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Victorian fires
Are Victorian governments trying to get rid of Victorian wildlife on purpose?
Mon, 2014-07-14 19:45 by Sheila Newman
#FF9999;line-height:120%;"> Video inside. This article is about the effects of 390,000 ha of native vegetation targeted to be burned every year in Victoria, Australia's most cleared state. The video inside this article documents how vast numbers of Australian wildlife are burned alive in scientifically dubious prescribed burns, mandated by the Victorian Government. It asks whether the cruel and avoidable fate of many wildlife in prescribed burns is really protecting human lives and assets or merely a way of meeting an arbitrary target. Others would be much harsher and say that this may be a calculated strategy to rid the state of wildlife in addition to an apparently deliberate failure to cooperate with wildlife activists in making easily protected wildlife corridors to connect viable habitat.[1]
The Labor Government in Victoria created these machinally destructive laws after the 2009 bushfires, but the Liberal Government has not questioned them. Those currently heading the Victorian animal holocaust are Dennis Napthine, Premier of Victoria (denis.napthine [ AT ] parliament.vic.gov.au),
Ryan Smith, Environment Victoria Minister (ryan.smith [ AT ] parliament.vic.gov.au) and
#10; [email protected]">Peter Walsh Minister for Agriculture (peter.walsh [ AT ] parliament.vic.gov.au).
Government burning off decisions arising from the bushfire commission seem mostly based on spin. They do not acknowledge in their methods to avert bushfires the predominant role of humans in starting them. Nature accounts for only about 6% of fires, mostly in the form of lightening. Ninety point nine per cent (90.9%) of vegetation fires are caused by humans through arson (35.2), through 'accidents' (36.2%), by 'incendiary' (? explosions etc) (13.3%), and through prescribed burns reigniting (5.4%). (3.9% are described as 'other'.)
"Bushfire, arson, what do we know now?" (the source of the above graph and figures) is a Productivity Commission report on the role of arson in creating fires. As we might expect of the economic technocracy, one of their recommendations is prescribed burn-offs to limit the arsonist's bang for his/her buck! In other words, do the job for them? Absolutely no regard or even a thought for the living creatures that suffer. The authors note that it is hard to stop arson in large vegetated areas. We note, however, that there has been a huge reduction in parks and forest staff on the ground, like rangers, since the Kennett government 1992-1999, with Labor governments continuing this folly.
Shooters encouraged in parks, but not wildlife carers
Whilst governments are gung-ho to allow shooters into national parks to 'control pests', what about compensating wildlife activists and carers who are willing to roster themselves in forests during the fire-season and to monitor animal welfare and visitor activity, day and night if necessary? People who care for injured wildlife and love the bush are very unlikely to set fire to habitat.
Faulty bushfire management compounds faulty climate change management
The values of the Liberal Government avoid the issue of climate change. Their population growth and development policies (like the Labor government's before them, despite the rhetoric) actively increase high carbon-emission producing activities and drying and warming of land. Much of Australia's carbon emissions come from land-clearing, but in Victoria (and Australia) the government is encouraging more new development, and consequently more land-clearing. As well, intensification of development means that people are confined to small airless and eaveless appartments which can only be cooled by air-conditioners, which put heat into the air outside and demand more coal-fired electricity to run. Victoria's grotesque 'planning policies' increase local heat island effect and the overall risk of the climate heating and drying. We note that Victoria is soon to subject VCAT to committee regulation that will see even less control over the 'planning' that is overrunning our democracy and heating our environment.[3]
The mass media and government have avoided acknowledging the demonstrable fact that old growth forests burn much less than new or 'managed' forests. New forests and plantations dry through thinning or through repeated burnoffs which then favour combustible vegetation that survives fires, thus creating a man-made fire-vulnerable landscape and reduction to inland rainfall. The prescribed annual burn-off target greatly increases the drying of vegetated land and vegetation kinds. Trees not only create local 'heat islands' but vast old-growth forests cool vast portions of the environment as well as efficiently regulating below-ground and above ground hydration through transpiration.
For those who were in Victoria during the 2009 fires, and remember the heat leading up to the fires, the active promotion through legislation of these drying factors (although in guise of fire-precautions) is insane. At best it appears like gross incoordination of knowledge and policy; at worst it seems quasi-homicidal.
Government by the ethically bereft in Victoria and Australia
It is as if we are governed by a self-appointed moneyed caste which has lost all respect for nature, other species and the citizens of Victoria themselves. The environmental laws are flouted [2]and then, when attention is drawn to this, our corrupt parliaments simply change the laws.
For those of us who grew up in a social environment that enjoyed the outdoors and strongly valued passive interaction with native wildlife, with a culture of wildlife protection and respect, this is shocking. We realise that we are ruled by a planning technocracy that has no higher human values, makes empty promises, speaks in cliches, and makes laws to advantage its members.
It has taken many of us decades to accept that this is really what is happening. At best we are witnesses to great callousness, at worst we are witness to the construction by elites of a kind of civilisation that is only concerned with enriching a small elite at the expense of their fellows and the total destruction of the natural world.
The people responsible are obviously not able to work out the ultimate consequences of their policies, which will see a so-degraded Austrlaia that survival for most, if not all, will become doubtful. They are also not scientists, except in the technologies that further their immediate wealth. They have no humane philosophies. If they are religious, it is with dogmas that blind them to consequences and help them to further their own immediate interests. They are like Steven King's Tommyknockers, whom education has equipped with "a limited form of genius which makes them very inventive, but does not provide any philosophical or ethical insight. Instead, it provokes psychotic violence."[4]
This class is also ruling all states of Australia.
Inquiry into 2009 bushfires
The article below is a report on the inquiry into the 2009 Victorian bushfires, which were among the most frightening ever, occurring in deadly temperatures in the mid-forties. It shows the typical approach of the mainstream media, which always backs the status quo and attributes science and foresight to the establishment in its conditioning comments about how 'scientific evaluations have always been part of intelligent fuel reduction strategy' and its illogical conclusion that 'an effective wildfire control strategy must attempt to control fires throughout the forests. The paragraphs quoted below, however, also contain telling comments from environmentalists, but these paragraphs were right at the end of the full article, where most people never read. To consign these important observations to the end of the article, naturally diminishes their value in the readers' eyes. Also, note the use of 'experts' in the Royal Commission. Experts are usually part of the establishment. If you are not part of the establishment or disagree with it, then newspapers are unlikely to call you an 'expert'.
"Environmentalists, who for years have opposed fuel-reduction burns on the grounds that they damage the environment, have taken a new tack. The Greens, for example, now claim that they never opposed prescribed burning, but wanted a scientific evaluation of each burn conducted before it was approved, to ensure the survival of fauna and flora.
While this sounds reasonable, the fact is that these considerations have always been part of an intelligent fuel-reduction strategy, which must recognise that fires have been a natural feature of the bush, and it can be assumed that fauna and flora are adapted to survive low-to-moderate intensity fires.
[Candobetter comment: The huge arbitrary annual target promotes a regularity of holocaust that was never present in the environment where Australian animals evolved. Furthermore, this pyromaniacal target occurs in the most cleared state and where wildlife are threatened by many other intensifying and expanding processes. To cite evolutionary theory under these conditions is inappropriate and has grave consequences, as we see in the film above.]
Another line of attack, put forward by some environmental groups in central Victoria, is that the DSE should be setting fire to grass and weeds in close proximity to housing, rather than burning forests.
A spokesman for the groups said, "We cannot understand why DES fuel-reduction teams keep burning public forest blocks, when the dangerous areas closer to settlements are neglected." (Bendigo Advertiser, March 24, 2010).
Another member claimed that the DSE had produced no research analysing the effect of fuel-reduction burns on central Victoria's box-ironbark forests. The groups had adopted the motto, "Hazards not Hectares", to emphasise the need for burns in high-risk areas, rather than large areas of bush.
However, an effective wildfire control strategy must attempt to control fires throughout the forests, without neglecting high-risk areas close to human habitation. " (Source: "BUSHFIRES: Victoria changes tack on fuel-reduction burns," by Peter Westmore, News Weekly, April 17, 2010
[1] Such as those of Maryland Wilson, Malcolm Legg and Hans Brunner http://candobetter.net/?q=node/1012 and http://candobetter.net/?q=taxonomy/term/73over years on the Mornington Peninsula, attempting to link Greensbush National Park with Devilbend Reservoir, sundry then extant green paces and Frankston Reservoir. All eroded by development and then all prospects of a corridor completely destroyed - some would say gratuitously - by Peninsula Link - which could have provided many underpasses and overpasses but only provided one, in the Pines Flora and Fauna reserve, where the local Frankston Council then failed to use money allocated by government to install a predator proof fence to protect the local bandicoot population, which then became extinct. Now our only hope is a southern brown bandicoot program in the Werribee Zoo. Imagine! Needing a zoo to preserve this once common animal. Everything, from kangaroos to platypuses is now stuck in the remaining isolated and dwindling patches of habitat on Mornington Peninsula, which has been targeted for growth since Jeff Kennet made it part of Greater Melbourne. Instead of a green peninsula biosphere once touted, the Victorian government intends to build new roads and railway down to Hastings Port, of which 400 ha it then means for intensive industrial development.
[2]Victorian Fauna and Flora Guarantee Act
Auditor General's reports
[3] "GENERAL BUSINESS
10. CHANGES TO THE VICTORIAN AND CIVIL ADMINISTRATIVE (VCAT) ACT
Planning Appeals Coordinator: Gareth Gale
General Manager Planning & Development: Stuart Draffin
The purpose of this report is to brief Councillors on changes made by the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT) Amendment Bill 2014.
On 1 April 2014, the VCAT Amendment Bill 2014 received Royal Assent, and became effective on 2 June 2014. No community consultation occurred as part of this Amendment.
The Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal Amendment Bill 2014 contains substantial reforms relevant to the planning jurisdiction.
Most significantly, the reforms would enable the Tribunal to:
1. Invite a responsible authority to reconsider its decision at any time in a review proceeding
2. Make an order in relation to fees (including application and hearing fees), separate from its power to award costs
3. More actively manage the use and giving of expert evidence in proceedings
4. Make an order removing a person as a party to a proceeding if it considers that:
•??the person's interests are not affected by the proceeding; or
•??the person is not a proper or necessary party to the proceeding
5. Delegate certain functions of the Tribunal (such as making procedural orders or consent orders) to its registrars.
It is the first two reforms that are likely to be of most significance to Council. Below is a summary of those two proposed reforms.
New section 51A - Tribunal May Invite Decision-Maker to Reconsider Decision
In the context of the planning jurisdiction, this new provision would enable the Tribunal to invite a responsible authority (usually Council) to reconsider its decision at any time in the proceeding. The new section provides that on receiving the invitation to reconsider, the responsible authority may:
•??Affirm the decision
•??Vary the decision
•??Set aside the decision and substitute a new decision for it.
The new provision requires the Tribunal to ensure that, as far as possible, a proceeding's priority is not affected by inviting the responsible authority to reconsider its decision (unless the parties consent). As a consequence, the Tribunal may specify a timeframe within which a responsible authority may reconsider its decision.
One possible opportunity for Council to reconsider its decision might be following mediation and/or the amendment of plans. However, this process only seems warranted in order to avoid a hearing extending across multiple days – cases which are generally contained within the Major Cases List. Given there is clear intent in the new provisions to ensure a proceeding is not delayed further, coupled with the fact that all Major Cases List applications have hearings listed only six weeks after any mediation, it is difficult to contemplate under what circumstance this process will be useful.
It is further noted that Council already has the opportunity to reconsider its position during a VCAT process. As such, this change to the VCAT Act might not offer any new real change other than introducing a more formal mechanism to do so. This new process raises a number of procedural questions which are yet to be understood.
New Section 115 – New Power to Make Orders in Relation to Fees
This section provides that the Tribunal may, at any time, make an order that a party to
the proceeding:
•??Reimburse another party the whole or any part of any fee paid by that other party in the proceeding;
•??Pay, on behalf of another party, the whole or any part of any fee that may be required to be paid in the future by that other party in the proceeding;
•??Reimburse another party the whole or any part of any fee that may be paid in the future by that other party in the proceeding; and
•??Require a party to pay the whole or any part of a fee in future in the proceeding.
The key area that this could be useful for Council is in Enforcement Order Applications (EAO's). Given EAO's are generally only made in the situation where Council is forced to do so, the Tribunal could award the reimbursement of the $802 fee to Council.
The new changes to the VCAT have been introduced with little forewarning or consultation.
The implications of the changes, and particularly those at the new section 51A, are unclear amongst those working within the planning profession. At this stage, there appears little opportunity to enact this new provision, particularly given there is clear intent in the new provisions to ensure a proceeding is not delayed further.
The new changes will be monitored to better inform our understanding of how they will affect Council and other stakeholders.
HUMAN RIGHTS CONSIDERATION
The recommendation complies with the Victorian Charter of Human Rights and
Responsibilities Act 2006.
That Council note this report."
[4] Quote from Wikipedia summary of the plot of Steven King's The Tommyknockers, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tommyknockers
wildlife corridors
Victorian fires 2009
burning-off
Bushfire Management
Victorian bushfires
planning technocracy
wildlife burned alive
Victoria's prescribed burns policy
Read more about Are Victorian governments trying to get rid of Victorian wildlife on purpose?
Australian fires from space: another look at this continent and climate change
Thu, 2013-01-10 12:26 by Sheila Newman
Click for larger image here.
"Careful observers of the new "Black Marble" images of Earth at night released this week by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have noticed bright areas in the western part of Australia that are largely uninhabited. Why is this area so lit up, many have asked?
Away from the cities, much of the night light observed by the NASA-NOAA Suomi NPP satellite in these images comes from wildfires. In the bright areas of western Australia, there are no nearby cities or industrial sites but, scientists have confirmed, there were fires in the area when Suomi NPP made passes over the region. This has been confirmed by other data collected by the satellite.
The extent of the night lights in this area is also a function of composite imaging. These new images were assembled from data acquired over nine days in April 2012 and 13 days in October 2012. This means fires and other lighting (such as ships) could have been detected on any one day and integrated into the composite picture, despite being temporary phenomena.
Because different areas burned at different times when the satellite passed over, the cumulative result in the composite view gives the appearance of a massive blaze. These fires are temporary features, in contrast to cities which are always there.
Other features appearing in uninhabited areas in these images could include fishing boats, gas flaring, lightning, oil drilling, or mining operations, which can show up as points of light."Source: NASA December 12, 2012
Australian Agricultural Scientist Jane O'Sullivan comments, "Most of these would be fuel-reduction burns (being in April and October). Not a snapshot of current fires. However, it is remarkable how the energy released by fires over these few days of compilation appears to outweigh the energy released by lighting in built-up areas. This may also be an artifact of the compilation method: probably taking the brightest reading on each compiled image rather than averaging them. (That would explain the shipping channel images they also feature)."
What does this tell us about our land?
The distribution of these fires that are mostly unnoticed by the human inhabitants of Australia tells us something about this land of ours, which is reinforced by the map. Firstly, it gets very very hot and dry away from the sea and the only major mountain chain (which is on the East coast of Australia). Secondly, the desert vegetation is burning. (This is happening more and more often and some of the vegetation may not return due to this.) Thirdly, almost nobody notices because humans cannot easily survive in those regions. If you scroll down to the satellite and desert maps below the NASA image, you will realise why having more and more people come to Australia is a bad idea. We are using up a very thin fringe of green; it is getting hotter, and the desert is expanding into the inhabited areas, preceded by high temperatures and fire.
Environmental poet and author, Mark O'Connor says,
"Virtually all of Australia burns fairly regularly (though with frequencies that vary from annually in Kakadu grasslands to well over a century in some or most forests, but these images imply there may now be very short intervals between the burnings. Perhaps too short for many of the major desert bushes/plants to mature and set seed before they are burnt."
The Ten Deserts of Australia
There are ten deserts in Australia: the Great Victoria Desert, Great Sandy Desert, Tanami Desert, Simpson Desert, Gibson Desert, Little Sandy Desert, Strzelecki Desert, Sturt Stony Desert, Tirari Desert, Pedirka Desert.
Source of desert map, Paul Hesse, "Sticky dunes in a wet desert: Formation, stabilisation and modification of the Australian desert dunefields," Department of Environment and Geography, Macquarie University, Sydney, New South Wales 2109, Australia. See end of article for abstract quote on dune formation in Australian deserts.
"Australian deserts [...] make up about 18% of this continent, but a full 35% of Australia receives so little rainfall, it is classified as desert. 70% of the country is classified as arid or semi-arid, which means it gets less than 500 mm of rain a year. That makes Australia the driest inhabited continent on Earth. Only Antarctica is drier. Only 3% of the Australian population live in those dry 70% of the continent, the rest of our people is concentrated on the coasts.
The main reason for the formation of the Australian deserts is their location. Like most major deserts across the world the Australian deserts can be found around a certain latitude (roughly 30° north/south of the equator) where the weather phenomena create a dry climate:
Hot moist air rises at the equator. It cools as it moves north or south, the moisture condenses and falls as abundant rain onto the tropical regions. Finally the now dry air sinks over the subtropical regions, warming as it sinks, which encourages evaporation, and voila: you get more evaporation than rain, perfect conditions for the formation of a desert. Source: Outback Australia Travel Guide
Some more information about the nature of Australia's desert interior comes from the abstract accompanying the desert map above:
Abstract by Paul Hesse, "Sticky dunes in a wet desert: Formation, stabilisation and modification of the Australian desert dunefields," Department of Environment and Geography, Macquarie University, Sydney, New South Wales 2109, Australia
"Independent dating evidence and dune morphology indicate great stability of the Australian dunefields. Most dunefields have seen only minor superficial modification since they were formed, up to 1 million years ago, despite quite large changes in climate conditions. This stability may be partly due to the relatively dense vegetation cover on Australian dunes under the marginally arid climate. But new studies, supported by many older observations, suggest that 'sticky' dunes (where sand grains are bonded or cemented) may form under a broader range of wind climates than widely thought and have greater resistance to reworking. New mapping of the Australian continental dunefields from satellite imagery shows a previously unrecognised diversity of dune morphologies. Dune orientation, continuity, connectedness, crest planform, crest sharpness, spacing and setting all show patterns of variation over the continent. These are consistent with the overall low sand supply and variable wind climate that contribute to the dominance of longitudinal dunes but also with only superficial modification of the dunes after their initial formation. The longevity of the dunes is likely also partly due to the stabilisation of dune sand by pedogenesis: the bonding of sand by pedogenic calcium carbonate, gypsum, silica and translocated clays. The extremely low mobility of the sand dunes has led to preservation of dunes of great age, with stacked accretionary units and multiple palaeosols."
Australian fires 2012
desert fires
Australian deserts
Australian desert continent
Read more about Australian fires from space: another look at this continent and climate change
Study of Alice, the baby Wallaby, at Wildhaven
Thu, 2009-11-19 11:22 by admin
Many more photos of Australian animals interacting with Alan and Stella Reid at Wildhaven St Andrews Website, http://web.me.com/stellareid/Wildhaven
A study of Alice, the baby Wallaby
The study starts with Merlo and Cooper (Eastern Grey Kangaroos) watching Alice (Wallaby) in the early morning on 12th November 2009
Alice, who stands about 30cm high, contemplates sampling some new gum leaves
A little sniff before a taste.
Cleaning her teeth
Getting breakfast; had milk an hour ago.
taste test
found a good one
must be time for bed
Now, who can I annoy this morning?
All of us together, as the sun rose.
Many more photos of Australian animals interacting with Alan and Stella Reid at Wildhaven St Andrews Website, http://web.me.com/stellareid/Wildhaven.
Save the kangaroo
Wildhaven
living with wild animals
Stella and Alan Reid
Read more about Study of Alice, the baby Wallaby, at Wildhaven
www.livingwiththebush.org tries to stop Brumby's new suburban land-clearing laws
Fri, 2009-09-04 11:10 by Sheila Newman
Today is a dark day for native vegetation and the environment
Website - http://livingwiththebush.org/dp/
Today (Thursday 3rd Sept) Brumby bulldozed amendments to the Dandenong Ranges and Yarra Valley Regional Strategy Plan.
This was pushed through both houses of parliament with less than one days notice so the Government can soon remove vegetation protection to allow:
- clearing of all trees and vegetation within 10m of a house
- clearing a 4m wide strip of all vegetation along each property boundary
- clearing any vegetation except trees between 10m and 30m from a house;
from all of Victoria except the 20 urban councils around Melbourne proper.
Devastating impact
This will have a devastating impact in many areas of Victoria where many communities live with in a bushland setting.
And the evidence is that doing this will not make us safe from bushfire.
There are examples from Black Saturday of houses without any nearby vegetation that burnt, of fires that raced through short grass fields to ignite buildings. Houses located more than 380 metres from continous bush were lost.
Vegetation can also act as an essential windbreak, reducing the wind that intensifies fires, and may provide protection from radiant heat as well as slowing down or stopping embers.
Yet the Brumby government intends to allow this clearing until the final recommendations of the Bushfire Commission are released next year.
This will encourage unneighbourly behaviour
By then everyone who has been endeavouring to clear their block for any reason, including gaining a better view will have done so. We will have lost forever even more of our biodiversity and dumped more green house gases into the atmosphere.
The Living With The Bush Coalition has been formed to campaign against this proposal. We believe that this unfettered clearing is fundamentally flawed in that it will not protect houses from bushfires, may in fact increase the danger by creating more intense fires and will destroy the reason so many of us live with the bush.
Read our charter, "Living with the Bush"
You can read our charter at as well as more information on this issue, why we have reached this position and what you can do.
If you support the views expressed in the charter please consider endorsing it, either individually or as on behalf of a group.
You can register your support at the website.
With a large community outcry I hope we can get these unilateral changes modified to something that will protect our lives instead of just removing trees.
Please forward this on to your networks to help build the Living with the Bush Coalition,
Louis Delacretaz
Mr Brumby
land-clearing
Read more about www.livingwiththebush.org tries to stop Brumby's new suburban land-clearing laws
Joe Toscano - broadcasts on capitalism and violence in Australia this week
Eureka Rebellion anarchist ceremony 2009
The 3 December Spirit of Eureka celebrations will be a 12 hour extravaganza. Congregate at 4 am at the corner of Eureka and Stawell Street at the Eastern End of Ballarat. Dawn ceremony goes to daybreak. Those present will form a large circle. And, whilst waiting for dawn to break, everyone present will have the opportunity to say why they are there. The celebration ends at 4pm.
Joe reminds us that Eureka was about direct democracy, with mass meetings of 10,000 people, delegates appointed with specific mandates, direct action and, that great thing, Solidarity.
Eureka 2004 - 150th anniversary. (More details and history here.)
Anarchist invitation to Eureka Rebellion anniversary ceremonies
"The Anarchist Media Institute is inviting everyone who is interested in reclaiming The Radical Spirit of the Eureka Rebellion, to join us on Wednesday 3rd of December at the Eureka Stockade site in Ballarat, in Victoria, to celebrate the 148th Anniversary of the Eureka Rebellion.
Friday 3RD DECEMBER 2004
EUREKA STOCKADE SITE
EUREKA HALL - (CORNER EUREKA & STAWELL STREET, BALLARAT)
* 4AM  6AM Gathering at Eureka Park to mark the 150th anniversary of the battle on the site and at the time it occurred
* 6.00am  10.00am  Breakfast Eureka Hall (Bring own food & drinks)
* Further details to be announced
JOIN US - Celebrate the Past by Reclaiming the Present and creating a new future. Join us at Eureka Park /Eureka Hall (cnr Stawell and Eureka Streets, Ballarat)
It's time we reclaimed our history."
People for a Royal Commission into Corruption in Victoria
Email or snailmail for correspondence and petition:
A: P.O. Box 5035, Alphington 3078
Listen to the podcast for more or go to the Anarchist Media website
Joe Toscano
Eureka Rebellion
Read more about Joe Toscano - broadcasts on capitalism and violence in Australia this week
Tiny kangaroo first new patient for Wildhaven after the February fires
Photo by Stella Reid
This little kangaroo has been named Cooper, after the little boy who found him on his way to school. "Cooper's mother was hit by a car and is now in heaven", reports Stella Reid of Wildhaven Wildlife Shelter. Wildhaven was totally destroyed in the February bushfires in Victoria this year (2009). You can read about it in "Steve Irwin's dad visits Wildhaven after Black Saturday bushfires".
Cooper's education
Cooper and Stella go for walks in the National Park and watch wallabies and wombats.
Where Cooper sleeps
At night Cooper lives in a shed, where he is warm and comfortable. I have a feeling that Stella and Allen live in the same shed with him, since their buildings burned down in the worst bushfires in Australian recorded history. I have not, however, been able to confirm this.
Stella says that Cooper knows what it is like to lose everything and still find love and hope.
"Happiness is a journey not a destination and together with my new family I begin that journey."
And, as Maryland Wilson, President of the Australian Wildlife Protection Council (AWPC), says, "Stella must also be happier now that there is a baby in the house again."
Alan, Stella and Cooper in Wildhaven send their love and thanks to their supporters.
First new rescue case
Cooper is not the only animal they have contact with in the area of the fires, but he is their first new rescue case. Some of the animals they knew before have returned to see them. They put hay out for them because little grass is growing back, perhaps because the soil itself burned. The soil contains living creatures and, notably, mychorrizal fungi, which are essential for long-term nourishment of forests. Mychorrizal fungi can withstand very high temperatures, but maybe these fires were too much for them.
You can send money for hay and equipment etc here:
by direct transfer
Stella Reid
BSB: 063 222
Account: 10262617
By cheque
c/o St Andrews Post Office
10 Caledonia Street,
PayPal address : oceanwarrioress[AT]yahoo.com (Remember to put @ instead of [AT])
Please state there: "for Stella's kangaroos"
The PayPal option might be the most convenient for International donations.
baby animal
Read more about Tiny kangaroo first new patient for Wildhaven after the February fires
Sam the koala loses another battle and is euthanased - we are all very sad
Fri, 2009-08-07 00:06 by admin
Another famous koala - from Norman Lindsay's Magic Pudding
"Sam, we were all so glad to hear of your rescue, which gave us hope that the world would realise the plight of you and your fellow koalas and other wildlife in Australia and that our politicians might then wake up. We enjoyed seeing that you had made a friend at the wildlife shelter and it seemed that your future looked comparatively rosey. We are now so sorry to hear that you are no longer with us."
-- Ed.Candobetter
Sam was actually a female koala and, soon after she was rescued, she became fast friends with a male koala who was recovering in the same shelter.
Sam was a victim of controlled burning, not of 'bushfire'
Sam was a victim of the practice of "controlled burning-off" to prevent bushfires. She was not actually a victim of an out of control bushfire. Burning-off is a practice of which the frequency is criticised soundly and scientifically here. In many cases it benefits loggers and land-clearers. Managed and thinned forests are overwhelmingly more frequently linked to uncontrollable bushfires than old growth forests. There is a case for burning off on ridges which are prone to lightening attacks, but, as writers argue in these pages, we should use an entirely different approach to fighting fires in Australia.
Although Sam became known, admired, and undoubtedly loved, by millions of people, due to the terrible fires last February in which hundreds of people died and over a million native animals died, she actually succumbed to chlamydia.
Chlamydia in koalas
Chlamydia is a disease which was found to be epidemic in a number of koala populations about 20 years ago. Since then, the mixing up of different populations in new places in an effort to save the species from extinction due to traditional habitat destruction, has probably contributed to a rise in the incidence of infections. Stress in its own right is also an obvious likely factor in the prevalence, seriousness and chronicity of this illness.
Chlamydia bacteria occur in many different animals, including humans. In koalas clamydia can infect the urinary tract the genetical tract and the respiratory tract. It may cause infertility and blindness and the animal may die from these. They get pink rimmed eyes and cannot keep themselves clean due to incontinence.Source:
How safe are koalas in Australia?
Koalas only live on the South and South Eastern coast of Australia and most wildlife carers consider them in danger everywhere. Unfortunately the way that animals are classified as threatened and endangered in Australia means that you have to wait until the entire population of koalas Australia-wide is on the brink of extinction. Meanwhile, as we head quickly towards this situation, local and regional populations are being extinguished with barely a protest registered in the mainstream media and with only the merest token gestures from parliamentarians.
Wildlife Carers finance most of their work themselves, with little help and much hindrance from the government. People around the world who may read this: please place pressure on our Australian State and Federal governments to start protecting our wildlife instead of killing them through neglect or demonised as 'pests'.
In some cases koalas are endangered by being marooned by human development, so that they cannot get out and they exhaust the food trees where they are boxed in and die of starvation, fighting and disease. Throwing animals together from different populations, without a normal population structure means that these artificially created new colonies lack brakes on reproduction which occur normally through incest avoidance and the Westermarck effect.
However, the greatest direct killer is loss of habitat due to suburban development. This loss of habitat is driven by the growth lobby which has caused Australia to become severely overpopulated to the extent that we are now running out of water and land for farming and for wildlife is being stolen for human development. This means less water and less land for animals and forests.
Koalas are also killed by dogs, humans, stepped on by cattle, and run down by cars.
Brigitte Bardot's site has a very good page on this, devoted to Victoria's Mornington Peninsula Wildlife carer, Jenny Bryant's Koala Refuge.
But koalas are also loved by many Australians
As you can see from this page
In Australia one of our most famous books was Norman Lindsay's The Magic Pudding, where the hero was a Koala called Bunyip Bluegum, who left his home because he couldn't stand sharing it with his untidy uncle.
This picture shows him eating outside to avoid watching his uncle drag his whiskers in his soup. You can see that Bunyip is being importuned by two small goannas, who want hand-outs.
Save the Koala
Sam the koala
Wildlife Carers
Read more about Sam the koala loses another battle and is euthanased - we are all very sad

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Our consulting group has been active in Slovakia since 2003. During the years we have built the company that has a stabile market position in provision of business advisory services. We especially focus on tax and accounting services, payroll outsourcing and business consulting.
In co-operation with renowned law offices, we also provide legal advisory for our clients.
Professional approach to our clients always respects their specific needs. Each of our client is provided with a full range of required services in first-class quality. We are ready to adapt to various requirements of our clients. We respect our clients as our partners and maintain long-term relationships with them.
Thanks to quality of our work and customer´s satisfaction we could continually grow and expand our team. The people are the first pillar of our success. We carefully choose our colleagues and continually invest in their education and trainings. Thanks to our personal and individual approach based on mutual trust and confidence, the second pillar of our success are satisfied clients.
Our team is managed by professionals with long-term experiences in management structures of leading consulting companies with international background. This allows us to propose comprehensive solutions for each client in respect to local as well as international environment.
Thanks to our cooperation with our foreign partners, we can provide our clients with consulting services also in foreign countries.
We are member of the Slovak Chamber of Tax Advisors (www.skdp.sk), which is the professional association of the Slovak tax experts. As well, we are corresponding member of the international professional consulting network Russell Bedford International (www.russellbedfordinternational.org) that focuses on tax and accounting advisory around the world.


This new series of "author inspirations" will comprise short takes on works that we find inspiring–whether those works are films, fiction, gaming products, or anything else.
Recently I picked up Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities. In it are a number of illustrations from a 1997 film that I somehow missed when I tried to watch all of del Toro's backlog several years ago–Mimic. (Spoilers herein.) I watched the thing just last night, and its main villain–a race of giant cockroaches, basically–have marvellously grotesque forelimbs that raise a human-like mask (formed out of their exoskeleton) across their mandibles. The title comes from the "Judas Breed" having the ability to mimic their prey, and there are some glorious moments where they stalk around, looking like men in oversized trench coats, which are actually their wings folded around them. Something I loved about these creatures is that I kept expecting them to be sentient–but they remained instinct-driven insects, with only a single glimmer, in the finale, of a possibly problem-solving intelligence. This increased the ecohorror aspect of the film, a Nature that could not be reasoned with.
Besides the monsters, there's a lot that we could pull from Mimic. On the one hand, there are four to six "investigators," but two of them are directly responsible for the outbreak of these creatures, which makes for some nice–though abbreviated–tensions within the group. How might we make investigators in our scenarios culpable in the very horror they combat?
I also found this interesting article re-hashing the director's commentary of Mimic, and it raises some interesting issues around horror films and Hollywood politics, especially in the mid-1990s. For instance: del Toro originally envisioned one of the characters as gay, and the primary couple in the film were going to be mixed race. Both of these choices were nixed by the production company, but beg the question of how different Mimic might have been (and make me even more proud to love del Toro's work).
Have you seen Mimic? What did you think? How does it hold up to the rest of del Toro's oeuvre?
You can rent or purchase Mimic on Amazon for just a few dollars.
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At the start of every year, since 2010, I have listed new ways to learn online. I collect these sites throughout the year and save them just for this very moment. So here is a list of ways you can take advantage of the vast knowledge available online, allowing us to appreciate how willing people are to innovate and share.
Sound Gecko is pretty awesome. Using this app lets you listen to articles you find on the Internet. Simply enter the URL of the article you want to read and wait a few seconds for the application to generate the audio.
I tried it with an article on this site and with the exception of mispronouncing my last name (what else is new?), I found the synthesized voice reasonably easy to listen to. This could be a big time saver if you have lots to read and little time, which is probably most of you. Sound Gecko is available online and as a mobile phone app.
There are great educational videos on YouTube but you don't have time to watch them. Ripping the audio from those videos is the answer to that problem. YouTube to mp3 is one of several online applications for converting YouTube videos to MP3 files that you can download and take with you.
Simply enter the YouTube URL and click the Convert Video button. The application extracts the MP3 (there is processing time) and then gives you a link to download the audio file. It's not exactly a pretty site, but it works.
A photo essay is more than a gallery of photographs. The images (and often words) are tied together to express a narrative or chronology that transports the viewer to another place or event. Here is a list for finding some of the most compelling photo essays depicting life and issues around the world.
Carly is a young woman living with autism who co-authored the book Carly's Voice: Breaking Through Autism. To help promote her book, they have created this video experience of what it might feel like to live in Carly's world, giving users a first-person point of view into Carly's experience. I just wish there were more controls for pausing and navigation in the interactive version.
Noteflight is an application for composing music in your browser. You can write music, see the notes, print them and play them back. The free account for individuals allows for 10 compositions. Be sure to select the Individual account.
If you want to get your science straight, try these sites for starters. Explore the many interactive experiences from Nova, which cover a wide range of science topics. Play with The Scale of the Universe. Listen to the Nobel Prize Talks Podcasts. Read Stephen Hawking's lectures and watch his videos.
If you haven't visited an online library, try it in 2015. You can download or view eBooks in a variety of formats. The Open Library has a huge classic literature collection. Other choices for free reading include: Questia, Internet Public Library, and Authorama. A well-known site, mentioned in a previous year (I think) is Project Gutenberg. Finally, if you don't have an eReader, check out Books In My Phone, which is a service that packages books to be read on small devices. With access to all these books, you might want to learn to read more quickly. In that case, check out Spreeder.
Experience the sense of liberation that comes from learning how to fix a digital device, an appliance or vehicle on your own. Find manuals, guides and a community at ifixit. Learn repair skills and self-reliance.
Celebrate the beautiful diversity of this planet by visiting online embassies to learn about other countries. Here is a list of embassies in the U.S. For world facts, believe it or not, you can visit the CIA's World Factbook for maps and comparative statistics. Also, use the maps at GeographyIQ to access factual information about the world.
Zotero is for people who need a better way to collect and organize research. In addition, Zotero fosters community by organizing groups of people by research topic, making it easy to find others with similar interests for sharing and collaboration.
Share your favorite ways to learn online below in the Comments section.
Keep up with your field! Get The eLearning Coach delivered to your Inbox every month, with ideas, articles, freebies and resources.
Wonderful collection of new things to try. Thank you Connie!
I'm glad you liked this. Happy learning!
I found your site to be very informative. I am endeavoring to learn instructional design for adult learners at Walden University. I'm in my second week of classes and I am looking forward to beginning my new career.
In my efforts to find out more about how people learn, I can say that I feel the SoundGecko you've included in your blog, could be a tool of choice for a lot of adult learners. With daily schedules becoming more and more hectic, this tool will definitely avail the opportunity to listen to articles while on the go, since it also has a mobile app.
I'm wondering, though, if the use of the SoundGecko app, for the purpose of educational retention, will be effective enough for the majority of adult learners. According to "Principles of Adult Learning and Instructional Systems Design," adults are in more of a position to be in charge of their learning processes. They enter the learning environment having a lot more knowledge and experiences than younger learners. Additionally, adults can be adamant about how they believe they learn best, even if they've never tested any of the other learning theories within their previous learning environments.
As a future Instructional Designer, one of my responsibilities will be to design learning tools in a manner that is most effective for the learner. Of course, given the app presented, and its potential use as an aide in an instructional environment, I believe that the SoundGecko will be beneficial, if the adult is an auditory learner. I don't, however, feel that it will be as effective to the kinesthetic and visual adult learners.
As I was reading your blog, I had re-read twice, once from my own perspective as a learner eager to see what you had posted and then again as an instructional designer to see what other avenues or different ways there could be for learning new information. For example, your first item about SoundGecko is excellent! I had never heard of it before, and with the material I work with, we always create two versions of an online course, one as an interactive course and then a print version (just words, no images, interactions, etc.) and I thought this SoundGecko could be useful for our users who may not want to read the article itself, but rather listen to it instead. It could be useful for some of the material I work with, but I mostly create courses for healthcare professionals, and this SoundGecko may not get all the pronunciations correct (just like myself!), but overall I can see how it would be helpful if someone needed to multitask. They could put this on and then continue to do other things. Pretty snazzy! Thanks for sharing your finds with us!
You're right, I wouldn't count on a synthesized voice to get all the medical pronunciations correct. I hope you enjoy your experiences with Sound Gecko.
I can't say how effective it will be. But I do know that I seem to get a lot out of listening to podcasts, particularly when my attention is not split. So much to research and learn.
I really liked the ideas you put forth here! Some I would never of known about such as the SoundGeko application but I am now eager to give it a shot. I have students in my high school math classes that are from all spectrums and something like this could be very beneficial for my students that struggle with word problems. It is perpetually a weak point in math and something that could read the questions to them could be key as there is only ever one of me while there are 25 of them in my room. I have never used the youtube mp3 conversion tool before but I do have some friends that have used it to get some songs and things off the internet. Using it for the classroom or for me to be able to keep up to date with new materials and ways to incorporate new things that just take too long to watch at times is a great idea. I will have something new to listen to during my workouts now! Lastly I am very interested in the Autism experience site that you sent to me, I know my colleagues would be very interested as well to see how they utilize the internet to demonstrate the difficulties that the students with Autism must go through on a daily basis. My mother has worked for an Intermediate Unit for quite some time now and I know she and her colleagues will enjoy this as well.
Thank you for sharing such awesome materials!
Wow. Thank you for the in-depth comment, Josh. I had completely forgotten about that article and now I want to go back and check out those sites. I hope all the links still work. I am so happy that any of these sites can help your students.


On Thursday a federal court jury in Jackson rendered a mixed verdict in Bingham v. Asemotas Real Estate, LLC.
Plaintiff alleged violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act and beach of contract.
Here is the jury's Verdict.
The jury found for the Defendant on the breach of contract claim and hung on the FLSA claim.
The trial lasted 3 days.
Nick Norris with Watson & Norris in Jackson represented the Plaintiff. Brandon Dorsey of Jackson represented the Defendant.
District Judge Sul Ozerden presided.


Corporate page or personal profile on LinkedIn: where to put your energy?
To tell the truth, few members on LinkedIn have already managed to do business through their business page … But, but, but … That does not mean that it is not essential for your brand!
Your LinkedIn business page will never be as important as your personal LinkedIn profile and will not offer you as much opportunity to find new prospects. However, there are many reasons why your business can take advantage of it, so I'll expand on it later in the article.
To begin, let's see why your LinkedIn personal profile will always be the basis of your Social Selling.
When buying a product or service, do you prefer to request information from an automated messenger or an advisor? When you are on social networks do you prefer to interact with a human being or a logo?
Nobody likes falling on multiple-choice answering machines when they call their internet service provider: "We did not understand your choice", how many times did you hear that and hang up enervating? We are sorely lacking human contact and often we have the impression that brands lack human authenticity (fortunately some are exceptions to this rule!).
The most beautiful experiences you have had with a brand are certainly the contact you had with one of the employees of the same company.
LinkedIn company pages do not offer the opportunity to develop relationships, or to have private and individual conversations with targeted prospects.
You are totally dependent on the interactions that come to you organically (they are few) and sponsored publications (so paying).
However, there are companies that manage to get feedback from LinkedIn sponsored publications. With less than a budget, this does not mean that business pages become the cornerstone of your Social Selling strategy.
A successful Social Selling strategy will always be tied to the personal profiles and relationships that you will develop with your prospects. Human relations will always go before the rest and I personally think that it will not change before very long.
As you can see, the best return on investment you will ever have is to train your teams in Social Selling and using their personal LinkedIn profile. Sales people will be able to connect with their prospects individually and start a real relationship. Which is not possible with a LinkedIn company page.
The companies for which Social Selling works are those that know how to take advantage of a new connection and do it appropriately. Most will then achieve or exceed their business goals.
LinkedIn company pages are completely passive and do not allow you to create results when engagement on your page is low.
Connect with who you want (or almost). The business page can not make connection requests to prospects. It is nevertheless an essential function to generate new prospects. Fortunately it is feasible with your personal profile. Of course, do not connect with everyone on LinkedIn. Connect essentially with targets in your sector of activity (customers, prospects, partners, influencers …) Always ask, if you can or they can help you, whether for your watch or your business.
Send personal messages. You can not send private messages via the company page. I think this simple fact limits business pages to a goal of notoriety, since the only way to make themselves known is to regularly broadcast quality content and sponsored publications. Personal profiles meanwhile, offer you the opportunity to establish a relationship with your connections through private messaging.
Publish content directly to LinkedIn Publisher. Although you can share posts with images, videos, and links, you can not publish blog-like content on LinkedIn Publisher with an Enterprise page. With personal profiles, this is what will help you position yourself as an expert in your field and inspire confidence.
Even if the LinkedIn business page is not destined to become a gold mine (unless you have a large advertising budget as we have seen previously), it is worthwhile to create one.
We will see, what are the benefits and reasons for setting up a LinkedIn company page for your Social Selling strategy.
Whether you are a large company or a freelancer, if a potential prospect, customer, or connection wants to know more about your business and can not find it, it can lead to loss of trust or credibility in your business or of your brand.
That said, an incomplete or unprofessional business page can be just as bad. Pay special attention to the information you will integrate.
Having a LinkedIn profile with your company's or brand's logo will be the guarantee that it exists and that it has an identity. Your profile becomes more professional, if you have a logo rather than a gray square.
Having a business page gives prospects additional ways to find you on LinkedIn. They will be able to see the publications of the company page, job offers and employee profiles.
Read also here how to improve the visibility.
This gives you stronger organic visibility, even if you only have a few employees. In addition, your LinkedIn business page becomes a clickable logo in the personal profiles of every person who works for your business.
To extend the reach of your status updates, or your company's page in general, you can choose to pay for LinkedIn advertising.
Although advertising on LinkedIn may be more expensive than other social networks, you can target your ads very precisely and reach people who are only on LinkedIn (or almost), such as executives. A good campaign for key decision-makers could be a worthwhile investment.
If you own a business, it is essential to have both a LinkedIn company page and a personal profile.
When creating your business page, set reasonable goals, taking all of this information into account. In the end, your LinkedIn business page is another place where your prospects will be able to learn more about your business and understand how you can help them solve their problems.
Why and how to set up a newsletter for your blog?
How to develop your startup with the help of social networks?


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Spice Girls Cancel World Tour Over Lesbian Allegations
By Njideka Agbo 08 April 2019 | 7:09 am
Spice Girls reunion tour is about to come to an end after the girls reportedly backed out.
Melanie 'Mel B' Brown, Emma Bunton, Geri Horner and Melanie Chishol are reportedly having issues after Mel B admitted to a lesbian fling with Geri Horner in the '90s.
The Mail stated that Mel B revealed that the reason for the internal conflict and tension within the group was as a result of her and Homer's relationship in the past.
A source told Mail, "It has been a hugely dramatic week. At one point last Sunday, the tour wasn't happening. They agreed that they had to do the British dates because they are under contract and they don't want to let their fans down, but there won't be any more. There had been plans to keep it going but no more."
Confirming the story, Mel B told Piers Morgan, "She's going to hate me for this because she's all posh in her country house… but it's a fact.
"It just happened and we just giggled at it and that was it."
But Homer would have none of it.
"It has been very disappointing to read about all these rumours again, especially on Mother's Day of all days," the statement read.
"Geri loves the Spice Girls… she would like [the fans] to know that what has been reported recently is simply not true and has been very hurtful to her family."
Before now, they had announced that their tour which kicks off only a month away (June) with eight dates across the US, Australia and UK. Victoria Beckham, on the other hand, has said before now in a statement that she will not be able to make it due to "business commitments."


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The Open Collection —TOC02.3: Serially Un[Boxed]
By Jennifer Akins on October 17, 2017
The Open Collection —TOC02.3: Serially Un[Boxed] The Kranzberg Art & Architecture Library Special Collections is a unique repository for rare and hard-to-find art and architecture publications. From limited edition series to out-of-print volumes, the Art Special Collections holdings of...
Libraries' 'Mean Streets' Program Returns to St. Louis Film Festival
By ksinger on October 16, 2017
As part of the St. Louis International Film Festival (SLIFF) Nov. 2-12, Washington University Libraries, Washington University's Sam Fox School's College of Architecture and Graduate School of Architecture & Urban Design, Cinema St. Louis and the Missouri History Museum present "Mean Streets:...
New Content: Claude Fredericks Collection of James Merrill
By Casey Bowen on October 16, 2017
The Modern Literature Collection is proud to present the Claude Fredericks Collection of James Merrill, our latest resource in James Merrill scholarship. James Merrill and Claude Fredericks had a very close relationship that lasted throughout their lifetimes. Over the course of this long friendsh...
Students Say Thanks to Olin Library Construction Crew
By slaaker on October 16, 2017
A conversation has been happening between students and members of the Olin Library construction crew, who are hard at work on the Olin Library Transformation project. It all started several weeks ago near the Level 3 Newman Tower construction. A small piece of paper was taped to the atrium glass,...
Mapping LGBTQ St. Louis Is Now Online
By Miranda Rectenwald on October 11, 2017
http://library.wustl.edu/map-lgbtq-stl Mapping LGBTQ St. Louis is a digital interactive map exploring how the region's lesbian, gay, bisexual,transgender, and queer communities have changed over time, from the end of World War II in 1945 through the passage of St. Louis city's first gay an...
October Springer eBooks
By Alison Verbeck on October 11, 2017
Advanced Multipoles for Accelerator Magnets by Pierre Schnizer Advances in Optical Science and Engineering by Indrani Bhattacharya, Satyajit Chakrabarti, Haricharan Singh Reehal, Vasudevan Lakshminarayanan Amperometric and Impedance Monitoring Systems for Biomedical Applications by Jaime Pu...
Emergent Scientist
EDP Sciences announced the recent launch of Emergent Scientist, an innovative new open access journal that puts young scientists at its heart. The journal was born out of the 2016 International Physicists' Tournament (IPT), and is supported by the French Physics Society and the French Acade...
Hotch at 100: Growing Up In Saint Louis
By William Youngblood on October 9, 2017
This year marks the 100th birthday of author and Washington University alumnus A. E. Hotchner. To help celebrate this milestone, Hotchner sat down with Washington University's Steven Rosenblum in May 2017 for a wide-ranging conversation on his life, his career as a writer, and his friendsh...
Open Textbook Network Includes (Some) Classical Works
By Deborah Katz on October 9, 2017
The Open Textbook Network includes three works in Classics that are easy to find; two texts of Cicero and one on Hannibal. A search on Greek and Latin also brought up titles that may be of interest to Classicists . Exploring the library contents through the search box yields worthwhile results.
Follow Mapping LGBTQ StL on Twitter
By Miranda Rectenwald on October 6, 2017
Now you can get more updates and a behind the scene look at Mapping LGBTQ St. Louis on our twitter feed: https://twitter.com/MappingLGBTQstl


docbook-xsl stylesheets to produce html/pdf and optionally man pages.
in the code. A nice side effect would be much higher portability.
poll, it will be up until end of this year.
> docbook-xsl stylesheets to produce html/pdf and optionally man pages.
> in the code. A nice side effect would be much higher portability.
> poll, it will be up until end of this year.
your continued efforts on gtk-doc.


Lexus, Toyota's luxury car brand, has come up with a prototype hoverboard that glides a little above the ground; the technology used to make this possible was the same as that used in maglev trains. This is just a glimpse of what the future would look like, for those of you who watched the film franchise 'Back to the future' this is just what you would imagine Marty McFly with.
The hoverboard has a limitation as it requires magnets to be embedded in the ground, that would repel the board, just as those used in maglev train tracks. This is where the movie and reality are contradicting as in the movie the board floated over everything except water. The company is set to test the hoverboard in Barcelona, Spain "over the coming weeks until summer 2015," the company said.
Other hoverboard projects have also used similar techniques as this one but lets hope Lexus makes this and people are able to buy it soon, till the tests we are unsure whether it will be allowed and will be road ready but I'm sure many of you will want to ride a thing like this in the near future. Till then here's a video of the hoverboard.
The post Lexus Builds A Fully Functional 'Hoverboard' Prototype That Uses Magnetic Levitation by Ahmed Bilal appeared first on WCCFtech.


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Michael Meeske
Michael Meeske writes across genres, including women's historical fiction, mystery, suspense, horror, and gothic fiction.
The Magdalen Girls, Michael's first novel for Kensington Books, written as V.S. Alexander, was published in 2017. Set in 1962 Dublin, it deals with the dark history of the Magdalen laundries, a system of institutionalized servitude formerly sanctioned by the Catholic Church.
His second book for Kensington, The Taster, about a food taster for Adolf Hitler, was released in 2018 and was sold to Harper Collins/Avon in the UK as Her Hidden Life. In addition to the UK, foreign rights were sold in Canada, Germany, the Czech Republic, Brazil, Spain, and Italy. The Taster has been optioned for an English-language film by Ascent Film in Rome.
His third novel, The Irishman's Daughter, was released in March 2019 and received a starred review from Publisher's Weekly along with acclaim from the American Library Association. Foreign rights to V. S. Alexander's novels have sold in Europe, Central and South America, and have been translated into five languages. He is at work on his fourth novel for Kensington to be released in 2020, with a fifth slated for 2021.
Cleis Press published The Combat Zone, the first in his Cody Harper mystery series, written as Vincent Wilde, as well as the sequel, An Absent God. Both books are available through Cleis or on Amazon.com.
Other writing credits include Frankenstein's Daemon, a sequel to Frankenstein, and Poe's Mother, a psychological suspense thriller, offered through Usher Books available on Amazon.com. Additionally, his short stories, In the End, He Dreamed, and, Feelers, were selected for inclusion in two anthologies of gothic horror published by Firbolg Publishing. Zombieville was included in a 2011 horror anthology of short fiction by Florida Romance Writers (FRW), headlined by Heather Graham.
From 2008 to 2010, he served as Vice President of FRW. He has been an active member of FRW and guest since 2002. He is a former member of the Writers' Room of Boston, a non-profit working space for novelists, poets and playwrights.
Some of his influences include Edgar Allan Poe, Shirley Jackson, Oscar Wilde, Daphne du Maurier, Richard Matheson, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and any work by the exquisite Brontë sisters.
You can contact Michael by clicking here or on Facebook.
Our Rudy
Copyright © 2019 Michael Meeske - All Rights Reserved.


I'm new in the field of competitive programming and since I can't participate in the olympiads anymore I have to ask — is there any point in starting in the 12th grade to learn it and are there any competitions as important as (or more important than) olympiads? Thanks in advance!
If you don't enjoy it, don't do it, simple as that. Other than that, there's always the benefit of working out your brain and being good at job interviews.
I said job interview, not job. Most software engineering positions have algorithms in interview process.
Still less useless than playing computer games for sure.
ah, i see. you're probably a 12 year old who discovered how to write a hello world and you think you're a programmer.
cp is pretty much useless. on the other side, by playing popular esports you can get pretty big in the industry and actually earn lots of money.
So what brings you to Codeforces, if you could invest your time in esports?
... in hating against you?
or have you thought if it's actually the community that's rejecting what i'm doing? i bet no. that makes you part of the problem. you were quick to jump on me and hate me.
i mean if you're a girl you really shouldn't be doing this because it's not right.
Your own post on this very page. You earned the hate.
oh yeah, excuse me i am talking with a #PROGRAMMER. you obviously had to make that clear by not typing like a normal human being but rather formatting everything like an edgy teen.
edit: oh okay you're from india. so everything you say is pretty much completely irrelevant.
Oh, so you are trying to bring the community together by being racist?
excuse me but how am i being racist?
For me personally, I don't really have a good chance at making our country's olympiad team anyway. But I do competitive programming because I think that it is something enjoyable. Maybe you could try this: after you do some practice problems or a contest, think about if the time you are spending on competitive programming is worth it, or if you would rather do something else. If you would rather focus on something else, that is totally fine, but if you do enjoy it, then continue with competitive programming. Of course, if ever you become disinterested in competitive programming, then you can just stop competing without any harm. It all depends on how you feel about it and if you think it's worth your time to train on competitive programming when there are other things you can do.
Thank you for your answer! I find competitive programming to be enjoyable, but, on the other hand, my personal experience with the national competitions was just awful. I had big expectations for the county olympiad, but my performance was way below what I was expecting. Every time I open my PC to solve a problem I'm just not excited anymore and I feel awful for my performance.
If you plan on attending university, you can do ACM ICPC.
As a follow up, what are the opportunities to continue with competitive programming after university?
Is it just platforms (like CF, TC, AtCoder, etc) and big annual contests like GCJ, and Hacker Cup?
More specifically, are there any well known team contests for after university?
i see you have +1 contribution. is that botted too?
Server time: Apr/25/2019 15:58:32 (e3).


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Louis Rubenstein (geboren am 23. September 1861 in Montreal, Provinz Kanada, Britisch-Nordamerika; gestorben am 3. Januar 1931 in Montreal, Kanada) war ein kanadischer Eiskunstläufer, Sportfunktionär und Lokalpolitiker. Er war ein Pionier des Eiskunstlaufs in Kanada und der erste Kanadier, der an internationalen Wettbewerben teilnahm. Rubenstein wird als "Vater des kanadischen Eiskunstlaufs" und als "Vater des Bowlings in Kanada" bezeichnet.

Familie und Werdegang
Louis Rubenstein entstammte einer jüdischen Familie aus Kongresspolen, Russisches Kaiserreich. Seine Eltern, Max und Leah Rubenstein, waren 1850 nach Kanada ausgewandert. Er hatte elf Geschwister. In der Familie wurde Wert auf Sport gelegt. Rubenstein begann als Kind mit dem Eislauf, laut Berichten inspiriert von Jackson Haines, der später sein Trainer wurde. Mit 17 Jahren gewann er erste Wettbewerbe in Montreal.

Rubenstein war Teilhaber des Familienunternehmens Rubenstein Bros., einer 1864 gegründeten Silber- und Messinggießerei.

Karriere im Sport

Als Eiskunstläufer
Rubenstein trainierte beim Victoria Club of Montreal im heute stillgelegten Victoria Skating Rink. Er gewann von 1883 bis 1889 durchgehend die kanadischen Eiskunstlauf-Meisterschaften. Er trat auch bei US-amerikanischen Meisterschaften an, die er in den Jahren 1888, 1889 und 1891 ebenfalls gewann.

1890 wurde Rubenstein ausgewählt, um Kanada bei den ersten internationalen Meisterschaften im Eiskunstlauf – dem Vorläufer der wenige Jahre später begründeten Eiskunstlauf-Weltmeisterschaften – zu vertreten, die in Sankt Petersburg anlässlich des 25. Jubiläums des dortigen Eislaufvereins stattfanden. Die Reise dorthin dauerte zweieinhalb Monate. Vor Ort sah er sich mit antisemitischer Diskriminierung konfrontiert, die fast seine Teilnahme unmöglich gemacht hätte: Das Organisationskomitee wollte seine Teilnahme als jüdischer Sportler verhindern und versuchte später, ihn zu diskreditieren und seine Anerkennung als Sieger zu unterlaufen. Versuche, Rubenstein vor Beginn der Meisterschaft des Landes zu verweisen, konnten durch eine Intervention des britischen Botschafters verhindert werden. Als zusätzliches Hindernis erfuhr Rubenstein erst vor Ort, dass der Wettbewerb ein akrobatisches Programm enthalten solle und nicht nur die auf Präzision ausgerichteten Pflichtfiguren, die damals der Kern des Eiskunstlaufsports und Rubensteins Stärke waren. Er gewann dennoch in zwei von drei Wettbewerbsdisziplinen und erhielt die Goldmedaille. So wird Louis Rubenstein als erster Weltmeister im Eiskunstlauf bezeichnet, auch wenn die Meisterschaft von 1890 noch eine inoffizielle war und der Deutsche Gilbert Fuchs Anspruch auf den Weltmeistertitel der ersten von der Internationalen Eislaufunion ausgerichteten Weltmeisterschaft hat, die sechs Jahre später ebenfalls in Sankt Petersburg stattfand.

1892 zog sich Rubenstein aus dem aktiven Wettbewerb zurück, engagierte sich aber weiterhin für den Eiskunstlauf sowie andere Sportarten.

Als Sportfunktionär
Rubenstein war Mitbegründer der 1887 gegründeten Amateur Skating Association of Canada, die zum Ziel hatte, verbindliche Standards für den Eislauf als Wettbewerbssport zu schaffen. In dieser Funktion organisierte er 1897 die Eisschnelllauf-Weltmeisterschaft in Montreal. Rubenstein war außerdem Mitbegründer und erster Präsident der 1907 gegründeten kanadisch-US-amerikanischen International Skating Union of America. Aus der Amateur Skating Association of Canada gründete sich 1914 die Canadian Figure Skating Association (heute bekannt als Skate Canada). Rubenstein war der erste Präsident der Organisation und trug so maßgeblich zum Erfolg des kanadischen Eiskunstlaufs in den 1920er Jahren bei, nicht zuletzt, indem er den damaligen Earl of Minto, der als Gouverneur von Kanada fungierte, als Unterstützer gewann. Er und seine Ehefrau Lady Minto begeisterten sich für den Eiskunstlauf und förderten den kanadischen Verband. Auf Rubenstein geht unter anderem die Einführung von Juniorenwettbewerben zur Förderung des Nachwuchses zurück. Auf diesem Engagement sowie seinen sportlichen Erfolgen gründet sich Rubensteins Ruf als "Vater des kanadischen Eiskunstlaufs". Neben seinem Amt als Präsident der Canadian Figure Skating Association, das er bis kurz vor seinem Tod ausübte, wirkte Rubenstein am Aufbau eines Eiskunstlaufverbands in den USA mit und engagierte sich in zahlreichen weiteren Sportarten, darunter Bowling, Curling, Radsport, Toboggan und Rettungssport. Er wurde 1895 zum Präsidenten der Canadian Bowling Association gewählt – er wird daher auch als "Vater des Bowlings in Kanada" bezeichnet – und war 18 Jahre lang Präsident des Radsportverbands Canadian Wheelmen's Association. Von 1913 bis 1915 war er Präsident der Montréal Amateur Athletic Association.

Politische Ämter
1914 wurde Rubenstein zum Alderman für den Bezirk St. Lawrence (Ward 5) in Montreal gewählt. Er bekleidete das Amt bis zu seinem Tod im Jahr 1931. Rubenstein war 12 Jahre lang Präsident der Young Men's Hebrew Association of Montreal.

Ehrungen

Seit 1937 erinnert ein auf eine private Initiative hin errichteter Brunnen am Parc Jeanne-Mance an Louis Rubenstein, der für Jahrzehnte das einzige öffentliche Denkmal für eine jüdische Person in Montreal blieb. In der Peel Street 2070 in Montreal ist zu seinen Ehren eine Gedenktafel angebracht.

1955 wurde Louis Rubenstein in die Hall of Fame des kanadischen Sports aufgenommen, 1981 in die International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame, 1984 in die World Figure Skating Hall of Fame, 1990 in die neu gegründete Skate Canada Hall of Fame.

2016 ernannte die kanadische Regierung Louis Rubenstein zur Person of National Historic Significance.

Dokumentarfilm
Der vom National Film Board of Canada produzierte Dokumentar-Kurzfilm Inspiring Figure: The Louis Rubenstein Story erschien 2002.

Literatur
Louis Rubenstein. In: Joseph Siegman: Jewish Sports Legends. The International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame. University of Nebraska Press, 2020, ISBN 978-1-4962-0188-1, S. 119.

Weblinks

 Louis Rubenstein in der International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame (englisch)
 Louis Rubenstein in der Hall of Fame des kanadischen Sports (englisch, französisch)
 Louis Rubenstein auf den Seiten des kanadischen Eislaufverbands (englisch, französisch)
 Louis Rubenstein auf den Seiten der kanadischen Regierung (englisch, französisch)
 Louis Rubenstein in der Canadian Encyclopedia (englisch, französisch)

Einzelnachweise

Eiskunstläufer (Kanada)
Sportfunktionär (Kanada)
Eiskunstlauffunktionär (Kanada)
Radsportfunktionär (Kanada)
Politiker (Québec)
Person (Montreal)
Mitglied der International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame
Mitglied der World Figure Skating Hall of Fame
Mitglied der Hall of Fame des kanadischen Sports
Kanadier
Geboren 1861
Gestorben 1931
Mann

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


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text:
Tour Cards for Adam Stefanów and Mohamed Ibrahim
admin Author
More in News:
Snooker in the month of February January 30, 2023
Newly-crowned African champion Mohamed Ibrahim and WSF Championship runner-up Adam Stefanow will be awarded two-year main tour cards from the start of the 2018/19 season.
Stefanów was considering giving up the game. Photo credit: Matt Huart
After Lyu Haotian climbed into the top 64 in the world rankings at the end of last season despite only completing one year of his own two-year card, an extra place became available on the professional circuit.
Following consultation between World Snooker, the WPBSA, and the World Snooker Federation it has been decided that Poland's Stefanów is to receive the invitation to join the tour.
Having described the WSF Championship as his "last chance" to qualify for the professional circuit, the tournament proved to be bittersweet for the 24-year-old as he performed brilliantly to reach the final at the Dolmen Hotel, before falling short to eventual champion Luo Honghao of China.
But Stefanów, who for the past three years has lived in Sheffield, will now become the first Polish player to compete on the professional circuit since Kacper Filipiak during the 2011/12 season.
Stefanów said: "This is a dream come true for me. There are millions of people playing snooker around the world and to receive the ticket to the dream that I have had for 13 years of being one of the 128 players to play on the main tour is absolutely fantastic."
"I feel ready for the opportunity, I am at the perfect age, and I know that I can continue to improve as a player.
"I have been so dedicated to this sport since I was 11 and am so proud that I will be the first player to represent my country on the professional circuit with a two-year tour card.
"Snooker is such a huge sport in Poland and I am determined to be able to do something special for our game."
WPBSA Chairman Jason Ferguson said: "It is a pleasure for us to be able to welcome Adam Stefanów to the main tour as the next player in line following his exceptional performance at the WSF Championship in Malta."
"The WSF is providing inspirational opportunities to amateur snooker players across the globe who demonstrate their commitment to the sport at the highest international level.
"Adam is a hard working passionate player who has improved tremendously in recent times, he is exactly the type of competitor that the World Snooker Tour requires and he thoroughly deserves a chance to compete amongst the world's best players."
Meanwhile Egypt's Ibrahim emerged victorious from a 66-player field competing in Cairo at last week's African Snooker Championship, defeating countryman Mostafa Dorgham 6-1 in the final to secure the title.
The 28 year-old will join the professional circuit for the first time, although he has previous experience of competing at the highest level at the 2012 6-Red World Championship, where he pushed eventual champion Mark Davis to a deciding frame in Thailand.
The 2018 African Snooker Championship was successfully staged by the African Billiards and Snooker Confederation (ABSC), Africa's regional governing body which from an early stage has committed its support to the WPBSA and its International Federation structure.
WPBSA Chairman Jason Ferguson was among those in attendance on the final day of the tournament in Egypt and enjoyed positive dialogue with ABSC President Mohammed Kammah and representatives from national federations in respect of future cooperation.
"I am greatly encouraged by the development work undertaken by Mohammed Kammah and his team at the ABSC for snooker in Africa," said Ferguson.
"This is a huge region including 54 individual countries and there is real potential for growth which we are now beginning to see become a reality.
"The WPBSA, its group of organisations and the ABSC are the perfect partners to ensure snooker is promoted well across Africa."
"We are therefore delighted to be able to show our support by welcoming Africa's latest snooker champion Mohamed Ibrahim to the World Snooker Tour for the first time and we are looking forward to welcoming Egypt and more national federations to the World Snooker Federation over the coming months.
"I am optimistic that this will mark the start of a fruitful cooperation between ourselves and the national federations in Africa that will help us to further grow the sport in this region."
Adam Stefanow, African Snooker Championship, Mohamed Ibrahim