As the year has rung in I have been trying to tap into myself and my relationships lately. I have been reading the book Attached by Amir Levine and have been struggling to get through it just because I need to set aside personal time dedicated to reading it. But a concept in that book is attachment styles and love languages.
With the words of affirmation love language, words speak louder than anything else. This type of person appreciates kind words and being built up by words of affection. Simple phrases mean a lot to them, such as a simple "thank you" or "I appreciate you" moves mountains for them. Notes and expressions of love are what hits home for them, how they prefer to be loved. On the downside negative words hurt them a lot more than people who don't have this love language. Choosing words wisely with this person can make or break your relationship.
The love language of receiving gifts is pretty self explanatory. This type of person finds the most love when people give them gifts or make them a gift that shows them that they thought of them. They believe that a gift shows them that their significant other understands what they love and goes out of their way to get it for them.
The quality time love language focuses on spending time with their significant other. Doing anything with their significant brings extreme joy to this person and is how they feel most loved. Just being in the presence of their significant other makes them happy, even doing nothing with them. This partner hates spending time apart from their significant other and long distance is often a deal-breaker or extremely hard for this relationship. If you are dating someone with this love language it is important to reprioritize so they feel like a priority in your life. Having a conversation with eye contact and actual listening skills is important too.
Setting up and making dinner, doing chores so the other person doesn't have to. This type of person likes people doing things for them so they don't have to. For example, they had a long day and they still have to make dinner, so their partner makes dinner for them. This love language is difficult because it is easy to become a person that does everything for them.
This type of person feels love through hugs, kisses, sitting, playing with hair, just being as close as physically possible. This person just likes to be touched at all times, no matter how small. This can be potentially dangerous to relationships because some people have a bubble and can get irritated with constant closeness and touch. This could also cause moving too fast in relationship situations. I thought that this would be my love language, for sure, but I didn't get it in the results. I started to realize that I do like physical touch, but I too have a bubble and do not want anyone touching me at certain times.
So I decided to take the Five Love Languages Quiz, if you want to take it yourself you can find it here.
My results revealed that I find love in words of affirmation and quality time.
If you are interested in the love languages I recommend watching the video that I did, linked below.
I am super interested in human behavior and what makes us love and how we love so this was right up my alley.
If you guys have any comments or questions, comment below as well as blog suggestions!


Educators and politicians have condemned the new campaign as divisive and likely to stigmatize Muslim students.
Hawzah News Agency (Bavaria, Germany) – Led by a leaping girl in a short skirt, her arm raised triumphantly, five German teenagers are pictured smiling as they run down a brightly lit corridor. Beneath the group is a sinister demand: "Islam-free schools!"
These are the latest campaign posters from Germany's surging right-wing populist party: Alternative for Germany, or AfD. The posters, plastered across the southern German state of Bavaria ahead of next month's elections, have predictably stoked outrage for their bluntly anti-Islam message, and come at a time when tensions over immigration are once again dominating the national spotlight in Germany.
In Bavaria, the state's teachers' association has come out against the populist party's latest campaign stunt, saying it undermined diversity in schools by sowing division between students of different cultures.
Fleischmann worries the AfD's message encourages the ostracism of Muslim students, and risks encouraging the type of radicalization the AfD was supposedly concerned about.


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In Oklahoma, Whispers of Climate Change Action
Despite the growing impacts of climate change in the state, the leaders of Oklahoma still need to commit to fighting against global warming. Instead, they act in the shadows, leaving most of the climate fight heavy lifting to non-governmental organizations.
Solomon N.
Oklahoma is one of the states that endure hotter days more frequently. Scientists are predicting even higher temperatures as the century advances. Despite the growing impact of climate change in the state, its leaders are yet to acknowledge the need to fight global warming. Instead, they act in the shadows, leaving most of the climate fight heavy lifting to non-governmental organizations.
Climate change is a highly politicized issue in Oklahoma, a state overly dependent on fossil fuels. As the legislation against climate change drags on, private organizations and groups have taken it upon themselves to fight climate change.
The Impacts of Climate Change in Oklahoma
The brown marmorated stink bug (BMSB) made its first appearance in Oklahoma in 2019. The warmer, longer days in Oklahoma will result in increasing incidents of pest crop invasion.
Oklahoma's over-reliance on oil and gas as drivers of its economy means the state has relatively high levels of pollution. Almost a hundred thousand Oklahoma residents live within a half-mile threat radius of at least one of the over 29,000 methane-emitting facilities across the state. New research now shows a clearer connection between fracking activities and poor infants' health.
This graph displays the maximal Air Quality Index (AQI) value reached at the nearest air quality monitor for each month in 2019 for Bethany, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. The higher the AQI value, the greater the level of air pollution, and the greater the health concern. This pollution is especially unhealthy for sensitive groups. It is mainly caused by the state's heavy reliance on fossil fuels. Source: Augurisk.
While Oklahoma relies heavily on oil and natural gas energy sources, more than 70% of the land is under agriculture. In addition to occasional droughts, agriculture and energy demands are straining the state's water sources.
As temperatures rise, evaporation increases, which in turn decreases the water supply. The limited water sources affect the agricultural production and energy generation. As crops and livestock adapt to warmer days and longer growing seasons, productivity takes a dive. Warmer, longer days result in increasing incidents of pest invasion of crops.
The Great Plains of the US have also had their fair share of floods. According to the Department of Energy Management, Northern Oklahoma is especially susceptible to floods when the Arkansas River swells. There have been countless warnings and flood watches issued over the years.
On May 1, 2019, Governor Kevin Stitt declared a state of emergency in 52 of the 77 counties in Oklahoma due to tornadoes, severe storms, flooding, and straight-line winds. The order was amended later that month to include all the 77 counties in the state. Issuing these orders is becoming commonplace in Oklahoma. On October 30, 2020, the governor issued another state of emergency in 47 counties following an October 28th ice storm that left more than 356,000 homes and businesses without electricity.
In addition to aquifer depletion, the floods lead to erosion and nutrient run-off, which have adverse effects on agriculture. According to a report published in 2014 by the National Climate Assessment, communities in the Great Plains are at risk. The sparsely populated, low-income communities face heightened vulnerability to the impacts of climate change. Systems such as communication, infrastructure, housing, and health resources in sparsely populated areas are especially challenging in extreme weather.
Oklahoma recorded one of its worst droughts from November 2, 2010 to May 26, 2015. The southwestern part of the state was one of the worst-hit regions. Five years down the road, this region is still experiencing the harmful effects of the drought.
Combating Climate Change in Oklahoma
A wind farm near Weatherford in Oklahoma. The South Central state gets more than 40% of its electricity generated from wind energy. Credit: Travel Aficionado/Flickr
Oklahoma, a conservative state, has been passing on renewable energy and climate change mandates. This comes at a time when climate change is deemed a political landmine in this fossil fuel-reliant state.
Oklahoma's leaders are working towards a more resilient state, though they would hardly acknowledge this in a way that shines a light on climate change. The South Central state gets more than 40% of its electricity generated from wind energy.
As the political leaders in Oklahoma tiptoe the climate change conversation, non-political institutions across the state have made public their positions on climate change, becoming the leading proponents of this conversation. One such institution is CSS Partners, an organization co-founded by Tyler Powel, who was once the Deputy Secretary of Environment in Oklahoma.
During Powel's time, climate change wasn't the hot policy issue it is now. However, that did not stop him from preparing for whatever the weather in the future would throw at the state. According to Powell, the citizen input was instrumental in the development of the Water by 2060 Plan. This plan details the steps that the state should take to use the same or less fresh water in 2060 compared to what was used in 2012.
Oklahoma's Secretary of Energy and Environment, Ken Wagner, affirms the state's commitment to increasing the output of renewable energy sources. He states it is achievable without aggressively pushing for regulatory or legislative changes.
100 cities and towns across the country have committed to transitioning to 100% renewable energy by 2035. So far, nine states, along with Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia, have put in place policies for a 100% clean future by or before 2050.
In comparison, Oklahoma seems like it still has some work to do to fight climate change openly. As numbers of wildfires, droughts, and hot days increases, the state will need to work faster on resilience programs.
The Executive Director of the Sierra Club Oklahoma Chapter, Johnson Bridgewaters, is pushing for the state's commitment to boost its solar industry. He is proposing that the state issue tax credits and seek other avenues to raise money for developing the state's solar industry.
Gov Kevin Stitt deliberately avoided using the term climate change in a public address due to the politics around it. However, he did acknowledge the state was producing its low-emissions energy from wind and natural gas.
That said, the governor was quick to allege that other states are promoting heavy-handed policies bound to kill a lot of jobs. Contrasting his state's approach to most other states, Mr. Stitt claimed that Oklahoma's low emission energy sources are already working without job-killing mandates.
Private Organizations in Oklahoma Champion the Fight Against Climate Change
An introductory video to Citizens' Climate Lobby. This nonprofit, nonpartisan group is working on the Carbon Fee and Dividend legislation.
Citizens' Climate Lobby is an advocacy organization whose aim is to empower communities. This nonprofit, nonpartisan group is working on the Carbon Fee and Dividend legislation. The policy is geared towards reducing emissions in addition to supporting small businesses and creating jobs.
The Nature Conservancy, also a non-profit organization, is working with landowners to preserve what is left of the Prairie Preserve. The once-massive 170-million-acre grassland, Prairie Preserve, stretched across 14 states, with about 39,650 acres in Oklahoma.
As there's only less than 4% of the preserve left, communities, ranchers and environmentalists have come together to preserve the grasslands. This massive grassland is vital in fighting climate change as each acre captures up to 4 metric tons of carbon annually in Oklahoma. According to the EPA, this carbon is equal to what three million cars would produce.
The National Youth Committee (NYC) strike demands legislation against climate change in Oklahoma. The Youth Senate Strike is part of NYC. Youths from across the state rallied to the State Capitol to raise awareness of the growing climate change and its impacts.
Oklahoma isn't working as aggressively as other states when it comes to passing climate change laws. However, the efforts of the state's leadership are geared towards renewable energy and low emissions. Discussions around expanding renewable energy sources like wind power, solar energy, and exploring other clean energy sources are taking over. Oklahoma is well on its way to lower emissions, albeit with little acknowledgement of climate change.
Augurisk is a risk assessment platform for Climate Change, Natural Hazards and Societal Risks. We help people and businesses assess climate risks associated with their properties, so they can better prepare for the future.
Natural disasters cost $210 billion worldwide in 2020
Natural disasters cost the world US$ 210 billion, according to a new report published by Munich RE. Moreover, only $82 billion were insured, leaving many of those affected with net losses. This year's costliest natural disaster took place in China, where severe flooding
Simon de Bonviller
Simon de Bonviller 15 Jan 2021 • 1 min read
The Legacy of Trump Administration: Environmental Policies
More than 125 environmental safeguards from previous administrations have been rolled back, and others amended in the four years of the Trump presidency.
Solomon N. 1 Dec 2020 • 6 min read
Augurisk Blog - Covering climate change and natural hazards © 2021

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Debut: Tekkoshocon 2008; This costume has been sold.
Well, this is my first anime cosplay (and the most normal cosplay I've done so far), and what better to start off with than Bleach? I really like Orihime's character, and I just happened to have made a skirt out of a suiting material I found on sale that was perfect for her school uniform.
So I whipped up a jacket from the lovely gray suiting material to match (fully lined in powder blue) and decorated it with red cotton panels. I bought the hair clips on Ebay, and made the bow-tie out of red cotton I already owned. The gold pin is cardboard and hot glue. I already owned the wig/socks/shoes/shirt, so I put her together rather conveniently. I know the wig isn't perfect, but I still think the cosplay looks great. I had a lot of fun with it!


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The Age of Exploration
The Age of Exploration was a critical time in our history. Africans, Asians, Europeans, and Americans were exploring, vying for influence, and forging complex global trade links. These are a few key historical events that occurred during the age of Captain DaCosta's voyage.
Portuguese Sailors First Visit to Japan
After many attempts to reach Japan, the first encounter between the Japanese and Europeans occurred in August or September 1543. According to the Teppo-ki, the Japanese account of how firearms came to Japan, the Chinese boat carried around 100 Chinese sailors and 3 Portuguese men. The Portuguese were Francisco Zeimoto, Antonio da Mota, and Antonio Peixoto. Blown off course during a trading mission to the Chinese port of Ningpo, they landed accidentally at Tanegashima, a small island off the coast of Kyushu Japan.
Page from the Japanese matchlock training manual, Inatomi-Ryu Teppo Densho
The boat was carrying animal hides from Siam to China. It is likely that when the Japanese encountered the dirty unshaven sailors, they referred to them as Nambanjin, or Southern Barbarians. The lord of Tanegashima, Lord Tokitaka, was impressed by their two matchlock guns. After buying them, he learned how to shoot and later how to manufacture gun barrels and gunpowder. He ordered his men to continue manufacturing guns, marking the first time firearms reached Japanese soil.
Jaques Francis and the Salvage of the Mary Rose
In July 1547, Jaques Francis, described as a Guinea diver from Arguin Island off the coast of Mauritania, was hired by the British Admiralty along with his Venetian master, Piero Paolo Corsi, to help salvage the wreck of Henry VIII's famous ship, the Mary Rose. This task, however, was to prove complicated. A legal argument over recovered salvage arose between Corsi and a group of Italian Merchants that led to Jaques Francis being called to the witness stand in English court.
On July 19, 1545, a French Invasion fleet entered the Solent, the strait that separates the Isle of Wight from the mainland of England. They were intent on destroying the English fleet and invading the Isle of Wight. The crew of the Mary Rose attacked the invaders, but tipped over and sank within minutes because she her upper decks were overladen. She took down 400 sailors and 181 guns of various sizes and types.
The Mary Rose
As the sunken ship was in 6 fathoms of water, the salvage job had to be hired out to foreign salvage specialists. A number of unsuccessful attempts were made by different Venetian teams before December, 1545.
In 1546, another Venetian, Piedro Paolo Corsi and his salvage team were appointed to attempt another recovery. Francis the head diver of the team, was bought from another Italian merchant, because of his diving expertise. It is likely he was a highly trained former pearl diver and had an outstanding record of underwater exploits.
The former salvage team accused his master Corsi of stealing blocks of tin from two other wrecks. Francis became an important witness in the court case. While the Admiralty were ready to accept his testimony and selfhood, the Italian witnesses denounced him as an uncivilized man, a "slave," a "morisco," a "Black more," a "bondeman," and an "infidell borne," arguing that his testimony was therefore inadmissible.
He stood his ground in court, arguing for his own humanity and personhood, but the whole case highlighted the difficulties Europeans had in accepting black men and women as human, and in accepting their intelligence and ethnic origins as worthy of respect.
Portuguese Establish a Permanent Settlement in Macau
Leonel de Sousa, a Captain-Major of the voyage to Japan, reached the coast of Guangdong in 1552. There, he learned that all foreigners were able to trade after payment of taxes to the Chinese, except the "Folanji" including Portuguese, then considered pirates.
In 1554, de Sousa agreed with Guangzhou officials to legalize the Portuguese trade, on condition of paying certain customs duties. The single surviving written evidence of this agreement is a letter from de Sousa to Infante Louis, king John III's brother, dated 1556. It states that the Portuguese undertook to pay the fees and were not to erect fortifications.
The letter is an extremely important document in the history of Sino-Portuguese relations. It describes protracted negotiations with the haitao Wang Bo, identified in Chinese sources as having accepted a bribe from the Portuguese to dry their cargo and pay taxes in Guangzhou. Leonel de Sousa and Wang Bo agreed on the the mandatory 20% fees, but only on half the cargoes. This treaty was followed by the recognition of Macau as an official Portuguese warehouse in 1557. de Sousa became the second Captain-Major, or governor of Macau in 1558.
Sketch for The European Factories, Macao
Galileo Galilei Born
Galileo Galilei was born on 5 February 1564. He was an Italian astronomer, physicist, engineer, philosopher, and mathematician, and played a major role in the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century. He has been called the "father of observational astronomy", the "father of modern physics", the "father of scientific method", and the "father of science".
Spanish Explorer Andrés de Urdaneta establishes a Pacific Trade Route
Spanish Explorer Andrés de Urdaneta discovered and plotted a path across the Pacific from the Philippines to Acapulco in the Viceroyalty of New Spain (present day Mexico). It came to be known as "Urdaneta's Route".
His return trip from The Philippines to Mexico in 1565 proved to be a milestone in navigational history. It was to be the longest voyage ever taken, up to that time, 7644 miles navigating on unknown routes. On 18th September, his crew sighted the Californian island of Santa Rosa, the climax of the first Pacific crossing from west to east. With the crew hungry and thirsty, Urdaneta followed the coastline until reached his chosen destination, Acapulco. The voyage arrived on 8th October, 1565.
The Lusiads First Published
The Lusiads, is a Portuguese epic poem by Luís Vaz de Camões (sometimes anglicized as Camoëns).
Written in Homeric fashion, the poem focuses mainly on a fantastical interpretation of the Portuguese voyages of discovery during the 15th and 16th centuries. Os Lusíadas is often regarded as Portugal's national epic, much in the way as Virgil's Aeneid was for the Ancient Romans, or Homer's Iliad and Odyssey for the Ancient Greeks. It was first printed in 1572, three years after the author returned from the Indies.
Battle of Ksar El Kebir
The Battle of Ksar El Kebir, also known as Battle of Three Kings (in Arabic: معركة الملوك الثلاث) was fought in northern Morocco, near the town of Ksar-el-Kebir and Larache, on 4 August 1578. The combatants were the army of the deposed Moroccan Sultan Abu Abdallah Mohammed II, with his ally, the King of Portugal Sebastian I, and a large Moroccan army nominally under the new Sultan of Morocco (and uncle of Abu Abdallah Mohammed II) Abd Al-Malik I.
A Plan to Recover the Throne
The Christian king, Sebastian I, had planned a crusade after Abu Abdallah asked him to help recover his throne. Abu Abdallah's uncle, Abd Al-Malik, had taken it from him with Ottoman support. The defeat of Portugal and attendant death of the childless Sebastian led to the end of the Aviz dynasty, and the integration of the country in the Iberian Union for 60 years under the Philippine Dynasty in a dynastic union with Spain.
Portrait of Abd el-Ouahed ben Messaoud, Moroccan ambassador to England
This portrait commemorates the visit of the King of Fez's embassy to London in 1600-1. This was the first official painting ever made in England of a Muslim, and it depicts the Moroccan ambassador with a fierce and intimidating look.
The Battle
On 4 August, the Portuguese and Moorish allied troops were drawn up in battle array, and Sebastian rode around encouraging the ranks. But the Moroccans advanced on a broad front, planning to encircle his army.
The Sultan had 10,000 cavalry on the wings, and in the center he had placed Moors who had been driven out of Spain and thus bore a special grudge against Christians. Despite his illness, the Sultan left his litter and led his forces on horseback.
The battle started as both sides exchanged several volleys of gunfire from musketry and artillery. A commander named Stukley, leading the Portuguese center, was killed by a cannonball early in the battle. The Moroccan cavalry advanced and began to encircle the Portuguese army. Both armies soon became fully engaged in melee. Eventually the flanks of the Portuguese army gave way to the Moorish cavalry, threatening the center. Seeing the flanks compromised, and having lost its commander early in battle, the Portuguese center lost heart and was overcome.
Defeat of the Portuguese
The battle ended after nearly four hours of heavy fighting. It resulted in the total defeat of the Portuguese and Abu Abdallah's army with 8,000 dead, including the slaughter of almost the whole of the country's nobility, and 15,000 taken prisoner; perhaps 100 survivors escaped to the coast. The body of King Sebastian, who led a charge into the midst of the enemy and was then cut off, was never found.
The Sultan Abd Al-Malik also died during the battle, but from natural causes (the effort of riding was too much for him), and the news was concealed from his troops until total victory had been secured. Abu Abdallah attempted to flee but was drowned in the river. For this reason, the battle was known in Morocco as the Battle of the Three Kings.
Yasuke, the Black Samurai
Yasuke was a samurai of black African origin who served under the Japanese hegemon and warlord Oda Nobunaga in 1581 and 1582. The name ""Yasuke"" was granted to him by Nobunaga, although why and when is unclear. His original name is not recorded in any known source, so it is unclear if Yasuke is a Japanese rendering of his previous name, or a wholly new name granted by his lord.
Where Yasuke Came From
There are various theories as to his origin. François Solier of the Society of Jesus in 1627 wrote that Yasuke was likely from Mozambique, but his account may have simply been an assumption. It was written long after the event and there is no surviving contemporary account that corroborates it. It is also possible that he also came from Portugal, Angola or Ethiopia, and he could conceivably originally have been an African mercenary in the employ of an Indian sovereign, of which there were many at this time. Television program Discovery of the World's Mysteries (世界ふしぎ発見) suggested that Yasuke was a Makua named Yasufe. This was not a highly journalistic investigation, and the program provided little proof for their conclusions. The Makua didn't have any significant conflict with the Portuguese based on the Island of Mozambique until 1585. He may have been a member of the Yao people, who were just coming into contact with the Portuguese at the time, which might account for his name, Yao added to the common Japanese male name suffix of suke.
Meeting Nobunaga
Yasuke arrived in Japan in 1579 in the service of the Italian Jesuit Alessandro Valignano, who had been appointed the Visitor (inspector) of the Jesuit missions in the Indies, meaning East Africa, South and East Asia. He accompanied Valignano when the latter came to the capital area in March 1581, causing a sensation. In one event, several people were crushed to death while clamouring to get a look at him.
Nobunaga heard the noise from the temple where he was staying and expressed a desire to see him. Suspecting the black color of his skin to be black ink, Nobunaga had him strip from the waist up and made him scrub his skin. These events are recorded in a 1581 letter of the Jesuit Luís Fróis to Lorenço Mexia and in the 1582 Annual Report of the Jesuit Mission in Japan, also by Frois. These were published in Cartas que os padres e irmãos da Companhia de Jesus escreverão dos reynos de Japão e China II, normally known simply as Cartas, in 1598.
Satisfied that he was in fact black, Nobunaga seems to have taken an interest in him. At some point, he was either given or allowed to enter Nobunaga's service. Japanese accounts indicate he was presented to Nobunaga by the Portuguese, although European accounts make no mention of this.
It is likely that Yasuke could speak considerable Japanese. Nobunaga enjoyed talking with him (there is no indication that Nobunaga spoke Portuguese and it is unlikely that Yasuke would have been able to communicate in classical Chinese, the oriental lingua franca of the time). He seems to have become a close retainer, and was perhaps the only non-Japanese 'warrior' that Nobunaga had in his retinue, which could account for his rapid rise in favour and status. Yasuke was also mentioned in the prototype of Shinchōkōki owned by Sonkeikaku Bunko (尊経閣文庫), the archives of the Maeda Clan. According to this, Yasuke was given his own residence and a short, ceremonial katana by Nobunaga. Nobunaga also assigned him the duty of weapon bearer.
Battle in Kyoto
In June 1582, Nobunaga was attacked and forced to commit seppuku in Honnō-ji in Kyoto by the army of Akechi Mitsuhide. Yasuke was also there at the time and fought the Akechi forces. Immediately after Nobunaga's death, Yasuke went to join Nobunaga's heir Oda Nobutada who was trying to rally the Oda forces at Nijō Castle.
Edo Battle Standards
Battle standards set up beside a military commander's horse to show his position.
Yasuke fought alongside the Nobutada's forces for a long time but he eventually surrendered his sword to Akechi's men. They asked Akechi himself what to do with him. Akechi said that the black man was a beast and did not know anything, and furthermore, he was not Japanese, so they should not kill him but take him to the nanban-dera or nanban-ji (南蛮寺, literally the temple of the southern barbarians, how the Japanese referred to the Jesuit church). It is said that the reason why Akechi spoke in such a manner was a form of taking pity on him, i.e. giving a clear reason why not to kill him. Black people were not discriminated against in Japan at this time; they were even admired, for the Buddha was often portrayed as black in Japanese temples. However, perhaps Akechi also did not want to offend the Jesuits, needing all the friends he could get at this time of political turmoil.
There is no further written information about him, but there were many Africans in the service of Japanese and European employers, as well as independently employed men, in Japan at this time.
Ali Bey and the Sack of East Africa
In 1585, the Ottomans were confident after their capture of Egypt; they decided Muslim control of the African coast would be beneficial to their Empire. The Ottomans sent the pirate Ali Bey to burn Portuguese outposts and incite the Africans to revolt. His ship sailed south from the Red Sea, intent on robbing and sacking the Portuguese possessions on the East African coast. It was commanded by Sir Ali Bey. He is variously called a corsair, a pirate, and a commander.
His first target was a merchant ship commanded by Roque de Brito Falcáo. It held a valuable cargo. Roque De Brito set anchor at the island of Lamu, where a Muslim ruler promised him shelter. In fact the ruler sold him out to the Turks, who overpowered the ship and took control of all the cargo, also hoping to ransom Roque de Brito. Many other Muslim rulers along the coast hoped that Ali Bey would bring more Ottoman support for their struggle against the Portuguese. His success in reducing the heavy Portuguese taxes and trade rules made him a hero.
In retaliation, Portuguese commanders, led by Mateus Mendes de Vasconcelhos, razed whole cities and massacred thousands.
Because of the strategic importance of Mombassa, the commander of the Goa fleet, Mateus Mendes de Vasconcelhos, brought his fleet from India to bombard the city. The Turks had set up a small fort at the entrance to the harbor, but they were quickly overpowered and fled. Two of their ships, laden with gold, slaves, amber, and other trade goods, were seized by de Vasconcelhos' troops.
At the same time, the Zimba people from the Zambezi, attacked Mombassa from the mainland. They had a reputation as cannibals, and had been conducting a campaign of conquest up and down the entire coast. It is likely they were paid or encouraged by the Portuguese to attack the Muslim communities on the coast, as retaliation for their uprising. Mombassa was completely sacked.
Those who survived the massacre, including Ali Bey, fled to the Portuguese ships, begging for safe passage. He reportedly said' "I am not frightened by my adverse fortune, for such are the vicissitudes of war; I prefer being a captive of the Christians than being eaten by the barbarian Zimbas." de Vasconcelhos received Ali Bey into his protection.
The fort at Mombassa, Fort Jesus, was rebuilt and fortified after this campaign.
Drawings of Ships from Two Cultures
A comparison of folk art drawings of Portuguese ships, by Africans and Portuguese in the 15-1600s.
Rock painting of a Portuguese ship
A handful of rock art depictions of sailing vessels likely painted by South Africa's indigenous San and Khoi peoples. Their art reflects the contact between them and European mariners after the end of the 15th century.
Wall drawings of Portuguese Ships at Fort Jesus
A panel of Portuguese grafitti inside a room at Fort Jesus, depicting ships, chameleons, fish, and soldiers in armor, completed with ochre and carbon by Portuguese sentries.
Colony of Roanoke Established
The Roanoke Colony, also known as the Lost Colony, was founded by Sir Walter Raleigh on Roanoke Island in what is today's Dare County, North Carolina, United States. It was a late 16th-century attempt by Queen Elizabeth I to establish a permanent English settlement.
The colonists disappeared during the Anglo-Spanish War, three years after the last shipment of supplies from England. Their disappearance gave rise to the nickname "The Lost Colony." There has been no conclusive evidence as to what happened to the colonists.
Mimar Sinan Dies
Mimar Sinan, or "Sinan the Architect" (c. 1489/1490 – July 17, 1588) was the chief Ottoman architect (Turkish: mimar) and civil engineer for sultans Suleiman the Magnificent, Selim II, and Murad III. He is considered the greatest architect of the classical period of Ottoman architecture and has been compared to Michelangelo, his contemporary in the West. Sinan was responsible for the construction of more than 300 major structures and other more modest projects, such as schools. His apprentices would later design the Sultan Ahmed Mosque in Istanbul, Stari Most in Mostar, and help design the Taj Mahal in the Mughal Empire.
The son of a stonemason, he received a technical education and became a military engineer. He rose rapidly through the ranks to become first an officer and finally a Janissary commander, with the honorific title of ağa. He refined his architectural and engineering skills while on campaign with the Janissaries, becoming expert at constructing fortifications of all kinds, as well as military infrastructure projects, such as roads, bridges and aqueducts. At about the age of fifty, he was appointed as chief royal architect, applying the technical skills he had acquired in the army to the "creation of fine religious buildings" and civic structures of all kinds. He remained in this post for almost fifty years.
His masterpiece is the Selimiye Mosque in Edirne, although his most famous work is the Suleiman Mosque in Istanbul. He headed an extensive governmental department and trained many assistants who, in turn, distinguished themselves, including Sedefkar Mehmed Agha, architect of the Sultan Ahmed Mosque. Mimar Sinan's works are among the most influential buildings in history.
First Japanese Invasion of Korea
On April 13, 1592, the First Division of the Japanese invasion army, consisting of 7,000 men led by Konishi Yukinaga, left Tsushima in the morning, arriving at the Korean port city of Busan in the evening. Korean naval intelligence had detected the Japanese fleet, but Won Gyun, the Right Naval Commander of Gyeongsang, misidentified the fleet as trading vessels on a mission. A later report of the arrival of an additional 100 Japanese vessels raised his suspicions, but the general did nothing about it.
Sō Yoshitoshi landed alone on the Busan shore to ask the Koreans for a safe passage to China for the last time; the Koreans refused, and Sō Yoshitoshi laid siege to the city.
Battle of Jenné
The Battle of Jenné was a military engagement between the armies of the Mali Empire and the Moroccan Pashalik of Timbuktu. The battle was effectively the end of the great Mali Empire, setting the stage for other smaller West African states to emerge.
Aphrica map from 1600
Throughout the 15th and 16th centuries, the Mali Empire had been in near-constant state of decline. All of its periphery vassal territories had become independent states with some even challenging Mali's sovereignty, notable Songhai. In 1591, the Songhai Empire was defeated at the Battle of Tondibi by a Moroccan expeditionary force using gunpowder weapons such as the arquebus and cannon.
Attempts to Rebuild the Mali Empire
Songhai power was pushed back eastward across the Niger where they formed the smaller but still robust Dendi Kingdom. The ruler of Mali, Mansa Mahmud IV saw this as a chance to rebuild his moribund empire. The first step in his plans was to seize the valuable city-state of Jenné, which controlled trade along the inland Niger valley.
The defeat of Mahmud IV at Jenné has been attributed to several causes. Though there are few details, the ability of each army to rally its forces was a major contributor. In few other instances are the effects of imperial collapse in the face of a changing political and military environment so well demonstrated. The Mali which faced off against the pashalik forces and its native allies was not the grand military of Mansa Musa. In fact, it had reversed back to its pre-imperial structure just at the time when leaps forward in technology and organization were essential to the empire's survival.
Unreliable Allies
Mali's disunity, already in full throttle since the mid-16th century had finally caught up with it at Jenné. Hammad Amina, the chief of the Fulbe at Masina, had promised support in taking Jenné, but instead betrayed the mansa and went over to the Moroccan side. He advised the Moroccans on what to expect from the Mandinka-Bamana army and kept his own forces from joining the battle. The Fulbe are not mentioned as lending military aid to Jenné's defenders, and their absence from the battlefield may have had a great effect on the final outcome.
Mali was also unable to draw on its provinces for men and support. Mahmud IV been able to draw on the support of his traditional division commanders (the Sanqara-Zuma and Farim-Soura), he would have also had access to the reluctant the governor or Kala-sha of Kala province. Kala-sha Bukar refused to join the mansa without the two commanders, remarking in private:
"Since his two greatest lieutenants are not accompanying him, the situation is hopeless."
The Mali Empire, like its Songhai competitor, failed to modernize its military machine. Although previous mansas had tried to purchase firearms or firearm-equipped mercenaries from the Portuguese, they were unsuccessful. This meant the Mali Empire went to war with the same methods it had been using since the days of Sundjata, but without the unity or scale of its past armies. A Mali Empire armed with guns instead of lances and arrows might have stopped Jenné's reinforcement or taken the city outright.
The gunpowder weapons of the pashalik forces were not decisive against the Mali Empire either, despite the latter's reliance on traditional infantry and cavalry forces. The use of guns saved the pashalik reinforcements from annihilation (along with the timely intervention of the king of Jenné), but they didn't have the technical strength to rout the mansa's forces either. Mansa Mahmud IV and his army stayed encamped at the dune of Sanuna awaiting a second engagement.
Kingdom of Dahomey Founded
The Kingdom of Dahomey was an African kingdom (located in the area of the present-day country of Benin) that existed from about 1600 until 1894. Dahomey developed on the Abomey Plateau amongst the Fon people in the early 17th century and became a regional power in the 18th century by conquering key cities on the Atlantic coast. The last Dahomey king, Behanzin, was defeated by the French in 1894, and the country was annexed into the French colonial empire.
Rare Map of Africa
Dutch East India Company Established
The United East Indian Company (Dutch: Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie; VOC), known to the British as the Dutch East India Company, was originally established as a chartered company in 1602, when the Dutch government granted it a 21-year monopoly on Dutch spice trade. It is often considered to have been the first multinational corporation in the world and it was the first company to issue stock. The largest and most valuable corporation in history, it possessed quasi-governmental powers, including the ability to wage war, imprison and execute convicts, negotiate treaties, strike its own coins, and establish colonies.
Statistically, the VOC eclipsed all of its rivals in the Asia trade. Between 1602 and 1796 the VOC sent almost a million Europeans to work in the Asia trade on 4,785 ships, and netted for their efforts more than 2.5 million tons of Asian trade goods. By contrast, the rest of Europe combined sent only 882,412 people from 1500 to 1795, and the fleet of the English (later British) East India Company, the VOC's nearest competitor, was a distant second to its total traffic with 2,690 ships and a mere one-fifth the tonnage of goods carried by the VOC. The VOC enjoyed huge profits from its spice monopoly through most of the 17th century.
Hongs at Canton
Having been set up in 1602, to profit from the Malukan spice trade, in 1619 the VOC established a capital in the port city of Jayakarta, which they called Batavia (now Jakarta). Over the next two centuries the Company acquired additional ports as trading bases and safeguarded their interests by taking over surrounding territory. It remained an important trading concern and paid an 18% annual dividend for almost 200 years.
Luis Melo Begins Smuggling and Spying in Manila
Luis Melo was a Japanese merchant-mariner of samurai background and multiple identities, whose name frequently appears in both Spanish and Japanese documents of the time. He dealt in scrap metal and gunpowder, and was likely a smuggler and spy. From 1605, he served as an important channel of communication between Japan's new strongman, Tokugawa Ieyasu, and the Philippine authorities. Over time, Melo became Ieyasu's most important informant on the Philippines.
Red Seal Ship
Until the suspension of the trade between Japan and the Philippines in 1623, he continued to make large profits trading with the Spanish. In the last years of the sixteenth century, Japanese merchants provided Manila with a steady stream of iron, steel, and copper to cast cannon, the ammunition to go with these weapons, and large quantities of ready-made gunpowder and its ingredients. They provided crucial military supplies for the Spanish garrison at Manila at a time when it saw itself first threatened and then actually blockaded by Dutch naval power in Asia.
Melo's earliest appearance in the Japanese record dates from 1605. He is mentioned as an interpreter for an envoy from the Manila Governor, meaning he was a man of enough importance to be sent on a diplomatic mission to Japan. The year before, the governor had requested that the number of ships allowed to sail from Japan for the Philippines be limited. This record is contained in the diary kept of the red-seal licenses given out by Ieyasu's cabinet, and appears in the draft for an official answer on Ieyasu's behalf to a letter from the Governor of Manila.
He was likely living at least part-time in the Philippines for a considerable period of time. In 1602 Melo was paid the sum of one hundred pesos for work on a church for the Japanese community, of which he must have been a prominent or even a leading member. As a pedigreed samurai, he would have automatically been a man of importance. The Manila community of overseas Japanese was mostly made up of poor expatriates who had come to the Philippines as slaves, common sailors, or persecuted Christians.
Smuggling Gunpowder into Manila
In 1618, Melo sent large shipments of essential supplies to Manila, for which he still owed import taxes in 1620. Some large cargo contained 4700 kilograms of saltpeter, used to make gunpowder, while shipments carried other, less dangerous merchandise. Although his expenses seem to have exceeded his income in 1918, he was gambling on a political situation that would allow him to make great profits and pay off his debts the following year.
In the same year, 1618, a contemporary Spanish source describing the situation in the bay of Manila.
"The [Dutch] enemy being in the mouth of the bay in the beginning of November, a Japanese ship came to Ilocos, which is a province of this island of Manila, and was told that the enemy controlled the bay which he would have to enter to come to this City. But he feared nothing as he had a license or patent of his Emperor, which the Dutch respect for its contents and for which they give free passage to all Japanese ships wherever they may be sailing on these seas. And so he continued on his way until he encountered the Dutch who stopped him for two or three days. The Dutch asked him if he was carrying any ammunition, which is what they do not allow. [The Japanese captain] denied he did, even though he was carrying much hidden underneath a great quantity of sacks filled with flour. With this the Dutch let him enter the bay, giving him an insolent message to hand to the Governor of Manila."
Other records of the time describe a man named Nishi Luis, who brought a cargo of flour, iron, copper, saltpeter, gunpowder, pikes, iron wire and nails to Manila. It is believed this was Luis Melo, traveling under a different identity. His Luis Melo identity was a Christian, with access to the Philippine and Spanish communities. His Nishi Luis identity was fully Japanese, an apostate, allowing him to move freely in Japan.
But Nishi/Melo must have realized that he was taunting the gods: only four years into the future, trade and all other relations between Japan and the Philippines would be suspended for more than two centuries. Luis stopped going to Manila before the Spanish authorities found out that he was no longer a Christian, or had never been a real one.Though he rendered much service towards the survival of the Spanish colony against the very real Dutch enemy (as well as the mostly imaginary Chinese and Japanese enemies), he might very well have ended up in jail or on the gallows for spying.
After this, Nishi Luis moved to Sakai, and seems to have become a renowned tea master. For a year or two, his name still pops up here and there in the sources connected with the Manila trade, with Luis conducting his business by proxy. In February 1620, for example, a Portuguese resident of Nagasaki, Emanoel Rodrigues, arrived in Manila with a cargo of iron, carrying 600 kilograms of nails for the account of Nishi Luis. We also have a list, dated 28 March 1621, for a cargo consisting mostly of food brought to Manila by the same captain, which mentions 30 jars of biscuits for the account of Nishi Luis.
Between 1621 and 1646, there are few records of his life and business. He contributed money to build Honjuji, a temple in Sakai, to which he left all his possessions and where he was buried after he had died in 1646. A five-storied stone grave monument was erected over his grave, showing just how wealthy he was at his death.
William Shakespeare Dies
William Shakespeare (1564 – 1616) was an English poet, playwright, and actor, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet, and the "Bard of Avon". Shakespeare produced most of his known work between 1589 and 1613. His early plays were primarily comedies and histories, and these are regarded as some of the best work ever produced in these genres. He then wrote mainly tragedies until about 1608, including Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth, considered some of the finest works in the English language. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright.
Shakespeare was born and brought up in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire. At the age of 18, he married Anne Hathaway, with whom he had three children: Susanna, and twins Hamnet and Judith. Sometime between 1585 and 1592, he began a successful career in London as an actor, writer, and part-owner of a playing company called the Lord Chamberlain's Men, later known as the King's Men. He appears to have retired to Stratford around 1613, at age 49, where he died three years later. Few records of Shakespeare's private life survive, which has stimulated considerable speculation about such matters as his physical appearance, sexuality, and religious beliefs, and whether the works attributed to him were written by others.
The Shimabara Rebellion (島原の乱 Shimabara no Ran) was an uprising in southwestern Japan lasting from December 17, 1637, to April 15, 1638, during the Edo period. It largely involved peasants, most of them Catholic Christians. It was one of only a handful of instances of serious unrest during the relatively peaceful period of the Tokugawa shogunate's rule.
In the wake of the Matsukura clan's construction of a new castle at Shimabara, taxes were drastically raised, which provoked anger from local peasants and rōnin (samurai without masters). Religious persecution of the local Catholics exacerbated the discontent, which turned into open revolt in 1637. The Tokugawa Shogunate sent a force of over 125,000 troops to suppress the rebels and, after a lengthy siege against the rebels at Hara Castle, defeated them.
In the wake of the rebellion, the Catholic rebel leader Amakusa Shirō was beheaded and the prohibition of Christianity was strictly enforced. Japan's national seclusion policy was tightened and official persecution of Christianity continued until the 1850s. Following the successful suppression of the rebellion, the daimyo of Shimabara, Matsukura Katsuie, was also beheaded, becoming the one and only daimyo to be beheaded during the Edo period.


Urbanski, of the Featherworks in Boston, pleaded guilty to all charges at Boston Magistrates' Court.
Prosecuting, Marie Stace said police saw Urbanski on the busy South Street at 5pm on October 23 when his car had broken down.
She said they spoke to Urbanski and found a friction lock baton in the car and a knuckleduster and a Kubotan on him.
When they searched his home address they found he was cultivating two cannabis plants in his bedroom, although there was no evidence of supplying.
Ms Stace said Urbanksi told the police he had bought the weapons on eBay as collectible items not weapons, and that he was not aware they were illegal.
He also said he was growing cannabis for himself to save money buying it.
In mitigation, Beris Brickles said Urbanski had an interest in martial arts weapons and had other items at home which were legal as long as they stayed in the house.
He told the magistrates Urbanski had purchased the items on eBay and that some of them were not illegal in Europe and he had fallen foul of his lack of knowledge.
Magistrates' told Urbanski 'ignorance of the law' was no excuse.
Fining him £400 for possessing the weapons and ordering their destruction, the magistrates told him ignorance of the law was no excuse.
He was also fined £130 for producing cannabis and ordered to pay £125 in costs and charges.


My dog has awful diarrhea. Is there anything I should do? I feel so bad. She's miserable.
My mom and step-dad feed their dog rice when she's sick. Seems to help.
That makes sense, like eating toast when you're sick. I might try that. Thanks.
No, the only homeopathic thing we've used for her is for fleas. She doesn't get sick very often. Ripped apart by bobcats and coyotes, more often. What would be in the kit?
Rice can be a bit rough on some dogs... Potatoes, maybe? I knew this dog once with a horribly sensitive system, and he lived on potatoes and white fish.
Thanks, mdvegan. That's awesome advice. She had tapeworms about a month and a half ago, so its a concern. I've had her on a liquid diet so far, and wasn't sure if I should feed her. Thanks again, guys.
a little pepto bismal....youll have to look up doesing online.
Watch for dehydration by monitoring fluid intake and gums. If the gums are dry, the dog might be getting dehydrated. I learned this the hard way when one of mine got colitis and had to stay overnight for fluid resusitation. She immediately felt better after getting some fluid.
Yu guys are great. Thanks!


text:
Major General Shamaal summoned to 241 Committee inquiry
By Mohamed Fathih Abdul Muhsin
June 6, 2021 , 14:49
Major General Shamaal at 241 meeting | Photo: Majlis
Malé, Maldives – Chief of Defence Force Major General Abdullah Shamaal was summoned to the Parliamentary Committee on National Security today, for questioning over the security breach of Former President and Current Speaker of the Parliament Mohamed Nasheed during May 6 terror attack.
While Maldives National Defence Force had decided against allowing individual members to be summoned to the committee inquiry, Major General Shamaal attended the committee at 13:30 today. However, information revealed by Shamaal has not been publicised as the Committee meetings are confidential.
According to information received by local media Adhadhu, the Parliamentary Committee has decided to summon around 40 officers in relation to the inquiry. Till now, Major General Abdullah Shamaal and Vice Chief of Defence Force Brigadier General Abdu-Raheem Abdu-Latheef has been summoned to the committee from MNDF.
In addition to this, the committee has also decided to summon Defence Minister Maria Didi to the committee although a certain date has not yet been announced.
Following the terror attack against the Former President on May 6, criticism has been aimed mainly at MNDF with allegations that they have failed to provide necessary security for the Speaker. The Committee wanted to summon individual officers to clarify how things worked within the authority. However, MNDF released a statement deciding against allowing individual officers to attend the committee.
The statement from MNDF read that the authority will fully comply with the parliamentary inquiry however, will not allow for individual officers to attend the committee for questioning.
In addition to MNDF officers, senior officers of Maldives Police Service has also attended the Committee inquiry. This includes Commissioner of Police Mohamed Hameed and Director of Counter Terrorism Superintendent of Police Fareedh Ismail. Personnel from other relevant authorities have also been summoned to the committee including Housin Minister Aslam who gave information at the Committee today.
The police is currently investigating the cause behind the attack on the Former President. 4 individuals have been arrested so far, all of them indicating radicalisation. The Parliamentary Committee is investigating into the security breach of the Speaker following the terror attack.
Speaker Nasheed still remains in Germany after he was released from the German medical hospital on May 21, where he went for recovery and rehabilitation for the injuries suffered in the May 6, 2021 assassination attempt on him. According to his family, he will remain in Germany for a month before returning back to Maldives.
The IED explosion went off around 20:20 on 6 May leaving Speaker of Parliament, Mohamed Nasheed critically injured while he was getting in to his car near his house, G. Kenereege, Malé City. In addition to him, 3 more people were also been reported to be injured from the explosion including the Speaker's bodyguards and bystanders.
Nasheed was taken to ADK with heavy bleeding, and both internal and external shrapnel injuries. Ball bearings were found in Nasheed's chest, near the heart. Injuries caused by these projectiles caused life threatening damage to the chest area. Nasheed endured major injury to the fourth rib, with a blade going through a lung. A projectile also went through his intestine with another near his liver.
Speaker Nasheed was treated at the Critical Care Unit of ADK hospital in Malé until he was airlifted to Germany on May 13, 2021 for recovery and rehabilitation. Parliament had previously revealed that Speaker Nasheed's medical expenses in Germany is being covered by Honorary Consul of Maldives in Germany, Christian Von Stetten.
Major General Shamaal hesitated to answer some questions: Inquiry Report
Assistant Commissioner of Police summoned to 241 Committee inquiry
MayTerrorAttack: Defence Minister Mariya summoned to 241 Committee inquiry
Home Minister Imran summoned to 241 Committee inquiry


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Amazon has announced that more than 5bn items were shipped through its Prime service in 2017. Prime, which costs $99 a year or $10.99 a month, provides members with free two-day shipping on eligible purchases in the USA, as well as unlimited streaming of movies and TV shows with Prime Video, among other benefits.
Even though the company has been tight-lipped about its Prime members, Amazon will occasionally drop hints.
A Canadian-made item was also one of Amazon's hottest products in 2017.
In the USA the number of items available for unlimited free two-day shipping has doubled from 50 million to 100 million items and is in addition to Prime one and same day services available in more than 8,000 U.S. cities and towns, and two-hour delivery with Prime Now in more than 30 major cities.
The best-sellers of all were the Echo Dot and Fire TV Stick, which were not only the top-selling Amazon products but also "the best-selling products from any manufacturer in any category across all of Amazon", similar to what the company reported immediately following its Black Friday sales event. Prime membership continued to grow during the holidays as Amazon incented shoppers with free trial offers.
Prime is also available in the US, UK, Spain, Japan, Italy, India, Germany, France, China, Canada, Belgium and Austria. For example, the company added more content to its video service and reserving early film screenings for members.
Amazon shares made a strong start to the New Year, ending the U.S. trading session 1.67% higher at $1,189.01. His estimate of 60 million Prime members was derived from Cowen's survey of 2,500 consumers.
This new entry will also see the first Story Mode in the series since 2005's Mario Tennis: Power Tour for the Game Boy Advance. Are you excited for some of the other games coming to Nintendo Switch this year? Payday 2 is set to release on February 27th.
The outage was reported at about 11:15 a.m.in the south and central halls of the Las Vegas Convention Center. Whoa, I'm in a hotel on the other side of town from the LVCC and our power just flickered too.
The suit also names co-writers Amy Wadge and Johnny McDaid, Sony/ATV, Universal Polygram, and WB Music . A request for comment from Rae and Sony Music reps was not immediately responded to.
Not just the box, we get to see some of the key specifications of Samsung's upcoming flagship smartphone. We are actually surprised the official message from Samsung didn't reach out well to the masses.
Swift asked to be put in touch with Sheeran after one of her managers saw him performing at a gig in Nashville. But our favourite part of the video sees Taylor take to the streets of London.
Huawei CEO Richard Yu even went off script at CES 2018 to slam US carriers for refusing to distribute the company's smartphones. Also present at the venue was OnePlus co-founder Carl Pei, who translated Lau's comments for CNET (Lau spoke in Mandarin).
In December, China's exports jumped 10.9% from a year ago to $231.8 billion, down from a 12.3% pace in the previous month. Russian Federation estimated in 2016 that the annual trade flows between the two world powers were at $66.1 billion.
Tickets for CELINE DION LIVE 2018 Tour in Manila will go on-sale to the public beginning 18 January. The tour is produced by AEG Presents and co-produced by Ovation Productions in Manila .
The MoD also said that a U.S. spy plane flew over Syria around the time of the attack , which helped the rebels target the drones. The agreement has helped reduce fighting significantly and contributed to warmer ties between Russian Federation and Turkey.
Michelle Pearson said the suicide of Dolly brought back many hard memories about her son. They had expected 50-60 people at the funeral, not the hundreds that turned out.
Mr Leonard told the First Minister that pensioner Mr Wilson had waited more than 16 hours for treatment on January 1. She added: "Nevertheless, Scotland's NHS remains the best-performing NHS anywhere in the United Kingdom".
Funke played the role of a Dora Milaje member in the film directed by Anthony Russo and Joe Russo. New set photos have arrived online from Avengers 4 , which is now filming .
Bloomberg reports this happened because Uber managers were informed ahead of time on how to cover up any revealing information. Some Uber employees also felt the system slowed investigations that were legally sound, Bloomberg said.
February 1, 1994: Gillooly pleads guilty to racketeering in exchange for a 24-month sentence February 10, 1994: Harding sues U.S. One thing that still can't be disputed about Harding, apparently, is her penchant for sitting in the middle of controversy.


text:
Q: How a OAuth1.0 Signature is generated I have to Authorize a request using OAuth1.0.
In the response header it requires access token,OAuth Nonce,Timestamp and OAuthSignature.I wrote methods for creating  Timestamp and  OAuthNonce
How the OAuthsignature is generated using these parameters?It uses HMAC-SHA1 method for Hashing the signature.
How can i create a method for generating an OAuth signture key. Can anyone suggest a method foe creating the signature using these parameters? Thanks in Advance.
private static string CreateOAuthTimestamp()
        {
            var nowUtc = DateTime.UtcNow;
            var timeSpan = nowUtc - new DateTime(1970, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, DateTimeKind.Utc);
            var timestamp = Convert.ToInt64(timeSpan.TotalSeconds).ToString();
            return timestamp;
        }

 private string CreateOauthNonce()
        {
            return Convert.ToBase64String(new ASCIIEncoding().GetBytes(DateTime.Now.Ticks.ToString()));
        }

A: I found a metod for creating an Oauth 1.0 signture.It requires all parameters of the api request to be hashed in SHA1 algorithm.
private string CreateOauthSignature
       (string resourceUrl, string oauthNonce, string oauthTimestamp ,
SortedDictionary<string, string> requestParameters)
    {
        //Add the standard oauth parameters to the sorted list
        requestParameters.Add("oauth_consumer_key", consumerKey);
        requestParameters.Add("oauth_nonce", oauthNonce);
        requestParameters.Add("oauth_signature_method", OauthSignatureMethod);
        requestParameters.Add("oauth_timestamp", oauthTimestamp);
        requestParameters.Add("oauth_token", accessToken);
        requestParameters.Add("oauth_version", OauthVersion);

        var sigBaseString = requestParameters.ToWebString();

        var signatureBaseString = string.Concat
        ("GET", "&", Uri.EscapeDataString(resourceUrl), "&",
                            Uri.EscapeDataString(sigBaseString.ToString()));

        //Using this base string, encrypt the data using a composite of the
        //secret keys and the HMAC-SHA1 algorithm.
        var compositeKey = string.Concat(Uri.EscapeDataString(consumerKeySecret), "&",
                                         Uri.EscapeDataString(accessTokenSecret));

        string oauthSignature;
        using (var hasher = new HMACSHA1(Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes(compositeKey)))
        {
            oauthSignature = Convert.ToBase64String(
                hasher.ComputeHash(Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes(signatureBaseString)));
        }
        return oauthSignature;
    }

The ToWebstring() is an Extension method for converting the Sorted dictionary to a web string and encoding the special characters.After creating the signature this can be included in the authorization header of the Http request along with the other header parameters viz. nonce,timestamp,access token etc.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
Gärestad är en by i Edestads socken i Ronneby kommun i Blekinge län belägen strax öster om Ronneby. Från 2015 avgränsar SCB här en småort.

Namnet
Namnet Gärestad bör vid tolkningen delas upp av förleden Gär(e) och efterleden -stad (-sta ). Det kan nämnas att orter som har efterleden sta är kända från tiden kring Kristi födelse och fram till vikingatiden. Förleden är fri för tolkning, kan vara namnet på en av de första boende eller kanske till och med bara har betydelsen gärde. Då stavningen enligt det sena 1500-talets Lunds Stifts Landebok skall ha varit "Jerrle-" ligger det dock nära till hands att tolka ortnamnets innebörd som liktydigt med den hos Järrestad på Österlen, det vill säga "Jarlens plats". Inom byn har man bland annat  hittat stenyxor från den neolitika delen av stenåldern. Det finns stora gravrösen från bronsåldern och gravlämningar från vikingatiden, så det råder det inga tvivel om att bygden har varit bebodd länge.

Historia

Gravrösen
På var sida om E22 finns några av de största gravrösena från äldre bronsåldern i Blekinge. Norr om, och dolt från, vägen ligger ett röse på Målarberget som är 4 meter högt och omkring 25 meter i diameter. Något längre österut och söder om, och väl synligt från, vägen ligger gravröset vid Hamrabackarna som är 4 meter högt och cirka 25 meter i diameter. På platsen finns även två stensättningar. Det höga och över omgivningen dominerande läget är typiskt för dessa storrösen. Det har funnits 14 stora gravrösen i Gärestad, varav 2 är undersökta och borttagna.

Silverskatten
År 1889 gjordes ett fynd av en större silverskatt i en åker nära den äldre bykärnan av Gärestad by. Den bestod av mer än 1000 mynt; tyska, arabiska, engelska, danska och svenska. Där fanns även armband, silvertackor, delar av en halsring samt enstaka skärvor från ett förvaringskärl av så kallad Östersjökeramik. Skatten vägde drygt 2 kg och grävdes ned runt vikingatidens slut, cirka år 1060. Skatten förvaras i dag på Historiska Museet i Stockholm, dock ej för visning.

Ronneby blodbad
I september 1564 trängde Erik XIV in i Blekinge mot Ronneby med 5 500 man fotfolk och 2 400 ryttare. Svenskarna mötte ett förbittrat motstånd från bönderna. Det berättas att de soldater som kom efter under marschen höggs ned och hängdes upp i träden. Som straff för det beordrade Erik XIV 160 ryttare och ett hundratal bösseskyttar att bränna och plundra på ömse sidor om härens väg mot Ronneby. Gärestad låg mitt i härens väg mot Ronneby så man kan förmoda att byn utplånades. Den 4 september inträffade stormningen av staden Ronneby, som har gått till historien under benämningen Ronneby blodbad.

Enskifte
Under 1820-talets senare hälft genomfördes enskifte i byn, vilket innebar att landskapet ändrade form, byn som tidigare var uppdelad i två bykärnor blev mindre koncentrerad men fortfarande kunde man urskilja de ursprungliga bykärnorna. Fyra gårdar flyttades ut på ägorna och ägorna blev mer sammanslagna till större enheter. I samband med skiftet ändrade man också delar av vägsträckningen, några åkervägar behövdes inte längre och nya tillkom för att nå enheter längre bort.

Noter

Orter i Ronneby kommun
Småorter i Sverige

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


Description: A vulnerability was reported in IBM WebSphere DataPower. A remote user can decrypt SSL/TLS sessions in certain cases.
Solution: The vendor has described configuration methods to correct the vulnerability.


text:
The Apartheid Era
Analysis	Characters	Laconic	Recap	Trivia	Setting	YMMV	Fridge	Fanfic Recs	Haiku	Headscratchers	Ho Yay	Image Links	Memes	Radar	Quotes	Reviews	Useful Notes	WMG	Awesome	Funny	Heartwarming	Nightmare Fuel	Tear Jerker
/wiki/The Apartheid Erawork
"I've travelled this old world of ours from Barnsley to Peru
I've had sunstroke in the arctic and a swim in Tinbuktu
I've seen unicorns in Burma and a Yeti in Nepal
And I've danced with ten foot pygmies in a Montezuma hall
I've met the King of China
and a working Yorkshire miner
But I've never met a nice South African."
--Spitting Image, "I've Never Met a Nice South African"
—(because apparently racism is funny if you have the right target)
South Africa from 1948 to 1990.
During this time, legalized ethnic segregation occurred, with South African black people stripped of citizenship by South African white people (who were/are mainly English and Afrikaners, the latter being Dutch/Afrikaans for "Africans") in South Africa proper and given citizenship of one of ten "homelands", four of which were nominally independent but still totally reliant on the rest of the country to survive. Officially, the motive was "de-colonization"; unofficially, the "homelands" (a.k.a. "Bantustans") quickly became a source of cheap labor for the mines.
Making things a tad more complex in this Cold War era, the largest anti-apartheid group ANC (African National Congress, the party that Nelson Mandela belonged to) were openly allied with Marxists. This was the paradox however, as because the white South Africans were so vehemently anti-Communist the anti-apartheid movement could get little support in for some time otherwise, and no arms definitely, at least not from the West (USSR was more than willing to provide military training and weapons, however). Meanwhile, the US, UK and Israel supported the white apartheid government.
South Africa engaged in a number of border wars at this time, basically involving frequent cross-border raids into (Communist) Angola and Mozambique. It also fought and lost a war to keep hold of Namibia. Since this was the Cold War, anti-West independence movements were assisted throughout Africa by countries such as Russia and Cuba; during the course of the war, South Africa faced (and defeated) the largest Soviet mechanized force outside Russia since WW 2. It was assisted in this endeavor by various anti-Communist, pro-West independence movements, notably UNITA.
Within South Africa, political opponents could be "banned"—barred from communicating with more than one person at any one time when not at home, from visiting certain areas and from having anything they said quoted in the media (a legal measure which is still on the books today). Indefinite detention without charge or trial was allowed for those suspected of "terrorism"—defined so broadly, like "communism", that it meant "whatever the government says". Up to 1993, South Africa had the greatest percentage of its own population in prison globally, when it was surpassed by... the US (on account of mandatory minimum sentencing laws). Hundreds of people were tortured in jail and killed with explanations such as "fell down the stairs" -- The Coroner Doth Protest Too Much indeed, to the point of public inquests backing such findings. Additionally, the security and intelligence services assassinated numerous people outright, both in South Africa and abroad, usually making use of 'care packages', better known as a bomb in the mail (care packages ... they take care of you). The shift from non-violence to violence is thought of as beginning in 1960 with the Sharpeville Massacre, when frightened police (including Black officers) fired on an unruly protesting crowd throwing stones, killing dozens, most shot in the back while fleeing. It went downhill in the aftermath, with armed resistance and terrorism beginning.
There is a lot of debate over who exactly is responsible for ending apartheid, especially in the post-apartheid era where anti-apartheid activities during the apartheid era is equivalent to ones street credit (and carries a lot of political favor and support). But basically in late 1989 when conservative F.W. de Klerk became president of Apartheid South Africa he announced that he planned to end the discriminatory Apartheid laws. In 1992 a referendum was held on whether Apartheid should be continued or not, the majority of white South Africans voted to end Apartheid. Of course this referendum is rarely recorded in history.
The announcement of F.W. de Klerk in 1990 started a 3 year long discussion/negotiation between the apartheid government and anti-apartheid groups which culminated in the election of Nelson Mandela and the ANC (African National Congress) party in 1994. For their effort to peacefully transition South Africa out of Apartheid Nelson Mandela and FW de Klerk were jointly awarded the Noble Peace Prize in 1993. After the election of the first black president (Mandela), de Klerk stayed on as vice-president until 1996 when he retired from politics.
After apartheid ended the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was created to help address the crimes of past.
Apartheid is pronounced "apart-hate" (but only if you over-enunciate it), which may seem appropriate if your primary language is English.[1] The word's current political meaning was coined in Afrikaans. It exists in Dutch as well, but it had no political connotations in either language before it was used to name the now-infamous government policy. It translates simply as "apart-ness." What is rather ironic about it is that the term was used because the word "segregation" was considered to have too many negative connotations, and "apartheid" was considered a more neutral term for the policy. Although similar policies existed before then, even before the formation of the Union of South Africa (being known as the "Shepstonian System" in the British Empire's Natal Colony, which joined the Union in 1910), it was only officially and nationally entrenched in law in 1948. If you're in America, this is kind of like the difference between it being a States' Rights or Federal issue: before apartheid, some provinces were less segregationist than others.
Did we mention that, although South Africa was Allied in WW 2, some members of the South African government when Apartheid was first conceived were Nazi sympathizers? Well, we did now. In the early 1970s, an extreme white supremacist and neo-fascist group, the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging or AWB, meaning Afrikaner Resistance Movement, was formed and in fact clashed with the apartheid government itself, which they felt was too soft.
South Africa was subjected for much of this period to a large-scale international economic and military boycott—the South Africans With Surface to Air Missiles developed weapons indigenously with Israeli help (that's right, Israel helped the National Party segregate blacks. Why? Probably so they could get uranium to build their own nukes), including working on a shared nuclear weapons program. The so-called "Vela Incident", an explosion out in the ocean near Antarctica which was picked up by US surveillance satellites, was probably a South African nuclear test.
However, more significantly, it also faced a cultural boycott. South Africa was barred from the Olympics from 1964 to 1992. Going to South Africa to compete would get a sportsperson very bad press. International cricket, a big South African sport, had occurred spottily. There were some "rebel" tours, including two of England players, which resulted in players getting bans as a result.
In terms of media, Equity banned works involving its members from being shown on South African television, which arrived in 1975 (before that, TV was banned as a morally corrupting influence). If you actually went to South Africa to film, you were not going to be popular. On a more informal level in the 1980s, the same thing applied for popular musicians who performed at the infamous Sun City resort in South Africa, as Artists Against Apartheid pointed out in their protest song, "Sun City." Interestingly enough, Sun City was in a homeland/reservation, since gambling was illegal in the Republic itself. This cultural boycott occasionally got rather out of hand, as when Paul Simon was criticized for recording his Magnum Opus Graceland in South Africa... entirely with musicians who were black in the first place.
Mercenary Legacy
With apartheid coming to an end and a new government in place, one of their first actions was to reform (read: get rid of) the then-current standing military, presumably since for decades the military was the iron first of the apartheid government and performed numerous operations (above-board and otherwise; counterinsurgency isn't always pretty) in order to undermine anti-apartheid activities. To be fair, most soldiers were given the option to stay on, but many (understandably?) didn't want to be commanded by Soviet-trained officers they'd been fighting against for all of the Cold War. Most of the soldiers, well-trained with years of active military experience, became Mercenaries (or Military Contractors), most notably the PMC (Private Military Contractor) Executive Outcomes was founded by former members of the apartheid government and when on to take part in a number of military actions in Africa. Today it is still common for South Africans to be part of NATO-aligned mercenary groups in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, although the increasing age of the apartheid-era generation and the smaller number of new mercenary recruits makes it a dwindling phenomenon. Also, since mercenary companies (and associated activities) are illegal in South Africa, the privatized military-style South African forces you do see these days are called "security companies" now. So, if you ever make any official inquiry, there are no South African mercenaries, but it makes little practical difference.
The Apartheid Era in Fiction
Eagle in the Sky by Wilbur Smith
The Tom Sharpe novels Riotous Assembly and Indecent Exposure, satires of the regime. Sharpe spent 10 years in the country until thrown out in 1961.
Wonderella, as a teenager, thought it had something to do with elephant poaching.
Harry Turtledove's Alternate History novel The Guns of the South has bitter Afrikaners, members of the real-life Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (Afrikaner Resistance Movement), steal a time machine and provide the Confederate States of America with AK-47s in the hopes of building a powerful nation that supported "white power". They face opposition from Robert E. Lee and other moderates who, regardless of their personal feelings on slavery, recognize that following the AWB will lead the Confederacy down a path of violence and ostracism from the global community.
Of course, actual South Africans also know that the AWB aren't nice guys, which explains why the AWB has always been an irrelevant, extremist fringe organization. Even during apartheid. Everyone knows about them because they're Nazis, but they never had even the modicum of popular support the KKK had.
Irvine Welsh's Marabou Stork Nightmares is set in apartheid South Africa during the protagonist's childhood. The Afrikaners are a very unpleasant bunch.
Hurrah for politically correct racism.
In an episode of The Goodies, the Goodies move to South Africa just after all black natives have left. The regime starts a new form of segregation called Apart-Height. Which does not bode well for anyone under a certain height. Eventually the native Jockeys overthrow the government.
In the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures comic book produced by Archie Comics, a supporting character was a black werewolf whose family moved to Jamaica from South Africa to escape apartheid.
The novel and film The Wilby Conspiracy (the movie starred Sidney Poitier and Michael Caine); the story concerns a black South African activist and a white English businessman hurtling across South Africa to try to elude a South African secret policeman.
The Sixth Battle has South Africa invaded by its neighbouring communist states, backed by the Soviet Union Union of Eurasian Republics. The US joins on South Africa's side and some of the Zulu population back South Africa, both on the "better the devil you know" principle.
At the beginning, Mandela and de Klerk are killed when someone crashes a remote-controlled Cessna into the South African parliament building.
The general scenario is more or less what happened in real life, since the Bantustan "homelands" were political allies of apartheid South Africa, and both SA and its homelands (Zulu and otherwise) were involved on the American side of the Cold War.
In The Third World War, South Africa is a key area in the conflict.
District 9, an Alien Among Us story set in Johannesburg, never explicitly mentions apartheid—but you can't help thinking about it anyway.
The South African writer stated that it wasn't supposed to be an allegory for anything, but was just his idea of what would realistically happen to aliens if they landed in South Africa.
In World War Z, a Heroic Sociopath modifies an old Apartheid-era South African civil war plan to deal with the zombie threat. It works well and is adopted by many of the nations detailed in the book.
Red Dust is a film that explores the Apartheid Era through flashbacks during a truth and reconciliation hearing (hearings where those guilty of Apartheid-era crimes, on both sides, can admit their guilt, apologize and receive pardons).
Spitting Image released a song attacking Apartheid called "I've never met a nice South African" (the first verse of which is at the top of the page) which does admit that nice (ie anti-Apartheid) South Africans exist, and that they got put in prison.
Larry Bond, co-author of Red Storm Rising and creator of the Harpoon tabletop wargame, wrote a novel entitled Vortex, which chronicled a Mandela-less final war with Cuba, Angola, and Namibia on one side, South Africa on another side, the US and Great Britian on a third, and the various revolutionary groups fighting everyone. Better than it sounds.
Invictus begins at the very end of the Apartheid era, and deals with the Mandela government's use of the South African national rugby team, long associated with whites in general and Afrikaans-speakers in particular, as a means of unifying the nation.
An episode of Silent Witness involves Nikki Alexander (born in the country) being hired to identify the bodies of ANC activists executed in 1985. It also features a woman getting "necklaced" for fleeing the house where she's held as a sex slave and telling the police, an ANC punishment for informers that involves placing a tyre around their neck, dousing it in petrol and setting it alight.
The Power of One, a novel by Bryce Courtenay, and the movie of the book discuss an English colonist, who boxes in illegal interracial tournaments, and inspires the native Black population, giving them lessons in English. The Afrikaner police are depicted as Nazistic, and the main antagonist of the story is explicitly a Nazi sympathizer, who has a swastika tatoo, listens to the Horst Wessel Lied, and, as a teenager, swore allegiance to Adolf Hitler.
In addition, as a possible Take That against the Apartheid regime, the aforementioned main antagonist is named Botha, after the then-recent leader of Apartheid South Africa.
And of course the English are made out as being superior and the Afrikaners as all being Nazis, despite the fact that all whites at similar levels of education supported Apartheid more or less equally (and the stereotype of the backwoods racist Afrikaner versus the scrappy liberal Englishman originated during a time when the latter were keeping the former in concentration camps). But hey, it's all in the cause of opposing racism, right?
Hoppie was an Afrikaner, wasn't he? There are plenty of good and upstanding Afrikaners in the book, the protagonist just has very bad experiences with a schoolyard gang at the beginning.
The Disney Channel movie The Color of Friendship is a fictionalized account of the 1977 visit of an Afrikaner exchange student to the home of African-American congressman Ron Dellums, himself an outspoken opponent of Apartheid.
Almost anything by Wilbur Smith, but especially Power Of The Sword and Rage from the Courtney series.
Lethal Weapon 2 featured a South African drug dealer hiding behind Diplomatic Impunity.
As did the Indio movies. The "South African drug dealer with diplomatic immunity" is turning out to be its own trope.
The Big Bad in the original Soldier of Fortune video game is an exiled South African Colonel named Dekker who blames the fall of Apartheid on the meddling of western nations. His ultimate plan for revenge is to drop a neutron bomb (Built in part on expertise he has from working on top-secret South African nuclear projects) on the US.
Whereas there was (and to an extent, still is) latent hostility towards the US Federal government among many South Africans, that's... kind of unrealistic. We like Americans, even if we think they have a regrettable tendency to intervene without understanding why or how. But I mean, you don't get angry at a storm, and it doesn't make you hate rain.
In the movie Blood Diamonds Danny Archer (Leonardo DiCaprio) is a white Rhodesian (now Zimbabwe) and former South African Apartheid soldier turned mercenary as well as the antagonist Colonel Coetzee (Arnold Vosloo) and the officers of his mercenary platoon are all ex-apartheid soldiers turned mercenary.
In a subversion of the usual portrayal however, they do not make racist statements (unless they are very, very pissed off with a Black person) and Coetzee's troops include Black South African mercenaries as well.
This is basically a realistic portrayal of what South Africa's military, and its mercenaries, are like. Even during apartheid, all races were represented in the Army - except that units were segregated, and only white South Africans were subject to conscription. While fighting against the Communist hordes on the border, South Africans were more concerned about staying alive than being racist.
As an added bonus to stack against the stereotype, consider the fact that all white South Africans in movies refer to black people by "the k-word", with this being more common among soldiers and government ministers. Except... even under apartheid, it was illegal to use that word. Those film South Africans may have had diplomatic immunity, but all the heroes had to do was record the bad guys insulting them, and they would get fired and probably fined several thousand Rand for being racially insensitive.
South African author Alan Paton is most well-known for his anti-apartheid literature, such as Ah, but Your Land Is Beautiful, which displays several episodes during apartheid's beginnings in the 1950s. Paton's most famous novel is Cry, the Beloved Country, which explores the complex social interactions of Whites and Blacks during the turbulent upheavals of apartheid's emergence through the eyes of a Black pastor and a White farmer. The book was adapted to film in 1951 and 1995, the latter one starring James Earl Jones and Richard Harris; there was also a stage musical adaptation, Lost in the Stars, that was itself filmed in 1973.
The 1987 film Cry Freedom, based on books by investigative journalist Donald Woods, chronicled the friendship between the white Woods and black anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko, who died from injuries sustained during police custody in 1977. Woods' books accused the apartheid regime of whitewashing Biko's death, which led to Woods being blacklisted and escaping to Britain.
↑ because since "-heid" means "-ness", you also have words like "vriendelikheid" ("friendliness") which have nothing to do with "hate" at all.
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Useful Notes
Useful Notes/South Africa


Thanks for your contribution, Nigel! A great opening to a great project.
To extend upon your contribution, I decided to explore my home. I live on the coast, so I've grown up by the sea and beach. That's why my contribution is titled "HOME". It's an exploration of a familiar landscape, one that I've seen a lot of, and it holds a very special place in my heart.
Proud to be handing this book to you! If the postman can find you this time).
On the previous page I have explained my entry and reasons for the style of images. Can't wait to see your contribution!
It was a pleasure for me to be the first contributor to the YOUR EXHIBITION Collaborative Album project. I chose to go down streets I've never walked down.
Welcome to the YOUR EXHIBITION Collaborative Project entry feed. Here you will be able to find the posts of the previous contributors to the album.


text:
Hokkaido Tohoku Kanto Chubu Kansai Shikoku Chugoku Kyushu Okinawa
Tsutsujigaoka C.C. つつじヶ丘カントリー倶楽部
Sky Hill Golf Club スカイヒルゴルフクラブ
Murasakizuka G.C. 紫塚ゴルフ倶楽部
Kanagawa Country Club 神奈川カントリークラブ
Green Feel G.C. グリーンフィールゴルフ倶楽部
Kagoshima's Golfing Gems	Tanegashima and Ibusuki rank with the best golf courses in Japan
"Suppose they gave a war …. and nobody came" was a famous anti-war slogan from the 1960s. Well, suppose they built a golf course …. and nobody came. That could be the slogan of the beautiful but sadly under-used Tanegashima Golf Club in Kagoshima Prefecture.
Traveling from the Tokyo region to this remote island off the south coast of Kyushu feels like heading into the wilderness. It's a 90-minute jetfoil ride from Kagoshima City, 90 minutes that quickly takes you from the fast lane to the slow. Only 28,000 people live on Tanegashima, with more than half of them in the main town and port of Nishinoomote. The island stretches north to south for nearly 60 km but is barely 10 km wide and has a maximum elevation of 282 meters.
But it still has plenty going for it. Its most...
Night Golf In Japan	Under an hour from Tokyo
Part of the advantage of living in Chiba, as I do, is the proximity to golf courses. But living out there still doesn't make me immune to the dreaded morning and afternoon traffic jams that greet all golfers! To counter this several golf courses offer night golf, which is the perfect antidote to traffic not only on the roads but on the course itself! Playing night golf in Japan is like playing golf overseas: you drive there in 30 minutes or less, get right on to the course, and play-through in under 4 hours, and head back home. What's not to love? Well, I can hear the naysayers asking about lost balls. But I can honestly say that I lose fewer balls at night than I do during the day. More about that later.
Tsutsujigaoka Country Club	Ashikaga, Tochigi Prefecture
A real gem of a course set in a national park, hemmed by breathtaking mountains and forests lies Tsutsujigaoka Country Club. Located in the city of Ashikaga, which is known historically as the Eastern 'Little Kyoto' for its cultural, religious and architectural heritage, and more recently for it's outdoor activities, Golf courses, wineries and the area's general 'slow-life' atmosphere.
Kasumigaseki Country Club	Kawagoe, Saitama
Not much is known about Kasumigaseki Country Club outside of its domestic fanbase, but an upcoming appearance in the world's greatest sporting contest is about to change all of that. Kasumigaseki CC beat other prestigious Japanese golf courses, including Yokohama Country Club and Wakasu Golf Links, to lay claim to Japan's second Summer Olympics hosting gig – and its first Olympic golf competition.
Following last year's completion of the redesign from legendary American golf course architect Tom Fazio, the course is now ready to welcome the best golfers on the planet as the countdown to July 29 begins. I was able to pay the course a visit in early May and get a preview of its impressive new layout, as well as learn more of its fascinating history.
Kintetsu Kashikojima Country Club	Ise Shima, Mie Prefecture
As a mid-handicap golfer, I've never played in any serious golf competitions. The monthly medal at my home course or a "few bob" on a skins game with friends is as close to real tournament pressure as I will ever find. But as a fan of the game, I do love playing championship courses. Remembering the epic battles of professional tournaments fought by the greats of the game, the shots that won them the tournament, how they played the course and their composure never fails to inspire us to try and bring some of that into our own games.
On a recent trip to Mie prefecture in the southwest of Japan, I was lucky enough to enjoy a round at the fantastic Kintetsu Kashikojima Country Club. A masterful design by Mr Osamu Umeda, this 18-hole, par-72 course was made famous by being home to...
Green Feel Golf Club	Kataoka, Kochi Prefecture
It is no surprise that Green Feel has been voted the number 1 course in Shikoku for the last number of years. The designer, Mr Sho Tobari (a prominent tournament producer and TV commentator in his own right) got it right with a design that all levels of golfer can enjoy. He is quoted on their website as saying: 'This is a course designed to be enjoyed by regular amateurs, but also to offer a high degree of difficulty from the championship tees, keeping in mind that tournaments can be held at any time'. Stepping out into the caddy masters area you can see the 1st and 9th holes from a slightly elevated position and they look glorious in the September sunshine, there is a palpable air of excitement as players go through the bustle of their pre-game routine, and after a quick warm-up, we...
SkyHill Golf Club	Takaoka-gun, Kochi Prefecture
Mountain courses are not everyone's cup of tea, but I love that they have personality and are memorable in a way some of the more 'civilized' courses are not. Sky Hill was no exception and we had a super fun day watching balls fly from the launch pad tees, calculating (guessing!) up and downhill yardages, and spotting various forms of wildlife (was it a Civet or a Japanese Badger?). My memories of the day are happily colored by an equal personal best stolen with a par on the signature downhill par five 18th.
Eastwood Country Club	Kawachi, Tochigi Prefecture
About 1.5 hours drive North of Tokyo in Tochigi prefecture, lies a fantastic track, cleverly designed and with plenty of unique character and charm. It's a favorite of locals and is a stop on the senior Japan Tour. This year, Eastwood CC has also started to welcome foreign golfers living and visiting Japan to experience its fantastic golf and classic Japanese "OMOTENASHI" spirit!
EARLYBIRD GOLF IN JAPAN	Crazy but Genius!
There are no daylight savings in Japan- or Asia for that matter. That means, starting from Mid April until the end of August, sunrise is around 4 a.m. The idea of a 4:32 a.m. tee time might seem a bit daft to most, but for the golfer in Japan it not only makes a lot of sense, it is in fact, genious.
Nemu Golf Club	Ise Shima, Mie Prefecture
Ise in Mie prefecture is more known for being home to Japan's most sacred Shinto shrine; Ise Jingu - than Golf courses, but with the backdrop of being Japan's ancient spiritual home and picture postcard geography, lies a Golf course and resort that will give you a modern and exciting experience unlike anything from its contemporaries in the more visited areas of Kansai.
Murasakizuka Golf Club	Sakura, Tochigi prefecture
This is a golf resort for the Golfer who likes to combine good food, relaxing and luxurious facilities with fantastic golf. 27 holes, onsen, Hotel, pool, private villas, teppanyaki all available to help mind and body relax after a fun day on the course.


What the "things" that had been accomplished?
What is Jesus thirsty for?
Do you think there is significance in the use of hyssop? If yes, why?
Have you ever fed someone who is hungry, give drink to one who is thirsty, clothe one who is naked, visit one who is sick or go to one who is in prison? If yes, what motivated you to do it? If no, what is stopping you from doing it?
Spend some quiet moments with the Lord and ask Him to help you experience His thirst. Allow Him to show you the things that you can do to quench His thirst and note them down. Take action on the things He showed you at the right time.


To study whether public sector employees are a different type of employee with different expectations than the private sector employees, we look at differences in the generic dimensions of their psychological contract. Data from a survey of 4956 Belgian employees show that, compared to private sector employees, public sector employees attach less importance to career development opportunities and financial rewards promises, and perceive these promises as less fulfilled. They also perceive social atmosphere and work–life balance as less fulfilled. Furthermore, we observed significant gender differences in the importance and fulfilment of the psychological contract.