text:
News: Cooper & Turner going for growth in wind sector following acquisition
By Tom Austen
Historic global manufacturer, Cooper & Turner, which has significant operations in Sheffield and Rotherham, has been acquired by The Watermill Group, an American private investment firm.
Family-owned, Cooper & Turner, is one of Europe's leading manufacturers of bolts, nuts and washers used in the energy, rail, construction and other engineering sectors. It has facilities at its Templeborough Works in Sheffield and at Canklow in Rotherham, where the focus is on the wind energy sector.
Based in Lexington, Massachusetts, The Watermill Group, targets "businesses at a pivotal turning point," bringing in investors with the aim of helping companies achieve their full potential through strategic transformation.
The deal, for an undisclosed amount, sees the acquisition of Cooper & Turner by taking on Andaray (Holdings) Limited and its direct and indirect subsidiaries.
Mid Cap Financial Services, LLC provided debt for the transaction and Grant Thornton UK LLP provided corporate finance, debt advisory, tax and financial due diligence advice to Watermill. K&L Gates LLP provided Legal Counsel to Watermill. Mazars LLP advised Cooper & Turner and Mincoffs Solicitors provided legal counsel.
The vision is to create: "The world's first, truly global mission-critical-fastener supplier with a seamless, one-stop shop solution for the manufacture and distribution of industrial fasteners that meet the highest levels of quality."
Cooper & Turner senior management, including group CEO Tony Brown and head of group production David Brown, will remain in their current positions and retain a significant shareholding in the company. The Watermill Group are set to introduce complimentary systems and procedures and provide strategic guidance as the company manages the growth in wind energy. Another aim is to support the launch of manufacturing and distribution operations in the United States.
Julia Karol, president and COO, Watermill Group, said: "Cooper & Turner's reputation and track record is virtually unmatched. We are impressed with the company's unwavering commitment to quality and safety, its high customer service levels, as well as its global manufacturing and distribution footprint. Combining Watermill's strategy-driven approach with Cooper & Turner's highly experienced management team, the company has an exciting opportunity to become the world's first, truly global mission-critical-fastener supplier."
Ronald M. Krisanda, an advisor at Watermill and former president and COO at manufacturing firm, Milacron Holdings Corporation, will serve as the chairman of the Board of Advisors for the organisation. He said: "Cooper & Turner is a compelling business with a highly experienced senior management team, led by brothers Tony and David Brown, whose entrepreneurial vision and operational expertise have been paramount to the organisation's success. We look forward to working with them and their team to uncover new opportunities and accelerate the company's growth in the booming international wind sector and beyond."
Tony Brown, Group CEO, Cooper & Turner, said: "We are thrilled to join Watermill for this next chapter in the history of Cooper & Turner. For nearly two centuries, this organisation has evolved and thrived – innovating alongside cutting-edge customers and developing industry-leading service levels across established and emerging sectors. Watermill's strategic guidance will be invaluable to us as we continue in this tradition of growth and progress."
Cooper & Turner acquired the former home of Manheim Motor Auctions in 2012 and, to support further growth, a new extension was completed in 2013 to infill the space between the two existing units and create substantially more floorspace. The site incorporates a 120,000 tonne stock holding facility and the group moved towards a full distribution network. Cooper & Turner and McLean Buchanan and Wilson (MBW) joined forces in March 2007.
Joseph and James Turner founded a gun barrel business in Birmingham in the 1800s. Having expanded the business into other areas, including rivet production, the company was amalgamated with Henry Cooper & Co in 1912.
Production was moved to Sheffield and the company continued to be successful, supplying products for a wide range of applications including battleships and Ford's Model T cars. Recent projects have seen its products used in the construction of the Burj Khalifa in Dubai and the redevelopment of Liverpool FC's Anfield stadium.
Cooper & Turner website
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Labels: acquisition, canklow, construction, Cooper and Turner, Energy, Export, foreign, investment, legal, Rotherham, sheffield
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I am a freak. I have hands and I have feet, and if you saw me you'd faint, you'd be petrified, mummified, turned into stone or a pillar of salt!
Sir, have you no Latin?
It's "Cuss-toe-dez" and "A-star-tez" thank you very much!
The Dead Eyes Opened. The Dead Eyes Opened. The Dead Eyes Opened. The Dead Eyes Opened.
Good lord! Powerhouse is 75 years old! Well done Mr Scott!


text:
The So-Called 'Libertarian Moment' Is Engineered By The Christian Right
There's been quite the buzz in the chattering classes this week over Robert Draper's suggestion in the New York Times Magazine that the Republican Party, and perhaps even the nation, may finally prepared for a "libertarian moment," likely through the agency of the shrewd and flexible politician Rand Paul. It's obvious, in fact, that some of the aging hipsters Draper talks to who have been laboring in the libertarian fields for decades glimpse over the horizon a reconstructed GOP that can reverse the instinctive loathing of millennials for the Old Folks' Party.
Unfortunately, to the extent there is something that can be called a "libertarian moment" in the Republican Party and the conservative movement, it owes less to the work of the Cato Institute than to a force genuine libertarians clutching their copies of Atlas Shrugged are typically horrified by: the Christian Right. In the emerging ideological enterprise of "constitutional conservatism," theocrats are the senior partners, just as they have largely been in the Tea Party Movement, even though libertarians often get more attention.
There's no universal definition of "constitutional conservatism." The apparent coiner of the term, the Hoover Institution's Peter Berkowitz, used it to argue for a temperate approach to political controversy that's largely alien to those who have embraced the "brand." Indeed, it's most often become a sort of dog whistle scattered through speeches, slogans and bios on various campaign trails to signify that the bearer is hostile to compromise and faithful to fixed conservative principles, unlike the Republicans who have been so prone to trim and prevaricate since Barry Goldwater proudly went down in flames. The most active early Con-Con was Michele Bachmann, who rarely went more than a few minutes during her 2012 presidential campaign without uttering it. It's now very prominently associated with Ted Cruz, who, according to Glenn Beck's The Blaze has emerged as "the new standard-bearer for constitutional conservatism." And it's the preferred self-identification for Rand Paul as well.
What Con-Con most often seems to connote beyond an uncompromising attitude on specific issues is the belief that strict limitations on the size, scope and cost of government are eternally correct for this country, regardless of public opinion or circumstances. Thus violations of this "constitutional" order are eternally illegitimate, no matter what the Supreme Court says or who has won the last election.
More commonly, Con-Cons reinforce this idea of a semi-divine constitutional order by endowing it with — quite literally — divine origins. This is why David Barton's largely discredited "Christian Nation" revisionist histories of the Founders remain so highly influential in conservative circles, and why Barton himself is welcome company in the camps of Con-Con pols ranging from Cruz and Bachmann to Rick Perry and Mike Huckabee. This is why virtually all Con-Cons conflate the Constitution with the Declaration of Independence, which enabled them to sneak both Natural and Divine Law (including most conspicuously a pre-natal Right to Life) into the nation's organic governing structure.
What a lot of those who instinctively think of conservative Christians as hostile to libertarian ideas of strict government persistently miss is that divinizing untrammeled capitalism has been a growing habit on the Christian Right for decades. Perhaps more importantly, the idea of the "secular-socialist government" being an oppressor of religious liberty, whether it's by maintaining public schools that teach "relativism" and evolution, or by enforcing the "Holocaust" of legalized abortion, or by insisting on anti-discrimination rules that discomfit "Christian businesses," has made Christian conservatives highly prone to, and actually a major participant in, the anti-government rhetoric of the Tea Party. Beyond that, the essential tea party view of America as "exceptional" in eschewing the bad political habits of the rest of the world is highly congruent with, and actually owes a lot to, the old Protestant notion of the United States as a global Redeemer Nation and a "shining city on a hill."
So perhaps the question we should be asking is not whether the Christian Right and other "traditional" conservatives can accept a Rand Paul-led "libertarian" takeover of the conservative movement and the GOP, but whether "libertarians" are an independent factor in conservative politics to begin with. After all, most of the Republican politicians we think of as "libertarian"–whether it's Rand Paul or Justin Amash or Mike Lee–are also paid-up culture-war opponents of legalized abortion, Common Core, and other heathenish practices. As Heather Digby Parton noted tartly earlier this week:
[T]he line between theocrats and libertarian Republicans is very, very faint. Why do you think they've bastardized the concept of "Religious Liberty" to mean the right to inflict your religion on others? It appeals to people who fashion themselves as libertarians but really only care about their taxes, guns and weed. Those are the non-negotiable items. Everything else is on offer.
And then there's the well-known but under-reported long-term relationship of Ron and Rand Paul with the openly theocratic U.S. Constitution Party, a Con-Con inspirational font that no Republican politician is likely to embrace these days.
The more you examine the evidence, the more it seems plain that the "libertarian moment" in the GOP, even it's real, and even if it's advanced by Rand Paul as a presidential candidate, isn't necessarily of a nature that's going to be wildly popular among secular-trending millennials — or among Draper's hipsters. To the extent it has a mass base, it's likely as much or more among conservative Christian soldiers who despise government so long as they don't control it as among dope-smoking free-loving free-thinking anti-interventionist Reason readers. So the latter might want to think twice before climbing onto the Rand Paul for President bus, or consigning their fate to Republican politics.
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


i need not go for the lecture and i homed at 1.30?
I CANT LOG IN MY MSN FOR SOMEWHAT REASONS.
& i dont know what it is.
i guess its with duno what certificate error.
now i cant log in msn.
(at least i can still continue to the website but MSN how? anyone can help?
hmms. anyway, enough of that.
but i cant think of what to blog now.
neverminds. i shall stop here.


This comprehensive course will cover the principles and practices of food safety and sanitation that are essential in the hospitality industry for the protection and well-being of staff, guests and customers. The course will provide a systems approach to sanitation risk management and the prevention of food contamination by emphasizing the key components of the Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP) food safety system. After successful completion of this course, students will be prepared to meet the requirements of state and national certification exams.


The Nintendo 3DS will hit stores in North America on March 27, at a price point of $249.99, as revealed today in New York City. It's available in Aqua Blue and Cosmo Black.
The 3DS was first revealed in a cryptic press release in March 2010, shortly before the North American release of the DSi XL. In addition to increased processing power and screen resolution, the system promises adjustable 3D visuals without requiring 3D glasses. It also includes built-in augmented reality games, some using bundled "AR cards." An "Activity Log" tracks your gameplay as well as your steps, graphing each and dispensing "Game Coins" that can be spent in games. You can make Miis either in a menu interface or automatically from pictures. Other features include a 3DS version of the DSi's sound app, a web browser, and 3D video capability.
Marquee Nintendo games on the horizon include an updated remake of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, along with new Pilotwings, Star Fox, Nintendogs, and Kid Icarus titles, and the original submarine game Steel Diver. From third parties, Super Street Fighter IV 3D Edition is possibly the biggest, with Dead or Alive, two Resident Evils, and Metal Gear Solid 3 games also in the wings.
Exactly the price I predicted. Kind of a spicy meatball, though, considering its a handheld. I with only 2 months left I guess we'll be hearing about launch titles soon.
Also of note, Nintendo revealed that the 3DS will continue to use Friend Codes (boo-urns), but there is now a singular friend code tied to your system, instead of having a different one for each game. Almost there, Nintendo, almost.


text:
D.W. Harding
Through the Vanishing Point: Space in Poetry and Painting
by Marshall McLuhan and Harley Parker
Harper & Row, 267 pp., $7.50
War and Peace in the Global Village
by Marshall McLuhan and Quentin Fiore, co-ordinated by Jerome Agel
McLuhan: Pro & Con
edited by Raymond Rosenthal
Funk & Wagnalls, 308 pp., $5.95
Sense and Nonsense of McLuhan
by Sidney Finkelstein
International Publishers, 122 pp., $1.45 (paperback) (paper)
Marshall McLuhan; drawing by David Levine
As more and more pours out by and about McLuhan it becomes clear that, although little can now be profitably said about his work, the episode as a whole has some bearing, diagnostically on the condition of present-day intellectual life. It raises three questions. For what forms of malaise does he seem to bring relief? What is wrong with the contemporary version of rational discourse which he defies? And what has happened to education that people literate and interested enough to read his work can be so credulous or at best uncertain?
The second question is the most sobering to orthodoxy. McLuhan's scornful rejection of logic and of linear progression from premises and data to conclusion serves, it is true, as a defense for untenable ideas, but it also appeals to an understandable discontent with the negative uses to which reasoning, logical criticism, and sound knowledge are too often put in the common run of intellectual discussion. Dubious maneuvers though they are, there is something attractive about his mosaic presentation, his "probes," his invitations to explore, not argue, with him; these maneuvers try to break free from self-inhibition and sterile dispute. His writing is reminiscent of the lecturing of M. D. Forbes, who played a major part in creating the Cambridge English school (which began its existence as an independent school of the University only in 1919), helping to bring in I.A. Richards and contributing more than anyone else in those early years to the school's unorthodox vitality and concern with contemporary literature. (A glimpse of his importance emerges from E. M. W. Tillyard's The Muse Unchained, a history of the school's development from the standpoint of a university politician.) Forbes died suddenly in 1936, during McLuhan's second year in Cambridge, but until then, and in spite of the distractions of his immense range of interests, he offered to those who wanted it an invigorating element of iconoclasm, creativeness, and challenge, expressed whimsically with a sweep of paradoxical generalization, cross-fertilizing references from widely separated fields, tangential wit, and the explosive compression of meaning in puns.
That there should be room for such people, in spite of all the sober objections, is the feeling of Richard Kostelanetz in one of the "Pro" essays of Mr. Rosenthal's new collection. He is indignant at the reviewers' relative neglect of "significant recent explorations": "Like Herman Kahn and Norman O. Brown, McLuhan believes in thinking which is exploratory and speculative, rather than substantive and definitive; and the books of all three are products of men who do not necessarily believe in their thoughts." The risk is obvious of course—the false prophet, the spell-binder. Equally obvious is the need for a first stage, without rigorous critical discipline, in any new thinking, whether the author makes it public or not, and whether he or others do the equally necessary checking and closer formulation. If the exploratory stage is published it deserves an exploratory welcome. The Gutenberg Galaxy was well justified as a first stage. Not much would have survived testing but there might have been modified insights acceptable to historians and some leads for psychologists and social scientists.
But a cult formed, and instead of getting clinical trials the new formula was frothed up into an effervescent nostrum. Tom Wolfe* describes the launching of the cult by Gossage and Feigen, business consultants in San Francisco, whose organization, Generalists, Inc., specializes in being non-specialist and giving firms the over-all view of their problems that other specialists presumably miss. They saw possibilities in McLuhan's merging of diverse disciplines and his hostility to specialism ("No specialist need apply" said a sign in his office), so they "invested about $6,000 into just taking McLuhan around to talk to people, Big Boys, all sorts, outside the academic world, on both coasts." The rest of the story of lunches, conferences, and noisy festival parties is scattered throughout Wolfe's article. Though he seems not to have meant it as an exposé, the story could have gone unchanged into The Mechanical Bride as an example of the public relations industry at work. Gossage himself, writing in McLuhan: Hot & Cool, is hilariously revealing on the Bride: "The Mechanical Bride, published in 1951, was his first book on the media and his most bizarre. I will not dwell on it more than to say it is a collector's item fetching upward of fifty dollars in mint condition."
A straightforward exposure of the stupidities of advertising and the contemptible content of commercial entertainment had certainly better be written off as bizarre and not be dwelt on by the business interests who made a pet of the later McLuhan. "Why not use the new commercial education," McLuhan had asked in the Preface, "as a means of enlightening its intended prey?" And in The Mechanical Bride McLuhan's comparison between us in our cultural plight and Poe's fisherman swept into the vortex of the Maelström always carried the same message—"we are now obliged not to attack or avoid the strom but to study its operation as a means of release from it."
The purpose—release from it—was put unambiguously. And from all the double talk of the later work you can select reaffirmations of that attitude right down to The Medium Is the Massage and McLuhan: Hot & Cool, where in reply to the editor's questions McLuhan said his detachment was like the doctor's, surgeon's, or scientist's, and added "my own observation of our almost overwhelming cultural gradient toward the primitive—or involvement of all the senses—is attended by complete personal distaste and dissatisfaction." If he had allowed this note to be heard clearly in his ambiguous utterances he would not have been fêted by advertisers, industrialists, and public relations consultants.
McLuhan (quoted in the useful biographical note in Mr. Rosenthal's book) records that in his first teaching post he had found himself confronting "young Americans I was incapable of understanding. I felt an urgent need to study their popular culture in order to get through." Had he been a middleaged exile from central Europe this would be readily understood, but coming from a Canadian of twenty-five whose own student days were directly behind him, it suggests an unusual susceptibility to feeling cut off. This, in the various forms it takes among writers and artists and their audience, is the malaise McLuhan offers to remedy: the outsiders' sense of insecurity—out of touch with the conventional young, excluded from the scientist's world and its prestige, and standing aside from practical men, especially men of business, who treat them at best with good-natured tolerance and whose power could put them out of existence.
McLuhan the prophet has the answer. He will show us how to understand the young (better than they do themselves) and welcome their contribution to the new world. He can tell the scientists how obsolete their assumptions are and how little they know what they're doing until McLuhan enlightens them (those "space probes"—pathetically out of date). The business men, especially, if they want to stay in business, had better listen carefully to him and to the artists and learn how to ride the punch of the new technology instead of taking it on the chin (Understanding Media). Far more effective than the simple fantasy of the outsider getting his own back, McLuhan's later endeavor tacitly conveys to the majority his yearning to be one of them, part of their great world, its prophet in fact, and a prophet who calls them not to repentance but to understanding and acceptance of themselves. Previous spokesmen of the cultural minority never attempted this strategy; they saw the majority simply as a threat to be resisted. McLuhan has the merit of at least seeking a more constructive and mutually tolerant relation between the ordinary public and the intellectual minority.
The Bride, for all its greater sophistication and sparkle, stems in spirit from Leavis and Thompson's Culture and Environment, which was published the year before McLuhan went to Cambridge and which McLuhan mentions as having influenced him. It was an approach to the problem examined in Mass Civilization and Minority Culture, Leavis's 1930 pamphlet. That problem is still pressing to Raymond Rosenthal in the analysis with which he skillfully introduces the essays in McLuhan: Pro & Con, in which he claims (and on the whole justly) that "you will encounter only the serious, analytical and personal reasoning of the hemmed-in intellectual network." Emphasizing what a small minority this is, he goes on: "Yet the truth is that this network is the only one that discusses ideas for their own sake—for its sake, as a matter of fact, since a world that regarded ideas from a purely functional, practical standpoint would be a world in which that already small, beleaguered network no longer existed in any viable and significant form."
Surely this is unsatisfactorily phrased, and leaves intellectuals more doubtful about themselves than they need be. If the beleaguered network were really discussing ideas for its sake, just to keep itself in existence, it would deserve rather little sympathy. It seems more important to notice that things of the mind are just as "functional" and "practical" as many other things whose practicality is never questioned, for instance the refinements of eating and drinking that go beyond the simple intake needed for bodily maintenance. The editor of an intellectual journal has no less claim to being functional than a restaurateur, a reviewer is as practical as a wine steward, and a writer who makes a modest living out of literature has no more need to feel non-functional in an advanced society than the manufacturer who makes a fortune out of cosmetics. But they are undoubtedly surrounded by a huge majority making propaganda for the sort of enjoyments that, if they were all we had, would be death to the more practiced intellectual and artistic activities. The threat grows more intimidating as the power and technical sophistication of majority propaganda in favor of contentment with majority enjoyments increase.
Critical analysis of mass culture, with resistance to much of it, is therefore necessary, but a hostile cleavage between mass and minority is not. In the last analysis cultural minorities survive because they enjoy at a high level certain things that the majority also enjoys in a less practiced form; and so far there have always been sufficient numbers of the majority who recognize this, at least dimly, to ensure some support for literature and the arts. A cultural minority, after all, must always be recruited from the majority, spiraling up out of it. McLuhan unfortunately became hypnotized by the downward spiral; and the parable of the Maelström carries a doubtful message. Poe's fisherman survived not simply because he slowed down his descent by acting on detached observation but because the Maelström stopped in time. Unfortunately none of us will outlive the contemporary vortex, and for the later McLuhan release from it is no longer the clear message. He puts the problem plainly enough in the Galaxy: "Western man knows that his values and modalities are the products of literacy. Yet the very means of extending those values, technologically, seem to deny and reverse them…." But faced with this anxiety McLuhan now begins to persuade himself that the situation brings its own reassurance:
Our liberation from the dilemma may, as Joyce felt, come from the new electric technology, with its profound organic character. For the electric puts the mythic or collective dimensions of human experience fully into the conscious wake-a-day world.
This technique of coping with the threat is fatal. L. H. Myers described it long ago in The Near and the Far when his young Prince Jali, dismayed by a glimpse of evil in the world, is told by Hari that in order not to be afraid of this world you must belong to it yourself, or at least pretend to—"Didn't I tell you once that in a nightmare the way to escape a pursuing tiger is to turn yourself into one?" Myers's comment comes later when Hari follows his own advice, plunges into the social and political mêlée, failing to keep faith with his serious standards, and ends up with a knife in his back.
McLuhan is the desperate dreamer who has turned himself into a tiger, This in effect is what critic after critic has pointed out, in objecting that McLuhan never indicates clearly what he hopes his maneuver will achieve. Rosenthal rightly complains of McLuhan's haziness:
…sometimes he seems to be saying that one can maintain a point of view only by getting into the act of electronic disintegration (which would seem to be a contradictory way of behaving, to say the least), and at other times he seems to be saying that the deliquescent and crumbling effect of the mass media will leave the individual no firm ground to stand on.
His ghastly success in turning himself into the tiger is all too clear in his later writing when he borrows the techniques of advertising copy, not to expose them as in the Bride, but to use them as the advertisers do. Notice for instance his factitious heightening of emotion in order to put across an untrue or unproven statement. Speaking of the fact that we see continuous pictures on the TV screen instead of rows of moving dots, he writes, "The TV image requires each instant that we 'close' the spaces in the mesh by a convulsive, sensuous participation…." What is "convulsive" doing here? The neural processes on which the impression of a continuous picture depends are unavoidable and automatic; to inhibit them would involve a convulsion in nature. Notice the advertiser's quasi-hypnotic technique in the following extract (from The Medium Is the Massage) with its repeated emphases and the thumping similarity of sentence structure and rhythm:
In television, images are projected at you. You are the screen. The images wrap around you. You are the vanishing point. This creates a sort of inwardness, a sort of reverse perspective which has much in common with Oriental art.
How could an educated reader possibly swallow this? To take it seriously he must inhibit all questioning, he must not ask how TV differs in this respect from ordinary movies (a point McLuhan has never convincingly established), what it means for an image to "wrap around you," what "a sort of inwardness" is, or whether in fact perceiving the TV picture is in the least like looking at the reverse perspective of Eastern art.
McLuhan's repertory includes the politician's techniques as well as the advertiser's. Asked by Stearn (McLuhan: Hot & Cool) "Is the Cold War a sensory conflict?"—a perfectly fair question if McLuhan's assertions are taken seriously—he completely evaded the question in a burst of irrelevant word-spinning that ended with an exaggerated statement of the familiar fact that accent and tone of voice are more important indicators of social background in England than in the US. It was worthy of a political candidate cornered at a press conference.
One bit or another of the hocus-pocus was attacked by critics from the start. Now the most patient, painstaking exposure of the whole illusionist bag of tricks is provided by Mr. Finkelstein, writing for what might be called "the adult education audience"—intelligent, concerned about social issues, and willing to read carefully, but short on formal schooling, glad to have allusions explained, welcoming the full development of arguments with nothing cryptic or taken for granted. One useful chapter, for instance, goes carefully into McLuhan's use of "hot" and "cool" and demonstrates step by step the untenability of the notion that TV is in any intelligible sense "cool." Unlike many of McLuhan's other critics, Mr. Finkelstein is fortunately immune from the temptation to try to scintillate in McLuhan's own style. The result is pedestrian but clear, and the criticisms are, it seems to me, unanswerable. For those who have not already succumbed to the toxins this book provides reliable immunization.
At a higher level of scholarship and intellectual sophistication, and less simply polemical than Mr. Finkelstein, an admirable long essay by James Carey in McLuhan: Pro & Con examines McLuhan's intellectual parentage in the work of Harold A. Innis, a political economist, also of Toronto, whose book The Bias of Communication argues that the history of the modern West "is the history of a bias of communication and a monopoly of knowledge founded in print." Both Innis and McLuhan, says Mr. Carey, assume the central importance of communications technology, but where McLuhan sees its main effects in sensory organization and thought, Innis saw them in social organization and culture.
Mr. Carey's scholarly and fairminded analysis leads him to conclude, like Mr. Finkelstein, that the effects McLuhan attributes to sensory qualities of the media are in reality the result of social institutions. For Mr. Finkelstein it is clear that business and its associated advertising and entertainment are the institutions mainly involved, and he easily shows how well McLuhan's ideas suit their problems. Mr. Carey concentrates on the attraction McLuhan has for the individual who is sensitive to ills that the tradition of rationality has not cured. McLuhan, he says, argues "that the reunification of man, the end of his alienation, the restoration of the 'whole man' will result from autonomous developments in communications technology. All individuals have to do to be put back in touch with their essential nature is to detach themselves from tradition and submit to the sensory powers of the electronic media."
The salvation offered has its ominous overtones. Among the rich new developments that McLuhan blandly foresees is the manipulation of peoples in a way that supports Sidney Finkelstein's suspicion of totalitarian complacencies in his thinking. In Understanding Media, for instance, McLuhan suggested that we are within conceivable range of a world where we might say "We can program twenty more hours of TV in South Africa next week to cool down the tribal temperature raised by radio last week." Suppose that this is not meant to be more or less innocuous nonsense, suppose that it would work, then who are "we" who would do the programming in this new colonial administration?
We might have hoped for more detailed and developed argument when particular topics were treated within the general system. But about McLuhan in his latest books it is almost enough to repeat the mournful lines on the Prince Consort's fatal illness at the opening of this age of electric circuitry:
Along the electric wire the mes- sage came:
"He is not better, he is much the same."
They must be a disappointment to his followers. Here, in discussing war, poetry, and paintings, he neglected the chance to comment effectively on public themes instead of repetitively exercising on his private verbal trapeze.
Through the Vanishing Point is an anthology of poems and reproductions of paintings, with short comments suggested by McLuhan's theories and drawing attention wherever possible to the treatment of space: "space" being given the most elastic if not unlimited meaning. The opening stanza of The Faerie Queene is quoted, "A Gentle Knight was pricking on the plaine…", and the authors comment,
The stanza presents action on three planes, two of space and one of time, each one of which is like a single panel, or frame, of a Medieval narrative painting, where there is parataxis rather than linkage.
The vector of the speaker's voice tends to incline these separate planes toward each other. The preference of the age is in this direction of continuity and connectedness.
Apparently this means that Spenser describes a knight riding across a plain, thus evoking an image of action in three-dimensional space, and indicates something of the knight's past and future; and since it's all about one knight the two spatial planes and the time plane are associated, as they would be in many other descriptions. It may remind McLuhan and Parker of a medieval painting in juxtaposed panels, but this seems to be a private association. This commentary on "space" is made at the cost of omitting all reference to the moral, social, and psychological descriptions that Spenser packed into his opening stanza. The main gesture toward creative novelty in the book is the notion that in looking at some paintings the spectator becomes the vanishing point. This is one way of expressing the effect of the reversed perspective of Eastern art on the Western spectator, though whether the habituated Eastern spectator feels the same effect is questionable. The idea is linked with McLuhan's implausible suggestion that the television viewer is in the same position. So on a reproduction of La Grande Jatte we get the comment, "Painting as light source flips viewer into vanishing point. The Oriental moment of reversal—Seurat prophet of TV." They find this worth saying about Seurat!
About the causes of war McLuhan's main assertion, in War and Peace in the Global Village, is that new technologies alter "the order of our sensory lives" and the images we make of ourselves and our world, and this so disturbs our inner lives "that wars necessarily result as misbegotten efforts to recover the old images." The order of our sensory lives" is completely undefined (in spite of McLuhan's constant use of this and similar phrases) and there is no indication how it affects our images of ourselves. When he gives an example he quotes the war of 1914 when "the Kaiser protested that Germany had become encircled as a result of the industrial advance of the Slavic peoples. The industrial development of backward countries, such as Hungary and Poland, disturbed the psychic balance and identity image of the Germans." But this change clearly was institutional and material, a change in the Germans' relative status and their markets, not in their sensory lives. And if wars necessarily result when the national image is threatened with change, the British, undergoing drastic revisions of their self-image, ought now to be bursting to go to war.
As for peace, McLuhan gives his usual vague hint of hope through passive absorption into the new environment. "Two centuries of mechanical environment had abrased and aborted nearly all human motivation, inspiring a lust for violence as a compensatory feedback. All that is now changing. The world of electric circuitry that is now the normal environment inspires quite opposite responses." He then demonstrates this by the story of a man who took LSD and felt that life was so precious that his son ought not to go into the army and kill. As if that clinched the argument about electric circuitry McLuhan goes on: "The extreme and pervasive tactility of the new electric environment results from a mesh of pervasive energy that penetrates our nervous system incessantly." This sounds like an advertiser's cure for fibrositis. But his command of the limpidly meaningless never fails him.
That such writing can be accepted raises discouraging questions about the reading capacity of the educated public. Tom Wolfe reviewing these last books (in Book World) suggested that people will begin to insist "Start proving it." That suggestion seems late in the day, but in fact a prior demand is necessary: "Start saying it"—i.e., make a statement sufficiently unambiguous, with terms sufficiently defined, to be capable of proof or disproof. This demand has obviously not been made. Close and questioning attention to an author's crucial statements has not been established as a habit in many students and the educated readers that students become. In fact, at all levels of education logical thinking is increasingly channeled into scientific and mathematical language. Yet the most momentous social concerns still need clear thinking and expression in ordinary language. There may be more important things in education to which this has to be sacrificed; if so, the McLuhan cult is part of the price to be paid.
McLuhan's acceptance of his role as a cult figure has meant a lamentable waste of the serious investigation that his development of Innis's work might have stimulated. Undoubtedly we need to know with much greater certainty and thoroughness what print has done for us and what may be the gains and losses if TV and radio were to reduce their influence in certain fields of discussion or certain sections of society. Not only science but all skeptical inquiry depends on the close examination by many people of the steps leading to a conclusion, and for this a written record is almost a necessity. (McLuhan himself might well have been invulnerable as a purely oral guru, reported by disciples from afar.)
Even in an electronic era there will always be people who think, aided and tested by some form of multiplied record, whether in book form or not; and in the more oral culture which TV may be producing, a still bigger gulf might develop between those who think and those who only accept the outcome of thought. There might also, it is true, be more warmth of social contact, less of the loneliness of thinking independently, less desiccated bureaucratic communication, something of the cosiness suggested by "the global village." And while the phrase "the global village" suggests vividly one possible outcome of accelerating transport and communication, the real effects are uncertain and depend not on technology but on human choice: the question is not how rapidly and realistically a picture of distant events can be transmitted, but which of the innumerable available events are selected. In particular we can only guess at the effects of telescoping together in TV all the most exciting moments, whether of war, sport, travel, or scientific work, and providing a daily contrast with the relative tedium of unphotographed existence. Again, the greater "tactility" McLuhan finds in TV, though a metaphor masquerading as a statement, may perhaps point toward a greater richness in the viewer's associated imagery—of texture, consistency, temperature, smell, movement, pain, etc.—than most people get from reading or even perhaps from movies. Whether this really is so we don't know, nor do we know what its consequences are if it does occur. The subject bristles with questions and the early McLuhan performed a service by insisting on its importance. But the broad questions are unanswerable, in fact unaskable; they need subdividing and defining more closely before they are strictly intelligible as questions. This is what McLuhan's readers have failed to ask of him.
A second factor, vital to his success, must be his readers' failure to bring to bear everyday knowledge, general reading, and personal observation on statements in books that claim scholarly status. As students they may instead have relied on assembling the opinions of other writers and seeing if some kind of balance sheet could be drawn up. How in the face of independent common sense could McLuhan get away with, for example, his claim that primitive cultures are oral and auditory and ours is visual? Questionable even in the limited context of the psychiatrist's article he bases it on, the notion as a generalization is wildly implausible. The American Indians' skill in tracking, the bedouins' astonishing capacity for reading camel spoor, these are ordinary instances of the familiar fact that in many habitats the survival of a primitive people depended on constant visual alertness, acute discrimination, and highly trained inference from visual data.
Can any other culture have been more auditory than ours and demanded greater skill in listening to speech—in traffic, at cocktail parties, beside the conveyor belt? Can we be less oral than primitive peoples?—with our conferences, parties, lectures, conventions, committees, telephones, and television. One is left with the truism that we read a lot and preliterates don't. The implications of that fact are well worth exploring, but we get no help from stories of alteration in some physiologically and psychologically undefined "sensory ratio." What might have been tentatively welcomed as a first exploratory effort in The Gutenberg Galaxy has small claim for consideration when it is elaborated without being clarified. McLuhan's glaring incoherences of thought and disregard of everyday observation are not confined to peripheral "probes"; they occur at nodal points of the system. And yet the cult sprang up. Something in our education abets the willing suspension of common sense which a belief in McLuhan requires.
Of course, common sense can never prevail once and for all. Protesting against the acceptance of Browning as a prophet or a philosopher, Santayana remarked (and to the Boston Browning Society):
Awakening may be mistaken for enlightenment, and the galvanizing of torpid sensations and impulses for wisdom. Against such fatuity reason should raise her voice. The vital and historic forces that produce illusions of this sort in large groups of men are indeed beyond the control of criticism. They must be allowed to fight out their desperate battle against the laws of nature and reason. But it is worth while, in the meantime, for the sake of the truth and of a just philosophy, to meet the varying though perpetual charlatanism of the world with a steady protest.
Of charlatanism, in the sense of deliberate trickery, McLuhan need not be suspected; feeling threatened by the civilization of which he is inescapably part, he so eagerly welcomed the reassurance offered by his prophetic vision that the sleights of mind producing it escaped his notice.
More by D.W. Harding
Leavis's Way
D. W. Harding (1906–1993) was a British psychologist and literary critic. In1933 he joined FR Leavis as an editor of Scrutiny, where much of his literary criticism appeared, but also work, notably on aggression, that led to The Impulse to Dominate and Social Psychology and Individual Values.
In McLuhan: Hot and Cool, edited by G. E. Stearn, Dial Press, 312 pp., $6.95 ↩
Maureen N. McLane
Sylvia Legris
Corn Crowfoot, Corn Buttercup
Jan Zábrana, translated from the Czech by Justin Quinn
Evening Trains
Rae Armantrout
Richard Sieburth
Logan Fry
The Disease of Nature


Funeral services are set for a former Mississippi lawmaker known for his strong oratory skills.
Ed Perry was 76 when he died Tuesday at his home in Oxford. He was an attorney and served as a Democrat in the Mississippi House from 1968 to 2000. Perry was chairman of several committees, including Appropriations.
Waller Funeral Home says services are 2 p.m. Friday at First Presbyterian Church in Oxford.
Perry was known for reciting the "whiskey speech," written in the 1950s by a predecessor in the Mississippi House, Noah "Soggy" Sweat. The speech shows how a politician can advocate both sides of an issue.


text:
import HKDF from 'hkdf';
import srp from 'srp-js';
import * as forge from 'node-forge';

const DEFAULT_BYTE_LENGTH = 32;
const DEFAULT_PBKDF2_ITERATIONS = 1E5; // 100,000

/**
 * Generate hex signing key used for AES encryption
 *
 * @param pass
 * @param email
 * @param salt
 */
export async function deriveKey (pass, email, salt) {
  const combinedSalt = await _hkdfSalt(salt, email);
  return _pbkdf2Passphrase(pass, combinedSalt);
}

/**
 * Encrypt with RSA256 public key
 *
 * @param publicKeyJWK
 * @param plaintext
 * @return String
 */
export function encryptRSAWithJWK (publicKeyJWK, plaintext) {
  if (publicKeyJWK.alg !== 'RSA-OAEP-256') {
    throw new Error('Public key algorithm was not RSA-OAEP-256');
  } else if (publicKeyJWK.kty !== 'RSA') {
    throw new Error('Public key type was not RSA');
  } else if (!publicKeyJWK.key_ops.find(o => o === 'encrypt')) {
    throw new Error('Public key does not have "encrypt" op');
  }

  const encodedPlaintext = encodeURIComponent(plaintext);

  const n = _b64UrlToBigInt(publicKeyJWK.n);
  const e = _b64UrlToBigInt(publicKeyJWK.e);
  const publicKey = forge.rsa.setPublicKey(n, e);

  const encrypted = publicKey.encrypt(encodedPlaintext, 'RSA-OAEP', {
    md: forge.md.sha256.create()
  });
  return forge.util.bytesToHex(encrypted);
}

export function decryptRSAWithJWK (privateJWK, encryptedBlob) {
  const n = _b64UrlToBigInt(privateJWK.n);
  const e = _b64UrlToBigInt(privateJWK.e);
  const d = _b64UrlToBigInt(privateJWK.d);
  const p = _b64UrlToBigInt(privateJWK.p);
  const q = _b64UrlToBigInt(privateJWK.q);
  const dP = _b64UrlToBigInt(privateJWK.dp);
  const dQ = _b64UrlToBigInt(privateJWK.dq);
  const qInv = _b64UrlToBigInt(privateJWK.qi);

  const privateKey = forge.rsa.setPrivateKey(n, e, d, p, q, dP, dQ, qInv);
  const bytes = forge.util.hexToBytes(encryptedBlob);
  const decrypted = privateKey.decrypt(bytes, 'RSA-OAEP', {
    md: forge.md.sha256.create()
  });

  return decodeURIComponent(decrypted);
}

export function recryptRSAWithJWK (privateJWK, publicJWK, encryptedBlob) {
  const decrypted = decryptRSAWithJWK(privateJWK, encryptedBlob);
  return encryptRSAWithJWK(publicJWK, decrypted);
}

/**
 * Encrypt data using symmetric key
 *
 * @param jwkOrKey JWK or string representing symmetric key
 * @param plaintext string of data to encrypt
 * @param additionalData any additional public data to attach
 * @returns {{iv, t, d, ad}}
 */
export function encryptAES (jwkOrKey, plaintext, additionalData = '') {
  // TODO: Add assertion checks for JWK
  const rawKey = typeof jwkOrKey === 'string' ? jwkOrKey : _b64UrlToHex(jwkOrKey.k);
  const key = forge.util.hexToBytes(rawKey);

  const iv = forge.random.getBytesSync(12);
  const cipher = forge.cipher.createCipher('AES-GCM', key);

  // Plaintext could contain weird unicode, so we have to encode that
  const encodedPlaintext = encodeURIComponent(plaintext);

  cipher.start({additionalData, iv, tagLength: 128});
  cipher.update(forge.util.createBuffer(encodedPlaintext));
  cipher.finish();

  return {
    iv: forge.util.bytesToHex(iv),
    t: forge.util.bytesToHex(cipher.mode.tag),
    d: forge.util.bytesToHex(cipher.output),
    ad: forge.util.bytesToHex(additionalData)
  };
}

/**
 * Decrypt AES using a key
 *
 * @param jwkOrKey JWK or string representing symmetric key
 * @param message
 * @returns String
 */
export function decryptAES (jwkOrKey, message) {
  // TODO: Add assertion checks for JWK
  const rawKey = typeof jwkOrKey === 'string' ? jwkOrKey : _b64UrlToHex(jwkOrKey.k);
  const key = forge.util.hexToBytes(rawKey);

  // ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ //
  // Decrypt with AES-GCM //
  // ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ //

  const decipher = forge.cipher.createDecipher('AES-GCM', key);
  decipher.start({
    iv: forge.util.hexToBytes(message.iv),
    tagLength: message.t.length * 4,
    tag: forge.util.hexToBytes(message.t),
    additionalData: forge.util.hexToBytes(message.ad)
  });

  decipher.update(forge.util.createBuffer(forge.util.hexToBytes(message.d)));

  if (decipher.finish()) {
    return decodeURIComponent(decipher.output.toString());
  } else {
    throw new Error('Failed to decrypt data');
  }
}

/**
 * Generate a random salt in hex
 *
 * @returns {string}
 */
export function getRandomHex (bytes = DEFAULT_BYTE_LENGTH) {
  return forge.util.bytesToHex(forge.random.getBytesSync(bytes));
}

/**
 * Generate a random account Id
 *
 * @returns {string}
 */
export function generateAccountId () {
  return `act_${getRandomHex(DEFAULT_BYTE_LENGTH)}`;
}

/**
 * Generate a random key
 *
 * @returns {Promise}
 */
export function srpGenKey () {
  return new Promise((resolve, reject) => {
    srp.genKey((err, secret1Buffer) => {
      if (err) {
        reject(err);
      } else {
        resolve(secret1Buffer.toString('hex'));
      }
    });
  });
}

/**
 * Generate a random AES256 key for use with symmetric encryption
 */
export async function generateAES256Key () {
  const c = window.crypto;
  const subtle = c ? c.subtle || c.webkitSubtle : null;

  if (subtle) {
    console.log('[crypt] Using Native AES Key Generation');
    const key = await subtle.generateKey(
      {name: 'AES-GCM', length: 256},
      true,
      ['encrypt', 'decrypt']
    );
    return subtle.exportKey('jwk', key);
  } else {
    console.log('[crypt] Using Fallback Forge AES Key Generation');
    const key = forge.util.bytesToHex(forge.random.getBytesSync(32));
    return {
      kty: 'oct',
      alg: 'A256GCM',
      ext: true,
      key_ops: ['encrypt', 'decrypt'],
      k: _hexToB64Url(key)
    };
  }
}

/**
 * Generate RSA keypair JWK with 2048 bits and exponent 0x10001
 *
 * @returns Object
 */
export async function generateKeyPairJWK () {
  // NOTE: Safari has crypto.webkitSubtle, but it does not support RSA-OAEP-SHA256
  const subtle = window.crypto && window.crypto.subtle;

  if (subtle) {
    console.log('[crypt] Using Native RSA Generation');

    const pair = await subtle.generateKey(
      {
        name: 'RSA-OAEP',
        publicExponent: new Uint8Array([1, 0, 1]),
        modulusLength: 2048,
        hash: 'SHA-256'
      },
      true,
      ['encrypt', 'decrypt']
    );

    return {
      publicKey: await subtle.exportKey('jwk', pair.publicKey),
      privateKey: await subtle.exportKey('jwk', pair.privateKey)
    };
  } else {
    console.log('[crypt] Using Forge RSA Generation');

    const pair = forge.pki.rsa.generateKeyPair({bits: 2048, e: 0x10001});
    const privateKey = {
      alg: 'RSA-OAEP-256',
      kty: 'RSA',
      key_ops: ['decrypt'],
      ext: true,
      d: _bigIntToB64Url(pair.privateKey.d),
      dp: _bigIntToB64Url(pair.privateKey.dP),
      dq: _bigIntToB64Url(pair.privateKey.dQ),
      e: _bigIntToB64Url(pair.privateKey.e),
      n: _bigIntToB64Url(pair.privateKey.n),
      p: _bigIntToB64Url(pair.privateKey.p),
      q: _bigIntToB64Url(pair.privateKey.q),
      qi: _bigIntToB64Url(pair.privateKey.qInv)
    };

    const publicKey = {
      alg: 'RSA-OAEP-256',
      kty: 'RSA',
      key_ops: ['encrypt'],
      e: _bigIntToB64Url(pair.publicKey.e),
      n: _bigIntToB64Url(pair.publicKey.n)
    };

    return {privateKey, publicKey};
  }
}

// ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ //
// Helper Functions //
// ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ //

/**
 * Combine email and raw salt into usable salt
 *
 * @param rawSalt
 * @param rawEmail
 * @returns {Promise}
 */
function _hkdfSalt (rawSalt, rawEmail) {
  return new Promise(resolve => {
    const hkdf = new HKDF('sha256', rawSalt, rawEmail);
    hkdf.derive('', DEFAULT_BYTE_LENGTH, buffer => resolve(buffer.toString('hex')));
  });
}

/**
 * Convert a JSBN BigInteger to a URL-safe version of base64 encoding. This
 * should only be used for encoding JWKs
 *
 * @param n BigInteger
 * @returns {string}
 */
function _bigIntToB64Url (n) {
  return _hexToB64Url(n.toString(16));
}

function _hexToB64Url (h) {
  const bytes = forge.util.hexToBytes(h);
  return window.btoa(bytes)
    .replace(/=/g, '')
    .replace(/\+/g, '-')
    .replace(/\//g, '_');
}

function _b64UrlToBigInt (s) {
  return new forge.jsbn.BigInteger(_b64UrlToHex(s), 16);
}

function _b64UrlToHex (s) {
  const b64 = s.replace(/-/g, '+').replace(/_/g, '/');
  return forge.util.bytesToHex(window.atob(b64));
}

/**
 * Derive key from password
 *
 * @param passphrase
 * @param salt hex representation of salt
 */
async function _pbkdf2Passphrase (passphrase, salt) {
  if (window.crypto && window.crypto.subtle) {
    console.log('[crypt] Using native PBKDF2');

    const k = await window.crypto.subtle.importKey(
      'raw',
      Buffer.from(passphrase, 'utf8'),
      {name: 'PBKDF2'},
      false,
      ['deriveBits']
    );

    const algo = {
      name: 'PBKDF2',
      salt: Buffer.from(salt, 'hex'),
      iterations: DEFAULT_PBKDF2_ITERATIONS,
      hash: 'SHA-256'
    };

    const derivedKeyRaw = await window.crypto.subtle.deriveBits(algo, k, DEFAULT_BYTE_LENGTH * 8);
    return Buffer.from(derivedKeyRaw).toString('hex');
  } else {
    console.log('[crypt] Using Forge PBKDF2');
    const derivedKeyRaw = forge.pkcs5.pbkdf2(
      passphrase,
      forge.util.hexToBytes(salt),
      DEFAULT_PBKDF2_ITERATIONS,
      DEFAULT_BYTE_LENGTH,
      forge.md.sha256.create()
    );

    return forge.util.bytesToHex(derivedKeyRaw);
  }
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


Johannesburg – The ongoing Asian demand for lion bones has led to an horrific wildlife poisoning in the Limpopo National Park, just over the Mozambican border from Kruger Park.
A mere two kilometres from the Machampane tourist camp, a research team came across the carcases of two nyala, a warthog and an impala laced with what they describe as a black granular poison. Lying nearby were two lions, 51 vultures, three fish eagles, a yellow-billed kite and a giant eagle owl. There was evidence of a leopard but its body was not found.
The lions had been dismembered, their bones removed, and 22 vultures had been decapitated, their heads presumably to be used for muti. Snares had also been set around the poisoned carcases. The team from the Limpopo Transfrontier Predator Project burned all the poisoned carcasses.
At the recent Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), wild lions remained listed as Appendix 11 with a 'zero annual export quota for bones, bone pieces, products, claws, skeletons, skulls and teeth removed from the wild and traded for commercial purposes.' However, in a shock move, captive breeders escaped the ban, with South Africa only required to submit an annual quota for bone exports from captive breeding facilities.
Will Travers, President of the Born Free Foundation, called it an appalling decision which would perpetuate captive breeding bone trade. He called a sad day for CITES. Conservationists have pointed out that it's impossible to distinguish between the bones of captive or wild lions, leaving the door wide open for laundering of poached animal parts.
The Limpopo research team found the two lions had been carried 200 metres away from the epicenter of the poisoning onto a nearby ridge and butchered. The skins, a portion of the abdomens with significant layer of fat and the intestines were left.
The two male lions were both estimated to be about two years old. All their bones had been removed and meat had been cut into strips, dried and mostly removed.
This is the second poisoning event that has targeted the lion pride in this same area. The first one, in July 2014, killed three adult lions, seven white-backed vultures and a bateleur eagle. According to the team, "this poisoning is the first time that we have found evidence of lions being targeted for their bones in the park. Considering the prevalence of commercial rhino and elephant poaching in the region over the past five years we are concerned that this event could mark the beginning of large-scale poaching of lions for their bones in the Limpopo National Park".


text:
Planets, Mechanocratic Russia, Alternative Canon
Jotunheim appears only in the Alternative Canon. For its Main Canon equivalent, see Vyyrahk.
Jotunheim as seen from space. The central warship factory housing the World Eater can be seen on the left side of the planet.
Moon(s)
1 (Ymir)
Number of Stars in System
Number of Planets in System
Political Characteristics
Controlled by
Governor(s)
General Gennady Ermakov
Settlement Type
Fortress-world
Jotunheim Citadel
Vanaheim Region, Universe #4918419
"Our nation, Drakolich, possesses multiversal travel, a gift which has been bestowed upon but an elite few. I have already begun to draw up plans on how to use it to our great advantage. One of those plans revolves around the construction of a new capital, on a different world to this one. Though Sunikagrad will remain the political and cultural capital of the Mechanocracy, the nation's military affairs will be headquartered on Jotunheim, an ice world that my agents have already scouted out in an alternate dimension that is well out of sight of both the Frenkish and the Imperium. I intend to have one hundred thousand soldiers deployed to the planet in the first ever global conquest campaign within a month of my ascendancy to the position of Grand Curatrix." ~ General Elena Trotskaya, to Drakolich. (*)
4 Notable appearances
Jotunheim is a medium-sized ice planet located in an alternate universe. It is under the complete control of Mechanocratic Russia, and it is considered the unofficial capital world of the nation as of 2157. It is the hub of the Mechanocracy's top-secret interdimensional empire project, the product of a dramatic shift in foreign policy by the Trotskaya Administration that accepts the extreme unlikelihood of ever conquering the New Frenco Empire and thus shifts attentions toward dealing with an even greater threat in the Imperium of Sidhae.
"I hate this place. It's always dark, it's freezing even in the fucking summer... And I swear, if I hear ONE more psyker complain about this 'screaming' they keep telling me about EVERY TIME they go near the citadel, I'm gonna punch someone!" ~ a disgruntled Captain Vsevolod Berdan.
The ice crag-covered surface of Jotunheim, plunged into eternal darkness by its dying sun.
Jotunheim has a radius of 5,928 kilometres, being only slightly smaller than Earth and having a little less gravity as a result – its gravitational pull being 0.8 times that of Earth's. As a result of its own gravity and that of its sole moon, Jotunheim experiences considerably greater tectonic activity than Earth. This is especially the case following the construction of the massive equatorial fortress by MAF military engineers, which extends close to the planetary mantle in depth.
Although it is well within its parent star's Goldilocks zone, its surface is almost permanently dark and cold because of its sun's significantly greater age than Sol: it has already expanded and begun to cool down. Astronomers estimate that the star is just twenty two million years away from completely expending its hydrogen fuel and going supernova.
The main gate to Jotunheim Citadel. Two TU-52 superheavy mechwalkers can be seen on patrol in the foreground.
Arguably Jotunheim's most distinctive feature is the gigantic fortress covering the planet's equator, constructed over a period of twelve years from 2156 to its completion in 2168. The fortress is protected by a dense planetary shield and an intricate network of portal jammers, and is armoured to a standard designed to weather orbital bombardment – even a blast from a multi-petawatt energy lance (such as that deployed by the Sidh Dies Irae-class superdreadnought). As well as being able to withstand almost any attack, its defensive armaments can defeat close to any invading military force: it possesses several turreted energy lances of its own, each powered by an independent dark energy reactor, to destroy dreadnought-sized ships. Batteries of TZU-300 superheavy anti-aircraft artillery guns make short work of incoming orbital mass drops and large airships, and thousands of smaller LORAD and SHORAD missile systems and DEAD networks will cut through aerospace bomber or fighter formations.
The Southern Fissure, the remnants of an ancient massive earthquake as seen from the outermost wall of the equatorial fortress.
Should any invader make their way through Jotunheim's formidable first line of defence and successfully make planetfall on the ice world, they will have to contend with constant nuclear bombardment from the many ballistic missile silos and attacks launched from auxiliary forts dotted across the planet. This is in addition to the outermost defences guarding the equatorial main fortress, not least of which is a troop garrison almost two million strong. Additionally, long sieges are all but impossible for the ill-prepared due to Jotunheim's extremely-hostile climate: temperatures can drop as low as -90 degrees centigrade in the winter. For all intents and purposes, Jotunheim is totally impenetrable – the perfect retreat for Grand Curatrix Elena Trotskaya to draw up battle plans and direct the affairs of the country from the infallible safety of her citadel. Indeed, it has only ever come under direct attack just once: in World War IV, by the forces of Frenkish General Nigel Steele during the Raid on Jotunheim – which took place long before the planet's defences were complete.
At the fortress' heart is the vast, circular warship factory used to construct the World Eater hyperdreadnought, Trotskaya's most prized superweapon and ultimate trump card against the Imperium of Sidhae. For obvious reasons, therefore, the warship factory housing the World Eater is easily one of the most heavily-guarded structures on the planet, defended by a brigade-strong detachment of Novaya Chthonian hypersoldiers. The warship factory is also where the Arkhont battlegroup, under the command of General Yulia Trotskaya, is stationed.
Notable appearances
Jotunheim first appears in the Tale from the Frencoverse The Sword of Pride.
The appearance of Jotunheim from space is based upon Starkiller Base from Star Wars: The Force Awakens (fortunately, the planet itself does not possess a solar system-destroying megaweapon). The surface, on the other hand, is based upon Icecrown Glacier from World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King (with the exception of one photograph used out of a plain lack of better ones).
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Home >> Monthly Predictions >> Is June 2015 Auspicious For Your Marriage?
Seventh lord Venus is in good position with Jupiter. Second half of the month is auspicious. This may enhance the possibility for Aries born to get engaged during this month if Jupiter and Venus are strong and well placed in the chart.
This is also a good time for married couple. Though you will remain irritate during this month yet relations with spouse will remain cordial and enjoyable and you will be able to get all help and cooperation from your spouse. If you want to invest in property, consider the opinion of your spouse to reap more profit.
Transit of Saturn may cause delay or the proposal of marriage may be rejected or postponed at the eleventh hour. It is better if you wait for another one month for the positive results.
You may have to face the opposition of your spouse during first half of the month which may become normal during second half of the month if you maintain a healthy environment at home. Coldness in the relations is seen. So, the best solution is to avoid any undesirable dialogue during this period.
This is favorable time for engagement for Gemini born. Best time for a new member to join the family. Jupiter should be strong in the chart to get good results.
Those who are married will also enjoy a good time during this month as married life will be cordial and you will get support and cooperation of your spouse throughout the month. In-laws may also be helpful.
Though you may be getting good proposals but the same are not materialized due to transit of Rahu and Saturn. You may be inclined for the love marriage but you should wait for some auspicious time. Any proposal received after mid of month should be considered with care. Strength of Saturn and Venus should be judged in the natal chart.
This is a good time for married couples. You will be energetic and will enjoy the conjugal happiness. Your spouse may not feel the same enthusiasm due to illness or due to some tension. There may be some discord in second half of the month.
This is not a favorable time to get married. If you have any proposal, postpone it to the next two months. Family may also be reluctant to approve the present proposal, if any. Consider well the Manglik aspect before marriage by matching the charts.
Family and domestic life may be troublesome. Second half of the month is not favorable for married life. There may be lack of understanding with your spouse. You should keep cool during this month and should avoid any unnecessary arguments with spouse.
This is not a good time for marriage. Consider all the aspects of proposal and do not take any hasty decision. If you have to take any decision finally, strength of Jupiter and Venus should be analyzed in the chart.
Married life will be average. You may not be giving proper attention on your relations due to over indulgence in your work. You should take in to confidence you spouse for any important decision particularly related to finance etc. That may give you more favorable results.
If you have any proposal, second half of the month is favorable for taking any final decision for marriage. Mars and Venus should be strong in the natal chart. Make remedies to strengthen these two planets if they are weak or ill placed in the chart.
For married life, this period cannot be considered positive particularly first half of the month. Discord in relations and the health of spouse may be cause of concern. Relief in this regard can be expected only after 17th June.
Not a good time at all for considering any marriage proposal. You may get proposals which are not as per your exception. Do not come under pressure of any one. Consider the proposal very carefully if the same are received from some known circle.
Relations with the wife may not be cordial and there may be conflicts due to difference of opinion. You will remain irritate which may disturb your married life. Avoid any unnecessary and hot arguments.
You may get some marriage proposal from your parental side after second half of the month which should be handled tactfully as this proposal may not suit you. You have to wait for another two/three months when you will get a good proposal. Any hasty decision should be avoided altogether to keep away any complication at a later stage.
Relations with spouse may not be cordial. You may feel disturbed at home front. Married life will not be supportive at present. You may like to remain aloof during this month. Mars transit in seventh house after mid of the month will exaggerate this position.
This is a good month to get engaged, if your Moon and Venus are strong in natal chart. Those who are involved in love affair will find this month important. Any proposal received from some relative or known circle may be considered subject to the satisfactory result after match making. Second half of the month is more favorable.
Married life will be generally good. Second half of the month should be considered more favorable in this regard. In the beginning of the month, you will not get the full support of your family members. But all these problems will reduce after second half of the month.
You should try to take any final decision with care particularly during this month. You may not be satisfied with the proposal you received recently. Do not make hurry. You will get engaged in coming two/three months as stars will be more positive at that time. Also strengthen your Sun, if the same is debilitated, weak or ill placed in the natal chart.
Harmony at home life will be average. You will feel lack of peace of mind with or without any reason throughout the month. You should try to keep away from unnecessary arguments from family members.
You may get a favorable proposal within three/four months. Presently you should not make hurry to finalize any proposal.
Family life may be affected to some extent. In spite of success, you may feel restless and irritate. There appears lack of cooperation from spouse. Friend circle will be supportive.


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What looks like a flat prairie type golf course on your first impression is soon to change upon arriving at the third tee boxes on both the Spirit and Millburn nines. An eighty foot drop in elevation creates a majestic view of the Elbow valley below. A well placed tee shot is a must on these two holes!
River Spirit is easy to get to, and you are sure to enjoy your round in the country away from the sounds of the city,surrounded by the best nature has to offer.
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Whenever a period of time is ending, as in a season change or a new month or year is upon us, we are inclined to release the past and move forward in new and expansive ways. However, the act of making resolutions or feeling like we didn't accomplish all that we could have implies that we need to change something we don't like about ourselves. This sort of thinking has a judgmental and negative feeling to it. It's trying to motivate yourself through a low vibrational frequency.
To transition from one state of consciousness to another, it takes practice and it takes positive energy to keep momentum going. To make any change, look for solutions to what you perceive as lack and turn that thinking into self care and inspired actions! Put easy rituals in place that align you with the things that make you feel good. This is how you empower yourself and create forward momentum.
Putting practices in place that are easy and make us feel good are simple solutions to raising your vibration and sets the tone for easily creating the change you'd like to see.
Here's a simple way to place the energy into your life at any time - starting with these small steps empowers you by harmonizing your whole self and helps you feel ready to do anything, one step at a time!
1. Physical Body...adding something to your diet, instead of taking something away, is an action that initiates healing.
2. Mental Body...choosing one book, something that feeds your mind, can expand your consciousness and also activate project awareness. The act of having a plan and sticking to it is very powerful.
3. Spiritual Body...showering and meditation music go hand in hand. Listening to instrumental music allows you to clear your mind and center yourself.
4. Energetic Body...having a sacred space to re-connect with your soul energy and higher self is essential. A special chair, pillow or salt lamp creates are some elements to enrich your special spot.
5. Emotional Body...giving thanks for the simple things and big loves in your life activates healing on deep level. Writing down or journaling what is good and pure about you and what is in your world creates ripples of healing through your whole body.
Your actions, thoughts and words create the life you lead.
Put yourself first so that you can be fully present for all that life brings your way.


* Be aware of vehicles around you. High winds are more problematic for drivers of trucks, buses, recreational vehicles, campers, and drivers who are towing trailers.
* Reduce your speed and correct your steering, especially when moving from a protected area to an unprotected area, or when meeting large vehicles.
* Wind is often accompanied by heavy rain or winter precipitation. Stay alert for slippery areas.


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