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You are here: Parliament home page > Parliamentary business > Publications and Records > Hansard > Commons Debates > Daily Hansard - Westminster Hall
17 Oct 2007 : Column 249WH
[Sir Nicholas Winterton in the Chair]
Defence Exports
Motion made, and Question proposed, That the sitting be now adjourned.—[Mr. Roy.]
Sir Nicholas Winterton (in the Chair): The House is rightly concentrating on defence, with a debate in the main Chamber last week and another debate yesterday. The hon. Member for Newbury (Mr. Benyon) has secured an important debate here in Westminster Hall today.
Mr. Richard Benyon (Newbury) (Con): It is a great pleasure to serve under your watchful eye this morning, Sir Nicholas. I also welcome the Minister to his place. I suspect that the Ministry of Defence and the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform had a battle to decide which would reply to the debate. It is a matter of huge regret that the Minister's Department lost but, nevertheless, in a personal sense, it is good to see him here.
The Prime Minister, in his leadership acceptance speech, said:
"One of my first acts as prime minister would be to restore power to Parliament in order to build the trust of the British people in our democracy."
We all welcomed that statement. Today, we have an opportunity to hold the Government to account for what I believe is the classically bad decision to close the Defence Export Services Organisation and move its residual role to another Department. On 25 July—the day before parliament rose for the recess—the Prime Minister went very much against what he said in his speech by sneaking out a written statement of just 19 lines that brought to an end 40 years of successful Government support for our defence export sector. Some people will call me naive, but I hope for some answers from the Minister this morning about the closure of DESO.
I chose the subject of this debate carefully, as I want to point out how damaging the decision is, and what impact it will have on the future of defence exports. I want to know what was going on in the Prime Minister's head—I think that we all do from time to time—that led him to do such damage to such a successful brand. And let us be assured: the brand is dead. Whatever arises from DESO's ashes, the perception in the marketplace is that Britain is out of the game. The best people are leaving to work in the private sector and there is a general belief in the marketplace that the British Government want nothing to do with defence exports. I noticed how happy some organisations opposed to the arms trade were with the decision, and there was talk of parties being held after the announcement. However, I submit that their joy should be short-lived.
Dr. Julian Lewis (New Forest, East) (Con): One group of people who, I am sure, are delighted at the decision are members of the Liberal Democrat party, who have always been enemies of defence exports, no matter how legitimate and proper. Has my hon. Friend any idea why there is not a single Liberal Democrat present in the debate—not even their spokesman?
Mr. Benyon: I suspect that they have other things on their mind at the moment, but they should not delight in the decision. Perhaps they mistakenly believe that stopping arms sales and defence exports from this country will somehow improve the situation around the world. Countries such as Russia and China are salivating at the prospect of expanding their defence export sales at our expense. The consequence will be an expanded manufacturing base in those countries which, unlike us, do not care much about the question of to whom they sell arms. That is the great mistake of the Liberal Democrats and others opposed to the arms trade.
David Taylor (North-West Leicestershire) (Lab/Co-op): Does the hon. Gentleman acknowledge the fact that it is possible to rejoice in the imminent demise of DESO without necessarily being against defence exports as such, and does he accept the estimate made by many reputable economists that the section of the economy linked to defence exports is less than 0.2 per cent.—less than one job in 500? That is not exactly a body blow to the British economy, is it?
Mr. Benyon: That is one of the most dangerous and complacent views that I have heard on the whole issue. I have constituents working for small companies of 25 people that depend on DESO when they go abroad. Those companies do not have a large marketing department. They do not know how the economy and marketplace work in some countries. They go straight to the post. If the hon. Gentleman thinks that £5 billion a year of arms sales and defence exports is insignificant to the economy, I urge him to consider the tax take from those companies, and what the effect will be on hospitals, police and public services in his constituency.
The debate is intended to draw out from the Minister important answers to important questions: why the Prime Minister took the decision, and why it was dealt with in such an underhand and incompetent way. The decision came only a few days after the Prime Minister called for government to be more open and accountable. I cannot think of a decision that was more closed or more designed to avoid being held to account. It came less than 10 days after an advertisement appeared in The Sunday Times advertising the post of director of DESO. Why was the decision made without any provision for what would fill the vacuum created by DESO's demise? At the very least, one would expect the most basic measures to be in place for what was to come post-DESO.
Internal briefing documents for staff about that extraordinary decision are flying around Whitehall and Westminster. They are in question-and-answer form, and some of them have fallen into my hands and my colleagues' hands. The answer to one question is:
"How UKTI will manage their responsibility for defence trade promotion remains to be decided."
Another question asks:
"Where will the transferred staff be located"?
The answers states that that is "to be decided." The answer to the question of whether staff will
"transfer to UKTI on the same terms and conditions as they have now"
is that that will be
"worked out during the implementation and planning phase."
"What will happen to the (Army) Export Support Team?"
Importantly—and this relates to the point made by the hon. Member for North-West Leicestershire (David Taylor)—the answer, again, is that that is "to be decided." The question of what will happen to the DESO first secretaries overseas, too, is "to be decided." What an extraordinary decision from a Government who claim to be competent, open and accountable. How extraordinary to make a major change to a Department and to have nothing in place—nothing; a vacuum.
Why was there no consultation with industry? In a debate last week, several Members quoted letters from large companies—one was from the managing director of BAE Systems—and companies such as Thales. Many other letters in circulation have come to my attention. Why was there no consultation with the unions, as required under civil service codes? For the past few days, I have been talking to the unions, and I can find no evidence of any formal briefings, discussions or consultations about what transfers will take place or under what conditions DESO employees will be employed in any new organisation. More importantly, why was there no consultation with Ministers? I think that the House deserves to know when the Secretaries of State for Defence and for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform were informed of the decision. I would that that happened on or around 25 July, and that it was as much a surprise for them as it was for the rest of us.
Why was the decision taken in a manner designed to prevent proper parliamentary scrutiny? The House, the industry and its hundreds of thousands of employees, as well as the dedicated staff at DESO, deserve answers. I do not wish to prejudge the Minister, but I must warn him that it would be contemptible if in his reply he simply dished out the usual blandishments and non-answers about how DESO has done excellent work in the past. We know about that, and accept that it is a remarkable organisation.
David Taylor: The announcement did not relate to the end of the British defence industry; it related to the imminent demise of DESO, which employs about 450 staff in London and overseas, including 200 who work on Government-to-Government contracts. If a large employer of, say 1,000, 2,000 or 5,000 employees had their operating base closed by Government edict, the hon. Gentleman would expect a statement to the House and consultation at the highest level, but we are talking about 450 jobs, and those people will be readily redeployed in other areas of Government industry.
Mr. Benyon: I hope to prove to the hon. Gentleman that his view is mistaken. It is of fundamental importance that DESO should remain part of the
MOD. He is right: we are talking about only 400 or so people, but there are much wider implications for the economy as a whole.
Mr. Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con): I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate. The intervention from the hon. Member for North-West Leicestershire (David Taylor) betrays a lack of understanding of the specialist requirements of defence exports, which are an extremely complicated area of business to manage. They are of fundamental importance not only to our economy, but to the armed forces, because a successful British defence export base supports our forces and ensures that they have more kit than they would otherwise have for the requisite defence budget.
Sir Nicholas Winterton (in the Chair): Order. Interventions should be brief, so the hon. Gentleman should bring his remarks to a fairly speedy conclusion.
Mr. Blunt: I am grateful to you, Sir Nicholas. I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate and I look forward to the Minister's reply.
Mr. Benyon: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for putting more eloquently than I could have done the argument I was about to make in response to the point made by the hon. Member for North-West Leicestershire.
I hope that the Minister will not claim that defence exports would be better served by operating within UK Trade and Investment. The Minister knows that nobody outside the Prime Minister's narrow circle and one or two Labour Back Benchers believes that that is the case. To take up the point made by my hon. Friend, as of this weekend, the DESO website—I suspect that the announcement will not be there in a few hours' time—says with a pride which, I am sure is matched by that of the dedicated DESO staff, that it gives
"assistance to company-led marketing campaigns".
It says that it supports the "MOD's defence diplomacy efforts" and its "partnerships and alliances". It says that it offers "security building measures" and promotes
"British interest and influence abroad".
Those are four good reasons—key strategic reasons—for keeping DESO, or that Government discipline, in the MOD.
The Government support all exporters through their agencies, but defence exporters need support from the MOD, mainly because they sell to overseas defence ministries. DESO's website states that it is
"an integral part of the Ministry of Defence"
"is well placed to give defence industry the kinds of support it needs".
Mr. Nicholas Soames (Mid-Sussex) (Con): My hon. Friend should remember in his excellent speech that the point of DESO was that it was separate from the various dud organisations that have promoted—allegedly—British exports overseas under Governments of both parties. Such organisations were monstrous bureaucracies, but DESO was lean, extremely fit, and accomplished. That is why it attracted the Prime Minister's opprobrium.
Mr. Benyon: My hon. Friend has huge experience in this field and I hope that he will contribute more to the debate, but he is absolutely right. We are talking about a highly technical economic activity and it is vital both that it is linked to service personnel, who understand the equipment that DESO helps to sell, and that there is hands-on use of the equipment in the field.
The DESO website states that its activities
"differ from those in the civil sector in many respects because of the specialised requirements of...military customers".
My hon. Friend is right that DESO is a lean organisation. It does not operate under the leaden hand of departmental organisations that seek to help business but which sometimes have the opposite effect.
DESO has 460 staff worldwide and about 200 in the UK—that number is falling rapidly—and has an annual net budget of £16 million, which is paltry in terms of MOD spending. However, it assisted with £500 million-worth of sales last year and contributed massively to the value of defence exports, which averaged £5 billion. The DESO brand is trusted around the world, which has helped to place Britain second only to the United States in defence exports.
David Taylor: The hon. Gentleman said that DESO is a trusted brand. Does he believe that that trust was damaged by the organisation's involvement in the al-Yamamah deal with Saudi Arabia? That deal inflicted its most recent casualty yesterday when the chief executive of BAE Systems departed early.
Mr. Benyon: The hon. Gentleman ought to do more research. The MOD Saudi Arabian projects organisation—MODSAP—handled that deal on a Government-to-Government basis. The deal was not as he alleges. I shall address his point more broadly, because I believe that the al-Yamamah deal is partly responsible for the bizarre decision on DESO.
Mr. John Spellar (Warley) (Lab): Would not a deal such as al-Yamamah still be dealt with by the MOD under the new arrangements? Government-to-Government deals would still be the provenance of the MOD and separate from company-to-Government deals, which would be dealt with by the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform.
Mr. Benyon: I hope that the right hon. Gentleman is right. We are talking about Government-to-Government deals, which were not part of DESO's remit and will not be part of what we are led to believe will follow DESO.
Dr. Julian Lewis rose—
Mr. Benyon: If my hon. Friend will allow me, I will give way to him once I have completed my point.
Was that daft—I use that word carefully—decision taken, as my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Sussex (Mr. Soames) claimed last week, as
"an act of bovine stupidity, engineered by some communist woman at the Treasury"?—[Official Report, 9 October 2007; Vol. 464, c. 223.]
We need an answer from the Minister. Was the decision made to appease to some faction within the Labour party? In answer to the point made by the right hon. Member for Warley (Mr. Spellar), I wonder whether it
was a classic piece of new Labour spin. Did the Government perceive a problem with the BAE Systems al-Yamamah deal, and did they wish to park it? Getting rid of DESO means that they can say to the Liberal Democrats, or any organisation with which they may wish to make deals, that they have dealt with the issue. It does not matter that DESO was not part of the deal or that the issue was not about DESO. The decision is hugely damaging and wrong, but the Government have taken it.
Dr. Lewis: The hon. Gentleman has made the point that I wished to make a few moments ago. Surely this is a classic piece of horse trading and gesture politics. The Government are on the back foot, as their own left wing and the Liberal Democrats are baying about the dropping of the BAE Systems case. The decision is a sop—a piece of red meat thrown to the lions, irrespective of the merits of the case.
Mr. Benyon: My hon. Friend who, like my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Sussex, has great experience in these matters, is absolutely right. To mangle an analogy, the decision is like using a sledgehammer to miss a nut.
Sustaining a capable and flourishing UK defence industry base, as my hon. Friend the Member for Reigate (Mr. Blunt) said, offers the UK a strategic advantage. It allows us to depend on quality, home-grown procurement for our defence needs. It helps keep down the cost of UK defence procurement by creating competition between domestic and overseas suppliers and generating economies of scale. It also helps to co-ordinate directly our armed forces' urgent operational requirements in the field, which feed through into our defence exports. I am talking about real operational experience from our armed forces. Keeping that operation in the MOD strengthens relationships, with positive consequences for both military and foreign security policy objectives. The Government ignore that point at their peril. It is not I who has thought this argument up. It is all there in the Government's defence industrial strategy 2005, which states:
"A strong defence industrial base is important for the UK's defence."
I ask hon. Members to consider for the moment a small African country—Botswana, let us say. Some people in the House believe that it is entirely wrong that a poor country such as Botswana should spend money on arms, but it has a right to defend itself. It has a right to have a small number of armed forces, and it may wish to take part in African Union missions to places such as Darfur. Where should Botswana go? Its first port of call should be the country with which it has a relationship—Britain. In the circumstances, I foresee that Botswana will believe that there is no value, no relationship, no future in coming to a country such as Britain, and it will receive a very welcome invitation from countries such as China, Russia or Israel. Many of those countries have very different attitudes towards arms sales from us.


'Warming Up' Collection of space heating artefacts, 1920s to the 1960s | Electric Fireplace Heater, designed in 1929 | Design of an early electric heater demonstrates Canadian engineering ingenuity.
Design of an early electric heater demonstrates Canadian engineering ingenuity.
Students will see how this 1930s historic artefact demonstrated the ingenuity of Canadian engineers to take common components and combine them into a unique portable heater and aesthetic room element featuring the newest energy source, electricity.
This heater featured twin open coil electric resistance heaters on porcelain tubes, twin light bulbs illuminating chunks of amber glass, and twin fans, self-driven by warm air, for a flickering fire effect. It was seen as a modern fireplace hearth and room heater, compared with an open coal or wood fireplace, with no stacks of wood to be cut or coal scuttles to fill, no smoke, no need to feed the fire, and no chimney.
The designers manufactured this electric hearth in a steel casing, with cast polished bronze front grill, and a large copper heat-reflecting hood for an attractive consumer appliance for town and city residents. Visitors can research and find out how this appliance was marketed 80 years ago -- and how it foretold fireplace inserts that came 50 years later and the closed fireplaces and stoves of the late 1900s, using electricity, natural and propane gas and fuel oils -- and wood and coal as well.
Students will realize that the design of such appliances have changed, but the principle of electric heating has remained the same, with manufacturers showing more innovation in the materials used in 20th century electric appliances. Is 100% of its power used when it reaches end-users? Are there losses along the way?
Electrification of city, town and country began in earnest when Niagara Falls was harnessed for generating hydraulic water-flow-based electricity in 1905. It's still the cleanest, natural and renewable energy source. Students will want to learn more about how electricity spread far and wide over the 20th century -- and came crashing down in the 1998 Great Ice Storm affecting eastern Ontario, southern Quebec and the Maritimes, and the North American northeast Blackout of 2003.
The result was more comfort, convenience, and pleasure than Canadians may have felt with wood and coal sources of heat.
* Research from the archives of the HVACR Heritage Centre Canada (DCSB #2, HD1001H).
* Historical artifact from the HVACR Heritage Centre Canada, T. H. Oliver Collection, Accession No. 2003-084.
* Safety issues with heaters," www.cityofkingston.ca/residents/.


JB HiFi is the largest entertainment retailer in Australia. Starting with one store in 1974, there are now over 160 stores across the country. The JB HiFi name is synonymous with music in Australia, having supported and sold music in Australia for almost 40 years.
To complement the offering of physical music in their bricks and mortar and online stores, a music streaming service; JB HiFi NOW Music was launched in late 2011. JB HiFi NOW Music is currently the largest Australian owned paid subscription service.
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Does JB HiFi sell your music via?
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Q: SAS9.3 PROC FCMP can not save user defined function I want to use proc fcmp to define my own function in SAS9.3.
OS is aix 64bit.
Here is my code (reg_func.sas):
proc fcmp outlib=mylib.funcs.rule;
function gen_sub_rule();
put "this is a test function";
return (0);
endsub;
run;
quit;

but after run sas reg_func.sas, i got some warnings
WARNING:Cannot wirte model to data set mylib.funcs because it is curently opened or already exists as a standart data set.Will revert to V8 CATALOG instread.
WARNING:Failed to save function gen_sub_rule to mylib.funcs.rule.
Can anyone help?Thanks!

A: Solved! Referrring to https://communities.sas.com/t5/Base-SAS-Programming/Irritating-warning-in-Proc-FCMP/td-p/16216
The key is the cmplib option, here is my code:
    libname mylib 'H:\saslib\testlib';
    proc fcmp outlib=mylib.funcs.rule;
      function calc(var);
         newvar=log(var);
         return(newvar);
      endsub;
     function gen_str(var1 $, var2 $, var3 $) $100;
        length newvar $100;
        newvar=catx('#', var1, var2, var3);
        return(newvar);
      endsub;
    Run;

    /*list the source code*/
    Options cmplib=_null_;
    proc fcmp library=mylib.funcs;
      listfunc calc gen_str;
      run;
    Quit;

    /*using func*/
    options cmplib=mylib.funcs;
      data _null_;
        numret=calc(20);
       charret=gen_str('what', 'is', 'your');
       put numret= charret=;
    run;

    /*delete the func*/
    options cmplib=mylib.funcs;
    proc fcmp outlib=mylib.funcs.rule;
    deletefunc calc;
    run;
    quit;

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
By Colin Beasty, (former) Associate Editor, CRM Magazine
Wild & Crazy
The retirement-community division of Pulte Homes, Del Webb, was concerned that it might be misreading its customers. The division suspected that many of its "retirees" weren't sitting around at the pool all day or playing shuffleboard. Good hunch on Del Webb's part, because when it dispatched 100 employees to retirement communities throughout the country to interview more than 100 residents about their lives and tastes, the community's administrators got a surprise: Residents are active, energetic, and choose recreation like dance and fitness classes as well as more sophisticated ventures like taking on new careers. "We've become masters of adopting to the wants and needs of this generation," says Caryn Klebba, a spokeswoman for Del Webb. The division took this lesson and turned it into a competitive advantage. Today, Del Webb no longer depicts retirement living as a reward for a lifetime of hard work. Instead, the company presents it as a new beginning, and for good reason: Baby Boomers hate being pigeonholed. More than any other generation before them, Boomers are redefining life for the 50-plus crowd. Traditionally, age 50 has been the point at which marketers lose their interest in consumers, branding them as shoppers whose purchasing habits have been hardened and whose loyalties with certain brands entrenched. But the massive Boomer generation (said to have been born between 1946 and 1964) bucks the norm at every turn, and that matters now more than ever. More than half of the almost 76 million Boomers are 50 years old or older, while the rest crest the hill at the rate of 10,000 a week, according to Matt Thornhill, president of the Boomer Project, a marketing consulting firm based in Virginia. At this rate, Thornhill says, marketers have little time to respond to these changing attitudes. "Companies need to retool their attitudes if they're to meet this group's expectations about marketing and service." These attitudes are changing for good reason. The average American's life expectancy has topped out an all-time high of 78 years. For Boomers this means more time for fun, as most consider the 50-plus years as a new lease on life. "This isn't a group that wants to hear about retirement, growing old, and moving to Florida," says P.J. Wade, a futurist and founder of business-improvement consultancy The Catalyst Group. "To them, it's a fresh start." Money, Money, Money The Boomers have the cash to make that fresh start real. Experts place this generation's spending power at more than $1 trillion a year, nearly double the spending power of the prior generation. As American life expectancy continues to increase, so have Boomer expectations about how long they want to work. A recent AARP survey found that more than two-thirds of workers between the ages of 45 and 74 plan to continue working in some capacity past retirement. Even the AARP now refers to this life stage as "so-called retirement." Britt Beemer, president and chairman of America's Research Group, says, "This is a generation that is working longer than any previous generation before them." Boomers are also reaching their peak earning years as expenses begin to bottom out. For most of them, the kids have moved out of the house, mortgages and other loans are ending, and they are inheriting money from their savings-minded parents (which, Yankelovich's Smith says, is a trait Boomers don't have). "Baby Boomers love to spend money on themselves. An economist once said that Boomers will be the first generation in American history to leave less money for the next generation than they received from the prior one." Marketing to Boomers well past their 50th birthday also has the advantage of enabling companies to make up for the financial shortcomings of Generation X. Generation Y, a group of almost 73 million teens and 20-year-olds, still has a long way to go before reaching financial prowess, but Gen X, which falls between Gen Y and Boomers, should be the next logical target for marketers. The problem, according to experts, is that Gen X is only about 49-million strong. As a result, many economists and marketers have realized this group's spending power will never reach that of Gen Y and the Boomers. But don't expect Boomers to blow through their money. Despite this generation's financial security, Boomers' tastes and values have been refined over the years, resulting in a smart group of buyers who are better educated and more experienced than Xers and Yers. It's important when selling and marketing to this group that companies convey the value of the product or service they're selling. "They want to know the benefits, they want information," Smith says. "Salespeople better be prepped and know what they're talking about when it comes to Boomers. They're dealing with some smart cookies." We're Too Sexy For Our Age
Christie Brinkley was 22 when she signed with Cover Girl to become its spokeswoman, and the company renewed that contract for the next 20 years, the longest modeling contract ever. Just a few years after Cover Girl ended it, the company resigned Brinkley as a model (in 2005) for ads for mature-market skin care products. Today, Brinkley powers the ad efforts of Cover Girl's first makeup line aimed at older women (Advanced Radiance Age-Defying Makeup). But Cover Girl's contract with Brinkley signifies a larger trend among certain industries that have recognized how important health, beauty, and living a more active life is to Boomers. "Boomers, especially women, want to look and feel younger," says Dianne Durkin, president of Loyalty Factor. "Boomers are very health conscious. Any company that markets its products and services as solutions that recognize these trends is going to find a lot of success." Nowhere is this more evident than in the health and beauty industry. Companies have traditionally used very young models--we're talking teenagers--with dewy skin to pitch products to middle-age women. But recently a number of companies have overhauled their marketing campaigns and brand image to redirect the message to Boomer babes. In 2004 soap maker Dove learned this lesson after conducting a massive, globe-spanning market research project. The company found that many campaigns were unrealistic about older women. "It's about making all women feel beautiful every day," says Silvia Lagnado, global brand director for Dove. Dove now uses ordinary-looking women of all ages. The payoff? In the one year since launching the campaign for its new Unilever product line, Dove has experienced an increase in sales of 3.4 percent. That might not seem a lot, but in the highly competitive beauty industry, it's huge. "That's a strategy that worked because it connected with Boomers," Durkin says. "Boomers accept the fact they're getting older. It's important companies realize they're not fighting it, they just want to make the 50-something-year-old person look good." "This is a generation that was raised during a time when youth was being celebrated," Smith says. "They're going to look for products and services that give them an edge and an energetic feel." This drive to stay healthy is one reason why many Boomers have a strong connection with younger generations, such as the Yers. "Marketing to Boomers through their kids and grandkids is a great way to get the message across," she says. "They're going to pay attention to these trends in their quest to stay young and energetic." Not As Loyal As You Think Most marketers believe that by the age of 50 a consumer's brand preferences are firmly fixed--once a Colgate buyer, always a Colgate buyer. But while many experts agree this hypothesis is true for older generations, Boomers are just as likely to switch brands as younger generations. According to a recent Yankelovich study, 33 percent of consumers older than 50 agree it's "risky" to buy an unfamiliar brand. That's less than the 36 percent of those surveyed between the ages of 16 and 34 and only slightly greater than the 30 percent of people aged 35 to 49. This flexibility stems from the time during which Boomers grew up. The 1960s were a time of experimentation and unlimited possibility. When trying to lure customers from the competition, it's important marketers give a higher value proposition than the opposition, a staple of selling to this group. "Boomers are very [smart] consumers, they're not going to waste money," Smith says. "If another brand can come along and offer a more compelling product that speaks directly to their needs, they'll make the switch, just as much as any 20-year-old will." Boomers have high expectations of the marketing and sales pitches companies use to acquire them with, but these lofty expectations also apply to companies looking to keep them loyal via superior customer service. For Boomers, says Alton Adams, a managing director and customer insight specialist with Accenture's CRM practice, "there needs to be a postpurchase level of service that is commensurate with the product purchased and commensurate with the level of service promised." Boomers want customer service that not only resolves the issue, but also lets them feel "empowered," Adams says. "They want to feel more knowledgeable about the product and the company." Many Boomers have been disappointed with the IVR and Web self-service solutions companies now use, Adams says, as these solutions tend to be "summary solutions" that fail to leave them feeling informed about and trusting of the company they're doing business with. Also, Boomers have used evolving technologies for decades, and subsequently aren't as quick to shift to newer self-service solutions that younger generations have come to expect. Channel Cool One mistake companies often make about this cohort is to assume that it is less techwise than younger generations. Having grown up during the tech revolution, most Boomers are well versed in many of the channels that marketers use today to communicate. "They expect you're going to approach them through the channel they're going to buy through," Adams says. "They expect the company to know who they are and how best to approach them." Boomers are one of the most diverse groups in American history when it comes to tech adoption. Companies can look at simple customer data, namely, career history and educational background, for channel reach. This group's knowledge and adoption of technology comes primarily from their work environment, according to Catalyst's Wade. Boomers contact companies using "the channels they're most comfortable with, because that's the channel they've been using for years," Adams says. "If a Boomer is contacting via email, take him off your call list, direct marketing list, whichever, and skew your communications via the media he contacted you with. It's a simple concept, but one companies fail to pick up on." Companies are also altering channels for older generations to improve the experience. TicketsNow.com is an online reseller for premium events like concerts and sports. Realizing that its core demographic was people in their late 30s and early 40s, it revamped its Web site in 2005 to help ensure that customers were receiving customized, luxurious shopping. The site allows customers to check weather forecasts, get directions, hire a limousine, or make a reservation at a restaurant near the venue. "We were looking to create a virtual concierge experience that's unrivaled in the industry," says Mark Hodes, senior vice president of customer marketing. "Our customers are people who have made it in life, and want to show the world." TicketsNow.com is just one example of how many companies are reworking their customer touch points to provide those "vibrant and vivacious Boomers" a better customer experience, Adams says. "They've accepted who they are and are living life to the fullest." Contact Assistant Editor Colin Beasty at cbeasty@destinationCRM.com. BOOMTOWN {Facts}
Understand that Boomers are comfortable with their age and want to look and be healthy. Also understand they don't want to be 20 years old again.
Boomers are as open to new brands as are younger generations, and have plenty of expendable income to boot. Don't make assumptions about brand loyalty.
Baby Boomers are techwise. Use the customer data you have on your Boomer customers and segment them based on education and career history to learn which channels they're most responsive to.
Baby Boomers are smart consumers. Don't use vague, mass-marketing advertising with generic messages. Communicate the clear-cut benefits and values of the product and/or service you're selling. --C.B.
Crossing Generational Lines at Work
2008 Office 2.0 Conference: As young meets old, and new meets traditional, business needs to keep an open mind.
Working with the Years
In a multigenerational workforce, knowledge transfer becomes an ever-more-complicated challenge.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Home > December 2021 > Billy's Christmas Gift
Billy's Christmas Gift
By Dimitri C. Michalakis on December 25, 2021
The first American Christmas I experienced was in Chicago in the '60s, when Kennedy was president, Chubby Checker was doing the Twist, Marilyn Monroe was the resident sex symbol, and Greece still had a king and queen.
We had just moved from Montreal, Canada and were renting the top floor of a house on South Lotus Avenue, which had a fireplace (with bricks painted white and which we never used), and where the landlord drove a Cadillac that he washed and polished every weekend, and his son drove a Thunderbird that he washed and polished every weekend, and the landlord's cousin was Carol Lawrence, the singer and actress, who was married to Robert Goulet, a singer and heartthrob of the time, and the landlord's daughter had once shown us a snapshot of her visiting Carol Lawrence and Robert Goulet in their dressing room backstage after a show, and they were both wearing white bathrobes.
In Canada, despite all that snow, I don't remember celebrating Christmas with much ceremony—or the island in Greece where I had lived with my grandparents when I was little—except once somebody came around to the blue-washed walls of my grandmother's taratsa around the holidays and said to her, "Kale, na sta vrontixome?"—Lady, should we sing to you? And then he started drumming on a jug with a skin and singing New Year's carols—Antiminia, antihronia!–with his mouth gaping open and his gold teeth flashing.
Now in Chicago, in America, we were getting the full taste of an American Christmas—where at night whole streets turned into a blaze of Christmas lights, red and green and yellow, and some houses had silver Christmas trees in the window that changed colors with a revolving wheel, and recordings playing Christmas carols over the street sung by Bing Crosby and Nat King Cole and Gene Autry. And on TV there were Christmas commercials showing a rosy-cheeked Santa Claus chugging bottles of Coca-Cola after sneaking down the chimney and distributing his presents, or sledding down snowy slopes and giggling on a Norelco shaver. And Mitch Miller had a Christmas show, with all his guys wearing gloves and mittens as they sang, even though they were in a studio; and Andy Williams had a Christmas show wearing his gloves and scarf, even though he was in a studio; but our favorite was Perry Como in a studio, resting on a studio sleigh powdered with studio snow and wearing his gloves and scarf, while he sang Christmas carols between commercials for recipes stirred with melted Kraft caramels.
And since we were Americans now, and Americans had Christmas trees, my father decided one bone-chilling night that we should also get a Christmas tree, too, and since we couldn't afford a silver tree in the window with the revolving lights, we should buy a real one and put it in the bay window where his desk was.
So we all bundled up and got into the white Impala with the red stripe and red vinyl seats, and waited for the heat to come on, while we stared at the lights glowing on the dashboard like candles, before my father gave the engine a few final grunts and swung the red steering wheel around so we could putter down South Central Avenue, past the golf course to Columbus Park.
The park is where they sold the trees in the parking lot, strung with makeshift lights on poles, and where the cars were jammed in a traffic of '60s car fins, and Christmas carols blared from speakers, and a barrel on the sidewalk blazed with a fire where the tree salesmen stopped to warm their hands from the brutal Chicago winter.
Including my friend Billy from school—who was just a kid—but during the holidays he worked selling trees (Billy was always working), when he wasn't skipping doing his homework and being sent to the principal's office, and the principal was my father, but Chris never took offense, cause he liked my father and liked their visits, and my father liked him, and they had lunch together regularly and a nice chat about Billy's ambitions when he grew up: he wanted to be a garbage man.
"Just a garbage man?" said my father.
"What's wrong with being a garbage man?" said Billy, grinning through his two front bunny teeth. "Don't they have to pick up your garbage?"
As usual, Billy made sense. And now he was selling Christmas trees, wearing a hat with fur ears like a bear, gloves like a hockey player, and boots flapped open like a fisherman.
"I'll show you the best tree in the house," he told us, grinning through his bunny teeth, before he tramped away in his boots and with his big gloves dangling like some kid with mittens.
And first he pulled out a tree and stumped down and it looked as fat as Jackie Gleason.
"That's a nice tree," he said.
"It's fat," said my sister, who was a moody teenager.
"We don't want a fat tree," said my mother. "We don't have any ornaments yet."
"You want a nice tree?" said Billy.
"We want a nice tree," said my father.
"Okay," said Billy, with a shrug, "I'll show you to the best tree in the house."
"I want to go home…" said my sister, who was a moody teenager.
But we followed Billy and he led us to a tree that he pulled out and stumped down and it looked taller than our whole house.
"Billy, we don't live in the Empire State Building," said my father.
"Where do you live?" said Billy, peeking under the fur visor of his hat.
"Not in the Empire State Building," said my father.
So Billy thought about it under his visor.
"I'll show you to the best tree in the house," he said.
"You said that already," said my sister.
"Show us the best tree in the house," said my father.
"I'll show you the best tree in the house," said Billy.
And we followed him again—until he brought us to a tree that seemed to be standing miraculously all by itself like it was growing out of the ground—only it was on a makeshift wooden platform–and it wasn't too fat, and it wasn't too tall, and it looked like the very model of a Christmas tree.
"It's the best tree in the house," said Billy, and he didn't need to pull it out and stump it down cause it was perfect just the way it was.
"Why didn't you show us this before?" said my mother.
"Cause I cut it down myself," said Billy, with a manly shrug at my sister.
"So it's your tree," said my sister.
"I can give it to anybody I want," said Billy, with another manly shrug to her.
"We don't want your tree," said my mother.
"I'll give it to you for nothing," Billy told my father.
"We don't want it for nothing," said my father.
"It's your tree," said my sister.
"It's my gift to you," said Billy. "What am I going to do with a tree?"
We knew his father worked as a long-distance truck driver and was never home, his mother had died long ago, and his brother had joined the Army and was stationed in Germany.
"So you decorate it for yourself," said my mother.
"I got no ornaments," said Billy with a manly shrug.
So we accepted his gift, but paid him for the tree, as our gift to him, and since it was our first American Christmas and had no decorations, we went to Goldblatt's department store downtown to buy all our Christmas lights and ornaments, and then we invited Billy to come over and decorate the tree with us, which he did very officially wearing a sweater vest and tie and bringing us a Christmas-green carton of egg nog as a present.
"Yeah, it's the best tree in the house," said Billy, when we finished decorating it and were sitting around in our socks staring at our first American Christmas tree, thanks to Billy, who poured us the egg nog like a bartender, cause he said he might also become a bartender when he grew up.
About Dimitri C. Michalakis
Dimitri C. Michalakis is Editor in Chief on NEO Magazine.


text:
Q: Exec or Shell_exec: variables don't pass from php to the script I tried many tests, but my 2 variables just don't pass, while a variable set within the script is indeed passed back correctly to PHP.
HTML/PHP code extract:
<?php
$subject = $_POST['subject'];
$body = $_POST['body'];
$output = null;
exec('../scripts/my-script.sh $subject $body', $output);
?>

<?php echo "
" . var_export($output, TRUE) . "
";?>

my-script.sh:
subject=$1
body=$2
cd ~/scripts/
path=`pwd`
#
echo "--"$path >> ./log.txt
echo "--"$subject >> ./log.txt
echo "--"$body >> ./log.txt
#
echo "=="$path
echo "=="$subject
echo "=="$body
only $path gets written in log.txt, and passed back to php.
The 2 other variables subject and body are empty;

html output:
array (
0 => '==/home/account/scripts',
1 => '==',
2 => '==',
)

log.txt content:
--/home/account/scripts
--
--

I tried to insert double quotes and format in different ways the variables within the exec function call, but the variables subject and body always appear empty both in log.txt and back in HTML/PHP.
exec('../scripts/my-script.sh "$subject" "$body"', $output);
exec('../scripts/my-script.sh'.' '.$subject.' '.$body, $output);

Any idea very welcome !

A: Doubles quotes should be at the beginning of the string.
'some string "$var" somestring' // won't interpolate
"some string '$var' somestring" // will interpolate

or you can concatenate them to the string
exec('../ems-scripts/mass-email-send.sh ' . $subject . ' ' . $body, $output)

You can read this discussion Should I use curly brackets or concatenate variables within strings? your problem is more about variable concatenation and interpolation, than really about exec() and shell_exec()

A: The problem just seems to be the quotations. If you use the ' as you have, the values will not be parsed
in stead of
exec('../ems-scripts/mass-email-send.sh $subject $body', $output);
try
exec("../ems-scripts/mass-email-send.sh $subject $body", $output);


text:
'Exodus or extinction': Afghanistan's Hindus and Sikhs are hanging by a thread
Riddhi Kanetkar
Illustration: Simone Zhao
Over the past 50 years, a change in Afghanistan's socio-political landscape has propelled the mass exodus of the country's Hindus and Sikhs. Ongoing persecution has made their survival difficult, with many being forced to migrate out of their homeland, in search for safety.
Early on the morning of 25th March 2020, the Sikh community of Kabul were praying in their holy place of worship, Gurdwara Har Rai Sahib. Minutes later, their prayers were cut short by a militant attack that left 25 dead. Unfortunately, this terror is now a reality for the last remaining Sikh and Hindu communities of Afghanistan, whose population has been decimated since the turn of the century. Following a mass exodus in the past few decades, there are estimates that only around 700 Hindus and Sikhs remain in Afghanistan, although numbers remain uncertain and fluctuating.
Afghan Hindus and Sikhs have an enduring presence that is interwoven into the fabric of the country's history. The arrival of these communities predates the Mughal Empire, and had been marked by many traditional relics and artefacts dispersed around the country, which have now been destroyed. The history of Hinduism in Afghanistan is said to be dated back to the Indus Valley Civilisation (5500-2000 BC.), followed by the advent of Buddhism and Zoroastrianism. The region is also home to the mountain Asmayi, which had been a prominent Hindu pilgrimage site. However, despite their established settlement in the region, the Hindu community has now dwindled to merely occupy parts of Kabul and Jalalabad.
Sikhism, as a comparatively modern religion, had a more latent arrival in Afghanistan; nevertheless, it is reported that some Sikhs had established trading connections with Afghanistan following Guru Nanak's visit in the 15th century. This was an increased trend at the end of the 18th century, during which many Sikh settlers from India relocated to Afghanistan to establish trade links. After 1947, the Partition of India also compelled many Sikhs to find refuge in Afghanistan.
Before the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Hindu and Sikh communities had once numbered over 200,000. A spike in Taliban-operated extremism – that aggravated Afghanistan's tumultuous socio-political landscape – also transformed the country into a precarious environment for its religious minorities. As such, the declining population of Hindus and Sikhs is a direct result of years of persecution.
The post-Soviet era – and its challenges for Afghanistan
Speaking to a Hindu priest who was born and raised predominantly in Afghanistan, I ask him about his experience growing up in an era which witnessed the social fragmentation of Afghanistan. With religious factions governing the societal divide, Mr Shukla* saw first-hand the metamorphoses that was instigated as a result of the Soviet and US invasions in the 1980s, as well as the rise of the Taliban in the late 1990s.
"My nana (grandfather) was a Dewan (minister) in Kabul, and my grand-nana was a Dewan in Jalalabad", he says. His family have an entrenched history in Afghanistan, as both his father and grandfather were also Hindu priests, when he recalls, "Times were easier". He emphasises that, "Before the Taliban came, the situation was easier". However, despite his lineage tracing back generations in Afghanistan, their family, like many others, had been forced to relocate out of the country.
This is a common problem for many Hindus and Sikhs, whose very existence in Afghanistan is marked by ostracization. As such, they are clearly distinguished from their Muslim counterparts, by measures such as paying a 'jizya' (a special tax for non-Muslims). Beyond this, they are also required to wear a yellow badge in public, to identify themselves as separate from the majority population. This is underlined by a 'constant pressure [for them] to convert their religion to Islam'; such measures serve to demonstrate their 'outsider' status, in the very country which they consider their home.
The seizure of land has also been an impediment to their survival in their cities; many Sikhs have to live in gurdwaras, as they cannot afford housing. However, speaking up means that they will be placed under a spotlight. The prospect of attention is one they avoid, out of fear of retaliation.
Enforced segregation also limits their activities in the public sphere. Article 62 of Afghanistan's constitution serves to restrict their political participation as non-Muslim citizens, further cementing their status as second-class citizens. This has, in part, contributed to a decline in employment rates, which in turn has increased poverty rates within the communities.
According to the Survey of Afghan Hindus and Sikhs, conducted by Porsesh Research & Studies Organisation (PRSO), when questioned about problems facing Hindu and Sikh communities, 36.6% respondents regarded unemployment as the most important issue. Despite being concentrated in the cities, they face greater limitations when applying for jobs. The majority work in family-owned shops, and rely on salaried jobs as opposed to wage labour.
Mr Shukla descends from a family of priests and Dewans, who had comparatively greater liberty to work in more diverse sectors. Nevertheless, he recalls a notable shift in society over time.
"Compared to 50 years ago, many have migrated out. Seven Hindu families that I know are living in Germany, the USA, India, Holland, Belgium. Everywhere in the world. They have migrated because they have no option.
"The situation started changing around 1980. It was still bad, but it is becoming worse", he says.
The rise of the Taliban saw a consequent spike in violence against minority communities such as Buddhists and Jews, who have now been erased from Afghanistan's demographic landscape. The Hazaras of Afghanistan, who are predominantly Shia Muslim, also faced intense persecution at the hands of the Taliban. Nonetheless, the decline of Taliban-led despotism has not yet carved a safe environment for minorities. While the country's constitution has claimed to allow freedom of religion for non-Muslims, this liberty has not been translated into practice.
The ceaseless instances of prejudice and discrimination have made it difficult for Hindu and Sikh citizens to follow Dharmic customs and conventions, such as the cremation of the dead. Following the terror attack on the gurdwara on 25th March, there was a subsequent attack on the Sikh crematorium the next day. The attack on these communities is just as much an attack on their values and traditions.
Even aspects of citizens' appearances have been policed, with many Sikhs having their hair forcefully cut. Additionally, while the government provides mosques with free electricity, Hindus and Sikhs have to pay commercial sums for the electricity needed for their mandirs and gurdwaras. These discrepancies point to the larger, systemic oppression that these groups have to endure. Pushed to the margins of society, survival itself has been made difficult.
The search for safety
It is therefore unsurprising that many have fled the country, in search for solace elsewhere. When questioned by PRSO about staying in Afghanistan, 60.7% of Hindus and Sikhs suggested that they would take the opportunity to leave, whereas 37.9% expressed a desire to stay. Younger respondents were also amongst the highest to express a desire to migrate; this generational divide points to a split between generational attachment to their land, and a desire to seek prospects for their future. This divide in perspective also alludes to the predicament that many Hindus and Sikhs face; although their safety is compromised, their persistence to stay is underlined by a tenacious loyalty to the place they consider their homeland.
The Hindus and Sikhs now remaining in Afghanistan are a lingering shadow of their predecessors. Following the exodus, around 99% of the community has migrated across the world, predominantly to India, the U.K, or the US.
When I ask if Mr Shukla's family had preferred living in Afghanistan, there is a clear repudiation against the idea. "No no no", he says, "– everyone has now come back".
Many refugees settled in India, and he himself visits India from time to time. When I ask if he thinks the current Hindu population should leave Afghanistan, he agrees, "Yes. Because they are not safe".
His statement is underlined by a solemn pessimism for the future. "I do not think conditions will get better. It is becoming worse and worse."
"The situation cannot be better. Never."
This fear is not unfounded, as April 2020 witnessed the third consecutive attack on gurdwaras in the region. This follows a string of IS attacks against these targeted minorities. Just in 2018, IS militants murdered 17 Afghan Sikh and Hindu leaders in Jalalabad, who were on their way to meet President Ashraf Ghani.
Following this attack, many Sikh activists in the US pursued the matter by sending a letter to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, urging them to grant these persecuted communities refugee status. They encourage their movement to safe zones outside of Afghanistan, where they would be protected. This idea was supported by 19 groups, which included Jewish, Christian and Muslim communities. They emphasised that this assistance was needed amidst a 'horrific choice of exodus and extinction'.
Although the vast majority have fled the country, many Hindus and Sikhs still hold a connection to their Afghan heritage. Mr Shukla is considered a 'British-Afghan' on his passport; although he has had to leave his country, it is an indelible part of his identity.
The advent of Taliban rule diminished any hope for social harmony between Afghanistan's diverse cultures and communities. Their imposed sectarianism has mutilated the country into a ghost of its former self, eroding the cultural heritage stemming from civilisations in the Indus Valley and Central Asia.
Afghanistan's Hindus and Sikhs are hanging by a thread. Forced to choose between the two aspects of their identity, many are burdened with choosing between their loyalty to their homeland, and fighting for survival.
Pushed to the periphery of existence, these communities need institutional protection. We must ensure that their cultural legacy is not extinguished from the very place they call home.
* Name of my interviewee has been changed at their request to maintain anonymity.
Riddhi is a second-year undergraduate studying Comparative Literature at UCL, and the South Asia editor at The Meridian.


text:
Home Focus Accounting & Finance Is IRS collecting data from social media posts?
Is IRS collecting data from social media posts?
A report by a WSU professor found that the IRS was potentially breaking the law
VBJ File
Facebook is facing serious criticism after dolling out user information to corporate analytics companies and political campaigns – but there's another group likely trolling through that data and getting far less attention: The Internal Revenue Service.
In a 2017 report, Kim Houser, a clinical assistant professor of business law at Washington State University, found that the IRS was breaking the law by trolling through data collected from Facebook and private social media posts. Federal law (the Privacy Act of 1974) states that citizens have to be informed when that sort of data is collected, and citizens must be able to review that information for accuracy. But a year after talking to the IRS and the American Civil Liberties Union and spreading the word, nothing about the illegal practice seems to have changed, Houser said.
"No. Nothing. Nothing at all," she said. "I keep following the ACLU website and their ethics website, but nothing's happened. People don't seem to be as concerned about the government and what they're doing versus what private companies are doing. But they should be."
Houser said she came across the issue after attending a 2012 meeting at which an IRS speaker talked about the agency's use of analytics.
"I looked at his Power Point presentation, and what he was saying was that private industry would be jealous if they knew what data we were collecting for the IRS," Houser said. "That set off a huge red flag."
The ACLU filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the IRS over the issue back in 2013, but the process appears to have stalled.
"The current IRS policy manual relies on the outdated Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), which only requires a warrant for some emails and other electronic communications," Nathan Freed Wessler, an ACLU staff attorney, said in his blog in 2013, not long after the FOIA request.
"In order to uniformly protect the privacy of Americans' private communications, lawmakers must update ECPA to require a warrant for the contents of all electronic communications, regardless of age or other factors," Wessler said.
The IRS audit process is supposed to be random. In the past, the agency generally looked for mathematical errors or mismatches to determine who to audit.
But more recently, due to budget and staffing cuts, the agency has turned to data analytics, using information typically provided to corporations to mine consumer data.
"This is the exact type of information that would be really inappropriate for the IRS to be purchasing," Houser said. "This gives such a deep amount of detail on people that it's not acceptable."
The IRS authorized the new data collection practice in its audit manual, but it violates the Electronic Communications Privacy Act and contradicts a 2010 U.S. v. Warshak ruling that says citizens should have an expectation of privacy when using their email.
The audit manual specifically states that "investigators can obtain everything in an account except for unopened email or voice mail stored with a provider for 180 days or less."
That means investigators can still look at opened email, and there are no restrictions looking at data from services like Paypal, Google or Facebook, Houser said.
So, for example, the IRS could look at your private Facebook page for evidence of expensive, undeclared items or travel. If your taxes were low, but your Facebook had pictures of you on your new yacht, that could get you in trouble, Houser said.
Part of the problem is that a lot of our country's privacy laws were created in the 1970s and 1980s, before the internet revolution and the rise of Facebook and other social media platforms. The goal of the older laws is to limit what sort of data can be collected, but those laws haven't been updated for modern technological uses, she added.
"There's no internal limit on what Google and Facebook could potentially sell to the IRS or any other agency," Houser said. "And we've seen instances where the IRS has brought up things like eBay purchase data and Facebook posts in court cases."
Consumer behavior on Google and Paypal have also been brought up in IRS court cases, signaling that the practice may be widespread across several platforms, she added.
"I've also read recently a couple of tax accountant bloggers – and the audits they've been asked to show up for lately, the IRS seems to know exactly what to ask for when they meet," Houser said.
The IRS shifted to analytics after budget cuts in 2011. The goal was to use algorithms to pick through the data and select people appropriate for audits, while saving money on actual man hours. But the problem is the agency's algorithms are private, so nobody outside the IRS knows exactly what they're mining, Houser said.
"They could be looking at race, religion, nationality – all of that could be tracked," Houser said. "But we don't know exactly what they're looking at because we don't know what the algorithm is looking for."
Until the issue is addressed, the only way to really avoid the problem is to stay off the internet, which Houser said she understands is nearly impossible in modern times. But beyond that, she did have some more modest advice.
"Be careful when you're posting online to not exaggerate," Houser said. "If they're showing things that don't match your income, showing expensive travel or things like that, you want to be careful. I think the best we can do is just keep in mind what we're presenting on Facebook is being looked at by the IRS."
People can also talk to their members of Congress to try to build some momentum for changing the practice. But after publishing an opinion piece on the subject in The Hill on Jan. 20 of this year, Houser said she still hasn't heard anything from politicians interested in the subject.
"I think at some point we should all write our Congresspeople and tell them we're concerned about this," she said.
Sue Vorenberg
Interject Data Systems, "Talk Tech – Report Lab"
Network With Results International, Fort Vancouver Chapter
Clark County Leads Direct
Clark County Toastmasters Club


Each day, we will discover a new featured creature from the animal kingdom in this week of creature fun! We'll touch the world's softest animal, find out what hides in our forest during the day and who's out at night. Get ready to keep on creature adventuring!
Membership is required to register for camp.
Your child will go behind the scenes of the Nature Center as they meet and care for the rescued and rehabilitated animals that live on grounds. Children will learn about animal behavior as they spend time with our furry, feathered and scaly animals. Campers will also get a chance to explore our fields and trails.
Through mindfulness exercises that consider each and every part of the body as a tool for mark-making, students will be given a GIANT "canvas" to investigate and work on over the course of the week. We will use our hands, arms, legs, feet, and more to invent new ways to apply paint to paper. Explorations into basic engineering, such as the construction of a pendulum for dripping paint in an arching shape, will open up new and exciting possibilities!
Teens will have the opportunity to travel and take part in new and exciting activities outside of camp. Under the guidance of our camp staff, campers will take two trips during regular camp hours to local recreation sites like Bounce!, WSplashdown, Bowling and more! Campers still have time to enjoy our traditional camp activities when they are on site.
Welcome to the big top! Through art-making, movement, and imaginative play we will explore the magic of the circus world! Camp will culminate in a mini performance in which each camper will have the opportunity to showcase their unique talents. Will your child be a juggler, show their super strength, or tame a wild beast? We shall see!


text:
Hiderábád (urdu nyelven: حیدرآباد, angolul: Hyderabad) város Délkelet-Pakisztánban, Szindh tartományban, az Indus folyó keleti partján. Lakossága elővárosokkal együtt 3,4 millió fő volt 2011-ben.

Mezőgazdasági termények kereskedelmi központja (köles, búza, rizs, gyapot). Iparváros, ahol ékszert, bőrárut, festéket, üvegárut, cementet, textilipari termékeket állítanak elő. Kézműipara is jelentős.

A város mai formáját az 1780-as években nyerte el, amikor Szárfaraz Kán afgán herceg megtervezte a települést. Egykori erődje ma már romos, de számos uralkodói síremléke megmaradt. Néhány kilométerre terül el az az egykori csatahely, ahol 1843-ban a britek Charles Napier vezetésével döntő vereséget mértek Mir Ser Mahomed Kán csapataira, majd Szindh tartományt magukhoz csatolták. A Miani falu melletti csata színhelyét emlékmű jelöli.

Képek

Jegyzetek

Fordítás

Források
 Readers Digest: Guide to Places of the World, 1995

Pakisztán települései
Szindh

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


Escape the crowds, grab your kitesurf gear and join us in the Abaco, Bahamas April 5th - April 11th on a 6 Night, 7 Day private catamaran sailboat! April is one of the best month's for wind in the Abacos with an 86% chance of 15+ kts every day.
Charters start at 2pm the day of arrival and end at 10am the day of departure.
Outside of Florida | You MUST arrive in Marsh Harbour (MHH) no later than 2pm on March 30th to ensure an on time departure from the dock. You may not depart Marsh Harbor earlier than 10am on March 5th.
Your Captain (Cory) and Crew (Emily) will have the boat provisioned and ready to depart the dock at 3:00pm on Saturday March 29th. The Abacos offer many islands to sail to so our itinerary will be based on the weather forecast for the week.


Alex Cross, former Washington, DC detective and former FBI agent, is still in the hunt for the killer that ended his marriage with his beloved Maria and left his children without a mother. Almost every case he is called on to assist with, Alex hopes that case will be the one to lead him to his wife's killer. Alex is now in the consulting business to assist anyone needing his expertise. Michael Sullivan, alias The Butcher, and his buddy Jimmy "Hats" Galati, are fearless gangsters and they themselves fear no mafia or other gangland organizations. Either would kill without any qualms, would not hide from anyone, but instead instill the fear of opening their mouth to anyone in fear of their life. The Butcher loved Jimmies companionship because he knew he had him under control to do what he wished. The Butcher would cut you up and kill you without blinking an eye, Jimmy included.
One of the reasons Alex Cross was so determined to find Maria's killer was that she had died in his arms, a fact he never told his family. The recent killings have brought Maria's killing to his mind, as the circumstances were too similar. Eventually Alex's old buddy and former partner on the force, John Sampson, asked him if he would come on board and assist in the horrible crimes that had been taking place. This gave Alex a good excuse to return to help his friends while hoping to find Maria's killer. The problem was the complaining by "Nana" who had to lovingly take care of Alex's children when Alex worked the long hours required tracking down evidence. Alex had earlier agreed to cut down on the time needed for his private work but soon after had to renege and beg to Nana that he had to work longer to assist the police in tracking down this brutal butcher. Nana, of course, had no idea that the present crimes were similar to the killing of Maria. She had to agree since Alex insisted so vehemently.
The story continues as the butcher becomes even more of a danger and a very major killer. He also knew Alex was hot on his trail so he played games with Alex and other law enforcement. The rest of the story continues very smoothly but with many twists and turns as The Butcher continues his evasion of police in plain sight with his many disguises and actions. You will not guess the ending until after you have read it. Patterson has again given a terrific story in his Alex Cross series. One would think that readers would tire of his stories but he keeps coming through with new angles that are not "run of the mill" nor do they have a predicted result.


text:
It's official: Round Rock Express announce affiliation with Astros
Chris Bils
The Ryan family is back under the same baseball roof again.
At a news conference Thursday, the Round Rock Express ended speculation and officially announced that they have a new player development contract with the Houston Astros.
Round Rock will be the Triple-A affiliate of the 2017 World Series champions.
"It's going to make Thanksgiving a lot more fun," joked Reese Ryan, the Express CEO.
Ryan's father, Hall of Fame pitcher Nolan Ryan, was on hand for the announcement, along with brother Reid Ryan, who is the Astros' president of business operations.
"I don't think it's been a secret," Reid Ryan said. "I think everybody has kind of known we were going to try to come back over here."
The agreement is officially for four years, the longest allowed by Major League Baseball, but Reid Ryan said the intention is to make the partnership last long into the future.
"I don't see why it won't be a long, long time," he said "Maybe forever — you never know. We're going to be an Astros club here hopefully for as long as I'm around."
The Express also revealed new branding, including a new logo and four new uniforms for 2019, in front of about 700 season ticket holders, sponsors and members of the media. They'll return to their original navy, red and silver color scheme, with the Astros' bright yellow and orange incorporated into a 20-year commemorative logo.
The new brand was created by California firm Brandiose.
The club will wear all-white home uniforms and all-gray away uniforms. White with navy pinstripes and a navy top with white pants are the alternate options.
The Express has been an affiliate of the Texas Rangers since 2011. Founded in 2000, the Round Rock club began as Houston's Double-A franchise before becoming the Triple-A affiliate for Houston from 2005 to 2010.
In eight seasons with the Rangers, the club had an overall record of 579-560. In 2015, Round Rock came within one win of the Pacific Coast League championship. Despite a last-place season in 2018, the Express posted the second-highest attendance in minor league baseball with an average of 8,842 fans passing through the gates.
"We were great with the process and wanted to make sure we fulfilled our contract with the Texas Rangers," Express President Chris Almendarez said. "I'm glad the Astros wanted to be with us, and I think the relationship we have is going to be good for a long time."
The 2019 Express season will begin April 9 with a three-game series against the Nashville Sounds, the team that was recently unveiled as the new Triple-A affiliate for the Rangers.
For the past four seasons, the Astros' Triple-A affiliate has been the Fresno Grizzlies. That team won the PCL championship in 2015 and made the championship series this season.
In the end, the allure of bringing the Ryan brothers back together and linking up with the defending World Series champions was too good to pass up.
"It's just a no-brainer; it made too much sense for us not to do it that way," Express General Manager Tim Jackson said. "Every level of (the Astros) went to the playoffs this year. To be able to bring the brand of baseball the Astros have right now means a lot to us."