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Potential Residential Care Home Vote Fraud Concern
Aberdeen City, Aberdeenshire, Articles, Community, Featured, Information, News No Responses »
With thanks to Suzanne Kelly.
A new cloud covers the controversial Union Terrace Gardens Referendum today, as a care home worker came forward with concerns about postal votes sent to a residential home.
The worker, who wishes to remain anonymous, approached Aberdeen Voice to say that over a dozen postal vote envelopes arrived at one residential home – but when the worker went to retrieve them a short time later – they were not where they had been left. No one at the residence seemed to know precisely what became of them. The concern is whether or not the residents' votes were properly distributed and managed. The matter is still being looked into, and no allegation of wrong-doing has been made at this stage.
Aberdeen Voice's Suzanne Kelly is researching further, and contacted the elections officer, and the other recognised campaigning organisations on the issue.
Kelly asked the elections officer for the marked Register to be checked with a view to how many care home residents returned votes, and whether there are any unusual voting patterns. However, the elections officer's position is that "it would be illegal for me to provide this in terms of the Representation of the People(Scotland) Regulations 2001." In an election relevant parties would normally be able to view the marked Register.
Crawford Langley, the Elections Officer for the Union Terrace Gardens referendum vote, previously contacted the police over potential postal vote fraud in May 2005 when he was elections officer and a small number (between 6 and 12) of anomalies arose, where people appeared not to have received their postal vote forms.
Langley was quoted at the time as saying:
"We are talking about a very small number but, given the publicity elsewhere and the tight ship we run in elections in Aberdeen, it was sufficiently unusual that I needed to do something about it."
The controversial referendum, which was over the future of Aberdeen's Victorian Union Terrace Gardens, gave residents a choice to either 'retain' the gardens, or to endorse a £140 million pound scheme called the Granite Web. This entails the city obtaining a £70 million pound TIF loan, which will be matched by Sir Ian Wood / The Wood Family Trust (£50 million), £5 million from an anonymous donor, and another £15 from as-yet unnamed private sources. The TIF scheme is still in trial stages in Scotland.
many feel the media bombardment influenced the vote
The referendum was dogged by controversy. Official campaigning groups were entitled to place a 300 word essay into the voting pack, and had to adhere to strict expenditure limits.
The Green Party's statement was not printed in full. Also controversial were the actions of a 'secretive' group (as described by a BiG Partnership employee) known as 'Vote for the City Gardens Project.' This federation of businessmen and women, who prefer to remain anonymous, are thought to have spent tens of thousand of pounds to promote the City Garden Project Granite Web.
Their glossy, A3 full colour brochure went to households in Aberdeenshire which were not eligible to vote as well as to City residents. The group also issued a four-page newspaper format item, and had several full-page spreads in the local press. Local radio stations broadcast pro City Garden Project commercials. None of the officially recognised campaigning groups would have been able to afford such a campaign, and many feel the media bombardment influenced the vote.
The materials produced by the group used projections by PriceWaterhouse Coopers to claim the scheme would create over 6,500 permanent jobs and mean £122 million to the local economy every year until 2023. Those who tried to contest these projections being used as fact found that the Vote for the City Gardens Project group was not accountable either to the elections officer or the Advertising Standards Agency. Other points of contention have been brought to the election officer's notice as well.
Willie Young of the Labour Party, who were an official campaigning organisation, had this to say:
"We really do need to see the mark register so we can prove to ourselves that the referendum was run correctly. In a democracy we need checks and balances and the Electoral Commission is clear that those involved in an election should be given access to the mark register. I am not suggesting anything is untoward, but it is our right to make sure that it isn't. We are baffled by the stance taken by the counting officer".
Suzanne Kelly commented:
"It is abundantly clear to me why my source wishes to stay anonymous. They are keen to continue in the job they love, and are all too aware of what can happen to a whistle-blower. This issue is still being investigated, but I thought bringing it to the election officer's attention immediately was the right thing to do. This is why we need to check the votes sent to all of our residential care homes – we must ensure no one has been exploited and no votes have gone astray. Were all the votes sent to the homes used, and if not, what percentage went unused? Did the vote split at the residential homes echo the nearly 50–50 split the total vote saw? If not, then further research will be needed.
There is at present no allegation of any wrong doing by any individual – but it is clear that we need to have the transparency we were always promised concerning Union Terrace Gardens, but which we so sadly lacked. We've seen redacted minutes – minutes where lines of text have been 'blacked out' to keep the public in the dark. Why should there be any secrecy over what is common good land?"
Kelly was chair of one of the recognised campaigning organisations ('Democracy Watch') and has been liaising with other campaigners; a number of issues remain over the referendum, and these will be reviewed soon.
Posted by at 23:04	Tagged with: ACSEF, Advertising, Agency, BIG, Brochure, Business, Campaign, Care, City, Commission, Common, Coopers, Crawford Langley, Economy, Elections, Electoral, Expenditure, Fraud, Funding, Gardens, Good, Granite, Green, Home, Incremental, Labour, Land, Mark, Media, Minutes, Officer, Partnership, Party, Police, Postal, Press, PriceWaterhouse, Project, Radio, Referendum, Register, Secrecy, Sir, Sir Ian Wood, SIW, Standards, Suzanne Kelly, Tax, Terrace, TIF, Union, UTG, Victorian, Vote, Web, Willie Young
Something's A Myth In The City Square
By Mike Shepherd.
A document has appeared purporting to reveal and counter 'myths' about the proposed Union Terrace Gardens development. It has been posted on the Aberdeen and Grampian Chamber of Commerce (AGCC) website.
Some of the claims are disingenuous and others stretch the idea of a 'myth' somewhat.
AGCC: "Fiction: This is Sir Ian Wood's project. Fact: The City Garden is not and never has been Sir Ian Wood's project."
The City Square has always been seen as Sir Ian Wood's project. Sir Ian announced his proposal at HM Theatre in November 2008. The Evening Express reported the launch with the headline;
"Options revealed in Sir Ian Wood's vision for Union Terrace Gardens" EE13/11/08
The same article also states:
"The businessman wants to raise Aberdeen's Union Terrace Gardens to street level and create a civic square."
A media quote picked at random clearly shows that it has invariably been perceived as Sir Ian's project.
"Back my vision for the city or lose £50m, Sir Ian warns" P&J 14/04/2010
So exactly whose vision is it then, Sir Ian?
"What is referred to as 'my vision' is in fact the vision, aspiration and hopes of many, many Aberdonians for the future economic and civic wellbeing of our city and region as North Sea oil winds down." BBC20/4/10
Excuse me, I don't think so.
AGCC: "Fiction: The City Garden Project will destroy the only green space in the city. Fact: It will create new, bigger, greener and more attractive gardens. It is about gardens and open, distinct spaces on different levels, using the natural slopes, for all sorts of activities."
The development will destroy the existing Gardens and according to the technical feasibility study, all 78 mature trees including the old elms will be chopped down. It is hard to accept that the new "City Garden" could ever support mature trees on the existing scale.
AGCC: "Fiction: It will destroy our history and heritage. Fact: Wherever possible, the project will preserve and enhance our history and heritage."
This is the most disingenuous of all the 'myths' in the document. The first draft of the design brief for the City Squarecalls for a …
"21st century contemporary garden"
…to be built in place of the Victorian park. Union Terrace Gardens was planned by Alexander Marshall Mackenzie, who also designed many of the surrounding buildings including the Art Gallery. If Union Terrace Gardens feel as if they belong, this is the reason why. The city square WILL destroy a key part of our history and heritage.
AGCC: "Fiction: Aberdeen City Council is selling off public land for this project. Fact: The land involved will remain in public ownership."
This is misleading as it doesn't explain the whole picture. The land will most likely remain with the Council for the time being. However, the ground will probably be leased for a long period, 125 years has been suggested. A lease-hold on this time-scale while technically not ownership, is nevertheless a significant property deal. Any structure on the land, including the so-called City Garden, will not be publically owned. This will belong to the private company or trust if they get planning permission.
AGCC: "Fiction: Aberdeen City Council is spending money it cannot afford on this project, money that could be better spent elsewhere. Fact: Aberdeen City Council has not allocated any revenue expenditure to the City Garden Project, over the past year."
We know that considerable Council officer time has been allocated to work spent on the project. We do not know if the City Garden Project intends to reimburse the Council for this or not. ACC minutes show that the Council lawyers have not yet signed off the relevant project agreement that would allow this to happen.
AGCC: "Fiction: The City will be taking on-board future liabilities relating to the construction and operation of the City Garden. Fact: The City has agreed to consider a TIF scheme to provide public sector funding for the project. This will involve the City borrowing funds to invest in the project. The project will stimulate new business investment and generate additional extra economic activity in the area, resulting in an increase in the amount of business rates collected in future years. This will be used to repay the loan plus the interest charges."
Doh! – "Fiction: The City will be taking on-board future liabilities" but then we are told "This will involve the City borrowing funds to invest in the project".
The Council are £562M in debt and cannot afford any more borrowing for anything. As has been explained on these pages before by Mick Miller, the version of TIF suggested for the City Square Project involves major financial risk. If the amount of business rates does not increase sufficiently to pay back the loan, then the Council get left holding the baby.
AGCC: "Fiction: The majority of Aberdeen public has voted against redeveloping Union Terrace Gardens. Fact: 11,000 people (less than 10% of the population) participated in the public consultation which revealed that just over half were against the proposal. Many of those were basing their decision on misinformation. The majority indicated a need for change and for the location to be more attractive and accessible."
This is probably the most outrageous of the so-called myths. A public consultation was held, the public voted No by a significant majority and it was ignored. The public were told that their votes would count. Even Sir Ian Wood acknowledged this in an interview as can be seen on an STV located on Youtube.
""The citizens of Aberdeen… will have the right to choose. There will be full consultation, it's coming to the end of it now and they will decide. And that's democracy in operation. That's great."
http://video.stv.tv/bc/news-l2-gardens-190210/?redirect=no
The scale of participation in the consultation was significant. ACSEF, who helped set up the consultation, noted:
"11,943 people went on to submit formal responses that have been recorded in the statistics. This is a huge response rate when compared to similar style consultations. For example, the Edinburgh Tram consultation had just under 3,500 direct responses."
When, later ACSEF discussed the results of the consultation at a board meeting onthe 22d March 2010, they discussed how to frame the result of the consultation as a favourable outcome for the city square in spite of the No vote:
"If views are roughly split there is an opportunity to say that although the public has spoken this is only in relatively small numbers. Those wishing to see the status quo are in the minority compared to those who wish to see change such as updating and modernising the gardens."
http://www.acsef.co.uk/uploads/reports/21/22%20March%2010.doc
The statement that the majority indicated a need for change is misleading, the majority said no to the City Square Project and did not endorse it.
If the public were misled during the consultation, who was responsible for the misinformation? Where did these myths come from?
"It is now acknowledged by all involved that the absence of a reference design was a fundamental flaw in the consultation. The consultation asked if people supported the project or not but the common perception was that the conceptual illustrations, based on the technical study, represented a final design. Many based their decision on not liking what they believed was a final design."
http://thecitygardenproject.com/background.asp
The proponents of the City Square do not accept that they lost the consultation fairly. They cannot believe that the public cogently preferred either the Peacock scheme or the preservation of the existing gardens to a modern city square. But this is what happened.
AGCC: "Fiction: It will be a flat, concrete square. Fact: This is not the case. The design teams have been given a very clear brief that new gardens and space which will have street level access from all four sides will use the existing topography of the site to provide a unique, dramatic and creatively landscaped setting to better reveal and blend with the surrounding historic architecture."
OK guys, explain to me how you can "raise the level of the Gardens to that of the surrounding streets" (the Council's words not mine) and use the existing topography to any significant extent? So where did the idea of a unique and dramatic setting come from?
Here is the description of the existing Gardens as noted in the City Centre Development Framework:
They have a "topography which provides a unique and dramatic setting for the surrounding historic townscape and bridges and an essential component of the identity of the City Centre. "
I suspect that this is just the start of a large PR campaign to sell the concept of the "City Garden Project" to the Aberdeen Public. It will have only a limited impact. Aberdonians are highly educated and can think for themselves. They can make their own mind up about what they want the city centre to look like, whether it is the existing Gardens or a city square at street level. They are smart enough to see what is plausible and what isn't.
Posted by Fred at Aberdeen Voice at 02:27	Tagged with: Aberdeen, ACSEF, Agenda, Architects, Architectural, Board, Brief, Business, Centre, Chamber, Citizens, City, Commerce, Company, Competition, Concourse, Conference, Consultation, Contemporary, Council, Councillors, Debt, Democracy, Democratic, Denburn, Design, Development, Elm, Enterprise, Executive, Exhibition, Finance, Garden, Gardens, Grampian, Green, Group, Implementation, Infrastructure, Land, Level, Majority, Malcolm, Mature, Meeting, Mike Shepherd, Minutes, Monitoring, Myth, Park, Peacock Visual Arts, Planning, Project, Public, Reading, Risk, Scheme, Sir Ian Wood, Street, Terrace, TIF, Trees, Trust, Underground, Union, Victorian, Vision
In Town Without My Car Day – Not This Year
Aberdeen City, Articles, Community, Environment, Information, Opinion No Responses »
By Richard Pelling.
In Town Without My Car Day takes place every September in cities across Europe (and beyond) is an event designed to promote awareness of alternatives to the car for accessing city centres and serves to promote sustainable transport that can help reduce pollution in the urban environment. It forms an element of European Mobility Week – but will we see In Town Without My Car Day in Aberdeen this year? NO.
http://www.mobilityweek.eu/-Introduction-to-EMW-
'What about Getabout's Belmont Bike Festival ?', you say – well; few would consider that an ITWMC Day and the sorry tale of how this event came to be held onBelmont Street serves to highlight Aberdeen City Council's commitment to sustainable transport and the environment.
http://www.get-about.com/news_full.asp?id=167&curpage=&search=clear&section=news
For background, lets consider Report EPI/11/140
http://committees.aberdeencity.gov.uk/mgConvert2PDF.aspx?ID=13852&txtonly=1
This was presented at the Aberdeen City Council Enterprise, Planning & Infrastructure (EP&I) Committee Meeting on 24th May 2011, which suggested thatAberdeen host an ITWMC event in 2011 and requested that Union Terrace be the venue :
"Union Terrace remains the optimum location given the nature of the space required, the potential to use Union Terrace Gardens for some elements, the visibility of the event and the significant footfall that will be attracted and the fact that the Council already has special event temporary traffic management measures in place for the regular closing of Union Terrace for the International Street Market, and members of the public and transport operators are familiar with such diversions."
Sounds great – Union Terrace is, of course, regularly closed for the commercial streetmarket that runs Friday – Sunday, so there should surely be no issues with closing it to hold this important one day environmental event and the proximity of Union Terrace Gardens gives extra space for say, cycling demonstrations, discussions of the visionary proposals for a Denburn Woonerf etc.
http://otheraberdeen.blogspot.com/2011/04/woonerf-for-denburn-valley-proposal.html
Union Terrace is also ideal as it is itself part of National Cycle Route 1 which in addition to being a popular commuter route in town, runs all the way from Dover to John o' Groats (then on to Orkney and Shetland via the ferry). Sounds like it should be a done deal, but, EPI/11/140 goes on to say :
"Should the Committee feel that the impact on the road network and the travelling public will be such that they cannot support such an event on Union Terrace, officers will instead initiate proceedings to hold a smaller-scale event on Belmont Street on Saturday 17th September (although September 24th is the preferred date for the event, Belmont Street is hosting the Aberdeen Country Fair that day)."
So if the "optimum location" at Union Terrace – which can be shut on a weekday and all weekend for the street market – can't be used the event will be held on Belmont Street … but not on the ideal date as that street is already closed for a regular street market then.
In fact, not only is Belmont Street already pedestrian-dominated (so it's hardly a major concession to close it for a day), the council's website notes that Belmont Street will be "closed at regular intervals throughout 2011" – indeed 24th September, 29th October, 26th November, 3rd, 10th, 17th & 24th December are already listed (no mention of 17th September yet though ??).
This point is noted in the original report which states :
"Although this would not strictly qualify as an In Town Without My Car Day event, as it would take place on a predominantly pedestrianised street, and would be of a significantly lesser scale, the space available should be such that some of the proposed attractions could still take place and the event should still be visible enough to attract a large number of visitors."
Yes indeed, having the event on Belmont Streetwould not constitute a true ITWMC event.
In fact, looking at Section 4 of EPI/11/140 we see just how little commitment to the event there is. In Section 4.1 we read
"the closure of Union Terrace will involve the temporary rerouting of motor vehicles"
Well yes, isn't that the whole point of closing off a street FOR ONE DAY a year?
"Public transport operators have been consulted on this proposal and they have significant concerns, stating the location is inopportune because of the disruption this will cause to bus services"
Disruption? That's rich coming from First Aberdeen – look how they just closed the Bridge of Don Park & Ride site from 5th – 10th September. On another note, do you think bus operators want people to get into the habit of cycling into town?
(4.2) "The closure of Belmont Street would have minimal impact on traffic movements as vehicular access to Belmont Street is restricted and no public transport services use the street".
(5.6) "… Closing the road on a weekend day should also limit any inconvenience to commuters and businesses."
The minutes of the EP & I Meeting of 24th May 2011,record that the committee resolved:
"to support Aberdeen City's participation in the European Mobility Week and In Town Without My Car Day 2011" – though evidently just as long as it didn't inconvenience them too much! They also resolved to "instruct officers to initiate proceedings to close Belmont Street for a smaller scale event on Saturday, 17 September, and that the Head of Planning and Sustainable Development clarify whether this would still meet the requirements for participation in the European Mobility Week and In Town Without My Car Day 2011".
http://committees.aberdeencity.gov.uk/mgConvert2PDF.aspx?ID=15637
So we end up with the Belmont Bike festival.
I hope the event is a great success but think it could have been so much more. Keeping cars off what is an effectively pedestrianised street for a few hours on a Saturday really sums up Aberdeen City Councils level of commitment to the whole notion of cycling as a form of urban transport.
Posted by Fred at Aberdeen Voice at 23:57	Tagged with: Aberdeen, Belmont, Bike, Car, City, Closed, Committee, Council, Country, Cycle, Cycling, Day, Denburn, Development, Enterprise, Environment, European, Fair, Festival, Health, Infrastructure, International, Market, Meeting, Minutes, Mobility, National, Planning, Richard Pelling, Roads, Route, Street, Sustainable, Terrace, Town, Traffic, Transport, Union, Week
Aberdeen Council: Where's The Brief ?
An update on the Council – and non-council designs on Union Terrace Gardens by Mike Shepherd
Six architects are busy designing a modern square and a subsurface concourse for the proposed development of Union Terrace Gardens. The public can expect to see these designs in early October. The architects have been given a design brief by the project implementation team for the City Garden Project, telling them what it is they are expected to design.
Only part of the brief has been made public; most of our councillors still have not been fully informed as to what the architects are being asked to do with our public, open, green space.
Yet, the intention had been for the councillors to sign off the design brief, but this never happened. Councillors are informed about the City Garden Project in a series of meetings for a group called the Project Monitoring Board. The minutes of the meetings are posted on the council website. The April minutes state:
"MRC (Malcolm Reading Company – the company managing the competition) will produce a comprehensive design brief and this will be submitted to Council on 29 June 2011, for ratification, before being issued to the short listed companies."
Two months later, the June minutes stated:
"Mr Brough informed the group that the project management group had met on Monday the 6th June and had discussed and also amended a draft of the brief that Malcolm Reading has written up. The final brief will go to council on the 29th of June for noting. Mr Brough informed the group that the brief for the design didn't go into much detail and may seem vague as the brief needed to allow some leeway and not be too prescriptive to the architects."
This document was provided to councillors and gave some vague details as to what was expected of the architects including a specification for " a contemporary 21st century garden". I was present at the Council meeting on 29 June and the design brief was never discussed. There was a lengthy debate on allowing smoking in homeless accommodation and that was more or less it. I asked the council executive why the design brief had not come up. I received this reply on 3 July, just after the council meeting:
"I reported to the Project Monitoring Group what was intended at the time of the meeting. However, it was subsequently decided, by members involved in determining the Agenda for Council meetings, that there was no need to obtain Council approval for this and that it should go to Council as an attachment to the normal quarterly City Garden Project Bulletin report.
"Also, the brief still has to be finalised, by the addition of various technical annexes, before being issued to short-listed companies on 21 July."
This makes it clear that the brief had not been completed by the time of the council meeting on 29 June, and that 'members' had pulled the item from the agenda. The document provided to councillors was not a finalised version. I wrote an open letter to councillors criticising the decision not to allow councillors to ratify the design brief. https://aberdeenvoice.com/2011/07/an-open-letter-to-our-councillors-city-garden-project/
"You have now lost control over the City Garden Project. A non-elected body has now made decisions as to what our city centre should look like. They have decreed that the Denburn should have a "contemporary 21st century garden", not you. It is this body that is also deciding what the large underground concourse should be used for. If conference and exhibition facilities are to be provided, then this will clearly have implications for the future of the Aberdeen Exhibition and Conference Centre at the Bridge of Don. However, this is not a decision that you will have any control over unless you turn down the city square plans."
The public should be extremely worried about the loss of democratic control over the City's assets. The public was ignored when they voted against the City Square in a public consultation last year, now the powers given to our councillors are being bypassed too."
This was repeated in a letter in the Scotsman and later partly republished by Private Eye. The result was a major row in the council chambers, which still has not died down yet. Some councillors and council officials were very upset at the statement that councillors had lost control over the City Garden Project. Others were annoyed that they had not been allowed to debate the design brief. Labour Councillor Willie Young asked a series of questions at this week's Council meeting.
http://committees.aberdeencity.gov.uk/ieListDocuments.aspx?MId=1972
One of the questions was:
"To ask the Chief Executive if it is normal for third parties who currently do not own, lease or have any pecuniary property rights over a public asset such as Union Terrace Gardens to actively promote, encourage architectural design briefs on an asset they currently do not own, lease or have any pecuniary right over?"
The Chief Executive replied to this as follows:
"No. Any party does so at their own financial risk. However, the Council by virtue of their decision of May 2010 and those of subsequent meetings have noted and encouraged the course of action undertaken by the City Gardens Trust."
The following request was also made:
"Council agrees that in order to provide proper scrutiny over an area of land currently under the City Council's direct control, and to ensure that no citizen or citizens of Aberdeen can accuse the Council of "losing control" over the City Garden Project, as well as to ensure beyond reasonable doubt that there will be a local democratic audit of plans for an area of the city centre that many Aberdonians care passionately about, Council undertakes without delay to determine a design brief to be provided to architects which meets the requirements of the citizens of Aberdeen as approved by elected members, the democratically elected guardians of this fine city."
This was not debated at the Council meeting on Wednesday. However, I'm told it will come up for discussion at a later Enterprise, Planning and Infrastructure sub-committee meeting.
I would ask councillors to stand up and assert themselves on this issue. You are our elected representatives. There should be local democratic control over our public open green space, its function and its utility. It's not up to a bunch of businessmen and their friends to decide what our city centre should look like. Nobody voted for them.
Posted by at 22:49	Tagged with: Aberdeen, Agenda, Architects, Architectural, Board, Brief, Centre, Citizens, City, Company, Competition, Concourse, Conference, Consultation, Contemporary, Council, Councillors, Democratic, Denburn, Design, Development, Enterprise, Executive, Exhibition, Garden, Gardens, Group, Implementation, Infrastructure, Malcolm, Meeting, Minutes, Monitoring, Planning, Private Eye, Project, Public, Reading, Terrace, Trust, Underground, Union


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Arts + Culture » Culture
Dal's free-lab builds on real life
Dalhousie architecture department's annual free-lab projects brings students out of the classroom and into the community.
by Jessica Linzey
Earth brothers Dal architecture students make a rammed-earth wall.	photo Jessica Linzey
In the summer of 2004, a group of Dalhousie architecture students set up shop in Cheticamp where, under the guidance of a few profs and in collaboration with the local community, they spent two weeks designing and building a permanent outdoor children's theatre. Le Theatre Petit Cercle went on to win a handful of prestigious architecture awards and, in the process, became one of the most talked-about projects to emerge from the school's annual free-lab exercise.
Richard Kroeker was one of the professors who led the Cheticamp theatre build. Another of his projects, the Murdena Marshall Meeting Hall in Eskasoni, took three years and the involvement of many students to get from initial design to completion. This year, it will be showcased in the Venice Biennale Architecture Exhibition. Using innovative and appropriate building materials and techniques, these projects, says Kroeker, "show how small-budget ideas can make itin the world of high architecture. We've taken undervalued material and added value by design."
Marking the end of the summer academic term, free labs allow students to trade the confines of the studio in for a full-scale building experience and to learn how those lines on the drawing board relate to three-dimensional structures in the real world. Last summer, a dozen students worked with visiting professor Peter Sassenroth (the German architect behind Berlin's Chapel of Reconciliation) on a rammed-earth bicycle shed in a north end backyard---a study to determine how an ancient building technique would stand up to harsh maritime weather. Work on this year's projects begins within the next week. Some, such as the Spencer's Island outdoor cinema, are community-based. Others, such as professor Susan Molesky's Marsh Instrument, are more experimental in nature.
Over the next two weeks, Molesky will be asking students to build a landscape installation, in response to the natural marshland environment of Grand Pre, currently campaigning for UNESCO world heritage designation. A recent recruit to the Dal faculty, Molesky---responsible for last year's urban park beside the Salvation Army on Gottingen Street---cites the Cheticamp free lab as what initially attracted her to Dalhousie. "There's nothing better for the students than to actually build something. It's invaluable to their next steps as architects."
Here in the city, another group of students will design and build a 75-foot-long "community art" (read: graffiti) wall, which will be temporarily installed on the Halifax Common. The project was initially proposed by now-Masters students David Cocks and Mike Cook, in response to the graffiti bylaw passed by the city last year. The wall will experiment with a variety of surfaces---"with a chalkboard on one side to address the playground beside the skate park," says Cocks---and will be monitored and documented as a living work of art over a two-week period, ending August 16.
After being installed, the wall will be left alone and the public invited to use it as a canvas. In the fall, Cocks and Cook hope to find an exhibition space for the piece that results---whether at the university or in a local art gallery.
Meanwhile, Kroeker's students will continue to look at ways of using locally available materials---designing and building a prototype bent-wood construction that takes its inspiration from traditional Mi'kmaq and Algonquin lodges and longhouses. The end result will be a shelter and studio for visiting professors and former students.
"We hope to raise the stakes with each ," Kroeker says. "My first free lab with the school was a birchbark canoe. Another year, we built a structure out of surplus phonebooks. I just want to get these guys building something with as little energy inputs as possible."
A back-country shelter, a concrete sink, a timber frame, a yet-to-be-determined structure on the former Africville site, a mixed planning-and-architecture exercise in Shoal Lake, Manitoba: Whatever form they take, this year's free labs promise to build on a long and valuable tradition of getting students out of the studio and into the community, working with real materials on a limited budget.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Soursop Leaves Tea!!! Cancer FREEEE!!!
Soursop also known as Guyabano here in the Philippines has definitely gained popularity in the last couple of years, after more and more people started testifying about its many beneficial effects on the body. It has been acknowledged as the miracle cure for cancer (through independent studies), but not by the medical industry who still maintains that chemotherapy is the only treatment.
vitamin C, vitamin B1, and vitamin B2.
The first thing you will need to do is to find Soursop tree in your Backyard.
then choose the dark green color which is more effectively than the lightest one.
Get a bowl and put the leaves into it.
Rinse each leaf to avoid some dirt. Repeat the step for 3 times with a new warm water.
Remove the water from the bowl then pour some leaves to a new bowl so we can boil it later.
Fill the bowl with fresh water then leave it for about 5 minutes.
Boil the leaves in medium heat then leave it for about 10-20 minutes.
after boiling the leaves you can now finally drink it!!!


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Marrying a celebrity is not an easy feat. You have to be able to handle the limelight, the paparazzi, the red carpets, and all that jazz.
In order to prepare the ladies for life in the fab lane, the ladies were given a styling and catwalk workshop this week on Enga Veetu Mapillai. They were tasked to pick out a glamorous outfit, do their hair and make up – and then rock the runway.
The 14 girls also had two mentors to guide them in the glamming up process.
Aside from walking the runway, the girls were posed with brain-teasers and questions about real-life situations with Arya.
Even though Arya seemed really impressed with Susanna and Agatha, the winner of the challenge turned out to be Shreya, a video jockey and model from Kerala.
Since Shreya won the challenge and earned the Token of Love, she will be safe from the next elimination.


Internet coding was first developed in the late 1980s and it was around the early 1990s when the internet first became commercially available. Since that time web developers have been working through the complex systems which allow them to navigate this vast web of computerized information. This can include using base Href tags and Href anchors. With this, as with all coding syntax, such as Href tag syntax, is important.
An Href title tag is what allows people to connect with information, and it is for this reason that people will probably continue to use complex internet coding to connect with people across the board. An Href title tag is one of the most significant ways that people get information online connecting between one page and another. This is not to say that these are the only sources that people are likely to use in the future. Tags such as the Href title tag might eventually be replaced by other coding languages.
There are a lot of coding languages in the world which are becoming more popular precisely because they are more adaptable to machinery such as the iPhone. It is for this reason that the Href title tag might not be the end of internet development, but it is a new beginning for it. The internet is going to become increasingly complex in the future but Href title tags still provide a fairly simple format for those who are not extremely familiar with online content engineering.
Using content engineering of this variety is one way that people can reach out to a wider audience in a short period of time. It is for this reason that the Href title tag will probably be significant to many people in the future, even as more advanced languages like Javacript come to dominate the iPhone and other mobile devices.


Тема: How Do They Survive?
Chicken McNuggets. I asked for a half dozen nuggets.
"We only have six, nine, or twelve," was the reply.
So I shook my head and ordered six McNuggets.
MAKES YOU WONDER HOW THESE PEOPLE CAN SURVIVE!!!
beside her car. "Do you need some help?" I asked.
about the batteries it's a long walk."
secretary and said, "I'm almost out of typing paper.
photocopier and proceeded to make five "blank" copies.
cents. Two for a dollar.
daylight changes, not the actual amount of time.
Needless to say, she was very disappointed.
thought the suspect wasn't telling the truth.


text:
L'uomo di casa (Last Man Standing) è una serie televisiva statunitense ideata da Jack Burditt e trasmessa dall'11 ottobre 2011 al 20 maggio 2021. Narra le vicende in chiave comica della famiglia Baxter.

Trama
Mike Baxter, padre di famiglia dalle idee fondamentalmente conservatrici, si trova alle prese con la sua famiglia composta esclusivamente da donne eccetto suo nipote Boyd di due anni, con il quale tenta un'educazione alla vera essenza della mascolinità quasi stereotipata, in contrasto con la volontà di sua figlia Kristin. Lavora in un negozio di articoli da caccia e pesca chiamato Outdoor Man, suo ultimo rifugio per condividere le sue idee da uomo rude e virile con i colleghi e con il suo capo, Ed Alzate.

Vanessa, moglie di Mike è una donna in carriera che con grande complicità del marito tenta di spingere le proprie figlie a dare il meglio. La primogenita, Kristin, è una ragazza madre che è rimasta incinta durante il ballo di fine anno e che per ammortizzare le spese per il figlio Boyd lavora in un fast food. Dotata di grande intelligenza, capisce che nonostante non sia più adolescente ha ancora dei sogni e decide di intraprendere la carriera universitaria. La secondogenita, Mandy, è la classica ragazza dal comportamento superficiale ed apparentemente priva di interessi culturali, appassionata di moda, di TV spazzatura e di musica commerciale. L'ultima delle tre è Eve, un'adolescente di dodici anni appassionata di calcio che grazie al suo comportamento poco femminile si trova ad avere un rapporto di grande intesa con Mike, suo padre.

Personaggi e interpreti

Personaggi principali

 Mike Baxter (stagioni 1-9), interpretato da Tim Allen, doppiato da Michele Gammino.Padre di tre figlie, è il direttore marketing dell'Outdoor Man; un uomo virile, tradizionale, dagli ideali molto conservatori.
 Vanessa Baxter (stagioni 1-9), interpretata da Nancy Travis, doppiata da Roberta Greganti.È la moglie di Mike, di professione geologa, nella quarta stagione deciderà di diventare professoressa di scienze
 Kristin Beth Baxter, interpretata da Alexandra Krosney (stagione 1) e Amanda Fuller (stagioni 2-9), doppiata da Rossella Acerbo.È la figlia più grande di Mike e Vanessa, madre single di un bambino di due anni di nome Boyd. Durante la prima stagione ha una relazione sentimentale con Kyle, un dipendente del padre, poi nella seconda stagione incomincia una relazione con il padre di Boyd il cui nome è Ryan, nella prima stagione fino alla seconda lavorerà come cameriera, nella terza inizierà a fare da manager ad un ristorante, poi inizierà a lavorare con Mike.
 Amanda Elaine "Mandy" Baxter, interpretata da Molly Ephraim (stagioni 1-6) e Molly McCook (ricorrente stagione 7-9), doppiata da Veronica Puccio.È la secondogenita della famiglia Baxter; una ragazza superficiale che cerca sempre di seguire le ultime tendenze del mondo della moda. Il suo sogno è apparire in un reality show, dalla terza stagione aprirà un negozio online di moda
 Eve Baxter (stagioni 1-6; ricorrente stagione 7-9), interpretata da Kaitlyn Dever, doppiata da Lucrezia Marricchi.È la figlia più giovane di Mike e Vanessa, che sembra avere un carattere molto simile a quello del padre, dalla settima stagione inizierà a frequentare la scuola militare
 Kyle Anderson (stagioni 1-9), interpretato da Christoph Sanders, doppiato da Simone Crisari.È un giovane dipendente dell'Outdoor Man. Durante la prima stagione ha una relazione con Kristin, dalla seconda stagione avrà una relazione con Mandy; che poi sposerà nella sesta stagione
 Edward "Ed" Alzate (stagioni 1-9), interpretato da Héctor Elizondo, doppiato da Bruno Alessandro.È il proprietario dell'Outdoor Man, nonché caro amico di Mike, con il quale è in attività da molti anni. Non esita a donare consigli di varia natura, spesso dalla dubbia utilità, ai propri dipendenti.
 Ryan Vogelson, interpretato da Nick Jonas (stagione 1) e Jordy Masterson (stagioni 2-9), doppiato da Roberto Gammino.È il padre di Boyd. Fuggì quando mise incinta Kristin. Nella seconda stagione si riconcilia con Kristin e nella quarta la sposerà.
Boyd Baxter, interpretato da Evan Kruntchev e Luke Kruntchev (stagione 1), Flynn Morrison (stagioni 2-6) e Jet Jurgensmeyer (ricorrente stagione 7-8), doppiato da Luca De Ambrosis.Il figlio di Kristin: Mike si diverte a passare il tempo con suo nipote Boyd, e affettuosamente lo vede come il figlio che non ha mai avuto. Mike e Ryan spesso si scontrano su come dovrebbe essere cresciuto. Boyd ama le attività incoraggiate da suo padre e suo nonno.
Chuck Larabee (stagioni 4-9; ricorrente stagioni 2-3), interpretato da Jonathan Adams, doppiato da Alessandro Ballico.Il vicino di Mike e Vanessa: Chuck è un ex marine americano in pensione e un veterano della prima guerra del Golfo che gestisce un'azienda di sicurezza privata e che in seguito si occupa della sicurezza dell'Outdoor Man. Chuck è un afro-americano, e spesso scherza con Mike sugli stereotipi razziali, e si scambiano regolarmente le frecciate come se non si piacessero l'un l'altro. In realtà, sono buoni amici, nonostante non voglia ammetterlo. Vanessa vede attraverso i loro scambi accesi, spesso dicendo loro di "ottenere una stanza". Chuck è sposato con Carol e hanno un figlio, Brandon, che ha la stessa età di Eve.

Personaggi ricorrenti

 Bud Baxter (stagione 1 e 3-4), interpretato da Robert Forster, doppiato da Angelo Nicotra.
 April (stagione 1 e 3), interpretata da Christina Moore
 Michelle (stagione 1), interpretata da Danielle Bisutti
 Carol Larabee, interpretata da Erika Alexander (stagioni 2-6) e Tisha Campbell-Martin (stagione 7)
 Blanca Alvarez (stagioni 2-4), interpretata da Carla Jimenez
 Cammy Harris (stagioni 2-6), interpretata da Sarah Gilman
 John Baker (stagioni 2-3), interpretato da Jonathan Taylor Thomas, doppiato da Marco Vivio.
 Justin (stagioni 3-4), interpretato da Tye Sheridan, doppiato da Luca Mannocci.
 Andrew (stagione 3), interpretato da Zachary Gordon
 Wendi Gracin (stagioni 3-5), interpretata da Joely Fisher
 Joe Leonard (stagioni 5-9), interpretato da Jay Leno
 Rob (stagione 6), interpretato da Travis Tope

Personaggi secondari
 Octavio, interpretato da Ezequiel Stremiz, doppiato da Luca Mannocci.
 Maria, interpretata da Emma Loewen, doppiata da Vittoria Bartolomei.
 Teresa, interpretata da Robin Roberts, doppiata da Irene Di Valmo.
 Fiona, interpretata da Lauren Tom, doppiata da Federica Bomba.
 Trevor, interpretato da Jordan Black, doppiato da Francesco Fabbri.

Episodi

Produzione
L'8 novembre 2010 la ABC diede un primo via libera al progetto ideato da Jack Burditt, in quel momento noto con il titolo di lavorazione Man Up; confermando la produzione di un episodio pilota il 19 gennaio 2011; quando la serie venne presentata come una nuova sitcom incentrata su «un uomo che cerca di mantenere la sua virilità in un mondo sempre più dominato dalle donne» e assunse il nuovo titolo provvisorio The Last Days of a Man.

Casting

Il casting iniziò il 18 febbraio 2011, quando Tim Allen venne ingaggiato per interpretare il protagonista Mike Baxter. Il 29 marzo venne ingaggiata Nancy Travis, per il ruolo della moglie di Mike, Vanessa; mentre il 30 marzo entrò nel cast anche Hector Elizondo, interprete del capo di Mike, Ed Alzate. Nei giorni seguenti furono ingaggiate anche Kaitlyn Dever, Molly Ephraim e Alexandra Krosney, interprete delle figlie del protagonista: Eve, Mandy e Kristin. Completa il cast principale Christoph Sanders, interprete di Kyle Anderson, giovane dipendente che lavora con Mike.

Il 25 agosto 2011, tra le guest star della prima stagione venne annunciata la presenza di Cassandra Peterson, apparsa nell'episodio dedicato alla festa di Halloween Last Halloween Standing. L'8 novembre Nick Jonas venne ingaggiato per interpretare il ruolo di Ryan, padre naturale del nipote di Mike; mentre il 14 dicembre venne annunciata l'apparizione di Jamie-Lynn Sigler nel ruolo di Gabriella, figlia di Ed Alzate. Il 3 gennaio 2012 venne ingaggiata per interpretare se stessa in un episodio anche Kim Kardashian. Il successivo 3 febbraio vennero ingaggiati invece Robert Forster e Mike Rowe, interpreti rispettivamente del padre e del fratello del protagonista Mike Baxter. Tra le altre guest star della prima stagione sono presenti Kenton Duty, David Anthony Higgins, Steve Talley, Tony Hawk, il pilota Tony Stewart, interprete di se stesso, Frankie Muniz e Christina Moore, interprete di April, sorella di Vanessa.

L'11 giugno 2012, prima dell'inizio della produzione della seconda stagione, venne annunciato che Alexandra Krosney avrebbe abbandonato il cast per ragioni creative. Per sostituirla, il 10 agosto 2012 venne ingaggiata Amanda Fuller; un recasting si svolse anche per il figlio del suo personaggio, Boyd, che nella seconda stagione ha cinque anni, mentre nella prima ne aveva due.

Programmazione
Dopo aver visionato il pilot, il 13 maggio 2011 la rete diede il via libera alla produzione di una prima stagione completa; la serie assunse il titolo definitivo Last Man Standing e debuttò nei palinsesti statunitensi l'11 ottobre 2011. Visti i buoni ascolti registrati dai primi episodi, il successivo 3 novembre la ABC decise di estendere l'ordine iniziale di 13 episodi a 22; poi ulteriormente esteso a 24 nel seguente mese di gennaio. Nel frattempo, per motivi familiari, Jack Burditt aveva ceduto la posizione di showrunner a Kevin Abbott, che a partire dalla stagione successiva avrebbe lasciato il posto a Tim Doyle. L'11 maggio 2012 la ABC rinnovò la serie per una seconda stagione, trasmessa dal successivo 2 novembre. Dopo la trasmissione di soli due episodi della seconda stagione, il 12 novembre la ABC ordinò la creazione di tre sceneggiature aggiuntive, portando così l'ordine da tredici a sedici episodi. Successivamente, il 28 novembre, il network ordinò la creazione di ulteriori due sceneggiature, portando così l'ordine finale a diciotto episodi. Il 13 maggio 2016 la serie viene rinnovata anche per una sesta stagione, andata in onda dal 23 settembre 2016 al 31 marzo 2017. Il 10 maggio 2017, la serie viene cancellata dopo sei stagioni, nonostante fosse la seconda sitcom della ABC più seguita durante la stagione 2016-17.

I primi tentativi di riportare la serie in onda li fece CMT (rete che ha già riportato in onda Nashville, cancellata dalla ABC dopo quattro stagioni), ma l'accordo con la ABC saltò. Il 3 maggio 2018, Allen twittò che un ritorno "potrebbe essere solo una realtà" e ha spinto i sostenitori dello show a "continuare così". Lo stesso giorno, TVLine riferì che la Fox era intenzionata a prendere la serie per la stagione televisiva 2018-2019. L'11 maggio 2018, Fox annunciò ufficialmente di aver ordinato una settima stagione. La settima stagione viene trasmessa negli Stati Uniti dal 28 settembre 2018. Il 19 aprile 2019 Fox ha annunciato il rinnovo per l'ottava stagione, andata in onda sia negli Stati Uniti che in Italia nel 2020. Il 19 maggio 2020 la Fox ha rinnovato la serie per una nona stagione.

In lingua italiana la serie è andata in onda in prima visione in chiaro dal 1º dicembre 2012 sulla rete svizzera RSI LA1, mentre in Italia ha debuttato il 3 dicembre 2012 sul canale satellitare Fox, in contemporanea con la messa in onda svizzera. Dalla terza alla sesta stagione va in onda in prima visione su Fox Comedy; mentre dalla settima, invece, è tornata ad essere trasmessa in prima visione su Fox a poche settimane dalla messa in onda statunitense. In Italia, in chiaro, la serie è trasmessa da Italia 1.

Note

Altri progetti

Collegamenti esterni

Serie televisive ambientate nel Colorado
Serie televisive di 20th Television

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


A handful of Hays CISD athletes took to Austin for the 93rd Clyde Littlefield Texas Relays. Above, Lehman Lobo Bryant Lewis fights to the finish in the high school Boys Division II 100-meter dash. Feature photo, Hays High's Cameron McFadden races down the track in the high school Girls Division II 100-meter hurdles Friday. See full results and more photos online at haysfreepress.com.


text:
Category: Judicial Review
Guest Post: Five Years of Striking NJAC: The Conundrum of Independence of Judiciary
"The constitutional theory of checks and balances is a part of the basic structure of the Indian constitution."
The absolute authority of the Collegium system in matters relating to appointment and transfer of judges of constitutional courts has been debated and questioned for long. The collegium consists of the Chief justice of India (hereinafter CJI) and his four senior-most colleagues, who regulate the matters of judicial appointments to the Supreme Court (or two senior-most colleagues in case of appointment or transfer to High Courts along with the senior-most judge having the concerned High court as his parent court).
Continue reading "Guest Post: Five Years of Striking NJAC: The Conundrum of Independence of Judiciary"
Explained: What is the Ordinance making power of the President?
President of India Ram Kovind
Apart from other executive powers, the Governors and the President have legislative powers with which they can meet certain emergencies. These are laid down separately in two articles of the Constitution that give the President (Article 123) and the Governors (Article 213) the power to promulgate Ordinances when the legislature is not in session. Generally speaking, the power at both levels is the same: Governors and the President, facing the need for 'immediate action', may promulgate Ordinances having the force of legislative Acts, but central or state executive must lay Ordinances before the legislature when it reassembles. Unless approved by both houses, the Ordinance expires six weeks after reassembly. The technique of issuing an ordinance has been devised to enable the executive to meet a sudden situation arising in the country when the Parliament is not in session, and which cannot be dealt with under the ordinary law. (Ambedkar, VIII CAD, page 213) The executive does not need to expound the reasons for promulgating an ordinance and a declaration to that effect in the preamble of the ordinance is sufficient. The executive of England or the USA enjoys no such power.
Continue reading "Explained: What is the Ordinance making power of the President?"


The people we interact with influence us greatly - what we do, what we talk about and how we feel. However, science has found that our mood and behaviour is also influenced strongly by people we don't know. How is it that we are so strongly affected by people we've never met? And what can we do to maintain a healthier social network? This article by New Scientist magazine has the answers.
The following article 'Three Degrees of Contagion' was published in New Scientist magazine, edition 2689. It has been reproduced here for your information and enjoyment.
If you live in the northern hemisphere, this is probably not your favourite month. January tends to dispirit people more than any other. We all know why: foul weather, post-Christmas debt, the long wait before your next holiday, quarterly bills, dark evenings and dark mornings. At least, that is the way it seems. For while all these things might contribute to the way you feel, there is one crucial factor you probably have not accounted for: the state of mind of your friends and relatives. Recent research shows that our moods are far more strongly influenced by those around us than we tend to think. Not only that, we are also beholden to the moods of friends of friends, and of friends of friends of friends - people three degrees of separation away from us who we have never met, but whose disposition can pass through our social network like a virus.
Indeed, it is becoming clear that a whole range of phenomena are transmitted through networks of friends in ways that are not entirely understood: happiness and depression, obesity, drinking and smoking habits, ill-health, the inclination to turn out and vote in elections, a taste for certain music or food, a preference for online privacy, even the tendency to attempt or think about suicide. They ripple though networks "like pebbles thrown into a pond", says Nicholas Christakis, a medical sociologist at Harvard Medical School in Boston, who has pioneered much of the new work.
At first sight, the idea that we can catch the moods, habits and state of health not only of those around us, but also those we do not even know seems alarming. It implies that rather than being in charge of where we are going in life, we are little more than backseat drivers, since most social influence operates at a subconscious level.
"We need not be alarmed. Social influence is mostly a good thing."
But we need not be alarmed, says Duncan Watts, a sociologist at Columbia University, New York. "Social influence is mostly a good thing. We should embrace the fact that we're inherently social creatures and that much of who we are and what we do is determined by forces that are outside the little circle we draw around ourselves." What's more, by being aware of the effects of social contagion we may be able to find ways to counter it, or use it to our own benefit. "There's no doubt people can have some control over their networks and that this in turn can affect their lives," says Christakis.
To get an idea of what is going on, take Christakis's findings on the spread of happiness, which were published last month. His team looked at a network of several thousand friends, relatives, neighbours and work colleagues who form part of the Framingham Heart Study, an ongoing multigenerational epidemiological survey they has tracked risk factors in cardiovascular disease among residents of Framingham, Massachusetts, since 1948. The found that happy people tend to be clustered together, not because they naturally orientate towards each other, but because of the way happiness spreads through social contact over time, regarding of people's conscious choice of friends (BMJ, DOI: 10.1136/bmj.a2338).
Christakis also found that a person's happiness is dependent not only on the happiness of an immediate friend but – to a lesser degree – on the happiness of their friend's friend, and their friend's friend's friend. Furthermore, someone's chances of being happy increase the better connected they are to happy people, and for that matter the better connected their friends and family. "Most people will not be surprised that people with more friends are happier, but what really matters is whether those friends are happy," says Christakis.
They also discovered that the effect is not the same with everyone you know. How susceptible you are to someone else's happiness depends on the nature of your relationship with them. For example, if a good friend who lives within a couple of kilometres of you suddenly becomes happy, that increases the chances of you becoming happy by more than 60 per cent. In contrast, for a next-door neighbor the figure drops to about half that, and for a nearby sibling about half again. Surprisingly, a cohabiting partner makes a difference of less than 10 per cent, which coincides with another peculiar observation about some social epidemics: that they spread far more effectively via friends of the same gender.
All this poses a key question: how can something like happiness be contagious? Some researchers think one of the most likely mechanisms is empathetic mimicry. Psychologists have shown that people unconsciously copy the facial expressions, manner of speech, posture, body language and other behaviours of those around them, often with remarkable speed and accuracy. This then causes them, through a kind of neural feedback, to actually experience the emotions associated with the particular behavior they are mimicking.
Barbara Wild and her colleagues at the University of Tubingen, Germany, have found that the stronger the facial expression, the stronger the emotion experienced by the person observing it (Psychiatry Research, vol 102, p 109). She believes this process is hard-wired, since it acts so rapidly and automatically.
Others have suggested it works through the action of mirror neurons, a type of brain cell thought to fire both when we perform an action and when we watch someone else doing it, though it is not clear whether the mimicking would cause the neurons to fire or whether their firing would trigger the mimicry. What is clear is that unconscious imitation allows people to "feel a pale reflection of their companions' actual emotions" and even "feel themselves into the emotional lives of others", says Elaine Hatfield at the university of Hawaii, Honolulu, whose review of the latest research will appear next April in The Social Neuroscience of Empathy.
"There is plenty of evidence for emotional contagion."
There is plenty of evidence for emotional contagion outside the lab. In 2000, Peter Totterdell at the University of Sheffield, UK, found a significant association between the happiness of professional cricketers during a match and the average happiness of their teammates, regardless of other factors such as whether the match was going in the teams' favour (Journal of Applied Psychology, vol 85, p848). He found a similar effect among nurses and office workers. It has also been shown that if a college student suffers from mild depression their roommate will become progressively more depressed the longer they live with them and that emotional displays by bank employees have a direct impact on the moods of their customers.
We can see, then, how a phenomenon such as happiness might pass quickly though a social network and infect clusters of friends and relatives. What none of these studies explains, however, is why the strength of the infection varies according to who is passing it to whom. Why are we so much more strongly affected by the happiness of a nearby friend than a nearby sibling? Why does a next-door neighbour have a significant impact, yet someone living a few tens of metres away on the same block have none?
Two factors appear crucial: the frequency of social contact, and the strength of the relationship. This is not too surprising: we know that emotional contagion requires physical proximity. It is also likely that the closer we feel to someone, the more empathetic we are towards them, and the more likely we are to catch their emotional state. However, how these two factors play out in day-to-day interaction is uncertain. What is also unclear – because it has never been properly tested – is the extent to which emotions can propagate through virtual networks, where the opportunity for physiological mimicry is much reduced.
So much for emotions – what about other phenomena that we unwittingly pick up, and pass on through our social networks? In 2007, Christakis's team, again tracking members of the Framingham Heart Study, found that obesity is transmitted in a similar way to happiness. Your risk of gaining weight increases significantly when your friends gain weight, and it is also affected by the weight of people beyond your social horizon. "Obesity appears to spread through social ties," Christakis says. Again, how likely you are to catch it depends on who you are interacting with: after controlling for factors such as difference in socioeconomic status, the researchers found that an individual's chances of becoming obese increased by 57 per cent if one of their friends became obese, 40 per cent if a sibling did and 37 per cent if their spouse did, irrespective of age (The New England Journal of Medicine, vol 357, p370).
"Obesity spread via a different mechanism to happiness."
However, neighbours have no influence, and how far away you live from a friend counts for little, which implies that obesity spreads via a different mechanism to happiness. Rather than behavioural mimicry, the key appears to be the adoption of social norms. In other words, as I see my friends gain weight, this changes my idea of what an acceptable weight is. One similarity with happiness is that friends and relatives have a far greater influence if they are of the same gender. While it is not evident why that should matter for emotional contagion, norms of body size are clearly gender-specific: "Women look at other women, men look at other men," says Christakis. This could also help explain the epidemics of eating disorders reported among groups of schoolgirls in recent decades.
The spread of a social norm appears to account for another of Christakis's findings: that when people stop smoking, the usually do so along with whole clusters of friends, relatives and social contacts. As more people quit, it becomes the socially acceptable thing to do, and those who choose to continue smoking are pushed to the periphery of the network. In this case, people are most strongly influenced by those closest to them – if your spouse quits, it is 67 per cent more likely that you will too. Your work colleagues can also have an effect, particularly if you are in a small, close-knit workplace; and more highly educated friends influence one another more than less educated (The New England Journal of Medicine, vol 358, p 2249).
While the mechanism of social contagion varies depending on the phenomenon being spread, in many cases the dynamics are very similar. For example, Christakis has found that with happiness, obesity and smoking habits, the effect of other people's behaviour carries to three degrees of separation and no further. He speculates that this could be the case with most or perhaps all transmissible traits. Why three degrees? One theory is that friendship networks are inherently unstable because peripheral friends tend to drop away. "While your friends are likely to be the same a year from now, your friends of friends of friends of friends are likely to be entirely different people," says Christakis.
Answering that should help us understand more about the "collective intelligence of social networks, which some researchers liken to the flocking of birds – the decisions to quit smoking, for example, is no more an isolated move that the decision by a bird in the flock to fly to the left. Sociologists and others are using mathematical models to test these dynamics to try to understand better what triggers the spread of behaviours. Duncan Watts at Columbia University has shown that adding localised social groups with certain ideas or behaviours can lead to the ideas cascading across entire global networks. This contradicts the notion – promoted by the author Malcolm Gladwell in The Tipping Point and others – that social epidemics depend on a few key influential individuals for whom everyone else takes their cue. It doesn't ring true, argues Watts, because such "influentials" typically interact with only a few people. The key for the spread of anything, he says, from happiness to the preference for a particular song, is a critical mass of interconnected individuals who influence one another.
"Is there any way to mitigate the effects of these social forces?"
Is there any way to mitigate the effects of such powerful and pervasive social forces? It is unlikely we can ever escape social influence entirely, even if we wanted to. "Even when you're aware of it, you're probably still susceptible," says Watts. Still, being aware can help, especially when we are seeking to avoid undesirable behaviours or adopt positive habits. We can be choosy about new friends, seeking out people whose lifestyles we aspire to: if you want to lose weight, for example, join a running club and – most importantly – socialise with its members.
Actually cutting ties with old friends might be a bit drastic, though perhaps spending less time with those whose traits we do not wish to share would be a good idea – lazy people, perhaps, or those inclined to negative thinking. And beware those who hang out with such people even if they do not display their views or behaviours – remember the three degrees of contagion rule. Finally, if you really cannot avoid spending time with certain people whose behaviours or emotional state you would rather not take on board (certain relatives at family gatherings, perhaps), you could always try repressing your natural inclination to mimic their body language and facial expressions, and so limit the contagion effect – though be prepared for them to instinctively cool towards you as a result.
What this game plan amounts to is a kind of subtle social reorientation. We will always be vulnerable to what those around us are doing, so as far as possible make sure you are with the right people. Remember the new adage: we are who we hang out with.
1. Choose your friends carefully.
2. Choose which of your existing friends you spend the most time with. For example, hang out with people who are upbeat, or avoid couch potatoes.
3. Join a club whose members you would like to emulate (running, healthy cooking), and socialise with them.
4. If you are with people whose emotional state or behaviours you could do without, try to avoid the natural inclination to mimic their facial expressions and postures.
5. Be aware at all times of your susceptibility to social influence – and remember that being a social animal is mostly a good thing.
To read articles written by Mike, please click here.
"I really would like to say a huge big thank you for the workshop you provided at the Gough Group Accountants' conference. The workshop was interactive, engaging and full of fun as well as being very informative and educational. It covered all of the topics requested by the Gough Group, and more, with real examples, problem solving and team building activities. The feedback I received from those who participated, was 100% positive, and I am sure all who attended will have to agree that Mike's methodology and delivery on all topics was most impressive. I will have no hesitation to invite Mike to our conferences and training days in the future."


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This online course is a primer on negotiating for conflict and dispute resolution. It aims at providing participants with the fundamental understanding and tools for complex negotiations under conflict situations. This course is also the first in a series and focuses on understanding conflict, procedures for dispute resolution, tools for negotiating under conflict situations as well as effective communication and decision making. This course emphasises learning by doing.


Finding a metered parking space in Boston is an absolute nightmare. There are layers of street signs that may actually conflict. In addition there are one-way streets, dead-end streets, construction sites, detours, scheduled street-cleaning days, traffic congestion, events that usurp parking rules, neighborhood parking restrictions, accidents, narrow streets, aggressive drivers, and many other obstacles that make the Boston driving experience truly unique.
The paramount rule is to take the MBTA whenever possible. There are few areas of the city that contain unoccupied metered parking spaces. The Financial District may have spaces after 4 pm for instance, but some of the streets do not allow metered parking after 4 pm (read the signs!). The North End may have a bunch of parking spaces available, but local residents with a sticker on their car are allowed to park there! The parking regulations vary, but most often the meters must be paid until 8 pm (Saturdays until 6 pm or later). Finally, you cannot feed the meters for more than 2 hours in most places, and can get fined for even paying the meter.
Thus, a list of parking garages is provided here. There are many garages in the city. The Haymarket garage is very popular near North Station. The Boston Harbor Garage is located right along the waterfront. The Post Office Square and Langham Hotel garages are very popular in the Financial District. In east Back Bay are the Boston Common and Park Square garages. In west Back Bay are parking garages at Copley Place and Prudential Center, as well as some of the hotels.
Some areas of Boston have electronic meters in the center of a bank of parking spaces. Vehicle owners must pay via a central meter, and then take the printed slip and place it on the driver's side window facing out. The slip has a timestamp and other information, so make sure it faces out for the meter enforcement person to read.
The only parking deals in Boston at some garages are "early-bird specials" (out early after parking overnight or in early on weekdays), and weekend all-day discounted pricing.
Parking in Boston is very expensive, and the fines can be even more expensive. There are violations for expiring at a meter, feeding a meter, parking in a local resident spot, handicap spot, fire hydrant, handicap zone or ramp, event or temporarily reserved spot, etc. The Boston Transportation Department (BTD) is very efficient, and you may return to your parking spot on the street and discover your vehicle has been towed. The city impound lot is located in South Bay, and, fair warning, it's probably one of the largest vehicle storage lots in Boston!


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text:
Floward arrives in Egypt
Business Corporate News
The service will be launched in Cairo, Egypt on August 1st 2021
Published: August 15, 2021 14:00 Gulf News Report
Image Credit: Supplied
Floward, the go-to online flowers and gifts delivery destination in the MENA region launched its services in Cairo, Egypt on August 1st, making it its 8th country and 22nd city to launch in.
For starters, Floward launched its operations in Cairo only and will gradually expand to other cities and regions within the country.
Floward CEO Mr. Abdulaziz B. Al Loughani said: "After cementing our position as the go-to destination for flowers and gifts in the GCC and London - UK, we are now very excited to expand further into the MENA region starting with Egypt. We are always looking into expanding into large markets so we can reap the benefits of our major efforts put towards growing Floward and servicing our wide customer base. We have great confidence in the Egyptian economy, valued at more than USD350 billion, with the flowers industry estimated at nearly USD300 million. This makes it a very promising and attractive market to launch our services in and to also provide job opportunities for the Egyptian youth and talents."
He added, "Additionally, there is a historic and strong relationship between the GCC countries and Egypt, and their peoples and we are proud to offer them our services and help them share their feelings with their loved ones in Cairo."
Established in 2017, Floward is a full-fledged ecommerce solution that offers prime fresh-cut flowers sourced from the best growers and farmers around the world and arranged locally by a team of florists and designers. Floward also offers cakes, chocolate and perfumes curated by the region's most exciting designers bundled with its flower arrangements and manages the last-mile same-day delivery to ensure the best customer experience.
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// Fill out your copyright notice in the Description page of Project Settings.

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#include "BaseAIController.h"
#include "SimpleAIController.generated.h"

/**
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UCLASS()
class LAB_3_API ASimpleAIController : public ABaseAIController
{
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public:
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    void Tick(float DeltaSeconds) override;

    UPROPERTY(EditAnywhere, Category = Movement)
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    float ChooseDirectionProbeCount;

private:
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    bool TryEscape();
};

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
Home / Transportation / Maritime / Shanghaiing Sailors
Shanghaiing Sailors
A Maritime History of Forced Labor, 1849–1915
Shanghaiing Sailors quantity
SKU: 9780786494514 Categories: History, Maritime, Military History, Transportation Tag: labor
"Shaghaiing," or forcing a man to join the crew of a merchant ship against his will, plagued seafarers the world over between 1849 and 1915. Perpetrators were known as "crimps," and they had no respect for a man's education, social status, race, religion, or seafaring experience. The merchant ships were involved in the opium, tea and gold trades, and the practice was spurred by the opening of the Suez Canal. A major reason for it was a shortage of sailors and the unwillingness of seamen to sail on certain types of ships. They suffered from great deprivations, all for a paltry sum usually squandered during shore leave. Navies and pirates had their own form of shanghaiing called impressment.
This work explores the rich history of shanghaiing and impressment with a focus on victims and also considers the 19th century seafarer and the circumstances that made shanghaiing so lucrative.
Researcher Mark Strecker writes about current and historical events on his website, Mark Strecker's Historical Perspective (markstrecker.com). He lives in Norwalk, Ohio.
Mark Strecker
Bibliographic Info: 45 photos, 8 maps, notes, bibliography, index
Acknowledgments v
1. A Conspiracy of Events 3
2. A Mariner's Life 26
3. Rebellion on the Open Water 46
4. The Crimps and Their Business 63
5. Liberty Days 87
6. Shanghaied! 104
7. Impressment: Shanghaied by a Navy 122
8. The Oysterman Problem 143
9. The Hunt for Whales and Men 159
10. The Struggle to End Shanghaiing 180
"fascinating examination…. Strecker is to be praised for his unyielding sensitivity toward the plight of the maritime labourer…interesting, well-written"—The Northern Mariner/Le marin du nord.
Science and Technology in World History, Volume 4
African American Army Officers of World War I
You're viewing: Shanghaiing Sailors $39.95


WHAT IF YOU ARE WRONG!
1.) Peter walking on the water? - Matt v.24-32. In v. 27, As Yahshua was walking on the water He said I AM! Be not afraid! In the King James it says "It is I "but the Greek says I AM! Yahshua is saying that He is the Father manifested in the flesh, the great I AM! In Job 9: 8 the word says that only the Father treadeth upon the waves of the sea. So, unless Peter is the Father manifested in the flesh, which he is not, he couldn't have walked on the water. Peter stepped out of the boat to walk, but he sunk right away. The other apostles who stayed in the boat were the ones who knew the word and recognized that Yahshua was the Father manifested in the flesh. They are the ones who had faith, in who Yahshua was. That's why Yahshua told Peter that he had little faith and asked him "why did you doubt? He doubted that Yahshua was the great I AM! Think of it, if we are filled with the Spirit of the Father and Peter wasn't filled at that time, why can't we walk on the water? The answer is that we are not Yahshua! Mark, who studied under Peter never recorded this incident.
2.) Baptism in the Name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost- (Matt.28:19).This is the only place in the Word where this phrase is mentioned, concerning water baptism. The book of Matthew was written in Hebrew and Yahshua said to baptize in His Name! This was put in by the Catholic Church, who had the original manuscripts. This is one example where they tried to bring the pagan concept of three persons in deity doctrine into the word. I will talk about the real Trinity later in and my book "Demystifying the Trinity" explains the real doctrine of the Trinity in detail. Everywhere in the word about a baptismal formula it mentions that it should be done in the Name of Yahshua :( Acts 2:38, 8:16 and 10:48-(Yahshua in the Greek)). In Col. 3:17 the word says that "whatever you do in word or deed, do it all in the Name of Yahshua." When I baptize people I baptize them in and into the Name of Yahshua. When they go down in the water the name of Yahshua buries their flesh and they die to their fleshly desires that are against the word. When they come up they go right into the Name of Yahshua with all the power that the Name represents. Yahshua comes from the Name Yahweh which means that He is the great I AM. Yahweh is an action verb which means that when you use His name He actively gets involved your situation.
4.) Sabbath and Sunday- Please see my message on the Sabbath below.
5.) Christmas, New Years, Halloween, Easter, Valentines Day are all pagan holidays that are not contained in the word. Satan came into our lives when we started to celebrate these days. Yahshua was born on Passover and rose the Saturday (Sabbath) before that Sunday. Please see my message below on "When was Jesus born, when did he die and when did He rise." Please see my message below on "Pagan Origin of Valentines Day" also. Please learn more about the origin of Christmas by reading my message below on "A season of Strange Miracles." Pagans came up with the ideas of the year starting on January 1 when the bible says that Nisan 1 is the beginning of the year, please click on "Biblical Calendar" on my website and you will see when Nisan 1 is on the Gregorian calendar up to the year 2020. Please see my messages below on each of Yahshua's feast days: Passover, Unleavened Blood, Firstfruits, Pentecost, Feast of Trumpets (Rosh Hashanah), Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur), Feast of Tabernacles, Hanukkah (under "a Season of Special Miracles) and Purim. These Feast Days were instituted by Yahshua, not by man or Satan!
6.) We have to be very careful about terms that we use that we think are bible based but have a pagan heritage. Please see my message below on "the Origin of Names." See where the names "Church, Lord, Bible, etc came from.
7.) Learn that the day according to the word starts at 6:00 A.M., not 12:01 A.M. Please get my book "Noon" by contacting me to help you in this matter.
8.) Where did the Name "Jehovah" come from and why the Father's Name is Yahweh instead. "Hovah" contained in Jehovah means "wicked." Please see the Strong's Concordance "1943, 1943 (Hebrew). Also please read my message below on Yahweh vs. Jehovah.
10. Please see how many people have been hurt and not having the proper mate in their lives by erroneous teaching on divorce and remarriage, by reading my biblically based message on "Divorce and Remarriage" below.
11. Please see my messages on the feast days of YAHWEH and value of celebrating these days, as opposed to the holidays that are satanic in origin. - Passover, Unleavened Bread, Feast of Firstfruits, Pentecost, Feast of Trumpets, Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur), Feast of Tabernacles, Hanukkah, Purim and the New Year (starts on Nisan 1 (See my messages on "New Year 1,2 and3").
Please remember to ask Yahshua to remove traditions that are not in the word so you can keep Satan out of your life and please our Father! Don't let anything prevent you from reading this message and the messages that are mentioned.
Remember, you could be wrong about what you believe!


That is the only question on the minds of large Institutions, Banks, Hedge Funds, Traders, and Investors as the sun slowly rises on Eastern Australia setting up a new trading day, this Thursday 22 January. The European Central Bank, headed by Mario Draghi is tipped to start his form of QE or credit easing (bond buying), historic measures for Europe but apparently under German terms of compliance. There are lots of messy details here, too many to dissect on this forum, but the bottom line is the Euro will be affected, Stock Markets will show some volatility as money will be injected into the banking system to instigate some liquidity for business growth.
All Stock Markets around the world were up today in anticipation of the ECB move. It will be the amount of Drgaghi's proposal that will excite or disappoint the Market players.
The Euro was also up against the Greenback, NZD – Kiwi, the Aussie and especially the Canadian "Loonie" Dollar. The pesky Swiss Franc won the battle against the Euro from Wednesday's trading, still trying to handle the fallout from the SNB decision of letting go the peg of 1.2000. Tourists visiting this spectacular scenic country have just doubled their costs but on the bright side for Swiss citizens, imports, especially food and vegetable will become cheaper.
The most surprising move yesterday came from the beleaguered Canadian Central Bank as they lowered their interest rate 0.25 basis points to 0.75% in the wake of the massive drop in OIL prices during the last 6 months which has been negative for their economic growth. The poor old Canadian Dollar which has taken a beating of late, took a knock-out punch that floored the Loonie against the USD. The pair, USD/CAD opened the day at 1.2111 and closed at 1.2324. No analyst had predicted this move. Tens of thousands of Canadians visit the warmer climes of United States for the winter to escape the frigid ice and snow of their homeland, (the Yanks call them Snowbirds) Guess what, their stay has just got a lot more expensive.
Gold closed the day just a couple of dollars down, but did have a quick rejection around the $1300.00 mark. Silver and OIL were up marginally by days end.
The only important red-tag news today comes from the US session as all eyes around the Investment world will be on Mario Draghi and the ECB as all wait in baited anticipation of their Bond buying program. US Unemployment claims will also be announced at this time to add some more confusion to the process.


The acoustic ceiling was used for a long time as a perfect part of interior decoration. However, it is out of fashion now and when you want to add modern interiors to your homes, you will need to remove old looking acoustic ceiling with the help of professionals. For individuals, it is not easy to remove the acoustic ceiling and only professionals are able to work on such projects at your place. If you also need services of Acoustic removal at your home, you will need to contact a good company offering these services to the clients.
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To speculate about whether Proust was a snob is as superfluous as debating the degree of Joyce's egotism, though we could construct an argument that Proust would have been unfitted to dissect the society of Recherche without a social climber's desire. And Joyce writing in A Portrait that the "artist, like the God of the creation, remains within or behind or beyond or above his handiwork, invisible, refined out of existence, indifferent, paring his fingernails" feels more like his defence of a narcissistic narrator than a personal attitude. Neither quality detracts from the brilliance of either writer, and arguably both characteristics are disproportionally present among writers of the time (or perhaps any time).
Though the two men apparently sat beside each other and later shared a cab home, no written record exists of their encounter, though there is no shortage of biographical speculation about conversations about health and truffles.
This following paragraph is from the Preface that Borges wrote in the first volume of Pleiade series of Œuvres Complètes. Dated Geneva, 19 May 1986, this must be amongst the last texts that Borges wrote. I adore how Borges has discreetly slipped a simple tribute to Joyce into the Keats' 'joy for ever' line. How many readers, I wonder, pass that sentence without spotting the reference.
This book is made up of other books. I am not sure whether a continuous reading is the best solution in this case, it might be more convenient to enter in and out at random as one leafs through the pages of an encyclopedia or of Burton's Anatomy of Melancholia.(…) Eliot wrote that it is less important to know what one wants than what the century wants. He claims this, as if drunk on universal history. Is it necessary for me to say that I am the least historical of men? The circumstances of history touch me like those of geography and politics, but I thing that as an individual I am above these seductions. A thing of beauty is a joyce forever, John Keats wrote in a memorable way. There are nevertheless, moments of happiness that are singular and eternal.


Florida Gov. Rick Scott must have faith in Glenn Gilzean. After all, he appointed Gilzean trustee of Florida A&M University twice.
Gilzean, a 30-year-old St. Petersburg resident and vice president of Step Up For Students, was one of 42 reappointments to state boards and committees, which failed confirmation by the Florida Senate. The listing includes Dr. John Armstrong as State Surgeon General and Michael D. Crews for Secretary of the Florida Department of Corrections.
Scott originally appointed Gilzean as the FAMU trustee March 14. He replaces retired Tampa business executive Charles Langston.
Since the appointment was during the active Senate assembly, the Florida appointment process allows lawmakers to put off approval during the first yearly legislative session following selection. The "Failed to Confirm/Took No Action" compelled the governor to appoint Gilzean for a second time last week.
The Senate must accept Gilzean in the second-year session. If not, his appointment will be void.
Scott has a history supporting Gilzean. In 2010, Scott appointed him to the Pinellas County School Board. Previously, Gilzean worked as a regional field director for the Florida Board of Education and served on the Florida Attorney General's Gang Reduction Task Force.
In November 2012, Gilzean ran a heated race to keep his Pinellas School Board seat, but lost to former St. Petersburg City Councilwoman Rene Flowers.
Gilzean joins FAMU in the wake of a high-profile hazing incident, where the 2011 death of drum major Robert Champion resulted in 12-month academic accreditation probation.
"My role as trustee is to provide overall governance," Gilzean says.
The new terms for Scott's latest reappointments began May 16. This time, when confirmed, Gilzean will be FAMU trustee through Jan. 6, 2018.
As for the Senate approval system, Gilzean is taking it all in stride.