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Ocotea foetens és una espècie fanerògama d'arbres de fins a 40 m d'alçada de la família de les lauràcies. És constituent habitual de la selva laurisilva dels arxipèlags de la Macaronèsia: Madeira i Açores (Portugal), i Canàries (Espanya). Cal destacar que està amenaçat per la pèrdua d'hàbitat i que apareix al centre de l'escut d'El Hierro.

Aquesta espècie presenta un tronc esvelt, cilíndric i molt ramificat des de la base amb un fullatge perennifoli de color més fosc que Laurus azorica, copa densa i globosa, sent l'arbre que posseeix una major cobertura de tota la laurisilva. Les flors són de mida petita, de color blanquinós, verdós o groguenc que apareixen en inflorescències de tipus raïm subterminals desprenent una olor agradable que recorda al dels til·lers d'Europa.

El Garoé era un arbre sagrat per als bimbaches, antics habitants d'El Hierro, i un dels seus símbols, encara que es desconeix exactament la seva espècie és probable que fos Ocotea foetens o una altra lauràcia. La llegenda diu que a la base d'aquest arbre es destil·lava aigua suficient per a tots els bimbaches. Aquest fet té relació amb la realitat, ja que les illes es troben sota la influència dels vents alisis, que afavoreix la condensació dels núvols a les branques d'aquest arbre afavorint la pluja al voltant de l'illa. L'arbre sagrat va desaparèixer després d'una tempesta a 1610 i en el seu lloc va ser plantat un exemplar d'O. foetens.

Referències

Enllaços externs
 Descripció general de l'espècie a la pàgina del Govern de Canàries
 Press, JR, MJ Short. Flora of Madeira. 1994. The Natural History Museum, Londres
 World Conservation Monitoring Centre 1998. Ocotea foetens.

Lauràcies
Arbres sagrats
Arbres laurals

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


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Corporal Punishment, Religion & Child Abuse
"As long as the child will be trained not by love, but by fear, so long will humanity live not by justice, but by force. As long as the child will be ruled by the educator's threat and by the father's rod, so long will mankind be dominated by the policeman's club, by fear of jail, and by panic of invasion by armies and navies." -- Boris Sidis, from "A lecture on the abuse of the fear instinct in early education" in Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 1919.
Child Mistreatment, Child Abuse What is it? by Alice Miller
Humiliations, spankings and beatings, slaps in the face, betrayal, sexual exploitation, derision, neglect, etc. are all forms of mistreatment, because they injure the integrity and dignity of a child, even if their consequences are not visible right away. However, as adults, most abused children will suffer, and let others suffer, from these injuries. This dynamic of violence can deform some victims into hangmen who take revenge even on whole nations and become willing executors to dictators as unutterably appalling as Hitler and other cruel leaders. Beaten children very early on assimilate the violence they endured, which they may glorify and apply later as parents, in believing that they deserved the punishment and were beaten out of love. They don't know that the only reason for the punishments they have ( or in retrospect, had) to endure is the fact that their parents themselves endured and learned violence without being able to question it. Later, the adults, once abused children, beat their own children and often feel grateful to their parents who mistreated them when they were small and defenseless.
This is why society's ignorance remains so immovable and parents continue to produce severe pain and destructivity – in all "good will", in every generation. Most people tolerate this blindly because the origins of human violence in childhood have been and are still being ignored worldwide. Almost all small children are smacked during the first three years of life when they begin to walk and to touch objects which may not be touched. This happens at exactly the time when the human brain builds up its structure and should thus learn kindness, truthfulness, and love but never, never cruelty and lies. Fortunately, there are many mistreated children who find "helping witnesses"and can feel loved by them.
The United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child
has defined corporal punishment in these words:
"any punishment in which physical force is used and intended to cause some degree of pain or discomfort, however light. Most involves hitting ("smacking", "slapping", "spanking") children, with the hand or with an implement – whip, stick, belt, shoe, wooden spoon, etc. But it can also involve, for example, kicking, shaking or throwing children, scratching, pinching, biting, pulling hair or boxing ears, forcing children to stay in uncomfortable positions, burning, scalding or forced ingestion (for example, washing children's mouths out with soap or forcing them to swallow hot spices). In the view of the Committee, corporal punishment is invariably degrading. In addition, there are other non physical forms of punishment which are also cruel and degrading and thus incompatible with the Convention. These include, for example, punishment which belittles, humiliates, denigrates, scapegoats, threatens, scares or ridicules the child."
The Roots of Violence: 12 points by Alice Miller
For some years now, there has been proof that the devastating effects of the traumatization of children take their inevitable toll on society – a fact that we are still forbidden to recognize. This knowledge concerns every single one of us and – if disseminated widely enough – should lead to fundamental changes in society; above all, to a halt in the blind escalation of violence. The following points are intended to amplify my meaning:
All children are born to grow, to develop, to live, to love, and to articulate their needs and feelings for their self-protection.
For their development, children need the respect and protection of adults who take them seriously, love them, and honestly help them to become oriented in the world.
When these vital needs are frustrated and children are, instead, abused for the sake of adults' needs by being exploited, beaten, punished, taken advantage of, manipulated, neglected, or deceived without the intervention of any witness, then their integrity will be lastingly impaired.
The normal reactions to such injury should be anger and pain. Since children in this hurtful kind of environment are forbidden to express their anger, however, and since it would be unbearable to experience their pain all alone, they are compelled to suppress their feelings, repress all memory of the trauma, and idealize those guilty of the abuse. Later they will have no memory of what was done to them.
Disassociated from the original cause, their feelings of anger, helplessness, despair, longing, anxiety, and pain will find expression in destructive acts against others (criminal behavior, mass murder) or against themselves (drug addiction, alcoholism, prostitution, psychic disorders, suicide).
If these people become parents, they will then often direct acts of revenge for their mistreatment in childhood against their own children, whom they use as scapegoats. Child abuse is still sanctioned – indeed, held in high regard – in our society as long as it is defined as child-rearing. It is a tragic fact that parents beat their children in order to escape the emotions stemming from how they were treated by their own parents.
If mistreated children are not to become criminals or mentally ill, it is essential that at least once in their life they come in contact with a person who knows without any doubt that the environment, not the helpless, battered child, is at fault. In this regard, knowledge or ignorance on the part of society can be instrumental in either saving or destroying a life. Here lies the great opportunity for relatives, social workers, therapists, teachers, doctors, psychiatrists, officials, and nurses to support the child and to believe her or him.
Till now, society has protected the adult and blamed the victim. It has been abetted in its blindness by theories, still in keeping with the pedagogical principles of our great-grandparents, according to which children are viewed as crafty creatures, dominated by wicked drives, who invent stories and attack their innocent parents or desire them sexually. In reality, children tend to blame themselves for their parents' cruelty and to absolve the parents, whom they invariably love, of all responsibility.
For some years now, it has been possible to prove, through new therapeutic methods, that repressed traumatic experiences of childhood are stored up in the body and, though unconscious, exert an influence even in adulthood. In addition, electronic testing of the fetus has revealed a fact previously unknown to most adults-that a child responds to and learns both tenderness and cruelty from the very beginning.
In the light of this new knowledge, even the most absurd behavior reveals its formerly hidden logic once the traumatic experiences of childhood need no longer remain shrouded in darkness.
Our sensitization to the cruelty with which children are treated, until now commonly denied, and to the consequences of such treatment will as a matter of course bring to an end the perpetuation of violence from generation to generation.
People whose integrity has not been damaged in childhood, who were protected, respected, and treated with honesty by their parents, will be – both in their youth and in adulthood – intelligent, responsive, empathic, and highly sensitive. They will take pleasure in life and will not feel any need to kill or even hurt others or themselves. They will use their power to defend themselves, not to attack others. They will not be able to do otherwise than respect and protect those weaker than themselves, including their children, because this is what they have learned from their own experience, and because it is this knowledge (and not the experience of cruelty) that has been stored up inside them from the beginning. It will be inconceivable to such people that earlier generations had to build up a gigantic war industry in order to feel comfortable and safe in this world. Since it will not be their unconscious drive in life to ward off intimidation experienced at a very early age, they will be able to deal with attempts at intimidation in their adult life more rationally and more creatively.
Excerpts from: Corporal Punishment & Political Missions by Alice Miller
Under certain circumstances, children who have been told repeatedly that the humiliations and beatings they have been subjected to are for their own good may end up believing it all their lives. Consequently, they will raise their own children in the same way, laboring under the delusion that they are doing the right thing. But what happens to all the rage, the pain, the anger those children were forced to suppress when they were not only treated cruelly by their own parents but expected to be grateful for it?
Tackling this question has helped me get nearer to answering the first of the questions I asked about childhood: How does evil come into the world? Gradually, the conviction took shape in my mind that evil is reproduced with each new generation. Newborn infants are innocent. Whatever predispositions they may have, they feel no urge or need to destroy life. They want to be looked after and protected, to love and be loved. If those needs are not satisfied, if children are abused instead of cherished, then that will determine the entire course of their lives. Human beings feel the urge to be destructive only if they were subjected to cruelty at the beginning of their own lives. A child who has been loved and respected will have no motivation to wage war on others. Evil is not an inevitable or integral part of human nature.
From a close study of many biographies, I established that in those cases where the victim did not turn into a victimizer, there was invariably some figure that had shown the child affection, the person I call the helping witness. Children with helping witnesses to turn to were able to gain awareness of the evil that had been done to them while at the same time identifying with the person who had shown them kindness. The Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky is one well-known example. Though he probably suffered at the hands of his brutal father, he was given solace by his loving mother.
Children with no helping witness are in the greatest danger of regarding the dreadful things they have been subjected to as for their own good and then dealing out to others the same kind of treatment without the slightest pangs of conscience. In short, they will ideologize this hypocrisy. Hitler the child learned at home that blows and humiliations were right and proper. Hitler the adult insisted -- and believed -- that it was his calling to save Germany by exterminating the Jews. Other dictators have ideologized their acts of vengeance in similar ways. Stalin had to purge Russia of the subversive "cosmopolitans"; Napoleon had to establish the Grande Nation, cost what it might; Milosevic had to make Serbia into a great nation.
Society's blindness to these mechanisms is what still makes wars possible, because the actual reasons behind them remain in the dark. Although probably all historians, at least in Germany, know very well that Frederick the Great was humiliated and tormented by his father, I have yet to come across a historical work that makes the connection between the cruelty meted out to this sensitive child and the monarch's later compulsive urge to overthrow as many countries as he could. Obviously this subject is still taboo.
For as long as we have recorded memory, the same woeful picture has been repeating itself. Men go off to war, women cheer them as they leave, and very few question what really sparked it off. Wars patently designed to invade and conquer foreign territory are passed off as acts of self-defense, or as the fulfillment of some holy mission. Most people are blind to the genuine reasons behind these "missions." Only when we have understood where evil comes from and how we keep it alive in our children will we cease to be helplessly exposed to its effects. We have a long way to go.
In nearly half of the fifty states in the United States, teachers are still allowed to spank children in school. This punishment is given for minor offenses, usually in the form of paddling on the buttocks performed by a person specially designated to do so. There is a graded scale of different forms of corporal punishment aimed at meting out "discipline." Pupils are made to stand in a corridor awaiting their turn to be chastised. These children appear to consider this institutionalized humiliation as something normal. Only later will their pent-up feelings of rage be vented in acts of criminal aggression. Most parents tolerate this system; some actively endorse it. Isolated mothers and fathers who oppose it are more or less doomed to ineffectuality. In Texas alone, according to the Project NoSpank Web site, some 118,000 children are punished this way each year.
But beaten children are not learning how to defend themselves against criminals. They are learning to fear their parents, to play down their own pain, and to feel guilty. Being subjected to physical attacks that they are unable to fend off merely instills in children a gut feeling that they do not deserve protection or respect. This perniciously false message is stored in their bodies and will influence their view of the world and their attitude toward their own children.
They will be unable to defend their claim to human dignity, unable to recognize physical pain as a danger signal and act accordingly. Their immune systems may even be affected. In the absence of other persons on whom to model their behavior, these children will see the language of violence and hypocrisy as the only effective means of communication. Naturally, they will avail themselves of that language when they grow up because adults normally suppress feelings of powerlessness and helplessness. This is the real reason why so many defend the old system of parenting and schooling. Until now only 17 of 192 members of the United Nations Organization had made spanking children illegal. This shows how little this problem is recognized world-wide.
The earlier the use of violence starts, the more profoundly the lesson is internalized and the less accessible it is to later control by the conscious mind. Thus, the first opportunity, in the form of some kind of political ideology, will suffice to spark off bestial cruelty in quiet, servile people who were living with explosive suppressed aggression.
For those acts of vengeance, society provides a whole range of ideological guises. Racism, anti-Semitism, fundamentalist fanaticism, and "ethnic cleansing" are only some of them. Many young people engaged in such activities strongly believe that they are serving idealistic aims.
Breaking Their Will: Shedding Light on Religious Child Maltreatment by Janet Heimlich
This revealing, disturbing, and thoroughly researched book exposes a dark side of faith that most Americans do not know exists or have ignored for a long time—religious child maltreatment. After speaking with dozens of victims, perpetrators, and experts, and reviewing a myriad of court cases and studies, the author explains how religious child maltreatment happens. She then takes an in-depth look at the many forms of child maltreatment found in religious contexts, including biblically-prescribed corporal punishment and beliefs about the necessity of "breaking the wills" of children; scaring kids into faith and other types of emotional maltreatment such as spurning, isolating, and withholding love; pedophilic abuse by religious authorities and the failure of religious organizations to support the victims and punish the perpetrators; and religiously-motivated medical neglect in cases of serious health problems. In a concluding chapter, Heimlich raises questions about children's rights and proposes changes in societal attitudes and improved legislation to protect children from harm.
Children as Chattel: The Common Root of Child Abuse and the Pro-Life Movement by Valerie Tarico
Confronting Religion & Child Abuse by Valerie Tarico
Council of Europe: Children and Corporal punishment: "The Right Not to be Hit, Also a Children's Right
Does The Bible Sanction Child Abuse by Valerie Tarico
How Spanking Affects Later Relationships: There is clear evidence that it's best to show children relationship skills that never escalate to physical harm.
In Some Countries, It's Illegal To Hit Your Child. The U.S. Is Not One Of Them
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: Not Everyone in the Village Is Worthy of Raising a Child
Mistreatment & Child Abuse by Alice Miller
Project Nospank
Smacking Children Does Harm Says Consultant
Ten Reasons Not to Hit Your Child
You Can't 'Unhit' Your Child: Anxiety and Corporal Punishment
Whipped, Hit and Locked in Closets: Life Inside Some Religious Day Cares

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Union Springs, Ala. — The National Open Shooting Dog Championship drew 69 dogs for the 2019 renewal which is dedicated to the late Dr. Jerry Champion.
Running began Monday, February 4, with Dr. Jim Mills of Searcy, Ark., Mike Jackson of Battle Ground, Ind., and Ray Wheeler of Shelby, Ohio judging. Advertised reporter Mike Husenits was unable to attend due to health issues. Board members Perry Hicks and Heather Klinck will make a joint effort to properly cover the trial and associated events.
Barring any weather delays, the Championship should be completed on February 12.


Balconies can get dirty and flithy so fast! Keeping it clean 24/7 can be quite a challenge especially given our tropical weather. Professional balcony cleaning services in Delhi can ensure a complete scrubbing of your balcony floors, proper removal of hard-to-reach cob webs, accumulated dust and grime, etc. Our team of experienced cleaners also help clean the windows and window panes or sills that are prone to collecting dirt.
Cleaning of Balcony Window, Window Pane, Window Channel and Grills.


If you've never visited Northern California in the springtime, now is the perfect time to go. Napa Valley houses some of the world's finest wineries and wine tasting locations. Elite Express' Northern California branch can arrange travel for you and your guests on a Napa Valley wine tour.
First, visit the famous Robert Mondavi Winery and take one of their 30-minute tours offered May – October. At $25.00 per person, it's a great way to learn about wine and take in the beautiful grounds.
Another must-see winery is the Sterling Vineyards. An added bonus of this winery is the aerial tram ride which takes you to the entrance and offers extraordinary views from high up. You'll get plenty of photo opportunities throughout your visit, as the winery is located 300 feet above the town of Calistoga. Follow a self-guided tour and enjoy wine tastings of a variety of blends. $49.00 will get you the Silver Experience, and $75.00 the Platinum Experience. Both have a variety of wines with pairings to endulge in, with the Platinum Experience being a 1-hour long culinary tasting.
For those looking for more of a connoisseur experience, consider visiting Opus Winery . You can choose between their Estate Tour for $85.00 that lasts approximately 90 minutes, or their Double Vintage Tour & Tasting which is $145.00 and lasts approximately 120 minutes (both tours require calling ahead for an appointment.) Or, you can opt for the wine tasting at $50.00 a glass.
For vehicle rates, and availability call 888-355-ELITE (3548) or 310-534-3900.
Elite Express offers hotel check-in services to assistance at a reasonable price. When booking your airport pick-up services, let the customer agent person know that you would like hotel check-in service in addition to your transportation service.
From there, let our chauffeurs handle the rest. We will pick you up and drop you off at your hotel destination, and ensure you are safely checked-in, with anything you need explained to you. All that is required is a hotel voucher as confirmation of your booked room. Leave it up to our chauffeur to speak to the front desk agent on your behalf.
It's often said that prom night is one of the most memorable nights in a young person's life. What better way to make the evening a total hit, than to reserve a decked out stretch limousine? Make your teen's prom dreams come true and reserve today.
To request a quote, just send us an email with the date, location of prom, and how many are in your group, and we'll respond shortly with an estimate. Once you approve, we'll send you a confirmation and you'll be ready to go for prom- it's that easy!
Whether you are young, or elderly, in shape or out of shape, keeping in good health may mean having to see a doctor once in a while and/or having a medical procedure done at some point. Let us know the next time you are in need of transportation to and from the hospital or clinic.
Elite Express' fleet consists mainly of luxury-type vehicles, but we also have economy vehicles that can help you get you to and fro at an affordable price. Elite Express can even set up correspondence with the hospital or clinic staff to ensure your pickup time is arranged in a timely fashion. This will help to avoid any "wait fees" that can accrue when the driver needs to wait at the pickup location.
If you are having an out-patient procedure done, just set up a roundtrip with by letting us know the estimated times you will need to be picked up. We will call you doctor's office or hospital for you during the day to arrange the best pickup time for your return.
If you having an in-patient procedure done, we'll set it up in the same way, except we will arrive the next day, or whenever you will be ready to leave the hospital.


Across the nation, the recent government shutdown has captured everyone's attention. That goes double here in Washington D.C., where residents breathlessly await every new piece of news. And as the first official shutdown to take place during the social media era, this stoppage has become a fascinating source of sociological analysis.
Naturally, topics such as #Shutdown, or other variations thereof, have been trending on Twitter since Monday. Zoomph has been monitoring social media activity on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to isolate the most influential content, and the results have been telling.
Surprisingly, the content receiving the most engagement and interaction has actually side-stepped traditional news and information sharing. Instead, social media users are more frequently segueing the government shutdown topic into memes, jokes, and other sorts of irreverent posts. It isn't until one scrolls much lower on the list of top influencers that news sources with more serious articles appear. So what does this mean? Is the government shutdown really not as serious as we thought?
#ShutdownPickupLines You must be furloughed from the Center for Disease Control, because your smile is infectious.
Even individuals directly impacted by the shutdown are getting in on the social media spree. Rather than showing off food creations or pets, many Instagram photos now display the furlough letters ordering their recipients to stay home .
These types of responses are a perfect example of how adversity causes people to seek out the company and connections of others even more than usual. And it's not lost on us that this phenomenon would have been impossible to measure before the advent of social media. Now, every major national event can—and will be—documented online, for better and for worse. What we do with that information is up to us.


Home/Uncategorized/How to easily rename all of the files in one folder in Windows.
Time is of the essence, you've named the photos with people you know in, and now you are bored and left with 98 un-named photos. 🙂 If you put them on your image hosting website entitled IMG0234.JPG etc no one will ever be able to find them in a search (Bad SEO) and it just looks awful. So with these 4 easy steps you can name them all "Nokia-Event-Oct11" for example. Also you may just want to do this to tidy up your photos or files on your computer.
1) Open the folder or directory holding the files (photos) you are wishing to rename.
For just a selected few – press CTRL and click the files that you want to rename.
4) Press enter and hey presto – like magic, they are all named correctly !
Not fantastic renaming on my part, but just an example.


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A timeline of Mueller's investigation on Trump's associates
Thais Marques, Assistant Editor
On May 17, 2017, Deputy General Rod Rosenstein appointed Robert Mueller as special counsel to oversee the investigation between Russian officials and Donald Trump's campaign. The main concern being both parties' involvement in possible obstruction of justice during the 2016 elections. The controversy expanded as Michael Cohen, Trump's personal attorney and the vice-president of The Trump Organization, was also convicted for wrongdoings.
Significant findings have since been released during the past four years of the investigation mainly concerning President Donald Trump's now-retired lawyer Michael Cohen in addition to other close associates to the president. The following presents a timeline of the highlights concerning Mueller's investigation on Cohen and Trump's associates:
Cohen:
April 9, 2018: Michael Cohen's home is raided by FBI agents.
Aug. 21, 2018: Cohen pleads guilty in a Manhattan courtroom to eight counts related to tax fraud and campaign finance violations. Over the next few months, Cohen reportedly spent more than 70 hours in interviews with the special counsel.
Dec. 7, 2018: Prosecutors from New York's Southern District recommend a "substantial term of imprisonment" for Michael Cohen for campaign finance and tax violations, as well as lying to Congress.
Dec. 12, 2018: Michael Cohen was sentenced to three years in prison. In his guilty plea, Cohen claimed Donald Trump directed him in 2016 to pay hush money to two women who alleged affairs. One of the women included Stormy Daniels, a porn actress who was paid $130,000.
Trump's associates:
Oct. 5, 2017: Trump's former campaign adviser, George Papadopoulos, pleads guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with foreign nationals tied to the Russian government.
Dec. 1, 2017: Trump's former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, pleads guilty to lying to investigators about his contacts with Russians.
March 8, 2019: President Trump's close ally and former campaign chairman Paul Manafort was sentenced in a Virginia court to 4 years in prison for financial crimes including bank fraud, tax fraud and hiding a foreign bank account.
The Mueller investigation on Russian interference came to a close on March 22, 2019. After receiving Mueller's report, Attorney General Bill Barr told Congress the "the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities." Although many of Trump's associates were charged for obstructing justice, Trump was not charged with any crimes. Barr wrote that while Mueller's report "does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him."


You know that lovely warm glow you get on a summer's evening when it's still 42 degrees outside and you're reaching into your fridge for your first restorative tinny when suddenly the lights go out and your air-con too?
Of course you do, especially if you live in South Australia, where, thanks to ambitious 'green' energy targets, power outages like this have become the new normal.
The madness is the result of the global warming scare which has dominated Western policymaking for the last four decades. Some countries are starting to get over it – notably Donald Trump's United States –but in Australia it continues to exert a grip tighter than the bite of a ravenous saltie.
Climate change lunacy has affected everything from your right to clear trees off your property (often you can't: they've been designated a carbon sink) to where you can't build your waterfront home (junk science paranoia about rising sea levels) to how many millions of dollars you waste on desalination plants (for the permanent drought that never came).
Most damaging of all are Australia's renewable energy targets. In South Australia they stand at 50 per cent (by 2025), in Queensland 50 per cent (by 2030) – rightly described as 'bonkers mad' by deputy PM Barnaby Joyce, in Victoria 40 per cent (by 2025). Even under the Liberal federal government, the national target is 23 per cent by 2020. All of these are doomed to fail –even the national one would require the impossible feat of a 50 per cent increase in Australia's renewable energy (mainly solar and wind) within three years. Meanwhile, the havoc they have already wreaked is considerable.
South Australia has been the hardest hit so far by the great renewables disaster. No doubt it sounded good when premier Jay Weatherill and Energy Minister Tom Koutsantonis first began evangelising about their world-beating clean energy targets. The consequence, though, has been blackouts, job losses and economic chaos caused by rocketing power prices and intermittent supply.
But instead of apologising, the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) is asking customers to take it on the chin. In a process euphemistically known as 'load shedding', the AEMO can order customers' power supplies to be switched off in times of extreme stress so as to prevent wider system failure.
Why is this happening now in a developed nation in the 21st century? The simple answer is that renewables, apart from being two or three times more expensive than fossil fuels, are intermittent, unreliable and unpredictable.
If the sun isn't shining (which it doesn't, at night, not even in Australia) or the wind isn't blowing, then the power needs to come from more conventional sources like coal and gas. The more renewables in the energy mix – 40 per cent of South Australia's energy capacity is now wind – the more inherently unstable the grid becomes.
Hence the great blackout of September last year: a storm forced a shut down of wind power to prevent surges; this in turn crashed the entire local grid.
All this man-made chaos might be excusable if it served any useful purpose. It doesn't.
Increasingly, it is becoming apparent that renewables are one of the great, truly bad ideas of the last 100 years: a boon for troughing rent-seekers, virtue-signalling pollies and posturing greenies but terrible for the rest of us poor saps who have to subsidise them; disastrous for the environment (all those birds and bats sliced and diced); utterly ineffectual in 'combatting climate change' (Australia produces less than two per cent of the world's greenhouse gases).
So what's to be done? What's painfully clear is that – with rare exceptions like Cory Bernardi and One Nation's Malcolm Roberts – Australia's politicians have no appetite for reining in the problem, for fear of suffering the same fate as Tony Abbott, whose political demise was partly wrought by the Green Blob. It doesn't help that most of the media – especially the ABC –is so heavily in thrall to eco-zealotry and refuses to question the (fake) green 'consensus'.
That means people who believe in regaining the cheap, reliable energy Australia used to have before the green madness took hold have a fight on their hands. One way they might yet win is through the courts via judicial review. What, after all, is the most basic requirement taxpayers ought to expect from their governments? Due diligence on public expenditure.
This is going to be one of the tactics of Cool Futures Funds Management – a contrarian Aussie hedge fund of which I'm an enthusiastic supporter because it is, as far as I know, the first financial institution to try to profit by holding the Green Blob's dodgy dealings to account.
It has approached the government with a low-cost, shovel-ready, clean-coal technology solution which could solve all Australia's baseload energy supply problems. But because this solution involves fossil fuel, it will inevitably be resisted heavily by the greens and their useful idiots in government and business. And that's where the courts may have to adjudicate.
Australians deserve better than to be held to ransom by the duff ideology of a few eco-zealots. If governments can't provide their voters with something as basic as reliable energy, then they must be held to account for their negligence.
South Australia is a warning the rest of the country should heed before it's too late. And the answer to your problems, my Aussie friends, is most definitely not blowing in the wind. It's right there, underneath your feet.


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PARTNER-MEDIATION
TRUE CONVERSATIONS
(PRE)MEDIATION
HOW CAN YOU MAKE YOUR STARTUP A SUCCESS?
16 mei 2018 16 mei 2018 partner-mediation.comGeen categorie
Elements for success and failure according to Patrick de Zeeuw from Startupbootcamp, which helps young companies.
Volkskrant, 28 april 2018
There you are, your startup is ready to conquer the world. But how? You have a great idea, but how are you going to make your new company a success? This is where Patrick de Zeeuw comes in, he is cofounder of Startupbootcamp, an investor who helps around 200 to 250 young companies every year. With small investments and mainly with knowledge. With locations all over the world, Startupbootcamp has already helped 650 startups.
There are two main reasons why a startup is not going to make it. The first one: there is 'no market fit' according to De Zeeuw. This means that there are not enough people interested in the product. Because they are too early or too late with bringing the product on the market or there is just no businessmodel. 'Sometimes a company changes the proposal twice or even three times before it becomes a success' (Patick de Zeeuw). For instance Airbnb started with renting out air matrasses from their apartment.
Much more important is the second reason why startups do not make it. There is a conflict between the founders. Most of the time the core of problem lies a lot deeper: this is often the tension that grew under the pressure of trying to create the company.
Because there is almost always a certain kind of pressure and tension, premedation is part of the accelerator program used at Startupbootcamp. Ambitions change and there can be issues about money. Or one of the founders gets a new girlfriend who thinks he needs a normal job and should make money. Before you realize it, it goes wrong.
Problems have to be discussed before they even exist, says De Zeeuw. In this way everything will be adressed before it can turn into something that could threaten the company. Just like you are going to the dentist every six months and you get your car checked. No starting company does this, says De Zeeuw, eventhough this is one the most important steps towards success. In our program startups have two sessions with mediators, where they will put everything on the table.
Another lesson: do not have too many founders. One will be too difficult, because he/she would have to do everything him/herself. Two is better, especially if one of them is good at sales and the other is more of a developer of the product. Like Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak from Apple. Three is more difficult. Five founders is a disaster. We do not do that. Our method seems the be a success. After four years of working with different startups 75 to 80 percent of the startups are still active who have been at Startupbootcamp. One of the most important factors in order for the startup to stay successful is that the spirit of the startup-phase keeps alive in the company as it grows. Are the founders still making the decisions? Is the right mentality still there? A big risk is to get managers from big companies involved, says De Zeeuw. It can ruin the culture in the company. Think about Steve Jobs, who got John Scully from Pepsi involved and got pushed out of the company after a while. Our job is to get the culture right and to get the founders aligned.
WHAT KIND OF DISPUTES ARE APPROPRIATE TO MEDIATE?
HOW TO REDUCE CONFLICT IN YOUR START-UP, CORPORATE INNOVATION AND BUSINESS TEAMS
Willemsparkweg 100b 1071 HM Amsterdam
roelof@partner-mediation.com of annemarie@partner-mediation.com
+0651350966 of +0641263725


I've been making collaborative drawings, a totally new and alien experience for me, with Nottingham painter Sardul Gill.
Sardul and I initially made some paintings / drawings in my garden around March time.
Then I had an idea to do some more in June. The idea was to try and make drawings consistent with how the landscape is formed – that is to say, allowing for natural forces and human intervention – and see what would happen. The landscape is constantly being altered by natural forces and by animals, and by people planting, digging, building, and clearing up and making repairs.
I put some large sheets of Fabriano out in the woods and left them for three weeks. During this time it rained (a lot) and the paper buckled of course. After about a week I threw on some mud, from the field (red clay) and grey mud from the quarry tip. Although I weighted it down the wind blew the paper about and it tore, and the rain made holes. I imagine small insects and animals crawled across. It became covered in twigs and leaves, and grass clippings from the strimmer – dried out and got wet again several times.
I invited Sardul to come and and work on the drawings with me. We applied more mud, black ink and white paint. Next day it rained again and it all changed. Then a strong wind came and tore off great chunks. At this point I brought them into the studio to try and preserve and patch them up a bit. they probably won't last very long but I hope to at least show them once next year, before they fall apart all together!
I have now have some ink drawings on much sturdier paper that have been out in the woods for six months so far….


So it's been a busy couple of weeks put a new engine in the Scoob and had an MOT with my fingers and everything else crossed 😅. Here's a few pics. Added some nice bits and bobs aerocathes, rad cap, forged header tank. But sadly need to take the gearbox out looks like I caught the rear main seal so slight oil leak. But she's coming along slowly.
Actually drove it for the first time in a couple of weeks! Finally sorted all the little leaks in the cooling system and it's running beautifully. Perfect day for a little spin!
Pulled the front knuckle assembly out ready for new wheel bearings and hubs, ABS bolts snapped both sides and a blackend finger but their out! So might as well do the ball joints, trackrod ends, drop links and new brake backing plates as well. Fortunes spent but still smiling.
Although at my level of power or type of usage, I don't really need to go "parallel" . I've over thought and engineered most of the car , so why not the fuel lines too. The oe fuel system runs a "series" set up , this means cylinder number 3 is the last in line to get fuel . a parallel fuel rail conversion allows the fuel to flow into the end of each "rail" and return out of the other end , so no particular injector is last in line to get fuel anymore. A few pics of me trying to work out which lugs to remove off the inlet, once the oe rails are gone and which way to flow and return the fuel lines.
Well, I'm back! Over 3 years since I had my last Subaru (my pain in the rear Legacy GTB, I'm sure a few of you will remember). Its taken me a while to get back, life seemed to get in the way a bit, but I decided I should treat myself. So here she is... my 2003 wrx wagon. Couple of paintwork issues but engine and box seem strong, no rust to be seen and seems to have been pretty loved through its life. Hope to get back out to some shows through the season and catch up with some old faces.
That price is high . Low mileage never guarantees a good car, it just guarantees you pay too much . dealers in general are stingy as hell and never prep/repair cars well before sale . Either be sure it absolute A1 order, great set of tyres and extras and worth price to you or keep looking . Doubt they put much effort in a 90K service, I want belt replaced with all new idlers, expect they took that car for under 5K . Dealers are in business of making money from hot air sales, you always do fairer/better deals privately with decent folks .
Hi everyone couple weeks ago I've posted in here that I had the change to buy my first scooby. This is the second week with my 2000 gf8, love it love it love it! The sound, the grip the style, simply in love with this car. It does need some TLC but the engine is sound. As soon as the weather improves will start working on its body work and will post updates.
Have forums had their day??


In today's economy, buying a home is an important decision. This is going to affect how you're for the foreseeable future, so it's important to make the right decisions. In order to make this process less difficult, you can take these steps.
If you have never bought a home before, you are going to need assistance. This is where a real estate attorney (such as one from Valentine & Valentine PC) comes in handy. This professional can sort through all of the complicated paperwork, making sure you are getting a good deal on a home.
Your lawyer also has access to a lot of important resources. For instance, they can bring home inspectors to inspect the potential house you are going to buy. They inspect the physical structures and systems of the home, helping you identify any hidden costs that you are going to have to deal with if you buy the home.
Your attorney can also negotiate with the seller, so you don't have to stress as much about haggling with strangers.
When looking at potential homes, it's important to consider the features on the interior. Look for modern appliances that are also energy efficient. These appliances, such as a washing machine or refrigerator, are going to help you save more money each month on your energy bills.
Pay particular attention to the types of floors in the home. If there is a lot of carpet, you might want to go with a different home. Instead, try getting a home with wooden floors. These floors are easy to maintain, and they are not going to stain easily.
In order to get approved for a mortgage or loan for the mortgage, you are going to need to have a good credit score. Today, a good score is around 661-780. Anything below this range should be of concern. There are ways to build up your credit, though.
Start by slowing paying off the balances on your credit cards. You might need to create a budget to do this. Only pay for things you truly need, as this helps you save extra money each month. Once all of the credit cards have been paid off, try opening up more cards and paying off the balances on these as well. If you pay on time, your credit score will slowly go up.
Buying a home is an important life decision, especially today. In order to make the right decisions, you can consider the steps above.
Hi, my name is Mackenzie Kohler and when my business partner and I were having financial difficulties, we decided that we would file commercial bankruptcy. Since a partnership bankruptcy can be very complicated, we hired an attorney to help us with all the legal aspects of this process. Our attorney made sure that everything was handled properly and this put my business partner and I at ease. If you're considering filing commercial bankruptcy, read my blog to learn what to expect during the process and how an attorney can help you. I hope this blog gives you all the information you need about commercial bankruptcy and hiring an attorney.


After 50 years and many tests and adversities, the circle of life moves on all on its own, what would you think of as an excellent baby shower present for your child? I located one after a ghastly mistake, discover what by keeping reading!
232: Can OTC Treatments Combat Resistant Head Lice?
People who find themselves attempting to overcome head lice resistance to medications will find the resistance only worsens if the same OTC methods are used more than once.


Chatsworth has been the home to the Cavendish family since Bess of Hardwick lived here in 1549. She married William Cavendish, from Cavendish in Suffolk, and persuaded him to move to Derbyshire and in 1552 they built a Tudor mansion in the grounds. The Hunting Tower, built in the 1580's still stands today.
Bess's fourth husband was George Talbot, the Earl of Shrewsbury. Queen Elizabeth I appointed Shrewsbury custodian of Mary Queen of Scots during her imprisonment, and he took Mary to Chatsworth on a number of occasions between 1568 and 1584.
When Bess died in 1608, she passed the estate on to her second son, William Cavendish and he became the 1st Earl of Devonshire, a vacant title, as the 'Earl of Derby' was a title that was already taken. The line of Earls and Dukes of Devonshire, that have lived on the estate for over 400 year, had now begun.
Major reconstruction took place in 1687 when the 4th Earl (1st Duke) retired to Chatsworth from the service of James II. He embarked on a twenty year building programme, recruiting some of the finest architects and landscape gardeners of the time. The water feature 'The Cascade', designed by Gillet, was built in 1701. Edensor village was pulled down to enhance the view, with little of it remaining today.
The 6th Duke inherited the estate in 1811 and transformed it into much of what we see today. Staff were plentiful, with over 80 gardeners employed. He took over 8 major estates across the country, but many were sold off over the years. It may well be in the selling of various estates that Chatsworth became so proliferous in terms of furnishings and possessions, with many of the items coming from Devonshire House in London.
In the twentieth century, economic problems begat the family in terms of taxes and death duties. Measures were taken by selling estates and cutting costs and as a means of protecting the estate, the Chatsworth House Trust was set up, being granted a 99 year lease at an annual rent of £1.
To bring the house up to modern living standards and to comply with ever increasing legislation, the house has undergone a fair amount of modernisation in recent times in terms of electrical work, plumbing etc. This all out of sight of the visitors, but essential work that needed to be done. Running costs for the estate amount to about £4m per year.
This is certainly a magnificent spectacle. You expect a grand country house, but get the feel that its a little more special as you approach it from a distance. If you enter through the stables area, you get a taste of the architectural charm, but then when moving on to the house, this is something else!
On paying your entry fee, you enter the house and embark on a one way system, with certain passages tastefully roped off to ensure you all go on the same route through the rooms. This saves you missing anything. There's a loop of downstairs, followed by a loop of upstairs, then down a stone staircase, through the sculpture gallery and shop and out into the garden. You can take as much time as you want, and it's certainly worth it!
In looking back, the one thing that crosses your mind are the number of rooms closed off in the house. I'm sure they wouldn't have been as opulent, but interesting nonetheless. I think there may be one bedroom on show, but in the whole house there must be dozens. The kitchen isn't on the tour, but some of these unseen parts must still be fascinating. In seeing the level of detail in other parts of the estate, you wonder what is behind these closed doors. The kitchen, the cellar, the attic, the roof space, the view from the roof garden. It would be good to see details, even if only a series of tasteful photographs on display.
You also wonder what life was like in the old days of coach and horses. They say London was a five day ride from here. You can imagine the grand parties, the horse drawn carriages in the distance being viewed through the windows as they arrive to a log fire. The garden parties, the summers and snow covered winter landscapes. Admittedly, not much fun in the Great Plague of 1666 and being in a society without a police force and a proper health service couldn't have been ideal, but generally it must have been a grand existence here.
The farmyard is interesting, but best for kids, as is the playground, obviously. Stand Wood, the woodland area behind the house and accessed near the farm/adventure entrance is a beautiful area and a wonderful walk at any time of the year.
The grounds are nice, and it's lovely to visit the various landmarks scattered around. The weather makes a big difference and on a nice day it's a glorious walk in beautiful surroundings. And timewise, if you take in Stand Wood, you can be out all day.
Opening their doors to the public must have been a hard decision, but an economic necessity. Once the decision was made, and paying customers arrived, it probably soon became obvious that it was more a day out for couples and those wanting a relaxing day, than kids. But kids' needs are a necessity to a family day out and to attract them, they've opened the farm buildings as a commercial venture. Next to it, they've built an nice adventure playground with a sand area.
Dogs aren't allowed in the farmyard/adventure playground area, but there are posts to tether them to just outside the farm area gate, with water bowls provided.


Logos Technologies delivers innovative technology and program solutions enabling critical mission operations for our government (Defense, Intelligence Community (IC), and civilian agencies) and commercial clients. We also enable secure customer operations in all environments and against all threats. Founded in 1996 our company is a leading provider of persistent surveillance technology and is aggressively developing capabilities in this revolutionary new mode of remote sensing. Logos possesses broad capabilities for technology development, with expertise in mathematics and statistics, signal and image processing, remote sensing, biofuels, spacecraft and aircraft systems, and computing systems and software. Additionally, we take great pride in our professional capabilities within the context of secure information systems solutions by providing end to end support for multi-level data processing and sharing environments. Logos provides a dynamic environment in which to advance your career. As a high-tech consulting firm, we offer a wide range of opportunities in a fun and challenging environment.
Email me jobs from Logos Technologies, Inc.


Beryl Bainbridge: Every Man for Himself.
For the tour fraught, mysterious days of her doomed maiden voyage in 1912, Titanic sails towards New York. In her labyrinthine passageways are played out the last, secret hours of a small group of passangers.


A TPM Reader wrote in on Friday and asked a simple, but for me, unexpected question: what do the fees for Prime pay for? Not in the sense of what do you get but what do we use the subscription fees for? This question caught me off-guard because to me the answer is obvious: everything. Prime today is the backbone of our entire business model, our largest single source of revenue and almost half of total revenue. But perhaps it's not as obvious on the other side of the screen. So I thought I'd explain it all in a bit more detail. Some of this will probably seem like inside baseball. But you may find it interesting if you're a Prime subscriber or if you're interested in the economics of digital publishing or both.
Before I get into the details I want to make one point clear. As we introduce a new subscription tier probably some Prime subscribers are wondering: does this mean another slice of the content – reporting, analysis, editor's blogs, commentary – will go behind another paywall. The answer to that is a flat no. And that flat no will not change. We're adding a bunch of cool things. But they're not writing or content or the news reporting we publish. The goal and scope of Prime remains the same: break down the 'fourth wall' of journalism and give our readers access to all the collective and evolving knowledge of our editorial staff that cannot be fit easily or sometimes at all into conventional news writing. Our goal is to provide a deeper layer of insight, guidance, detail, previews that don't easily fit into confines of conventional news writing.
So now, what does Prime pay for? Alright, let's dig into this.
Until late in 2012 almost 100% of TPM's revenue came from various kinds of advertising. In October of 2012 we launched Prime. We started Prime for a number of reasons. But a critical one was that we believed the digital advertising market was going in a bad direction, especially for small publishers. This proved to be prescient. But the terror wouldn't really get underway for a few years. And for the next few years Prime accounted for under 10% of TPM's revenue.
The inflection point came in 2015.
Here are some key data points. In 2015, TPM brought in just under $2.4 million in advertising revenue. In 2018, that number will have dropped to just over $1.2 million. In other words, a 50% drop in what was once our sole form of revenue over a three year period.
This would of course have been catastrophic if we had not been building Prime in the background. Annually (and later monthly) renewing Prime subscriptions were a relatively small part of our budget in 2012, 2013 and 2014. But in 2015 it rose to just over $400,000. Between 2015 and 2018 that number rose to roughly $1.4 million. So the growth in recurring Prime subscription revenues came close to equaling out the drop in advertising revenues.
But expenses were also growing. From 2015 to 2018 our expenses went up substantially, almost a 100% going to growth in salaries and benefits, especially on the lower end of our salary scale. From 2015 to 2018, average and median salaries both went up over 25%. Salaries for non-managerial editorial staffers went up 39%.
So what do your Prime membership fees go to? Pretty simply, running the company. Prime is now the backbone of our entire business model. It's not differentiated to one part of our operations or another in anyway. In fact, in a sense the way we talk about it is a little anachronistic. Prime is simply a subscription to TPM. It pays for running the entire site.
The more global picture is that we've been trying to manage an overall business transition for the company over roughly the last three years. It has two parts. The first is moving from a business model based almost exclusively on advertising to one which is heavily diversified and based mainly on payments from readers for various kinds of subscriptions. The second is increasing salaries and benefits to have a better workplace and attract and (especially) retain talent. Doing these two things at the same time is a difficult stunt to pull off. But so far we've been able to pull it off. I would say we're about 2/3 way through the transformation.
The key going forward for us to is to get to a point of relative equilibrium in which we have subscription revenues at a sufficient base that we think the diminished level of reliance on advertising and other revenue sources is stable over time. That's why we're focused now on launching Inside and the new ad-free version of Prime we're introducing next month. Different readers have different capacities to pay and different things they're interested in. What we've been working toward is a mix that allows us to get roughly two-thirds of total revenue from subscription fees – a mix of Prime, Ad-Free Prime and Inside, while keeping the majority of content free to the public and the rest available for a small fee (Prime).
That's why we're super focused now on these two new offerings. If those launch successfully, the combination should put us where we need to be over the course of 2019. But Prime remains the bedrock and our core focus. Nothing is permanent of course. But with these three offerings we believe we'll have a solid foundation to build on and grow with going forward.


Analyze and compare growth trends over time by monthly or quarterly cohorts.
Which cohorts have the highest engagement?
Which cohorts engage the most on social?
What's our MRR growth by weekly cohorts?
Which cohort reads our docs the most?
Which cohorts install the most integrations?
Identify revenue patterns throughout the customer lifecycle to retain your best customer types.
Use Cohort Analytics Reports to calculate month over month revenue and identify the factors driving retention, stickiness and customer health.
With Woopra's Cohort Analytics Reports, you're not limited to analyzing cohorts by simple acquisition or signup dates. Understand the impact new in-app experiences have on product usage and how that engagement impacts retention over time to build features that drive long-term success.
Acquiring new customers is great, but retaining them is greater. Woopra's Cohort Analytics Reports allow you to analyze beyond the point of conversion, helping you understand which campaigns or promotions deliver your most engaged customer types month over month.


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Important pages are being 302 redirected, then 301 redirected to support language versions. Is this affecting negatively the linking juice distribution of our domain?
Hi mozzers, Prior to my arrival, in order to support and better serve the international locations and offering multiple language versions of the same content the company decided to restructure its URLs focused on locale urls. We went from
https://example.com/subfolder to https://example.com/us/en-us/new-subfolder (US)
https://example.com/ca/en-us/new-subfolder (CAN)
https://example.com/ca/fr-ca/new-subfolder (CAN)
https://example.com/de/en-us/new-subfolder (Ger)
https://example.com/de/de-de/new-subfolder (Ger) This had implications on redirecting old URLs to new ones. All important URLs such as https://example.com/subfolder were
302 redirected to https://example.com/us/en-us/subfolder and then 301 redirected to the final URL. According to the devs: If you change the translation to the page or locale, then a 302 needs to happen so you see the same version of the page in German or French, then a 301 redirect happens from the legacy URL to the new version. If the 302 redirect was skipped, then you would only be able to one version/language of that page.
http://example.com/subfolder/state/city --> 301 redirect to {LEGACY URL]
https://example.com/subfolder/state/city --> 302 redirect to
https://example.com/en-us/subfolder/state/city --> 301 redirect to
https://example.com/us/en-us/new-subfolder/city-state [NEW URL] I am wondering if these 302s are hurting our link juice distribution or that is completely fine since they all end up as a 301 redirect? Thanks.
International SEO | | Ty1986
Redirection Question - Can Anyone Help?
Hi Community, I have 2 job boards. Job board A is a .co.uk domain. Job board B is uk.com domain. Job board A displays jobs in the UK but has an international jobs section. Job board B focuses entirely on international jobs. To cut a long story short we are shutting down Job board B as we are going to just be using Job board A in future. In terms of redirection, would it be best to: 1. 301 redirect job board B domain to Job board A. (www.jobboardb.uk.com -> www.jobboarda.co.uk) or 2. 301 redirect job board b to the international jobs section on job board a (as this is the most relevant place for the user to go I am thinking to go with option 2, but I read somewhere that it wasn't best practice. Any help is much appreciated.
International SEO | | SO_UK
If domain mapping subfolders to TLD's is it perceived as a fully separate entity/site therafter ?
Hi I take it once you have domain mapped a country specific subfolder to a country specific TLD (for better local region targeting reasons) Google perceives it as a completely separate entity and it no longer shares any of the parent sites domain benefits (such as domain authority etc) so from that point on requires its own dedicated link building etc ? All Best Dan
International SEO | | Dan-Lawrence
Rel Canonical or Rel Alternate advice please
Hi All, I was hoping to just get some advice on my situation as to the right markup to use for our situation, We are working on a more user/mobile friendly redesign for our website and are hoping to release it soon, Our primary URL is www.cirrusresearch.co.uk as we are a UK based company, This has stayed as our primary international website for historical and political reasons as we still get good traffic from overseas, the .co.uk doesn't really seem to hold us back internationally, However underlying we do have the www.cirrusresearch.com pointed all of our pages, which is not a general redirect but is giving us a duplicate of each of our pages but with the .com extension, we basically have an exact duplication of our .co.uk website but with the .com extension, we are not looking to switch to the .com as a primary domain, I have noticed when doing some USA ranking research that Google is preferring to display the alternate .com versions of each page (Understandably) We have not noticeably been penalized by Google for being a duplicate. I took a look at the documentation on the webmaster support on the use of REL Canonical and REL Alternate and am unsure which of these would be most suited markup for my crazy situation, Any advice on this please? Thanks,James
International SEO | | Antony_Towle
When I upload my app in chrome web store, it shows this error - "no manifest found in package please make sure to put manifest at the root directory of the zip package". Please explain me the process of putting manifest file.
Chrome Web store give error "no manifest found in package please make sure to put manifest at the root directory of the zip package"
International SEO | | SameerBhatia
.com versus local domains
Hi all, One of my clients has local domain websites in various parts of the world (co.uk etc. etc.) and there has always been a discussion about where a move from local domain (the current set-up) to a targeted .com domain (i.e. .com/uk) would benefit from a SEO perspective. The main reasoning (seo-wise) that keeps coming up is that there'd only be one domain to link to which would help with link juice being passed around. Any thoughts as whether this would actually be the case or if this possible benefit would be outweighed by other cons? Recent moves (local to .com) from a few websites (the Guardian newspaper in the UK being the most recent one off the top of my head) has made me start thinking about it again! Diana
International SEO | | Diana.varbanescu
Backlinks to URLs with Language Parameters (for Chinese version of website) and SEO?
Hey all, We run a large eCommerce site in Australia and are preparing to launch to the Chinese market. Our site has been fully converted to Chinese and displays the version of the site detected as default in the user's browser unless they manually select otherwise. This is done by appending the parameter "?la=zh" onto the end of the URL, so for example the Chinese version would be: **www.example.com/australia?la=zh ** This then forces the product catalogue to display the relevant language version. My question is, for SEO purposes and back links in particular, since they aren't really a "true URL" (i.e: strictly speaking they aren't different "pages", just the same page being populated with different characters), would getting links from Chinese websites to the URL "www.example.com/australia?la=zh" really be viewed as any different from just "www.example.com/australia"? Do they pass the same amount of juice and is the difference detected by the engines (thinking mainly about Baidu in particular but of course Google as well)? Feedback from anyone with experience in SEO for multi-lingual sites would be much appreciated, thanks.
International SEO | | ExperienceOz
Use country-specific domains or stick to already strong .com domain?
We run an online store with the majority of our customers coming from 4 different European countries. The site is accessible through TLD's of all of these countries. However our .com domain currently has the most links pointing to it and the highest domain authority. Unfortunately, we are unable to tell through which TLD visitors reach our site. The niche is rather competetive, and therefore I am unsure whether it would be worth it to solely use our .com domain for the English language, and try to rank for each of the seperate languages with its own country-specific domain. **Question/discussion: **Will it be worth the costs and time to spent to build links for the country specific domains in these countries, or should we focus on making our .com domain stronger and use it for all countries? I'm aware of the benefits of ranking with a domain in the country the user is in. Note: We have major duplicate content issues at this moment, due the content being available in different languages, on a handful of domains. On each domain, users can view the site in different languages. In addition, the language indication in the url is not very clear (?lang=x) so I believe this should be improved to make it easier for search engines to tell which language is presented. If I choose to use a different language for each TLD, then the language flag in the navigation on the site will point to a different domain, so each language is hosted on 1 domain and there is no more duplicate content. However, I'm afraid this will lead to lower rankings, as the (strong) .com domain will no longer host the content in different languages.
International SEO | | 1200wd