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Рождественский рынок Брауншвейга () традиционно проводится в городе на Рождество уже более трёх столетий. Он известен как один из наиболее ярких и «атмосферных» рождественских рынков на территории современной Германии: причиной тому является архитектурный ансамбль места его проведения — так называемый «традиционный остров» () образован Брауншвейгским собором, зданиями площади Бургплац, местным дворцом Данквардероде и памятником «Брауншвейгский лев». Ежегодно рынок привлекает сотни тысяч посетителей: к примеру, в 2008 году рождественский рынок в Брауншвейге посетило около 900 000 человек.

История
По имеющимся на начало XXI века сведениям базар, называвшийся «рождественский рынок», появился в Брауншвейге в XIV веке — в этот период он проводился на площади Альтштадтмаркт () в центре Старого города. В 1385 году рынок проходил в период с 1 по 2 января, но затем — предположительно около 1505 года — время его проведение было сдвинуто на предрождественские дни. Документы подтверждают, что в 1498 году местный правитель — герцог Генрих I — предоставил старейшинам города специальную привилегию на проведение двух городских ярмарок; однако у историков нет точных сведений о том, предоставлялись ли аналогичные привилегии в последующие годы. Затем, в 1505 году, император Священной Римской империи Максимилиан I устроил в городе две ярмарки, начинавшиеся 8 декабря и продолжавшиеся десять дней. После того как в 1671 году город Брауншвейг потерял свою независимость, рождественский рынок стал начинаться «в воскресенье перед Рождеством». Всё это время основным местом проведения мероприятия были площади Альтштадтмаркт и Кольмаркт.

Первый рождественский базар после окончания Второй мировой войны состоялся в Брауншвейге уже в 1946 году — в этот раз мероприятие прошло на площади перед Брауншвейгской резиденцией. В последующие годы павильоны рынка ставились на площади Хагенмаркт (). Наконец, в 1956 году, рождественская ярмарка впервые была прошла на площади Бургплатц () — которая до 1954 году служила местом проведения еженедельного городского рынка. В последующие десятилетия площадь рынка непрерывно росла и он начал занимать ряд соседних улиц и площадей. С 2009 года частью рынка стал даже исторический ров вокруг дворца «Dankwarderode», получивший в связи с этим оригинальное деревянное покрытие и специальное освещение.

С 2006 года рождественский рынок в Брауншвейге насчитывает более 130 прилавков и аттракционов: при этом ежегодно около 270 участников борются за право стать его частью. В процессе отбора стендов жюри особое внимание уделяет эстетической привлекательности прилавков и магазинчиков, которые обязаны «вписываться в традиционную историческую картину рождественского базара». Кроме того, каждый год специальный комитет выбирает на рынке как наиболее удачные, так и наименее привлекательные прилавки: если первые получают специальный сертификат, то вторые — так называемое «Голубое письмо» (), в результате чего они даже могут быть «отстранены от участия в Рождественской ярмарке на срок до пяти лет».

Примечания

Литература
 Werner Spieß: Geschichte der Stadt Braunschweig im Nachmittelalter. Vom Ausgang des Mittelalters bis zum Ende der Stadtfreiheit 1491—1671, Band 2, Braunschweig 1966, S. 422—423.
 Richard Moderhack: Jahrmarktsprivilegien (1498, 1505, 1521) // Braunschweiger Stadtgeschichte. Mit Zeittafel und Bibliographie. Wagner, Braunschweig 1997, ISBN 3-87884-050-0, S. 84.
 Ricarda Huch: Im alten Reich. Lebensbilder deutscher Städte. Band 2: Der Norden. Bremen 1927, S. 40.
 Peter Giesau: Burgplatz // Braunschweiger Stadtlexikon. 4. Auflage. Joh. Heinr. Meyer, Braunschweig 1992, ISBN 3-926701-14-5, S. 53 f.
 Norman-Mathias Pingel: Topfmarkt // Braunschweiger Stadtlexikon. 2. Auflage. Ergänzungsband. Joh. Heinr. Meyer, Braunschweig 1997, ISBN 3-926701-30-7, S. 130.

Ссылки
 Braunschweiger Weihnachtsmarkt
 Lichterglanz am Braunschweiger Dom
 Weihnachtsmarkt in Braunschweig 2018

Культура Брауншвейга
Рождественские базары
Рождество в Германии

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Home » Articles Posted by Preggie Moodley (Page 7)
Author Archives: Preggie Moodley
SASI encourages people to find additional incomes and increase savings
The South African Savings Institute (SASI) is encouraging people to find an additional income and increase their savings capacity this year.
The organisation is offering tips that can be implemented in January, to help improve financial well-being for the year ahead. Prabashini Moodley reports ……
South Africans have fallen on challenging times in the last two years, amid the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2021, businesses were torched and damaged, stock was stolen and lives were lost. This was yet another blow to many suffering financial hardship.
Now, in Janu-worry after all the festive season spending, the South African Savings Institute says, smart financial planning now can mean less stress in the year ahead. SASI Acting CEO Gerald Mwandiambia says with motivation levels high in January, it's a great time to set in motion a savings plan for the year.
"The best savings technique is really to have a financial plan or goal. January is a great opportunity for you to set those goals for the year ahead. This includes, how you going to manage your budget and specific savings goals for the year ahead. Each individual has their own personal economy and that your goals and your lifestyle are specifically for yourself."
Mwandiambia says discipline is a cornerstone of a healthy savings culture. By activating stop orders and joining stokvel movement savings will become a monthly bill that needs to be paid. He details the most effective ways to meet your financial commitments and save at the same time.
"In order to save, you need sacrifice, commitment and discipline. Sacrifice is saving money you could do something else with. Commitment in terms of having the plan. You need to try and save using automation. That helps with discipline. This is setting up stop orders, so money goes to the right places. Something very important is a stokvel. This helps with the discipline as well the group forces you to comply and stick to certain standards."
It's that time of year when families are facing large annual expenses that many have not prepared for. These include school fees and uniforms. Mwandiambia is encouraging South Africans to look outside the box and make 2022 the year that they increase their savings with an additional income.
"Many of us work 8 hours but after that 8 hours, it leaves 16 hours to do something else. It's very important to have secondary or tertiary incomes and look at how you can make that extra R100 a week. At the end of the day, when you annualise it – it ends up being real money. South Africans limit themselves to earning a salary but you can increase your earning potential. So I say, make 2022 that year when you find that additional income to help you save."
Stokvel a means of saving
It's not all doom and gloom though, and resourcefulness is rewarded. Sixty-year-old Surie Govender from Verulam in KwaZulu-Natal initiated a new stokvel scheme in November last year, before the December spending frenzy.
She has been running the stokvel movement for women in her family and friends in her area for the last twenty years. She says, over the years women have gained financial independence through the savings scheme.
"They like a lump some of the money where they can use it to do something in the house. Some of them say, they just want to buy a TV cash – if they buy from the shop, they will pay interest. Here, you take a lump some and there is no interest. You got no choice, you can't use the money for something else, the money has to be paid. This is a saving because you pay towards it every month. What I did, the bathroom, the kitchen, our outbuilding, the shower."
For a sound financial year ahead, experts' advice is to make saving a priority.
Re-evaluating wasteful spending habits, monitoring electricity and water usage and paying off debt faster are other money-saving tips to implement in 2022.
Buffalo City deploys disaster management teams to areas affected by flooding
The Buffalo City Metro in the Eastern Cape has deployed disaster management teams to areas affected by flash flooding after heavy downpours.
Videos on social media show flooded houses and cars. Executive Mayor Xola Pakati is expected to visit the affected areas this afternoon to assess the extent of the damage.
Metro spokesperson Samkelo Ngwenya has advised people living in low-lying areas to seek alternative accommodation as heavy rainfall is expected for the rest of the weekend.
"We are attending to various incidents of floods that have impacted on homes particularly informal settlements and flooded roads. We are undertaking evacuations in NU1 Mdantsane as well as Zone 3 and Zone 18 and teams are on-site in Zone 3 and 18. We are working with ward councillors to provide disaster relief packages and alternative accommodation to the families. Our municipal disaster operations are going to continue throughout the weekend."
A resident in Mdantsane NU 1, Siyavuya Pawuli says they are battling to stay dry.
"We woke up this morning and there was water in the house, we tried sweeping it away with a broom and now mopping it and now we put sheets and blankets on the floor to absorb the water cause it keeps filling up."
State Capture threatened government's programme of social and economic transformation : Ramaphosa
ANC President Cyril Ramaphosa says State Capture was a systematic attempt to syphon off public resources and funds.
He was delivering the ANC's January 8th statement at the Old Peter Mokaba stadium in Polokwane as part of the party's 110th birthday celebrations.
ANC January 8th Statement 2022:
Ramaphosa received the first part of the State Capture report from acting Chief Justice Raymond Zondo earlier this week. Some described the release of the report as a defining moment in the country's history and a step forward in the quest to tackle corruption. Others claimed that it was biased.
Ramaphosa says State Capture undermined and threatened government's programme of social and economic transformation.
"It also destroyed the capability of the state and led to the departure of capable people from public institutions as they resisted State Capture. Some were fired, some were forced to resign, and some just gave up, some were suspended for long periods and they left. Those were the critical skills that our country was robbed of people who knew the work, who knew what to do."
January 8th statement proceedings:
National Assembly building's structural integrity needs to be tested before rebuilding: Architect
5 January 2022, 10:16 PM
The architect of the National Assembly building, Jack van der Lecq says the most critical part to rebuilding is to test the structural integrity of the building.
Van der Lecq is the person who designed the building as early as 1984 and the building was completed and opened in 1988.
Mercedes Besent speaks to the architect:
Van der Lecq explains, "The most critical thing for me is the testing of the structural integrity of the building because over the main Assembly Chamber there are six massive beams spanning over the total width of that chamber. And if there is any damage or deflection or cracking or whatever structural system, then we have got another problem. Then of course it has to be redone and that's a totally different story. Point number one, the structural integrity of the building must be tested."
Alternative venue for State of the Nation Address
President Cyril Ramaphosa is expected to deliver the State of the Nation Address in February, which happens in the National Assembly.
With the building now gutted, an alternative venue has to be found to host the hundreds of politicians and guests that normally attend the event.
Mercedes Besent speaks to Parliament Spokesperson Moloto Mothapo:
Ukhozi FM song of the year winner says she will not be detered by criticism
Hlosiwe Mthalane, better known as DJ Hlo, says criticisms from music lovers and maestros will not deter her from reaching her dreams. She wants to be one of the best musicians in the country. DJ Hlo surprised many people when her single called Isibani was voted 'Song of the Year' on SABC's Ukhozi FM on New Year's Eve.
DJ Hlo's song won with more than 200 000 votes defeating her arch-rivals Jumbo as well as DJ Siblings featuring DJ Mngadi and many others. The University of KwaZulu-Natal graduate says she is not demotivated by criticism; instead she will work harder to promote her music.
"I feel like a backlash is encouraging me more to be a better version of myself and to be a better DJ and better artist in general. I choose to focus on the positive rather than focusing on negative things. It has opened me many doors in the music industry and more jobs opportunities, more endorsements and I will use that to full capacity."
However, there are mixed views from the public about DJ Hlo's song. Some say they were disappointed when this track was announced song of the year.
"We don't know DJ Hlo, and it was my first time hearing her song. Really, I don't know her and I don't even have her song on my phone. She did not deserve to win."
However, others believe the song deserves recognition.
"I know DJ Hlo and she deserves to be voted song of the year, although I don't know all her songs, she is a hard worker. I am very happy that she won."
DJ Hlo's Manager at the record label Maz Entertainment outlined the strategy they used to promote the song.
"Firstly, we went to the churches, and we went to the Royal Zulu family, we went to the taxi rank and I would like to thank who welcomed us. In fact, most of the people know DJ Hlo, the welcome was tremendous and I thank those who voted for her."
DJ Hlo says this achievement has motivated her to reach greater heights in her music career. – Report by Khalesakhe Mbhense

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Okta brings identity management to server level
Posted on: April 23, 2019, in Blog
Since it was founded in 2009, Okta has been focused on protecting identity — first for individuals in the cloud, and later at the device level. Today at its Oktane customer conference, the company announced a new level of identity protection at the server level.
The new tool, called Advanced Server Access, provides identity management for Windows and Linux Servers, whether they are in a data center or the cloud. The product supports major cloud infrastructure vendors like Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform, and gives IT the ability to protect access to servers, reduce the likelihood of identity theft and bring a level of automation to the server credential process.
As company founder and CEO Todd McKinnon points out, as every organization becomes a technology company building out their own applications, protecting servers becomes increasingly critical. "Identity is getting more and more important because there is more technology and zero trust in the network. You need to manage identity not just for users or devices. We are now applying our identity [experience] to the most critical resources for these emerging tech companies, their servers," he said.
McKinnon explained that developers typically communicate with Linux servers via the SSH protocol. It required logging in of course, even before today's announcement, but what Okta is doing is simplifying that in the same way it simplified logging into cloud applications for individuals.
People's roles change over time, but instead of changing those roles at the identity layer to allow access to the server, in a typical shop the development or operations team creates an admin account with a superset of permissions and simply shares that. "That means the admin account has all the permissions, and also means they are sharing these credentials," he said. If those credentials get stolen, the thief potentially has access to the entire universe of servers inside a company.
Okta's idea is to bring a level of automation to the server identity management process, so that users maintain their own individual credentials and permissions in a more automated fashion, even as roles change across the entire server infrastructure a company manages. "It's continuous, automatic, real-time checking of the state of the machine, and the state of the user and the permissions that makes it far more secure," he said.
The tool is continuously monitoring this information to make sure nothing has changed such as another machine has taken over, avoiding man-in-the-middle attacks. It's also making sure that there is no virus or malware, and that the person who is using the machine is who they say they are and has access at the level they are using it.
Okta went public almost exactly two years ago, and it needs to keep finding ways to expand its core identity services. Bringing it to the server level as this new product moves the idea of identity management deeper into a technology stack, and McKinnon hinted the company isn't done yet.
"You might not think of server access as an identity opportunity, but the way we do it will make it clear that it really is an opportunity, and the same can be said for the next several innovations we will have after this," he said.
Okta to acquire workflow automation startup Azuqua for $52.5M
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Australia Post is one of the country's best known and respected companies, delivering mail across Australia every day.
Australia Post plays a leading role within the transport industry, operating one of the largest and most energy efficient fleets in the country.
To reduce the environmental impact of its transportation operations, Australia Post has considered everything from the use of alternative fuels and fuel efficiency initiatives, to wind drag and variable vehicle sizes.
Boral is one of Australia's largest and most experienced construction materials suppliers.
Boral professionally managers a diverse range of resources in an environmentally responsible manner to ensure a sustainable supply of products well into the next century.
Committed to providing customers with a reliable supply of quality products, Boral has invested in the most advanced plant and equipment, and progressive work practices.
A privately owned transport company, Camlin Transport and Rural Trading operates across the country, with offices in Sydney, Tamworth, and Brisbane.
Camlin specialises in the niche field of cryogenic transport - predominantly bulk and packaged dangerous goods.
Camlin strives to establish itself as an operational partner to its clients in the cryogenic and bituminous industries. Camlin's primary business goal is to operate and grow in a profitable manner, providing income and stability for its ever-growing employee base.
John West Logistics was formed as a company in 2000 under the banner of DGL, specifically to provide a level of personalised service in the areas of Contract Fleet and Warehouse Logistics.
JWL's dedicated fleet operate nationally throughout Australia and New Zealand. Our modern innovative equipment is supported by trained, professional logistics personnel, allowing JWL to supply quality logistical solutions to a diverse range of clients.
The business maintains a strong commitment to safety and the environment and is committed to the provision of quality services in all endeavours.
The K&S Corporation is a multi-model transport and logistics service provider.
K&S' core business is in the management of complex supply chains where linehaul and local transport, export, wharf cartage, bulk transport and storage play key roles.
Their supply chain design philosophy is based on the principles of simplicity, integration and partnering arrangements that continually drive improvements for K&S and their clients.
Mainfrieght is a global logistics provider that offers managed warehousing and international and domestic freight forwarding, with branches across Australia, China, Europe, New Zealand and the United States.
Mainfreight first began operations in New Zealand in 1978. Investment in Australian operations began in 1989 driven by a desire to treat New Zealand and Australia as a single market. In 2011 Mainfreight acquired the business of Wim Bosman Group providing further opportunities to expand Mainfreight's international global network with branches throughout Europe.
Mainfreight's culture is built on a 100-year vision, with all decisions made on the basis the company will be in operation for another 100 years. This shapes their approach to recruitment and training of team members, customer and supplier relationships and growth strategies
Toll in Australia has grown from a single horse cart founded by Albert Toll in 1888 to a major integrated logistics provider with an Asia Pacific focus and a global reach. Australia is home to the Toll Holdings headquarters, a major logistics company operating within Australia.
Toll is an Asia Pacific focused company with the global reach, the resources, the expertise and the drive to deliver optimal logistics solutions to customers, serving domestic and international markets.
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Everything You Need to Know About Microsoft Azure
Stacey Higginbotham Jul 14, 2009 (Jun 5, 2020) -- Blog Post
Microsoft (s msft) today unveiled pricing details for its Azure services platform — possibly because customers were reluctant to build an application on the beta platform without knowing what it may one day cost them. The platform is Microsoft's leap into the clouds, and it's an impressive first step, at least on paper, complete with competitive pricing and lots of concessions designed to get enterprise customers to shift over their IT operations. It also has the potential to become a platform as a service, which would enable far greater levels of control than current platforms, such as those offered by Google; or those tied to applications like Force.com, which allow programmers to build more apps that connect with Salesforce.com (s crm); or Quickbase, which does the same for users of Intuit's (s intu) software.
Windows Azure is a cloud operating system on which developers can build using .NET, Java, Ruby on Rails, Python and other languages. Doug Hauger, Windows Azure GM, said that in the future Microsoft will offer an admin model that will allow developers access to the virtual machine, although they will not have to manually allocate hardware resources as they might with a traditional infrastructure-as-a-service offering such as Amazon's (s amzn) EC2.
SQL Azure is Microsoft's relational database in the cloud.
.NET Services is Microsoft's platform as a service built on the Azure OS.
What It Costs:
There are three pricing models: consumption-based, whereby a customer pays for what they use; subscription-based, with discounts for those committing to six months of use; and as of next July, volume licensing for enterprise customers that want to take existing Microsoft licenses into the cloud.
Azure compute is 12 cents per service hour (half a cent less than Amazon's Windows-based cloud).
Azure's storage service costs 15 cents per GB of data per month, with an additional penny for every 10,000 transactions, which are the movements of data within the stored material.
.NET Services platform costs 15 cents for every 100,000 times the applications built on .Net Services accesses a tool or chunk of code.
Moving data costs 10 cents per GB of inbound data and 15 cents per GB of outbound data.
SQL Azure is $9.99 for up to a 1 GB relational database, and $99.99 for up to a 10 GB relational database.
What the web is saying:
The Register: Microsoft has announced pricing for Azure that marginally undercuts Amazon on raw computing for Windows-based clouds but remains more expensive than the mega book warehouse's Linux option.
The Wall Street Journal: …Microsoft had priced its Azure service "aggressively," suggesting the company is serious about establishing itself as a cloud computing provider, despite qualms about the impact the move could have on its own business model which is overwhelmingly reliant on traditional packaged software sales.
ZDNet: Do you think Microsoft is just rebranding its existing datacenter software as "private-cloud"-capable? Or does Microsoft's private-cloud tools and software give it a leg up over Amazon and Google?
Ars Technica: Microsoft may have a tough time convincing developers that Azure is worth their time, and while pricing is important, it all comes down to trust.
The NYTimes: Critics have charged that Microsoft took a long time to prepare a cloud computing offering, giving rivals – even a bookseller like Amazon – a chance to grab the early attention in this market. Such tardiness has cost Microsoft dearly in the past, especially in search, where Google's brand remains dominant.
What It Means for Microsoft and Cloud Computing:
Much of the analysis so far has accused Microsoft Azure as being a late entrant to the cloud computing and platform-as-a-service party. They're right, but Microsoft is still ahead of many enterprises that it hopes to attract as customers, which have done little more than eye the cloud with suspicion. So it may be late, but don't discount Redmond's efforts just yet. Microsoft seems to be willing to play with other programming languages and embrace heterogeneous environments in Azure, likely because no enterprise data center runs solely on Microsoft software. The Azure platform also has a service-level agreement that offers 99.9 percent uptime on the storage side, and 99.95 percent uptime on the compute side.
In addition to validating cloud computing in the enterprise and offering enterprises a familiar face in the clouds, Microsoft Azure has a dark side (maybe it's navy?) in that it will reduce the software company's profits (though it may, at the same time, generate additional revenue. However, Microsoft knows this, and so far has warned investors about what the cloud stands to do to Microsoft's earnings. It will mitigate some of the margin loss if it can operate its cloud as efficiently as possible. It's already researching ways to do so, including using low-power chips that Intel designs for netbooks in its servers to save on electricity costs.
The nature of corporate computing is changing thanks to virtualization, faster networking and performance boosts from multicore processors. Microsoft cannot afford to ignore these shifts, especially as its customers start to realize the power of cloud computing. It may be behind Amazon and other players, but there's plenty of room for an open platform that's aimed at enterprises. But Microsoft will have to try to improve its reliability, and I'm still unclear as to how nicely it will play with companies that want to build management platforms and other tools for customers who want a view inside the Azure cloud. But so far, the details around Azure make it a contender.
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Saurabh Sharma Dec 7, 2021 (Dec 15, 2021) -- Key Criteria & Market Landscape
Key Criteria for Evaluating iPaaS Solutions
Integration Platform-as-a-Service (iPaaS) solutions help organizations connect diverse applications, services, APIs, and data sources across on-premises and cloud environments. These solutions have…
IaaS, PaaS
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Farhad Sayeed Dec 6, 2021 -- Key Criteria & Market Landscape
Key Criteria for Evaluating Financial Operations (FinOps) Tools
The cloud has become the de facto hosting platform for enterprises, with multi-cloud and hybrid cloud infrastructures becoming the norm. However, managing…
DevOps & Applications, Financial, Fintech
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Paul Lewis Jul 23, 2021 (Jul 29, 2021) -- Business & Technology Impact
Platform Play
LAWPRO is the leading provider of professional indemnity insurance and services to thousands of providers in the Ontario legal community. LAWPRO also…
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Michael Desmond Jun 18, 2021 (Oct 13, 2021) -- Blog
Poised for Growth: GigaOm CEO on What Tech is Next
Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) are redefining the enterprise IT landscape, as across verticals see the potential for AI and…
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The ABCs of CI/CD
This venerable New York-based newspaper has provided its readers news in a balanced and objective fashion for the last 170 years. As…
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Johnny Baltisberger Mar 18, 2021 (Nov 18, 2021) -- Podcast Episode
Voices in Innovation – Digital Transformation in the Age of Covid with Saahil Panikar
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With the arrival of summer, many Manitobans are gearing up to spend as much time as possible outdoors.
Mosquitoes may spoil the summer, but now there is an increased threat of ticks and tick-borne diseases, such as Lyme disease. According to the Manitoba Department of Health website, stats show that Lyme disease - spread by bacterial infections carried by ticks - has been on the rise in the province the past five years.
The spread of Lyme disease is caused by a bite from the deer tick, also known as the black legged tick, Jan Cmela, of the Manitoba Lyme Disease Support Group, says.
"The black legged tick is the one that transfers a lot of tick-borne illnesses (such as) Lyme Babesia and Anaplasmosis, which are all reportable in Manitoba," Cmela says.
If a tick is carrying the infection, its bite can cause the disease to spread to humans.
Most Manitobans have been exposed to a tick habitat, Ryus St. Pierre, also of the Manitoba Lyme Disease Support Group, says. Yet many people aren't too aware of what is at stake when the topic of ticks and Lyme disease comes up, he says.
There were 59 reported cases of Lyme disease in Manitoba last year and 29 confirmed cases. Those numbers are about double what they were five years ago, according to the Manitoba Department of Health website.
Kateryn Rochon, an entomology professor at the University of Manitoba, says most people living in Manitoba have encountered wood ticks, but the deer tick is relatively new.
Deer ticks are more common in 2018 than they were 25 years ago, due to habitat changes and different agricultural practices. Also, many ticks have been brought from migratory birds, Rochon says.
A tick or tick bite may not be a serious infection, as long as it is not the deer tick species and it is removed properly and quickly. According to a press release by the Manitoba Lyme Disease Support Group, any illness after a tick bite warrants a trip to the doctor.
Katelyn McCaffrey, a communications officer at Manitoba Health, says that tick-borne diseases can be successfully treated, especially during the early stages.
Ticks aren't just out in the woods or in campgrounds. Rochon points out that ticks can be in city parks and along riverbanks. Chances are they are common wood ticks, and not the carriers for infections such as Lyme disease, she says.
Rochon says that tick populations may seem to be more common in early to late spring, but they are actually around throughout most of the summer.
The regular dog tick or wood tick still carry diseases, but it's not as as common, Cmela says.
Deer ticks are smaller than wood ticks, and females can be identified by an orange body, whereas the wood tick is more of a reddish brown.
Check out gov.mb.ca/health in order to obtain information on ticks, tick-borne diseases and what precautions to take.


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Мили Елизабет Хюз-Фулфорд () e американска астронавтка, участник в един космически полет.

Образование
Мили Е. Хюз-Фулфорд завършва колеж в Минерал Уелс, Тексас през 1962 г. През 1968 г. завършва университета Тарлетон в Тексас, с бакалавърска степен по биология и химия. През 1972 г. защитава докторат в Женския университет на Тексас. До смъртта си е професор по биохимия в Калифорнийския университет в Сан Франциско.

Служба в НАСА
Избрана е за астронавт от НАСА на 9 януари 1984 г., Група Spacelab-4. След катастрофата на космическата совалка Чаланджър е реселектирана отново на 24 февруари 1989 г., Група SLS-1. Участва в един космически полет. Напуска НАСА на 4 юни 1991 г.

Полет
М. Е. Хюз-Фулфорд лети в космоса като член на екипажа на мисия STS-40:

Награди
  Медал на НАСА за участие в космически полет (1991).

Източници
 Spacefacts biography of Millie Hughes-Fulford
 Laboratory of Cell Growth

Астронавтки на САЩ


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Mit Aireys Inlet wird sowohl ein Meeresarm als auch eine Stadt bezeichnet, die südwestlich von Melbourne in Victoria, Australien, zwischen den Städten Anglesea und Lorne  sowie westlich von Fairhaven an der Great Ocean Road liegen.

Der Ort ist 119 Kilometer von Melbourne, 46 Kilometer von Geelong und 28 Kilometer von Torquay entfernt.

Im Jahr 2016 hatte Aireys Inlet eine Bevölkerung von 802 Menschen.

Geschichte
Im frühen 19. Jahrhundert lebte dort – noch vor der europäischen Besiedlung – der geflohene Sträfling William Buckley in einer primitiven Hütte und ernährte sich von Fischen, Meeresfrüchten, wilden Himbeeren und Honigameisen. Aireys Inlet wurde zu dieser Zeit von den Aborigines Managwhawz genannt. Heute trägt der Ort den Namen eines frühen Siedlers J. M. C. Airey, der 1842 in dieses Gebiet kam.

Das Post Office wurde am 1. April 1893 eröffnet.

Literatur und Medien
In den frühen 1950er Jahren lebte der australische Krimiautor Arthur W. Upfield bei Aireys Inlet. Seine Novelle The New Shoe (1951) basiert auf der Ortschaft und dem Leuchtturm. Einige der Romanfiguren basieren auf lokalen Persönlichkeiten.

Viele Szenen der Kinder-Fernsehserie Twist Total wurden im Gebiet des Split Point Lighthouse gedreht.

2005 wurde der Bollywood-Film Hochzeit – Nein danke! in Melbourne mit einigen Szenen um Aireys Inlet, Fairhaven und Anglesea gedreht.

Tourismus

Zahlreiche Surfer machen in Aireys Inlet Urlaub und nutzen den bekannten Surfstrand Fairhaven Beach. Da dieser Strand starken Wechseln unterliegt, gilt Surfen dort als unberechenbar. Schwimmer sollten beachten, dass dort eine starke Strömung herrscht.

Der Painkalac Creek, der Aireys Inlet von Fairhaven trennt, formt einen Salzsee hinter den Sanddünen, bevor er sich in den Ozean ergießt. Durch den niedrigen Wasserstand im Inlet erreicht der Creek allerdings selten den Ozean.

Es gibt auch ein hufeisenförmiges Reef am Step Beach, das eine exzellente Möglichkeit zum Schwimmen bietet, wenn der Tidenhub den niedrigsten Stand erreicht. Die touristische Hauptattraktion des Ortes bildet das Split Point Lighthouse, das über das Inlet hinausragt und dem Ort ein Erkennungszeichen an der Great Ocean Road verleiht.

Da die Küstenlinie mit Fairhaven verbunden ist, gibt es dort einen langen Sandstrand, der lediglich bei Aireys Inlet durch eine Reihe von Felsen unterbrochen ist, zwischen denen es Badestrände gibt, wovon meisten davon sind ziemlich einsam  sind. Jeder Strand hat seine eigene Charakteristik, die sich aus verschiedener Länge, Lage und nahegelegenen Felsen ergibt. Die Strände beinhalten den Sandy Gully, Steppy Beach und Sunnymeade.

Bei Niedrigwasser ist es möglich, entlang des Strandes zu wandern oder über die Felsen zu klettern. Dabei wird ein Ausblick auf den östlichen Beginn der Great Ocean Road in Richtung Anglesea ermöglicht.

Buschfeuer von 1983
Aireys Inlet wurde von den australischen Buschfeuern von 1983 erfasst, die eine große Anzahl von Häusern niederbrannten. Kurze Zeit danach stieg das Interesse an dem Gebiet wieder und die Immobilienpreise erholten sich und stiegen bis zum heutigen Tag laufend an. Für die Immobilien, vor allem für jene, die einen Blick auf den Ozean ermöglichen, stiegen die Kaufpreise und es werden mehr als eine Million AUD erzielt.

Weblinks
 Offizielle Website (englisch)
 ANGAIR: local environment group (englisch)
 Split Point Lighthouse History (englisch)
  (englisch)
 Official Great Ocean Road Info (englisch)

Einzelnachweise

Surf Coast Shire


Chair of the Board of Tetrareal Jsc George Velchev (left) and General Manager of the Doubletree by Hilton Varna hotel Claudio Sturm (right) announce the opening of the first Doubletree hotel in Bulgaria. Photo by Anettevents. The top-class world hotel brand Hilton will be represented for the first on the Bulgarian Black Sea coast with the opening of the "Doubletree by HiltonVarna" hotel in the Golden Sands resort. The upcoming opening of the Doubletree by HiltonVarna was made public Friday at a news conference in the Golden Sands with the announcement of the signing of a franchising contract between Hilton Worldwide and Helios Hotels Jsc, a subsidiary of Tetrareal Jsc. The famous Doubletree chocolate chip cookie, an icon of the hospitality of the brand, was introduced for the first time in Bulgaria at a special ceremony. While the top global luxury hotel brands ar present in Sofia, the Doubletree by HiltonVarna will be the first establishment of such class in Bulgaria outside of the capital. "The new Doubletree by HiltonVarna is the fully renovated luxury part of the former Helios Spa & Resort Hotel. We have decided to perfect this part in order re-brand it, so we have invested in a number of improvements such as new fire and safety installations, new TV systems, or the Suite Dreams mattresses which are a must for the Doubletree brand, and are unique for Bulgaria in our hotel," announced Dr. George Velchev, Chair of the Board of Directors of Tetrareal Jsc.
"Our company has made a considerable investment in Doubletree by HiltonVarna, especially given the fact that the hotel already had a five-star category. Our aim was to create a unique product for the Golden Sands and the Bulgarian Black Sea coast. We are glad that once again we will be pioneers with our world-class brand and services in the Golden Sandsresorts. Hilton has been selected many times as the most famous hotel brand in Europe and the world, and I am convinced that this product will enjoy an immediate success here since Bulgaria continues to offer the best quality at the best price among the European vacation destinations," Velchev explained. While not allowed by the Hilton franchising contract to disclose the precise figure of the investment in the new Doubletree hotel, Velchev told Novinite.com (Sofia News Agency) that the amount of money invested to re-brand the hotel was about 35% of the original investment for its construction. "The opening of Doubletree by HiltonVarna in 2010 reaffirms the stable development of the Doubletree brand in Europe. The European presence of the world hotel brand Doubletree by Hilton has marked considerable growth in the last few years," said Claudio Sturm, the General Manager of the new Doubletree by HiltonVarna hotel in the Golden Sandsresorts. Sturm has prior experience at management positions in leading hotel chains in Germany and Austria, and has also served as the Sales and Marketing Director of the Hilton Sofia. Doubletree by HiltonVarna is located in a green area of the Golden Sands resort with a sea view. It features a fitness center equipped by top American producer Precor. It offers a direct access to the Aphrodite Beauty Spa & Health Clinic, a unique combination for the Bulgarian Black Sea coast of a spa and medical center located on a total of area of 2 300 square meters. Among its many other amenities in the Doubletree style, the hotel grants its guests a free access to its own section of the beach at the Golden Sands resort. Doubletree is one of the ten brands in the Hilton Family which also participates in the Hilton Hhonors program; it encompasses facilities in 230 locations around the world. The first Bulgarian Doubletree hopes to profit from the loyalty of Hilton clients, as well as from the upcoming opening of a number of new Doubletree hotels around Europe – 4 in Russia, 3 in Turkey, and one in each Greece, Romania, and Norway. Velchev told Novinite.com (Sofia News Agency) he expected that the opening of the Doubletree by Hotel Varna hotel will break the model of the Bulgarian Black Sea hotels and resorts of reliance on tour operators for clients. In his words, over 90% of the foreign tourists at the Bulgarian Black Sea hotels are recruited through tour operators; while with specific features of the Doubletree brand will allow the new hotel to bring this number down to 20%-30% as far as its guests are concerned. Velchev has also announced the planned opening of another facility of the Hilton brand by his company - the HiltonVarna. Its construction will start after the demolition of an existing hotel in the Golden Sandsresorts in the fall of 2010, and the HiltonVarna is expected to be opened in June 2011. Interviews with the Chair of the Board of Tetrareal Jsc, George Velchev, and the General Manager of the Doubletree by HiltonVarna, as well as additional information expect on the Novinite.com website on Monday and in The Sofia Morning News on Tuesday.


The Department of Security of the Government of The United States of America is a cabinet-level department of the office of the Governor. Operations within the Department of Security are directly overseen by the Secretary of Security.
The Department of Security ensures the physical safety of all Government personnel. The Department of Security is directly responsible for the staffing and training of Government security personnel and the maintenance of security equipment. The Department of Security possesses the authority to out-source the duties and responsibilities of the Department of Security to private contractors. The Department of Security is also directly responsible for the security of foreign dignitaries when visiting the office of the Governor and shall interact with foreign security officials regarding coordination of security protocols.
The Department of Security is also charged with ensuring the Continuity of the Government (COG) in times of emergency by installing alternative communications, secondary physical locations, additional document repositories and other necessary redundancy plans.
The Department of Security will also directly oversee the establishment of armories and the long-term growth, training and maintenance of an organized militia in support of the Government of The United States of America.
Candidates for Secretary and Deputy Secretary(s) of the Department of Security are nominees exclusive to the Governor. Nomination of candidates for the staffing of other roles within the Department of Security may be submitted by any General Post Master. All candidates for employment within the Government of the United States of America are subject to Government employee processing and evaluation protocols and confirmation from the assembly of the Government of The United States of America. Once confirmed, these officials shall possess authority to perform the delegated functions and duties of the Department of Security.


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By Janne Wass on March 30, 2021 • ( 5 Comments )
Killers from Space
Famous for its villains with ping pong ball eyes, this 1953 low-budget entry sees Peter Graves abducted by aliens planning to invade the Earth. Sadly, the stale script isn't nearly as fun as the design of the antagonists would suggest. 2/10
Killers from Space. 1954, USA. Directed by W. Lee Wilder. Written by Myles Wilder & William Raymond. Starring: Peter Graves, James Seay, Steve Pendleton, Frank Gerstle, John Frederick, Barbara Bestar, Shepard Menken. Produced by W. Lee Wilder. IMDb: 3.5/10. Rotten Tomatoes: N/A. Metacritic: N/A.
First, we have to address the eyes – the wonderfully wacky ping pong ball eyes. This 1954 film was supposed to be serious – and the aliens were supposed to be frightening. And then they stuck ping pong balls on their eyes. It's wonderful! Well, in fact, they are not ping pong balls at all. Director Willie Wilder had suggested ping pong balls, but makeup artist Harry Thomas thought that wouldn't look realistic, so he went to an optical shop to ask for glass eyes that he could cut in half. But they cost 900 dollars apiece, which was probably more than Thomas' entire makeup budget. John Johnson's book Cheap Tricks and Class Acts quotes an article in Filmfax, where Thomas is interviewed. Thomas describes how after being turned down at the opticians', he stayed up all night wrestling with the problem of the aliens' eyes, and how to make them realistic, so he wouldn't have to settle for Wilder's idea with the ping pong balls: "I was almost completely discouraged when I opened up the refrigerator to get something to drink, and there was my answer: a white plastic egg tray." So there you have it. In your face, haters, those are not ping pong balls, they are very realistic egg tray bottoms.
The film itself follows the exploits of nuclear scientist Dr. Douglas Martin (Peter Graves), who is accompanied in his plane by the same kind of narrated military stock footage that director Willie Wilder used in his 1953 film Phantom from Space (review). This time, however, it isn't an alien UFO that crashes, but Martin's plane, as he and his pilot are out and about monitoring a nuclear test near the Soledad Flats. The stock footage rescue team finds the pilot dead, but no trace of Martin. However, shortly after, a dishevelled Martin stumbles into the test facility, with no recollection of anything after the crash — or about how he got a strange surgical scar on his chest. His superiors and the FBI think it best that, until the mystery is solved and Martin can be deemed sound of mind, he take a vacation. However, despite the pleas from his wife (Barbara Bestar), Martin can't keep away from his job, and one day walks in, steals some top secret data, drives out to the Soledad flats and places a note under a rock. Unfortunately he is caught red-handed by FBI investigator Briggs (Steve Pendleton), who seems to be constantly strolling around the nuclear test site. When apprehended and under the influence of "truth serum", Martin tells us "the whole story".
Dr. Martin (Peter Graves) being examined by Maj. Clift (Shepard Menken).
33 minutes into the 70-minute film we meet the egg-tray-eyed aliens, dressed in leotards resembling the Phantom. This 20-minute sequence is told in flashback, as Martin awakes on a slab in a cave filled with blinking machines, seeing the alien surgeons holding up his beating heart in front of him, then replacing it in his chest. This is, naturally, where his care came from. Their leader Deneb (John Frederick) informs him that he died in the crash and was brought back to life so that he could aid them in getting information on the last nuclear test. Turns out the aliens are using the energy released in the nuclear tests to create gigantic insects and lizards, all of which Martin meets in a poorly staged 10-minute rear projection sequence as he tries to escape. As Deneb informs him, the aliens' home planet is dying and they intend to invade Earth — but not before unleashing the giant critter plague upon the planet, which will devour all living things, leaving the house ready for its new inhabitants. When Martin refuses to save his own life by helping the aliens, Deneb calls on the great Tala (John Frederick again), to appear on one of his screens to hypnotise Martin and force him to do the aliens' bidding. End of flashback.
The third act of the movie consists of Martin arguing with his doctor (Shepard Menken) and superiors (James Seay, Frank Gerstle) about his state of mind, and about the necessity to shut down power in the entire state (you see, the aliens are tapping into the power grid, and cutting off power will make their base explode). Meeting only with disbelief, Martin escapes the base hospital in pyjamas and a hospital gown, determined to shut down the power plant on his own.
Peter Graves waking from surgery.
And what about those eyes, you may ask. Well, as Deneb tells Martin, the aliens' sun is fading, and the aliens have developed egg tray eyes in order to cope with the darkness.
In truth, Killers from Space has all the makings of a good B movie. The story, concocted by director William Lee Wilder's son, Myles Wilder, is not a bad one. The attempt to meld a spy thriller with an alien abduction scheme has worked up to this day, with X-Files as the penultimate example. Wilder takes his cues from alien mind control stories such as the one found in Invaders from Mars (1953, review) and combines it with the always popular amnesia trope (done to perfection in Richard Condon's 1959 novel The Manchurian Candidate and carried on in Robert Ludlum's 1980 book The Bourne Identity), and is careful not to reveal the aliens until halfway through the film. Granted – the script is clumsy and illogical and the dialogue, especially the one involving the aliens, is disastrous, but Myles Wilder and his tag-team buddy William Raynor weren't totally useless writers, as they proved with their successful TV work later on. With even a semi-decent budget and a good director, say like Jack Arnold or William Cameron Menzies, this could have been a minor science fiction classic in the vein of It Came from Outer Space (1953, review).
Flying above a nuclear test.
But, alas, they are stuck with a shoestring budget and Willie Wilder. I have written in length about Wilder Sr. and Jr. in my review of their previous film Phantom from Space, so head over there for some more insight. But briefly: William Wilder was the older brother of the accomplished Austrian writer-director Billy Wilder. In 1945 Billy's estranged brother Willie took some of the money he had made as a successful handbag manufacturer in New York and set himself up as an independent film producer in Los Angeles. Phantom from Space was his third feature film as a director, and the first of his early fifties sci-fi trilogy, the others being Killers from Space and The Snow Creature (1954, review). These three have become his most lasting legacy, and are often considered among the worst of all the inane science fiction cheapos made in the decade. He directed eight more films in the fifties and sixties, including the sci-fi tinged The Man Without a Body (1957) and a last science fiction-ish movie called The Omegans (1968)
Peter Graves carries Killers from Space on his shoulders. Not the most versatile of actors, he is sometimes prone to overacting in the movie, especially in scenes where he is reacting to things that are not on screen, or fleeing from rear-projected gigantic critters. But he never lets on that he is working in a basement-studio production or that the proceedings are sometimes downright silly. Thus he lends an air of dignity and realism to the movie, and never seems to be phoning in his performance.
Peter Graves.
There isn't much in the way of special effects in the film – apart from the strange equipment in the alien lab and the rear-projected critters. So little, in fact, that the film doesn't even have a credited special effects crew. The stacks of machines appearing in the aliens' cave were probably salvaged from some other film, and blinking neon tubes and arc generators were not hard to come by in Hollywood in the fifties. At least in Phantom from Space, there were some rather impressive invisibility effects, here all effects shots are stock photo explosions, stock photo animals or bits and pieces cobbled together from other films, mainly a few miniature shots of rockets, space stations and futuristic cities – I can distinctly make out the Martian city from the 1951 film Flight to Mars (review), one of the most re-used miniature shots in SF history.
The rear-projected shots of the spiders and lizards and bugs behind Peter Graves are clumsily done, and Graves seems to have been given very little direction about what he should be doing. The whole sequence with Dr. Martin running around in the caves is painful to watch, as it is seems nobody on set had any sense of what was supposed to be going on, other than having Graves running back and forth in Bronson Canyon. The change in film stock quality when mixing actual film footage and stock footage is blatant throughout the movie, even from looking at the grainy version available for home viewing. When a nuclear explosion is supposed to go off in the desert, one can clearly see that it is a US atom bomb test. At sea. With ships in the sea.
Steve Pendleton as he FBI agent.
The film was clearly shot in a rush, since Wilder and cinematographer William H. Clothier seem to settle for as few set-ups of each scene as possible, and some scenes are simply done with one single, static camera shot. To the film's credit, we do see a little more than bare offices, as Wilder does try to take us out in the open and change locations as much as possible. Still, there's no escaping the dreary scenes where actors stand lined up against a white wall with a chair and a desk to make it look like an office. For one scene we get little more than two people talking to each other from separate corners of the screen, while the camera centres in of a portrait of president Eisenhower. For five minutes or so. For the final climactic scene, Wilder had the privilege to film at an actual power plant, and the surroundings are pretty impressive. Unfortunately, he doesn't quite manage to use the camera with any sort of imagination, to take advantage of the location, instead we get people running through one static shot into the next one.
All characters in the film are flat and one-dimensional, and there is no character development to speak of. The film is only 70 minutes long, but the lack lack of any sort of subplot or dialogue outside of the what is necessary to move the plot along force the filmmakers to pad out the film with stock footage and endless silent stretches of people running, driving and walking. The plot could easily have been condensed into a 30 minute TV episode.
John Frederick hypnotising Peter Graves over a screen.
Thematically, the film follows the issues of the time without much deviation. This was the height of McCarthyism, when Americans were looking for Russian spies under every bed. However, for diplomatic reasons censors didn't want creators of fiction to actually say they were looking for Russian spies under every bed, hence the many creative metaphors we see in films from this era, where people are talking about "foreign powers" or "the enemies of freedom". In Killers from Space, it isn't hard to see the the mind-controlling aliens as a metaphor for the communists, secretly building up their army for an invasion, but the script is so thin that not even this simplest of SF tropes gets any real footing, as the screenwriters never stop long enough to ponder the issue. Instead the aliens' motives are on a first-grader's level: our planet is dying, we will kill everyone and take over the Earth.
The other Big Issue of sci-fi in the fifties was nuclear power and the atom bomb. More often than not, the fear was that the Soviets might develop long-range missiles armed with nuclear warheads, capable of launching them across the Pacific of the Atlantic ocean. Furthermore, advances in rocketry, such as the development of the V2 rocket and other technology sparked the idea that the first country to conquer space would be able to place nuclear weapon platforms either on the moon or in orbit around the Earth. Such worries were the driving force behind films like Destination Moon (1950, review) and Project Moonbase (1953, review). In these films, the fear of nuclear weapons was strictly that atom bombs were incredibly powerful bombs that could lay waste to whole cities. Very few at the time – even among scientists – understood the long-term danger of radiation and radioactive fallout. There were films that dealt with the dangers of atomic power, such as Five (1951, review) and The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951, review), but not even their bleak visions could do justice to the real horrors of a nuclear explosion. Unsurprisingly, Killers from Space doesn't get it either, with our heroes peacefully strolling around the test site.
Ruth Bennett and Peter Graves.
All in all, Killers from Space is a film where the hot topics of the time informs the storytelling more than the other way around. Whether or not Wilder & Wilder had any intent to comment on either of the topics listed above is unclear, but whatever the case, these discussions are lost in the thinness of the script. As such, the film has more in common with the juvenile entertainment of the Flash Gordons (1936, review) of the thirties and forties than with afore-mentioned socially charged movies.
Among the many mundane camera setups are small moments of quality. Phantom from Space and Killers from Space were among the first films as director of photography for William H. Clothier, a Hollywood legend who worked on dozens on westerns with John Wayne and John Ford, including The Alamo (1960), The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), Cheyenne Autumn (1964) and Big Jake (1971). He was nominated for two Oscars. In Killers from Space especially two shots stand out; both POV shots. The first one is the air base doctor checking Dr. Martin's eyes, which is a very eerie close-up of Shepard Menken's face, and the other is the shot of Martin waking up after his crash, seeing three strange aliens doing something with scare, smoking instruments, then the shot switches so we see Martin's own heart beating on top of his chest.
The editing is ghastly. People appear from out of nowhere and there is shot after shot of people running from one static shot through another. This is most tiresome in the underground sequences and in the sequences at the power plant. The pacing is constantly off and there are too many unedited stretches of single takes.
Peter Graves and a lizard.
Contemporary critics, as far as they noted the Killers from Space, where not impressed. Boxoffice wrote: No success whatsoever met this obvious attempt to parley some stock footage, a collection of pseudo-scientific props and touches of trick photography into suspenseful space-opera which might capitalize on the current popularity of pictures of its category." Variety called it "a routine affair where more adroit handling might have upped into a true chiller". Wood Soanes at the Oakland Tribune noted in his review that he couldn't inform the readers about how the film ended, "since the picture ran 71 minutes and 50 was all I could stand".
Today, the film has a 3.5/10 rating on IMDb and not enough entries for a Rotten Tomatoes consensus. AllMovie gives Killers from Space 1/5 stars, and Craig Butler writes: "Unfortunately, somehow director W. Lee Wilder manages to take all the fun out of what should be a crazy misfire of a movie, making a film that is so tedious and dull that all the fun drains out of it within the first 15 minutes. Clearly, Wilder was attempting to treat this material with seriousness, which is not a crime. But his work here is so lacking in any skill, so lacking in any sense of pacing or structure or ability to build suspense, that he makes Killers a chore to sit through." TV Guide writes: "Cheap and idiotic, this film employs motifs that might have suggested allusions to 1950s politics had more thought been put into the screenplay. As it is, the picture contains bad stock footage, bad costuming for the aliens, and bad acting from everyone involved."
James Seay, Barbara Bestar and Frank Gerstle.
Film historian and critic Bill Warren wrote: "Killers from Space suffers from slow pace, mediocre acting and cheap production values, all of which detract from the interesting basic premise". And in The Sci-Fi Movie Guide, Chris Barsanti notes that while the film does contain some atmospheric photography, "some incredibly shoddy f/x […], along with a lethargic pace, put this one deep in the trash barrel". Clive Davies in Spinegrinder calls it "pretty but, but worthwhile if only for the aliens". Richard Scheib at Moria writes: "In all regards, Killers from Space is routine. W. Lee Wilder generates almost nothing in the way of suspense during the chase sequences. The film loses credibility altogether once it introduces the ridiculous looking aliens in hooded boiler suits and with ping-pong ball eyes and shaggy eyebrows, looking for all the world like they are wearing mass-produced joke store masks. Wilder valiantly tries to obtain some effect by sinisterly underlighting them but the ludicrousness of their look sinks the film."
However, both Killers from Space and W. Lee Wilder have their genuine fans, even if they are few and far between. One of the most heartfelt praises of Wilder I've read comes from Jim Knipfel at Den of Geek, who writes that "W. Lee was a much more interesting and adventurous filmmaker than his brother" and that "he did have some fine, sharp little scripts (often written by his son Myles) and an undeniable cinematic flair. Somehow, perhaps pure chutzpah was behind it, or a touch of dark alchemy, or simple madness, all those sub-par onscreen elements came together into some mighty spellbinding wholes".
In Jim Knipfel's defence, I haven't seen all of Wilder's films, but I do feel that the praise he heaps on Phantom from Space and Killers from Space is a tad inflated. While it is true that both films have the feeling of being made by a mad scientist, the simple truth is that the quality just isn't there. With both movies there is the nagging feeling that there's a good premise in the original story – but that's thanks to Myles and not Willie. Myles later proves himself as a quality player in Hollywood, Willie never did.
Killers from space!
I would agree that W. Lee Wilder wasn't the same sort of clumsy amateur that Ed Wood was, but there were a bunch of decent directors and producers in Hollywood in the forties, fifties and sixties that churned out pictures on shoestring budgets with far better results, even if they weren't all as wacky as Wilder. Sam Newfield and William Beaudine, for example, and let's not forget the king of the cheapo movies, Roger Corman, who worked on even smaller budgets than Wilder, often with better results. What Wilder did have in common with Wood was that his reach exceeded his grasp, which is why we remember him today. Trying to make Big Movies with Big Ideas with neither the talent nor the budgets to do so, his films are spectacularly memorable failures, rather than decent, but forgettable B movie fair. Another reason we remember Killers from Space is that the movie fell into the public domain quite early, since nobody renewed its copyright license, and because it was riffed on by the Film Crew, a MST3K-type group some years ago. And because of the egg trays.
And I disagree with Richard Scheib who writes that it is the wacky-looking aliens that sink the movie. The aliens in Invaders from Mars were equally kooky, but that film still works, and what doesn't work isn't the fault of their baggy velour suits. No, Killers from Space is killed off because nothing else in the film comes even close to the outrageousness of the aliens. While the ludicrous aliens do destroy any credibility the film tries to build up as a serious chiller, the real problem is that the rest of the movie is at the same time so incredibly dull and so slapdash.
Frank Gerstle, Sphepard Menken, James Seay and Steve Pendleton.
Billy Wilder (born Samuel) is of course regarded as one of the top directors in Hollywood during the forties and fifties, while Willie (born Wilhelm) is regarded as the talent-deprived embarrassment of the family. Willie helped out the penniless Billy when he arrived in Hollywood from Nazi Germany, but for some reason the two brothers didn't seem to get along – they never collaborated, and rarely spoke of each other in public. One of the few times Billy mentioned Willie, he jokingly called him "a dull son of a bitch". According to Willie's granddaughter Kim Wilder, who writes about her granddad at Kid in the Front Row Film Blog, there wasn't any special reason for the animosity between the two, other than the fact that Billy Wilder was a difficult and self-absorbed man, who was more interested in his own art and his "rich Hollywood friends" than his family. However, there is a connection between the two Wilders in Killers from Space, and that is lead actor Peter Graves.
Peter Graves was an up-and-coming actor who got something of a breakthrough in Billy Wilder's lauded WWII drama Stalag 17, released the same year as Killers from Space. I have covered Graves earlier on the blog, in my review of the terrible 1952 movie Red Planet Mars. Graves was never the most versatile of actors, but did a good enough job within his own parameters, that with the help his athletic build, his ruggedly handsome features and his stern blue eyes and blonde hair, he was able to carve out a rather successful Hollywood career, but as the blog X-Entertainment puts it: more in a "'you're supposed to know what he's done' way than an actual 'you know what he's done' way".
Peter Graves stealing information.
During the fifties Graves trudged on in supporting roles in A-films like The Night of the Hunter (1955) and The Naked Street (1955), and played leads in a number of B movies, including a few sci-fis. But he found his real success in TV, starting with the lead in the western drama Fury (1955-1960), following up with the Australian western series Whiplash (1960-1961) and the British Court Marshal (1965-1966). To baby boomers, however, his real claim to fame is as the grey-haired leader of a team of American agents infiltrating foreign baddies all over the world. As Jim Phelps in the groundbreaking spy series Mission: Impossible (1967-1973) Peter Graves became an A-list celebrity worldwide, and the role landed him a Golden Globe in 1971. He reprised his role in the remake (1988-1990), but turned down the role in the Tom Cruise movie in 1996, because the script revealed Jim Phelps as a traitor.
A younger audience may know Graves from his legendary turn as Captain Clarence Oveur in the Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker comedy Airplane! (1980), where he asks a young boy if he's "ever seen a grown man naked", and in the sequel from 1982. In an interview Graves confesses that at first he threw the script for Airplane! across the room, as he thought it was rubbish, but upon second reading he realised how the role made fun of his history of steely, stone-faced hero types, and he slowly started to chuckle. Graves is treasured in sci-fi circles because of his appearance in a number of bad B movies, like It Conquered the World (1956, review) and Beginning of the End (1957). He had the leading role in The Clonus Horror (1979) and had a cameo as himself in Men in Black II (2002). He also appeared in a few TV films, including The Eye Creatures (1965) where he did an uncredited voice-over, and the interactive movie/computer game Darkstar: The Interactive Movie (2010), where he acted as narrator. Graves' real name was Peter Duesler Aurness. Sci-fi fans may know his brother James Arness as the Thing in The Thing from Another World (1951, review). However, he is of course best known for his long-lasting fame as one of the main cast in the legendary TV series Mission: Impossible. Graves was the brother of actor James Arness, of Gunsmoke fame – for SF fans best known for playing the alien in The Thing from Another World (1951, review).
Leslie Nielsen and Peter Graves (right) on Airplane in 1980.
Regarding the cast, there are few worthy of much mention apart from Peter Graves. However, credit must be given to John Frederick, who plays the leader of the aliens with a completely straight face, not that this makes the performance any better. This was probably one of his largest roles, as his 70 film and TV roles are mostly of the "2nd officer of Wehrmacht" or "Police officer in car" variety. As in most of his movies, he was credited as John Merrick. James Seay, who plays the air base commander, is wooden as a plank. He had tiny roles in When Worlds Collide (1951, review), The Day the Earth Stood Still, The War of the Worlds (1953, review). He also had a supporting role in Phantom from Space, and he was at least credited in The Amazing Colossal Man (1957), Beginning of the End, The Destructors (1968) and Panic in the City (1968).
Frank Gerstle and Steve Pendleton were prolific bit-part actors who appeared in both A and B movies, as well as TV series. Gerstle appeared in The Neanderthal Man, The Magnetic Monster (1953, review), Killers from Space, The Wasp Woman (1959), Monstrosity (1963), Murderer's Row (1966), The Silencers (1966) and The Bamboo Saucer (1968), and Pendleton can be seen in Target Earth (1954, review) as one of the military types stuck in a room. Shepard Menken, as the physician, is actually not that bad in his role, as the only one in the cast emitting anything close to naturalism. Menken soldiered in with bit-parts in B movies up until the mid-fifties, when he almost exclusively switched to TV, and in the sixties he made something of a career in animation voice work. His greatest claim to fame is probably voicing Ricki-Ticki-Tavi in the film with the same name in 1975.
Barbara Bestar as Dr. Martin's wife does show some emotion, but unfortunately too much, and she overacts all the way through. Bestar played the female lead in four B movies in the early fifties, and spent the rest of the decade as guest actor in a number of TV-series.
James Seay, Steve Pendleton and Shepard Menken.
Among the smaller bit-part players are a few mildly interesting names to pick up as curiosities. Jack Daly had small roles in The Day the Earth Stood Still, The Rocket Man (1954), Tobor the Great (1954, review), Phantom from Space and Return of the Fly (1959). Ron Gans had quite a time on TV, playing several aliens in the series Lost in Space (1965-1967), the abominable snowman on Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1964-1968), and later started doing voice work – he pops up in an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987-1994), and had the honour of voicing the minor Decepticon robot Drag Strip, as well as a number of other voices on the original Transformers TV-series (1984-1987), as well as the straight-to-video movie Transformers: Five Faces of Darkness. X-Men fans might want to take note of the fact that he voiced none other than Magneto in the one-off TV short Pryde of the X-Men (1989). He also had bit-parts in the films The Curious Female (1970), The Thing with Two Heads (1972), Deathsport (1978), Heartbeeps (1981), and Not of this Earth (1988), starring former porn star Traci Lords. Robert Roark's claim to fame is playing Davis, a psychopathic killer, in Target Earth.
Makeup artist Harry Thomas (the one with the egg trays) did work as part of larger makeup teams on a few A-listers like George Cukor's Camille (1936) Cecil B. DeMille's The Ten Commandments (1956), but the rest of his resumé almost reads like a list of the 50 worst movies ever made. Thomas worked on a total of 21 science fiction films, starting with Superman and the Mole-Men (1951, review), Red Snow (1952) and Invasion U.S.A. (1952, review). He then moved on to films like Project Moon Base, Cat-Women of the Moon (1953, review), The Neanderthal Man (1931, review), Jungle Hell, Voodoo Woman (1957), The Unearthly (1957), From Hell It Came (1957), Frankenstein's Daughter (1958), Night of the Blood Beast (1958), Missile to the Moon (1958), Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959), Flight that Disappeared (1961), Space Probe Taurus (1965), Navy vs. the Night Monsters (1966), The Bubble (1966), and The Curious Female (1970). He also worked on many episodes of the TV series Adventures of Superman.
Just one more.
The one thing that stands out surprisingly well in the movie is the music, composed by Manuel Compinsky. A renowned violinist, conductor and music teacher, like many musicians in Los Angeles, he contributed to the film industry, although mostly as a musician. He composed music for three of W. Lee Wilder's movies, though: Killers from Space, The Snow Creature and The Big Bluff (1955). His brother, Alec Compinsky was music supervisor on Killers from Space, and worked in this capacity on a handful of other films, but most notably on a good dozen TV-series. The music in the film is suitably eerie, with a hint of modernism, and covers long stretches without dialogue.
Killers from Space. 1954, USA. Directed by W. Lee Wilder. Written by Myles Wilder and William Raymond. Cinematography: William H. Clothier. Editing: William Faris. Music: Manuel Compinsky. Makeup and egg trays: Harry Thomas. Sound recordist: George E.H. Hanson. Starring: Peter Graves, James Seay, Steve Pendleton, Frank Gerstle, John Frederick, Barbara Bestar, Shepard Menken, Jack Daly, Ron Gans, Ben Welden, Burt Wenland, Lester Dorr, Robert Roark, Ruth Bennett, Mark Scott. Produced by W. Lee Wilder for Planet Filmplays.
Categories: Alien body snatchers, Alien Invasion, Alien monsters, Aliens, Mind Control, Monster critters, Monsters
Tagged as: Film, Movies, Peter Graves, Sci-fi, Science Fiction, W. Lee Wilder
Riders to the Stars
theotherscribe says:
I love how in-depth this is, from all aspects of the production and cinematography to the cultural landscape it came from to the contemporary reviews to the profiles of the people behind it. Very well done and interesting to read, especially considering such a dull and shallow subject matter.
Janne Wass says:
Thank you, scribe! Even bad art deserves good analyses!
No problem! And you're absolutely right.
This movie its actually pretty good, Phantom from Space Is more solid overall and The Snow Creature Is more focused but it delivers. Great sci fi flicks.
Thanks for the comment Vincent! I wouldn't describe any of Willie Wilder's films as "solid", but for their budgets they are at least professionally crafted, even if he had to cut a lot of corners.


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Good business requires good government, too
By Catherine Holt, CEO of the Greater Victoria Chamber of Commerce
If you follow Bill Gates and Warren Buffett — those icons of American capitalism — you might have been startled recently, as I was, by their adamant view that they, and other members of the one per cent, need to pay way more taxes.
This goes against what has been considered gospel — that the private sector does not support handing over hard-earned money to government.
We want our politicians to enable the private sector so it can thrive and create jobs and a strong economy. But when it comes to the public sector, there is often an attitude that government is wasteful and a financial burden that needs to get out of the way.
In the United States and the United Kingdom, countries that too often set the tone for Canadian attitudes, there is a serious clash going on between the private and public sectors. Their national governments are led by private-sector champions on a mission to dismantle the institutions they were elected to lead.
But in this clash, Gates and Buffett are unexpectedly at the forefront as defenders of the public sector. They talk about government keeping a society and economy healthy by providing services that enable people, especially workers, to stay healthy, educated, safe and mobile.
Gates and Buffett are driven by the appalling information that life expectancy in the U.S. has been on a decline since 2014. The same is happening in the U.K. Lower life expectancy is typically an indicator of an "undeveloped" country, where public services are inadequate to elevate a country's population to a higher standard of health and education and therefore income and longevity.
Thankfully, there is less dramatic news in countries with a mutually beneficial relationship between government and business, such as those in Northern Europe as well as Switzerland, New Zealand, Germany, France — and Canada. Life expectancy is stable or continues to creep upward. People report high levels of happiness, financial stability, education and health.
I recently read a good case study of this in a fascinating piece in the New York Times about a young couple who moved from New York to Helsinki, Finland. The couple was pleasantly shocked to find, not just a better standard of living for themselves, but what they see as a capitalist paradise.
Companies can thrive and better compete globally because their workers are healthy and financially stable. Unlike the U.S., employers and workers in Finland don't have to create and pay for their own expensive corporate or personal solutions for parental leave, child care, housing, education, health care or transportation.
This takes me back to the Greater Victoria Chamber of Commerce and our advocacy priorities for 2020. Each year, our very active public policy and advocacy committee decides what areas we want to see government improve to make our region a better place to do business.
The dominant concern I continue to hear from Chamber members is that, in our current low unemployment economy, we have too many jobs going unfilled. We need more workers. And that means we need government help with things that attract workers — affordable and available housing, childcare, transportation and better access to health care.
If we took the Finnish approach — or maybe we should call it the Buffett/Gates approach — we might say that there is a virtuous circle created when businesses pay taxes for government to run public services. Run well, these services form a strong social fabric needed to support workers so they can function at home and work. We can take it a step further and see this partnership as a way to become a destination of choice for those who want to build a career and raise a family.
Everyone wants the best and the brightest — what are we offering to make them come here?
We already have the landscape, the weather and the jobs. How about upping our game in other ways? What if we had housing that didn't require you to mortgage your children's future, or if child care was available at a reasonable cost rather than relying on your worn-out parents or your neighbour?
What if you didn't need a car because the bus goes by your stop every eight minutes, as do the new rapid-bus routes in Vancouver and in many cities in Europe and Asia? What if health care didn't require taking hours off work to sit in a germ-ridden clinic to have five minutes with an over-worked GP you've never laid eyes on before? Or what if university tuition was only $250 per year — as in France?
Tthe Chamber will continue to speak up when businesses are hit by unexpected taxes such as the Employer's Health Tax, which transfers all the burden to private sector employers, or when governments waste money on poorly run infrastructure projects. It's important to call out policies that manipulate markets, such as the speculation tax, or unfairly ask businesses to pay property taxes that are multiple times the rate charged to residential properties.
Holding government accountable is critical for democracy. There's always room for improvement.
But we can still recognize the powerful benefits that come from a strong partnership between government and business. It's what can put us among the very best places to live — and we might even live a little longer, too.
This column originally appeared in the Feb. 2 edition of the Times Colonist.
Policy & Wins for Business
News for Members


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SAM HUNT
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Black artists say the country music industry still needs to do the hard work of addressing the systematic racial barriers that have been entrenched in country music for decades. I was called colored, like, I didnt know colored people like country music, said Palmer, who had three singles reach the Hot Country Songs Chart. Both the Academy of Country Music and the Country Music Association started diversity task forces more than a year ago when country music was being criticized for a lack of female voices and women were being left out of major categories like entertainer of the year. But just as country artists outwardly reflect a predominantly white image, there are few Black country music executives working behind the scenes. Theres a dismantling of culture that needs to happen.Palmer, who is recording a podcast that focuses on the experiences of women of color in country music, said she feels optimistic that the current discussions about race and country music can lead to progress, if real changes are implemented.