As we move into Spring and the weather turns warmer, it is important for students to balance their outdoor and indoor time. Screen time should be reduced, and students should be encouraged to play outdoors. Connecting with friends supports social, emotional and physical health. Students needs to be able to create things to do without a lot of purchased resources. One of the favourite places for the students to play at school is the nature playground. It doesn't matter if they are in kindergarten or grade 5. Climbing, exploring, observing, wondering are all part of learning and growing.
Walking, biking, wheeling to and from school is another great way to promote healthy living. If you are not able to do this from home, try parking the car 5 minutes from the school Check out https://cloverdale.sd61.bc.ca/our-school/getting-to-school/ for ideas. We will also be having our walk, bike and wheel week again in May.
Encourage students to read a variety of books, fiction and non-fiction, different genres and formats. Also playing word and letter games while driving, whether it is to the grocery store or a day drive improves literacy and family time.
Many families stay for a few minutes after school to play. This is a great opportunities for students and parents to socialize. Enjoy!
Today staff is involved in professional development, learning about math, social and emotional, indigenous teachings, assessment, post graduate studies, and several other topics. Later this month, staff will be sharing out and engaging in professional learning communities and collaboration time to improve their instructional practices and further engage our students, providing them with the best possible education.
Our first grade 5 basketball mini tournament will be after school in the gym on Tuesday. (Last week's was cancelled). We wish our 23 basketball players good sportsmanship, team play and skill demonstration. There will be a second mini tournament on February 26.
Floor hockey for grade 5's will be starting next week with a jamboree in March. Stay tuned for rugby for grades 3, 4 and 5 starting soon. Practices and auditions are coming up for our Cloverdale's Got Talent show.
On Tuesday, we will welcome Trustee Nicole Duncan to our school.
Thank you students for demonstrating kindness each and every day.
The week ahead will be very busy. On Monday, grade one students will be having a presentation by the Saanich Fire Department. On Tuesday, the Grade 3's will be doing art in the gym put on by the ArtsReach Society. Our book fair will be open during student led conferences. This is an excellent opportunity for you to add to your home library. The salmon eggs have arrived in Mrs. Kheari's and Mrs. Morrell's classroom. The will watch the life cycle of the salmon until students release the fish into Goldstream River later this year.
250-382-7231, email me, sjost@sd61.bc.ca or drop by the school. It is important that you understand what the changes will mean for your family and the community.
It looks like the weather will be turning colder. In the event of snow, please check the district website or CFAX radio at 6:30 am to see if the school will be closed. Please make sure your child is prepared to be outside during the cold weather. This means boots, gloves, hats and winter jackets. If it is extreme cold, the students will not be going outside at recess time.
Once again, our PAC, parents and students have demonstrated how committed and hardworking they are as they worked the Royals Hockey Game on Friday to raise money for events and equipment for Cloverdale Traditional School. The students were excellent ambassadors for the school. The PAC raised $4,367.50! Thank you to everyone that made this happen.
On Tuesday, please remember to send in the Spellathon pledges. The spellathon is a great way for students to set goals for themselves and learn new words.
Thank you to Mrs. Petrovic's and Mrs. Sapsford's class for welcoming the Superintendent to Cloverdale Traditional School by singing the Welcome Song. Thank you to River and Lucy for being our greeters.
Next Friday is our assembly. Please make sure that students have complete uniforms.
If any families would like to have a tour of the school, please contact the office at 250-382-7231.
Student Led Conferences are coming up on February 6 and 7. Please watch for information to sign up for your time slot. This is an excellent opportunity to see what is happening in the classroom and work with your child on activities. We hope everyone will be able to attend.
Thank you to all the parents and students that helped out with the bottle drive on Saturday. Students are raising money for their legacy gift. Each year the grade 5 students give a gift to the school. In 2016, the students donated a Buddy Bench, 2017 a bike rack, and in 2018, two large logos for the gym wall. Thank you students for all your hard work. On Saturday, they raised $800.4! The next bottle drive will be May 25. Please save your bottles.
This month, the students are studying Maud Lewis as our artist of the month. They are learning about who she was and her style of art. You will see bulletin boards around the school, showing student work using her style and techniques.
Our yearly school fundraiser, Spellathon, starts this week. Students will be given words to practice and a pledge sheet. The students will be assessed on January 22. The proceeds are used to support programmes and initiatives in the classroom.
We are down to the last week of school. Students have been preparing for our Christmas Concert in between focusing on their core academics. We are looking forward to our two performances of "Mrs. Claus Scores Again" on Wednesday afternoon and Thursday evening. Parking will be at a premium so if you are able to walk or park a few blocks away, it would be greatly appreciated. Please do not park in Thrifty Foods parking lot.
For the last few months, we have been very fortunate to have Mrs. Wilcox working with students. Unfortunately we will be saying good-bye to her on Friday. Her hard work and dedication to students has been greatly appreciated. We will miss her.
Our halls are filled with art work and decorations. I hope you will have time before or after the performance to wander our halls.
Starting in January, students will be studying the artist, Maud Lewis. They will be studying her style and trying to create her art, using similar technique. Bulletin boards will start appearing in January.
Students will be bringing home uniform items including shoes. Please check to see that the items still fit and that items are returned clean in January.
Have a wonderful week, and I look forward to seeing everyone throughout the week, dropping off and picking up students, watching performances, or helping in the classroom.
Thank you to Adina for another successful movie night. Families arrived in pj's with treats in hand. What a fantastic community event.
Our soccer goal has finally been reinstalled. The pitch is a little short but at least students can now play a game.
Staff are continuing to add to their toolboxes about social emotional learning. Everyone needs to be ready to learn.
We are really gearing up for our Christmas Concert. Please encourage your child to practice their song so that they are ready. Tuesday, December 18, will be a dress rehearsal with performances on Wednesday afternoon, December 19 and Thursday evening, December 20. A huge thank you to Mrs. Jones, our music teacher and Mrs. Grigolato, play director.
Kindergarten registration is January 7 – 11, 2019. Please check the district website for more information. Acceptance into our programme will follow the school enrollment priority. If there are more students in a priority category than seats available, placement offerings will be determined through a lottery. This means that students entering kindergarten for September 2019, can be registered any time between 8 am on January 7, 2019 to 3 pm on January 11, 2019. If you have any questions, please see the district website or contact the school.
Hailey will continue to accept donations for the homeless this week as she will be delivering her donation later this week with her mother. We were all very excited to see the jar fill up as students put in their donations. Hailey will have a total by the end of next week.
In the spirit of giving, Cloverdale Traditional School will be collecting non-perishable food items for the food bank as well as money for Lamay Primary School in Tanzania. We will have boxes for food items starting next week. At our Christmas Concert on December 18, 19, 20, we will have donation boxes available. Students will be learning about Lamay Primary School on December 13, 14. This is a school that Cloverdale Traditional School has donated to over the years helping to purchase school supplies and sports equipment. Please help us help others.
On Monday, we will be having a lockdown drill. We practice earthquake, fire and lockdown drills throughout the year. It is important to prepare students to help make them safe in case of an emergency. This will not be a surprise for the students and they will be walked through the drill. The Saanich police liaison officer will be in attendance to provide suggestions and support.
The boundary review survey is open until November 30. If you have not completed the survey I encourage you to do so.
Next Friday, November 30 is our monthly assembly. Please join us at 9:00 to see what has and is happening at Cloverdale Traditional School. Keira K and Toby will be your MC's.
Thank you to the PAC, especially Adina A, for another successful Open Gym Night. Over 30 families attended an evening of basketball, floor hockey, hula hoops, scoop ball, scarves, skipping and more. Watch for the next Open Gym Night in the Spring.
Students continue to work very hard. Science concepts are reinforced using games, math is found in articles about animals, social studies is related to world events and students get into the zone in daily reading. Thank you to all the parents that come in to support daily reading in the classroom. Students are making excellent progress and developing a love of reading.
Grade 5 basketball will be starting soon. All students are encouraged to join the team. We are hoping to get several games in prior to our jamboree in February.
Christmas concert ticket request forms will going home on Thursday. There will be 2 tickets per family initially and if there is extra seating, additional requests will be filled. Orders will be filled on a first come first served basis. Please return your requests as soon as possible.
Just a reminder, there is no school on Friday, November 23. Teachers will be exploring how to meet the needs of all students. This is a topic that we continue to explore, learn new strategies and then incorporate into our daily lessons. Teachers, too, are life long learners.
It is hard to believe that we are thinking about Christmas already. The actors in the Christmas play have begun practicing and Mrs. Jones is working with classes to learn songs. Please stay tuned for more information about tickets.
Work continues on the new portable. At this time, we do not have a confirmed date of completion. The district is planning on doing plantings around the portables. The Cloverdale Out of School Care Society is really looking forward to completion.
As the weather turns cooler, please make sure that students come dressed for the weather. Tucking gloves and a hat into the backpack would be appreciated. Students will be outside playing during recess whenever possible.
Please remember to check student agendas. This daily communication between home and school will help to stay connected as well as support your child with their students and develop responsibility. Daily reading in every grade is very important. Setting aside family reading and sharing time each day is a great way to create some down time as well as an opportunity to have discussions. Making connections to personal experience, other books you have read and world events helps to deepen understanding.
On Monday and Tuesday, students worked very hard to prepare the school gardens for the winter. The planting days started with Starr Munro and Mr. Kissinger explaining about the Living Knowledge Garden and the important of camas to the Indigenous people. Students were told that the camas may not bloom until the second year. Our food gardens are being tended to by our grade two classes.
The school was a sea of orange and black on Wednesday. Maybe classes were engaged in Halloween activities. There were stations within and between classes. Several buddy classes chose to collaborate on Halloween activities. Buddies is a very important party of learning, sharing, collaborating, and leadership. The activities that they do and the relationships that are formed, create lifelong memories.
Teachers are involved in many professional development opportunities, learning and developing strategies to support curriculum. They are sharing with others and incorporating what they are learning into their daily lessons. As I walk through the school, I am seeing engaged students doing a wide variety of activities to help deepen and show understanding. As we continue to learn more about the brain, we are developing best practice to support learning.
Report cards will be coming out in a month. If you have any questions, comments or concerns please contact your child's teacher at any time. Open communication and ongoing support for your child is paramount to their progress.
Our monthly assembly on Friday, was very well attended by parents and guests. Three families toured the school, to learn more about what we have to offer. If you are interested in booking a tour, please contact the office.
The Halloween dance on Friday night was a huge success! The decorations, music and food was extremely well organized. Princesses, spiderman, ghosts, wild animals, fruit, pirates and storm troopers danced the night away. Thank you PAC for another fantastic evening.
On Monday and Tuesday, with the help of Starr Munro, students will be planting Camas bulbs and preparing the gardens for winter. We are still waiting for our split rail fence to be installed around our Knowledge Nature Garden.
The third portable is still under construction. The carpenters have been building an entrance ramp and hope to be finished some time in November.
Students are invited to wear orange and/or black, or school uniform on Wednesday. Students are not to be dressing up in costume. If you are going out to celebrate Halloween, please be safe. We ask that you send a minimal amount of Halloween candy to school. It makes it challenging for students to focus with the extra sugar in their system. Happy Halloween.
Friday's professional day will see staff exploring curriculum, inclusion, diversity, self-regulation, and health and safety. Staff are working very hard to help all students reach their full potential. Striving for excellence in a nurturing and supportive environment is the philosophy behind the traditional school.
This week we had apples and milk delivered to the school as part of the Fruit and Vegetable Programme. It is amazing how quickly all of the product disappears. Please continue to provide healthy lunches. It is important for your child to know what is in the food they eat. Reading labels and discussing food content, can help develop a healthy lifestyle.
It is important for child to be fluent in math facts. Practicing addition and subtraction facts up to 20, for grades 2 to 5 as well as multiplication and division facts for grades 4 and 5, for 5 minutes a day should increase fluency. This foundation is very important for more complex mathematical concepts.
Today we practiced our earthquake drill. Students did a duck and cover drill and then exited the building, meeting on the back field. Just over a year ago we had our reunification drill. The district is continuing to solidify its emergency response plan. Creating and practicing your family's earthquake plan will help prepare your child. It is also important for you to have supplies that will last for a minimum of 72 hours.
Saturday is municipal voting day. Grade 4 and 5 students have been learning about government and participating in a student vote. Don't forget to get out and vote on Saturday.
Students did an excellent job of evacuating the building safely during our fire drill on Tuesday. The fire department said it took only 1 minute 38 seconds to evacuate the building. I walked through the school with the captain and he explained how we could make the school even safer. We will be making the suggested changes. Thursday, next week, is Shake Out BC. Everyone is encouraged to practice duck and cover at school, work and home. All families should be prepared to survive for a minimum of 72 hours after a major earthquake. Please make sure that all earthquake forms have been returned to the school.
1000X5 is a wonderful programme provided by volunteers in the Greater Victoria area. If you have gently used books appropriate for children age 0-5 that you are no longer using, please bring them into the school office. Volunteers will sort the books, put them into colourful bags and distribute this "gift" to children and families throughout Victoria. We know that children that have heard 1000 stories by the time they are 5 will have a much greater chance of becoming good readers and developing a love of reading. Please help this very important cause.
On Wednesday, I had the pleasure to watching the choir practice. The students were learning a new song and they sounded amazing. Our cross country runners continue to show great sportsmanship and dedication at their weekly meets. Monday's meet is at Gorge Kinsman Park. Our Green Team continues to clean out our compost bins and collect our hard plastics. Thank you.
It is to be a beautiful warm weekend, I hope that you will find time to enjoy the outdoors with family and friends.
The week started off with Cloverdale Traditional co-hosting the Cross Country meet at Lambrick Park on Monday. Our students worked very hard, demonstrating excellent sportsmanship and determination. Well done! Our next meet is on Tuesday.
On Tuesday night, Mrs. Black, Mrs. Kheari, Mrs. Crust, Mrs. Glover and Ms Williamson presented a workshop to parents on Supporting your Child with Home Reading. We had 25 parents attending. If you are interested in learning how to support your child with home reading, and we not able to attend, please connect with your child's teacher or Mrs. Glover. They would be more than happy to provide you with information.
Wednesday and Thursday were short days with parent/teacher interviews in the afternoon. We had an excellent turn out. If you were not able to attend, please contact your child's teacher to make alternate arrangements. This is an excellent opportunity to share insight about your child. You know your child best, and any information that helps support your child is greatly appreciated.
We had lots of students participating in our Bike, Walk and Wheel to School week. Students recorded their mode of transport. Student received zipper pulls, Cloverdale Cheetah stickers, bookmarks and scarves. Please consider continuing biking, walking or wheeling part or all the way to school.
Next week is fire safety week. This is an excellent to discuss emergency plans for your family, creating an exit plan and a meeting area outside your house. Testing the smoke detector is also a good idea so that your child knows the sound. We will be having a fire drill on Tuesday. The fire department will be here, monitoring our procedure.
As the weather is starting to be colder and rainier, please make sure your child is dressed for the weather. We will be having outdoor recesses as much as possible.
Have a wonderful Thanksgiving long weekend.
It is hard to believe that September is over. Students have been working extremely hard. Yesterday the school was awash in a sea of Orange Shirts. The message that the students learned was that everyone is included, everyone is special and everyone is accepted. I witness this every day on the playground and in the classroom.
Today we supported the Terry Fox Run. Students brought in money to support Cancer Research. Cancer has touched every one of us in one way or another. Students, teachers and parents ran and walked around the field to acknowledge the hard work that Terry did and the hard work that researchers, medical staff, families and friends do to support those that are experiencing this horrible disease.
Today at our assembly we acknowledged the Cross Country Team, the Green Team, and Choir and spoke about the upcoming opportunity to join the swimming team, As well, we acknowledge students that participated in the Library Summer Reading Programme and wrote journals. September birthdays were celebrated as well.
Next week is our Bike, Walk and Wheel to school week. We are encouraging students to Bike, Walk or Wheel to school one or all 5 days. This can be all or part way to school. Students are reminded not to ride their bikes, scooters and skateboards on school property and to make sure they are locked up outside. Skateboards may be brought into the classroom. There will be a bulletin board on the basketball court and students will get a sticker to put on the board showing that they participated in the programme.
On Tuesday evening, 5 of our primary teachers will be presenting how to support your child with home reading. This is an excellent opportunity to learn tools and strategies to move your child forward with their reading. We are hoping for an excellent turnout.
If your child missed photo day on Monday, there will be an opportunity for retakes on November 6.
During the month of October, grade 4 students will be writing FSA's. The results show the school how it is doing in reading, writing and math. Teachers are able to use the information to adjust programming.
Hopefully the weekend will cooperate and you will be able to enjoy time outside with family and friends.
Cross Country practices have started with the first meet on Monday. Good luck runners. Information about Swim Club will be coming out shortly. On Wednesday, choir started with Mrs. Jones. All grade 3, 4, 5 students are welcome to join this noon hour club. Our Green team is working very hard to help our environment. They are collecting the composts and hard plastics on a weekly basis.
Take a stroll through our hallways to see the displays demonstrating our knowledge of "The Bad Seed".
The new portable for the Cloverdale Childcare Society arrived on Tuesday. Students watched as the portable arrived in two sections, then trailered across the basketball court and the grassed field, and finally lifted by crane into place. The two halves were put together to make a new portable. Hopefully, once the building is complete, students will have an opportunity to have a tour of the inside.
Monday, September 24 is Picture Day. Full uniform is required. Please check to see that your child's name is on their crested item. Students are encouraged to leave their crested item at school so that it is ready at all times.
Thursday, September 27 is Orange Shirt Day. Orange shirt day was designed to educate people and promote awareness about the Indian residential school system and the impact this system had on Indigenous communities for more than a century in Canada. Students are invited to wear orange shirts instead of their white shirt.
Friday, September 28 is our Terry Fox Run. Students will be running around the field from 2:00 – 2:30. You are more than welcome to come and join your child as we walk and run to help raise awareness of the legacy of Terry Fox. Donations will be collected next week to support cancer research. Please consider donating to this very important cause.
The PAC is sponsoring an information night on October 2. Daily reading of just right books is extremely important. To help you support your child, several of our primary teachers will be presenting tools and strategies.
Also next Friday is our monthly assembly. Parents and grandparents are welcome to attend.
I hope the weather cooperates this weekend and you are able to venture outside to enjoy the beginning of Fall.
It has been a very busy week at Cloverdale. Students are settling into routines and teachers are assessing so they can meet the needs of students. One routine that we practiced on Friday is the fire drill. The students did an excellent job of following the directions of their teacher. We will be having a fire drill each month. The fire department will be attending one of the drills.
Cloverdale is exploring one school one book. All classrooms are reading the book, The Bad Seed, by Jory John. Bulletin boards throughout the school will depict things from the story. The book has some important messages. Check it out!
We are looking forward to our Welcome Back Evening on Thursday, September 20, 2018. Everyone is invited to the gym for 5:00 for introductions and then to the classrooms until 6:00 to meet the teacher, learn about what will be happening this year and have your child show you around the classroom. The gym will be open until 6:30 to socialize. This is not an opportunity to discuss your child with the teacher. Parent/Teacher interviews will be held on October 3 and4. More information will be coming out on how to sign up on-line for your interview time.
Cross Country has snuck up on us. Notices were sent home on Friday with grade 3 – 5 students, about the upcoming season. Permission forms need to be returned to Mrs. Glover as soon as possible. All students are welcome. As long as a child is interested in running and participates in the practices, they can be part of the Cross Country team.
Two of our intermediate teachers will be attending a coding workshop this week to learn how to incorporate coding into their lessons. Primary teachers will be attending a similar workshop in October.
Monday is a Professional Day with no students in attendance. Teachers have a very busy day planned. We will be talking about the traditional tenants and how we are making them part of each day at Cloverdale Traditional School. Next on the agenda will be technology and how we are using technology in the classroom now that we no longer have a computer lab. (Thank you PAC for buying us all the Chromebooks and IPads). Then it is on to Professional Learning Communities where teachers will be working in grade groupings to come up with a driving question that will help move our school forward. And finally we will be exploring the new resources available to support the new math curriculum.
The PAC meeting on Tuesday was well attended. It was nice to see returning parents as well as several new parents. Feel free to come to one or all of the meetings.
We have had a very smooth first week of school. Moving students on Wednesday, allowed students and teachers to settle and quickly establish routines and begin the new curriculum. Teachers will be doing some assessment to determine how to best support your children. Agendas will be used daily. Please check the agenda and sign it daily. This is a great way to see what is happening in your child's classroom. Please read the introduction in the front of the agenda and discuss it with your child. It is expected that all parents, and students in grade 3-5 sign the front of the agenda, agreeing to the information provided. Teachers will be communicating with families on a regular basis either through a paper or digital newsletter.
We had our first assembly yesterday. Students were told about many of the clubs, activities and sports that we will be doing this year. More information and sign-ups will be given to children via the daily announcements. Please encourage your child to get involved! Our next assembly is September 28 at 9:00. Everyone is welcome.
If your child was involved in the library summer reading programme or wrote/created a journal, please encourage them to bring it to the office. I would love to read what they have been reading and doing. These students will be recognized at the September 28 assembly.
Our welcome back and meet the teacher evening is on September 20. The format will be slightly different this year. We will start with a welcome with coffee and treats at 5:00 and then the classrooms will be open until 6:00. Coffee and treats will be available until 6:30. I hope you are able to attend.
Our Terry Fox Run will be happening on September 28. We will be collecting Toonies for Terry. Please help this very important cause. All of us have been touched directly or indirectly. Students will be running on the back field from 2:00 – 2:30. Please come and join us.
It is hard to believe that Cloverdale Traditional School is starting its 12th year as a traditional school I feel extremely fortunate to have been given the principalship. Miss Pick worked very hard to make Cloverdale Traditional School what it is today. We will continue to create a school that encourages the principles of the traditional philosophy, the core competencies and an inclusive learning environment. My goal is to support teachers, students and parents, allowing everyone to grow and work to their full potential. I hope we can challenge everyone to try new things, think outside the box and create a school where everyone is excited to be. Please don't hesitate to email, call or stop by the office, to share ideas, concerns and successes. I can't wait until September 4th. See you then.


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Duke's Gina Kim shoots lowest score (66) by an amateur in U.S. Women's Open history, sits one off lead
May 31, 2019 by 0 Comments
CHARLESTON, S.C. — In just the last two months, 19-year-old Duke freshman Gina Kim has competed in the inaugural Augusta National Women's Amateur and played a key role in her school's seventh NCAA Women's Championship. Those would seem like a pair of career highlights that would be tough to top, even with what could very well be a long career ahead of her if she decides to go pro.
And still, she may already have topped them both on Thursday at the U.S. Women's Open.
Teeing off in the day's third-to-last group, Kim went out in one-under 34 on the Country Club of Charleston's back nine, her only bogey coming at the treacherous par-3 11th, which played as the hardest hole of the opening round. She made her first birdie at the par-4 13th, then after three consecutive pars she holed out from a greenside bunker for birdie at the par-3 17th, one of 10 birdies the hole yielded all day.
Kim then proceeded to go crazy on the front nine (her back), making three birdies and two bogeys on the first five holes, then holing out for eagle from 141 yards at the par-4 eighth. On the following hole, the par-5 ninth, she nearly made an albatross after lacing a 3-wood from 241 yards that scared the hole. A two-putt birdie gave her a five-under 66, the lowest round ever shot in the championship by an amateur. It left her in a tie for second, one stroke back of Japan's Mamiko Higa.
Asked if this was as locked in as she's ever been on a golf course, Kim didn't hesitate.
"I would say so, yes," she said.
Locked in might have been selling it short. As the 50th-ranked women's amateur in the world, Kim was probably the last amateur many expected to be in this position following Day 1. As it stands, she's five strokes clear of Jennifer Kupcho, who was the No. 1 ranked amateur in the world prior to turning pro for this event, and six clear of Maria Fassi, who was No. 2 before also turning pro this week. Andrea Lee, who will now moved from No. 4 to No. 2 in the world, played a solid round herself, but still sits three back of Kim. Not even Kim saw this coming.
"I've just been blessed with this round," Kim said. "I wasn't expecting much, to be honest. My goal was just to play, have some fun, you know, just stay happy out there. But being able to come out like this, it's definitely more than what I asked for so I'm definitely grateful to the people who supported me and just to my caddie."
Staying happy was easy on Thursday for Kim, whose braces could be seen from a 100 yards away given how much she was smiling as she bounced around the property. It's not too big a leap to say that it may have been the round of her life.
"It feels amazing. This is something I dreamed of as a little girl," said Kim, who is actually making her second appearance in the Women's Open after qualifying and missing the cut a year ago at Shoal Creek. "So being able to finish out strong like that really shows me that I'm ready to be here, and I'm definitely ready to do whatever I can to keep myself in it.
"I'm proud of what I've been able to do, but I'm also proud of my caddie as well, who has really worked hard with me out there on the course."
Kim and her caddie, Ben Sorrells, met at Augusta National for the ANWA, where Sorrells caddies in between his time looping on the Web.com Tour. Even though Sorrells wanted her to "muscle a 9 iron" at the par-4 eighth (Kim went with a "chippy" 8 instead), she couldn't help but praise his effort after the round.
"We've kept in contact since [the ANWA], and I knew he was a really great caddie, and he said the right things at the right time. So I asked if he could come over here and caddie for me this one time, and he said sure. So very grateful that he accepted."
She'll need all the help she can get from him on Friday in Charleston, where temperatures in the 90s and winds of 10 to 20 mph are expected once again. Kim will go off the first tee at 9:01 a.m. alongside Jiyu Jung and Olafia Kristinsdottir. Backing up such an impressive round always proves to be a huge ask, especially for a player whose age still ends with "teen." But whatever she shoots, you can guarantee Kim will have a lot of fun doing it.
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ww1geek
Exploring the First World War
Book Reviews – First World War
17th Manchesters
1914: Voices from the Battlefields
1918: The Last Act
9th Service Battalion The Sherwood Foresters
From the Channel to the Ypres Salient
A Major Soldier
A Moonlight Massacre
A Motorcycle Courier in the Great War
A Nation in Arms
A Passionate Prodigality
A Quartermaster at the Front
A Sacrifice of Innocents
A Village at War
A Visitor's Guide: The Battles of Arras North
A Visitor's Guide: The First Day of the Somme
Above Ypres
Accrington's Pals: The Full Story
Ace of the Black Cross
And They Loved Not Their Lives unto Death
Badges of the Regular Infantry 1914-1918
Battles of Arras South
Before Action
Beneath the Killing Fields
Boys Soldiers of the Great War
Breaking the Fortress Line 1914
British Battle Tanks
Cambridgeshire Kitcheners
Canada's Dream Shall be of Them
Captured Germans
Chasing the Great Retreat
Command and Morale
Dalwood Great War Memorial 1914-1919
Dearest Mother
Death of a Division
Digging the Trenches
Disputed Earth
Doctors in the Great War
Dorking in the Great War
Epitaphs of the Great War
Epitaphs of the Great War: Passchendaele
Facts About Fritz
Fighting the Somme
For Every Sailor Afloat, Every Soldier at the Front
From the Somme to Victory
Ghosts on the Somme
Gott Strafe England
Haig's Medical Officer
Halesowen War Memorial
Hamel 4th July 1918
Hawker VC RFC Ace
Herbert at War 1914-1918
Herbert Columbine VC
Hertfordshire Soldiers of the Great War
High Wood
Images of War: The British at First and Second Ypres
In Flanders Fields
In the Shadow of Bois Hugo
In Which They Served
Innocence Slaughtered
Into Touch: Rugby Internationals Killed in the Great War
Killing Time: The Archaeology of the First World War
Kitchener Wants You
Lander's War
Leeds Rifles
Letters Homes 1914-1919
Lionel Morris and the Red Baron
Listening to Ludendorff
Londoners on the Western Front
Machine Gunner 1914-1918
Machine Gunner on the Somme
Major and Mrs Holt's Battlefield Guide to Western Front – North
Marjorie's War
Men, Horses, Mud and Stew
Military Technology of the First World War
Mud and Bodies
Mud, Blood and Determination
Padre, Prisoner & Pen-Pusher
Photographing the Fallen
Poppyganda
Posters of the Great War
Private Lord Crawford's Great War Diaries
Public Schools and the Great War
Recollections of the Great War in the Air
Sailor in the Desert
Shadows of the Somme
Six Weeks
Slaughter on the Somme 1 July 1916
Sniping in France
Soldier from the wars returning
Somme 1916
Somme Intelligence
Sorrow Into Pride
Studentenfriedhof to Soldatenfriedhof
Subterranean Sappers
Teenage Tommy
The 1914 Campaign
The 51st (Highland) Division in the Great War
The Badges of Kitchener's Army
The Battle Book of Ypres
The British Army in Italy 1917-1918
The Christmas Match
The Death of Glory
The Devil's Carnival
The Fighting Pioneers
The Final Whistle
The First Day on the Somme
The Frontline Walk
The Great War Handbook
The Home Front in the Great War
The Illustrated War Reports: Ypres 1914-1915
The Kaiser's Dawn
The Life and Death of a Royal Field Artillery Subaltern on the Western Front
The Man Who Saved Paris
The Missing of the Somme
The Nek: A Gallipoli Tragedy
The Quick and The Dead
The Retreat from Mons 1914: North
The Somme
The Somme 1916
The Somme Reconsidered
The Tangier Archive
The Western Front
They Didn't Want to Die Virgins
They Were There
Tracing Your First World War Ancestors
Twelve Days on the Somme
Underground Warfare 1914-1918
Victoria Crosses on the Western Front
Visiting the Fallen: Arras North
Walking in the Footsteps of the Fallen
Walking Ypres
With Valour and Distinction
World War One: A Layman's Guide (ebook)
Ypres 1914: Langemarck
Ypres 1914: Messines
Ypres 1914: The Menin Road
'Til the Boys Come Home
Book Reviews – Other Conflicts
A Diary of Hope
Age Shall Not Weary Them
And Some Fell on Stony Ground
Barbarossa Derailed
Beauty in the Shadows
Chin Up, Head Down
Churchill & the Mad Mullah of Somaliland
Churchill's Legionnaire
Diary of a War
Drafty's Blunder
Eric Harden VC
Four Ball One Tracer
In Peace & War
Served in Faith Forgotten in Haste: An Autobiography of a Number
Shell Shock: The Diary of Tommy Atkins
Soldier at Heart: From Private to General
Ten Brave Men and True
The Pegasus Patrol
Walking Gallipoli
War Games: A Collection of Short Stories
Film, DVD, & App Reviews
Battles of the Marne & the Aisne (DVD)
Forbidden Ground (2013)
Great War: Battlefields of the Western Front (ipad and iphone)
Le Cateau (DVD)
Nery and the Retreat From Mons (DVD)
Private Peaceful (2014)
The Great War 100
The Great War 100: Decisive Battles of the First World War
Timeline WW1 (ipad)
Walking the Western Front
Walking the Western Front: Somme (DVD)
Projects, Articles & Media
The 2nd Queen's and the 1914 Christmas Truce
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The 1st Queen's 1914 Star Medal Roll
Posted on March 19, 2017 by ww1geek
It has been a while since I last posted on here but I've been trying to fit in my ongoing research into the 1st Battalion The Queen's (Royal West Surrey Regiment) when time allows. One project I recently completed was transcribing the 1914 star medal roll for the battalion. The roll lists all the men eligible for the 1914 star, or 'Mons Star'; the criteria being that they had served in France or Belgium between 5th August and 22nd November 1914, the end of the First Battle of Ypres. The roll lists 1,635 other ranks and 65 officers, giving a total of 1,700 men who served with the battalion during this period. However in this post I want to focus on the fate of the original members of the battalion.
Extract from the 1st Queen's 1914 Star medal roll. The National Archives: WO 329/2424. Crown copyright.
The battalion embarked from Southampton on 12th August aboard the SS Braemar Castle, and disembarked at Le Havre the following day. The medal roll records a total of 1,000 other ranks and 30 officers who disembarked at this time, slightly more than the prescribed War Establishment of 1,007 men; in fact the roll also does not quite tally with the numbers given in the regimental history, which records that 971 men and 27 officers embarked with the battalion.
The roll provides each individual's regimental number, rank, name, date of disembarkation, and a remarks column. The remarks are broken down into three areas, as described in the roll:
(a) If non-effective:- cause, etc
(b) If transferred:- present regimental number, rank, and unit
(c) If forfeited:- cause
This leads to a number of descriptions in the remarks column such as discharged, dead, or prisoner of war. However many entries do not have any remarks recorded against them.
I cross-referenced the transcribed roll against other sources such as the Commonwealth War Graves Commission list of casualties for the battalion and International Committee of the Red Cross prisoner of war records. This showed a number of men in the 1914 roll whose fate had not been recorded in the remarks. Once these had been taken into account the breakdown is as follows:
Remarks Other ranks Officers Total % of total
Dead* 322 12 334 32%
Deserted 24 – 24 2%
Discharged 116 1 117 11%
Prisoner of war 232 1 233 23%
Transferred 121 – 121 12%
No remark 185 5 190 18%
TOTAL 1,000 30 1,030
*This is an aggregated figure of those listed variously as: Dead, Died, Died of wounds, and Killed in action
Lieutenant Roland Henriques, killed 14th September 1914
So one third of the battalion's original members were killed and nearly a quarter taken prisoner; in total accounting for over 50% of those men who landed in France on 13th August. The first casualty (wounded) in the battalion was Lieutenant Pain on the 26th August (13 days after landing), who was shot in the hand by a Frenchman who mistook him for a spy. The first death was Private James Ayres on 27th August; he is buried in St. Souplet British Cemetery. The first officer killed was Lieutenant Roland Henriques, who lost his life during the Battle of the Aisne along with 26 other men of the battalion.
Of those who transferred, many of these were to the Labour Corps or Army Service Corps, which might include a number of men who had been wounded and were no longer considered fit for the infantry. However a number of other regiments also feature, from the Cyclist Corps to the Norfolk Regiment, as well as a number of men who transferred to the Machine Gun Corps.
A perhaps surprising aspect of the figures provided by the medal roll is the number of deserters, accounting for 2% of the original battalion. Two men from the 1st Queen's were 'shot at dawn' during the war, one in 1917 and one in 1918, but both were later recruits to the battalion. It would be interesting to try and establish when these 24 deserted and the reasons for their desertion.
The battalion's first commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Warren, killed 17th September 1914
The number of other ranks who were wounded is not given in the roll, but the officers wounded are easily collated from the war diary. This shows that 11 of the 30 officers (37%) who disembarked with the battalion were wounded during the war. Add to that figure those who were killed or taken prisoner, and the number rises to 24, or 80% of the original leadership of the battalion. This includes the first commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Warren, who was killed by a sniper on 17th September 1914. Of the total number of 66 officers eligible for the 1914 star, two thirds became casualties or were taken prisoner during the war.
Of the 334 original men from the battalion who died, the years of death are as follows:
Year Number % of original battalion
1914 207 20%
1915 30 3%
Post-war 16 2%
For comparison, the total number of deaths in the battalion were:
Year Number % of total number of deaths
As you would expect, the number of men killed from the original battalion decreased as the war progressed. The figures also show that the number of men killed in the battalion was fairly equally spread across each year of the war with the exception of 1915; the percentage is lower because the battalion spent much of the year being brought back up to strength and was only really in action during the Battle of Loos. It is also interesting to note that there were slightly more casualties in 1918 than 1914, when the battalion pretty much ceased to exist after the Battle of Gheluvelt on 31st October (see here – although the casualty figures at Gheluvelt will be the subject of a separate blog piece). Despite the similar casualty levels in other years, 1914 seems to feature more heavily in the battalion's history and identity – perhaps because it did mark the end of the battalion in its original form.
When the battalion came out of action in November 1918 it was noted that there were only 17 men still with the battalion who had served continually with it for the duration of the war; one officer, four NCOs, and 12 other ranks. The medal roll shows us that one third of the battalion's original members were killed, much higher than the overall casualty rate of c.13%. However that also means that two thirds of the original battalion made it home. The blank remarks and 'discharged' entries hide the true extent of the number of men who were wounded, and of course many may have been wounded and returned to the battalion. Nevertheless the 1914 star medal roll remains an invaluable research source which can shed light onto the impact of the war on the regular battalions.
The names of many of the original men from the battalion are listed on the Menin Gate
This entry was posted in 1914, First Ypres, Projects, Queen's Royal West Surrey Regiment, Research, Surrey Regiments, WW1, Ypres and tagged 1914 star, 1st Queen's, medal roll, Queens, Research, Surrey, WW1, Ypres. Bookmark the permalink.
6 Responses to The 1st Queen's 1914 Star Medal Roll
Phil Mann says:
Very interesting read. My Grandfather, Louis Philip Mann, was a Pte in 1 Queen's and fought at Gheluvelt, where he was wounded. Also a Boer War veteran, he was eventually medically discharged in 1915, due to his wounds. Strangely, although his wife and children were living in Frimley, Surrey, he was sent to hospital in Dublin, (National Children's Hospital, 88 Harcourt Street, Dublin), until recovered. He past away in 1937.
Steve Law says:
Hi Phil, I was just researching the 1914 Star to this Soldier, who I've just seen was your grandfather… Please feel free to get in touch.
Hello Steve,
Thanks for getting in touch. My Grandfather had a 1914 Trio together with an earlier QSA medal with four bars. Sadly, I have no idea where any of them are and have been searching for them for years as both his Grandson and a fourth generation 1st Battalion, Queensman, (albeit after the 1966 amalgamation).
Forgot to add, he also had the bar/rosette to the 1914 Star as well as a SWB as he was wounded at Gheluvelt… Cheers! Phil
Hi Phil, Well at least you can now account for his 1914 Star! I'm happy for Andy to pass on my email &/or website address to you so that you can contact me direct if you wish. In good faith, Steve
I've sent you a message on your website. Very many thanks for getting in touch before selling it on.
Chat more on the "dark side"… 😉
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HostMonster Web Hosting Review
By Jeffrey L. Wilson
Jeffrey L. Wilson
Managing Editor, Apps and Gaming
Since 2004, I've penned gadget- and video game-related nerd-copy for a variety of publications, including the late, great 1UP; Laptop; Parenting; Sync; Wise Bread; and WWE. I now apply that knowledge and skillset as the Managing Editor of PCMag's Apps & Gaming team.
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No cloud, reseller, or WordPress hosting plans.
Lacks monthly hosting plans.
Skimpy email amount with certain plans.
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HostMonster doesn't offer month-to-month web hosting options, which is a strike against the service. Instead, it requires you to sign up for an annual plan. HostMonster throws a few savings bones your way, should you sign up for a two- or three-year plan, but those who don't want lengthy commitments should turn to the excellent HostGator ($2.64 Per Month + Free Domain Registration at HostGator)(Opens in a new window) , the Editors' Choice for shared web hosting, if they want to pay on a monthly basis.
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WordPress, Cloud, and Reseller Hosting
Unfortunately, HostMonster lacks optimized WordPress hosting. The customer service rep who I spoke with (more on that in a bit) suggested that I check out BlueHost's offerings, as that company is HostMonster's sister site. I wouldn't.
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HostMonster doesn't offer cloud hosting, either. If you're in the hunt for that type of hosting, please check DreamHost, the PCMag Editors' Choice in that space.
As you might expect, HostMonster also doesn't have any reseller hosting plans. Hostwinds does, however. It's our Editors' Choice for the category, so you should definitely give it a look.
Setting Up a HostMonster Hosted Site
HostMonster gives you several tools for building a website, including Weebly, a well-known choice among web-based website-builders. Weeby's drag-and-drop functionality let me quickly build an attractive page complete with slideshows, contact forms, social media links, and more.
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E-marketing and E-commerce
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I hit up HostMonster's tech support (via web chat) on a weekday afternoon to ask a representative about the differences between the company's various offerings. A rep quickly fielded my question but didn't seem to quite understand my question. I'm not sure if that was due to a language barrier or being overwhelmed and skimming the chat.
I later fired up the web chat on a weekday morning to ask a representative about how to import my WordPress.com setup into HostMonster. A rep came to my aid a few seconds later and pasted a very helpful link into the chat that contained step-by-step instructions. The person on the other side of the computer also suggested calling the 24-hour support squad if I needed step-by-step guidance.
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There Are Better Options
HostMonster makes setting up a site or WordPress blog a breeze, but DreamHost, HostGator, and Hostwinds—PCMag's overall Editors' Choice winners for web hosting services—simply offer more features and flexibility. HostMonster is good at what it does but sadly, lacks the optimized WordPress, reseller, and cloud features that would help it compete with the big boys. Furthermore, its lack of month-to-month pricing plans may turn off some users.
5 Things You Need to Know About Web Hosting
HostMonster Web Hosting
By Jeffrey L. Wilson & Gabriel Zamora
By Gabriel Zamora
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Mother London's new space and gargantuan work table designed by Clive Wilkinson Architects.
The table seats up to 200 employees.
A wide stair at Mother London merges with the giant table.
University of California, Merced Central Plant by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill.
The plant's exterior walls are sheathed in corrugated metal, like the local grain silos.
Inside the UC Merced Central Plant.


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Both Sides Now — The Value of Data Exploration
Over the last several months I have authored a number of stillborn articles that just did not live up to the standards that I set for this blog site. After all, sometimes we just have nothing important to add to the conversation. In a world dominated by narcissism, it is not necessary to constantly have something to say. Some reflection and consideration are necessary, especially if one is to be as succinct as possible.
A quote ascribed to Woodrow Wilson, which may be apocryphal, though it does appear in two of his biographies, was in response to being lauded by someone for making a number of short, succinct, and informative speeches. When asked how he was able to do this, President Wilson is supposed to have replied:
"It depends. If I am to speak ten minutes, I need a week for preparation; if fifteen minutes, three days; if half an hour, two days; if an hour, I am ready now."
An undisciplined mind has a lot to say about nothing in particular with varying degrees of fidelity to fact or truth. When in normal conversation we most often free ourselves from the discipline expected for more rigorous thinking. This is not necessarily a bad thing if we are saying nothing of consequence and there are gradations, of course. Even the most disciplined mind gets things wrong. We all need editors and fact checkers.
While I am pulling forth possibly apocryphal quotes, the one most applicable that comes to mind is the comment by Hemingway as told by his deckhand in Key West and Cuba, Arnold Samuelson. Hemingway was supposed to have given this advice to the aspiring writer:
"Don't get discouraged because there's a lot of mechanical work to writing. There is, and you can't get out of it. I rewrote the first part of A Farewell to Arms at least fifty times. You've got to work it over. The first draft of anything is shit. When you first start to write you get all the kick and the reader gets none, but after you learn to work it's your object to convey everything to the reader so that he remembers it not as a story he had read but something that happened to himself."
Though it deals with fiction, Hemingway's advice applies to any sort of writing and rhetoric. Dr. Roger Spiller, who more than anyone mentored me as a writer and historian, once told me, "Writing is one of those skills that, with greater knowledge, becomes harder rather than easier."
As a result of some reflection, over the last few months, I had to revisit the reason for the blog. Thus, this is still its purpose: it is a way to validate ideas and hypotheses with other professionals and interested amateurs in my areas of interest. I try to keep uninformed opinion in check, as all too many blogs turn out to be rants. Thus, a great deal of research goes into each of these posts, most from primary sources and from interactions with practitioners in the field. Opinions and conclusions are my own, and my reasoning for good or bad are exposed for all the world to see and I take responsibility for them.
This being said, part of my recent silence has also been due to my workload in–well–the effort involved in my day job of running a technology company, and in my recent role, since late last summer, as the Managing Editor of the College of Performance Management's publication known as the Measurable News. Our emphasis in the latter case has been to find new contributions to the literature regarding business analytics and to define the concept of integrated project, program, and portfolio management. Stepping slightly over the line to make a pitch, I recommend anyone interested in contributing to the publication to submit an article. The submission guidelines can be found here.
Both Sides Now: New Perspectives
That out of the way, I recently saw, again on the small screen, the largely underrated movie about Neil Armstrong and the Apollo 11 moon landing, "First Man", and was struck by this scene:
Unfortunately, the first part of the interview has been edited out of this clip and I cannot find a full scene. When asked "why space" he prefaces his comments by stating that the atmosphere of the earth seems to be so large from the perspective of looking at it from the ground but that, having touched the edge of space previously in his experience as a test pilot of the X15, he learned that it is actually very thin. He then goes on to posit that looking at the earth from space will give us a new perspective. His conclusion to this observation is then provided in the clip.
Armstrong's words were prophetic in that the space program provided a new perspective and a new way of looking at things that were in front of us the whole time. Our spaceship Earth is a blue dot in a sea of space and, at least for a time, the people of our planet came to understand both our loneliness in space and our interdependence.
Earth from Apollo 8. Photo courtesy of NASA.
The impact of the Apollo program resulted in great strides being made in environmental and planetary sciences, geology, cosmology, biology, meteorology, and in day-to-day technology. The immediate effect was to inspire the environmental and human rights movements, among others. All of these advances taken together represent a new revolution in thought equal to that during the initial Enlightenment, one that is not yet finished despite the headwinds of reaction and recidivism.
It's Life's Illusions I Recall: Epistemology–Looking at and Engaging with the World
In his book Darwin's Dangerous Idea, Daniel Dennett posited that what was "dangerous" about Darwinism is that it acts as a "universal acid" that, when touching other concepts and traditions, transforms them in ways that change our world-view. I have accepted this position by Dennett through the convincing argument he makes and the evidence in front of us, and it is true that Darwinism–the insight in the evolution of species over time through natural selection–has transformed our perspective of the world and left the old ways of looking at things both reconstructed and unrecognizable.
In his work, Time's Arrow, Time's Cycle, Stephen Jay Gould noted that Darwinism is part of one of the three great reconstructions of human thought that, in quoting Sigmund Freud, where "Humanity…has had to endure from the hand of science…outrages upon its naive self-love." These outrages include the Copernican revolution that removed the Earth from the center of the universe, Darwinism and the origin of species, including the descent of humanity, and what John McPhee, coined as the concept of "deep time."
But–and there is a "but"–I would propose that Darwinism and the other great reconstructions noted are but different ingredients of a larger and more broader, though compatible, type of innovation in the way the world is viewed and how it is approached–a more powerful universal acid. That innovation in thought is empiricism.
It is this approach to understanding that eats through the many ills of human existence that lead to self-delusion and folly. Though you may not know it, if you are in the field of information technology or any of the sciences, you are part of this way of viewing and interacting with the world. Married with rational thinking, this epistemology–coming from the perspectives of the astronomical observations of planets and other heavenly bodies by Charles Sanders Peirce, with further refinements by William James and John Dewey, and others have come down to us in what is known as Pragmatism. (Note that the word pragmatism in this context is not the same as the more generally used colloquial form of the word. For this type of reason Peirce preferred the term "pragmaticism"). For an interesting and popular reading of the development of modern thought and the development of Pragmatism written for the general reader I highly recommend the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Metaphysical Club by Louis Menand.
At the core of this form of empiricism is that the collection of data, that is, recording, observing, and documenting the universe and nature as it is will lead us to an understanding of things that we otherwise would not see. In our more mundane systems, such as business systems and organized efforts applying disciplined project and program management techniques and methods, we also can learn more about these complex adaptive systems through the enhanced collection and translation of data.
I Really Don't Know Clouds At All: Data, Information, Intelligence, and Knowledge
The term "knowledge discovery in data", or KDD for short, is an aspirational goal and so, in terms of understanding that goal, is a point of departure from the practice information management and science. I'm taking this stance because the technology industry uses terminology that, as with most language, was originally designed to accurately describe a specific phenomenon or set of methods in order to advance knowledge, only to find that that terminology has been watered down to the point where it obfuscates the issues at hand.
As I traveled to locations across the U.S. over the last three months, I found general agreement among IT professionals who are dealing with the issues of "Big Data", data integration, and the aforementioned KDD of this state of affairs. In almost every case there is hesitation to use this terminology because it has been absconded and abused by mainstream literature, much as physicists rail against the misuse of the concept of relativity by non-scientific domains.
The impact of this confusion in terminology has caused organizations to make decisions where this terminology is employed to describe a nebulous end-state, without the initiators having an idea of the effort or scope. The danger here, of course, is that for every small innovative company out there, there is also a potential Theranos (probably several). For an in-depth understanding of the psychology and double-speak that has infiltrated our industry I highly recommend the HBO documentary, "The Inventor: Out for Blood in Silicon Valley."
The reason why semantics are important (as they always have been despite the fact that you may have had an associate complain about "only semantics") is that they describe the world in front of us. If we cloud the meanings of words and the use of language, it undermines the basis of common understanding and reveals the (poor) quality of our thinking. As Dr. Spiller noted, the paradox of writing and in gathering knowledge is that the more you know, the more you realize you do not know, and the harder writing and communicating knowledge becomes, though we must make the effort nonetheless.
Thus KDD is oftentimes not quite the discovery of knowledge in the sense that the term was intended to mean. It is, instead, a discovery of associations that may lead us to knowledge. Knowing this distinction is important because the corollary processes of data mining, machine learning, and the early application of AI in which we find ourselves is really the process of finding associations, correlations, trends, patterns, and probabilities in data that is approached in a manner as if all information is flat, thereby obliterating its context. This is not knowledge.
We can measure the information content of any set of data, but the real unlocked potential in that information content will come with the processing of it that leads to knowledge. To do that requires an underlying model of domain knowledge, an understanding of the different lexicons in any given set of domains, and a Rosetta Stone that provides a roadmap that identifies those elements of the lexicon that are describing the same things across them. It also requires capturing and preserving context.
For example, when I use the chat on my iPhone it attempts to anticipate what I want to write. I am given three choices of words to choose if I want to use this shortcut. In most cases, the iPhone guesses wrong, despite presenting three choices and having at its disposal (at least presumptively) a larger vocabulary than the writer. Oftentimes it seems to take control, assuming that I have misspelled or misidentified a word and chooses the wrong one for me, where my message becomes a nonsense message.
If one were to believe the hype surrounding AI, one would think that there is magic there but, as Arthur C. Clarke noted (known as Clarke's Third Law): "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Familiar with the new technologies as we are, we know that there is no magic there, and also that it is consistently wrong a good deal of the time. But many individuals come to rely upon the technology nonetheless.
Despite the gloss of something new, the long-established methods of epistemology, code-breaking, statistics, and Calculus apply–as do standards of establishing fact and truth. Despite a large set of data, the iPhone is wrong because the iPhone does not understand–does not possess knowledge–to know why it is wrong. As an aside, its dictionary is also missing a good many words.
A Segue and a Conclusion–I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For: Why Data Integration?…and a Proposed Definition of the Bigness of Data
As with the question to Neil Armstrong, so the question on data. And so the answer is the same. When we look at any set of data under a particular structure of a domain, the information we derive provides us with a manner of looking at the world. In economic systems, businesses, and projects that data provides us with a basis for interpretation, but oftentimes falls short of allowing us to effectively describe and understand what is happening.
Capturing interrelated data across domains allows us to look at the phenomena of these human systems from a different perspective, providing us with the opportunity to derive new knowledge. But in order to do this, we have to be open to this possibility. It also calls for us to, as I have hammered home in this blog, reset our definitions of what is being described.
For example, there are guides in project and program management that refer to statistical measures as "predictive analytics." This further waters down the intent of the phrase. Measures of earned value are not predictive. They note trends and a single-point outcome. Absent further analysis and processing, the statistical fallacy of extrapolation can be baked into our analysis. The same applies to any index of performance.
Furthermore, these indices and indicators–for that is all they are–do not provide knowledge, which requires a means of not only distinguishing between correlation and causation but also applying contextualization. All systems operate in a vector space. When we measure an economic or social system we are really measuring its behavior in the vector space that it inhabits. This vector space includes the way it is manifested in space-time: the equivalent of length, width, depth (that is, its relative position, significance, and size within information space), and time.
This then provides us with a hint of a definition of what often goes by the definition of "big data." Originally, as noted in previous blogs, big data was first used in NASA in 1997 by Cox and Ellsworth (not as credited to John Mashey on Wikipedia with the dishonest qualifier "popularized") and was simply a statement meaning "datasets whose size is beyond the ability of typical database software tools to capture, store, manage, and analyze."
This is a relative term given Moore's Law. But we can begin to peel back a real definition of the "bigness" of data. It is important to do this because too many approaches to big data assume it is flat and then apply probabilities and pattern recognition to data that undermines both contextualization and knowledge. Thus…
The Bigness of Data (B) is a function (f ) of the entropy expended (S) to transform data into information, or to extract its information content.
Information evolves. It evolves toward greater complexity just as life evolves toward greater complexity. The universe is built on coded bits of information that, taken together and combined in almost unimaginable ways, provides different forms of life and matter. Our limited ability to decode and understand this information–and our interactions in it– are important to us both individually and collectively.
Much entropy is already expended in the creation of the data that describes the activity being performed. Its context is part of its information content. Obliterating the context inherent in that information content causes all previous entropy to be of no value. Thus, in approaching any set of data, the inherent information content must be taken into account in order to avoid the unnecessary (and erroneous) application of data interpretation.
More to follow in future posts.
Information, IT management, Project Management, Software, Technology
American Pragmatism, Big Data, Bigness of Data, Charles Sanders Peirce, complex adaptive systems, complex systems, Daniel Dennett, data integration, Definition of Big Data, empiricism, information systems, John Dewey, John McPhee, KDD, Knowledge Discovery in Databases, Moore's Law, Neil Armstrong, Richard Dawkins, Stephen Jay Gould, systems integration, Theranos, William James


text:
Wolf, in Pottstown, discusses business…
Wolf, in Pottstown, discusses business investment, borough-Hill School relationship
Governor Tom Wolf seated next to Reading Mayor, Wally Scott during a dinner. During his keynote address at a dinner presented by the Hill School Hobart's Run initiative at Sunnybrook Ballroom on Thursday evening, Governor Tom Wolf spoke about the importance of the partnership between the borough of Pottstown and the Hill School. Sunnybrook Ballroom, 50 Sunnybrook Road, Pottstown, Thursday, 4/20/2017, Special to the Reading Eagle, Sandi Yanisko
During his keynote address at a dinner presented by the Hill School Hobart's Run initiative at Sunnybrook Ballroom on Thursday evening, Governor Tom Wolf spoke about the importance of the partnership between the borough of Pottstown and the Hill School. Sunnybrook Ballroom, 50 Sunnybrook Road, Pottstown, Thursday, 4/20/2017, Special to the Reading Eagle, Sandi Yanisko
Special to the Reading Eagle: Sandi Yanisko
Gov. Tom Wolf delivers the keynote address Thursday night at the kickoff dinner for the Pottstown Investors' Conference. The event, held in the SunnyBrook Ballroom, was sponsored by the Hobart's Run initiative, which is focused on revitalizing the neighborhood that surrounds The Hill School.
By Matt Carey |
PUBLISHED: April 21, 2017 at 1:00 a.m. | UPDATED: August 19, 2021 at 4:07 a.m.
A strong working relationship between Pottstown and The Hill School will benefit both, Gov. Tom Wolf said Thursday night.
Wolf was keynote speaker at a kickoff dinner for the Pottstown Investors' Conference, an event to promote business investment in the borough.
The gathering at the SunnyBrook Ballroom was sponsored by the Hobart's Run initiative, a joint school-borough effort focused on revitalizing the neighborhood that surrounds the school.
Wolf spoke of the importance of the school collaborating with the borough on projects like Hobart's Run.
The governor, a York County Democrat, said that the current connection contrasts with the distant relationship the two entities had in the past.
"We were an island," Wolf, a 1967 graduate, said of the private school's relationship with the borough when he attended. "We did not engage with the community, and I think The Hill School and Pottstown suffered as a result."
Wolf said a strong relationship between the two would benefit both parties.
The Hill School needs a safe environment to attract future students, as well as community opportunities to make its students more attractive to elite colleges, he said.
And Pottstown, the governor said, could benefit from school alumni returning to the borough to launch businesses and invest in the borough.
The borough also could benefit from what the school has to offer, from its physical campus to its financial resources.
"This is the right time for The Hill School community and the Pottstown community to do this," Wolf said. "If they don't, neither one is going to be able to do what they could do if they worked together."
Wolf told the crowd of about 100 at the dinner that he believed the Hobart's Run initiative and the conference were a great start to a working relationship between the borough and the school.
That partnership is important because the model of educational institutions working with local governments through direct investment has proven successful, Wolf said.
He cited as examples the University of Pennsylvania and Drexel University in Philadelphia investing in surrounding neighborhoods.
Wolf added that lawmakers at all levels need to work to find solutions to help alleviate the budgeting pressure that local municipalities face through no fault of their own, including state pension costs that lead to higher property taxes.
"We can do all the things we want to try to generate activity," Wolf said. "But we're going to have trouble if we don't get to the problems that cause taxes to be too high.
"It's not their fault that we have created these problems. We need to help them solve them."
The Hill School will host the investors conference on Friday. The event will include several panels of local business owners who will discuss their investments in Pottstown, as well as investment opportunities.
"Our mission for the investors' conference is to provide a local forum through which potential investors can learn about the process involved with becoming a stakeholder in the revitalization of Pottstown," said Twila Fisher, manager of community and economic development for The Hill School.
Contact Matt Carey: 610-371-5038 or mcarey@readingeagle.com.
Matt Carey


text:
Anwar Abdel Aleem (* 13. Dezember 1918 in Alexandria, Ägypten; † 27. Oktober 1996 ebenda) war ein ägyptischer Meeresbiologe. Er war ein Spezialist für Algen und Meerespflanzen.
Sein botanisches Autorenkürzel lautet "".

Leben
Aleem war der Sohn von Mohamad Abdel und Aisha Aleem, geborene Gawad. 1941 erlangte er den Bachelor of Science mit Auszeichnung an der Universität Kairo. Von 1942 bis 1946 war er Assistent an der naturwissenschaftlichen Fakultät der Universität Alexandria. 1945 graduierte er an derselben Universität zum Master of Science. 1949 wurde er mit der Dissertation Distribution and ecology of British littoral diatoms über Kieselalgengemeinschaften zum Ph.D. an der Universität London promoviert. Von 1949 bis 1952 absolvierte er seine Postdoc-Phase mit Unterstützung von Forschungsstipendien in Schweden, Frankreich und Deutschland. Er arbeitete auch in englischen Labors, insbesondere in Plymouth, und erforschte in Zusammenarbeit mit Felix Eugen Fritsch die Ökologie der Kieselalgen der britischen Meeresküste. Von 1953 bis 1959 war er außerordentlicher Professor für Ozeanographie an der Universität Alexandria. 1953 wurde er mit dem ägyptischen Staatspreis für Biowissenschaften ausgezeichnet. 1954 war er Forschungsstipendiat der Allan Hancock Foundation sowie Fulbright-Stipendiat an der University of Southern California. 1955 folgte ein Forschungsstipendium  an der Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Von 1959 bis 1972 hatte er den Lehrstuhl für biologische Ozeanographie an der Universität Alexandria inne. Im Oktober 1961 heiratete er Hoda El-Odwy, mit der er zwei Söhne hatte. Von 1980 bis 1985 lehrte er in Dschidda, Saudi-Arabien, wo er das Institut für Meereswissenschaften am Roten Meer gründete. Er schrieb viel über Kieselalgen und Phytoplankton, in seiner späten Karriere beschäftigte er sich jedoch auch mit mehrzelligen Algen und deren Ökologie, insbesondere im Roten Meer.

1964 nahm er an der International Indian Ocean Expedition (IIOE) teil. 1970 erhielt er den akademischen Grad eines Doctor of Science von der Universität London. 1984 wurde er mit dem Kuwait Prize für die Förderung der Wissenschaft ausgezeichnet. 1986 ging er als emeritierter Professor in den Ruhestand.

Aleem entwickelte Geräte und Methoden zur Simulation von Gezeiten im Labor sowie quantitative Methoden zur Bestimmung von Plankton und Kieselalgen. Er forschte zur Ökologie und Taxonomie des marinen Phytoplanktons, führte Produktivitätsstudien in Binnenseen durch, forschte über die weltweite Verbreitung parasitärer Meerespilze und betrieb taxonomische Studien über Kieselalgen, Algen, Meerespilze und Meeresgräser.

Aleems Bibliographie umfasst 120 Veröffentlichungen. Dazu gehören auch einige Abhandlungen über die Geschichte der Ozeanographie, die ebenfalls zu seinen Interessen gehörte.

1951 widmete der deutsche Botaniker Friedrich Hustedt (1886–1968) Alleem die Kieselalgen-Art  Navicula aleemii. Im selben Jahr beschrieben beide Forscher zahlreiche Kieselalgenarten in den Publikationen Einige neue Diatomeen von der Südküste Englands und Littoral diatoms from the Salstone, near Plymouth.

Erstbeschreibungen von Anwar Abdel Aleem
 Caloneis hustedtii
 Nitzschia astridi
 Achnanthes pseudobrevipes
 Olpidium maritimum
 Achnanthes petiti
 Gomphonema subaequatoriale
 Navicula pseudogastrum
 Olpidiopsis feldmanni
 Nitzschia amundoni
 Navicula pseudostrearia
 Fragilaria fayoumensis
 Nitzschia goteborgensis
 Caloneis levringi
 Caloneis aegyptiaca
 Gomphonema fayoumensis
 Nitzschia valdestriata
 Nitzschia salinicola
 Amphora tenerrima
 Cocconeis guttata
 Navicula supralitoralis
 Nitzschia calcicola
 Nitzschia proshkina-lavrenki
 Pleurosigma subhyalinum
 Pseudendoclonium marinum
 Olpidium phycophagum
 Navicula britannica
 Navicula digitoradiata var. aegyptiaca
 Gomphonema subaequatoriale var. spathulata
 Navicula ramosissima var. comoides
 Schizonema ramosissimum var. mucosum
 Navicula grevillei var. comoides
 Amphora angusta var. orientalis

Schriften
 Marine and Freshwater Resources of Egypt, 1961
 Oceans and Seas and Their Natural Resources, 1964

Literatur
 Allen G. Debus (Hrsg.): World Who's Who in Science. A Biographical Dictionary of Notable Scientists from Antiquity to the Present. Marquis-Who's Who (Chicago), 1968, S. 26
 François Carré: Disparition et hommage In: Chronique océanographique, Band 46, 1999, S. 524
 Michael J. Wynne: Obituary A. A. Aleem In: Botanica Marina, Band 40, Nummer 4, Walter de Gruyter Berlin, 1997 S. 257–261.

Weblinks
 Chrono-Biographical Sketches: Aleem, Anwar Abdel (Egypt 1918–1996)

Einzelnachweise

Meeresbiologe
Phykologe
Hochschullehrer (Alexandria)
Ägypter
Geboren 1918
Gestorben 1996
Mann

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


Jana Partners has landed two seats on the board of Walgreen (WAG), including one for its founder and managing partner Barry Rosenstein, giving the activist investor outsize say over how the drugstore chain conducts its affairs with only a 1.2% stake, and sparing Walgreen from the possibility of an ugly fight with a shareholder.
Walgreen, which runs the largest U.S. pharmacy chain by number of stores, recently lowered its financial forecasts and two top executives, including its finance chief, left, creating a sense of crisis around the retailer and sending shares down.
It also last month decided not to relocate its corporate headquarters abroad after it completes the acquisition of the the 55% European drugstore chain Alliance Boots GmbH. Such a move, known as a "tax inversion" likely would have lowered its tax rate significantly. Jana had been pushing Walgreen to do the inversion.
Activist investors typically buy shares in companies they see as undervalued and advocate for steps such as divestitures, management shake-ups and financial engineering. Pretty often, these lead to ugly public spats—Olive Garden owner Darden Restaurants (DRI) is under siege by activist investor Starboard Value, which is trying to replace the company's entire board, and earlier this year Carl Icahn was feuding openly and bitterly with eBay (EBAY) executives and directors over his proposal the company sell off PayPal. But the Wall Street Journal reported that Walgreen CEO Greg Wasson and Rosenstein have had "friendly and constructive" conversations on getting more out of Walgreen shares.
Jana has become a more visible investment firm of late—this summer, it pushed PetSmart (PETM) to look into selling itself, which the retailer is now doing. The hedge fund's ideas have been adopted at other companies such as grocer Safeway (SWY), among others. But landing two seats on the Walgreen board is arguably his biggest coup yet.
The Wall Street Journal reported that Jana will now work with Walgreen to cut costs and change the kinds of products the drugstore chain stocks on it shelves, and push for a bigger stock buyback plan. Rosenstein will join Walgreen's board immediately, and Jana will place a second director as soon as it identifies a candidate Walgreen accepts, expanding the board to 15.
Walgreen is the second biggest holding in Jana's portfolio , after data center company Equinix, according to Bloomberg.


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John Cronin and his partner and father, Mark X. Cronin, co-founders of John's Crazy Socks, completed a week-long tour of Canada where they spoke on inclusion and entrepreneurship. The tour was arranged by the U.S. State Department as part of the Department's U.S. Speaker's Program. Their trip took them to Ottawa and Vancouver where they spoke with students, business owners, advocates, social service leaders and entrepreneurs.
The father and son team spoke to groups of entrepreneurs at Carleton University and the Hub in downtown Ottawa. And they met with individuals with differing abilities participating in a program at Algonquin University. They also met with several groups working with and supporting people with Down syndrome. Since John is a Special Olympic athlete, they met with the Special Olympics of British Columbia and discussed how the Special Olympics prepares athletes for the workplace. John and Mark wrapped up their tour by serving as guest judges at Simon Fraser University's Opportunity Fest, which showcased student innovators and entrepreneurs.
At the conclusion of their tour, U.S. Counsel General Katherine S. Dhanani presented John and Mark with Canadian-American flag pins to thank them for their work.
Brandon Lambert of the U.S. State Department said, "We're privileged to send two fine Americans on our behalf. You represent what's good about us as a people and nation." Mr. Lambert recruited John and Mark for the program after hearing them testify before Congress on hiring people with differing abilities.
The U.S. Speaker Program recruits dynamic American experts to engage international audiences on topics of strategic importance to the United States. Programs are conducted in person and through virtual engagement platforms. Key themes include entrepreneurship and innovation, countering violent extremism, global security, environmental diplomacy, combatting gender-based violence, civil society, education, 21st century media, and youth empowerment. The office conducts approximately 650 speaker programs annually.
For more information about the State Department's speaker's Bureau, contact IIP-Expertmanagement@state.gov.
John's Crazy Socks is a father-son venture inspired by John Lee Cronin, a young man with Down syndrome, and his love of colorful and fun socks, or what he calls his "crazy socks." We're on a mission to spread happiness.
Inspiration and Hope: Showing what is possible when you give a person a chance. We hire people with differing abilities, share videos to show what people can do, host school tours and school groups that come for work experience. We want the world to see what people with differing abilities can do. John's Crazy Socks currently has 39 employees, 23 of whom have a differing ability.
Giving Back: We donate 5 percent of our earnings to the Special Olympics and raise money through our Sock of the Month Club and charity and awareness socks for our charity partners like Autism Speaks, the Autism Society of America, the National Down Syndrome Society, and the Williams Syndrome Association. We have raised over $280,000 for our charity partners and publish a monthly Giving Back Report.
Socks You Can Love: We have over 2,300 different socks plus a Sock of the Month Club, gift boxes and gift bags. And we match the great socks with great service: we do same day shipping so most of our customers receive their socks within two days of ordering.
Making It Personal: Every package gets a thank you note from John and some candy.
Please see our website for more information about our openings. For more information about John's Crazy Socks, please visit our webpage, Facebook page, Instagram account or YouTube channel. You can also contact us at 631-760-5625 or email us at service@johnscrazysocks.com.