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Book review: The Island at the Center of the World: The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan and the Forgotten Colony That Shaped America
The Island at the Center of the World: The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan and the Forgotten Colony That Shaped America by Russell Shorto
About a decade ago when I was living in New Jersey, I used to drive every weekend from New Jersey to Massachusetts to see my then-girlfriend. While driving back I used to take a road called the Saw Mill Parkway, near a town called Yonkers, on the way to crossing the Tappan Zee bridge. Both reference points seemed completely nondescript to me then. What I did not know until now was that both Yonkers and the Saw Mill Parkway are the only tributes in this country to a remarkable man and a lost time which, if it had endured, could have significantly influenced the history of this country.
The remarkable man was Adriaen van der Donck, a Dutchman who brought the liberal outlook of 17th century Amsterdam to the Dutch colony of New Netherlands, with its capital New Amsterdam. He was known as a 'Jonkheer' or 'young lord', and on his estate up the Hudson river he built a saw mill. Hence Yonkers and the Saw Mill Parkway.
Today about the only two things that most people know about the place was that it was bought from the Indians in 1626 for the seemingly laughably small sum of 60 guilders or 24 dollars, and that New Amsterdam became New York when the English took over it in 1664. During that period it became the most progressive European colony in America, reflecting the liberal, multicultural, intellectual and progressive spirit of the Netherlands, but its history is basically taught today as an English history. Russell Shorto's engaging book charts the history of this remarkable and forgotten colony, from the discovery of the location by Henry Hudson in 1608 (about the time that Jamestown was founded) to its takeover by the English.
Much of the book centers on two larger-than-life characters; Adriaen van der Donck and Peter Stuyvesant who were sort of opposites; the former is virtually forgotten while the latter lives on in the form of names like Stuyvesant High School. Van der Donck was educated at Leiden which then had a university rivaling Oxford in its embrace of natural philosophy and logic, and the Netherlands was already serving as a refuge for religious apostates like pilgrims and Rene Descartes. Inspired by his law studies at Leiden, Van der Donck had a scientists' eye for observation and objectivity. He made friends with the Indians, lived with them, studied the plants, animals, mountains and rivers in the vast landscape of what is now the Albany region and wrote a book describing the land that became a bestseller. He brought principles of representative government and religious freedom to New Amsterdam.
Stuyvesant who had fought the Spanish in South America and lost a leg to a cannonball belonged to the conservative old guard and believed in exercising the will of the company of which he was director - the Dutch West India Company which was then scouting around the world looking for natural and human resources. Although Stuyvesant and van der Donck were on good terms before, Stuyvesant's heavy-handed management of the colony led van der Donck and a select few settlers to write protests to the Hague laying out some remarkably forward-looking principles of secular governance for the colony.
And yet somehow, between Stuyvesant's authoritarian but dogged direction and van der Donck's progressive views, New Amsterdam for a few decades became a model for secular civilization that later defined New York City as a melting pot, a unique place with a ragtag band of seamen, traders, brewers, prostitutes, soldiers, farmers, freethinkers, frontiersmen and people from all countries and professions which encouraged multiculturalism and religious freedom, in significant contrast to the monocultural, religiously rigid Puritan colonies of New England to the North; in fact it served as a refuge for persecuted Englishmen and women from New England who settled mainly in Long Island. It also largely regarded the neighboring Indian tribes as equals and traded beaver furs and wampum with them, and unlike the English at Jamestown rarely engaged in murderous conflict with the natives. Under van der Donck's leadership, the Netherlands was going to institute a bonafide progressive government in the place - the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 had inspired a general sentiment of tolerance and peace - but sadly the beginning of the Anglo-Dutch wars led the country to again cede authority to the West India Company, and Stuyvesant again had the upper hand. Nonetheless the colony still flourished because of its decentralized nature.
The book describes how the colony bequeathed many Americanisms, among them "boss" (from "baas"), "coleslaw" (from "koosla") and "cookies" (from "koekje"). A lot of upstate New York, New Jersey, Philadelphia, (the name Schuylkill is Dutch) and especially New York City have a deeply embedded Dutch heritage, and there's even a non-trivial amount of Swedish and Finnish heritage that came from a Swedish colony that endured for about twenty years in what's now Delaware before it capitulated to the Dutch. The end of the colony came when the English first under Cromwell and then under Charles II realized the lucrative advantage that the location would provide in exploring the interior up the Hudson river, along with a strategic waypoint for the then exploding slave trade. Van der Donck sadly died in an Indian raid while Stuyvesant lived out his life in his colony and was buried there in 1672. The golden age of Dutch civilization and free thought was on the decline, and England - and the English version of history - took over.
There is no doubt that New Amsterdam was a model of religious and cultural tolerance that needs to be remembered, largely because there was no system of top-down governance there for a long time, but perhaps Shorto overstates the influence it had on future developments in the United States including the Constitution; nobody knows how exactly history would have turned out had there been two dominant colonies - the English to the North and the Dutch to the South, but it would have been very interesting indeed. Ironically, in his zeal to demonstrate how forgotten secular New Amsterdam was, Shorto fails, even when mentioning New England in some detail, to mention even once the equally secular and remarkable secular experiment to the North which I wrote about earlier - Roger Williams and his founding of Rhode Island. Seems like someone's always forgotten.
Labels: American history, book review, history
Book review: An Empire on the Edge: How Britain Came to Fight America
An Empire on the Edge: How Britain Came to Fight America by Nick Bunker
A highly illuminating, novel account of the lead-up to the Boston Tea Party and the American Revolution from the British side, covering the critical years 1772 to 1775. British politics and economics played a seminal role in inciting the conflict (who knew that smuggling which drastically undercut the prices of tea and other commodities played such a huge role in the revolution). As an Englishman Bunker offers a very thoughtful and sympathetic but still fair and balanced portrait of British political leaders and convincingly demonstrates how they were complex characters with far from outright villainous intent.
Unlike the simplistic textbook version of events, Bunker explains in painstaking detail (sometimes too much detail) how the British simply misunderstood the colonists rather than actively oppressed them, seeing them as sources of revenue and little more, largely ignoring them until 1773. Occupied with extending their empire in other parts of the globe and chronically afraid of the French, they thought of the American colonies as a reliable outpost which they would never have to worry about, even as they were losing their grip both on the vast, overstretched geography as well as the hearts and minds of the colonists. They also badly misunderstood that what were for them simple matters of (modest) taxation were for the colonists fundamental matters of religion, individual rights and free trade; unlike other British colonies like India, the North Americans already had a lot of freedom and individual rights, which made England's petulant, scolding attitude highly inflammatory and the decision to separate from the mother country consequently easier.
Even after the Tea Party there was a huge gulf of misunderstanding between King George III, prime minister Lord North, the colonial secretary Lord Dartmouth and the colonists that led to missed opportunities. Support for taking hard measures against the colonies was also far from monolithic, with many famous members of parliament like Edmund Burke delivering fiery speeches against North, and the quality of British democracy was commendable, with even riotous events like the Boston pamphlets and the Tea Party needing proper legislative procedure, witness accounts and documentary evidence to prosecute (the book makes it clear that even by the 1770s the King could make almost no law without parliament's consent). News (including scurrilous "fake news") also took at least a month to travel from one shore to another during those days, compounding the misunderstanding.
The British also made a critical mistake by getting obsessed with Boston and Massachusetts which, although symbolically important, were politically as well as economically much less important than the Southern colonies and the Hudson Valley. After the tea was dumped North basically thought he could quell the rebellion through a targeted local war in Massachusetts or Rhode Island (the most radical state); little did he know that the colony shared deep resentments with other colonies. In a curious sense the British understanding of the colonists was as impoverished as the later American understanding of the Vietnamese. Just like an American General could never see through the eyes of Ho Chi Minh or a Vietnamese peasant, North and his ministers were simply too different from an Ethan Allen or Thomas Young.
Essentially this was a story of many missed opportunities. if they had played their cards right England could well have turned North America into a country like Australia or Canada, essentially an independent republic with intimate ties to the commonwealth, or even defused the budding revolution in 1772 by extending an olive branch of the right kind, perhaps dividing North from South, until it was too late. As it turned out, the two countries indeed turned out to be two nations separated by a common language.
Computer simulations and the Universe
There is a sense in certain quarters that both experimental and theoretical fundamental physics are at an impasse. Other branches of physics like condensed matter physics and fluid dynamics are thriving, but since the composition and existence of the fundamental basis of matter, the origins of the universe and the unity of quantum mechanics with general relativity have long since been held to be foundational matters in physics, this lack of progress rightly bothers its practitioners.
Each of these two aspects of physics faces its own problems. Experimental physics is in trouble because it now relies on energies that cannot be reached even by the biggest particle accelerators around, and building new accelerators will require billions of dollars at a minimum. Even before it was difficult to get this kind of money; in the 1990s the Superconducting Supercollider, an accelerator which would have cost about $2 billion and reached energies greater than those reached by the Large Hadron Collider, was shelved because of a lack of consensus among physicists, political foot dragging and budget concerns. The next particle accelerator which is projected to cost $10 billion is seen as a bad investment by some, especially since previous expensive experiments in physics have confirmed prior theoretical foundations rather than discovered new phenomena or particles.
Fundamental theoretical physics is in trouble because it has become unfalsifiable, divorced from experiment and entangled in mathematical complexities. String theory which was thought to be the most promising approach to unifying quantum mechanics and general relativity has come under particular scrutiny, and its lack of falsifiable predictive power has become so visible that some philosophers have suggested that traditional criteria for a theory's success like falsification should no longer be applied to string theory. Not surprisingly, many scientists as well as philosophers have frowned on this proposed novel, postmodern model of scientific validation.
Quite aside from specific examples in theory and experiment, perhaps the most serious roadblock that fundamental physics seems to be facing is that it might have reached the end of "Why". That is to say, the causal framework for explaining phenomena that has been a mainstay of physics since its very beginnings might have ominously hit a wall. For instance, the Large Hadron Collider found the Higgs Boson, but this particle had already been predicted thirty years before. Similarly, the gravitational waves predicted by LIGO were a logical prediction of Einstein's theory of relativity proposed almost a hundred years before. Both these experiments were technical tour de forces, but they did not make startling, unexpected new discoveries. Other "big physics" experiments before the LHC had validated the predictions of the Standard Model which is our best theoretical framework for the fundamental constituents of matter.
The problem is that the basic fundamental constants in the Standard Model like the masses of elementary particles and their numbers are ad hoc quantities. Nobody knows why they have the values they do. This dilemma has led some physicists to propose the idea that while our universe happens to be the one in which the fundamental constants have certain specific values, there might be other universes in which they have different values. This need for explanation of the values of the fundamental constants is part of the reason why theories of the multiverse are popular. Even if true, this scenario does not bode well for the state of physics. In his collection of essays "The Accidental Universe", physicist and writer Alan Lightman says:
Dramatic developments in cosmological findings and thought have led some of the world's premier physicists to propose that our universe is only one of an enormous number of universes, with wildly varying properties, and that some of the most basic features of our particular universe are mere accidents – random throws of the cosmic dice. In which case, there is no hope of ever explaining these features in terms of fundamental causes and principles.
Lightman also quotes the reigning doyen of theoretical physicists, Steven Weinberg, who recognizes this watershed in the history of his discipline:
We now find ourselves at a historic fork in the road we travel to understand the laws of nature. If the multiverse idea is correct, the style of fundamental physics will be radically changed.
Although Weinberg does not say this, what's depressing about the multiverse is that its existence might always remain postulated and never proven since there is no easy way to experimentally test it. This is a particularly bad scenario because the only thing that a scientist hates even more than an unpleasant answer to a question is no answer at all.
Do the roadblocks that experimental and theoretical physics have hit combined with the lack of explanation of fundamental constants mean that fundamental physics is stuck forever? Perhaps not. Here one must remember Einstein when he said that "Our problems cannot be solved with the same thinking that created them". Physicists may have to think in wholly different ways, to change the fundamental style that Weinberg refers to, in order to overcome the impasse.
Fortunately there is one tool in addition to theory and experiment which has not been prominently used by physicists but which has been used by biologists and chemists and which could help physicists do new experiments. That tool is computation. Computation is usually regarded separately from experiment, but computational experiments can be performed the same way that lab experiments can as long as the parameters and models underlying the computation are well defined and valid. In the last few decades, computation has become as legitimate a tool in science as theory and experiment.
Interestingly, this problem of trying to explain fundamental phenomena without being able to resort to deeper explanations is familiar to biologists: it is the old problem of contingency and chance in evolution. Just like physicists want to explain why the proton has a certain mass, biologists want to explain why marsupials have pouches that carry their young or why Blue Morpho butterflies are a beautiful blue. While proximal explanations for such phenomena are available, the ultimate explanations hinge on chance. Biological evolution could have followed an infinite number of pathways, and the ones that it did simply arose from natural selection acting on random mutations. Similarly one can postulate that while the fundamental constants could have had different values, the ones that they do have in our universe came about simply because of random perturbations, each one of which rendered a different universe. Physics turns into biology.
Is there a way to test this kind of thinking in the absence of concrete experiments? One way would be to think of different universes as different local minima in a multidimensional landscape. This scenario would be familiar to biochemists who are used to thinking of different folded structures for a protein as lying in different local energy minima. A few years back a biophysicist named Collin Stultz in fact made this comparison as a helpful way to think about the multiverse. Computational biophysicists test this protein landscape by running computer simulations in which they allow an unfolded protein to explore all these different local minima until it finds a global minimum which corresponds to its true folded state. In the last few years, thanks to growing computing power, thousands of such proteins have been simulated.
Similarly, I postulate that computational physicists could perform simulations in which they simulate universes with different values for the fundamental constants and evaluate which ones resemble our real universe. Because the values of the fundamental constants dictate chemistry and biology, one could well imagine completely fantastic physics, biology and chemistry arising in universes with different values for Planck's constant or for the fine structure constant. A 0.001% difference in some values might lead to a lifeless universe with total silence, one with only black holes or spectacularly exploding supernovae, or one which bounced back between infinitesimal and infinite length scales in a split second. Smaller variations on the constants could result in a universe with silicon-based life, or one with liquid ammonia rather than water as life's essential solvent, or one with a few million earth-like planets in every galaxy. With a slight tweaking of the cosmic calculator, one could even have universes where Blue Morpho butterflies are the dominant intelligent species or where humans have the capacity to photosynthesize.
All these alternative universes could be simulated and explored by computational physicists without the need to conduct billion dollar experiments and deal with politicians for funding. I believe that both the technology and the knowledge base required to simulate entire universes on a computer could be well within our means in the next fifty years, and certainly within the next hundred years. In some sense the technology is already within reach; already we can perform climate and protein structure simulations on mere desktop computers, so simulating whole universes should be possible on supercomputers or distributed cloud computing systems. Crowdsourcing of the kind done for the search for extraterrestrial intelligence or protein folding would be readily feasible. Another alternative would be to do computation using DNA or quantum computers: Because of DNA's high storage and permutation capacity, computation using DNA can multiply required computational resources manyfold. One can also imagine taking advantage of natural phenomena like electrical discharges in interstellar space or in the clouds of Venus or Jupiter to perform large-scale computation; in fact an intelligence based on communication using electrical discharges was the basis of Fred Hoyle's science fiction story "The Black Cloud".
On the theoretical side, the trick is to have enough knowledge about fundamental phenomena and to be able to abstract away the details so that the simulation can be run at the right emergent level. For instance, physicists can already simulate the behavior of entire galaxies and supernovae without worrying about the behavior of every single subatomic particle in the system. Similarly, biologists can simulate the large-scale behavior of ecosystems without worrying about the behavior of every single organism in them. In fact physicists are already quite familiar with such an approach in the field of statistical mechanics where they can simulate quantities like temperature and pressure in a system without simulating every individual atom or molecule in it. And they have measured the values of the fundamental constants to many decimal places to use them confidently in the simulations.
In our hypothetical simulated universe, all the simulator would have to do would be to input slightly different values of the fundamental constants and then hard-code some fundamental emergent laws like evolution by natural selection and the laws of chemical bonding. In fact, a particularly entertaining enterprise would be to run the simulation and see if these laws emerge by themselves. The whole simulation would in one sense largely be a matter of adjusting initial values, setting the boundary value conditions and then sitting back and watching the ensuing fireworks. It would simply be an extension of what scientists already do using computers albeit on a much larger scale. Once the simulations are validated, they could be turned into user-friendly tools or toys that can be used by children. The children could try to simulate their own universes and can have contests to see which one creates the most interesting physics, chemistry and biology. Adults as well as children could thus participate in extending the boundaries of our knowledge of fundamental physics.
Large-scale simulation of multiple universes can help break the impasse that both experimentation and theory in fundamental physics are facing. Computation cannot completely replace experiment if the underlying parameters and assumptions are not well-validated, but there is no reason why this cannot happen as our knowledge of the world based on small-scale experiments grows. In fields like theoretical chemistry, weather prediction and drug development, computational predictions are becoming as important as experimental tests. At the very least, the results from these computational studies will constrain the number of potential experimental tests and provide more confidence in asking governments to allocate billions of dollars for the next generation of particle accelerators and gravitational wave detectors.
I believe that the ability to simulate entire universes is imminent, will be part of the future of physics and will undoubtedly lead to many exciting results. But the most exciting ones will be those that even our best science fiction writers cannot imagine. That is something we can truly look forward to.
First published on 3 Quarks Daily.
Labels: philosophy of science, physics
Book review: Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul
Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul: Church, State, and the Birth of Liberty by John M. Barry
If anyone wants to know what makes the United States unique, part of the answer can be found in this book. At its center is a wholly remarkable, extraordinary, awe-inspiring individual who was light years ahead of his time. Roger Williams founded Rhode Island (then Providence Plantation) in 1636 and it became the world's first model of both full religious tolerance as well as individual rights, and it established government by the consent of the governed as a foundational principle. At that time nothing like it existed anywhere, and certainly not in Europe where Catholics and Protestants were killing each other over absurdly trivial matters like the age for baptism and Calvinist predestination. Williams's teachings and writings set the stage for fundamental debates about the role of religion and the state in individuals' lives with which we are still grappling.
Williams had fled from England when Charles I intensified his father James I's campaign to persecute Protestant Puritans who wanted a purer, more rigorous form of worship. Growing up in London, Williams had been enormously influenced by Edward Coke and Francis Bacon, two men who ironically were sworn enemies. Coke was the most eminent jurist in English history and had challenged the divine right of kings and emphasized rights to property and due process. Bacon was one of the fathers of the scientific method and put a premium on evidence and observation. From both these men Williams imbibed a deep set of ethics about free, secular thinking.
He arrived in Massachusetts a decade after the Mayflower docked at Plymouth and a few years after the Massachusetts Bay Colony was established by John Winthrop, the "city on a hill". A talented lawyer, minister and linguist who was steeped in Bacon's scientific method, he became friends with the Indians, learnt their customs and and became fluent in their language. He was received with great respect and offered the post of minister in the newly-established Boston's first church. His time in history came when he made a historic break by opposing two basic tenets of the Puritans and Christians in general: that the state should have no authority to enforce the first four commandments dealing with God, and that Indians had property rights too and the Puritans did not have the authority to simply seize them and needed to buy their lands. This went not just against the fundamentalist religious beliefs of the colony but was something wholly new that directly contradicted both the meld between church and state and in fact all the political and religious philosophy that existed at the time.
For his novel views Williams was duly banished from Massachusetts under threat of execution, but he kept on privately preaching his creed in the more tolerant Salem. When Massachusetts sent out a squad of soldiers to haul him onto a ship bound for England for imprisonment, they found that (goaded by a tip from Winthrop), Williams had already escaped into the bitter, snowy winter wilderness. The only reason he remained alive was because he found refuge and friendship among the Narragansett and other Indians who lived in the area, and the fact that his friends and colleagues had denounced him while strangers had saved his life fundamentally changed his views of race, of religion, of Native Americans, of freedom and individual rights, of how much control men should have over other men. His colony became a refuge for the rejected, the denounced, the banished of Massachusetts, Plymouth and Connecticut; the three major colonies of the time.
He decided to codify his beliefs in a formal document. Massachusetts kept on being threatened by its freethinking neighbor to the South and kept on trying to usurp its territories, so Williams went back again to the same England from which he had fled about fifteen years ago. At this point England itself had become roiled up in what was going to lead to the English Civil War and the execution of Charles I. He befriended Oliver Cromwell and managed to get a charter for Rhode Island written and later endorsed by Charles II (who seems to have forgiven his friendship with Cromwell). In an age when almost every piece of paper including the founding charter of Puritan Massachusetts was infused throughout with the names of God and Christ, the Rhode Island charter is an extraordinary document, not mentioning God even once. It established almost complete freedom of religion and made it clear that no one should be persecuted simply for their beliefs; a groundbreaking assertion at a time when even minor differences in religious beliefs between Catholics and Protestants, let alone ones between Protestants and Jews or Quakers, were enough to ignite religious wars that killed thousands. Finally, with his charter safely establishing the legality of Rhode Island, Williams returned back to his colony and lived to be an old man, still preaching the gospel of tolerance.
Williams's writing serve as the foundation for the novelty of the American experiment. He was a devout Christian who conceived a separation of church from state, private from public activity. He might have been the first bonafide libertarian. There is a straight line between his teachings, John Locke, the Declaration of Independence and all the worldwide events that the American Revolution inspired. No wonder that when the tide of history met the shores of fate, not only did Rhode Island become the first to protest against unlawful behavior by the English even before the Boston Tea Party, but it became the first state in the colonies to declare independence from Great Britain in 1776.
Labels: book review, history
Book review: Fur, Fortune and Empire
Fur, Fortune, and Empire: The Epic History of the Fur Trade in America by Eric Jay Dolin
A marvelous and highly revealing history of the fur trade in America, right from the first permanent European settlements in the 17th century to the end of the 19th century. A story of inspiring doggedness against an incredibly unforgiving environment and of the tragic clash of civilizations.
Dolin's basic thesis is that fur was to the 17th and 19th centuries what oil was to the 20th, and it was the possibility of buying beaver furs in unprecedented quantities for fashion-hungry Europe from Indians that largely drew first the Dutch and French and later the English to North America, so the settling and expansion of North America especially to the West tracks very closely with the fur trade. Having access to the Mississippi and the Hudson rivers, the former were much better placed to buy fur in exchange for European goods, at first trinkets like utensils and clothing but later deadlier commodities like guns and alcohol. The Dutch started trading for beaver pelts in their New Amsterdam colony, while the French swept in from Canada and controlled the Mississippi. This led to an inevitable clash between the British and the French for control of the Great Lakes region. After the French and Indian War, clashes arose between the British and the colonies regarding jurisdiction over the newly-opened vast Ohio territory and its lucrative fur possibilities, and this was at least one of the factors leading to the American Revolution. Americans continued to duke it out with the British even as both expanded into the Northwest, this time killing sea otters in unprecedented numbers for trade with China with brutal techniques and gleeful avarice. The Lewis and Clark expedition was at least in part a quest to map lucrative locations for the fur trade.
One of the highlights of the book is the light it sheds on early European-Indian relations which were much more benign compared to later years. In almost every case the Indians welcomed the Europeans at first contact and were in awe of their guns and other modern technology. Partly out of necessity - the Europeans were completely dependent on the natives at first for fetching furs from the deep interior - and partly out of genuine respect and curiosity, Europeans established trading relationships with the Indians through trading posts, and the Indians were often canny enough to play competing French and British trappers and companies against each other to get the best price. The relationship started changing when the Europeans became more land-hungry and when they started taking advantage of the Indians by plying them with alcohol; the independent forays of European trappers also started reducing their dependence on native fur acquisition. But there were violent clashes on both sides, sometimes instigated by Indians but more often invoked by European greed.
The book has memorable portraits of key fur trappers, sailors and soldiers who braved unbelievable rigors of starvation, predation and hostile engagements with Indians to get the furs, living for months in inhospitable, sub-zero temperatures in the Midwest and the Great Plains. One of these "mountain men" was Hugo Glass who was mauled by a grizzly bear and left for dead before he endured an astonishing foot journey to reach civilization; Glass was the inspiration for the movie "The Revenant". The mountain men are fascinating; mostly originating from Kentucky, Tennessee and other border states, they were the most free-lancing among the free-lancing trappers, traveling with aplomb whenever and wherever they wanted, yet 80% of them were married and a third took Indian wives. What is truly interesting is that these uneducated, hardy men were often as well read as an East Coast businessman and practiced a kind of equality among themselves and their wives, often living in communal camps, that might have been unique on the continent for the times. Other memorable characters include John Jacob Astor, one of America's first millionaires who thrived on and greatly expanded the fur trade, Captain James Cook who was the first to discover the Northwest before he was killed in Hawaii and frontiersmen like Kit Carson, Daniel Boone and Manuel Lisa.
The last part of the book deals with the tragic effects the fur trade had on America's fauna as well as on the Indians. By the 1850s or so Europeans and Indians had both hunted the beaver nearly to extinction before they discovered a new source of fur: the American buffalo or bison. With that discovery began probably the greatest episode of manmade carnage in history. At the beginning tens of millions of buffalo roamed the Great Plains and the Southwest; by the end of 1890 there were a few hundred. The building of the transcontinental railroad sealed the fate of both the buffalo and the Indians in whose life the buffalo was so intimately integrated that they would use and consume every single part of it, including the scrotum and the tail, the heart and the blood. Meanwhile, Europeans started killing the animal for sport, sometimes lazily shooting it from train compartments and leaving the carcasses rotting. The long-range rifle made it possible for a single hunter to kill dozens in a day and waste most of their meat. Soon the plains were literally dotted with rotting carcasses and skulls for as far as the eye could see. The westward expansion also split the Indian population into small groups which were at the mercy of settlers and the U.S. Army, leading to their complete subjugation. This was truly a sad chapter in the history of the United States, and one that frankly brought tears to my eyes.
Not just the buffalo but the beaver and the sea otter were killed in the tens of millions and hunted to near extinction, so it's perhaps a miracle that they are still around. While the history of the fur trade tells the story of expansion, greed, killings and conquest along with one of resilience, doggedness and adventure, its aftermath tells a story of hope even as Teddy Roosevelt, John Muir, Thoreau and others reminded Americans of humans' deep connection to nature, made a strong push for conservation and assigned large areas of the country to conservation where bison, otters and other animals killed during the fur trade started thriving again. A few years ago a beaver was spotted on the Bronx River in New York for the first time in two hundred years. Perhaps there is a kernel of compassion and hope in the gnarly undergrowth of man's cruelty after all.
Labels: book review, books, history
Book review: Miracle at Philadelphia
Miracle at Philadelphia: The Story of the Constitutional Convention, May to September 1787 by Catherine Drinker Bowen
A superb, must-read day-by-day account of the Constitutional Convention which took place in Philadelphia between May and September 1787. The writing and description of not just the deliberations and the personalities but the stuffy, hot, Philadelphia weather, the shops, the clothes and the impressions of European visitors of a society that snubs its nose at class are so vivid that you get the feeling you are there. I have read a few other accounts of this all-important episode, but none so revealing as to the spirit of the times.
Present here are the great men of American history in all their glory and flaws: Washington, Hamilton, Madison, Franklin, Gouverneur Morris (from whose pen came "We the people" in the preamble to the Constitution), and even a lobbyist for land companies, Manasseh Cutler, who helped draft the Northwest Ordinance that created the vast Northwest Territory and sealed the fate of millions of Indians. Exerting their influence subtly from Europe were Jefferson and Adams. There were fiery speakers both for and against a central government - George Mason and Edmund Randolph from Virginia, Luther Martin from Maryland, Hamilton from New York, Elbridge Gerry from Massachusetts (from whom comes one of my favorite quotes: "The evils we have stem from the excess of democracy. The people do not want virtue, but are the dupes of pretended patriots") - who made no secret of their feelings. They formed the Federalists and Antifederalists who were to have such bitter debates later.
Discussed were issues both trivial and momentous: the exact terms for Senators and Congressmen, whether the President should be appointed for life, the regulation of trade with other countries, the requirements for voting and citizenship, the provision for a national army. But the three most important issues were taxation, representation in both houses, and Western expansion. In many ways these issues encapsulated the central issue: states' rights vs a strong national government. The small states were afraid that proportional representation would diminish their influence to nothing; the large ones were afraid that incomplete representation would harm their economy, their manufacturing and their landed gentry; sparsely populated ones worried that it would harm Westward expansion and slavery. Many people spoke openly against slavery, but it was out of concerns for the Southern states' objections that the Constitution adopted the infamous three-fifths clause relating to "other persons" (there was consolation in the fact that the convention at least set a 1808 date for the ending of the slave trade). To soothe concerns on both sides, Roger Sherman of Connecticut offered the Sherman Compromise which proposed that the House would have proportionate representation while the Senate's composition would be fixed to two from each state.
Women, white men without property, Africans and Indians famously got fleeced. As Jill Lepore wrote in her history "These Truths", while Africans were degraded as slaves and considered as three-fifths of men, women fared almost as badly and were completely left out of the Constitution: in 1776, Abigail Adams memorably wrote to her husband, "Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the husbands. Remember, all men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation", but her words were far from anyone's mind in 1787. Women's rights as we know them were non-existent then. But the Constitution was at least a triumph of religious freedom when, in the face of objections by some prominent Americans, it did away with any religious test for becoming a citizen and for holding office. This was a revolutionary move for the times.
Bowen's book also does a fantastic job of letting us see the world through the eyes of these men and women. It's very difficult for us in the age of the Internet to realize how slow communication was during those times and how disconnected people felt from each other in the unimaginably vast expanse of the country and the frontier to the West. The states were so loosely bound to each other by the previous Articles of Confederation and had such disparate geographies and cultures that in some cases they were threatening to fracture (for instance Maine wanted to separate from Massachusetts, and Virginia was planning to form a navy to defend herself against other states) So many of the concerns arose from legitimate worries that a Senator or President from Washington would never understand the concerns of a farmer from South Carolina, or that a farmer from South Carolina would never understand the concerns of a New England artisan. The fear that a central government would run roughshod over individual states was a very real one, although seventy years later it manifested itself in an ugly incarnation. There was also deep skepticism about "the people" (as Hamilton had put it, "If men were angels, governments would be unnecessary."), and many vociferously asked that the preamble should say "We the states".
Another revealing aspect of the book is to communicate how many measures were either defeated when they were first proposed or passed by a slim majority; sometimes the delegates even changed their votes. This was democracy in action; giving everyone a chance to voice their concerns while still obeying the wishes of the majority. Fun fact, especially in light of the present times: the presidential veto was struck down ten-to-one when first proposed. And, in what today seems like the most incomprehensible move, a Bill of Rights was also struck down ten-to-one when first proposed. The main argument was: if Americans are already free, why do they need a separate Bill of Rights? And if you are already laying down rules for what the government can do, why is it necessary to explicitly state what it cannot do? It was only after the Constitution was sent to the states for ratification that Massachusetts proposed adding a bill of rights; in fact some of the amendments in the Bill or Rights mirror Massachusetts' own proposals for a state bill of rights. Once the powerful states like Massachusetts, Virginia and Pennsylvania ratified, the other states quickly fell in line.
It is wonderful to see Antifederalists who had opposed the Constitution immediately concede to the wishes of the people, often in generous terms, when it is ratified by individual states. In fact that is perhaps the single-most important fact that comes across in Bowen's account; that men with widely differing views reached a compromise and forged a document which, although it contained important flaws, became a trailblazing, unique, enduring piece of work asking for a "more perfect Union" that led to a clarion call for individual rights and liberty not just in the United States but throughout the world.
Book review: The Island at the Center of the World...
Book review: An Empire on the Edge: How Britain Ca...
Book review: Roger Williams and the Creation of th...


text:
package org.configureme.util;

import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.InputStream;
import java.io.InputStreamReader;
import java.io.PushbackInputStream;
import java.io.Reader;
import java.nio.charset.Charset;

/**
 * Generic unicode text reader, which will use BOM mark to identify the encoding to be used.

 * If BOM is not found then use a given default or system encoding.
 *
 * @author another
 * @version $Id: $Id
 */
public class UnicodeReader extends Reader {
	private static final int BOM_SIZE = 4;

	private final PushbackInputStream internalIn;
	private InputStreamReader internalIn2 = null;
	private final Charset charset;

	/**
	 *
Constructor for UnicodeReader.

	 *
	 * @param in a {@link java.io.InputStream} object.
	 */
	public UnicodeReader(InputStream in) {
		this(in, Charset.defaultCharset());
	}

	/**
	 *
Constructor for UnicodeReader.

	 *
	 * @param in a {@link java.io.InputStream} object.
	 * @param charsetName a {@link java.lang.String} object.
	 */
	public UnicodeReader(InputStream in, String charsetName) {
		this(in, Charset.forName(charsetName));
	}

	/**
	 *
Constructor for UnicodeReader.

	 *
	 * @param aIn a {@link java.io.InputStream} object.
	 * @param aCharset a {@link java.nio.charset.Charset} object.
	 */
	public UnicodeReader(InputStream aIn, Charset aCharset) {
		this.internalIn = new PushbackInputStream(aIn, BOM_SIZE);
		this.charset = aCharset;
	}

	/**
	 *
getEncoding.

	 *
	 * @return a {@link java.lang.String} object.
	 */
	public String getEncoding() {
		if (internalIn2 == null)
			return null;
		return internalIn2.getEncoding();
	}

	/**
	 *
init.

	 *
	 * @throws java.io.IOException if any.
	 */
	protected void init() throws IOException {
		if (internalIn2 != null)
			return;

		Charset preciseCharset;
		byte bom[] = new byte[BOM_SIZE];
		int n, unread;
		n = internalIn.read(bom, 0, bom.length);

		if ((bom[0] == (byte) 0x00) && (bom[1] == (byte) 0x00) && (bom[2] == (byte) 0xFE) && (bom[3] == (byte) 0xFF)) {
			preciseCharset = Charset.forName("UTF-32BE");
			unread = n - 4;
		} else if ((bom[0] == (byte) 0xFF) && (bom[1] == (byte) 0xFE) && (bom[2] == (byte) 0x00) && (bom[3] == (byte) 0x00)) {
			preciseCharset = Charset.forName("UTF-32LE");
			unread = n - 4;
		} else if ((bom[0] == (byte) 0xEF) && (bom[1] == (byte) 0xBB) && (bom[2] == (byte) 0xBF)) {
			preciseCharset = Charset.forName("UTF-8");
			unread = n - 3;
		} else if ((bom[0] == (byte) 0xFE) && (bom[1] == (byte) 0xFF)) {
			preciseCharset = Charset.forName("UTF-16BE");
			unread = n - 2;
		} else if ((bom[0] == (byte) 0xFF) && (bom[1] == (byte) 0xFE)) {
			preciseCharset = Charset.forName("UTF-16LE");
			unread = n - 2;
		} else {
			// Unicode BOM mark not found, unread all bytes
			preciseCharset = charset;
			unread = n;
		}
		if (unread > 0)
			internalIn.unread(bom, (n - unread), unread);

		// Use given encoding
		internalIn2 = preciseCharset == null ? new InputStreamReader(internalIn) : new InputStreamReader(internalIn, preciseCharset);
	}

	/**
	 *
close.

	 *
	 * @throws java.io.IOException if any.
	 */
	@Override
	public void close() throws IOException {
		init();
		internalIn2.close();
	}

	@Override
	public int read(final char[] cbuf, final int off, final int len) throws IOException {
		init();
		return internalIn2.read(cbuf, off, len);
	}

}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
Expectatiion vs Reality
By pukka,
August 6, 2008 in The opinions4u Terraces - Latics Forum
Location:Shelbyville
(When I say vs Reality I mean vs what actually happens come may)
When I read through the predictions for the season, the amount that dont have us at least in the play offs is very small. If those predictions are genuine and can be seen as a good reflection on fans as a whole It could be a double edged sword.
I think that the last time so many people were as "confident" as this was when Ronnie had his season and I truely believe that it part of why the fans disliked him. I dont want to make this another "Ronnie debate" cos nothing can be said that hasn't already.
Come mid-october. If we are half way in the table, I'll be looking at this board with interest and listening to the fans at the ground as to whether there is any discontent. Personally I'm hopeful rather than expectant and I do think that this is our strongest squad for a while. I do think the division as a whole is much stronger too and I've predicted 7th.
If we start like a train though I think we have a chance as its jan/feb when I think we will improve on previous years, due to squad size. For the last 2 years come february we lost pace. (Our final league placing was given a slight boost last year by 2 final wins. We were 11th with 2 games to go.) 2 years ago after hitting the top in feb we fell away.
Lets start well first. We haven't done for a few years. 10 games and 15 points+ please.
Heres to a good and hopefully successful season.
Edited August 6, 2008 by pukka
After many years of supporting Latics, my nature is to be realistic to the extent of aiming for enough points to avoid relegation as soon as possible. From then on the bonus of the Play-offs or the ultimate bonus of promotion becomes a taget. I would also love a good cup run.
From watching the pre-season games, I can't see us starting like a train, but I hope I'm wrong. The new players may have been hiding their lights under bushels and Shez may have been hiding his winning formation under his coaching manual. The players brought in appear to have added depth, experience and quality to the squad, and the promise shown by the youngsters last season gives me optimism.
I'm more excited about the coming season than for some years, but I just hope that people don't get on the players backs during games if results are not meeting high expectations.
ghostofcecere
I see some similarities between 'that' ronnie season and this; there is always a higher level of expectation after a busy summer in the transfer market. If we were to trawl the messageboards of the teams left in the division from last top 10 then I bet they are all expecting the playoffs this time around. Similarly I bet those outside the top 10 that have made no investment over the summer will probably be fearing the worst this time around.
I think it shows that we have made more progress than many think under TTA that these days we are looking to get 70 points plus and reach the playoffs, rather than looking over our shoulders hoping to get to 50 as soon as possible and avoid relegation.
I still think the priority should have been the left side for us to be genuine contenders, but I also think we still have a good chance for the playoffs. Whatever I'm sure there will be fun and heartache in equal measures, if there wasn't it wouldn't be Latics would it!
I always start off believing, it's a big part of the reason I follow the game is because I believe we are going to do something in the next season, game, half, minute or some other time soon that makes the bad times worthwhile. I must say though that I can't understand why anyone wouldn't think the play-offs are eminently achievable. Reason? I don't take any note of, "how strong the division," is. There is always the odd big team, the odd small team throwing money and so on, they are still down here on merit. We would have made play-offs with reasonable injury luck last season, so there is every reason to think we could make them this year even without making quite a few decent signings, which it seems we have done. That's before you consider that several of our squad from last year will be better anyway with experience for the bairns.
Whilst I'm quietly confident, the same old problems remain, so i'll do what I normally do.....expect nowt then I won't be disappointed, on the other hand if we do achieve something I'll be bladdered for a week, and be found in a ditch in Norfolk, quietly humming Campione! (normal weekend eh Lees !?). Having said that the forthcoming season is also my PGCE year and although I've bought a season ticket, i'll do well to attend the number of games I normally do (40+) so its nailed on we'll win 12-0 every week and play football so sublime it wouldn't be out of place on the cococabana!
I dont have a job and cant afford many. Actually after the Rochdale game I dont know when I'll be going again so yes we WILL start like a train!!
Providing we don't have as many off days and non footballing days as last season we should make the play off's. In other words a little more consistent. However just to dampen things, during the pre-season games we've seen the good and the bad. Unfortunately the bad towards the end!
Edited August 6, 2008 by Lags
JohnnyPimp
Well, I don't usually bet on Latics as you can quickly see your hopes, dreams and money go up in smoke.
However, I couldn't resist £20 on us at 10-1 for promotion.
Barring a bad run of injuries / suspensions I think top 6 is veeerrrry achievable.
boundaryblue80
Location:OLDHAM!!!!!!!!!!!
The following below is what I've previously written about our hopes. Over the past few seasons I've got it fairly spot on (if I don't mind saying so myself.) And I don't think I'll be too far out again...thus, anything less than top 10 and it'll be huge failure by one man IMO. He's got the tools, he's identified the early season success required...he's got few excuses now. This season I'll get my answer...you don't get rid of a manager till you know they can't take you forward any further. I think Shez can (even with mistakes and limitations) however, if he doesn't then I think rightly, we'll have to decide we have to move on. I think Corneys hinted at this also with words to the effect of "if this squad can't get us up then I don't know what will."
Time to move us forward Shez.
http://www.owtb.co.uk/index.php?s=&sho...st&p=149711
Unless Shez works out why we've failed over recent years then he can change the personel all he likes...the same failings will happen. We could have the best squad in this league but without the right players playing and the right style, then it'll fail. And that means fast wings, over-lapping one another, meaning strikers stay in their positions upfront and the midfield can get forward and support. For 18mths, we've not had this and Shez hasn't gone about solving this. Getting in Demar will help. And IMO, benching a certain player on the right side will too!
At present, early doors, from what I've seen pre-season and from how Shez is talking...I don't expect to see Taylor at RW (but Lids) and I also think he'll make the mistake of playing O'Grady and Davies together. And I think all this talk from Shez about starting quickly this time around could all be blown away again by bad early season decisions. Like happened last year with KK coming in on the eve of the season and basically ripping up the pre-season. Or the year before where we ripped up pre-season by playing a midfield diamond...something we'd not practiced once that pre-season.
People say give it time and I'm all for it. But Shez has stated this time around that we MUST hit the ground running. That includes Shez too with his decisions or else playing catch up will leave us fighting for the playoffs.
At present, if Shez gets the early season wrong (in line-ups and style) then we'll finish 8th-10th. But if Shez proves he's learned and gets it right, straight from the off, I think we've the squad to get promoted or at minimum, the playoffs. Early season will be the key!
Agree with a lot of that, except the Davies and O'grady bit. They've looked like they are beginning to forge an understanding and given that Hughes is nowhere near fit I'd give them a chance to develop the partnership further. When Davies has gone wide, O'Grady has got himself into the box, Davies has returned the compliment to a certian extent but he really does need to work on his positioning. However if Davies wants to be a shoe-in every week he needs to cut out the aimless wandering around the field, as when Hughesy is fit then it is Hughes and O'Grady for me. You need physicality in this league, Hughes and O'Grady will give us that imo. I hope against hope that Taylor is not playing at LB on Saturday and Lids is not on the right, but we know what the answer will be to that and another slow start beckons.
I hope against hope that Taylor is not playing at LB on Saturday and Lids is not on the right, but we know what the answer will be to that and another slow start beckons.
It'll be Kelvin at LB, Taylor LW and Lidds on the right, won't it? I'll be amazed if it isn't.
outoftheblue
Location:Wherever I lay my hat... (Chad actually!)
Couldn't have put it better myself. (Well I could, but you're welcome to your moment of glory )
My hope is that we are in the Play-offs and even pushing for an outside chance of automatic. I have not watched any pre-season games and never take any notice of them anyway (seen us have a cracking pre-season and be rubbish come KO, vice versa and everything in between) so not sure about the new signings.
My expectation however is probably similar to last 2 seasons - in the mix for the last couple of play-off spots near the end of the season. Might make it, might not.
Personally I would be keeping Sheriden even if we miss out again this year. I've said it before, but the general view is managers need time to get it right (4,5,6 years sometimes) and unless we get relegated/look like getting relegated I'd give Shez time again.
Unless we have the opportunity of replacing him with a vastly successful manager that all but guarantees promotion. But given we are Oldham Athletic and they don't exist anyway, I'd say that's hardly likely.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Sigh... I was collecting parts to made a full size prop of this and just had to move and get rid of them .
Yep . and instead of working on projects you work on fixing up the new place .
so true, i feel your pain.
on the other hand my new place has a garage and two awesome underground supervillan hideouts so cant complain.
Love the attention to detail, even down to the kick-start.


When building your survival kit, there's a whole lot of different pieces and items that you'll add to it. Because of this, the costs of making your survival kit can easily reach high amounts, and that's never a good thing. At first, it may seem unavoidable, but there are ways around this if you're clever enough.
All you need to do is some budgeting and bargain hunting! If you can find the right deals, you can get quality items for cheap prices.
So, take a look here for a guide to some great dollar store options for survival equipment, thanks to our friends from Survival Life.
Cotton balls covered in vaseline make excellent fire starters!
Here is another fire starting technique that is guaranteed to get a fire up and going in just seconds.
Get your tinder bundle ready to go and lay a piece of toilet paper on top of the tinder bundle. Next, touch the terminal end of the 9V battery to the steel wool. It will instantly ignite. Once it's started, make sure to keep the flame against the toilet paper and tinder bundle, and there you have it! Instant fire!
Having an assortment of batteries is a must! We need them for everything from flashlights to weather radios…and so much more! However, we all know just how expensive buying batteries can be, so during the next few trips to your local dollar store grab a few packs each time you go.
LED flashlights are another must-have survival item! Granted, the quality of LED flashlights at your local dollar store won't the best, but grabbing a few just to have as extras is a good idea. It's one of those just-in-case purchases.
This is another must-have item for any survival kit. They have so many uses, but my favorite use for bandannas is making char cloth, which is a must-have for any fire starter kit. Plus, it's super easy to make!
A pair of heavy duty gloves are yet another must-have item for every bug out bag. In a true survival situation, they provide great protection against wood splinters, blistering, and other weather-related injuries.
These are a must-have for every household and personal bug out bag and will prove their worth in every survival situation. Both baby and sanitary wipes can be purchased at your local dollar store at a great price!
Many of the items you need in a well stocked first aid kit can be purchased at great prices from your local dollar store.
So, whenever you're putting your survival kit together or simply adding to it, consider these bargain alternatives for these items. They're still useful quality, but much cheaper!
For more items you can save big on at a dollar store, head over to Survival Life.


Applications for Pfirecracker Pfestival food vendors are now open. Pfirecracker Pfestival is from 5-10 pm on July 4 at the Pfield.
This year we are accepting food truck, trailer and for the first time - tent food vendors. Apply easily on your phone, tablet or computer here.
We host over 6,000 people at the Pfield with 12-16 food vendors. Please make sure you do not run out of food!
No electricity is available. All generators must be quiet or covered.
Up to three vendors can sell the same type of food or specialty drink. You will be notified which items you can sell.
Booth fees must be paid within 5 business days of conditional acceptance.
A full list of rules and details is available on the application. Questions? Call 512-990-6113 or email events@pflugervilletx.gov.


text:
Tag: Austrian Grand Prix
F3 Austria: Vesti triumphs over Hauger in action-packed feature race
Mercedes junior Frederik Vesti took his first win of the 2021 Formula 3 season in the Red Bull Ring feature race, beating polesitter Dennis Hauger in a race-long fight.
Starting from second on the grid, Vesti launched an immediate challenge on Hauger on the opening lap. Hauger had to go defensive as early as the first corner, and on the run down to Turn 4 he was forced to cover off the inside as Vesti pulled alongside him under slipstream.
Dennis Hauger, Prema (Bryn Lennon, Getty Images / FIA F3)
Hauger set an early fastest lap but was unable to pull away from Vesti over the first phase of the race. Vesti started lap four just a few tenths behind the Prema and again attacked Hauger around the outside of Turns 3 and 4, but was again rebuffed.
But on the following lap Vesti was close enough to pull alongside Hauger under DRS down to Turn 4 and take the lead. The move then left Hauger vulnerable to Vesti's ART teammate Alex Smolyar, who followed Hauger closely before taking second place on lap 7.
Over the short lap Vesti faced the same difficulty in pulling away as Hauger did, and he found himself having to defend from Smolyar as well. After an unsuccessful move at Turn 3 on lap 10, Smolyar came back at Vesti under DRS on the following lap to take the lead. But the Russian's time at the front only last one corner, as Vesti fought back up the inside of Turn 4, with Hauger following him through to retake second place as well.
Vesti wasn't able to drop Hauger over the remaining laps, despite moving eight tenths clear at one point, but neither was Hauger able to make any serious attempts at retaking the lead. Meanwhile, Smolyar dropped back after losing the lead and came under attack from the #3 Prema of Olli Caldwell.
Alex Smolyar, ART (Clive Mason, Formula Motorsport Limited via Getty Images / Courtesy of FIA F3)
Smolyar managed to hold off Caldwell for a while, including multiple moves at the Turn 3 overtaking spot. But with four laps to go, Caldwell finally managed to get past Smolyar at Turn 4 to take his third podium of the year and second of the weekend.
Behind the podium fight, there was another fierce battle throughout the top ten as a DRS train covered the points positions. Clement Novalak was at the head of that group in fourth for much of the race, defending from the likes of Jak Crawford, Jack Doohan and Victor Martins, while Caldwell and the #2 Prema of Arthur Leclerc came up the order behind them.
On lap 9 Caldwell and Leclerc had finally made their way to the front of the train, and Caldwell slipped past Novalak at Turn 3 to take fourth place. Leclerc tried several times to pass Novalak for fifth but was fended off, which left him in turn defending from Martins in sixth.
Clement Novalak, Trident (Alexander Scheuber, Formula Motorsport Limited via Getty Images / courtesy of FIA F3)
On lap 14 Martins got a run on Leclerc through Turn 1 to take sixth, but Leclerc came back at him on the straight down to Turn 4. As they fought, Leclerc lost his front wing as he tagged the back of Martins then ran onto the grass and lost control.
After first clouting the wall and breaking his front right suspension, Leclerc shot across the braking zone of Turn 4 and collected Novalak. Both retired in the gravel trap, while Martins dropped to the back with a puncture and the safety car was deployed.
Crawford inherited fifth place ahead of Doohan, but they also came together on lap 22 and promoted Matteo Nannini to fifth ahead of Ayumu Iwasa and Caio Collet. Logan Sargeant, Calan Williams and Jonny Edgar rounded out the top ten by the chequered flag.
Caio Collet, MP Motorsport (Alexander Scheuber, Formula Motorsport Limited via Getty Images / Courtesy of FIA F3)
With podiums in each race this weekend, Hauger leaves the Red Bull Ring with 115 points and a substantial championship advantage. As Hauger's main rivals Doohan and Martins both failed to score in the feature race, Vesti now moves up to second in the standings, albeit 41 points behind Hauger and just two ahead of Doohan.
Formula 3 returns in four weeks' time in support of the Formula 1 Hungarian Grand Prix in Budapest.
Posted on 3rd July 2021
F3 Austria: Schumacher takes dominant maiden win in second sprint race
Trident's David Schumacher claimed his first Formula 3 victory, winning the second Red Bull Ring sprint race from reverse pole position.
Schumacher got away well from reverse grid pole, while Roman Stanek filed into second and Jak Crawford jumped Kaylen Frederick and Juan Manuel Correa for third. But as the drivers continued to establish their positions, the race was brought to an early halt as Logan Sargeant and Tijmen Van Der Helm crashed at the start of lap 2 and brought out the safety car.
At the restart Schumacher bolted clear to build an early lead, while Stanek and Crawford battled for second place. As Stanek dropped out of DRS range of Schumacher, Crawford tried a move on lap 8 around the outside of Turn 3 but found himself run out of road.
Jak Crawford, Hitech (Clive Mason, Formula Motorsport Limited via Getty Images / Courtesy of FIA F3)
After trying another pass at Turn 4, Crawford eventually got past Stanek on lap 9 and set off after Schumacher. But just one lap later, Crawford pulled off the track with a loss of drive, promoting Correa to the podium.
Correa's time in the top three didn't last much longer, however. On lap 11 he found himself the innocent victim as Frederick in fourth missed his braking point while defending from Frederik Vesti, and ended up spinning himself and Correa around at Turn 3. As Vesti avoided the incident, Victor Martins benefited to move up to third ahead of Jonny Edgar in fourth.
The incidents behind Stanek didn't relieve the pressure on the Czech driver, as he found himself having to defend second from Martins almost immediately. Martins tried three moves around the outside of Stanek at Turn 4, but after being rebuffed he dummied to the inside of the corner on lap 15 and finally demoted the Hitech to third.
Once behind Martins, Stanek then came up attack from Vesti, who tried to repeat Martins' Turn 4 overtake on lap 16. Stanek held off the ART on that occasion, but Vesti came back on lap 18 to take the position under DRS on the run down to Turn 4.
Frederik Vesti, ART (Bryn Lennon, Getty Images / Courtesy of FIA F3)
Martins and Vesti then began closing in on the leading Schumacher, eating into his four-second lead as the Trident's tyres started to fall away. But on lap 23, Martins also fell out of contention as he lost power in the same manner as Crawford, promoting Vesti to second with two laps remaining.
With a virtual safety car deployed to recover Martins' car, Schumacher was able to drive through his tyre struggles and keep the lead from Vesti.
Stanek wasn't able to benefit from Martins' retirement to get back on the podium as he was passed by Dennis Hauger on lap 21. The championship leader had driven a recovery race after falling to 14th place at the start, but a series of early overtakes as well as the retirements ahead of him allowed Hauger to complete the podium in third.
Stanek finished fourth ahead of Edgar, and Arthur Leclerc took sixth place and the fastest lap. Jack Doohan was seventh, and Enzo Fittipaldi, Olli Caldwell and Jonathan Hoggard completed the points.
Posted on 3rd July 2021 6th July 2021
W Series Austria: Chadwick dominates at the Red Bull Ring
Reigning W Series champion Jamie Chadwick kickstarted her title defence with a dominant win from pole position in the second Red Bull Ring round.
Chadwick got a dream start from pole as Beitske Visser stalled off the line from second position. She was then given another advantage as her Veloce teammate Bruna Tomaselli and Academy's Irina Sidorkova tussled for second, allowing Chadwick to arrive at Turn 1 with a healthy lead already.
Sidorkova came out on top in the battle with Tomaselli and pulled clear of the Brazilian over the opening lap. That left Tomaselli under pressure from Emma Kimilainen, who had jumped up from sixth on the grid to join the podium fight.
Race: 5/30 MINS @IraSidorkova has moved up to P2 and @EmmaKimilainen has climbed up to P3 👊#WSeriesAustria 🇦🇹 #WSeries pic.twitter.com/DFXDPGSwVd
— W Series (@WSeriesRacing) July 3, 2021
Kimilainen passed Tomaselli for second on lap 2 and stuck close to the back of Sidorkova. As Chadwick pulled clear of the pair, Kimilainen kept her car consistently within a second of Sidorkova and tried to find a way past the Russian.
But despite the pressure from Kimilainen throughout the race, Sidorkova managed to close off any opportunity and finish second behind Chadwick for her first W Series podium. Kimilainen ran out of laps to make a move happen, but finished half a second behind Sidorkova in third.
As the podium trio bolted down the road, Tomaselli led a tight battle for fourth place. The Veloce driver soon had a train behind her with Sarah Moore, Nerea Marti and Abbie Eaton. Moore in particular had great pace, and had already got herself up to fifth from eighth on the grid.
Race: 19/30 MINS
Battle for P4, @smgirlracer26 is starting to close the gap to @brunatomaselli #WSeriesAustria 🇦🇹 #WSeries pic.twitter.com/J4yjsoi0gD
Moore initially got past Tomaselli on lap 7, but was repassed and had to fend off Marti on the following lap. Moore then regrouped in the closing laps to try around the outside of Tomaselli at Turn 3 on lap 18, before finally making a move stick at Turn 4 on lap 22.
Moore and Tomaselli finished fourth and fifth, with Eaton getting ahead of Marti for sixth and her first W Series points. Alice Powell finished a disappointed eighth between Marti and Belen Garcia, after saying on the radio that she had no straight line speed.
Sabré Cook had held the final point in tenth for much of the race after recovering from a spin in qualifying that put her at the back of the grid. But her Bunker Racing teammate Fabienne Wohlwend grabbed the position in the closing laps to round out the top ten.
Chadwick's win moves her to the top of the standings by three points from Moore, with Round 1 winner Powell another point behind in third. W Series returns in two weeks' time at Silverstone, in support of the British Grand Prix.
Posted on 3rd July 2021 3rd July 2021
F3 Austria: Hauger wins chaotic sprint race after leaders collide
Prema's Dennis Hauger won the opening sprint race at the Red Bull Ring from 12th on the grid, taking the lead late on after Clement Novalak and Matteo Nannini collided at the front.
Nannini snatched first place at the start of the race, beating reverse polesitter Logan Sargeant into Turn 1, while Novalak jumped from seventh to third off the line. Behind them, Hauger got himself up into the points in seventh between Jack Doohan and Arthur Leclerc.
The race was stable through the opening laps as most of the cars were running in a DRS train and unable to close up any of the gaps. But on lap 9 things kicked off as Sargeant came back at Nannini to retake the lead through Turn 4.
Logan Sargeant, Charouz Racing System (Dan Istitene, Formula Motorsport Limited via Getty Images / FIA F3)
That triggered a frantic couple of laps as Sargeant, Nannini and Novalak traded the lead between themselves multiple times. Nannini looked to come out on top at last as he took first on lap 13 and fended off Sargeant for the following laps.
But on lap 16 the battle sparked off again as Sargeant came back and retook the lead. Nannini repassed him on the following lap, but both were passed by Novalak on lap 19.
After Novalak took the lead, Sargeant started to drop back from the battle at the front and was dropped to fifth by Hauger and Olli Caldwell. That put the Premas in the perfect position to benefit when Novalak and Nannini made contact through Turn 3, which sent Novalak into the gravel with suspension damage and dropped Nannini down to eighth.
Hauger took the lead with just over three laps remaining, from Caldwell in second and Sargeant who had been restored to the podium. When Hauger crossed the line he also had the fastest lap to his name, to take the maximum 17 points away from the opening race.
Olli Caldwell, Prema (Clive Rose, Getty Images / FIA F3)
Hauger's closest championship challenger Victor Martins initially finished fourth, leading home Jak Crawford, Caio Collet, Doohan and Nannini. But after the race a raft of drivers were penalised, most of them for consistently abusing track limits, which drastically altered the top ten.
Sargeant was the biggest casualty as he was handed a five-second penalty for four track limits abuses, which dropped him off the podium. But in total, eleven drivers were penalised including a disqualification for Ayumu Iwasa for failing to comply with a black and white flag.
The penalties eventually brought Charouz's Enzo Fittipaldi up to fourth ahead of a penalised Martins, and Jonny Edgar rose from 12th to fifth. Frederik Vesti was seventh, and Crawford, Kaylen Frederik and Juan Manuel Correa rounded out the points. Trident's David Schumacher was elevated to reverse grid pole, and Sargeant ended up 15th.
Posted on 1st July 2021
Home is where the heart is for Red Bull – Austrian GP preview
The Formula One circus stays in the Styrian mountains as the Red Bull Ring plays host to the Austrian Grand Prix, just seven days after Max Verstappen claimed victory at the same circuit in the Styrian Grand Prix.
It would take a brave person to bet against Verstappen taking his third consecutive victory on Sunday, given his dominant performance last weekend. Sergio Perez will be hoping he can make it two Red Bulls on the podium, after coming within a second of Valtteri Bottas in the previous race.
A double podium is probably the best case scenario once again for Mercedes with Lewis Hamilton making a rare trip to the Brackley simulator in an aim to extract every last inch of performance out of his car. The quick turnaround means no upgrades for this race, and there are mixed messages from the Mercedes camp regarding how much more development we will see on their 2021 car.
Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes (LAT Images / Mercedes AMG F1)
The pace from the top two teams meant Ferrari and McLaren were once again left fighting for fifth. Although it was Lando Norris who won the midfield battle last weekend, Daniel Ricciardo was showing good pace before reliability troubles dropped him down the order. Ferrari will also be hoping for a smoother weekend from Charles Leclerc, who showed some inspired moves after being controversially involved in Pierre Gasly's retirement.
AlphaTauri, Alpine and Aston Martin will look to pick up some of the lesser points once again, in what looks to be one of the tightest midfield battles for years. Strategy could well be key in this battle, as free air is hard to come by on the track with the shortest lap time of the year. Pirelli are also bringing softer tyres to the Austrian GP than they did at the Styrian round, which might lead to more action in the pitlane.
For George Russell, he will be hoping his pitlane action is much more conventional this weekend. A pneumatic leak cost him a shot at his first ever points for Williams, with the Brit admitting that there's no guarantee he will be able to replicate that performance again this time around. His teammate will also be hoping for a better result, after being an innocent victim in last weekend's lap one shenanigans.
You can't fault this response from @GeorgeRussell63 👏#StyrianGP 🇦🇹 #F1 pic.twitter.com/hwt0kCZfdd
Alfa Romeo will be hoping they can sneak a point, after just missing out with Kimi Raikkonen last time around. The intriguing battle between the Haas cars will also be one to watch, as Mick Schumacher and his teammate battle for inter-team supremacy, which must be a small ray of light in a very difficult debut season for both drivers.
It's fair to say last week's race was not a classic, but different tyres (and possibly different weather) could make the Austrian GP an entirely different beast indeed.
Posted on 5th July 2020
Bottas wins chaotic Austrian Grand Prix as Norris claims debut podium
Valtteri Bottas has taken victory at a chaotic Austrian Grand Prix that saw just eleven cars reach the chequered flag, with Charles Leclerc in P2 and Lando Norris claiming his first ever podium in P3. Lewis Hamilton finished second on the road but dropped to fourth due to a five-second penalty he received for a collision with Alex Albon.
The race was sedate enough for the first ten laps. Bottas built up a 3.2-second gap to Verstappen, while Norris slipped back to P5 behind Albon and Hamilton. On lap 11, though, Verstappen lost power on the approach to Turn 3 and told his engineer that his car kept going into anti-stall. He limped back to the pits and retired on lap 13.
The next casualties were Daniel Ricciardo and Lance Stroll. Ricciardo pulled into his garage with a cooling issue while Stroll, who had been struggling with a lack of power for several laps, retired due to a sensor issue.
Bottas had built up a six-second gap to Hamilton by lap 17, but on lap 21 Hamilton set a new fastest lap and began to reel his team-mate in. Four laps later, the gap was down to 3.8 seconds.
Lap 26 saw the first safety car of the race, brought out due to Kevin Magnussen suffering a brake failure at Turn 3. A flurry of pitstops ensued with every driver opting for the hard tyres except for Perez, who went with the mediums.
When the safety car period ended, Vettel lunged down the inside of Carlos Sainz going into Turn 3. He misjudged the attempt and span, dropping down the order to P15. While the incident was noted, no investigation was deemed necessary by the stewards.
On lap 42, Bottas and Hamilton were warned about sensor issues that had been detected in the gearbox of both cars and were told to stay off the kerbs. This warning was repeated several times and the gap between the two widened as Hamilton eased off slightly. Despite this apparent issue, the duo were still over ten seconds ahead of third-placed Alex Albon.
Lap 51 saw the next retirements. George Russell ground to a halt from what had been a promising P12 and brought out the second safety car of the day. Romain Grosjean, meanwhile, ran off the track at the final corner and pulled into the pits with seemingly the same brake problem that curtailed team-mate Magnussen's race.
Red Bull chose to bring in Albon for a change to the soft tyres, losing P3 to Perez in the process, while both Mercedes stayed out on hard tyres that had already completed 25 laps by that point.
The Safety Car came in on lap 54 briefly, after which Albon re-took third place from Perez after Perez locked up going into Turn 3.
At that exact moment, however, the safety car was brought out again, this time because Kimi Raikkonen's front-left tyre had come clean off the chassis going into the final corner. It was initially unclear whether it was Albon or Perez who had been ahead at the moment the safety car came out, but it was decided a few laps later that Albon had been slightly ahead of Perez and thus the Red Bull driver slotted into P3.
Lap 60 saw the safety car come back in and Albon set about chasing after Hamilton on his newer soft tyres. He saw an opportunity going into Turn 4 and went for it, only for the two to come to blows. Albon span and fell down the order to last place. The incident was duly noted and investigated, with Hamilton being given a five-second penalty.
Albon slowed a couple of laps later, saying over the radio that his engine was stopping. He wound up finishing P13, or last.
Between lap 64 and lap 66, Leclerc got past Norris and then Perez to find himself in P3 behind the Mercedes duo. It looked as if Perez was in with a shout of finishing on the podium due to Hamilton's penalty, only for his hopes to be dashed when he was awarded a five-second penalty of his own for speeding in the pitlane and then being overtaken by Norris.
Lap 70 saw the last retirement of the race when one of Daniil Kvyat's tyres disintegrated going into Turn 1. He managed to bring the car to a stop behind the barriers at a marshall post.
Bottas crossed the line to take the chequered flag at the end of lap 71 with Hamilton in P2, Leclerc in P3 and Norris in P4. Hamilton's penalty, though, dropped him to P4 and promoted Leclerc to second and Norris to the final podium position.
LAP 71/71: 😵#AustrianGP 🇦🇹 #F1 pic.twitter.com/EkdK92B9Ns
— Formula 1 (@F1) July 5, 2020
[Featured image – LAT Images]
Posted on 28th June 2020 1st July 2020
Austrian Grand Prix Preview: F1 is back, but not as we know it
112 days after the opener in Melbourne was supposed to get underway, the Formula One season will finally begin in Austria this Sunday.
As with the return of most sport during the COVID-19 pandemic however, things will work a little differently in the F1 paddock. Media presence will be lower, the freedom of the drivers to roam around the surrounding area during race week will decrease and, perhaps most prominently, there will be a complete absence of fans.
The Austrian Grand Prix will mark the first of two races at the 4.3-kilometre Red Bull Ring, with the Styrian Grand Prix following just a week later. This is all part of the FIA's plan to satiate the year with as many races as possible so as to create as exhaustive a calendar as possible for the world championship season, which needs to be at least eight races long to classify as such.
Normally by this point of the year, we would know who is competitive and who is not, but the cars have not run since testing in Barcelona at the beginning of the year and, as we learned last year especially, testing pace is little to go by.
It is therefore quite difficult to determine who the favourites are going to be, but the same could generally be said in Spielberg last year. Mercedes, Red Bull and Ferrari were all competitive last season, with Max Verstappen narrowly beating Charles Leclerc to victory following a controversial overtake at the end of the race, the investigation for which was not concluded until hours after the drivers had stepped off the podium.
One of the major points of interest is the perennially fascinating midfield battle. The Racing Point, designed on last year's Mercedes, is tipped to be one of the major challengers to fourth place in the Constructors' as they look to knock McLaren off their perch as best of the rest. Renault's inconsistencies over the past couple of seasons will need to be rectified by their new driver-pairing of Daniel Ricciardo and Esteban Ocon, as the French team consider their future involvement in the sport they have failed to re-master since their return in 2016. Alpha Tauri – rebranded from Toro Rosso – and Alfa Romeo will also have an eye on challenging for the best of the midfield teams.
Haas are understood to be the only constructor not bringing upgrades to this race, as uncertainty looms about their interest in F1 too. Their upgrades last year affected them adversely rather than helping them progress after the first race, and they will look to avoid further regression this year. They managed a fourth and fifth-placed finish in Spielberg in 2018, while Kevin Magnussen qualified an impressive fifth last season. A gearbox penalty and the Haas car's ghastly race pace saw him finish behind both the Williams cars.
Speaking of which, Williams' car was three seconds quicker in testing in Spain than it was in the 2019 Spanish Grand Prix, which will lead the British team to believe they can climb off the bottom of the championship table and relieve some of the immense pressure currently on Claire Williams' shoulders.
One of the shortest tracks on the calendar follows the longest wait for a Formula One season since the World Championship's inception. The Styrian mountains will not be alive with the sound of fans, but they will still be alive with the sound of Formula One cars.
[Featured image – Matthias Heschl/Red Bull Content Pool]
Posted on 27th June 2019 27th June 2019
"Put a Ring On It" – 2019 Austrian Grand Prix Preview
Beyoncé may have said "if you like it, then you should've put a ring on it", but in motorsport we race the rings instead. Yes, it's race weekend once again, as F1 is welcomed by the circuit previously known as the Österreichring!
It was known as such between 1969 and 1995, and then became known as the A1 Ring from 1996 to 2003. Finally, Dietrich Mateschitz bought the circuit and in 2008 started a reconstruction. From 2014, the newly-branded Red Bull Ring became host once again to a European round of the Formula One Championship.
The Red Bull Ring was originally 5.911km in length, with its weakness being its safety record and high speeds (second only to Silverstone during its Österreichring period). Something had to be done, and as such it was shortened to 4.326km in its guise as the A1 Ring, and again in 2016 to 4.318km.
Red Bull Ring sectors. Image courtesy of Pirelli.This weekend we head back to the Red Bull Rin after last week's French Grand Prix at Paul Ricard, which was dominated by Mercedes with Hamilton and Bottas finishing 1-2.
Can I mention hot air? No, not the untruths one may hear, but instead air streams from the African continent. Tyres could again play a massive part in the race this weekend, with it predicted to be one of the hottest days in Europe so far, courtesy of very warm air streams. Last weekend in France saw temperatures hit 56°C, but this weekend could hit 60°C. That alone will shift the working windows of the tyres and also will vary between teams . With higher air temps we could also see the 2019 aero regulations cause some teams issues with heat distribution.
Available tyres for the races up to the Russian GP. Image courtesy of Pirelli
The Red Bull Ring, following its 2014 redesign, is one of the shortest tracks on the F1 calendar, with the current configuration's lap record being a 1:06.957, set by Kimi Raikkonen in 2018. With four sharp turns (T1, T3, T7 and T8) and three DRS zones allowing overtaking, the race is not a foregone conclusion.
Infograpics for the 2019 Red Bull Ring. Image courtesy of Pirelli
2019 has been a year of Mercedes dominance, with them having won all eight races so far – two for Valtteri Bottas and six for Lewis Hamilton.
Ferrari has had correlation issues in their fluid dynamics simulation to wind tunnel analysis, hence the testing of new front wing and floor assemblies at Paul Ricard. With that issue presumably sorted, can their car finally show its promise?
Red Bull's Max Verstappen won here in 2018, and he will be hoping for that to happen again this year to finally break the Mercedes strong-hold on the championship.
And if Verstappen, Vettel and Leclerc can't mount a challenge? It will, yet again, be between the Mercedes boys of Hamilton and Bottas.
[Featured Image courtesy of Colombo Images/Scuderia Ferrari]
Renault: "We must do better" in Silverstone
Renault boss Cyril Abiteboul has said his team "must do better" at the British Grand Prix than it has in the previous rounds in Austria and France.
The French marque endured a pointless race at the Red Bull Ring last weekend, with Nico Hülkenberg retiring due to a fiery engine failure and Carlos Sainz falling foul of tyre blistering, while in France the week before an MGU-K failure almost dropped Sainz out of the points in the closing laps.
"The sign of a good race team is the ability to react quickly and come back stronger," Abiteboul said ahead of the British Grand Prix. "Even in the short turnaround between Austria and Silverstone, we must improve reliability, recover our more usual competitiveness level and further our understanding around tyre management.
"We know Silverstone will be a tough challenge but we will keep pushing to get back on target."
Renault Sport F1 Team
Abiteboul added that Austria in particular was "a crash landing" after eight consecutive points for the team:
"Although the circuit did not play to our strengths, we must do better. It certainly benefited our rivals, who took advantage of three retirements in the top teams to finish higher than usual in the rankings."
Renault remains in fourth place in the Constructors' Championship after Austria, but their absence from the top ten meant that Haas—who finished fourth and fifth in Spielberg—closed to within 13 points in the standings, and could overtake Renault this weekend if the French team run into any more misfortune in Silverstone.


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Not only does mold cause damage to the surfaces that it grows on, but it also contributes to health problems such as allergies and infections to those that are exposed for long periods. Do not hesitate to contact Rainbow International for complete mold remediation as soon as you discover mold in your home or building in Harlingen, TX. Call us anytime at (956)622-7349 if you need mold remediation for a small area.


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Two Fulbright U.S. Scholar Alumni Win 2018 Pulitzer Prizes
Submitted by Achsah.Callahan on April 24, 2018 - 10:28 am EDT
Jake Halpern, a Putlizer Prizer Winner in Editorial Cartooning, was a 2011-2012 Fulbright U.S. Scholar to India, and Jack E. Davis, a Putlizer Prize Winner in History, was a 2002-2003 Fulbright U.S. Scholar to Jordan.
A Fulbright Visiting Scholar's Encounter with the American Dream
Submitted by taotiadmin on February 05, 2018 - 3:41 pm EDT
Gabriela Misca, a 2015-2016 Fulbright Visiting Scholar from the U.K., describes how Fulbright allowed her to achieve her academic American dream.
For Fulbright Scholar-in-Residence, Research Meant Ride-alongs with Police in Florida
Ross Deuchar, a 2016-2017 Fulbright Scholar-in-Residence from the U.K., describes his research on policing and gang violence in South Florida.
The Fulbright Outreach Lecturing Fund Through a Student's Eyes
Submitted by taotiadmin on February 05, 2018 - 12:52 pm EDT
High school student Benjamin Gerhardt recounts his experience of attending an Outreach Lecturing Fund lecture delivered by 2016-2017 Fulbright Visiting Scholar Gargi Sen.
Deadline Approaching: Fulbright International Education Administrators Seminars in France and Germany
Submitted by Achsah.Callahan on January 11, 2018 - 8:57 am EDT
Learn about the Fulbright International Education Administrators Seminars to France and Germany, and apply by February 1, 2018.


You're in for a world of pampering. This rich, luxurious body butter is a decadent treat for your tired, dry skin. It helps soften, moisturize and rejuvenate the look and feel of your skin while indulging your senses with a fresh scent and a hint of warm, exotic vanilla.
Ingredients: Water, Cetearyl Alcohol, Prunus Amygdalus Dulcis (Sweet Almond) Oil, Glycerin, Dicaprylyl Carbonate, Helianthus Annuus (Sunflower) Seed Oil, Coco-Caprylate/Caprate, Squalane, Dicaprylyl Ether, Butyrospermum Parkii (Shea) Butter, Persea Gratissima (Avocado) Oil, Cetearyl Glucoside, Ceteareth-33, Fragrance (Parfum), Butylene Glycol, Xanthan Gum, Phenoxyethanol, Benzyl Alcohol, Imidazolidinyl Urea, Potassium Sorbate, PEG-8, Alcohol, Lactic Acid, Tocopherol, PEG-40 Hydrogenated Castor Oil, Ascorbyl Palmitate, Psidium Guajava Fruit Extract, Vitis Vinifera (Grape) Seed Extract, Pyrus Cydonia Fruit Extract, Ascorbic Acid, Citric Acid.
Love.... just when i think ive tried all the scents and love them Korres comes out with another new scent that i must try, lol. They really outdo themselves. many thanks.
I had some Vanilla Guava from 2010. It was very moisturizing but the fragrance was just about gone. Thought it was time to get some fresh and WOW does it ever smell and feel good.


Really? MY impression is that research institutes hardly offer permanent jobs. Central Banks are an option only for emptical macro economists. What about the rest?
Not true at the Bundesbank.
Hagen is where the racist works or?
I know I wasn't invited.
who got positions at Bern?
Lol, there are not enough jobs. They are not permanent and they are definitely not better.
Kids are three, between 6 and 10. We live in a big city and I had enough Rufe to have a higher salary then probably many of my colleagues. I get 8.5k net plus 0.6k for Kindergeld, wife is not working yet. We bought the house and pay 1.9k for mortgage plus electricity and the like, another 0.8k for insurance (health etc.) and maybe 0.2k for kids/school etc. We spend some money on food but this is cheap in Germany. I am old so I am not buying fancy clothes anymore. Leftover after all expenses (and many are not necessary) is around 1k, we are probably considered poor seen from the US.
So you're earning 12K gross? Nah, probably not.
I just made my Einkommensteuererklärung. 141T€. As I said: I got several Rufe and I was lucky. Probably very lucky.
just a kind reminder that you Germans are not really welcome here:) please stay away, the world is big enough. Schönen Sonntag!
You are kidding, right? Two of the most beautiful cities in the German-speaking region.
We care about the great replacement. The money comes by itself.
Please define the great replacement.
Don't feed the troll. It's some racist alt-right bs.


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Effect of a Soluble Epoxide Hydrolase Inhibitor, UC1728, on LPS-Induced Uveitis in the Rabbit.
Aaron Kolb // Brandt Lab // Gillian McLellan // Publications // Jan 01 2016
Author(s): McLellan GJ, Aktas Z, Hennes-Beean E, Kolb AW, Larsen IV, Schmitz EJ, Clausius HR, Yang J, Hwang SH, Morisseau C, Inceoglu B, Hammock BD, Brandt CR. Effect of a soluble epoxide hydrolase inhibitor, UC1728, on LPS-induced uveitis in the rabbit. J Ocul Biol. 2016 Jan;4(1). doi: 10.13188/2334-2838.1000024. Epub 2016 Jan 12. PMID 28066796
Journal: Journal Of Ocular Biology, Volume 4, Issue 1, Jan 2016
Cytochrome P450 epoxygenase isozymes convert free arachidonic acid into eicosanoids named epoxyeicosatrienoic acids (EETs) that have roles in regulating inflammation. EETs are rapidly converted to dihydroxyeicosatrienoic acids (DiHETs) by soluble epoxide hydrolase (sEH). Little is known about the potential role of these metabolites in uveitis, but conversion of EETs to DiHETs could contribute to the inflammation. We tested a potent and orally available inhibitor of sEH for its ability to reduce ocular inflammation in a rabbit LPS-induced model of uveitis. Rabbits were treated by subcutaneous injection with the sEH inhibitor (UC1728, 3 mg/kg), or the vehicle control (PEG400) and uveitis was assessed at 6, 24 and 48 h post-intracameral LPS injection using a modified Hackett-McDonald scoring system. Eyes treated by intra-cameral injection of PBS, or by aseptic preparation served as further controls. Signs of inflammation in this model were mild and transient. Treatment with UC1728 did not significantly reduce inflammation compared to animals treated with the PEG400 vehicle. Blood levels of UC1728 were a thousand fold higher than the in vitro determined inhibitory potency (IC50) of the compound suggesting a significant degree of inhibition of sEH in the rabbit. The lack of efficacy suggests that sEH or its substrates the EETs may not be involved in mediating inflammation in this model of uveitis.
C-reactive protein and diabetic retinopathy in Chinese patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus
Keratitis in six dogs after topical treatment with carbonic anhydrase inhibitors for glaucoma.


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Mayor – City Officials Discuss Missoula Water Progress
John Engen
Mayor John Engen and other city officials gathered together with interested citizens in the Missoula City Council Chambers on Tuesday night to provide an update and a progress report on the now city-owned Missoula Water.
Engen began with a prepared statement in which he gave his history of the condemnation lawsuit and how Missoula ended up owning what was once called Mountain Water.
Engen closed his remarks with the following statement:
"In the rear-view mirror, it's become all too evident that the city of Missoula was in the midst of a creeping crisis," said Engen. "A slow emergency that left unaddressed would lead to huge rate increases, a catastrophic failure of the system, the possible exporting of our precious water and an uncertain future. Our actions were controversial, but they put an end to an emergency, and if we had not pursued this acquisition with rigor, confidence and speed, I would have been negligent, irresponsible, and ultimately, a leader who failed his community in a time of trouble."
After presentations by City Chief Administrative Officer Dale Bickell, City Councilor Bryan Von Lossberg and Missoula Water Superintendent Dennis Bowman, a question from the audience regarding the millions in legal fees from the utility's acquisition was addressed by Mayor Engen, who had originally estimated that the total costs would not exceed $400,000.
"The mayor is not very good at estimating," he began. "Robert Dove (of Carlyle Partners) made it clear that he would make it as expensive as possible for the city to acquire this system through condemnation, and they did their best to make good on that promise. Our responsibility was to meet that challenge head-on with our own attorneys. It was way more expensive than I ever anticipated, and I'll own that all day long."
The forum was presented by the League of Women Voters.
See the complete presentation courtesy of Missoula Community Access Television here.