text:
in: Cars, Cars (CMR2.0), Peugeot, Discipline not defined (CMR2.0)
Peugeot 206 WRC
The Peugeot 206 WRC is a World Rally Car based on the Peugeot 206 WRC It was used by Peugeot Sport, Peugeot's factory team, in the World Rally Championship from 1999 to 2003. The car brought Peugeot the manufacturers' world title three years in a row from 2000 to 2002. Marcus Grönholm won the drivers' title in 2000 and 2002.
Colin McRae Rally 2.0[]
The Peugeot 206 WRC is a 4WD Rally car featured in Colin McRae Rally 2.0
CMR2.0
Front / 16 Valve Straight 4
Cars (CMR2.0)
Discipline not defined (CMR2.0)
More Colin McRae Rally and DiRT Wiki
1 DiRT Rally 2.0
2 DiRT Rally
3 DIRT 5
Colin McRae Rally and DiRT Wiki is a FANDOM Games Community.


"Witnesses to Democracy" examines the pro-democracy movement in South Korea through the eyes of UA Journalism Professor Kim Newton and the mother of a slain student protester in 1987.
The Chronicle of Higher Education has ranked the colleges that grant the most bachelor's degrees in foreign languages, with the UA finishing among the top 10 in the nation.
Since 1996, the University of Arizona Critical Languages Program in the College of Humanities has been developing interactive multimedia systems for less commonly taught foreign languages. To expand the impact of these expert-designed courses, the UA has licensed 13 of the courses to startup Language Canvas, which is taking them forward and making them available to schools, programs, and individual learners everywhere.
A top-10 ranking by the UA space science program led a strong overall showing by the university in the U.S. News & World Report 2019 Best Global Universities rankings.
In a cross-country collaborative class, a UA professor and a data science specialist help arm students for biology's big data revolution by incorporating coding into the scientific method.
The UA's Bachelor of Fine Arts programs in dance, musical theater, and theater design and technology each placed in the top 10 among public universities in the latest rankings from OnStage.


There are plenty of banners in Arlor to collect, but there are only a few that have just the particle effects. For the current Ursoth Assault event, would that be too much to ask for a banner-less particle effect for the top leader board ranks? Maybe something like the effect of the leaves falling or poison clouds? It would make the pass three weeks of grinding worth while and also pave the way for more intense competition because; who wouldn't want more particle effects to look moar shiny?
This is a pretty good suggestion actually. This type of rewards should be the prize of such events, not arcanes.
+12 Agree with both of you.
Yeah i only use Big Love..
I've been using little love forever and love it for the particle effects. I always get asked about it and wouldn't trade it for any item in the game. Would be nice to see more particle effects though.
I met one guy who told that he would trade Tabard set for my Little Love + 2013 Big Love and 2014 Big Love. And for lil' love i had an offer for 50m tho.... For those offers, i would trade it, i made a suggestion to make it tradeable btw.
The mom banner and goblin event banner were legit. Beautiful artwork. The old school banners look dated now comparatively and I agree would love to see more of what you are describing.
Who does have? Who doesn't?


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I hope you guys had a great Christmas and Boxing Day! We are back from the holiday break of sorts with this month's YouTube Channel Profile, also our final monthly feature post of 2017! This series spotlights 1-3 YouTube channels whose content is at least 50% devoted to local metal, hard rock, or punk bands and/or concerts, as randomly chosen the previous month in order to promote their content and encourage readers to check them out and/or subscribe to them! This month's choice is stacked with footage from one of the Soo's biggest exports, so here's what you should know!
Detoxicated (http://www.youtube.com/detoxicated)
Owner: YouTube user Lauren DeDieu, who I don't believe is locally based
Channel Timeline: Launched on February 12th, 2006; videos posted from that day until February 2010
Channel Summary: Originally intended as a channel for videos from MuchMusic's programs Video On Trial and Live@Much, it quickly became known as a source for videos of or relating to local/Toronto indie punk quartet Treble Charger, as implied with the channel name referencing their 2002 album "Detox". Featured content includes music videos, live performances, band commentaries, behind the scenes sessions, and interviews, including many from MusicMusic during their early 2000s heyday. However, most content since July 2006 has been of separate projects, primarily Montreal alt-rockers Mobile.
Why You Should Watch: This is a must-watch channel for fans of Treble Charger, especially from their later years, and with 30 or so videos dedicated to them on the Detoxicated channel (not to mention a Greig Nori-featured episode of Video on Trial to lead off), you'll find a lot to like here, especially if you miss the good old days when MuchMusic truly aired music! However, note that this channel hasn't been visibly updated in well over 7 years, not even for post-reunion activity from Treble Charger.
Treble Charger - Red (Original Version): Though outpaced by a Mobile & Video on Trial video each in popularity, the music video for Treble Charger's 1994 song "Red" is the most viewed here from the band's featured content, netting over 260,000 views. Notably, this is the video for the version of "Red" from their debut album "nc17", not the more famous re-recording from 1997's "Maybe It's Me". Featuring artsy footage of a woman running through a colourful forest full of unexpected items, this softer original (featuring Bill Priddle on lead vocals) is in line with the band's mid-1990s output, and it's a well written number accentuated with interesting visuals! Note that the video is letterboxed, having been uploaded before YouTube introduced widescreen videos in 2009. Also, while many other Treble Charger music videos can be checked out on this channel, a curious omission here is the video for the 1997 version of "Red".
Treble Charger - American Psycho Band Commentary: Much in the same vein as commentary tracks on DVDs, Treble Charger (sans bassist Rosie Martin) made very similar recordings back in 2002 for what I believe to be early website exclusives, before coming here in 2006. These feature Greig, Bill, and then-drummer Trevor McGregor giving running commentary on their music videos for "Friend of Mine", "How She Died", "Brand New Low", "Business", and as embedded below, "American Psycho". The video quality isn't great, and each half of the video is squished to fit the aspect ratio, but it's neat to hear the guys reminisce on the video shoots in an informal setting, and you do hear some good trivia and humourous facts throughout, if you don't mind the hit-and-miss audio quality! Note that the latter three videos are not on this channel in their original form, but are available elsewhere on YouTube.
Treble Charger - Live@Much Part 1: Most of the Detoxicated channel's videos are of Treble Charger's appearances on MuchMusic to promote their album "Detox", including five from a mid-2002 appearance on MuchOnDemand & seven videos comprising their entire episode of Live @ Much from November 13th, 2003. A hybrid concert & interview in front of a studio audience at Much headquarters in Toronto, the episode starts below with "Brand New Low", while part 4 features "Hole In Your Head" & "Don't Believe It All", and it closes with "American Psycho". Parts 2-3 & 5-6 are solely of interviews by host & then-VJ Jennifer Hollett, and they cover lots of ground for their career, music, and future plans (including some audience questions on part 3), though with Bill's departure shortly afterwards & their hiatus the following year, it's interesting to see how some of the responses turned out. Excellent flashback for fans of the band and MuchMusic alike, and well worth a watch!
I hope you guys liked our final YouTube Channel Profile of 2017! To start 2018 in this series, our first random selection for the new year will take us to the official YouTube channel of local doom metal trio AlgomA, so watch for that on or around January 26th, and stay tuned for weekend concert previews and more on the site next! Thanks everyone!
Tags: channel, charger, detoxicated, interviews, metal, much, muchmusic, music, profile, punk, sault, scene, series, treble, videos, youtube

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Note: This is a guest blog from Karrieann Soto Vega, a PhD Candidate in the Composition and Cultural Rhetoric program in the Writing Studies, Rhetoric, & Composition Department, currently working as a Teaching Associate in the Women's and Gender Studies Department at Syracuse University. Her research and pedagogical interests span decolonial feminist efforts and Puerto Rican nationalism, specifically those enacted by women; social movement rhetoric and transnational feminisms; as well as multimodality, multilingualism, and new media composition practices.
At this point, the news is still highlighting how most of the archipelago has no electricity or drinking water, which has greatly affected hospitals, and the overall capacity of resuming school or work for many. Given these conditions, #PuertoRicoSeLevanta (Puerto Rico Rises) has been the most appropriate moniker for the feeling, action, and overall idea of survival after hurricane Maria ravaged Puerto Rico. A quick search of this hashtag provides a glimpse at who has been working towards the much-anticipated rising moment. A comic illustration depicting the response from the U.S. president is juxtaposed to several people lifting a figure of a saddened map of Puerto Rico. The people holding up Puerto Rico are wearing shirts that name them: Diaspora, Artistas, Gobierno, Pueblo, and even a person wearing military gear.
To me, this comic represents the narratives I've been hearing since September 20th. The Puerto Rican diaspora has been organizing relief efforts and sending donations collected on the continental U.S., forming what I call networks of solidarity all over the world. Artists like Lin Manuel Miranda and Olympic Gold Medal winner, Monica Puig, and the local government officials in Puerto Rico are also doing all they can to help their fellow Puerto Rican people, the Puerto Rican "pueblo." Missing from this comic, and the narrative it represents, is a set of grassroots, Puerto Rican organizations that had already been working to uplift Puerto Rico from the decaying conditions caused by the well-publicized debt.
This image is especially effective in portraying the negative response of the U.S. government. Missing from the image are the exact tweets where the president characterizes Puerto Ricans as lazy, people who expect everything to be done for them. These tweets are tinted with neocolonial undertones. Not only are "they" (not us) lazy, but they are not doing anything to survive. This is an outright lie.
It is important to recognize the work that a large number of Puerto Ricans have been doing to uplift the culture and economy of the archipelago well before hurricane María. This recognition helps to counter the claims of Puerto Ricans being unable to do anything for themselves, and that the only way for them to do anything is through U.S. intervention, because white savior complex. Don't get me wrong, the U.S. government must provide all of the help and support it can spare (which apparently is not that much), and it should do so especially because of the political relationship they share. In an ideal world, aid efforts would be coordinated with local organizations instead of sporadically providing crumbs in the form of Pringles and water bottles, as David Begnaud reported was the case in Aguadilla. Under extremely terrible conditions, Puerto Ricans have been looking out for each other, helping each other open up roads, and feeding one another. These are the stories I believe we should highlight.
There are several groups who have been advocating for Puerto Ricans from within the Caribbean context. The group Defend Puerto Rico, for example, has been recently calling for Puerto Ricans in the diaspora to urge Congress to act to increase the moneys allotted for Puerto Rico relief. But before the hurricane, Defend Puerto Rico had been creating connections with the New York Diaspora, to creatively celebrate Puerto Rican traditions. They also documented the efforts of the brave women in Peñuelas who are fighting the corporations dumping toxic coal ash in Tallaboa by using their bodies to blockade trucks carrying the ashes and doing outreach to educate el pueblo: creating a women-led environmental justice movement.
A collective of grassroots organizations is now called the Hurricane Maria Relief Fund, and it is accepting donations that will go to organizations like Taller Salud in Loíza, the G8 of Caño Martin Peña in San Juan, and the Centro para Desarrollo Político, Educativo, y Cultural in Caguas. Each of these organizations have had their own political project, whether to provide affordable and holistic healing to impoverished communities or to create programs for the political, educational, and cultural development of Puerto Rican communities.
The best way to help Puerto Rico is by giving to Puerto Ricans who are already doing the work. Though I've only provided a few examples (also check out ConPRmetidos), these organizations represent a collective of groups who are trying to rebuild Puerto Rico, their way.


Buy i play.® Size 24M Long Sleeve Rashguard in White from $17.99 at Bed Bath & Beyond. The Long Sleeve Rashguard Shirt provides all-day UPF 50+ sun protection without having to apply sunscreen to your baby's delicate skin. The stretchy, quick-dry material and flatlock seams are comfortable and allow your child to move freely and be active.The Long Sleeve Rashguard Shirt provides all-day UPF 50+ sun protection without having to apply sunscreen to your baby's delicate skin. The stretchy, quick-dry material and flatlock seams are comfortable and allow your child to move freely and be active.
This Long-Sleeve Rashguard by i play. provides greater coverage and is made from a stretchy, quick-drying nylon/lycra blend that provides up to UPF 50+ sun protection. It coordinates perfectly with i play. swimwear (sold separately).
Gift your little one optimal comfort and protection on sunny beach days with the Long Sleeve Rashguard from i play. Crafted of a stretchy and quick-drying nylon blend, this top provides your little one with UPF 50+ sun protection.
This i play. Long Sleeve Rashguard is made from a stretchy, quick-drying nylon/lycra blend that provides up to UPF 50+ sun protection. It coordinates perfectly with i play. swimwear (sold separately).
This Long Sleeve Rashguard by i play. provides greater coverage and is made from a stretchy, quick-drying nylon/Lycra® blend that provides up to UPF 50+ sun protection. It coordinates perfectly with i play. swimwear (sold separately).


It was a disrupted week with all but one game cancelled at St. Paul's due to wet pitches. The 15A team travelled to Barnes and found the good very hard against an incredibly strong wind. St Paul's scored all six goals in the first half of the game which meant it would be a very big ask for the boys to come back. But the team gave it a valiant effort and managed to score three goals when the wind was in their favour.
At home the U14A & B not only had the wind to contend with, but were both on heavily sloped pitches for their matches. The U14B lost narrowly (a mark of their season) and the A team managed to win comprehensively against a strong opposition. Three more goals were added to Head's already impressive tally. The U15B were equal to anything their opponent could through at them and their game finished 3-3. The U16B were beaten 2-0 whilst the A team managed to beat their opposition in a thrilling match. Four first half goals from the boys saw them take a 4-1 lead into the half, but with the wind still to come the team new they had a battle on their hands. The unbeaten Pauls team (already crowned league champions) reacted too late in the game to mount a serious threat to the result and had to settle for a 4-3 loss. This was a fantastic spectacle and the team can be proud of their dogged defending in the last 15 minutes.
The 3rd XI drew 2-2 and remain unbeaten this season. A fantastic effort considering some of the strong opponents they have faced. The 2nd XI unfortunately lost 1-0 in a tight match up with a penalty chance spurned before the end of the game. The 1st XI had perhaps their best win of the season winning 3-1 courtesy of goals from Nathan (2) and Harry. Berkhamsted faced the full force of the storm in the first half but still managed to create numerous chances. Nathan scored twice but could have had more with his devastating pace on the left wing. St Paul's fought back through a fluke of a goal – a cross which was blown by the wind into the top corner! St Paul's pushed but Berkhamsted managed to stay calm and with about 10 minutes to go Harry received the ball on the half way line dribbled past his man, looked up and saw the keeper off his line… Harry struck a well placed shot which lobbed the keeper before settling into the back of the net. A huge cheer from the crowd and it meant Berkhamsted were now home free.
The weeks continue to count down to the main Nationals up at Shrewsbury but there was still plenty of Fives throughout the week to keep the boys sharp ready for it.
Tuesday saw the U15 squad travel over to Eton College to against them in the prestigious Hughes Cup, a three pair U15 team tournament. This is the first time ever Berkhamsted had reached the final of this competition having dispatched Shrewsbury the other week with an overall 2-1 win. It is always a tough ask to play against Eton on their home courts but the boys did admirably. Doe & Hubbard took on their long standing rivals whom they lost to in the U14 Nationals Final last year; it was a high quality match with lost of good rallies play, but the clinical finish from the Eton pair allowed them to take the match 0-3 but with the firs5 two sets being very tight. Foster & Pemberton played a stunner at 2nd pair walking away with a reasonably comfortable 3-0 win. Due to a last minute drop out our final pairing saw young James Boylan stepping out of his comfort zone at U14 level to play not only a year up but also against one of the top schools in the country. He was paired up with Thompson and 3rd and a cracker of a match ensured! The boys got off to a flyer taking the first set 12-9; Eton then found their fee5 8n the second and adjusted their game plan with lots of targeting shots towards Boylan allowing them to take the second set 4-12. The Berko boys were unfazed by this however and the heavy play towards Boylan actually helped improve his game allowing h8m to adapt to the Eton boys' style of play. The next two sets were very tight all the way but unfortunately both went the way of Eton 10-12, 10-12. A great effort and result for a first time Final in this competition.
The following day an almost identical squad travelled over to Mill Hill to play up against their U16s, though Longbottom was changed in for Boylan. They pulled off a very convincing overall 3-0 win with all the pairs making light work of their opposition thanks to some fine set piece and rally play throughout. This was a good reminder for the boys of just how high up the rankings they are as a year group across the schools U15 category.
Thursday saw a different U15 squad alongside the U14s taking on Aldenham; always an enjoyable fixture so it was nice to have them back in the card having had to cancel or las5 few last term due to poor weather. The U14s performed well walking away with an overall 3-0 win while the U15s had a slightly tougher time losing at 1st and winning at 2nd pair leading to a draw in that age category.
Thursday also saw the U11 Nationals (see separate report).
The week rounded off on Sunday with four U15 pairs travelling over to Eton to compete in the Kinnaird Cup; this is the men's adult competition but the boys were entered into the Festival section to gain some valuable match experience against adult players. There were some good results across the day but the highlight was young Doe & Pemberton making it all the way to the quarter-finals before being knocked out by an experienced coach playing with an U18 player.


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The Vision Process
Development of Imagine Transportation 2.0 began in early 2015, when the board of the Allegheny Conference on Community Development directed staff to develop a regional transportation vision and implementation framework that focused on the region's future needs. The Allegheny Conference is a 72-year-old business-civic leadership group that focuses on issues of sustainability, prosperity and quality of life in the Pittsburgh region.
The Allegheny Conference established the Regional Transportation Alliance of Southwestern Pennsylvania, a public-private partnership consisting of one public-sector representative and one private-sector representative from each of the 10 counties in the region, plus the City of Pittsburgh. This structure was modeled after the previously-successful regional development initiative from the late 1990s called the Southwestern Pennsylvania Growth Alliance. In this case, the RTA's purpose was to facilitate a broad community discussion about the region's transportation future. The Allegheny Conference provided the staff support for the RTA: Ken Zapinski, Senior Vice President, Energy & Infrastructure; Carly Dobbins-Bucklad, Senior Policy Analyst and RTA Project Manager; and Katelyn Haas, Transportation Fellow.
During the summer of 2015, each county was asked to approve a formal resolution of participation in the RTA. Nearly every county passed such a resolution, though some jurisdictions chose a more informal route. Recruitment of private-sector participants was conducted at the same time.
The RTA was publicly launched on Sept. 30, 2015. The first phase of the project was a crowdsourcing initiative to ask a broad cross-section of groups across the 10 counties to identify their biggest transportation challenges. The RTA contacted nearly 800 groups across 23 different market segments for this effort:
Aging Population Advocates
Community Colleges & Trade Schools
Economic and Industrial Development Partners
Environmental & Health Advocacy Groups
Freight Carriers
Human/Social Services
Large Arts and Entertainment Organizations
Library Systems
Minority and Diversity Advocacy Organizations
Community Development Organizations
Park Systems and Recreation Organizations
Top 10 Private Employers by County
3 Largest School Districts by County
Tourism Boards
Transportation Advocacy Groups
Workforce Investment Boards
Young Professional Organizations
Youth Services Organizations
The RTA received responses from more than 350 of those contacted. In Spring 2016, the free-form responses were analyzed and 17 different priorities, grouped into four themes, emerged.
The solution that crowdsourcing respondents most often suggested to address these challenges was expanded public transit service.
RTA staff sought reaction and feedback on these preliminary findings at speaking engagements around the region, in interviews with targeted stakeholders across the regions, and in sessions convened with elected officials from around southwestern PA. RTA staff also held additional focus groups and other data-gathering meetings with business executives from across the region, particularly in the manufacturing and freight sectors, to round out the input.
The RTA sponsored a Future of Mobility Forum, free and open to the public, on July 11, 2016. The forum featured video highlights from the November 2015 MIT Disrupting Mobility Global Summit (which had been attended by RTA staff), panels of experts and futurists, and an apres-event wine-and-beer salon for participants to engage with the speakers, who included:
Nahom Beyene, RAND
Marshal Brown, Illinois Institute of Technology Driverless Cities Program
Stan Caldwell, Carnegie Mellon University Traffic 21 Institute
Chris Cochran, Pinellas Suncoast Transit
Roger Cohen, Policy Director, Pennsylvania Department of Transportation, and co-chair, PA Autonomous Vehicle Task Force
Grace Gallucci, Northeast Ohio Areawide Coordinating Agency
Robert Hampshire, Human Factors Group, University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute
Jennifer Krusius, Uber
Joe McAndrew, Transportation for America
Jake Sion, Transit App
The RTA Steering Committee held eight meetings in 2015-2016 to discuss findings, debate recommendations, identify information gaps to be addressed, and to direct the staff's ongoing work, before reaching a unanimous consensus around the content of Imagine Transportation 2.0.
Imagine Transportation 2.0 was released to the public on March 8, 2017.
Allegheny Conference on Community Development | AlleghenyConference.org
Theme: rta by Allegheny Conference Web Team.


I've included a short test and the assembler output by both forms.
Should I file a bug suggesting a possible improvement here?
The backend patterns match against "MEM AND singlebit".
deferring deletion of insn with uid = 2.
deferring rescan insn with uid = 7.
Added testcase with some more variations of "setting bits in I/O" theme.
* config/avr/avr.md ("insv"): New insn expander.
Closed as resolved+fixed as of patch above.


I've always believed in God, but for a long period in my life I hardly ever prayed. I may go to our Father in Heaven when I wanted something, but that was about it. Now I pray every day, sometimes several times a day. I go to God to give thanks. I go to Him to pray for others. I go to Him seeking continued happiness. I go to Him for pretty much everything. I believe He wants that kind of relationship with all of us. You don't have to be eloquent with words to have a conversation with God. Talk to Him like you do with anyone. He wants to hear what's in your heart. Give it all to Him & have faith that He is listening. He will give you exactly what you need.
Philippians 4:6 Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer & supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be known to God.
Matthew 11:24 Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe you have received it, and it will be yours.
Have a praying week my friends!!!
This entry was posted on December 17, 2017 at 9:07 PM and is filed under Our Daily Bread with tags 1 Thessalonians 5, God, Heavenly Father, Matthew 11, Philippians 4, prayer, relationship, Thanksgiving.	You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.


text:
Tokyo based, expat Cape Bretoner. Learning to live in a de-leveraging world. Better suited to the crusades. CFA & FRM charter holder. Disclaimer: @Firehorsecaper reminds investors to always due their own due diligence on any investment, and to consult their own financial adviser or representative when warranted. Any material provided is intended as general information only, and should not be considered or relied upon as a formal investment recommendation.
@firehorsecaper
JACK BOGLE LIVES TO 114: PART 1 ASSET ALLOCATION
Tue Dec 15, 2015 7:41am EST Comments Off on JACK BOGLE LIVES TO 114: PART 1 ASSET ALLOCATION
Jack Bogle is 86. He is an absolute legend, founder of Vanguard Investments and #1 proponent of passive index investing. It was disclosed today that Bogle-san personally has a higher weighting in bonds than equities for the first time (53% bonds/47 equities). Let's take a stab at calculating the duration of Jack's portfolio. The duration of the US bond market is 8 years, hence the bond component estimate is a modest 4.24 year (0.53 * 8). Equities are a great inflation hedge, primarily because they have a very long duration. For the US stock market, as a whole, is it approximately 50 (price/ dividend ratio, 100/2), contributing 23.50 year of duration to the portfolio, for a 28 duration aggregate. Math geeks can rightly protest this is too simplified, and it is (higher level math and many assumptions are required to fine tune) but the real # is higher, not lower, so simmer down.
This investment mix, assuming Jack is planning for his purposes solely (wait for PART II – Estate Taxes) takes his investment portfolio, from a duration perspective, to his 114th birthday. Not to burst anyone's bubble, but Japan is the master of the supercentenarian lotto and women make up 87%+ of the 60,000 Japanese >100 years old. The oldest Japanese man presently is Yasutaro Koide (112) who resides in Nagoya, Japan.
Asset allocation has been shown to be more important that security selection over long periods of time. Bonds, as an asset class, are not "easy", as anyone even brushing up against the high yield component this month can attest, but it is worth the effort. The merit of municipal bonds for US taxpayers can not be downplayed as "It is not what you make, but what you keep." Power to you Jack Bogle, we are rooting for you! JCG
i) Duration, in bond land, is the 1st derivative of the price/yield relationship (ratio of price/yield). The 2nd derivative, to be profiled in an upcoming post, is convexity (positive convexity is an awesome security feature). Generically, across asset classes, duration can be defined as the elasticity of the security price with respect to changes in the gross rate of return.
ii) If you found this post of interest, follow me on twitter @firehorsecaper as my 11 year old pointed out it is not cool to be following more people than follow me.
FOMC: THREE BILLY GOATS GRUFF
Sun Dec 13, 2015 11:29pm EST Comments Off on FOMC: THREE BILLY GOATS GRUFF
Tough week to have to raise rates, but I think Yellen will hike. It has been 9.5 years since the last hike in June 2006. The FOMC (Papa Gruff) has broad shoulders and can afford to get rates officially off the zero bound. As others have pointed out, much of the initial move is already factored into Fed Fund futures (approx. 75% at time of writing). The ECB (Baby Gruff), despite their most recent disappointment (bridge overload), remains in QE infinity mode, as does the BOJ (Mama Gruff). 12-18 months out EUR/USD at 0.95 and USD/JPY 140.00 are not out of the realm of possibility if both goats were to sit out an entire monetary cycle.
Much of the what has been playing out in the markets since the 2013 Taper Tantrum is grounded in divergent central bank policies. The DXY is near its highs. As fellow peanut gallery member dyer440 noted in his most recent "oil gambler" piece, oil has a very high statistical inverse correlation to the USD (75% over the last decade). All former lottery winner countries are getting taken to the mat quicker than a UFC featherweight title fight. The currencies moves have been extreme to the downside; BRL, ZAR, MYR, NOK, CAD, and AUD, all cannon fodder until further notice.
PBoC (Troll) has been under the bridge for a long time. The Chinese troll is not scary just because of his size in terms of dwindling appetite for iron ore and other base metals. Monetary policy could not be effectively managed in a fully closed system, but things are changing rapidly. I wrote a brief note Nov. 30th on the most recent decision by the IMF to include China's Renminbi as a component in the Special Drawing Rights (SDR) basket. China is joining the easing party. Having guided the Yuan to a 4 1/2 year low (spending nearly $700bln of their reserves to keep the pace "measured"), bigger moves are afoot. PBoC signalled its intent last Friday to change the way it manages the Yuan's value and feel it is better measured against a baskets of currencies (much like the SDR they just got added to/ qualified for). The timetable is unclear with respect to implementation. This news falls well short of abandoning the loose peg to the Greenback, but all should take note, the Troll is not slumbering. JCG
BRAZIL: THERE'S A RAT IN THE KITCHEN
Wed Dec 9, 2015 8:29pm EST 1
BTG Pactual, the once darling of the emerging market investment banking scene, appears to be in its death throws. Andre Esteves, ex-CEO, is wearing much wider pin stripes than he would like in Brazilian prison, with no day passes for Carnival. The arrest came on Nov. 25th (formal charges, accusing Esteves and Brazil Senator Delcidio do Amaral of obstructing a criminal investigation were laid Dec. 7th) as a result of the on-going Operation Lara Jato (Operation Car Wash), Brazil's largest ever corruption case. Twelve + private companies, involving upwards of 100 individuals are accused of paying bribes to secure contracts with Petrobras, a publicly listed (incl. a US listing importantly, subject to the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act) company which Brazil owns a controlling stake.
Sete Brazil is a private company which was co-founded in 2010 by BTG Pactual, Brazilian banks and Petrobras (9%). Sete had 28 charter agreement with Petrobras, representing over $89bln (total backlog) with a 14.5 year duration. The total investment to build the 29 ultra deepwater rigs (with 5 different shipyards in Brazil) was $26.4bln. We have all seen what has transpired in oil & gas land over the past year. A group of five Brazilian lender extended $5bln to Sete Brazil in June 2015 in an effort to stave off bankruptcy. The Sete rig plan has been cut to 18 (14 underway) with $3.6bln of the aforementioned loan still o/s with repayment pushed to 2016.
Others have pointed to the Andre Esteves arrest as being the equivalent of Lloyd Blankfein, Goldman's CEO being arrested, perp walked down Wall Street and thrown in Leavenworth. On some metrics, the scale of this story is bigger. It was most recently reported that Mr. Blankfein's net worth is estimated at $1.1bln. Andre Esteves is also a self-made billionaire, recently reported to be worth $2.2bln (2 Lloyds), #13 in Brazil and #628 of Forbes 2015. Esteves owned approx. 23% of BTG Pactual equity and the all important Golden Share that gave him largely unfettered management control. Subsequent to Mr. Esteves's arrest the "top 7", as they are affectionately referred, have taken control of BTG Pactual. The Golden Ticket was shredded and Esteves's common exchanged for preferred shares (exact terms not disclosed, but note pref shares rank ahead of common in a wind up). Challenges lie ahead. Both major rating agencies have stripped BTG Pactual of their former investment grade rating (now BB-/Ba2, both with negative outlook). Moody's is a press release on Nov. 25th stated, "BTG Pactual CEO's absence could hurt credit rating." Over 1/2 of BTG Pactual's BRL30bln (US$8bln equiv.) in funding comes form wholesale sources. A finger has been placed in the dike, as BRL6bln has been provided to BTG Pactual by Fundo Garantidor de Creditos, a private deposit insurance plan funded by the Brazilian Banks. Non-core assets are being sold to further bolster liquidity, with some success. Singapore's sovereign wealth fund GIC purchased BTG Pactual's 25.6% stake in Brazilian hospital chain Rede D'Or BRL2.38bln (US$618mm). BTG is also looking to sell BSI, the Swiss private bank they bought less than 6 months back, with CS and Julius Baer said to be potential bidders. BTG Pactual's USD bonds, BTGPBZ 4% 01/16/20 have lost about 44% of their value in recent weeks, falling from $90.00 to $50.00 (dipping into the $40's). BTG Pactual equity also fell by 50% over the same period but appeared to have a floor at BRL15.00, until today. The stock is down another 12% to BRL13.22 in early trade today.
A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking real money. 12/09/15 Moody's placed Brazil's Baa3 issuer, bond rating for review downgrade. Moody's does not see a turnaround likely in 2016 for Brazil. Investment grade ratings are hard to achieve, and it appears even harder to maintain. JCG
Note: USD/BRL (US Dollar / Brazilian Real) exchange rate stands at 3.75 at the time of writing, down 44% over the last year (2.60 on 12/09/14).
Bye-Bye Coal
Mon Dec 7, 2015 5:30am EST Comments Off on Bye-Bye Coal
Obama has kept to his 1st term campaign promise with respect to coal, that is for certain. Coal has had a tough run since 2008. Twenty-seven coal companies have filed for bankruptcy since 2012. The Clean Power Plan has since assisted in kicking up the pace of the coal steamroller.
$KOL, the ETF for the coal sector (tracks the Stowe Coal Index of global listed names with revenues from coal >50%) hit an all time low last Friday, December 4, 2015. The index is down 54% in the last year and a full 87% from the 2008 peak. The 2nd largest constituent in KOL is China's Shenhua with a 9% weighting. Shenhua, China's largest coal player is expected to produce and sell in excess of 500 million tonnes of coal in 2015 (215,000 employees versus 80,000 for the entire coal mining industry in the US). In total, China produces almost 4bln tonnes (3.87 rounded up).
There is no value or "mean reversion" strategy that will save the day for the macro coal outlook at this juncture, in my view. Clever exit strategies are likely more appropriate. Those with equity exposure might want to vet the 1st lien bond portion of the capital structure and flip their long equity position to a short (to estimated recovery rate) as a hedge. Senior unsecured recovery rates in some of the recent coal cadavers, such as Walter Energy (r.i.p. 07/15/2015) has been <5%, a feat hard to match in non-technology names.
China both produces and consumes more than 50% of global coal production. Coal demand is set to plateau with China's coal-fired power plant moderization plans, but from a standing start 40% of China's overall energy draw and 66% of their power is coal derived. US electricity is 39% coal generated at present (alas the Tesla Model S is not powered by dried Unicorn dung, its' power is more coal derived, upon further investigation, than a Denali Hybrid).
Looking to fossil fuel c02 emissions from power production globally, currently 73% are from Thermal Coal, 20% from Nat Gas and 7% from Oil. At current coal prices 1/2 of known coal reserves should stay in the ground. To meet global climate change goals 80% should. Nat gas produces 50% of the co2 of coal per BTU. It may not seem so right now, but Nat Gas appears to be the prettiest girl at the dance. JCG
Note: Proven coal reserves currently stand at 893 billion tonnes globally (110 years worth at current production levels).
Summers in Rangoon: Jade – Heaven's Stone
Fri Dec 4, 2015 7:03am EST 2
Much of the press on Myanmar has been on the most recent election. 90 parties were in the running, 88 D. Trump's and 2 real contenders with the ruling USDP (Union Solidarity & Development Party) handily unseated by Aung San Suu Kyi's NLD (National League for Democracy) party. Yangon (formerly Rangoon) remains the centre of power. Myanmar (formerly Burma) is the largest country in SE Asia (1.6x CA) with a population of 60 million (France has 66mm for reference). While the population of Myanmar is 68% Burman (incl. Suu Kyi, the new leader) there are 100 distinct ethnic groups within Myanmar. It is like a Benetton commercial, except with more tears.
This post is not about the Myanmar elections but about what developed nations like the USA could do to further the plight of this poor country (#149/186 on the UN list of poorest countries), namely lifting long standing trade sanctions. Per capita GDP in Myanmar is $1,200 with 15mm making only $1.25 a day. Trenton, NJ's ("Trenton Makes and the World Takes") per capita GDP is $17,400 ($48/day).
As China finally gets real progress underway on "One Belt, One Road" (OBOR, 21st Century Silk Road), an initiative all should get up the curve on (trade flows, fx, infrastructure, commodities), the US would be well served by having an ear to the ground . The Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS), which includes Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Viet Nam and the Yunnan Province – PRC has a population of > 325mm. The East-West corridor of the OBOR project runs a full 1,450 km from Myanmar to Viet Nam.
Myanmar is the 6th largest producer of rice with over 20mm acres in production. Agriculture makes up 36% of Myanmar's $64bln economy.
A full 90% of the fine Jade on planet Earth originates from Myanmar (Kachin Province in the North). The strongest bid has always been from China where > $10bln worth of Jade was imported in the last year. Jade, with a 2014 value estimated at $31bln (16mm kg) makes up almost 50% of Myanmar's GDP (tax receipts a scant 2% of production). Burmese Jadeite export to China has been a lucrative trade since the 3rd century AD. The November 22, 2015 landslide at a typical Myanmar jade mine which took the lives of >100 souls was a stark reminder of the typical harsh conditions.
The time to try and influence a more equitable sharing of the jade mining spoils is now. Some recent market intel estimates that upwards of 2/3 of global high-end earth moving equipment is deployed in Myanmar jade mines (financed by Chinese interests). As one would guess, the "efficiency" gains are considerable, mines with a former life of 3 years have been compressed to a couple of months. They will make a movie about it someday. We should try and write an alternate ending.
As a frontier market, Myanmar is not green lighted by many global institutional investors yet. Accredited investors on the private lending side can achieve 15% returns in US$ on 2-3 year term deals, documented under Singapore Law. Telecom is a hot sector (highest growth rates globally, incl. Africa) as is Yangon real estate. JCG
Smoke 'em if you got 'em
Thu Dec 3, 2015 6:08am EST 2
The tobacco space, from an investment perspective, is fraught with peril. That said, Tobacco Bonds are some of the most liquid and highest yielding segments of the US municipal bond market.
Smoking rates in the Developed World have plummeted (less than 20% of Americans currently smoke versus peak levels of 30% when 53% of men smoked, in the "Mad Men" era). Smoking rates in the US have declined, on average 3.3% per annum from 2000. US cigarette shipment are set to print their first positive growth print since 2006 in 2015, which has resulted in a rally (9% return ytd) in high yield tobacco bonds, after a stonking 19% rally in 2014. Most see this uptick as an outlier, with the downward consumption trend firmly in place.
Perhaps the largest Structured Settlement case study ever is the "Tobacco Bond" segment of the municipal market where US States (17 of those States eligible to do so) securitised a portion of the approx. $206bln Master Settlement Agreement (MSA) made with the major tobacco companies in 1998. Over $90bln of Tobacco Bonds have been issued. There are $32bln in senior lien (par amount) outstanding with $19bln rated below investment grade. Phillip Morris, Lorillard and Reynolds American agreed to make annual payments to US States to resolve liabilities for health care costs related to smoking. The bonds were largely issued on a non-recourse basis, hence the bond investors have their repayment prospects tied to on-going cigarette shipment volumes. Many of the bond structures underestimated the pace of smoking cessation and the rating agencies estimate upward of 80% of the o/s bonds will result in a partial loss of principal (extension of maturity dates in most cases). Plenty of clever muni houses troll in this space which is likely the best way to gain exposure given the inherent complexities in selecting specific bonds. Most funds limit their exposure to the space to 15-20% of fund AUM. One of my favourite bonds in the space when still on US soil, in the top Federal tax bracket, was Illinois $1.5bln "Railsplitter" deal of 2010 which was structurally superior to all before it in that with a 17.5 year maturity (many deals had 30+ year final maturities) and it was able cover debt service even with smoking rates declining by 10% per annum (levels still never seen).
Asia tobacco sidebar: Recent cigarette stats out of China are beyond comprehension, where it was recently reported that 68% of males > 15 year old currently smoke cigarettes. The "normal ratio" of male to female smokers is 5:1 but in China is approaches 20:1 with a scant of women 3.2% partaking. A full 1/3 of all cigarettes sold globally are sold in China (versus their 17% population weighting). Nobody to sue here, as China Tobacco runs the show. Tobacco related revenues account for upwards of 7% of China government revenues presently. A full 30% of Chinese males are projected to eventually perish from smoking related illness at current consumption levels. Next to be sorted will be the price elasticity equation, as these heady revenue numbers are achievable with a pack of Yellow Crane Tower smokes selling for US$0.40 equivalent! With the near nationwide ban on smoking in US prisons (the US has 5% of the world's population but incarcerates 20% of the world's prisoners) there are reported cases of single prison cigarettes selling for US$30.00. Odd that the US would push for such a government sponsored longevity study when the cost per inmate is so high, but that is a topic for another day. In India, over 75% of cigarette consumption is in single cigarette (aka loose) format, a practice Modi would like to ban but enforcement will be all but impossible. ITC controls 80% of the tobacco trade in India and they are sold through 7mm+ establishments (sole proprietor corner stores primarily).
Phillip Morris (PM) equity trades at a PE of 19x with a dividend yield of 4.67%. Reynolds-Lorillard (RAI) merged in mid 2015 and sports a PE of 17% and a dividend of 3.11% (Reynolds bought the 4th signatory to the MSA is 2004). For those willing to put in the work there could be compelling "hedged high yield" trades worth considering where you buy the tax exempt tobacco bond (most effective for those in the highest 38.6% Federal tax bracket) and hedge via shorting PM and RAI stock to your deemed recovery value. Higher order analysis is required as the Tobacco Bond coupon is tax exempt (muni interest is not subject to 3.8% Obamacare investment tax either) and you would be cross hedged in a taxable instrument with a high dividend which you would be on the hook for. If you think big tobacco equity is fully valued + and that there is too much pessimism built into the high yield Tobacco Bonds, this strategy certainly reduces the funding cost of the position. JCG
NG – Your Balls May Not Fall Until April
Tue Dec 1, 2015 9:13am EST Comments Off on NG – Your Balls May Not Fall Until April
Natural Gas is now trading at levels not seen since 2002. We stand today at $2.10 per MMBTU (one million British Thermal Units, aka BTUs). The January 2016 contract traded in the past week at all time contract lows. For reference, when Brian Hunter of Amaranth fame tried to divine a nat gas price spike over the Winter of 2006/2007, price were at $5.11 per MMBTU. A massive inventory build in the USA and unseasonably warm temperatures (New York enjoyed temps in the 70's through much of November) have been given credit for the plunge. I officially call codswallop on this natural gas swoon.
New York is not Singapore.
Latitude (an internationally sanctioned measure of the distance from the equator):
Singapore 1.3 degrees N
Beijing 39.92 degrees N
New York 40.71 degrees N
Beijing just endured the coldest November it has experienced in 6 decades (not 6 year, or 16, 60 years). The Chinese government (smart lads, reference the IMF's SDR announcement of yesterday) wants to promote the use of natural gas in China. Coal still makes up a full 40% of China's energy needs (Mad Max poor air quality this week exasperated by El Nino, apparently). Airborne particulate from NG is 1/10 that of coal. China cut NG prices by 30% for non-resi customers as recently as October 2015 to spur demand which was running at a growth rate of 5%. China shortages of NG are now running at 40% versus ramped demand, due largely to the November cold snap. This market can turn quickly. January 2016, I see a 3 handle. JCG
Disclosure: Long NG
Note: BTU = heat required to heat 1 pint (16 oz.) of water by 1 degree Fahrenheit. 3,412 BTU = 1 kWh
I Yuan in (China-IMF/SDR), I Yuan out (1% – World)
Mon Nov 30, 2015 9:19am EST 2
A pivotal week in the world financial markets lies ahead. We kick off today with the IMF's decision on giving the Chinese Yuan the "Fisher Price" (safe to play with) stamp of approval on inclusion as a component in the Special Drawing Rights (SDR) basket (aka reserve currency status). The delta is high on a yes result, given previous carping by Legarde et al, with the most likely weighting being 14% (USD is 41.9%). On the trade importance metric, China get a large check mark, with 12% of global trade. The qualification metric of being "freely usable" has been cut with an unknown substance to read "widely traded in the principal exchange market". It appears China will get a participation trophy reflecting its' size (2nd largest economy at US$ 10.4 tln. equiv. vs. $17.4 tln for the USA) and economic reforms made to date (i.e. partial elimination of capital controls).
While this pivotal decision could attract upwards of US$1 tln to the Renminbi (people's currency) over time, China macro is a tad cray cray at present, leading some leading houses to estimate near term inflows as low as +US$40bln on a yes vote.
Even the CNY (onshore Yuan) bulls thinks it depreciates by 3-6% vs. USD over the coming year. The bears see CNY off by 17% from current levels by the end of 2016 (7.50 vs. 6.3944 as at 30/11/15). Plenty of information on the interweb about CNH (offshore Yuan), but suffice it to say CNH is on its' back foot for the foreseeable future. It trades 570 pips back of CNY at 6.4515 and is presently looked at as the canary in the coal mine wrt further PBoC easing measures when it trades >450 pips cheap to CNY. CNH was a popular carry + appreciation trade for several years running but those days are over. The Dim Sum bond market stands at US$500bln equiv. remains small in relation to the onshore bond market in China (120% of GDP). Rates in China are at 4% with inflation running at 2%, hence the scope for further easing is world leading (assuming negative rates in Europe lose steam at -0.65%).
Less than 5% of Chinese nationals hold a passport, versus 40% in the US. 15-20mm more Chinese passports are issued every year. The stories of global real estate being Dysoned up by Chinese investors will likely continue unabated (NYC, London, Paris, Vancouver, Sydney & Christchurch). UHNW Chinese want lower beta investment strategies in currencies other than CNY. The impetus is likely not purely on an asset allocation metric, based on return profiles, but rather on the near term risk of wealth confiscation. The on-going anti-corruption, anti-graft investigations are far reaching.
A betting man would wager that, at least in the near term, the "I Yuan out" camp wins out. JCG
Malaysia – 1MDB
Tue Nov 24, 2015 8:24am EST 2
Malaysia is getting a lot of press these days, and not much of it favourable. Obama is fresh back from his trip to Malaysia where last week be attended the ASEAN-USA Summit in Kuala Lumpur (KL), the Capital of Malaysia. Some expected Supreme Leader to at least figuratively box the ears of Malaysia's leaders over the on-going 1 Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) scandal which had been well covered in the popular press (WSJ and other venerable publications). No such calamity ensued, perhaps given the tender stage of TPP discussions where President Obama needs all the allies he can muster, which could give Najib near term immunity (at least until the next challenge).
Tomfoolery has prompted foreigners to pull US$7bln of assets out of Malaysia in 2015. At this stage, it might be helpful to put all this in context. Malaysia is a big country. KL lies 9,400 miles from New York City. California is 1.3 times bigger,in terms of land mass, than Malaysia. CA's GDP is US$2 trillion versus Malaysia's $315bln. California's population is 39 million versus Malaysia's 30mm. In per capita GDP terms, California is $51,300 to Malaysia's $10,500. The economy of Malaysia is the 3rd largest in SE Asia after Indonesia and Thailand. Malaysia is the 3rd richest, as measured by per capita GDP after Singapore and Brunei (Singapore at $55,200, Brunei at $38,500 with the USA at $53,000, for reference).
Not all the news is bad. For the first half of 2015 Malaysia's GDP grew at 5.4% and is projected to grow 4.5-5.0% for the full year. Malaysia is growing at a pace well ahead of developed market economies (6% in 14′) despite headwinds. Malaysia has a sizeable ($100 bln+) and well funded pension plan, the Employees Provident Fund (EPF) which has upwards of 23% invested internationally (capped at that level near term, but up from < 10% less than a decade ago). Government debt as a % GDP stood at 53.9% as of the end of 2014. Federal explicit guarantees at the end of 2014 totalled 16% of GDP.
Within SE Asia, Malaysia is the most exposed to falling commodity prices (in terms of net exports and the government's fiscal position). Global petrochemical prices have followed crude lower. Nat gas and palm oil make up 7.7% of exports in Malaysia. The famous Petronas Twin Towers were completed in 96′ at a cost of $5.6bln and held the record as the tallest towers in the world for 6 years through 04′. MYR, is the ticker for the Malaysian Ringgit which stands at 4.27 per USD and is down 27% from a year ago. Only the Brazilian Real has fared worse, down 57%. Other oil weighted economies have seen their currencies bruised as well; Norwegian Krone down 27%, Canadian Dollar down 17%, South African Rand down 27% and the Aussie Dollar with its' iron ore derived umbilical cord to China, down 17% year-over-year.
1MDB is a "strategic development company", wholly owned and controlled by the Federation of Malaysia (A3/A-). With approx. US$9bln in debt, 1MDB represents Malaysia's largest contingent liability. A nearly perfectly timed (pre-Obama would have been ideal) lifeline has arrived with the inking of a deal to sell 1MDB's prime Edra energy assets to China General Nuclear Power for MYR 9.83bln (US$2.3bln), plus the assumption of related debt the deal could be worth MYR18bln (US$3.9bln). Clearly the debt reduction was welcome, as some foretold something closer the magic beans under all that 1MDB debt. Malaysian CDS (5 year) has rallied to 176bp (in 56bp from October 5, 2015 when it stood at 232). 1MDB's US$ debt has rallied smartly as well ($10.00+), OGIMK 4.4% 03/23 isin XS0906085179,(A- rated) yield 6.31% (+406 CT10), asset swapping (par/par basis) to 3 mth USD L+443. When Malay 5 year CDS was at 232 1MDB debt was yielding 9.44% eclipsing B rated Mongolia (Mongol 5.125% 12/22) which was yielding 8.53% (L+600).
There are more layers to this onion that I have time to write or you have time to read. Scaling the size of the problem can be useful. Pre-paydown from the recent Edra energy asset sale the 1MDB debt at $9bln was <3% of Malaysian GDP. Troublesome yes, lethal no. Perhaps the better question is why is a country endowed with relatively rich natural resources is languishing at 10k per capita GDP after gaining independence 55+ years ago. JCG
MOMENTUM INVESTING: $MTUM; THE DAY THE MUSIC DIED
CHINESE AUTO STOCK: Geely Automobile Holdings Limited (0175.HK)
OZ GOLD RUSH; RNC MINERALS ($RNX.TO, $RNKLF) – LARGEST GOLD NUGGET EVER MINED
firehorsecaper: 3 trading days in since I penned this piece, Nasdaq is 11.4% off the highs and S...
Momentum Investing: $MTUM; The Day The Music Died – ValueWalk Premium: […] Article by iBankCoin […]...
firehorsecaper: Saudi-backed Uber optimistic IPO valuation $100-120bln in 1st half of 2019. Didi...
#CFAInvest #OIL #EM #gold #Muni #MAGA #TSLA $GLD #CANADA #FATCA GDXJ $GDX #TRUDEAU #FED #IBB #C #DB #ETHICS #FCX #COPPER #AAPL #CAD #Activist #POTUS #GRANTS


Handmade sterling silver heart earrings with embossed retro style squares pattern.
Sterling silver sheet textured with a groovy retro squares design and cut into heart shapes. Sterling silver posts are soldered to the backs of the hearts and the sterling silver is oxidized and polished to highlight the lovely embossed design.
A great gift idea for Mother's Day!


text:
June 7, 1978 Album Reviews
Eddie Kendricks: At His Best
To a large extent, this album by the high-voiced former lead singer with the Temptations belies its own title. Dominated by catchy but simplistic solo work (e.g. "Keep On Truckin'," "Boogie Down"), it makes good sense on the dance floor but seems certain to bore many sit-down listeners. The ethereal "Just My Imagination (Running Away with Me)," the only Tempts track here, is another story entirely, though. It rates among the best soul-pop efforts of the decade by any artist and it vividly demonstrates what more imaginative material and backup could do for Kendricks's present career.
Country Joe McDonald: Rock and Roll Music from the Planet Earth
Ian Dury: New Boots and Panties


This guide's previous chapter brought closure to the ongoing story of TicketsRus.com, presenting a comprehensive example of how an APM solution can be leveraged by multiple stakeholders in an organization. Through that story, service desk employees, administrators, developers, and even IT and executive management were able to work together through a common set of visualizations towards the resolution of a major problem.
That chapter also showed how effectively resolving problems requires a data‐driven approach, one with a substantial amount of granular detail across multiple devices and applications. Using this approach, it is possible to trace a system‐wide performance problem directly into its root cause. By integrating into databases, servers, network components, and the end users' experience itself, a fully‐realized APM solution is uniquely suited to gather and calculate metrics for entire business services as a whole.
This is a critical approach to how IT brings value to the business; however, it isn't one that is used by all organizations. Those without high levels of IT maturity are intrinsically unable to attain alignment between IT and the business.
Chapter 2 talked at length about this problem of IT and business alignment. It discussed how different IT organizations display different levels of organizational maturity, with greater maturity bringing greater business value. Like APM, BSM is a methodology that both requires IT maturity while it develops IT maturity.
To better understand the concepts in this chapter, you may consider turning back to review those first introduced in Chapter 2. As successfully implementing BSM requires a high level of IT maturity, understanding exactly how that maturity is developed and measured is important.
Figure 9.1 shows a logical representation of where BSM links into APM. Here, APM begins with the creation of monitoring integrations across the different elements that make up a business service. Those monitoring integrations gather behavioral information about the end users' experience. They collect application and infrastructure metrics as well as other customized metrics from technology components. APM's data by itself is used primarily by the IT organization for the problem resolution and service improvement processes discussed to this point in this guide.
Figure 9.1: BSM converts technologyfocused monitoring data into businesscentric metrics.
This linkage is realized through an extension of the Service Model that was first introduced in Chapter 6. If you turn back to Chapter 6's explanation of APM's Service Model, you can obviously see the direct linkages between service technologies and their representation within the model. However, that discussion didn't focus largely on how representations for business services should be implemented.
Figure 9.2 shows a graphical example of how Chapter 6's physical model can be augmented with additional elements that represent the Ticketing System's business service. Here, the technology infrastructure components that comprise that service are abstracted under the element titled Ticketing System Infrastructure. Above this element, three more are added to represent the geographic locations where that service is available to customers. Finally, atop the entire model is the ultimate representation of the Ticketing System itself.
Figure 9.2: The technology underpinnings of a business service feed into BSM's Service Model.
This positioning of the Ticketing System at the model's top is significant. Not shown in Figure 9.2 but important for BSM's Service Model is how multiple business services can be represented in parallel through this augmented model. For example, the same organization may support business services for Ticket Brokering and/or Vendor Management. These services, which might or might not be available to customers in different geographic locations, are added to the topmost level of the model and linked into its geographic elements. The resulting multiple‐service representation allows business leaders a singleglimpse view across all the services and locations that make up their business.
As with the technology‐oriented Service Model represented in Chapter 6, monitoring data and associated threshold values exist underneath the BSM model's individual elements. As with the initial technologist‐oriented model, that data provides the logic that determines whether a business service, geographic location, or any other element is represented in green versus red. Further, it populates the more granular explanations of system behaviors when a user drills down into individual elements.
Different here is the type of data that is represented within this level of the model. Here, business leaders are primarily interested in information that measures "how well the technology is meeting the needs of the business" and is commonly manifested at a high level using a metric referred to as Service Quality.
Quality is a term that has been discussed previously in this guide, yet thus far with a strong focus on the technology underpinnings to business services. In the BSM perspective, the idea of quality has been formalized. It corresponds to a quantitative and numerical representation of the success or failure of a business service.
When the service is fully functional and meeting the needs of its customers, is that service of high quality?
When the service is fully non‐functional, meeting the needs of no one, is that service of high quality?
When the service is functional but with some non‐functional actions, is that service of high quality?
When the service is functional but with low assurance that user actions are being fully accomplished per user needs, is that service of high quality?
When the service is functional in appearance but fully non‐functional, is that service of high quality?
It is obvious to see how the first question represents a business service that is operating with a large amount of quality: The service is operational. Users are interacting with it and accomplishing their needs. It is also obvious to see how the scenario in the second bullet operates with zero quality: The service is completely down and no one is accomplishing anything with it.
Yet complex systems operate in more than just a binary "on" versus "off" state. A system can be functional or non‐functional, but it can also operate in many different states inbetween. For example, built‐in redundancy can mean that individual component failures may not affect that service's overall availability. Those same failures may only slightly affect its performance. Reductions in performance can also render a functioning service to a state of slowness that no user would want to interact with. Here, the service is operational, but not with any level of performance that can be considered "successful." Reductions in quality can also occur when the loss or reduction in performance of downlevel components ultimately means a partially‐functional service.
As you can see, the situation gets murkier when the state of a system exists in this area between "on" and "off." In each of the final three bullets, how well is this system operating? How well is it fulfilling the needs of its users? As an example, in the third bullet's scenario the service is mostly functional with some non‐functional actions. If some users can accomplish their tasks, does this make its quality higher than in the fifth bullet's scenario where the service appears functional but really isn't working at all?
The answers to these questions are obviously non‐trivial. As such, this extended conversation is intended to prove that a spectrum measurement of "quality" is necessary in addition to the simplistic green versus red representation of an element's state. A visualization of just that spectrum is shown in Figure 9.3. There, you can see how the quality of service for multiple business services is shown in a single image. Visualizations such as this one enable business leaders to identify which services are meeting the needs of their customers, yet without being bogged down in the minutiae of their technology underpinnings.
Figure 9.3: A measurement of Service Quality across multiple business services.
Further, BSM's numerical representation of quality needn't necessarily be an instantaneous value. Knowing the quality of a service over the medium‐ or long‐term enhances a business leader's situational awareness even further.
Consider the situation where the quality of a business service is constantly changing between acceptable and unacceptable states (see Figure 9.4). When today's quality measurement is reported at 77, while yesterday's was reported at 95, it is easy to recognize that the overall system's effectiveness has diminished between these two days.
Figure 9.4: A historical view of Service Quality.
When quality measurements change rapidly between acceptable and unacceptable thresholds, this information gives the business leader the data he or she needs to direct improvement activities. Planning, budgeting, and expansion activities can all be directed to the services that need them the most. Ultimately, measurements like these give IT as well as business leaders the information they need to recognize when their services are (or, more importantly, are not) meeting the needs of their customers.
You'll notice some very specific terminology used in this section associated with quality measurements. The statement "of high quality" is used rather than "of full quality" or "of complete quality." This choice of wording is important because business systems always have areas for improvement. This means that today's measurement of high quality may be below tomorrow's measurement. Quality improvement activities, an important ITIL component, enable the measurement of "today's highest quality" to be continually moved upwards as improvements are incorporated into the business service or its technology components.
How Does One Measure Quality?
This concept of a single number that represents a service's quality is great, but how can it be calculated? How does a system like BSM gather the thousands of raw metrics gathered by monitoring integrations into a single‐number definition of a service's behavior? You'll find that this process is also non‐trivial but can be made easy through the right software.
The first step in developing this sense of quality is obviously in creating the abstraction of the business service that is its Service Model. This process has been explained in detail throughout this guide. By developing the Service Model, IT and the business define the elements that make up the business service as well as their interconnections. Both the elements as well as the interconnections are important because each fills out the picture of the service in its own way.
Once that Service Model is fully realized, the next step requires the mapping of service levels, Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), user impacts, and revenue impacts atop its structure. In this process, the metrics that define success or failure within business processes are used as thresholds. For example, if the business defines a particular rate of completed transactions to mean that the service is acceptably fulfilling customer needs, that metric should be added to the appropriate element. Or, if the user drop rate from a Web front end remains within a particular parameter, adding this metric in the appropriate place is another useful threshold. In the following sections, consider a few of the metrics that you likely already have in your business today.
Service level metrics are often first defined by the IT organization or through Service Level Agreements (SLAs) between the business and IT. In these agreements, the business identifies that services and their components must be available during certain hours with an identified minimum of downtime. Mean‐time between failures, failure rate, allowable downtime, and expected performance are all common metrics that can be applied to network, server, application, or other elements by the business.
Highly mature organizations are often capable of adding performance‐based metrics into their SLAs as well. With these types of service levels, specific thresholds for element performance are known and documented. Lacking an APM solution, these types of performance metrics are often exceptionally difficult to gather and report on. Their monitoring may be accomplished through multiple, non‐integrated solutions that are separately controlled by individuals within each technology domain. With such point solutions in place, the sharing of information between domains can be difficult or even impossible. However, when APM monitoring is extended across the IT infrastructure, the business gains the ability to gather these kinds of performance‐based metrics across many different types of technology elements at once.
Service levels with external service providers are another area in which APM provides a great assist. By gathering availability and performance metrics against contracted service providers, your organization gains its own set of data to be used during outages. This information is also useful when contract disputes require chargebacks for SLA breech events with service providers. Any business service that relies on external services for a portion of its activities requires this kind of monitoring to truly gain a representation of overall service success.
KPIs are often business‐oriented metrics used to define the success level of an organization or business process. These metrics are often used to quantify activities that are otherwise subjective in nature. These can be activities such as leadership development, the level of customer‐business engagement, and overall customer satisfaction.
As a rule, KPIs should be designed as actionable metrics, with the value of the metric driving some necessary action by the organization. KPIs should also be defined to provide information on status, trends, or variance to business artifacts such as plans, forecasts, or budgets. These two elements are critically important to KPIs that will eventually be encoded into BSM, as they provide a basis for quantifying its data. In essence, you need metrics whose value eventually drives some change to the environment if they are to be useful in the context of APM. By leveraging metrics that have a known reaction line, your BSM solution can further be used to provide necessary alerting when that action needs to be taken.
Mapping KPIs to business artifacts in addition to technology components also enables the later assignment of dollar values to incidents. As you'll learn in a minute, a fully‐realized BSM solution can highlight where expensive problems need immediate resolution or when system or user behaviors are impacting the business bottom line.
Accomplishing all of this requires some sort of design tool. An effective BSM solution will provide the necessary logic to match incoming KPI data to defined thresholds and management reaction lines. That logic can be incorporated through user‐defined rules, through relationships between elements, or through complex expressions. Complex expressions may use if‐then‐else expressions or regular expressions with which to construct the necessary thresholds.
Figure 9.5 shows an example design tool where a complex expression has been constructed that validates availability metrics. In this example, both minimum and expected thresholds are described. The combination of these two values quantifies the behaviors that are considered appropriate and inappropriate for the assigned element.
Figure 9.5: A BSM solution's design tool provides a location where expressions can be constructed based on incoming data.
Chapter 8's story discussed a few examples of how the level of user impact drives the targeting of troubleshooting resources. It argued that those problems with a greater user impact should in most cases be prioritized over those with a smaller impact. Defining those user impacts is another activity that occurs within a BSM solution.
Using the BSM software's designer tool, it is possible to identify the impact associated with each of the elements in the model. For example, when a particular network connection goes down to a geographic site, the number of users in that site are known to be affected by the problem. Or, when one of a pair of clustered transaction processing servers goes down, it can be assumed that the total level of processing will be reduced by half.
Once the user impacts for individual elements are known and entered into the system, the Service Model with its interconnections is then used to identify the flow‐up and flow‐down impacts for each element. This is represented in the simplistic example shown in Figure 9.6. Based on the dependencies encoded through the model's interconnections, individual element impacts can be combined to understand how many users are affected by a problem with any element. In this example, the Inventory Processing System is known to have 1700 users, while the External Web Cluster is known to have 8300 users. Here, the loss of the Inventory Processing System can impact its 1700 users as well as a portion of those who use the External Web Cluster.
Figure 9.6: A simplistic example of how user impacts can be assigned to Service Model elements.
Knowing how many users are impacted tells one story of a problem. But knowing exactly how service behaviors impact revenues is yet another. Information about revenue impacts can be inputted manually into a BSM's threshold logic. Or, more dynamically, they can be gathered from business artifacts such as budgets, sales metrics, or other revenue data.
BSM is uniquely suited above all other monitoring solutions in that it includes the capacity to aggregate traditional technology monitoring with financial data from these kinds of sources. When sales or budgetary data is available in a format that the BSM solution can work with, it becomes possible to relate technology and user impacts to hard dollar gains or losses to the organization.
One example of this can be seen in Figure 9.7. In this example, technical information from a site's external Web metrics has been related to financial information as gathered from a sales or revenue database. In this example, a historical trendline can be developed that shows the relationship between unique visitors to a Web site and the level of daily revenue that occurs as a function of those visitors.
Figure 9.7: Using a BSM visualization to relate user count to revenue statistics.
This information becomes fantastically useful to the business leader because it provides a real‐time and historical look at the systems under their management. Yet it does so without exposing the complex technology underpinnings that aren't part of their job role. Such visualizations relate the technology behaviors to business successes as a function of revenue and/or sales. Business leaders with access to this kind of information have a much greater capability to quickly shift focus, activities, and even entire lines of business as needed based on quantitative information.
In some cases, a BSM solution needn't be used at all with its technology monitoring elements. A BSM solution provides a single‐glimpse visualization of business activities, so it becomes a location where purely financial information can be gathered for regular consumption. Figure 9.8 shows an example of this, displaying monthly profit versus payout information that is sourced directly from a financial database.
Figure 9.8: Information in BSM visualizations can be gathered from purely financial sources as well.
Nowhere in this visualization is information that arrives through APM monitoring integrations. The data here is calculated purely from financial databases or other business artifacts. Visualizations like this are often placed alongside others that contain APM‐related information in a management dashboard. The result is a more holistic situational awareness of the business service and its revenue impacts.
There has for a long time been a problem intrinsic to the collection and reporting on business‐related metrics. That problem relates the quantity of time required to collect, compute, and report metrics when done through traditional manual processes. The problem here is that for much of the history of business itself, the only way to collect these types of metrics is through those very manual and time‐consuming processes.
Notwithstanding the labor cost associated with collecting and creating the necessary reports, the manual collection process also masks another problem: data granularity. Think about the situation where it takes a few days of labor to compile and report on business metrics. The result is that metrics are always at least a few days old, and there is no capacity to see in real‐time how incremental system changes directly impact business revenues. Lacking data granularity, you're always making business decisions on old data. Today's business climate mandates that businesses constantly adapt themselves to changing situations in the economy. Purchasing or customer trends must be analyzed as they happen, with decisions made quickly, if the business is to remain agile in its products or services. This need for a constant flow of real‐time information goes completely counter to the traditional manual collection efforts that have been its tradition. Needed are solutions that collect data on a constant basis and present that information to decision makers in what could effectively be called real‐time.
BSM represents one solution that can accomplish just that goal. With a fully‐realized BSM implementation in place, business leaders are given access to real‐time information about technology as well as financial impacts. Because the data that drives their visualizations is gathered constantly through its APM underpinnings, the business leader gains greater visibility into customer and system behaviors. Leaders with this information can much better reposition their business when conditions mandate changes to the business model.
Also important here is a recognition of what to do when systems or services simply aren't meeting the needs of their customers. It's been said before that there are an unlimited number of ways in which a complex business system can be constructed but only a few that will ultimately provide value. Without the deep instrumentation gained through a BSM‐ontop‐of‐APM (BSM/APM) solution, you likely don't have the raw data that quantitatively validates that your services are fully optimized. Further, you'll never be able to make improvements to service delivery if you don't know where improvements can be made.
One important metric that is gained through the creation of quality metrics is actually the functional inverse of quality: the Cost of Poor Quality (CoPQ). When a business service is not meeting the needs of its customers, it is not bringing in a maximum level of revenue. With a BSM solution's metrics in place, it grows possible to measure the lost revenue that is incurred through poor quality service delivery. That lost revenue is directly and inversely related to the level of quality in your system.
CoPQ is a term that is defined by Six Sigma as those costs which are generated as a result of producing defective material. This cost includes the cost involved in fulfilling the gap between the desired and actual product/service quality. It also includes the cost of lost opportunity due to the loss of resources used in rectifying the defect.
Although this traditional definition relates primarily to manufacturing environments, CoPQ can be measured in other IT‐related environments as well. Think for a minute about the high‐level variables that can go into a CoPQ calculation: You need to know the quality of a system as well as its level of potential quality. Subtracting these two numbers and adding a multiplier for cost gives you this information.
More on Six Sigma and other frameworks in a minute, but for now, recognize that metrics such as CoPQ become easy to measure once metrics like quality and revenue impacts are well defined. BSM solutions have the potential to provide all of these numbers.
Today's businesses are also more global in nature. Whereas locally‐oriented businesses can easily determine their hours of operation based on those that are industry‐ and locallyacceptable, global businesses have a much harder time determining when the sign at their front door flips from "Closed" to "Open."
when can regular maintenance operations be scheduled?
are there times to swing additional resources to bear?
when are inbound user rates higher or lower?
With users connecting in from areas around the globe, one solution for the always‐on business is the creation of a business calendar. In the context of BSM, the business calendar represents the periods of time each day when inbound users are at their peak versus nonpeak hours. Depending on the type of business, this period of time can be at very different times of the day. For example, a Web service whose customers are primarily other businesses will see greater attention during the workday. In contrast, others who service families might see greater attention when users have gone home for the evening.
Creating such a calendar is another non‐trivial task. First and foremost, actual metrics of user counts must be collated and averaged based on time and day. Those metrics must be aggregated across the multiple geographic locations and time zones where the business service is primarily located. Internet‐based services with replicated infrastructures in other parts of the world will see greater levels of inbound users at different parts of the day.
Figure 9.9 shows an example of how a simplistic business calendar can be constructed across United States, EMEA, and Asia‐Pac localities. Here, the areas shaded in red indicate peak hours for that locality. Those in green represent non‐peak hours. A BSM solution that calculates a service's business calendar must then aggregate those metrics into an aggregated business schedule. That schedule can be used to answer the previously‐posed questions as well as define the hours where servicing affects the least users.
Figure 9.9: An example business calendar.
It is worth mentioning here that replicated service infrastructures across multiple localities can impact how the business calendar is used. For example, if a maintenance activity needs to occur on a local device, the local business calendar should be consulted. If the device under maintenance is used by the entire infrastructure, the aggregated calendar will determine its maintenance time. Another important point is that the BSM business calendar is intended to be a real‐time metric. As your business evolves over time, so will your business calendar.
The metrics gained through a BSM implementation are also useful when fed into management frameworks such as ITIL or Six Sigma. Like BSM's roots in APM data, these frameworks are often highly data‐driven in how they accomplish and improve upon the tasks of IT. One of the common limitations, however, in successfully implementing ITIL and Six Sigma framework processes is in gathering enough data of the right kind to be useful. The data gathering and calculation potential of a BSM/APM solution enables greater success with both frameworks. Without delving too deep into their details, let's take a quick look at the areas of each where BSM and APM can both provide added value.
The ITIL is comprised of a set of industry best practices that identify the necessary activities that are common to an IT environment. ITIL is specifically comprised of 5 stages and 24 activities within those stages. Activities within ITIL span the life cycle of service strategizing, design, transitioning, operations, and continual improvement.
A full discussion on ITIL can take an entire book (or in fact six books, which is what comprises the entire library to date). For the purposes of ITIL's linkages with BSM, consider the activities in Figure 9.10. The 12 activities highlighted in red are those that stand to gain a direct benefit from the quantitative data gathered and calculated by a BSM/APM solution.
Figure 9.10: ITIL's 5 stages and 24 activities. Those that are directly impacted by BSM are highlighted in red.
You can view more detailed information about the ways in which BSM improves each of these activities by turning to Chapter 9 of The Definitive Guide to Business Service Management.
Many of these activities have been discussed in this guide so far, although without specifically calling them out by their ITIL nomenclature. One in particular of note is the entire fifth stage of the ITIL service life cycle, Continual Service Improvement. In this stage, services in operations are analyzed with an eye towards their capacity to meet their original stated goals as well as the needs of their consumer.
Whereas ITIL has a widespread focus on the required activities of an IT organization and its services, Six Sigma's focus is entirely on the improvement process alone. Again, without delving too deep into the purpose and history of Six Sigma, it is important for the discussion here to recognize that Six Sigma's improvement activities also gain quantitative measurements through the data within a BSM/APM solution.
The Six Sigma Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, and Control (DMAIC) process is comprised of five phases: Defining the services or components that are critical to quality, measuring their behaviors, analyzing those measurements with an eye towards finding areas of gap, implementing and validating improvements, and finally, building the controlling structures that ensure the improvement remains in place over time.
Figure 9.11 highlights each of these five phases as well as some of the common activities that are accomplished during each phase. Important to recognize here is that each of the activities noted in Figure 9.11 can actually be augmented through the data provided by a BSM/APM solution. For example, sampling data can be gathered through APM monitoring integrations. That data can be used to create a baseline of configuration and behaviors, which is then continually measured through the same APM monitors.
Figure 9.11: The activities and phases of Six Sigma.
Those behaviors can then be analyzed for poor quality and associated costs, creating failure mode effect and Pareto charts to identify areas of highest impact. Ultimately, gaps can be identified and improved upon, with the same BSM/APM data validating the positive impact of the improvement. Similar to the process improvement example with ITIL, BSM/APM quality data establishes the metric by which all improvement activities are ultimately measured against.
BSM's bottom line arrives with its unique capability to convert technology metrics into dollars and cents impacts. By seeing how the impact of technology behaviors changes the business bottom line, technologists and business leaders alike are more empowered to make smart decisions about service delivery.
Most importantly, business processes are the backbone of a well‐managed business. Their efficient completion ensures that business activities are executed properly and ultimately drive value—rather than cost—to the business. The historical problem, however, with business processes has been their integration into IT technologies. Too often in immature IT organizations, business processes are forced to function within the capabilities of the IT infrastructure rather than the opposite. In the most egregious of examples, business processes are simply not fulfilled by the technologies that are deployed by the IT organization.
Alignment between your IT processes and your business processes is critical to transforming IT from its traditional role as business cost center into a new role of business partner. As should be obvious in this chapter, the right data and the right solutions enable you to do just that.
This chapter effectively concludes this guide's discussion on APM. Its focus on the business side of technology is fundamentally critical, as every IT organization is a function of its business, and that most businesses today can't function without their IT organizations. In the end, the data‐driven approach that such an organization gains through the implementation of an APM solution gives a far greater situational awareness of the technology environment than domain‐focused point solutions.
Although this chapter concludes the discussion, it does not conclude the guide. The final chapter, Chapter 10, arrives as a sort of primer on the topics discussed throughout this entire guide. It summarizes the important points discussed in each chapter and is intended to be the handout you can use to educate others about what you've learned in the other nine chapters. Most importantly, Chapter 10 serves as a more concise explanation that you can deliver to the decision makers in your organization should you determine that an APM solution is a necessary addition to your IT environment.


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A positive outlook: Wyoming Livestock Board veterinarian shares disease outbreak remains minimal at this point
February 12th, 2021 by Wyoming Livestock Roundup
At the current moment, Wyoming Livestock Board (WSLB) Assistant State Veterinarian Dr. Hallie Hasel noted at the Fremont County Farm and Ranch Days in Riverton Feb. 3-4 there are no major disease outbreaks for livestock producers to be concerned with. While this determination has the potential to change, the outlook is positive.
Hasel shared information from the WSLB on Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags and gave an update on Rabbit Hemorrhagic Disease Virus (RHDV), brucellosis and vesicular stomatitis during her presentation.
"A few years ago, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) started implementing RFID tags," she said. "There was a ruling at the time giving dates on when USDA was going to stop using metal tags and start using RFID tags."
"The ruling is on hold as far as RFID tags are concerned, and there are not any timelines or deadlines at the moment," Hasel continued.
The hold comes with the change in administration, and Hasel believes there will be more information available as nominations progress and the new Secretary of Agriculture can look over previous rules. Currently, cattle and bison producers can get RFID tags at no cost for replacement females in their herds. Producers can contact WSLB for further information.
"RFID tags were implemented to assist in animal disease traceability and are important for tracking diseases coming into the U.S. and for tracing livestock disease movement throughout the states," said Hasel. "Animal diseases are not dissimilar from human diseases, and like we have seen on the news, once there is a disease outbreak in one state, it quickly travels to another."
RHDV in Wyoming
RHDV was confirmed in a wild eastern cottontail rabbit in Albany County in December 2020 according to the WSLB. Hasel said this disease moves very slowly, and the U.S. outbreak of RHDV started around two years ago at the southern border.
"RHDV has finally made its way to Wyoming in the last couple of months, and it is a big deal because it affects both domestic and wild rabbits," she noted. "When the rabbit population is depleted, there are serious issues up the food chain."
Currently, RHDV is in the wild rabbit populations in both Albany and Laramie counties, with a total of six confirmed positive cases, according to Hasel.
"This disease is difficult to control because all we see is sudden death," she added. "For those with domestic rabbits, biosecurity is the best mode of action. If domestic rabbits are not separated from wild rabbit populations, they are at an increased risk for RHDV."
Practices including cleaning clothing and shoes are encouraged, and visiting other rabbits or introducing visitors to domestic rabbits are discouraged.
"There are two vaccines currently available, but they are both in Europe," said Hasel. "Veterinarians are able to import the vaccine, however it is a lengthy process and expensive."
RHDV is affecting rabbits at an alarming rate, and Hasel shared if an individual notices dead wild rabbits to contact the Wyoming Game and Fish Department.
Brucellosis update
According to Hasel, a very small number of premises were under quarantine for brucellosis earlier in the month, and both are on their way out. The biggest issue, she shared, is the livestock-wildlife interface when it comes to transmitting the disease.
"Brucellosis primarily spreads during calving season, so livestock-wildlife interface during calving has the potential to increase brucellosis in our cattle herds," she said. "Brucellosis causes abortion, but it also can present as weakness in calves, stillbirths, reduced milk and arthritis."
With continued drought in the forecast, producers can expect the grazing pattern for elk to change if the state doesn't receive moisture. Because of this, Hasel recommended producers be vigilant.
WSLB requires cattle aged four- to 12-months-old be vaccinated for brucellosis and asks adult herds at high risk of transmitting the disease be vaccinated as well. Hasel shared WSLB field veterinarians are planning to visit producers in the designated surveillance areas to create herd plans, including a risk assessment, which has the potential to ease some producer requirements and save on vaccination costs.
Possibility of vesicular stomatitis
Not seen in Wyoming in 2020, vesicular stomatitis should be on producers' radars this year, noted Hasel.
"We didn't have vesicular stomatitis last year, but we can expect to see it this year," she said. "Hopefully, the next several months will tell us more about what we can expect."
Vesicular stomatitis presents as blisters in ears, tongues and on the coronet band, slobbering and frothy mouths, according to Hasel.
"The problem we have with vesicular stomatitis is sometimes it looks like foot-and-mouth disease, which is something we really don't want to see," she added.
Hasel recommended producers keep their eyes open for uncomfortable lesions near eyes, ears and hooves. The disease often spreads through flies or human movement.
"There is not a cure for vesicular stomatitis, so the best thing for producers to do is treat symptoms and improve biosecurity if this disease presents itself this year," said Hasel.
Averi Hales is the editor of the Wyoming Livestock Roundup. Send comments on this article to roundup@wylr.net.
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