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CALGARY — A deal announced Friday by Brion Energy Corp. with a northern native community is expected to kick-start a stalled 250,000-barrel-a-day oilsands project and permit the flow of $1.3 billion to its Calgary-based parent company.
Stock in Athabasca Oil Corp., which owns Brion with partner PetroChina, jumped 90 cents or 11.5 per cent to close at $8.74 on the Toronto Stock Exchange.
In a joint news release Friday afternoon, Brion and the Fort McKay First Nation said the band has agreed to drop its court appeal on constitutional grounds of the project's August regulatory approval.
No details were given in the release, nor would spokespeople give specifics, citing a non-disclosure clause in the agreement.
But Alvaro Pinto, director of sustainability and lead negotiator for the band, said the deal doesn't restrict how Brion develops the project, nor is there a requirement for a buffer zone between the project and the Moose Lake reserve lands.
"There are limitations in terms, not of the development itself, but there are some terms that help to protect the area," he told the Herald in an interview.
"There isn't any commitment in terms of a no-development zone but, as I said, there are strong commitments in terms of environmental protection which we didn't have before."
The Alberta Energy Regulator approved the Dover thermal project in August after rejecting a request from the band for a 20-kilometre no-development zone south of its Moose Lake reserve lands.
It ruled Dover's development would have "little if any impact" on neighbouring lands but the zone would exclude 1.2 billion to 1.4 billion barrels of bitumen from being produced.
The band then filed an appeal on the grounds that the AER had failed to consider its constitutional treaty rights in its decision and the Alberta Court of Appeal agreed to hear it in March.
Meanwhile, the AER approval went to the Alberta cabinet for endorsement, where it has remained in limbo.
Pinto said the band reserves its right to protect its constitutional treaty rights in future while conceding withdrawing its appeal in the current case leaves the issue unresolved.
Brion spokeswoman Kristi Baron said in an interview no details of the agreement are being revealed, specifically refusing to say whether Brion has agreed to restrict development or offer any additional financial or economic benefit to the band.
The agreement was signed in the Fort McMurray area Friday by Zhiming Li, Brion president and chief executive, and Chief Jim Boucher of Fort McKay. Neither was available for interviews.
"As good neighbours, Brion is committed to developing the lease in an environmentally sound manner, while delivering social and economic benefits for the local community," said Li in a joint news release.
"Reaching this agreement with Brion shows it's possible to protect our traditional territory while partnering with those who work in the area," said Boucher.
Analysts Mark Friessen of RBC Dominion Sercurities and Matthew Taylor of National Bank Financial said in notes the deal offers relief for Athabasca, headed by president and chief executive Sveinung Svarte.
"While we believe a positive settlement of Dover has largely been priced into the stock, this is positive in that it ultimately should lead to receipt of the Dover proceeds of $1.32 billion which improves the company's financial liquidity," Friesen wrote.
"We expect that receipt of the Dover proceeds would likely result in an increased capex program in H2/14, possibly making the company more attractive as a JV partner in its Duvernay process."
In December, Athabasca unveiled a $460-million 2014 budget with $348 million earmarked for oilsands and just $106 million on conventional light oil plays.
"Athabasca now has line of sight to exercising the put with PetroChina and this alleviates go-forward funding concerns," agreed Taylor, adding clarity on the issue could help Athabasca land joint venture deals in oilsands and in its conventional Duvernay acreage.
Final OK of the Dover project is expected to trigger a put/call option allowing 60 per cent partner PetroChina to buy out Athabasca's 40 per cent stake. Brion is the operating company.
The delay has created a capital shortfall for Athabasca which is over half finished building its $565-million, 12,000-bpd Hangingstone thermal project.
Like Hangingstone, Dover is to use steam-assisted gravity drainage technology and is proposed to grow through multiple phases. The first 50,000-bpd phase would cost about $2.5 billion to build, Brion said in its AER application.


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Hi TomasYou experienced this recently, since the upgrade 2 weeks ago, or just before that?
I don't know if I'm doing something wrong, but I sent a couple PMs out and they never showed up in my "sent messages" folder in the "My Messages" section, which makes it hard to confirm what I've sent or even if it was sent... or am I looking in the wrong spot?FWIW, I sent Darren B. a message today. Darren, let me know if you got it.

subset: commoncrawl


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Here's Maxwell Drew!
A beaming Jessica Simpson cradling her new baby daughter graces the cover of this week's People magazine.
In an accompanying interview, Simpson says "life has completely changed" for herself and fiancé Eric Johnson since daughter Maxwell Drew Johnson's arrival on May 1.
U.S. & World
News from around the country and around the globe
Both mother and father "stare at her all the time," Simpson said.
"From how I sleep to what I think about, Maxwell has definitely taken over everything," she told People.
The pop star and "Fashion Star" mentor reportedly made $850,000 from publishing her first baby photos in People. Simpson said that nursing Maxwell has become a "full-on job."
"It's the worst if I have to pump and give Eric a bottle to give her," Simpson said. "I miss holding her and having that closeness."
Simpson, 31, and Johnson, a 32-year-old former San Francisco 49ers tight end and Yale grad, became engaged back in November 2010 after six months of dating.
Last month, Simpson announced a deal to expand her retail empire with a maternity line, created in partnership with Destination Maternity.
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy


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Unleashing the Power of Rubber Bands
- Nancy Ortberg Author
- 2008 15 Jul
EDITOR'S NOTE: The following is an excerpt from Unleashing the Power of Rubber Bands: Lessons in Non-Linear Leadership by Nancy Ortberg (Tyndale House Publishers).
The Problem with T-Shirts
Recently I read some statistics on the Internet that said in order to stay aligned with their company's vision, people need to be reminded of that vision every twenty-eight days. I'm not sure how they came up with twenty eight days; seems like an odd number to me. But suffice it to say, people need to hear about your vision on a regular basis in order to stay motivated.
Great leaders think about vision—a lot. But the problem is, most of us are thinking about it more than we are talking about it. And if vision is that important, we need to be constantly asking ourselves, What's our vision and how are we doing at communicating it?
In many organizations, once a vision sentence is crafted, it's often written on a piece of paper and put in a notebook, only brought out again a couple of times a year at new trainee orientation or in a leader's speech. Occasionally it might make its way onto a mug or a T-shirt.
Nothing inspires cynicism in an organization faster than a T-shirt.
Vision doesn't belong on T-shirts. As leaders, our job is to breathe life into the vision and fill the words with meaning that stir people in the deepest parts of their souls—the parts that long for significance and transformation. We need to come up with creative, compelling, and repetitive ways to talk about the vision, and then we need to make the words come alive. Sometimes we even need to say those words in different ways so that people can see every facet of the vision, kind of like the shifting colors of a kaleidoscope.
Vision is about stirring and provoking, reminding and imagining. It's about showing people the wonder of an improved future and infusing them with hope. Vision is about creating a reason to believe again.
Vision is primarily nurtured through the stories we tell and the heroes we create in our organizations. A couple of years ago, we were working with a large school district on the East Coast. We were in the second day of a two-day offsite conference, with about a hundred and twenty people around tables in a large room. As is true with any school district, this one was facing huge challenges: increasing ethnic and economic diversity in their student population, budget cuts, and mounting expectations in test scores.
As part of an exercise in vision, we asked people to stand up and tell a brief story or mention a hero that reflected their district's vision of "providing a place where every child would succeed."
The principal for one of the larger high schools in the district stood up and talked about a young African-American boy who had just graduated from their school the month before. He had spent six years, from middle school through high school, in their district, but he stood out from the other kids because he was homeless—by choice.
Although this boy had received numerous offers for housing from friends, he did not want to be separated from his mother, so for nearly six years he woke up every morning in the back seat of a car. He walked across the parking lot to a nearby Wal-Mart and washed up in their restrooms. Then he took two city buses to arrive at school before the first bell rang. He ended up graduating with a Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Scholarship, a full ride to a four-year college of his choice.
The story took two minutes to tell. But by the end, I was ready to quit my job and go to work for that school district!
Here's the deal. No one goes into education for the big paycheck. That two-minute story worked in a powerful way to reconnect those overworked and underpaid educators to the core reason they went into this line of work in the first place. You could see it all over the room: tender smiles, nodding heads, people clearly reenergized and ready to return to the issues of diversity, budget, and test scores with a renewed sense of purpose and hope. The story was a creative and compelling way to remind people of the vision.
Two minutes.
Some of my most memorable intersections with powerful vision have come in educational contexts. Perhaps it's because there is no question that something more than money motivates educators.
Another time we were working with a large school district in the Los Angeles area. Once again we were working on exercises around the topic of vision, but this time, we had divided the group into teams: administrators, principals, psychologists, teachers, etc. One team in particular worried me: the facilities and maintenance employees. I wasn't at all sure that these guys in their jeans and T-shirts would be able to deeply engage in discussions about vision. After all, their primary responsibilities included cutting the grass and cleaning the bathrooms.
I can be an idiot sometimes, but that's for another chapter.
After I explained what I wanted the teams to do, I walked over to "help" this table. I kneeled down and said in my best consulting voice, "So, what have you got for me?"
The head of the department said, "Well I've been thinking about this idea a lot over the past twenty-five years," and the rest of the guys around the table chuckled. I assumed he was having hard time trying to figure out this vision thing, so I continued, "Well, tell me what you have been thinking."
To this day, I still carry a scrap of paper in my wallet on which I've written what that man said next:
"We work to create and maintain an environment that inspires greatness."
"Excuse me?"
As he repeated that sentence (that glorious sentence) the laughter around the table returned, and stories started spilling out.
"Yeah, yeah, we don't just plant flowers, we create gardens that inspire greatness," one of them said playfully.
As if trying to top that, another said, "When people use the bathroom, they will look around the facility with a pride that comes from cleanliness and working parts all in order."
"Everywhere people look, everything they see, from the grass to the classrooms to the restrooms, will inspire them toward greatness because of the physical environment of the schools. From the teachers to the students, to the parents, even the Fed-Ex guys that make deliveries on our campuses…" I was getting the picture.
Wow. After I regained my footing from having been bowled over, I stood up from my kneeling position. Then I bowed down to them.
I returned to the front of the room and told the entire group what had just happened. I said, "These guys are rock stars! If the facilities and maintenance guys can come to work every day understanding that their job is about more than trimming shrubs and cleaning toilets, that it's up to them to create an environment that inspire greatness, then everyone in this organization should be able to figure out how to tie his or her job to the vision.
"You all ought to bow down every time you cross paths with one of these men. We are not worthy to look directly into their eyes and ought to give them sunglasses so we can pass by," I finished with a smile.
The next time we worked with this district, the superintendent told us we had created monsters! The maintenance guys now strutted through the campuses … and well they should.
Heroes shape the culture of an organization, giving it form and substance and breathing life into it. They turn an organization into a living entity, taking it out of the "institution" category and plopping it squarely into the "organism" category.
It is good for us to think about organizations as living things, because doing so moves us away from the idea that it's us—people—against the organization. We need to realize that the organization is the people.
The right heroes help us fight the encroaching celebrity culture that can destroy even the best organizations: that not so subtle elevation of jocks and the cheerleaders that leaves everyone else feeling like second-class citizens, minor contributors, or Page Three news.
Heroes give flesh and bones to the vision, helping people see what's right in front of their eyes. And the best heroes make everyone else in the organization realize that "hero-hood" is not reserved for the select few, but that they, too, can become a hero. And maybe, just maybe, vision is a collection of heroes that point us in the right direction.
I have attended a lot of meetings where sales and marketing people are given awards. They get the verbal accolades and the nodding approvals, while all the while the data entry person who made the success possible—or at least had a lot to do with it— sits unnoticed in the corner. Leaders make sure no one is overlooked. That might sound like it's too big a job. Well, it is a big job, but it's not too big. It is imperative, and one of the primary ways of realizing vision. And it is the right thing to do, which is so much of what leadership is about.
Much of a vision's power lies in what it taps into. Done well, vision connects to that part of us that desperately wants to be a part of something deeper, something with meaning and significance. Vision releases ongoing energy in an individual and an organization that perpetuates and fuels itself. Vision lifts heads, stirs souls, and taps hearts. It creates and fosters and strengthens and stimulates. It engages passion, which is a profound source of motivation. Vision brings out the best where before, good enough was good enough.
Right now, we are working in a community that has been ravaged by violence and is struggling to overcome the legacy of destruction it's left behind. For years, this area had the highest murder rate per capita in the state, and for a while, in the country. It is difficult and sometimes discouraging work. Two steps forward, five steps back. Recently the community experienced shootings for thirty days in a row. Thirty days, every day, a shooting—some fatal, some not.
We're working with an agency that seeks to create avenues of non-violence in this community. They've started programs in the schools and the neighborhoods to target susceptible kids and intervene in this seemingly endless cycle. The agency does good work. They teach classes, they counsel, they offer music and art lessons, they host a weekly family night and try to "reprogram" the community mindset that sees violence as a way of life.
The young staff that so passionately leads this organization try to be relationally available to the people of the community twenty-four seven. What they do is so important, and in this area, they are the only ones doing it. They frequently gather as a group to remind themselves of their vision. They tell stories of the successes, and celebrate every step in the right direction. When discouragement seeps in, as it does on a regular basis, they return to their vision. They remind themselves of the truth and hope of the words. Their heroes are those who are living out the vision. When they get weary of doing good, it is not the strategy or logistics or budget that breathes life back in to their understandably worn-out souls. It is the vision.
Not the vision on a T-shirt, but the vision as it is lived out in the flesh and blood of those within their God-blessed reach.
Unleashing the Power of Rubber Bands
Copyright © 2008 by Nancy Ortberg
Published by Tyndale House Publishers
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, except as provided for by USA copyright law.


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French Horn Rebellion – Love Is Dangerous EP
French Horn Rebellion's "Love is Dangerous" is a song that gets better with each listen. For the track, the brothers Molinari enlisted the soulful and smooth vocals of fellow NYC music man, JPatt, who happens to be 1/2 of The Knocks. The EP also features remixes from Chrome Canyon and rekLES, as well as another track called "Cold Enough" that sees R&B legend Jody Watley (of Shalamar) stepping behind the mic. Without a doubt "Love is Dangerous" is the Next Jack Swing.


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MINNEAPOLIS, July 23, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Techne Corporation (NASDAQ: TECH) (Techne) announced today that J. Fernando Bazan, Ph.D. has been appointed Chief Technology Officer. With global recognition as a scientific leader in fields ranging from structural biology to drug discovery for the treatment of human disorders, Dr. Bazan will be instrumental in directing innovation and influencing future growth in Techne's world-wide market.
Dr. Bazan joins Techne with more than twenty years of experience in academia and the biotechnology industry. Following training at Stanford University, the University of California Berkeley, and the University of California San Francisco, he served as a senior scientist at the DNAX Research Institute (Schering-Plough/Merck) and at Genentech (Roche) as well as serving as Chief Scientific Officer at NeuroScience, a neuroimmunology startup. Dr. Bazan holds an adjunct faculty appointment at the University of Minnesota School of Medicine where he applies pharmacological approaches to cancer and immune disorders and utilizes structural and computational insights to investigate signaling mechanisms in biological systems.
As a world renowned scientist, Dr. Bazan has shed light on important biological questions and set the groundwork for advances in the cell signaling and immunology fields. His technical expertise, interdisciplinary approach, and creativity led to the first classification system of the structural architectures of cytokines and their receptors. Dr. Bazan's research also produced numerous scientific breakthroughs including the identification of novel cytokines, their receptor complexes, and immune subsets (Th17 cells) that responded to these factors. This ability to drive global technical collaborations will help frame the strategic and platform decisions for the Company.
"We are delighted to welcome Dr. Bazan to the executive team at Techne," said Charles R. Kummeth, President and Chief Executive Officer of Techne. "His seminal discoveries of key cytokines are central to our business, and Dr. Bazan brings with him the technical expertise and vision to help lead the future of innovation at Techne."
Techne Corporation and Subsidiaries (the Company) are engaged in the development, manufacture and sale of biotechnology products and hematology calibrators and controls. These activities are conducted through the Company's two operating subsidiaries: Research and Diagnostic Systems, Inc. (R&D Systems) of Minneapolis, Minnesota and R&D Systems Europe, Ltd. (R&D Europe) of Abingdon, England. R&D Systems is a specialty manufacturer of biological products. R&D Systems has three subsidiaries: BiosPacific, Inc. (BiosPacific), located in Emeryville, California, Boston Biochem, Inc., located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and R&D Systems China Co. Ltd., (R&D China), located in Shanghai, China. BiosPacific is a worldwide supplier of biologics to manufacturers of in vitro diagnostic systems and immunodiagnostic kits. Boston Biochem is a leading developer and manufacturer of ubiquitin-related research products. R&D China and R&D Europe distribute biotechnology products. R&D Europe has two subsidiaries: Tocris Holdings Ltd. (Tocris) of Bristol, England and R&D Systems GmbH, a German sales operation. Tocris is a leading supplier of chemical reagents for non-clinical life science research.
SOURCE Techne Corporation


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The Literary Machine is a piece of software with very ambitious goals. Its author describes it as a "dynamic archive and an idea management tool aimed at creative thinking—built especially with the writer in mind. It is packed with indexing and display techniques so general and potent that you will use it as an intelligence center. In a class by itself, it is virtually an extension of your brain. So, write in it. Collect and sort information and ideas in it. Make it your treasure chest of random notes and ideas for analysis and future reference. For, it will serve you well as the substance, catalyst, and processor for relating or reusing them in creative combinations."
So far, so promising. But then there is the claim that "LM is designed to fulfill needs, not fancy." This raises immediately the question as to what criteria are used to differentiate "needs" from "fancy." Yet, we are not told what the criteria are, but only told what the results of the application of these criteria are supposed to be: the application "does not 'fool around' with features that your conventional word processor and email client already do well and more efficiently than a database could. Instead, LM teams with your other programs to accomplish what, till now, was possible only in your dreams."
"Can LM help you think 'outside the box?' Answer: What box? LM's powerful 'fuzzy thinking' kernel does away with 'the box.'"
The reason is "LM's tremendous flexibility," which is said to stem "from its innovative, dual-classification system: one an optional, traditional data tree of well defined topics, the other a powerful underlying conceptual network that forms the keyword matrix of LM's revolutionary 'fuzzy thinking kernel.' It's where you discover relationships, where you find something you filed too long ago to remember what topic it's in, where you dredge up past bits of writing or thinking on a subject, where you go to get an idea."
If by now you are interested in what this "fuzzy thinking kernel" is, you are not alone. But the answer is ultimately rather disappointing. It has to do with what in the language of the program are called "words, concepts, and 'ideas."
- "words" correspond to what are usually called "key words" that are collected in a "dictionary." Any kind of entry can be assigned such key word(s), and entries that have common key words can be retrieved by its means. In most programs this would be done by a search, LM is more visual: you drag the key word to the desktop and all connected entries appear. Nothing fancy, one might be tempted to say.
- "Concepts" are explained as connections between words. Actually, they may also be represented as searches of two or more terms connected by the Boolean operator "AND." Nothing fancy here either.
- "Ideas" are just the items or records in the database, to which a keyword or keywords are applied.
This is the fuzzy thinking kernel. Records connected by keywords they have in common.[1]
LM uses a simple flat keyword structure rather than an inheritance hierarchy, such as are used by Lotus Agenda and many other programs written after it.[2] In other words, there is no nesting of keywords. In this it is very similar to Personal Knowbase, which also bets on indexing "your notes, messages, and ideas using keywords for fast access" and, just as LM, makes exaggerated claims about how this makes it "a Unique Free-form Note Organizer." But at least, it is open about the concept of "Keywords" and does not pretend to have a "fuzzy thinking kernel."
It also has another advantage over the "Literary Machine," namely a clean, and very intuitive interface. In fact, LM's use of the visual metaphor of a card index only seems to get into the way—at least as far as I am concerned. Dragging "a concept to the LM desktop produces a deck of (note) cards. Each card is an item you connected to that concept, and the information it contains could be text, an image, a sound, or all three." The Website warns that if you are dragging "a Dictionary word to the desktop produces several word-combinations (e.g., concepts), you should review each before opening the connected items." The reason is that "otherwise the desktop could get so full [that] you couldn't sort the appropriate items from the inappropriate ones." But actually there seems to me already more than enough confusion when you have dragged just one word to the desktop. (See the screen shot, which also shows that the applications retains almost all the non-endearing features of Windows 3.1).
Why am I so negative on the "Literary Machine"? Well, I used index cards for a long time in the real world. This application promised a translation of this approach into software for research and writing. I spent about a week around 2000 trying to make it work, only to give up on it as being unworkable.
The many claims about how the program reproduces what the mind does, supported by appeals to supposed discoveries in cognitive science, did not help either. If you are interested in an application that works by means of flat list of keywords, Personal Knowbase is much to be preferred. But I would prefer an application that does not just rely on keywords. For one, given the power of today's computers, every word in a database can be a keyword, and a powerful search engine that includes "OR," NEARBY," and "NOT" should find many more connections than the Literary machine or Personal Knowbase.[3] Secondly, the ability easily to link different items to each other is absolutely essential—or so it seems to me. The Literary Machine does not offer either.
1. The whole thing is made even more confusing because in the language of the program "keywords are concepts, which are built by Dictionary words — singly or in combination. Since a concept may thus consist of several Dictionary words (without a designated header word), LM marks-up an item with an arbitrary word (a keyword) from the concept. At a first, this strategy might appear senseless, but your work in the program gradually shows you how useful it is." In my experience, it never made sense, but perhaps I never gave it enough of a chance.
2. See Taking Note on Agenda
3. Literary Machine 2000 is restricted to "AND" or "OR." Personal Knowbase just searches for strings. Keyword mode allows "AND" or "OR."


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British historian Eric Hobsbawm dies at 95
Eric Hobsbawm, who has died aged 95, was honored as one of Britain's most distinguished historians, despite retaining an allegiance to the Communist Party that lasted long after many supporters had left in disgust.
He was read by generations of students and revered for his ability to make history come alive, using his socialist perspective to tell stories from the peoples' point of view.
Daughter Julia Hobsbawm said her father died early Monday at a London hospital. He had been suffering from pneumonia.
"He'd been quietly fighting leukemia for a number of years without fuss or fanfare," she said. "Right up until the end he was keeping up what he did best, he was keeping up with current affairs. There was a stack of newspapers by his bed."
Hobsbawm's reading of Karl Marx and his experience living in Germany in the 1930s formed his views. He joined the Communist Party in England in 1936 and stayed a member long after Soviet military force crushed the Hungarian uprising in 1956 and the liberal reforms of the Prague Spring in 1968, although he publicly opposed both interventions.
Hobsbawm is best known for three volumes, spanning the period from 1789 to 1914: "The Age of Revolution" (1962), "The Age of Capital" (1975) and "The Age of Empire" (1987). A later volume, "Age of Extremes," took the story forward from 1914 to 1991.
His last book, "How to Change the World," published in 2011, was not a revolutionary tract but a collection of essays dating back to the 1960s on Marx and Marxism.
Ed Miliband, leader of Britain's opposition Labour Party, said Hobsbawm's work "brought hundreds of years of British history to hundreds of thousands of people."
"He brought history out of the ivory tower and into people's lives," Miliband said.
The late British historian A.J.P. Taylor said Hobsbawm's work was distinguished by precise explanations of what happened and his interest in ordinary people.
"Most historians, by a sort of occupational disease, are interested only in the upper classes and assume that they themselves would have been numbered among the privileged if they had lived a century or two ago - a most unlikely assumption," Taylor wrote. "Mr. Hobsbawm places his loyalty firmly on the other side of the barricades."
Eric John Ernest Hobsbawm was born June 9, 1917, in Alexandria, Egypt. His father was British, descended from artisans from Poland and Russia, and his mother's family was cultured, middle-class Viennese.
The family moved to Vienna when he was two. Following the deaths of his father and then his mother, he moved to Berlin in 1931 to live with relatives, and joined the Socialist Schoolboys.
"In Germany there wasn't any alternative left," he said in an interview with Maya Jaggi published in The Guardian newspaper in 2002.
"Liberalism was failing. If I'd been German and not a Jew, I could see I might have become a Nazi, a German nationalist. I could see how they'd become passionate about saving the nation. It was a time when you didn't believe there was a future unless the world was fundamentally transformed."
He once said he was "lucky - yes, lucky enough - to live in Berlin before Hitler came to power."
"And if you don't feel that you are part of world history at that time, you never will."
As a student in Berlin, Hobsbawm informed his schoolmaster that he was a communist and that a revolution was needed.
"He asked me a few questions and said, `You clearly have no idea what you're talking about. Kindly go to the school library and see what you can find,'" Hobsbawm said in an interview broadcast by the BBC in 2012. "And then I discovered The Communist Manifesto, and that was it."
In 1933, he moved to London, where he found life boring.
Britons "didn't grasp this extraordinary end of the world atmosphere, but in Berlin you had it, and you thought you had to do something about it," Hobsbawm said.
During World War II, Hobsbawm was assigned to an engineering unit which introduced him, for the first time, to the working class.
"I didn't know much about the British working class, in spite of being a communist. But actually to live and work among them, I thought they were good eggs," he said in a BBC radio interview in 1995.
He approved of their "solidarity, a very strong feeling of class, a very strong feeling of being together, a very strong feeling of not wanting anybody to put them down.
"But alas, they were not democrats. They did not believe they were as good as the next man," he said.
Hobsbawm's first book, "Social Bandits and Primitive Rebels," published in 1959, was a study of what he called "pre-political social agitators," including Sicilian peasant leagues, city mobs and bandits, an early example of his interest in the structural history of working-class organizations.
The same year he published "The Jazz Scene," using the pseudonym Francis Newton, and writing about jazz continued to be an outlet.
"He defined the term `intellectual polymath,'" Julia Hobsbawm said, adding that she'd asked him last week what advice he would give his grandchildren.
"He said he would like them to be curious. Curiosity was the biggest asset anybody could have."
He also recommended three books: Fyodor Dostoyevsky's "Crime and Punishment," the poetry of W.H. Auden, and the "Communist Manifesto," a final recommendation she said he delivered "with a twinkle in his eye."
Hobsbawm defended his allegiance to the Communist Party as born of hope, of ignorance and a fear that leaving the party might be seen as an attempt to secure some advantage.
"I belonged to the generation tied by an unbreakable umbilical cord to hope of the world revolution and of its original home, the October Revolution, however skeptical or critical of the" Soviet Union, he wrote.
But in an interview on the BBC's "Desert Island Discs" in 1995, Hobsbawm said he had been disillusioned by a visit to the Soviet Union shortly after the death of Josef Stalin in 1953.
"I still believed in the movement, but I had stopped being a militant for a very long time. As it were, from about 1956 I carefully recycled myself as a sympathizer rather than a militant," he told the BBC.
Hobsbawm was appointed a lecturer at Birkbeck College in London, spending his entire career on the faculty and eventually being appointed president.
In 1998, he was made a Companion of Honor, a rare award for a historian, placing him in the ranks of luminaries Stephen Hawking, Doris Lessing and Sir Ian McKellan. It is limited to 65 living people at any one time.
Hobsbawm was first married to Muriel Seaman in 1943; they divorced in 1951. In 1962 he married Marlene Schwarz.
He is survived by Marlene, two sons, a daughter, seven grandchildren and one great-grandchild.
Associated Press writer Raphael Satter contributed to this report.


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Science for Hire: Why Industry's Deep Pockets May Be Depleting the Last of Our Fisheries
This story first appeared on Public Trust Project.
It's sunset in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, a time when the little town's handful of shops board up for the night, and the lights click off at no fewer than six marine research institutes.
But at the far end of the town, one block from the churning Atlantic, 10 weary scientists sit around a big square table arguing about cod. They've been at it since 8 a.m.. Each has blocked two weeks in his or her calendar for this single purpose.
The group is meeting at the Woods Hole Aquarium, the oldest saltwater aquarium in the country, which also houses office space for 45 federal scientists working for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). There are no cod fish to be seen in the aquarium's tanks. There aren't many cod in the ocean either, compared to historic levels, and it is on this point that the scientists are squabbling.
It's not that they all disagree. In fact, there is consensus on most points among nine NOAA scientists who are attending the meeting. Their job it is to analyze fish populations in New England waters for the federal government – among them cod, pollock, and flounder.
But one prominent dissenter withholds his consensus vote: Doug Butterworth, the lone representative of the fishing industry at the session.
Butterworth is a renowned scientist based at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. He's been lauded for his extensive contributions to the science of fishery management in many different countries. But he also has a controversial side job: he's employed by commercial fishermen in the Gulf of Maine, who fly him into town every now and again to wage scientific war on the NOAA biologists.
It's a role that has gained him some notoriety. "Doug seems like he's got a retainer up here," said Dr. Liz Brooks, a NOAA fisheries biologist who has worked on measuring pollock and cod populations.
Cod is an iconic species. Fishermen began harvesting them in the 17th century, when the fish were so abundant in New England it was said that you could walk across the sea on their backs. Over the centuries, cod's abundance made it what Paul Greenberg called a "workaday fish," in his lovely book Four Fish. Cod became a common, plentiful source of protein for the working class.
By the 20th century, innovations in fishing technology led to the rise of giant, industrial factory ships, which began to displace small-scale cod fleets, and a new era of overfishing was born. In the mid 1990s, scientists feared the cod population would collapse altogether due to extreme fishing pressure.
Finally, the government made the tough call to close Georges Bank to commercial cod fishing in 1994. The waters – an elevated shelf of sea floor in the Gulf of Maine – were once among the most productive fishing grounds in the nation. Since then, portions of Georges Bank and the Gulf of Maine have reopened to cod fishermen, but fishing pressure is just one-third of what it was 15 years ago. Even so, fishermen have been engaged in an elaborate dance with NOAA to prove that there are plenty of fish in the sea for the taking. Doug Butterworth has been a key part of their strategy.
Butterworth's tactic is always the same: to challenge the notion that fish populations are as small as the government says they are, helping to ward off regulations that reduce the amount of fish that industry is permitted to take from the sea. To understand how he operates, one must dig into the complex details of fisheries science – a science that holds profound ramifications for the future of fish in our oceans.
Just over a year ago, in October 2011, this same group of NOAA researchers made a startling discovery. A newly completed computer model (called a "stock assessment") indicated that the cod population in the Gulf of Maine had fallen so dramatically that even a complete moratorium on cod fishing would not allow the population to rebuild by 2014 -- the cutoff date mandated by federal law.
That year, commercial cod fishermen had hauled in approximately 8 million pounds of cod from the muddy bottom of the Gulf of Maine. Those working fishermen feared that the finding that cod stocks were perilously low would all but put them out of business by triggering regulations severely curtailing the amount of fishing allowed.
The scientists were surprised by what they found. A previous stock assessment, completed in 2008, had identified a cod population on the upswing – in fact, cod had been held up as an example of a fishery well on the way to recovery after near collapse. But between 2008 and 2011, 48 million pounds of fish had seemingly vanished.
To make sure the computer model wasn't erring, Michael Palmer, the head NOAA scientist for the 2011 stock assessment, spent six months running the numbers. "It was by far the best stock assessment I've ever seen," said Jud Crawford, science and policy manager at the Pew Environment Group. "Mike Palmer did every conceivable analysis."
Palmer realized that a few lucky trawls by government boats surveying the Gulf of Maine in the early 2000s had given NOAA a misleading impression of the health of the cod population. The trawl nets had mysteriously filled with juvenile fish who were expected to build into a healthy, bountiful "year class" of adults. But they never did.
The New England groundfishing industry – the group of companies that harvest fish inhabiting the deep, chilly Gulf of Maine waters that stretch from Cape Cod to Nova Scotia, were not pleased with the findings.
"I'm telling you, it's out there," cod fishermen Russell Sherman told the New York Times. "We've had no problems locating codfish."
"We don't trust your data," New Hampshire charter boat fishermen Bill Wagner explained to regulators at a meeting that was reported on by the Associated Press.
Facing the possibility of potential restrictions to their harvest, industry representatives took action. Butterworth appeared at the cod meetings bearing an alternate computer model -- one that projected nearly 40 percent more cod in Gulf of Maine waters than the model run by the NOAA scientists. His participation was commissioned by the Northeast Seafood Coalition and the Associated Fisheries of Maine.
Butterworth used a statistical strategy called "dome shaped selectivity" -- fisheries jargon for a model that assumes that the largest, most fecund animals escape capture by commercial fishermen, and therefore are not factored into the models run by government scientists. This in turn raises estimates of the number of fish in the ocean – a very good thing if you are a commercial fisherman trying to avoid regulations.
"With dome shaped selectivity, you are assuming that there are older fish out there, so the model creates them. But if you're wrong, you are saying the stock is in much better shape than in fact it is," said Dick Brame of the Coastal Conservation Association. "Dome shaped selectivity is the du jour way to influence stock assessments."
Because Butterworth's 2011 cod model found more cod fish than NOAA's model, the scientists had to come to a consensus. Industry participation in the scientific process is permitted under the Magnuson Stevens Act, which enables cooperative research among scientists, fishery managers, educational institutions, and stakeholders.
Building a consensus among participants is not mandated by the law, but it adds to the credibility of the scientists' report. Dr. Paul Rago, a NOAA fishery biologist who supervises the New England groundfish assessments, says that it's "something that you desire to have as a way of providing scientific advice to the [fishery] managers."
Consensus wasn't easy to come by.
NOAA scientists spent a week forming a fragile scientific agreement with Butterworth. Collectively, they decided to use the government's model, but they would employ some of Butterworth's dome-shaped selectivity – effectively agreeing to generate more cod. Initially, Butterworth agreed to the compromise, and a report was drafted with preliminary recommendations to the New England Fishery Management Council, the body that regulates cod and other species in the Gulf of Maine.
Shortly after, Butterworth reneged on the consensus agreement. He distributed a paper to New England fishery managers that made a case for greater dome selectivity, among other modifications to the model.
Normally, when a stock assessment is completed, it goes through a rigorous peer review process. A selective group of independent scientists from around the world spend a week in Woods Hole at NOAA's Northeast Fishery Science Center, learning about the computer model and evaluating whether it accurately models the number of fish in the sea. Only when the peer reviewers sign off on the assessment do fishery managers set regulations, such as limiting the amount of fishing. It's not taken lightly since those kinds of decrees can affect the livelihoods of fishermen.
This time, the rules of engagement were ignored. Fishing industry allies pounced before the peer reviewers had reached a verdict on the cod assessment. Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts issued a press release calling on NOAA to "immediately conduct a new assessment" with "complete information that has been developed with the consent of all stakeholders."
Days later, the peer reviewers completed their final report – and NOAA's assessment stood as the best available science: "The panel unanimously recommends that the results of the Gulf of Maine cod stock assessment be used for management of this stock," they wrote.
But it didn't matter – enough doubt had been raised over the validity of the science. Nineteen New England lawmakers, including seven U.S. House members and five Senators addressed the Secretary of Commerce, asking that NOAA prioritize further research that considers "the analysis provided by Drs. Butterworth and [Rebecca] Rademeyer." (Rademeyer is Butterworth's associate).
Ultimately, the lawmakers got their wish. NOAA leadership instructed its biologists to redo the stock assessment in 2012 – two years earlier than scheduled, at a considerable price to the American taxpayer. Stock assessments cost upwards of $200,000, according to Dr. Rago.
In the meantime, the New England Fishery Management Council decided to cut the harvest of cod by just 20 percent, from 17 million pounds to 14 million pounds. NOAA had recommended a 70 percent decrease in catch in order to preserve Gulf of Maine cod and its ability to replenish itself.
In May 2012, Michael Palmer began preparing a new stock assessment. At the end of the months-long process, his findings remained virtually unchanged.
Five months later, in October, Butterworth arrived on Cape Cod, where he and the NOAA scientists began their two-week long working group on the state of the New England cod fish.
On day one of the meeting, Jim Weinberg, chairman of the stock assessment workshop process at NOAA's Woods Hole facility, issued parameters to the scientists aimed at minimizing conflict. "The hope is that you will arrive at a consensus," he said, glancing briefly at Butterworth. "This is a sequential peer review process. It doesn't work well if we go to them bringing them two, three, or four different opinions."
Butterworth wasted no time in responding. "Legitimately, there can be more than one defensible assessment," he said. "There can be multiple views each indicating a different [regulatory] action. Are we going to get into that?"
There was a titter among NOAA employees in the room. "We generally don't resort to voting or anything like that," Weinberg said firmly. "The scientific process is typically one of consensus. That means a number of people think it's the right thing to do, and some group of people can live with it."
Then they dove in. Palmer presented his model, took questions from the group, and Butterworth went over his alternate model, which used dome shaped selectivity to show a higher "biomass" of cod in the ocean.
"My concern is the thing that's driving the dome selectivity is this period when you have almost no data. You have almost no information for these older ages of fish," Dr. Dvora Hart, a stock assessment scientist with NOAA's Population Dynamics branch, argued in response.
In an interview later that day, Hart told me that Butterworth has typically been hesitant to divulge the methods he uses to demonstrate dome shaped selectivity, and project more fish. "He doesn't like to show the data," she said. "He says you only interpret data through the model. I'm a scientist, I want to first look at the data."
"It irritates me how much time we have to waste with Doug. He talks a lot and its purposeful, so other people won't talk as much. People don't want to cut him off because the industry will scream at them that they don't get heard," Hart said.
At the end of two weeks, Butterworth refused consensus.
Without an agreement, NOAA must send its report to peer review with both the government's model and Butterworth's model on the table. The peer review is scheduled to take place in December; it is unclear what will happen when the reviewers confront two models. "It's only happened once before," said Dr. Rago. "If you don't reach consensus it gets a little murkier." The peer reviewers will either have to choose one model themselves, or the regulatory process will be in deadlock without a single model to serve as the "best available science."
Like an expert witness in litigation, Butterworth has used these tactics before – with great success. To the biologists who work at NOAA's Woods Hole laboratory, he's a regular presence at stock assessment meetings for pollock, white hake, yellowtail flounder, and more. He is always pushing dome shaped selectivity, that magical maneuver that produces a greater amount of fish.
"Doug shows up looking for domes," said Dr. Brooks. "I joke that he has to declare his domes before entering the country."
When fishing is permitted at reasonably high levels, there is little reason for industry to develop its own science. The moment that government science begins to show a population trending downward, however, that can change – quickly.
Recently, Butterworth was hired to present alternate science for menhaden, a keystone species in the Atlantic Ocean that is the main source of food for dozens of important marine predators. A stock assessment from 2010 found that the menhaden stock is at its lowest point on record – just 10 percent of menhaden remain compared to historic levels.
Butterworth was brought on beginning in 2011 by Omega Protein, a company that nets nearly half a billion pounds of menhaden each year. Recently, he has been meeting with fishery managers serving on the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC), the agency that regulates the menhaden fishery, which is preparing to make a critical decision about whether to limit the menhaden harvest this coming December.
At these meetings, Butterworth has submitted a paper entitled "Is Overfishing of Atlantic Menhaden Occurring?" which argues that there is a "clear and sound statistical justification for the introduction of domed selectivity" – meaning there's more fish out there than you think. Evidence for using the doming is not just statistical, the paper argues, "it is a reflection of emigration of the older menhaden outside (primarily to the north of) customary fishing grounds."
"Talk about making decisions with limited data," said Lynn Fegley, the associate director of Maryland's Fisheries Service, who sits on the ASMFC and has met with Butterworth. "What this hinges on is the idea that there are fish in the northern waters."
There are no data showing that menhaden are present in northern waters, save for an aerial study conducted by Dr. James Sulikowski, another scientist hired by Omega Protein, who found a limited number of menhaden schooling in the north. Sulikowski himself told me that his research would have to continue for a number of years before it would be statistically significant.
Butterworth's interventions have had an impact.
In the case of pollock, dome shaped selectivity has translated into huge increases in the quotas allowed for fishermen. In 2010, NOAA scientists presented a stock assessment model that found some limited dome selectivity in the pollock fishery. "Butterworth came in with really high domes and extremely high abundance," said a NOAA biologist who worked on pollock. The New England Fishery Management Council chose Butterworth's version of the dome, which enabled the agency to increase catch limits, or quotas, for pollock by 600 percent.
But data suggest that those huge increases in quotas haven't translated into more fish harvested by industry.
As of Oct. 31, the mid point of 2012 fishing season, pollock fishermen had caught just 28 percent of their allocated Gulf of Maine pollock quota. Cod fishermen had caught 25 percent of theirs, according to data collected by NOAA.
"The most likely explanation for this is that fishermen simply aren't finding the fish." Michael Conathan, director of ocean policy at the Center for American Progress, wrote on his organization's website.
Butterworth defends the right of commercial fishing interests to have a seat at the table.
"Given that I represent industry I feel I am obligated [to speak up] in discussions if a feature that I believe is of importance and is relevant to industry interest is being overlooked. If I am there as a representative of industry I will make sure that it is on the table," Butterworth told me in a phone interview.
"There is a line in this game between what's acceptable and what's unacceptable and I think I have stayed in the bounds of what's acceptable," he said.
He cited his work for the government of South Africa, in which he has had to defend the government's position against private industry. "I've had my own battles with industry consultants," he admitted.
Does Butterworth's outsized role in Atlantic stock assessments fundamentally undermine good science? Because biologists involved in the process strive for consensus, Butterworth's flair for casting doubt on the work of government scientists means that he enjoys near veto power.
Some NOAA employees have questioned whether industry involvement complicates their efforts to conduct research that would ultimately improve the stock assessments in the long term.
"If I had time I would do research, and look at more robust ways to capture uncertainty in the assessment models. That has never happened because there's always a crisis," said Dr. Liz Brooks. "Someone is always saying 'your models don't work, do the same assessment over with same data.'"
"My job is to make sure that the fishery is sustainable. My job is to make sure that 10 years from now, there is a fishing industry," Michael Palmer, the lead scientist for the cod assessment, told me. "Right now we're on a treadmill where we are constantly doing stock assessments. There's very little time to progress in the quality of science."


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I felt like following up on Kate's question. There were some good motivational answers there.
Given a pair of factors M < N, there is a standard way to construct a 2-category whose objects are M and N, whose morphism categories are the categories of bimodules, and whose composition is described by some kind of Connes product. If I restrict to the endomorphism category of M, I get a monoidal category structure, but I don't know how to say anything about it. Here's a barrage of questions:
- When people talk about fusion categories coming from subfactors, are they referring to the endomorphism category of one of the factors?
- How are the endomorphism categories of M and N related? Are they equivalent? Are they Koszul dual?
- Does the Jones index say something concrete about the category, like Frobenius-Perron dimension? (How does one compute Jones index, anyway?)
- How do people go about constructing exotic subfactors? Do they just arise in nature? I'm totally okay with pointers to references here.
- (bonus)
I should get a braided tensor structure from a net of factors on a circle. Is this the center of the fusion category, and is it in the literature?
Edit: Based on the (fantastically illuminating) responses, it seems that my bonus question doesn't make sense, because the M-M bimodule fusion category depends on the choice of N in an essential way. Maybe the phrase "conformal defect" should be used somewhere. If I come up with a suitable replacement, I'll present it as a separate question.


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Brown, Hallie Q.
The subject of this sketch is a picturesque and interesting personage of 108 years of age.
Elizabeth West Gross, familiarly and affectionately known as "Grandmother Gross" was born in New Liberty, Owen County, Kentucky, October 7, 1817.
When three years of age, her mother was sold for debt to Dr. Gayle, New Liberty. There she lived until she was twenty-one, when she married Peter Herndon Gross.
"Granny Gross" is the mother of five children, has fourteen grandchildren, and seventeen great-grandchildren. Her youngest son and last child, nearing seventy years of age, died recently in Pittsburgh, Pa.
During all of her years before the Civil War, "Granny Gross" never left the old plantation, and when freedom came she lived with the daughter of her former mistress, Mrs. Hallum, who lives with her daughter, Mrs. Russell Reville.
Grandmother Gross has been and is yet a great traveler. She has made ten visits to Washington, D. C., some of which were to inaugurations. She has seen many notable persons among whom were Abraham Lincoln and James Buchannon.
She tells of the Indians who often passed her home in great numbers, going to school which was taught by old Col. Dick Jackson. Oft-times they would stop and she gave them food.
She remembers clearly the night of November 13, 1833, when the stars fell as thick as hail.
Sometimes when "Granny Gross" is in a reminiscent mood she will sing snatches of old campaign songs, popular during the Harrison and Tyler and Polk campaigns, to the great delight to her listeners and her own enjoyment.
Grandmother Gross possesses few characteristics peculiar to old persons. She has not taken any medicine in ten years, has recently completed three beautiful silk quilts and crocheted several sets of mats. She seldom uses glasses.
On the occasion of her 106th birthday, October 7, 1923, a noted local baker made and presented to her a handsomely decorated cake mounted by 106 candles.
There was never a more faithful follower of Isaak Walton than is "Granny Gross." Only last September she spent an afternoon fishing at her favorite spot.
A few years ago, she made a visit to the home of her former owner's daughter who is past seventy. Upon her arrival there she found a very sick member of the family. The trained nurse in charge proved incompetent and was forthwith discharged. Then "Granny Gross," at the age of 96, was given the case and the patient recovered. In her prime, she was unsurpassed as a nurse.
Even now at her advanced age, she is wonderfully active and requires the aid of neither crutch nor cane to climb a long stairway to her bedroom.
The Sunshine Club, a charitable club of Urbana, has for several years made Grandmother Gross the guest of honor at its annual dinner given for the elderly women of the city. She looks forward to this event with the delight and happiness of a child.
She makes her home with a grand daughter, Mrs. John Kennedy, of Urbana, Ohio.


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I've had enough bad news. Bowie. Rickman. Killing off Alice Morgan. Fucking aggravated my migraine and already anxious disposition. Life's never fair, but go tell someone else. I'm still waiting for things to even out. But the man who shares my flat says that we'll only be seeing more deaths, now that we're in our forties, and some closer to home. Having no parents, I grew up as an appendage to a coterie of aunts and uncles, who are in their fifties and sixties. Fuck.
Hauled my fat bottomed girl out of bed, got on my moped, and challenging both migraine and writer's block, sat at a cafe with my laptop. Black coffee, please, yes, no milk. Triggers a migraine. Something I've only just figured out. So no more cappuccinos. 2016 is a fuck up so far, but I'm not going to self-pity. I'm writing. Will commence the rescue of half finished stories trapped in the drafts folder.
For Bowie and Rickman. And Alice Morgan.
art by Marina Capdevila


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Gonna Be A Tough Year
This story appears in the January 2009 issue of Entrepreneur. Subscribe »
The last year of this decade is shaping up to be the most challenging in a long time for entrepreneurs. A range of statistics, from credit availability to consumer spending, appear to point toward a 2009 that will be, if not a train wreck, at least a time for caution. Economists tracking the indicators say that entrepreneurs have plenty of cause for concern, although not all the indices are negative.
Perhaps the most telling statistic is the sharp increase in the number of business owners planning to reduce business and capital expenses. In August 2008, 49 percent said they intended to cut back, and by October, that figure had risen to 69 percent. "That's huge," says Alice Bredin, a small-business market researcher and advisor to OPEN from American Express Small Business Monitor. "That's a lot of businesses not spending."
Entrepreneurs' lurch toward conservatism appears well-founded, according to many economists who see 2009 shaping up as a year of recession. Official definitions of recessions vary, of course. And recessions often aren't declared until the crisis has passed and growth has resumed. But that's no reason to be sanguine about the likelihood of a full-fledged downturn this year. "I think it'll be deep and serious," says Bud Conrad, chief economist at investment research firm Casey Research.
A continuing credit crisis may have the strongest negative impact on 2009. Data collected by the Federal Reserve Board indicate that bank loan officers are tightening credit standards for small-business lenders at a rate not seen since before the recession of the early 1990s. For small businesses counting on loans and lines of credit, that's very serious news, indeed. "I don't want to tell these guys how bad it's going to be," Conrad says. "Some will go out of business."
of senior bank loan officers reported that they recently tightened standards for small businesses seeking loans during the second quarter of 2008. That's an all-time high since record keeping began in 1990.
(Source: "The July 2008 Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey on Bank Lending Practices")
Not all the news is bad, though. It appears that many businesses have cut costs fast enough to overcome the slump. Filipponi's figures show that those businesses' operating margins have increased over the same 12 months. "My guess is that they're finding ways to cut back," he says. "That's important, because it's going to be harder for them to borrow. So it's important to have strong cash flow from operations to fund growth or even to stay in business."
And not every sector will be equally affected. The hard-hit finance, insurance, real estate, residential construction and entertainment industries have all seen sales decline, according to Sageworks. But sales for utilities and educational, health-care, professional and technical services are all on the upswing. "That makes sense," Filipponi says, "because those are industries where there's a need."
While recent bad news rivals any seen since the 1930s, it's unlikely that this contraction will be quite that bad. "This is very different from the Great Depression," says Conrad, "because the government bailout is much bigger." Along with the government's willingness to act, deposit insurance and lower trade barriers represent major economic distinctions between today and the Depression era.The massive government intervention could spell a return to inflation. Conrad expects just that as the economy begins to improve late this year. That should help revive the housing and residential sectors and give entrepreneurs a chance to raise prices. But getting there may not be easy. "To survive in this environment requires extreme caution," Conrad says. "Batten down the hatches."


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Today's article is all about time – a commodity that can be in short supply in business, both small and large.
Let's start with how much time is spent in the business compared to ON the business. Business owners and managers all recognise that they need to spend time ON the business (planning, strategy, marketing and other administrative tasks) and now they need to add another bow to their string by managing their social media presence.
"My goodness! I don't have time to waste on Facebook / Twitter /Pintrest / Google+ etc" are the words most commonly used. 'Wasting' time on social media is the first hurdle to get over. Time spent on social media marketing and communication is only wasted if it is not directed to the intended (and engaged) audience.
Knowing what content to post is half the journey, next is when to post it. Scheduling tools are very useful for a business' main tools but it doesn't mean schedule and forget. A business needs to check back for the interaction through the social media forums. This is where the conversations and online relationships with potential customers are forming. Check out this article from Social Media Connect about the popular and free scheduling Facebook tools.
Scheduling posts means that a business can set aside a block of time in a week and plan out the social media activity. It is very important to check back on the content that is planned in the event of a wider public occurrence (floods, fires, etc) to ensure that material is not seen to be insensitive or inappropriate.
How much time should be spent on social media communication? There is no definitive answer. Every business is different and has different needs. Points to consider are:
- How many social media platforms is a business using
- How much content do they have
- What interaction are they getting from their fans / followers
Some forums require more interaction – think Twitter and Facebook, others are less time sensitive. Trip Advisor and similar customer review sites should also be considered as social media.
Responding to feedback and comments is just as important as putting the original content out there. Potential customers like to see how a business has responded to good and bad reviews.
Setting aside small portions of the administrative day allows a business owner to check into social media and make the appropriate responses in a timely manner but does not consume hours of the day.
Planning out the content to match business events, marketing promotions, anniversaries and other highlights strengthens and streamlines the message going out. Potential customers know what it is the business is telling them and the message isn't getting lost amongst other 'noise'.
I hope you enjoyed this article, please share amongst your social networks.
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The Curse of Davros is the first story in the 2012 Sixth Doctor audio trilogy. It featured the return of Flip Jackson who had previously appeared in The Crimes of Thomas Brewster. During the closing moments of this story, she joins the Doctor.
Publishers summary
It's been a year since Philippa "Flip" Jackson found herself transported by Tube train to battle robot mosquitoes on a bizarre alien planet in the company of a Time Lord known only as "the Doctor".
Lightning never strikes twice, they say. Only now there's a flying saucer whooshing over the top of the night bus taking her home. Inside: the Doctor, with another extraterrestrial menace on his tail — the Daleks, and their twisted creator Davros!
But while Flip and the fugitive Doctor struggle to beat back the Daleks' incursion into 21st century London, Davros's real plan is taking shape nearly 200 years in the past, on the other side of the English Channel. At the battle of Waterloo...
to be added
- The Doctor - Colin Baker
- Flip Jackson - Lisa Greenwood
- Davros - Terry Molloy
- Jared Ramon - Ashley Kumar
- Napoléon Bonaparte - Jonathan Owen
- Captain Pascal - Rhys Jennings
- The Duke of Wellington - Granville Saxton
- Marshal Ney - Robert Portal
- Captain Dickson - Christian Patterson
- The Daleks - Nicholas Briggs
Cultural references from the real world
- On visiting the battlefield at Waterloo, Jared is reminded of the strategy-based video game franchise Command & Conquer.
- The upper half of a Dalek's casing is light enough for Flip to lift over Davros.
- There are several insights (from a human perspective at least) into Dalek psychology and physiology; there is an underlying anger almost childish anger that is part of the Dalek's psychology/physiology. The Daleks are always in pain.
- Davros orders the Supreme Dalek to increase its brain electro-stimulation by a factor of ten as a punishment.
- Davros orders a Dalek to self-destruct. Given that he and the Supreme Dalek are close to it when it does, this must not be a very violent self-destruction.
- Davros' Kaled brain patterns are similar to those of a Dalek.
Time Lords
- When Davros is in the Doctor's body, he is able to automatically 'share' the 'gift' of language translation with Flip and Jared despite them having never been inside the TARDIS.
- After her flat is destroyed by the Daleks, Flip laments that she will have to move back in her with mother and her boyfriend Nigel whom she considers "creepy."
- Flip has never had a solid grasp of history and claims that she was not even allowed to do it for her GCSEs. Consequently, her only knowledge of the Battle of Waterloo comes from the Swedish pop group ABBA's song "Waterloo". Upon meeting Napoleon only hours before the battle is to begin, she tells him of its outcome by quoting the song's opening lyric: "At Waterloo, Napoleon did surrender."
- Davros is in constant pain. The Doctor acknowledges that if there was a button on Davros' chair that could terminate his life, he would use it in an instant to end the pain.
- This is the second audio drama released in the main range to feature the Duke of Wellington as a character. The first was AUDIO: Other Lives in December 2005 in which he was played by Ron Moody. He does not actually meet the Doctor in either story.
- This is the first audio drama released in the main range to feature Davros since AUDIO: Terror Firma in August 2005 and the first overall since AUDIO: Masters of War in December 2008.
- With this audio drama, Colin Baker becomes the sixth actor to portray Davros. Coincidentally, he has played the sixth incarnation of the Doctor since 1984.
- This audio drama was recorded on 6 and 7 June 2011.
- Flip and Jared recall the events of AUDIO: The Crimes of Thomas Brewster, which occurred one year earlier in their personal timelines. Jared mentions that he still has D.I. Patricia Menzies' mobile phone number somewhere.
- The Second Doctor was also present at the Battle of Waterloo on 18 June 1815. In the course of the same adventure, he had extensive contact with both Napoleon and the Duke of Wellington. (PROSE: World Game) During his eighth incarnation, his companion Charley Pollard would later befriend the elderly Duke at the Great Exhibition in 1851. (AUDIO: Other Lives) Much earlier in his personal timeline, the First Doctor had met Napoleon on the Russian front in 1812 (AUDIO: Mother Russia), which Iris Wildthyme claimed to have done as well (AUDIO: The Panda Invasion, The Claws of Santa). Furthermore, the First Doctor's companions Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright had earlier been in Napoleon's presence in a tavern in Paris on 28 July 1794 but did not actually speak to him. (TV: The Reign of Terror)
- When Flip inquires after Evelyn Smythe, the Doctor tells her that she left the TARDIS in order to spend the rest of her life with "a chap called Rossiter." (AUDIO: Thicker Than Water)
- The Doctor tells Flip that Davros' life support chariot does not feature a button with which his life support can be deactivated. This would suggest that Davros has redesigned the chair since he first met the Fourth Doctor on Skaro. (TV: Genesis of the Daleks)
- The Doctor asks Davros if he was "expecting someone else." (TV: The Caves of Androzani)
- Napoleon Bonaparte is described as having "a genius for war". (TV: The Daleks' Master Plan)
- Although the Doctor does not come into contact with him, Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart's ancestor Major General Fergus Lethbridge-Stewart served as the Duke of Wellington's right-hand man at the Battle of Waterloo. (PROSE: The Scales of Injustice)
- The destruction of Flip's flat and the death of the humans who had been occupied by Daleks would be referred to as the Thames Mead Massacre and would be dealt with by Charlie Sato. (AUDIO: Mastermind)
External links
- Official The Curse of Davros page at bigfinish.com
- DisContinuity for The Curse of Davros at Tetrapyriarbus - The DisContinuity Guide


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Recreational anglers catching summer flounder in Delaware waters will be able to keep smaller fish this season when regulation changes take effect on Saturday, May 11. The changes allow anglers to keep four fish per day with a minimum size of 16 inches, with no closed season. Under the previous regulations, the minimum size for keepers was 17 inches.
In another change, the minimum size limit for black sea bass remains 12.5 inches, while the possession limit decreases from 20 to 15. For 2014, black sea bass season will run May 19-Sept. 18, and reopen Oct. 18-Dec. 31.
The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) approved a regional recreational summer flounder harvest limit that requires the states in the Delaware, Maryland and Virginia region to have identical summer flounder regulations. Delaware's regulatory changes provide added opportunities for anglers while managing the flounder population at a sustainable level.
ASMFC also approved measures allowing the continuation of a regional management approach for black sea bass intended to maintain the fishery at a sustainable level. Southern region states from Delaware to North Carolina are required to match the federal rules.
Recreational anglers who fish, crab or clam in tidal or non-tidal waters statewide must have a valid Delaware fishing license. A resident annual fishing license costs $8.50 for ages 16 through 64. Higher license prices apply to non-resident anglers. Anglers under the age of 16 and residents age 65 and older are not required to purchase fishing licenses in Delaware.
Most resident and non-resident anglers age 16 and older are required to obtain a Delaware Fisherman Information Network (F.I.N.) number. The free number is included as part of a Delaware fishing license purchase. License-exempt anglers, including Delaware residents 65 and older and individuals who do not have an individual license fishing on licensed boats, may visit www.delaware-fin.com or call 800-432-9228 toll-free to obtain their free F.I.N. number.
Delaware fishing licenses are sold online, at the licensing office in DNREC's Richardson & Robbins Building, 89 Kings Highway, Dover, and by license agents statewide. To find the participating agent nearest you, or to purchase a license online, visit Delaware Licenses. For additional information on Delaware fishing licenses, call 302-739-9918.
For more information on fishing in Delaware, click on 2014 Delaware Fishing Guide. The guide also is available in printed form at DNREC's Dover licensing desk, and from license agents throughout the state.
For more information about summer flounder or black sea bass regulations, please call the DNREC Fisheries Section at 302-739-9914.


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Payday 2: we show you how not to rob a bank
Payday 2 demands teamwork and proper strategy across all of its tense heists. VG247's Sam Clay and Pat Garratt have recorded their latest four-player session to show you how not to do them.
Warning: Pat swears often in this clip, and it's actually hilarious.
Part two is coming tomorrow morning so subscribe to our YouTube channel to make sure you see it first'. Stay tuned.
Do you think you guys can do better than our crew? Let us know below.
Payday 2 hits PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 on August 27.


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"Our Wooden Garden Products Will Make A Real Difference To Your Garden"
View our selection of fine garden windmills, exquisite watermills, refined
wishing wells, nutritious birdfeed and so much more, all available to buy online.
Choose from a large range of quality wooden items that are all handmade by craftsmen with years of experience.
Our range of windmills, wishingwells, planters, bird tables, bird houses and watermills will put the finishing touches to your garden design. These will make you "the envy of your neighbours."
We now also stock a fantastic range of birdfeed and bird feeders that is bound to have a stunning selection of wild feathered friends frequent your garden.
We are proud to be home to beautiful copyright designs such as the Tilburg Windmill, the Dorchester Bird Table, the Burgh Watermill, and the Happisburg Lighthouse, all pictured below.


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Young, Brigham
Young, Brighambrĭg´əm [key], 1801–77, American religious leader, early head of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, b. Whitingham, Vt. Brigham Young was perhaps the greatest molder of Mormonism, his influence having a greater effect even than that of the church's founder, Joseph Smith, in shaping the Mormon faith as it exists today (see Latter-Day Saints, Church of Jesus Christ of).
Sections in this article:
- Introduction
- Mormon Leader
- Early Life
- Bibliography
The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2012, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.
See more Encyclopedia articles on: Protestant Christianity: Biographies


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Craig Cutler
Granny Smith apples are ideal for this dish: Their sweet-tart juice complements the rich scallops, and they keep their shape when cooked.
- Yield
- Makes 4 servings
- Active Time
- 20 minutes
- Total Time
- 20 minutes
- 2 Granny Smith apples
- 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- 12 large sea scallops (about 1 pound), side muscle removed
- Kosher salt, freshly ground pepper
- 1 tablespoon unsalted butter
- 1/4 cup hearty sprouts (such as daikon or sunflower) or pea shoots
- Core 1 apple; cut into 1" cubes. Place in a blender with lemon juice and 1/4 cup water; purée until smooth. Strain juice through a fine-mesh sieve into a small bowl. Peel, core, and cut remaining apple into 1/4" cubes. Add to bowl. Set aside.
- Heat oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Season scallops with salt and pepper. Working in batches, cook scallops until golden brown and just cooked through, about 2 minutes per side. Transfer to a plate; tent with foil to keep warm.
- Add butter to skillet. Cook, scraping up browned bits from bottom of pan. Add reserved apple mixture and cook, stirring often, until juice is thickened and apple pieces are tender, about 4 minutes. Spoon over scallops; top with sprouts and season with salt and pepper.
Per serving: 240 calories, 11 g fat, 2 g fiber


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Pylos pī´lŏs [key], ancient harbor, Messenia, SW Greece, on a bay of the Ionian Sea. Excavations have revealed a great Mycenaean palace of the 13th cent. BC, perhaps the dwelling of King Nestor . Six hundred clay tablets were found there which were important in the decipherment of the late Minoan script (see Mycenaean civilization ). The modern town of Pílos, formerly known as Navarino, grew up on the south shore of the bay. The Bay of Pylos was the scene of an Athenian naval victory over Sparta in 425 BC and of the battle of Navarino (1827) during the Greek War of Independence.
The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2012, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.
See more Encyclopedia articles on: Ancient History, Greece


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THE KEY ESSENTIALS FOR LEARNING IN THE 21ST CENTURY: PROGRAMS AND PRACTICES by Paulina Cho A Dissertation Presented to the FACULTY OF THE USC ROSSIER SCHOOL OF EDUCATION UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF EDUCATION May 2012 Copyright 2012 Paulina Cho
Object Description
|The key essentials for learning in the 21st century: programs and practices
|Cho, Paulina
|Author email
|Doctor of Education
|Document type
|Degree program
|Education (Leadership)
|Rossier School of Education
|Date defended/completed
|Date submitted
|Date approved
|Restricted until
|Date published
|Advisor (committee chair)
|Gothold, Stuart E.
|Advisor (committee member)
Hocevar, Dennis J.
Bowman, Gregory
|The purpose of this case study was to generate new knowledge to learn about programs and practices that promote the acquisition of 21st century skills at a school. The study identified programs, pedagogical methods, and instructional practices of Charles Summon Elementary School that have contributed to the school's ability to prepare its students with knowledge and skills necessary for the life in 21st Century. ❧ Qualitative case study research methodology was utilized to accomplish the collection, analysis, and interpretation of the relevant data for the study. Documents were reviewed, observational field notes of site visits were taken, survey questionnaires and semi-structured, open-ended interviews were conducted to answer three research questions. Use of Bolman and Deal's four frames paradigm provided the theoretical support for the analysis and interpretation of the data gathered at the case study school. ❧ Data analysis uncovered four major themes to C.S.'s implementation of the global competence skills: a culture supportive of communities of practice and collaboration; effective leadership to carry out the school's vision and goals; a strong alignment of school's vision and goals to its programs and practices; and lastly, integration of technology to teach core curriculum. The study revealed that C.S. is organized around the key components of the Professional Learning Community (PLC) where it focuses on high levels of learning for all students through ongoing collaborations and supports to its teachers. Having to offer Primary Years Programme guided by transdisciplinary global themes with a strong emphasis on technology, this site is committed to deliver a 21st Century education to its students. Authentic activities such as inquiry-and project-based learning allowed for students to work collaboratively and cooperatively while sharpening their skills in communication, problem-solving, and creativity/innovation. The study identified some of the implications for school administrators and teachers. They are the essential elements of PLCs and integration of 21st century skills into core curriculum. Suggestions for future studies included focusing on other schools that are integrating these global skills to have deeper understanding of 21st century curriculum-programs and practices as well as its impact on student outcomes.
|21st century schools;21st century skills; globalization; global competence skills; professional learning communities; effective leadership; academic programs; instructional practices; collaboration; collaborative learning; project based learning; inquiry based learning; school culture
|Part of collection
|University of Southern California dissertations and theses
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|University of Southern California. Libraries
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|Cho, Paulina
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|The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the author, as the original true and official version of the work, but does not grant the reader permission to use the work if the desired use is covered by copyright. It is the author, as rights holder, who must provide use permission if such use is covered by copyright. The original signature page accompanying the original submission of the work to the USC Libraries is retained by the USC Libraries and a copy of it may be obtained by authorized requesters contacting the repository e-mail address given.
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|THE KEY ESSENTIALS FOR LEARNING IN THE 21ST CENTURY: PROGRAMS AND PRACTICES by Paulina Cho A Dissertation Presented to the FACULTY OF THE USC ROSSIER SCHOOL OF EDUCATION UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF EDUCATION May 2012 Copyright 2012 Paulina Cho


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Save the Date!
Spring Managed Care Forum
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Orlando, Fla.
The NAMCP Behavioral Health Institute (BHI) is pleased to recognize the
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Be sure to check out the study results of Verinata's Non-Invasive Prenatal Technology. Click here to view the press release.
Click here to check out the "Latest in Clinical Nutrition" DVD available for purchase now!


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After the marching band takes the field before Northwestern University football games on Saturdays this fall in Evanston, three drum majors run onto the field in their white-and-purple uniforms.
As the band's master of ceremonies introduces the band's leaders, Elisabeth Sladek from Crystal Lake is announced to more than 30,000 spectators at Ryan Field.
Sladek, and her two fellow drum majors, plant their maces into the ground and perform the traditional Big Ten backbend before the band plays their opening song.
A 2012 Prairie Ridge High School graduate, where she served as a drum major for two years, Sladek is a sophomore at Northwestern.
Sladek recently sat down with reporter Joseph Bustos to talk about being a drum major in a marching band.
Bustos: Why did you want to be a drum major?
Sladek: When I was 9 years old, my parents took me to my first Big Ten game, which was Northwestern of course, and I was watching the marching band ... and I saw the drum major run across the field and do all the performance stuff, and I was like 'Mom, I want to be like him one day.'
Bustos: Is it rare for someone who's a sophomore to be a drum major at Northwestern?
Sladek: I wouldn't say rare, but I wouldn't say it's the norm ... [Band director] Dan Farris told us it doesn't matter what age you are. ... It's not suppose to be seniority, it's by who can do the job the best.
Bustos: Being in the band is a heck of a time commitment. During the school year, how long are the typical practices?
Sladek: We practice Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, two hours a day. Thursday night is our later-night practices, and game day is all day. You have to block out Saturday. It's hard to juggle that with classes sometimes, but it's totally worth it.
Bustos: You were a drum major at Prairie Ridge. How is directing a college band different from directing a high school band?
Sladek: Don't get me wrong, I loved the Prairie Ridge band. They were wonderful people, but at the same time, in high school you have a range of people that are 15 to 18 years old. Musicianship-wise, they're not as advanced as they are in college. It's easier to direct a college band because everybody knows more about their instruments.
Bustos: Is there a favorite song you like to play?
Sladek: When I was playing "Moves like Jagger," because of the piccolo part.
Bustos: What's it like having your name announced, and you're high-stepping the entire time, in front of a crowd of more than 30,000 people?
Sladek: For the first time, completely nerve-racking, but also, it's an indescribable feeling.
It's probably one of the best feelings I've ever had. ... The energy of the crowd was so cool. Especially [the first game], being high school band day, the Crystal Lake Central Band was there. [When the emcee] announced "Elisabeth Sladek from Crystal Lake, Illinois," and I heard them go nuts. That was a big confidence boost.
Bustos: What's your style as a drum major?
Sladek: I'm still working on that. I try to give a lot of positive reinforcement because I know for me, it's hard to take negative criticism. ... We're all Northwestern students. We like to be really good at what we do. I always try to balance it out. 'You're marching too far on this, but you're keeping the line.' ... I like to think it's important to lead by example, so I try to be the best I could be.


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Why is the Citroen DS considered the most beautiful car of all time? What should be?
by, 05-14-2013 at 02:14 PM (370111 Views)
[QUOTE=Spray`;81847808]Cord 812
My position on the Cord 810/812 is well-documented. It is also on solid ground. The combination of sheer, perfectly proportioned beauty, the ground-breaking futurism of the design that also successfully avoided lookiing weird, as many visionary designs do, along with the trump card of the Cord being the virtual brainchild of one single human being, Gordon M. Buehrig, other than the 'oily bits", which makes this machine the masterwork of a virtuoso, places it at the top of the heap.
Dissenting opinions will be swatted down like drunken fruitflies. :laugh:


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Councils for Voluntary Service in the London Urban Zone
Below are the organisations that make up the Councils for Voluntary Service category. They are ordered by descending traffic rank in the local territory as detailed by Alexa. Where they have insufficient traffic to have a UK traffic rank the organisation is ordered by their global traffic rank and where there is insufficient traffic for even a global ranking, an organisation is just listed alphabetically. Finally where an organisation does not have an independent website they are ordered by their parent organisation's traffic rank. A quick and easy way to look up the Alexa traffic rank for a website is to visit the Chrome Web Store and to install the Alexa plugin to your copy of the Chrome browser.
These organisations administer the funding provided by the local authority to the voluntary and community sector. They also represent the voice of the sector in their area and facilitate partnership between third sector organisations and between these organisations and the wider public and commercial sectors. In 2005 the third sector in London had a turnover of £18,7000,000 and employed 250,000 people (6.8% of the workforce). Councils for Voluntary Service are sometimes joined by local Centres for Voluntary Action (in turn represented nationally by Volunteering England) and in a few instances are multi-authority organisations. They are represented by the National Association for Voluntary and Community Action, London Voluntary Service Councils, and, sub regionally by South London Councils for Voluntary Service.