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Big Think Interview With Niall Ferguson
Niall Ferguson
A conversation with the Harvard University historian.
Over a year ago
: What was your early history education like?
: When I was a schoolboy in Glasgow, I suppose I was treated to the usual smorgasbord of historical subjects that most British school children study. A few weeks of the Romans, a few weeks of ancient Britains, some Scottish history, and then it became a little bit more serious. The Wars of the Roses, the Reign of James the VI and I, what was then called the English Civil War, or Revolution, but these days they call it something much fancier like the British Civil Wars (plural). And I studied the 19th and 20th centuries at school too. I'm not sure all of these different things were terribly well connected, but I did find myself drawn more and more to the subject the older I got. And the turning point, I think was the year—and I'm guessing my age was 15 or 16—when I was studying Hamlet in English Literature, and the 30 Years War in history. Now the study of the play, Hamlet, is something that everybody should undertake, and I still have fond memories of the essay I wrote on the theme of death in Hamlet.
But when I was studying the 30 Years War, I was encouraged by my history teacher, Bonnie Woods, to go to the Mitchell Library, which is a wonderful library in Glasgow. And I went in, in search of books on the 30 Years War and was absolutely stunned to find an entire shelf of books on the 30 Years War; the first of which was by Friedrich Schiller, the great German
sturm und drang
dramatist and historian. And it was the realization that there were so many different ways of thinking about the 30 Years War as opposed to the one play of Shakespeare called Hamlet that shifted my attention from English to History.
: What is the value of historical perspective?
Niall Ferguson
: Historical study differs from a great many other things; say the whole realm of the social sciences for two reasons. Firstly, we're not engaged in model building. We're not trying to simply the world of human beings into some kind of mathematical model. Historians live and breathe the complexity of the past and we accept that there really is a sample size of one. There's only one human history and we can't rerun it in any laboratory, so we can't be engaged in a scientific endeavor. The second thing that history does is that it encourages that minority of human beings who are alive, I think it's only 7% of human beings who ever lived who are alive right now, to understand what the other 93% experienced in their time.
So, historians build a bridge backwards through the generations, and at the heart of our enterprise is the imagination. One has to imagine what it was to be in another time, in another predicament. And that active imagination is at the heart of the historical process. The great philosopher, R.G. Collingwood said, "We are engaged in reconstructing past thought on the basis of those remnants that other civilizations leave behind; the letters, the documents." That's really what history is.
So, this combination of understanding complexity and reimagining past life seems to me to be a tremendously valuable combination of skills. More reliable in my view than more formal forms of social science, as a way of understanding the futures (plural) because there is no such thing as the future singular. There's just multiple futures, and we all collectively get to choose, or at least we try to choose, and it's the combination of our decisions that produces the one future that happens.
I have become more and more convinced with every passing year, that as an historian, I'm in a stronger position to imagine plausible futures than somebody who is trained in another discipline. At least some of which has happened to the last—the dead 93% of humanity just gives me more scenarios to draw from. Trying to think about the futures requires a certain amount of thinking by analogy, and if all you've got to go on is your own lifetime experience plus some model, I think you're likely to get it wrong, whereas with historical understanding of past scenarios, you're probably going to be better at visualizing the futures than the competition. And that, I think, is an extremely powerful for the study of history, not just by people who want to be professional historians, but also by people who want to be good citizens, good decision-makers, good scenario-builders.
: What is dangerous about saying: "This time is different?"
Niall Ferguson:
My colleague at Harvard, Ken Rogoff, and his co-author, Carmen Reinhart have identified the four most dangerous words in the English language as "this time is different." In their book of that title, which has the subtitle "Eight Centuries of Financial Folly," they show how often human beings have persuaded themselves that they live in a special time and that the rules of the past no longer apply and therefore the price of housing, the price of stocks, you name it, the price of tulips, can rise forever. This illusion in the financial world has all sorts of analogues in other spheres. There are those that will assure you that we live in a unique time with respect to communications, or with respect to military force.
Now my strong belief is that for all the technological change that has happened over the last 200 or so years, and particularly the technological changes of the very recent past, at this time, is not so different from previous times that we've nothing to learn from the past. Just to give one example, I'm having this conversation with an anonymous, to me unidentifiable audience through the miracle of a digital camera and the Internet. Now, that's certainly very different from the way in which Martin Luther communicated his ideas about Christianity to the German public in the early 16th century. The way that happened was through sermons which, of course, could only be heard by hundreds of people at the time, but were then communicated via the printing press and transcriptions to a much, much larger audience. The reformation came about in the 16th century because of a network effect. There was a viral quality to it and the printing press was to the reformation what the Internet is to our time.
Understanding how networks operate is a tremendously helpful thing for historians to be able to do. But the thing you learn is that the important thing about a network is not the speed at which the information travels, whether it takes days or nanoseconds is not the important thing. The important thing is that the network should exist and that it should have network properties that it should have network properties that should be positive externalities, if it reaches enough people not matter whether it's in days or nanoseconds that can change the world. So, for me, the most important thing to recognize is that although technology may speed the world up, and it may make networks much larger than they've been in the past, it doesn't change the essential property of a network.
: How do notions of time affect your work?
Niall Ferguson
: When I was a boy, and in fact to this day, my favorite television superhero was not Superman, or Batman, or Spiderman or any of these people with tremendous physical power, it was a gentleman named Dr. Who. A BBC character, who I think is unique, or perhaps shares the distinction with Sherlock Holmes alone with being an intellectual hero not distinguished by any physical prowess, but distinguished by his intellectual firepower.
Dr. Who is, and forever shall be, a time lord—that's his designation. He has the ability to travel through time, and he was my hero because it seemed to me that that ability to travel through time was something far more appealing than the ability to stop a locomotive, or hold up a falling tower, or whatever it was that Superman was able to do. Stop a speeding bullet. So, Dr. Who appealed to me because time seemed to me to be the really interesting thing to have power over.
The study of history is all about time. For example, in the project that I am currently working on—which is a provisionally titled "History of the West and the Rest," the rise of the west to predominance after around 1500—time plays a key role. The Chinese had clocks, elaborate hydraulic water clocks; well before west Europeans had anything like that. But when west Europeans began to build mechanical clocks, which they initially needed to get the timing of church services right, a revolution began which was characterized by the rapid dissemination of smaller and smaller timepieces. The Chinese had these huge clocks, they were pretty accurate, but they never had watches. They never had clocks that you could just put in your living room. And so, I'm fascinated by the technological revolution of the clock and the watch because, of course, that transformed the precision with which westerners could live their lives.
David Landes wrote a wonderful book on this, the great Harvard economic historian. But it's still a neglected classic. I wouldn't say it was absolutely essential to the way history is studied. But for me, clocks are crucial. I spent some time a few weeks ago in a shop in central London which specializes in antique clocks, grandfather clocks, those big ones that you see in old country houses and this certain kind of old fashioned living room, and had a wonderful time discussing with a clock enthusiast the different styles of clock that came from the different regions of the British Isles in the 17th, 18th, and 19th Centuries.
So, time is something that I have long been obsessed with. And I suppose I've come to realize that the power of time was one of the things that made the West ascend to dominate the rest for most of the last half-millennium.
: What gave rise to the West?
Niall Ferguson
: If you have been Dr. Who, if you were Dr. Who, and you took a trip in your TARDIS back to the year 1500, or 1400, somewhere round about the 15th century, you would have been very impressed by Beijing, probably the biggest city in the world at that time with it's clean, wide streets, it's dazzling palaces. You might also have taken a trip on the Grand Canal connecting it to Nanjing, the older imperial capital. You'd have been very impressed by what you might have seen at the Mughal Empire in India, you'd have been dazzled by the achievements of the Ottoman Empire in what is today Turkey. These great oriental empire in what is today Turkey. These great oriental empires would have really knocked your socks off. And if you'd have time to take in Peru, you'd have thought the Incas had something quite impressive going on. And the Aztecs in Mexico too. You'd then take a trip to London and you would have been very underwhelmed by this town—because it wasn't a city, it was quite small. And it was very smelly and dirty because the sanitation standards were way lower than in Asian cities. You wouldn't have been that impressed by the architecture, because apart from the Tower of London, most of it was pretty rudimentary. London Bridge was about the most impressive thing there.
So, you certainly would not have put money at that point on London and other West European cities becoming the dominant entities of the next 500 years. Something happened that empowered the ramshackled little monarchies of Western Europe to become the masters of the world; the economic masters, the technological masters, the political masters. Something made these little countries—they were little countries: Portugal, England, the Netherlands, and then some were somewhat bigger, Spain and France—something empowered these countries and enabled them, over a period of time, to establish mastery over the much larger empires of the east, as well as over the entire New World as they called it, the Americas.
And so I've been asking myself a lot for the last few years, what that was. And the course I've been teaching recently at Harvard had the title "Western Ascendancy, Mainsprings of the Global Power," which is a somewhat bombastic title, but gets to the heart of the matter. What was it that made the west dominate the rest? Why are the westerners superior to the resterners (if you will forgive that phrase)? And I've come to the conclusion that there were really six killer applications, killer apps, that originated in the West which it took ages for the rest of the world to download. And for the sake of brevity, I will tell you what the six were. Imagine bullet points.
So, number one was competition, both political and economic. To talk about capitalism misses the point that Western Europe also had phenomenal competition between multiple institutions in the political sphere too. Autonomous cities you really didn't find in the great Asian empires. But the fact that London was a semi-autonomous city in medieval England and that within London there were multiple corporations and guilds representing different crafts was really a very distinctive feature of that society. It was partly a consequence of the weakness of broad authority that there was no emperor in Europe as powerful as the Ming emperor of China. Charles V tried and ultimately failed to establish a monopoly of power, so competition is part of the story unquestionably.
The scientific revolution that happened in the 17th century is killer app number two. Newton had no peer, no competitor in the eastern world, much less in the Americas, although the Asian empire has mathematics to a very high level and astronomy that sometimes bled into astrology, they just didn't do the Scientific Revolution and were effectively offline when the Scientific Revolution happened as it did in western Europe with some traffic to North America.
Number three killer app, well one might say democracy, but I think that would wrong because most western political institutions were not democratic in the strict sense until relatively recently, 19th century, early 20th century. It's more that an idea of citizenship based on property ownership and representation took hold. First in the English-speaking world and then it spread. John Locke was in many ways the great theorist in this relationship between property and representation and the idea of some property-owning representative government spread from England to North America and then the United States found its most perfect form. When this became democratic, when the franchise was extended to non-property owners, democracy was much more likely to work where that foundation existed. It was the rule of law in a system where the law was made by property owners through a representative assembly. So, that's killer app number three.
Number four is modern medicine. Once the West figured out what caused cholera epidemics, or why plague spread, or what tuberculosis was, it had a huge advantage over the rest. And so in the last 19th century into the 20th century, there was a revolution in human life expectancy, which is entirely the result of advances in the realm of medicine. And the great empires of the late 19th century, early 20th century used this knowledge to good effect, but in a somewhat brutal way because inseparably allied with these medical advances was a pseudoscience of race that essentially legitimized western imperial power by asserting that non-western peoples were subordinate forms of humanity. That's the shadow side of this story I'm telling, which I want to emphasize because this is not a triumphalist story, it's an exercise in comparative history.
Killer app number five is the consumer society. The idea that everybody should have more than one set of clothes. And that sounds rather banal unless you're a teenager in which case you immediately get it. But it's hugely important, once you have clothing at the heart of your economy, textiles, textile factories, which were the key to the industrial revolution in England, and everywhere else, you need consumers too. And the big difference between spices and clothes—spices were the basis of the Dutch East India's Company's business and clothes, textiles, were the basis of the British East India's Company's business—is simple. The demand for clothes and spices, like nutmeg, is finite. It's quite inelastic. There's only so much you can consume a year. The demand for clothing is infinitely elastic. There is never enough in your wardrobe and it seems to be in most human lives.
And so textiles and the industrial revolution that accompanies the spread of the consumer society really represents killer app number five.
And finally, Max Weber had a brilliant idea about a hundred years ago, a little bit more that there was a Protestant ethic that generated the spirit of capitalism. Now, I think he was sort of half right about that because a work ethic clearly was something that differentiated the West from the rest through much of the period I'm talking about. Where he was probably wrong was attributing this exclusively to Protestantism because it turns out that many, many different religious cultures can get that work ethic. Jews had it roughly contemporaneously with Calvinists, and nowadays, of course, what we see is that work ethic spreading into all kinds of different civilizations most notably the Confucian civilization of China.
So, the argument is a six-part argument. There are six killer apps that give the West predominance over the rest over about 500 years. And the final question, of course is: is it over? Is the end of western ascendancy? And it seems quite plausible to think that it is because, after all, these killer apps are no longer monopolized by the West. The rest have basically downloaded them all... to varying degrees, but with a pretty high degree of success. And that means it's unlikely that the West will continue to occupy that position of extraordinary predominance that it had, say, 100 years ago when maybe 20% of people of the world lived in western empires, western societies, but they accounted for more than 50% of all global income. I think that's pretty much coming to an end now.
: What factors will determine the next phase of our collective cultural evolution?
Niall Ferguson:
It still seems plausible to me that these institutions I'm describing determine success or failure, at least in the realm of economic growth and political stability. The interesting thing is that the most rapidly rising, non-Western power of our time, which is the People's Republic of China, has adopted most, but not all of the killer applications. So they've certainly downloaded competition that the economy of China is a planned economy at core, but it has a market economy wrapped around that.
They have, of course, downloaded science, and there's no barrier to non-Western societies engaging in scientific research today.
Modern medicine, for sure, it was an interesting feature of communist regimes that they were quite good at using modern medicine to improve welfare for large populations.
The consumer society, well they're getting there. It's been a saver society until recent times, but it is now policy in Beijing to encourage consumption among ordinary Chinese and to make China less reliant on exports to Western consumers.
And as for the work ethic, well they have that in spades, its an extraordinary phenomenon that the people who work the longest hours in the world today are in fact in East Asia and not in the West.
The one killer app they haven't downloaded is, of course, our political model with its emphasis on private property rights and representation of the individual. And I don't think they're going to. It's pretty clearly policy in Beijing to have five out of the six off the menu, but not that crucial third killer app which ultimately produces democracy.
So, we're running an interesting experiment which is to see whether or not it is actually dispensable. If you're from Singapore, you think it is and it's clearly the orthodox view in East Asia today that you can have all these different aspects of modernity, you can have these Western institutions, but you don't need the political one. You can have it on the basis of enlightened authoritarianism. And I'll have to say I'm a little doubtful that that will turn out to be right because we ran this experiment actually within the West because we had free societies in the West and we had unfree societies. The West generated lots of alternatives to itself. One was communism and one was national socialism. And these alternatives failed, and pretty dismally actually.
It seems to me—and here I'm really following the work of the great Nobel laureate, Doug North,—the institutions of freedom, political freedom and economic freedom, are indispensable for an innovative society, that you can have science without freedom, but you probably can't have scientific innovation. You can replicate what they do in the Western laboratories, but are you actually going to have the real breakthrough? And I think you have to have the full range of freedoms to be as innovative as, say, the United States has been over the last 100 years.
: Can China continue without these democratic institutions?
Niall Ferguson
: Let's take another trip back in time. It's 1936 and you decide to go on a trip to the Soviet Union and you're welcomed by our hosts, and taken on a tour of some absolutely spectacular construction sites. Perhaps you go to Magnitogorsk, this sudden eruption of industrial architecture in the middle of nowhere. And you are deeply impressed by what you see. You see skyscrapers in Moscow city transformed, and you come back to New York and say, I've seen the future and it works. Of course, at that time, the capitalist democratic model looks pretty badly broken. You just past three years since the trough of the Great Depression and it's by no means clear in 1936 that the United States is out of economic trouble.
There's a great deal of unease about the way Western democracy functions. All over Europe, democratic regimes are falling because of a lack of belief in the democratic model, most notably in Germany.
Fast forward to now, you take the same trip; you go to Shanghai, maybe you go to Chongqing further up the Yangtze and you see most spectacular construction site and you come back and you say, I've sent the future and it works. It's just a few years since the failure of Lehman Brothers and the collapse of the Western financial model and wherever you look there is disquiet about the way the democratic process works. It's at its most acute in countries like Greece, but only because Greece is further down the line of fiscal crisis than the other western countries today.
So, there are reasons today why you might make the same mistake that George Bernard Shaw and Sydney and Beatrice Webb made when they went to the Soviet Union. What they got wrong was that they judged by the surface at the degree to which a truly alternative model had been established. They did not see, or chose not to look at the shadow side of Stalin's system, which of course, included a vast network of prison camps, the Gulag and an atmosphere of terror in which no individual, including members of Stalin's own family, could feel safe.
China today is not Stalin Soviet Union, by any means; the levels of coercion and terror are far lower, and the degree of economic freedom is far higher. But it is still a planned economy right at its core. Chongquing is not being built into the biggest and fastest growing city in Asia all by market forces, it's the result of a command economy run out of Beijing, and there is an absence of political freedom that is very real indeed for those who chose to criticize the system.
Now, we should therefore be careful what we wish for when we start applauding the Asian model and denigrating our own. I'm in the frontline of the people who are critical of the way the United States has handled public finance over the last decade. And it seems to me that there is an urgent need for radical reform in that area before we end up in a Greek-style mess.
But we've got to be really careful here to distinguish between epiphenomena, the way in which taxes are raised and public expenditures are managed, and the core phenomenon of our constitutional order based on individual liberty and free expression. That constitutional order is way, way more important than any of the outlying issues of fiscal reform. And it is a superior constitutional order than anything else available in the world today. And I still feel convinced that the experiment of organizing an industrial society without a representative form of government will fail, as it has failed everywhere else that it's been tried everywhere else because, as I've said, the Chinese are not the first to attempt breakneck industrialization without political freedom.
: How will the underlying weaknesses of the Chinese system play out?
Niall Ferguson
: A parallel that I've drawn recently—which isn't to everybody's taste—is between China today and Germany 100 years ago. Let me emphasize, 100 years ago. Not in the 1930's, in the 1910's. A hundred years ago, Germany was one of the most dynamic societies in the world. It had a rapidly growing economy; it was leaping ahead of Britain in terms of industrial innovation; it had, already by 1910, the best universities in the world, much better than the American universities at that time incidentally; and it was also a country filled with a self-confidence that was shading into arrogance. As Germany rose, the hegemony of an English-speaking empire, Britain's, was obviously called into question and that was something about which the Germans became more and more explicit.
Kaiser Wilhelm II was somebody who had an uncanny ability to put his foot in his mouth, but much of what came out of that mouth about Germany's ambitions to have a place in the sun, to have a world policy, a global policy, to have an empire and a Navy comparable in size to those of Britain, those were tings that ordinary Germans believed in too. Not all of them, but many.
When I look at China today, I see a similar combination of rapid economic growth, impressive innovation, social transformation, but also political system that doesn't want to change. That wants to essentially retain the institutions of 40 years ago, which was essentially what the Kaiser wanted too. And I also detect a real resemblance in the somewhat shrill nationalism that emanates from some parts of Chinese society, notably from relatively young Chinese. Its university-age Chinese who produce these rather mad patriotic videos whenever they feel that China has been slighted, whether it's over Tibet, or Google, or whatever.
So, there's a Wilhelmian quality to China that takes a historian to spot and they're doing Wilhelmian stuff. They're terribly interested in natural resources in Africa, check that box. They're building a much larger Navy than they've ever had before, check that box. They're somewhat stridently challenging the rise of an English-speaking empire to call the shots around the world, check that box. And so on. So, it seems to me that the big challenge that the United States faces is very similar to the challenge that Britain faced 100 years ago. It's a dynamic rival; it's a rapidly growing rival. It's starting to beat you on a number of different things, it's producing way more qualified engineers than you are. And what you don't want to admit to yourself is that this thing is not going to be in a comfortable symbiotic relationship with you indefinitely. Germany was certainly in that kind of a relationship with Britain in the 1870's and 1880's—trade between Britain and Germany flourished, there was all kinds of cultural exchange—but it's not a stable marriage.
If one rival is growing faster than the other, it is a rival, not a partner. And we are living in that transition today I think. It's not exact, historians work with rough analogies, not with perfect matches. And there are all kinds of differences in which the cultural difference if perhaps the most important. The cultural difference between the United States and China is vastly greater than the cultural difference was a hundred years ago between Britain and Germany. They even shared members of the same royal family as their monarchs. But I think if you look at the key elements, the relationship has much in common. The economic element, the strategic element, and above all, I think there's nationalist damage which is going to become more and more of a feature, I think, of relations between China and the United States.
: How will the U.S./China relationship evolve?
Niall Ferguson
: The two things to remember about the relationship between China and the United States. One is that the demographics are about to turn against China quite sharply. The Chinese, because of the one-child policy in the Mao years and subsequently have a really serious demographic imbalance between the generations. That is going to become a major problem as the proportion of Chinese aged more than 65 soars in the next two decades. They also have a huge gender imbalance. And there are some provinces in China where male children are 20% more numerous than female children because of selective infanticide and so forth.
The second point to remember is that the financial nexus between China and the United States is profoundly unstable. I've talked with my friend Moritz Schularick for three years now about Chimerica, the fusion of China and America in the economic sphere. And at the heart of that fusion was a kind of vendor finance where the Chinese lent us the money to buy their stuff. And they did this out of self-interest. At the same time, the Chinese accumulated vast quantities of U.S. dollar-denominated securities to keep their currency from appreciating. And that currency policy has produced a mountain of claims on the rest of the world. International reserves in excess of $2.4 trillion dollars, some 70% of which are in the U.S. dollar form. It's not stable because the Chinese don't want this mountain to get any bigger. They've come to terms with the fact that their currency must strengthen in the years ahead, and they're looking for alternative routes to go down. Because if they'd just stay on this course that they've been on in the last 10 years, it's pretty obvious what's going to happen. Their U.S. dollar denominated claims at some point are going to become worth much less because the obvious way for the U.S. to get out of its financial difficulties is for the dollar to weaken and foreign claims on the U.S. to become worth less.
So we are at a fork in the road: it's now. I heard a Chinese economist two weeks ago say, "Our policy now is to buy no more U.S. government securities and not to sell all that we have at the same time." Now if you think about what that means, the end of reserve accumulation by China, possibly a gradual winding down of Chinese exposure to U.S. securities, it means the end of a credit line to the United States that has been worth a awful lot to American consumers and American investors. It means that the Chinese support for the U.S. government bond prices is going. That means their price will drop, which means that U.S. interest rates will conceivably rise, and that of course, will act as a real dampener on U.S. recovery prospects when it happens. And I believe it is happening now.
So, the big problem for the U.S. is realizing that this relationship is unwinding. When I hear American policymakers talk about this, I still hear the same riff that I was hearing two or three years ago. "They need us as much as we need them." They can't dispense with us as an export market, so they're not going to risk destabilizing this relationship. I heard that just the other day at Harvard's Kennedy School. And it's profoundly complacent and wrong. The Chinese don't think of it this way, they see this as a marriage on the rocks and they are actively looking, if not for another partner, then certainly for a divorce from this somewhat unreliable and spendthrift American spouse.
: What will be the U.S.'s place in the world over the next 20 years?
Niall Ferguson:
As I said earlier, there are many futures and we don't know which one will happen. But there's no doubt that a quite probable future, looking ahead 10 or 20 years, has the United States as the waning empire crushed under a burden of debt accumulated in a relatively short period of time. No longer as economically dynamic as it's been in the past; perhaps also plagued by internal political dissention.
And on the other side, a China that appears to have found the magic formula to achieve 10% growth year after year. A China that is not only content with economic predominance, but starts to crave a strategic power, at least in the Asia-Pacific region that takes the form of a submarine fleet, aircraft carriers, deep-water ports. That future is a plausible one because similar things have happened in the past. And we would not be entirely surprised if an English-speaking empire began to wane, suffered from economic underperformance and was challenged by a rival empire to the East, which was achieving sustained higher growth rates.
It's one future, but I want to leave you with another future that is a little bit more cheerful. In this other future, the United States, because it still has a political institutional advantage, addresses its own internal problems, achieves quire radical fiscal reform, streamlines its tax system, cuts the entitlements that are about to bankrupt it, rejuvenates its politics, and embarks on a new era of optimism, propelled forward by the technological innovation and entrepreneurship that are still properties peculiarly strong in the United States.
If the United States can use its advantages, both political and technological—and indeed entrepreneurial—to grow its way out of this crisis that it's currently in, then the future is rosier for Western civilization. At the same time in this alternative future, China starts to bump up against the kind of weaknesses that Wilhelmine Germany also encountered. The social dissention in Wilhelmine Germany was really one of its defining characteristics. The Social Democratic party became the biggest party in the German parliament in 1912. And this was a Marxist party explicitly hostile to almost every aspect of the German regime.
So there's a sense in which one could imagine things going wrong in China and going right in the United States. History isn't one simple, predictable narrative. It isn't governed by the laws of physics or anything resembling them. There's a huge uncertainty about what happens in both of these countries, not to mention the rest of the world, which makes the study of history so fascinating. It's not linear, there isn't some nice predictable curve that tells you when America's power will decline and when Chinese power will ascend. It's a very non-linear, chaotic, complex process that we as historians get to study. And that's why when we talk about the future, we should correct ourselves and say, "futures" (plural) and here are the futures we have to choose from.
Recorded on April 19, 2010
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This international resource and service from the University of Illinois features concepts, issues, media and methods for human communications related to food and nutrition, farming and rural life, natural resources and the environment, renewable energy, natural fibers, rural development and other aspects of agriculture. Welcome to this interactive website and please check with us whenever we can help you identify and gather information.
510 Funk ACES Library
1101 S. Goodwin Ave.
Urbana, IL 61801
Jul 31, 2013
Issue 13-12
Welcome to ACDC News
If you are receiving this e-newsletter for the first time, it's a resource for professionals, teachers, students, researchers, and others interested in communications related to agriculture, food, natural resources, rural development, and related topics. Timely news? Yes, but more than that. It explores media, methods, issues, and trends from around the world, and may stir your thinking and creativity. In each issue you will see a sample of information coming into the Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, an open resource and service based at the University of Illinois, USA. Nearly 39,000 documents reflect journalism and communications about agriculture in more than 170 countries. We hope you both enjoy and find value in reading ACDC News.
Remembering "real life" in the digital marketplace
"More than 90 percent of the conversations about products, services, and brands that take place every day in America happen offline," report Ed Keller and Brad Fay in The Face-to-Face Book: Why Real Relationships Rule in a Digital Marketplace (Free Press, 2012). "Social media is big and growing," they explained, "but it is still dwarfed by the analog world in which people live and interact."
They cited research and case studies (including about a half dozen in the food sector) which prompted them to suggest:
You can read a review of the book on the Forbes website at: http://www.forbes.com/sites/groupthink/2012/06/11/facebook-or-face-to-face-the-real-world-social-network-still-triumphs/
Why "there's been very little adoption of variable rate technology."
Agricultural economist David Bullock says it's because many grain farmers started to say, "That's a pretty yield map. But how does it make me money?" Without full information, site-specific management is a financial loser, according to Bullock. Speaking in June at a symposium of the International Agricultural Trade Research Consortium in Seville, Spain, he reported that for many crops and applications, precision technology has not been profitable because of lack of full information. He reported results of an on-farm agronomic experiment using precision agriculture technology
Possible good news? Findings suggest that variable rate technology "can cheaply provide the information needed by VRT to be profitable."
You can view this presentation at: http://ageconsearch.umn.edu/handle/152371
My best advice for our next 100 years
Elizabeth Gregory North shared some key perspectives on June 14 when she received the 2013 Professional Award, highest recognition given by the Association of Communication Excellence in Agriculture, Natural Resources, and Life and Human Sciences (ACE) to one of its members. Her advice, offered during the Centennial Conference, included these insights:
Elizabeth is the department head of the Office of Agricultural Communications with the Mississippi State University Extension Service. She is a 20-year professional in communications and marketing with Extension and land-grant institutions. Among her contributions, she was cited for her work with the National Extension Branding Initiative. You can read her remarks here.
Evidence from Asia about mobile phones for rural learning and development
A journal article added recently to the ACDC collection summarizes results of learning-by-mobile (mLearning) projects in six developing countries of Asia. Researchers observed "important evidence of mobile phones facilitating increased access to education," but much less evidence about how mobiles promote new learning. Findings were mixed regarding the extent to which mLearning promotes new learning. Among the barriers observed:
You can read this article in the International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning at: http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/794/1487
Developing a scale to measure superstition in rural areas
You can get some guidelines in a Journal of Social Sciences article we added recently to the ACDC collection. Researchers M. M. Huque and A. H. Chowdhury constructed a 20-item scale to measure superstition among maize farmers in Bangladesh. It showed discriminatory power and proved reliable and dependable. They suggested it may have bearing in other countries whose social systems and level of development are satisfactorily comparable.
You can read "A scale to measure superstition" at: http://www.doaj.org > Search on title
Integrating local and scientific agricultural knowledge
We recently added to the ACDC collection a study that examined how information flows locally about horticultural practices—vertically across generations of growers and horizontally among growers and with change agents such as extension workers. It identified approaches and perspectives that may find applications beyond Argentina, where the study was based.
"This could enable greater integration between local and scientific knowledge, allowing for cultural and biological diversity," the researchers concluded. "For this purpose, it would also be necessary to create new mechanisms of communication between locals and western institutions tending to facilitate better comprehension and self-respect."
You can read this article in the Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine at: http://www.ethnobiomed.com/content/4/1/25
Communicator activities approaching
Honoring a worst agricultural novel
We close this issue of ACDC News with a tip of the hat to an agricultural novel recognized in the latest Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest. This annual competition, sponsored by the English Department of San Jose State University, challenges entrants to compose the opening sentence to the worst of all possible novels. We note with interest that the winner of the Science Fiction category featured gardening.
"As I gardened, gazing towards the autumnal sky, I longed to run my finger through the trail of mucus left by a single speckled slug—innocuously thrusting past my rhododendrons—and in feeling that warm slime, be swept back to planet Alderon, back into the tentacles of the alien who loved me." Mary E. Patrick, Lake City, South Carolina.
You can read all the 2012 winners, runners-up and dishonorable mentions at: http://bulwer-lytton.com/2012win.html
Best wishes and good searching.
Please pass along your reactions, suggestions and ideas. Feel free to invite our help as you search for information. Don't forget to follow us on Twitter @ACDCUIUC. And please suggest (or send) agricultural communications documents we might add to this unique collection. We welcome them in hard copy (sent to Ag Comm Documentation Center, Room 510, 1101 S. Goodwin Avenue, Urbana, IL 61801) or in electronic format sent to email@example.com

subset: commoncrawl


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Feb 19, 2013 at 6:46 am
North Dakota will enter the regular season stretch run ranked No. 6 in the latest national polls.
North Dakota (16-8-6, 11-5-6 WCHA) moved up one spot in both the USCHO.com and USA Today/USA Hockey Magazine polls despite having had last weekend off. UND will travel to 10th-ranked Denver next weekend in a critical WCHA series.
Quinnipiac remained the nation's top-ranked team for the second week in a row. Minnesota, Miami, Boston College and New Hampshire rounded out the top five in both polls.
Talk Show Host, Operations Manager


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Haresh Jani, MD, FACC
2575 Spring Arbor Rd
Suite 400
Jackson, MI 49203
- Residency: Internal Medicine, State University of New York at Brooklyn, New York, NY, 1991
- Medical School: NHL Municipal Medical College, Amdavad, India, 1981
Dr. Jani's areas of professional interest and expertise include coronary artery disease, cardiac arrhythmia, congestive heart failure, pacemaker implantation and defibrillator follow-up. He earned his medical degree from NHL Municipal Medical College in Amdavad, India, and completed a residency in internal medicine at Sheth KEM School of Medical Education and Research. At the State University of New York at Brooklyn, Dr. Jani completed both a second residency in internal medicine and a fellowship in cardiovascular disease. Dr. Jani is board certified with the American Board of Internal Medicine and the American Board of Cardiovascular Diseases. He is a fellow and member of the American College of Cardiology and is certified for nuclear cardiology procedures by the Institute of Nuclear Cardiology.


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|your week ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT
Naughty Nothings
All it takes to make a music video nowadays is a bunch of hedonistic pretty things who are a bit off the wall. Hose them down with fire-engine water hoses and add mudslings and whiplashing. Hindi pop music videos are not just off the kilter, they are off everything-sense, sanity, saris and skirts.
Throwing the lid off suppressed libidos, these videos follow the stale act of the innocent girl waiting to get her paws dirty. DJ Anuj's Kabhi Aar Kabhi Paar video makes use of Lolitaesque girls gone wild. DJ Aqeel's retro psychedelic video Keh Doon Tumhe shows a dancer making out in the back alley of a club. Definitely stuff to make the late Kishore Kumar cringe. The Vinay Sapru and Radhika Rao directed Kaanta Laga left parents piqued with its peeping thong and girls dipping into porn magazines but it did not stop the sale of thongs stitched into jeans at Mumbai's Fashion Street.
The Chadti Jawani video with three bum pinching fairies just added to the spineless substance plaguing the videos. In a gross rendition of Meri Beri Ke Ber, Sanober Kabir rides a horse saddle while the camera zooms in on her hideous red pout. The bitch slapping continues between two girls in another remix of the same song.
"The only way to make your version different is to have a sexy video," says Champak Jain of Venus Tapes and Records. He cast a vague Polish blonde Patrycja Liniwicz in the role of the nasty bimbette who snatches an Indian dancer's boyfriend only to lose him in the end. "We wanted to make a video with enough exposure without annoying the Censor Board," says Jain. Whatever. One look and you know the Censor Board was taking a nap while approving it. Bappi Lahiri's disco remix Gori Hai Kalaiyaan hints at lesbianism on the side.
And let's not even get started on the toy boys. Even as the nostalgia of youth culture is completely spurious, bored directors use these testosterone-fuelled videos to sell sex-or something like it. Sleaze sells. What the video directors have forgotten is that sense might sell better.
By Supriya Dravid
Earthy Flavour
GURGAON Wherever those Shere Punjab dhabas went, they left an appetite for earthy ambience and spicy khaana. Pind Baluchi, the new restaurant at Gurgaon's Grand Vatika complex serves that experience in huge helpings. The interiors with mirror mosaics, electrically controlled screens that change from day to night to village scenes and waiters dressed in red lungis and kurtas create a rustic setting. The food is sumptuous. Especially murgh tandoor, mushroom kurkure and vegetable boti kebab. Just the kind of tadka eating out needs once in a while.
By Shefalee Vasudev
Gujarat Shining
MUMBAI Gujarati theatre is in a jubilant mood. Sanjay Goradia Production's Ame Lai Gaya, Tame Rahi Gaya, a comedy directed by Vipul Mehta, recently completed 300 shows in 17 months.
With an average of 12 shows every week and around 10 plays on the floor, the Gujarati theatre community is on a roll. The latest is Vikalp's Tran Gujarati, a play with three acts by Uttam Gada, Mihir Bhuta and Naushil Mehta who have written and directed their pieces. Says executive producer Manhar Gadhia, "It was an attempt to keep the spirit of Gujarati theatre alive."
Non-commercial ventures are few but on the commercial scene comedy rules. Besides actor Apara Mehta of Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi other mainstream actors active on the stage are Sarita Joshi, Ketki Dave, Paresh Rawal, Sharman Joshi and Deven Bhojani. "The script is the star in Gujarati plays," says Goradia. No wonder the entire galaxy is shining.
By Kimi Dangor
Perfect Timing
Even though he has sparkled in some recent roles, Saif Ali Khan has looked as if he is making the best of a bad job. He has ably played foil to Aamir Khan, Shah Rukh Khan and Urmila Matondkar. With Hum Tum, he can consider himself a full-time leading man. One with Swiss watch-perfect timing.
In director Kunal Kohli's Nora Ephronesque screenplay, he plays the eternally adolescent man while Rani Mukherjee is excellent as a woman who knows her own mind-even though it doesn't reflect in her clothes, which range from ill-fitting corsets to asymmetrical skirts and boots that look as if they are left over from Chalte Chalte. The witty exchanges don't ring false, the emotional pitch in the melodramatic parts is just right and the cameos are succulent.
Now if only the lead pair hadn't so clearly burst into a giggling fit immediately after pretending to get down and dirty on the beach. If actors are uncomfortable doing love scenes, then perhaps they should find a career in Iranian movies.
By Kaveree Bamzai
Recreating the Poetry of Life
There is this abiding memory of Dom Moraes at the Oberoi bar in Mumbai, his spectacles perched on the edge of his nose, cigarette trailing smoke, whisky in hand, railing against politics, society, the media, the weather, women's fashion, Indian eating habits and almost everything else. He was the quintessential non-conformist, an author in constant search of answers to questions no one dared ask, a poet hidden inside a social activist, a man incomplete without female company. His stormy marriage to the iconic filmstar Leela Naidu ended in divorce. And drink.
The CV is impressive but never enough to flesh out this enigmatic man. Born in Bombay in 1938. Brought up in privilege but always in the shadow of legendary editor, author and father Frank Moraes. The genes spoke volumes. Dom began to write poetry at the age of 12. By 15 W.H. Auden had read and liked his poems. Stephen Spender published them as did Karl Shapiro in Chicago. At 19, he published his first book of poems, A Beginning, which won the Hawthornden Prize for the best work of the imagination in 1958. Moraes remains the first non-Englishman to win the prize, and the youngest. In 1960 his second book of verse, Poems, became the Autumn Choice of the Poetry Book Society. In 1965 he published his third, John Nobody, also to critical acclaim. He was, truly, India's poet laureate.
Dom has edited magazines in London, Hong Kong and New York, been a correspondent in various wars and a UN official. He visited every country in the world except Antarctica, which, he famously declared, was not a country. He wrote 23 books, including a biography of Indira Gandhi, apart from scripting documentaries from England, Cuba and Israel for the BBC and ITV. In his last book, The Long Strider, published in 2003, co-author and companion Sarayu Srivatsa wrote about Dom being diagnosed with cancer. He dismissed it as a temporary stumble in his all-consuming search for the perfect world, the perfect word, the liberation of poetry, and, above all, the meaning of life. He has found it all now.
By Dilip Bobb.
By Shefalee Vasudev
Old Favourite
"Kishore Kumar was a sampoorna kalakar (complete artist)," said Lata Mangeshkar. So it is fitting that the introduction to this notable collection is by Mangeshkar and Harish Bhimani.
The Golden Years has 42 songs on three CDs. But there is a certain lopsidedness in the selection. Twenty-one songs are by R.D. Burman, seven by Kalyanji-Anandji and six by Rajesh Roshan. Other music directors like Bappi Lahiri, Laxmikant-Pyarelal and S.D. Burman find only token mention. Salil Chowdhury finds none. Even songs composed by Kumar himself are nowhere in this collection. Nevertheless there are some great numbers showcasing his versatility. Even though an entire industry thrives by imitating Kumar, music companies still recompile and release Kumar's songs. That says it all.
By S. Sahaya Ranjit
EXHIBITION Chapter One is a show that aims to position photography as serious art along with painting. The show will feature works by well-known photographers Rafique Sayed and Shibhu Arakkal juxtaposed with paintings by Azis T.M.
From June 6 to 20 at Galerie Sara Arakkal in Bangalore and then from August 4 to 14 at Gallery Beyond in Mumbai.


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Heavy-duty vinyl polyester tri-laminate walls
34-oz. polyester bottom
Welded seams
Quick-release buckles
Keep the water out by simply rolling down the top of the Dry Bag and snapping the side release buckles together. Yellow and blue bags have 20 oz. extra heavy-duty vinyl/polyester tri-laminate walls with RF welded seams. Clear bags are made of waterproof 10 oz. vinyl with welded seams and allow you to find items quickly. All bags have a thick 34 oz. bottoms.


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Thirteen pieces of art which once belonged to Clive of India had been on loan to Powis Castle, Welshpool.
But in 2003 they were removed and taken to London for valuation.
Clive's family sold them earlier this year, along with other artefacts from the Victoria and Albert Museum.
Five items went under the hammer in April at an Islamic art sale at Christie's in London, the auction house confirmed.
They were bought by an unnamed buyer believed to have been from the Middle East.
But officials at Powis Castle are making efforts to see some of the treasures be returned to go on display at the site again.
Some of the artefacts sold at auction were part of the Mughal collection brought back to the UK by Clive, the 18th Century governor of India.
They were sold following the death of Vida Schreiber, wife of Viscount Clive.
Among the riches that may return to the museum at Powis Castle include a Hookah pipe, jewels, bowls and a rose water sprinkler.
Castle house manager, Margaret Gray, said: "We're hoping some of the items that left Powis Castle will return - it is possible.
"They are collectables that are priceless - they are items such as bowls, another Hookah, a rose water sprinkler and jewels."
She added: "The items from Powis Castle that were sold will be kept in the UK."
Powis Castle was originally built as a simple stone fortress in 1200, and was transformed in the late 17th Century by the 3rd Baron Powis.
In 1784, Lord Clive, son and heir of Clive of India, married into the family, bringing the Clives vast fortune to the castle.
The Clives enriched the castle's store of treasures with paintings, furniture and memorabilia from their years in India which are on show at the Clive of India museum.
Robert Clive is famous for his victory over the Nawab of Bengal at the battle of Plassey in 1757 which signalled Britain's control over India.
Clive, who had an opium addiction, later became governor and commander-in-chief of India before committing suicide after being accused of financial irregularities in 1774.
The treasures sold at an Islamic art sale at Christie's on 27 April included a 17th Century pistol-grip dagger, decorated with floral sprays which went for £650,000.
A flywhisk, which would originally been fitted with yak hair to enable servants to keep flies from their masters, sold for £800,000.
There are more than 300 items of Indian and far eastern origin still at the museum at Powis Castle, making it the finest private collection in the UK apart from the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.
The Powis Castle museum was opened in 1987 by Countess Mountbatten of Burma.


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Benjamin Ho Kim, PGA
Main Address:
Chula Vista, CA 91911
Mr. Kim speaks Korean. He has worked at golf courses for 18 years and was Head Pro for ten years.
Services Offered:
- Play Golf of America Participant
Free Fitting Month
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National Awards
- 2010 PGA President's Council on Growing the Game
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Home » Golf Courses » California » Chula Vista » Benjamin Ho Kim, PGA
PGA of America Championships
Quail Hollow Club
Charlotte, North Carolina
Olympia Fields Country Club
Olympia Fields, Illinois
Trump National Golf Club
Washington, D.C.
Le Golf National
Guyancourt, France


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Bookmark this site
STOCKTON, CA -- Diamond Foods has agreed to purchase Procter & Gamble's Pringles potato chips brand in a deal valued at $2.35 billion. Diamond claims that the acquisition will establish the company as second-largest global savory snacks business behind PepsiCo's Frito-Lay unit. The transaction is expected to close by the end of the year.
Diamond will reportedly more than triple the size of its snack business with the addition of Pringles. The company's other snacks include Emerald Nuts, Pop Secret microwave popcorn, acquired from General Mills Inc. for $190 million in 2008, and Kettle potato chips, purchased for $615 million last year. Diamond began in 1912 as a California walnut growers' cooperative and completed its public offering in 2005.
The Pringles brand, sold in more than 140 countries, will help increase Diamond's global scale and more than double its snack sales in the U.S. and the UK, officials said. Diamond chief executive Michael J. Mendes will lead the combined company, which will have sales of about $2.4 billion.
The move comes as P&G looks to more closely focus its business on cosmetics and healthcare products.
P&G shareholders will retain a 57% stake in the new company while Diamond shareholders will hold the rest. Diamond shareholders will also take on $850 million of Pringles debt. Diamond said the Pringles deal will result in one-time costs of around $100 million over the next two years.
P&G's saddle-shaped Pringles potato crisps, stacked in the brand's signature canister, were first sold in the U.S. in 1968 and distributed internationally in 1975. The fried crisps get their unique texture from a mix of potatoes, wheat and potato starch, corn and rice flours.


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|Christina, Chad
|Malone, Ronald
|Pfeiffer, Timothy
Submitted to: Book of Abstracts Aquaculture America
Publication Type: Abstract Only
Publication Acceptance Date: 12/1/2007
Publication Date: 2/9/2008
Citation: Christina, C.M., Malone, R.F., Pfeiffer, T.J. 2008. Pumps vs. airlifts: Theoretical and practical energy implications [abstract]. Book of Abstracts Aquaculture America 2008: Beyond Magic-Competing in World Markets.p.77. Interpretive Summary:
Technical Abstract: In the design of a recirculating aquaculture system five life-supporting issues should be considered which include aeration, degasification, circulation, biofiltration, and clarification. The implications associated with choosing a pumped system versus an airlift system to address these issues was evaluated. For a given tank configuration, operating with airlifts and in-tank aeration, approximately 600 cubic foot of air per minute, delivered at an injection depth of 4 feet is required. Using the most efficient blower to delivery this quantity of air a total of 10.4 kW of energy is required for an airlift system. A pump system utilizing high head pumps to provide the same amount of aeration and water transfer would require a minimum of two 3 hp pumps for a total of 4.4 kW of energy consumption. This analysis shows that in theory pumped systems should be more energy efficient than airlifted system but the availability of extremely low-head, high volume pumps makes airlifts more energy efficient in recirculating aquaculture systems.


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Definition of dichromatism
n. - The state of being dichromatic. 2
The word "dichromatism" uses 12 letters: A C D H I I M M O R S T.
No direct anagrams for dichromatism found in this word list.
Words formed by adding one letter before or after dichromatism (in bold), or to acdhiimmorst in any order:
s - dichromatisms
List all words starting with dichromatism, words containing dichromatism or words ending with dichromatism
All words formed from dichromatism by changing one letter
Other words with the same letter pairs: di ic ch hr ro om ma at ti is sm
Browse words starting with dichromatism by next letter
Previous word in list: dichromatic
Next word in list: dichromatisms
Some random words: rerig cajuput tmeses de kea ogre empale
This is not a dictionary, it's a word game wordfinder.
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Global brands must provide a seamless Web experience to users around the world. Users in Brazil should have the same brand awareness as those in the US.
Delivering the same brand experience across countries with different languages is a challenge in itself, and sometimes the same language will have different connotations in different countries.
For example, the word "cueca" refers to clothing (undergarments). However, in Portugal, it refers to women's undergarments; and in Brazil, it refers to men's undergarments. The language and the pronunciation is the same, but the context is different. This creates huge challenges for creating and delivering localized content to various countries.
Join us at Session 806: Going Global: Best Practices for Managing a Digital Presence Worldwide, where we'll discuss how these challenges can be handled using Adobe Experience Manager along with a story of a successful customer implementation.


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- 5 Rocket Stocks for Gluttonous Turkey Day Gains
- Time to Sell These 5 'Toxic' Stocks
- 5 Earnings Short-Squeeze Plays
- 5 Must-See Charts
- 5 Stocks With Big Insider Buying
2 Oil & Gas Stocks Rising on Big Volume - views
DELAFIELD, Wis. (Stockpickr) -- Professional traders running mutual funds and hedge funds don't just look at a stock's price moves; they also track big changes in volume activity. Often when above-average volume moves into an equity, it precedes a large spike in volatility.
Major moves in volume can signal unusual activity, such as insider buying or selling -- or buying or selling by "superinvestors."
Unusual volume can also be a major signal that hedge funds and momentum traders are piling into a stock ahead of a catalyst. These types of traders like to get in well before a large spike, so it's always a smart move to monitor unusual volume. That said, remember to combine trend and price action with unusual volume. Put them all together to help you decipher the next big trend for any stock.
>>5 Stocks Under $10 Set to Soar
With that in mind, let's take a look at several stocks rising on unusual volume today.
World Fuel Services
World Fuel Services (INT) a fuel logistics company, engages in marketing, selling, and distributing aviation, marine, and land fuel products and related services worldwide. This stock closed up 2.2% at $35.77 in Monday's trading session.
Monday's Volume: 1.84 million
Three-Month Average Volume: 439,677
Volume % Change: 356%
>>5 Big Stocks to Trade for Gains
From a technical perspective, INT bounced higher here off its intraday low of $34.57 with strong upside volume. This stock recently dropped sharply from its high of $42.77 to its low of $34.57. During that drop, shares of INT were consistently making lower highs and lower lows, which is bearish technical price action. That move has now pushed shares of INT close to oversold territory, since its current relative strength index reading is 33.34. Oversold can always get more oversold, but it's also an area where a stock can experience a powerful bounce higher from.
Traders should now look for long-biased trades in INT as long as it's trending above its recent low of $34.57 and then once it sustains a move or close above $36.70 with volume that's near or above 439,677 shares. If we get that move soon, then INT will set up to re-test or possibly take out its next major overhead resistance levels at its 200-day moving average of $39.74 to its 50-day moving average of $39.82.
InterOil (IOC) is engaged in the exploration and production of oil and gas properties in Papua New Guinea and its surrounding regions. This stock closed up 6.8% at $88.47 in Monday's trading session.
Monday's Volume: 1.27 million
Three-Month Average Volume: 735,650
Volume % Change: 150%
>>4 Big Stocks on Traders' Radars
From a technical perspective, IOC ripped higher here right above some near-term support at $80.58 with above-average volume. This move is quickly pushing shares of IOC within range of triggering a major breakout trade. That trade will hit if IOC manages to take out some near-term overhead resistance at $88.81 to $89.97 with high volume.
Traders should now look for long-biased trades in IOC as long as it's trending above Monday's low of $82.94 or above $85 and then once it sustains a move or close above those breakout levels with volume that's near or above 735,650 shares. If that breakout hits soon, then IOC will set up to re-test or possibly take out its 52-week high at $106.44.
To see more stocks rising on unusual volume, check out the Stocks Rising on Unusual Volume portfolio on Stockpickr.
-- Written by Roberto Pedone in Delafield, Wis.
>>4 Stocks Under $10 Making Big Moves
>>5 Stocks With Big Insider Buying
>> 5 Surprise Stocks the Pros Love Right Now
Follow Stockpickr on Twitter and become a fan on Facebook.
At the time of publication, author had no positions in stocks mentioned.
Roberto Pedone, based out of Delafield, Wis., is an independent trader who focuses on technical analysis for small- and large-cap stocks, options, futures, commodities and currencies. Roberto studied international business at the Milwaukee School of Engineering, and he spent a year overseas studying business in Lubeck, Germany. His work has appeared on financial outlets including CNBC.com and Forbes.com. You can follow Pedone on Twitter at www.twitter.com/zerosum24 or @zerosum24.


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MY Theme Series - Blooms Ebook
Flowers - Natures Colour Palette
by Photographer - Peter Eerden
Other versions of this book
Print Book
About the Ebook
This book is dedicated to flowers I have photographed over a number of years. From the striking rose to the smallest Australian Orchid hiding in a rock face these photographs capture the essence of nature in all its glory.
About the Creator
Peter Eerden, born 1950 in the Netherlands, emigrated with his parents and siblings to Australia in 1956. His formative years were spent in South Australia though his adult years have seen him, in the main, a resident of Melbourne Victoria. Peter's early forays in writing centered around editorials and short stories for a number of local community organisations. His first book 'Teyde - A Bichon Frise' is a historical and pictorial account of a dog breed that entered Australia from England in 1975 and written as part of his International Dog Judging career. He married Patricia Birk in 2007 and through her encouragement entered a new chapter in his life with a developing interest in wildlife photography. He has travelled extensively and maintains a photoBOOK publishing presence both here and in South Africa. An extensive photographic collection can be viewed at http://www.petersphotoart.com
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A BLACKBURN primary school is helping pupils to feed their imagination by signing up to breakfast club sponsored by bread company Kingsmill.
Sacred Heart RC Primary School, in St Silas's Road, has joined the company's second national school programme which is designed to help Key Stage 1 and 2 pupils aged four to 11 understand breakfast why it is the most important meal of the day.
More than 684 schools have signed up so far, reaching an estimated 233,928 pupils.
Four activities have been created to challenge the children's vocabulary, creativity, basic fitness and numeracy, featuring a team of four characters who form The Breakfast Squad. Jane Smith, Sacred Heart deputy head, said: "The children looking forward to completing the activities including the competition and have told me that the bread is yummy."
Jon Wilson, from Kingsmill, said: "We believe it is important to teach children the importance of breakfast, and to help them understand why having it will benefit them throughout the day.
"We hope The Breakfast Squad will get children excited about what they eat, and help them understand the benefits of a balanced breakfast."


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Holy crap check this out. I was penalized 6k in 2007 despite overpaying by 2k, because TurboTax did not transmit the money on the 14th of April, even though I got a successful transmission message after clicking the button. I was notified after the deadline, by the IRS, that they never got my payment. So I hired a tax lady, who wrote me a nice letter and attached some screen shots of my TurboTax account showing I paid on time and it was a software problem. So I thought I cleaned up last year's problem. I was stoked!
I literally just licked the envelope to send off the correspondence to the IRS about the 2007 problem, and continued to tend to my bills. In the pile, there was another letter from the IRS. This one says I owe almost 18k for my 2006 taxes. Because apparently, TurboTax did the same thing that year. But the IRS waited almost 2 years so they could add an additional 6k in penalties and interest.
So now, out of the blue, I am 22k in the hole with the government. And I swear I paid that 12k, I remember it clear as day. In 2006 I found out the transmission did not go through and sent them a check. Bank of America said they cannot find the check, but I remember it plain as day. Plus both years, I was paying my taxes the whole time. But of course, the IRS can always figure out ways to squeeze a little extra out of a brotha.
I called the IRS, and they basically said I am S.O.L. and any problems I have had with software have nothing to do with the bottom line, which is, I owe them 22k right now. And as for Bank of America, it's not like I backed up my transaction logs, so I depend on their system to pull data when needed.
I'm no conspiracy theorist, but how the heck did both B of A and the IRS lose record of that transaction? And how can The IRS justify waiting until 6k in interest and penalties is accrued to inform me about the 2006 problem? And how can they justify penalizing me 6k for OVERPAYING my taxes by thousands of dollars just a few weeks late? Especially considering I TRIED to pay on time and the software was to blame?
This is how.


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Leah Libresco is deeply gratified that JK Rowling regrets putting Ron and Hermione:It's not just that Ron seems less intelligent and inquisitive than Hermione in the books, but that her joy in research and making connections leave him uninterested at best and impatient or contemptuous at worst. And she hardly seems to share his interest in Quidditch or Wizard Chess. Couples don't need to share every interest, but a partner who checks out when you're at your most engaged and joyful is bad n … [Read more...]
Harry and Hermione, Agape and Narrative Thrust: What do you think?
February 2, 2014 by


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I appreciated being really welcomed into the community. I had a great opportunity to learn about the culture and religion of Islam.
I had a wonderful time. Very welcoming. We learned a lot about the history of Islam. Highly recommended for everyone.
The performance was equal of consummate to the depth of the content that was presented in the play. I love Islamic Heritage Month rpograms.
I really enjoyed my experiences at Masjidullah for Islamic Heritage Month. The programming was very enriching, educational, and diverse.
A very educational program. Great mix of good people. I drive by every day, and never knew the wondrous experience that lay within this venue.
As a former actress, I really enjoyed the production. Excellent work! Kudos to all!
Very exciting and educational events. I am glad I came.
Very informative! I am very thankful that I am able to be here to experience this. May Allah continue to bless you to present these programs to the community.
I think the movies are very informative. Clarity regarding misconceptions. Great opportunity to share this with others of all Faiths!


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Blog post
When The Planners Go Marching In
There's just one problem with academia. Sometimes it can be so … academic.
In the interest of getting out into the world, I'm writing this post from Nawlins (nee New Orleans), where 16 other Penn planners and I are spending our weeklong spring break doffing our tops for beads and booze doing pro bono city planning work. For most of us, it's been nothing short of a paradigm shift—and the week ain't over yet.
There's just one problem with academia. Sometimes it can be so academic.
In the interest of getting out into the world, I'm writing this post from Nawlins (nee New Orleans), where 16 other Penn planners and I are spending our weeklong spring break doffing our tops for beads and booze doing pro bono city planning work. For most of us, it's been nothing short of a paradigm shift-and the week ain't over yet.
We've been working at three separate agencies, doing what we can to make a difference in just a week's time: At City-Works, we're designing proposed improvements for the Urban Main Streets program in Old Algiers and Elysian Fields; at the New Orleans Redevelopment Authority, we're cataloging information about vacant properties and looking at homeownership opportunities; at Neighborhood Housing Services, we're mapping housing conditions in the Central City area. The work is thrilling, but only because it's accompanied by touring the city, trying to learn what happens when a city is destroyed.
Three and a half years later, Katrina's scars still mark the city. Many streets are crackled and broken from the weight of the water that sat on them. Every house and business is defined by whether it's "back" or "gone." Scores of homes still bear the spray-painted markings from when rescue crews searched them-some have left the tattoo as a badge of honor, but most that remain are on houses whose owners have yet to return.
And then there's the Lower Ninth. Many of the wrecked houses have been razed. All that remains is a concrete set of steps leading to what used to be a front door.
Scattered throughout the Lower Ninth are the so-called "Brad Pitt houses"-bankrolled by the actor and designed by Frank Gehry. Back in Philadelphia, we discussed these buildings in urban design class last week: Observing how the multistory futuristic homes, with their big windows and wild angles, contrasted so wildly with the existing vernacular, many derisively dismissed them as out of place and garish. They didn't like the aesthetics; they thought they didn't fit into the neighborhood's character; they pooh-poohed the design-from-without-ness of it all. All valid criticisms.
But there's a problem with judging these houses by looking at a picture of them: You can't tell what's next door.
It's a concrete slab.
Excepting the Brad Pitt houses, entire swaths of the Lower Ninth Ward are gone. Those who have a Brad Pitt house have a house, which is more than you can say for most. To criticize the architecture feels off base at best-more like elitist and, frankly, dangerous. If Brad Pitt weren't flexing his movie-star muscles for the Lower Ninth, that many more people would still be homeless.
A place's character is always evolving. From a city planning perspective, so many swatches of New Orleans are blank slates: entire blocks just begging to be built and programmed from the ground up. It's not an opportunity that planners often come across. Even areas that were hurting before Katrina have a kind of new lease on life, as renewed interest has directed resources down here. (Would 17 city planners have spent their spring break here doing gratis planning work in 2004? Unlikely.)
But that silver lining is terrifyingly fragile. If enthusiasm flags in the slightest, we'll lose New Orleans. The task is so great that even a momentary lapse in attention would be catastrophic. This city needs money and planners, and lots of both-not academics who'll dismiss a practical solution on account of misguided design opinions.


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SAM Wood said Steven Craig proved people wrong with his performance against Dagenham on Saturday - and called for fans to present a united front.
Wood said it was vital everyone connected with Wanderers stuck together in the last month of the season as Blues seek to climb away from relegation danger.
Striker Craig's pre-match comments about concerns over the club's financial situation drew a frosty reaction from supporters, but Wood said it was a mark of the man that he didn't let it affect his performance.
The 27-year-old, who received the sponsors' man of the match award for his display in the 2-0 win over the Daggers, said: "Stevie was excellent today. He stood up to the abuse he was getting and he proved everyone wrong.
"To step up for the penalty, it's a lot on his shoulders and he stepped up. That's the kind of character he is. He faces it all the time and does what he's got to do.
"He said what he said. It didn't affect his performance on the pitch, which is what Stevie's all about.
"Hopefully everyone will get behind him now, and the team, and we all stick together."
Craig tweeted after the game: "Like to thank all the true fans and my teammates for their support in the last two days. Great result and performance from the boys."


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Hello all you fellow gentlemen, so I'm pretty much new to this community. Been checking out this blog for quite a while, which has clearly proven itself to be one of the most resourceful blogs for men(my opinion nonetheless). I'm also a big fan of the "old-fashioned" ways so I feel very much at home here.
Now this has been a concern of mine for a while now. I have been one of the many unfortunate victims of the wretched friendzone, for quite a handful of instances. In fact, I just had to reconcile with a recent scenario of the such a few weeks ago(I dare you to tell me that when a girl says, "Friendship hug!" as she hugs you, that it signifies any interests beyond that of friends.)
I knew well very that I blew my chances with the recent girl; by succumbing to my pathetic clingynes. It came to the point where she told me to back off for a bit, so I did. Really regret going there but I wish to cherish it as lesson learned.
These past 2 weeks at the local church, there has been quite a few new girls coming to the sunday services that I have had the privilege of meeting. All seemed genuninely sweet and nice and very ladylike. Some of the girls, I may be developing interest for.
So I was wondering if any of you men could give some advice.
How should I go about eventually and geuninely asking one of the God-fearing women that I've recently met, to go out on a date with me.
What's a good timing? Should I try getting to know more about each of girls first(and seeing who I would be most interested in) before asking?
No, I'm not trying to be a reckless player kind of guy. It's nothing serious. I just want to get a bit more into the realm of dating and perhaps getting to know more people.
And about the friendzone. How does one avoid it? What are good traits for a guy to have when pursueing the one he's interested in? What are bad traits and idiosyncrasies one should avoid having?
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Just ask. Waiting and inaction is your enemy. Ask them as soon as you can- in other words, ask when it won't be creepy. Otherwise you will be friendzoned.
"Friendzoned" is just a cutesy way of saying she's not attracted to you. The friend zone isn't somewhere women put guys they wanted, but became friends with instead. Its somewhere they put guys who never had a shot in the first place ... but they like enough to hang around.
Its not something you can really avoid, except insofar as you avoid becoming a friend at all (which will be some of the advice you get). If she's into you, she probably won't friendzone you.
I second JB on this one completely.
There are ways to frame yourself romantically, such as not "hanging out" with women, rather "dating" women. The difference is often as simple as calling it a "date" from the beginning so that she realizes that you are interested in her as more the friends. If you treat her like a friend, she will behave like a friend. Women tend to follow the man's lead to avoid looking promiscuous by chasing the guy.
If she does "friendzone" you, its a nice way of her saying that she isn't interested. You should be flattered in a way since she feels that you are a decent enough person to spare your feelings and to be friends with, she just doesn't feel romantic attraction for you. Don't shy away from a platonic friendship either, often times they lead to meeting more women (the girl's friends) in which there may lie another love interest. A female wingman is the best tool a single guy.
Do you belong to a small group? I don't know if the Sunday morning church service is the most conducive setting to effectively ask one of these girls out. It might take a little extra effort, but I would try to ask the girl out when you two are outside of church. Your intentions might be more clear this way as opposed to before/after a service where it could be mistaken for fellowship?
So from I'm getting out of all you guy's response is that I should indeed straightforwardly ask one of them out? So it's alright to just flat out ask them? Even though I've only met the girl once?
This is clearly something I'm not used to.
Sounds like you're on the right track. But like I said before, just make sure it's not creepy when you ask them. Some girls might get scared away if they sense you going too fast. Make sure you're comfortable with them and they're comfortable with you. Then go for it. And yes, you just ask: "Did you want to get some coffee/lunch/ice cream sometime soon?" If she says yes, do two things immediately: put forward a time and a place for the date, so there's no ambiguity or confusion on her part. Secondly, take her number down (if you don't have it already). If she says no, at least you tried.
Having only met a girl once shouldn't be too much of a detriment. I can't stress enough though: don't make it creepy. Only you and her will know when you've left the creepy-zone and entered into the acceptable zone. Use your discretion, and if you mess up (ask too early) learn from your mistake and don't do it again.
Just ask her out and stop thinking about it (ie stalling). I grew up in a more secular environment than I would consider myself in now and I am shocked at how passive a lot of the young Christians I see in the churches I now attend are.
My understanding is that most church-attending, "God-fearing women" are pretty comfortable with the idea of you asking them out on a date to get to know them. Unlike their more secular sisters, their chances to get to interact with intimately and know the other sex are more limited.
Next, there is unlimited amount of good timing. Bad timing would be limited to asking her at a funeral or something. If the girl is chatting with you, ask her out. If she seems to be turned off by this then don't worry, you just saved yourself some wasted time in some girl's friendzone.
Don't hang out with these girls pretending to yourself that you are doing it to get to know them. We all know the real reason is because you are too chicken to ask them out. Also, if you go and make friends with the group, you'll poison your chances of dating one of them because she'll turn you down so as to not upset the group. Worse still, one of the girls (often the most undesirable) will have probably told the others by then "dibs", therefore making you unavailable to the rest. This is pretty much a dead end in which you either date only her (who will be undesirable for a reason) or move on. Telling her you are not into her that way but into her friend is pretty much dating suicide for the group. Unlike men, women pick up on the negative side of being friendzoned pretty quick and respond very effectively.
One aspect to attracting women is, well, being attractive. Women generally say confidence is the most attractive trait. If you pursue what you want, that is an aspect of confidence. Asking the woman out is one aspect of that, though far from the only.
I still think it's the alpha/beta mix. Too much friendly nice-guy stuff means you're headed for the friendzone. I reckon it's alpha that attracts and beta that keeps things going on a day-to day basis longterm. Too much of either isn't going to work well
+1 great advice.
would a gal shaking yer hand at the end of the night constitute being friend zoned (non buisness related, met her that same night) she offered her hand to be shook then took off before I could ask for her number,also didnt help that m buddy pulled me aside cause his girlfriend wanted me to meet her sister.
This wisdom deserves to be chiseled in marble somewhere.