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Tag Archives: Manchester City

Manchester City’s plan for global domination

Football has already been transformed by big money – but the capitalists behind Man City are trying to build a global corporation that will change the game for ever | GILES TREMLETT in The Guardian

(December 15) – On 19 December 2009, Pep Guardiola stood and wept in the middle of Zayed Sports City Stadium in Abu Dhabi. The 38-year-old Barcelona manager clasped a hand across his face as his body gave way to huge, shoulder-heaving sobs. Zlatan Ibrahimović, the club’s towering Swedish striker, wrapped a tattooed arm around Guardiola’s neck and then gave him a vigorous push in order to jolt him out of it. But Guardiola could not stop. Continue reading

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Premier League’s unlevel playing field

Even while top soccer players in Britain, such as Arsenal FC’s Mesut Özil, are regularly paid 180,000 pounds a week, the workers employed at club stadiums struggle to make ends meet, a new report says | Ronnie Macdonald / Wikimedia Commons

In These Times (Jan. 21) – SOCCER is big business in Britain, but not everyone who works in the Premier League benefits from that prosperity. According to a recent report by the community organization coalition Citizens UK, even while chief executives make millions, workers who cater, clean and provide security for top soccer clubs are getting paid minimum wage. Right now, the report says, many employees at stadiums around the country are earning £6.31 an hour – well below the estimated national living wage of £7.65. Continue reading

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Manchester City: a tale of love and money

 Manchester City won the Premier League title at the weekend, thanks to £1bn of Sheikh Mansour’s money. But it wasn’t always like this… | DAVID CONN

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Angry Mobs Lock Up Indian Bankers As Cash Chaos Soars: “We Are Fearing The Worst”

by Tyler Durden

India’s demonetization campaign is not going as expected.

Overnight, banks played down expectations of a dramatic improvement in currency availability, raising the prospect of queues lengthening as salaries get paid and people look to withdraw money from their accounts the Economic Times reported.

While much of India has become habituated to the sight of people lining up at banks and cash dispensers since the November 8 demonetisation announcement, bank officials said the message from the Reserve Bank of India is that supplies may not get any easier in the near future and that they should push digital transactions.  “We had sought a hearing with RBI as we were not allocated enough cash, but we were told that rationing of cash may continue for some time,” said a banker who was present at one of several meetings with central bank officials.

Reserve Bank has asked us to push the use of digital channels to all our customers and ensure that we bring down use of cash in the economy,” said a banker. This confirms a previous report according to which the demonstization campaign has been a not so subtle attempt to impose digital currency on the entire population.

Bankers have been making several trips to the central bank’s headquarters in Mumbai to get a sense of whether currency availability will improve.  Some automated teller machines haven’t been filled even once since the old Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes ceased to be legal tender, they said.  Typically, households pay milkmen, domestic helps, drivers, etc, at the start of the month in cash. The idea is that all these payments should become electronic, using computers or mobiles.

This strategy however, appears to not have been conveyed to the public, and as Bloomberg adds, “bankers are bracing for long hours and angry mobs as pay day approaches in India.”

“Already people who are frustrated are locking branches from outside in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Tamil Nadu and abusing staff as enough cash is not available,” said CH Venkatachalam, general secretary of the All India Bank Employees’ Association. The group has sought police protection at bank branches for the next 10 days, he added.

Joining many others who have slammed Modi’s decision, the banker said that “this is the fallout of one of the worst planned and executed government decisions in decades.” He estimates that about 20 million people – almost twice the population of Greece – will queue up at bank branches and ATMs over the coming week, when most employers in India pay their staff. In an economy where 98 percent of consumer payments are in cash, banks are functioning with about half the amount of currency they need.

As Bloomberg notes, retaining public support is crucial for Modi before key state elections next year and a national contest in 2019, however it appears he is starting to lose it.

“We are bracing ourselves for payday and fearing the worst,” said Parthasarathi Mukherjee, chief executive officer at Chennai-based Laxmi Vilas Bank Ltd. “If we run out of cash we will have to approach the Reserve Bank of India for more. It is tough.”

The ongoing cash shortages follow Modi’s Nov. 8 unexpected decision to ban 500 and 1,000 rupee ($15) notes, a decision that sucked out 86% of currency in circulation and blindsided the nation. Bank officials reported that most top banks in the financial heart of Mumbai are now starting the day with anywhere between 800 million rupees to 1.2 billion rupees of cash, instead of the typical 1.5 billion rupees.

These currency chests are then shared with several branches, which are rationing supplies. Withdrawals are capped at 10,000 rupees per person instead of the 24,000 rupees limit set by the government, said a manager at a state-run Bank of India branch in the eastern state of Jharkhand.

In a Mumbai suburb, a branch of the nation’s largest lender, State Bank of India, was starting the day with about 600,000 rupees of cash that will run out in about an hour, compared with the 1.5 million they’d typically have, the manager said. in what has clearly become a physical cash run.

12-2-2016-10-45-24-amTo be sure, many employers are scrambling to adapt to the new cash-lite regime: “with pay day around the corner a lot of small and medium-sized companies are opting for prepaid cards over cash payments,” said Naveen Surya, managing director of payments solutions company Itz Cash Card Ltd., who’s also chairman of the representative body Payments Council of India. “More than five million of these cards have been sold in India in the last one week” and sales of 40 million more are expected through December, he said.

Ride-sharing service Ola has partnered with fuel companies to help drivers get e-vouchers to fill up their tanks at Bharat Petroleum Corp. pumps in Bengaluru, the company said in a statement. Paytm, India’s largest digital wallet startup, has noticed a doubling in online recharges including a trend where individuals top up multiple mobile phones to help friends and family, the company said in its statement. Additionally, as Goldman notes, Paytm has experienced a 500% surge in daily user growth since the currency reform, according to The Indian Express.

The government, too, is urging electronic payments. Card payment facilities were introduced in parliament’s dining hall on Wednesday, the Press Trust of India reported, citing Parliament’s Food Committee Chairman A P Jithender Reddy.

While large companies such as Hindustan Petroleum Corp. make 99 percent of their pay outs electronically, it still needs to work out a system with smaller sub-contractors, said finance director J. Ramaswamy. Indian Oil Corp. is opening State Bank of India accounts for all laborers at its Paradip refinery, Dharmendra Pradhan, India’s oil minister, said on Nov. 29 in New Delhi.

“I will request all our companies to encourage bank transfers for all such payments,” Pradhan said.

Alas, as we warned previously, for a nation that remains vastly cash-based – and where 98% of consumer payments are in cash – any transition from physical to digital money will take far, far longer than the timeframe Modi has allotted himself for the demonetization transformation and, as we reported previously, it is only a matter of time before India’s economy becomes crippled by money shortages to the point where not only India’s economic output but the government itself will be in jeopardy.

One thing appears clear: foreign investors have decided not to wait and see how this experiment ends.

12-2-2016-11-03-35-amOLDDOGS COMMENTS!

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Roman Around

combating liberalism and other childish notions

Posted by Andrew Roman on May 4, 2010

Nineteen years ago today, a pretty girl from the farm country of Northwest Ohio said “I do” when she was asked if she would stand by a boisterous Brooklyn boy in sickness and in health, for richer and for poorer, and all the rest of it.

She has certainly lived up to her word.

And nineteen years later, she’s still my girl.

We’ve come a long way since pickle juice and chips, haven’t we?

I can hardly wait to see what the next nineteen years brings.

Happy anniversary, Mrs. Roman.

You sure have a lot of nice CDs.

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Steve Jobs and the Lean Startup

Steve JobsOn my 25 minute train journey to work each morning I like to pass the time by reading. The two most recent books I’ve read are The Lean Startup: How Constant Innovation Creates Radically Successful Businesses by Eric Ries and Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson (both links contain an affiliate id). Although one is a biography and the other is a book on project management they actually cover similar ground, and both are books that people working in technology should read.

Walter Isaacson’s book has been extensively reviewed and dissected so I’m not going to go into detail on it. The book is roughly divided into two halves. The first section is on the founding of Apple, Pixar and NeXT. This section serves an inspirational guide to setting up your own company. The joy of building a great product and defying the odds against a company succeeding comes across very strongly. The later section following Job’s return to Apple is a much more about the nuts and bolts of running a huge corporation. While it’s an interesting guide to how Apple got to where it is today, it lacks the excitement of the earlier chapters.

Eric Ries - The Lean Startup, London EditionThe Lean Startup could, rather unkindly, be described as a managerial technique book. It’s much more than that though as it’s more of a philosophy for how to run company or a project. The book is very readable and engaging with plenty of useful case studies to illustrate the point being made. The key message of the book is to get your product out to customers as soon as possible, to measure as much as you can and learn from what your customers are doing and saying. As you learn you need to make a decision on whether to persevere or to pivot, and change strategy.

There are many reasons why Steve Jobs was a great leader, a visionary and a terrible boss. One aspect was his unshakable belief that he knew what the customer wanted, even before they knew themselves. This is the antithesis of the Lean Startup methodology, which focuses on measurement and learning. Eric Ries stresses that a startup is not necessarily two guys working out of a garage. Huge multinational corporations can have speculative teams or projects inside them, that act much like start ups, so it wouldn’t be impossible for the Apple of today to act like a start up. Apple weren’t always huge though, and back in the 1970s they really were a start up.

One Apple trait the Lean Startup methodolgy doesn’t allow for is dramatic product launches. The Lean Startup is a way of working that relies on quick iteration and gradually building up your customer base. It’s hard to quickly iterate when building hardware, but early in Apple’s life they were struggling to find a market for their computers. The Apple I follow the trend of the time of build-it-yourself computers. Just a year later and Apple released the Apple ][ which came with a case and was much more suitable for the average consumer. This represents a pivot on the part of Apple. They could have continued to focus on hobbyists but instead they decided to change and aim for a bigger, but less technical, market.

Reading is a key part of becoming a better programmer. Whether it’s reading about the latest technology on a blog, the latest project management techniques or the history of computers reading will help you become better at your job. I’m not sure I recommend anyone tries to recreate Steve Job’s management style, but as a history of Apple Walter Isaacson’s book is inspirational and informative. The Lean Startup is considerably more practical, even if it won’t inspire you to set a company in the first place.

Photo of Steve Jobs by Ben Stanfield.
Photo of Eric Ries – The Lean Startup, London Edition by Betsy Weber.

iPhone 4S

Apple Store - LondonThis weekend I joined the hysterical masses and upgraded my increasingly ancient iPhone 3G to a shiny new 64GB iPhone 4S. Except that it was actually a bit of an anticlimax. I went into my local O2 shop at about 10:30am on Saturday morning, the day after the launch, and purchased a phone. No queueing, no raging hoards. I didn’t even have to shove a granny out of the way to get one. However, after handing over my credit card while cringing at the expense it was back home to enjoy the famous Apple unboxing experience.

I wish I’d never upgraded my 3G to iOS 4.2. Up until that point it was a great phone. Afterwards it was slow and applications would repeated crash on start up. Did I mention it was slow?

It’s hard to express just how much quicker the 4S is compared to my 3G. Often just typing my the passcode would be too quick for the 3G and it would miss one of the numbers forcing me to go back. No danger of this with the 4G though. Application starting, browsing the web, taking photos are all super speedy.

Although it’s the same as the iPhone 4 the screen is still incredible. It’s so bright and sharp it’s really a joy to use. It really comes into its own when browsing webpages that are designed for bigger screens. The extra detail really helps you to work out where to zoom in.

The camera is also much improved, and I’m sure the addition of video compared to my old 3G will come in useful. I brought iMovie and that seems like an easy way to put together some short videos of my holidays. I haven’t had much of a chance to experiment with this aspect of the phone properly yet, but I can imagine that where carrying equipment is a problem it will replace my DSLR as my primary camera. I’m sure I’ll have more to say on this topic when I’ve been out and about for a while.

Robots only eat old peopleI don’t intend to make this an in depth review of the phone, there are many hundreds of better places that you could go to for that. One feature that I can’t not talk about is Siri. I struggle to see why, for a non-blind user, you would use it after playing with it for a bit. If you are blind then dictating is clearly a huge help, and the biggest surprise for me is the quality of the voice recognition. I don’t have a strong accent so I suppose that if it didn’t work for me then it wouldn’t work for anyone. Still though, for someone who hasn’t used voice recognition for ten years it’s amazing just how far it has come.

There’s lots of talk online about the funny answers that Siri comes up with if you ask it question like “What’s the meaning of life?” It’s certainly to Apple’s credit that they’ve given it so much personality and it’s not just a bland robot. These questions are not a long term use case though.

Where Siri really succeeds is as an interface to Wolfram Alpha. Like most people when Wolfram Alpha was launched I played with it for a bit and then forgot about it. The ability to say things like “What’s the distance from the Earth to the Moon?” and have Siri return the correct answer is quite amazing. People are used to typing a few words into Google but Wolfram Alpha needs a bit more than that. A voice interface seems so much more natural and is probably Siri’s killer application.

Unfortunately as I’m in the UK Siri doesn’t do mapping or business search for me. Roll on 2012 when that is supposed to be added.

It’s early days yet, but I’ve fallen in love with my phone all over again.

Photo of Apple Store – London by nabekor. Photo of Robots only eat old people by Mark Strozier.

Making History by Stephen Fry Book Review

Time Travel: We Leave For New Zealand Today. by americanvirusThis book poses an interesting question, what would happen if you could stop Adolf Hitler from being born? Ask anyone if they had the choice, would they take it and I imagine that almost everyone would say yes. When Michael, the lead character in this story has that choice he takes it with both hands. Unfortunately though, things do not go according to plan.

Stephen Fry is a British institution and a well known upper class intellectual. In this book he is clearly writing about what he knows as it focuses on a post-graduate student at Cambridge. The book is full of colour and detail and has an air of authenticity that draws you into the world effortlessly. There seems to be a significant amount of himself in the lead character and he writes as he talks. At first I found the overly intellectual mode of writing to be annoying and distracting from what the author was trying to say. Persevere though, and you’re rewarded with a charming, warm and funny story that will also make you think about history and the choices we make.

This book can easily be described a genre-defying as the time-travel premise means it clearly fits into science fiction. Don’t worry though, this book is not about spaceships or lasers as the two moments of time-travel are tiny compared to their consequences, and combined with flashbacks into the two world wars, the book fits into historical fiction as well. Is historical science fiction a genre? It is now.

This book was first published in 1996, and if you haven’t read in the last fifteen years then you should definitely go and hunt down copy. You’ll read it and imagine that it was written yesterday.

Photo of Time Travel: We Leave For New Zealand Today. by americanvirus.

Why Does e=mc2? Book Review

The Atomic Explosion and Mushroom Fallout at Sunset by stuckincustomsRock star turned physicist Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw have written a book with a deceptively simple title, Why Does e=mc2? With a title like that you might expect that the book will be along the same lines as the New Scientist books How To Make A Tornado and Do Polar Bears Get Lonely?. Instead though, you get a book that takes you on a in-depth journey through deriving the equation from first principles* and on to the many things that it implies.

As you might expect for a book from two physicists it is a fairly specific book, focusing on entirely on the equation and the mathematics and physics that surround it. If you’re looking for a history of the equation and the Einstein then this is not the book for you. That’s not to say that it’s not well written, or not accessible because it is both of those things. The jovial nature of the writing and understandable metaphors really help you to follow the progress of the book, especially when four dimensional space-time is being discussed.

This book is well written, informative and entertaining. If you’ve ever wanted to know why e=mc2 and you’ve got a basic understanding of maths then “Why Does e=mc2?” will answer all your questions and more.

* Well, from an fairly basic set of set of assumptions.

Photo of The Atomic Explosion and Mushroom Fallout at Sunset by stuckincustoms.

Championship Manager 2010 for the iPhone Review

Soccer Ball by jbelluchI often pass some time while traveling playing a game or two on my phone. Being a football fan I was interested to see that a version of Championship Manager was available for the iPhone.

Early impressions of the game are good. The interface is polished with plenty of options and buttons to press. The game also features a pretty complete set of teams and players with all the usual statistics that you would expect from a football management game.

The key part of a football management is the match interface. Choosing your formation and assigning players to positions is incredibly easy with the touch interface. The actual view of the match is top down and feels really cramped on the small screen. Reading the text commentary is simple, but watching the tiny dots running around on the pitch is very difficult to follow. You cannot help but feel detached from the action.

Post-match you are often treated to a press conference where you pick a journalist who asks you a question. You then pick an answer from a number of options, trying to balance the happiness of your players, board, fans and the media. Different answers will improve your standing with some and reduce it with others. Oddly along with the text of each answer the game shows you the exact effect the answer will have. A really manager has to guess at how their answer will be interpreted, they don’t have a help set of red and green numbers.

I was quite surprised to see a football management game on the iPhone. Both Championship and Football Manager are well known for needing substantial amounts of CPU power and memory to run well even on a desktop PC. The game does run pretty well, although some of the menu transitions are a little sluggish. I’m sure it would run better on a 3GS rather than the 3G that I have. Another issue is that the game is a huge battery drain and you can probably only get an hour or so play on a fully charged phone.

While Championship Manager on the iPhone was never going to be a graphical marvel, but it is undoubtedly one of the most impressive games on the system. At just £2.99 it’s an excellent purchase.

Photo of a soccer ball by jbelluch.

FlightControl Review

On Friday I download a fun little puzzle game for my iPhone, FlightControl.

The premise of the game is that you’re running air traffic approach control for a small airport and you need to arrange for the two types of passenger jets, light aircraft and helicopters to land in the appropriate places without crashing into each other. A simple concept with even simpler controls. You tap on the plane you want to direct and then drag the plane to the runway. It will then follow the path you dragged out. It’s incredibly easy to use and really lets you focus on the goal of stopping those planes from crashing.

The graphics and sounds are excellent. The game has a great cartoon feel and although the menu and ui are minimal it has a very consistent look that clearly didn’t happen by accident. The map and airport look good and there are plans to add more airports to the game which I hope will be done to a similarly high standard.

The game starts off very easy to let you get the feel for the controls but the difficulty level ramps up pretty quickly and you’ll soon have to deal with five or more planes at once. When you’ve got two planes flying at different speeds trying to land on the same runway your brain will start to melt, but in a good way.

The game features online leaderboards which is a nice touch, but like with most online stats the leaders are way out of most users reach. The current all-time top score is almost 15,000. My best is 53.

My only criticisms are that the airport is perhaps a little large which means you don’t have much room to sort your planes into stacks as you wait for them to land. The game also has an annoying habit of letting new planes enter when an existing plane is right by the edge so they crash before you can do anything. A warning icon does appear to give you time to move a plane out of the way, but it’s frustrating to lose a game in what seems like such an unfair manner. Finally I think the game could be improved by putting ticks on the planes paths so you see more easily when they well get to a certain point on the map. A small marker every five seconds of flying time would be very useful.

The game is a great pick-up-and-play title, and you won’t be able to play it just the once. With the game currently selling for a greatly reduced price it should be on every casual gamer’s iPhone.

Wolfenstein 3d iPhone Review

ID Software have taken time out from letting you play Quake 3 in your browser to release a port of the granddaddy of all first person shooters – Wolfenstein 3d. The iPhone is really beginning to show itself as an excellent gaming platform, and despite its age Wolfenstein really looks at home on the phone.

The graphics are, quite frankly, rubbish. However, they’re exactly as they were when the game was released in 1992 which is exactly the point. The sound has faired much better and sounds great. The voices of the German soldiers still send shivers up your spine. It’s an extremely faithful port of the game, and the addition of an automatic save feature means it really works as a pick up and play game. It’s very easy to dip in and out of taking one level at a time.

The controls have naturally been revamped for the iPhone’s unique control system. You steer by moving your left finger over up/down/left/right arrows and fire by tapping your right finger on a button. This works really well and it is very easy to pick up and to start running around the Nazi prison that you find yourself in. The controls do rather feel like driving a fork lift truck. You regularly find your self reversing backwards around a corner, which is not how a person would move, but it’s easy to forgive and hard to see how else it could be done.

The game might seem a little expensive at £2.99 but you get all six episodes of the game which will last you many hours. It’s available in the App Store now, and for such an old game still shows its class amongst the other games available on the iPhone.

If you’re interesting in the process of making the port then John Carmack has written a detailed post describing it.


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Animus Lost

On Epilogues

In which "ever after" isn't far.

6 months after Unforgiven

“You’re staring, Mr. Greene.”

The words pulled Arkh back into the real world. He shook his head gently as he regained clarity over the moment. It had been a long journey here, and he’d gotten little sleep. Physical comfort was still a difficult thing for him to achieve, despite Albin’s creative measures (he called the device a “wheeled chair”), and a good night’s sleep had long since become a thing of the past for him.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m just kind of… overwhelmed.”

Near him, reclined on a small bed, with a blanket draped over her, laid Cyleena Dren, a small smile dancing across her lips. “It’s alright, Archie.” She nodded down with her head at the swaddle of blankets in her arm. “Did you want to hold her?”

Arkh felt his heart leap up into his throat, and suddenly had a hard time breathing evenly. “Yeah, I do,” he finally said, after a moment.

She was smaller and lighter than Arkh had expected, the mass of blankets making her seem heftier than she actually was. When he finally got her nestled into the crook of his arm, he peeled back one of the cloth coverings and looked at her face. So tiny, so fragile. “She’s beautiful.”

“Yep, she’s got her father’s trademark good looks, that’s for sure.” Jharva had leaned over Arkh’s shoulder, and was now gently poking at the little baby’s hands while he spoke.

Arkh let out a small laugh that he hoped desperately didn’t convey the hate he felt. Jharva Kelger, handsome orc functionary in the Imperial Court and heir to the Kelger fortune, had fallen for Cyleena shortly after her promotion to Imperial Advisor. Their courtship had been swift, and their whirlwind romance resulted in a quick but lovely marriage ceremony, and a beautiful baby girl—who was unusually healthy, considering how she was nearly a month premature. Jharva had attributed the stroke of luck to his strong genes. Arkh had no medical basis upon which to disagree with the orc.

Cyleena looked knowingly at Arkh, and agreed with her husband. “Yes, Jharva, she does.”

Arkh fought the smile that tugged at the corner of his lips, not wanting to let Cyleena see that he still loved her. “What’s her name?”

Jharva sniffed, and stood up straight as he answered. “Well, I wanted to give her a strong, orcish name, like Valla, or Thess, but, well…”

Cyleena picked up the sentence. “I insisted on using a family name.” She hesitated long enough for Arkh to meet her gaze. “Celeste.”

Three weeks later

“I’m sorry, Mr. Greene.”

The words, despite their source, were sincere. Lieutenant Cressida didn’t know Arkh that well (and, due to the nature of their relationship, likely never would), but she was a kind soul, and a good soldier. For whatever it was worth, Arkh knew that she understood his pain.

“Thank you, lieutenant. May I please get closer? I’d like to read it.”

The Imperial Guardswoman took a moment before giving her response. “You may. Take your time.”

“Thank you, lieutenant.”

Lieutenant Cressida, as well as her three sergeants, had been assigned to Arkh as “security detail,” for his time in Cinderfell. Ostensibly, they were there to act as his bodyguards and guides, as he was now officially an Imperial asset. In reality, they were there to make sure that no Blood Magic was used during his stay—with force, if necessary. Empress Valentine hadn’t wanted to take such strongarmed measures, but her Imperial Council weren’t backing down, and Arkh ultimately subjected to the detail. He figured he’d need someone to strap him into his saddle, anyway.

The hard rain had made reading from a distance difficult, and as his horse plodded forward through the mud, the simple, unadorned words on the headstone finally came into view.

An evil mage destroyed my life. I earned my name by ending his. I am remembered by the company I kept in my quest, who are honored among the Beastmen for their deeds.

Albin Graf, Demon slayer
Archibald Greene, Blood mage
Fritz Karhil, Curious thief
Goldenlocks Kittlebee, Bear warrior
Nameless, Skybound Beastwoman

Vengeance was sweet.

For a long moment, Arkh remained there, him and his horse standing a silent vigil for his lost friend. The hard rain and booming thunder of the North seemed as fitting a eulogy that the warrior could have asked for. Arkh was grateful for the rain, as it removed the need to dry his eyes, once he finally turned away.

Two years later

“Thank you, Mr. Greene.”

Arkh smiled at the young boy across from him. “Don’t fret over it, Shane. I knew what you were trying to say, but your word choice had me worried at a couple parts. I just wanted to make sure you were doing alright.” Shane smiled as he stood up, and pulled his pack over his shoulder. “Now you promise you’ll come talk to me if you start getting angry, okay?”

Shane nodded at his professor. “I promise. I don’t want to hurt anyone.”

“There’s a good lad. Go get some dinner.”

The boy didn’t have to be told twice, and had disappeared from the room before Arkh could blink. Arkh allowed himself a small smile as found the next blank page in Shane’s journal, and took notes on their session. The boy was doing well, despite being in one of the most problematic age ranges, and had already learned to control his anger and aggression much better than most of his peers. Arkh saw lots of potential in that boy.

The Academy itself was an exercise in finding that kind of potential. The original idea had come from Empress Valentine, who’d handed it over to Arkh and Rathiel, eldest son of Jarl Eagleface, and a powerful Blood mage like Arkh. The two of them saw the good they could do with it, and immediately started erecting a school in the borderlands of Kalahari, just under a mile east of Westwater’s city limits. Jarl’s strong presence in the city during the rebuilding of Westwater was a godsend in that time, and served to dramatically strengthen relations between the Academy and Cinderfell.

The Academy for Constructive Applications, as it was officially known (or the “Sanguine School,” as some liked to call it), was finished in just over a year. Westwater, Tuari, Koth, Cliffport, and even Trada had sent help in the form of supplies, workers, and educational materials, and the final result had been something much better and grander than either Arkh or Rathiel had even hoped for.

The pair quickly realized that there was more to do than they could handle between them, and had to start recruiting others from around Vulcanica to help. Teachers began to fill up the Academy’s faculty for virtually all of the classes that didn’t specifically involve Blood magic, while support staff filled up the logistics positions. Meanwhile, Rathiel took over most of the administrative duties, and Arkh handled a lot of the student counseling, but both of them still taught Blood magic classes on a regular basis. Arkh personally had a hard time staying out of the medical wing, where he was quickly gaining a reputation as an advisor and helpful pair of hands.

In the year since the Academy’s completion, Arkh had found a serenity that he hadn’t realized he was missing. The dark part of him had grown quiet, and he came to embrace the control him and Rathiel saught to empower their students with. For the first time in a while, he’d felt neither pain nor regret.

A knock on his door pulled Arkh from his gentle reflection. “Come in,” he announced, as he closed the journal and returned his quill to its holder. The door creaked open, and an armored woman stepped in. “Captain Cressida,” Arkh nodded as he began tidying up his desk. “Please, sit. How can I help you?”

Jenvive Cressida, loyal soldier of Cinderfell, and captain of the Imperial Guard detail assigned to monitor and aid the Academy, sat across from Arkh. Officially, her job was to make sure that the Academy recieved all the help it could from Cinderfell, and that no one in the Academy entered Cinderfell without express permission and a chaperone. In reality, however, her job was largely quite boring, and mostly involved her going to a lot of meetings with various Cinderfell officials to deliver even more boring status reports.

“Professor Greene,” Cressida began, clearing her throat. “It is my understanding that no classes will be held tomorrow, on account of the holiday?”

Arkh nodded. “That’s right.”

“Well,” she continued. “I was curious if… if you’d like to go into town with me, tonight?”

Arkh tilted his head. “Do you need my help with something?”

Cressida blushed as she shot a dry look at Arkh. “Professor, I’m asking you on a date.”

Arkh smiled as he felt blood rush to his face. “Oh,” he laughed. “I’m sorry, captain.” He paused for a moment. “Yes, I think I’d like that.”

Kissarai Arikiba

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text:
Meeting the stars of Dakar 2014

Posted on Updated on

All competitors are gathered and it is great to be able to meet the real superstars before start.
A lot of smiles and hugs all day long. And wishing luck!

Talking to Dakar’s most victorious competitor Stephan Peterhansel, who said that still after 15 Dakar rallies in a car, he still feels more like a motorcycle rider.
I know, the bike rider never leaves your heart.

* (left)

And greeting Argentinian super star Marcos Patronelli, who I’ve been sharing assistance team with in Dakar 2009-2010.

* (right)

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Friday, July 4, 2014

Furious Freedom

Freedom is uncommon.
It's worth remembering on this Independence Day...

However inalienable and proper freedom might be, oppression, bondage, and involuntary servitude persist today more so than at the height of the Atlantic slave trade.

The freedom to choose what you say and believe, where you go to live and work, to pursue knowledge, where you choose to call home and whom you will serve ... these are uncommon today. Uncommon, as in not available to most people.  Today.

Freedom's story is about more than taxes on tea or people in chains.

Our American Revolution included twenty years of political upheaval and eight years of bloody war that ended in 1783, but there was more.

The French Revolution followed in the same decade, and the western world was born.  Personal freedom and inalienable rights were recognized in 1791 by the first amendments to our constitution, but it was well into the next century before such rights began to emerge for blacks, even later for women, and another century before segregation began to rot away.  There's more.

Humanity and the world were explosively changed by the freedom these few in the New World had won, but they and their predecessors had been fighting for such freedom since the Bronze Age.  It is a perpetual fire that has burned in every heart since the beginning.

At the other end of the spectrum from freedom is enslavement, perhaps.  Slavery is broad-reaching and not confined to the Atlantic slave trade between Africa and the new world.  Slavery existed thousands of years before in ancient China, Egypt, Israel, Turkey, India, Rome, Greece, Europe, the Americas, and Africa.

Slavery in antiquity may have begun simply.  From year to year, there might be a good harvest, a successful season, or a dry spell lasting years; success wasn't guaranteed.  A family or a community might have plenty for generations or be driven out when the rains failed or the nearby forests were exhausted.  Having lost their livelihood, they might offer themselves as laborers in a more fruitful region to those who had good land for crops or nets for fishing.  Problems arose when those who 'had' took advantage of those who 'had not', and varying degrees of indenture and servitude were imposed.  In distress, a family might sell a child in hopes of saving the child and themselves as well.  A successful herdsman might offer a cow or two for a pretty wife.  Or servant.  Slavery by class, by birth, by conquest, by desperate choice ...

Beyond self-indenture, we find capture and forced service. Forced enslavement has a long history and persists today as human trafficking.

Only recently having returned to worldwide public attention, the slave trade affects perhaps millions.  There are 10,000+ per year that we know about. Actual (undetected) numbers will be much higher.

Children are still being bought and sold. Women and girls make up about 70% of trafficking victims.

To continue bringing the issue forward, take a look at indentured servitude.

Indentured service was a labor system, most common in the 18th century British colonies, where young folks would sell themselves for a period of years as laborers.  They began by first selling themselves to a European sea captain who transported them and in turn sold their indenture to employers in the colonies who needed labor.

Indenture was a way for the poor youth of Britain and Germany to try for a new life in the New World.  Their plan was to work for a period of years and then be released.

During the late 17th and early 18th centuries poor children from England and France were kidnapped and sold into indentured labor in the Caribbean for a minimum of five years, but most times their contracts were bought and sold repeatedly and some laborers never attained their freedom.

Our modern version has several elements, particularly since the industrial age began.
Indebtedness is a bondage, encouraged and enforced by western culture.  Particularly for students, the legally enforced obligation of debt confines the individual to a narrow path of employment and availability in the workforce, usually for decades.  (Student debt tops $1.2 trillion, more than all credit card and auto loans combined.)  When you're dealing with millions of workers, the averages play out pretty impressively for the finance industry and the wealthy.

Wages were tied to productivity for 25 years following WWII.  In college economics, we
were taught that the two were tied by economic law, and that if they deviated, marketplace
response would force them back together.  They couldn't separate.  All that ended by the 70's
when corporations began to extract wealth specifically for the benefit of the few.  Executive
wages increased radically while labor pay rates stalled for the next half-century.  The financial
industry was turned loose to continue the wealth extraction.  Deregulation made the theft legal,
and Wall Street has extracted trillions from the economy's productivity without a penny going
 to the workers who provide it all.
Minimum wage traps unskilled workers in poor working conditions and inadequate support for a healthy life.  At first, after the plague in Europe had decimated the population and labor was in short supply, maximum wages were set to control costs for the benefit of the wealthy.  Later minimum wages were set to provide a 'living wage'.  If the U.S. minimum wage had kept pace with worker productivity, it would be more than double the current rate.

Poverty, we know, is not something anyone chooses; it's done to you.

The big players these days are the 0.01% richest folks.  Economic warfare, rather poorly disguised in the west as free market capitalism, has formalized the process by which the super-rich advance at the expense of the indentured many.  The war is now global as financial institutions extract the wealth of developing nations.  Governments serve the wealthy and the gap widens.

Freedom is not the power to rise on the backs of others.
Freedom is not the chance to get ahead and leave others behind.
The full declaration is a world-changer.

The triumph of freedom is not a war's victory of one people or ideology over another ... that which we have isn't real freedom.  It's just a taste, and there's more to come.


text:
When was Harriet Metz Noble Livermore born (she was the third wife of Jesse Livermore)?

Jesse Livermore was a famous early 20th century stock trader. He killed himself at the end, but I'm very curious about his third wife as her previous four husbands all committed suicide. Is there a book on her life?
Update: I'm actually wondering about the actual birth date.
2 answers 2


text:
Apostasy Now Ep 29: Tombstone Da Deadman Goes Cosmic!

Tombstone drops in for a great conversation that is fun and really runs the gambit. You need to check this guy out! He has a new album out and we bring you a taste along with a chance to hear from this artist and get the bonus level context! Do yourself a favour and follow his links below. Enjoy!

[audio http://archive.org/download/ANPEp29TombstoneDaDeadmanGoesCosmic/ANP%20Ep29%20-%20Tombstone%20Da%20Deadman%20-%20Goes%20Cosmic.mp3]

Download Ep 29

Tombstone Da Deadman - Cosmic

Tombstone Da Deadman – Cosmic

Tombstone’s Music and More at Bandcamp:

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Tombstone on Facebook:

Apostate, Skeptic, Atheist, Humanist, etc I thrive on evidence and my own humour.

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Give us feedback. Good or bad baby, let us have it!

Want to be a guest or lower the caliber of your show by having us on it? Emails here!

And may the imaginary gods have mercy on your fairy tale soul!

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Pre Spring

Down South, here in Joburg, Imbolc is just 3 weeks away and I believe that I can almost see Spring heaving into view over the horizon.

The mornings are less viciously cold and a little moister, the Sun just that tiny bit higher in the midday sky. An actual ant was scouting out the territory of my desk at work the other day. And to step outside of the house in the early morning hours is to be hit in the nostrils with the effluvia of a drugs-manufacturing house.

Bloubosrand does sometimes produce some odd smells in the pre-dawn or post-dusk hours. Burning rubber is one of the favourites of course – from the squatter camps in the vicinity – but home dry cleaning chemicals runs a close second (and seems to have largely stopped since the over-the-road neighbour lost his job at Northern Cleaners), and occaisionally a more human-organic smell is the Odour of the Day.

But this morning when I stuck my head into the study to collect the partner’s coffee cup, I was struck by a hauntingly familiar smell – the scent of nitrogenous fertilizer components which marked the territory of my Dad’s agricultural laboratory in Binfield.

Not an unpleasant smell, for me, but my partner reminded me that it is still Winter and large-scale garden fertilization is unlikely to be occuring at this time.

But, on the Friday before the schools reconvene, what is likely to be cooking is a first batch of drugs for resale.

Having just gone through a day with a potential unexploded bomb a few meters down the street yesterday, I was having thoughts of a more immediately violent kind.

This is not Spring.

It is very firmly Pre Spring.

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