Woodstock

Woodstock opened 41 years ago today.

Word of the day

Yahrzeit – Jewish commemoration or remembrance of the anniversary of someone’s death.

I think – and please correct me if I’m wrong – that Maori don’t mark a grave until the first yahrzeit. I think – and again please correct me if I mis-think – that is because then you have got through all the other big days when you might feel the absence of someone who has died more strongly – birthdays, Christmas and other anniversaires.

Kubla Khan

Samuel Taylor- Coleridge was born on this day in 1875.

Kubla Khan

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.

So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced:
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher’s flail:
And ‘mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:
And ‘mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!

The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!

A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight ‘twould win me
That with music loud and long
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed
And drunk the milk of Paradise.

Once bitten not twice shy

The NBR reports that Landcorp, PGG Wrightson and Silver Fern Farms are to make a “significant” announcement on Tuesday.

The story is behind the paywall but the grapevine has been speculating since SFF and PGW announced earlier this year they had secured money from the government’s Primary Growth Partnership for a “joint proposal to design a transformational model for the New Zealand red meat sector”.

There is a lot to be said for vertical integration and control of the value chain but I am not sure what value PGW will add.

The Norgate attempt to takeover SFF was a very expensive exercise for PGW.

However, it seems that once bitten isn’t twice shy for them, although Tuesday’s announcement may be for a very different concept.

6/10

A not very good 6/10 in the NZ Herald current affairs quiz.

Long term benefit dependency not good for individuals or society

Does anyone really believe that long term benefit dependency is good for either the people receiving them or society?

Judging from the howls of anguish which have met the release of the Welfare Working Group’s summary paper some people do otherwise they wouldn’t be so upset at the prospect of addressing the problem.

Nobody is suggesting that benefits shouldn’t be available to offer short term assistance for people in temporary need. Nor is anyone suggesting people who are unable to work because of health issues or other circumstances beyond their control should not get long term assistance.

The problem is people who could work to support themselves and don’t.

They’re the ones, which Garrick Tremain portrayed so well, taking welfare not as a safety net but a hammock.

I can remember reporting on second generation beneficiaries nearly 30 years ago, by now some families must have the third or even fourth generation on benefits.

One of the reasons people choose state asistance rather than work is, as Lindsay Mitchell points out, they get more money than thy could earn in wages.

It must be galling for people on in low-paid work to know that some of the tax which comes out of their pay contributes to keeping people who get more in welfare than they earn.

There are no quick and easy solutions to the problem, but economic growth will help. More better paid jobs would ensure those in work are better off than they’d be on benefits.

August 15

On August 15:

778 The Battle of Roncevaux Pass, at which Roland was killed.

927 The Saracens conquered and destroy Taranto.

982  Holy Roman Emperor Otto II was defeated by the Saracens in the battle of Capo Colonna.

1018 Byzantine general Eustathios Daphnomeles blinded and captured Ibatzes of Bulgaria by a ruse, ending Bulgarian resistance against Emperor Basil II’s conquest of Bulgaria.

1040  King Duncan I was killed in battle against his first cousin and rival Macbeth.

1057  King Macbeth was killed at the Battle of Lumphanan by the forces of Máel Coluim mac Donnchada.

1185  The cave city of Vardzia was consecrated by Queen Tamar of Georgia.

1248  The foundation stone of Cologne Cathedral, built to house the relics of the Three Wise Men, was laid.

 

1261 Michael VIII Palaeologus was crowned Byzantine emperor.

1309  The city of Rhodes surrendered to the forces of the Knights of St. John, completing their conquest of Rhodes. The knights establish their headquarters on the island and renamed themselves the Knights of Rhodes.

 

1461 The Empire of Trebizond surrendered to the forces of Sultan Mehmet II – regarded by some historians as the real end of the Byzantine Empire. Emperor David was exiled.

1534 Saint Ignatius of Loyola and six classmates took initial vows, leading to the creation of the Society of Jesus in September 1540.

1599  Nine Years War: Battle of Curlew Pass – Irish forces led by Hugh Roe O’Donnell successfully ambushed English forces, led by Sir Conyers Clifford, sent to relieve Collooney Castle.

1760  Seven Years’ War: Battle of Liegnitz – Frederick the Great’s victory over the Austrians under Ernst von Laudon.

 1769  Napoleon Bonaparte, Emperor of France, was born (d. 1821).

1771  Sir Walter Scott, Scottish novelist and poet, was born (d. 1832).

1824 Freed American slaves founded Liberia.

1843  The Cathedral of Our Lady of Peace in Honolulu, Hawaii was dedicated.

 

1843  Tivoli Gardens amusement park  opened in Copenhagen.

 

1869  Henrietta Vinton Davis, American elocutionist, was born (d. 1941).

 

1863 The Anglo-Satsuma War began between the Satsuma Domain of Japan and the United Kingdom.

1875 Samuel Taylor-Coleridge, English composer, was born (d. 1912).

1893 Leslie Comrie, New Zealand astronomer and computing pioneer, was born (d. 1950).

1907 Ordination in Constantinople of Fr. Raphael Morgan, first African-American Orthodox priest, “Priest-Apostolic” to America and the West Indies.

1909  A group of mid-level Greek Army officers launched the Goudi coup, seeking wide-ranging reforms.

 1912  Julia Child, American cook (d. 2004)

1912 – Dame Wendy Hiller, English actress (d. 2003).

1914  Julian Carlton, servant of American architect Frank Lloyd Wright, set fire to the living quarters of the architect’s home, Taliesin, and  mudered seven people.

1914 The Panama Canal opened to traffic with the transit of the cargo ship Ancon.

1924 Robert Bolt, English playwright and screenwriter, was born (d. 1995).

1935 Will Rogers and Wiley Post were killed after their aircraft develops engine problems during takeoff.

1939  13 Stukas dived into the ground during a disastrous air-practice at Neuhammer.

1940  An Italian submarine torpedoed and sank the Greek cruiser Elli at Tinos harbour, marking the most serious Italian provocation prior to the outbreak of the Greco-Italian War in October.

 

1941  Corporal Josef Jakobs was executed by firing squad at the Tower of London making him the last person to be executed at the Tower for treason.

1942  Operation Pedestal – The SS Ohio reached the island of Malta barely afloat carrying vital fuel supplies for the island’s defenses.

1944 : Operation Dragoon – Allied forces landed in southern France.

1945  Victory over Japan Day – Japan surrendered.

 

In New Zealand VJ Day was celebrated. Sirens immediately sounded, a national ceremony was held, and the local celebrations followed.

1945 – World War II: Korean Liberation Day.

1947  India gained independence from the United Kingdom and becomes an independent nation within the Commonwealth.

1947 – Founder of Pakistan, Muhammad Ali Jinnah was sworn in as first Governor General of Pakistan at Karachi.

1948 The Republic of Korea was established south of the 38th parallel north.

1950 Princess Anne, Princess Royal, was born.

1951 The troop ship Wahine  was wrecked en route to the Korean War.

1954 Stieg Larsson, Swedish writer, was born (d. 2004).

1954 Alfredo Stroessner began his dictatorship in Paraguay.

1952 A flashflood in Lynmouth,Devon, killed 34 people.

1960  Republic of the Congo (Brazzaville) became independent from France.

1961 – Conrad Schumann fled from East Germany while on duty guarding the construction of the Berlin Wall.

 

1962  James Joseph Dresnok defected to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea after running across the Korean DMZ.

1963 Execution of Henry John Burnett, the last man to be hanged in Scotland.

1963  President Fulbert Youlou was overthrown in the Republic of Congo, after a three-day uprising in the capital.

1965 – The Beatles played to nearly 60,000 fans at Shea Stadium in New York City, in an event later seen as marking the birth of stadium rock.

1968  40,000 people protested in Mexico City against repression.

1969 The Woodstock Music and Art Festival opened.

1971  President Richard Nixon completed the break from the gold standard by ending convertibility of the United States dollar into gold by foreign investors.

1972 Ben Affleck, American actor, was born.

1973 Vietnam War: The United States bombing of Cambodia ended.

1974  Yuk Young-soo, First Lady of South Korea, was killed during an apparent assassination attempt on President Park Chung-hee.

1975  Bangladesh’s founder Sheikh Mujibur Rehman and most members of his family were killed during a military coup.

1975 Miki Takeo made the first official pilgrimage to Yasukuni Shrine by an incumbent prime minister on the anniversary of the end of World War II.

1977  The Big Ear, a radio telescope operated by Ohio State University received a radio signal from deep space; the event is named the “Wow! signal” from the notation made by a volunteer on the project.

 

1984 The PKK in Turkey started a campaign of armed attacks upon the Turkish military

1998  Omagh bomb in Northern Ireland, the worst terrorist incident of The Troubles.

1999  Beni Ounif massacre in Algeria; some 29 people were killed at a false roadblock near the Moroccan border.

2007  An 8.0-magnitude earthquake off the Pacific coast devastated Ica and various regions of Peru killing 514 and injuring 1,090.

 

Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia

Teach Your Children Well

Happy birthday David Crosby, 69 today.

Word of the day

Ragmatical – wild, riotous, ill-behaved.

Saturday’s smiles

A young teacher started work at a country school and was keen to make lessons relevant to her pupils.

During maths she said to her class:  “If there were 12 sheep in a paddock and six of them got through a hole in the fence, how many would be left?’

“None”, answered Peter.

“None, Peter? You don’t know your maths if you think 12 minus 6 equals none.”

“No, Miss, you don’t know your sheep. When one goes, they all go,” Peter replied.

Capital cafes cop unexpected consequences of credit card disclosure

The revelations on credit card spending of politicians and public servants have been diverting, although the capitals cafes and restaurants might not be as happy as most of the public is.

Trans Tasman notes:

As if a chill wind wasn’t already blowing through the accounts of Wellington eateries, the swathe of newly released credit card details from Govt dept heads can be expected to have a further dampening effect on dining habits in the capital. Perhaps the only pleasure politicians and senior public servants will be able to take from this is it will almost certainly reduce the hosting opportunities to which the Press Gallery – writers of most of the credit card exposes – will be invited.

The amount it cost to produce the records has led to questions of whether the exercise can be justified.

I think it can because the knowledge that expenditure is likely to be made public in future will be a good restraint on extravagance.

However, it’s important we don’t get too Presbyterian about the dining habits of politicians and public servants.

Business does happen over meals and relationships are built round a dinner table in a way that doesn’t happen in an office. We can’t expect that to happen over fish and chips on a park bench.

Providing the bill meets the “actual and reasonable” test applied to covering expenses in most private businesses we shouldn’t complain about them in the public sector.

Quote of the week

The announcement from Minister of Finance and Infrastructure Bill English yesterday that government agencies are now being told to consider such partnerships for any new projects brought a predictable, if illogical, howl of protest from Labour, the Greens and the Council of Trade Unions.

Probably the largest single public-private partnership in this country’s history was initiated by the last Labour government. That is the New Zealand Superannuation Fund, known to friend and foe as the Cullen Fund.

Rob Hosking on the Left’s private hang-ups.

These two paragraphs are part of a  column which exposes Labour’s confused position on privatisation but it’s part of the subscriber-only content so unless you’ve paid up you’ll have to take my word for it.

August 14 in history

On August 14:

1183  Taira no Munemori and the Taira clan took the young Emperor Antoku and the three sacred treasures and fled to western Japan to escape pursuit by the Minamoto clan.

1385 – Portuguese Crisis of 1383–1385: Battle of Aljubarrota – Portuguese forces commanded by King João I and his general Nuno Álvares Pereira defeated the Castilian army of King Juan I.

1598  Nine Years War: Battle of the Yellow Ford – Irish forces under Hugh O’Neill, Earl of Tyrone, defeated an English expeditionary force under Henry Bagenal.

1842 Indian Wars: Second Seminole War ended.

 

1846  The Cape Girardeau meteorite, a 2.3 kg chondrite-type meteorite struck near in Cape Girardeau County, Missouri.

1867 John Galsworthy, English novelist and Nobel Prize Laureate, was born (d. 1933).

1880  Construction of Cologne Cathedral was completed.

1885  Japan’s first patent was issued to the inventor of a rust-proof paint.

1888  A recording of English composer Arthur Sullivan’s The Lost Chord, one of the first recordings of music ever made, was played during a press conference introducing Thomas Edison’s phonograph in London.

 

1891 Petitions organised by the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) seeking women’s suffrage and signed by a total of 9000 women were presented to New Zealand’s Parliament.

1893  France introduced motor vehicle registration.

1900  A joint European-Japanese-United States force (Eight-Nation Alliance) occupied Beijing, in a campaign to end the Boxer Rebellion.

1901  The first claimed powered flight, by Gustave Whitehead in his Number 21.

1908  The first beauty contest was held in Folkestone.

1912  United States Marines invaded Nicaragua to support the U.S.-backed government.

1921  Tannu Tuva, later Tuvinian People’s Republic was established as a completely independent country.

1933  Loggers caused a forest fire in the Coast Range of Oregon - the first forest fire of the Tillamook Burn.

 

1935  United States Social Security Act passes, creating a government pension system for the retired.

1936 Rainey Bethea was hanged in Owensboro, Kentucky in the last public execution in the United States.

1937 Chinese Air Force Day: The beginning of air-to-air combat of the Second Sino-Japanese War and World War II in general, when 6 Imperial Japanese Mitsubishi G3M bombers were shot down by the Nationalist Chinese Air Force.

1941 David Crosby, American musician, was born.

1941 Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Atlantic Charter of war stating postwar aims.

 

1945  Steve Martin, American actor and comedian, was born.

 

1945 Japan accepted the Allied terms of surrender  and the Emperor recorded the Imperial Rescript on Surrender.

 

1946 Susan Saint James, American actress, was born.

1947  Pakistan and India gained Independence from the British Indian Empire and joined the British Commonwealth.

1948  Don Bradman, widely regarded as the best cricket batsman in history, makes a duck in his final Test innings.

1950  Gary Larson, American cartoonist (The Far Side), was born.

1967  UK Marine Broadcasting Offences Act declared participation in offshore pirate radio illegal.

1969 British troops were deployed in Northern Ireland.

1972  An East German Ilyushin Il-62 crashed during takeoff from East Berlin, killing 156.

1980  Lech Wałęsa led strikes at the Gdańsk shipyards.

1987  All the children held at Kia Lama, a rural property on Lake Eildon, Australia, run by the Santiniketan Park Association, were released after a police raid.

1994 Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, the terrorist known as “Carlos the Jackal“, was captured.

2003  Widescale power blackout in the northeast United States and Canada.

NOAA satellite imagery one day before and the night of the blackout.

2006  Chencholai bombing - 61 Tamil girls were killed in Sri Lankan Airforce bombing.

2007   Kahtaniya bombings killed at least 400 people.

Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia

The difference between mystery & suspense

Alfred Hitchcock would ahve been 101 today.

Word of the day

Wadmal – thick course coarse wool.

If the price of wadmal was higher people involved in the sheep industry would be much happier.

Pulling teeth at the telephone shop

I’ve been delaying upgrading my mobile phone until the new versions which have been promised appeared.

A friend told me the new model to compete with the IPhone 4  was about to be launched. It wouldn’t be on display but if I asked there’d  be one out the back.

I went to the shop, asked about it and was shown a poster of a Motorola Milestone..

I asked some questions about the phone,  added that my friend had said there’d be one out the back and asked again if I could see one .

There were no other customers and the three assistants all chimed in with more information. But I still got  a “no” they couldn’t show me one.

I asked some more questions once more asked if they were they sure there wasn’t one I could see.

I got some more helpful answers and another “no”.

I asked yet more questions and again said my friend had told me they’d have one out the back they could show me.

This time I got a yes – they had a plastic model of one and a real phone as well.

They showed me both, answered lots of questions and were generally very helpful.

However, the one question they couldn’t answer was when the phone would be on the market.  It was supposed to have been last week but there’d been a hitch.

After the problems with XT I can understand that no-one wants to launch a new product until they’re quite sure it’s going to do what it’s supposed to.

But why did I have to go through the teeth pulling exercise to get a look at it?

Sheila and Bruce join Aussie election race

After its previous leader Tony Abbott failed to connect with women voters, the Australian Liberal Party has unveiled a previous unknown called Sheila as its new leader and Prime Ministerial candidate. . .

Pop over to News Biscuit to read the rest.

Undercover Minister

You’d think a man famed for his bright shirt and tie combinations would be hard to miss.

But Health Minister Tony Ryall has managed to pop in to the A&E waiting room at several hospitals  and isn’t always recognised.

“If he’s visiting a city he will sometimes duck into emergency departments and talk to patients there to see what is happening,” the spokesman told NZPA.

“He’s been getting the patient perspective on how things are working. He gets regular official reports, this puts the patient context into it.”

The spokesman said Ryall was sometimes recognised by staff.

“If he isn’t recognised he introduces himself but he wants to speak to patients, he doesn’t interrupt what the staff are doing and he never goes into areas where patients are being treated.”

It’s not the conventional way for a Minister to visit and not everyone approved but what’s the problem?

He introduces himself if he’s not recognised, he doesn’t want to interrupt staff, he gets to see what patients see and what staff have to deal with, without any of the stage management that goes in to an official visit.

Stealing from the poor

A couple of volunteers have been convicted for stealing food donated to a Salvation Army Foodbank .

Any theft is wrong and this is stealing from the people who need it most.

August 13 in history

On August 13:

1516  The Treaty of Noyon between France and Spain was signed. Francis recognised Charles’s claim to Naples, and Charles recognises Francis’s claim to Milan.

1521 Tenochtitlán (present day Mexico City) fell to conquistador Hernán Cortés.

 Fundación de México – Tenochtitlán by Roberto Cueva del Río.

1536  Buddhist monks from Kyōto’s Enryaku Temple set fire to 21 Nichiren temples throughout Kyoto in the Tenbun Hokke Disturbance.

1553  Michael Servetus was arrested by John Calvin in Geneva as a heretic.

1704  War of the Spanish Succession: Battle of Blenheim – English and Austrians wona gainst French and Bavarians.

1790 William Wentworth, Australian explorer and politician, was born (d. 1872).

1792   Louis XVI of France was formally arrested by the National Tribunal, and declared an enemy of the people.

 

1814  The Convention of London, a treaty between the United Kingdom and the United Provinces, was signed in London.

1818 Lucy Stone, American suffragette, was born  (d. 1893).

1831 Nat Turner saw a solar eclipse, which he believed was a sign from God.

1860 Annie Oakley, American sharpshooter (d. 1926), was born.

1888 John Logie Baird, Scottish television pioneer, was born (d. 1946).

 

1889  German Ferdinand von Zeppelin patented his “Navigable Balloon“.

 

1899 Alfred Hitchcock, English film director, was born (d. 1980).

1907 Sir Basil Spence, Scottish architect, was born (d. 1976).

 

1913  Otto Witte, an acrobat, was purportedly crowned King of Albania.

1913  First production in the UK of stainless steel by Harry Brearley.

 

1918  Opha Mae Johnson became the first woman to enlist in the United States Marine Corps.

1918 Bayerische Motoren Werke AG (BMW) established as a public company.

1920 Polish-Soviet War: Battle of Warsaw began.

 

1926 Fidel Castro, Cuban revolutionary and politician, was born.

1937 Battle of Shanghai began.

1940  Battle of Britain began.

1951 Dan Fogelberg, American singer/songwriter, was born (d. 2007).

1960 The Central African Republic declared independence from France.

1961 The German Democratic Republic closed the border between the eastern and western sectors of Berlin, to thwart its inhabitants’ attempts to escape to the West.

 

1968 Alexandros Panagoulis attempted to assassinate the Greek dictator Colonel G. Papadopoulos.

1969 The Apollo 11 astronauts were released from a three-week quarantine to enjoy a ticker-tape parade in New York. That evening, at a state dinner in Los Angeles, they were awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Richard Nixon.

1978  150 Palestinians in Beirut were killed in a terrorist attack.

1979  The roof of the uncompleted Rosemont Horizon near Chicago, Illinois collapsed, killing 5 workers and injuring 16.

2004   Hurricane Charley, a Category 4 storm, struck Punta Gorda, Florida.

 

2004  156 Congolese Tutsi refugees massacred at the Gatumba refugee camp in Burundi.

2005 Former NZ Prime Minister David Lange died.

2008 Michael Phelps set the Olympic record for most the gold medals won by an individual in Olympic history with his win in the men’s 200m butterfly.

Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia