The Piano

Happy birthday Anna Paquin, 28 today.

Shouldn’t that be former?

Dr Therese Arseneau is joined on the panel by ACT leader and cabinet minister Richard Prebble . . .

The TVNZ media release on the Q&A panel for tomorrow shows one word can be very important, though as one of the world’s worst proof readers I can understand how it happened.

Amazing Grace

John Newton was born born 185 years ago today. He was the captain of ship which carried slaves then underwent a conversion, became a minsiter and an abolitionist.

He wrote several hymns, the best known of which is Amazing Grace.

It was used as the title and theme song for the film about William Wilberforce’s efforts to abolish slavery. Newton is also portrayed in the film.

Saturday’s smiles

A woman inserted an ad in the classifieds: “Husband Wanted”.  Next day she received a hundred letters. They all said the same thing: “You can have mine”

If you want your spouse to listen and pay strict attention to every word you say – talk in your sleep.

Marriage is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.

A woman is incomplete until she is married. Then she is finished.

If it weren’t for marriage, men would go through life thinking they had no faults at all.

These lines were lifted from Baker & Associates weekly AG-Letter which is a valuable resource on matters rural and agricultural.

This week’s includes a report on the firm’s annual remuneration survey. It analyses 190 responses covering 447 fulltime and 102 part time employees on properties throughout the country to give a very good picture of salaries, wages and employment conditions on farms.

A sample newsletter and details on subscribing are here.

12/15

12/15 in the 3 News weekly quiz.

One step back two steps forward

If the government had carried on with plans to investigate mining potential on schedule 4 conservation land it would have been accused of not listening to the people.

Now that it has taken heed of the vociferous opposition to the plan and not only said there will be no mining on this land but added more to it, it’s been accused of doing a u-turn.

It’s one of those damned if they did, damned if they didn’t situations but Trans Tasman has found some positives in it for the government:

. . . Brownlee says “NZers have given the mineral sector a clear mandate to go and explore that land, and where appropriate…utilise its mineral resources for everyone’s benefit.”

Therefore, on his analysis the biggest backdown since National came to office was “a valuable exercise” and he could be right. It hasn’t lost anything which really matters, it listened and it learned, and its opponents have been cut off at the knees. And the industry, far from being disappointed, says it’s getting what it has wanted for a decade-aero magnetic surveys of regions expected to yield deposits worth billions.

One step back from schedule 4 land has led to a couple of steps forward in other areas. Northland MP John Carter and West Coast Tasman MP Chris Auchinvole are showing a lot of enthusiasm for the possiblity of mining in their electorates.

And Grey District Mayor Tony Kokshoorn said city people shouldn’t use his region to ease their environmental consciences:

 . . . Aucklanders need to deal with what he calls “the mountain of carbon emissions” their highways are spewing out before blocking a small amount of mining on the West Coast.

He says it is not right that urban people should stop the region’s development.

Mr Kokshoorn says the area proposed for exploration was only “a few thousand hectares” out of the two million hectares of conservation land on the West Coast.

He said there is a currently a balance between eco-tourism and mining on the West Coast and further mining would not compromise the environment.

He said the Government’s decision not to mine on schedule four conservation land was hugely disappointing.

People who marvel at natural beauty as they drive through it at 100 kph or take a closer look on an occasional holiday have a right to their views. But while they stand up for the environment they forget the sustainability stool has two other legs – the economic and social ones.

Local people need work which mining could provide and the infrastructure and services which would come with it.

They have a far greater interest than visitors in ensuring mining doesn’t come at the cost of the environment because it will be done in their backyard, and no-one’s suggesting mining at any cost.

The Resource Management process will be able to ensure mining is done with minimal disruption and damage and the requirement to leave the land in the same or better state when the work is finished.

Virus warning

Yesterday Adam at Inquiring Mind blogged he was feeling unwell .

Today  I’ve got a sore throat and other symptoms which  warn of the onset of a cold.

Could this be blog to blog infection and if so would it have been caused by a computer virus?

July 24 in history

On July 24:

1132 Battle of Nocera between Ranulf II of Alife and Roger II of Sicily.

 

1148  Louis VII of France  laid siege to Damascus during the Second Crusade.

1411  Battle of Harlaw, one of the bloodiest battles in Scotland.

 

1487  Citizens of Leeuwarden, Netherlands struck against ban on foreign beer.

1534  French explorer Jacques Cartier planted a cross on the Gaspé Peninsula and took possession of the territory in the name of Francis I of France.

1567  Mary, Queen of Scots, was forced to abdicate and replaced by her 1-year-old son James VI.

 

1701  Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac founded the trading post at Fort Pontchartrain, which later became the city of Detroit, Michigan.

1715 A Spanish treasure fleet of 10 ships under Admiral Ubilla left Havana  for Spain.

 

1725 John Newton, English cleric and hymnist, was born (d. 1807).

1783 Simón Bolívar, South American liberator, was born (d. 1830).

1802 Alexandre Dumas, père, French writer, was born (d. 1870).

1814  War of 1812: General Phineas Riall advanced toward the Niagara River to halt Jacob Brown’s American invaders.

1823  Slavery was abolished in Chile.

1832  Benjamin Bonneville led  the first wagon train across the Rocky Mountains by using Wyoming’s South Pass.

1847  After 17 months of travel, Brigham Young led 148 Mormon pioneers into Salt Lake Valley, resulting in the establishment of Salt Lake City.

1864  American Civil War: Battle of Kernstown – Confederate General Jubal Anderson Early defeated Union troops led by General George Crook in an effort to keep them out of the Shenandoah Valley.

1866  Reconstruction: Tennessee became the first U.S. State to be readmitted to the Union following the American Civil War.

1874 Oswald Chambers, Scottish minister and writer, was born (d. 1917).

 

1895  Robert Graves, English author, was born  (d. 1985).

1897 Amelia Earhart, American aviator, was born (disappeared 1937).

 

1901  O. Henry is released from prison after serving three years for embezzlement from a bank.

1911  Hiram Bingham III re-discovered Machu Picchu, “the Lost City of the Incas”.

 

1915  The passenger ship S.S. Eastland capsised in central Chicago, with the loss of 845 lives.

 

1923  The Treaty of Lausanne, settling the boundaries of modern Turkey, was signed.

1927  The Menin Gate war memorial is unveiled at Ypres.

1929  The Kellogg-Briand Pact, renouncing war as an instrument of foreign policy went  into effect.

 

1931  A fire at a home for the elderly in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania killed 48 people.

1935  The world’s first children’s railway opened in Tbilisi, USSR.

1935   The dust bowl heat wave reached its peak, sending temperatures to 109°F (44°C) in Chicago and 104°F (40°C) in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

1937 Alabama dropped rape charges against the so-called “Scottsboro Boys“.

 

1938 First ascent of the Eiger north face.

1943 World War II: Operation Gomorrah began: British and Canadian aeroplanes bombed Hamburg by night, those of the Americans by day.

 

1950 Cape Canaveral Air Force Station began operations with the launch of a Bumper rocket.

1959  At the opening of the American National Exhibition in Moscow, U.S. Vice President Richard Nixon and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev have a “Kitchen Debate“.

1966 Michael Pelkey and Brian Schubert made the first BASE jump from El Capitan. Both came out with broken bones.

1967  During an official state visit to Canada, French President Charles de Gaulle declared to a crowd of over 100,000 in Montreal: Vive le Québec libre! (“Long live free Quebec!”). The statement, interpreted as support for Quebec independence, delighted many Quebecers but angered the Canadian government and many English Canadians.

1969 Jennifer Lopez, American actress and singer, was born.

1969  Apollo 11 splashed down safely in the Pacific Ocean.

1972 Bugojno group was caught by Yugoslav security forces.

1974 Watergate scandal: the United States Supreme Court unanimously ruled that President Richard Nixon did not have the authority to withhold subpoenaed White House tapes and they order him to surrender the tapes to the Watergate special prosecutor.

1974 After the Turkish invasion of Cyprus the Greek military junta collapsed and democracy was restored.

1977  End of a four day Libyan-Egyptian War.

1982 Anna Paquin, Canadian-born New Zealand actress, was born.

1982  Heavy rain caused a mudslide that destroyed  a bridge at Nagasaki, Japan, killing 299.

1990  Iraqi forces started massing on the Kuwait-Iraq border.

1998  Russell Eugene Weston Jr. burst into the United States Capitol and opened fire killing two police officers.

2000 Private Leonard Manning became New Zealand’s first combat death since the Vietnam War when he was killed in Timor-Leste.

2001 – Simeon Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, the last Tsar of Bulgaria when he was a child, is sworn in as Prime Minister of Bulgaria, becoming the first monarch in history to regain political power through democratic election to a different office.

2001 Bandaranaike Airport attack was carried out by 14 Tamil Tiger commandos, all died in this attack. They destroyed 11 Aircrafts (mostly military) and damaged 15, there are no civilian casualties.

2005 Lance Armstrong won his seventh consecutive Tour de France.

 

2007  Libya freed all six of the Medics in the HIV trial in Libya.

Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia