Word of the day

Solecism  – a grammatical mistake in speech or writing;  an ungrammatical combination of words in a sentence; a minor blunder in speech; something deviating from the proper, normal, or accepted order; an error, inconsistency, or impropriety; a breach of etiquette or decorum.

Sowell says

The minimum wage law is very cleverly misnamed. The real minimum wage is zero—and that is what many inexperienced and low-skilled people receive as a result of legislation that makes it illegal to pay them what they are currently worth to an employer.

— Thomas Sowell Quotes (@ThomasSowell) July 19, 2019

Rural round-up

Pine trees cast shadow of death over NZ native plants and animals – Mike Cranstone:

NEW Zealand has always been challenged to move from commodity mass production to targeting higher value, whether it be in agriculture, tourism or our manufacturing businesses.

In this country’s frantic race to deliver on a throw-away election comment of 1 billion trees, we seem to be chasing numbers and not quality.

Hundreds of thousands of hectares of productive farmland is being removed from livestock production by investors chasing a potential windfall from a speculated rising carbon price. . .

Share sale last chance – Sally Rae:

A share offer for the last 14% of the North Otago Irrigation Company shares issued but not taken up at the time of the scheme expansion in 2014 now represent the last chance for farmers in the scheme area to secure water. Agribusiness reporter Sally Rae finds out how the scheme has benefited North Otago.

Agriculture has plenty of challenges and the list is building by the day.

But North Otago Irrigation Company chairman Matt Ross reckons if people went for a drive around rural North Otago and saw some of the businesses operating, they would say, “isn’t that amazing?”. . .

Interesting start to the day @tekopae ⁦@farmingwomennz⁩ pic.twitter.com/r3K8cPtMwU

— Ian @ Te Kopae Farm (@tekopaenz) July 18, 2019

Mel and Janelle – the city slickers turned Tauranga dairy farm superstars – Jean Bell:

After trading in the corporate life in downtown Auckland’s grey streets for the luscious green pastures of a Ōhauiti dairy farm, Janelle Nee and Mel McEntyre aren’t looking back.

The couple took over Nee’s family farm in 2016 and they’ve taken to farming like ducks take to the water, picking up a Fonterra farming award and getting the farm out of a deficit along the way.

“Three years ago if someone had said to me, ‘oh you’re gonna love your cows,’ I would’ve been like, ‘oh whatever’,” McEntyre says, with a flick of the hand and a roll of the eye. . .

Love meat not plastic – Kit Arkwright:

It’s Plastic Free July – did you know? For those that don’t, this global movement helps millions of people be part of the solution to plastic pollution – so we can have cleaner streets, oceans, and beautiful communities, writes Kit Arkwright from New Zealand’s domestic meat promotion body.

Plastic is an issue close to many Kiwi’s hearts. The recent ‘Better Futures’ study by Colmar Brunton ranks plastic waste as the number one issue for New Zealanders. It featured above issues like the cost of living, protection of children and suicide rates. To say now is the time for the meat industry to take a long, hard look at how it reduces its impact on plastic waste is an understatement.

The issue of plastic packaging for meat is not a simple situation. Plastic packaging offers the most effective solution to ensuring meat has a viable shelf-life and it also offers a safe option for ensuring the high standards of food safety we have come to expect as a given here in New Zealand. . . 

 

Gillie … 😸❣#Scotland #farm #croft #cat #CatsOfTwitter #OuterHebrides pic.twitter.com/gw2OtC0oBE

— DaliMach (@frenchscotjeff) July 17, 2019

Grace winds down now he’s 93 – Annette Scott:

At 93 Ashburton farmer Keith Grice has decided it’s time to hang up his hat on sheep farming but the true dinkum landlubber is not ready yet to leave his land. He talked to Annette Scott about his 70 years as a sheep farmer.

When the trucks rolled out from Keith Grice’s sheep yards, loaded with his capital stock ewes bound for the annual in-lamb ewe fair at Temuka on July 10, they marked the end of a very long era.

After 70 years farming sheep and at the ripe old age of 93 Grice has decided it’s time to put away his shepherd’s crook.

We need an all hands on deck effort to help farmers in crisis – Margaret Krome:

A friend once described the most traumatic experience of her life. It wasn’t an assault, an accident or even any physical injury. As a child, her father was laid off as an air traffic controller at O’Hare International Airport in a labor standoff that President Ronald Reagan sought to make into labor’s Waterloo. Her whole family had deeply identified with her father’s service and never really recovered, she said. A sense of alarm and despair pervaded her childhood ever after.

Similar trauma is being relived horribly in farm country right now. Farming is deeply personal; I know no farmer for whom it’s just an occupation. Over the years, I’ve sadly witnessed the catastrophes of farm families for whom farm foreclosures, traumatic in themselves, resulted in divorce, domestic violence, substance abuse and other tragedies, including the worst — suicide.

In my experience, although farm foreclosures feel altogether personal, they rarely reflect a farmer’s competence. The terrible wave of farm losses in the 1980s and the current crisis in the farm community were both a long time brewing — a consequence of federal policies that favor agricultural and market concentration, and of disparate policies related to trade, agricultural markets, research, credit, water, immigration and more. . .

 

Do we need a farm to fork revolution?

UK Environment Secretary Michael Gove has appointed Henry Dimbleby to pioneer a ‘farm to fork’ revolution:

Henry Dimbleby – co-founder of restaurant chain Leon and of the Sustainable Restaurant Association . . . will investigate the entire food system, from field to fork, and consider what changes are needed to ensure that it:

• Delivers safe, healthy, affordable food, regardless of where people live or how much they earn;
• Is robust in the face of future shocks;
• Restores and enhances the natural environment for the next generation;
• Is built upon a resilient and sustainable agriculture sector;
• Is a thriving contributor to our urban and rural economies, delivering well paid jobs and supporting innovative producers and manufacturers;
• Does all of this in an efficient and cost-effective way.
• His recommendations will result in a trailblazing new National Food Strategy, set to be published in 2020.

Is this a good idea and if it is, should New Zealand do something similar?

Food security is already an issue in some places and could be under threat in more from the affects of climate change.

That isn’t an excuse for Soviet style central planning and control of the supply chain.

But it does highlight the need to ensure, as the Paris Accord stipulates, that any climate change mitigation policies don’t come at the expense of food consumption.

Andrei pointed out yesterday the human cost of the wrong policies on energy, it would be even higher if food security is compromised.

Quote of the day

I insisted on working on problems outside the mainstream of astronomy so that I could work at my own pace and not be pressured by bandwagons. I do not offer this as an example for you, but only to show that there can be diverse approaches to science. There must be. I hope some of you will be able to devise your own paths through the complex sociology of science. Science is competitive, aggressive, demanding. It is also imaginative, inspiring, uplifting. You can do it, too. – Vera Rubin who was born on this day in 1928.

July 23 in history

1632  Three hundred colonists bound for New France departed from Dieppe, France.

1793 Prussia re-conquered Mainz from France.

1829 William Austin Burt patented the Typographer, a precursor to the typewriter.

1833 Cornerstones are laid for the construction of the Kirtland Temple in Kirtland, Ohio.

1840  The Province of Canada was created by the Act of Union.

1851 Twenty-six lives were lost when the barque Maria was wrecked near Cape Terawhiti, on Wellington’s rugged south-western coast.

1862 American Civil War: Henry W. Halleck took command of the Union Army.

1874  Aires de Ornelas e Vasconcelos was appointed the Archbishop of the Portuguese colonial enclave of Goa.

1881  The Federation Internationale de Gymnastique, the world’s oldest international sport federation, was founded.

1881  The Boundary treaty of 1881 between Chile and Argentina was signed in Buenos Aires.

1888 Raymond Chandler, American-born author, was born (d. 1959).

1892 Haile Selassie, Emperor of Ethiopia, was born (d. 1975).

1900 – Julia Davis Adams, American author and journalist, was born (d. 1993).

1903  The Ford Motor Company sold its first car.

1912 – M. H. Abrams, American author, critic, and academic, was born (d. 2015).

1913 – Michael Foot, English journalist and politician, Secretary of State for Employment, was born(d. 2010).

1914  Austria-Hungary issued an ultimatum to Serbia demanding Serbia to allow the Austrians to determine who assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand.

1926 Fox Film bought the patents of the Movietone sound system for recording sound onto film.

1928 – Vera Rubin, American astronomer and academic was born (d. 2016).

1929  The Fascist government in Italy  banned the use of foreign words.

1936  The Unified Socialist Party of Catalonia was founded through the merger of socialist and communist parties.

1940 United States’ Under Secretary of State Sumner Welles‘s declaration on the U.S. non-recognition policy of the Soviet annexation and incorporation of three Baltic States – Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

1942 The Holocaust: The Treblinka extermination camp opened.

1942  World War II: Operation Edelweiss began.

1945  The post-war legal processes against Philippe Pétain began.

1947 David Essex, English singer, was born.

1950 Blair Thornton, Canadian guitarist (Bachman-Turner Overdrive), was born.

1952  New Zealand’s first female Olympic medallist, Yvette Williams (now Corlett) won gold in the long jump with an Olympic-record leap of 6.24 metres (20 feet 5 and 3/4 inches).

1952 Establishment of the European Coal and Steel community.

1952 General Muhammad Naguib led the Free Officers Movement (formed by Gamal Abdel Nasser– the real power behind the coup) in the overthrow of King Farouk of Egypt.

1956 The Loi Cadre was passed by the French Republic in order to order French overseas territory affairs.

1961 Martin Lee Gore, English musician and songwriter (Depeche Mode), was born.

1961 The Sandinista National Liberation Front was founded in Nicaragua.

1962 Telstar relays the first publicly transmitted, live trans-Atlantictelevision program, featuring Walter Cronkite.

1962  The International Agreement on the Neutrality of Laos was signed.

1965 Slash, American guitarist (Guns N’ Roses), was born.

1967  12th Street Riot in Detroit, Michigan  began in the predominantly African American inner city (43 killed, 342 injured and 1,400 buildings burned).

1968 Glenville Shootout: In Cleveland, Ohio, a violent shootout between a Black Militant organization led by Ahmed Evans and the Cleveland Police Department occurs. During the shootout, a riot begins that lasted for five days.

1968  The only successful hijacking of an El Al aircraft  when a 707 carrying 10 crew and 38 passengers was taken over by three members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

1970 Qaboos ibn Sa’id became Sultan of Oman after overthrowing his father, Sa’id ibn Taimur.

1972 The United States launched Landsat 1, the first Earth-resources satellite.

1973 Himesh Reshammiya, Indian Bollywood composer, singer and actor, was born.

1980 Michelle Williams, American singer (Destiny’s Child), was born.

1982  The International Whaling Commission decided to end commercial whaling by 1985-86.

1983 The Sri Lankan Civil War began with the killing of 13 Sri Lanka Army soldiers by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam .

1983  Gimli Glider: Air Canada Flight 143 ran out of fuel and made adeadstick landing at Gimli, Manitoba.

1986  Prince Andrew, Duke of York married Sarah Ferguson at Westminster Abbey.

1988 General Ne Win, effective ruler of Burma since 1962, resigned after pro-democracy protests.

1992 A Vatican commission, led by Joseph Ratzinger, (now Pope Benedict XVI) established that it was necessary to limit rights of homosexual people and non-married couples.

1992 Abkhazia declared independence from Georgia.

1995 Comet Hale-Bopp was discovered and becomes visible to the naked eye nearly a year later.

1997 Digital Equipment Company filed antitrust charges against chipmaker Intel.

1999 Crown Prince Mohammed Ben Al-Hassan was crowned King Mohammed VI of Morocco on the death of his father.

1999  ANA Flight 61 was hijacked in Tokyo.

2005 Three bombs exploded in the Naama Bay area of Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, killing 88 people.

2008 Cape Verde  joined the World Trade Organization, becoming its 153rd member.

2009 Mark Buehrle of the Chicago White Sox  became the 18th pitcher to throw a perfect game in Major League Baseball history, defeating the Tampa Bay Rays 5-0.

2012 – At least 107 people were killed and more than 250 others wounded in a string of bombings and attacks in Iraq.

2014 – The opening ceremony for the 2014 Commonwealth Games was held in Glasgow, Scotland.

2015  – NASA announced discovery of Kepler-452b by Kepler.

2016 – Kabul twin bombing occurred in the vicinity of Deh Mazang when protesters, mostly from the Shiite Hazara minority, were marching against route changing of the TUTAP power project. At least 80 people were killed and 260 were injured.

Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia