A founding member of ELO has been killed in a freak accident when a giant hay bale rolled out of a field and landed on his van.
Cellist Mike Edwards died instantly when the 50-stone cylindrical bale careered down a slope, flipped 15ft over a hedge and smashed on to the roof of his van.
Mr Edwards, 62, was known for unconventional cello playing including plucking the strings with an orange or grapefruit and his bizarre customs which became a major ingredient of ELO, the Electric Light Orchestra.
#2
You know, when I was a younker, hay was baled into small, squarish shapes that a 12-year-old could wrassle down to the corral. Did they go charging off by themselves and kill people? Nosiree, they did not.
You only saw those big round hay bales in old pictures from furrin lands, and in them blurry French paintings.
But now those godless unAmerican giant round bales are all over. Why?? Who's responsible?
#5
From my experience, Angie Schultz, it really depended on the size of the farm and the field. Even where I grew up, the rectangular prism bale was found on most small farms, ranging from 50ish pounds to 125ish pounds, though normally 100+ pounders were wet. The cylindrical ones I always saw in the big spreads. I don't know when they ever started using them though, but they've been around for some time.
#6
The cylindrical ones I always saw in the big spreads. I don't know when they ever started using them though, but they've been around for some time.
There wasn't a lot of hay growing where I lived, but we spent a lot of time in Illinois and Indiana, and those round ones were a rarity. I can't remember the last time I saw a big stack of square bales. (Of course, I haven't been exactly au courant on the hay situation for some time.)
I'm really disappointed, though, that no one has said, "I, for one, welcome our new giant cylindrical overlords."
[Bangla Daily Star] Six activists of Bangladesh Chhatra League unit of Rajshahi University have been temporarily expelled last night on charges of killing Nasirullah Nasim, a fellow activist following a row over Iftar token.
Prof M Abdus Sobhan, vice-chancellor of RU, told The Daily Star that the university's syndicate made the decision at a meeting that lasted four hours.
"We made the decision following a probe report and sent the findings to the university's disciplinary board," said Sobhan, who chaired the meeting.
The temporary expulsion will be effective until the board makes a decision.
The six are: Zahirul Islam of Public Administration, Lutfur Rahman of Zoology, Zahidul Islam of Social Work, Toufiqul Islam of Bangla, Ruhul Amin of Political Science and Moshiur Rahman of Psychology departments.
All of them were loyal to former BCL RU unit president Awal Kabir Joy who was expelled.
After the expulsion, Joy told reporters that neither he nor the BCL RU unit had any relation with the students expelled for murdering Nasim.
Nasirullah Nasim, a fourth-year student of the History department and a resident of Shah Makhdoom Hall, was mercilessly beaten up and shoved off from the first floor of the dormitory following a row over Iftar token on August 15, the National Mourning Day.
He died on August 23 after battling death for eight days.
After Nasim's death, central unit of BCL expelled unit president Joy as well as general secretary Majedul Islam Opu, whom Nasim was loyal to.
A five-member committee was formed following Nasim's death headed by Prof Ruhul Amin of Political Science department. The committee investigated the matter and submitted its report on September 2 where it mentioned the names of six students responsible for the murder.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/07/2010 00:00 ||
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#1
ION REGIONAL, WMF > [Burma]MYANMAR IS DYING: MYANMAR'S MILITARY JUNTA SEEKS MASSIVE NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT ASSISTANCE FROM CHINA.
Intehwesting, RADIC ISLAM IS TRYING TO EXPAND DESPITE CURR, MILTERR-HOPED TEMPORARY, SETBACKS IN AFPAK. DITTO CHINA as per the GEOGRAPHICAL, GEOPOL obtructions of the "FIRST ISLAND CHAIN".
* SAME > EAST TURKISTAN TERRORIST FORCES [Uighurs = Xinjiang]ARE COMPOSED MOSTLY OF YOUNG PEOPLE: CHINA'S PLA MUST STAY FAR AHEAD OF THE SEPARATISTS IN THE MILITARY-LED INDOCTRINATION OR TRAINING OF CHINA'S YOUTH AGZ TERROR AND EXTREMISM.
One helluva Ideo + Geopol Clash is in the making for ASIA???
A small excerpt
To combat widespread tax avoidance the gov't imposes a 21% sales tax, taxes bank transactions such as check deposits and withdrawals, business contracts, personal property, and homes. And the Argie gummint is broke because it spends all that and more ...
Banks add their own fees and rules to discourage customers from using rival banks or credit cards.
Argentines can't forget the 2001 economic crisis that forced the government to devalue the peso, robbing most people of two-thirds or more of their wealth overnight. Banks were ordered to freeze deposits, and dollar-denominated savings could be withdrawn only in devalued pesos. That was the Kirchners. The Argie public couldn't have been too upset, they re-elected the swindlers ...
"Banks swindled us not long ago," Vivanco, the notary, said. "People who had their deposits in dollars were given back pesos and many lost 70 percent of their savings, and they blame the financial entities for this, even though the banks were just following the government's orders." ? Coming soon to a country near you
#2
HGTV's House Hunters International featured a couple, in the last year, buying a place in Buenos Aires. At the conclusion they're walking to the contract signing carrying fifty thousand in American cash to make the down payment. How he got that amount out of the States in cash is probably an interesting story as well. Then again, they were relocating from Aspen.
#4
When South Vietnam fell the banks were taken over and all money was confiscated. One who got out said he at one time had $10,000 dollars he just carried around on himself. He tried to get out several times as I recall three times along with his two sisters. He and a sister were caught and torchered.
The sister caught died. When times are tough cash is king. Afghans don't trust the banks either as can be seen now. When governments do this they make the underground economy much stronger.
[Iran Press] Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has raised speculations that he may return to his former job in 2012, as the country's new presidential election draws near.
Speaking at a meeting of the Valdai International Discussion Club, Putin said he had not yet decided whether to run in Russia's 2012 presidential election but hinted that he would run for a third term as Russian president.
"How we will act in 2011 or at the start of 2012 we -- I and President Medvedev -- have said this repeatedly: we will act based on the real situation in the country, on what we have done, on the mood in society," Reuters quoted Putin as saying on Monday.
"It is too early to speak about this, though," Putin said. "We must do our jobs. Each of us is doing our job and in my view we are doing it effectively," he added.
Putin said that he would announce his plans whether to stand when the event comes closer.
The former president also tried to allay fears that his re-election would damage Russia's political system, saying that Franklin Roosevelt was voted in four times in a row to serve as US president because this did not contradict the American constitution. We fixed that ...
"Neither I nor President Medvedev will do anything which contradicts current Russian legislation or the country's fundamental law -- the constitution," Putin said.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/07/2010 00:00 ||
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The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. has the new power to take over and liquidate non-bank companies whose failure would jeopardize the financial system.
Intended as a "third way" between bankruptcy and bailout, the FDIC's expanded authority is part of the 2,300-page Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act signed into law on July 21.
It is a new regime for dissolving mega-companies, one with almost no judicial oversight and in which creditors' rights are few. The FDIC is tackling nearly 40 major rule makings to flesh out the details of the law.
Taxpayers will not foot the bill if a company fails. Unlike Chapter 11 bankruptcy, which is designed to give companies a chance to reorganize and start anew, the FDIC process assumes control over all assets and operations.
The goal is not to save the company. It is to liquidate it in an orderly way that maximizes its value. A threshold question is exactly what companies are covered by the FDIC's resolution authority and under what circumstances it can be invoked.
Title II of the Dodd-Frank Act says the new provisions apply to bank holding companies, non-bank financial companies supervised by the Federal Reserve, and any other company or subsidiary "predominantly engaged" in financial activities, when such activities account for at least 85 percent of revenue.
A company has no choice about the FDIC taking over as receiver. How the decision to do so is made varies slightly depending on whether the entity is a broker-dealer or an insurance company, but it comes down to a determination by the Treasury secretary in consultation with the president.
A company can challenge the Treasury secretary's decision in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia -- but the court only has 24 hours to rule on the petition. If the court doesn't act, the government's action will be automatically considered approved.
The district court's decision can be appealed -- but there's no stay pending a decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Even with an emergency appeal, the FDIC still would have been busy dissolving the company for possibly a month before the court would likely issue a decision.
The lack of a judicial oversight may prove most contentious for creditors. In a bankruptcy, creditors often appear before a bankruptcy judge to argue the merits of their claims. Under FDIC resolution process, creditors lack such a forum.
#1
Even with an emergency appeal, the FDIC still would have been busy dissolving the company for possibly a month before the court would likely issue a decision. IANAL, but this statement looks funny. Courts have been known to issue emergency stay orders to stop similar proceedings in their tracks until the court has time to issue a decision.
A 2006 Immigration and Customs Enforcement investigation into the purchase of child pornography online turned up more than 250 civilian and military employees of the Defense Department -- including some with the highest available security clearance -- who used credit cards or PayPal to purchase images of children in sexual situations. But the Pentagon investigated only a handful of the cases, Defense Department records show.
The cases turned up during a 2006 ICE inquiry, called Project Flicker, which targeted overseas processing of child-porn payments. As part of the probe, ICE investigators gained access to the names and credit card information of more than 5,000 Americans who had subscribed to websites offering images of child pornography. Many of those individuals provided military email addresses or physical addresses with Army or fleet ZIP codes when they purchased the subscriptions.
In a related inquiry, the Pentagon's Defense Criminal Investigative Service (DCIS) cross-checked the ICE list against military databases to come up with a list of Defense employees and contractors who appeared to be guilty of purchasing child pornography. The names included staffers for the secretary of defense, contractors for the ultra-secretive National Security Agency, and a program manager at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. But the DCIS opened investigations into only 20 percent of the individuals identified, and succeeded in prosecuting just a handful.
The Boston Globe first reported the Pentagon's role in Project Flicker in July, citing DCIS investigative reports (PDF) showing that at least 30 Defense Department employees were investigated.
#3
The problem is jurisdiction for the crime. DoD civilians are not subject to military justice under the Uniform Code. Those who are military are subject to the UCMJ, but only those punitive articles as provided by law. While it would be tempting to invoke Article 134General article, it too has limitations. This is a case where the civilian side needs to charge an individual and prosecute.
#1
Enough people are pissed and wise to Soros' schemes that this won't make much of an impact. More like a fart in an elevator. Everyone realizes it stinks and moves on with nothing worthwhile happening.
#2
Tea Party hating liberals couldnt sell the transparently nonsensical idea that Tea Partiers are just a bunch of racists, homophobes and morons, so the Crash the Party agents on the Left are infiltrating the Tea Party in order to pose as a bunch of racists, homophobes and morons.
#4
The NAACP and the Soros-funded anti-Tea Party operation, however, do not share Cleavers desire to defuse the situation. Instead, they plan to extract as much political mileage from the fictitious incident as possible.
Info wars? Fictitious incident? I call this out-an-out lying. How is this different than what Joseph Goebbels did? Telling the big lie frequently and often. Whenever I hear Soros name, I think of skullduggery.
New York (CNN) -- The National Black Farmers Association will call Tuesday for the U.S. Senate to fund a historic discrimination case settlement involving minority farmers.
John W. Boyd Jr., the founder and president of the National Black Farmers Association, will hold a press conference at 11 a.m. ET in front of a federal court house in lower Manhattan to make the announcement.
Last month, the U.S. Senate failed to approve $1.25 billion for the settlement between the U.S. Agriculture Department and black farmers, prompting finger pointing by members of both parties and outrage among many black farmers.
"We are very, very, very disappointed that we are just caught up in such a larger political fight in the Senate, where it's just partisan division," Boyd said after the August 5 outcome.
A 1997 case against the U.S. Agriculture Department, Pigford v. Glickman, was settled out of court 11 years ago, but tens of thousands of farmers missed the filing deadline to submit claims. Does a vegetable garden qualify as a farm?
October 9, 1998 -- Class Certification in Pigford granted by the Court
April 14, 1999 -- Consent Decree Approved
The court approves the Consent Decree (what the parties agreed to in the settlement) after a Fairness Hearing.
October 12, 1999 -- Deadline for claim sheets to be submitted
Six months after approval of Consent Decree: 21,776 individuals filed a claim by this date and were considered eligible by the facilitator.
July 14, 2000 -- Court ruling for late filers
The court ruled that individuals could send in an application to provide information about the extraordinary circumstances (as spelled out in Section 5g of the Consent Decree) as to why they missed the October 12, 1999 deadline. The deadline for the late filers was September 15, 2000.
September 15, 2000 -- Late Filers "Application" Deadline
For those who did not submit a claim by October 12, 1999, there was an opportunity to submit an "application/affidavit" to the arbitrator to explain why the October 1999 deadline was missed. The person had to convince the arbitrator of the extraordinary circumstances that prevented him or her from submitting a claim.
#8
I heard about this case a week ago and here is some info from snopes that makes it interesting:
The case was entitled "Pigford v. Glickman" and in 1999, the black farmers won their case.
The government agreed to pay each of them as much as $50,000 to settle their claims.
But then on February 23 of this year, something shocking happened in relation to that original judgment.
In total silence, the USDA agreed to release more funds to "Pigford".
The amount was a staggering $1.25 billion. This was because the original number of plaintiffs, 400 black farmers, had now swollen in a class action suit to include a total of 86,000 black farmers throughout America.
There was only one teensy problem. The United States of America doesn't
have 86,000 black farmers. According to accurate and totally verified census data, the total number of black farmers throughout America is only 39,697.
Someone take that shovel from him and hit him over the head with it. The guy just doesn't get it! Is anyone telling him this crap isn't working? He hasn't changed direction one bit! Insanity has been defined as doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result each time.
He wants to pour this money directly into wages for building infrastructure and not get any leverage by stimulating small business.
I've looked at the roads around where I live. There are signs everywhere about how the roads are being worked on courtesy of "stimulus" money, but I haven't seen any roadbuilding equipment what-so-fuc&ing-ever. Nada. And we still have just as many potholes.
Stimulus money my a$$. States are making up shortfalls their budgets with this money.
Libs just can't imagine a world with less government. It completely escapes them. No trust in their fellow man's ability to recognize and deal with danger. Layer upon layer of complication piled on top of each other until business owners can't do business anymore without breaking some sort of law, and leaving them at the legal mercy of anyone with a beef against them and the ability to afford a lawyer. Given crap like the ADA laws, sometimes they don't even need that. Lawmakers these days don't trust juries, and write laws so complicated and full of unintended consequences that it's difficult to exercise common sense and good judgment. If you can't write a law on one piece of paper, you're probably doing something wrong. If you have to argue for months in federal court about why the interstate clause allows the federal government to take over the states, they're just gaming the system.
The founding father kept our constitution limited to about four pages so the governed wouldn't all need law degrees to understand when things were getting out of whack. It's meant to be interpreted properly by the average citizen of the day. And by us, too.
#1
It's meant to be interpreted properly by the average citizen of the day. And by us, too.
gorb, Thanks to the advances in education since the time of the Founders it is no longer possible for the average citizen to properly interpret the Constitution. (Depending on the meaning of the word 'properly' this statement is either sarcastic or sad.)
#3
Time to pull the ship of state out into drydock and scrape off the barnacles. How do we do that?
Posted by: No I am The Other Beldar ||
09/07/2010 9:23 Comments ||
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#4
The last time was around 1776. They left instructions on how/what to do, but they wrote it in an arcane language that our most educated class can't understand these days.
Despite $7 billion in federal grants and other spending over the last seven years to improve the ability of public safety departments to talk to one another, most experts in public safety communications say that it will be years, if ever, before a single nationwide public safety radio system becomes a reality. The only solution of course is to send yet MO MONEY to the rent-seekers. Meanwhile, please note that it is still almost impossible to buy a car radio with built-in weather radio reception, much less one that will automatically trigger on in case of an emergency. Drivers will have to either have their news radios running or await a text msg or cell call from a friend or relative, assuming those networks don't clog immediately.
[Pak Daily Times] A crucial meeting of the Council of Common Interests (CCI) held on Monday decided to generate additional finances for the rehabilitation of flood-affected population and reconstruction of the affected areas mainly through imposition of flood surcharge and other new taxes.
Minister for Information Qamar Zaman Kaira told reporters that the CCI meeting had directed Finance Minister Dr Abdul Hafeez Shaikh to hold a meeting with finance secretaries and chief secretaries of the provinces to finalise the mode of generating additional resources. The meeting, chaired by Prime Minister Syed Yousaf Raza Gilani, also decided to immediately pay Rs 20,000 to each affected family. The payment would be made through smart cards after verification from NADRA to ensure transparency in disbursement of money.
Kaira said the meeting had given a final shape to the National Disaster Management Council (NDMC) in consensus with the provinces. The council, he said, would comprise 13 members and would include two members from each province, one each from Azad Jammu and Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan and three from the federal government. The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government had nominated its members, while the other provinces, Azad Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan would do so in a couple of days. The NDMC would oversee the reconstruction and rehabilitation work in the flood-affected areas. The meeting had also decided to provide free of cost seeds and fertilisers to farmers who owned less than 25 acres of land.
Kaira said that initially Rs 40 billion had been worked out for the payment of Rs 20,000 to two million families for early rehabilitation. However, he said that this calculation was tentative as provinces were revising the number of affected families. The minister said that the federal government had asked the provinces to order judicial probes into reports of unauthorised breaches made in the flood embankments. The chief ministers of all provinces, the prime minister Azad Kashmir, the Gilgit-Baltistan chief minister and others attended the CCI meeting.
Posted by: Fred ||
09/07/2010 00:00 ||
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#1
Flood tax?
Bet Bambi's jealous he didn't think of it first.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
09/07/2010 18:39 Comments ||
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#2
The payment would be made through smart cards after verification from NADRA to ensure transparency in disbursement of money.
#3
"The payment would be made through smart cards"
Don't they need electricity for that?
I mean, the real kind, not the kind that comes from the sky during a thunderstorm.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
09/07/2010 18:51 Comments ||
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#4
I wish someone in the leadership would stand up and say.... HEY LOOK! There has been a very recent DOWNTURN in the production and shipment of bomb making firtilizer and.... and.....and Pakistan is under water. Could there just possibly be a phueching CONNECTION?
#5
NO. Instead you'll see an Islamic flag with it, probably with rocket being an ICBM aimed at Israel, and a caption reading, "See how Islam helped us?"
#7
#1 I hope so - its weird for me to see Youths + dedic Adults of today raise their arms in Salute-Honors wid CELLPHONE CAMERAS + IPODS, ETC. NOT LIGHTED CANDLES OR CIGARETTE LIGHTERS.
HERESY, HERESY, I SAY!
["Garden of Good & Evil", "Bohemian Rhapsody" Songs here].
#2
ION NEWS KERALA > [XPert Laurence Smith]GLOBAL WARMING TO VEST NORTHERN [NorLatitude = NorRim Countries aka "NORCS"] COUNTRIES WID GREAT ECONOMIC POWER, e.g. CANADA + SCANDINAVIA whose World-vital natural resources remain either wholly or partially undeveloped or untapped. Such "NORC" Nations are likely to also become TARGETS/FOCII FOR MASS MIGRATIONS = DIASPORAS FROM OTHER GW-TROUBLED COUNTRIES SUFFERING HEAVILY FROM GW-INDUCED NATIONAL SHORTAGES.
SMITH is known for arguing that:
* CHINA will supplant the US as the World's greatest econ power by Year 2050, wid INDIA to rank in third-place.
* BEST-CASE GW SCENARIO by Year 2100 = average World rise of 4.5 Degrees; WORST-CASE GW SCENARIO by Year 2100 = average World rise of 8.0 Degrees or higher.
* Wildlife to suffer one of the greatest periods of extinction in World History since the demise of the Dinosaurs 65 Milyuhn years ago.
#4
Computers have long been able to out fly humans, as long as everything was doing what it was supposed to. The problem has been that only humans had the sharp senses to detect and respond to serious problems before they became critical.
Looking at this as part of an efficiency equation, it becomes simple. A high value aircraft needs a pilot to get it home if damaged. A lower value aircraft can be a UAV, because it is far more expendable.
But a lower value aircraft does not have to be terribly high performance, if its low cost translates into a higher total number of aircraft.
For example, an aircraft that is as cheap as a small car, that is little more than an engine, fuel tank, simple computer guiding literal fly by wire, GPS and a weapon, could outnumber a top of the line aircraft by hundreds to one. (At $100k each, you could mass produce 1,500 for the price of a single $150m F-22 Raptor).
As an armada, it is extremely hard to defend against, needing another armada to stop it. Likely its weaponry could be a 1,000lb bomb (V-1 buzz bomb was 1,850lb), or an anti-aircraft machine gun. For area targets it could carry a propane bomb.
Posted by: Water Modem ||
09/07/2010 10:31 ||
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#1
That class of ship is one of the very first steps in the construction of the modern warship. Can't they declare it to be a historic monument or some thing? I don't know it's battle history, but if any thing, I would think, despite its size, the Smithsonian would be interested in it.
#2
Laurence of the Rats and I visited that ship when we went to Philly way back when. I thought it was a grand ship, built with style and elegance. It'd be a shame for it to be allowed to rot away.
#3
Surely the USNavy-DOD can do something to save her - perhaps another monument for the Naval Academy or Pearl Harbor, etc.
The OLYMPIA symbolizes Amer's rise from CONTINENTALISM [settling the West] to INTERNATIONAL POWER STATUS via the 1898 War agz Spain + future "Teddy-ism" [POTUS Theodore "Can Do/Amer Built the Panama Canal Just Becuz It Can" Roosevelt].
#1
I heard Bloomberg being interviewed today. He's still going with the freedom of religion statement about the triumphal mosque and the shadowy people associated with it. Honest to God, this guy wouldn't change his position if another 9/11 was planned out of the mosque and occurred. Where's Rudy?
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Despite $7 billion in federal grants and other spending over the last seven years to improve the ability of public safety departments to talk to one another, most experts in public safety communications say that it will be years, if ever, before a single nationwide public safety radio system becomes a reality.
