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|Internet-Zeitschrift für Kulturwissenschaften
|16. Nr.
|März 2006
2.4. Das Open Source Dorf - The Open Source Village
John Earls (Pontificia Universidad Católica del Peru)
The world at present is heading into the transitional period that follows the moment of peak oil. In this period it will be necessary to learn how to effectively administrate the entire planetary environmental system in a sustainable way that allows for human coexistence with it but is not subordinated to exclusively human interests. The world biosphere is an extremely complex system and our misadministration of it, on the base of the abundant energy of cheap fossil fuels, has not prepared us for a viable participation in it in the post peak-oil age. Instead, the oil-age economic system has generated the conditions for the out of control global warming that is now causing such heavy stress on the biosphere that supports us.
The post peak-oil age will be based on organisational principles that correspond to the steady state phase of mature ecosystems. As Howard Odum has summed it up:
"During growth, emphasis is on competition, and large differences in economic and energetic welfare develop; competitive exclusion, instability, poverty, and unequal wealth are characteristic. During steady state, competition is controlled and eliminated, being replaced with regulatory systems, high division and diversity of labour, uniform energy distributions, little change, and growth only for replacement purposes. Love of stable-system quality replaces love of net gain. Religious ethics adopt something closer to that of those primitive peoples that were formerly dominant in zones of the world with cultures based on the steady energy flows from the sun. Socialistic ideals about distribution are more consistent with steady state than growth." (Odum 1974)
In preparation for this coming world situation it would be wise to evaluate how resilience was maintained in pre-industrial societies before their violent incorporation to the evolving euro-centric global order. The case of Andean societies is particularly interesting in that the complex mountain environment presented a number of formidable challenges to the emergence of large-scale self-sustaining social systems, which can be compared in certain ways to the challenges confronting the world today.
I will argue that the patterns of socio-ecological coordination that characterise those societies entail the management of a very broad-based information flow; and that it reveals general principles which will be useful for the construction of a sustainable organisation in the complexity of the global environment.
In digital electronic communication technology copies of messages are made with no loss of information. In human-only communication error is inevitable and easily propagates throughout a social system rendering large-scale coordination very difficult. The Andean states emerged in a historical dynamic that "selected for" the encompassing of the ecological environment, the social system and the universe of symbols, in an ever-wider communication network.
I am obviously not arguing that the Andean states and empires should be held as political models for the mature world system - they were quite authoritarian societies. Nevertheless, excessive top-down control was mitigated by the geographic constraints of the enormous mountain environment. The system was basically self-regulating at all levels and worked through a set of ingenious socio-ecological techniques for political and economic coordination.
In the first place there are few places in the world where in a one day drive by car one can cross almost rainless sandy deserts near sea level, climb some 5,000 m. to a frigid region of permanent glaciers (with many peaks of over 6,000 m.), and then descend again to hot and dense tropical rain forests. To experience similar ecoclimatic diversity in most other parts of the world would entail many weeks of car travel over many thousands of kilometres.
A very useful measure of environmental complexity as devised by Western ecologists is that of the life-zone model of Leslie Holdridge (1947, 1979). The life zone classification is based on the correspondence of natural vegetal formations to ranges of variables defined by the intersection of 3 axes: the mean annual biotemperature as calculated from temperature registers within the range of 0 to 30°C, the mean annual precipitation (in mm.), and the annual evapotranspiration ratio given by dividing the annual precipitation by the mean evapotranspiration potential. Each life zone is represented by a hexagon formed by these axes as shown in Fig. 1. The scheme is remarkable for its simplicity. Heat and humidity are taken as the fundamental climatic determinants of biological activity. This allows a mapping to be drawn between latitudinal and altitudinal ranges in terms of their equivalent biotemperatures and humidity regimes. The correspondences are only approximate, particularly so in the case of the latitudes and also though less so, for the altitudes, but give a grounding for the generalizations that are made about the common properties of spatially dispersed ecosystems. In all Holdridge identified 101 life zones in the entire world.
Fig. 1 World Life-zone classification (Holdridge 1947: 367)
The classificatory criteria of Holdridge are reproduced in table 1: for example a mean annual biotemperature of < 1.5°C corresponds either by latitude to the Polar region or the Nival altitudinal range; from 6 to 12°C to the Cold Temperate or the Montane. While an approximate numerical value for altitude range can be given by taking an average gradient of -6°C per 1000 m, the situation is much more complex for latitude because of the irregular forms and distribution of the land masses.
Table 1: Biotemperature ranges of corresponding latitude and altitude ranges (adapted from Holdridge 1979)
|Mean annual biotemp. (Tbio°C)
|Latitude Regions
|Altitude "pisos"
|Mean annual ETP(mm)
|< 88
|1.5 to 3
|88 to 177
|3 to 6
|177 to 354
|6 to 12
|Cold temperate
|354 to 707
|12 to *16/17
|Temperate Low
|707 to 972
|*16/17 to 24
|972 to 1414
|> 24
|> 1414
Holdridge's global biometric was adapted and applied to Peru by Joseph Tossi (1976) to describe the environment in the Peruvian Andes; it is generally used by anthropologists and other Andean scholars (see Mitchell 1981; Mayer y Fonseca 1979; Fonseca y Mayer 1988, Flannery et al 1989, Heffernan 1989 among others). Though Tossi's study initially established 35 life zones of the 101 life zones identified by Holdridge (1947) for the whole world, 84 are now said to be found in Peru(1) with 0.86% of the world's land surface, which gives us an idea of the amazing complexity of the country. If we assume that all of the 101 life zones are homogeneously distributed into equal sized units over the world's land surface of 148,939,063.133 km² (29.2% of the total) then one life zone would have an area of 1,474,644 km2. Peru's total land surface area of 1,285,220 km2 would only contain 0.87 life zones rather than 84, and the average life zone would be just 15,300 km2 in size. However since only some 30% of the territory is in the Andes mountain range, into which are packed the majority of the life zones identified by Tossi, the average size of these would be very much smaller. More to the point is that just as the mountains themselves are dispersed so are the life zones. Even at the rather coarse grain of Tossi's ecological map each of the mountain life zones is spread like an archipelago over wide areas. The zones are distributed discontinuously and the number visible and their positioning depend on the scale of resolution at which they are observed. Our interest here is in the social and cognitive processes in the human adaptation to that environment, since an effective adaptation to an environment entails an effective classification of that environment.
Added to all this is the fact that at increasing altitudes the microclimatic variability increases. The solar radiation increases while the air pressure and water vapour tension decrease with altitude. With this the energetic changes at surface level are more abrupt in the mountains than at sea level. Slight differences in texture, colour, ground cover, exposition, etc. give rise to quite different local microclimates ·(Geiger 1959, Earls 1998).
As Flannery, Marcus and Reynolds have put it:
"So complex are the environmental gradients between snow-capped mountain peaks and the riverine floor of the basin that all published descriptions are simplifications. The human mind typically reduces a daunting mass of environmental information to a set of model or ideal categories, and this is as true of the Western ecologists who have studied the Andes as it is of the Indians." (1989: 11)
Flannery et al present a simple but very useful discussion of the problems involved in the classification of the Andean environment. They cite the works of John Holland (1975) and Holland et al (1986) as well as a personal communication from Holland. It is argued that "...a simplifying classification is one of the first steps in adaptation: a human group produces a workable coarse-grained model of a much more finely grained environment."(cited in Flannery et al 1989: 11). They quote Holland as having visualised the social-environmentally problem "...as a nested set of Markov processes with progressively coarser structure". At the upper limit of resolution and with "...the finest-grained structure would be a perfectly accurate characterization the environment, including not only the gradients of temperature, rainfall, and evaporation but also the location of every type of rock, plant, and animal." As I interpret this each nested set would correspond to a level of recursion, with its respective level of resolution; the Markov process at each level would run over a similar set of transition probabilities with roughly equal stable probabilities. In other words, the environment would exhibit the self-similar structure of a fractal order. At each successive order of resolution a new variant of the same fractal structure would emerge. This fractal focus can lead us closer to an understanding of the indigenous mode of environmental classification.
As can be seen from the figure 1, the Holdridge life-zone system makes use of the fact that the effects of heat and humidity on biological activities are logarithmic rather than arithmetic. Within their tolerance limits organisms tend to react in exponential patterns to changes in these as well as many other factors. For example, the transpiration of a plant at flowering time, and thus its water requirements, increase in proportion to the logarithm of the water deficit. However the logarithmic scales of the axes suggests a power law relation between the temperature and humidity components and thus a fractal organisation in the mountain ecosystem itself(2). This in itself is not very surprising given the work of Mandelbrot 1983, Bak 1996 and others on fractal representations in nature (see also Colby and Keating 1998: 1479-1500), and indeed in all complex adaptive systems. What is interesting is that the fractal structure can be read out of the Holdridge model, which is not the case with any other environmental classificatory system that I am aware of.
A simple measure of complexity is the length of a concise description of a set of the entity's regularities. Thus, something that is completely random and something that is totally ordered have near zero complexity (Gell-Mann 1995). The Andean environment is some where in between; it exhibits many sorts regularities and a description of these would necessarily be long. Within a reasonable level of allowance it can be said to reproduce the global environmental complexity in a region of less than 1% of the surface area. It can thus be said to be a model of the global system.
In the following section I will briefly describe the general pattern of the historical evolution of the Andean political system and of the socio-ecological innovations that allowed the emergence of human ecosystem coordination at ever-wider scales. In line with the Holdridge life-zone model, the development of this coordination in the Andes is most clearly expressed in the development of articulation of zones in the vertical special axis.
The development of Andean society has been characterised by an alternating pattern of cultural homogenisation and heterogenisation. Anthropologists usually refer to these as periods of unification and diversification. The periods of unification are characterised by the spread of a set of fairly homogeneous cultural expressions over a great area and their adoption by many different regional populations and ethnic groups. In diversification periods these peoples develop distinct local cultures that go their own way without much influence from other regions. The whole process is expressed in the evolution of the crops and can be seen clearly in the case of maize. Qualitative jumps in the yield and structure of new varieties of the crop, and their diffusion throughout the region, occurred in the periods of unification. The periods of diversification are associated with the diversification of maize varieties into many new local adaptations (Grobman, Salhuana, Sevilla and Mangelsdorf 1961).
Given the environmental complexity and the physical barriers between areas, periods of cultural diversity are to be expected. In terms of the argument presented here they replicate the multifarious diversity of human cultural and social evolution in general. The problem is in finding what had to be done in the forging of the great periods of Central Andean unification. Here I will briefly trace the development of agricultural management in the area in terms of the evolution of the Andean pattern of vertical management.
Vertical management was first identified by John Murra (1972, 1975) as the key to understanding the economic and political articulation of the Andean social units. Its evolution does not seem to have been a slow gradual process; the archaeological evidence indicates that the innovation and consolidation of vertical control was a product of the periods of social and economic unification. The last two of these periods are associated with the large imperial states of Wari and the Inca.
In general terms agriculture was independently initiated in different parts of the Central Andes, though it probably originated initially in the tropical forests of the Amazon lowlands more than 7,000 years ago (Lathrap 1970, 1974). Before this time food acquisition was based in hunting and gathering by small groups. Incipient agriculture got going in the lowest parts of the inter-Andean valleys and the coastal river plains. The principal crops were maize, squash, sweet potato and beans though not generally together in the same local environment. Tuber crops like potatoes began to be sown in the higher mountain slopes. In general, each early agricultural group specialised in the production opportunities of a particular niche while they accessed to products of other niches by transhumant hunting of wild animals, fishing, fruit or root collection and by trade. Transhumance (the moving of residence from one place to another for subsistence at different times of the year, though not yet including herding) was a common practice to obtain the products of different regions. In different parts of an area with a single general class of environmental niches, the different social groups tended to cultivate different species and varieties of crops.
In accord with the Holdridge model, the distribution of classes of similar niches is strongly correlated with altitude over a range of some 13-14 degrees of latitude but with increasing latitude the zone height decreases, (Holdridge 1978: 14-28). Murra introduced the term piso ecológico, which can be translated as ecological "story", "floor" (as of a building) or "belt", to refer to classes of niches with the same general characteristics. In very general terms for most of mountain Peru, each row of two hexagonal life-zones (to the right in Fig. 1) would correspond to a piso ecológico. The Premontane (or Low Subtropical) corresponds to the piso Yunga(3)(500-2500 meters above sea level.), the Lower Montane to the Qechwa (2500-3500 m), the Montane to the Suni (3500-4100m) and the Subalpine (4100-4600) to the piso Puna. Over time an incredible diversity of species and varieties were developed within and between these pisos: grains (maize) and beans in the Qechwa, tubers (potatoes, mashwa, oka, ulluko) and some other grains (quinoa and cañihua) in the Suni while the Puna is mostly dedicated to llama and alpaca herding.
In this early, or Initial, period the cultural remains associated with these groups (homes, tools and later on ceramics, etc.) tended to differ from place to place, and we can suppose they constituted independent political systems The divergent evolutionary process was characterised by increasing efficiency in the management of the particular environmental niches by their associated groups. In all zones the agriculture was concentrated in the flatter parts of each local niche. These were not closed groups; there were contacts and trade over wide areas from the earliest times and which seem to have increased over time.
Around 1500 BCE the diversification process was superseded by a profound process of regional integration that in northern Peru is associated with the culture of the Temple of Chavín de Huantar, and in the south with Chiripa and Pucara. The period is usually known as the Formative, or the Early Horizon. The influence spread from these sites over what is modern Peru and Bolivia, and would correlate with an intensification of the contacts between peoples. This integration is characterised by a substantial agricultural base and, for the purposes of this paper, of the simultaneous and intensive management of two or more separated ecoclimatic zones as in the islands in an archipelago. This required an elaboration of the earlier agricultural organisation and permitted the accumulation of alimentary surpluses. It represents the beginning of coordinated management of the verticality. There was also a leap in agricultural technology particularly in the construction of large irrigation systems with reservoirs for the ordered control of water distribution. Maize was cultivated on the northern coast in Chavin times and potatoes at higher altitudes. Nevertheless there is no evidence as yet of agriculture on the mountain slopes; cultivation was still concentrated in the flattest areas though the extensive cultivation of both maize and potatoes is good evidence of the articulation of production over different ecological pisos.
In the flatter lands around Lake Titicaca (Moist Subalpine or Suni) ridged fields (camellones) were introduced for the stabilisation of cultivation in face of the irregularities of the water level of the lake and other climatic uncertainty (Erickson 1986, 1993). There were also a number of new techniques for the management of surface water runoff. All these systems operated for a substantial reduction of climatic risk.
The political systems of this period must have been quite elaborate and settlements became concentrated at the sites of sophisticated temple construction though not patterned as in true urbanism. The consensus among archaeologists is that they are not yet representative of state systems. It is generally agreed that the first consolidated state system emerged on the northern coast of Peru with the new wave of regional diversification that succeeded to fragmentation of the Chavin cultural hegemony - the period known as the Early Intermediate Period. The kingdom of Moche was a very complex system and evidences much political and agricultural innovation. However I am not going to describe it here since its productive management was centred in the homogeneous coastal plain environment. The great step to coordinated vertical control emerged with the expansion and consolidation of the Wari empire in most of Peru. This period is known as the Middle Horizon (or the Second Period of Regional Integration); it includes the Wari Empire and the Tiwanaku state system centred in Lake Titicaca.
The consolidation of vertical control in central Peru
The Wari Empire arose in the Ayacucho region of south central Peru. In spite of the previous influence of Chavín in the area there is little evidence of any important socio-cultural or agricultural innovation. The details of its historical evolution throughout the Early Intermediate Period are still not well understood though it was clearly a period of local development along with intense contacts with coastal Peru and the Lake Titicaca region. What is clear is that coordinated control of vertical space in the Ayacucho region developed after 500 CE along with intensive urbanism, which was spread throughout the central Andes. The capital of the Wari Empire was at Huari (I use this spelling to designate the capital and the more linguistic spelling, Wari, for the Empire) near the modern city of Ayacucho. Wari imperial expansion occurred in two waves about a hundred years apart and the whole system fell apart by about 800 CE.
While the details of the elaboration of the system around the city of Huari are somewhat confusing (Isbell and MacEwan? 1991), its massive impact in the basin of the Pampas River some hundred kilometres to the south is very clear (Raymond e Isbell 1968, Schreiber 1991; 1992: Meddins 1991; 1994; Valdez and Vivanco 1994, Vivanco and Valdez 1993). Before the Wari expansion to this river basin the local peoples' agricultural management was limited to one or two spatially separated pisos ecológicos. There is no evidence of any consistent cultivation of the valley slopes, the lands between the valley bottoms and the upper flatter lands were largely covered with bushes and used for hunting and gathering wild fruits and berries.
Around 600 CE the Pampas area was incorporated into the Wari Empire in the first phase of its expansion. The previous dispersed villages were almost completely erased and new planned towns were founded. A huge programme of agricultural terrace construction was undertaken on the slopes, which were then articulated with the livestock herding in the high punas. Although the details of the process differ somewhat in the basins of the three southern tributaries of the Pampas, particularly with respect to the local political control, the pattern of vertical integration is the same. The dispersed natural pisos were transformed into what Enrique Mayer (1979; 1983) designates as production zones. Some 80 years later there was a further expansion and elaboration of the whole system (Schreiber 1992).
Agricultural production zones are like a vertical array of horizontal belts on the mountainside like the ecological pisos but are artificial rather than natural formations and often a separation wall is built between them. Each zone is defined by a particular crop association, a distinctive socio-technological organisation and a specific labour calendar. A typical zone spans about 500 m of altitude though there is a lot of variation. Within each one the ecology is homogenised, and on the slopes the environmental parameters like solar radiation, temperature, humidity, etc. which influence in the flowering times and crop maturation rates are ranged with the vertical gradients and so very much reducing the climatic uncertainty. Hundreds of natural ecoclimatic niches are recomposed into just a few zones and their sectors (see Earls 1998, 2005). The differences between the various sectors of the same zone (i.e. with different topographic orientation and solar exposition, soils, etc.) follow an ordered pattern that could be coded into and read off a solar calendar. The management of this system is made possible by the emergence of a very effective social organisation that is articulated with it (Earls 1996, 1998). The production zone agriculture was one of the great innovations of environmental complexity management and should be considered as an early step in the Techno Garden and Adapting Mosaic scenarios of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (Alcamo et al 2005)
The Pampas basin area is one of the most topographically "wrinkled" areas of the Andes and its transformation by the Wari enabled a great jump in agricultural intensification. For the first time vertical agriculture was coherently articulated with livestock management. The large-scale construction of agricultural terraces was accompanied by a sophisticated system of irrigation for them and of the valley floor as well. Food storage silos (qollqa) were built in the higher parts of the rivers' headlands taking advantage of the cold temperatures. Most relevant for the present argument is that this new system of technological vertical control permitted the coordination of productive activities between social groups in dispersed geographical areas. Khipus (information registers composed of knotted strings) were used and there is evidence of a complex astronomical calendar (Zuidema 1992), but how they would have operated in this period has to be extrapolated back from Inca times while taking into account what the archaeological record tells us about what was particular about the Wari state. In the following section on the Andean state communication system most of the description comes from our much more detailed knowledge of the Inka state, however the argument equally applies to Wari.
All known civilisations that have reached a certain high level of complexity have developed some sort of state apparatus for the regulation of the relations between people, between people and things, between groups of people, of institutions of different kinds and of any of these with the state, of which people belong to what institutions, and between all of these with the environment, and have had to develop means of registering and accessing the information necessary for their regulatory activities. (It is well known that the word statistics derives from the word state). Its existence lies in its management of the web of communication channels that is seen as of benefit to the other components of the society. The state must also be able to siphon off what is seen as a reasonable amount of the goods produced by these other components for the running of the system. To do all this, the state must keep records of all the information necessary for the taking of the decisions that continuously arise. These general considerations apply as much to the Wari state as they do to the Inca, and ideally to any modern state as well.
The basic question that we must ask is: how should society be organised so that when the state had to intervene to rectify any disequilibria or imbalance, it could do so with a minimum of effort and time delay? The state needed to know: when, under what circumstances, and at what scale an intervention would be necessary. Modern cybernetics and systems theory have shown us that effective administration demands least effort and energy expenditure when information processing and decision-making are distributed throughout the system, and ideally with the system organising itself into a hierarchy of self-similar levels. The social units at each level or node should be articulated by combined self-regulation and mutual regulation - so that the need for intervention by higher levels can be minimised and the time available for wide scale and long term planning and development maximised, (and so avoid a sort of hyperactive self burn-out). The organising principles operating through the whole system should be clearly spelt out in as many ways as possible and replicated at every level, as I have indicated above. I have argued in other places that this was the case in the Inca state of Tawantinsuyu; political organisation was generally consistent with these cybernetic principles (Earls 1982a, 1989, 1998, 2005) (particularly when contrasted with the chaos generated by the Spanish colonial administration).
The question of what the state needed to know then becomes a question of knowing to what degree the self-regulatory mechanisms were effectively operating. For this the state needed to know of all potential sources of instability at every level throughout the hierarchy: the amount of cropland sown - where it was sown, when and with what crops -- incipient droughts, floods, crop plagues, frost occurrences, excessive rivalries between peoples or groups, political unrest and its expression, the stocks levels of the foods stored in the state silos (qollqa), the size and situation of the state llama herds, etc.. The list is enormous and the values of all the factors under constant change, however the values of these could be registered at specific times of the year on the khipus and any unanticipated drastic changes in such values would be read as "something needs to be done".
So far I have only considered the ecological and technological problems involved in the development of articulation in the Andean political system. It is obvious that the identification of what the state needed to know and the general nature of the fractal hierarchy do not tell us how the state, and the other levels of the social hierarchy, were able to communicate to redress the constantly arising instabilities. I will look at the general problem of communication in the Wari and Inca states and the way they got around the absence of what we define as true writing.
All states, excepting the Andean ones - but including the Mesoamerican Aztec and Maya states -- have come to use paper and ink for information management. Thus they are said to have used writing while the Waris and Inkas did not. However, this is of no help for understanding Andean state information processing. A fundamental characteristic of writing, in common with all human language, is the absence of any intrinsic connection between what is represented and the symbol(s) that stand for it. Meaning resides in a social consensus as to what the symbols stand for; symbolic communication is a process involving culturally shared abstractions, but this property is also shared with pictographic communication systems that are not writing. The big difference between writing and pictographic systems is this: In fully developed syllabic and/or ideographic writing the abstractions themselves can be represented symbolically and reflected upon by further symbolic representation, as can the abstractions of abstractions, and so on (the property of recursive reflexivity).
I shall now describe four of the best-known Andean pictographic symbol systems below; they are not fully reflexive communication systems but were used in such a way that they performed the vital role of broad category definition in the social information system. Following this I will discuss some relevant properties of the Inka khipu communication system - the system which most authors agree comes nearest to a true writing system.
The number of information encoding forms used is too great for them all to be listed here. The important thing is that the encoded information expressed the organisational principles governing social life, the place, rank, and function of the persons and groups in the social and natural order. In the terms of information theory, the information was encoded with a high degree of redundancy. In practice this can be understood as encoding the same thing in as many ways so that the message is as clear as possible to as many people as possible. There was special emphasis on expressing the social and calendar order in as many ways as possible with the goal of eliminating any ambiguities and possible misinterpretations: no state could accept that any individual or group did not show up for their work some day with the excuse: "well it's just that we didn't know the date"; or "we thought that this day was the X-group's turn". While the forms are simpler, these basic patterns apply to the present day Quechua and Aymara communities.
A khipu is a device for the register of information in basically numerical form. It consists of a primary chord to which a variable number of adjacent secondary chords (pendants) were attached in a downward direction when the primary was held taut. These pendants were usually ordered into a number of subgroups separated by an empty space on the primary, by colour patterns, by thread style, and other markers. Numbers themselves were represented by knots. Broadly speaking, the non-numerical group markers indicated the categories to which the numbers referred. Often each group of pendants was associated with a top string attached so that it went in the opposite direction to the pendants. The top strings often represented a number corresponding to the sum of the numbers represented in the corresponding subgroup of pendants. To both the pendants and the top strings other subsidiary strings were often attached and to these often-secondary subsidiaries hung, and so on. A very simple khipu is given in Fig. 2, which indicates how the number of turns in the knots and the placing order of these down the pendants represented numbers. Their use did not only involve the four arithmetical operations but also of more sophisticated mathematical structures like matrices and hierarchies (Ascher and Ascher 1981). In another part (Earls ms) I argue that at least in Inka times khipu structure had reached a level of development such that self-referential abstraction could have been encoded in them. If this was the case then spatially dispersed khipu managers (khipukamayoq) could have used them to communicate information about how information was encoded and agree on changes to be made. This would be necessary for the standardisation of khipu structure and communication over the wide areas involved in state regulation. In this context it is relevant that Urton and Brezine (2005) have been able to show that the organisation of khipus that are associated with the Inka state expresses the hierarchy of the state.
Concluding remarks on the Andean system
In general these Andean systems are what Isbell has termed energy averaging systems (1978). In order to assure a high level of productivity for the units at the lower nodes of the hierarchy there had to be a socio-technological organisation that facilitated self-organised productive activity at those nodes. I have argued that given the wrinkled complexity of the Peruvian Andean environment, increases in productivity occurred in steps marked by innovations in the coordination of neighbouring agro-ecosystems over the course of history: first in the Initial Period by the articulation of ecological pisos and later in Wari times by the production zones. The wide scale political articulation of the system disappeared with the fall of the Wari Empire around 800 CE but at the lower levels, equivalent say to the modern communities, the basic patterns of it were maintained up to the time of the Inca expansion some 500 years later and still operate to the present day. The Incas elaborated and extended the system at a scale of 30º of latitude, and introduced innovations like the ceque system mentioned above and the agricultural control system of Moray(4)
Given the limitations of space I cannot explain just how this all worked here; details are to be found in the cited literature.
The agricultural order of the world today is based on the accessibility of abundant and cheap fossil fuels. High levels of production are maintained with a minimum of horizontal coordination. That is what Tainter, Allen, Little and Hoekstra (2003) have termed a high gain system. A measure of energy quality can be expressed in terms of the amount of energy extracted divided by the energy invested, directly or indirectly, for the location, extraction and refinement of that fuel. The magnitude of the ratio - energy return on energy invested, (EROEI, EROI or gain) - for a particular form of energy indicates a lot about the functioning of a society that depends on that energy. A high gain society operates quite differently to a low gain one. The industrial capitalist global society is based on the easy availability of oil - a fuel of very high-energy gain. As Tainter et al (2003) put it: "Energy gain has implications beyond mere accounting. It fundamentally influences the structure and organisation of living systems, including human societies." A society based in the availability of a high gain fuel can be termed a high gain society, and one that depends on a low gain energy like human labour is a low gain society. A high-gain system deals with increased complexity by extending the vertical hierarchy of the control levels. The problem of error propagation is met by intensive message replication and high-speed transmission. Coordination becomes an essentially statistical process - as long as there is sufficient correlation between enough components of the system and abundant high quality energy then "somehow things will work out". In the post-peak oil transition period to a low-gain world, wide-scale coordination will depend on the incorporation of low gain organisational technologies such as those I have outlined here. These technologies were developed in the Andes over a period of various millennia; while historical dynamics work at a much faster rate today things can still not be made to work over-night. Still, I hope to have shown that we do not have to reinvent the wheel.
© John Earls (Pontificia Universidad Católica del Peru)
(1) The 49 life zones that do not appear in Tossi's classification have largely been established by forestry studies in areas which lack reasonably reliable meteorological registers, or have none at all. For overall calculations involving the variety of the Andes with respect to the rest of Earth I will use the figure of 84 life zones, with the conditions specified in fn 14. For variety calculations within Peru I shall use the data given by Tossi (1976)
(2) The Holdridge model might be an elaborated Sierpinski triangle
(3) The terms Yunga, Qechwa, Suni, Puna are the terms commonly used by the Andean peoples to designate the successive vertical ecological pisos.
(4) Moray is an Inca agricultural site in which the production zone system is artificially replicated in a very small space by the manipulation of the local microclimates made possible at high altitudes (Earls 1989, 1998).
Alcamo, J., D. van Vuuren, C. Ringler, W. Cramer, T. Masui, J. Alder, and K. Schulze. 2005: Changes in nature's balance sheet: model-based estimates of future worldwide ecosystem services. Ecology and Society 10(2): 19. [online] URL: http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol10/iss2/art19/
Araujo, Hilda 1998: Parentesco y representación iconográfica: El caso de las tables pintadas de Sarhua, Ayacucho, Peru, In Ed. Denise Arnold Gente de carne y hueso, La Paz, Bolivia.
Bak, Per: 1996: How Nature Works, Oxford University Press.
Colby, J.D. and P.L. Keating 1998: International Journal of Remote Sensing, Vol 19, No.8.
Cook, Anita 1996: The Emperor's New Clothes, in (Ed.) Gary Urton Structure, Knowledge and Representation in the Andes: Studies Presented to Reiner Tom Zuidema on the Occasion of his 70th Birthday, Jour. of Steward Anthropological Society, V.24, 1 and 2, Urbana. pp. 297-320.
Earls, John 1982a : La coordinación de la producción agrícola en el Tawantinsuyu ,en: (Ed.. M. Lajo, R. Ames y C. Samaniego) Agricultura y Alimentación: Bases de un Nuevo Enfoque. P.U.C.P., Lima.
1982b : Astronomía y Ecología: la sincronización alimenticia del maíz , (Reedition de 1979a), en: (Ed.. Lajo et al) ,Agricultura y Alimentacion: Bases de un Nuevo Enfoque. P.U.C., Lima
1989a : Planificación Agrícola Andina: bases para un manejo cibernético de sistemas de andenes Ed. Univ. del Pacífico y COFIDE, Lima.
1998: The Character of Inca and Andean Agriculture, http://macareo.pucp.edu.pe/~jearls/documentosPDF/theCharacter.PDF .
1996: Rotative Rank Hierarchy and Recursive Organisation: The Andean Peasant Community as a Viable System, in Ed. Gary Urton, Gary Structure, Knowledge and Representation in the Andes: Studies Presented to Reiner Tom Zuidema on the Occasion of his 70th Birthday, Jour. of Steward Anthropological Society, V.24, 1 and 2, Urbana. pp. 297-320.
1998 "Aportes del conocimiento y las tecnologías andinas en el contexto de la aldea global". Desarrollo e Interculturalidad en la Zona Andina, Ed. J. Acebedo, Escuela para el Desarrollo, documento 13, Lima.
2005: La agricultura andina y la globalización, CISEPA, P. University Católica, Lima.
Earls, John and Irene Silverblatt
1978: La realidad física y social en la cosmología andina, Actas del XLII Congreso Internacional de Americanistas, T. 4, París.
1981: La instrumentación de la cosmología inca en Moray. en: (Ed.. H. Lechtman y A. M. Soldi) La Tecnología en el Mundo Andino; Runakunap Kawsayninkupaq rurasqankunaqa, Univ. Nac. Autónoma de México, México D.F.
Flannery, Kent, Joyce Marcus and Robert G. Reynolds
1989: The Flocks of the Wamani: A Study of Llama Herders on the Punas of Ayacucho, Peru., Academic Press, San Diego.
Fonseca, Cesar and Enrique Mayer
1988: Comunidad y producción en la agricultura andina. Fomciencias, Lima
Geiger, R.
1959: The Climate near the Ground. Harvard Univ. Press, Cambridge, Mass.
Gell-Mann, Murray
1995: Complexity, Vol.1, No.1, http://www.santafe.edu/sfi/People/mgm/complexity.html
Grobman, Alexander, W. Salhuana, R. Sevilla and P.C. Mangelsdorf
1961: Races of Maize in Peru: Their Origins, Evolution and Classification, National Academy of Science - National Research Council Publication 915, Washington, D. C.
Heffernan, Kenneth J.
1989: Limatambo in Late Prehistory: Landscape Archaeology and Documentary Images of Inca Presence in the Periphery of Cusco. Ph.D Thesis, Dept. of Anthropology and Prehistory, Australian National University, Canberra.
Holdridge, Leslie R.
1947: Determination of World Plant Formations from simple Climatic Data. Science 105 (2727): 367-368
1979: Ecología basada en zonas de vida. Inst. InterAm?. de Ciencias Agrícolas, San José, Costa Rica. (Translation of "Life Zone Ecology")
Isbell, William H.
1978: Environmental Perturbations and the Origin of the Andean State, in Eds. C.L. Redman, M.J. Berman, E.V. Curtin, W.T. Langhorne, N.M. Versaggi and J.C. Wanser Social Archaeology: Beyond Subsistence and Dating, Academic Press, New York.
Isbell, W.H. and G.F. MacEwan? (Eds) 1991. Huari Administrative Structure: Prehistoric State Architecture and State Government, Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, Washington D.C.
Lathrap, Donald
1970: The Upper Amazon, Praeger, New York
1974: The Moist Tropics, the Arid lands, and the Appearance of Great Art Styles in the New World. In Art and Environment in Native America (Eds. M. King y I. Taylor). Texas Tech Press, Lubbock. pp. 115-58.
Mandelbrot, Benoit
1983: The Fractal Geometry of Nature, Freeman,
Mayer, Enrique and César Fonseca
1979: Sistemas agrarios en la cuenca del Río Cañete (Departamento de Lima). ONERN, Lima.
Mayer, Enrique
1983 : Production Zones. En S. Masuda, I. Shimada y C. Morris (comps) Andean Ecology and Civilization: an Interdisciplinary Perspective on Andean Ecological Complementarity. Univ. of Tokyo Press, Tokyo, pp. 45-84.
Meddens, F.
1991. A provincial perspective of Huari organization viewed from the Chicha/Soras Valley, in W.H.Isbell and G.F.McEwan? (eds) Huari Administrative Structure: Prehistoric State Architecture and State Government, Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, Washington D.C. pp. 215- 231.
1994: Mountains, miniatures, ancestors, and fertility. The meaning of a Late Horizon offering in a Middle Horizon structure in Peru, Bulletin of the Institute of Archaeology, University of London 31: 127-150.
Murra, John
1972: El "control vertical" de un máximo de pisos ecológicos en la economía de las sociedades andinas, en Visita de la Provincia de León de Huánuco, Vol. II pp. 427-476
1975: Formaciones económicas y políticas en el mundo andino, Ed. IEP, Lima
Odum, Howard
1974: Energy, Ecology and Economics, Minnesotans for Sustainability http://www.mnforsustain.org/energy_ecology_economics_odum_ht_1973.htm
Odum, Howard
1988: Self organization, Transformity and information, Science 242: 1132-1139
1996: Environmental Accounting: EMERGY and environmental decision making. Wiley, New York.
Rappaport, Roy A.
1971 : Ritual, Sanctity and Cybernetics. Amer. Anth. 73, pp. 59-63
1979: Ecology, Meaning, and Religion, North Atlantic Books, Richmond, California.
Salomon, Frank 2004: The Cord Keepers: Khipus and Cultural Life in a Peruvian Village, Duke Univ. Press, Durham, NC, pp. 252-255.
Schreiber, K.
1991. Jincamocco: a Huari administrative center in the South Central Highlands of Peru, in W.H.Isbell and G.F.MacEwan? (editors) Huari Administrative Structure: Prehistoric State Architecture and State Government, Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, Washington D.C.: 199- 213.
Schreiber, K.
1992. Wari Imperialism in Middle Horizon Peru. Anthropological Papers Museum of Anthropology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 87.
Tainter, Joseph A., T.F.H. Allen, Amanda Little, T.W. Hoekstra
2003: Resource Transitions and Energy Gain: Contexts of Organization, Conservation Ecology (now Ecology and Society) 7(3):4 URL http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol7/iss3/art4/print.pdf
Urton, Gary and Carrie J. Brezine
2005: Khipu Accounting in Ancient Peru Science Vol. 309. no. 5737, pp. 1065 - 1067.
Valdez, L. and C.Vivanco
1994. Arqueología de la Cuenca del Qaracha, Ayacucho, Peru, Latin American Antiquity, 5 (2): 144- 157.
Vivanco, C and L.Valdez
1993 Poblados Wari en la cuenca del Pampas-Qaracha, Ayacucho, Gaceta Arquelógica Andina 23: 83-102.
Zuidema, Tom
1964: The Ceque System of Cusco: the social organisation of the capital of the Inca, Leiden.
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Zuidema, Tom and Ulpiano Quispe
1973: A Visit to God: The account and interpretation of a religious experience in the Peruvian community of Choque Huarcaya, in Ed. D.R. Gross Peoples and Cultures of Native South America, pp. 358-376, Doubleday /The? Natural History Press, New York.
2.4. Das Open Source Dorf - The Open Source Village
Sektionsgruppen | Section Groups | Groupes de sections
Inhalt | Table of Contents | Contenu 16 Nr.


text:
Ron Howard's latest set photo from the young Han Solo spinoff movie confirms the Galactic Empire will have a presence in the film. Since taking over for the fired Phil Lord and Chris Miller in late June, the Oscar winning director has been drumming up excitement for his entry into the Star Wars franchise via several behind-the-scenes images that illustrate everything is running smoothly and everyone is having a fun time making the film. With Lucasfilm prioritizing The Last Jedi over Han Solo in terms of official marketing, Howard's social media activity has been the lone source of damage control for the standalone following the infamous kerfuffle.
The filmmaker has already given fans their first look at Donald Glover's Lando Calrissian and the Millennium Falcon flying through hyperspace (among other revelations). To date, most of the publicity has focused on the protagonists of the picture, leaving the antagonists shrouded in mystery for the time being. That changes now, thanks to yet another picture courtesy of Howard. Viewers can expect to see some classic foes on the big screen again.
Taking to Twitter, Howard shared the following image of what seems to be an Imperial control panel with a helmet resting on top. Captioned "The Empire Looms Large," this seems to be the director's way of saying Han and company will have some Imperial entanglements to sort through during the movie.
The Empire, or some iteration of it, has served as the primary villains for six of the nine Star Wars films to date (including The Last Jedi). Some viewers may bemoan this decision as a sign of waning creativity, but it makes sense for a Han Solo origin story to include the Imperials in some capacity. This film is said to cover how the scoundrel formed his lifelong bond with Chewbacca, whom he rescued from captivity (referenced in the canon novel Life Debt). Fans of the old Expanded Universe know Han spent some time in the Imperial Academy before becoming a smuggler, so perhaps the anthology film will borrow some elements from Legends. Given that Han Solo is supposed to cover a period of six years, it's possible the Empire is featured in small sections and isn't the main enemy through the entire film. Han has flown from one side of the galaxy to the other, so some of those worlds were probably out of the Imperial reach.
Teases like this are enjoyable for fans, providing them with new content to speculate about, but they also raise the demand for something a little more concrete to be released. Considering all this film has been through, there is much anticipation to see the first Han Solo trailer, and many are wondering when an official preview will be released. At D23, Lucasfilm promised more information on the spinoff would come soon, which is a vague term. With all the focus on Episode VIII, it may not be until the holiday season (or later) we finally get our first real look at what Howard and crew have in store.
MORE: Speeder Crashes In Ron Howard's Han Solo Video
Source: Ron Howard
- Star Wars 8/Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017) release date: Dec 15, 2017
- Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018) release date: May 25, 2018
- Star Wars 9 / Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (2019) release date: Dec 20, 2019

subset: commoncrawl


text:
What first drew you to theatre design?
Going to the English National Opera with my family from the age of 12. If you booked in advance, you could buy season tickets for £5 each, in the front row of the upper circle. It was during the 1980s and 90s – the ENO's "powerhouse years". The visual worlds were beyond anything I'd ever seen.
What was your big breakthrough?
I've had a whole series. The first was winning the Linbury prize for stage design in 1995 – that got me a job, which is already a big deal for a set designer. Then Trevor Nunn invited me to design at the National theatre in 1998. And designing Kanye West's 2005 tour took me to another level.
Where do you find inspiration?
Everywhere: in words as much as images. I came across a TED talk recently by [author] Matt Ridley called "When ideas have sex". He talks about the fact that when you think you're having an idea, what you're really doing is finding the last jigsaw piece.
You've worked as creative director for several pop acts. What does that involve?
With Kanye West, I say, "Let's do this," and he usually goes, "Great, let's do it" – but he is the true director. With Pet Shop Boys, I present them with a very clear vision. But what's common to all my work is sitting down with a blank piece of paper and having an idea. Everything starts with a brain and a pencil.
How have new technologies changed theatre design?
The internet has changed our research processes beyond recognition. Not long ago, I'd give my assistants £50 and say, "Go to all the libraries and bookshops in London – I need a picture of a 1964 red Pontiac car." Now, I can just do a Google image search.
What one song would work as the soundtrack to your life?
Good Morning by Kanye West. I love its optimism.
What's the worst thing anyone ever said about you?
I've had plenty of evil reviews. Recently, there were lots of glowing reviews for the Pet Shop Boys tour, and then I saw someone's tweet, which said: "Great set list – terrible set, as usual, from Es Devlin." The moral of the story is not to put your own name into a Twitter search.
Is there anything about your career you regret?
Some palm-tree shaped gobos – little pieces of foil you put on a lights – in an opera about Colonel Gaddafi. At the time, because they were provided by Wolfgang Goebbel, an incredibly tasteful avant-garde lighting designer, I thought they were ironic. Now, I suspect they were just awful.
What's your greatest ambition?
To refine the art of seeking a balance: between opera and pop; between big projects and small children.
In short
Born: Kingston upon Thames, 1971.
Career: Spans theatre, opera and pop concerts, with major productions for the National Theatre, the Royal Court, English National Opera; and for pop acts such as Pet Shop Boys, Take That and Rihanna. She also designed the Olympic closing ceremony for London 2012, and most recently, the set for the play Chimerica, at the Harold Pinter Theatre, London, from 6 August, and for Massive Attack v Adam Curtis, at the Manchester International festival until Saturday.
High point: "It will be in 2017, on a lake in Bregenz, doing Carmen."
Low point: "Sending groundplans to Shakira for approval while I was in labour."


text:
Any of you holdouts on Bolivar, the law is coming. For you.
Just off the AP wire:
GALVESTON, Texas - Authorities say the holdouts on Texas' ravaged Bolivar Peninsula will be required to leave in the next few days, and they are prepared to impose martial law if needed to empty the barrier island scraped clean by Hurricane Ike.
Galveston County Judge Jim Yarbrough said Tuesday there are "hardy bunch" of roughly 250 people still trying to live there, including some "old timers who aren't going to want to leave."
Officials say without food, gas, water and other necessities, the island is unlivable and everyone needs to leave so recovery can begin.
Residents will ultimately be able to return, but officials say they need to be ready for a marathon, not a race.
A hardy bunch of old-timers who aren't going to want to leave?
Dagnabbit and consarnit, we will not go through this hurricane recovery without the proper stereotypes! So thank you, Bolivar Peninsulans!
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text:
On Jun 8, 2011, at 4:07 PM, Brian Manthos <email@example.com> wrote: > From: Brad Kemper [mailto:email@example.com] >> But anyone >> using the keyword 'left' knows that it means 'from left to right', or they find >> out within seconds and then move on. > > I disagree completely on this point. I constantly find this backwards notation a stumbling block. The reason I raised the issue is because I don't want to just "move on". The spec is broken and inconsistent, and I thought the goal of having drafts at all was to address such things so that the future can be better. > > Using that argument we might as well call it "foo" because "people will just learn that foo means that it progresses from left to right". Not so. Currently 'left' has a clearly defined meaning of "start the gradient on the left". There is a logic to it that is not difficult to learn. It is not a totally arbitrary name. > > Honestly, I think that would be better than using "left" to mean the exact opposite of "leftwards". I'd be OK with "left" meaning "to the left" instead of "from the left", except that means EVERYTHING already authored would produce incorrect results in new browsers, and EVERYTHING authored to the new revision will produce incorrect results in current versions of browsers that support linear-gradient. I don't recall any similar type of situation in CSS with a property or value that had already seen enthusiastic author response. So I cannot in good conscience support such a change unless linear-gradient and/or it's prefixed versions are renamed (e.g. -moz2-linear-gradient or -moz-straight-gradient). I'd want that even if I loose the battle to keep the more intuitive version of degree direction.Received on Thursday, 9 June 2011 00:16:35 UTC
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.3.1 : Monday, 2 May 2016 14:38:46 UTC


text:
Yesterday on the Kelley's Break Room Facebook page, I asked people what their Cabbage Patch Kid was named. I had asked this before because it entertains me to no end. What I would have given to have been a Cabbage Patch Kid namer. As soon as each was born in the Cabbage Patch, I would have held them so gently and told Xavier Roberts what to name the sweet precious soul. Honestly, though, I don't know if I could come up with anything better than the names I heard about yesterday.
My Cabbage Patch doll?
Her name was Kathleen Denise. Denise is my middle name, so seeing her middle name on her birth certificate made me extremely happy. I still remember the Christmas I got her. I had opened up all of my presents from my parents and received all of my Santa gifts and still did not spot a Cabbage Patch Kid, the one thing I REALLY wanted. My mom asked me to go get something out of the Ram Charger parked in the garage and when I went out, there was the Cabbage Patch Kid box sitting on the hood and my dad behind it ready with a camera. I don't think I have ever been more excited in my life. I loved Kathleen with my whole heart. I carried her plastic head with me everywhere I went and I was in FIFTH GRADE. My sister carried hers, too, but, as you can see in this picture, she wasn't taking hers to school! I swear other girls were taking theirs to school that day besides me.
This is what I tell myself.
My sister's doll was FLOSS BARBIE, which is a beyond awesome name.
(Are you still stuck on that awesome picture of us? Wishing you had one of those duck sweaters?)
Cabbage Patch Kids were just taking over the world when I had this picture taken. I think it was around 1985. My mom even took a class with my aunt on how to make PORCELAIN Cabbage Patch Kids. She spent hours perfecting how to paint their lips and eyelashes. Ha! She made one for my cousin, Greg, because he was always threatening to turn our Cabbage Patch Kids into coleslaw.
Seeing that Cabbage Patch Kid names make me extremely happy, I thought I would list the ones that people shared on Facebook. I had to have them all in one easily accessible place for me to enjoy on a whim. When the days are gray and lonely, I'll just pick up my chin and grin and…read this list.
(I only included the ones with a first and middle name given.)
(Also, feel free to pass this list on to anyone expecting a baby and searching for really awesome, memorable baby names. Lots of winners in this list.)


text:
Eh, why not?
Let's take a tour of a long-vacant former strip club in downtown Covington.
Viva La Foxx has been closed for years, but there are still remnants of the club's... glory days? There's an ashtray with cigarette butts still in it atop a booth's table that is covered in elaborate cobwebs. The dancers' locker room has boots, panties, and curlers still inside. There's even bags of potato chips still on the rack behind the bar.
And yes, that famous stripper-themed carpet is still on the floor.
In fact, that carpet may be available for purchase as mementos as the Bradford Building, the name of the structure that housed Viva La Foxx, nears development. The Catalytic Fund purchased the building and hopes to have a development plan in place soon.
Ideas for what that may look like will be on display at Beyond the Curb, the Catalytic Fund-produced urban living tour that returns to Covington on Sunday, April 30. The self-guided tour will take visitors across downtown Covington to gaze at the before, the after, and the in-progress of living in the city which has seen a recent boom of development, both historic renovations and new construction.
Details on the Bradford Building will be on view at the Boone Block, a beautifully restored 19th century building that is now home to nine luxury townhouses.
For details on tickets and other properties on the Beyond the Curb tour, click here.
-Staff report


text:
Easter Package
Holiday Buffets are not to be missed at the York Harbor Inn. Our Easter Buffet is no exception!
Sunday April, 21, 2019
Always sold out, make reservations early for your preferred seating time.
Easter Sunday Brunch Buffet - 2018 MENU
Check back for 2019
9:30 - 4:30
Carving Stations
Roast Prime Rib of Beef, au jus, raifort sauce
Brown Sugar & Clove Glazed Country Ham
Rosemary-Mustard Roast Leg of Lamb
Chicken and Pepper Stew
Honey Citrus Glazed Shrimp
Rigatoni & Roast Cauliflower al Forno
Eggs Benedict ~ Cheese Blintz, Strawberry Sauce
Scrambled Eggs with Spring Herbs ~ Orange Buttermilk Pancakes
Home Fried Potatoes ~ House Made Corned Beef Hash
Apple Wood Smoked Bacon ~ Sausage
Salads & Sides
York Harbor Inn's Seafood Chowder
Tomatoes au Gratin ~ Mashed Yukon Gold Potato
Green Beans with Dill ~ Orzo with Peas & Parsley Pesto
House Made Breakfast Pastries ~ Fresh Fruit Salad
Cobb Salad, Shallot Vinaigrette ~ Waldorf Salad with Cherries
Mozzarella, Herb & Tomato Salad
Dessert Selections
York Harbor Inn's Famous Ice Cream Smorgasbord
Chocolate Fudge Cake ~ Carrot Cake ~ Lemon-Strawberry Trifle
Blueberry Pie ~ Chocolate Chip Cookie Pie
43.95 per person plus tax and gratuity
Children 12 and under 19.95
Reservations Required
(207) 363-5119


text: Corigliano - Italian authorities disembarked some 360 cold and hungry migrants from a "ghost ship" on Saturday abandoned by its crew off the country's jagged southern coast. Women and children were among hundreds of migrants left stranded aboard the Ezadeen, which docked in the port of Corigliano Calabro around 23:00 (22:00 GMT) on Friday after a delicate operation by the Italian navy to take control of the ageing vessel.It had been left to drift in stormy seas without fuel or electricity, and in the dark rescuers had first thought that it could be holding up to 450 people.But after docking the authorities revised the count to 232 men, 54 women and 74 children aboard, most of whom are thought to be Syrians fleeing the war in their homeland. All were said to be in good health.Six coastguard officers were lowered from a helicopter onto the deck of the Sierra Leone-flagged vessel on Friday to set up a tow for the 40km to the Italian coast.The rescue is the latest in a series of maritime operations Italy has mounted in recent days as it struggles with a record wave of migrants making the dangerous journey across the Mediterranean.On Wednesday, the navy faced more drama after it stopped another crewless "ghost" ship left drifting in its waters with nearly 800 migrants on board.The appearance of the two drifting boats full of migrants within a matter of days has raised concerns that smugglers have started abandoning large boats full of people off the coast of Europe as a new tactic to maximise profits from their ruthless trade.The Ezadeen, which usually carries cattle, had been en route from Famagusta in northern Turkish-controlled Cyprus to the southern French port of Sete, but had first stopped at the Syrian port of Tartus, according to a shipping website. We are alone Before it came to a halt, the nearly 50-year-old Ezadeen had been moving at seven knots, and was spotted by a coastguard plane 80 miles offshore shortly after nightfall.After the crew jumped ship, a woman refugee on board was able to operate the ship's radio and told the coastguard that the crew had abandoned the vessel, Italian navy spokesman Captain Filippo Marini said."We are alone, there is no one, help us!" the woman cried, he said.The coastguard asked for assistance from Icelandic patrol boat Tyr, which was in the area on a mission with the European Union's border agency Frontex, but rough weather conditions made boarding impossible.Once the Ezadeen had run out of fuel, five Tyr crew members were winched onto the merchant ship by helicopter to care for passengers until Italian coastguard officers arrived to take control."The migrants aboard were visibly distressed but overall in good medical condition. They have been provided with food, water and basic medical assistance," a Frontex statement said on Friday.The incident marked the third sea rescue operation Italy's navy has been forced to mount in a week.The first came with the deadly fire that broke out on the Norman Atlantic ferry on Sunday between Greece and Italy.Italian prosecutors fear the ferry could contain the bodies of still undiscovered illegal immigrants and unregistered passengers.Bari prosecutor Giuseppe Volpe said almost 500 people may have been aboard - far above the 474 officially on the manifest, and prompting fears the current death toll of 13 may rise once the ferry is fully searched in Brindisi.Volpe said it had been "established" that illegal immigrants were aboard, something confirmed by several of the rescued passengers. The search is expected to concentrate on trucks parked in the car deck where the fire started. New smuggling tactics On Wednesday, a ship carrying nearly 770 migrants was found drifting towards the rocks off Italy's southeastern shore.The Blue Sky M freighter was on autopilot, after having been abandoned by the people smugglers who had sailed in from Turkey.The Moldovan-registered vessel got within five miles of running aground before six navy officers were lowered on to the ship by helicopter, and succeeded in bringing it under control.The vessel's passengers included some 60 children and two pregnant women, one of whom gave birth on board, according to the Italian Red Cross.Many of the migrants on the ship were treated for hypothermia or injuries including broken limbs.More than 170 000 people have been rescued at sea by Italy in the last 14 months, and hundreds, possibly thousands, have perished trying to make the crossing.Increasingly, the traffickers appear to be abandoning their human cargo at sea, with more now using bigger vessels than the converted fishing boats and other craft they previously favoured.The International Organisation for Migration estimated on Friday in Geneva that people smugglers grossed over $1m on just one of the abandoned ships alone.


text:
Tenure Should Not Be for Life
One of the hottest school-reform topics these days, particularly in the popular press, is the need to evaluate and revise the laws governing teacher tenure. The public often sees these laws as providing unreasonable job protection for ineffective, mediocre, or even incompetent educators. And even those in the know have begun questioning whether the job security tenure provides can become counterproductive, serving as a disincentive, in a time of reform, to making meaningful changes in teaching methods. Legislatures in some states are considering proposals to eliminate tenure altogether, based on the premise that to do so would improve the quality of the teacher workforce by making it easier to dismiss the incompetent. (See Education Week, April 17, 1996.)
Currently, teachers and administrators in the state of New York, for example, are granted tenure after three years of full-time teaching experience. That is a job safeguard that remains with the educator for the rest of the time he or she spends in that particular district. Once an educator has earned tenure, dismissal becomes much more difficult, time-consuming, and costly. While certain other professions may afford similar protection through negotiated contracts or regulations, such as civil service, a teacher's position is considered a proprietary asset by New York state law, a protection not available to most.
Tenure advocates believe one approach to addressing the difficulty associated with dismissing ineffective educators would be to streamline the required due-process procedures, thereby reducing the enormous costs associated with weeding out the incompetent. Some suggest addressing proactively the quality of educators entering the profession, rather than attacking tenure laws, by upgrading teacher education and preparatory programs, using objective evaluators who are external to the school system to make tenure recommendations, or improving programs for the induction and development of teachers.
While all of these suggestions have merit, none addresses the real issue of the appropriateness of tenure protection as it now stands. I have been involved in education for 20 years, 10 as a teacher and 10 as an administrator, and I have experienced the advantages and disadvantages of tenure from both perspectives. While I agree with the need to alter the tenure laws, I disagree with those who would eliminate tenure altogether in the name of improving education.
Based on my experience, the vast majority of teachers are quite good at what they do, and spend long hours devoted to educating children. Many are excellent; few are practitioners an experienced evaluator would classify as "bad." In fact, the truly bad teachers should not be the target of tenure-law reform. It is, after all, the responsibility of administrators to evaluate and discharge teachers during probationary periods--before they obtain tenure. Moreover, truly incompetent veteran teachers are not that difficult to get rid of; they generally provide ample reasons and opportunities to do so. Of course, we all have read of the notable exceptions to the rule, cases that drag on for a year or more, resulting in expensive legal outlays. But these are exceptions. Relatively minor changes in due-process regulations, if implemented, could simplify the procedures while still providing due process, could reduce the time required and the cost of hearings and appeals, and could give districts and teachers an appropriate forum to resolve issues.
But because the vast majority of teachers do not fall into this category, our efforts should be broader. They should address changes in tenure laws that would have a positive effect on all educators and, ultimately, the quality of the education system. The emphasis in the call for tenure reform seems to be focused solely on teachers. It shouldn't be. Tenure laws apply equally to administrators as well as teachers, as they should. Any discussion of tenure laws or changes made to tenure laws should encompass all professional educators.
What should be the goal of tenure-law revision? In my opinion, it should result in a process that would ensure that all educators remain knowledgeable and proficient in the factual base, philosophy, and methods of their fields, and that they continue to learn and develop as educators. The only way to guarantee this is to link job mastery directly to job security. Tenure should not be for life, even though most educators continue to do a fine job year after year. Our communities, our children, and our job demands change; tenure laws should reflect that and should make sure that educators change accordingly.
To best meet this need, tenure needs to be made a renewable license, with an educator required to complete a rigorous professional-development component on a regular basis. In New York, for example, the state board of regents, not the legislature, should set minimum requirements for tenure renewal, with school districts allowed to establish additional, specific local requirements. Examples of professional-development opportunities that might lead to renewed tenure would include curriculum development, implementation of alternate-assessment programs, completion of graduate or in-service courses, presentations at local or regional conferences, or teaching college-level courses. There are numerous examples of appropriate activities for meeting such requirements. The important point is that a tenure license requiring renewal, perhaps every 10 years, would provide educators ample time to devote themselves to true professional development--and school districts adequate time to evaluate their professionals.
It is difficult for real reform to occur in many districts because schools are made up of individuals, some of whom have little incentive to change their classroom activities or their teaching methods. A renewable license would provide a way to implement systematic change and could open the door to significant reform of the entire system.
Vol. 15, Issue 31, Page 39Published in Print: April 24, 1996, as Tenure Should Not Be for Life
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About TNU and our research
Huntington's disease (HD) is a fatal neurodegenerative hereditary CAG triplet repeat disorder without a cure. It is clinically characterized by anxiety, depression, metabolic disturbances, chorea and dementia. Neuropathological changes include neuronal dysfunction, protein aggregates and cell death in the cerebral cortex, the striatum and the hypothalamus.
The pathogenic process in HD and the relationships between regional changes and the behavioral consequences are not known. As it is a monogenetic disorder, experimental models of the disease may provide useful tools to elucidate molecular mechanisms underlying psychiatric symptoms. Emerging studies suggest that neuroendocrine and hypothalamic changes in HD may 1) cause symptoms and signs such as anxiety, depression and metabolic disturbances, 2) provide biomarkers to track disease progression and severity, and 3) be involved in the pathogenic disease process.
Studies addressing these points using experimental models and material from patients with HD are ongoing in the research group. Techniques used in the laboratory include detailed testing of motor, cognitive, depressive-and anxiety-like behaviours, stereotactic surgery, gene targeting and disease modeling using adeno-associated viral vectors (AAV), immunohistochemistry, stereology, ELISA, RIA, Western blots, HPLC, RT-PCR as well as MRI analysis.


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Below is an easy to navigate map of Lewisham, displaying recycling points where resident's can take anything from cans to kettles. Zoom in on your local area to find your nearest recycling point.
Below is an easy to navigate map of Lewisham, displaying recycling points where resident's can take anything from cans to kettles. Zoom in on your local area to find your nearest recycling point.
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This map is NOT 'easy to navigate'. You should provide the information in a less gimmicky way.
I think the Map's actually pretty good, I tend to use google maps for most things … good on Lewisham council for being up with the technology!
Pingback: Refuse bins refuse to take the WEEE « Recycle for Lewisham
Wow, now people don't get confused!
You can use your Cell phones to locate this waste removal centers.
So easy navigating this using a GPS. All the key waste removal centers are marked.
Pingback: Low Energy Light Bulb Recycling « Recycle for Lewisham
You actually cause it to look not that hard using your powerpoint presentation however in discovering this trouble to generally be seriously something which In my opinion I had under no circumstances recognize. It appears too difficult and very enormous personally. I am taking a look in advance as part of your following distribute, I'll try to obtain the hang of it!
So, recycling is beneficial environmentally as well as economically.
Reprocessed copper contains as much as 90 percent of the
new copper value. If you have become convinced to recycle your laptop batteries, you can then contact your local recycling facility.
Not entirely sure how I'm supposed to get my Christmas tree to the recycling centre without a car… Why can't they be picked up like with other councils?
i agree your point is something they need to consider
Plastics recycling is listed at New Cross Sainsburys but I can only see paper, cans and glass at the recycling point, am I looking in the wrong place or does the map need updating??
Location is very important point for recycling .It is maintain a big issue recycling management.
i have no way of getting to recycle centre my bins are full and the extra black bags are dumped on the drive by the bin men and its not a problem if you give them some money to throw then in to the bin lorry .people are more likely to fly tip if the waste is only every 2 weeks in lewisham .2 large item are a total of £45 i earn very little and £45 is a weeks food cost for me
Greefings from Carolina!I'm bored to tears aat work so I decided to browse your website on my iphone during lunch break.
I love thee info you present here and can't wait to take a look when I
get home. I'm amazed at how quick your blog loaded on my phone ..
I'm not even using WIFI, just 3G .. Anyhow, good blog!
Great article! This is tthe type off information that are meant to be shared across the internet.
Shame onn Google forr no longer positioning this publish upper!
Come on over and talk over with my web site .
Thank you =)
The plastic bag recycling point in lewisham tesco does not exist according to their staff
where can we recycle books?
There is no recycling point at Lee Station! I just walked here from Hither Green with 3 weeks worth of recycling because you haven't delivered my bins yet, to discover it's just textiles and some fly tipping! Please update your map.


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A group of Government employees have lost their claim for unfair dismissal after they were forced to retire early from jobs.
The 22 former Tyneside civil servants said they had to retire early after their employer, the Contributions Agency, became part of the Inland Revenue in 1998.
A change to retirement policy meant staff were supposed to retire at 60 with the possibility of an extension to July 1999, instead of working on until 65 as they had planned.
This angered the long-serving administration assistants and messengers, based at sites at Longbenton and Hebburn, because they say they had not planned to retire so soon and had not all made adequate arrangements.
But their claim was dismissed after a tribunal hearing in Newcastle yesterday.
Chairman Nick Garside said: "We accept that all the applicants wanted to work up until the age of 65.
"But policies change, Governments change and organisations change.
"We come to the conclusion that the normal retirement age of the applicants was 60. Therefore their claims of unfair dismissal are dismissed."
Chris Close, representing the pensioners, branded the retirement policy a sham, saying it had been changed three times in under 18 months.
He said: "They were confused by the process and they did not know whether another policy change might have happened.
"I think this is a sham and it is not something that should be sustained by an employment tribunal.
"Making people retire against their will is not fair. These people worked for substantial periods of time
"These are crown employees who did their duty only to see themselves thrown on the scrapheap. They have been betrayed ."
But Kassie Smith, representing the Inland Revenue, said the claimants were told the policy had been changed through personal letters and departmental circulars and the union had voted unanimously on the changes.
She said: "All the claimants were between 60 and 65 when their contracts were drawn up and they have all admitted to this tribunal that they received letters and memos about the changes.
"This excludes the tribunal from considering the complaint of unfair dismissal."
Sixty-six-year-old William Elliot, of Hebburn, who represented himself at the tribunal, joined the then Department of Health and Social Security in November 1986 as a porter/messenger.
He claimed he was forced to retire under an Inland Revenue policy despite workingfor a number of government departments.