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Reducing the uncertainties related to blade dynamics by the improvement of the quality of numerical simulations of the fluid structure interaction process is a key for a breakthrough in windturbine technology. A fundamental step in that direction is the implementation of aeroelastic models capable of capturing the complex features of innovative prototype blades, so they can be tested at realistic full-scale conditions with a reasonable computational cost. We make use of a code based on a combination of two advanced numerical models implemented in a parallel HPC supercomputer platform: First, a model of the structural response of heterogeneous composite blades, based on a variation of the dimensional reduction technique proposed by Hodges and Yu. This technique has the capacity of reducing the geometrical complexity of the blade section into a stiffness matrix for an equivalent beam. The reduced 1-D strain energy is equivalent to the actual 3-D strain energy in an asymptotic sense, allowing accurate modeling of the blade structure as a1-D finite-element problem. This substantially reduces the computational effort required to model the structural dynamics at each time step. Second, a novel aerodynamic model based on an advanced implementation of the BEM (Blade Element Momentum) Theory; where all velocities and forces are re-projected through orthogonal matrices into the instantaneous deformed configuration to fully include the effects of large displacements and rotation of the airfoil sections into the computation of aerodynamic forces. This allows the aerodynamic model to take into account the effects of the complex flexo-torsional deformation that can be captured by the more sophisticated structural model mentioned above. In this presentation, we report some recent results we have obtained applying our code to full-scale composite laminate wind-turbine blades, analyzing the fundamental vibrational modes and the stress load in normal operational conditions.
ASME 2012 International Design Engineering Technical Conferences and Computers and Information in Engineering Conference
August 12–15, 2012
Chicago, Illinois, USA
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- Design Engineering Division
- Computers and Information in Engineering Division
Analysis of the Aeroelastic Dynamics of Wind-Turbine Blades
Lucas I. Lago,
Lucas I. Lago
Michigan Technological University, Houghton, MI
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Fernando L. Ponta,
Fernando L. Ponta
Michigan Technological University, Houghton, MI
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Alejandro D. Otero
Alejandro D. Otero
University of Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina
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Author Information
Lucas I. Lago
Michigan Technological University, Houghton, MI
Fernando L. Ponta
Michigan Technological University, Houghton, MI
Alejandro D. Otero
University of Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Paper No: DETC2012-71275, pp. 113-121; 9 pages
Published Online: September 9, 2013
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Lago, Lucas I., Ponta, Fernando L., and Otero, Alejandro D. "Analysis of the Aeroelastic Dynamics of Wind-Turbine Blades." Proceedings of the ASME 2012 International Design Engineering Technical Conferences and Computers and Information in Engineering Conference. Volume 1: 24th Conference on Mechanical Vibration and Noise, Parts A and B. Chicago, Illinois, USA. August 12–15, 2012. pp. 113-121. ASME. https://doi.org/10.1115/DETC2012-71275
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Taiwan basketball team's China bid sparks fears of 'brawn drain'
By Amber Wang, AFP
TAIPEI, Taiwan — A leading Taiwanese basketball team's bid to join China's professional league has intensified concerns on the island that it is suffering a "brawn drain" to its giant neighbor. The Taiwan Beer side, championship winners in 2006-7 and 2007-8, recently announced that it wants to play in the Chinese Basketball Association (CBA) league, adding to an emerging exodus of players heading for the mainland. "We cannot stop players from making the most of their limited athletic lives but rather than losing one after another to Chinese teams, our team could join the CBA," said head coach Richard Yan.
The team, named after the signature product of its main sponsor, Taiwan Tobacco and Liquor Corp., would attract more backers and offer better deals to players once in the CBA, he said. The plan raised a few eyebrows, with basketball authorities saying they opposed the team moving its big shots to China while leaving junior players in Taiwan's Super Basketball League (SBL). "Of course we hope top players stay in Taiwan… We don't want the SBL to become a sideshow to the CBA," said Huang Chao-her, secretary-general of the Chinese Taipei Basketball Association. While the association does not bar individual players from moving to China, it would be difficult for the Taiwan Beer team to get the green light because it has a state-funded sponsor, Huang said. "Such a move would require the approval of various government agencies in charge of sports, labor, finance and China affairs. It is a very complicated matter," said Huang. Several top coaches reportedly backed Taiwan Beer, saying it is inevitable for local teams to tap into China's vast market in the wake of dwindling box office income and funding. For years Taiwan's top athletes have gone to powerhouses such as the United States and Japan in the hope of taking their careers to the next level, but increasing they are setting their sights on China. "The trend of going to China is unstoppable," said Chu Yen-shuo, a Beijing-based Taiwanese sport critic and former chief editor of Hoop Taiwan magazine. "Just like many European players joined the NBA, it's only natural that people want to move where there is more money," he said, adding top Chinese players can earn up to five times more than their Taiwanese peers. Lin Chih-chieh, a former star forward of Taiwan Beer, was among the players and coaches who jumped on the bandwagon when he joined the Guangsha Lions in eastern Zhejiang province last year.

subset: commoncrawl


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"Sweet Home" Mortgage Loans for First-hand Property
This is a loan business whereby a homebuyer mortgages all the legitimate rights and interests of the first-hand property he/she has bought (for which no trading activity has occurred and complete property right has yet to be obtained) to the bank so that the bank can issue a loan according to a certain proportion of the price of the property trading contract, which will be repaid by the borrower in installments, including the accrued interest.
1. Simplified and shortened application process; preferential interest rate;
2. Flexible selection from multiple repayment methods;
3 Senior CGB housing loan specialists provide one-stop quality services.
The applicant should
1. Has legal and valid identity certificate or certificate of residence;
2. Be a worker, investor or resident in mainland
3. Have legal and stable sources of income and the ability to repay the principal and interest of the loan on time;
4. Have a good personal credit standing and no bad credit record;
5. Have opened a settlement account with our bank and be willing to accept our credit supervision;
6. Be able to provide the guaranty we accept or have the credit eligibility we have evaluated or accepted;
7. Meet the other requirements we specify.
Information to be submitted
1. Identity certificate of borrower;
2. Evidentiary document proving the income or other debt-paying ability of the borrower;
3. Marital status certificate (marriage license or singlehood certificate) ;
4. Property trading contract or property purchase agreement;
5. Prepayment voucher or certificate;
6. Other documents and information we require.
Amount of loan
The maximum amount of loan will not exceed 80% of the price indicated in the property trading contract (excluding taxes and fees).
Term of loan
The maximum term can reach 30 years.
Interest rate of loan
The floating proportion of current interest rate of CGB shall be used based on the current benchmark interest rate for loans announced by the People's Bank.
Repayment Method
1. Repayment Tool
Repayment may be made through Licaitong Card, demand deposit passbook or cash.
2. Mode of repayment
(1) Weekly installment;
(2) Biweekly installment;
(3) Monthly installment;
(4) Quarterly installment;
(5) Semiannual installment;
(6) Repayment of principal and interest in installments;
(7) Repayment of interest in installments and principal as it falls due;
(8) Lump-sum repayment of principal and interest as they fall due.


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- How Joyce Wrote "Finnegans Wake": A Chapter-by-Chapter Genetic Guide
What tasks should, or can, a review of a book entitled How Joyce Wrote "Finnegans Wake" set for itself? Upon the book's release, a number of responses focused upon specific details: readings of manuscript passages, factographies, and dating. There is, of course, such a high standard of scrupulousness required of textual genetics that matters of this kind remain central to the evaluation of an individual scholar's work. Other responses have naturally been concerned with the "[h]ow" so boldly advertised in the book's title. For my part, though, it is the relation of the book's editorial project to the larger placement of textual genetics within the field of Joyce scholarship that will concern me here, since it seems that this book requires consideration in more than terms merely of efficacy.
If How Joyce Wrote "Finnegans Wake" simply accorded with the various prepublication endorsements that it received, then it might indeed be enough simply to praise the editors for their historiographical work and to keep the book on a shelf beside other secondary reference materials that are considered useful. But useful for what? According to Roland McHugh, this book represents the "most complete and accurate account to date of the composition of James Joyce's greatest work" (back cover). For Derek Attridge, it is "[a] major step [End Page 591] forward in the critical history of the book that is Joyce's most challenging work" (back cover). On the one hand, it is a most accurate account, on the other a major step forward. These are commendable qualities in themselves, but hardly all that this book is or could be held to be. Why is that?
What very few Joyce scholars, professional or otherwise, yet realize is that textual genetics represents one of the major theoretical breakthroughs after poststructuralism. And while this book only purports to be a genetic guide to how Joyce "wrote" Finnegans Wake, it is also something of a reflection upon a state of affairs—above all, upon the status of textual genetics within the larger project of Joyce scholars—and any serious review of this book needs to take both of these factors into account. I say both, because they are not equivalent. First, the state of affairs of Joycean genetics is ambiguous, indeed ambivalent, and this book is, among other things, a symptom of that ambivalence; it is this ambivalence that has complicated the status of genetics within the larger discipline.
In the introduction to How Joyce Wrote "Finnegans Wake," Luca Crispi and Sam Slote, with Dirk van Hulle, write: "The editors and contributors believe that readings of Finnegans Wake can only benefit from a solid critical awareness of the archive of the Wake's composition" (3); "[w]e hope to present here the fruit of the past decade's consolidation of Wakean genetic studies in the hope of stimulating and encouraging further work" (4). Here begins my first serious criticism of this book: the anemia that robs it of its proper ambitions. For this is a very serious work, and yet its claims are constantly understated, to the degree that it defeats its own hopes. How? Let me say this: by retreating into the aspirations of usefulness, this book robs itself, and Joycean genetics, of a central place in Joyce scholarship apart from that of a secondary augmentation of core works like Clive Hart's Concordance and the James Joyce Archive.1
In a review circulated almost immediately upon the book's release, Robbert-Jan Henkes noted that "this book has been at least seven years in the making . . . some chapters were already presented at the 2000 London [symposium]," yet "it still is very much state-of-the-art."2 This is true, but for more reasons than simply that there "are things in it nobody knew before" (n.p.). Henkes describes the book's organization as a "spatial alliance of chapters...


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Baker Island is worked in the round from the bottom up. When working the body chart on round 28, you will need to remove and replace the locking EOR marker in order to work the final C2/2/2LP. If you choose to place markers identifying the pattern repeat, you will need to remove and replace each marker in order to work the C2/2/2LP cross that the marker divides.
DESIGNER: Meghan Kelly
YARN: The Fibre Co. Acadia (60% merino wool, 20% baby alpaca, 20% silk; 145 yds/50 gm skein): egret, 2 skeins.
GAUGE: 28 sts and 33 rnds = 4" (10 cm) in 1 x 1 rib on smaller ndls, after blocking. 27 sts and 35 rnds = 4" (10 cm) in chart pattern on larger ndls, after blocking.
NEEDLES: 1 - 16" US 3 (3.5mm) circulars and 1 - 16" US 5 (3.75mm) circulars and set dpns.
NOTIONS: Tapestry needle, stitch marker.
SIZE: 22" (56 cm) brim circumference + 10.5" (26.75 cm) height.
SKILLS: Working cables from charts.


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One day a man was digging potatoes. He had a shoe on the left leg but he had no shoe on the right leg. A man was passing by and he said "Why dont you put the shoe on the right leg and let the other leg barefoot". "The right leg is alright too because it has the riding" said he.
School: Cnoc an Doire (B.) (roll number 2418)
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- Knockaderry, Co. Kerry
- Teacher:
- Domhnall Ó Seaghdha
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Once an old woman got sick and she went to the doctor. He gave her a plaster and said "when you go home put that on your chest". After a few days she came again and the doctor asked her how did she feel. "I couldnt get any chest doctor but I put it on a box and I'm just as bad as ever" said she.
One evening an old woman ran out of meal but she waited until next morning. She arose early and went into one of her neighbours houses for the meal. She was in such a hurry that she said. " I left the day before the house and I left Paddy wide opened and the door in bed."
One day a man was beating an ass and another man said "stop it dont you know
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The ESRB has listed its rating description for the upcoming PlayStation 4 game, Gravity Rush Remastered. The console version got a Teen rating due to fantasy violence, mild suggestive themes and the use of alcohol.
Some female characters in the game will be wearing "revealing outfits." A few of the artwork from the new gallery mode also contains "depict up-skirt camera angles and characters with deep cleavage." You can read that part of the summary for the action-adventure game below:
During the course of the game, some female characters wear revealing outfits, and one still-frame cutscene depicts a woman covering her breasts after dropping a towel. Several gallery images depict up-skirt camera angles and characters with deep cleavage.
The fights in Gravity Rush Remastered are highlighted by cries of pain in addition to colorful lighting effects. Some of the cut scenes can also be quite violent as well. You can find the rest of ESRB's summary for Gravity Rush Remastered below:
This is an action-adventure game in which players assume the role of a woman on a quest to uncover the secrets of her past. As players manipulate gravity to traverse through fantastical environments, they engage in hand-to-hand combat with blob-like creatures (i.e., Nevi) that break apart and disappear when defeated. Players can also throw various projectiles (e.g., boxes, furniture, crystals) at nearby enemies; battles are highlighted by cries of pain and colorful light effects. Some cutscenes contain other instances of violence: a character beating up armed thugs; a girl getting "eaten" (i.e., absorbed) by a large Nevi.
The game also includes a protracted interaction with a drunken character (e.g., "Wow he smells like he crawled out of the bottle" and "Ahh, the flower of the nightclub! *Hic*").
Gravity Rush Remastered will be released for the PlayStation 4 early next year on the 9th of February. In addition to running at 60 frames per second and 1080p native resolution, the PS4 version also has all the DLC packs that came out for the Vita release.


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How to Wear a Jumpsuit
If you're looking for a cuter, more casual look, GoJane also carries affordable rompers with short shorts and fun, flirty shapes.
Colorblocking is also helpful for balancing out wider hips or a larger bottom. A dark leg is slimming, and when paired with a lighter top will draw the eye up. A cinched waist and flowy top can also help create a more hourglass shape. Unless you are very tall, long garments such as jumpsuits can actually make the body look shorter.
Go with heels or wedges to look as long and lean as possible. Think bright, bold heels and eye-catching statement necklaces. Main menu Open search menu. How to Wear a Jumpsuit BY: Editors Mar 6, If your main concern is Your curves or lack thereof: And two last tips for everyone Wear heels or wedges. Boldly accessorize a classic black jumpsuit outfit. English Choose a language for shopping. Amazon Music Stream millions of songs. Amazon Drive Cloud storage from Amazon.
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The wide legs of this jumpsuit mean it can almost pass for a dress. The lightweight fabric and easy fit look make it perfect for summer workdays. $, skytmeg.cf Fit And Toned Jumpsuit - Charcoal. SHARE. $USD. All Fashion Nova models are wearing size small in tops and dresses, and size 1, 3, or 5 in jeans depending on their body type. Please use the model figure above as a guideline to determine the most accurate size for your fit. FREE SHIPPING - There is nothing better than a sexy bodysuit or a great fitting cotton jumpsuit and we are always looking for the very best bodysuits, jumpsuits and catsuits with .


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Barbara Anne (Shapiro) DeRocher, 72, of Cedar Park, Texas, and former long-time resident of Andover, MA, died August 31st, 2018.
Barbara was born in Malden, MA, to the late Eugene Leonard Shapiro and Doris Irene (Claff) Shapiro. She graduated from Boston University in 1967 where she received a Bachelor's degree in business. She loved to garden, paint, and travel. She was also a student of history and an avid reader. She adored her family and her pets and enjoyed cooking and baking for them.
Her parents were founding members of the Temple Tiferet Israel in Malden, MA, where she led the youth group as a teenager. As a young woman, she taught ESL to immigrants in Boston. After college, Barbara went on to work in international business before becoming a homemaker. She also served as an office manager when her children left home and advocated for foster children as a CASA volunteer.
Barbara is survived by her husband, Stanley E. DeRocher of Cedar Park, TX, her brother, Mark Shapiro of Arlington, MA, her daughter Sarah E. Moore and husband Andrew, of Austin, TX, her son, Seth A. DeRocher and wife McKensie of Cedar Park, TX, as well as five grandchildren Alanna, Adam, David, Emerson and Liam.
After a private burial, family and friends may attend her memorial service at 11am on Friday, September 7, at the Weed-Corley-Fish Funeral Home located at 3125 North Lamar Blvd, Austin, TX 78705. In lieu of gifts, memorial donations can be made to the Association for Frontotemporal Degeneration (https://www.theaftd.org/).
3125 N Lamar Blvd.
Austin, TX 78705
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Opto-Electronics Review
Editor-in-Chief: Jaroszewicz, Leszek
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- Comparison of 905 nm and 1550 nm semiconductor laser rangefinders' performance deterioration due to adverse environmental conditions by Wojtanowski, J./ Zygmunt, M./ Kaszczuk, M./ Mierczyk, Z. and Muzal, M.
- Review of night vision technology by Chrzanowski, K.
- History of infrared detectors by Rogalski, A.
- Understanding the NEΔT of tactical infrared focal plane arrays by Norton, P.
- A novel method for detecting light source for digital images forensic by Roy, A./ Mitra, S. and Agrawal, R.
- Terahertz detectors and focal plane arrays by Rogalski, A. and Sizov, F.
- TiO2/SiO2 multilayer as an antireflective and protective coating deposited by microwave assisted magnetron sputtering by Mazur, M./ Wojcieszak, D./ Domaradzki, J./ Kaczmarek, D./ Song, S. and Placido, F.
- Laser prototyping of printed circuit boards by Nowak, M./ Antończak, A./ Kozioł, P. and Abramski, K.
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- THz radiation sensors by Sizov, F.
- Extraction of centre line from curvilinear objects by Rokicki, J./ Matiukas, V./ Ušinskas, A. and Adaškevičius, R.
- Barrier infrared detectors by Martyniuk, P./ Kopytko, M. and Rogalski, A.
- Measurement of elastic constants of nematic liquid crystals with use of hybrid in-plane-switched cell by Nowinowski-Kruszelnicki, E./ Kędzierski, J./ Raszewski, Z./ Jaroszewicz, L./ Kojdecki, M./ Piecek, W./ Perkowski, P./ Olifierczuk, M./ Miszczyk, E./ Ogrodnik, K. and Morawiak, P.
- Evaluation of infrared collimators for testing thermal imaging systems by Chrzanowski, K.
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- Organic field-effect transistors by Małachowski, M. and Żmija, J.
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Volume 24 (2016)
Volume 23 (2015)
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Volume 24, Issue 4 (Dec 2016)
Research Article
Coupled electric fields in photorefractive driven liquid crystal hybrid cells – theory and numerical simulation
Moszczyński, P. / Walczak, A. / Marciniak, P.
Page 163
Published Online: 10/17/2016
Refractive index matched half-wave plate with a nematic liquid crystal for three-dimensional laser metrology applications
Piecek, W. / Jaroszewicz, L.R. / Miszczyk, E. / Raszewski, Z. / Mrukiewicz, M. / Perkowski, P. / Nowinowski-Kruszelnicki, E. / Zieliński, J. / Olifierczuk, M. / Kędzierski, J. / Sun, X.W. / Garbat, K. / Kowiorski, K. / Morawiak, P. / Mazur, R. / Tkaczyk, J.
Page 169
Published Online: 10/17/2016
Power modulated temperature sensor with inscribed fibre Bragg gratings
Mądry, M. / Markowski, K. / Jędrzejewski, K. / Bereś-Pawlik, E.
Page 183
Published Online: 10/20/2016
All optical measurement of an unknown wideband microwave frequency
Kumar, A. / Priye, V. / Raj Singh, R.
Page 191
Published Online: 10/22/2016
Influence of a thin metal layer on a beam propagation in a biconical optical fibre taper
Stasiewicz, K.A. / Moś, J.E.
Page 196
Published Online: 10/17/2016
D-shape polymer optical fibres for surface plasmon resonance sensing
Gasior, K. / Martynkien, T. / Wojcik, G. / Mergo, P. / Urbanczyk, W.
Page 209
Published Online: 10/14/2016
Simple method for manufacturing and optical characterization of tapered optical fibres
Zakrzewski, A. / Pięta, A. / Patela, S.
Page 216
Published Online: 10/14/2016
Thulium-doped fibre broadband source for spectral region near 2 micrometers
Písařík, M. / Peterka, P. / Aubrecht, J. / Cajzl, J. / Benda, A. / Mareš, D. / Todorov, F. / Podrazký, O. / Honzátko, P. / Kašík, I.
Page 223
Published Online: 10/17/2016
Contents to volume 24
Page 232
Published Online: 10/22/2016


text:
"'We all need to remember, every day more and more, that in the last resort there is no such thing as the 'common man'," Richard Hoggart wrote, seven years before the birth of Nigel Farage. "If we do not, we may in the end have allowed individual decision to slip away in our dutiful democratic identification of ourselves with a hypothetical figure whose main value is to those who will mislead us." Hoggart, who died in 2014 at the age of 95, spent his extraordinarily productive working life urging us to watch out for men such as Farage and Donald Trump: "mass persuaders" whose cynicism and self-interest knew no bounds.
The Uses of Literacy, published 60 years ago next month, was his second and by far his most famous book. In it, Hoggart argued that collective engagement in a project of civic literacy would grow naturally out of the increasing education of the working classes, and that knowledge really would translate into power. And in some ways his hopeful prediction came true. From the 1960s onwards thousands of young people entered higher education, catering to the first mass cohorts of grammar school children, and then, in the 1990s, furnishing nearly half of under-25s with a degree.
But what of the other half? This tacit segregation was laid bare by analysis of how people voted in the 2016 referendum. Statistically at least, if you were born before the era of mass higher education, and held few or no qualifications, you voted to leave. If you were under 40 – the biggest waves of university expansion happened after 1992 – and held a degree, you voted to remain.
As has been pointed out, many of those who voted to leave stand to lose the most from a potential economic downturn brought about by Brexit. But the point is not that people without qualifications are stupid, and that in the context of the referendum they unwittingly voted against their own interests. It is that they perceived that nothing and no one in power was acting in their interests, so what the hell? People with qualifications have come to live increasingly separate lives from those without, are rewarded far more generously in terms of pay and status and therefore had greater cause to believe in the status quo.
When Britain exposed its deep divisions in last year's referendum, it was tempting to view "leave" and "remain" voters as opposing factions in a culture war. Mail readers versus Guardian types; town dwellers versus city dwellers; pub-goers versus tapas-eaters. Tempting, yes, but too easy. Britain's cultural divide is an expression of another, more pernicious divide that has been growing for decades, that of social class.
Writing in 2015, the sociologist Mike Savage identified the present-day "cultural omnivore", whose position within the "established middle-class" cultural elite was anatomised in his book Social Class in the 21st Century. Savage and his colleagues based their study on their 2011 Great British Class Survey, conducted on the BBC website, which revealed vast and growing experiential gaps between university educated, city dwelling professionals and older, unqualified people living in smaller towns.
Cultural omnivores get jittery about being thought of as "elite"; they go to as many rock gigs as classical concerts, and might pick up a cheeky Sun with their Guardian. One effect of this cultural blurring – as evidenced during New Labour's late 1990s honeymoon period, when Noel Gallagher from Oasis quaffed champagne with Tony Blair at No 10 – was to blind this new elite to widening social divisions. Surely we can't be that divided if we're all buying the same records, the thinking seemed to go. Although the Britpop era appeared to mark some kind of return to a period when popular culture was a potentially unifiying force between the classes, in reality it masked a new snobbery.
In his introduction to a 1989 reissue of Orwell's The Road to Wigan Pier, Hoggart noted that "the coffin of class" had remained empty throughout the postwar period, in spite of regular claims by pundits that class was dead. What he'd witnessed instead in the intervening decades was a regular reinvention of the rules of class; a redefinition of snobbery and distinction, so that no matter how hard people attempted to dissolve the boundaries, new ones kept cropping up.
In 1960 Hoggart led the Pilkington committee on broadcasting, whose recommendations forced ITV to compete with the BBC on grounds of quality rather than ratings. It wasn't assumed that you needed a degree to follow Jacob Bronowski's The Ascent of Man, which appeared on BBC2 in 1973. Now you'd be lucky if you saw it on BBC4. The original television adaptation of Alex Haley's Roots, made in 1977, was broadcast on BBC1. The 2017 remake is being shown on BBC4, edged off the BBC's flagship channel by the somewhat less stretching The Real Marigold Hotel, in which ageing celebrities are filmed trying out retirement in India. "A little caviar for the snobs and buckets of rubbish for the masses," was how Hoggart described the early-2000s division of BBC channels into posh and non-posh.
In The Uses of Literacy, Hoggart had anticipated this changing nature of culture in British life. His book is at once a testimony to a vanishing world of working class proximity and cooperation, and a warning about the creation of cultural life in the potential vacuum left by its passing.
Hoggart was not romantic about working class life. He was orphaned at the age of eight and his early years were spent with an assortment of relatives, giving him all the evidence he needed to be wary of sentimental appeals to what he called "group-feeling". He recalls local suicides and the matter-of-fact way in which they were discussed, the weekly anxiety of budgeting for food and outstanding debt, the fatalism of the miner who gave the young Hoggart a crown in the local pub and requested that he "use it for thee education. Ah'm like all miners. Ah only waste t'bluddy stuff."
Hoggart illuminated a hidden world not as a tourist or anthropologist but as an angered witness, though some critics distanced themselves from his perspective. In her 1982 book, Landscape for a Good Woman, the historian Carolyn Steedman damned his account of working class family life for what she saw as its "simplicity" and "passivity". Steedman didn't see her mother – an isolated single parent obsessed with glamour and with the material things she couldn't have – in a portrait that emphasised the communality of terrace life and what Hoggart called the "cheerful existentialism" of working class people.
There is, of course, ample room for both perspectives – in fact, we need both, and those of as many others as possible. These kind of debates only highlight the lack of well known accounts of working class lives, leading to the suggestion that one must dominate, while middle class written lives are so numerous that we take their complexity for granted.
In reviews and commentary, Ken Loach's 2016 film I, Daniel Blake suffered from the over attention that comes with under-representation. Because it was the only widely distributed film to have been made about the effects of the austerity policy, it bore the burden of having to say everything that was going to be said on the subject. As if in counterbalance to Benefits Street, the Channel 4 series that has made a cheap spectacle of difficult lives, Loach sought to make his eponymous hero beyond reproach. Disbelieving reviewers accused Loach of poverty tourism, saying that no one as "good" as Blake could suffer so much at the hands of government.
Such extreme and polarised reactions seem to confirm Hoggart's lifelong argument that it was in the interests of the powerful to persuade the powerless that they have nothing to offer towards the creation of a common culture. British newspapers – overwhelmingly rightwing since the eclipse of Hoggart's favourite case study, the Daily Mirror, by the Sun in the 1980s – chase their own tails trying to pretend they reflect the voice of "the common man" when, in reality, most of them hold that imaginary voice in contempt.
Why do people fall for it? At least some of the answers lie in the prescient arguments made in The Uses of Literacy about the way in which informed scepticism – essential to an inclusive democracy – gives way to blanket cynicism, when everyone seems to be saying the same thing, no matter which side they're on. This returns us to the fictitious "common man" after whom the media, cultural and political elite go chasing, thinking they'll attract him if they can just come up with the right combination of words using the "slogans intended for the common man" generator.
One of the more egregious examples of the slogan-generator effect in recent years must be the Labour party's "Controls on Immigration" mugs, introduced for sale in the run-up to the 2015 general election. As if you'd go to make a cup of tea and, while waiting for the kettle to boil, look at your "Controls on Immigration" mug and bless the Labour party for standing tough against the metropolitan elite. They must think we're, well, mugs.
The ubiquity of the wartime slogan "Keep Calm and Carry On", seen on posters, in advertising and across a range of birthday present ephemera, is the apparently apolitical equivalent of Labour's mugs. Or is it? Owen Hatherley's 2016 book The Ministry of Nostalgia deconstructs the recent mania for "austerity chic" – essentially enamel saucepans and tea towels reminding you to get on with it, where's your blitz spirit, put the kettle on and have a nice sit down – in a political context of deliberate cruelty towards those whose entire lives have been spent in forced austerity.
Hatherley's book is a bracing attack on middle class complacency, the unwitting glue of smugness that enables governments of every stripe to keep attacking the poor and marginalised in the name of maintaining the social fabric. Noting the wilful ignorance involved in appropriating a wartime propaganda slogan to remind yourself to put up with the Tories rather than do something about them, Hatherley summons the angered spirit of Hoggart from the point of view of someone enraged by the willing collusion of consumers with persuaders.
In 1957, British society was class-bound but not stagnant; in 2017, it is, apparently, both, the classes and regions having retrenched into mutually carping sides. What would Hoggart make of our culture today, where the "thin and pallid" versions of literature, popular music and journalism he identified abound?
The first half of The Uses of Literacy is a glorious catalogue of the components that formed what Hoggart termed "the full rich life": the roasting hearth, "club checks" to buy clothes and neighbourhood social clubs at which semi-pro singers stretched every note as though pummelling a "sweet and sticky mass" of sugar syrup. By comparison, he argued, wider affluence was creating a market for those susceptible to what he called the "mass persuaders": marketing men, essentially, who could take an unalloyed good like universal literacy and turn it into an expedient for selling mass culture – books, movies and songs created as if in a laboratory with a clinical focus on appealing to the greatest number. These products, he argued, had the potential to bring about a state of sluggish disenchantment, in which people knew there was something missing from their lives, but could no longer quite put their finger on what it was.
Hoggart praised the keenly expressed emotions of 1950s club singers, with their easily lampooned melisma, who find their modern equivalents in the ubiquitous TV talent contests – Britain's Got Talent, The X Factor, The Voice – on which young hopefuls try to out-sing Beyoncé and bust the PA in the process. Yet Hoggart was nowhere near as romantic about working class life as to locate that misplaced feeling he discussed in "community"; in The Uses of Literacy he advises against the use of that word "because its overtones seem too simply favourable; they may lead to an underestimation of the harsher tensions and sanctions of working class groups".
Hoggart's definition of mass product was something that contained no emotional truth – nothing that could be measured or felt as real, however painful that reality might be to confront – because it was produced by people who believed their audience had no ability or desire to detect that truth. "Sex-and-violence novels," he wrote, epitomised "an endless and hopeless tail-chasing evasion of the personality", a description that could have been taken from a review of Fifty Shades of Grey. That sense of evasion is palpable in much current chart music, the lyrics of which obsess over personal slights and bungled attempts at saving face using the distancing devices of social media. It's a uniformly alienated sound, generated by producers seeking to smooth out any hint of creative individuality.
To the late cultural critic Mark Fisher, the fact that, viewed through a prism of privilege, "everyone" seems to do the same things proves that producers of mass culture have succeeded in "lowering the expectations … because it's easier to standardise and mass reproduce mediocrity. It's much harder to reliably tell us something actually interesting."
It wasn't always so. There is a glaring blind spot in Uses, which is Hoggart's failure to anticipate the extraordinary creativity of mainly working class pop musicians in the two or three decades after its publication. When he watched teenage boys "slouch" in front of the jukebox in 1950s milk bars, all he heard from the speakers was "a peculiarly thin and pallid form of dissipation, a sort of spiritual dry-rot". Among those slouchers you might have found a young John Lennon or Paul McCartney; a few years later, a Little Richard-obsessed David Bowie would be forming his own jazz band in the milk bar-studded suburbs. Hoggart didn't predict the combined effect of exposing working class boys to a grammar school education and to American pop culture at the same time. He never imagined that clever kids might make something clever out of what appeared to him dumb. That's not to say that Hoggart and Fisher, who wrote beautifully about the role of pop music in his self-education, are not writing about the same fear. Both could see that forms of culture no longer produced for consumption in specific, meaningful contexts, but instead for a placeless, meaningless "average", contribute to the emptying out of "the full rich life".
Hoggart was less concerned with technological development than with how cynical people planned to manipulate the opportunities of mass affluence for their own ends. Social media, music and video streaming, and particularly their availability through smartphones, now bring "mass persuaders" into the fabric of everyday life in the way that no other technology has so far done, including television. Without a basis in civic literacy – literacy as bullshit detector – "fake news" is really information cooked and served the way you like it, depending on the source through which you choose to have it delivered.
Think of Donald Trump, the tweeting president. Because those who work in the media and politics use Twitter relentlessly to communicate with each other, they assume that everyone else uses Twitter, and therefore fail to appreciate that reporting someone's tweets is not necessarily "news". Twitter is a gossip exchange that has somehow, glibly, by unwitting collusion, been turned into a treacherous diplomatic tool. This is an abuse of literacy on an industrial scale: a would-be demagogue given greater power by a media that professes to be horrified by his every utterance, simply because he has chosen a medium that they themselves use and erroneously believe is universal and democratic. It is not: Twitter is an elite platform that happens to be "free" to use. Except, of course, you pay for its use in innumerable other ways.
It's strange that we are only now talking about a resurgence of political populism when, really, refusing to tell your voters the complicated truth and pretending the answers are easy is a conceit that goes back many decades. In Hoggart's words, this time from an essay on higher education from 1965: "It is essential to keep looking and listening rather than to settle for comfortable half-generalisations, to remain open to the changes going on around us, and to the need sometimes for changes in our own attitudes."
"There are many who feel that they 'know all the arguments about cultural debasement'," Hoggart wrote in the conclusion to Uses, "though they do not really know the material ... In this way it is possible to live in a sort of clever man's paradise, without any real notion of the force of the assault outside."
Reading The Uses of Literacy can tell us a lot about today's confusing landscape; for one thing, that "we" – remain voters banging "our" heads on the nearest table – are confused largely because "they" – leave voters in areas heavily reliant on EU funding, for instance – couldn't seem to see which side their bread was buttered on. David Cameron's folly was not so much his craven capitulation to the "bastards" in his party, but his sheer ignorance of the persistence and the causes of social division in his own country. The world of Us and Them is still, regrettably, very much alive.
• Respectable by Lynsey Hanley is published in paperback by Penguin on 23 February. To order a copy for £7.99 (RRP £9.99) go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99.


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A man talks about the difficulties that he had to go through in order to arrive at the United States when he was an adolescent. He narrates all of the practices that he took forth to sustain himself and how his dream ended becoming a nightmare.
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Nyon: Five-time champions Sevilla have been drawn to face Lazio in the last 32 of the Europa League.
Sevilla, who have won all five of their titles since 2006, are in second place in Spain and Lazio are fifth in Serie A.
Arsenal landed another long trip and will play BATE Borisov in the first leg in Belarus after group games in Azerbaijan and Ukraine.
Napoli and Inter Milan will only have to cross the Italian border into neighbouring countries for games against Zurich and Rapid Vienna, respectively.
Chelsea, the 2013 champion, are at Malmo and Celtic will host Valencia in the first leg.
The first legs will be played from February 12-14, with return games scheduled from February 20-21.
The final is set for May 29 in Baku, Azerbaijan.
Europa League draw
Rennes v Betis, BATE Borisov v Arsenal, Malmo v Chelsea, Viktoria Plzen v Dinamo Zagreb, Brugge v Salzburg, Rapid Vienna v Inter Milan, Slavia Prague v Genk, Krasnodar v Bayer Leverkusen, Zurich v Napoli, Shakhtar Donetsk v Eintracht Frankfurt, Celtic v Valencia, Olympiakos v Dynamo Kiev, Lazio v Sevilla, Fenerbahce v Zenit Saint Petersburg, Sporting Lisbon v Villarreal, Galatasaray v Benfica
First legs to be played February 14 with return legs on February 21


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CEBU, Philippines — Book best friends and best-selling authors Cassandra Clare and Holly Black met in 2002, when Clare asked Black for a coffee run following the latter's book signing for her first tome. They have since written novels together ("The Magisterium" series) and have travelled in book tours alongside each other – making readers cry with their twists and taking them on an adventure of secret worlds and magical creatures.
Clare, author of "The Mortal Instruments" series, and Black, known for "The Spiderwick Chronicles," were recently in Cebu for their King and Queen Tour with National Bookstore, featuring their latest releases: Clare's "Queen of Air and Darkness" and Black's "Wicked King."
Before meeting with their Cebuano fans at the Northwing Atrium of SM City Cebu, the young-adult fiction writers sat with Cebu press and talked about how they build their winding stories, their interests outside of writing, and what happens in their writing group which they share with authors like Marie Lu, Kelly Link, and Leigh Bardugo among many others. The two also got real about what it's like to get the movie adaptation treatment, as well as their advice to aspiring writers who want to build a world of their own.
What's your first hook when it comes to starting a story?
Cassandra: I usually come up with the characters first. I figure out who they are and the story coalesces around the characters. Once I know what the characters are, and what their interactions are with each other, the plot grows with those interactions and relationships that they have with each other.
Holly: I often start with character. But I also start often with a picture that gives me a feeling. It's an image that I have and I want the story to feel like it. The trick for me, I think, and why I change so much is because I'm chasing the feeling. What is the story that would make me feel that way, or would make the reader feel that way? The questions are very important. When I get to the question then I actually start to have all the building blocks. But it gets me a while to triangulate between this kind of feeling, the characters, and the question of the book.
Can you tell us about your writing group?
Holly: We're really lucky that we live about five miles from each other. We get together almost every day at Cassie's house and work on our own stuff. We put our headphones on. It's great to be in a community like that. It was my dream to be part of a community of writers. It gives you the opportunity to…when you're stuck, you can ask 'Hey is this working?' Especially with professional stuff where you don't always… You all have your own careers. You can lean on other people's experience and say 'Hey I'm having this problem, what do you think?' It's lonely in this industry and it's not lonely because we have that community.
Cassandra: It definitely helps with the writer's block. If you're stuck on something, you can turn to your friends. Everybody in the group is very familiar with everybody's work. We go on these writing retreats every year, very often. It's a bigger group. It changes on who's available at the time. They're able to come in and read each other's works. You get to read other people's stuff early. And you get to give advice and they get to give you advice. It's really helpful.
What do you enjoy outside of writing?
Holly: I obviously spend a lot of time reading. It's great to be able to read not for work. It's a real pleasure. And I have a five-year-old. I spend a lot of time, when I'm not working, chasing after him and messing around.
Cassandra: I like to travel. Every time I get any the free time, I like going all over the world, experiencing new things, learning new stuff, visiting places I've never been to. It's great. It's always really exciting. And 'True Crime.' I listen to 'True Crime' podcasts and murder mysteries. I'm really addicted to them. Half the time the husband murdered the wife and I'm looking at my husband like, 'Are you going to push me off the balcony?'
Why do you like to explore themes like fairies and hidden worlds?
Cassandra: The Shadow Hunters is the idea of this secret group of warriors. Growing up, the idea that there was magic in the world that only some people know about, that it was there but some of us didn't get to see it was really attractive to me. I really wanted to believe that there were werewolves, vampires, fairies, demon hunters. They're among us! I was willing to accept that I couldn't see them but I liked the idea that they did exist.
Holly: What I love about fairies is that I love that they are not human. They have never been human. Unlike vampires, werewolves. They are other, they are alien beings that could look like us but are not us. I always come back to the idea of fairy fruit and the idea of something that is so delicious that it turns all other food into ashes in your mouth. Ruinous beauty. The thing you want even though it will destroy you. I guess that's the story that fascinates me again and again.
With the rich world-building you've done for your books, how do you keep your sanity?
Cassandra: We both have field guides. I have lived in the Shadow Hunter world for a long time. Sometimes I have dreams about it. But I'm still pretty good at telling the difference between imagination and what's actually happening. The most sanity-challenging aspect is keeping everything straight—all of the families, the magic, all of the mythology, the history, the different timelines in the books. So I have an assistant and I also have like a complicated method of keeping things straight. I have a big book, and there are the timelines, backstory, even lists of names that I already used, minor characters who appeared on one page and we never see them again. You have to know all of that when you create a world that feels real. And so relying on that, my own memory, and assistant. And working on projects that aren't Shadow Hunters keep a balance between Shadow Hunters, reality, other projects…
Holly: I have been writing a lot of different stuff. So it's a little bit easier to keep it straight. But it's been fun to do standalones and try out a bunch of different things.
You both had the film adaptation treatment. It's something many writers and storytellers dream about. What would you like to tell these writers based on your experience?
Holly: I had a good experience with "The Spiderwick Chronicles." What we were mostly concerned with is we hoped that they would keep true to the spirit of the character so that even if they changed a lot of things it would still feel like the books, feel like the people in the books. And that it would feel like fairies. Secondly, we hoped that they would make a good movie. I'm really happy with it. I think the "Spiderwick" movie, it was a good experience. You definitely have to let go. People are just going to go off and do their thing. You definitely don't know when it's going to happen or if it's going to happen. I spent a lot of time hearing it's on, it's off. My agent called and said it's on, so I went to a local liquor store and said 'Give me that expensive champagne.' I uncorked the bottle, poured two glasses, the agents called and said it's back off. My advice is to only believe it's really happening if you're walking around on set.
Cassandra: I had both movie and TV series... I would say for writers, I think the case for me, you're going to get offers from people to adapt your book into a movie, hopefully. If I could go back, I would tell myself to hold out for a good deal that allows you to be involved in a project because those do exist. And your agent's going to say 'You're never going to be allowed to be involved. Forget the idea that you get to have any input, just sign it.' And that's what happened with me. Looking back, I would rather have waited and signed a contract that would have allowed me to have input in the film and TV show. There were aspects I enjoyed. I liked being on set. It was really fun.
Your advice to aspiring writers?
Cassandra: Try to think. It might sound a little corny but you know the idea of writing an original book, etc. What you want to do is think, 'What can only I bring to the project? What's my voice? What's my special? Do I think it's unique only to me and how do I bring that to what I'm writing so that I'm bringing something different to the world that people connect to?'
Holly: And also to write it for your reader self. Write it for the reader that you are and not think about what everybody says a writer should do. Think about what would I really to read, because you're the reader you know best. When I was a kid, I wanted to be a writer. I didn't know anybody who made a living in the arts. And you know how they say, if you believe, you can do it… but it's hard to believe. I've never met a writer, I had no idea. One thing I would say is even if you don't believe you can do it, you can still do it. Move forward from thing to thing, step to step.
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Tag Archives | emerging market
Drop in telecoms carriage fees will drive broadband access in Africa
Digitisation (the migration from analogue to digital technology) will help to bridge the digital divide between emerging and developed markets.
Mobile branchless banking in emerging markets
Branchless banking allows the customer to have access to banking services without being reliant on a brick-and-mortar bank branch. Technological advancements and the adoption of a collaborative approach between banking service providers and technology companies are going to forge a new way of doing banking in emerging markets, where transport, electrical and other infrastructure is often underdeveloped.
Africa – the Resilient
KPMG's Global Automotive Executive Survey reveals opportunity in Africa
Agriculture in Africa
The Nigerian agriculture minister, Akinwumi Adesina, once stated that "potential is important, but nobody eats potential", thereby summarising one of Africa's key problems – unlocking its agricultural potential to allow the continent's growing population to fully benefit from the available resources. KPMG's paper aims to provide a glimpse of Africa's agricultural sector – where it stands, how it got there and what should be changed in order to move forward, knowing that potential alone is not enough to feed a growing population.
Prioritising Africa's megacities
Whilst Africa is often perceived as a mysterious, underdeveloped continent, it's quickly becoming one of the most valuable emerging markets for infrastructure. In fact, infrastructure development – in the form of megacities – is one of the key strategic priorities for senior African leaders. What's driving infrastructure development in Africa?
Investing in Africa: Part One
Sub-Saharan Africa is expecting a 5% annual growth rate in 2012-2013, and World Bank data show that almost half of Africa's countries have reached middle-income status. As this growth trend continues, the continent is a potentially attractive destination for domestic and foreign private capital, including private equity investments, which will further boost growth rates.
Africa Rising
To many, Africa is a land of mystery and danger; a place where development is needed and investment is scarce; a complex patchwork of countries, cultures and societies. But to a growing number of infrastructure developers and investors, Africa is quickly becoming one of the hottest and most valuable emerging markets for infrastructure in the world.
Africa Brief: 'Barcsa' focus, Grinrod, Maputo, Angola stock exchange and more
Coal / Grindrod and Mozambique's Maputo Port Development Company (MPDC) plan to invest $1.7bn over the next five years to upgrade ports in the country as demand grows, MPDC said on Friday. Capacity would be tripled at the Maputo and Matola ports to 50-million tons by 2020 from 15-million tons. Investment of $355m this year and next year had been approved to boost capacity at the Matola port terminal. The coal terminal will be handling 7.2-million tons by next year, from 6-million tons.
Africa boasts alpha returns for private equity investments
Africa's private equity (PE) landscape is uncharted and at an early stage of development, however, it is growing steadily and giving good returns. In fact, according to a KPMG survey, a record amount of 25.7 billion rand ($3.03 billion) in PE money from Africa was returned to investors in 2011, up from R18.1 billion in 2010.
According to Dapo Okubadejo, the partner in charge of Corporate Finance & Financial Advisory Services at KPMG Nigeria:
"Africa is now viewed by PE houses and fund managers as a priority investment destination. As growth in other economies have slowed in recent years due to the 2008/9 recession and current crisis in the Eurozone, investors have been looking to emerging markets and economies that will provide higher return rates and Africa is continuously proving its business case for investment."
KPMG talks investment into Africa ahead of BRICS Summit 2013
KPMG recently hosted a roundtable discussion, lead by its Global Chairman, Michael Andrew, ahead of the Fifth BRICS Summit taking place in Durban this week. This Summit is expected to include a substantial focus on Africa – looking at how the BRICS high growth markets are converging in Africa through investments and partnerships, aiming to leverage the continent's vast natural resource and mineral reserves for their own continued development.
Invest Africa: Insurance
Africa's insurance market remains very small when compared to those in developed countries. The market contributes approximately 2% to GDP and caters to less than 5% of the population. Insurance is a grudge purchase and is heavily influenced by income levels. Short-term insurance currently makes up 90% of the African market and life insurance a meagre 10%.
Invest Africa: ICT & Telecoms
There are currently more than 500-million mobile subscribers on the continent as opposed to 240-million in 2008. Although the African telecommunications market is in its developmental stage, the market is growing at a faster rate than the rest of the world. Various projects are in place to increase Africa's bandwidth. These projects aim to cut down costs for both the operator and the end-user.
Invest Africa: Nigeria
Nigeria is the most populous country on the African continent with approximately 150-million people and is the 32nd largest country with the 41st largest economy in the world.
According to the World Bank, Nigeria is classified as a mixed economy, emerging market. Nigeria has reached middle income status, with well developed financial, legal and transport sectors. Nigeria boasts the second largest Stock Exchange in Africa and enjoys an annual economic growth of 7%.
Invest Africa: Infrastructure
In a world that is looking for alternative investment destinations, Africa is seen as the next investment and growth frontier. In order for the continent to secure its place in the global economy, properly developed infrastructure – that can support business development across the continent – needs to be established.
Africa is well positioned as an emerging market and is a wealth of opportunity for investment and growth. The world is eager to do business with Africa, however finds it difficult to access the African market especially in the interior, primarily due to poor infrastructure.
Developing Africa's infrastructure
In a world that is looking for alternative investment destinations, Africa is well-positioned as an emerging market and represents a wealth of opportunity for investment and growth. The world is eager to do business in Africa. However, in order for the continent to secure its place in the global economy, properly developed infrastructure that can support business development across the continent, needs to be established first. Infrastructure challenges are a deterrent to investment.


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We propose and demonstrate a simple dual port tunable from the C- to the L-band multi-wavelength fiber laser based on a SOA designed for C-band operation and fiber loop mirrors. The laser incorporates a polarization maintaining fiber in one of the fiber loop mirrors and delivers multi-wavelength operation at 9 laser lines with a wavelength separation of ~2.8 nm at room temperature. We show that the number of lasing wavelengths increases with the increase of the bias current of the SOA. Wavelength tunability from the C to L-band is achieved by exploiting the gain compression of a SOA. Stable multi-wavelength operation is achieved at room temperature without temperature compensation techniques, with measured power and the wavelength stability within < ±0.5 dB and ±0.1 nm, respectively.
©2011 Optical Society of AmericaFull Article | PDF Article
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- Our Natural Hair and Facial Care Collection
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Our vegan shampoo bar is filled with hair and scalp nourishing oils. It contains high amounts of castor bean oil for lather and bubbles! SLS free of course and you won't be able to tell the difference from liquid shampoo. Get ready to call the shine police!
Ingredients: coconut, olive, castor bean oils, cocoa butter, lemon, grapefruit, rosemary essential oils
Packaged in an organic cotton drawstring bag.


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Hummingbird Lagoon Bay, Mustique, St Vincent and The Grenadines
from $50000/ week
- 12 Guests
- 7 Bedrooms
- 7 Bedrooms
- 7 Bathrooms
- Description
- Details
- Availability & Rates
- Location
- Photos
- Reviews
Villa Description
Hummingbird Villa Mustique St. Vincent & the Grenadine Islands Paolo Piva Designed
This contemporary 7 bedroom villa, set in 8 acres, designed by Paolo Piva, exists on 3 levels, has open panoramic views and a stunning swimming pool.
Private & Sociable
The sheer scale of this villa enables guests to enjoy both privacy and a vibrant social experience. The guest cottage exists separately from the villa connected by a wooden walkway. The wide expanse of seating and sun deck around the pool and the dining gazebo provide perfect locations for guests to get together.
Villa Entertainments
A fitness suite, games room and media suite provide relaxing areas for guests to unwind and relax together.
20m Travertine Pool
Surely one of the most impressive pools on the island this travertine pool has pristine decks and lounging areas surrounding It's stunning layout.
Plunge Rock Pool
The well conceived master bedroom suite has a spa like plunge rock pool.
The Beaches
Macaroni Beach is perhaps the most famous of Mustique's nine beaches and is situated on the east coast of the island. Other popular beaches on the Atlantic or Caribbean are Endeavour, Lagoon, L'Ansecoy, Pasture Bay and Simplicity, several have picnic hut facilities. Some beaches are connected along the coastline by rustic stone paths.
Mustique Services
Complementary to the villa are an invitation to the Managing Directors cocktail party,airport pick-up and transfer to the villa, use of 4 floodlit tennis courts, avehicle, access to a fitness trail, household staff (cook, maid &gardener) and a laundry service.
Horse Riding on Mustique
The Equestrian Centre on Mustique offers the unique opportunity to ride along this unspoilt coastline and lush island landscape at only 100 USD per hour. The centre is open from Monday to Friday and rides are scheduled at 9.30am and 3.30pm.
The Isle of Mustique is privately owned and It's constant warm climate and unspoilt landscape makes it unique and extremely desirable. Discreetly maintained by The Mustique Company a maximum of 100 residential properties may exist although there are currently only 72 in existence. The roads are unpaved, there are few of them, little signage exists and all the telephone and power cables are underground. In essence Mustique has been developed in reverse, the properties are sophisticated whilst the landscape is unspoilt and serene. English is the most common language spoken but due to the international scope of the islands guests French,Italian, German and Dutch are often spoken.
Mustique Visitors
Covering 1,400 acres Mustique has several coral reefs at It's waters edge and plays host to a variety of beautiful wildlife such as herons, tortoises, iguanas and a wide variety of tropical birds. The year round population of around 500 live mostly in the villages of Lovell,Britannia Bay and Dover. General history of the island dates back to the 15th century when Spanish sailors named the island 'Los Pajaros' or The Birds' as the islands resembled a flock of birds settling on the ocean. Originally the islands main export was Sugarcane but this was eventually abandoned in the 19th century when sugar was sourced from European-grown sugar beet. Remains of the Sugarcane industry such as the 'Cotton House' and sugar mill at Endeavour are the last physical traces of the islands historic past.
Villa Details
- 12 Guests
- 7 Bedrooms
- 7 Beds
- 7 Bathrooms
Bedroom Details
- 7 x double rooms
Villa Features & Highlights
Regular Updated Information
The Grenadines Collection does its best to ensure that photos and descriptions of villas and surrounding areas are accurate. Some variation may occur as a result of changes made by owners and / or other conditions and activities in the vicinity of the villas. We work hard to give you the most up to date villa information and villa Calendars.
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Written By Sumudu 2014-05-10T20:20:00Z
Oh well.. this post isn't about my wallet that was lost & found. But the blog post I composed yesterday on Evernote, I thought had gone missing. After checking at the backend Jason confirmed that the post never went through. Because, I still had the post in my 10 Centuries Notebook on Evernote, I re synced the note that contained yesterday's blog post. Viola! the post with the photographs appeared on my blog site in an eye blink. The more I use 10Centuries platform, I seem to be liking it. I strongly recommend every one who's interested in setting up a blog site should check it out.


text: On Dec 27, 2005, at 8:34 PM, Scott Kane wrote: > > What I'm trying to do is: > > put "SELECT * FROM users" into tSQL > --> EXECUTE SQL > put revdb_querylist(,,gConID,tSQL) into tList > > handleRevDBerror tList > if the result is not empty then > answer warning the result > exit mouseUp > end if > > put tList into fld "Users" > --------------------------- > That works fine. What I need to do is add the tList > elements to a group of normal Fields (edit boxes for > clarity). In the example there would be three of > these: > > edName > edEmail > edSubscribed Hi Scott, The revdb_querylist function is just returning tab/cr delimited text so you can loop through all results like this: set the itemDelimiter to tab repeat for each line tResult in tList put item 1 of tResult &cr after tNames put item 2 of tResult &cr after tEmails put item 3 of tResult &cr after tSubscribed end repeat I'm not quite sure how your edit boxes are being used. Are you trying to just put one of the records from the tList result into the edit boxes? Or are you trying to edit all of the names, emails, etc. at once? If you are just trying to edit one result at a time then I would probably modify the query to return the specific record you are after. If you just want to work with all resorts at once then you could do this to get at record 3: put item 1 of line 3 of tList into field "edName" put item 2 of line 3 of tList into field "edEmail" put item 3 of line 3 of tList into field "edSubscribed" -- Trevor DeVore Blue Mango Multimedia trevor at mangomultimedia.com


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MGT 444: Final Exam Sample
Terms in this set (63)
According to Margaret Blair in her book "Ownership and Control," what best describes the concept that refers to the whole set of legal, cultural, and institutional arrangements that determine what publicly traded corporations can do, who controls them, how that control is exercised, and how the risks and returns from the activities they undertake are allocated.
Corporate Governance
Which of the following is not considered a main duty of a board of directors at a publicly traded corporation in the United States?
File a shareholder resolution to separate the CEO position from the chairperson position of the board
Which of the following does not correctly state Anant Sundaram and Andrew Inkpen's argument in their article "The Corporate Objective Revisited"?
Shareholder value principle has been predominant in the United States throughout the history of American corporations
According to Taekjin Shin's article "The Shareholder Value Principle: The Governance and Control of Corporations in the United States," which of the following factors did not contribute to the rise of the shareholder value principle as a predominant business principle in the United States?
The increased dispersion of corporate ownership by individual investors in the 1980s
In December 2014, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) issued a decision that allowed Whole Foods Market Inc. to exclude a non-binding shareholder proposal that would make it easier for investors to nominate directors to be elected at the company's annual shareholder meetings because the company was offering a similar corporate-governance change. Such proposals are known as
Proxy access
Which one of the following is not among the prevailing justifications for corporate social responsibility (CSR), according to Michael Porter and Mark Kramer in their article "Strategy and Society: The Link Between Competitive Advantage and Corporate Social Responsibility"?
Shareholders have greater ability to explicitly contract with the firm and thereby have the backing of the judicial system
The company that owned the Chicago Cubs baseball team and operated its Wrigley Field stadium refused to approve installation of lights and night baseball because Phillip Wrigley, a chewing gum company executive and the owner/manager of the stadium, believed that night baseball might have a negative impact on the surrounding neighborhood. The court held for Wrigley notwithstanding lower attendance and financial losses. The court's decision most closely reflects:
Stakeholder management theory
Which of the following statements is correct?
According to the article "Toshiba Accounting Scandal Highlights Issues in Corporate Governance," the accounting scandal at the Japanese electronics conglomerate reflects poor transparency and ineffective monitoring by the board of directors
Which of the following statements correctly summarizes James Walsh's critique of Steven Kaplan's article "Are U.S. CEOs overpaid," where Kaplan argued that the typical U.S. CEOs are not overpaid and that it is possible that the CEOs are even underpaid?
Kaplan focused exclusively on other highly paid professionals as reference points while ignoring more relevant and legitimate reference points such as ordinary workers
Which of the following correctly describes how poison pill works?
Poison pills make a takeover prohibitively less attractive to an acquirer by making the shares of the target company worth less after a takeover
At Facebook, each share owned by Mark Zuckerberg (co-founder, CEO, and chairman of Facebook Inc.) has 10 votes per share, but other shareholders who bought stock in the IPO have one vote per share. What is the term that best describes this arrangement?
Dual-class share structure
According to the article "Some Paradoxes of Whistleblowing" by Michael Davis, which of the following is not considered an element of the complicity theory of whistleblowing?
You have a good reason to believe that revealing the information you discovered will prevent the harm to the public
Which of the following is a correct statement about B Corps?
A nonprofit organization called B Lab assesses companies to certify B Corps that meet B Lab's standard of social and environmental performance [see Tabuchi's New York Times article and Kapner's Wall Street Journal article. Becoming a B Corp is different from state laws, including those in Delaware, that can award companies status as "public benefit corporations."]
According to Lori Ryan, Ann Buchholtz, and Robert Kolb in their article "New Directors in Corporate Governance and Finance: Implications for Business Ethics Research," what does "CEO duality" mean? Provide a brief definition of the term. Write your answer inside the box below.
situation in which a ceo serves the board chair position
Explain the core argument of agency theory, as introduced and discussed in several readings (such as Blair (1995), Ryan, Buchholtz, and Kolb (2010), Shin (2013), Sundaram and Inkpen (2004), and Goranova and Ryan (2014)). Make sure to clarify who are considered "principals" and "agents" in a typical corporate governance setting in the United States. Write your answer inside the box below.
The argument of agency theory is that the separation of ownership and control creates a conflict of interest and a misalignment of incentives because agents prefer to shirk, maximize their own self-interest, and do not always act in the best interest of principals. In corporate governance settings, owners (shareholders) are the principals and managers (such as CEO and executive managers) are the agents.
According to Anant Sundaram and Andrew Inkpen in their article "The Corporate Objective Revisited," why does stakeholder management distort entrepreneurial risk-taking incentives? Write your answer inside the box below.
As residual claimants, shareholders can diversify their investment portfolios and are therefore willing to take more entrepreneurial risks to maximize the profit of the firm, for example by pursing high-growth investment opportunities. By contrast, because managers' human capital and financial capital are often tied up in the firm's assets, managers are more risk averse than shareholders. Managing on behalf of fixed claimants, i.e., stakeholder management, exacerbates the incentive for entrepreneurial risk aversion because fixed claimants
This question is based on a testimony made by John Castellani (President of Business Roundtable, an organization representing CEOs of major U.S. corporations) given before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Financial Services (see Appendix A at the end of this exam). Do you agree or disagree with Mr. Castellani's view about proxy access? Defend your position using concepts, terms, or theories that you learned in this course. Write your answer inside the box below.
You can develop your argument either in support of or against Castellani's position. Either way, a good answer should (1) address the specific arguments of Castellani as expressed in his testimony and (2) as required in the exam question, use relevant concepts, terms, or theories to support your position. You can use any concepts, terms, or theories that we learned, but your answer should clearly demonstrate how the concepts, terms, or theories you chose are relevant to Castellani's case.
This question is based on a Wall Street Journal article "Buybacks Can Juice Per-Share Profit, Pad Executive Pay" found in Appendix B of this exam. Do you think the corporate practice of buying their own stock is ethically justifiable? Why or why not? Defend your position using concepts, terms, or theories that you learned in this course. Write your answer inside the box below. [Hint: "EPS" stands for earnings per share, which is an indicator of a company's profitability. EPS is calculated by net income less any dividends paid to the shareholders, divided by the number of outstanding shares.]
You can develop your argument either in support of or against the WSJ's article's critique of stock buybacks. Either way, a good answer should (1) address the specific arguments about stock buybacks as expressed in the article and (2) as required in the exam question, use relevant concepts, terms, or theories to support your position. You can use any concepts, terms, or theories that we learned, but your answer should clearly demonstrate how the concepts, terms, or theories you chose are relevant to stock buybacks.
agency theory key insights
separation of ownership and control
conflict of interest
Who are the Principals
shareholders/ owners
Who are the Agents
What kind of claimants for shareholders?
residual claimants
What kind of claimants for stakeholders?
fixed claimants
what is the main issue with ceo duality?
conflict of interest
b-corps and public benefit corporations are not the same
Justification for whistleblowing:
The Standard Theory
S1. The organization will do serious and considerable harm to the public
S2. The whistleblower has identified the threat, reported it to her supervisor, and concluded that the superior will do nothing effective
S3. The whistleblower has exhausted other internal procedures within the organization
S4. The whistleblower has evidence
S5. The whistleblower believes that revealing the threat will prevent the harm
(see text for complete theory)
Justification for whistleblowing:
The Complicity Theory
C1. What you will reveal derives from your work for an organization
C2. You are a voluntary member of that organization
C3. You believe that the organization, though legitimate, is engaged in serious moral wrongdoing
C4. You believe that your work for that organization will contribute (more or less directly) to the wrong if (but not only if) you do not publicly reveal what you know
C5. You are justified in beliefs C3 and C4; and
C6. beliefs C3 and C4 are true.
What is a dual-class share structure? What are the pros and cons?
Two separate stocks, one with more voting power.
Pros: More power stays concentrated
Cons: Less power to regular stockholders, more power to the investors and CEO's
Say on pay
This term refers to the right of shareholders to have a direct vote regarding executive compensation
"proxy access"
gives investors the right to place competing nominees for director seats on companies' official proxies.
CEO duality
A situation in which an individual holds both the CEO and chair of the board title
Paradox One: The paradox of burden
Whistleblowers usually face great risks because of their actions.
The conditions of the standard theory cannot provide enough justification for an agent to take up such risk.
Paradox Two: The paradox of missing harm
Whistleblowers often act in conditions when they cannot prevent harm.
They often report on harm after-the-fact.
Paradox Three: The paradox of failure
Whistleblowers have not had much success in actually preventing harm.
What does it mean when someone says "shareholders are the residual claimants"?
they are the ones who receive the profit after what is left over with costs
What was Berle and Means' finding?
they found out that corporations aren't necessarily owned by large wealthy individuals. Managers are the ones in control.
What is the separation of ownership and control in publicly traded corporations?
it means that the shareholders aren't really in control of the company
Stewardship theory
sincere and doing the right thing
Plurality vs. majority
Plurality voting cares about which choice received the most votes. Majority voting requires a choice to get over 50% of the votes. Run-off voting systems and alternative vote will always have a majority winner because if they don't have one initially, they eliminate candidates until they have a majority winner. Plurality example is the U.S. presidential elections in which the winner isn't required too and frequently doesn't win over 50% of the nations votes. Australia's congress is an example of a majority voting system.
The term shareholder value refers to
any economic value, profit, or wealth that is created by
the corporation as a direct result of its business operation, and that is distributed to the owners
of corporate equities, in other words, the shareholders.
The term shareholder value principle also refers to
the business principle that the primary objective
of corporations is to maximize shareholder value
residual claimant
is the agent who receives the remainder of a random amount once predictable payments are made
Justifications for shareholder value principle
1. Maximizing shareholder value maximizes the value of the whole firm
2. Stakeholder management distorts entrepreneurial risk-taking incentives
3. Having more than one objective function is a recipe for confusion
4. Non-shareholding stakeholders can become shareholders, but the reverse is not easy
5. The law fills the judicial void for stakeholders
justifications for csr
-moral (normative)
-license to operate
-pursuing shared value
What is a poison pill? How does it work?
Rights offering made to existing shareholders, allow existing shareholders to buy stock at very low price, used to avoid a takeover, increased shares may dilute ownership % of firm taking over, discourages hostile takeover
What are the tactics that companies use as a defense against hostile takeovers?
Poison pills, golden parachutes, classified boards
golden parachutes
Clauses written into executive contracts that provide special payments to key executives who might lose their position or be otherwise disadvantaged if another company took control of the organization through a merger or acquisition
Arguments in favor of downsizing
-Shareholder value principle
-Survival of the company
-Utilitarian justification
Arguments against downsizing -Utilitarian critique
-Legitimate expectations (implicit agreement)
-Fairness (merit)
-Stakeholder Theory
The Friedman doctrine
The only social responsibility of business is to increase profits, as long as the company stays within the rules of the law
Shareholder activism
actions by large shareholders to protect their interests when they feel that managerial actions of a corporation converge from shareholder value maximization.
IPO process
public benefit corporations
Corporation formed primarily for charitable purposes
B Corps (benefit corporation)
a company whose character allows the board to consider social environment ahead of profit maximization
The term shareholder value refers to
any economic value, profit, or wealth that is created by
the corporation as a direct result of its business operation, and that is distributed to the owners
of corporate equities, in other words, the shareholders.
Kaplan vs. Walsh debate
ceo pay
Stakeholder theory (3 justifications)
Descriptive justification mainly comes down to researchers pointing to a trend of
management tendencies to adopt a stakeholder approach or not
Instrumental Justification is the gap that the descriptive justification leaves between the facts and the reasons behind them is attempted explained by the instrumental approach. The instrumental approach
strives to connect stakeholder theory with superior financial performance.
Normative justification is their main argument for
stakeholder theory being fundamentally normative is that the alternative, shareholder
capitalism, is morally unacceptable. The arguments for the normative justification are
based on ethics, morality, utilitarianism, corporate social responsibility etc.
fixed claimants
Non-shareholding stakeholders are paid the fixed amount as specified in the agreements or contracts; lenders are paid nothing more than principal and balance as specified in the lending terms; employees are paid the fixed amount of wages and salaries as specified in the employment agreement
Classified Board
A board on which directors serve for specified terms, usually three years, with only a fraction of them up for reelection at any one time. Also called staggered board.
residual claimants
Shareholders are paid after all other parties are paid; they get nothing if the company use all the money paying everyone else, and they get all the remaining profits if the business is profitable enough to pay everyone else and have some leftovers.
According to Margaret Blair in her book Ownership and Control, how has equity ownership of large publicly traded corporations in the United States changed during the past several decades after the publication of Adolf Berle and Gardiner Means' landmark study in 1932? In the box below, briefly state the main feature of what Blair called "Revised Berle-Means Model" which highlights the change in equity ownership of large corporations.
In the past few decades, large financial institutions (such as pension funds, mutual funds, and insurance companies) have collectively increased equity ownership of large publicly traded corporations in the United States. [Optional: This contrasted the pattern of corporate ownership reported in Berle and Means' 1932 study, which noted that by the end of the 1920s the dispersion of share ownership of large corporations was so great that the managements of these companies were deemed to be in control themselves and not truly answerable to any particular owners.]
According to Lori Ryan, Ann Buchholtz, and Robert Kolb in their article "New Directors in Corporate Governance and Finance: Implications for Business Ethics Research," what does "proxy access" mean?
A proxy access is a shareholder empowerment action that would give investors the right to place competing nominees for director seats on companies' official proxies
According to Thomas Donaldson and Lee Preston in their article "The Stakeholder Theory of the Corporation: Concepts, Evidence, and Implications," what is a normative justification of stakeholder management?
Normative justification establishes that stakeholder management is the right thing to do because the interests of all stakeholders are of intrinsic value. That is, each group of stakeholders merits consideration for its own sake and not merely because of its ability to further the interests of some other group, such as the shareholders


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DA eyes Gauteng as ANC 'at its weakest'
'The ANC is in serious trouble and the DA is on the ascent,' says DA head of campaigning Jonathan Moakes
The DA has its eye on ensuring that it has the largest share of the vote in Gauteng, with the party saying the ANC is at "its weakest" thus far in the province.
With 26 days to go until the 2019 general election, the DA's head of campaigning, Jonathan Moakes, said trends showed that the ANC had never been weaker in Gauteng.
"The ANC is in serious trouble and the DA is on the ascent," he said.
Business Day understands that according to some polling, ANC support was between 47% and 50% in Gauteng two weeks ago, but had recently dropped below this. The DA's support in the past three weeks in Gauteng is said to have apparently grown between six and seven percentage points.
The DA has vowed to bring the ANC below 50% in the country's economic hub. If this happens it is likely that the province will be governed by a coalition government.
PODCAST | The DA didn't win the 2016 election, as much as the ANC lost it
On Wednesday, EFF leader Julius Malema said his party was open to working with any party, including the DA and the ANC. However, he said the EFF"s working relationship with the DA was strained.
The EFF had voted with the DA-led coalition in Johannesburg and Tshwane following the 2016 local government elections, handing over the reins of the metros to the DA.
DA national spokesperson Solly Malatsi said the party was not conducting background talks on coalitions, but was focused on its campaign.
"We going into this election with maximising out performance and making sure our contribution to this elections it to get the largest share of the vote in Gauteng," he said. "We are in it to win it."
Malatsi said any coalition talks, if need be, would only happen after elections.
The DA it was also confident about the strides it had made in the Northern Cape, another province in which the party hopes to bring the ANC below 50%.
In the Western Cape, Moakes said the DA was likely to retain its majority. He said the party was at the same level it was four weeks before the 2014 elections.
In 2014, the DA won the Western Cape with 59.38%.
Despite this, the DA was not taking anything for granted, Moakes said.


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