text:
The beginning of a new year is an exciting time full of opportunity for employers. And while 2017 will offer plenty of new employment and HR trends, three major stories will carry over from 2016.
Stay informed about the latest news on these three topics in order to position your business to be ahead of the curve in complying with regulatory changes that will occur in 2017.
FLSA Overtime Rule
Throughout 2016, employers readied for changes to the Fair Labor Standards Act's (FLSA) overtime rule, scheduled to take effect December 1, which would raise the salary threshold for exempt employees from $23,660 to $47,476. This change would have affected more than 4 million American workers, who would either become entitled to overtime pay or receive a raise to reach the new threshold.
But a coalition of states and business groups had filed a suit challenging the law, and on November 22, a federal district court in Texas ruled in favor of a preliminary injunction, delaying its implementation. What does that mean for employers? Right now, playing the waiting game.
The case will continue to wend its way through the court system as the Department of Labor (DOL) appeals the decision. Despite the DOL asking for a fast-track appeal, it's unlikely that employers will have any more clarity before February, after President-elect Donald Trump takes office.
Affordable Care Act
Employers have struggled to understand and meet the requirements of the Affordable Care Act over the nearly 7 years since it went into effect. With President-elect Trump headed to the White House in January and a Republican-controlled House of Representatives and Senate, the future of the Affordable Care Act hangs in the balance. President-elect Trump campaigned strongly on repealing the ACA, but has since indicated that he may work to retain some portions.
It will likely take months or years into Trump's term for healthcare policy changes to be agreed on and implemented, so employers should closely monitor this issue and how it will progress. Your employees will be eager to see how they'll be affected, so you'll need to clearly communicate any changes that will impact your insurance offerings.
Minimum Wage
The minimum wage continues to be a hot topic nationwide. While the federal minimum wage has remained at $7.25 since 2009, many states and cities have significantly higher minimum wages that take precedent, and a number of states are seeing the minimum wage rise in 2017. During the November 2016 election, for instance, voters in Arizona, Colorado, Maine and Washington voted to increase the minimum wage. The Economic Policy Institute's Minimum Wage Tracker has detailed information on minimum wage changes by state, including recent and upcoming increases and applicable notes.
Some states, like Oregon and Colorado, are raising the wage in steps over multiple years. Oregon's minimum wage, for instance, will step up each July through 2023. And Oregon's wage is even more complex in that it has three rates for different areas of the state.
Keep an eye out in 2017 for trends in minimum wages on the local, regional, state and national levels. With some activists pushing for a $15 minimum wage and many businesses strongly opposed, this topic will continue to develop.


text:
The new GM soybean, known as RoundupReady 2 Yield, was developed by the agri-biotechnology company Monsanto. Next season, this bean will be cultivated in the USA on an initial field area of 400,000 to 800,000 hectares and by 2010 is expected to be grown on approximately 2.5 million hectares. Similarly to the previous generation of beans known as RoundupReady, which have been grown around the world since 1996, the new beans display resistance to herbicides containing the active ingredient glyphosate (brand name: Roundup). The according resistance gene was introduced directly into a new type of soybean with a higher yield than before. Monsanto has claimed that the new soybean enables farmers to aim towards harvest increases of between seven and eleven per cent.
As already has occurred in Canada, Mexico, Taiwan, Australia, New Zealand and the Philippines, China now has approved the import of the new generation of Roundup-Ready. Seventy per cent of American soybean exports arrive in these countries and China receives the most. The granting of approval in most soybean-importing nations has fulfilled an important prerequisite for soybean farms in the USA in their switch to the new product.
In the EU, import of the new soybean (officially designated by the abbreviation MON89788) remains prohibited. Application for approval was submitted in 2006. Although the scientific safety assessment conducted by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has been concluded, a decision on approval cannot be expected to date.
In the absence of EU approval, even minimal and accidental admixtures of the new RoundupReady2 are prohibited. Shipments, in which the new soybeans are detected have to be withdrawn from circulation, regardless of the quantity of the unapproved beans. In the case of large-scale cultivation of RoundupReady2 soybeans in the USA, minimal presences and admixtures of this bean in soy deliveries will not be avoidable with absolute certainty.
In 2007, approximately 3.5 million tonnes of soybeans were imported to the EU from the USA.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
|Political Parties and Australia's Migration Program, 1972-2010: A Partisan Difference?
|Crowe, Shaun
Department of Government and International Relations
|Issue Date:
|This thesis examines the historical relationship between political parties and Australia's permanent migration program. Whilst the existing empirical literature has often compared the decisions of specific, consecutive governments (for instance, the work comparing the Fraser, Hawke-Keating and Howard administrations) it has not yet viewed the parties themselves as central units of analysis. In practice, this means that it has not yet explicitly tested whether, over multiple administrations, the Labor and Liberal parties have supported distinct or coherent permanent intakes. This thesis explores this precise question. From 1972-2010, it examines whether Australia's major parties have promoted programs of a different size or composition. Throughout this analysis, the paper recognises the influence of external factors in limiting and framing party autonomy. In particular, it acknowledges employment's historical impact on migration decisions. Because of this, the thesis' empirical analysis attempts to both acknowledge and control for the labour market. Ultimately, whilst not suggesting one single, overarching narrative about specific parties and migration outcomes, the paper emphasises the often distinct ways in which (because of both different responses to economic imperatives and different partisan motivations) Australia's political parties have shaped the migration program's size, composition and trajectory.
|Department of Government and International Relations
|Rights and Permissions:
|The author retains copyright of this thesis
|Type of Work:
|Thesis, Honours
|Appears in Collections:
|Honours Theses
Honours Theses - Government and International Relations
|Shaun Crowe.pdf
|Adobe PDF
Items in Sydney eScholarship Repository are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.


text:
Heat grill to medium.
Finely grind the chicken breast, onion, garlic and ginger together and place in a medium bowl. Add the rice wine vinegar, soy sauce and sesame oil and mix thoroughly. Shape this mixture into 2 by 1-inch patties and let rest in the refrigerator for 5 minutes. Toast the brioche rolls, then grill the chicken patties for about 5 to 6 minutes over a medium heat. (Don't try to cook faster over high heat as the outside will be cooked and not the inside.)
To finish, place 1 patty on the bottom of each toasted bun, top with cheese, sliced tomato, onion and iceberg lettuce and cover with the bun top.


text:
Jeanie - YOU ARE HERE - G
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Playing Catch Up:
Zombies Ate My Neighbors
' Mike Ebert
January 11, 2007 | By
Alistair Wallis
January 11, 2007 | By
Alistair Wallis
Post A Comment
Today's Playing Catch-Up, a weekly column that dares to speak to notable video game industry figures about their celebrated pasts and promising futures, speaks to Mike Ebert, lead designer on LucasArts celebrated topdown action title
Zombies At My Neighbors
Ebert began working with computers seriously while studying computer science at the University of California in Berkeley. This is going to make me seem like some old geezer, he sighs.
I did two years at Berkeley as a computer science major, learning C and trying to make some pretty sad video games just using text print outs. It was the stone age of computers; punch cards and teletypes! I got an Apple II in my 2nd year, but spent most of my time playing video games on that. The next year I dropped out of Berkeley to study illustration at the Academy of Art in San Francisco.
Starting Off At Lucasfilm
After completing his course, Ebert applied worked in desktop publishing for a while, before applying for work with Lucasfilm in the latter half of the 1980s. The company had recently found success with adventure titles
Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders
Maniac Mansion
, and were looking to keep working within the genre.
Though he admits he didnt see the industry as a viable career choice until he received the first paycheck from Lucasfilm, Ebert used the days prior to his interview to practice drawing Indiana Jones with a mouse, on a friends Mac.
I knew how to use a mouse pretty well, since I was working in desktop publishing at the time, he says. So translating my drawing skills to the mouse was pretty easy. I only stopped drawing with a mouse about two years ago: I moved over to pen and tablet. I kind of lucked into the job at Lucasfilm Games. I was working towards a career drawing comic books, when a friend recommended that I check out a job opening at Lucasfilm. So I went in for an art test and got hired on the spot. I was artist number three at the company. The pay was a lot better than any comic book jobs I had gotten up to that point.
Im not going to lie, he continues. It was pretty sweet! Working at Skywalker Ranch was like being at a movie studio that was disguised as an amazing vacation resort. We were the black sheep of Skywalker Ranch, we just didnt fit in. My favorite memory was seeing all the game testers swarm the dining hall. They always ran to get in line first, especially on steak day! You pretty much dined on five star quality restaurant food, surrounded by George [Lucas], various Hollywood stars, and video game testers!
Eberts first released work for the company was on the NES port of
Maniac Mansion
in 1988, for which he was credited with actor art. The next year, Eberts work was seen in
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: The Graphic Adventure
, and in
The Secret of Monkey Island
the year after that. As an artist back then, you sort of did everything: background art, character design, and animation, he notes of his contribution to the titles. Animation wasnt that hard to do, most the sequences were about six to eight frames long. Pretty easy stuff. I wasnt involved in any game design work at that time.
Despite the reputation these games have today as classics of the genre, Ebert notes that the idea of making something with lasting appeal wasnt the main goal, and that the team had little idea of the impact that the games would have.
Everyone just wanted to make something better than
Kings Quest
Space Quest
from Sierra, he muses. There was a strong sense of competition against Sierra. I dont know how Sierra felt about us, but in our minds they were the arch enemy. Ron Gilbert, who created
Monkey Island
, really drove us to make the best game possible. I learned a lot about design and organization from Ron. Even just yesterday I found myself making a dependency chart for our new game, thats something I picked up from him.
Around this time, Ebert attempted to become more involved in the design side of things with the company, along with Kalani Streicher, who had previously worked on the point and click adventure game
. The two began pitching a sci-fi adventure title, as well as building several prototypes using Lucasfilms in-house adventure game engine, SCUMM, but were never given the chance to develop their ideas further. There was some politics in the company, especially since we were the new guys trying to move up to the project leader roll, he notes. Some of the things we prototyped in our game, made appearances in later SCUMM games.
The duo did receive a credit for Contributions to Design on 1991s
Star Wars
game for the NES, though Ebert laughs that he wasnt actually aware of the acknowledgment. I didnt even know I was listed on that game! I probably just sat in some meeting and offered suggestions, he says.
Star Wars
was a disaster of a project at Lucasfilm, just about anything that could go wrong did.
The Empire
Strikes NES
Finally, Streicher and Ebert were offered the chance to lead the development of a sequel to
, but this was cancelled after the original title failed to sell as well as expected. However, despite the problems with the project,
Star Wars
was selling, and the opportunity to design the
Empire Strikes Back
game was waiting to be taken up. Most people in the company didnt want to go near the NES projects because of all the problems, Ebert notes. When there was an opening to design the
NES game, I jumped all over that opportunity.
Ebert and Streicher used the chance to fix the mistakes made during the development of
Star Wars
, and outsourced part of the game to Sculptured Software, Inc. Outsourcing is what made that project work, he comments. A lot of things went wrong with
Star Wars
, so Kalani and I wanted a fresh start with
. We found an existing unpublished sci-fi game that Scupltured Software had created. We took the game engine, and designed
around it. Lucasfilm handled the design, art and level construction, while Sculptured did the programming. It worked extremely well on a tight time schedule because the engine, dev tools and key programmer were in place to begin with.
We all loved
The Empire Strikes Back
, and wanted to do great job, he adds. The real pressure we felt though was to get the game done fast and efficiently, especially since most of the earlier NES games were development disasters.
The game was released in 1992, and received positive reviews, with many praising its emphasis on exploration and partially non-linear progression. The same year, Ebert also contributed art to another
Indiana Jones
title -
The Fate of Atlantis
- and was credited as a playtester on Toys For Bobs
Star Control II
The game development community around Marin was pretty small back then, and just about everyone knew someone at each company, Ebert explains of the acknowledgement. I met Paul Reiche of Toys For Bob through friends and used every opportunity to see what Paul was working on, and test some of his games.
Zombies Prototyped My Project!
Eberts next project evolved out of a bitmap graphics engine that could be controlled by pretty simple C code built by programmer Ed Kilham, who Ebert was sharing an office with.
I knew some C, so during my free times I started making all sorts of strange graphics demos and games, he says. One of the demos was a side-scrolling save-the-people-from-the-monsters demo that would later evolve into
Zombies Ate My Neighbors
Amongst the changes made was a difference in perspective from side to 3/4 top down, inspired by Eberts love of
Smash TV
, which he describes as two of his favorite arcade games of all time. The basic gameplay was that of a top-down shooter, with the protagonists of the game using various weaponry to defeat schlock horror staples like mummies, zombies and vampires and rescue their neighbors.
Ebert notes that he feels the most important element of the titles design was its concept of resource management: use as few weapons [as possible] early on so that later you have plenty of weapons to defeat the harder levels, he explains.
The aspect of keeping the neighbors alive, made for interesting twists in strategies, he continues. The more neighbors you keep alive the longer it takes to save them on each level, also the more resources you use to save them. You can keep fewer neighbors alive, have less to save, use less resources, but then you risk losing the game if your total drops to zero.
Our other goal was to try to present 20 very different feeling levels at the start of the game. I figured if the player had 20 levels of fairly distinctive game play, wed get them hooked. Only after those 20 levels were done would we start to duplicate level concepts. This worked out pretty well. I ended building and doing the art for all 56 levels of the game. I shuffled the order of the levels around a lot during development.
Wandering Around LucasArts, In-Game
Amongst the various levels in the game were a number of hidden levels, including the infamous credits level, Monsters Among Us, which set the player loose in the LucasArts offices; allowing them to talk to various members of the development team to find out their role in the title. Also in the level were a number of surprise cameos, including
Day of the Tentacle
s purple tentacle,
Sam & Max
designer Steve Purcell dressed as Indiana Jones, and the companys owner.
I dont think we were actually supposed to put George Lucas in the game, muses Ebert, but we did, and just didnt tell anyone. It was so easy to make levels for
that one day for fun, I just made the floor plan of our offices. The credit level then grew out of that. Originally it was a little more gory, but Nintendo didnt like severed heads in the game.
In the end the design worked very pretty well, Ebert says. We managed to get just about everything into that game that we could squeeze onto the cartridge. Looking back I wish we hadnt hidden the flamethrower so well. Most people dont even know there is one in the game. I wish we had more focus testing on the product too. Most of all I wish Lucasfilm had published the game themselves. The publishing deal Lucas had with Konami earned us very little royalties.
The game was released on SNES and Genesis in 1993 to rave reviews. I think its the best reviewed game Ive ever worked on, Ebert notes. The project went so smoothly we were green lighted for
Metal Warriors
almost immediately. Id like to see a DS or Wii downloadable version of
, but last time someone talked to LucasArts about it, they were like We made that game?
Send Them Some Letters People
Metal Warriors
, co-designed by Ebert and programmer Dean Sharpe, was released in April 1995. A fast paced side-scrolling mech shooter, the game arrived too late in the SNES lifetime to receive much attention, though Ebert is nonetheless proud of what was achieved.
That game was a lot of fun to make, he says. Harrison Fong designed some great looking mechs and Dean Sharpe did an amazing job with the controls, especially the Spider Mech. Everything went very smooth on that project. We used the
engine and I remember we went through test with less than 500 bugs.
There was a time when Nintendo was talking about publishing the title themselves, if we made a few changes, he recalls. I really liked having Nintendo review our game and offer us a list of changes to make. Their ideas were really good! But, the PlayStation shipped, that year, the SNES market vanished, and the Nintendo deal fell through. We were glad just to get the game in the stores.
The change to CD based media didnt change the way Ebert worked much though, he notes. The bigger change wasnt the format, but switching to 3D art and level layout, he says.
Starting Up Big Ape
Ebert founded his own studio, Big Ape Productions, with Sharpe shortly after
Metal Warriors
release, and adds that the duo felt pretty confident we could learn anything we needed to know about working on the 32-bit console. Big Ape moved into office space shared with Paul Reiches Toys For Bob, and developed
Hercs Adventures
Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace
for LucasArts in 1997 and 1999 respectively, before Ebert decided to cut ties with the publisher.
Some of it was politics, he notes. [Former LucasArts general manager] Kelly Flock was really the guy that let us do
Metal Warriors
. He gave us a lot of ability to work on our own, but still within LucasArts. We just worked fast and efficiently, avoiding any politics within the company. After Kelly left things were a little strange in management, there was more politics. It just seemed like a good time to try going on our own.
In 2001, Big Ape released
Simpsons Wrestling
for PlayStation through Activision, following which Ebert made the decision to leave the company. I dont want to go too much into the whole Big Ape experience, he says hesitantly. I could write a short book about things we did wrong. The key thing I learned was that when your company starts to grow, you need someone with business experience involved in the daily operation of the company. You might get by when you are a small development group, but increased size, brings increased problems.
After resigning from Big Ape, Ebert estimates that it took Reiche about two hours to offer him a design job at Toys For Bob. Eberts first job for the company was 2003s
Disney Extreme Skate Adventure
The Toys For Bob Experience
To me the license title is actually the greatest challenge in game design! Ebert says. In theory you should be able to make a licensed based title that is as fun, and sells as well as even the most successful original title. The licensed title is sort of the improv of game design. You get some random un-expected subject matter, you improvise and make a fun game out of the subject. If I give you the subject matter, Peanut Butter and Bread you as a designer should be able to make an amazing game out of that subject matter.
You may just need to work at the design a little more than, say, with a World War II shooter, he continues. You cant always fall back on well tested paradigms with something like Peanut Butter and Bread; your subject matter wont allow it. This is what excites me about license titles!
Ebert worked as senior designer on another licensed title,
, in 2005, which saw him trying to figure out the most fun thing about being a zoo animal.
You didnt have guns or chainsaws, but still there were fun things you could do, he muses. It took a while to figure what those things were, but eventually we got it. The guilty pleasure that comes from causing mischief on unsuspecting humans; that was a direction we could go with the design that kept it true to the subject matter, but was still fun. The penguins outsmarting the sailors, the lion scaring off little children, hippos knocking over cars and people on the streets of Manhattan: all these things worked to make an entertaining experience.
Its not always the subject matter though of the game that makes for a good or bad work experience, he adds of working with licences. Its the company thats around the production. I think no matter what the subject matter of the game, Id have a lot of fun working on it with the people at Toys For Bob. This is going to sound like a sale pitch, but there are pretty much three things that make it a great place to work: People, Tools, and Atmosphere.
Ebert notes that a large number of the staff at the company are people he has known for much of his career; people who have previously worked with LucasArts and Big Ape, or other companies in the same area. After 10 years working with a fellow designer, you typically mesh pretty well as a team, he says. The atmosphere is very small dev group feel to it. Everyone here is very hands on. Even upper management understands most every aspect of the game, or has worked on some part of the game. Most everyone has checked their egos at the door, and we typically dont hire people that wont fit into the friendly atmosphere of the place.
Tool development at Toys For Bob is a top priority, he continues. Weve got a powerful scripting and authoring tool set that allows the designers to build essentially anything they want. You could if you wanted create a flight simulator for one level of a game, a race game on another, and a dungeon crawler on another, all with the same tool set. We did a little of this on
; the penguin level was all custom built, sharing very little from the other game levels. Were readying a new upgraded version of the tools for our next project. The tool set is the best Ive seen in 17 years of making games, and Ive used a lot of tool sets!
Downhill Jam
, The Future...
More recently, the company released
Tony Hawk Downhill Jam
for the Wii a console that Ebert describes as a lot of fun to develop on.
I think theres probably some very cool game ideas still waiting to be discovered for the Wii, he muses. But, unless you are doing a Wii exclusive, its going to be hard to really get the full potential out of that controller. Our next project is cross platform, so its going to be a challenge to make sure that the Wii, Xbox 360 and PS3 all control equally as well.
Ebert worked as co-lead designer for the game, though notes that 80% of his work is actual hands on 3D work and scripting. The title also gave him a chance to work on character design; submitting ten characters to a pool of hundreds brainstormed by the development team two of which made their way into the game. He comments that he saw the chance to submit designs as a way to satisfy a creative urge; something he says licensed games dont always do.
When I get that urge, I do artwork instead, Ebert explains. I still draw and work on a comic book idea in my spare time. I keep a
running thread over at conceptart.org of my personal art work
Amongst this work is a comic book, which represents a return to the medium for Ebert he mentions that he had a few published comic books a long time ago, though laughs that he is unhappy with the standard of his work at the time, and never shows them to anyone.
Comics take a lot of work; the deadlines for getting them finished are usually very tight, he says. I hate sacrificing the quality of the comic, just to meet deadlines. For now Ill keep it something I do on the side. Ive got the whole story arc planned out, I just need to start drawing it. I set a goal of getting the first chapter (12-16 pages) finished by the end of 2007. Will see if I make it! Ill show it around then and see what the response is like. I may just post it online for free. Not sure yet.
Before then, Ebert has a new project to work on at Toys For Bob; although he is currently unable to say much about it. Its a licensed title, he hints, but if I can figure out a good design for a Peanut Butter and Bread mini game, its going in as a secret level!
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text:
The local games club has a growing interest in Dead Man's Hand, so I picked up a copy of the rules and some minis to see what all the fuss was about. At around £20 for the rules and a similar amount for three sets of figures, I thought why not, so headed out to the Wargamestore at Brimstage to pick some up. And cowboys and Indians were amongst the first toys I played with, having inherited a massive set from my brother, sadly long gone now. So, a full circle, so to speak.
First up, Cowboy Posse II (all figures are by North Star). I wanted these to look a bit like the regulator posse from Pale Rider.
The we have Lawmen Type I. The guy in the middle is painted like the regulators above, so he can join their gang. The guy on the left wears a white hat and an old cavalry shirt, so he has to be a good guy (Randolph Scott or John Wayne).
Lawmen - the Earps. Enough said, smartly dressed, big moustaches, marshals badges.
So, there we have it, three posses ready for the table. The club has loads of Wild West scenery, so I'm all ready to go. Now to try out the rules.
Thanks for looking.


text:
5 And A Beagle
"Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans." John Lennon
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
#4 was downtown the other day, spending her hard earned money on.......socks - Boston Terrier socks.
I wonder how Miles would feel if he only knew that she pines for another dog.
Knitting still goes on around here even though not much blogging goes on. And socks still take the top spot - probably because of their portability.
These are the Canada socks from Knitting on the Road.
Of course by the time I came to the conclusion that I should have switched the two contrast yarns around so as to better show the patterning, I was too far along to possibly want to rip out and start over.
Oh well, once worn, whose going to be peeping under my pant legs?
Although it took its time in arriving, summer seems to have settled in quite nicely here in Vancouver. I hope you're enjoying a relaxing summer wherever you are.