text:
No. 261
As previously announced, the proper time for observing the Memorial in 1977 is after six p.m. the evening of April 1. This conclusion is reached by knowing that the Vernal Equinox arrives at the 30th Meridian East (the one nearest Jerusalem) at 7:43 p.m. March 20; and the new moon nearest that time occurs at 8:33 p.m. March 19. Thus the first of Nisan is established at six p.m. of March 19. Counting then to the fourteenth, we arrive at six p.m. April 1; and any time that night after six p.m. is correct for observing the Memorial of our Lord's death. We here at Mount Dora plan to observe the festival at 7:30 p.m., April 1; and we extend a cordial invitation to any of like mind as ourselves to join us on that occasion if they be in this neighborhood.
It will be noted aforegoing that we say "the first of Nisan" (which is the name of the Babylonian God of Spring), but that name was not known to the Jews when the Passover was instituted. The first month of their religious year (and the seventh of their business year) was Abib, which means 'sprouting' or 'budding' – very similar indeed to the meaning of Nisan. But Nisan is first mentioned in the Bible in Neh. 2:1 – just before release of the Jews from the 70-year Babylonian captivity.
Wherever it may be our privilege to be on that special night, let us keep in mind that it was exactly 3592 years since the Passover was kept that awesome night in Egypt in 1615 B.C.; and the ostentatious observance of the Passover by the Jews to this year is a very strong testimony that the Bible is the Word of Truth. According to human reckoning, 3592 years is a very long time; but it is only a little less than four days if we consider it from God's standpoint. "A thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night." (Psa. 90:4)
It should be apparent from what we have written above that the moon does play a very important part in determining the date of "our Passover." But this contention is true only as relates the beginning of the month Abib. Once Nisan (or Abib) is determined, then the Bible tersely states that the Passover is to be held on the 14th day of Abib, regardless of the condition of the moon on that date. (Ex. 12:6) The moon is always substantially full at Nisan 14, although it sometimes requires a day or two for it to reach complete fullness. Therefore, the Jewish observance of Passover is often a day or two late, because they wait for the moon to become full for their "remembrance" of that great event.
It is in order here to keep in mind that the moon on this occasion represents the Jewish nation. In its coming to the full from the first of the month it well represents the rise of the Jewish nation from obscurity in the days of Abraham to the pinnacle of glory when Jesus came into their midst. "The people which sat in darkness saw great light; and to them which sat in the region and shadow of death light is sprung up." (Matt. 4:16) "A new commandment I write unto you, which thing is true in Him and in you: because the darkness is past, and the true light now shineth." (1 Jn. 2:8) But, as soon as they had crucified "the Lord of Glory" the moon began to wane, and with it also went God's favor from the Jews – until in the year 70 A.D. Roman Emperor Titus captured Jerusalem and dispersed the Jews to the remote parts of the earth.
A House Desolate – Just before Jesus was crucified, He had made that fatal pronouncement upon the Jews: "Your house is left unto you desolate." (Matt. 23:38) The "house" in this instance includes both the political and religious establishments, but especially so the religious arrangement. When Moses organized the religious ritual at Sinai, he, at the commandment of God, anointed and installed his Brother Aaron as High Priest. At Aaron's death, his eldest son Eleazar succeeded him into that office; and this order was followed in part to the time that Jerusalem was destroyed – although it seems the Jews had departed in part at least from that set-up when Jesus came. However, we are told in Heb. 5:4 that "No man taketh this honor unto himself, but he that is called of God, as was Aaron." Strictly speaking, then, the Jews actually had only one High Priest, Aaron – and subsequent heads of that office were merely a succession of Aaron.
Inasmuch as Aaron was from the tribe of Levi, it follows that all his successors must also come from that tribe. But in the dispersion at the year 70 A.D. the "desolation" was so devastating that the Tribe of Levi was completely lost at that time. Therefore, the Jews no longer can have a High Priest in the strict and all-embracing term of that word – because they know not which among them are from that tribe. Consequently, their Atonement Day and Passover are merely an exercise in futility, because they need a High Priest for a proper standing before God. However, it is commendable that they do the best they can to celebrate the Atonement Day and Passover each year.
A few days after the "desolate" sentence the Jews were shouting, "Crucify Him," over Pilate's objection. "When Pilate saw that he could prevail nothing, but that rather a tumult was made, he took water, and washed his hands before the multitude, saying, I am innocent of the blood of this just person: see ye to it. "Then answered all the people, and said, His blood be on us, and on our children." (Matt. 27:24,25) And God took them at their word! In the seige of Jerusalem, according to Josephus, 1,337, 490 Jews were destroyed; and the prophecy of Jesus in Matt. 24:2 had a very literal fulfillment: "Jesus said unto them, See ye not all these things? verily I say unto you, There shall not be left here one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down."
It should be noted here that Titus was apparently a brilliant and God-fearing man. The Romans referred to him as "The darling of the human race." Also, it is recorded of him that he was a close personal friend of Josephus. Titus did not want to sack Jerusalem or destroy the magnificent temple, but the Jews would have no compromise with him, so he spoke to Josephus somewhat after this manner: You go over and plead with them; you are one of their countrymen, and they may listen to you where they will not listen to me. However, when Josephus made the effort it only aroused the ire of those inside the City one of them threw a rock that hit him on the head; and he was carried away as dead although he later revived, and tried to carry on as Titus had suggested.
However, the Jews would not be persuaded, and this left no alternative but to make a tremendous and violent assault, at which the Romans were expert at that time. Following is some of the quotation from Josephus: "The carriage of the materials was a difficult task, since all the trees, as I have already told you, that were about the city, within the distance of a hundred furlongs, had their branches cut off already, in order to make the former banks... Caesar gave orders that they should demolish the entire city and temple, but should leave as many of the towers standing as were of the greatest eminency... and so much of the wall enclosed the city on the west side. This wall was spared, in order to afford a camp for such as were to lie in garrison; as were the towers also spared in order to demonstrate to posterity what kind of city it was, and how well fortified, which the Roman valor had subdued; but for all the rest of the wall, it was so thoroughly laid even with the ground by those that dug it up to the foundation, that there was nothing to make those that came thither believe it had ever been inhabited. This was the end which Jerusalem came to by the madness of those that were for innovations; a city otherwise of great magnificence, and of mighty fame among all mankind."
Now follows some more from the same historian – some time after the foregoing had taken place: "While Titus was at Caesarea, he solemnized the birthday of his brother Domitian after a splendid manner, and inflicted a great deal of the punishment intended for the Jews in honor of him: for the number of those that were now slain in fighting with the beasts, and were burnt, and fought with one another, exceeded two thousand five hundred."
Thus, their statement, "His blood be on us, and on our children," was exacted in magnified fulfillment; and gives us a much deeper understanding of the prophecy, "Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her, that her iniquity is pardoned; for she hath received of the Lord's hand double ('kephel,' as of a thing folded in the middle 'I will recompense their iniquity and their sin double unto them') for all her sins." Inasmuch as the Jews had had God's special favor for 1845 years, they would receive an equal period of time in reverse – "for all her sins." Reading the record with an unbiased mind, we must come into agreement with the statement of 2 Peter 1:21: "Prophecy came not in old time by the will of man; but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Spirit."
It should be stressed that there was only one Passover; thus, only one type of "Christ our Passover." The subsequent observations to this present year have simply been a "memorial" of that original one. "This day shall be unto you for a memorial; and ye shall keep it a feast by an ordinance forever." (Ex. 12:14) "And it shall come to pass, when your children shall say unto you, What mean ye by this service? That ye shall say, It is the sacrifice of the Lord's passover, who passed over the houses of the children of Israel in Egypt, when he smote the Egyptians, and delivered our houses." (Ex. 12:26,27) "Thou shalt therefore keep this ordinance in his season from year to year." (Ex. 13:10)
And just as there was only one typical Passover, so there is only one antitypical Passover – "Christ our passover is sacrificed for us." (1 Cor. 5:7) Jesus is the antitype of the lamb slain in Egypt that night – "the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world." When He blessed the bread and the wine at that last supper, He said, "This do in remembrance (as a Memorial) of me." The outstanding contrast between the Jewish Memorial and the one we keep is that the Jews still eat the lamb at their service; whereas, we use simply the bread and the wine. Nothing is said about wine that night in Egypt, but the Jews now use four cups of wine in their Memorial, the last one being taken "after supper"; and it was that cup that Jesus used to impress upon us the "remembrance" (memorial) of Him.
Be it noted that, while millions of Jews and Christians will in some formal ceremonies and in a perfunctory manner celebrate this great event of history, but few of either religion discern the real significance of the celebration. Could their minds be awakened thoroughly to its true significance, it would start a religious revival such as the world has never yet known. But, as the Apostle declares, "the god of this world" has blinded the minds of many, and even some whose eyes are partially opened he describes as being blind and cannot see afar off, or holden and unable to see the deep things of God in respect to these ceremonies, which have been celebrated in the world now for almost thirty-six hundred years. However, it must be admitted even by the higher critics and agnostics in general that an event so prominently marked, so widely observed for so long a time, most have a foundation in fact. There must have been just such an occurrence in Egypt 3592 years ago: the first-born of Egypt must have perished in that tenth plague, and the first-born of Israel must have been preserved free from it – all that observed the rule to remain "under the blood" – else this widespread celebration of the event would have been inexplicable.
Perhaps all of our readers know of most of the particulars connected with the institution: The Israelites held in a measure of serfdom by the Egyptians until, in Lord's providence, the time came for their deliverance, how their masters sought selfishly to maintain their bondage, refusing to let them go forth to the land of Canaan. During the year the Lord sent nine different plagues – one after another – upon the Egyptians, relieving them one after another when their king craved mercy and made promises which he afterwards broke. Finally Moses, the servant of the Lord, announced a great crowning disaster: The firstborn of every family in Egypt would die in that one night – in the home of the humblest peasant, as well as in the king's palace, there should be mourning, as a result of which they would be glad finally to yield and let the Israelites go – yea, urge them to go, and in haste, lest the Lord should ultimately bring death upon the entire people, if their king continued to harden his heart and resist the Divine mandate.
The first three plagues were common to all in Egypt, including the district in which the Israelites resided; the next six plagues did not affect the district occupied by the Israelites; and the last, the tenth plague, was declared to be common to the entire land of Egypt, including the land of the Israelites, except as the latter should show faith and obedience by providing a sacrificial lamb, whose blood was to be sprinkled upon the sides and lintels of their doorways, and whose flesh was to be eaten in the same night, with bitter herbs and unleavened bread, the eaters standing staff in hand and girded ready for the journey – with full expectancy that the Lord would smite the first-born of the Egyptians with death, and make them readily willing to let the Israelites go, and with the faith that they would share in this calamity, were it not for the blood on their door-posts and lintels.
The Israelites were commanded to celebrate this as the first feature of the Jewish Law, and one of their greatest memorials as a nation. As a matter of fact, we find that in some degree the Passover is celebrated by Jews in all parts of the world even by those who claim to be agnostics and infidels. We might add here that the same tendency grips most of them for the Atonement-Day service also. We personally have known Jews who make no pretense of observing Jewish rituals, yet they would go to the orthodox synagogue on Atonement day – in sackcloth and ashes – with the explanation to us that, if that one day would make their father happy, they might as well do it, although we were forced to believe that the superstition was with them that "bad luck" might be their portion if they did not go along with the crowd. Inherently, they still have a measure of respect for it as an ancient custom.
But is it not strange that, with the bright minds which many of them possess, the Jews have never thought it worthwhile to inquire about the meaning of this celebration? Why was the lamb slain and eaten? Why was its blood sprinkled upon the door-posts and lintels? Because it was the commandment of the Lord, of course; but what reason, motive, object or lesson was there behind it all? A reasonable God has reasonable commands; and in due time His faithful people should understand the significance of every requirement. Why are the Hebrews indifferent to this subject? Why does deep prejudice hold their minds? We know, of course, that "blindness has happened in part to Israel" until the fullness of the Gentiles be come in – that they are now shortly to receive the light and joy from a full understanding of this drama of the Ages. None like it has ever been imagined by the fiction writers; it is beyond the skill of any of them – which is another reason why we must conclude that it is a Divine operation and performance.
Although Christianity itself has the answer to the foregoing questions, yet few Christians have a clear understanding of them. This even applies to many of the Protestant ministers, who know about Paul's mention of "Christ our Passover," but do not seem capable of fitting type and antitype together. If the Jew can realize that his Sabbath of rest from the various vexations of life is a shadow of better things to come (Heb. 10:1), why does he not also conclude that the other features of the Law given through Moses are typical? Jesus Himself emphasized this point in very clear and understandable words: "Till heaven and earth shall pass away, one iota or one tip of a letter shall by no means pass from the law, till all be accomplished." (Matt. 5:18, Dia.)
But "blindness in part" has befallen to Jew and Gentile alike (Rom. 11:25), as they fail fully to comprehend that the Passover lamb typified – represented – the "Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world." It needs no argument that the blood on the door-posts and lintel that fateful night in Egypt did protect the Jews that night from the fatal ravages of sin, and in the following day when they left Egypt (type of the world in sin) with a 'high hand." And just as the Jews were protected that night by their lamb, so have Christians throughout this Age been shielded from the fatal effects of sin by our Lamb "which taketh away the sin of the world."
It requires no great imagination or profound learning to fit together the foregoing with St. Paul's words in Heb. 12:23, where he speaks of Christians as the "Church of the firstborn"; and the words of the Apostle James (1:18): "We should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures." Self-evidently, this would imply after-borns and afterfruits. While the sprinkled blood obligated only the firstborn, yet all the other Jews were likewise delivered from Egypt in that performance; and that nation typified the entire human race that will eventually come into harmony with God during the Kingdom. "For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus; Who gave himself a ransom for all, to be testified in due time." This is vividly shown in the miraculous protection received by every Jew in the passage over the Red Sea not one Jew was lost that day, although the entire Egyptian army was destroyed.
As stated above, St. Paul clearly and positively identifies the Passover lamb with our Lord Jesus: "Christ our Passover is slain for us; therefore, let us keep the feast." (1 Cor. 5:7,8) And as the Jews were to keep their Passover once a year, so it is with the antitype – it is also to be celebrated once a year. It goes without saying that all who come into the Lord's "house" need the blood of sprinkling, not upon our residences, but upon the tables of our hearts. "The blood of Jesus Christ his son cleanseth us from all sin." (1 John 1:7) And, as the Jews ate literal unleavened bread with their lamb that night, so we also partake of our Lamb with the unleavened bread of "sincerity and truth." (1 Cor. 5:8) Thus, we "put on Christ" as we grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus. As the Jews ate the lamb that night with "bitter herbs" (which whetted their appetites for more lamb), so the Christian partakes of his Lamb with symbolic bitter herbs – the punishing trials of life through the sins of ourselves and those of others.
Our Lord Jesus also personally identified Himself with the Jewish Passover lamb at the last Supper before He died. He gathered His disciples together in the upper room, saying "With desire have I desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer." (Luke 22:15) As Jews, it was necessary that they should celebrate the Passover supper on that night – the saving of the typical first-born from the typical prince of this world. However, as soon as they had finished eating the lamb with all the pertinences, Jesus instituted a new Memorial upon the old foundation, saying, "As often as you do this do it in remembrance of Me." (1 Cor. 11:24,25) And, while their Jewish neighbors, who did not accept "our Lamb," would go on keeping the typical arrangement each year, as the faithful covenant-keeping Jews still do today. But that was the last typical Passover for the disciples; henceforth they would partake of the bread and wine "in newness of life" each year – with the eating of the actual lamb, etc., only a memory of the past with them.
Jesus was emphatic that the disciples should no longer keep the typical celebration, as He took the bread and the wine and told them to use these "in remembrance of Me." His blood would be shed the next morning; and the cup – the wine – would be a fitting reminder of what they had done that night. Of course, the apostles knew very well what their future Passovers would be: the bread and the wine once each year on the typical Passover date.
This practice was followed once every year as long as the Apostles remained alive, after which a great falling away occurred – as foretold by St. Paul in 2 Thes. 2:3: "That day shall not come, except there come a falling away first." This "falling away" occurred during the Dark Ages – a time of such confusion that there is no reliable history for much of it. However, the truth that Christ was the antitypical Passover Lamb persisted even then, though the celebration itself as given by Jesus that last night fell into disuse, the Mass taking its place. Although Protestants in general have repudiated the Mass, as being wholly contrary to what Jesus commanded, yet they are still somewhat influenced by it, as their practice shows.
Many Protestants will innocently ask (not grasping the connection between the Jewish Passover and "Christ our Passover"), Is not the Mass merely the Eucharist, the Lord's Supper, under another name? We would answer that it is wholly different: The Lord's Supper celebrates the death of Christ accomplished at Calvary, but the Mass represents a new sacrifice for sins made every time it is performed. Our Roman Catholic friends believe that when the priest blesses the wafer it becomes the actual body of Christ in his hands, thus sacrificing Him afresh. High Mass is a particular sacrifice of Christ for a particular sin of a particular individual; whereas Low Mass is a sacrifice of Christ for the general sins of a congregation.
Roman Catholics claim to believe in the merit of Christ's sacrifice at Calvary, that it covered original sin and general sins that are past up to baptism; but they claim also that the subsequent daily sins, shortcomings, blemishes of every individual, require to he cleansed by fresh sacrifices of Christ from time to time. Thus, from their standpoint, as represented in the Mass, and as practiced by Roman Catholics and Greek Catholics and high Church Episcopalians, Christ is being sacrificed afresh all the world over every day. However, this is in direct contradiction to St. Paul's words, "Christ dieth no more" (Rom. 6:9); He accomplished full sacrifice for sin in His death on the cross.
Once this matter is clearly understood, it requires no great imagination to recognize that the repeated sacrifices represented in the Mass would have the general effect of minimizing the value of the great sacrifice at Calvary as represented in the Passover and its Memorial Supper. Certainly those who come to regard the Mass as the cancellation of their sins could hardly be expected to look with deep concern and high appreciation as otherwise to the antitypical Passover – He that perished on the cross. Of course, the celebration of Good Friday continues to this day throughout Christendom, but the true celebration of the Lord's Supper preceding it fell into disuse long ago, with its meaning almost completely lost.
Protestants generally have repudiated the Mass centuries ago, but they have substituted the Lord's Supper in its place. But, accustomed to the frequency of the Mass, they consider it but a matter of expediency how often the Lord's Supper should be kept; hence, we find some celebrating it every four months, some every three months, some every month, and some every Sunday – usually in the morning; whereas the proper time is after six p.m. in the evening. Did they realize that Jesus is "Christ our Passover" – "the Lamb of God" – they would then give heed to Ex. 12:6: "The whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it in the evening." And it was in the evening of Nisan 14 – after Jesus and the Apostles had kept the Passover – that the Memorial ("remembrance of Me") was established by Jesus blessing the bread and the wine – "My body, My blood."
Also, Christians generally have misconstrued the Lord's words, "As oft as ye do this," to mean, Do this as often as you please; whereas the words really signify, You, My disciples (all Jews are accustomed to keeping the Passover once each year), keep this antitypical Memorial – once each year on the same day and hour as you have done for the typical Memorial of the Passover in Egypt.
"By him therefore let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is, the fruit of our lips giving thanks to his name." (Heb. 13:15)
Sincerely your brother
John J. Hoefle, pilgrim
QUESTION: – Was Joseph, the stepfather of Jesus, an Ancient Worthy?
ANSWER: - So far as we know, this question never came up under Brothers Russell or Johnson; otherwise we would quote their opinion rather than our answer. We have the same attitude toward both Messengers that Brother Johnson had toward Bro. Russell: If the Scriptures didn't give him an unmistakable answer to such questions, he always took Brother Russell's opinion rather than his own.
While the Bible does not definitely say Joseph was an Ancient Worthy, it would seem from the general setting, and the things said about Joseph, that he was one of them. Some might think that he would have been mentioned in the 11th Chapter of Hebrews if he were an Ancient Worthy, but there were other prominent Ancient Worthies not mentioned in that Chapter – John the Baptist, Isaiah, Hosea and "the prophets" (Heb. 11:32). So the fact that he was not mentioned in that Chapter would be no criterion. The Lord appeared unto Joseph in a dream with instructions concerning Mary; and Joseph followed very carefully what he was told to do. (Matt. 1:20,21) Undoubtedly he was faithful in carrying out all the Lord told him to do.
So far as we know, there is nothing in the records to tell us whether Joseph was alive or dead when Jesus died, but the commentators infer that he was dead; otherwise Jesus would not have given the Apostle John the custody of His mother. Since Joseph was faithful in all the Lord told him to do, caring for Mary until Jesus was born, then caring for Jesus until He became the anointed One – Jesus Christ, Jesus would not have ignored His stepfather to give John the custody of His mother. The Jewish family arrangement was a very strong one; thus, Jesus would hardly have told Mary to leave her husband, and make her home with John.
Matthew 1:19 says Joseph was "a just man"; and this identical expression was given concerning Cornelius (Acts 10:22). Galations 3:11 and Rom. 1:17 tell us that the "just shall live by faith"; and it would seem that Joseph lived by faith. According to Acts 24:15, which uses the same Greek word 'dikaios' translated "just," then he would receive "a better resurrection" – the resurrection of "the just." He had the supreme privilege of caring for the boy Jesus; and this in itself was a great honor. Joseph believed God, and Gal. 3:6 says "Abraham believed God and it was accounted to him for righteousness."
Dear Brother Hoefle:
Please send me the papers you have concerning Jehovah's Witnesses. Thank you!
Sincerely, ------- (ALABAMA)
Dear Sir:
I was real interested in reading one of your leaflets. I would appreciate one copy of each. Thank you for this service.
Sincerely, ------- (FLORIDA)
Dear Mr. Hoefle: Greetings to you!
Many thanks for the literature and your informative letter. both are highly appreciated. I am curious about your split with the LHMM in 1955. What were some of the errors that brought about your departure? Have you written anything on these matters? Oh, please send me a copy of the funeral service of Professor Johnson...........
I am a Reform Jew, and yes, I observe full New Year's services from Rosh Hashannah to Yom Kippur. God be with you!
Sincerely ------- (CALIFORNIA)
Dear Friends:
My sister gave you my name and you have been very kind in sending me some of your bulletins. The earliest one I received was #192. In some of the bulletins I notice references to Pastor Johnson as founder of the LHMM, and to Bro. Jolly and his Campers. These references lead me to believe that there has been a schism along the line since my parents studied with Pastor Johnson. Do any of your earlier bulletins explain the differences of opinion between your group and those of others? I have recently become more deeply interested in trying to understand God's plan, and I believe an understanding and knowledge of both sides of such differences can be helpful.
I will appreciate any information you can send me. I hope my small contribution will be of some help.
Yours sincerely, ------- (PENNSYLVANIA)
Dear Brother Hoefle:
I have been associated with Jehovah's Witnesses for a number of years – or from 1962 to 1975. Frankly, it got to the point where I would become very upset at things that were said at the meetings and things written in the Watchtower – especially when the virtues of Jehovah's Witnesses were proclaimed. Their actions were far from the lofty ideals presented. In my humble opinion the hypocrisy of the Jehovah's Witnesses constant religious politicking is clearly far removed from the high ideals among the Witnesses, and thousands are leaving (I was told 400,000 in the last 5 years).
Especially do the more intelligent and reasoning Witnesses have a difficult time, and they are leaving as the dogmatism and intolerance becomes more unbearable – especially the more enlightened ones. I feel I have wasted a great deal of time in the Witnesses and regret that I left college. But I understand it is a very common experience for a Witness, once he becomes involved with the Witnesses, to leave his college studies and later on regret it – even if he does not leave the Witness movement. A good friend of mine, a non-Witness, said that in a few years I probably would leave the Witnesses, and she was right. But she did say I should try to learn from it, and I feel I have – although it is hard not to be bitter. As I still have a strong spiritual need, and I have enjoyed, and found helpful, your publications. Please send me the current issues of your magazine. Thank you very much.
Most sincerely, ------- (OHIO)
Dear Brother Hoefle: Greetings in the Name of the Father and His Son Jesus!
In the article of the Jehovah's Witnesses, I heartily agree 100%! I have two of them (husband & wife) that come to my place to visit, and I return their visits to their home. I call them the "Jay Walkers," because of their artificial behavior of Christianity; and, as of now, I have practically stopped my visits to their home. I've tried time and time again, to show them the errors of their beliefs, but I can't make them see the light. They are so bullheaded that it is a waste of time to discuss the Bible with them. I gave them the history of Brother Russell, Rutherford and Knorr, but it just will not sink in. The trouble is, when anyone becomes a "speaker," That's it! It seems that I cannot do the work of God that will break that "iron" that's keeping their minds from seeing the Truth. That "evil" was the dominating factor that caused the Israelites to lose their "Identity" as a nation..........
Enclosed is $-- to help keep your work alive and going, and may God help you also in every way. Amen! Yours in the service of the Lord, Brother ------- (ILLINOIS)
Dear Gentlemen:
I am very interested in studying religions, within the context of the Christian belief. I have a friend that gave me your address and so I decided to write you and find out about your organization. Would you please send me a list of your publications, as well as the addresses of any local Churches.
I have a few questions that I hope you will be able to answer. What do you believe about Pyramids in connection with Biblical prophecy? What is your estimation of the writings of Pastor Russell? Any help on the above material will be most appreciated. Sincerely ------- (California)


text:
National Chili Day celebrates this easy to make meal, and we have recipes that will hit the spot! Packed with healthy protein, fiber, and vitamins, chili is one of our favorite things to whip up.
Chili is a warm, hearty dish that is so easy to pull together. Combine all ingredients in a crock pot before you leave for work, set on low, and come home to a great meal!
Healthy, Hearty National Chili Day Recipes
Crafted with a mix of beans, spices, honey, and…beer, this Sweet Spicy Chili is a nutrient dense and yummy meal. This recipe is vegan, although you could definitely swap out the veggie crumbles for ground turkey, beef, or shredded chicken! Add in your favorite toppings, like avocado or shredded cheese, to make this meal something special.
If you want something equally as filling, but more traditional than our Sweet Spicy Honey Chili, try our Turkey Chili. Turkey is lean, high in protein, and (if bought from a solid company) more environmentally friendly than beef or pork. This chili would also be delicious made with just a mix of beans or veggie crumbles instead of the turkey.
This Sweet Potato Chili is an unusual take on the normally bean-based stew. The sweet potatoes give a rich, hearty texture to the chili, while the blend of spices forms a smoky-sweetness that is absolutely delectable. This dish is vegetarian, but you can add ground turkey or beef if you so desire.
Our latest White Chicken Chili will warm up any cold winter evening at home and satisfy your hunger.
If you are looking for ideas on what to serve with your chili, our Amazing Eastern Shore Cornbread makes a great companion to any chili dish and will not disappoint you or your family!
We hope that you enjoy these recipes on National Chili Day. If you decide to make any of our recipes, or better yet, your very own take, why not take a photo and share it with us using #waxingkararecipes on Instagram. We love seeing your photos!

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Since I went to a great Halloween party last night, I didn't feel the need to go out again tonight. Instead, I stayed home and gave out candy (no, not walnuts) to the five groups of kids who showed up at the door. Since I had pretty much given up on trick-or-treaters coming to the door at around 7pm, the kids who did show up each got a crapload of candy (Tootsie rolls, pops, dots, etc) from me.
I had pretty much watched everything I could on our main TiVo while I was waiting for trick-or-treaters, so I got bored & decided to do some stuff in the kitchen. I usually buy eggs in bulk at Costco (five dozen at a time) and will hard-boil a large pot of eggs at one time. When I put the hard-boiled eggs back into the fridge with the other eggs, I usually mark them with a large 'X' across the top with a black sharpie.
We decided against carving pumpkins this year (no time), so I thought I'd get my Halloween creative jollies off on the hard-boiled eggs. Kind of a Easter-ish twist on Halloween, or something.
I started off with a couple of simple jack-o-lantern-type faces, but then started drawing other animals and progressed to (somewhat) recognizable cartoon characters. Can you tell who/what I was trying to draw? (Hey, I wasn't trying to be DaVinci, I was just doodling on eggs…)
Since I had just watched an episode of Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends ("Hi" to my friend Craig… not McCracken!), I did a little tribute in hard-boiled egg and sharpie:
I wrapped it up with some tributes to some of my favorite bloggers… the Domokun is inspired by the pictures of Mikey that Joelle posted. And the Lockergnome was inspired by Chris Pirillo himself. (And you thought I wasn't going to do anything useful with that mousepad I got at Gnomedex 4.)
I don't know if I'm going to do this every year (I wasn't planning to stay home and make eggs… it just turned out that way), but this is the kind of thing that happens when I have too much free time on my hands…
- Excited
- Fascinated
- Amused
- Bored
- Sad
- Angry


text:
Recently renovated, this spacious north facing unit located on the first floor offers: 2 large bedrooms, modern kitchen, internal laundry, combined large living/dining, balcony and carpspace. Close to Eastlakes shopping centre and transport.
- 2
- 1
- 1
- Street Address 10/291 Gardeners Road
- Type Residential Lease
- Price LEASED
- State NSW
- Town Village Eastern Suburbs
- Suburb Eastlakes
- Property Type Unit
Sydney Auction Results Bouncing Back
13 Aug 2019RRE Properties has seen both the lows and highs of the property cycle since 1966 ...
Eastlakes New Shopping Centre Latest News
9 Feb 2019Property giant Crown Group has been forced to rethink its $1 billion Eastlakes ...
Latest News
About us
At RRE Properties our clients come first, no exception. RRE is a cutting edge real estate agency that has grown from humble beginnings in 1966 to the area's leading agency servicing our core areas for half a century. A strong foundation built on practiced values of honesty and integrity with our clients. At RRE our reputation for excellence amongst our clients and the marketplace has always been second to none.
Contact us
403 Gardeners Road , ROSEBERY , NSW , 2018
02 9317 3404


text:
Listen to this article
When asked who his industrial heroes are, Sir Hermann Hauser, father of the UK's semiconductor industry, ignores the obvious. Not for him the Henry Fords or Andrew Carnegies. Instead, the man who founded Acorn Computers and has been called in by the UK government to help revive British industrial innovation, chooses the mathematicians and computer scientists whose work brought the power of computing to the world of manufacturing.
"The great brains, like Alan Turing or Maurice Wilkes, laid the foundations for everything we do now," he says.
Equally he might have chosen Charles Babbage, who in the 19th century came up with the concept of a programmable computer, or James Watt, who improved designs for the steam engine that would transform manufacturing. The difficulty in drawing up a list of just 50 business pioneers is that they have all built on the work of previous generations of equally determined and original thinkers.
Henry Ford is often credited with inventing the assembly line, which brought down costs and workers' injuries while increasing productivity and output. But, like Watt, he merely expanded on an idea that had been around for more than 100 years. His success, though, was copied on a wider scale than ever before across a variety of industries as technology and communications improved in the 20th century.
The impact adapters such as Ford have had on the way people live, work and consume is undeniable. These pioneers "made it easier to manufacture large quantities, and to market them through the world's ever-stronger distribution and communication networks", Lord Bhattacharyya, British industrialist and founder of WMG, a consultancy at the University of Warwick, said in a speech. "These changes created the factory, urbanisation, new transport systems and a shift in the nature of the 'maker' — from craftsman to labourer. Ultimately, they created the mass market."
They also created vast economic wealth. Wages, even in a world where manufacturing jobs have plummeted, are generally higher than in the lower-skilled services sector.
In the 20th century, unlike the 19th, many of the revolutionary changes were brought about by those who found better ways of organising production than those who invented tools or machines.
Taiichi Ohno is considered to be the founder of lean manufacturing, the philosophy otherwise known as the Toyota Production System, which helped the Japanese car company to survive after the second world war. The lean approach aims to eliminate waste in every aspect of a manufacturing process — from workers' actions to the supply and use of raw materials. Partly based on theories described in Henry Ford's 1926 book Today and Tomorrow and on the methods of US supermarkets, the principles devised by Ohno have become common practice in world-class industrial companies and in their supply chains.
Hauser, meanwhile, cites Sir Robin Saxby, founder of Arm Holdings, whose chips are used in 95 per cent of the world's smartphones. His genius was in sensing there could be a different business model for a chip company than the traditional make-and-sell approach. "Arm does not sell chips — it sells licences (on its design) to make chips to 350 chip companies that all compete with each other," says Hauser. "This helped Arm to become the dominant player in microprocessors."
The world is on the brink of a new industrial revolution — one where manufacturing is network-based and data will flow through the production process into the customer experience and back again. This will open up new ways to produce more customised and affordable goods that people want. In the days of Henry Ford, to keep costs down, customers could have any colour they wanted as long as it was black. But now, with intelligent systems that can inform manufacturers earlier of consumers' desires, manufacturing is entering the era of mass customisation. Bhattacharyya cites Jaguar Land Rover, the UK-based carmaker owned by Tata Group of India. Using social media, JLR has cut the costs of marketing a car by 70 per cent.
This new revolution will create new industrial pioneers, who may not be traditional industrialists.
Ineke Dezentjé Hamming-Bluemink, a former politician, is leading the Dutch government's strategy to adapt to the labour, educational and social challenges implied by the next phase of industrial development. "The next innovator will not be some big company. It will be someone working in his or her garage coming up with an idea," she says.
In a way, this is a return to a golden age of innovation, when a humble locksmith like Benjamin Huntsman could invent new ways to make steel that would make the industrial age of the 19th century possible. Now engineers with heart problems, for example, are using the possibilities created by the internet, social networks and advanced manufacturing techniques such as 3D printing to create innovative medical solutions for their own needs.
Elon Musk is challenging the mighty aerospace and defence companies with SpaceX, a company that aims to develop rocket technology by making commercially viable reusable space launch vehicles. Jim Cantrell, former vice-president of SpaceX, is reported to have said of Musk that he "used $1bn to do what Nasa couldn't do with $27bn".
These are the people who will transform industry for the future. The knowledge that will be gathered in the development of rocket technology will be fed back into other sectors — just as Ford's own success was absorbed and copied in other industries.
There will be failures along the way, but as Musk told New Scientist magazine: "One failed experiment does not invalidate the greater goal. If that was the case, we'd never have had the lightbulb."
Marvin Bower
Very few management consultants deserve the title "pioneer", writes Andrew Hill. It is not consultants' style to lead from the front. A more appropriate — cynics would say safer — approach is to help provide the tools with which their corporate clients can break new ground.
Bruce Henderson, the founder of Boston Consulting Group, would merit a mention for the way in which he helped define strategy. But BCG was only founded in 1963. By then Marvin Bower had already shaped McKinsey into the model of a modern management consultancy, creating the sector as we now know it.
As Duff McDonald writes in The Firm, his portrait of McKinsey: "Bower was obsessed with making sure he and his peers would not be dismissed as corporate parasites and would enjoy a respect similar to other early 20th-century professionals such as doctors, lawyers, engineers and ministers."
McKinsey might have made just a footnote in business history if Bower had not taken the lead when the group's official founder, James O "Mac" McKinsey, died suddenly in 1937. The group split in two: the other half became AT Kearney and Bower kept the McKinsey name for the part he went on to head.
One of Bower's achievements was to move McKinsey consultants up the corporate hierarchy until they became the trusted advisers to senior executives. He deliberately left behind Mac McKinsey's original concept of the group as "management engineers", hired to solve the lowlier challenges facing big US companies. As in law, where Bower had started his career, McKinsey would be a "practice" rather than a business and have "clients" rather than customers. He also developed many of the techniques that helped McKinsey — and ultimately other consultants — become efficient moneymakers.
But Bower also established a set of principles for the group. Framed copies of his mission statement and values — including "Put client interests ahead of the firm's; observe high ethical standards; preserve client confidences" — still hang on the wall of McKinsey offices. One reason why the insider-trading scandal that embroiled McKinsey in 2011 was so shocking to the consultancy was that it involved breaches of these principles and ended in the conviction of Rajat Gupta, who, like Bower, had risen to become managing director of the firm.
Bower died in 2003, aged 99. His longevity — and his continuing influence over McKinsey even after retirement — cemented his reputation as the soul of the consultancy. But by bringing rigour to the consulting sector as a whole, and to consultants' corporate clients, his influence also rubbed off on business as a whole.
Richard Branson
Sir Richard Branson regularly appears on lists of the UK's most successful businesspeople, or most inspiring entrepreneurs, writes Sarah Gordon. His reputation as a challenger to the status quo is due in part to his launch of a range of businesses, from mobile telephones to trains to airlines, that challenged complacent incumbents such as British Airways and often gave consumers a better choice and lower prices.
He opened his first record shop on London's Oxford Street in 1971 and two years later launched Virgin Records, which signed controversial bands such as the Sex Pistols. This was followed by a variety of other businesses, such as the Virgin Atlantic airline, founded in 1984. Some have been more successful than others — Virgin Mobile may be a familiar name but Virgin Brides, a bridal wear company, is probably best forgotten. Virgin Atlantic itself has just returned to profit after three years of losses.
The precise nature of the Virgin business empire is little understood by the public. About 80 businesses bear the Virgin name, but Virgin Group Holdings, which manages Branson's investments and his personal brand, holds a direct stake in fewer than half. Virgin Group owns just over a quarter of the 12 largest Virgin companies by revenues, and most Virgin-branded companies pay the holding company a licensing fee for use of the name.
The recognisability of that name, and of Branson himself, is in part due to a series of high-profile exploits he has engaged in over the years, from hot-air ballooning to high-speed boating. His buccaneering image, with blond beard and mane to match, has played a considerable part in the success of the Virgin brand, which he has parlayed into a franchising model that has given him a fortune, estimated by Forbes, of $5bn.
The contradictions underlying this image — for one, Branson is a socially liberal philanthropist but lives as a tax exile on his Caribbean island of Necker — appear not to have undermined its financial value.
In 2005, he stepped back from day-to-day running of the Virgin Group to focus on his philanthropic activities and Virgin Galactic, his project to send tourists into space. In October, the endeavour was rocked by the fatal crash of a spaceship in the Mojave desert in the US, killing a test pilot. Despite such setbacks, Branson has vowed to continue with the business — and his personal brand seems to have suffered little as a consequence.
Barbe Nicole Clicquot-Ponsardin
If life had taken a more predictable course, Barbe Nicole Clicquot-Ponsardin would probably have spent her years as a devoted wife and mother in a wealthy, connected family in northern France, writes Adam Thomson.
As things turned out, she became one of France's first successful female business leaders in a male-dominated world, selling her Veuve Clicquot champagne in international markets and pioneering a technique that transformed the drink from a cloudy wine into the crystal-clear tipple we know today.
The event that sparked the change was the death in October 1805 of François Clicquot, the man she had married just seven years before and with whom she had helped build the family's wine business.
Barbe Nicole Clicquot persuaded her father-in-law to allow her to take over the company — a move that later prompted the inclusion of "veuve", or "widow", in its name. But Europe was at war and business proved exceptionally tough.
Production slumped initially, and Britain's naval blockade forced her to look east to Russia, at one point shipping champagne bottles hidden in barrels to skirt an embargo the Tsar had placed on French wine.
To survive, she cut costs, reined in overdue payments from clients and diversified into selling red wine in the domestic market, according to Tilar Mazzeo in her book The Widow Cliquot: The Story of a Champagne Empire and the Woman Who Ruled It.
"Barbe Nicole's workday, in the cellars or at her desk, began at seven in the morning, and she rarely set aside her account books and letters until nine or 10 in the evening," writes Mazzeo.
With her husband, she had the idea of putting an anchor on each of the corks as part of an early attempt at branding in an era when bottles were not even sold with labels.
She also continued to develop her marketing: in 1810, she produced the world's first vintage champagne; in 1811, an outstanding vintage, she began putting a star on each of the corks in homage to the comet that appeared in the night sky that year.
But beyond her industry and tenacity as a business woman, Clicquot's lasting contribution was pioneering the remuage, or riddling process — tilting the bottles and turning them for several weeks to collect the dead yeast in the neck and then removing it — that gives champagne its clear appearance.
The result was what is generally considered the first modern champagne, and its popularity spread among Europe's elites, who soon began to associate it with celebration and luxury.
Clicquot died in 1866, when the company sold 750,000 bottles, compared with about 100,000 when she took it over. It seems only fitting that, even during her lifetime, she became known as the grand dame of champagne.
Henry Ford
For an invention so momentous, the origins of the moving production line remain obscure, writes Robert Wright. Henry Ford is celebrated as the father of the invention but, according to The People's Tycoon, a biography of him by Steven Watts, Ford gave two different stories, claiming it had been inspired by how carcasses moved in Chicago slaughterhouses or by the workings of a watch factory.
What is certain, though, is that, in 1913 and 1914, workers in the Ford Motor Company's Highland Park plant, in a city on the north side of Detroit, started to assemble first components then whole vehicles on a moving production line. The effect on productivity was astonishing — and led Ford to a second extraordinary innovation.
Far more than contemporaries such as William Durant of General Motors or the Dodge Brothers, Ford had focused from his company's earliest days on trying to bring down the cost of cars to within the reach of ordinary people. The company started production of the vehicle intended to do that — the Model T — in 1908.
But despite Ford's determination to make his factory's layout as logical and efficient as possible, there were still substantial problems smoothing the flow of parts and vehicles through Highland Park, opened in 1910. Managers started, according to Watts, experimenting with different techniques, including pushing vehicles along with bars and pulling them with ropes to carry them smoothly past individual workers' workstations. The company finally settled on a chain to pull vehicles along.
The system ironed out the effects of different workers' different work styles, speeding up the slow and slowing down the fast. The added efficiency quickly put Ford in a virtuous circle of cost-cutting that fuelled demand. The company made 68,773 Model Ts in 1912. The basic model sold for $590, already a sharp reduction from $900 in 1910. By 1920, Ford was producing nearly 1m Model Ts a year and selling the basic model for $395. At points in the 1920s, the Model T accounted for half of US vehicle sales.
However, the tedium of work on the assembly line quickly pushed up Ford's workforce turnover. In response, he increased wages to $5 a day — twice the average for the time — and cut the working day to eight hours. It was the kind of idiosyncratic decision-making that would later cause the company many problems. But, by creating for the first time large number of workers with spare time and money, the move is widely credited with creating the US's 20th-century consumer society.
Carlos Ghosn
No chief executive is irreplaceable. But Carlos Ghosn may be about as close as it gets, writes Andy Sharman. The Lebanese Brazilian has taken a multinational upbringing and applied it to a carmaker that accounts for one in 10 new cars sold worldwide and employs 450,000 people.
Ghosn has done something almost unprecedented in the world of cars by forging the Renault-Nissan alliance. Now 15 years old, its longevity is testament to his principles of mutual respect and cultural sensitivity in an industry littered with failed partnerships (DaimlerChrysler, BMW-Rover, Ford-Volvo-Jaguar Land Rover).
The Renault-Nissan universe — which is regularly orbited by Ghosn's Gulfstream jet — includes ownership of Avtovaz in Russia, which he chairs, and a cross-shareholding and electric vehicle development partnership with Daimler of Germany.
Then there is the Romanian brand, Dacia, which has been resuscitated as a low-cost marque and has taken a bite out of Europe's biggest carmakers.
"It's cross-cultural squared — not just people from different cultures but different companies too," says Chris Donkin, one of the car industry's leading headhunters.
When Ghosn arrived at Nissan in 1999, it was sitting on $20bn of debt and nearly $5bn in annual net losses. To an anti-foreigner outcry in Japan, he closed factories, cut jobs, sold off non-core assets and redesigned the cars. Since then, the diminutive polyglot has inspired bento boxes and manga cartoons.
Nissan is sustainably profitable and the French and Japanese groups have integrated, using a big joint-purchasing unit to haggle down prices from suppliers.
The supremely confident Ghosn is in his element addressing international media at global car shows — fixing reporters with piercing eyes and gravity-defying eyebrows. He is respected for an ability to think and communicate clearly despite the complexity of the organisation.
But some say his success and durability at the top of Renault-Nissan has been to the detriment of the companies' future. Aspiring successors — including Andy Palmer and Carlos Tavares — have turned elsewhere for top roles in the car industry. And his success with Dacia contrasts with the continued underperformance of the upmarket Infiniti marque.
Meanwhile, sharp declines in Russia and Brazil have raised doubts over his historic focus on pushing the alliance into emerging markets.
As the 61-year-old nears the end of his contract with Renault-Nissan in 2017, speculation is rising over how he might be replaced — or rather, how many people will have to replace him.
Ghosn himself is cryptic. "A lot of people think that the only solution is to have one person running two companies," he says. "[But] the present organisation of the company is not the only one."
Mo Ibrahim
With a fortune made from the early days of the mobile phones, the Sudan-born entrepreneur Mo Ibrahim has emerged as a key mover in attempts to rebrand Africa as a success story in both politics and business, writes Peter Marsh. His Mo Ibrahim Foundation, established in 2006, gives substantial sums to people promoting the best standards of leadership and transparency in government across the continent.
But Ibrahim's unusual awards would never have been possible without his own exceptional business record. He moved to the UK from Sudan in 1974 and later joined BT, where he helped the telecoms business become established in the then new world of mobile phones. After that, he started a successful business in operating mobile phone networks across Africa. In 2005, he sold his company Celtel for $3.4bn.
His foundation's biggest award is an annual prize for a former political leader who has "developed [his or her] countries, lifted people out of poverty and paved the way for sustainable and equitable prosperity". The amount of money handed out in these prizes — even though in some years the cash is left unawarded — is eye-popping, especially by the standards of a continent where incomes are low.
But Ibrahim argues his awards are a practical encouragement to politicians to quit and hand over to someone else rather than cling on with incomes supplemented by, as often happens, bribery and corruption.
This year's award — which gives the recipient $5m over 10 years, followed by $200,000 a year for life — was given to the Hifikepunye Pohamba, the outgoing president of Namibia.
The size of these awards — which are accompanied by smaller disbursements of scholarships and fellowships to others lower down the ladder of African politics — has created some controversy. This is on the grounds that many African leaders are well remunerated and hardly need handouts when they step down.
But Ibrahim's big theory is that on the back of a rise in standards of government, helped by the potential of people given his awards to act as role models, the climate for business will gradually improve. That in turn should help improve standards of living in a continent blighted by poverty. Some tentative support for his ideas has emerged in the indications in recent years that African economies have started to ramp up, helped by signs of sometimes impressive entrepreneurial activity.
Lee Byung-chull
As his battle with cancer neared its end, Lee Byung-chull became concerned about the biblical warnings of rich men struggling to enter heaven, writes Simon Mundy. "Does this mean the rich are bad?" he asked a priest a month before his death in 1987.
Lee had plenty of time to ponder the meaning of wealth, spending most of the second half of his life as South Korea's richest man. Samsung, the group he founded, remains by far the country's biggest; it includes the world's biggest technology company by sales and 73 other businesses, from stockbroking to theme parks.
Lee was born to a wealthy family in southern Korea in 1910, the year the country was formally annexed to the Japanese empire. Like many upper-class Koreans he went to study in Japan, although he did not complete his economics degree at Tokyo's Waseda University.
His business career began in 1936, when he set up a small rice mill in the southern town of Masan, buying a truck to gain an edge in distribution over competitors, who relied on ox-carts.
After a failed foray into property speculation, Lee founded Samsung, which began by exporting foodstuffs to China. It prospered despite the tumult of the second world war, becoming one of Korea's biggest trading companies by 1950.
That year Lee had to flee Seoul in the face of North Korean invasion but continued to trade in his southern homeland for three years until the civil war drew to a close. He played his political cards right, making generous campaign donations to President Syngman Rhee, who smoothed his entry into sugar refining, textile manufacturing and financial services.
Lee's links with the old regime became a liability in 1961 when it was overthrown by army officers who threatened to confiscate the assets of top businessmen. But Lee persuaded the dictator Park Chung-hee to allow him to retain capital to invest in new industries, while sharing the profits with the state.
Samsung and its fellow chaebol, or family conglomerates, were at the core of Park's export-focused economic strategy, under which South Korea developed at a speed matched by few countries in modern history.
Lee's most significant moves, however, were in manufacturing: between 1969 and 1978 he set up businesses making consumer electronics, ships and semiconductors, in each of which Samsung now stands among the world's biggest producers.
His achievements went alongside a steely personality: the chain-smoking Lee once intervened in a recruitment process to rule out a man whose shoes he deemed too dusty, and fired two of his own sons for underperformance.
"They were not fit to hold executive positions," he told a reporter from Time in 1976. "The life of a man is short, but that of a corporation must never be."
Li Ka-shing
Flee China, produce plastic goods, then move into property. Put like that, Li Ka-shing's beginnings are similar to many other Hong Kong tycoons of his generation, and they track the territory's own economic development, writes Jennifer Hughes. Li's trick is doing it better, bigger and more globally than anyone else.
Today Cheung Kong and Hutchison Whampoa, his flagship conglomerates, operate in more than 50 countries in businesses ranging from ports and property to pharmacies, oil, hotels, telecoms and more. The geographic spread alone makes Asia's richest man stand out among the region's tycoons, who tend not to venture farther than neighbouring markets. Even Jardine Matheson, his most storied rival, has mostly restricted itself to Asia after ill-fated ventures into the UK and the US in the 1980s and 1990s.
Li's reputation is as a bargain-seeking buccaneer — indeed, in the past 20 years alone, he has bought and sold assets worth about seven times those traded by Jardine. His biggest bargain may have been the acquisition of Hutchison in 1979 from HSBC for a knockdown price reportedly well below book value. In one swoop, that acquisition expanded his interests beyond the property portfolio that is the bedrock of most Asian fortunes.
But behind the wheeler-dealer façade is a businessman who favours protected profits and legal certainty, neither of which are exactly swashbuckling traits. Most of his operations are based in countries with strong legal traditions to limit risk. Many are also utilities or are utility-like in that they have high barriers to entry that protect profits and increase certainty. That even includes his Hong Kong property interests, a sector still dominated by a handful of tycoons, and even his local supermarkets in the city that operate in a near-total duopoly with those of Jardines.
Li can also play the long game. Hutchison's foray into European 3G mobile telecoms in the early 2000s was viewed for years outside the company as a cash-draining disaster. But more recently it has begun to deliver profits — and has emboldened the company to consider buying UK operator O2 from Telefónica for $15bn.
In Hong Kong Li has often been dubbed "Superman" by the press, helped by his beginnings in poverty — he assumed responsibility for his family aged 15, three years after fleeing the mainland. He may not be superhuman, but the scale and range of his businesses clearly sets him apart from others of his generation.
Alfred Nobel
He was the founder of the world's most prestigious award for peace — and someone known as a "merchant of death" for inventing dynamite, writes Peter Marsh. Few have left such a legacy of contrasts as the Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, who before he died assigned the majority of his vast wealth to establish the Nobel Prizes.
Born in 1833 in Stockholm, Nobel studied chemical engineering in the US. He learnt enough about nitroglycerine, a volatile liquid known for its explosive properties, to work out how to turn it into a reasonably safe compound. In 1867, after mixing nitroglycerine with other substances to make a paste, Nobel patented this invention as "dynamite," from the Greek dunamis, or power, and built factories in Hamburg and Stockholm, and later New York and California. Dynamite revolutionised the mining, construction and demolition industries. Railroad companies could now safety blast through mountains, opening up vast areas to exploration and commerce. As a result, Nobel — who was responsible for 355 patents and set up companies and laboratories in more than 20 countries — grew hugely wealthy.
But his name became controversial after many accidents in the use of his product, including an 1864 explosion at the factory in Stockholm that killed Nobel's younger brother Emil. Undeterred, military authorities soon began experimenting with the compound for use in weaponry.
In an obituary printed erroneously in 1888, eight years before his death, Nobel was described as a man "who became rich by finding ways to kill more people faster than ever before". The writer was perhaps looking ahead too far because at that time the use of dynamite had not become established in conflicts: it was not until the first world war that it really took off as a tool of destruction.
Understandably stung, Nobel was determined to leave behind something other than a set of formulas for blowing things and people to pieces. His will provided for sufficient funds to establish a set of prizes that for more than a century have been celebrating the achievements of people in physics, chemistry, medicine, literature and economics, and for work in peace.
Nobel's name also lives on in Akzo Nobel, a Dutch company that is one of the world's biggest makers of paint and evolved partly from a business he started in 1895. Elements of his work linked to warfare can be glimpsed in several companies — among them RUAG, a Swiss munitions maker, and Dynamit Nobel Defence, a German producer of tank armour — whose origins can be traced to some of Nobel's early business ventures.
Cecil Rhodes
It is hard to think of anyone who has served as chairman of one of the world's best-known companies and has been more vilified than Cecil Rhodes, writes Peter Marsh. The British imperialist and mining entrepreneur was the founding chairman in 1888 of De Beers, the South Africa-based diamond business, now owned by Anglo American, and which since it started has been bracketed with opulence and power.
Rhodes also possessed views that few other than members of neo-Nazi organisations would now want to be associated with. In June 1877, after he became a Freemason while at Oxford university, he wrote: "It is our duty to seize every opportunity of acquiring more territory. More territory simply means more of the Anglo-Saxon race, more of the best, the most human, most honourable race the world possesses.
"The absorption of the greater portion of the world under our rule simply means the end of all wars."
Rhodes is widely regarded as one of the prime forces leading to the all-out 19th-century "scramble for Africa" led by the UK and other European countries. As a result, he has been blamed by many for policies that consigned millions of Africans to lives of poverty and abuse.
The son of a vicar, Rhodes had become interested in South Africa's mineral wealth after arriving in the country in 1870 with £3,000 from his aunt to invest in business ventures. He teamed up with others to form the goldminer Gold Fields of South Africa (now Gold Fields).
But Rhodes always appeared to be more interested in politics — in particular, imposing UK-centred rule on as much of Africa as he could target — than in operating businesses.
With the help of a fortune gained from his mining operations, in 1890 he was appointed prime minister of Cape Colony, a region established by the British and later subsumed into the new country of South Africa.
One of his most cherished ambitions was to create a railway along a continuous pink strip of land from Cape Colony to Cairo.
Closer to home, he introduced laws that would benefit mine and industry owners, at the expense of local people. The police force of the British South Africa Company — an administrative operation under Rhodes' control — moved into lands north of South Africa to form what became Southern and Northern Rhodesia, named in his honour. Today, these are Zimbabwe and Zambia.
The political legacy of Rhodes has not lasted nearly as well as the businesses he founded. But in his will, Rhodes left behind enough money to fund the Rhodes scholarships, which are used to tutor future world leaders in traits of "excellence in intellect, character, leadership, and commitment to service". The assistance programme for students counts former US president Bill Clinton among its alumni.
Alfred P Sloan
He trained as an electrical engineer and started in business devising roller bearings, writes Robert Wright. But Alfred P Sloan's genius was nothing to do with the underlying technology of the automotive industry, which he transformed in the years after the first world war.
He was, instead, one of the first great geniuses of American management. His Organization Study, a report produced in 1919, provided the blueprint for the modern corporation, leaving individual divisions' entrepreneurial energy undimmed but allowing the central corporation to maintain control.
At a time when Ford was focused primarily on making a single vehicle — the Model T — ever more cheaply and efficiently, the Organization Study propelled General Motors towards the brand strategy most carmakers still pursue.
GM's range, from the mass-market Chevrolet to the exclusive Cadillac, was meant to offer consumers options that would ensure they stuck with GM as their tastes and priorities changed over a lifetime.
Sloan also, just as importantly, recognised that cars could be fashion statements. While Henry Ford was trying to build vehicles that would last in perpetuity, Sloan developed vehicles he knew would wear out in time. He introduced annual design changes to encourage sales.
It is perhaps easy to forget in the wake of GM's Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2009 and subsequent scandals over some vehicles' unsafe ignition switches, that GM was the most admired company of its time. It seized market share from a once-dominant Ford and became the world's most valuable company by every measure.
Much of Sloan's thinking was developed in reaction to the chaos Sloan was horrified to discover in 1916 after Hyatt Roller Bearing, a parts supplier that he had been running, was bought by United Motors, an arm of General Motors.
GM's head then was William Durant, the company's brilliant founder, who managed GM on the gut instinct that guided many executives in the early car industry.
"Durant was a great man with a great weakness — he could create but not administer," Sloan wrote later.
Sloan sought for the first time to measure every metric affecting the company, from component costs to consumer opinions of its products.
He consistently sought to subordinate his own personality to that of the corporation he helped to shape.
He was, however — according to surviving accounts of his personality — clipped, careful, cautious, correct and calculating in his behaviour. Perhaps the greatest tribute to Sloan is that it is his thinking, rather than the freewheeling style of Durant, that continues to shape corporations in the US and elsewhere.
Ratan Tata
Ratan Tata began his career in 1961 shovelling limestone and handling the blast furnace at the Tata Steel factory in Jamshedpur, writes Peggy Hollinger. But by the time he retired 51 years later, he had created an industrial conglomerate with more than 100 companies spanning 80 countries.
Tata was never destined to stay on the shop floor, given his family name. But friends say he did not lose his appreciation of the factory that those early experiences left with him.
Almost as soon as he took over from his uncle JRD Tata as head of the Tata Group in 1991, he set about taking advantage of the economic reforms sweeping India to shake up and expand a sleepy group.
He pulled out of cement, textiles and cosmetics to focus on software, telecommunications, finance and retail. At the same time, he wanted to expand internationally and chose industrial and manufacturing companies to take him into the UK with the purchase of Tetley Tea in 2000, and into Europe with the acquisition of Corus — now Tata Steel — in 2007. But it was the purchase of Jaguar Land Rover in 2008 that made Tata's reputation as a global industrialist.
When Tata Group bought the British carmaker, few would have bet on its chances of success. The company had cost its previous owner, Ford, billions of dollars over eight years and failed to deliver the necessary profitability. But Tata — at the time a manufacturer of low-priced cars and vans in India — invested heavily in updating JLR's facilities to produce top-of-the-range cars, and now even the group's once troublesome unions are generous in their praise.
On a recent visit to JLR's Halewood plant in Merseyside, Frances O'Grady, general secretary of the Trades Union Congress, held up JLR as an exemplary employer that invested in its workforce even as it sought greater productivity through automation.
The turnround at JLR has not only confirmed Tata's reputation as one of the best industrialists of his generation, but has also helped to buoy the British economy, as the UK is now exporting more cars than ever before.
Eiji Toyoda and Taiichi Ohno
Eiji Toyoda was a pioneer in many ways: in rebuilding Japan after the second world war, turning Toyota into one of the first truly global Japanese companies, and fathering the luxury Lexus marque, writes Robert Harding. But what changed the world of business was his creation, with renowned engineer Taiichi Ohno, of the Toyota Production System.
The system encompasses a host of practices, from just-in-time manufacturing to the use of kaizen, or continuous improvement, all aimed at eliminating waste from the process. The TPS — and less consistently the principles underlying it — have been copied and adapted all over the world.
Toyoda and Ohno formed a particular kind of business double act. Toyoda was the visionary chief executive, willing to take bold bets on new models and overseas factories, but also to instil the remarkable culture that explains why the TPS never works quite as well for others as it does at Toyota. Ohno, meanwhile, was the relentless, focused engineer who turned the ideas and principles of the Toyoda family into a systematic method for eliminating waste and constantly driving up productivity in the company's factories.
The origins of the TPS lie in a 1938 experiment by the founder of Toyota Motor, Kiichiro Toyoda, who created a flow-based system based on keeping the production line running smoothly rather than at the maximum speed.
"With our new system, making too much of anything was against the rules, and so was making too little of anything. But it was a flexible system. If you had done everything you were supposed to do, you could go home," Eiji Toyoda would later recall according to The Birth of Lean, a book of interviews with Toyota managers. After the war, Japanese industry was on its knees, and seemed likely to stay that way given the vast scale advantage enjoyed by its US rivals. "The Toyota production system evolved out of need," said Ohno. "Certain restrictions in the marketplace required the production of small quantities of many varieties under conditions of low demand."
In the years ahead, the vision and drive of Toyoda and Ohno would help Toyota surpass those competitors.
Jack Welch
Famed for a hard-driving, straight-talking, "can-do" approach, Jack Welch stands out as one of the most successful industry managers of the past half-century, writes Peter Marsh. From an unprepossessing background, Welch ran as chief executive the sprawling operations of General Electric, the US conglomerate, for 20 years from 1981.
Welch made the company leaner and more profitable and instituted a set of business principles, based around sticking to a narrow series of core objectives, that have won him admirers in many sectors.
Welch advocated striving incessantly to make customers happy, as well as being fair to company workers. But he said that treating workers according to their merits, even if this meant sacking them, was always preferable to allowing the underperforming employees of a company to stick around when this meant reducing the chances of success for the business as a whole. This reputation for ruthlessness earned Welch, for much of his GE tenure, the epitaph "Neutron Jack", after the neutron bomb with its ability to wipe out people while leaving buildings and equipment largely untouched.
After retiring from GE — whose market capitalisation and income increased 30-fold and 10-fold respectively during his tenure — Welch has forged a new career in teaching, setting up the Jack Welch Management Institute near Washington DC. The institution, in which Welch has a leading role in engaging with students, organises online MBA courses and other facets of executive training.
But the 79-year-old has done his best to signal that his embrace of the apparently softer elements of management has not removed the rougher edges of his outlook. He scoffs at the fashionable idea of younger employees having mentors to guide them through tough periods. "Whatever you do in your career, never get a mentor, because your mentor can turn out a turkey," he told an interviewer.
Welch was fortunate that for much of the time he held sway at GE the world economy was in a relatively benign phase. After he stepped down, managing big global corporations became a lot more complex. Welch never had to cope with the rise of China as a new economic powerhouse, the 2008–09 financial implosion and the concerns about a potential break-up of the EU.
Even though it has sometimes been hard to separate out how much of Welch's influence is down to talent and acuity as opposed to chutzpah and self-promotion, there is no denying his legacy has lived on for longer than that of most other comparable company bosses.
Get alerts on Online MBA when a new story is published


text:
Multiples of this, multiples of that, I collect multiples.
This collection started with just one little piece. Now every time I see this pattern at a thrift store, garage sale or the White Elephant Sale, I have to "save" it and bring it home. It isn't a fancy or even a rare pattern. I think that it might even be a simple Asian restaurant pattern. But I like it, I have "saved" a few and it make me smile.
I stacked the little tea cups in the bowls like I have seen in restaurants.
The many sided tin on the left, my mom gave me. It was black and sticky with grime. I think an old man kept his "tabacca" in it. Now that I have gotten all the grime off it, it is pretty.
So, from time to time, I will show you some of my other multiples. I bet you can't guess what they are! Don't think usual, they aren't dolls, teaspoons, coins...
Thanks for listening.


text:
Teachers Pay Teachers is a great website for collecting resources. Recently, I have started my own TPT account. I LOVE creating resources that school counselors and other educators can use to help kids. Check out my site...
Wonderful Website
Your comment will be posted after it is approved.
Leave a Reply.


text:
Trenton-Mercer Airport - Volunteers from the New Jersey Wing of the Civil Air Patrol (CAP) conducted air and ground searches in Central New Jersey on Saturday August 21st at the request of several government authorities. Beginning at 8 am the exercise scenario involved US Air Force trainer overview of CAP responses to multiple missions requiring assistance to FEMA, AFRCC, DEA, NJ State Police, the Boy Scouts of America and other federal, state and local organizations. This was the third major CAP training exercise held between July and August dwelling on hurricane disaster, aircraft crash and lost person operations.
The searches were coordinated from a mission base located at the general aviation area of Trenton-Mercer Airport. New Jersey Wing also provided air search support to the Pennsylvania Wing mission base located at Fort Indiantown Gap.
Ground team leaders searching for lost scout group in Washington Crossing State Park confer on initial search pattern. Target was a real group of seven cub scouts and their den leader. After two sweeps of the park the scouts were found. (L-R) Captain Patrick D. Rutherford of Manalapan, Cadet Chief Master Sergeant Raymond Witkowski of Jackson, 1st Lt. David I. Lee of Allentown, and 1st Lt. Gene Murray of Brick.
Approximately 40 members of the NJ Wing were involved including multiple-pilot-observer crews flying single-engine recon aircraft throughout the two states and adult officer-directed teen cadet search and rescue crews conducting ground operations.
Aerial recon missions included identification of a potential terrorist activity against a major transportation center in the Raritan River Valley area, locating a downed aircraft somewhere on a flight path between NJ and PA, and aerial and ground missions to find a group of seven lost cub scouts in Washington Crossing State Park. All mission tasks were completed successfully.
The NJ photo recon aircrews took high resolution images and transmitted them to the Trenton-Mercer emergency management team for evaluation. The New Jersey CAP Incident Commanders were Lt. Col. Steve Tracy, a Jackson resident and Lt. Eric Allen Cohen, a Asbury Park resident as IC in training. Senior USAF trainer-evaluator was Lt. Col. Tom Dey, a resident of Carteret.
After 9-11 and Hurricane Katrina, communication breakdowns and interoperability problems were identified as critical areas for all government agencies. The US Air Force trainers were particularly interested in honing New Jersey CAP search and rescue capabilities to meet simultaneous interstate and local mission challenges.
Civil Air Patrol, the official auxiliary of the U.S. Air Force, is a nonprofit organization with 57,000 members nationwide. CAP performs 90 percent of continental U.S. inland search and rescue missions as tasked by the Air Force Rescue Coordination Center (AFRCC) and was credited with saving over 100 lives in fiscal year 2009.Over 1800 members volunteered 8000 hours of their time during Hurricane Katrina disaster relief operations Its volunteers also perform homeland security, disaster relief and counterdrug missions at the request of federal, state and local agencies. The members play a leading role in aerospace education and serve as mentors to more than 22,000 young people currently participating in CAP cadet programs. CAP has been performing missions for America since 1941.
There are more than 1200 members of CAP in New Jersey. For information about the New Jersey Wing visit http://www.njwg.cap.org.


text:
Friends of Wüsthof: Callie-Anne Gavazzi
Callie-Anne Gavazzi has taken a childhood passion for tasty, local food to a global audience with her show Callie-Anne Cooks: Into The Wild, broadcast in Asia, Cyprus, Malta, the Middle East and Africa on ITV Choice.
Mixing an adventurous spirit, infectious enthusiasm and a can-do attitude, Callie-Anne takes viewers into unexplored corners of the continent, delivering some surprising foodie experiences along the way – from crocodile egg pizza to bush-baked garlic bread.
Her earliest foodie memory is sitting with her Dad, Simon, and eating oysters as he shucked them straight off the rocks in Mozambique. "I think I fell in love with food then, and I didn't even know it yet," she says. A stint in London opened her eyes to international flavours, but a return home to manage a family bush lodge in Mozambique really kick-started her culinary journey. "I was always obsessed with eating out – be it at food markets, restaurants or pubs," she says. "I guess when I got to Mozambique, the passion became a career path".
A stint on MasterChef South Africa, where she made it to the Top 25, gave her the hunger to succeed in the culinary world. "I was so determined to carry out my dream, so much so that I fought for it - until I finally got my own TV show," she says. "I feel as though it gave me the drive I needed to reach my dreams. And it just proves, if you want it badly enough, you will get it".
While much of her cooking on the show is done over flames or in improvised bush ovens, Callie-Anne says her one kitchen essential is her Wüsthof Classic Ikon Chef's Knife. "I love using it with everything - even the things you don't need to use it for, yup, I use it," she says. "It's my favourite and it makes me feel super confident in the kitchen". When she's on the road, her knives travel along with her in a case. "I don't let anyone else use or wash my knives – if I do it myself, I know they'll always be in perfect condition, and safe". Her slickest knife skills – she says, modestly - are being able to fillet a fish, debone a chicken and take a sirloin off the bone, cleanly and in a heartbeat. "You can't do that with dull knives, so keeping them sharp is really important – you can damage a knife if you use it while its dull," she says.
Her foodie hero is Jamie Oliver, because of the way he's passionate about creating food that's relatable. "He cooks food for all the right reasons – food we can all create, food that's sustainable and balanced," she says. "I aspire to be like him in my own way - making a difference and inspiring other people with what I have to share, from my own food journey!" Given the tough choice of planning a hypothetical 3-course menu for her idol, she puts her faith firmly in simple, African-inspired food. Her chosen starter would be fresh and spicy Cahora Bassa bream cakes, topped with homemade aioli. For main, a homemade tagliatelle pasta, in a marinara-meets-oxtail ragout and to finish, her wicked African-inspired Tiramisu, made with Amarula cream.
With simplicity at the heart of all Callie-Anne's cooking, it's no surprise she thinks that the most common mistake amateur cooks make in the kitchen is overthinking things. "Cooking is about instinct. You must feel confident with your way, with your style and with your methods," she says. "It's all about the way the food tastes at the end of the day - and if it tastes good, how you got there is irrelevant! 'Cook with confidence', that's my motto".
In terms of foodie trends, Callie-Anne names anchovies as one of the most underrated ingredients any cook can use. "I don't think people realise what a difference anchovies can make to a dish," she says. "The love I have for an anchovy in all my cooking is crazy. It imparts such great flavor. I think it's the fear of anchovies, not the actual taste, that stops people from using them – but they are so versatile and I am totally obsessed!" As for overrated trends, she can't wait to see the back of the Smoothie Bowl. "I can't think of anything worse than eating food in a soup form - when it's not soup," she says. "Smoothies are smoothies for a reason and are to be sipped out of a straw like a milkshake! There are better ways to eat healthy…"
For more about Callie-Anne and her foodie adventures, visit www.callieannecooks.com or follow her on Twitter and Instagram @callieannecooks. Words by Trevor Crighton


text:
Since the dawn of time us humans have sought after clear, hairless skin. Whether for aesthetic purposes or necessity for cleanliness, we have always set a societal ideal for pure and smooth skin, free of hair and other imperfections.
Looking back on the art and statues of days gone by, you can easily see this perfect image of humanity perpetrated everywhere, from paintings and marble statues to even in literature. That has not changed as of late, as we have sought to perfect and advance methods of hair removal for ourselves for generations.
Body hair removal techniques have varied across the eras of human invention. The most common methods have included hot wax that bonds to the hairs and rips them out, and using a blade to shave the hairs so tiny they aren't noticeable.
While these methods have lasted throughout the years as reliable, affordable and easy to do, they do come with their own share of dangers.
For one, traditional wax may seem the best because it pulls the hair out at the root, but the wax can easily burn your skin if not done properly, and also the harsh pulling can cause your hair to break, causing problems with the hair growing back.
How Body Sugaring Is The Best Hair Removal Method
If you look back at the ancient Egyptians, body sugaring is obviously the way to go. Body sugaring combines lemon juice, water, and obviously sugar to make a simple wax that you use like your average hair removal wax.
You heat it up to the required temperature, smooth it on, and peel off like normal. But the differences in the experience are truly staggering, as we will detail for you below.
First off, you don't need to heat it up that high for it to be a good, smooth wax. Unlike traditional wax that needs to be heated extremely hot to stop being solid, with sugaring wax it only needs to be around body temperature. This means that neither you or the person doing your sugaring will be hurt in the process.
Secondly, when it pulls off of you, it hurts a lot less than waxing does, feeling more like a small pinch rather than a painful rip of your skin.
It also does hardly any damage to your skin, and has the least potential for broken hairs out of any of the waxing processes around the world, as the wax is more gentle and bonds more easily to the hairs, lifting them completely out without breaking them in the process.
And lastly, one of the major problems with waxing is if you accidentally leave stuff on, it can be hard and painful to get the wax off of you. With body sugaring you can fear no more as all you need to get the solution off of you is some warm water and a gentle scrub.
So if you're interested in body sugaring services for men and women, be sure to give us a call or click today for more information and we can set you up with an appointment.


text:
2018 Show Report
Following another successful edition of Securexpo East Africa, we've put together a short summary of the results...
The 3rd edition of East Africa's leading exhibition and conference for security, fire and safety, Securexpo East Africa, welcomed 2,008 attendees from 23 countries and 80 top security brands. Based in Nairobi, Securexpo East Africa, this year reported another successful edition with a 28% increase in attendees from 2015 over the three days (31 January – 2 February 2018).
Visitors came from all over Africa with 23 countries represented. Kenya made up the majority of the show's audience, with other notable countries present being; Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, Somalia and DRC.
With over 80 brands on display, visitors saw technical demonstrations and live equipment from companies such as Ambient System, Axxon Soft, Bristol Fire, Centurion Systems, Connectel Inc, Dahua, Hikvision, Hytera Communications, Idemia, Matrix and Smartworld. The exhibitor results from the exhibition appear to be extremely good with over 50% of the exhibition signing up for the next event.
You can read the FULL post-show report press release here.
Get the full Postshow Report
Download the full post-show report for Securexpo East Africa 2018 via the link below...DOWNLOAD THE FULL REPORT HERE


text:
Wearable graphene sensor for detecting and preventing diabetic foot ulcers
Linh Le and Malcolm Nason want to help people with diabetes prevent the foot problems so common in the disease. They're developing wearable sensors that monitor foot temperature and alert patients at risk for hard-to-treat ulcers.
"People with diabetes develop problems with their vascular system, and lose the ability to regulate the temperature of their feet," Nason says. "The feet start to retain heat, which is really bad for tissues. Because diabetes also damages the nerves of the feet, patients don't know they're developing blisters or other injuries."
Nason and Le founded their company, Bonbouton, to develop smart clothes that monitor body temperature, breathing, heart rate, muscle movements, and more. They incorporate unobtrusive, ultra-thin sensors created from the nanomaterial graphene, using graphene oxide printing technology Le refined as a doctoral student.
Smart clothes could prove valuable in athletic training, military outfitting, or medical monitoring. Initially, the Bonbouton team has focused on the latter, drawing on Nason's background in the neurobiology of thermoregulation.
Like so many startup stories, theirs began at a networking event. Le knew the CEO of the company Nason was working for, and struck up a conversation. The pair reconnected once Le started researching potential directions for wearable technology.
The resulting marriage of materials and medical applications earned Bonbouton a spot in the Digital Health Breakthrough Network's spring 2017 class, a unique opportunity to evaluate the company's diabetes-monitoring concept.
"This would be extremely difficult to do on our own," Le says. "We've developed relationships with a few podiatrists, but getting access to institutional review boards and running a trial would be a challenge."
"HITLAB has the structure and connections," Nason adds. "Their help might save us two years and a quarter million dollars or more."
Both founders pursued academic paths before becoming digital health entrepreneurs. They say New York City is the perfect place for people like them.
"The health care systems on the east and west coasts are very different," Le says. "I think there's just more opportunity to engage here."
Nason agrees. "Your can go to a pitch competition every night of the week," he says. "There's a lot of interest, talent, and energy looking for something to stick to, and New York is working to make that happen."