Satellites controlling irrigation just oneidea for Alexandra-based space centre
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Shed serves up lessons on value of wool
Minister to travel to Cuba and Colombia
Public hearings begin for $1.8bn Auckland road
Team New Zealand's private benefactors help keep the America's Cup campaign afloat
Tory Channel Ltd deliver top-of-the range patrol vessel to Nelson fishery officers
A skilled workforce for Canterbury
Targeted approach wanted for water
More cautious Rio Tinto's outlook uncertain
Calls to electronically track building products
With Challenger and Defender intently going over their America's Cup campaigns and trying to evaluate the other's performances, there is a fair chance that they'll be looking at the latest content from a new 3D Video application which takes them aboard their rival's AC50 - sitting in the 'shotgun seat' wrote richard Gladwell earlier this week in sailingworld.com.
Earlier in the 35th America's Cup Regatta, Race Director Iain Murray confirmed that the teams would have full access to a suite of performance data from their competitors.
That is expected to include content that Oracle Team USA and Emirates Team New Zealand have recorded from an onboard camera stack to gather content for a new 3D Video viewing experience.
The application is the latest development from New Zealand-based Animation Research Limited or ARL who first made their mark 25 years ago with real-time graphic animation in the 1992 America's Cup in San Diego.
That product, now Virtual Eye, while originally designed for the TV broadcast has been extended into a multitude of platforms and devices from mobile phones to PC's smart TV's. ARL have used their market leader position to dominate the sports animation space - covering everything from gliding to cricket, motor racing and golf, as well as sailing.
Continue to the full article on sailingworld.com || June 22, 2017 |||
C-Tech began life in 1997 as a small back yard operation in co-founder Alex Valling’s shed writes Chris Kitchen for Sailworld.com
Fast forward 20 years and C-Tech has a lot to celebrate. Their composite technicians have produced over 50,000 custom designed carbon spars, and they’ve had a successful partnership with Emirates Team New Zealand for five consecutive America’s Cup campaigns.
C-Tech and Emirates Team New Zealand first worked together during their 2003 campaign to supply sail battens. Despite radical changes in America’s Cup classes, 15 years later C-Tech continues to supply wing components, rudders, dagger board cases, dagger board tips, fairings, lifting posts, accumulator tubes, struts, prods and ‘bike components’ for their 2017 challenge. C-Tech has also supplied most of the other America’s Cup teams with their prods and a number of compression struts.
Emirates Team New Zealand’s 2017 challenge has been one of the most dramatic in their history with C-Tech.
Days before America’s cup qualifying was due to start Emirates Team New Zealand damaged a rudder. C-Tech got the call to build an emergency replacement. The C-Tech crew pulled together and rostered a 24 hour shift to get two weeks work completed in five days.
Two weeks later just hours after Emirates Team New Zealand’s capsize on the Great Sound during qualifying meant another phone call to the C-Tech team. Within hours the emergency order order of fairings and struts were being built. They were completed and shipped to Bermuda in record time.
Continue to the full article here on sailingworld.com || June 24, 2017 |||
Sinister frenzy flourishes due to the failure of ruling classes, ecclesiastics, politicians, educators to purge it ---- Establishment now powerless and swept along helplessly with the vengeful and resentful mob
Gordon Strong is Britain’s leading commentator on Arthurian legend and mythology. He routinely lectures on the subject in the United States and Australasia and was recently the subject of a National Geographic Discovery series. Mr Strong, who lives near Glastonbury, is also an authority on the way in which the atavistic characteristics popularly supposed to exist only in ancient myth and superstition exist today and occur all around us now but in a different form and under a different description. His particular area of applied study is in recurring mass hysteria and its causes and effects. He is the author of the just-published book Consciousness & Imagination in which he reveals the reasons founded in timeless superstition that underpin so many eerie events today. Gordon Strong (pictured) now answers Five Questions on Britain’s current bout of moral frenzy
If we look at these developments in terms of a witch hunt, then this one has been running for longer than most?
The most famous of these in relatively modern times was, of course, the events surrounding the Witches of Salem and this is worthy of note because the state governor simply put an end to the affair by decree. Now and in in this current outbreak we find that no establishment representative can come forward and say, in effect “so far- and no further,” simply because the establishment has been so closely identified with this incendiary issue and its continuation. The BBC is one such entity. It cannot take up a moderating role just because it is so closely identified with the outbreak in the case of the broadcasting entertainer Jimmy Savile. This of course then became compounded as the BBC drew in Sir Cliff Richard. Whether the BBC chairman could have been relied upon for any impartial view is a matter for conjecture. It is almost impossible to identify any inherent bias in the Corporation as the stance of the BBC continually alters, and almost arbitrarily so.
This outbreak has been an equal opportunity one with the highest in the land having been encompassed in its compounding hysteria?
Mass opinion, ‘the voice of the people,’ is always dangerous, and is so often hysterical. The once valued notion of common sense has disappeared from much of society. Being misinformed and ill-educated, few have the wit to act independently. We live in a society where the party line is upheld as the only view. This outbreak, it is true, has been remarkable for its duration and the way in which it has encompassed the entire nation and its spectrum from entertainers, through to politicians, and military leaders. That fact makes this current one so interesting from the point of view of students of myth and folklore and of course witchcraft. Let me give you an example of such an outbreak and a very recent one. It was in New Zealand in the form of the one in Christchurch which is outlined with such clarity in Lynley Hood’s work “A City Possessed.” This outbreak in terms of duration had a beginning, middle, and an end, and focussed on a clear cut situation centred on child care. It was though contained within Christchurch and did not engulf the whole nation. The fervour duration was limited to a comparatively short space of time
It is often stated by researchers such as yourself that these outbreaks in history occurred in response to some natural disaster such as a pestilence or a famine?
The nature of the God of the Old Testament as a ‘jealous’ deity may be relevant here. The desire to punish the wrongdoer is aligned to another contemporary manifestation, the blame culture. In this instance, the high profile and celebrity status of so many of those swept up in the current outbreak gives its own clue. There is an overwhelming notion that those who have received society’s greatest reward, in terms of power and appreciation, have somehow deceived them. The notion that these so-called celebrities were and are imposters, in other words. This impression has been fanned by the popular media which profits mightily from this kind of thing, even though, as we have just noted, it causes the problem in the first place by presenting the public with these false gods. That they have become fallen idols seems now almost inevitable.
So you see the British current hysteria as a modern outbreak of what has been going on since mediaeval times?
It is what has been going on since the beginning of recorded history. Something goes drastically wrong. It is only the form that changes. The implied thesis is that someone must pay the price. In the instance of the current United Kingdom outbreak one senses that politicians and their fellow media inspired celebrities have somehow reneged on their promise to make Britain a better place. People are being told that they have never had it so good. But one does not have to be a seer to comprehend that a vast proportion of the adult population is very disappointed about their lot in general. So in the gulf, the vacuum, in between what was promised either directly or implicitly and what has in fact come to pass is the need to topple these false prophets. Public figures are always vulnerable, and ironically their very prominence makes them an easy target for persecution.
Many people see the most sinister aspect of this current and sustained outbreak is that anyone can officially accuse anyone and the accused are tarred for life?
‘Operation Yewtree’, the code name for the operation to entrap the supposed wrongdoers was only partially successful. Of those arrested, only half of that number were eventually found guilty. In the light of that knowledge it all seems a questionable procedure. There was also a flagrant disregard of one of the most ancient of legal precepts, mentioned in Magna Carta. The adage referring to ‘presumption of innocence’ as well as ‘justice must not be delayed’ was ignored. This is the most chillingly atavistic element of the current situation and this does take us back to mediaeval times when this naming/shaming, as we would now call it, phenomenon began to be recorded in detail. Someone has a grudge against someone - so they are exposed. In the electronic era we have this multiplier. Some aggrieved person is able to identify someone they have never even met, but have somehow cultivated a deep antipathy toward what they represent. In former times an authority figure could, by virtue of the trust they embodied and thus the authority vested in them, call a halt to these outbreaks. But the current nominal repositories of such trust and confidence have become so diminished that they stay silent. The reason is that they know that the hysteria is beyond their control, and because they are fearful that by drawing attention to themselves they will somehow become embroiled also. I include in this category, ecclesiastics, politicians, educators, and in British terms, the ruling class.
More about Gordon Strong and his publications
| From the This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. || Saturday 24 June 2017 |||
Apple's iOS 11 update began trials this week, giving testers a look at a new feature designed to combat distracted drivers says a report by Newshub.
The 'Do Not Disturb While Driving' feature will mute iPhones and stop notifications from lighting up the screen whenever the user is driving. It will automatically activate whenever the phone connects to a car's Bluetooth, or if it detects the motion of a moving vehicle.
The feature, which can be disabled, can be personalised to automatically reply to text messages and notify people when users are on the road.
Navigation or music playback won't be affected.
"It's all about keeping your eyes on the road," Apple vice president of software engineering Craig Federighi explained when announcing the feature in June.
"When you're driving, you don't need to respond to these kind of messages. In fact, you don't need to see them."
In New Zealand, it is illegal to use a mobile while driving to call, text, read messages or communicate in any way. Doing so could result in an $80 fine and 20 demerit point loss.
Apple's iOS 11 update is expected to roll out to everybody sometime this month.
| A Newshub release || June 23, 2017 |||
An exclusive report in Packaging News reveals that UK supermarket icon, Sainsbury’s, is to undertake a “root and branch” review of its procurement processes for the sourcing of own-brand packaging.
The supermarket giant revealed to Packaging News that the initiative will evaluate the supply chain and identify a set of preferred suppliers meeting Sainsbury’s standards and specifications for quality, value and service.
Speaking exclusively to Packaging News, Chris Grobler, packaging commercial manager at Sainsbury’s, said: “Closing the loop between the best packaging suppliers, our Sainsbury’s brand suppliers and ourselves will create a strategic, efficient and cost-effective way to procure our packaging going forward.”
With public concerns about packaging and food waste in the UK, Grobler said the retailer decided it was a good opportunity to look at packaging with a value chain approach.
He said Sainsbury’s was “casting its net wide” to make sure it understood the packaging supply market and work more closely with packaging suppliers that meet its criteria.
Continue here to read the full release || June 23, 2017 |||
American Airlines is none too happy about Qatar Airways’ offer to buy a stake in the business, saying it was “unsolicited”.
According to Sky News, Qatar CEO Akbar Al-Baker told American CEO Doug Parker that he wants to acquire about 10 per cent of the airline’s stock, which would cost about $US2.4 billion ($AU3.2 billion).
Qatar said it plans to buy an initial stake of up to 4.75 per cent of American’s stock, before expanding to the full 10.
But Parker was not enthused with the gesture, and expressed this in a memo to staff.
“We aren’t particularly excited about Qatar’s outreach,” the CEO wrote.
“If anything, this development strengthens our resolve to ensure the US government enforces its trade agreements regarding fair competition with Gulf carriers,”
US carriers and Gulf carriers have been notoriously embroiled in a battle for years, with the Big Three US carriers – Delta, American and United – claiming the Gulf carriers of Qatar, Emirates and Etihad receive billions of dollars in unfair state subsidies from the government, which the Gulf carriers deny.
American, along with Delta and United, has pressured the US government to curb US flights by Gulf carriers, including Qatar, in the past, making this gesture from Qatar Airways rather surprising.
Qatar is in its own battle right now with neighbouring states as well as Etihad and Emirates, with Qatar travel banned in countries such as Saudi Arabia, UAE and Bahrain. The slim piece of airspace Qatar has left has impinged on its ability to fly its usual routes, however the carrier has fought back and launched a bunch of new destinations and a cheeky border-themed ad.
According to Sky News, Al-Baker and Parker met in secret in early June at an airline-industry conference in the Mexican resort town of Cancun.
Al-Baker is also known for making bold moves like this, having also bought into other airlines, including the parent of British Airways, a close partner of American Airlines.
According to Reuters, in his letter, American CEO Parker promised to continue American’s “full court press ... to stand up to companies that are illegally subsidized by their governments.”
He also said he found Qatar Airways’ proposed investment “puzzling given our extremely public stance on the illegal subsidies that Qatar, Emirates and Etihad have all received over the years from their governments.”
Qatar Airways responded on Twitter, saying, “We are glad to see American Airlines’ CEO Doug Parker’s perspective that he agrees with Qatar Airways’ belief that American Airlines is a solid financial investment.”
Meanwhile, Qatar Airways is one of the airlines targeted by the US in the laptop ban, along with Gulf rivals Emirates and Etihad, that prevents passengers bringing their laptops and large electronic devices onboard flights, citing security risks.
| A Travel Weekly release || June 23, 2017 |||
Palace of the Alhambra, Spain
By: Charles Nathaniel Worsley (1862-1923)
From the collection of Sir Heaton Rhodes
Oil on canvas - 118cm x 162cm
Valued $12,000 - $18,000
Offers invited over $9,000
Contact: Henry Newrick – (+64 ) 27 471 2242
Mount Egmont with Lake
By: John Philemon Backhouse (1845-1908)
Oil on Sea Shell - 13cm x 14cm
Valued $2,000-$3,000
Offers invited over $1,500
Contact: Henry Newrick – (+64 ) 27 471 2242