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Media Objectivity in Canada: a Timeline of Social Events
November 30, 2007
Without an informed civil society there can be no robust conversations in a renewed democracy.
"(A) democracy cannot function unless the people are permitted to know what their government is up to (Commager, Henry Steele)."
Citations from Hackett and Zhao's useful publication (1998 ) entitled Sustaining Democracy? Journalism and the Politics of Objectivity 1
The regime of objectivity refers to an "ensemble of ideals, assumptions, practices and institutions" that is tied to concepts of democracy, public responsibility, public life and public good. There is an assumption that interest groups, social movements, politicians and the media operate under a regime of objectivity (Hackett and Zhao 1998:1).
Mass media has become the leading institution of that realm of social life called the public sphere, "where the exchange of information and views on questions of common concern can take place so that public opinion can be formed (Hackett and Zhao 1998:1)."
Liberal-democratic capitalist mode of governance is the dominant mode of governance in Canada. Quebec has a stronger history of advocacy and participant journalism (Hackett and Zhao 1998:12).
"These recent shifts in media ownership and policy might be seen as the equivalent of a non-violent coup d'etat, a metaphor evoking the inherent link between media power and state power — between the colonization of the popular imagination and the allocation of social resources through public policy and market relations. Communications scholar Herbert Schiller suggests that what is at stake is "packaged consciousness": the intensified appropriation of the national symbolic environment by a "few corporate juggernauts in the consciousness business."" (Hackett and Zhao 1998:5)
"The late French social theorists Michel Foucault, during the 1970s, wrote of "discursive regimes" — of how power is imbricated with knowledge, not by directly imposing censorship or coercion from outside, but indirectly and internally, through the criteria and practices that "govern" the production of statements (Hackett and Zhao 1998:6)"
"Scott Lash's concept of "regimes of significance" is composed of a cultural economy and a specific mode of signification. A cultural economy is comprised "of relations and institutions by which cultural objects are produced and consumed." Mode of signification is a "typical way by which cultural objects become meaningful to those use them." "Lash and other theorists make distinctions between discursive and figural, modernist and postmodernist, and cognitive and aesthetic ways of seeing and knowing (Hackett and Zhao 1998:6)."
Foucault collapses all truth claims into power, self-interest and the internal validity rules of particular discourses (Hackett and Zhao 1998:7)
Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms enshrined "freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication," subject to "such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society." Legal scholar Harry Glasbeek "predicted that the Charter's freedom of expression clause could be used "to defend individuals generally and the media in particular from state controls, but not individuals or their defender, the state, from private interests," thus helping the private press "to retain its sovereignty as a purveyor of information and opinion.47" In effect free speech is interpreted as a property right of corporate entities, not as a human right of individual citizens (Hackett and Zhao 1998:80). "Subsequent court rulings seem to bear out this prediction. Because freedom of the press includes the freedom to be biased, the print media (by contrast with broadcasting) are not legally required to be objective or balanced. Nevertheless, these concepts are often viewed as professionalistic criteria to be respected and relied upon in court decisions protecting media owners' property rights. Canadian or U.S. citizens have sometimes sought court-ordered access for their opinions or rebuttals in the pages of newspapers or magazines. The courts have consistently refused such a right of reply or access, citing the integrity and responsibility of journalists in producing "balanced" and "objective" reports. "
Market liberalism describes the right-wing movement that upholds a faith in the market mechanism. "It advocates minimum government, deregulation, privatization of public services, and more economic freedoms for the private sector. It espouses an extreme version of individualism. It displays hostility towards unions, collective bargaining, and the progressive social movements that struggle for economic and social rights for various disadvantaged groups. Market liberalism is also called neoliberal, neoconservative, and the new right. Preston Manning, Ralph Klein, Mike Harris and Newt Gingrich are champions of market liberalism. It is basically a revolt of the rich — the upper middle class — in a crusade against the poor. It is presented as a commonsense revolution. The shift towards market liberalism began in 1980 (Hackett and Zhao 1998:151).
Canadian press has media blind spots. This includes "…tax breaks for the wealthy, Canada's cosy trade-and-aid relations with regimes, such as Indonesia, that violate human rights and Canada's substantial participation in the international arm's trade, contrary to its self-image as a peacekeeper (Hackett and Zhao 1998:182)."
"In 1995, according to Project Censored, the U.S. press underplayed or ignored these stories, among others: the massive deregulation of telecommunications; $167 billion in annual subsidies to business, whose elimination could enable the U.S. government to balance its budget without slashing social programs; lax enforcement of U.S. child labour laws, resulting in thousands of injuries and even death of children in the workplace; $100 billion or more lost annually in medical fraud; ABC's cancellation of a hard-hitting documentary on the tobacco industry at the same time as a tobacco company filed a $10 billion libel suit against Capital Cities/ABC; the U.S. chemical industry's fight to prevent the banning of methyl bromide, a toxic zone-killing pesticide; the death through error or negligence of up to 180,000 patients in US hospitals each year (Hackett and Zhao 1998:182)."
1700s Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Thomas Paine were pioneers of social thought of the Enlightenment. Reason can control nature. All men have natural rights. Rousseau described nature as God's creation. Rousseau described nature as rational, benign and inherently harmonious.
1700s Thomas Jefferson was one of the early promoters of democracy.
1835 A jury acquitted editor/politician Joseph Howe accused of criticizing the authorities. The law of seditious libel was effectively struck down (Hackett and Zhao 1998:15).
1800s The press was both partisan and sectarian. It did not present the news with honesty or accuracy (Hackett and Zhao 1998:15).
1815 – 1836 The English working class used newspapers as a vital way of contributing to an unfolding class consciousness (Hackett and Zhao 1998:27).
1800s Independent penny press papers were published heralding the age of independent, non-partisan and socially responsible journalism. (Hackett 1998:16)
British Stamp Duty is a government tax on newspaper sales.
1800s The labour press began to publish. (Hackett and Zhao 1998:16) The labour press described a social landscape in which the rights to justice, equality and property of artisans, mechanics, trades people were impeded (Hackett and Zhao 1998:21).
1800s Utilitarianism advocated the goal of the greatest good of the greatest number instead of democracy based on natural rights and reason. Utilitarianism was better accepted by the ruling order, the middle class. They were concerned that democracy would lead to mob rule (Hackett and Zhao 1998:19) Utilitarianism and democracy are held in a long-standing tension in the United States.
1820s – 1830s Craft unions developed in some Canadian cities (Hackett and Zhao 1998:21).
1830s United States entrepreneurs launched daily newspapers in the 1830s. The popular commercial daily papers took full bloom in the 1870s (Hackett and Zhao 1998:24).
1850 – 1867 "Both the Leader and the Globe in their views of democracy expressed the central position of mid-Victorian liberalism. Both declared for a wide, popular electorate but still wanted a qualified franchise to recognize property and intelligence, and to prevent the rule of ignorance and mere numbers…. There was in this mid-century Canadian press little of the spirit of American Jeffersonian or Jacksonian democracy with their faith in the natural worth of the common man."
1850s – 1900 The trade union movement developed in Canada.
late 1800s The popular commercial daily papers emerged as the first version of journalistic objectivity (Hackett and Zhao 1998:18).
late 1800s Herbert Spencer's social Darwinism foreshadowed the competitive, exploitative laissez-faire market economy. (Hackett and Zhao 1998:18).
1872 The Ontario Workman was founded. The labour newspaper expressed Enlightenment sentiments: "Co-operation is a principal that has shone upon the world through the progress of intelligence, and that it will gradually grow with the intelligence of the masses we have no doubt. It, or some like system, will gradually supersede the serf system of the past(Hackett and Zhao 1998:21)."
1880s The US founded Knights of Labor was spreading across Canada (Hackett and Zhao 1998:28).
1891 T. P. Thompson was Canada's most prominent labour journalist. He was forced to close his newspaper when his readers turned to the commercial dailies. "It is much to be regretted that the wage earners are so stupidly blind to their own interests that they cannot see the advantage of having a live outspoken journal to plead their cause (Hackett and Zhao 1998:28)."
1917 The Russian Revolution
1920 Walter Lippman and Charles Merza accused The New York Times of reporting the Russian Revolution by "seeing not what was, but what men wished to see (Hackett and Zhao 1998:40)."
1930s Great Depression
1935 Leni Riefenstahl's documentary Triumph of the Will celebrated the Nazi Regime. It is the classic propaganda film.
1935 The American Newspaper Guild's code of ethics upheld the value of objectivity: "The newspapermen's first duty is to give the public accurate and unbiased news reports (Hackett and Zhao 1998:40)."
1937 Quebec's "authoritarian premier, Maurice Duplessis introduced the Padlock Act to shut down what it considered to be "Bolshevik or communistic" publications. The Supreme Court overturned the Padlock Act in 1957 (Hackett and Zhao 1998:79)."
1950s Alberta's Conservative Premier Ralph Klein described the 1950s as a Golden Age when Canadians "looked to the newspapers for their information, and … to governments for answers." Klein and many others were convinced that in the 1950s "The news simply reported on "reality," and political journalism treated politicians and authority figures with enough respect that they could communicate with their publics without worrying about the distorting lenses of the media (Hackett and Zhao 1998:136)." This cognitive certitude was pervasive. It existed in academia as well.
1958 The C.D. Howe Institute's origins go back to Montreal in 1958 when a group of prominent business and labour leaders organized the Private Planning Association of Canada (PPAC) to research and promote educational activities on issues related to public economic policy. Under the leadership of Robert M. Fowler, and with a small but dedicated staff, the PPAC soon became the Canadian co-sponsoring organization for the Canadian-American Committee (CAC), which had been established in 1957 to study and discuss the economic factors affecting the bilateral relationship between Canada and the United States.
1960s Conservative think tanks, business, politicians and media scholars describe the 1960s news media as left-liberal and anti-authority. A new breed of journalists was branded as adversarial, "gotcha", disruptive and cynical (Hackett and Zhao 1998:136).
1960 A French language CBC journalist complained that the CBC reporting was "objective to the point of being virginal (Hackett and Zhao 1998:39)."
1960s Third world national liberation struggle.
1970 Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau invoked the War Measures Act during the October Crisis. 450 activists, journalists and writers were arrested under suspicion of being sympathetic to the separatist movement (Hackett and Zhao 1998:79).
1970s "The Royal Canadian Mounted Police placed left-wing groups and periodicals under surveillance (Hackett and Zhao 1998:79)."
1970 "The Davey Commission sparks debate on media ownership vs. freedom of the press (CBC Radio 1970)."
1971 New York Times Co. v. United States Decided June 30, 1971.
"I can imagine no greater perversion of history. Madison and the other Framers of the First Amendment, able men [403 U.S. 713, 717] that they were, wrote in language they earnestly believed could never be misunderstood: "Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom . . . of the press . . . ." Both the history and language of the First Amendment support the view that the press must be left free to publish news, whatever the source, without censorship, injunctions, or prior restraints. In the First Amendment the Founding Fathers gave the free press the protection it must have to fulfill its essential role in our democracy. The press was to serve the governed, not the governors. The Government's power to censor the press was abolished so that the press would remain forever free to censure the Government. The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of government and inform the people. Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government. And paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people and sending them off to distant lands to die of foreign fevers and foreign shot and shell. In my view, far from deserving condemnation for their courageous reporting, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and other newspapers should be commended for serving the purpose that the Founding Fathers saw so clearly. In revealing the workings of government that led to the Vietnam war, the newspapers nobly did precisely that which the Founders hoped and trusted they would do."
1971 Ben Bagdikian predicted that "more independent channels of communication to each information corporation and into each home will end the homogenizing of news that now occurs because it must be prepared for such a wide spectrum of consumers" (Bagdikian 1971, 20).
1973 A bloody military coup, with U.S. connivance, overthrew Chile's elected Marxist president Salvador Allende…. The new military regime unleashed a reign of terror that saw thousands of Chileans arrested, tortured, murdered, and/or exiled. Political parties were banned, the press was censored, and freedoms of speech and assembly were restricted. The junta pursued decidedly free-enterprise economic policies, but it took sixteen years for some semblance of liberal democracy to be restored (Hackett and Zhao 1998:166)."
1974 The Fraser Institute was established. The Fraser Institute is a pro-business think tank and lobby group.
1978 The Business Council on National Issues was established. The Business Council on National Issues is a pro-business think tank and lobby group.
1980 Canada's competition law watchdog sparked a federal inquiry into a corporate takeover of two newspapers companies (Hackett and Zhao 1998:5).
1980 – 1981 The Tom Kent Royal Commission on Newspapers reported that "The great majority [of Canadians] believe that newspapers and the mass media in general, have responsibilities to the public different from those of other businesses." The mass media is expected to function in public interest, not just economic self-interest. (Hackett 1998:1) "It is those newspapers with a large advertising market to protect and with a readership all social classes of society that have taken the initiative of setting up existing press councils…. The various press councils established in Canada until now are seeking to perpetuate the social consensus which has ensured the success of the so-called omnibus newspapers …. Whose formula is specifically designed towards advertising led consumer patterns and whose basic unit is the traditional family (Hackett and Zhao 1998:92)."
1982 Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms enshrined "freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication," subject to "such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society." Legal scholar Harry Glasbeek "predicted that the Charter's freedom of expression clause could be used "to defend individuals generally and the media in particular from state controls, but not individuals or their defender, the state, from private interests," thus helping the private press "to retain its sovereignty as a purveyor of information and opinion." In effect free speech is interpreted as a property right of corporate entities, not as a human right of individual citizens. (Hackett and Zhao 1998:80).
1983 REAL Women organization was created.
1984 Brian Mulroney elected Prime Minister of Canada.
1984 Robert Hackett wrote an article in 1984 on the limitations of using objectivity and bias as evaluative standards for journalism. He worked with Newswatch Canada (then called Project Censored Canada) that covers blind spots in the media.
1988 Brian Mulroney elected Prime Minister of Canada.
1989 Yuezhi Zhao's 1989 MA thesis was on the discourse and politics of objectivity in North American journalism. Zhao grew up in a peasant family in rural China.
1992 Barry Mullin's column criticized his own paper, the Winnipeg Free Press, for its coverage of the Los Angeles riots. The continent's major news story was carried on the back pages while front page carried soft stories. Mullin had been an ombudsman for the Winnipeg Free Press. But the new Thomson appointed publisher disagreed with Mullin's level of independence (Hackett and Zhao 1998:93).
1994 The response of the Mexican government to the Chiapas rebellion may have been more moderate because of the Zapatistas' use of the Internet to communicate with their sympathizers world wide (Hackett and Zhao 1998:191)
1995 Sovereignty Referendum in Quebec
1995 "In 1995, according to Project Censored, the U.S. press underplayed or ignored these stories, among others: "In 1995, according to Project Censored, the U.S. press underplayed or ignored these stories, among others: the massive deregulation of telecommunications; $167 billion in annual subsidies to business, whose elimination could enable the U.S. government to balance its budget without slashing social programs; lax enforcement of U.S. child labour laws, resulting in thousands of injuries and even death of children in the workplace; $100 billion or more lost annually in medical fraud; ABC's cancellation of a hard-hitting documentary on the tobacco industry at the same time as a tobacco company filed a $10 billion libel suit against Capital Cities/ABC; the U.S. chemical industry's fight to prevent the banning of methyl bromide, a toxic zone-killing pesticide; the death through error or negligence of up to 180,000 patients in US hospitals each year (Hackett and Zhao 1998;182)."
1995 – 1996 There were unprecedented multibillion-dollar-mergers in North American media.
1996 The US Congress passed The Telecommunications Act that "raised the ceiling on the size of national TV networks and virtually removed restrictions on the ownership of different types of media in the same market (Hackett and Zhao 1998:4)."
1996 Hollinger took over Southam, Canada's largest newspaper chain.
1996-05 "The Winds of Change conference, which took place in Calgary in May 1996, brought together approximately 70 leading right-wing thinkers and activists in an effort to bring unity to conservative forces before the next federal election, expected in 1997. The goal, according to organizer David Frum, was to discuss the prospects for a merger between the Reform and Progressive Conservative parties. The stark reality facing Conservatives is that a continued fracturing of the right-wing vote is likely to ensure not only a victory for Jean Chretien's Liberals in 1997 but that the Liberals remain in power indefinitely. Frum believed that a vigorous airing of views behind closed doors, steps to develop a common agenda, and the bon amie of personal contact would create the momentum that was needed. . . . First, in the 1980s and 1990s the corporate community has funnelled considerable resources into so-called think tanks. The Vancouver-based Fraser Institute (1974), the C. D. Howe Institute in Toronto (1958), and the Canada West Foundation (1970) in Calgary are among the most influential policy-oriented research institutes. They often make headlines with timely and sometimes controversial reports on public policy issues, do contract work for governments, hold conferences and seminars, and do their own community outreach and media liaison work. Right-wingers might argue that the left in Canada has its own think tanks in the form of some university-based research centres. Of course, even the most objective scholarship might seem threatening to those who hold strong ideological views. These centres lack both the financing and the muscle that is available to the corporate-sponsored institutes. Indeed, as university budgets and federal funding for basic research have been cut back, corporate money has become more important in financing research. Corporations tend to support projects from which they can benefit directly (Taras 1996).
Late 1990s The Federal Government cut the CBC budget dramatically. CBC cut its workforce by a third.
2000 The Sarejevo Commitment At the beginning of the 21st Century men and women of the media register their commitment to integrity and public service. This document was launched at a World Media Assembly, SARAJEVO 2000, and signed by participants on 30 September 2000.
We, men and women of the media – professionals at all levels, from publishers and producers to cub reporters and students of journalism; from the print and digital media, television and radio, book publishing, cinema and theatre, advertising and public relations, music and the performing and creative arts – met here in the bruised, historic and beautiful city of Sarajevo, pay our homage and respect to the millions of humanity whom we inform, entertain and educate.
2001 In the wake of 9/11 there was a dramatic increase in the number of blogs.
2001 The producers of the series West Wing created a pivotal episode entitled Isaac and Ishmael where real, virtual and everyday embodied real were inextricably linked. The series exists in the liminal space occupied by docudrama, fictionalized journalism, news as fiction, psychodrama, realpolitical analysands, flesh and blood real and the imaginary real. The series reveals behind-the-scenes ethical sell-offs of the fictional (or nearly real) political epicentre of the planet. The Democratic President capable of blinking has a real world Ivy League CV . He is an economist trained in the London School of Economics.
2006 in An Inconvenient Truth, directed by Davis Guggenheim, Al Gore described how the mass media provides misinformation about consensus in the scientific community regarding climate change 2004 showed. He contrasts the findings of 928 Science magazine survey of all peer-reviewed scientific studies of climate change in which there were no articles questioning the fact that global warming caused by increased carbon dioxide in the earth's environment is occurring at a rate and speed greater than any climate event in the past. Concurrently 53 percent of articles, etc in the mass media articles concluded that there is conflicting and/or inadequate evidence regarding global warming. Until Gore's film was released consumers of the mass media who relied solely on them for information regarding climate change received deliberate misinformation preventing them from responding democratically to environmental risks.
2008 Guardian journalist Nick Davies published Flat Earth News: An Award-winning Reporter Exposes Falsehood, Distortion and Propaganda in the Global Media in which he critically examined the changing face of journalism in the UK since the 1970s. This reporter with a distinguished record in investigative journalism claims that "the British newspaper industry, its regulators and the PR machine that supplies it" accept, report and spread "lies, distortions and propaganda" in a culture of "churnalism" not objective, investigative reporting (Riddell 2008). "Il documente les règles permettant à n'importe quel rédacteur d'usiner une « information » sans chair, sans risque et parfois sans vérité — mais respectueuse des principes du marketing : privilégier les enquêtes au rabais, éviter de froisser les institutions, se porter au devant des désirs supposés du lecteur, alimenter la panique morale… (Davies 2008-07)." He revealed how the public has come to accept misinformation (the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq) as it is so widely spread by a mass media culture in which fewer journalists are hired and those that remain are discouraged from taking the time to verify the credibility of sources.
Webliography and Bibliography
Bagdikian, Ben H. 1971. The Information Machines: Their Impact on Men and the Media. New York: Harper & Row.
Bagdikian, Ben H. 1997. The Media Monopoly. 5th ed. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.
Barlow, Maude; Winter, James. 1997. The Big Black Book: The Essential Views of Conrad and Barbara Amiel Black. Toronto: Stoddart.
Bird; Roger?; Winter, James. 1998. "The End of News: How the News Is Being Swamped by Information, Manipulation and Entertainment. And How This is a Threat to Open, Democratic Society." Canadian Journal of Communication [Online], 23(4). January 1. Available: http://www.cjc-online.ca/viewarticle.php?id=493.
CBC Radio. 1970. "How free is Canada's press?" March 23, 1970.
CBC. 2007. "Media Ownership in Canada: a timeline."
Chomsky, Noam. 1989. Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies. Toronto: CBC Enterprises.
Davies, Nick. 2008. Flat Earth News: An Award-winning Reporter Exposes Falsehood, Distortion and Propaganda in the Global Media. London: Chatto & Windus.
Davies, Nick. 2008-07. "Qui veut en finir avec le modèle de la BBC: L'émotion n'existe pas? Alors, inventez-la!" Le monde diplomatique.
Franklin, Ursula. 1990. The Real World of Technology. Concord, ON: Anansi.
Grant, George. 1969. Technology and Empire. Concord, ON: Anansi.
Hackett, Robert. 1991. News and Dissent: The Press and the Politics of Peace in Canada. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.
Hackett, Robert; Gilsdorf, Bill; Savage; Philip. 1992. "News Balance Rhetoric: The Fraser Institute's Political Appropriation of Content Analysis." Canadian Journal of Communication. 17:1: 15-36.
Hackett, Robert A.; Zhao, Yuezhi. 1998. Sustaining Democracy? Journalism and the Politics of Objectivity. Toronto: Garamond Press Inc.
Hackett, Robert A.; Gruneau, Richard. 2000. The Missing News: Filters and Blind Spots in Canada. Ottawa: Centre for Policy Alternatives/Garamond Press Inc.
Hallin, Daniel. 1989. The "Uncensored War": The Media and Vietnam. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Herman, Edward, and Noam Chomsky. 1988. Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media. New York: Pantheon.
Herman, Edward, and Robert McChesney. 1997. The Global Media: The New Missionaries of Global Capitalism. London, UK: Cassell.
Kellner, Douglas. 1992. The Persian Gulf TV War. San Francisco, CA: Westview Press.
Ligaya, Armina. 2007. "Media monopoly: Media consolidation: Can Aussie model stop the moguls? CBC News in Depth. September 19.
McQuaig, Linda. 1995. Shooting the Hippo: Death by Deficit and Other Canadian Myths. Toronto: Viking.
Menzies, Heather. 1996. Whose Brave New World? The Information Highway and the New Economy. Toronto: Between The Lines.
Postman, Neil. 1985. Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Showbusiness. New York: Penguin.
Riddell, Mary. 2008-02-03. "Failures of the Fourth Estate: Flat Earth News by Nick Davies turns the spotlight on the workings of the press." The Observer.
Silva, Edward. 1995. More Perishable than Lettuce or Tomatoes: Labour Law Reform and Toronto's Newspapers. Halifax, NS: Fernwood.
Taras, David. "The Winds of Right-wing Change in Canadian Journalism." Canadian Journal of Communication. 21:04.
Tichenor, Phil. 1970s.
Winter, James. 1996. Democracy's Oxygen: How Corporations Control the News. Montreal: Black Rose Books.
Flynn-Burhoe, Maureen. 2002-. "Media Objectivity: a Timeline of Social Events1." >> Speechless.
Flynn-Burhoe, Maureen. 2007. "Media Objectivity: a Timeline of Social Events 1." >>"Google Docs. November 29. http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=ddp3qxmz_362fxcz5h
[1.] This is a personal teaching learning and research tool using my EndNote 8 and Zotero bibliographic databases compiled over a 14-year period, current events articles from various on-line and print sources. It is available for use under the Creative Commons license which is a license requiring any one who uses copyrighted work to attribute the work to its author, to not use the work commercially, to share any derivative work with the same license as this. For the sake of expediency I am uploading a timeline I developed in 2002. The vast majority of the entries come from a provocative, extremely concise, well-written publication by Hackett and Zhao (1998). For anyone teaching urban studies, critical ethnography, sociology, anthropology, economics, human rights, communications, public policy, history, political science not to mention journalism, this book is a must. It is entirely readable and its logic is impeccable. This has been uploaded in December 2006 to my WordPress blog and it will be updated in slow world time. Last updated July 2008.
I began this particular timeline while teaching First Nations and Inuit adult students in Off-Campus programs. One of the first questions asked of me during an information session on course content was put forward by the grandson of Jessie Oonark. The life and times of Jessie Oonark (1906-1983) Inuit artist, Order of Canada, Royal Canadian Academy member has been a part of my everyday life since the early 1990s I first began to investigate how understanding of her deceptively simple but content-rich work could be enhanced. By the time I met her daughter, a colleague teaching at Nunavut Arctic College in Iqaluit, Nunavut, had dinner at the Frobisher Inn in Iqaluit, NU with her son, cultural activist, father, political worker, William Noah in Iqaluit and her nephew, I was already confused, ashamed and angered by the stories of social injustice that I had collected. Her progeniture asked me, "Will we be examining the way the mass media portrays Inuit?"
Filed in democracy, philosophy and society, Politics, Social History Timeline, society, timelines
Tags: churnalism, Conrad Black, corporate crime, democracy, democracy's oxygen, disinformation, EndNote, Flat Earth News, fourth estate, Fraser Institute, Google Docs & Spreadsheets, Hackett and Zhao, Mary Riddell, mass media, media blind spots, media concentration, media objectivity, mergers and acquisitions, Nick Davies, self-regulation, Tom Kent Royal Commission on Newspapers, wikileaks
Patrick Watson vs CTV: the case of Conrad Black
July 14, 2007
Patrick Watson (1980) vs CTV (2007): the case of Conrad Black: The Canadian Establishment and governance.
Throughout the trial of Conrad Black I wondered why Patrick Watson's articulate and well-researched CBC documentary entitled the Canadian Establishment (1980), was not viewed on CBC. Conrad Black was known for a strong and effective offensive tactics when dealing with his image management in the press and until the guilty verdict became publicized the media was discouraged from entirely objective coverage. This may change now that the jury has revealed to their decision. CTV coverage reveals a pro-Black bias describing him as stoic, proud, even …onian, in the face of this trial, almost agreeing with Conrad Black that he is somehow above the law. However, he did glare and skowl at the jury when they gave their decision. They describe how he helped every community he was a part of. They admire his rise from his university education to an emerging career with the press to the circle of the uber-wealthy. They expect him to stand up to this and continue to argue for his own innocence. He was found guilty of obstruction of justice where he removed evidence from his Toronto office and of email fraud which hold a combined possible sentence of 10 to 65 years. Charges of racketeering were dismissed. Nonetheless he stole millions of dollars from Hollinger, and continues to feel no remorse. There appears to be a strong empathetic response to the potential of his doing his real jailtime in an American jail where he is actually going to have to do work such as laundry. There is speculation and some relief that since he is so 'astute' in terms of money that he will have provided for himself and his family, Barbara Amiel, their son and daughter, Alanna in some 'legal' fashion. CTV journalists are comparing the American and Canadian legal systems in terms of fairness and approaches to access to jury information. They mused about whether American courts would be harsher on Black and his co-accused than their Canadian counterparts who would be more influenced by Black's position of power, wealth and prestige. They seem to admire Black for his intelligence and his ability to write and do research and imagine him using his minimum security prison to study and write. Although others argue that an American minimium security prison is not an exclusive club prison like those in Canada and Black will not have access to a computer. CTV interviewees describe Black as someone very concerned with his place in history. CTV journalists look for 'silver lining' in his situation. They wonder how Black will survive from now to his sentence hearing by Judge … in November. He is no longer a Canadian citizen since he abandoned it to become a British Lord. This means he has no rights to go to Canadian jails which are considered to be friendlier to the uber-wealthy. Black is expected to begin quickly to appeal the jury's findings. This will not be stalling the sentencing hearing.
What makes Watson's (1980) revelations so compelling at this time is the way in which he reveals Black's roots as outsider on Bay Street until he was able to take advantage of widows of Establishment members to get his toe in the door. While Black's father had some wealth through his brewery, his family lacked the prestige and power of the Canadian Establishment. According to Watson, it was during the era of Conrad Black that the Establishment shifted towards an even more self-serving attitude of entitlement. His business ethics predates that of the mean-spirited arrogance of the financeers in the 1990s. He seems to embody that which is dysfunctional and unsustainable in a social world corrupted by extremes of wealth and poverty.
My own concern with Black was the role he played as media mogul in obstructing access to an objective press, a keystone of democracy. Like the the New Brunswick-Bahamas Irvings prior to their ethical turn, mass media moguls adopt Friedman's motto that their sole responsibility is to make money. Black claimed that he hoped to provide more of a pro-business, economic efficiency viewpoint to counteract the perceived social justice bias of the media (Flynn-Burhoe).
Do we secretly admire white collar criminals and their brilliant lawyers? Conrad Black and three others are accused of stealing $60M from shareholders to fatten their 5- and 7-figure salaries. Prosecutor Jeffrey Cramer claimed in his opening statement that media mogul Black failed to provide the public with objective accounts of world affairs.
CTV News. 2007. Conrad Black. July 13, 2007.
Flynn-Burhoe, Maureen. 2006. "Media and Objectivity: a Selected Timeline of Social Events." >> papergirls. December 6.
Flynn-Burhoe, Maureen. 2007.
"Is the Mass Media Coverage Biased in Favour of Conrad Black?">> papergirls. May 9, 2007.
Watson, Patrick. 1980. The Canadian Establishment. CBC.
"Patrick Watson." Museum TV Archives.
Filed in Business & Finance, economic efficiency, Economy & Finance, risk management, Risk Society, Social History Timeline, Social Justice, timelines
Tags: Affluenza, Canadian Council of Chief Executives, Canadian Establishment, Conrad Black, corporate crime, corporate social responsibility, economic cohesion and the structure of corporate capita, economic efficiency, facebook, Google Docs & Spreadsheets, Hackett and Zhao, mass media, mergers and acquisitions, Milton Friedman, moral mathematics, Tom Kent Royal Commission on Newspapers, UHNW, white collar crime
King of Canada: Tom d'Acquino CEO of CEO's
January 9, 2007
The Canadian business community has taken the most active interest in politics at the CEO level than any other business community in in the world (d'Acquino cited in Brownlee 2005: 9 Newman 1998:159-160). And this interest and influence has been on the rise in the last decades. Canada's business community has had more influence on Canadian public policy in the years 1995-2005 then in any other period since 1900.
Look at what we stand for and look at what all the governments, all the major parties . . . have done, and what they want to do. They have adopted the agendas we've been fighting for the in the past few decades (cited in Brownlee 2005: 12 Newman 1998:151).
Tom D'Acquino should know as he is the CEO of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives.
While the average North American is becoming increasingly concerned by climate change, a recent report by Pricewaterhouse Coopers has found that fewer than a fifth – 18 per cent – of North American chief executives are concerned about climate change putting them increasingly out of step with their colleagues in Europe and Asia Pacific.
This a current list of the Chief Executive Officers of the Officers of the Board of Directors of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives:
- Dominic D'Alessandro, Vice Chair Canadian Council of Chief Executives (CCCE) and President and CEO Manulife Financial
- Thomas d'Aquino, Chief Executive Officer and President of Canadian Council of Chief Executives
- Paul Desmarais. Jr. Vice Chair President of Canadian Council of Chief Executives and Chairman and C0-Chief Executive Officer of Power Corporation of Canada
- Richard L. George, Honorary Chair Canadian Council of Chief Executives and President and CEO of Suncor Energy Inc.
- Jacques Lamarre, Vice Chair of Canadian Council of Chief Executives (CCCE) and President and CEO SNC-Lavalin Group, Inc.
- Gordon M. Nixon, Chair of Canadian Council of Chief Executives (CCCE) and President and CEO of Royal Bank of Canada
- Hartley T. Richardson Vice Chair of Canadian Council of Chief Executives (CCCE) and President and CEO of James Richardson and Sons, Ltd.
- Annette Verschuren Vice Chair of Canadian Council of Chief Executives (CCCE) and President of The Home Depot Canada
Selected bibliography
- Brownlee, Jamie. 2005. Ruling Canada: Corporate Cohesion and Democracy. Halifax: Fernwood Publishing.
- Flynn-Burhoe, Maureen. 2006.Media and Objectivity: a Selected Timeline of Events
- Flynn-Burhoe, Maureen. 2005. Interview with Jamie Brownlee in response to Globe and Mail article "Canada's top 10% pay 52% of total tax bill."
- Flynn-Burhoe, Maureen. 2007. "King of Canada: Tom d'Acquino CEO of CEO's" Google Docs and Spreadsheet. mirror
- "The Globe and Mail Weekly Appointment Review." Globe and Mail. January 22, 2007. p. B6
- Hackett, Robert A. and Gruneau, Richard. 2000. The Missing News: Filters and Blind Spots in Canada. Ottawa: Centre for Policy Alternatives/Garamond Press Inc.
- Hackett, Robert A. and Zhao, Yuezhi. 1998. Sustaining Democracy? Journalism and the Politics of Objectivity. Toronto: Garamond Press Inc.
- N/A. 2007. "U.S bosses out of step on climate change." Management-Issues
- Newman, Peter. 1975. The Canadian Establishment. Toronto: Mclelland and Stewart.
- Newman, Peter. 1975. The Canadian Establishment. Toronto: Mclelland and Stewart.
- Newman, Peter. 1981. The Acquisitors.. Toronto: Mclelland and Stewart.
- Newman, Peter. 1998. Titans: How the New Establishment Seized Power. Toronto: Penguin Books.
- Olsen, Gregg. 1991. "Labour Mobilization and the Strength of Capital: The Rise and Stall of Economic Democracy in Sweden." Studies in Political Economy. 34.
- Olsen, Gregg. 2002. The Politics of the Welfare State: Canada, Sweden and the United States.. Toronto: Oxford University Press.
Brownlee's (2005) publication stems from his MA thesis supervised by University of Manitoba Sociology Professor Greg Olsen. It builds on the work of William Carroll, Wallace Clement and Murray Dobbin. I highly recommend this book for teaching, learning and research on how Ottawa really works. Some of the well-constructed arguments are located in sections entitled: economic cohesion and the structure of corporate capital, mergers and acquisitions, interlocking directorates, a class conscious business elite, public policy formation network, Canadian Council of Chief Executives, Global policy organizations, advocacy think tanks and economic elite, corporate social responsibility and the role of states in the era of globalization. The bibliography is a book in itself. The appendices, Media-Corporate Director Board Interlocks and Think Tanks – Corporate Director Board Interlocks for 2003 provide missing pieces to a puzzle.
I first read this book while preparing to teach a Northern-centred introductory human rights course in Iqaluit, Nunavut. My students were often employees of the Nunavut Government involved in making history as they introduced their own human rights bill. I wanted the inconvenient truth claims in Hackett and Zhao to be illegitimate but their research was unfortunately very robust. I thought I lived in a country whose forms of democratic governance were maturing until I read how we were actually going backwards not forwards in terms of objectivity and mass media.
These recent shifts in media ownership and policy might be seen as the equivalent of a non-violent coup d'etat, a metaphor evoking the inherent link between media power and state power — between the colonization of the popular imagination and the allocation of social resources through public policy and market relations. Communications scholar Herbert Schiller suggests that what is at stake is "packaged consciousness": the intensified appropriation of the national symbolic environment by a "few corporate juggernauts in the consciousness business (Hackett and Zhao 1998:5)
Filed in climate change, economic efficiency, Economy & Finance, postnational, Power and everyday life, risk management, Risk Society, Social Justice, Tag Clouds, teaching learning and research, wealth disparities will intensify
Tags: benign colonialism, business & human rights, C.D. Howe, Canadian Council of Chief Executives, Cannibals with Forks, circumtomato, corporate social responsibility, economic cohesion and the structure of corporate capita, economic efficiency, EndNote, EndNote 8, ethical topography of self and the Other, Ethical turn, Google scholar, Habermas, Hackett and Zhao, Hudson's Bay Company, management, mass media, mergers and acquisitions, public policy formation network, risk management, Social Justice, Tag Clouds, tokenism, Tom D'Acquino, Tom Kent Royal Commission on Newspapers, Ulrich_Beck, untabled, w3tableless, Wally Clement


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| 13.1°C Dublin
Police say a 41-year-old car washer shocked his family when he interrupted a funeral being held for him at his mother's home in the town of Alagoinhas in north-eastern Brazil.
Police inspector Roberto Lima said that on Sunday Jose Marcos Araujo identified a body at the city morgue as being that of his brother, Gilberto.
Insp Lima said that Jose Marcos took the body to his mother's home where a wake was held.
But the police inspector said that several hours before the Monday burial "a friend of Gilberto's saw him walking down the street and told him that his family was mourning him".
"So he went to his mother's home to let everyone know he was very much alive," Insp Lima said.
PA Media

subset: commoncrawl


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When you hear people complain about California taxes, try asking a question: how much exactly did you pay in state income taxes?
You almost certainly won't get an answer. People don't know their own burden -- even though they complain about it. Heck, why don't you ask yourself the question? Unless you got an extension, you filed taxes fairly recently -- Monday was the deadline. How much did you pay in California income taxes?
This question-- first suggested to me by my California Crackup co-author Mark Paul -- is a reminder that much of our budget debate in this state, which centers on taxes, is hot air. Pavlov-style, people have been taught to bellyache about taxes, even ones that hurt them so little they don't know how much they are. This white-hot debate about taxes crowds out more serious debates that we could be having -- about the economy, education, and even taxation. Instead of quibbling over tiny changes in rates, couldn't we talk about how to change the tax system in California to promote economic growth while providing stronger revenues for infrastructure and schools?
That's a more important question.


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Power, Range & Accuracy (2011-04-08)As prized as range and accuracy are in Airsoft they also happen to be the very antithesis of our beloved technology. The very concept of an Airsoft weapon is that it is a softer version of an air rifle; using lower power to project a lighter pellet at lower velocity to achieve less kinetic energy.
To squeeze the best performance out of your Airsoft shooting you really do have to have at least a basic understanding of the science involved with the technology you are using.
The nature of an air pressure propelled projectile launch system is that the better the projectile is at catching air pressure and turning it into movement energy then the more efficient and effective it will be in turning that air pressure from the gun in to projectile travel energy.
Unfortunately, it is those very same characteristics that means when your projectile hits a static volume of air then those same properties also make that projectile very easily slowed and halted by that air.
When an object falls, its descent is achieved with the force of gravity. Interestingly enough, if you hold a bullet in one hand then hold a gun in the other at the same height from the ground, if you shoot that gun in level with the ground at the same time you drop the bullet from the other hand then both bullets hit the ground at the same time. One falls strait down and whilst the other may fly out a good 500m or more, it will still hit the ground as the same time.
When you shoot a BB, more power means more FPS. With a higher FPS the pellet travels faster which means it gets to travel further in the same amount of time, if it has X seconds before it hits the ground then it has X seconds to travel as far as its FPS will allow. So in theory, a higher FPS gun should be longer ranged right?
Not quite.
When you step up the FPS you are also increasing the air resistance factor on the BB. The faster the BB travels through the air, the faster the air is hitting the BB and so it slows down faster. The faster a BB travels, the more resistance it encounters. FPS does increase your range but really not by that much as most of the gain you would get is offset by air resistance.
Everything that makes a BB good for firing out of an Airsoft weapons makes it equally as bad at penetrating though air. Equally, while it is good at harnessing the gust of air from your gun it is just as enthusiastic about harnessing cross winds to throw itself violently off target. IN much the same way as Air resistance in static air, cross winds mean that your BB is much to keen to grab that random gust of wind and flit off in the wrong direction.
Gravity is a constant downward force so the effect that it has on a BB in flight is a constant factor. The hop-up is a backspin to create aerodynamic lift to counter act the gravitational drop effect.
In terms of engineering, the back spin is created by applying some kind of friction or torque on the BB as it flies out of the weapon. The hop-up unit uses a piece of rubber (bucking) to graze the top part of the BB such as to slow the top but allow the bottom to continue. The result is a BB that spins backwards as it flies, as such, creating aerodynamic lift.
What this means is that you BB starts with X amount of FPS then when it hits the hop-up unit the bucking slows the BB down to X minus Y FPS. By slowing it down, it steals away that energy to add spin to the BB. Hop-up is not just good for range, its incredible. It takes all that bloated characteristic of BB aerodynamics and uses it to turn the BB into a little wing increasing its range significantly.
As discussed, FPS helps with range but not by a lot but hop-up on the other hand is great. If you have a small amount of energy to work with, it is far more effective to spend it on the hop-up up then the FPS in order to achieve distance. As such, for an Airsoft weapon, the FPS could be anywhere in a window of 300 to 500 fps but its terminal range is not that much different but even a minor tweak in hop-up energy and that pellet can now outrange everything else on the field.
FPS will mean your pellet gets to your target sooner which means your target has less of a chance to move out of the way. The faster your target is moving, the more you have to lead the target as you aim in order to account for travel time of the projectile. The higher the FPS, the less lead you need to add. A 300 fps rifle with an incredible hop-up can most certainly hold well out to 30 or 40m but it will take so long to get there that it is hard enough to hit a slow moving target but hitting a running one can be close to impossible.
Furthermore, BBs slow down quite a bit in flight. If you are shooting at great range, by the time the BB gets there it could be of such low energy that it can strike a vest or jacket with almost no feeling at all. Our 300 fps rifle with an incredible hop-up can most certainly hold well out to 30 or 40m but by the time it does hit the target it might be traveling at less than 150 FPS making it quite likely that your target might not even feel it.
A BB travels down an inner barrel on a cushion of air so it does not touch the sides. This slight give also means the BB can move side to side inside the barrel, not much, but just enough to allow those BBs to come out of your barrel in a cone pattern instead of a line. A tighter barrel means less space which means less wobble which means a tighter cone. A longer barrel means more time for the BB to stabilize its wobble which again means a tighter cone.
It is important to consider the cone because your well tuned rifle might well be able to land BBs a good 50 or 60m away but if they are landing 10 or 20m apart then that accuracy is so low you cannot count on it to hit anything really. If you have a fully automatic assault weapon then you can create a beaten zone of area denial to keep heads down and hold opposing forces back.
If you have a bolt action or semi-auto weapon, if your landing pellets any more then 3m apart at range then you will have to empty whole magazines before you can expect to hit a human size target at that range.
The point being made here is that the length of your invisible cone is your maximum range but the weapons maximum effective range is the greatest distance along that cone before it is wider than the target you are shooting at. For a full auto weapon, a spread of 5m still puts enough pellets in your central 0.5m to be a threat but a slower firing weapon really can only afford to only land shots inside that 0.5m wide human zone.
So to sum up; range comes from the hop-up, FPS gives you flight time and distance to felt hits and barrel tightness and length gives you accuracy. Barrel length and FPS does not give you more range. Range is good but unless your landing 50cm groupings or tighter, that range at and beyond that point is pot shots.
A bolt action weapon shoots so slow that it absolutely must be shooting at targets up to the 50cm diameter cone section to be effective. A semi-auto has enough firepower to stretch its statistical likelihood of hits out to maybe a 2 or 3m diameter section of cone, beyond that its pot shots. A full auto weapon with high fire rate can deliver human kills out to 5m diameter cone section but if the intention is suppressive fire then you actually want a cone diameter section out to 10m across to create a deliberately poor accuracy so that the pellets are 5 or 10m apart but still have enough FPS to feel thus you create a kill zone area rather then a small window.
Airsoft is about having fun but the technology is about science. Play to have fun but if you want to be effective it pays to have a good sit down and think about things. Plan out your intentions, do your research and talk it over with experienced players and Airsoft engineers. Just because real guns work that way does not mean Airsoft will. Just because you think things work a certain way, does not mean they do.
- Arclight


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Seals ride out ice shelf collapse
Go with the flow Antarctica's Weddell seals go into survival mode and put births on hold when conditions aren't favourable, a new study has found.
The research, led by Thierry Chambert from Montana State University, adds to a growing body of evidence that extreme events do not necessarily lead to extreme ecological responses.
The team of researchers studied a group of female Weddell seals who reared their babies on top of the ice sheet near McMurdo station.
"This has allowed birth rates and population fluctuations to be continuously monitored since 1969," says Professor Jay Rotella, an ecologist also at Montana State University who co-authored the paper. "It presented us with a unique opportunity to assess changes in local abundance and birth rates in response to an extreme environmental event."
On thick ice
In March 2001, an iceberg known as B-15 broke off the ice shelf along the Ross Sea. The iceberg, which was estimated to be around 10,000 square kilometres, broke into four massive fragments and remained in Erebus Bay until 2005, which is home to large breeding colonies of Emperor penguins and Weddell seals.
"The current swung the iceberg pieces around like a huge barn door, closing off the bay," says Rotella.
"The winds couldn't blow the ice out in the way they normally do each summer, which led to the ice sheet in Erebus Bay to thicken and become quite jumbled in places where the seals haul out."
"After the iceberg calved, the seals' birth rate dropped, remaining below average until 2004 when it fell to the lowest level ever recorded."
Rotella says that instead of investing energy in breeding, the seals went into survival mode.
"Although many remained in the bay, numerous females went missing from breeding colonies, likely due to the combination of reduced food resources and limited access to breeding colonies because of the thickness of the ice, which put breeding on hold.
"When the iceberg finally broke up, almost all of the missing females came back and there was an unprecedented baby boom. So, the multi-year event was short enough that the seals had a great ability to cope with it."
Local Emperor penguins weren't so fortunate. Previous studies have shown that they experienced significant losses of both parents and chicks, which were crushed by the ice or were unable to reach open water to feed.
Weddell seals are known to have some control over when they become pregnant: following mating, implantation of the embryo is usually delayed for several months until the female has stored enough fat to fast while nursing a pup.
By contrast, Emperor penguins need to continue feeding while chick rearing, which was a major factor in their different survival rates.
Extreme ecological response
The calving of massive icebergs is expected to become more frequent due to rising global temperatures.
"These results reveal that, depending on their ecology, different species can suffer different impacts from an extreme environmental perturbation," says Rotella.
While this is good news for the Weddell seal population, the researchers caution that their analysis is based on a single even. More substantial negative consequences might be expected in the long-term if these events become more frequent, as climate change modelling predicts.
The study was published today in Proceedings of the Royal Society B. More details regarding the research can also be found at the Weddell seal science website.


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A University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo professor has discovered evidence that the ancestors of East Polynesians, including Hawaiians, once lived on remote Polynesian Outlier atolls.
Dr. William H. Wilson, a professor with Ka Haka `Ula O Ke`elikolani College of Hawaiian Language, has published a study of 73 unique linguistic changes distinctive of East Polynesian languages and the languages of these Outliers. The article, entitled, "Whence The East Polynesians?" is in the December 2012 issue of Oceanic Linguistics (http://uhpjournals.wordpress.com/2013/01/03/oceanic-linguistics-vol-51-no-2-2012/).
"Anthropologists, archeologists and linguists have long assumed that the first settlers entered East Polynesia from Samoa," Wilson noted. "The latest archeological research indicates the initial settlement took place as recently as a thousand years ago, which left many wondering why the East Polynesian and Samoan languages were so different. The associated cultures are also quite different, with ancient East Polynesian archeological sites exhibiting innovations in fishing technology that have long puzzled researchers."
Wilson's research found that the East Polynesian ancestors were separated far to the northwest of Samoa on Polynesian atolls for a considerable period before they entered East Polynesia, the huge geographic area containing Hawaiʻi, Rapanui, and New Zealand. It was in these Polynesian atolls that many of the unique features differentiating East Polynesian languages and cultures from the Samoan language and culture developed.
Wilson said that early Polynesians first moved 2,000 miles west and north from Samoa to the tiny Central Northern Polynesian Outlier atolls off the coast of the Solomon Islands, of which the best known are Takuu and Luangiua (Ontong Java). Nearby atolls with languages only slightly more distantly related to Hawaiian and other East Polynesian languages are Sikaiana to the south and Kapingamarangi and Nukuoro to the north.
"The peoples of these atolls have highly developed traditions of navigation," Wilson said. "They are also more dependent on fishing for survival than the people of the high islands of Samoa which, unlike atolls, have extensive agricultural lands. Ancient East Polynesian innovations in navigation and fishing methods developed first in these atolls."
Wilson's linguistic evidence linking East Polynesian languages with those of the Central Northern Outlier atolls includes words known to many in Hawaiʻi. One is a change from an earlier term kiu for a bird with a curved beak. In the Outliers and early East Polynesia, this became kiwi, which then developed into the Hawaiian bird name `i`iwi. The same term spread to New Zealand to name an endemic bird there known as the kiwi.
Wilson listed 51unique words and 22 grammatical similarities whose development is shared by the Central Northern Outlier and East Polynesian languages. Wilson traced all of the unique words and grammatical features back to an ancient Central Northern Outlier ancestral language that gave birth to Proto East Polynesian, the unifying ancestor of Hawaiian, Tahitian, Marquesan, Rapanui, and Maori.
Related articles
- Oceanic Linguistics, vol. 51, no. 2 (2012) (uhpjournals.wordpress.com)
Filed under: aloha, Announcements, Education, Environment, Hawaii, Hawaiian, Rumors, UH Hilo | Tagged: Dr. William H. Wilson, Where Hawaiians Came From | Leave a comment »


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Boar�s Head adds talented new pastry chef
Sweet treats over at the Boar's Head, home of the Old Mill Room, could be getting even sweeter, as the resort announced recently that it has hired new pastry chef, Cornelius Thuys.
In addition to graduating from the St. Nicholas Pastry School in Amsterdam, Holland, Thuys has 25 years experience crafting bakery treats, beginning in Switzerland and the Netherlands, then in America as the Executive pastry chef at the Hotel Dupont in Wilmington, Delaware, and later at the The DuPont Country Club. In 1999, he became the head pastry maker at the Sagamore Resort on New York, and then moved to Arizona where he led the The Wigwam Resort and Golf Club's pastry efforts.
Thuys, the Boar's Head reports, has a reputation for innovative, stylish, wedding cakes, chocolate creations, and seasonal desserts. Yum!


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Carnival Flyer/Poster
"Rio Carnival 2014" -This flyer was designed to promote a carnival/bacchanal-themed party/event. Both the 4.25×6.25 vertical & 11.25×4.25 horizontal variations are included. New and unique versions of the template can be achieved by adding and altering text, font style and layout, colors, as well as the addition & removal of objects and layers .
All elements shown, excluding the models & logos, are included in the PSD file.
Fonts Used
Additional Notes
Models and logos are NOT included and are used for display purposes only.
Feel free to contact me personally with any queries and please leave a rating if possible, it helps out a lot.
Thank You! and Enjoy.


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Historical connections pop up in weird places. The other night I indulged in a repeat viewing of The Duchess, an eighteenth-century romantic biopic about Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire.
I made a point of seeing The Duchess when it hit theaters last year, for three reasons. First, it's based on Amanda Foreman's bestselling biography of Georgiana. This is one of those books I keep intending to read but somehow don't get around to. I figured seeing the movie would make me feel a little less guilty about it.
Second, I could think of far less pleasant ways to spend my time than watching Keira Knightley prance around for a couple of hours.
Third, this movie offered the potential for some interesting Revolutionary War cameos. One member of Georgiana's circle of gal pals was the actress Mary Robinson. Robinson had a well-publicized fling with Banastre Tarleton, who's most famous for wreaking havoc throughout the South as a cavalry commander during the British campaigns of 1780-81. I wondered if the filmmakers would include Tarleton in the cast of characters. He was, after all, a major character in 2006's Amazing Grace, owing to his vocal opposition to abolishing the slave trade while in Parliament. (In a nice authentic touch, Amazing Grace's Tarleton has a few missing fingers, owing to a wound he suffered in North Carolina in March 1781.)
Tarleton was a no-show in The Duchess. But, to my surprise, another British veteran of the War for American Independence did put in an appearance: Major General Charles Grey.
To American history aficionados, he's more popularly known as "No-flint Grey," due to his controversial victory over Anthony Wayne at Paoli, PA on September 20, 1777. The "Paoli Massacre," like Tarleton's victory at Waxhaws, is one of those controversial engagements that made for great American propaganda during the war. Before leading his men on a surprise night attack against Wayne's Continentals, Grey had the flints removed from their muskets to prevent them from firing their weapons and accidentally alerting the Americans. The British stormed the camp and laid into Wayne's men with their bayonets and swords, killing 53 of them and wounding or capturing somewhere around 200.
Grey's use of stealth and steel proved successful, but Americans accused him of perpetrating a cold-blooded massacre. The "No-flint" moniker stuck, and "Remember Paoli" became an American motto. In fact, the nation's second oldest Rev War monument was erected on the site in 1817, and another was added sixty years later. Today it's one of the most well-preserved Revolutionary War sites in the country.
So what in the world is "No-flint" Grey doing in a period romance film? Much of the movie focuses on Georgiana's affair with Grey's son and namesake, a prominent member of the Whig party and future prime minister. When the two finally had a daughter together Georgiana had to turn the baby over to Grey's parents to be raised. In the movie, when she and a friend take a carriage ride out to a desolate spot to turn over the infant, "No-flint" Grey is the guy who shows up.
You wouldn't expect a movie like this to have anything to do with military history, but there it is. And if that's not enough, the actor playing Grey has "Shrapnel" for a last name. Coincidence?
(Grey portrait from the UK's National Portrait Gallery, via Wikimedia Commons)


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I'm not very good in front of people, so it's definitely on my own. If I ever do record an album and get a record deal and what-not I'm in trouble.What about bands? Do you play live or do you prefer jamming on your own or with friends?
Depends on the day. I want to do some speed metal stuff.. so Slayer, Anthrax, Metallica, Kreator, etc..I was going to ask you about who's influenced your song writing but I probably wouldn't know who the hell they are.
Tell me anyway.
Heavy industrial metal.. Ministry, Skrew, Fear Factory, Strapping Young Lad.
Progressive Blackened Death Metal... maybe a combination of Marduk, Unleashed, Opeth, and the like.
Mostly I just like to have fun though. Maybe I'll come up with something new.
Whatever I do, it's going to be something where people aren't going to say "MAN, that's annoying." I've heard so many trends in metal and I keep thinking.. ok, NOW it can't get any worse.


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Kotaku readers with money currently burning a hole in their pockets might want to hoof it down to the local GameStop tomorrow, as several tipsters forced to work retail warn of impending deal, including $100 off Guitar Hero World Tour.
Similar to the deal that GameStop ran a few weeks ago, the full band kit can be had for a song, a price "currently not available online." Looks like someone needs the space for the Fall flood of Guitar Hero 5 and The Beatles: Rock Band boxes. On top of that, we're told "roughly 200 price drops" went into effect today, meaning Spring's retail bombs can be Summer's low-risk purchases.
Found any deals? Let us know! And thanks to GameStop Manager X for the heads up.


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|8.22 / 10
|January 12, 2018
|Babak Najafi
|Paul Schiff, Tai Duncan
|Columbia Pictures
|Taraji P. Henson, Danny Glover, Neal McDonough, Billy Brown, Margaret Avery, Xander Berkeley
|89 minutes
write a review | read reviews | photos
watch the Proud Mary trailer
Hit woman Mary Goodwin (Taraji P. Henson) works for Benny (Danny Glover), a gangster who trained her to be an assassin and made her part of his crime family in Boston. Also part of the family is Benny's son, Tom (Billy Brown), with whom Mary once had a relationship.
When Mary kills a gambler who owed Benny money, the dead man turns out to be the father of a 12-year-old boy named Danny (Jahi Di'Allo Winston). Feeling guilt about her part in making the boy an orphan, she keeps tabs on him over the next year and finds out he's living on the streets and delivering product for a ruthless drug dealer who goes by the name of Uncle (Xander Berkeley).
When Danny winds up up unconscious in an alley, she decides she finally needs to step up and help him. She takes him in, then goes to confront Uncle, but loses her cool and in the process, inadvertently starts a gang war.


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Availability of timely data is at the core of effective financial and economic analysis. The Federal Reserve Economic Database (FRED) provides a vast array of economic time series via an intuitive graphical interface. If you want to get a read on the U.S. economy, FRED is an outstanding resource. The ability to quickly create customized charts makes it quick and easy to examine a wide range of data. In this article, I am going to show a number of these charts, while exploring the overall economic U.S. economic picture.
There is almost no economic variable that is as significant as the yield on Treasury bonds. When any economic or financial statistic is at or near a historic extreme, this variable becomes of paramount importance. Treasury bonds are currently at historically low yields and you really get a sense of that by looking at history. For example, have a look at this FRED chart of the yield on 10-year Treasury bonds over the last 50 years:
The story that this chart tells is enormously significant in terms of how the economy arrived at its current state. In the 1970's and 1980's, inflation was high and bond yields reflected that. Today, the 10-year Treasury yield is 1.6% and the chart shows just how significant that is in terms of the last 50+ years. Low interest rates and bond yields make it easier for companies, individuals, and governments to take on debt. Furthermore, falling interest rates allow borrowers to simply roll their debt forward into lower-rates. The chart above explains one reason the United States has gotten so heavily indebted over the past thirty some years.
Now let's move to the next picture—the Consumer Price Index (CPI), the standard official measure of price inflation. In general, we expect to see prices increase over long periods of time reflecting inflation. When economies are growing and more people are competing for the same goods, prices rise. The historical average annual rate of inflation in the U.S. is about 3% per year. This average is not the whole story though, as the chart below shows.
This chart shows the percentage change in the CPI from year to year—the annual rate of inflation. In the 1970s and early 1980s, there were periods when we saw double-digit inflation. During the recent recession, we saw deflation—a drop in the CPI. Today, the CPI is around 2.3%, which is pretty tame. The problem of course is that when the change in the CPI is less than the yield from government bonds, bond investors are actually losing purchasing power by lending the government money.
Even with modest inflation, government bond yields at historic lows are making it very difficult for savers to generate income from their portfolios. Furthermore, the Fed's stated purpose of keeping interest rates low is to stimulate the economy. As the next few charts show, however, the economy appears to be stuck in low gear despite low rates.
A standard measure of the health of the economy is unemployment rates. A robust economy effectively applies the human capital of its citizens. We are currently in the midst of a prolonged period of high unemployment, as the chart below shows.
The high rate of unemployment, combined with its duration, is something that we have not experienced since the early 1980s. That was right at the beginning of the emergence of computers and related technology. The technology boom of the past thirty years has certainly done its part to create jobs, but so has the enormous growth in borrowing—both public and private—that has been enabled by low and falling interest rates.
The unemployment chart very clearly shows that unemployment rises in a recession (shaded areas) and falls in a recovery. Since 1950, we have never seen unemployment as high as it is today, this far into a recovery. Unemployment numbers account for people who are looking for work and do not include those who are not in the job market.
At any time, a certain fraction of the population will be out of the job market because they are retired, disabled, stay-at-home parents, or simply too discouraged to look for work. The percentage of people either employed or looking for work is referred to as the 'labor participation rate.' The chart below shows the labor participation rate for males since the late 1940s. The seasonal cycle in employment is clearly evident in the chart, of course, but it is really striking that we have seen the fraction of adult males actively engaged in the workforce drop from more than 85% in 1950 to 70% today. There are many causes for this trend. The U.S. population as a whole is aging and people are living longer in retirement.
When we look at the labor participation rate for both men and women, we see a different pattern:
With the large-scale entrance of women into the workforce, the overall labor participation rate in the U.S. climbed steadily from the mid 60's to the late 90's. Since the late 90's, however, the trend has changed dramatically, with a historically-unprecedented decline.
A low labor participation rate is not inherently bad. It reflects an aging and affluent population. The problem, however, is that even as a higher and higher fraction of the population is leaving the labor force, unemployment remains stubbornly high.
All of these charts paint an overall picture suggesting that the U.S. economy is in new territory, at least as compared to the past fifty or sixty years. The combination of negative real yields on bonds with high unemployment, even as the labor participation rate is falling, suggests a long-term economic slow-down, consistent with the 'New Normal' scenario first proposed a number of years ago by PIMCO's Bill Gross and Mohamed El Erian. I am not predicting that this is, indeed, our future. My abilities to predict the future are no better than anyone else's. The data does suggest, however, that we are in uncharted territory such that the world looks somewhat different than it has in the past. This situation suggests that we at least question the conventional wisdom with regard to asset allocation.
Related Links:
- Should the US Reform the Student Loan System?
- Housing Prices and the Economy: Is There Any Good News?
- Unemployment: Part of the Economic Cycle or Secular Shift?
Folio Investing The brokerage with a better way. Securities products and services offered through FOLIOfn Investments, Inc. Member FINRA/SIPC.


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You remember Miss Doodle's trip as a photographic journalist to New York? This is a wonderful day and a great day for Miss Doodle. She has her first publication in the international trimestrial Photomagazin Phot'Art! - N)10, which is all about NEW YORK and it's artists.
The Magazine is bilingual (English/French), the paper and such the rendition of the photos are exceptional and the articles about the photographers and their art very interesting.
The cover photo is by Lynn Bianchi, inside there are more fascinating photos of this NY artist, as well as many others, you can see the summery on the page hereunder. If you have the opportunity to get this magazin (the distributors are mentioned on their website) , you will not regret it if you love inspirational and astonishing photography and great articles.
click to open


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Student Accounts
Niagara University offers options to pay such as payment plans and company reimbursement. Go to the payments page to access information and apply for these options. You must apply for the Payment Plan each semester.
Online Payments
Online payments can be made using our one-time payment portal.
Tuition & Fees
Take a look at the official tuition and fee schedule.
Meal Plans
Check out all the meal plan options or add funds to your student ID card.
Financial Aid Presentation
Presented during Summer Orientation, this video offers tips on navigating the financial aid process at Niagara University.


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Chandler Parsons had a good night, and you can trust me because it would be rude to lie. Everyone's favorite or second favorite male Friends character, Chandler finished with 21 points, 8 rebounds, 9 assists, a steal and a block. He's like a mini LeBron! He's had 3, maybe 4 impressive games out of 6. He's not going to win you a championship by himself, but he's a nice player to have.
LeBron James – Hey, it's the full-sized LeBron! I really don't like to talk about superstars too much, unless their muscles have torn or detached, but James' 30 points, 6 rebounds, 9 assists, 3 steals and 2 blocks mark some sort of NBA record (6 games with at least 30 points). More impressive to me is the last time he scored fewer than 24 points was January 12, a month ago. His February averages are 30/8/6/2/1.
Jonas Valanciunas – In 32 minutes, he earned 8 points, 8 rebounds, 2 assists and 2 blocks. The kid has a bright future, but I suspect this is what we get from him for the rest of this season (weirdly, Amir Johnson almost had an identical line – 8 points, 7 rebounds, 3 assists, 2 steals, 2 blocks).
DeMarcus Cousins – Oh, my Cousins, how I've longed for you! *sips water* The Line of DeMarcation was drawn last night as Cousins tallied 23 points, 7 rebounds, a sexy 4 assists and a de-friggin-licious 5 steals. He's averaging better than 2 steals per game this month, which is curiously much better than his blocks per game. I guess if you're going to forego blocks for another stat, you should pick the one that's even more valuable to fantasy owners.
Jamaal Tinsley – Speaking of steals, James Tinsel finished the night with 6 points, 0 boards, 6 assists and 4 steals. I was debating dropping Metta World Peace (17/8/1/4/1) given his lackluster performances the past few days, and JT's steals were enticing, but I can't own a guy who averages 3 or 4 points per night. I already enjoyed my time with Jason Kidd.
Jermaine O'Neal – He double doubled, going for 13 points, 15 rebounds and throwing in 4 dimes as well. The last time he did that was back in November, which I am trouble troubled by. However, he had 5 blocks last night and 9 in the past 3 games, which suddenly makes him an interesting card to play.
Serge Ibaka – I-blocka spent most of his night doing what he does, accumulated 7 blocks to go with 10 points, 3 boards and a steal. The steal was actually Ibaka trying to block what he thought was a low altitude shot.
Anthony Randolph – With 16 points, 7 rebounds, 2 assists, 3 steals and 2 blocks, Randolph showed what some playing time will let him do. Too bad for him he will only see such time while the Nuggs continue to suffer injuries/illness.
Andrew Bogut – On the night, 6 points, 12 rebounds, 4 assists, and a block. Bogut is like Ricky Rubio Redux, a B player who was treated like an A+ superstar upon return from injury. Bogut's been averaging 8.5/8.5 with 3 assists and a block every game, which is fine (although he's only had 2 blocks in the past 5 games), but it's not MVP calibur. All I'm tryin to say is, don't sell the farm to pay the mortgage, or, um, keep Bogut in perspective, know what he offers, and don't pretend he's more or less. Mooooo.
Portland Trail Blazers – They really need a bench player.


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When it comes to high school volleyball, there are usually very few surprises in the first round.
Well the Chino High School volleyball team sure provided one of those. The fourth-place team out of a weak Mt. Baldy League turned in a 3-2 (25-15, 15-25, 15-25, 25-14, 15-7) win over Sunkist League champion Fontana which came in with a 22-3 record.
By the way, Chino parted ways with is coach a month ago., making the story tat much better.
Give new coach Ariel Rorabaugh much of the credit. She was the junior varsity coach until the varsity coach was removed. She says confidence was a big factor. That is, building up that of her team.
And the players too say that is the what has made the difference.
Yes, Fontana probably took their opponent lightly. But after the Steelers won the second and third games convincingly, it only seemed like just a matter of time before they wrapped it up. But that didn't happen.
Chino made all the plays in the last two games. Fontana seemed to tighten up. Sometimes it's easier in that situation when you are the underdog with nothing to lose.


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In oversize or petite version, bags are the accessory par excellence: essential and trendy, they complement the look of every woman. Bowling bags and shopping bags in saffiano print are unmissable with their feminine and sophisticated charm, while for metropolitan adventures, the comfort of a backpack is essential, presented in a romantic chic version, or with studs and pearls for a more gritty style. For ceremonies and special evenings, Liu Jo has instead created an exclusive collection of elegant and precious pochettes and clutches, enriched by jewelled details and elegant textures. The real news is the denim bags line: backpacks and shoulder bags to complete 90s-inspired outfits. Crossbody bags will enchant with colourful patches and a contemporary design, ensuring glamorous ready-to-wear hints to your outfits.
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text: Sadly, a media personality getting a DUI isn't all that unusual, but the circumstances of NBC Correspondent Jay Gray's arrest in Pennsylvania early on the morning of December 12 are rather interesting. He was leaving the home of Jerry Sandusky attorney and sleazeball in his own right Joe Amendola, who invited several journalists hoping to score an exclusive interview with Sandusky to watch the New York Giants game with him. So apparently that's how your "exclusive interview with an alleged child molester" sausage gets made.


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Using Commodity Futures as a Price Forecasting Tool
Joe Parcell
Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics
Jason Franken
Former Postdoctoral Researcher
Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics
Commodity futures prices can serve as a mechanism for price discovery for either present or expected future prices. A market is defined as efficient if it accounts for all public and nonpublic information in determining an equilibrium price in the market. Commodity futures markets are often considered the most efficient markets in the price discovery process. That is, the price quoted for a commodity on the futures market is thought to be the best measure of the actual price, either current or future. Therefore, if you would like a good predictor of what prices will be four months from now, the deferred (four months out) futures price quote for that commodity may be the best and easiest price forecast.
Forecasting current and future prices
Table 1 provides the corn closing future price quotes for Jan. 12, 2011. On that date these price quotes for corn could be thought of as forecast prices for the months listed in the left column. For example, if you wanted a forecast of what the price of corn was going to be for the United States in March 2011, you could use the March 2011 Chicago Board of Trade futures closing price of $6.31 per bushel as a forecast price.
The ability to forecast price is valuable for several reasons. Knowing the expected grain price, for example, can help a producer evaluate decisions about grain storage; make forward pricing decisions, such as the one described below; decide which cropping alternative to plant in the spring; and plan annual cash flow and loan requests.
An example of how price forecasting can help when making forward pricing decisions: Based on Table 1, if in January 2011 you could forward price corn for May 2011 at $6.38 per bushel, you would know that the offered price is about equal to the expected price. Typically, however, this will not be the case in forward pricing agreements because the entity offering the forward price contract requires a price discount to assume your price risk for a given period of time.
Table 1. Chicago Board of Trade corn futures price quotes (Jan. 12, 2011).
|Contract month
|Closing price
How to forecast a local price
Agriculture producers and agribusinesses face a diverse array of marketing and production alternatives and must evaluate the impact of each marketing or production decision on their risk management plan. Different questions arise throughout the year, but the question of what price to expect is the most difficult to answer. No matter the time of year, however, expected price always influences the decision-making process. Other questions that arise for producers include
- Before the growing season, which crop to plant given known input costs and expected harvest-time prices;
- During that same time and into crop maturity, whether to forward price a portion of the crop; and
- In the fall, whether to store the crop, or for cow/calf producers, whether to retain ownership on a portion of the calves beyond weaning.
Similarly, agribusinesses must determine price expectations to know what forward price to offer.
Commodity futures exchange markets provide a mechanism for price discovery on an aggregate level through arbitrage between multiple buyers and sellers. Price discovery at a given location is not as clearly defined, though, because local supply-and-demand relationships are not as well known. Historical basis provides a linkage between these two markets, however. Therefore, a simple, low-cost and relatively good predictor of the local cash price is the futures contract [month] price of interest adjusted for a multiple year average basis (cash price minus futures price) for that time. An expected price, where E denotes an expectation, can be found in the following way:
E[Cash price] = Futures price + E[Basis]
For example, suppose you are a corn producer who in January wants a corn price forecast for that December in a local market. You need this information to analyze the expected costs and returns of growing corn that year because, if you were to decide to raise corn, you would need to purchase seed in January. Your best expectation of that cash price might be that year's December corn futures price adjusted for an expected (say three-year average) basis. You know the previous three year's average basis for the area is -$0.20 per bushel. From Table 1, the December futures contract corn price is $5.60. Thus, your expected local cash price is $5.40 per bushel [$5.60 + (-$0.20)].
A similar procedure for forecasting prices can be used anytime for any offered futures contract. Suppose you are considering in January whether to plant corn or soybeans that year. If on Jan. 15 you wanted to forecast the December corn and November soybeans futures price for that year, you would simply obtain the December corn and November soybean futures price quotes on Jan. 15 and then add the expected basis.
Table 2 provides a detailed example of how anyone with access to local historical basis data can develop a cash price forecast. It illustrates forecasted corn prices for Lamar, Mo., as of January 2011. To derive the historical basis (C), average the basis (cash price minus futures price) for the previous three years. Then you can determine the expected, or forecast, cash price (D) by adding the relevant futures month contract (B) to the historical average basis (C) for the given month of interest (A).
Two points about Table 2: First, note that the futures contract month (in parentheses in column B) is kept constant until the expiration of the contract. This has been done for convenience, as industry practice may dictate rolling forward to the next deferred contract month at the beginning of the expiration month. For example, some may choose to use the July 2011 contract as the relevant futures month contract starting May 1, 2011, because May is considered the expiration month for the May 2011 corn futures contract. If doing so, then the historical May basis data should be computed as the cash price less the July futures. Second, the August–September period is an anomaly because many corn acres have yet to be harvested for new crop corn, while the southern growing region is in full harvest; or depending on weather, total harvest may be ahead or behind. Thus, August–September is a transition period, making any forecast for those months less reliable.
For business management of farm businesses, agribusinesses, wholesalers and retailers, forecasting local cash commodity prices is important to marketing or procurement. Timing is important when either selling or buying a commodity because of seasonal fluctuations in local and global prices. Farmers may price now, price later or forward price now for later delivery. Thus, knowing how current prices compare to potential cash prices is critical. Also, knowing if the forward price represents a fair price relative to historical patterns is important when being offered (seller) or offering (buyer) a forward price contract.
A local cash price forecast is also useful for making an informed store-versus-sell decision. For example, consider lines 1, 2 and 3 in Table 2. From column D, the between-month spread from March to April (line 2 minus line 1) is $0.01 per bushel and the between-month spread from March to May (line 3 minus line 1) is $0.14. When the spread is greater than the cost of storage, farmers have a financial incentive to store until that month and forward contract today for later delivery.
Table 2. Forecasted corn prices for Lamar, Mo., in January 2011.
|Three-year historical basis
|Expected cash price
|Old crop
|March 2011
|$7.12 (March)
|April 2011
|$7.22 (May)
|May 2011
|$7.22 (May)
|June 2011
|$7.27 (July)
|July 2011
|$7.27 (July)
|August 2011
|$6.47 (September)
|New crop
|September 2011
|$6.47 (September)
|October 2011
|$5.99 (December)
|November 2011
|$5.99 (December)
|December 2011
|$5.99 (December)


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