Introduction: CNC Nyancat Food Mold (nyancake!)
CNC tools and food! What could be better? Plus, it's super-easy.
This is an overview of how I made a nyancat food-safe mold, and of course with the magic of CNC and digital CAD files you can apply it to just about any shape you want. The basic idea is to mill out a foam positive, pour food-safe silicone into that, and then when the silicone mold cures, pour food into that.
CAD of some sort. Autodesk inventor is free for students (people with .edu emails).
Access to CAM and CNC mill or 3d printer.
Some money to buy food-safe silicone, say $20. Well, if you're doing jello, you can make molds out of hot glue (I used that for https://www.instructables.com/id/LeGummies-brick-shaped-gummy-candies/ -- definitely a destructive mold removal, I had to pry legos out with pliers), but I'm not 100% sure how safe that is. I guess it'd be fine for things like pudding.
Cake / pudding / jello mix, yogurt, watermelon juice, whatever food item you want.
1) Spend a few hours CAD'ing nyancat. Add a shell to the CAD file to make a positive mold shape you can pour silicone into
3) CNC mill out of architecture foam or 3d print the positive mold
4) Apply 2-part food-safe silicone (putty or rubber) to the positive mold to make a negative mold
5) Apply cake mix or jello or pudding or whatever. If you're making cake, make sure to use mold release, aka
Submitted by MITERS for the Instructables Sponsorship Program
Step 1: NyanCAD! Yay! *dance*
(Submitted by MITERS for the Instructables Sponsorship Program.)
Images are marked with  below.
The first step is to CAD whatever you want to make a mold of. You CAD a positive version of your image, then add a "shell" around it so that you can pour silicone into the shape.  The shell doesn't have to be circular, I just made it that way because originally I wanted a cupcake.
There are three main considerations when designing your mold.
If you are milling out your mold:
1) what size drill bit decide to use limits what size features you can have (but for cake, small features don't show up well anyway)
2) the length of the drill bit you are using limit how many levels / how deep you can go
3) the size of the mold impacts how much of that expensive food-safe silicone you will use
What I did:
You can see how I started a sketch and then used tools > sketch tools > sketch picture.... to insert a reference nyancat image into my solidworks file.
Since nyancat is pixelated, I also played around with the grid settings to get a grid that roughly matched the image (as well as scaling the image to get it to match).  Specifically, I knew I wanted to use a 1/8'' bit to get the file details without spending forever (using a 1/16th bit), so the sprinkles are a bit larger than that. I used a grid size of 0.14'', and the mold is about 6'' in diameter. This is huge! It eats up almost the full $20 of silicone mold-making material I got off of amazon. More about this in the 3rd step.
I hadn't really considered the depth of the mold, and I was lucky in that the drill bit I used was just deep enough to cut the grooves.
The drill bit definitely wasn't long enough to cut out the mold -- I was watching out for this and stopped it just as it started to bury itself into the foam.
Note that if you're planning on making cakes, finer details won't show up. e.g. the sprinkles on this CAD model definitely don't show up in cake. Actually, they tend to show up as reverse-sprinkles.  It shows up all fine on the jello and pudding molds though.
For milling, I didn't want to waste time having the mill cut out a circular shape, so in the last picture  you can see that I made the shell extra-large so that it wouldn't attempt to mill that surface, and then when I was using the mill's CAM software, I selected a rectangle around the shape to cut out the mold.
Finally, I've attached my CAD files here:
1) the sldprt (solidworks 2013*) file and
2) the exported STL file that CAM programs for the mill or 3d printer can read in to generate x,y,z movements (or polar? I know people with homebrew robot arm and delta robot 3d printers...) for the motors to move the cutting/extruding end around.
*ugh, I really hate how they are not backwards compatible, e.g. you can't open it in solidworks 2012 even. I'm going to graduate and not being able to use any of these files -__-;
for my ease of editing, the folders I am using:
Step 2: Mill / 3d Print It
Then, turn the STL file into g-code using the CAM tool of your choice and mill it or 3d print it.
For milling, you can use insulation foam, which is cheap and easy to mill (also used extensively in architecture models). The foam is nice because the silicone releases easily from it. Just don't breathe too much of the mill dust in.
It's sold in stores as "foam insulation" or "extruded polystyrene." See the internet for more information.
A note about 3d printing the mold, the outer "shell" tends to come off when I 3d print a scaled version of my 6'' diameter nyanCAD, which can be fixed with a dab of superglue.
Cleaning the foam mold
At the end, you can take a hot air gun to clean the foam "burrs" leftover from milling (see pic 10/23 14:07). This melts the polystyrene a bit (see picture from 10/23 15:34), so it wasn't really suitable for pixelated nyancat with sharp corners; I just manually picked off most of the bits of foam.
I was using the shopbot in the MIT media lab, so I used Partworks. I've also used masterCAM, where you have to draw the toolpaths by hand. This is actually insanely hard to do with nyancat because all the paths end up in the same place and MasterCAM gets all confused. Ugh. Get some UX people on that software...
Partworks was just like "hey look! it's a 3d file! let me magic that file for you! Let's be friends!"
I took pics of some of the settings I used for partworks. I cut two molds, one in december and one in november, which is why there's two sets. They are all the pics at the end.
You can also see a small 3d print, I was fixing up hexarideablepod (based off of https://www.instructables.com/id/Hexabot-Build-a-heavy-duty-six-legged-robot/) at the time for NYC maker faire 2012, so I didn't have time to make the mold walls properly thin. I actually got some super nice people at nyc maker faire printing pavilion to print off a mold with thinner walls, but had to leave before it was finished (looks like the printer need some setting adjustments as well). Thanks Luc Nikiema and the Tjiko snap 3d people. The plan was to ask the people printing pancakes for some batter and enjoy some nyan-pancakes :)
Note:molds are not mice-proof! Make sure to store your mold in a mouse-proof location! I left mine at school over winter break and came back to see my mold destroyed by mice chewing on them. WTF, seriously, not cool, mice :'(
Step 3: Pour Silicone Mix
There are two types of food-safe silicone for mold-making, silicone putty ("has the consistency of cookie dough", used for smaller molds e.g. my 2'' diameter 3d printed ones) and silicone rubber (pourable). The former is cheaper. We use silicone to make the negative mold because it's flexible and you can peel it right off of the positive mold.
I bought mine off of amazon prime because I had the student trial, so if you're shorter on time than money you can get it off of amazon.
1lb Easymold Silicone Rubber
Although, holy crap, it was $26.52 when I bought it, it's now at a whopping $34.63. You can see the price changes over time on camelcamelcamel:
So, if you have the time to wait for shipping, maybe hunt around the internet instead, or perhaps your local crafts store.
There's some at http://www.makeyourownmolds.com/copy-flex for $25 a lb, but it takes another $10 of shiping so @__@
Smooth-on, the makers of everything mold-related, also has food-safe silicone: "Smooth-Sil® 940 , Sorta Clear® 40, Sorta Clear® 18 and the Equinox® Series." I looked at the MA distributor, http://www.smooth-on.com/pages.php?pID=104 > Reynoldsam.com. Looks like that price is slightly more reasonable, running at ~$35 for two lbs, except plus shipping... There's no real good answer here, except get sponsored by arts grants at your university or city or something :P
The putty is here:
1lb Easymold Silicone Putty
How much to use
I poured rice into my foam mold to estimate how much mix I would need (water could be used as well, it's just a bit messier), then poured it out into a tupperware. If you just have one plastic container (the silicone will peel off of this when it is cured), you can mark the line with a sharpie and dump the rice out. I just used another identical tupperware container.
The easymold mix is 1:1 part a:part b by volume, so it was pretty straightforward to pour halfway with part A and then the rest of the way with part B. Then, I used popsicle sticks to mix it up.
Saving on the rubber
I stuck some foam bits I carved out by hand onto a piece of a cardboard to make a sort-of-two-piece mold to try to save a bit of material. If you do this, you should account for this in the rice-estimating step.
I clamped the top on and let it sit for half an hour, then removed it.
Removing the mold/ cleaning the silicone mold
The silicone should come cleanly off of the foam positive once its cured. I end up destructively removing the mold, but if you design your mold well you shouldn't need to really destroy the foam positive. I didn't deburr/clean out the foam mold enough, so bits of foam mold got stuck in the rubber mold. Some bits are probably inevitable. I just picked away at the silicone mold for a bit. You could probably also melt it out, the MSDS says the combustion products are CO, CO2, and soot. "polystyrene msds" or there is probably an MSDS (materials safety data sheet) for the specific insulation product you end up using.
It does NOT like coming off of cardboard as much.
The silicone comes off of the 3d print ABS extremely cleanly. The silicone captures extremely fine details, so it will capture the "3d printed" strands of plastic look.
Step 4: Apply Food!
Yay! That was easy. Now to turn this into food. Going from least lazy to most lazy:
Make sure to apply vegetable oil or butter! The face is especially difficult, so watch out for that. The failure modes for nyancake are plentiful. Your cake needs to be well-done, and if you don't apply mold release (oil/butter) you get zombie nyancakes or faceless nyancakes.
You can see that the mold heats unevenly -- if the temperature is up high, I think this was for white cake, the top gets burnt. Mmm, food visualization of thermal distribution...
The 1/23/12 picture shows how much one box of cake mix makes -- enough to fill 2.5 nyancake molds, probably.
If you're lazy, you can use the dieter's trick and all you need is cake mix and a clear soda. The clear soda replaces all the liquid ingredients. This version actually seems to distribute heat better, or perhaps it depends on the type of cake. To be determined! (science?)
From jell-o mix. It's all hunky-dory compared to cake, but still involves heating up water. It captures much finer details than cake, so
Whoa! All you have to do is add milk to the mix and whisk it for two minutes and you're done. It's a lot more wobbly than jello when not-so-frozen though.
I haven't gotten this to work well for anything except the smallest1'' diameter mold.The silicone is somewhat of an insulator and does not heat through fast, so you can't really flip your pancake and kind of just have to sit there and wait a minute or two.
The laziest way! Just dump some yogurt in there and stick it in the freezer :)
Bread / cookies / muffins:
I haven't tried this yet, but seems like muffin bread (or a thicker kind of cake) would capture the details of the mold better than cake.
Step 5: Conclusion
The main cost is the food-safe silicone.
Reducing the amount of material probably requires making a two-part mold, like what I did with the cardboard but more... CNC. Something like this: http://fablab.waag.org/archive/casting-foosbal-man-part-2.
I've also shifted toward small 3d-prints in the hopes of making a nyancupcake tray one day. Haven't gotten around to it yet though.
Changing the material
For oven-safe materials, it seems like silicone rubber is it. I've considered making a negative out of metal or heat-resistant plastic and then coating it with "silicone food sealant," however that stock is expensive too. If I knew more about woods, perhaps there are some suitable for use in ovens at <400 degrees Fahrenheit.
It's possible I could mill a chunk of sugar candy or something, oil it really thoroughly, and then pour cake batter into that. It wouldn't really be reusable though.
PET-G and corn starch have also been used to make food molds, although the former is not suitable for the oven and the latter is one-time use. See https://www.instructables.com/id/Custom-Hamburger-mold and https://www.instructables.com/id/Corn-Starch-Candy-Molds.
Singing nyancake! Embed an attiny+piezo+battery inside the cake, perhaps add some code so only when it is picked up does it start singing. See: jarv.org/2011/11/custom-musical-greeting-card-for-less-than-5/.
Hmm, valentine's day is coming up. There may be some mold-making in my future...
(for my editing use, my blog entries on this topic: drystonecakemakerfairenyancad)


text:
BUTUAN CITY (MindaNews/28 April) — A national fact finding mission said military operations are going on in hinterland barangays of Agusan del Norte and Surigao del Norte, even as officials of local governments and national line agencies denied the reports.
Photographs and video footage supplied by the human rights group Karapatan and the Kahugpongan sa Lumadnong Organisasyon sa Caraga (Kasalo Caraga) to the local media showed two cannons mounted in the middle of a populated community in Barangay Puting Bato in Cabadbaran City.
Another video footage and series of photographs also showed cut trees in the mountains of Zapanta Valley in Kitcharao, Surigao del Norte.
Dr.Naty Castro, secretary-general of Karapatan-Caraga said they also found empty shells from 50 mm machine gun as well as a chainsaw in the area.
The report said the area may have been cleared to serve as landing area for the helicopters that reportedly were used to deploy military forces and deliver supplies at the height of the intense military operations from March 4 to 15 this year.
Karapatan together with indigenous peoples organizations in Mindanao and Manila launched a fact-finding mission on April 12-15 after receiving reports of the exodus of evacuees in the city and other parts in the region due to intense military operations in the two provinces.
The ensuing military operations resulted in the exodus of mass evacuees in Butuan City on March 22 and in Gigaquit, Surigao del Norte on March 26.
“To date, there are over 243 families with about 1,000 men, women and children from the mountain of Palidan in Brgy. Mahaba and Sitio Losong, Brgy. Puting Bato in Cabadbaran City; Manhumapay in Zapanta Valley, Brgy. Bangayan, Kitcharao, both in Agusan del Norte; Brgy. Ferlda in Alegria,and Brgy. Camam-onan, Guigaquit, both in Surigao del Norte who have evacuated their communities and are staying in different evacuation sites in bothprovinces,” Castro said.
In its report, the Mission said they were repeatedly denied audience by local officials in Butuan City, Cabadbaran and in Gigaquit.
It said a dialogue with the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples’ (NCIP) regional director Dominador Gomez reportedly was not fruitful as the official reportedly denied the presence of evacuees as well as military operations because “he did not receive a report from the field.”
The Mission also noted that Gomez declined assistance to the Mamanwa evacuees allegedly because it does not have funds to support the hundreds of evacuees now staying in Brgy. Banza.
The report also noted that Marilyn Pinto, regional director of the Commission on Human Rights told the group that she is “unaware” of her role in addressing the problem of the evacuees. Castro said Pintor is not aware of her mandate as CHR director.
Castro said the mission team wanted to meet with Rep. Angel Amante-Matba but she sent her Chief of Staff who told them there is nothing they can do because it is a “national command.”
Given these officials’ denials, the Mission said it is constrained to bring the issue to Manila and present its report to Congress, the Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG), Department of National Defense and CHR chair Loretta Rosales.
The group also intends to raise the issue to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights (UNHCR) on the Rights of the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs).
Kakay Tolentino, Katribu Partylist national coordinator, said the NCIP’s inutility shows P-Noy’s real agenda to favor the mining industry in the country. “Ang local siempre ay susunod lang yan sa kagustuhan ng nasa taas,” Tolentino said.
Kasalo Caraga spokesperson Genasque Enriquez lambasted officials for accusing their group as pawns of the communists. “I will not sacrifice my wife and children to sleep on cold cement floors for weeks,” he said.
“This only shows the long historical discrimination against our people. This is already old and rehashed, the real issue is the evacuees and why did they evacuate?,” he said.
Dato Monico Cayog of Kalumaran, a Mindanao-wide organizationof Lumads said those who spread stories that the Mamanwa evacuees were “hakot”( a term for gathering people en masse and bringing them to another area on board trucks) are “crazy people.”
“Buang na. Daghan ba kwarta ang Kasalo, ang Karapatan? Ang nagsulti ana anad na sa election kay manghakot. Gianad nila ang mga tawo nga bayran, pakan-on para muboto sa ila,” (Crazy. Kasalo and Karapatan have money? Whoever said that is used to elections where they haul and feed people to vote for their candidates), he said.
Cayog said the military operations in the mountains of the two Carga provinces are aimed at displacing the tribal communities to accommodate mining companies.
Lt. Col. Vincent Iringan, commanding officer of the 30th Infantry Battalion, confirmed military operations are being carried out in Surigao del Norte “where there are sightings of armed illegal groups” because it is “our mandate as soldiers of the land.”
Iringan said a dialogue was already conducted with Mamanwa evacuees in Brgy. Baoy, Gigaquit, Surigao del Norte together with local government officials, the NCIP and other stakeholders.
Barangay councilor Baby Coter on one hand could not confirm that a dialogue had ensued saying as of present the evacuees are still staying at a dam site in Brgy. Baoy and local government officials and NCIP officials continue to deny assistance to the evacuees. “Asa may NCIP ug mayor wala man pakita sa mga bakwit” (Where is NICP and the mayor? They never showed up to the evacuees), Coter said in a text message. (Vanessa L. Almeda/MindaNews)

domain: politics


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text:
In September 1913, Woodrow Wilson pushed a button in the White House, sending an electric pulse that detonated the Gamboa Dike, some two thousand miles to the southwest in the Panama Canal Zone. The dam’s collapse sent water rushing from Gatun Lake into the canal, the culmination of a mammoth, decade-long construction project.
The project’s payoff was still a year away, however—in 1914, the Ancon sailed across the Isthmus of Panama, through the Miraflores locks, and into the Pacific Ocean. The new fifty-one-mile gap in the isthmus knitted the Atlantic and Pacific oceans together, a breakthrough widely hailed as the eighth wonder of the world. But it was also, and primarily, a potent symbol of the imperial ambitions of the United States. Henceforth, American power and prosperity would flow through the canal. Theodore Roosevelt reckoned its creation to be not only the most important achievement of his presidency but also the most important event in American foreign affairs since the republic’s founding. The canal expanded American trade, linked the navy’s Atlantic and Pacific fleets, and marked America’s ascendancy as a world power.
The canal project itself involved considerable flexing of American might. Until 1903, the isthmus was part of Colombia. When negotiations between that country and the US over the proposed canal broke down, Roosevelt sent warships to back the Panamanian independence movement, then quickly framed an agreement with Panama, which had become an independent nation in November 1903. The Hay-Bunau-Varilla Treaty, ratified by the Senate in 1904, granted the United States complete control over the canal and the ten-mile-wide Panama Canal Zone in perpetuity. As Roosevelt declared flatly in 1911, “I took the Canal Zone.”
Alexander Missal’s Seaway to the Future focuses on Americans’ image of the canal’s construction as a model for the orderly, conflict-free society that canal boosters hoped to create in the United States. Between 1880 and World War I, the US underwent rapid industrialization, experienced wrenching strikes, and absorbed millions of immigrants. Missal endorses historian Robert Wiebe’s contention that many middle-class white Americans, fearful of a militant working class, embarked on a “search for order,” seeking innovative management techniques to maintain stability in a newly industrialized, urbanized society. America’s ambitious undertaking, the Panama Canal, became more than a stupendous engineering feat, also furnishing a model of a “utopian” middle-class community, in which class divisions were rendered invisible and unthreatening.
Missal, a journalist, focuses on the “Panama authors,” who chronicled the decade-long effort to cut a channel across the country and ballyhooed the canal to the American public. These writers, he contends, were more significant than the canal itself: “For their middle-class audience, the writers’ construction of the Canal was more relevant than the concrete on the Isthmus.” His “alternate history” of the canal thus “takes place not on the Isthmus but within the United States—not in excavations of dirt but in people’s minds.” Photographers produced thousands of images of the canal, which complemented the work of the writers by offering Americans an “engineered view” of the project and a vision of a new America.
The Panama writers hailed the Canal Zone as a model society, a collectivist “mini-state” in which the government would not only oversee construction but also regulate virtually every aspect of society. The project was overseen by the Isthmian Canal Commission (ICC), which reported to the secretary of war, William Taft; day-to-day management of the zone was entrusted to a series of chief engineers: John F. Wallace (1904–1905), John F. Stevens (1906–1907), and George W. Goethals, who presided over the canal’s construction from 1907 until its opening in 1914, then served for two years as the zone’s first governor. (To ensure that Goethals would have complete control, Roosevelt named him chairman of the ICC, as well as chief engineer.)
Like most would-be utopias, the Canal Zone was far from democratic. Goethals, an accomplished engineer, considered the task of governing the zone’s sixty thousand residents (“Zonians”) both more important and more difficult than the technological feats of digging the canal and erecting its monumental locks. An autocrat, Goethals unflinchingly assumed the role of benevolent despot and strove to maintain a tightly controlled community that would furnish a model for Progressive reformers in the United States. Artist Joseph Pennell, who produced a renowned series of lithographs of the canal’s construction, pronounced the zone “the best governed section of the United States.” A mechanic put it differently: “There ain’t any democracy down here.”
Goethals was especially determined to maintain discipline among his workforce. In order to prevent workers from developing a sense of solidarity, organizing, or striking, he (like Stevens before him) deliberately maintained sharp distinctions between white Americans, black Americans, West Indians, and Europeans. White and black employees were segregated. African Americans and West Indians received lower pay.
As Missal observes, the Panama writers created their utopian vision of the canal by relentlessly excluding nonwhites and the specter of labor strife from their accounts. The writers and photographers depicted the excavation, the steam shovels, and the canal’s locks in copious detail but promulgated a sanitized version of a well-ordered society by consciously discounting the aspirations of thousands of workers. Missal concludes his book with a plea that the Panama writers’ fictive utopia, predicated on “exclusion and discrimination,” be “shattered.”
Julie Greene’s The Canal Builders reverses the blinkered logic of these original portrayals and provides a thorough breakdown of how the canal project fell far short of its ballyhooed democratic promise. A history professor at the University of Maryland, Greene painstakingly recounts the hard, dangerous jobs of the men who dug the canal. The construction project was a “global magnet” that drew tens of thousands of workers from the United States, Canada, Europe, South America, India, and elsewhere. Half the workers were West Indians, most of them unskilled. Some five thousand workers died due to disease and construction accidents.
Stevens and Goethals deliberately sought to divide and conquer their workforce, Greene writes, by exploiting racial and ethnic divisions against any threat of growing class solidarity. Initially, skilled and highly productive workers, regardless of race or nationality, were paid in gold-backed American dollars, while unskilled laborers received silver Panamanian currency. “Gold” workers received not only higher wages but also better housing and food, annual vacations, and other perks. In 1906, Stevens ordered all nonwhite workers transferred to the silver roll; two years later, Roosevelt decreed that only American citizens (who made up between 14 and 19 percent of the workforce) could be on the gold roll. Workers were divided, and the zone’s model society was riven by economic, ethnic, and racial tensions. Professionals disdained skilled laborers, and both despised the unskilled. In a notable effort to transform the zone from a rugged, nearly all-male construction camp into “a small bit of the United States,” with a more contented, stable labor force, the ICC in 1906 began encouraging women to come. (There were also sensational reports that the US government had retained several hundred prostitutes for canal workers, a charge Roosevelt sought to dispel when he visited the zone in a 1906 PR offensive.)
Greene seconds Missal’s view that Americans invested the canal project with great psychic significance. But while Missal describes the Panama writers’ Canal Zone as intended to be a model for United States society, Greene suggests a more complex relationship between the US and the zone. The zone would offer “a display of America’s domestic strengths in a world setting” and furnish a laboratory permitting reformers to experiment with activist government and expert management in ways that could improve American society and create a “progressivism for the world.” Social engineering in the zone could thus aid the cause of reform both at home and abroad.
Goethals strove to keep the zone, which he regarded a model of order, distinct from Panama—particularly from the nightlife of Panama City, which he dreaded as a source of chaos and trouble. Goethals’s undisguised contempt for the country, and that of many American workers, stoked resentments that smoldered for decades. Panamanians in turn resented the zone, which had sliced their nation in half, and the Americans who had “foreignized” Panama by gaining influence over the nation’s political elite.
Tensions between Americans and Panamanians erupted in 1912, as upward of one thousand American workers, soldiers, and marines boisterously celebrated the Fourth of July in Cocoa Grove, Panama City’s red-light district. Fearful of violence and vandalism, barkeeps and madams shut their establishments. Undeterred, the revelers battered their way into saloons and bordellos. Ordered to quell the disturbance, Panamanian police and soldiers arrested many Americans, beat several others, and killed one. Recriminations between the Panamanian and American governments, each of which blamed the other for the riot, dragged on for three years. And as Greene observes, “For a day the Cocoa Grove riots had brought Goethals’s efficient machine to a standstill.”
The Ancon’s historic journey through the canal’s locks in August 1914 was overshadowed by the war in Europe, which had broken out only days earlier. Europeans’ deployment of deadly new technologies to slaughter one another by the millions shattered many Westerners’ faith in progress, technology, government —and, for some, humanity itself. In 1915, the Panama Pacific International Exhibition, a world’s fair held to commemorate the completion of the canal and America’s newfound power, opened in San Francisco. The fair’s most renowned attraction, a five-acre model of the canal, celebrated the historic achievement. As Greene observes, this model, like most published accounts of the canal’s construction, depicted a world of perfect order, obscuring the privation of the workers who cleared trees, excavated soil, and blasted rock for a decade to link the Atlantic and the Pacific.
While most Americans regarded the canal as a symbol of American technological, commercial, and military prowess, it remained a source of resentment for Panamanians. In 1964, violent protests against the United States’s continued control over the Canal Zone left nineteen Panamanians and three Americans dead. In the aftermath, international pressure mounted on the US to transfer control to Panama. A majority of Americans, however, opposed relinquishing the canal, and the issue vexed the nation’s politics throughout the 1970s. “We bought it, we paid for it, it’s ours . . . and we are going to keep it,” declared Ronald Reagan in his 1976 primary campaign against Gerald Ford. Conservative Republicans’ fervent determination to retain control of the canal revived Reagan’s flagging candidacy, bringing him to the verge of wresting the GOP nomination from Ford, the sitting president. The Torrijos-Carter Treaties of 1977, in which the United States agreed to transfer the canal to Panama on New Year’s Eve of 1999, provoked intense opposition among Americans, many of whom viewed the canal as an object of national pride and a bulwark of national security. In his victorious campaign against Jimmy Carter in 1980, Reagan castigated the “giveaway” of the canal as a vestige of Vietnam-era defeatism.
Nearly a decade after Panamanians gained control over the canal, and nearly a century after its completion, it is now, according to Greene, a lost symbol of America’s rise to global power. The canal has receded as a hallmark of American technological prowess and military might. Its construction also suggests another story, one overlooked by contemporaries, who, in much the same fashion that they overlooked its workers, failed to recognize the canal as a harbinger of a globalized market not only for goods and capital but for labor. Workers from the Americas, Europe, and Asia forsook their homes and families for jobs in the zone, inaugurating an era in which transnational labor migrations became a fixture of the global economy.
As Missal points out, the Panama Canal could inspire middle-class hopes for an America devoid of class and racial conflict only by effacing workers and nonwhites from the vision of a US-administered utopian world order. Likewise, Greene has delved into the mythology of the canal as a heroic achievement of engineers and social visionaries to highlight how the tens of thousands of workers resisted becoming cogs in Goethals’s “efficient machine.” These interlocking new narratives of the canal’s construction not only supply a corrective to the willful blind spots of the past but also provide a useful vantage on the world bequeathed to us by the forces that set out to put America astride the globe nearly a century ago.
Chris Rasmussen teaches history at Farleigh Dickinson University in Madison, NJ.

domain: library


text:
Throughout the school year, Fairfax Extra publishes occasional reviews of high school shows written by student critics under the guidance of faculty mentors as part of the Critics and Awards Program, also known as Cappies. Now in its seventh season, the program recognizes the achievements of young performers, writers, directors and stage crews. For more information, visit www.cappies.com.
The pianist quietly sat down, her fingers poised above the keys. The notes started slowly, transforming into the lazy, carefree music associated with the saloons of the Wild West.
So began Herndon High School's recent production of James McLure's "Wild Oats," a quirky comedy made up of singing bar-girls, colonels, Shakespearean thespians, Mexican tenants and even a human cactus.
Dubbed "a romance of the Old West," Wild Oats is the hilarious story of aimless thespian Jack Rover, who falls in love with the strong-willed Kate Thunder and finds his long-lost family in the desert town of Muleshoe.
Leading a strong and enthusiastic cast, Alex Dobbs gave an uproarious performance as the Shakespeare-loving Jack. Dobbs fully embraced the over-the-top style of "Wild Oats," using wild gestures and animated facial expressions to great comedic effect. The chemistry between Dobbs and Jordan Garegnani, who played Kate Thunder, was realistic. Garegnani did an excellent job of portraying her character with lots of energy and irony in her words, reflecting Kate's quick wit. Both Dobbs and Garegnani had excellent timing.
Many other members of the cast also garnered a great deal of laughter from the audience. Rob Snow and Joe Fleming, as the acting duo of Mr. Kliegle and Mr. Leako, used exaggerated expressions and booming voices to create amusing caricatures. Emma Jasper as Amelia Dolores Morales, a poor tenant and Jack's mother, delivered her witty lines with great articulation and energy.
The most memorable scene involved the human cactus, Dan Claff, and a dancing bear, Bexar Drake, presented with an absurd composure that had the audience roaring with laughter.
Herndon's production was strong technically. The complicated lighting, designed by Julian Karlen, used many different colors in the background to portray the scene's mood. Spotlights were used to isolate characters when they needed to address the audience without anyone else onstage hearing, a technique that was both hilarious and effective in bonding with the audience. A few lighting cues were missed in the second act, but the performers handled this successfully.
The costumes, designed by Meagan Carrick, enhanced the show greatly by developing the Wild West setting with cowboy boots, jeans and showgirl dresses. The set, designed by Nick Moore and Dustin Vandenberg, also gave the show a very Western feel. The set involved numerous pieces, including a bar and student-built swinging saloon doors and a love seat. Although the set's complexity made for long set changes, Herndon cleverly used singing bar-girls and the pianist to occupy the time.
An adaptation of a Restoration comedy, "Wild Oats" is a challenging play for any high school to produce. Herndon met this challenge, making the show look effortless and wooing the audience with its "wild" humor.
Lake Braddock Secondary School
She likes him, but he's pretending to be someone else, and he thinks he's related to that guy, but in actuality . . .
Yee hah! Taking the audience to the Wild West, Herndon High sowed its "Wild Oats," a delightfully enthusiastic production chock-full of Shakespearean quotes and deliciously naughty innuendos. (Shakespeare, a scandalous writer himself, would be proud.)
At the Last Chance Saloon, the bar girls are dancin,' the cowboys are shootin' and the sleazy preacher from the Church of Suffering and Denial, Ephraim Smooth (played by Julian Karlen), comes to convert everyone's souls -- and not for the better. Soon we see Col. Croftus Thunder (Chris Patterson) galloping in on his "horse." There we also meet the colonel's outgoing, spunky niece, Kate Thunder (Jordan Garegnani), who meets Harry (Bexar Drake), Jack (Alex Dobbs) and Harry's goofy pal, Muz (Tom Snow).
Kate falls in love with Jack, who is disguised as Harry Thunder and is obsessed with Shakespeare, when she is supposed to marry Harry Thunder, who is under the name Dick Buckskin. Are you still with me? When the colonel gets suspicious, he goes to Kate, who is oblivious to what's happening. Jack, still disguised as Harry, tries to convince the colonel that he is his son so that Kate won't find him out, but the colonel knows better. And still, there's more.
This old fashioned comedy-melodrama, inspired by Shakespeare and written by James McLure, has a wild, convoluted plot as well as unforgettable lines, effects and characters. There were more memorable lines than one could remember by show's end.
There was the potential for this script to become a train wreck, but the impeccable comedic timing of the Herndon students and the obvious joy they exhibited made the show a delight. Standout performances among the uniformly excellent cast included Dobbs, whose physical comedy and facial expressions were unbearably funny; Garegnani, whose stage presence and accent changing were wonderfully clever; Karlen, whose smarmy persona delighted the audience; and Patterson as the charismatic colonel.
Other comedic roles included Rob Snow's Mr. Kliegle and Joe Fleming's Mr. Leako, both of whom kept the audience roaring, Bexar Drake as the Bear, and the techie, the Train, who garnered some of the biggest laughs.
A fabulous feature of the show was the color scheme in the gorgeous lighting. They were beautiful, radiant, Skittles-colored lights. Especially effective were spotlights highlighting asides to the audience. Crashing thunder, galloping hooves and a host of other sound effects, all perfectly timed, added that extra fun touch. The set changes, though sometimes awkward, were covered well by the singing bar-girls (Sarah Rubard, Sarah McGrath, Samantha Nees, Kate Parkin, Katrina Rodowski and Noelle Rosenblum) and by lovely performances from pianist Gale Williams.
Great comic skills, fun fights, bright lights, good music and sound effects and, most important, actors who weren't afraid to make fools of themselves, created a show that made you want to get up and join the cast.

domain: entertainment


text:
If the owners of our public lands in the East Bay hills are finally successful in implementing their plans to destroy our urban forest, what will the hills look like? The land owners tell us in their written plans that the forests will be replaced by grassland with islands of shrubs. They also say they will preserve existing oak-bay woodlands. However, their plans make no commitments to plant anything. They predict that this conversion will take place naturally, without further intervention.
The Sierra Club, which advocates for the destruction of our urban forest, is more specific about their desire for a native landscape. The Sierra Club says, “Existing native plants in the understory will be preserved and replaced naturally. Grass and shrub land will be restored…with more naturally fire-resistant native trees and plants.”
Are these realistic predictions for the future of the East Bay hills if most of the non-native forests are destroyed? That’s the question we will ponder today.
Grassland in California
We predict that grassland is the likely immediate outcome of tree removals. The grassland will quickly succeed to shrubs in the absence of grazing and periodic fires. However, that grassland won’t be native because grassland in California has not been native for over 150 years. Here are a few of the sources of that information:
- “…only about 1% of [California] grassland today could be considered pristine [AKA native]” (1)
- “Non-native species are widespread and often the dominant plants in California’s grasslands…it is clear that annual grasses…are dominant over enormous portions of the state.” (2)
- David Amme is one of the co-founders of The California Native Grass Association and one of the authors of East Bay Regional Park District’s “Wildfire Hazard Reduction and Resource Management Plan” at a time when he was employed by EBRPD. In an article he wrote for Bay Nature he lists a few small remnants of native grasses in the East Bay and advises those who attempt to find them, “As you go searching for these native grasses, you’ll see firsthand that the introduction of the Mediterranean annual grasses is the juggernaut that has forever changed the balance and composition of our grasslands.” (3)
- In a video recording of a lecture given to ecology students at UC Berkeley, Professor Joe McBride tells the students that an inventory of grassland in Strawberry Canyon found that it is 97% non-native annual grasses. (4)
Why were native perennial bunchgrasses quickly replaced by non-native annual grasses?
David Amme explains why non-native annual grasses quickly replaced native bunch grasses in his article in Bay Nature:
“The Mediterranean annual grasses grow faster and bigger than the native bunchgrasses. Established annual grass stands produce ten times the amount of seed as do native grass stands of equal area, and most important, their seeds are five to ten times larger, giving them a big jump on establishment and fast growth. Another advantage they have is their shallow, weblike root system, which quickly exploits the moisture near the surface of the soil, rendering tiny, slow-growing native perennial seedlings helpless.” (3)
Stromberg says land use changes were also instrumental in the replacement of native grasses by non-native annual grasses:
“…drought, combined with intensification of crop agriculture and intensive year-round livestock grazing resulted in a dramatic decline in native perennial grasses over a relatively short period. Diaries of early explorers such as John Muir also suggest that dramatic change occurred relatively rapidly in the mid 1800s. Native species were presumably replaced with non-native annuals whose seeds had become widespread as a result of transport by livestock, contaminations of seed crops, or active planting as forage crops.” (2)
European annual grasses evolved with a 40,000 year history of association with human disturbance in Eurasia and are therefore pre-adapted to take advantage of a highly disturbed environment such as agricultural and urban environments. They are also much more drought tolerant than California native grassland. (2)
Another factor in the dominance of non-native annual grassland is that many are known to be capable of transferring atmospheric nitrogen into the soil (called “nitrogen-fixers”). Modern burning of fossil fuels has increased atmospheric nitrogen levels. These two factors combine to increase levels of nitrogen in the soil. High levels of nitrogen in the soil “promotes fast-growing exotic annual grasses to the exclusion of native species.” (2)
What are the prospects of restoring native bunch grasses in the Bay Area?
Given the competitive advantages of non-native annual grasses, is it realistic to expect native bunch grasses to “naturally” colonize the landscape when the forests are destroyed without being planted? Probably not.
Stromberg reports on 18 grassland restoration projects on 943 acres in California in California Grasslands. All eighteen of those projects planted native plants after using various methods to eradicate non-native annual grasses. 78% of the projects used herbicides. 61% of the projects also used grazing. 56% of the projects also used some combination of mowing, disking, or burning. 11% of the projects also irrigated. None of these projects resulted in exclusively native grassland and none predicted permanent return of native grassland. (2)
We reported on a project in which nearly $500,000 was spent to convert 2 acres of non-native annual grasses to native grasses over a period of 8 years. Every possible combination of planting and eradication was used. When they ran out of money, they described their success as 50% native grasses that were predicted to last for 10 years.
We turn to David Amme again to describe the prospects of converting non-native to native grassland:
“…the Mediterranean annual grasses are a permanent part of the Californian grasslands, and they now are as much a part of California’s grasslands as the native perennial grasses once were. The time is long overdue for an official naturalization ceremony. Despite the losses suffered by native plants in the face of exotic grasses, the East Bay annual grasslands remain a tremendously productive ecosystem, in terms of producing great volumes of both forage and seed.” (3)
And apparently East Bay Regional Park District agrees with that assessment, judging by this sign posted at Inspiration Point in Tilden Park:
And the future of grassland is bleak
Researchers at Stanford University conducted a study of the future of grasslands in California by mimicking carbon dioxide and temperature levels that are predicted in the future: “In the course of a 17-year experiment on more than 1 million plants, scientists put future global warming to a real-world test.”
Here is what they learned: “The results aren’t pretty…the plants…didn’t grow more or get greener. They also didn’t remove the pollution and store more of it in the soil…Plant growth tended to decline with rising temperature….grassland ecosystems will likely not be able to tolerate the higher temperatures and increased drought stress.” (5)
Bay Nature published an interview with Elizabeth Hadly, Stanford University Paleoecologist and recently appointed faculty director of Stanford’s Jasper Ridge Ecological Reserve, where that research study was conducted. Professor Hadly told Bay Nature, “Global change is in motion and there is no going back, no ‘restoration’ to some historic state. I want to anticipate the future. How do we anticipate the future of the nature reserve in this place?” (6)
We agree with Professor Hadly. In a rapidly changing climate, conservation efforts should look to the future, not to the past. The past is increasingly irrelevant to conservation.
Ignorance or Strategy?
Why does the Sierra Club believe that our urban forests will be replaced by native grassland? Are they ignorant of the fact that our grassland is almost entirely non-native annual grassland? Are they unaware of the fact that none of the owners of our public land in the East Bay has any intention to plant native plants? Are they unaware of the competitive advantages of non-native grasses and the notorious failures of attempts to convert grassland from non-native to native?
Or is their ignorance actually a strategy? Do they want to seduce their followers into believing that destroying non-native trees will result in the return of a native landscape?
We don’t claim to know the motivation of those who demand the destruction of our urban forest. But we know this: destroying our urban forest will not magically produce a native landscape. Claims that it will are either dishonest or delusional.
In our next post we will address the claim that oak woodlands will also expand as a result of destroying our non-native forests. Preview: the claim that oak woodlands will expand is also delusional.
- Alan Schoenherr, A Natural History of California, UC Press, 1992, page 520
- Mark Stromberg, et. al., California Grasslands, UC Press, 2007, page 67
- David Amme, “Grassland Heritage,” Bay Nature, April 1, 2004
- “Elizabeth Hadly Turns to the Future,” Bay Nature, October-December 2016

domain: geography


The Slytest will soon be releasing their third record, Epic Ocean Love – Simeon Hillert, an upcoming producer in Gothenburg and Mats Björke (Mando Diao) are producing the new record. They are excited to follow up the critically acclaimed album “ Get Your Front Row Seat To This Trainwreck”. The Slytest have toured every corner in Sweden, and have played every kind of gig there is to play. They played big theaters, prisons, small bars, hotel lobbies and on the street. Why? Because they love it. They also played two shows in London during 2014. Now that electronic music and hipsters are taking over the world, The Slytest turns the other way. With its retro rock sound and old man’s rock (Wilco, Ryan Adams and the Stones) the band also manages to go back to the roots, in alt country music and minor blues.
“The Slytest got its fair share of a blog hype when their debut single ” Winning Without Playing ” was released in early 2012. The band, with roots in different parts of Sweden but based in Stockholm, followed up with a 4 -track EP – exclusively released on vinyl. After a lot of touring, the new single “The Ego Song” came from nowhere in November 2012. “The Ego Song” was the start of the album “Get Your Front Row Seat to This Trainwreck” – a debut album that has its feet in a seventies American pop and classic rock’n’roll. In September 2013 the first single single was released, the catchy “Rock’n’roll Heaven” – a song that takes its theme from the seemingly unlucky year 27 of talented musicians!
Dan talks about the new record: All my old songs are thought out and processed, describing a single life, where especially uncomplicated sex and old wounds are in focus. Influence -wise, Wilco are still the big favorites, and it can be heard in the new song “Lonely Artist”. I realized that I can not keep writing the same song over and over again. Instead, I chose to write about my friends’ sex lives, just kidding! But to look outward and see friends difficulties inspired me to write. All new songs on Epic Ocean Love are about the struggle my closest friends are fighting. We ask Dan to predict where The Slytest will be in five years: “We are burning to play live and explore new territories….”
The Slytest: Ride It Out
The Slytest: Ride It Out Lyrics:


It is up to everyone to take steps within our own life to reduce their footprint and support sustainable practices, but without the action of those at the top, we can only go so far. The cities that we live in need to be upgraded if we are to step into the future with a cleaner and long-lasting blueprint for society. Thankfully, there are innovations happening all around the world that could be a sign that all is not doomed.
These Cities Are Leading the Sustainability Movement in 2018 and Beyond
Some of the world’s biggest tourist destinations are making a surprising effort to reduce their carbon footprint. Here are some of the world’s most sustainable cities.
Copenhagen is one of the most sustainable cities in the world and has big plans to become completely carbon-neutral by 2025. The residents are doing a good job so far, with around 50% of the population now walking or cycling to work. Talk about leading from the front, around 60% of politicians also take these options over driving a car. Denmark is well known for its emphasis on health and happiness, and this has led to actions to make the docks clean enough for a swim, and food waste reduced by around 25%.
European cities, in general, have been encouraging residents to cycle to reduce congestion and carbon emissions in the city centers. Amsterdam is another shining example of pedestrianization, as it is one of the most bike-friendly countries in the world. They have even started adding solar panels to roads and paths in a recent innovation.
Even London, more often associated with West End Theatre, wild nights in Soho and busy tube networks, has made more attempts as of late to push for change. Namely, the “Congestion Charge zone” has a toll for people driving old, unsustainable cars in the city while electric cars can enter the area for free. And the “Boris” bike stations are now positioned around the city so that pedestrians can pick up a bike for a couple of pounds, cycle it to get wherever they want to go and deposit it at a different station when they arrive.
But it’s not just European cities that are leading the way. Take Ouarzazate in the Sahara region of Morocco, which is now home to the largest concentrated solar power station in the world; a giant project that will be the size of the country’s capital by the time it is completed in 2018. Morocco is aiming for 42% renewable energy by 2020, including solar, wind and hydro. Hundreds of other cities and towns across Senegal, Rwanda and other African countries are now powered by solar, many of them skipping fossil-fuel power altogether.
The key to renewable energy seems to be in working with what you have. Just as African countries can make use of the near constant power of the sun, Reykjavik in Iceland makes use of its massive and ever-lasting supplies of geothermal energy. They aim to be fossil-fuel free by 2050, and the city’s heating already comes from 95% geothermal sources. There is also an emphasis on preserving green space, with 9/10 residents living within a five-minute walk of public greenery.
One of the greenest cities in the world is Curitiba in Brazil, with 52 meters squared of green space per capita, including a 400km-square park, which also doubles up as a natural storm water management system. They also have a unique way to motivate residents to keep the place clean — by offering bus tokens, food or money in exchange for trash and recyclables!
Though there are much more examples of sustainability in the world, from New York to Singapore, we finish here with a truly policy-driven approach to a green future. In 2010, the National Congress in the city of Cochabamba, Bolivia, voted to pass a bill which literally translates to “The Law Of Mother Earth,” giving the planet access to basic rights such as diversity of life, clean water and air, equilibrium and restoration and pollution-free living. The citizens there are respecting the planet’s right to life, instilling a top-down attitude that Europe (and the rest of the world) could certainly learn from.
Though we have a long way to go before we can be sure of a sustainable future, it’s great to see positive change happening at the level of city planning and policy making. From rooftop gardens to renewable energy supplies, recycling incentives to the preservation of green space, cities around the world are making progress. It’s up to us to play our parts.
Green Cities Lead the Way in 2018
These cities are leading the path to sustainability in 2018. Countries all over the world should look to them for inspiration as they strive to lower their own carbon footprint.
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text:
directed ‘Mayakumari’ was supposed to release on June 16 last year, but due to the pandemic, it got stalled. Now, the revised SOPs from the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting
has made the team jubilant. The new directive has heaved a collective sigh of relief among the hall owners as well.
“The pandemic forced us to postpone the release multiple times. We even planned to release it in December, but the lack of confidence among the audience and irregularities in hall operations made us change our minds. Now, it is scheduled to release in May this year. With cinemas allowed to operate at 100% capacity now, we are hopeful of a revival,” said the director.
The film marks Rituparna Sengupta
’s first collaboration with Arindam Sil. It also stars Abir Chatterjee
, Rajatava Dutta
, Arunima Ghosh
, Sourav Das, Anindita Basu, Indrasish Roy
in pivotal roles.
Bankrolled by Camellia Productions, the plot of the film revolves around Maya kumari (Rituparna) and Kanan Kumar (Abir) who formed a hit pair of 1940’s Bengali cinema. At the peak of her career, Mayakumari takes a sabbatical and her fans and followers start speculating about Maya Kumar’s sudden disappearance. Why did she leave films? The truth is she leaves films to live her life with her husband Sital Bhattacharya (Rajatava Dutta) far from media and the glamour world. But did she leave her film career because of her first onscreen kiss and the criticism she received from society? To find these answers, the film’s plot shifts to current times as Soumitra Mallick (Indrasish) decides to make a film on Mayakumari and Kanan.
It’s also a musical film and the lyrics have been written by Suvendu Dasmunsi while the music is by Bickram Ghosh.

domain: news


text:
High-level representatives from the Parliament of Moldova and the Supreme Soviet of the breakaway region of Transnistria have agreed to formalise an informal dialogue process as part of which they have been meeting with each other regularly over the last year.
Established by the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue (HD) in 2017, this dialogue process, known as the Geneva Framework, seeks to create prerequisites for the restoration of a permanent dialogue between the two institutions in support of the official negotiation process between Moldova and the Transnistrian region, led by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).
The Geneva Framework aims in particular to:
- Support the development of a mechanism for involving the Moldovan Parliament and the Transnistrian Supreme Soviet in the implementation of agreements reached as part of the official OSCE negotiation process
- Support the implementation of agreements reached in the formal negotiating process through legislative initiatives
- Create the conditions for facilitating the official OSCE negotiation process as well as monitoring its progress, including through regular hearings, consultations, exchanges of information, joint meetings, conferences and seminars.
The conflict between the two sides has its origins in the decision of the eastern region of Moldova, known as Transnistria, to declare its de-facto separation from Moldova in 1990, amid regional geopolitical turmoil sparked by the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The conflict has remained frozen ever since.


text:
Nordic Skiing a global sport? Sure is. On Friday in PyeongChang, South Korea, the men contested a 1.5 k classic sprint at the 2018 Olympic venue. Russian Gleb Retivykh won the day with both Canada’s Len Valjas and the U.S. Ski Team’s Andy Newell making the finals.
2018 is sooner than you think. The World Cup makes its pre-Olympic presence in PyeongChang, South Korea this week and the U.S. and Canadian teams are there.
Development isn’s just for athletes: BEA’s Bernie Nelson and SMS Elite Team’s Patrick O’Brien get a chance to lead and learn at Junior and U23 Worlds at SoHo.
Yellow and blue, blue and yellow: either way it comes up Sweden as Stina Nilsson (SWE) wins the 1.4 k freestyle sprint in Falun, Sweden. And it was five U.S. women into the heats as Kikkan Randall makes her first final in nearly two years.
Sound check…check, check, check. Yup, air guitar time as Harvey and Valjas strum their Fischers after winning Team Sprint in Toblach, Italy.
Canada’s Dahria Beatty set the benchmark on Thursday at Soldier Hollow as she won the U.S. Nationals skate sprint. Hannah Halvorsen is primed for World Juniors and Caitlin Gregg had a two-podium week including a win in the 10 k skate.
Craftsbury Green Racing Project’s Ben Lustgarten won his first National Championship on Tuesday skiing away from APU’s David Norris for the win.
Delivering in rain, sleet, and snow: University of Utah skier Kevin Bolger wins the classic sprint National Championships on a crazy crazy day.
The sun seems to set early at SoHo, but not so much for Kyle Bratrud who won the men’s National Championship 15 k freestyle on Saturday.
Render it all down, it’s about the human element of competition on the World Cup. In this episode of Nordic Nation, we first speak with U.S. Ski Team Head Coach Chris Grover and then with one of the team’s athletes crushing right now in the Tour de Ski, Jessie Diggins. The topic at hand: breaking down an International Ski Federation (FIS) […]
Ustiugov, Ustiugov, Ustiugov…the Russian skier has made it there wins in a row to open the Tour de Ski. Despite a wrong turn, Norway’s Sundby placed second and sits second overall. Canada’s Harvey has skied consistently — a fourth today — and is seeking an overall podium in the Tour. He’s third overall after three stages.
Sergey Ustiugov (RUS) sprints for the win and shows he’s in good form. Last year’s second place TdS overall finisher Finn Hågen Krogh was second and a certain Norwegian named Sundby was fourth. Canada’s Alex Harvey was sixth. And yes — it’s Tour de Ski time!
In this episode of Nordic Nation we talk with Norwegian journalist John Rasmussen to discuss Norway’s skiing culture in light of the Johaug and Sundby doping cases. What better way to start your holiday than with Nordic Nation and Rasmussen.
All Norway in La Clusaz and the Weng and company win the 4 x 4k relay. Finland placed second with Sweden third. The U.S. women skied to 7th and Canada placed 12th.
Sundby is usually the cat, the others his mice. Not today in La Clusaz, France — site of a 15 k mass start free. Norway’s Finn Hågen Krogh beat the master to win the day. Sundby was second, Russia’s Alexander Legkov was third. Canada’s Alex Harvey was seventh after crashing, while U.S. skier Erik Bjornsen placed 20th — his first ever skate distance points.
Cross Country Canada, the nation’s governing body for cross country skiing will have a new leader in Shane Pearsall starting January 1st. He comes to the role new to skiing, but with a background helping lead Bobsleigh Canada and Skeleton as well as ties to oil and gas, an industry tied to the nordic skiing funding pipeline in Canada. As an athlete, Pearsall was an elite hockey player and was a member of the 1980 men’s national team. Pearsall answers Nordic Nation’s questions in this episode.
Neither good news or athlete’s names were released this morning as part of WADA’s publishing of it’s second McLaren Report: the investigation into systematic Russian Doping.
A quick trajectory. That’s a succinct way of describing US Biathlon’s Clare Egan ascent onto the World Cup. She first picked up a rifle three years ago, and today you might just see her shoot clean.
Three days up, three days down. The Lillehammer mini tour ends with Norway’s Martin Johnsrud Sundby taking the win by a sliver. Canada’s Alex Harvey has let the skiing do the talking with a flurry of top-tens, finishing the 9th overall.
One down, two stages to go. Sweden’s Calle Halfvarsson has both the Lillehammer mini tour’s early lead with a win on Friday’s sprint, and an increasingly firm grip on the World Cup Overall. Canada’s Alex Harvey is happy to lurk in 12th heading into tomorrow’s skate distance race.


Memorial Day Weekend was a huge weekend for music festivals across the entire nation. Festival junkies had a smorgasbord to choose from to fulfill their musical desires – Counterpoint, Mysteryland, EDC NY, Movement, Summer Camp. But there was one in particular that really grabbed our attention here at RaversChoice, and that was Sunset Music Festival in Tampa, Florida. The event took place just a few minutes outside of downtown Tampa at Raymond James Stadium on May 23-24th. It featured such an incredible lineup that we just had to take the trip down to Tampa Bay and see what this festival was all about.
Sunset Music Festival has only been around for a few years; but it has quickly made a name for itself during its tenure thanks to veteran organizers Disco Donnie Presents, Sunset Events, and Committee Entertainment. Each year SMF has delivered a jam-packed lineup consisting of some of the biggest names in electronic dance music, along with spectacular production and an absolutely beautiful crowd.
For the 2015 installment of this music festival, we were presented with the likes of Tiesto, Skrillex, Armin van Buuren, Flosstradamus, Porter Robinson, and Showtek. Joining these headliners was a plethora of EDM all-stars:Cedric Gervais, Duke Dumont, Don Diablo, Keys N Krates, Oliver Heldens, Tchami, and much more.
Although there was brief weather delay on Saturday during the opening hours of the festival which resulted in the evacuation of attendees until the heavy rain and lightning cleared, the party continued as scheduled for the rest of day 1. Trance and house lovers were in musical paradise on the opening day of SMF. The Eclipse stage had the trance family in full force with performances by Jordan Suckley, Mark Sixma, MaRlo, and Andrew Rayel. Over at the Horizon stage, there was a wonderful mix of house and a little basss sprinkled in with Mija, Trippy Turtle, SNBRN, Cashmere Cat, Destructo, and Tchami. The main stage, or Sunset stage, delivered some powerful sets as well. Some highlight sets from the Sunset Stage included a face melting set from Skrillex, an oh-so-groovy set from the future house prodigy, Oliver Heldens, and a massive set from the legendary Tiesto.
Of course, the party was nowhere near over for the opening day. The official after party for SMF took place at Amphitheater in Ybor City near downtown Tampa. Destructo and Mija were the headliners for the day one after party, and both of them played some electrifying sets. Guests at Amphitheater were also given a special surprise appearance by none other than Skrillex to top off a spectacular first day of Sunset Music Festival 2015.
We hit the ground running on day two, picking up right where we left off from day one. The Sunset stage was just as stacked as the first day with huge sets from The Chainsmokers, DVBBS, Showtek and Audien. The Horizon stage got a little tropical with feel-good sets by Viceroy, Sam Feldt, Thomas Jack, and Robin Schulz. Bouncing over to the Eclipse stage, things got down and dirty with some heavy trap and bass sets from Keys N Krates,Flosstradamus, and Meaux Green. There was even a little hardstyle thrown in with Headhunterz and Noise Controllers as well. We were given a life changing set at the Sunset stage from the legendary king of trance, Armin van Buuren, who put the entire crowd in A State Of Trance. It was such a perfect way to close out what was an unforgettable music festival. Take a look at the recap video of Sunset Music Festival 2015 below.
We can't thank you all enough!! #SMF15See you in 2016!
Posted by Sunset Music Festival on Wednesday, May 27, 2015
Once again, Sunset Music Festival was a huge success. The production was nothing short of extraordinary with amazing lighting and lasers, along with great sound and stage arrangement. The lineup across the board had something to tickle every EDM lover’s fancy. We hope that this festival will be back for many years to come. Hats off to Disco Donnie Presents, Sunset Events, and Committee Entertainment for working so hard on delivering such an outstanding music festival each year. We will definitely come back to SMF again in the future. Huge thank you to Disco Donnie for inviting us out to SMF, we had so much fun. Check out both of the incredible photo albums from SMF 2015, photographed by Rukes!


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SNOW HILL – The Berlin sewage system expansion is once again in limbo after the County Commissioners postponed a decision on the necessary county water and sewer plan amendment.
The commissioners voted Tuesday to delay a decision on the amendment, allowing Berlin to expand and upgrade its sewage system to increase nutrient removal and handle new growth, after two hours of presentations.
The commissioners cited the need to address concerns expressed by the Maryland Department of Planning (MDP), and the need for the county Planning Commission to consider language on the retention of the industrial wastewater discharge permit at the former Tyson plant.
Berlin proposes to increase the town wastewater system to handle up to 1.4 million gallons of sewage per day (mgd), which would be 3,200 EDUs, some of which would be discharged to Kitt’s Branch until spray land is available.
The plan before the county would eliminate the water discharge in 10 years, require new developments to provide more than enough spray irrigation land to handle the sewer increase and attempt to reuse effluent for lawns and gardens.
The town would be assessed on its spray irrigation progress several times in 10 years.
“That will be an opportunity to discuss with the town where they are,” county Comprehensive Planning Director Sandy Coyman said.
The proposal before the commissioners called for a new plant added at the Tyson site to augment the existing plant, despite last week’s recommendation by consultant Mark Prouty of URS Corp. that a single plant would be more economical.
Joe Moore, attorney representing the town, said that the number of plants was an economic decision and made no difference to the effect of the new system on water quality.
Projections call for nutrients running into local waters from sewage operations to be halved to meet the total maximum daily load (TMDL) limit, the allowable nitrogen pollution level.
Reaching the TMDL for Ayers Creek, Newport Creek and Newport Bay will be difficult, Coyman said. Under the best-case scenario, “we would just barely make the TMDL,” he said.
“You need to cut it in half is basically what you’re saying, and what the town is putting in now is very little from the [current] plant,” Commissioner Virgil Shockley said.
The intent is to move entirely to spray irrigation within a decade.
Commissioner Judy Boggs was skeptical that a 10-year plan could be called an interim plan.
“They have to locate land. They have to do soil tests,” Coyman said. “It does take a number of years after you embark on spray irrigation before you can spray on it.”
“In 10 years we’re not all going to be here,” Boggs said. “In 10 years, the land for spray application is going to be too expensive to afford or it’s not going to be available.”
Berlin already knows how to handle spray irrigation, said Moore.
“We already have it. We are the only municipality in this county to have it,” he said.
Since the current spray land does not have the best soils, the town needs to find more land. He acknowledged that could take time.
The town met with the Planning Commission three times to hash out better benchmarks, Moore said. Berlin also must comply with a state consent order requiring the town use spray only, and upgrade effluent treatment. “We are getting out of the waters of the state of Maryland,” Moore said. “We’re getting out. We’re not waiting for nine and a half years.”
The town has workable mileposts, according to Moore.
“What plant are we talking about? Are you talking about two plants? Are you talking about one plant?” Shockley asked.
“We don’t know, Mr. Shockley, as we stand here today,” Moore said. “One plant, two plants, it’s on an economic basis. Whether we’re a one plant or two-plant scenario is going to be based on whatever is best for the ratepayers of the town. It very well could be one plant.”
The state’s consent order, to get out of the water entirely in 10 years, necessitated some number crunching, Prouty said.
“We could have waited on that analysis till after this meeting. However, we also need to meet MDE’s need for a schedule,” he said.
The two-plant scenario came about because of developer Troy Purnell’s proposal to build, and pay more a large part of, a new plant on the Tyson site. If the two-plant scenario is abandoned, Moore said that the industrial discharge permit at the Tyson plant’s wastewater facility only disappears from the equation if the town sewer system can handle new users, making the industrial permit unnecessary.
The details have to be worked out, said county attorney and lifelong Berlin resident Ed Hammond. “The County Commissioners have to trust the town to some extent,” he said.
“If we don’t put our money where our mouth is you’re going to be a lot more skeptical the next time around,” Moore said.
Mark Cropper, attorney representing Purnell and his company Berlin Properties North (BPN), added a new wrinkle to the proceedings. The commissioners need to add a note, Cropper said, in the water and sewer plan amendment that would recognize that renewal of the industrial wastewater discharge permit at the old Tyson plant was consistent with the amendment. Without it the state will not renew the permit, which expires in August.
“It’s kind of an all or nothing proposition to Berlin,” Cropper said.
The county planning commission needs to look it over, according to Hammond. “You’re going to have to send it back,” he said. “That’s the way the rule book reads.”
As long as Purnell has sewer capacity to build his development with, renewing the permit is not necessary, Shockley said.
“We won’t know that between now and August is the problem,” Cropper said.
BPN would then be forced to sell the Tyson site for industrial uses if Berlin does not come through with sewer capacity, although the developer does not want to do that, Cropper said.
“We can’t let it expire and be left nowhere,” Cropper said. “They’ve got millions of dollars invested in that property.”
“What a hammer that BPN has in its hands that the town does not have,” Hammond said.
If BPN wanted to use the industrial permit as a hammer, the company would not be involved in the proposal at hand, Cropper said.
“This is the first I’m hearing of this. You’ve known about it quite awhile,” Boggs said.
The permit’s expiration date was never a secret, Cropper said, but he himself didn’t realize the language needed to be added to the amendment until last month.
A handful of people spoke up during the public hearing. Ray Shandley, who lives on Ayers Creek, protested the planned interim discharge into Kitts Branch, which leads to the creek. “That’s not what we want. That’s not what the state wants. That’s not what you want,” he said. “Do not go forward with something that permits an extension of dumping into the streams.”
“We really do need to clean up our water bodies. There are indications in our coastal bays [that] our water quality is decreasing also,” said Roman Jesien, science coordinator for the Maryland Coastal Bays Program.
The commissioners concluded that the discharge permit addition would need to be looked over by the planning commission before a decision. Uneasiness over a letter from Maryland Department of Planning (MDP) professing concern over zoning and consistency with the county comprehensive plan was also a factor in the delayed decision.
“That is the most ill-informed letter I’ve seen in a long time,” Moore said, pointing out that MDP assumes that Berlin, not Worcester County, set up the growth areas outside the town limits.
“I feel uncomfortable in discounting this,” Boggs said.
“It would appear to me we should probably postpone action until the Planning Commission discusses the industrial discharge permit and determines underlying zoning,” County Administrator Gerry Mason said.
The commissioners voted unanimously to hold their decision until the Dec. 18 meeting.


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Chris Brown Deletes Twitter After Nasty Feud with Writer Jenny JohnsonRelated: Chris Brown
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Twitter is Chris Brown-free -- for now, at least.
The controversial "Don't Wake Me Up" singer, 24, deleted his official account on the micro-blogging site over the weekend following an extended, often explicit Twitter war with comic writer Jenny Johnson.
Brown (who celebrated the Thanksgiving holiday in Europe with Rihanna) and Johnson first got into it when Johnson replied to one of Brown's tweets. "I know! Being a worthless piece of s--- can really age a person," Johnson wrote of Brown's tweet "I look old as f---! I'm only 23."
The R&B singer's response? "Take them teeth out when u sucking my d--- HOE."
As Brown continued to hurl X-rated, vile insults, Johnson then corrected Brown's spelling and added, "Your mom must be so proud of you," and referenced the star's infamous 2009 assault of Rihanna, 24.
In addition to several not-fit-for-print jibes, Brown called her "worthless" and a "thirsty bitch."
Quipped Johnson: "I have zero respect for a person who seems unapologetic for the terrible crime he committed and shows no signs of changing."
One of Brown's final tweets before deleting his profile on Sunday night: "Just ask Rihanna if she mad????"
For her part, Rihanna posted an Instagram photo of her on-again beau sleeping shirtless in her bed on Saturday.
This article originally appeared on Usmagazine.com: Chris Brown Deletes Twitter After Nasty Feud with Writer Jenny Johnson
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A new law that will dictate the competitive positioning of firms across the economy, and the rights of customers to their own data, is open for comment for three weeks.
WESTPAC BANKING CORPORATION
Banking, financial and related services.
Westpac tech chief Dave Curran will depart next January after a major overhaul of the bank's systems, with one of Citigroup's top execs returning to Australia to take up the reins.
As recently as February 2016, Whitehaven Coal was a local pin-up for the promoters of the stranded asset theory. But now MD Paul Flynn has turned it around.
NAB's tech chief says its aggressive move to the cloud is delivering benefits as it looks to retool its workforce for the AI era.
This time next year, when the banking Royal Commission is reduced to words on a page in front of the government, only one of the big four banks will still own a wealth manager.
The corporate regulator has told banks to step up their management of adviser operated deposit accounts to avoid fraud.
An extra $70.1m in funding for ASIC reflects chairman James Shipton wanting to adopt a more proactive regulatory approach.
The government is inclined towards setting up an access regime for the New Payments Platform, but the Reserve Bank says more time is needed to see if competition proliferates.
A new model for broker pay, a fuel watch style website and enhanced obligations will restore competition to the financial services sector.
The PC has lashed the banks for flooding the market with products, ripping off loyal customers and enticing new business with temporary benefits.
The Treasurer said he's relying on start-ups to use open banking and 'comprehensive credit reporting' to up pressure on the major banks.
ANZ, the nation's third largest lender, has slashed variable rates on its "no frills" home loan in the latest move by a major lender to build market share.
It's amazing how often a down market can spark a chunky block trade.
The banks have had a win convincing ASIC to limit the application of its new Banking Code of Practice to businesses borrowing up to $3 million, rather than $5 million.
Magellan's Hamish Douglass cannot say confidently whether bank stocks will be a sound investment in 10 years, because nobody has been able to articulate the sector's vulnerability to fintech.
In a call to action to policy makers, Westpac's CEO said government regulation is costing the economy $94 billion a year.
Westpac CEO Brian Hartzer has pledged to be more proactive identifying vulnerable customers and will set up a new 'consequence framework' for staff who misbehave.
An erosion of trust in banks driven by the royal commission is making customers increasingly wary about sharing data.
Big wealth managers and their upstart rivals have been tipped to follow Westpac's lead and cut fees for their investment platforms.
Westpac is playing a long game with its wealth management arm, aggressively pursuing customers with new, streamlined offerings.
Bets against the big Australian banks dropped by $300 million in the June quarter, as investors wait for the banks to raise interest rates in their mortgage portfolios.
Bank CEOs are preparing to appear before the Hayne royal commission following confirmation that a seventh round of hearings will start on November 19.
The banking regulator has backed the banks' right to make a profit and take enforcement action when borrowers can't repay loans.
Westpac Banking Corporation has carved Sydney hedge fund manager Regal Funds Management out of a deal to sell its boutique funds management business, Ascalon Capital Managers.
Australian banks facing a $70 billion "funding gap" may be left with little option but to start cutting into their cost bases.