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Tuesday Briefing: School Administrators’ Pay, Google’s Mobile Switch, and Abortion Waiting Periods
FlaglerLive | April 21, 2015
Today’s weather: calmer, sunnier, high of 82, low of 65, a bit warmer and thunder-prone Saturday and Sunday. Details here.
Today’s fire danger is Moderate. Flagler County’s Drought Index is at 172
The weather in Agrigento, Sicily: High of 68, low of 52. Details.
The OED’s Word of the Day: rurbanization, n..
The Live Community Calendar
Today’s jail bookings.
Today’s Briefing: Quick Links
- In Flagler and Palm Coast
- In Court
- In State Government
- In the Press
- Local Road and Interstate Construction
- PR Releases
- Blood Donations Needed
- In Coming Days in Flagler and Palm Coast
Note: all government meetings noticed below are free and open to the public unless otherwise indicated.
The Flagler County School Board has a full slate of meetings today, starting with a 9 a.m. workshop (as opposed to the more usual 4 or 5 p.m. start time). Discussion will focus on standardizing school administrators’ pay and applying a “step” plan that would automatically raise an administrator’s pay according to years of service, educational attainment and position. The base pay for administrators would start at $65,000 and top off at $86,590, not including several potential pay enhancements. See the salary matrix here. The board will also discuss a contract with Career Source of Flagler-Volusia during the workshop. The board’s business meeting is scheduled for 10 a.m. The board will be asked to approve spending $20,000 to underwrite the costs of 13 Flagler Palm Coast High School students, two teachers and one adult chaperone attending the International Future Problem Solving Conference June 10-15, 2015 in Ames, Iowa. Other schools are sending students as well, but fund-raising is underwriting those costs. The board is also expected to approve its District Strategic Plan for the next five years, which is available here. The board will meet again at 1 p.m. to discuss Phoenix Academy and its strategic plan. All meetings to be held at the Government Services Building’s board chambers, starting at 9 a.m.
Senior Scholarship Awards for Matanzas and Flagler Palm Coast High School seniors, at the Flagler Auditorium this evening.
The Palm Coast City Council holds a business meeting at the Community Center starting at 9 a.m. Council members will consider approving, on first reading, changing the name of Seminole Woods Parkway to Seminole Woods Boulevard, among numerous prosaic matters. The full agenda is available here.
The River To Sea Transportation Planning Organization’s Citizens Advisory Committee and Technical Coordinating Committee, which include representation from Flagler, meet today in the River to Sea TPO Conference Room, 2570 W. International Speedway Blvd., Suite 100, Daytona Beach. Note: The Citrizens Advisory Committee meets at 1:30 p.m., the Technical Coordinating Committee meets at 3 p.m. The full agenda and background material is here.
Online Auction for George Washington Carver Foundation: The annual auction, raising money for the Carver Center in Bunnell, is on through April 27. Make your bids here. The auction is the primary fundraising event for the Carver Center. In the past, money raised has been used for big-ticket items like ceiling insulation, furniture for the library, a scoreboard, bleachers, as well as money for scholarships and summer camp. “At this point, we are gearing up to assist the county with an addition to the center,” said Flagler County Commissioner Barbara Revels. “Flagler County is applying for a community development block grant to build additional classrooms and meeting space. If that happens, we’d like to be ready to help with what we can to furnish it.” Revels is a member of the George Washington Foundation and was part of a team instrumental in bringing the center up to sustainable level, saving the center from an uncertain fate. The Carver Center is a recreational facility that also offers tutoring, after school study, internet access and also serves the community with GED classes, employment counseling and other services. On April 20, Revels wrote: “I am reaching out to each of you as a reminder the G. W. Carver Center Auction will close at 7:00 p.m. Next Monday night the 27th. There is something for everyone to bid on. I want to thank those of you that have donated items and may have already bid. Please take the time to go to: http://gwcarvercenter.com/auction/auction/ and place your bid on one or more great items. I know I am tracking quite a few I want. Please help up make this year’s event the most successful yet. Remember all funds go to our Foundation that is a tax exempt charitable organization and NOTHING goes to administration or salaries. All funds go to the direct support of programs, equipment, supplies, scholarships or other needs of the Community Center’s patrons.”
Flagler Chamber of Commerce Boot Camp, another two-hour session tonight starting at 6 p.m. at the Flagler County Chamber of Commerce conference room in Palm Coast.
The Bunnell Planning and Zoning Board meeting scheduled for this evening was cancelled.
Handel’s Messiah: Stetson University’s Choral Union, Concert Choir, Women’s Chorale, Stetson Men and Orchestra, under the direction of Timothy Peter: A combined chorus, student soloists, and orchestra totaling 250 musicians will present this sacred oratorio, which has a long performance tradition at Stetson University. Ensembles involved include the Choral Union, Stetson Men, Women’s Chorale, Concert Choir, and Chamber Orchestra with additional winds and brass. Handel’s Messiah was first performed in Dublin in April of 1742 and received its London premiere nearly a year later. After an initially modest public reception, the oratorio gained in popularity, eventually becoming one of the best-known and most beloved choral works in Western music. 7:30p.m., First Baptist Church, 725 North Woodland Boulevard, DeLand.
Circuit Judge Michael Orfinger’s docket is all about case management today. County Judge Melissa Moore-Stens hears probation violation arraignments and pre-trail hearings at 1 p.m. (Courtroom 404).
Note: Most proceedings below can be followed live on the Florida Channel.
Health care: The Senate Appropriations Committee will hold a day-long meeting that will include a workshop on critical health-care issues. The Senate has proposed a plan that would use $2.8 billion in federal money to expand health coverage to about 800,000 low-income Floridians, but the House and Gov. Rick Scott oppose it. Also, the Senate plan involves an extension of a major health-funding program known as the Low Income Pool, which is scheduled to expire June 30. Also during the meeting, the committee will take up issues such as a bill (SB 918), filed by Sen. Charlie Dean, R-Inverness, that would increase protections for the state’s natural springs. Among numerous other bills, the committee will consider a proposal (SB 1248), filed by Sen. Kelli Stargel, R-Lakeland, that would revamp the state’s alimony laws. (10 a.m.)
Abortion: The House will hold a floor session and could take up dozens of bills, including a controversial proposal (HB 633), filed by Rep. Jennifer Sullivan, R-Mount Dora, that would require a 24-hour waiting period before women could have abortions. Among other bills on the House agenda is a measure (HB 4017), filed by Rep. Ross Spano, R-Dover, that would keep in place regulations on pain-management clinics. The regulations, which were approved to crack down on “pill mills,” are set to expire Jan. 1 unless lawmakers act. (11 a.m.)Special election: Voters in Hillsborough and Pinellas counties go to the polls in a special election in state House District 64. Former Rep. James Grant, R-Tampa, is seeking to return to the House and faces opposition from write-in candidate Daniel Matthews. Grant appeared to have won re-election in November, but the House declined to seat him because of a legal battle about whether the write-in was eligible to be a candidate. That necessitated holding the special election. The state Elections Canvassing Commission will meet to certify the results of April 7 special elections in Senate District 6, House District 17 and House District 24. Elkton Republican Travis Hutson won the race in Senate District 6, which includes St. Johns, Flagler and Putnam counties and part of Volusia County. St. Johns Republican Cyndi Stevenson won in House District 17, which includes the northern part of St. Johns County. Palm Coast Republican Paul Renner won in House District 24, which includes Flagler County and parts of St. Johns and Volusia counties.
–Compiled by the News Service of Florida
Boston Marathon bomber jury reconvenes today.
Google today adds “mobile-friendliness” to its search tools.
Trial for 93-year-old Auschwitz guard opens today: Seven decades after the liberation of Auschwitz, a 93-year-old former SS guard at the Nazi death camp shuffled into a German court on Tuesday to answer charges of complicity in the murder of 300,000 mostly Hungarian Jews in two months in the summer of 1944. With Holocaust survivors watching in the stark courtroom, Oskar Gröning read a terrifying but startlingly clear account of his life, focusing on the autumns of 1942 and 1944, when he served in the SS at Auschwitz-Birkenau.” Details from The Times.
Man died of spinal injury after being arrested by Baltimore police “City officials suspended six police officers Monday as they investigate the death of a 25-year-old man who suffered a severe spinal cord injury while in police custody. Freddie Gray had been hospitalized since his April 12 arrest and, according to his attorney, was in a coma when he died Sunday. On Monday, the mayor and police commissioner publicly pleaded for calm and promised a full accounting — an effort to keep Baltimore from becoming the latest flash point in disintegrating relations between police and communities across the country. […] Officials also were unable to answer other key questions, such as whether Gray was given prompt medical attention and whether he had done anything illegal or suspicious to justify officers detaining him in Gilmor Homes, a cluster of red-brick public housing on Baltimore’s west side. Also left unexplained is a video from a bystander showing two officers dragging what appears to be a limp suspect to a police van. […] Gray’s death thrust Baltimore into the national spotlight as the latest city facing protests over police conduct and allegations of excessive force. Since last year’s outrage over the fatal shooting by police of an unarmed teen in Ferguson, Mo., similar tensions have erupted in Cleveland, where an officer shot and killed a 12-year-old boy who was holding a toy gun; on Staten Island, where a street hawker died while being restrained by officers; and in North Charleston, S.C., where a video showed an officer shooting a fleeing, apparently unarmed man in the back, killing him.” From the Washington Post.
New Genetic Tests for Breast Cancer Hold Promise: “A Silicon Valley start-up with some big-name backers is threatening to upend genetic screening for breast and ovarian cancer by offering a test on a sample of saliva that is so inexpensive that most women could get it. At the same time, the nation’s two largest clinical laboratories, Quest Diagnostics and LabCorp, normally bitter rivals, are joining with French researchers to pool their data to better interpret mutations in the two main breast cancer risk genes, known as BRCA1 and BRCA2. Other companies and laboratories are being invited to join the effort, called BRCA Share. The announcements being made on Tuesday, although coincidental in their timing, speak to the surge in competition in genetic risk screening for cancer since 2013, when the Supreme Court invalidated the gene patents that gave Myriad Genetics a monopoly on BRCA testing.” From The Times.
Google’s Mobile Friendliness: “Many businesses around the world could wake up on Tuesday to discover their search ranking has been downgraded. After a monthslong warning period, Google will add “mobile friendliness” to the 200 or so factors it uses to list websites on its search engine. As a result, websites that don’t meet Google’s criteria will tumble in its all-important rankings. Google has made several big changes. Companies will be docked for shortcomings like displaying links that are hard to click or forcing users to scroll horizontally on a lopsided site. In addition, the company recently announced that in certain cases it would also use information contained within apps as a ranking factor for mobile searches performed on phones that run its Android software. “Since mobile search results are about half of what Google handles, anyone might be at risk,” said Danny Sullivan, the founder of Search Engine Land, which closely tracks changes to Google’s search engine. The shift to mobile devices has been a challenge for all businesses, Google included. In the space of a few years, phones have become the dominant portal through which people use the Internet. The United States had 134 million mobile users last year, about 100 million more than in 2010, according to eMarketer, a research company.” From The Times.
Road and Interstate Construction:
Palm Coast: Palm Coast Parkway between Cypress Point Parkway and Florida Park Drive. IMPACTS: Lane shifts and closures will occur and this may cause traffic congestion on this already busy roadway. Most construction work will occur between 9 p.m. and 7 a.m. though weather and unforeseen issues may adjust the schedules. This project will be complete by December 2015.
Flagler County: County Road 305 between CR 2006 and Tangerine. IMPACTS: Closure in force 3/17/2015 for the 2nd box culvert replacement. Detours detour via CR 110 to CR 95 to CR 2006. Truck Detour via Bunnell (SR 100 – SR 11)
Volusia: I-4 Widening from SR 44 to east of I-95, Monday and Friday, 7:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m., Eastbound/Westbound shoulder closing. Sunday through Thursday, Eastbound and Westbound lane closures as needed from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. Motorists should be aware of traffic shifts near Canal St./SR 44.
- Palm Coast Parkway Project Website
- Florida Department of Transportation Road Project List
- County Road 304 Project Map and Description
Sheriff’s Office Marks National Public Safety Telecommunicator Week: The Flagler County Sheriff’s Office Communications Center celebrated National Public Safety Telecommunicator Week April 12-18. The week is designated as a time to recognize all public safety men and women who respond to emergency calls and dispatch emergency professionals during times of crisis. It is a time to show gratitude to 9-1-1 call takers, dispatchers, technicians that maintain radio and emergency phone systems, communications staff trainers, communication center personnel and other public safety telecommunications staff who help during emergencies. “For one week each year we take time to celebrate the public safety Communications Specialists who are our unsung heroes and true first responders that are on the other side of 911 and the radios used by our public safety personnel,” said Kelley Eisen, FCSO Communications Manager. The Flagler County Commission, Town of Beverly Beach, City of Flagler Beach, City of Bunnell and City of Palm Coast presented the communications center with a proclamation acknowledging NPSTW. “Our Communications Specialists serve the community and are the life line to the person on the other end of the phone,” said Sheriff Jim Manfre. “They work 24 hours a day, seven days a week and are always there when called upon.” Throughout the week, communications specialists were able to bring their families to work, participated in cook-outs, and had themed dress down days, such as tropical day, crazy hat day, and sports team day.
April 22: Skywarn Storm Spotter Program Class: This class is also great for first responders, dispatchers, anyone who works outside, school staff, coaches, etc. Meteorologists aren’t the only ones who can recognize potentially disastrous weather. After participating in a free nationally acclaimed weather class hosted by the National Weather Service and Flagler County Emergency Services, anyone can become a trained storm spotter. The Skywarn Storm Spotter Program recruits volunteers to help protect people and property during tornados or severe thunderstorms. There are already over 1,000 storm spotters in Flagler County. “Skywarn is essential to the National Weather Service as weather radars cannot see everything,” said Bob Pickering, Flagler County Emergency Management Technician. “Spotters play a key role not only in advanced warnings, but also storm verification.” During a class taught by Ben Nelson, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Jacksonville, participants will learn to recognize signs of impending dangerous weather and how to report perilous conditions so warnings can be issued faster. The class will take place on Wednesday, April 22, from 6 to 9 p.m. at the Flagler County Emergency Operations Center, 1769 East Moody Blvd., Bunnell. To sign up for the class, please call Pickering at 386-313-4250 or send an email to: email@example.com.
April 23: Sheriff Jim Manfre will be the guest speaker for the Flagler County Chamber upcoming Eggs & Issues breakfast at 8 a.m. at the Grand Haven Golf Club, 500 Riverfront Drive in Palm Coast. The chamber hosts Eggs & Issues breakfasts five times a year to bring local and business-related issues and topics to light. Guest speakers include elected officials, thought leaders and high profile executives/business professionals. Cost to attend is $15 with advance payment for members or $20 at the door. Future members pay $20 with advance reservations or $25 the day of the event. Seating is limited; reservations are requested by Friday, April 17 at 5 PM.
Flagler County Job Fair on April 24: A limited number of spaces are still open for businesses interested in reserving a free booth at the second annual Flagler County Job Fair. The event will take place on Friday, April 24, from 12 p.m. to 6 p.m. at the Palm Coast Campus of Daytona State College, 3000 Palm Coast Pkwy SE, Building 3. Last year nearly 400 jobseekers attended the inaugural fair, which was hosted by the Flagler County Department of Economic Opportunity and CareerSource Flagler Volusia. This year Daytona State College and the Flagler County Chamber of Commerce joined the effort to positively impact Flagler County’s economic vitality. Among the businesses that have already registered are CoastalCloud, Edwards Jones Financial Service, Beutlich Pharmaceuticals and Target. A complete list of attending companies is available here. Businesses wishing to secure a place at the fair and job seekers interested in registering for preparation workshops should visit the job fair website. For additional information about the fair, please contact Casey Scott at 386-313-4098 or by email here.
April 25: Law Enforcement Torch Run For Special Olympics: The torch run is the largest annual public relations and fund-raising event amongst Special Olympics Florida and law enforcement agencies. Local Flagler County agencies are getting their sneakers laced up for the event on Saturday, April 25. The run will start promptly at 10 a.m. in the front parking area of 5400 East Highway 100 next to Flagler Palm Coast High School. Registration is $12 and each runner will receive a Law Enforcement Torch Run t-shirt. In addition to the torch run, the City of Palm Coast, Frank Celico Foundation and the Bike Doctor are hosting their annual Family Bike Rodeo which promises to enhance your family’s bicycle riding experience and safety. Children can participate in a bike safety course and have an opportunity to win a brand new bike helmet. There will be bike clinics, safety checks and a skills obstacle course. The Run/Walk/Ride will be escorted by the Flagler County Sheriff’s Office as runners carry the torch, also known as the “Flame of Hope,” westbound on State Road 100 to northbound Belle Terre Parkway and proceed to the Town Center Publix Shopping Plaza. There will be a break area in front of Mezzaluna Pizzeria before heading back out to Belle Terre Parkway southbound to the Target Plaza with another break area proudly sponsored by Hibbett Sports. The final leg will travel back to the start line were there will be pizza from Mezzaluna Pizzeria. “Year after year, the Flagler County Sheriff’s Office supports this important event and continues to raise money and awareness for a good cause,” said Sheriff Jim Manfre. This is a family event and there will be vendors and activities for children even if you do not run/walk. All activities will last until 1 p.m., so come on out and enjoy the Bounce House by Jump for Joy, Balloon Art by Bruce Bryant, and Face Painting by Doreen Lazzano. For more information, please call 386-586-2655.
Matanzas Inlet Beach Clean-up: In celebration of Earth Day, Fort Matanzas National Monument is hosting a beach clean-up on Saturday, April 25, from 9am to 12pm. Join us in removing not only man-made trash but invasive plant life. The event will begin with a safety briefing and an introduction to the park at the ocean-side parking lot on the east side of A1A, just north of the Inlet bridge. Trash bags, gloves, and water will be provided. Please bring sunscreen, appropriate beach wear (including a hat), and your own reusable water bottle. If you would like to participate, please call 904-829-6506 ext. 233 or email Jill_Leverett@nps.gov by April 23.
Matanzas Woods Interchange Construction Public Meeting: The Flagler County Engineering Department will host a public meeting to inform residents of the planned beginning of construction of the Matanzas Woods Parkway Interchange Project at I-95 and the future Old Kings Road Extension project. The interchange project is a long planned project providing interstate access to residents in the northern part of Flagler County and is slated to start this summer. This project will require the temporary closure of Matanzas Woods Parkway during the 2015 summer months when school is out of session. The future Old Kings Road Extension project will provide a direct route for commuters to the Matanzas interchange at I-95 and minimize traffic impacts to Matanzas High School. The Old Kings Road Extension project is slated to begin construction later this year. The meeting will be from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. Tuesday, April 28th at the Palm Coast Community Center, 305 Palm Coast Parkway NE, Palm Coast, Florida 32137. The residents of the area and the public are invited to attend this informational meeting. For more information call 386-313-4039.
Volunteers needed for invasive plant removal at Betty Steflik Memorial Preserve, April 29: Bring a friend, bring a kid, bring gloves and a water bottle to Betty Steflik Memorial Preserve on April 29 to help rid it of invasive species like the Brazilian pepper trees along the entrance road. The entrance road will be closed from dawn to 1 p.m. as Land Management and Parks and Recreation staff, with the help of volunteers, remove the plants. Normal park access will be available after 1 p.m. “We appreciate the help,” said Mike Lagasse, land manager. “Non-native plants are displacing the native plants.” Flagler County has a dedicated group of volunteers who have worked at other preserves, like the River to Sea Preserve, protect the native ecosystem. Laura Ostapko is one of those volunteers and a member of “The Pepper Pickers,” a group that started at Gamble Rogers and has recently expanded its scope of work. “We have a sign that says, ‘Restoring paradise one tree at a time,’ because that’s what we are doing,” Ostapko said. “It’s very rewarding when you see what you have done.” Betty Steflik Memorial Preserve is situated on 217 acres along the eastern side of the Intracoastal Waterway south of State Road 100. Those interested in volunteering are asked to contact Lagasse at 386-313-4064 or at firstname.lastname@example.org.
Arbor Day 5K Root Run/Walk and Free Fun Run May 2 in Palm Coast’s Town Center: Register now for the Arbor Day 5K Root Run/Walk, which starts at 8 a.m. May 2, followed by the Free Fun Run at 9 a.m. The run/walks will start and finish on Lake Avenue in Central Park at Town Center, 975 Central Ave. in Palm Coast. Awards will be given out at Central Park Main Stage after the race. This race will close out the 2014-2015 season in the Palm Coast Running Series. Register for the 5K Root Run/Walk at www.palmcoastgov.com/ArborDay. (Pre-registration is not required for the children’s Fun Run.) Participants of the 5K Root Run/Walk are guaranteed a race T-shirt and goody bag if they register by April 24. Entry fees and pre-registration deadlines are as follows:
· $25 Online registration closes at 5 p.m. April 30 at www.palmcoastgov.com/ArborDay.
· $25 Mail-in registration closes April 24 (Mail-in registration is available through April 24. Mail registration form available online with check or money order made out to City of Palm Coast to: City of Palm Coast, c/o Arbor Day Race Pre-registration, Attn: Carol Mini, 160 Cypress Point Parkway Suite B106, Palm Coast, FL 32164.)
· $25 In-person registration closes May 1. Register in-person 8 a.m.-5 p.m. weekdays at the Palm Coast Community Center, 305 Palm Coast Parkway, NE. Checks, money orders, cash and credit cards accepted.
· $30 Race day entry fee – cash or checks only – at Central Park (along Lake Avenue).
· Veterans with military ID receive free entry
Packet Pick Up will be held at the Community Center from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. May 1, or at 7 a.m. on race day at Central Park (on Lake Avenue). Prizes will be awarded to the overall male and female runners, as well as the top three men and women in 15 age groups. The race will be chip-timed. Children participating in the Fun Run will receive a ribbon. A ceremony honoring the overall winners for the Palm Coast Running Series will immediately follow the 5K Root Run awards. After the races, enjoy the free Arbor Day celebration from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Central Park. Bring canned food or pet food items and exchange them for a three-gallon native hardwood tree (while supplies last). Feed a Mouth, Get a Tree, Grow a Community is the theme. The event will also feature a butterfly tent, zoo exhibits, green vendors, a fire prevention activity, entertainment and kite flying/building. The popular Native Butterfly release is set for 11 a.m. Complete details are available here. For more information, contact City of Palm Coast Urban Forester Carol Mini at 386-986-3722.
Calling All Chiuhuahuas: The City of Daytona Beach’s Cultural Services Division is looking for 200 Chihuahuas in full costume to help set a Guinness World Record as part of Chihuahua De Mayo. This fun-filled, family event will take place at the world’s most famous bandshell May 2nd from 12 noon to 4 p.m. Chihuahua owners need to bring a copy of the pedigree registration or a birth certificate to verify that their dog(s) are pure breed, so they can take part in this record attempt.
- Registration….12:00 – 1:30 p.m.
- Guinness Book of World Records Attempt for most Chihuahuas in costumed attire (minimum 2 piece costume)….2:00 p.m.
- Bandshell to Boardwalk Parade After Record Attempt
- Parade Prizes – King & Queen Chihuahua Winners, Best Costume, Best Temperament, Best Hat, Best Duo, and Best Trio
- 1:00 – 3:30 p.m. – Mariachi Band – “Charros De Mexico” from Orlando
- Mexican Hat Dance Off – Pinatas – Candy
- Pet Rescue – Food – Vendors (vending space available)
- $5 Admission Fee – a portion of the proceeds will go to benefit the Halifax & Flagler Humane Societies and the Arnie Foundation
Come watch these Chihuahuas strut their stuff for the cutest Cinco De Mayo costume parade and enjoy an afternoon filled with a variety of things to do for the entire family.
Blood donations are urgently needed. Patients in our local hospitals are in need of blood transfusions, and the need for blood does not take a holiday. That’s why OneBlood is asking people to donate immediately.
Big Red Bus schedule in Flagler-Palm Coast:
Monday April 20th & Tuesday April 21st 9:00AM -2:00PM Daytona State College- Flagler/Palm Coast Campus, 3000 Palm Coast Parkway, Palm Coast
Saturday April 25th 1:00PM – 6:00PM Epic Theatre, 1185 Central Ave, Palm Coast
Monday April 27th 11:30AM – 4:00PM Flagler County Public Library, 2500 Palm Coast Parkway
Tuesday April 28th 11:00AM – 3:00PM Knights of Columbus Council 7845, 51 Old Kings Road North, Palm Coast
Wednesday April 29th 1:00PM – 5:30PM CVS Pharmacy, 1 Old Kings Road South, Palm Coast |
U.S. Supreme Court Labor Board v. Erie Resistor Corp., 373 U.S. 221 (1963)
National labor Relations Board v. Erie Resistor Corp.
Argued February 18-19, 1963
Decided May 13, 1963
373 U.S. 221
CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE THIRD CIRCUIT
Even in the absence of a finding of specific illegal intent, and notwithstanding the employer's claim that his action was necessary to continue his operations during a strike, the National Labor Relations Board was justified in finding that it was a violation of § 8(a) of the National Labor Relations Act for the employer to discriminate between employees who struck and employees who worked during a strike by awarding an additional seniority credit of 20 years to replacements for strikers, and also to strikers who returned to work during the strike, so that, in a subsequent layoff, strikers who did not return to work until after the strike terminated were laid off as junior employees. Labor Board v. Mackay Radio & Tel. Co., 304 U. S. 333 distinguished. Pp. 373 U. S. 221 -237.
303 F.2d 359, reversed and cause remanded.
MR. JUSTICE WHITE delivered the opinion of the Court.
The question before us is whether an employer commits an unfair labor practice under § 8(a) [ Footnote 1 ] of the
National Labor Relations Act, 61 Stat. 136, 29 U.S.C. § 158, when he extends a 20-year seniority credit to strike replacements and strikers who leave the strike and return to work. The Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in this case joined the Ninth Circuit, Labor Board v. Potlatch Forests, Inc., 189 F.2d 82 ( and see Labor Board v. Lewin-Mathes Co., 285 F.2d 329, from the Seventh Circuit), to hold that such super-seniority awards are not unlawful absent a showing of an illegal motive on the part of the employer. 303 F.2d 359. The Sixth Circuit, Swarco, Inc. v. Labor Board, 303 F.2d 668, and the National Labor Relations Board are of the opinion that such conduct can be unlawful even when the employer asserts that these additional benefits are necessary to continue his operations during a strike. To resolve these conflicting views upon an important question in the administration of the National Labor Relations Act, we brought the case here. 371 U.S. 810.
Erie Resistor Corporation and Local 613 of the International Union of Electrical Radio and Machine Workers were bound by a collective bargaining agreement which was due to expire on March 31, 1959. In January, 1959, both parties met to negotiate new terms, but, after extensive bargaining, they were unable to reach agreement. Upon expiration of the contract, the union, in support of its contract demands, called a strike which was joined by all of the 478 employees in the unit. [ Footnote 2 ]
The company, under intense competition and subject to insistent demands from its customers to maintain deliveries,
decided to continue production operations. Transferring clerks, engineers and other non-unit employees to production jobs, the company managed to keep production at about 15% to 30% of normal during the month of April. On May 3, however, the company notified the union members that it intended to begin hiring replacements, and that strikers would retain their jobs until replaced. The plant was located in an area classified by the United States Department of Labor as one of severe unemployment, and the company had, in fact, received applications for employment as early as a week or two after the strike began.
Replacements were told that they would not be laid off or discharged at the end of the strike. To implement that assurance, particularly in view of the 450 employees already laid off on March 31, the company notified the union that it intended to accord the replacements some form of super-seniority. At regular bargaining sessions between the company and union, the union made it clear that, in its view, no matter what form the super-seniority plan might take, it would necessarily work an illegal discrimination against the strikers. As negotiations advanced on other issues, it became evident that super-seniority was fast becoming the focal point of disagreement. On May 28, the company informed the union that it had decided to award 20 years' [ Footnote 3 ] additional seniority both to replacements and to strikers who returned to work, which would be available only for credit against future layoffs, and which could not be used for other employee benefits based on years of service. The strikers at a union meeting the next day, unanimously resolved to continue striking, now in protest against the proposed plan as well.
The company made its first official announcement of the super-seniority plan on June 10, and by June 14, 34 new employees, 47 employees recalled from layoff status, and 23 returning strikers had accepted production jobs. The union, now under great pressure, offered to give up some of its contract demands if the company would abandon super-seniority or go to arbitration on the question, but the company refused. In the following week, 64 strikers returned to work and 21 replacements took jobs, bringing the total to 102 replacements and recalled workers and 87 returned strikers. When the number of returning strikers went up to 125 during the following week, the union capitulated. A new labor agreement on the remaining economic issues was executed on July 17, and an accompanying settlement agreement was signed providing that the company's replacement and job assurance policy should be resolved by the National Labor Relations Board and the federal courts, but was to remain in effect pending final disposition.
Following the strike's termination, the company reinstated those strikers whose jobs had not been filled (all but 129 were returned to their jobs). At about the same time, the union received some 173 resignations from membership. By September of 1959, the production unit work force had reached a high of 442 employees, but, by May of 1960, the work force had gradually slipped back to 240. Many employees laid off during this cutback period were reinstated strikers whose seniority was insufficient to retain their jobs as a consequence of the company's super-seniority policy.
The union filed a charge with the National Labor Relations Board alleging that awarding super-seniority during the course of the strike constituted an unfair labor practice, and that the subsequent layoff of the recalled strikers pursuant to such a plan was unlawful. The Trial Examiner found that the policy was promulgated for legitimate
economic reasons, [ Footnote 4 ] not for illegal or discriminatory purposes, and recommended that the union's complaint be dismissed. The Board could not agree with the Trial Examiner's conclusion that specific evidence of subjective intent to discriminate against the union was necessary to finding that super-seniority granted during a strike is an unfair labor practice. Its consistent view, the Board said, had always been that super-seniority, in circumstances such as these, was an unfair labor practice. The Board rejected the argument that super-seniority granted during a strike is a legitimate corollary of the employer's right of replacement under Labor Board v. Mackay Radio & Tel. Co., 304 U. S. 333 , and detailed at some length the factors which to it indicated that
"super-seniority is a form of discrimination extending far beyond the employer's right of replacement sanctioned by Mackay, and is, moreover, in direct conflict with the express provisions of the Act prohibiting discrimination."
Having put aside Mackay, the Board went on to deny "that specific evidence of Respondent's discriminatory motivation is required to establish the alleged violations of the Act," relying upon Radio Officers v. Labor Board, 347 U. S. 17 ; Republic Aviation Corp. v. Labor Board, 324 U. S. 793 , and Teamsters Local v. Labor Board, 365 U. S. 667 . Moreover, in the Board's judgment, the employer's insistence that its overriding purpose in granting super-seniority was to keep its plant open and,
that business necessity justified its conduct was unacceptable, since
"to excuse such conduct would greatly diminish, if not destroy, the right to strike guaranteed by the Act, and would run directly counter to the guarantees of Sections 8(a)(1) and (3) that employees shall not be discriminated against for engaging in protected concerted activities. [ Footnote 5 ]"
Accordingly, the Board declined to make findings as to the specific motivation of the plan or its business necessity in the circumstances here.
The Court of Appeals rejected as unsupportable the rationale of the Board that a preferential seniority policy is illegal, however motivated.
"We are of the opinion that inherent in the right of an employer to replace strikers during a strike is the concomitant right to adopt a preferential seniority policy which will assure the replacements some form of tenure, provided the policy is adopted SOLELY to protect and continue the business of the employer. We find nothing in the Act which proscribes such a policy. Whether the policy adopted by the Company in the instant case was illegally motivated we do not decide. The question is one of fact for decision by the Board."
303 F.2d at 364. It consequently denied the Board's petition for enforcement and remanded the case for further findings.
We think the Court of Appeals erred in hold that, in the absence of a finding of specific illegal intent, a legitimate business purpose is always a defense to an unfair labor practice charge. Cases in this Court dealing with unfair labor practices have recognized the relevance and importance of showing the employer's intent or motive to discriminate or to interfere with union rights. But specific evidence of such subjective intent is "not an indispensable element of proof of violation." Radio Officers v. Labor Board, 347 U. S. 17 , 347 U. S. 44 .
"Some conduct may, by its very nature, contain the implications of the required intent; the natural foreseeable consequences of certain action may warrant the inference. . . . The existence of discrimination may at times be inferred by the Board, for 'it is permissible to draw on experience in factual inquiries.'"
Though the intent necessary for an unfair labor practice may be shown in different ways, proving it in one manner may have far different weight and far different consequences than proving it in another. When specific evidence of a subjective intent to discriminate or to encourage or discourage union membership is shown, and found, many otherwise innocent or ambiguous actions which are normally incident to the conduct of a business may, without more, be converted into unfair labor practices. Labor Board v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp., 301 U. S. 1 , 301 U. S. 46 (discharging employees); Associated Press v. Labor Board, 301 U. S. 1 03, 301 U. S. 132 (discharging employees); Phelps Dodge Corp. v. Labor Board, 313 U. S. 177 (hiring employees). Compare Labor Board v. Brown-Dunkin Co., 287 F.2d 17, with Labor Board v. Houston Chronicle Publishing Co., 211 F.2d 848 (subcontracting union work); and Fiss Corp., 43 N.L.R.B. 125, with Jacob H. Klotz, 13 N.L.R.B. 746 (movement of plant to another town). Such proof itself is normally sufficient to destroy the employer's
claim of a legitimate business purpose, if one is made, and provides strong support to a finding that there is interference with union rights or that union membership will be discouraged. Conduct which, on its face, appears to serve legitimate business ends in these cases is wholly impeached by the showing of an intent to encroach upon protected rights. The employer's claim of legitimacy is totally dispelled. [ Footnote 6 ]
The outcome may well be the same when intent is founded upon the inherently discriminatory or destructive nature of the conduct itself. The employer in such cases must be held to intend the very consequences which foreseeably and inescapably flow from his actions, and, if he fails to explain away, to justify or to characterize his actions as something different than they appear on their face, an unfair labor practice charge is made out. Radio Officers v. Labor Board, supra. But, as often happens, the employer may counter by claiming that his actions were taken in the pursuit of legitimate business ends, and that his dominant purpose was not to discriminate or to invade union rights, but to accomplish business objectives acceptable under the Act. Nevertheless, his conduct does speak for itself -- it is discriminatory, and it does discourage union membership, and, whatever the claimed overriding justification may be, it carries with it unavoidable consequences which the employer not only foresaw, but which he must have intended. As is not uncommon in human experience, such situations present a complex of motives and preferring one motive to another
is, in reality, the far more delicate task, reflected in part in decisions of this Court, [ Footnote 7 ] of weighing the interests of employees in concerted activity against the interest of the employer in operating his business in a particular manner and of balancing in the light of the Act and its policy the intended consequences upon employee rights against the business ends to be served by the employer's conduct. [ Footnote 8 ]
This essentially is the teaching of the Court's prior cases dealing with this problem and, in our view, the Board did not depart from it.
The Board made a detailed assessment of super-seniority and, it its experienced eye, such a plan had the following characteristics:
"(1) Super-seniority affects the tenure of all strikers, whereas permanent replacement, proper under Mackay, affects only those who are, in actuality, replaced. It is one thing to say that a striker is subject to loss of his job at the strike's end, but quite another to hold that, in addition to the threat of replacement, all strikers will, at best, return to their jobs with seniority inferior to that of the replacements and of those who left the strike."
"(2) A super-seniority award necessarily operates to the detriment of those who participated in the strike as compared to nonstrikers."
"(3) Super-seniority made available to striking bargaining unit employees as well as to new employees is, in effect, offering individual benefits to the strikers to induce them to abandon the strike."
"(4) Extending the benefits of super-seniority to striking bargaining unit employees as well as to new replacements deals a crippling blow to the strike effort. At one stroke, those with low seniority have the opportunity to obtain the job security which ordinarily only long years of service can bring, while, conversely, the accumulated seniority of older employees is seriously diluted. This combination of threat and promise could be expected to undermine the strikers' mutual interest and place
the entire strike effort in jeopardy. The history of this strike and its virtual collapse following the announcement of the plan emphasize the grave repercussions of super-seniority."
"(5) Super-seniority renders future bargaining difficult, if not impossible, for the collective bargaining representative. Unlike the replacement granted in Mackay, which ceases to be an issue once the strike is over, the plan here creates a cleavage in the plant continuing long after the strike is ended. Employees are henceforth divided into two camps: those who stayed with the union and those who returned before the end of the strike, and thereby gained extra seniority. This breach is reemphasized with each subsequent layoff, and stands as an ever-present reminder of the dangers connected with striking and with union activities in general."
In the light of this analysis, super-seniority, by its very terms, operates to discriminate between strikers and nonstrikers, both during and after a strike, and its destructive impact upon the strike and union activity cannot be doubted. The origin of the plan, as respondent insists, may have been to keep production going, and it may have been necessary to offer super-seniority to attract replacements and induce union members to leave the strike. But if this is true, accomplishment of respondent's business purpose inexorably was contingent upon attracting sufficient replacements and strikers by offering preferential inducements to those who worked, as opposed to those who struck. We think the Board was entitled to treat this case as involving conduct which carried its own indicia of intent, and which is barred by the Act unless saved from illegality by an overriding business purpose justifying the invasion of union rights. The Board concluded that the business purpose asserted was insufficient to insulate
the super-seniority plan from the reach of § 8(a)(1) and § 8(a)(3), and we turn now to a review of that conclusion.
The Court of Appeals and respondent rely upon Mackay as precluding the result reached by the Board, but we are not persuaded. Under the decision in that case, an employer may operate his plant during a strike, and, at its conclusion, need not discharge those who worked during the strike in order to make way for returning strikers. It may be, as the Court of Appeals said, that "such a replacement policy is obviously discriminatory, and may tend to discourage union membership." But Mackay did not deal with super-seniority, with its effects upon all strikers, whether replaced or not, or with its powerful impact upon a strike itself. Because the employer's interest must be deemed to outweigh the damage to concerted activities caused by permanently replacing strikers does not mean it also outweighs the far greater encroachment resulting from super-seniority in addition to permanent replacement.
We have no intention of questioning the continuing vitality of the Mackay rule, but we are not prepared to extend it to the situation we have here. To do so would require us to set aside the Board's considered judgment that the Act and its underlying policy require, in the present context, giving more weight to the harm wrought by super-seniority than to the interest of the employer in operating its plant during the strike by utilizing this particular means of attracting replacements. We find nothing in the Act or its legislative history to indicate that super-seniority is necessarily an acceptable method of resisting the economic impact of a strike, nor do we find anything inconsistent with the result which the Board reached. On the contrary, these sources are wholly consistent with, and lend full support to, the conclusion of the Board.
Section 7 [ Footnote 9 ] guarantees, and § 8(a)(1) protects from employer interference, the rights of employees to engage in concerted activities, which, as Congress as indicated, H.R.Rep. No. 245, 80th Cong., 1st Sess. 26, include the right to strike. Under § 8(a)(3), it is unlawful for an employer by discrimination in terms of employment to discourage "membership in any labor organization," which includes discouraging participation in concerted activities, Radio Officers v. Labor Board, 347 U. S. 17 , 347 U. S. 39 -40, such as a legitimate strike. Labor Board v. Wheeling Pipe Line, Inc., 229 F.2d 391; Republic Steel Corp. v. Labor Board, 114 F.2d 820. Section 13 [ Footnote 10 ] makes clear that, although the strike weapon is not an unqualified right, nothing in the Act except as specifically provided is to be construed to interfere with this means of redress, H.R.Conf.Rep. No. 510, 80th Cong., 1st Sess. 59, and § 2(3), [ Footnote 11 ] preserves to strikers their unfilled positions and status as employees during the pendency of a strike. S.Rep. No. 573, 74th Cong., 1st Sess. 6. [ Footnote 12 ] This repeated solicitude for
the right to strike is predicated upon the conclusion that a strike when legitimately employed is an economic weapon which in great measure implements and supports the principles of the collective bargaining system. [ Footnote 13 ]
While Congress has, from time to time, revamped and redirected national labor policy, its concern for the integrity of the strike weapon has remained constant. Thus, when Congress chose to qualify the use of the strike, it did so by prescribing the limits and conditions of the abridgment in exacting detail, e.g., §§ 8(b)(4), 8(d), by indicating the precise procedures to be followed in effecting the interference, e.g., § 10(j), (k), (l); §§ 206-210, Labor Management Relations Act, and by preserving the positive command of § 13 that the right to strike is to be given a
generous interpretation within the scope of the labor Act. The courts have likewise repeatedly recognized and effectuated the strong interest of federal labor policy in the legitimate use of the strike. Automobile Workers v. O'Brien, 339 U. S. 454 ; Amalgamated Assn. of Elec. Ry. Employees v. Wisconsin Employment Rel. Bd., 340 U. S. 383 ; Labor Board v. Remington Rand, Inc., 130 F.2d 919; Cusano v. Labor Board, 190 F.2d 898; cf. Sinclair Ref. Co. v. Atkinson, 370 U. S. 195 .
Accordingly, in view of the deference paid the strike weapon by the federal labor laws and the devastating consequences upon it which the Board found was and would be precipitated by respondent's inherently discriminatory super-seniority plan, we cannot say the Board erred
in the balance which it struck here. Although the Board's decisions are by no means immune from attack in the courts, as cases in this Court amply illustrate, e.g., Labor Board v. Babcock & Wilcox Co., 351 U. S. 105 ; Labor Board v. United Steelworkers, 357 U. S. 357 ; Labor Board v. Insurance Agents, 361 U. S. 477 , its findings here are supported by substantial evidence, Universal Camera Corp. v. Labor Board, 340 U. S. 474 , its explication is not inadequate, irrational or arbitrary, compare Phelps Dodge Corp. v. Labor Board, 313 U. S. 177 , 313 U. S. 196 -197; Labor Board v. United Steelworkers, supra, and it did not exceed its powers or venture into an area barred by the statute. Compare Labor Board v. Insurance Agents, supra. The matter before the Board lay well within the mainstream of its duties. It was attempting to deal with an issue which Congress had placed in its hands, and "[w]here Congress has in the statute given the Board a question to answer, the courts will give respect to that answer." Labor Board v. Insurance Agents, supra, at 361 U. S. 499 . Here, as in other cases, we must recognize the Board's special function of applying the general provisions of the Act to the complexities of industrial life. Republic Aviation Corp. v. Labor Board, 324 U. S. 793 , 324 U. S. 798 ; Phelps Dodge Corp. v. Labor Board, supra, at 313 U. S. 194 , and of "[appraising] carefully the interests of both sides of any labor-management controversy in the diverse circumstances of particular cases" from its special understanding of "the actualities of industrial relations." Labor Board v. United Steelworkers, supra, at 357 U. S. 362 -363.
"The ultimate problem is the balancing of the conflicting legitimate interests. The function of striking that balance to effectuate national labor policy is often a difficult and delicate responsibility, which the Congress committed primarily to the National Labor Relations Board, subject to limited judicial review."
Consequently, because the Board's judgment was that the claimed business purpose would not outweigh the
necessary harm to employee rights -- a judgment which we sustain -- it could properly put aside evidence of respondent's motive and decline to find whether the conduct was or was not prompted by the claimed business purpose. We reverse the judgment of the Court of Appeals, and remand the case to that court, since its review was a limited one, and it must now reach the remaining questions before it, including the propriety of the remedy which, at least in part, turns upon the Board's construction of the settlement agreement as being no barrier to an award not only of reinstatement but of back pay as well. [ Footnote 14 ]
Reversed and remanded.
[ Footnote 1 ]
"Sec. 8(a). It shall be an unfair labor practice for an employer --"
"(1) to interfere with, restrain, or coerce employees in the exercise of the rights guaranteed in section 7;"
" * * * *"
"(3) by discrimination in regard to hire or tenure of employment or any term or condition of employment to encourage or discourage membership in any labor organization; . . ."
" * * * *"
"(5) to refuse to bargain collectively with the representatives of his employees, subject to the provisions of section 9(a)."
[ Footnote 2 ]
In addition to these employees, 450 employees in the unit were on layoff status.
[ Footnote 3 ]
The figure of 20 years was developed from a projection, on the basis of expected orders, of what the company's work force would be following the strike. As of March 31, the beginning of the strike, a male employee needed seven years' seniority to avoid layoff, and a female employee nine years'.
[ Footnote 4 ]
The Examiner had relied upon the company's employment records for his conclusion that the replacement program was ineffective until the announcement of the super-seniority awards. The General Counsel, to show that such a plan was not necessary for that purpose, pointed to the facts that the company had 300 unprocessed job applications when the strike ended, that the company declared to the union that it could have replaced all the strikers, and that the company did not communicate its otherwise well publicized policy to replacements before they were hired, but only after they accepted jobs.
[ Footnote 5 ]
In addition, the Board held that continued insistence on this or a similar proposal as a condition to negotiating an agreement constituted a refusal to bargain in good faith under § 8(a)(5). See Labor Board v. Wooster Division of Borg-Warner, 356 U. S. 342 .
The Board also concluded that, on May 29, when the union voted to continue striking in protest against the super-seniority plan, the strike was converted into an unfair labor practice strike. All strikers not replaced at that date, the Board held, were entitled to reinstatement as of the date of their unconditional abandonment of the strike regardless of replacements. See Labor Board v. Pecheur Lozenge Co., 209 F.2d 393.
[ Footnote 6 ]
Accordingly, those cases holding unlawful a super-seniority plan prompted by a desire on the part of the employer to penalize or discriminate against striking employees, Ballas Egg Products v. Labor Board, 283 F.2d 871; Labor Board v. California Date Growers Ass'n, 259 F.2d 587; Olin Mathieson Chem. Corp. v. Labor Board, 232 F.2d 158, aff'd per curiam, 352 U.S. 1020, are explainable without reaching the considerations present here.
[ Footnote 7 ]
See, e.g., Labor Board v. Mackay Radio & Tel. Co., 304 U. S. 333 ; Republic Aviation Corp. v. Labor Board, 324 U. S. 793 ; Labor Board v. Babcock & Wilcox Co., 351 U. S. 105 ; Labor Board v. Truck Drivers Union, 353 U. S. 87 .
[ Footnote 8 ]
In a variety of situations, the lower courts have dealt with and rejected the approach urged here that conduct otherwise unlawful is automatically excused upon a showing that it was motivated by business exigencies. Thus, it has been held that an employer cannot justify the discriminatory discharge of union members upon the ground that such conduct is the only way to induce a rival union to remove a picket line and permit the resumption of business, Labor Board v. Star Publishing Co., 97 F.2d 465, or rearrange the bargaining unit because of an expected adverse effect on production, Allis-Chalmers Mfg. Co. v. Labor Board, 162 F.2d 435, or defend a refusal to bargain in good faith on the ground that, unless the employer's view prevails dire consequences to the business will follow, Labor Board v. Harris, 200 F.2d 656, or refuse exclusive recognition to a union for fear that such recognition will bring reprisals from rival unions. McQuay-Norris Mfg. Co. v. Labor Board, 116 F.2d 748, cert. denied, 313 U.S. 565; Labor Board v. National Broadcasting Co., 150 F.2d 895, or discriminate in his business operations against employees of rival unions or without union affiliation solely in order to keep peace in the plant and avoid disruption of business, Wilson & Co., Inc. v. Labor Board, 123 F.2d 411; Labor Board v. Hudson Motor Car Co., 128 F.2d 528; Labor Board v. Gluek Brewing Co., 144 F.2d 847; Labor Board v. Oertel Brewing Co., 197 F.2d 59; Labor Board v. McCatron, 216 F.2d 212, cert. denied, 348 U.S. 943; Labor Board v. Richards, 265 F.2d 855. See also Idaho Potato Growers v. Labor Board, 144 F.2d 295; Cusano v. Labor Board, 190 F.2d 898; Labor Board v. Industrial Cotton Mills, 208 F.2d 87, 45 A.L.R.2d 880, cert. denied, 347 U.S. 935. Indeed, many employers doubtless could conscientiously assert that their unfair labor practices were not malicious, but were prompted by their best judgment as to the interests of their business. Such good faith motive itself, however, has not been deemed an absolute defense to an unfair labor practice charge.
[ Footnote 9 ]
"Employees shall have the right to self-organization, to form, join, or assist labor organizations, to bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing, and to engage in other concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection, and shall also have the right to refrain from any or all of such activities except to the extent that such right may be affected by an agreement requiring membership in a labor organization as a condition of employment as authorized in section 8(a)(3)."
[ Footnote 10 ]
"Nothing in this Act, except as specifically provided for herein, shall be construed so as either to interfere with or impede or diminish in any way the right to strike, or to affect the limitations or qualifications on that right."
[ Footnote 11 ]
"The term 'employee' . . . shall include any individual whose work has ceased as a consequence of, or in connection with, any current labor dispute or because of any unfair labor practice, and who has not obtained any other regular and substantially equivalent employment. . . ."
[ Footnote 12 ]
This concern for the maintenance of the status prevailing before the strike has had its most recent manifestation in the 1959 amendments to the National Labor Relations Act. Congress there withdrew the ban inserted by the Taft-Hartley amendment disqualifying replaced strikers from voting in union elections. Now, employees not entitled to reinstatement can, under regulations promulgated by the Board, exercise their pre-strike voting rights. See § 9(c) (3); S.Rep. No. 187, 86th Cong., 1st Sess. 32-33, U.S.Code Congressional and Administrative News 1959, p. 2318.
[ Footnote 13 ]
"Labor unions . . . were organized out of the necessities of the situation. A single employee was helpless in dealing with an employer. He was dependent ordinarily on his daily wage for the maintenance of himself and family. If the employer refused to pay him the wages that he thought fair, he was nevertheless unable to leave the employ and to resist arbitrary and unfair treatment. Union was essential to give laborers opportunity to deal on equality with their employer. They united to exert influence upon him, and to leave him in a body in order, by this inconvenience, to induce him to make better terms with them. They were withholding their labor of economic value to make him pay what they thought it was worth. The right to combine for such a lawful purpose has, in many years, not been denied by any court. The strike became a lawful instrument in a lawful economic struggle or competition between employer and employees as to the share or division between them of the joint product of labor and capital."
American Steel Foundries v. Tri-City Council, 257 U. S. 184 , 257 U. S. 209 , quoted in Staff Report of Senate Committee on Education and Labor, 74th Cong., 1st Sess., Comparison of S. 2926 (73d Cong.) and S. 1958 (74th Cong.) 20. See also Remarks of Senator Wagner before Senate Committee on Education and Labor, 73d Cong., 2d Sess., Hearings on S. 2926, 10-11:
"It has been urged that the bill places a premium on discord by declaring that none of its provisions shall impair the right to strike. On the contrary, nothing would do more to alienate employee cooperation and to promote unrest than a law which did not make it clear that employees could refrain from working if that should become their only redress."
Remarks of Senator Taft, 93 Cong.Rec. 3835 (1947):
"That means that we recognize freedom to strike when the question involved is the improvement of wages, hours, and working conditions, when a contract has expired and neither side is bound by a contract. We recognize that right in spite of the inconvenience, and, in some cases, perhaps, danger, to the people of the United States which may result from the exercise of such right. . . . We have considered the question whether the right to strike can be modified. I think it can be modified in cases which do not involve the basic question of wages, prices, and working conditions. . . . So far as the bill is concerned, we have proceeded on the theory that there is a right to strike, and that labor peace must be based on free collective bargaining. We have done nothing to outlaw strikes for basic wages, hours, and working conditions after proper opportunity for mediation."
[ Footnote 14 ]
"We do not agree with Respondent's contention that the Union, in its strike settlement agreement of July 17, waived all rights for these employees. The settlement agreement provided, inter alia: "
"The Company's replacement and job assurance policy to be resolved by the NLRB and the Federal Courts and to remain in effect pending final disposition."
"It is clear that this agreement was intended merely as an interim settlement pending legal determination of the employees' rights. In any event, we would not, in our discretion, honor a private settlement which purported to deny to employees the rights guaranteed them by the Act. Cf. Wooster Division of Borg-Warner Corporation, 121 NLRB 1492, 1495."
Erie Resistor Corp., 132 N.L.R.B. 621, 631 n. 31.
MR. JUSTICE HARLAN, concurring.
I agree with the Court that the Board's conclusions respecting this 20-year "super-seniority" plan were justified without inquiry into the respondents' motives. However, I do not think that the same thing would necessarily be true in all circumstances, as for example with a plan providing for a much shorter period of extra seniority. Being unsure whether the Court intends to hold that the Board has power to outlaw all such plans, irrespective of the employer's motives and other circumstances, or only to sustain its action in the particular circumstances of this case, I concur in the judgment. |
I honestly want to know with this poll hijacking, what's with all of the hate for Lucario? I get it's used in everything, Smash, the Anime, the games.
And that movie made it look edgy, but other than that, why hate Lucario?
ITT: Why you hate/like Lucario
>why hate Lucario when its shoved into every piece of medium forcing it down our throat
hurr durr i dont know
The Mystery of Mew movie?
Negro, that movie brought me to manly tears.
I've liked Lucario since Gen 4. Getting to see more of it has only been a blessing.
>tfw it was on your list of top 6 favorites for a long time and despite having dropped from that list is still your bro
I liked Lucario when it came out on gen IV. I don't understand why /vp/ doesn't like edgy things.
It's cool, it's fucking strong, its Mega made it even more awesome (kinda like Giratina has an apprentice)
My all time top favourite pokemon. It's ridiculously unpredictable. (It has 4 main set, 8 subset, and at least one will fuck you sideways)
>Lucario my favorite pokemon
>i like Blaziken,Lopunny Zoroark,Delphox
>not a furry
>i dont find any of those attractive
Im with you guys there
Shoved into our throats with any medium possible
Most of it's fanbase are annoying furtists
Anime/movie portrays it as edgy as fuck
Ridiculous typing/movepool (i mean why the fuck is it a steel type, and how the fuck does it get to learn nasty plot, dragon pulse, blaze kick or dark pulse)
I personally really like Lucario myself - it's a cool design, interesting typing and actually pretty good in-game too!
I definitely sympathise with people who are sick of seeing it promoted in everything, but that doesn't make me like it any less.
Still, it's a shame Zoroark didn't become the 'new' Lucario, and that there wasn't really a contender for the position in Gen VI (other than Hawlucha maybe?). Variety is the spice of life!
I posted this in the last thread
Honestly, its just fucking stupid. I know I cant speak for everyone but everything about it erks me. It has a horrible design, the constant pandering is annoying, the anime made it super fucking edgy. No clue how people like this thing. Its not even because its popular. I like other popular mons.
I like Lucario, but I do agree that it's given way too much attention.
I was pretty mad when I made the effort to catch a Riolu in X, only to be given a Lucario with a megastone and had all-around better stats and nature. Why?
I'm fine with Lucario ingame. It's a nice mixed Pokemon with a lot of strategies to use. I don't mind the fanbase. It's OK. Every Pokemon has a weird-ass fanbase.
What I don't like is how GookFreak treats it like Jesus mixed with fucking Christmas and sushi or whatever the fuck they do over there. Every fucking year they throw it some kind of worship en masse like it was their own fucking savior. Movies, episodes, anime, representations in the fucking games of a stupidly main characterish nature. Unlike Lightning, it's been shoved down our throats far longer, but the premise is still there. And they don't realize that maybe, 'hey, maybe we should keep that to the anime only guys'. But no, there it is. Intruding on our lives like a fucking plague everywhere we fucking go or look. In Kerfluffle, in X/Y, in the TV Skits, in everything. And that's why I don't fucking like it.
I am glad that Jigglypuff got a different render and pose in the Smash 4 leak instead of the same fucking shit since Smash 64.
I don't hate Lucario because it's not on the tier of "Used in everything" like this fat pseudodragon is
>used to be fed up with Lucario
>decides to use one for the first time in Y
>still not a favorite but don't think it's so bad now
I like Lucario, probably a lot more than I do some other Pokemon; I just think Gamefreak needs to stop pushing it and let some other Pokemon have some spotlight. At the very least, change shit up every Generation.
I liked it initially but seeing it everywhere and it having a ridiculous/unjustified typing and receive all the good shit every gen while the rest are getting shafted makes me hate it. Especially since it is forced to us as the premier fighting type when clearly, other pokemon deserve that title more.
you know that marginally likable pop song that gets played in the radio 5x an hour? there's your answer
>displaces every other mon where it appears
>always given to you as a pre-evo or as it is
>forces you to mega evolve
>shoehorned into almost every fighting type specialist and replaces previous signature mons (i.e., bruno)
>given a good typing because fuck if i know aside from blatant favoritism
>given every good move while other fighting types with better concepts and design get squat
This is about how I feel. Lucario isn't a bad Pokémon, and i don't dislike it, i even bothered to breed and train one, but I feel like it's very unnecessary for it to be shoved in our faces all the time.
To those who say "GameFreak does it because it's popular and it sells!" remember that it's a self-fulfilling prophecy, it sells because that's what they push, they could hype any other Pokémon like that.
That said, I usually don't care, because I rarely pay attention to Pokémon outside the main games and Smash. I think Lucario is neat, and I have since seeing him on Iron Island in Diamond.
That's because, honestly, Zoroark got pushed during a time that being black-and-red with spikes was on the out. Lucario was unique looking, Charizard was Charizard, and Greninja was something new. Zoroark legitimately looked like an OC hedgehog.
>That's because, honestly, Zoroark got pushed during a time that being black-and-red with spikes was on the out. Lucario was unique looking, Charizard was Charizard, and Greninja was something new. Zoroark legitimately looked like an OC hedgehog.
Still proves that there has to be something special before a push works but I get what you're saying. It was created in the right place at the right time, it's a classic design, it's fresh etc. Whatever reason it may be, it has to have "it" before the push works.
To use another example, it's like in professional wrestling where no matter how much exposure some wrestlers get, they never manage to become as popular as the big stars.
I only hang out on /vp/ for Pokemon and on /vp/ there is no Lucario fanbase out in the open for me to hate so fanbase isn't an issue for me when it comes to Lucario.
I hate it because it gets forced down our throats everywhere from anime, Smash, the games and other smaller details like Lucario rank in PMD, giant Lucario statue and first mega ever. And after all this promoting and pushing, for a fairly meager or unnoticeable fanbase in the overall Pokemon fandom compared to the other guys like Pikachu, Eevees and Charizard. When you think "popular Pokemon", how often do you think Lucario? It's only somewhat popular for all the pushing it gets and if it weren't for that it'd be on the lower end of popularity like Absol, Zoroark or Zangoose.
How in the fuck is Hawlucha being pushed as the new Lucario? I think you meant Greninja
Cobalion is cooler.
And they have the same colors.
I enjoy lucario because it has an enjoyable design and learns a lot of moves I like that I did not expect. I do not care for it being forced at all and while I can agree with that the same can be said for almost anything generation 1.
It ain't hard to be better than Lucario.
I don't like it's design. It looks like it's wearing a bandana and shorts, and I think that looks stupid. Also, the placement of those spikes makes no sense and just bugs me.
Otherwise its a fine pokemon, but I still probably wouldn't use it - it's a glass cannon, and I prefer to use bulky or stall-y 'mons.
>using reaction images of characters you don't like
Mako a shit KLK a shit in general but Mako's in her own class of shit
/vp/'s just full of obnoxious hipster trash that hates popular shit.
Some people need not any other reason to hate something other than that other people like it.
they are often people devoid fom love and ruled by jealousy. pity them op, and show them you care.
>devoid fom love
somebody hates my favorite, s/he probably doesn't like anything ELSE
don't like !=hates
if someone hates something just because it's popular, that it WILL like things- it will like only things which are unpopular.
you know, like hipsters. but it will pretend to hate them because it also hates hipsters. pathetic isn't it?
ITT: People defending a telepathic, talking DBZ metal anthro who gets edgier when it megaevolves, is proud of its power, had no real weaknesses in game, learns moves it has no right to know apart from 'speshul' and is one of the most prominent pokemon used in the furry/yiff community, who endlessly pump out diaper, vore and scat renditions without shame.
Lucario is essentially the pokemon version of Shadow the Hedgehog, and the fact that the only defense you see in return is >h-hispters... should speak magnitudes.
>Ctrl f "pants"
>no results found
Really so no one mentioned those stupid mc hammer pants he wears.
Mewtwo is an endgame legendary, you can forgive Arceus/Mewtwo/Lugia etc. for being mary sues when their whole point is to be OP one-offs. I'm not a mewtwo fan, but it isn't as bad.
Don't forget even their lore is written like a child wrote it.
>Super special Aura powers
>Can read minds through aura use
>Especially powerful pokemon that bonds with only one trainer or is otherwise a loner too strong to fight lowly other pokemon.
> you can forgive Arceus/Mewtwo/Lugia etc. because they are special
lucario should learn its place because it isn't really special, it's just one of hundreds? I don't like this kind of thought. every pokemon is special in it's own way.
Typical mary sue fare. Note how similar it is to Shadow though:
>Super special Chaos powers
>Can stop time through chaos use
>Especially powerful hedgehog that bonds with only one person (Maria) or is otherwise a loner too strong to fight lowly humans/his friends.
>it is own way
>why aren't regular pokemon as special as legendaries?
>I don't like these people's opinion on this one character from a gaming franchise, therefore they're wrong and they're losers
>implying any lucario threads outside of deviantart and furaffinity can ever be peaceful
>I don't get why people bash Lucario
>Because it's my favourite poke I don't see anything wrong with it
Nothing is wrong with the pokemon in a vacuum. People who shit on it just because it's popular/shoved down our throats are autistic faggots whose opinions are at the mercy of others' opinions.
But even though I like Lucario in of itself, I still voted Toxicroak because I like it more, and I would have voted for Tox anyway just because Luke doesn't need to be in the spotlight
That's not a non sequitur you faggot. He wasn't saying the reason nobody else should bash it is because he likes it. He was saying that because he doesn't find anything wrong with it (synonymous with liking it), he doesn't know why others do.
Also anybody who brings up names of "logical fallacies" is probably experiencing babby's first discourse
The only thing that really bothers me about Auradog is that he's part steel.
I don't really see it, I guess. M-Luke looks pretty nice.
I'm more annoyed with Cynthia being jammed into things, honestly.
Outside of the furry fanbase and being Game Freak's Lightning, another reason I hate Lucario is that it's a shit design. Unnecessary spikes and lines. Dumb fur-shorts. It looks like it was designed by an 8-year old.
>it needs them
Boy it sure needed that blaze kick, dragon pulse, nasty plot, dark pulse, extreme speed, vacuum wave, shadow ball, stone age and adabtability mega, didn't it? I mean there aren't any pokemon that need any of those
Also you're right, if it's UU it's utterly worthless
I admit giving it Blaze kick is fucking stupid (come on, it's a steel type) and I don't get Dragon Pulse either (Anubis being able to blast things from its mouth, maybe?)
Just like how Salamence can learn Hydro Pump.
I meant its stats. 90 speed just doesn't cut it with those pitiful defences. That's why they give it mega evolution (parental bond Terrakion + Keldeo's SPA + Starmie's Speed)
Because /vp/ is upset that Gamefreak will focus on Pokemon that's proven to give them profit like Charizard or Lucario, instead of their "bros" like Druddigon or Ledian so they take their anger out on said popular Pokemon. Also, 4chan in general has a strong contrarian attitude. The awful fanbase probably doesn't help either, like half of >>20766119 critiques are just "it has a terrible fanbase."
I'm neutral towards Lucario. I don't care for the design but it's not offensively bad enough for me to dislike. Sure it has an awful fanbase and a Mary Sue-ish lore but fanbases are a dumb reason to hate a Pokemon and the franchise has always been very Mary Sue-ish so what does it matter? It's just...there to me. Mega-Lucario is pretty fucking ugly though.
Zoroark was hard to get in-game, competitively shit, and didn't have a Smash game to promote it. Those are all big things so I don't think you can really say "see? lucario was special!" since Lucario ultimately got more initial push. Charizard stayed in the hearts of nostalgiafags since it was Red's mascot and one of Ash's strongest Pokemon.
It's on the cover, yo. It was used to market the game.
Goddammit why does the end of this movie make me so sad?
>want to talk shit about its design because I dislike it too
>look at it again
>actually pretty tasteful for Gen IV
>start to like it
I'm still going to be opposed to it because of Game Freak forcing it everywhere—in every game, in every trailer, in every stream, in every media.
It's basically a second mascot of Pokemon now. People don't like it because it's Pikachu Part 2: Fighting/Steel Boogaloo. Personally, I was okay with it design wise since Gen IV, but I don't like M-Luke. People call it edgy but it'll never be as edgy as Mewtwo (Pokedex entrees always saying it's the most savage hearted among pokemon, acts like a human hating shitter whenever it appears in the anime, MUH AMBER, it's basically Pokemon's Shadow the Hedgehog). And it didn't get 2 fucking megas like Charizard or Mewtwo either. So it ain't as bad as the pandering of those two but it's still bad.
>I hate the boogeyman /vp/ made up
You do realize the only way you're going to find furry porn of lucario is by looming for it. This is literally something that will never affect you in the real world, yet faggots like you have to accept the /vp/ hivemind and have no original thought.
As of X and Y, Gyarados is used by three of the nine Pokémon League Champions, being used by Blue, Lance, and Wallace, making it the most popular Pokémon among Pokémon League Champions thus far (although Blue does not always have a Gyarados, depending on the player's starter Pokémon). However, Blue is the only one to use it in the Pokémon World Tournament.
Gyarados is also a popular Pokémon among Gym Leaders, being used by Blue, Clair, and Crasher Wake.
Gyarados has also been used twice by two Villainous Team Leaders. The first instance was Cyrus and the second instance was Lysandre.
The metal spikes and the weird shorts/extremely wide hips, the dumb ponytail things...
I just don't like Lucario's design. And reasons to hate it in-game? Its a Friendship evolution with a shitty typing. Its basically a pure-steel type that doesnt resist Psychic or Flying and has shit bulk and isnt exceptionally fast to make up for it.
I dont hate thigns for being everywhere, I hate them for being shit.
Mega Lucario on the other hand, has one of the best mega designs (behind Amphy and Blaziken, just a bit above Chainsaw Hands aka Mega Bullet Punch aka Scizor-M) and a blistering 112 speed stat, so I actually like it. Plus being a fighting type that isn't scared of Sylveon is a major plus so I have less reason to dislike it.
Truth be told though, I just love Toxicroak now that weather wars are gone just like I'd love Gliscor if it wasnt for Toxic Heal bullshit. Not because hurrr smogon scorp, but because fighting them genuinely pisses me off. And croagunk a qt, Riolu is just as poorly designed as Lucario. Unsurprisingly, I love poison-types and even think Grimer, Muk, Koffing, and Garbodor are adorable.
Lucario's true strength comes from being able to boost, as its comparitively weak for a mega (145 isn't even base mewtwo's Sp. Attack, let alone Ampharos' 165 or M-Heracross' sickening 185 Attack).
Coupled with the right moveset and near-perfect STAB Coverage partially thanks to Adaptability (Flash Cannon hits ghosts as hard as Dark Pulse/Crunch does, Bullet Punch/Vacuum wave hits as hard as ExtremeSpeed but provide coverage, at the expense of not outprioritizing other priorities)
Switch Lucario in on things that are too weak and slow, or lack the ability to damage Lucario to force a catch-22; If they stay in, you get to boost for free and they die, losing a valuable 'mon. If they switch, you get a free boost and the counter is disadvantaged, possibly killing you or at the worst, forcing you out. But you can always come back in against the same thing you came in on, boost, and murder it and the whole team.
NEVER Lead with Lucario. It has no defenses to speak of and doesn't resist the bravest bird's main attack, and is annihilated by its other STAB
Steel/Fighting isn't a very good typing. It has none of Fighting's weaknesses, but that just means it has fewer resists than a base steel does.
You're losing a Psychic, Fairy and Flying resist (the latter of which are far more important) and gaining ... what? You dont resist Fighting, so its still SE. You dont gain coverage against Ice or Rock (but you do against Fairy), you dont even quad-resist Dark anymore. The fighting type does nothing defensively for Lucario and hurts it tremendously, taking neutral damage from twice as many types and only getting a double resistance to U-Turn and Stealth Rock to make up for it. And with such pathetic defenses, you need every resistance you can get to stay alive.
Fortunately, "staying alive" is nothing Lucario is afraid due to its phenomenal speed as a Mega and the fact that next to nothing can survive a hit after it boosts
Its a far better design. Both Blaziken and Lucario had shit designs before, and were graced with the best looking megas ever.
Also how is Mega Lucario edgy? The rabid Mega in the animu doesn't count
>the best defensive typing crossed with the best offensive typing is bad
>confirmed for not reading
Fighting does nothing defensively for Steel and weakens it exceptionally. So much so that lots of other types benefit Fighting defensively much more. Like Flying, which is weak to one of Fighting's resists and resists the other, or Psychic or bug which lose a weakness (to bug and Rock respectively; Psychic/Fighting pre-gen 6 also lost a dark weakness) and thus complement each other better.
Fighting/Steel is just a shitty steel type defensively, and Steel doesn't help offensively pre-gen 6. Gen6 rebalanced the chart to make the combination much, much better.
One of the best pokemon ever, and gen 6 made it a thousand times even better. Its sprite made no sense in gen 5.... How was it levitating? Why was it standing on those flipper things?
I was saying the Gen 5 Sprite does not show it levitating and is very clearly grounded. Plus it looks bad. Why is an eel standing up like that? Its the same reason why Purrloin has such a shitty design in gen 6
Regular Lucario looks better than Mega Lucario. The double headband thing Mega Lucario has is just completely retarded. Also, I'm guessing the "edge" he's talking about is how the only huge aesthetic change besides the goofy headband and the even shittier colorscheme is that it gets spikier. Also those spikes through the hands, lawl.
What gets me about your post is that you just claimed that Lucario and Blaziken got the best looking megas and that is just downright hilarious to me. They barely change at all and get ribbons, whoopie.
I think the best looking megas are the ones that really improve on the base design, things like Houndoom, Banette, maybe Gengar and Pinsir.
The worst ones are the ones that barely change at all aside from like a new accessory or spikes (Blaziken, Medicham, Lucario, Tyranitar, etc) or the ones that get a whole lot dumber like Heracross (Hand wings? Nutcracker mouth? Second horn is a Pinocchio nose? What the fuck?), Manetric (Pokemon's Lightning), Charizard X (flame mustache?), Ludvig Von Ampharos (I love this fucker's design but not everybody is going to find it as funny as me), gosh there's just too many to list, most of the megas are dumb.
Some of them are an improvement on their base form but still aren't much to look at, like Charizard Y (nice crest, the extra wings are a big dumb though barely noticeable), Kangaskhan (mega babby), Aggron (so you got bigger, whoopie), Absol (original form was shit, adding wings and a stronger yin/yang horn motif is not much better), you get the drill.
I think I've loaded this post down with too many rambling opinions anyway. Misused a lot of parenthesis. If you disagree with some of the ratings I've given Megas, well, it's your prerogative. But Mega Lucario is pretty far from the best design if you ask me.
I don't think anyone is using Lucario under the delusion of surviving more than 2 hits. Lucario is an offensive pokemon. What you gain from adding Fighting is STAB on Fighting, which was better before this gen due to no Fairy. But that's the kicker, Lucario gets steel STAB too and can therefor take down most of the fairies. So he's still a pretty good glass cannon and has a pretty great movepool and enough of each attack stat to be very versatile in utilizing it.
Magnemite doesn't Levitate as a means of locomotion or survival. It levitates as a passive result of its magnetism, which isn't focused well enough to be maintained if the ground is shaken up. Because its body is composed of U-Magnets, it's drawn to any iron in rocks or in building walls/floors, which are every bit as effected by an earthquake as anything else standing on the ground. In fact, its significantly MORE effected because its part of the ground itself; i.e., the whole reason Steel is weak to Ground in the first place - Steel buildings are built into the ground and are rigid.
Aggron actually shrinks in its mega, since its not standing upright.
As for the spikes in its hands... Are you saying they weren't already there? The spikes are meshed better into its design rather than just stuck on like it got crucified and impaled. It looks like a trained fighter. And Blaziken had a lot of design changes besides the ribbons. The head crest becomes more pronounced, the color changes from "Hurrr its fire-type" to an actual artistic mesh of blacks and dark reds (before you call this edgy, learn some color theory. Or look at a generation 5 cartridge in the light and realize theyre both black and red)
They didn't have room to make Eelektross' sprite float properly and still show off the detail. I challenge you or any sprite artist to get Eelektross' entire body in clear, accurate detail while floating properly. And not facing the wrong way. Barboach and Tynamo managed it, but they're extremely tiny. They have a lot of ... for lack of a better term, wiggle room. Eelektross barely fits in the window it's given
Again, Flabébé does not float naturally. It's just flying on a flower, which means if theres no wind... its still touching the ground. I would argue its only floating because its more fairy-like or because gameFreak didnt like how the model looked grounded. Honestly, Even I think it would look pretty stupid and floette is literally my second favorite pokemon in the game.
Basically, pokemon like Koffing are levitating because they're gas, which is part of the air. Its what they do as a direct natural process, part of their existence. Eelektross levitates as a means of hunting prey, because its naturally an aquatic animal. It has legs, but they're poorly suited for land-travel, so it floats using precise electric currents instead.
Things that appear to be levitating and do not have Levitate are either not conciously doing so, or are doing something else instead. Again, magnemite is a key example as its body is more built for attracting metal (and getting attracted to it) than it is for levitation, despite possessing the ability to repulse itself to stay afloat
Your problem, sir, is that you keep thinking of Lucario as a defensive steel type that got ruined by adding fighting when that is the inverse of what is happening. Lucario is an offensive fighting type that got marginally improved by adding steel to it.
What does Fighting do to Steel? Well make it worse by your accounts. What does Steel do for Fighting? I'll tell you what, it neutralizes every one of Fighting's old weaknesses (Flying, and Psychic) and also neutralizes its new weakness (Fairy). Then it adds all the other steel resistances (Ice, Dragon, Grass, Steel, and Normal) as well as compounding the shared resistances (Bug, Rock) to the point where you can possibly switch in on them even as a pokemon with mediocre defensive and HP stats. All this just for having its only weaknesses be the default Steel weaknesses of Fighting, Ground, and Fire.
So yeah, you're making a hissy fit over Fighting ruining Steel when in reality Lucario's situation is Steel saving Fighting. Suddenly you have a powerhouse with STAB Fighting who is able to threaten every pokemon designed to obliterate Fighting sweepers, due to any moves included to get coverage versus Fighting are now neutral instead of x2. So all you have to worry about is Steel weaknesses and excessive setup. This is huge for an offensive pokemon like Lucario who can now eliminate threats that fighting does well against which also learn coverage moves that are normally super effective against Fighting.
Mega Lucario gives it needed stat buffs and an amazing Ability, as well as being in Gen VI where Steel is also useful offensively as a killer of a good chunk of the possible fairy types.
tl;dr you've got your perspective backwards viewing Fighting as ruining a defensive Steel when in reality Steel is saving an offensive Fighting.
>As for the spikes in its hands... Are you saying they weren't already there?
Nah I'm saying it got EXTRA spikes in its hands, as well as its feet. Also, the coloration is designed to make them evoke thoughts of bloody fists/feet, which is just gaudy really. I also like how you went from "crucified" in regular form to "trained fighter" in Mega Form despite no trained fighter in their right mind ever desiring spikes jutting out the top of his hands. I can definitely see where the "edgy" label comes from.
Another thing about the Lucario one is how besides getting an extra pair of headband looking dongles, their coloration doesn't match the other ones and it clashes.
As for Blaziken, the original crest being swept back looked fine, now it's split in two as retarded head fins. My head is a bird! Also, the smaller crests sweeping outward have now become a single crest on its nose/beak jutting up, it kinda draws attention to the wrong places and looks pretty dumb comparitively. Also, I like how you claim that the color changed from "Hurrr it's fire-type" when the ribbons it gains are ON FUCKING FIRE. They didn't get rid of the orange, they made it MORE PRONOUNCED and waving around every which way as if advertizing, SCREAMING, "HURR THIS IS A FIRE TYPE!" So I basically disagree with everything you just said. Except that people misappropriate the term "edgy" a lot.
I like Lucario as a mon. I raised a Riolu in B2W2 and it was a lot of fun to use. Good typing, good movepool, good stats all around. The design isn't anywhere near as bad as people make out.
My issue is with Nintendo and the furries. Nintendo for sticking it in everywhere they can. Pikachu I get, Charizard I get. Greninja, it isn't that bad yet. But Lucario is fucking everywhere, and I don't get it. I hope the poll shows them that people want other mons to get the spotlight. And the furries for ruining a good thing like only they can.
Thinking back, Lucario was even one of those mons released before the games came out, like Togepi or Munchlax. I remember in the original Rescue Team you could get it, Bonsly, Mime Jr, and Weavile as trophies or some shit. Bonsly & Mime Jr. would have made cute as fuck mascots.
>And the furries for ruining a good thing like only they can.
>implying they're capable of doing anything but ruin things
>implying anyone has any choice but to ignore them or become one
For comparison, here is my screenshot of that page, using the same search engine (including same locale)
>using linux just to browse 4chan/other remedial tasks
You must be proud to no longer be a sheep, right?
Actually, I had to use Linux because my Windows shat itself on me and wouldn't work at all, and my friend (who's actually in IT as a professional) couldn't help me aside from "use the USB stick, Luke!"
Its lore is a watered-down Mewtwo.
Hey, that reminds me: Brawl.
le new mascot
Why all the spikes
I even like Zoroark better
Fans = KornheiserPanic.jpg
Luxray best Gen 4 non-legend
If it weren't the unofficial mascot of Pokemon and were treated as a normal Pokemon I'd like it a little more.
I used to be on the hipster train about Lucario until I gave them an honest go with this generation.
Now I just think it's.. eh.. a pretty cool guy who doesn't afraid of anything.
I enjoyed him more than my Medicham leveling up, but I'll probably replace him now that my egged Mega-Medi is coming together.
Wheel of Time, by robert jordan. which reminds me, I liked it even before robert jordan died.
>GoT get popular
>Hipster A: I like GoT even before it became popular
>Hipster B: GoT is baby first fantasy soap opera. *insert title here* is way better.
>Hipster C: I liked *insert title here* even before you hipsters flowed to it when GoT became popular.
what the hell is that, I started reading/watching GoT after I heard it was good
what's wrong with that
I read shit only /lit/ has fucking heard about but you don't hear me bragging about it
a. nothing is wrong from taking to something after recomendition. only hipsters think this is bad.
GoT sucks, it's literly baby first fantasy soap operaand WoT is better. the black cauldron is better. the death gate cycle is better. dragon lance is better. heck, even drizzt is better.
I quit playing during generation 2, didn't touch pokemon until gen 6, when I saw the covers of R/S I thought they looked more like plastic children's toys rather than pokemon, then Brawl came out and I saw Lucario and it looked like the most stupid furfag original character do not steal shit I had ever seen in a game and thought to myself "is this what Pokemon has become now? another fucking Soniclike franchise?"
tl;dr Lucario has a very cringe inducing design, looking both edgy and stupid looking.
Kyogre and Groudon are awesome, but I won't be using Lucario any time soon.
Not him, but I remember saving this from a thread a while back.
Anubis isn't what Lucario is based off of. That's just /vp/ regurgitating the same information unto itself until everybody believes it to be fact (like how everyone thinks Hydreigon is based off of King Ghidorah.)
Outside of the ears, and I guess, maybe, some super loose Aura connection, it's really got nothing to do with Anubis. It's also not a Jackle.. if anything, it's a Wolf or Dog.
In reality, it's an attempt at an original creation with light inspiration drawn from Hachiko. Overall, it's a rough design outline of Lone Wolf/Hachiko/Oracle inspirations.
If the blue was gold or sandy, that could make a great pokemon on its own, maybe a special-based Fighting type (maybe part Ghost too, since Anubis = afterlife). And it would be cool to have an actual Anubis pokemon.
>despite zoroark flopping, lucario is so popular that GF decides to make lucario-clones every gen onwards |
CONTAINING THE ORIGINAL GREEK TEXT
OF WHAT IS COMMONLY STYLED THE NEW TESTAMENT
(According to the Recension of Dr. J. J. Griesbach)
INTERLINEARY WORD FOR WORD ENGLISH TRANSLATION
A NEW EMPHATIC VERSION
BASED ON THE INTERLINEARY TRANSLATION, ON THE RENDERINGS OF EMINENT
CRITICS, AND ON THE VARIOUS READINGS OF
THE VATICAN MANUSCRIPT
No. 1209 in the Vatican Library
BY BENJAMIN WILSON
The Emphatic Diaglott
In 1888, Zion's Watch Tower carried in the July issue (Reprint page 1051) an offer to all its readers to receive a copy of the Emphatic Diaglott at a subsidized price of $1.50 which included a year's subscription (or renewal) to the Tower, and postage of sixteen cents. The brother who made this possible, acquired in 1902 the copyright and plates and presented them to the Society as a gift.
An early copy at hand, which was presented in 1903 to Br. Silas Arnold of Dayton, Ohio by Br. Russell, includes an editor's page. As this has not been included in later editions, the text of this item may be of interest to our readers and is reprinted here.
A Friendly Criticism
This work we regard as a very valuable help to all Bible students, whether conversant with the Greek language or not. We esteem it (as a whole) the most valuable translation of the New Testament extant.
We call special attention to the 'word for word' translation, found immediately under the Greek text, in the left hand column. It will be found valuable, especially for a critical examination of any particular text. A little study will enable you to appreciate it. Like all things made and done by imperfect mortals, we think this valuable work not without its faults. It would seem to us that the author must have held the view that Jesus had no prehuman existence, and that there is no personal devil; i.e., that when the word devil' is used evil principle is meant; also that Jesus is still a man and flesh, in glory. In commending this work to you as a whole so highly as we have done, we deem it but a duty to draw your attention to a very slight bias which we think pervades the work in the direction named.
As some pointed illustrations of what we have remarked, we suggest an examination and comparison between the right and left columns of the work, in the following scriptures, viz: John 1:10, Rev. 13:8; Jude 9; Heb. 10:20. Editor of Zion's Watch Tower.
To trouble the reader with any lengthy remarks on the important advantage to be derived from a new translation of the Sacred Writings is deemed altogether unnecessary. Much information on this point has been given by others who have published modern versions of the New Testament, with the reasons which have induced them to do so. Those reasons will serve in a great measure also for this. It is generally admitted by all critics that the Authorized or Common version of the Scriptures absolutely needs revision. Obsolete words, uncouth phrases, bad grammar and punctuation, etc., all require alteration. But this is not all. There are errors of amore serious nature which need correction. The translators of the Common version were circumscribed and trammeled by royal mandate; they were required to retain certain old ecclesiastical words which, accordingly, were left untranslated. Thus the minds of many who had no means of knowing the meaning of the original words have been misled and confused.Biblical criticism, however, during the last two hundred years, has done much to open up and elucidate the Word of God, by discovering many things which were unknown to the old translators, making great improvements in the text, detecting numerous interpolations and errors, and suggesting far better renderings of many passages. Many modern versions have availed themselves of this valuable assistance, and it is believed they have thereby been enabled to give the English reader a better understanding of what was originally written.
Without presuming to claim any superiority for this, as a translation of the New Testament, over any other modern version, it is thought that the present Work presents certain valuable features not found elsewhere, and which will be of real practical utility to every one who wishes to read the books of the evangelists and apostles as they were written under the guidance and inspiration of the Holy Spirit. These features are:--An approved Greek text, with the various Readings of the Vatican Manuscript. No. 1209; an Interlineary literal Word for Word English translation; a New Version, with the Signs of Emphasis; a copious selection of References; many appropriate, illustrative, and exegetical Footnotes; and a valuable Alphabetical Appendix. This combination of important items cannot be found in any other book. The reader will find further remarks on this subject, on the page headed, Plan of the Work and he is also invited to read the pages with the respective captions: To the Reader; History of the Greek Text ; and History of English Versions. Also, on another page will be found the Letters and Pronunciation of the Greek Alphabet, for the special benefit of those who may wish to obtain a rudimentary knowledge of that language.
The intelligent reader will at once perceive the utility and importance of this arrangement. Readers who are familiar with the original tongue obtain in this Work one of the best Greek Testaments, with important ancient readings, well worthy of their attention; and, it is presumed, there are even few Greek scholars who are so far advanced but may derive some help from the translation given. Those who have only a little or no knowledge of the Greek may, by careful reading and a little attention to the Interlineary translation, soon become familiar with it. This Work, in fact, places in the hands of the intelligent English reader the means of knowing and appropriating for his own benefit, with but little labor on his part, what has cost others years of study and severe toil to acquire.
Scrupulous fidelity has been maintained throughout this version in giving the true rendering of the original text into English; no regard whatever being paid to the prevailing doctrines or prejudices of sects, of the peculiar tenets of theologians. To the divine authority of the original Scriptures alone has there been the most humble and unbiased submission. In the preparation of this work for the press, all available help to be derived from the labors of great and learned men has been obtained and appropriated. Lexicons, Grammars, ancient and modern Versions, Commentaries, critical and explanatory, Cyclopedias, Bible and other Dictionaries, etc., have been consulted and culled from. Also, the suggestions, opinions and criticism of friends, on words, phrases and passages, have been duly considered, and sometimes adopted. It is not presumed that this work is free from faults or errors. Infallibility is left for others to claim. Great care however, has been exercised to make it as correct as possible. The Work is now sent forth to the public, to stand or fall on its own merits. True, it cannot boast of being the production of a council of learned men, as King James version; but let it be remembered that TYNDALE alone, under very disadvantageous circumstances, did far more for the English Bible than that learned body, for they only followed in the wake of his labors.
This Volume, principally designed for the instruction and advantage of others, is now reverently committed to the blessing of our Father in the heavens, with an earnest and sincere desire that many of those who peruse its pages may be led by the knowledge, faith and obedience inculcated therein to obtain an inheritance in the aionian kingdom of Jesus the Anointed One.
HISTORY OF THE GREEK TEXT
The following condensed account of the different editions of the Greek New Testament will introduce the reader to the history of the Greek Text, and the various steps taken by learned men for the purpose of editing it with greater critical accuracy. The history will commence with the first printed editions.
The first printed edition of the whole of the Greek New Testament was that contained in the Complutensian Polyglot; published by Francis XIMENES de CISNEROS. The principal editor of the work was Lopez de Stunica. It was printed in Greek and Latin, and completed January 10, 1514. In consequence of the delay as to the publication of this edition (from 1514 to1520) that of ERASMUS was commenced and completed, and was published in 1516, being the first edition published of the Greek New Testament. Like the Complutensian edition, this was also in Greek and Latin. The latter part of the book of Revelation being wanting in his MS. He supplied the same by translating the Latin vulgate into Greek.
The Greek Manuscripts used for these two editions were few in number, of little critical value, and therefore do not possess much real authority. In 1535, Erasmus published his fifth edition, which is the basis of the common Text.*
In 1546, and again in 1549, ROBERT STEPHENS printed, at Paris, two beautiful small editions of the Greek New Testament; and in 1550 his folio edition with various readings from several Manuscripts--he collated some 15 MSS., but chiefly followed the Complutensian copy. BEZA published five editions of the Greek Testament; the first in 1565, the last in 1598.
In 1624, the ELZEVIR, printers at Leyden, published a small and beautiful Greek Testament, the editor of which is wholly unknown. It differs little from Stephens folio edition. The printers gave to this Text the name of Textus Receptus.
In WALTON'S POLYGLOT of 1657, the Greek New Testament was given according to the Text of Stephens; and in the last volume there was a collection of various Readings from such MSS. as were then known. These various Readings, with some additions, were given in the Greek Testament, published by Bishop Fell, at Oxford, in 1675.
In 1707, Dr. MILL'S Greek Testament appeared. His Text is simply taken from Stephens as given in Walton's Polyglot. His collection of various Readings was extensive, and these were made the ground for a critical amendment of the Text.
Dr. EDWARD WELLS published the first critical revision in parts at Oxford, between1709 and 1719, with a translation and paraphrase.
BENGEL followed on in the same work and published his edition in 1734, and in his Apparatus Criticus he enlarged the stock of various Readings.
WETSTEIN published his Greek Testament in 1751-2, but only indicates, in his inner margin, the few Readings which he preferred to those of the Elzevir edition. But in the collection of critical materials he did more than all his predecessors put together.
--------------*Erasmus, in his third edition of 1523, inserted the text, 1 John v. 7, on the authority of a MS. now in Dublin. Tyndale used this edition to revise his English version.
GRIESBACH, in critical labors, excels by far any who preceded him. He used the materials others had gathered. His first edition was commenced in 1775; his last was completed in 1806. He combined the results of the collations of Birch, Matthaei and others, with those of Wetstein. In his Revision he often preferred the testimony of the older MSS. to the mass of modern copies.
Since the publication of Griesbach’s Text, three or four other critical editions have been published, and have received the examination and approval of scholars. Of these, the edition of Scholz has passed through numerous editions. His fundamental principle of criticism was, that the great majority of copies decide as to the correctness of the Text; hence, those who prefer the more ancient documents will consider the Text of Griesbach preferable; while those whose judgment would favor the mass of testimonies would prefer that of Scholz.
In addition to Scholz’s collation, Lachmann, Tischendorf, Tregelles, &c., have given to the world the result of their critical labors, and which are acknowledged to be of the highest authority.
The number of MSS. now known, and which have been examined, is nearly 700; thus affording now a far better chance to obtain a correct Greek Text than when the authorized version was at first published.
HISTORY OF ENGLISH VERSIONS
THE first English version of the New Testament was that made by JOHN WICLIF, or WYCLIFFE, about the year 1367. It was translated from the Latin Bible, verbatim, without any regard to the idiom of the languages. Though this version was first in point of time, no part of it was printed before the year 1731.
TYNDALE'S translation was published in 1526, either at Antwerp or Hamburg. It is commonly said that Tyndale translated from the Greek, but he never published it to be so on any title page of his Testament. One edition, not published by him, has this title-- The Newe Testament, dylygently corrected and compared with the Greke, by Willyam Tyndale, and fynesshed in the yere of oure Lorde God, A. M. D. And xxxiiij. in the moneth of Nouember. It is evident he only translated from the Vulgate Latin.
COVERDALE published the whole Bible in English, in the year 1535. He followed his interpreters, and adopted Tyndale's version, with the exception of a few alterations.
MATTHEW’S BIBLE was only Tyndale and Coverdale s published under the feigned name of Thomas Matthew.
HOLLYBUSHE’S NEW TESTAMENT was printed in 1538, both in Latin and English, after the Vulgate text, to which Coverdale prefixed a dedication to Henry VIII.
THE GREAT BIBLE, published in 1539, purported to be translated after the veryte of the Hebrue and Greke textes, but it is certain that it was only a revision of Matthew’s, with a few small alterations. It was named the Great Bible, because of its large size.
CRANMER’S BIBLE, published in 1540, was essentially the same as the Great Bible, but took his name on account of a few corrections which he made in it.
THE GENEVA BIBLE was published at Geneva in 1560. The New Testament in 1557. Coverdale was one of the Geneva brethren who issued it.
THE BISHOP’S BIBLE was a revisal of the English Bible, made by the bishops, and compared with the originals. It was published in 1568.
THE DOUAY BIBLE appeared in 1609, and was translated from the authentical Latin, or Vulgate.
KING JAMES BIBLE, or the Authorized Version, was published in 1611. In the year1604, forty-seven persons learned in the languages were appointed to revise the translation then in use. They were ordered to use the Bishop s Bible as the basis of the new version, and to alter it as little as the original would allow; but if the prior translations of Tyndale, Coverdale, Matthew, Cranmer or Whitechurch, and the Geneva editors agreed better with the text, to adopt the same. This translation was perhaps the best that could be made at the time, and if it had not been published by kingly authority, it would not now be venerated by English and American protestants, as though it had come direct from God. It has been convicted of containing over 20,000 errors. Nearly 700 Greek MSS. are now known, and some of them very ancient; whereas the translators of the common version had only the advantage of some 8 MSS. none of which was earlier than the tenth century.
Since 1611, many translations of both Old and New Testaments, and portions of the same, have been published. The following are some of the most noted.
The Family Expositor: or a Paraphrase and Version of the New Testament, with Critical Notes. By Philip Doddridge. 1755.
The four Gospels translated from the Greek. By George Campbell. 1790.
A New Literal Translation, from the Original Greek of the Apostolical Epistles. By James Macknight. 1795.
A Translation of the New Testament. By Gilbert Wakefield. 1795.
A Translation of the New Testament, from the original Greek. Humbly attempted by Nathaniel Scarlett, assisted by men of piety and literature. 1798.
The New Testament in an Improved Version, upon the basis of Archbishop Newcome’s New Translation, with a corrected Text. 1808.
The New Testament, in Greek and English; the Greek according to Griesbach; the English upon the basis of the fourth London edition of the Improved Version, with an attempt to further improvement from the translations of Campbell, Wakefield, Scarlett, Macknight, and Thomson. By Abner Kneeland. 1822.
A New Family Bible, and improved Version, from corrected Texts of the Originals, with Notes Critical, &c. By B. Boothroyd. 1823.
The Sacred Writings of the Apostles and Evangelists, translated from the original, by Campbell, Macknight, and Doddridge, with various Emendations by A. Campbell. 1833.
A New and Corrected Version of the New Testament. By R. Dickinson. 1833.
The Book of the New Covenant, a Critical Revision of the Text and Translation of Common Version, with the aid of most ancient MSS. By Granville Penn. 1836.
The Holy Bible, with 20,000 emendations. By J. T. Conquest. 1841.
The Good News of our Lord Jesus, the Anointed; from the Critical Greek of Tittman. By N. N. Whiting. 1849.
A Translation of the New Testament, from the Syriac. By James Murdock. 1852.
Translation of Paul s epistles. By Joseph Turnbull. 1854.
The New Testament, translated from Griesbach s Text. By Samuel Sharpe. 1856.
TO THE READER.
THAT. All Scripture, divinely inspired, is profitable for Teaching, for Conviction, for Correction, for THAT Instruction which is in Righteousness, is the truthful testimony of the Sacred Writings about themselves. We rejoice to express our conviction that the word of God was perfect and infallible as it emanated from those holy men of old, the prophets and apostles, who spoke, being moved by the Holy Spirit. As a revelation of Jehovah's will to the human race, it was requisite that it should be an unerring guide. Amid the ever conflicting strife of human opinions, and the endless diversity of thought, we needed such a standard, to lead us safely through the perplexing problems of life, to counsel us under all circumstances, to reveal the will of our Heavenly Parent, and to lift on high a celestial light, which, streaming through the thick darkness that broods around, shall guide the feet of his erring and bewildered children to their loving Father's home. We needed, therefore, a testimony upon which to repose our faith and hope, free from all error, immutable, and harmonious in all its details--something to tell us how to escape from the evils of the present, and attain to a glorious future. With reverence and joy we acknowledge the Sacred Writings to be such, as they were originally dictated by the Holy Spirit. How important, then, that they should be correctly read and understood!
But can it be fairly said that such is the case with our present English Version? We opine not. Though freely acknowledging that it is sufficiently plain to teach men the social and religious duties of life, and the path to immortality, yet it is a notable fact that King James Translation is far from being a faithful reflection of the mind of the Spirit, as contained in the Original Greek in which the books of the New Testament were written. There are some thousands of words which are either mistranslated, or too obscurely rendered. Besides others which are now obsolete, through improvement in the language. Besides this, it has been too highly colored in many places with the party ideas and opinions of those who made it, to be worthy of full and implicit confidence being placed in it as a genuine record. In the words of Dr. Macknight, It was made a little too complaisant to the King, in favoring his notions of predestination, election, witchcraft, familiar spirits, and kingly rights, and these it is probable were also the translator's opinions. That their translation is partial, speaking the language of, and giving authority to one sect.
And according to Dr. Gell, it was wrested and partial, and only adapted to one sect; but he imputes this, not to the translators, but to those who employed them, for even some of the translators complained that they could not follow their own judgment in the matter, but were restrained by reasons of state.
The Version in common use will appear more imperfect still when the fact is known that it was not a translation from the Original, but merely a revision of the Versions then in use. This is evident from the following directions given by King James to the translators, viz.: The Bishop's Bible [was] to be followed, and altered as little as the Original will permit. And these translations [were] to be used when they agree better with the text than the Bishops Bible--namely, Tyndale’s, Matthew’s, Coverdale’s, Whitchurch’s, Geneva. None of these were made from the Original Greek, but only compare with it--being all translated from the Vulgate Latin. Hence it follows that the authorized version is simply a revision of the Vulgate. And the Greek Text, with which it was compared, was compiled from Eight MSS. only, all of which were written since the tenth century, and are now considered of comparatively slight authority. The Textus Receptus, or Received Greek Text, was made from these MSS., and is now proved to be the very worst Greek Text extant, in a printed form. And there was only one MS. for the Book of Revelation, and part of that wanting, which was supplied by translating the Latin of the Vulgate into Greek!
Since the publication of the Textus Receptus, and the Common Version, some 600 MSS. have been discovered, some of which are very ancient, and very valuable. The best and oldest of these is one marked B., Cod. Vaticanus, No. 1209 of the fourth and fifth centuries. The second marked A., Cod. Alexandrinus, of the fifth century. The third marked C., Cod. Ephrem., about the fifth century, and the fourth, marked D., Cod. Cantabujiensis, of the seventh century.
Besides valuable assistance from ancient MSS., the DIAGLOTT has obtained material aid from the labors of many eminent Biblical critics and translators. Among these may bementioned.--Mill, Wetstein, Griesbach, Scholz, Lachmann, Tischendorf, Tittman, Tregelles, Doddridge, Macknight, Campbell, Horne, Middleton, Clark, Wakefield, Bloomfield, Thompson, Murdock, Kneeland, Boothroyd, Conquest, Sharpe, Gaussen, Turnbull, Trench, &c., &c.Should any person doubt the propriety of the Translation, in any particular part, let him not hastily censure or condemn till he has compared it carefully with the various authorities on which it is based; and even should he see reason to differ in some respects, a correct Greek Text is given, so that the Original may be always appealed to in cases of doubt. However imperfect the Translation may be considered by the Critic it cannot adulterate the Original.
PLAN OF THE WORK.
1. Greek Text and Interlineary Translation.--The left-hand column contains the GREEK TEXT according to Dr. J. J. Griesbach, and interlined with it a LITERAL WORD-FOR-WORD TRANSLATION, wherein the corresponding English is placed directly under each Greek word.
The Sectional Divisions are those of the Vatican and Alexandrian MSS. Greek Words enclosed in brackets [thus], though authorized by Griesbach, are omitted by the Vatican MS. The advantages to be derived from such an arrangement must be apparent to the Bible student. The learned have a Greek Text acknowledged to be one of the best extant., while the unlearned have almost an equal chance with those acquainted with the Original, by having the meaning and grammatical construction given to each word. This part of the work will be adesideratum by many, but more adapted for criticism than for reading. Although by adhering to the arrangement of the Original, the Translation may appear uncouth, yet the strength and beauty of many passages are thereby preserved.
The frequent recurrence of the Greek article of emphasis, and an occasional ellipsis, often interfere with the sense and elegance of a sentence, but this cannot well be avoided in a word-forword Translation. The advantages, however, accruing to the diligent investigator of the Divine Word by pursuing this plan are many, and will be duly appreciated.
2. New Version.--The column on the right-hand side of the page is a NEW VERSION for general reading. This rendering is based upon that in the left-hand column, and the labors of many talented critics and translators of the Scriptures. The Readings of the oldest Manuscripts now known are sometimes incorporated, and always referred to. In this column the EMPHATIC SIGNS are introduced, by which the Greek Words of Emphasis are designated. For the use and beauty of this arrangement, the reader is requested to examine the annexed remarks on Signs of Emphasis.
The Chapters and Verses of the Common Version have been retained, principally for convenience of reference. The reader, however, by following the paragraphs in the opposite column, need not be governed by these arbitrary divisions. Chapters and Verses were not introduced till the middle of the 16th century.
3. Foot Notes and References.--The various Readings of the Vatican MS., Notes for the elucidation of the text, and References, are introduced at the bottom of the page. The Notes are critical, illustrative, explanatory, and suggestive. Old Testament quotations are always referred to, and copious parallel passages in the New.
4. Appendix.--It is intended to add an Appendix to the Work, containing all the Geographical and Proper Names found in the New Testament, with Words and Phrases intimately connected with doctrinal subjects, alphabetically arranged. These will be critically examined, and the light of Biblical science thrown upon such as have given rise to sectarian disputes, and the cavils of infidels.
SIGNS OF EMPHASIS
The Greek article often finds its equivalent in the English definite article the, but in the majority of cases it is evidently only a mark of emphasis. It frequently precedes a substantive, an adjective, a verb, an adverb, a participle or a particle, thus pointing out the emphatic words. The Greek article and Emphatic Pronouns exercise a most important influence on the meaning of words, and sometimes throw light on doctrines of the highest interest. The sacred penmen of the New Testament were, in the opinion of many eminent persons, guided by Divine inspiration in the choice of their words: and in the use of the Greek article there was clearly a remarkable discretion displayed. In fact, the Signs of Emphasis are incorporated with the words in such a manner that the latter cannot be stated without conveying at the same time to the intelligent mind an idea of the very intonation with which the sentence was spoken when it was written down. This peculiarity of the Greek language cannot be properly expressed in English except by the use of typographical signs: such as, Initial Capital letters, italics, SMALL CAPITALS and CAPITALS. The Common Version of the New Testament fails to give the reader a full conception of the meaning designed to be conveyed by the Greek original, in regard--
1st. To those Words which are connected with the Greek Article;
2nd. To those Pronouns substantive which are intended to carry in themselves a peculiar emphasis, and,
3rd. To those Adjectives and Pronouns which obtain a comparative importance, by reason of the position which they occupy in the Greek Text, with reference to some other words. To remedy these deficiencies, the following System of Notation is employed in the English column of the DIAGLOTT.
1. Those Words rendered positively emphatic by the presence of the Greek Article are printed in Small Capitals: as, The LIFE was the LIGHT OF MEN.
2. Those Pronouns Substantive which, in the Greek, are intended to be positively emphatic are printed in Black Letter: as, He must increase, but I must decrease.
3. Those Adjectives and Pronouns which in the Greek are comparatively emphatic, as indicated by their position, are printed with an Initial Capital Letter: as, One Body, and One Spirit, even as ye are called in One Hope of your CALLING.
4. All Greek Substantives, as being of more importance than other words, are also commenced with a Capital Letter [which actually is the basis of the bible code - ed] .
By adopting these Signs of Emphasis, it is believed certainty and intensity are given to passages where they occur, as well as vivacity and earnestness to the discourses in which they are found; thus rendering the reader a hearer, as it were, of the life-words of Him who spoke as never man spoke, or which were enunciated by His inspired apostles. |
Sunday, December 23, 2007
8:30am, up and scanning emails, checking voicemails. Open up one that says Sotheby's is hosting the sale of the Magna Carta at 7pm that evening. Get really excited; its the Magna fucking Carta! Check the Sotheby's website - they open at 9am.
8:45, hit the shower, make some coffee and toast.
9, call Sotheby's. Yes, they're selling the Magna Carta, yes its free for observers and yes it starts at 7pm, but get there early cause there's gonna be a lot of watcher-ons like myself.
9-3 or so, take care of business, personal and professional. Attempt to find a date for the auction via Craigslist Missed Connections page, posted with the title: "Are You Sexy? Are You Smart? Do You Want To See The Magna Cart(a)?" No-one responds.
3-5 or so, errands in the city, including swiping a pair of $25 fuzzy slips from TJ Maxx.
5-7, all the way uptown to 72nd and York. Drink a beer and make some phone calls to California about some upcoming tours for a group travel company called Contiki that I also work for. 7pm rolls around, I manage to convince my new roommate Marcelo as well as this funny quirky bird of a girl, named Ivana, also a building friend, to showup.
The place is packed. This is a single-item bid, its just the Magna Carta, and they're expecting it to fetch between $20 and $30 million dollars. This particular M.C. dates from 1297 and is the only one existing in the Western Hemisphere - out of the complete set of 17 Magna Cartas, 15 are in England and are never leaving; one is in Australia and is never leaving. This is the only one in the Western Hemisphere, previously owned by Ross Perot since 1984 and on display at the National Archives. Ole Perot decided to sell his copy, with the proceeds going to his children's charity. This is, quite honestly, the only time a single document of this much importance will ever go on sale, ever. This is what brings us to Sotheby's on a Tuesday night for the public sale of one of history's most important documents.
David Redden, Sotheby's VP and the auctioneer took the stage and the crowd, its 20 cameras and 30+ reports hush up. He says "Well. The Magna Carta. What can I say?" I expect him to start giving an expedited history of the document, something along the lines of "written in 1297, it is the definitive document that rebukes the Monarchical system by indirectly introducing the Common Law of Man . . ." but no. Instead, he launched straight into the bidding. "Do I have $12 million? $12, $12, $12, I have $12, How about $12.5? $12.5 I have $12, I have $13 yes I have $13, $14 . . . etc." It climbed to $19 million and held. Held. Held. And in less than 3 minutes it was over. $19 million dollars for this sheepskin parchment, riddled with holes, hanging onto a massive wax seal attached via tattered ribbon, and one of the three most important documents in America's history (the other two being the Declaration o Independence and the Bill of Rights, of course.) Sudden. Quick. It was truly heartracing.
Afterwards there was a Q&A session with the new owner, a David Rubenstein of the Carlysle Corporation, an equities fund company, or something to that effect that I'll never understand or have to worry about. He was very sincere, almost blushing. He was phoning in his bids, as he had flown in from DC and his plane and cab were late and he almost missed the entire auction. He made some very tender and patriotic statements about keeping this document in the Western Hemisphere, on view at the National Archives for public viewing, and how he couldn't let any foreigner or outsider take this document away from hardworking Americans. It wasn't clear if he spent his personal money or his company's money. After a couple of questions including "Do you speak any Latin?" & "What's your favorite passage?", I shot my hand up and inquired "So, do you plan on spending any alone time with the Magna Carta?" and the gathered crowd had a chuckle. Mr. Rubenstein remarked "This IS my alone time!" and gestured to the cameras convened.A few more questions and then he had to pose for individual pictures and we all took to the streets. It was some of the most exciting 3 minutes I'd spent in a long time.
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
Unsilent Night is the work of Phil Kline, a musician and visual artist who, every year since 1992, has created this city-block-long sound system slash roving party slash impromptu parade slash subtle protest against the commercialization of Christmas. On the second or third Saturday of December (essentially, two Saturdays before Xmas itself), Kline gathers people in Washington Square Park and has them bring their audio-playing machines. Old-school Radio Raheem shoulder blasters, iPods plugged into $600 Bose minispeakers, trenchcoated-John Cusack--holding-up-his-heart-on-a-mixtape-in-a-boombox-style sound-machines, laptops, short-wave radios, guitar amps, Sesame Street plastic tape players, you name it, if it plays music, then there will be someone carrying it. Kline himself prefers cassette players to CD and digital players, as there’s more of a music-recorded-onto-magnetic-tape authenticity to the sound than in a digital encoding, but he takes what he can get. Kline also organizes a few dozen boomboxes to lend to people, but as the event’s grown organically over the last fifteen years, he’s had to rely upon people bringing their own. And they do.
We congregated at a quarter to seven. People schmoozed, sipped tea, sipped whiskey, reconnected with busy-bee New Yorker friends. At seven the procession started. Kline had everyone, on the count of three, press Play. Some hit the button a split second earlier, some a split second later. All of a sudden, washing over Washington Square Park was this gorgeous, glorious orchestra of sound. Wind chimes, a piano tinkling, stringed instruments plucked, is that the sound of icicles breaking? With the tapes, CDs, iPods, radios, players and humans all playing, we started the procession. From Washingon Square we headed east to 4th Street, north on Lafayette, a nice wide diagonal cut across Astor Place to Cooper Square, continuing east on St. Marks Place to Tompkins Square Park. It was a simple, easy route; hardly over a mile of city streets, but covering an incredible amount of history. Allen Ginsberg read HowlTriangle Shirtwaist Fire of 1911. That’s where Abraham Lincoln made a\his famous "Might Makes Right" speech denouncing slavery in 1859, which got him onto the NY Republican ticket and eventually into the White House. That building used to be called the Electric Circus, and it was where Andy Warhol debuted the Velvet Underground with Nico in 1966. And so on and so on.
Of course, none of this was running through my head as I walked with my date and the crowds and the boomboxes and the sounds. I was just listening. With my head, my heart, my body, my whole being. Repeatedly (and quietly) shushing the talkers. Hustling ahead and dropping behind to catch different syncopations of the same sound. Positioning myself between two boombox speakers to try and live right between each note. And enjoying the cold of the night, the warm arm looped through mine, the sounds of Phil Kline’s endless song, and the contentedness of two to three hundred New Yorkers all experiencing the same wintertime magic.
(originally published on Dec 17th, at www.thelmagazine.com)
Sunday, December 16, 2007
On the way to Mutianyu we drove past one of Beijing’s outer-suburb fruit farms – another corollary to the NY-Beijing parallel worlds (but it was too cold for an emergency session of THE LEVYS’ ANNUAL APPLE-PICKING XTRAVAGAZNA BONANZA SPECTACULAR 2007! EVERY APPLE MAKES IT UP TO HEAVEN!) Upon zipping past an enormous fiberglass cornucopia-bounty-of-fruits-overflowing-from-a-walnut-shell prop, we had the driver pull over so we could snap ridiculous pictures. The rest of the drive was a calm, quiet ride through the outer districts of Beijing’s countryside. Then we got to the Wall.
First things first were the souvenir hawkers (ESB parallel = the Virtual Reality ride ticket shillers outside). Another NY parallel - The Nigerians in Battery Park, who need to take serious lessons from the tiny Chinese men and (mostly) women at the souvenir stands and tourist markets. Those Nigerians got nothing on the Chinese. All sorts of tourist souvenir gifts: from “hand-carved” wooden Dragon masks to cheap-ass canvas Chairman Mao messenger bags, from dried fruits and macadamia nuts by the gram to ugly paintings of pastoral Chinese scenery, from silk robes stitched together in an outer-province sweatshop to more kitsch garbage prominently displaying the face of everyone’s favorite pickled Commie; all sorts of unbelievable crap for sale with the standard white devil markup of approximately 200-1000%. There’s really no telling how much this shit should sell for, other than nowhere near the price they spit at you. The best way to go about shopping with these vultures (best as I can tell, being a White Devil of course,) is to ask their price, chop it into a third or a quarter or a fifth or a sixteenth and spit it back. Then when they get incensed and bust out with the exact same comical routine of “NO! I MAKE NO MONEY. NO GOOD! YOU GIVE ME . . .” you barter and bargain and back and forth until you get to a price you’re happy to shellout. It helps to walk away sometimes, to threaten to take your fat American wallet next door, where everybody is selling the exact same crap. It also helps to have a calculator to whip out and point at emphatically. It also also helps to shoot the same over-exaggerated faces back at the merchants when they act up on you. No matter what kind of price gets settled on, trust us. They’re making a fat stack of yuan.
We opted to take the chair-lift (ESB parallel = the 3 elevators) up and the plume-ride down. Well worth the $2 – $3 it cost each way. Our cable car once carried the holy Dalai Lama when he visited in the mid-90s. Sadly, we missed the cable car that carried former President Bill Clinton, who visited in ’98. At the top it was a short hike up the stairs to the Wall itself (parallel – the ESB elevator lets you off right inside the gift shop, to which it’s a short walk to the observation deck). And then . . .
Simply incredible. Indescribable. The thing just went on for miles and miles. Winding along the tops of the mountain ridge, snaking topographically so that it dipped and weaved and wound it way around off into the countryside, disappearing, reappearing, sliding into the endless China of mountains and cities. It was impossible to follow the line as it twisted and turned from one mountaintop to the other, just simply noticeable as the top-most crenellations zigged, zagged & zugged, seemingly into infinity. This section of the Wall (which, contrary to popular belief is no longer continual – parts of the Wall have fallen apart; only the reconstructed sections can be visited) was built in 1368 and renovated in 1983. There were massive guard towers situated every couple hundred kilometers and one rather large guard station, with enough room for beds, a kitchen, and storage, apart from the standard sentry posts. A super-rare feature here – both the inner and outer parapets had merlons (holes) in the wall so sentry guards could shoot at invaders. According to Wikipedia, “The Mutianyu Great Wall has the largest construction scale and best quality among all sections of Great Wall.” It was absolutely awesome. We took lots of ridiculous pictures.(Another fun comparison to the ESB is that as we were making our way around the Wall, Eileen, who was peppering us with facts and stories and dispelling more myths [was built by soldiers and laborers, and not slaves are is commonly misconceived], sent us off to walk some of the wall off a ways, and she hungout at one of the 3 watchtowers, cos it was a whole lot of walking around the wall that she’s done before. This just so happens to be a tour guide trick that we employ when bringing groups to the Empire State Building – instead of the hours-long wait on millions of lines, we just hangout at the bottom of the damn thing, and wait for our groups to go up and come down.)
Finally we get tired of marching up and down these tiny little half-steps and posing for multitudes of pix, and we trudge up and down the myriad hills that makeup the wall towards the toboggan-on-wheels-track-cart-slide-thingie that take intrepid souls from the top back downhill. And hells bells, you better believe we rocked that shit! With a level to control the braking mechanism, and some 30 degree luge-track-style turns, I hammered-ass down the slope, slowing only enough to kick Jonah in the back as he had gone before me and his cart wasn’t zipping too fast. At the bottom we posed for a picture with two bozos dressed like Genghis Khan, did a blitz of tourist shopping, and boarded the van for the ride home, with a lunch stop.
Here’s where the private driver thing kicks ass. Not beholden to a bus route or schedule, and on the super-hungry side of things, we instructed Eileen to tell the driver to take us to a local small-city restaurant that he likes, where it wouldn’t be a problem for us carnivores to get meat, and for Alisa to get fish/seafood and veggies. We ended up at this place called Mom’s Family Restaurant. Located inside Mom’s house, we were given a private room in the back, complete with couch (not pictured). Eileen took all the orders, and the food arrived and was placed down on the Lazy Susan (almost all restaurants in China have this thing, further exemplifying the Family-style dining concept) and we dug in. It was fucking incredible, a veritable xplosion of taste, texture, smell, spice, hot, cool, together. We had a mutton Mongolian Hot-Pot, a whole broiled fish with tofu and some kinda sweet brown sauce, butterflied fried chicken breast in a not-too-sweet honey sauce, the requisite Szechuan noodles, a roasted pork plate, some greens with garlic, white rice, possibly more dishes I’m losing in the recollection. We fed 6 people (including the driver) with 7 or 8 dishes, 3 big beers, ate until we felt close to bursting, and the whole meal, everything included, $15. I wanted to cry it was so beautiful. We rolled ourselves into the van and took off back to Beijing. The most wondrous food coma came quickly.
Monday, December 10, 2007
Also, Hong Kong has a lot of shopping malls. A lot of shopping malls. Mini-malls in the metro stations; a junk clothing mall (like Fulton Street in downtown Brooklyn) mixed in with a building full of hostels; a fashion and accessories mall in the ferry terminal; a luxury mall connecting an underground intersection crossing with a park with this passageway acting as the only way one can access the park . . . it was exhausting. Hong Kong’s relentless commercial valuation of every soul just trying to get around was more than a little depressing. It felt like an entire city of Midtown Fifth Avenues and Lower Broadways in SoHo.
Beijing is more of New Yorker’s kind of town. First off, it has twice the population of NYC. So they’re used to high-density living and hundreds of people crossing the street at the same time. Beijing is also super-flat, like Manhattan. Our flatness is manmade — we flattened the hills to build skyscrapers. The word Manhattan comes from the Munsee Indian word Mannahatta, which has a few different meanings: 1) long hilly island, 2) place of timber to make arrows, and 3) place of general inebriation. All true. Beijing, however, is naturally flat — a blank slate to build upon. It was developed over three hundred years but formalized when Chairman Mao and the Commie party widened the streets in 1949. Our man Mao didn’t do anything half-assed: eight-, ten- and twelve-lane boulevards are the norm, for Soviet tanks to squeeze through in case of riots. What’s more, the entire city is on a grid plan. Like Manhattan’s grid plan, this made following maps and orienting the city on a bicycle easy and a blast. New York and Beijing are on the same latitude, so they experience (mostly) the same weather patterns. And Beijing is a foodie’s paradise: incredible eats and phenomenal street food all up and down the tiny hutongs — little rabbit-warren type villages for the lower classes. Most of the hutongs were surrounded by newly built 20 story high-rises for the quickly growing middle classes.Kind of like the lux condos going up all over town, lording over tenements and their (formerly) working classes. There was energy in Beijing, a rush-to-get-things-done type of attitude, a confidence and righteousness in the faces and conversations (in English) that I had with residents, either expat or native born. The entire city is f’ing crazy about the upcoming Olympics (thankfully, unlike NY). The subway line was a little shaky and small, but within the next decade the entire metro is expanding to three times its current size — almost exactly what happened when New York’s original IRT lines were joined by the BMT in the 1910s and 20s and the IND in the late 20s and early 40s. Beijing, like the rest of China, is experiencing a housing and construction boom. And, Beijing has hipsters. And I’m sad to report that no matter the hemisphere, no matter the culture, the hipsters simply don’t dance. (See previous post) Just like back home.
As a native New Yorker, urban journalist and licensed tour guide, the list of cities where I feel I could live is a short one. I’m proud to add Beijing to the tally, if I could learn its confounding language. But until that unforeseeable day comes, there’s simply no place like New York.
(originally published at www.thelmagazine.com)
Monday, December 3, 2007
The venue, called 2 Kologos (Two Friends) was the size of a suburban basement rec room, and smelled about as funky. The tiny little bar in the corner was shilling cheap, strong liquors and beers (20 RMB for a 'wisky coke' [their spelling] – less than $3), the place was a fog of cigarette smoke (not yet illegal to smoke in bars in China) and the place was a veritable fire hazard – that is to say it was absolutely jam-fucking-cram-man-packed with INTERNATIONAL HIPSTERS!!! That's right gang – hipsters of all shapes, sizes, colors, nationalities and fashion senses. You had fashion-punkers, math rockers, lumberjacks, cool nerds sporting black-square frame glasses, artfags, tight pants, tight shirts, nice hats, and impressive array of facial hair on all who could grow it. Most impressive was the pure internationalism of the scene – we met kids from Chile, Poland, Spain, Wisconsin, Germany, France, Westchester, Beijing, New Zealand, SoCal, etc. Most of the expats spoke perfect Mandarin. It was hard to find a bad-looking kid in room. I would've paid good RMB to get a pie chart pictographically describing everyone's geographic provenance – where they came from, where they've been, where they're living / going next. That shit would've been badass. There were a fair share of Asians and the women (and men) who love them, but the majority of the hipsters were simply a Vice Magazine's ad bastard's wet dream.
The night was pieced together by Tag Team Records – Going Out of Business Since 2005 – a local rock / free-jazz / electronic label based here. The bands featured included: Arrows of Desire, a generic grungy rock and roll foursome; PK14, a half-way decent noise-rock band with a little bit of noodley electronic knob twisting and button pushing – the lead singer was a short squat balding teutonic individual who spent a lot of time screaming a la Frank Black (they reminded me of some krautrock group I couldn't place); FM3, a spaced-out five note drone group that busted out with a fog machine, clouding the entire space in a thicker haze than simple cigarettes could produce; and Lonely China Day, the only group actually made out of Chinese, also playing generic poppy, punky rock and roll. And, as mentioned above and totally expected, none of the hipsters were doing anything – we're talking not even a little hip shaking or head nodding. It was depressing and confirmed everything I feared about the international youth community – everybody is too fucking cool to do anything but smoke, drink, flirt and fuck.
But then Sulumi took the stage – two skinny Japanese dudes with asymmetrical haircuts, and they started plugging in a whole table of wires, sound machines, boomboxes, cables, sound manipulators, and . . . wait . . . was that? Yes, I think it was . . . holy shit . . . these two dudes are plugging in old-skool 8 bit Nintendo Gameboys. We had found members of the 8 bit Revlution! (There is a small but fierce community of Gameboy DJs across the globe that call themselves the 8 bit Revolution – they make their sounds by plugging in home-doctored Gameboys to DJ equip and rock the fucking house with hyperkinetic Midi-created videogame dance music. Bitshifter is one of them and located in NYC – check out his stuff, its ridiculous.) It took Sulumi a short while to get the sound right, sounds kept switching on and off, a blip here, a blurt there, but once they started rocking it, the goddamn sounds were like a dance virus. You had these two tall skinny Japanesesters physically throwing themselves across the stage, slamming their fists into the table, flipping their gorgeous black sheened cuts across their heavy-on-the-bangs heads, flinging their lank-ass bodies into air, just hammering along with the insanely infectious, unbelievably bouncy, uppity up electronic trampoline dance disaster jams . . . AND NONE OF THE FUCKING HIPSTERS, I MEAN NOT ONE SINGLE HUMAN BEING WAS EVEN ATTEMPTING TO MOVE.
Except for me and Jonah. I mean, of course we started moving – we're dancers through and through. I also realized that if we were to move up and center in front of the stage, our simple excitable energy would catch along and maybe, just maybe and hopefully and God willing, some less uptight of this here international community would start to shake ass. So that's what we did. And Goddamnit, we shook some serious ass. As the accumulated whisky cokes gathered in our bellies and the smoke killed our corneas, as the music hit that never-ending high and the gorgeous idiots gazed on with incredulousness, we did our best to show them how to do it. And it worked – sort of. Out of the capacity crowd of 100 bored looking bozos, we got a solid half-dozen dudes (well, five dudes and one chick from Chile) onto the floor. (Our proudest achievement – one of the dudes throwing down on the dance floor was a blond moptop'd douchebag who, immediately preceding Sulumi's kicking out the jams, tried to start a fight with me in claiming that they weren't going to be any good. And who was right, motherfucker?!? [I was pretty drunk by this point.]) The rest of the room could go fuck themselves. We were having a blast. At some point the DJs quit up all their righteous noise for a short intermission, and I took the opportunity to exclaim out loud (to the laughter of some and the indignation of others) YOURE TOO QUIET! THERE ARENT ENOUGH PEOPLE DANCING! MAKE IT LOUDER! Also having an equal-opportunity-blast were the three some-odd professional photographers with biig cameras who couldn't get enough of taking our picture. I fully expect to be on Beijing's blog equivalent of lastnightsparty.com. And looking like I kick some ass. After the bands, after the DJs, after more whisky cokes, after ogling the various babes and Asians, after sneering at the uptight hipsters, after I got my tattoos licked by an sexy overeager Polish boozer, after purchasing a "Buddha Machine", after conversing with numerous peoples of all sorts of nationalities and ethnographies, after all of this delirious, delightful delicious experience in Beijing nightlife, we (our brotherly party of two expanding to include two Jeremies, one from New Zealand and the other from the aforementioned Weschester; the Westchestarian being one of our more exuberant dance-floor partners) attempted to carry over the energy and dance-mania to some other clubs. But it was 2:30 in the AM (late for Beijing standards – this city is a working city and the nightlife is pretty much limited to Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, and over by 1 or 2 am) and the two other clubs we hit were as exhausted as we were. So at about 3 Jonah and I called it quits and taxi’d back to our digs. We drank, we flirted, we schmoozed, we chatted, we DANCED, we impressed, we depressed (the losers, that is), we rocked it and socked it and put rockets in our sockets, we slammed so hard our weary bodies were only wanting more on the long ride home. Sleep came swift and sweet and absolutely earned.
Sunday, December 2, 2007
To recap. Jonah, the youngest Levy boy is spending a few months abroad, enrolled in courses on visual studies and digital media at Nanling University. So Dad Levy, Alisa Brot (his fiancé) and I decided to head out here to visit and adventure for 1-2 weeks. We did the same thing in November 2006, when the J-ster spent 3 months in Hanoi, Vietnam. The kid likes Asia. The Vietnam voyage included Gideon, the middle Levy, but this time we left him at home to cover the business. Also, he's broker than the rest of us. Also, he doesn't travel very well. The rest of us travel very well together; we're all into adventure, history, sightseeing, bargain shopping, and most of all, ETHNIC EATING! So that's what brought us to Hong Kong. The schedule: 4 days in Hong Kong, then all four of us fly up to Beijing for an assortment of days - Alisa to NY on the 1st; Jonah back to HK on the 4th, and Dad and I the 20 hour flight on the 6th. So welcome, Levys (and Brot) to Hong Kong - a bunch of rough-edged and tough-gritted, street-wise and cash-savvy native New Yorkers; all used to the neon brashness of Times Square, the hustle/bustle of Canal Street, the mercantile excesses of 5th Avenue during the Xmas Shopping Season, all of it was absolutely bupkis compared to the overwhelming anti-humanizing effects of the streets of HK
The Special Administrative Region of Hong Kong is comprised of four territories, therefore, it is NOT part of China proper. The four territories correspond pretty nicely to our beloved hometown. HK proper is, of course, sparkling Manahatta, economic powerhouse for the entire seaboard. Kowloon, right across the river, is a large region segmented into smaller hoods, each one known for their cultural or commercial specialty, be they immigrants, boutiques, malls, hip cafes, and rapidly rocketing real estate; this would be the equivalent to our brilliant home borough of Brooklyn! The New Territories is a massive tract of land north of it all and attatched to mainland China; mostly parks and working class hoods corresponds to The Bronx. The Peninsula Sai Kung, which is east of Kowloon (part of the larger landmass that reflects Long Island) has many smaller bodies of water and tiny islands scattered throughout the place: thats Queens and the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge. And of course, darling Staten Island is represented by Lantau Island, the most remote of the five territories and home to both Lingnan U and Disneyland Asia.
Imagine a city with the signs and the hurriedness, the abrasion and glare, the flash and panache of Times Square, but with everything in Cantonese. Now visualize all those signs, buildings, buses and people are layered one on top of the other, in a vertical sardine-tin stacking style that stretches between two and eight levels high. For example, the buses are double-deckers. The metro goes underground two to five levels deep, where transfer-stations have trains of opposing directions layered vertically, as opposed to horizontally, across the platform as in New York. The local business signs on the street are twelve stories worth - one advertisement per floor, running the whole height of the building, and in most cases, craming more signs perched in the front, center, and rears of blocks. Now watch as this headachey Cantonese Times Square and shopping district expands to cover the entire island of Manhattan! It's exhausting. Not that we didn't have fun while in Hong Kong. But when one wishes for the calm and serenity of Lower Manhattan during a weekday lunch rush, you know that there's something wrong with the vacation spot you're at.
The fun we did have:
* Taking the Peak Tram to the top of Victoria Peak – a hundred plus year old funicular railway that leads to the top of the mountain in the middle of the city. You 'aint leaned nothing until you've leaned a good 45 degree angles into the hill as a 60 year old wooden tram chugs upslope at 6mph. * Watching Jonah kick some serious ass in a tournament-style rugby game. Keep in mind that my brother is, at a fresh-faced 21 (his birthday was Monday, and part of the reason we went Chinabound) a lanky, stick-figure kid of 6 ft 2, and probably the last choice on a rugby team. Except that most of his team were fellow Westerners, and all his opponents were tiny shriveled up Chinese college kids. Therefore, Jonah slaughterized the opposing teams. I mean flat-out pulvernated them. Making the first of many goals and equally many tackles, we were proud of the kid.
* We drank beer on the street. No open container laws! Woo-Hoo!
* We visited the beautiful bird and flower markets.
* We goggled at the post-modern, ultra-modern, hyper-modern and just plain ugly architecture of the downtown and Central business districts. * We looked the wrong way down streets and almost got run-over many a time as all the driving in HK is British style – steering wheels and streets all on the wrong (other) side.
* Checked out the noonday gun, which has been firing at the stroke of noon ever since the 1800s and is in a popular Noel Coward song that I've never heard.
* One of the wonderful, only-in-Hong-Kong experiences was visiting the World's Largest Seated Bronze-Cast Buddha on Lantau Island. It's 634 meters tall and weighs 250 tons – about the same size as a jumbo jet. It was consecrated in 1993 at a cost of $65 million and is perched at the absolute top of a pretty little hill which gives one magnificent views across the island. I spent the first two nights at Lingan U, in Jonah's roomate's bed, as he was home with his fam. The second two nights I spent on the couch of two of J's lovely friends, whom we all met at JONAH'S BIRTHDAY SPECTACULAR DINNER! In a huge group of 20 friends, we invaded a local Thai restaurant and had them cook us up a storm. Spicy tom yum soup, incredible green curry chicken, hot red curry beef, some of the best spicy pork ribs I've ever had, beer, jellied coconut crèmes for dessert, wonderful conversation amongst Jonah's classmates, girlfriends, buddied, Rugby teammates, family and folks, it was such a lovely experience. The kid is truly loved by all who get to share his warmth and giving personality. He's a great (big) little brother, and I love the kid.
The last adventure for the Levys (and Brot) on Hong Kong was actually outside HK altogether, as we took the hour-long ferry ride to Macau island, another Special Administrative Region not part of China. Macau was settled by the Portuguese 300 years before Hong Kong, and its mixture of Portuguese cooking, British development, Chinese food, and absolutely outlandish Vegas style casinos and preposterous architecture was a bit of a melee – the Macau Mishegosh we called it. Essentially just running around the entire island and not experiencing much, other than a delicious Portuguese lunch; we tried to do the bungee jump off the Macau tower – it was closed. We tried to find some Colonial architecture – it was mobbed by Chinese tourists on their weekend sojourns to gamble (illegal in HK) and buy baked pork strips and egg custard tarts. We got lost entirely too many times and spent way too much on cab rides back and forth. |
It's just fluctuating wildly from year to year as it always has done but by making some complex "allowances", climate statisticians claim to find a declining trend. But since climate statisticians are in the same class as used-car salesmen these days, it would be safer to stick with the raw data -- discouraging to Greenies though that might be
Further: As I read it, the research concerns only overall ozone levels in the atmosphere and has not in fact used measurements of the Antarctic "hole". There's many a slip twixt cup and lip there. It will be interesting to see what is in the relevant journal article when -- and if -- it has passed peer review
THE first hard evidence is in that global action under the Montreal Protocol to mend the hole in the ozone layer is starting to work. In the first accurate assessment of the impact of the treaty, Macquarie University climate dynamicist Murry Salby and his colleague Lilia Deschamps from the Bureau of Meteorology found that the ozone layer was about 10 per cent along the road to recovery. The rebound follows cuts to global emissions of chlorofluorocarbons and halons, which have been destroying the gaseous shield that blocks ultraviolet radiation and which is critical to life on Earth.
The scientists announced their results at the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society conference at the Australian National University in Canberra last Friday .
The ozone layer is in the stratosphere, the zone 10km to 50km above the Earth's surface. The ozone hole is a region where ozone concentrations can drop to only 30 per cent of their natural values. First observed in the late 1970s, it develops over Antarctica each spring and expands to cover the polar cap.
In early summer the Antarctic vortex, an atmospheric circulation pattern that isolates the column of air above the ice continent, breaks down. Released, the ozone-depleted air mixes with air across the southern hemisphere, diluting ozone at mid-latitudes during summer.
The atmospheric concentration of ozone-depleting CFCs and halons has been falling since the adoption of the Montreal Protocol in 1987. But even as these chemicals have been phased out of aerosol cans, refrigerators, fire extinguishers and factories, ozone levels have been fluctuating wildly between years. "These large changes mask the more gradual recovery of the ozone layer that is due to the decrease of ozone-depleting pollutants," Professor Salby told the HES.
He and Dr Deschamps confirmed that the erratic changes between years were due mainly to global atmospheric perturbations called planetary waves. "We showed there was a very strong relationship between planetary waves and changes of the ozone hole from one year to the next," he said. The changes introduced by planetary waves, which controlled the temperature of the stratosphere, at present dominated the evolution of the ozone hole, he said. "Temperature over Antarctica is a very strong determinant of the polar stratospheric cloud, which forms mainly over Antarctica. [This] cloud is at the heart of ozone depletion. It's responsible for the formation of the ozone hole each spring."
Particles in stratospheric clouds are sites where CFCs and halons launch their chemical attack on ozone molecules. Highly reactive forms of chlorine are the most damaging. The scientists compensated for the effect of planetary waves in the 30-year ozone record collected by NASA satellites. "This unmasked the slowly varying anthropogenic contribution," Professor Salby said. "It gives a fairly clear picture of ozone recovery. In it, you can see the rebound of ozone now.
"The signature of recovery is visible over the last decade and extends back into the late 1990s. We compared it against the evolution of chlorine, especially since the Montreal Protocol. "Once planetary waves are accounted for, the ozone graph closely tracks the chlorine graph."
Without the scientists' analysis, it would have taken 20 years for chlorine concentrations to have decreased enough for scientists to make a statistically valid assessment of the Montreal treaty.
Professor Salby said the anthropogenic component of ozone recovery - the gradual rebound over the past decade - amounted to about 10 per cent of a full return to pre-1980 levels. Ozone concentrations were at their lowest in the late 90s and were not expected to recover fully for about 50 years, he said.
The results correlating planetary waves and the ozone hole would clear the way for seasonal forecasts of ozone and the UV index.
IPCC: International Pack of Climate Crooks
Unquestionably the world's final authority on the subject, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's findings and recommendations have formed the bedrock of literally every climate-related initiative worldwide for more than a decade. Likewise, virtually all such future endeavors -- be they Kyoto II, domestic cap-and-tax, or EPA carbon regulation, would inexorably be built upon the credibility of the same U.N. panel's "expert" counsel. But a glut of ongoing recent discoveries of systemic fraud has rocked that foundation, and the entire man-made global warming house of cards is now teetering on the verge of complete collapse.
Simply stated, we've been swindled. We've been set up as marks by a gang of opportunistic hucksters who have exploited the naïvely altruistic intentions of the environmental movement in an effort to control international energy consumption while redistributing global wealth and (in many cases) greedily lining their own pockets in the process.
Perhaps now, more people will finally understand what many have known for years: Man-made climate change was never really a problem -- but rather, a solution.
For just as the science of the IPCC has been exposed as fraudulent, so have its apparent motives. The true ones became strikingly evident when the negotiating text for the "last chance to save the planet" International Climate Accord [PDF], put forth in Copenhagen in December, was found to contain as many paragraphs outlining the payment of "climate debt" reparations by Western nations under the watchful eye of a U.N.-controlled global government as it did emission reduction schemes.
Then again, neither stratagem should come as any real surprise to those who've paid attention. Here's a recap for those who have, and a long-overdue wake-up call for those who haven't. [See also The CFC Ban: Global Warming's Pilot Episode]
The Perfect Problem to the Imperfect Solution
The U.N. signaled its intent to politicize science as far back as 1972 at its Conference on the Human Environment (UNCHE) in Stockholm, Sweden. There, an unlikely mélange of legitimate environmental activists, dyed-in-the-wool Marxists, and assorted anti-establishment '60s leftovers were delighted to hear not only the usual complaints about "industrialized" environmental problems, but also a long list of international inequities. Among the many human responsibilities condemned were overpopulation, misuse of resources and technology, unbalanced development, and the worldwide dilemma of urbanization. And from that marriage of global, environmental, and social justice concerns was born the IPCC's parent organization -- the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) -- and the fortune-cookie like prose of its socialist-environmentalist manifesto, the Stockholm Declaration.
It was seven years later that UNEP was handed the ideal villain to fuel its counterfeit crusade. That was the year (1979) in which NASA's James Hansen's team of climate modelers convinced a National Academy of Sciences (NAS) panel to report [PDF] that doubling atmospheric CO2 -- which had risen from 280 ppmv in the pre-industrial 1800s to over 335 ppmv -- would cause nearly 3°C of global warming. And although the figure was wildly speculative, many funding-minded scientists -- including some previously predicting that aerosols and orbital shifts would lead to catastrophic global cooling -- suddenly embraced greenhouse gas theory and the inevitability of global warming.
It was at that moment that it became clear that the long-held scientific position that the Earth's ecosystem has always and will always maintain CO2 equilibrium could be easily swayed toward a more exploitable belief system. And the UNEP now had the perfect problem to its solution: anthropogenic global warming (AGW).
After all, both its abatement and adaptation require huge expansion of government controls and taxation. Furthermore, it makes industry and capitalism look bad while affording endless visuals of animals and third-world humans suffering at the hands of wealthy Westerners. And most importantly, by fomenting accusations that "rich" countries have effectively violated the human rights of hundreds of millions of the world's poorest people by selfishly causing climate-based global suffering, it helps promote the promise of international wealth redistribution to help less fortunate nations adapt to its consequences.
Best of all, being driven by junk-science that easily metamorphoses as required, it appeared to be endlessly self-sustaining.
But it needed to be packaged for widespread consumption. And packaged it they surely have. Here's an early classic.
The year was 1988, and Colorado Senator Tim Wirth had arranged for Hansen to testify on the subject before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee to help sell the dire need to enact national environmental legislation. As Wirth has since admitted, he intentionally scheduled Hansen's appearance on what was forecasted to be the hottest day of the hearings. And in a brilliantly underhanded marketing ploy, he and his cohorts actually snuck into the hearing room the night before and opened the windows, rendering the air conditioning all but useless.
Imagine the devious beauty of the scene that unfolded in front of the cameras the next day -- a NASA scientist preaching fire and brimstone, warning of "unprecedented global warming" and a potential "runaway greenhouse effect," all the while wiping the dripping sweat off his brow. No wonder the resultant NY Times headline screamed, "Global Warming Has Begun, Expert Tells Senate."
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how climate hysteria and not one, but two of its shining stars were born. For coincidentally, that was the same year the IPCC was established by the U.N. Its mandate: to assess "the scientific, technical and socioeconomic information relevant for the understanding of the risk of human-induced climate change."
How perfect: an organization formed not to prove or disprove AGW, but merely to assess its risks and recommend an appropriate response.....
The Dawn of Outright Climate Fraud
Back in 1989, future Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) Working Group 2 (WG2) lead author Stephen Schneider disclosed several tricks of the trade to Discover magazine: " To capture the public imagination, we have to offer up some scary scenarios, make simplified dramatic statements and little mention of any doubts one might have. Each of us has to decide the right balance between being effective, and being honest."
And according to MIT's Richard Lindzen's 2001 Senate subcommittee testimony, that's precisely what he witnessed as a Third Assessment Report (TAR) lead author. Among the atmospheric physicist's revelations was the fact that contributing TAR scientists -- already facing the threat of disappearing grant funds and derision as industry stooges -- were also met with ad hominem attacks from IPCC "coordinators" if they refused to tone down criticism of faulty climate models or otherwise questioned AGW dogma. I suppose that's one way to achieve the "consensus" the IPCC loudly boasts of.
As previously discussed here and here, it was in the same 2001 TAR that the IPCC suddenly and inexplicably scrapped its long-held position that global temperatures had fluctuated drastically over the previous millennium and replaced it with a chart depicting relatively flat temperatures prior to a sharp rise beginning in 1900. This, of course, removed the pesky higher-than-present-day temperatures of the Medieval Warm Period of 900-1300 AD, the existence of which obstructed the unprecedented-warming sales pitch.
Truth be told, this little bit of hocus-pocus alone should have marked the end of the panel's scientific credibility, particularly after Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick uncovered the corruption behind it. But thanks to a hugely successful campaign to demonize all critics as big-oil shills, the "Hockey Stick Graph" (aka MBH98) not only survived, but -- after receiving a prominent role in Al Gore's 2006 grossly exaggerated "scary scenarios" sci-fi movie -- actually went on to become a global warming icon. Even after McIntyre finally got his hands on one scientist's data last September and proved that Keith Briffa had cherry-picked data to create his MBH98-supporting series, the MSM paid McIntyre and others reporting the hoax little heed.
Consequently, TAR's false declaration of the 20th as the hottest century of the millennium was widely accepted as fact, right along with its proclamation that the 1990's were the hottest decade and 1998 the hottest year since measurements began in 1861...as was the replacement of "discernible human influence" described six years earlier with the claim of "new and stronger evidence that most of the warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities."
So by the time AR4 rolled out in 2007, in which they significantly raised not only the threat level, but also the degree of anthropogenic certitude (to 90%), the IPCC's word was all but gospel to the MSM, left-leaning policymakers, and an increasingly large portion of the population. Indeed, everywhere you turned, you'd hear that "the IPCC said this" or "the IPCC said that." The need to address "climate change" had quickly become a foregone and inarguable conclusion in most public discourse.
At that moment, Kyoto II seemed as inevitable as the next insufferable NBC Green is Universal week, and with it, the U.N.'s place as steward of the planet, which would surely be ratified at the pending 2009 Climate Conference in Copenhagen. ...Until, that is, the mind-boggling magnitude of AR4's deception became glaringly apparent.
Caught with their Green Thumbs on the Scale
Most readers are likely aware that in November of last year, a folder containing documents, source code, data, and e-mails was somehow misappropriated from the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit (CRU). The so-called "Climategate" emails disclosed an arrogant mockery of the peer review process as well a widespread complicity in and acceptance among climate researchers to hiding and manipulating data unfriendly to the global warming agenda. The modeling source code -- as I reported here -- contained routines which employed a number of "fudge factors" to modify the results of data series -- again, to bias results to the desired outcome. And this, coupled with the disclosure of the Jones "hide the decline" e-mail, provided more evidence that MBH98 -- and ergo unprecedented 20th-century warming -- is a fraud.
The following month, the Moscow-based Institute of Economic Analysis (IEA) issued a report claiming that the Hadley Center for Climate Change had probably tampered with Russian climate data. Apparently, Hadley ignored data submitted by 75% of Russian stations, effectively omitting over 40% of Russian territory from global temperature calculations -- not coincidentally, areas that didn’t "show any substantial warming in the late 20th-century and the early 21st-century."
But Climategate was only the tip of the iceberg. An AR4 warning that unchecked climate change will melt most of the Himalayan glaciers by 2035 was found to be lifted from an erroneous World Wildlife Federation (WWF) report and misrepresented as peer-reviewed science. IPCC Chairman Rajendra Pachauri attempted to parry this "mistake" by accusing the accusers at the Indian environment ministry of "arrogance" and practicing "voodoo science" in issuing a report [PDF] disputing the IPCC. But one in his own ranks, Dr Murari Lal, the coordinating lead author of the chapter making the claim, had the astoundingly bad manners to admit that he knew all along that it "did not rest on peer-reviewed scientific research." Apparently, so had Pachauri, who continued to lie about it for months so as not to sully the exalted AR4 immediately prior to Copenhagen.
And "Glaciergate" opened the floodgates to other serious misrepresentations in AR4, including a boatload of additional non-peer-reviewed projections pulled directly from WWF reports. These included discussions on the effects of melting glaciers on mudflows and avalanches, the significant damages climate change will have on selected marine fish and shellfish, and even assessing global-average per-capita "ecological footprints." It should be noted here that IPCC rules specifically disqualify all non-peer-reviewed primary sources.
Nonetheless, Chapter 13 of the WG2 report stated that forty percent of Amazonian forests are threatened by climate change. And it also cited a WWF piece as its source -- this one by two so-called "experts," who incidentally are actually environmental activists. What's more, the WWF study dealt with anthropogenic forest fires, not global warming, and barely made mention of Amazonian forests at all. Additionally, the WWF's figures were themselves based on a Nature paper [PDF] studying neither global warming nor forest fires, but rather the effects of logging on rain forests. So the IPCC predicted climate change-caused 40% forest destruction based on a report two steps upstream which concluded that "[l]ogging companies in Amazonia kill or damage 10-40% of the living biomass of forests through the harvest process."
Adding to the glacial egg on the AR4 authors' faces was the statement that observed reductions in mountain ice in the Andes, Alps, and Africa were being caused by global warming. It turns out that one of the two source papers cited was actually a mountain-climbers' magazine. Actually, this is a relatively authoritative source compared to the other: a dissertation from a Swiss college student based on his interviews with mountain guides in the Alps.
The 2007 green bible also contained a gross exaggeration in its citation of Muir-Wood et al., 2006's study on global warming and natural disasters. The original stated that "a small statistically significant trend was found for an increase in annual catastrophe loss since 1970 of 2% per year." But the AR4 synthesis report stated that more "heavy precipitation" is "very likely" and that an "increase in tropical cyclone intensity" is "likely" as temperatures rise.
Perhaps the most dumbfounding AR4 citation (so far) was recently discovered by Climatequotes.com. It appears that a WG2 warning that "[t]he multiple stresses of climate change and increasing human activity on the Antarctic Peninsula represent a clear vulnerability and have necessitated the implementation of stringent clothing decontamination guidelines for tourist landings on the Antarctic Peninsula" originated from and was attributed to a guide for Antarctica tour operators on decontaminating boots and clothing. Really.
And here's one you may not have heard yet. A paper published last December by Lockart, Kavetski, and Franks rebuts the AR4 WG1 assertion that CO2-driven higher temperatures drive higher evaporation and thereby cause droughts. The study claims they got it backwards, as higher air temperatures are in fact driven by the lack of evaporation (as occurs during drought). I smell another "-gate" in the works.
And yet, perhaps the greatest undermining of IPCC integrity comes from a recent study, which I’ve summarized here, challenging the global temperature data reported by its two most important American allies: NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). As these represent the readings used by most climate analysis agencies, including the IPCC, the discovery by meteorologist Joe D'Aleo and computer expert E.M. Smith that they've been intentionally biased to the warm side since 1990 puts literally every temperature-related climate report released since then into question.
...Along with, of course, any policy decisions based on their content.
More HERE (See the original for links)
IPCC goofs again: now Holland is drowned
Comment and roundup from Andrew Bolt in Australia below
Yet another blunder in that IPCC 2007 report which Kevin Rudd uses to justify his great green tax to “stop” global warming:
A United Nations report wrongly claimed that more than half of the Netherlands is currently below sea level.
In fact, just twenty percent of the country consists of polders that are pumped dry, and which are at risk of flooding if global warming causes rising sea levels. Dutch Environment Minister Jacqueline Cramer has ordered a thorough investigation into the quality of the climate reports which she uses to base her policies on.
Funny how every mistake now coming to light is of the kind that tended to make global warming scarier. You know, that the Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035, the Amazonian rain forests were extremely vulnerable, the Antarctica would become too fragile even for dirty shoes. And funny, too, how the IPCC boss cadged so many grants, directorships and business deals as his IPCC hyped the dangers. (Just read a fuller list of IPCC controversies here.)
Nor is that the only sceptical news from the Netherlands:
Dutch researchers reporting to Minister Cramer on Wednesday said that global warming appears to be slower than had been assumed.
Surely Cramer’s demand now for a review of the climate science by her scientists is exactly what’s needed here, too. I mean, shouldn’t Climate Change Minister Penny Wong be saying exactly this sort of thing herself:
Dutch Environment Minister Jacqueline Cramer says she will no longer tolerate errors by climate researchers. She expressed her anger to Dutch researchers who presented their annual report on the state of the climate on Wednesday.
Here’s Tony Abbott’s way out of the pinch of claiming to still believe in dangerous man-made warming, yet blocking Rudd’s emissions trading scheme. Surely there’s now so many scandals engulging the IPCC and its science, that it’s mad for us to spend a single dollar more until an inquiry - with sceptical scientists on board too - reviews all the science we were once falsely told was “settled”.
Demand an inquiry now.
India goes even further:
India has threatened to pull out of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and set up its on climate change body because it “cannot rely” on the group headed by its own Nobel Prize-winning scientist Dr R K Pachauri…
In India the (IPCC’s) false claims (on the Himalayas) have heightened tensions between Dr Pachauri and the government… In Autumn, its environment minister, Jairam Ramesh, said that while glacial melting in the Himalayas was a real concern, there was evidence that some were actually advancing despite global warming…
(L)ast night Mr Ramesh effectively marginalised the IPC chairman even further. He announced that the Indian government will establish a separate National Institute of Himalayan Glaciology to monitor the effects of climate change on the world’s “third ice cap”, and an “Indian IPCC” to use “climate science” to assess the impact of global warming throughout the country.
“There is a fine line between climate science and climate evangelism. I am for climate science. ...” he said.
Steve Milloy Reacts to Penn State ‘ClimateGate’ News, Says Investigation ‘Not Thorough At All’
Steve Milloy responded to news about Penn State University’s investigation into Dr. Michael Mann’s alleged involvement in the “ClimateGate” e-mails scandal, saying the review appeared to have been “not thorough at all.”
Milloy, publisher of JunkScience.com and author of Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Control Your Life and What You Can Do to Stop Them, issued a statement after a panel at the university determined an investigation is warranted in one of four ‘possible allegations’ related to Dr. Mann:
1. The review apparently extended little further than the Climategate e-mails themselves, an interview with Mann, materials submitted by Mann and whatever e-mails and comments floated in over the transom. Not thorough at all.
2. Comically, the report explains at length how the use of the word “trick” can mean a “clever device.” The report ignores that it was a “trick… to hide the decline.” There is no mention of “hide the decline” in the report.
3. The report concludes there is no evidence to indicate that Mann intended to delete e-mails. But this is contradicted by the plain language and circumstances surrounding Mann’s e-mail exchange with Phil Jones — See page 9 of Climategate & Penn State: The Case for an Independent Investigation;
4. The report dismisses the accusation that Mann conspired to silence skeptics by stating, “one finds enormous confusion has been caused by interpretations of the e-mails and their content.” Maybe there wouldn’t be so much “confusion” if PSU actually did a thorough investigation rather than just relying on the word of Michael Mann.
5. Although PSU is continuing the investigation, its reason is not to investigate Mann so much as it is to exonerate climate alarmism. On page 9 of the report, it says that “questions in the public’s mind about Dr. Mann’s conduct… may be undermining confidence in his findings as a scientist… and public trust in science in general and climate science specifically.”
“There needs to be a thorough and independent investigation of Climategate. PSU’s report is a primer for a whitewash,” concluded Milloy.
Time Magazine Has a Problem with the Truth about Global Warming
By Alan Caruba
Bryan Walsh has a great career in public relations awaiting him. Unfortunately he is currently passing himself off as a journalist for Time Magazine. PR, a profession I have enjoyed for several decades, is widely seen to “spin” facts to a client’s advantage and this is frequently the case. PR is advocacy. Journalism is supposed to be something else, i.e., the unbiased, objective reporting of the facts. Someone needs to explain this to Bryan.
In an article titled “Explaining a Global Climate Panel’s Key Missteps”, Bryan barely pretends to be a journalist as he engages in whitewashing some widely known facts about the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the United Nations' scam for the propagation of the huge global warming hoax. Bryan correctly notes that the IPCC was “one of the most respected organizations in the world” and, in October 2007, had shared a Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore, a famed global warming blowhard and fabulist best known for predicting the end of the world next Tuesday.
Bryan noted that the Norwegian Nobel committee had “lauded the IPCC’s fourth assessment report in 2007 as creating an ever broader consensus about the connection between human activities and global warming.” Note that these are stated as facts, but in truth there never was a “consensus” in the worldwide community of climatologists and meteorologists, and other scientists.
Indeed, there have been three international conferences to debunk global warming, all sponsored by the Heartland Institute, a Chicago-based non-profit, free market think tank that brought together some of the world’s leading scientists who participated in seminars and gave addresses that were illustrated by graphs and other data that debunked global warming. A fourth conference is scheduled in May and, who knows, some members of the U.S. media might actually attend and report the truth this time?
The assertion that there is a connection between human activities and the non-existent global warming doesn’t even meet the lowest standard of journalistic accuracy. There is no connection. None has ever been proven despite the claims. In general terms, the Earth’s climate is determined by the sun, the oceans, and other factors of such magnitude as to suggest that an ant hill poses a threat to a skyscraper.
Bryan finally got around to mentioning that “over the past week or two, the IPCC has seen its reputation for impartiality and accuracy take serious hits.” Hello! Those hits have been around for years, but the leak of emails in November 2009 between the key players in the global warming fraud unleashed a tsunami of revelations about the way the IPCC relied on deliberately distorted “facts” and strove to suppress the publication of the truth in leading science publications. It wasn’t over the past week or two unless Bryan has been in a deep comma for three months.
Calls for the resignation of IPCC chairman, Rajendra Pachauri, were noted. He has been under fire because he knew in advance of the Copenhagen conference that claims about melting Himalayan glaciers were bogus. Plaintively, Bryan asked, “What’s wrong with the IPCC?” and then answered saying, “To some degree, it’s a victim of its own size.”
Wrong again. The IPCC may have claimed that it had some 2,500 scientists participating, but the real “work” of the IPCC was undertaken by a close knit group of global warming fraudsters, several of whom are under investigation. They include Prof. Phil Jones of the Climate Research Unit (CRU) that provided key data regarding the planet’s temperatures---which always seemed to be rising exponentially.
Others included Prof. Michael Mann of Penn State University, a paleoclimatologist famed for his “hockey stick” graph of temperatures over the past 1,000 years that managed to overlook the Little Ice Age from 1300 to 1850. Joining the merry pranksters was Prof. Keith Briffa, another CRU researcher, who dished up a tree ring theory that confirmed global warming.
Dr. Kevin Trenberth of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, Colorado, linked increased hurricane activity to global warming, but was probably hard pressed to explain those years when it did not increase. There are others like Dr. James Hansen, head of NASA’s Goddard Institute that got the whole ball rolling in 1986 when he told Congress that global warming would destroy the Earth if we didn’t put an end to all energy use that generated greenhouse gas emissions.
Instead of noting the misdeeds of these and others closely affiliated with the IPCC, Bryan quoted a scientist from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, a “lead author on the 2007 IPCC report.” And we know how eager Richard Somerville must have been to suggest it might have been a thousand pages of nonsense. Bryan also quoted Peter Frumhoff of the left-learning Union of Concerned Scientists who repeated the tired IPCC message that “there is no debate about the core urgency” of global warming.
No debate? The debate has been raging for decades. Bryan, however, just plowed on, offering one excuse after another to cover the IPCC’s serious breach of ethics and accuracy, concluding that its “self-assessment” after each report and “the pressure…to be flawless” is the problem,but not the lies it has been putting forth since 1988. “But that’s exactly the sort of information policymakers will need to prepare for climate change going forward,” said Bryan.
No, policymakers need is real science, proven science. And the IPCC “science” about global warming, now rebranded as "climate change", is an insult to all real scientists and, beyond them, to a worldwide public that was consistently led to believe a massive hoax. Time, Newsweek, and countless others in the mainstream media have been co-conspirators in the global warming fraud. It is time to end this shameful blot on journalism and begin to report facts, not apocalyptic fantasy.
Global Warming Naysayers Find Support From Science
Article below from the newspaper of UCSB
In most areas of science, it is considered noble to be a skeptic of a given theory, unless that theory is man-made climate change. According to Al Gore, “The debate [about climate change] in the scientific community is over,” yet the debate curiously rages on. English Prime Minister Gordon Brown, frustrated by those pesky second-guessers, proclaimed, “we mustn’t be distracted by … flat-earth climate skeptics.” Yet while those who reject the climate change orthodoxy are portrayed as denying scientific fact, the facts are overwhelmingly supporting that skeptical view.
The theory of global warming states that greenhouse gasses, like carbon dioxide, trap the sun’s heat in the atmosphere, therefore an increase in human carbon dioxide emissions could potentially cause a steady rise in temperature. Indeed, Earth’s temperature over the past century of industrialization has risen by about .5 degrees Celsius, but the theory holds that greenhouse warming should be highest in the troposphere, the place where the greenhouse warming effect begins. Utterly confounding global warming temperature models, weather balloon data has shown the opposite; the troposphere has been consistently cooler than surface temperatures. When faced with real atmospheric data, one of the most fundamental assumptions behind climate change due to greenhouse warming absolutely breaks down.
Global warming proponents use data from ice core surveys to show that there is an intimate correlation between carbon dioxide and temperature. However, as the 2007 BBC documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle reveals, the alleged correlation is backward. Professor Ian Clark from the University of Ottawa has demonstrated from several ice core surveys that changes in the level of carbon dioxide lag behind corresponding changes in temperature by hundreds of years.
Carl Wunsch, professor of oceanography at M.I.T., described the phenomenon thus: “The ocean is the major reservoir [of] carbon dioxide … if you heat the surface of the ocean, it tends to emit carbon dioxide.” As the sun becomes increasingly active, it warms the vast oceans which, over a process that takes hundreds of years, release massive amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. “The sun is driving climate change,” explains Solar Physicist Piers Corbyn. “Carbon dioxide is irrelevant.”
It is easy for climate change advocates to dismiss skeptics as irrational and avoid a debate that threatens their primitive ideology. Their emotional argument consists of pointing to the thermometer in self-righteous indignation, but while temperature has been increasing, so has solar activity. The intensity of the sun’s magnetic field more than doubled during the twentieth century.
That is why the Left must silence skeptics and maintain a facade of scientific consensus, for if man-made climate change were to be revealed as junk science, their radical, anti-capitalist agenda would be utterly rejected by most Americans. Government regulations, such as caps on carbon emissions, have the potential to destroy both the economic prosperity of western civilization and the industrial progress of the third world. Only global warming skeptics, armed with scientific evidence and a willingness to question authority, have a chance of stopping them.
For more postings from me, see DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For readers in China or for times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here |
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