Home » Giglio: Upstate has Become a Colony of NYC GOWANDA – If I could have one wish granted in the New Year it would be for be for a return of respect and bipartisanship in Albany to ensure that state government serves the common good of all New Yorkers This is my last statement as an elected official It is not made out of malice for any region or political party It is made out of profound concern for our great state and the hard-working New Yorkers who make this the Empire State New York was the first capital of the United States Much of the Revolutionary War was fought here and more New Yorkers fought and died during the Civil War Wall Street is the center of global finance and many consider New York City the cultural capital of Western civilization but a majority of those in power in the state Capitol don’t think or believe it The fact is the people running things in Albany have turned rural upstate New York into a colony of New York City They treat us not as fellow New Yorkers but as a resource farm to supply them with energy Sometimes we are a convenient backdrop for a press conference It’s a resource extraction model that would have the NYC elites protesting in the streets if it were happening to their constituents In return we get taxes and regulations that are killing rural New York the most powerful members of the legislature are from New York City I hoped she would bring some Western New York common sense to Albany she embraced the most radical members of her conference Despite the cache of being home to one of the world’s great cities upstate would be better off without New York City That’s why I co-sponsored A01978 to hold a referendum on whether we should divide New York into two separate states The Democrat majority killed the bill in committee and it never got a fair hearing We are in a similar situation to what the 13 Colonies lived under We need independence from New York City the same way our country needed independence from the British Empire A lot of my downstate colleagues believe upstate could never survive without Wall Street revenue The truth is New York City needs upstate more than we need Wall Street Wall Street generates $19 billion in revenue for New York each year and all of us benefit to a certain degree But relying on Wall Street is dangerously short sighted which is why so many offices in Manhattan remain empty three years later Agriculture is the true economic foundation of New York State New York’s farmers and ranchers generate $5.7 billion in gross income per year Agriculture and related industries like cheese and yogurt production account for a whopping $44 billion in economic activity each year And you can’t squeeze a potato or a cow down a fiber-optic cable the majority is working hard to drive us into bankruptcy New York State’s budget has ballooned $70 billion dollars since 2018 when the one-party rule took over The current state budget is $234.9 billion dollars The governor’s own budget division in June projected that current state spending will far outpace revenue to tune of $2.3 billion in the 2025-2026 fiscal year $4.3 billion the following year and $7.3 billion for the 2027-2028 fiscal year Her own accountants are projected a $14 billion deficit within four years New York has a population of 19 million and an annual budget of $234.9 billion That’s nearly double the state budgets of two places New Yorkers are fleeing to Florida has a population of 22.6 million and a state budget of $116.5 billion Texas has a population of 30.5 million and a state budget of $144 billion So the combined budgets of Texas and Florida hospitals and human service agencies tell me all the time that their state aid is has been flat or heading in negative territory They rarely receive cost of living (COLA) increases from the state despite having to pay for unfunded mandates from Albany like increases in the minimum wage and demands to switch their facilities from fossil fuels to all electric heat The governor held a press conference last year to laud a $500 million fund to help school districts switch to all electric buses it will cost taxpayers $20 billion to fully convert all New York schools to electric school buses by 2035 which is the mandated deadline of New York’s fatuously misnamed Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA) The CLCPA is leading New York to bankruptcy It also won’t do a thing to mitigate carbon emissions and reduce global warming New York State is responsible for 0.4 percent of worldwide carbon emissions If the majority truly cared about climate change they would be protesting in Tiananmen Square demanding that the Chinese government stop building coal-fired electric plants Generations of New Yorkers will wind up paying for these policies We are being taxed to death and taxpayers and businesses are fleeing New York like they never have before It’s the great emptying of the Empire State those in power ignore or are blind to the damage they are doing to our state Assemblyman Joseph Giglio represents the 148th District which consists of all of Cattaraugus and Allegany counties and portions of Steuben County as well For more information, visit Assemblyman Giglio’s Official Website NASA considering a number of designs for its future Mars colonists from 3D-printed habitats to structures grown from mushrooms To combat dangerous surface-level radiation on the Red Planet, Nasa and its partners have to get creative about where exactly future colonists will live These 3D-printed domes plans for vertical Martian dwellings to be printed in situ with materials from the Red Planet Each 'hive' houses four astronauts with designers envisioning them being able to host a nuclear family with children included The design won the top prize of $500,000 in the second phase of Nasa's 3D Printed Habitat Challenge in 2018 Project Olympus, from 3D-printing company Icon, hopes to construct buildings on the Moon and eventually Mars. They are made of regolith - the rocky dust you find on the surface of the Moon and Mars The company won a $60million Nasa contract to build giant space homes from lunar rock in 2020 - and may well take its plans to Mars if it succeeds. NasaCredit: NASAMush-roomsNasa is also looking at utilising what's known as myco-architecture - the use of fungi as building blocks Nasa could technically "grow" habitats on Mars Nasa could build dome-like structures that are then layered with ice that acts as a protective layer against radiation - and also helps feed the living fungi Nasa isn't the only one considering the use of water-based ice in future Mars habitation SEArch+ (Space Exploration Architecture) and fellow architecture firm Clouds AO put forward the Mars Ice House in Nasa's 3D Printed Habitat Challenge These homes would have to be located in Mars' northern hemisphere these homes and the astronauts that live in them would be protected against radiation - without compromising life above ground according to the companies behind the project Our journalists strive for accuracy but on occasion we make mistakes. For further details of our complaints policy and to make a complaint please click this link: thesun.co.uk/editorial-complaints/ NASA's Curiosity Mars rover captured evidence of a solar storm's charged particles arriving at the Martian surface in this three-frame video taken by one of the rover's navigation cameras on May 20 "Cliffsides or lava tubes would provide additional shielding for an astronaut from such an event." The same gigantic sunspot that was responsible for triggering a historic geomagnetic storm on Earth in mid-May whipped up a legendary one for Mars a few days later "We really got the full range of space weather at Mars from May 11-20 CMEs and an extreme solar energetic particle burst and we've only begun to scratch the surface analyzing the data The May 14th flare really did deliver as expected," Ed Thiemann a heliophysicist at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) at the University of Colorado "The flare did significantly inflate and heat the Mars atmosphere as expected, and the resulting CME did indeed produce auroras," Thiemann added MAVEN (short for "Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution") had a front-row seat for the spectacular showing of auroras over Mars. But the way that auroras are created in the Martian atmosphere is much different than what happens here on Earth Earth has a magnetic field that protects us from charged particles This field channels such particles toward the poles which is why auroras are typically only visible from high latitudes lost its magnetic field in ancient times and so is not shielded from these particles the resulting auroras are widespread across the entire planet.  Curiosity's Radiation Assessment Detector (RAD) instrument can pick up the most energetic particles which get all the way down to the Red Planet's surface but it's the less energetic ones that create the stunning auroras That's where MAVEN's Solar Energetic Particle instrument comes into play allowing scientists to take the measure of the aurora-creating energy and recreate the event "There have been several solar events in past weeks so we were seeing wave after wave of particles hitting Mars." Curiosity's RAD instrument also played an important role gathering information to better educate scientists on how solar storms bring impacts on the Martian surface.  RAD data showed just how much radiation the particle storm generated in Curiosity's vicinity — a dose of about 8,100 micrograys If a person had been standing next to the rover at the time they would've soaked up the equivalent radiation of 30 chest X-rays This was the biggest surge ever detected in Curiosity's 12-year lifespan on Mars To give you an idea of how much solar energy was generated from this event just look at the black-and-white camera image from a navigation camera on Curiosity (pictured above) There was so much power when the storm hit the Martian surface that white specks of "snow" were sprinkled across the picture as the charged particles smacked the camera!  when Odyssey encountered the energetic particles in Mars orbit its star camera (which is used to orient the orbiter) took a hit the orbiter still was able to gather details on the charged particles as well as X-rays and gamma rays with its High-Energy Neutron Detector.  And it's not just technology that can observe this phenomenon from particle blasts; humans can "The 'specks' and 'streaks' observed in the camera aboard Curiosity is not far from what astronauts see when their eyes are bombarded by radiation storm particles. In fact, astronauts aboard the ISS often describe seeing 'fireworks' when they close their eyes during radiation storms," Tamitha Skov a retired research scientist from the Aerospace Corporation and a space weather professor at Millersville University in Pennsylvania "This is because an energetic particle will deposit some energy when it passes right through the CCD sensor in a camera or the retina in the eye and that deposited energy causes a false signal making the camera or the eye wrongly believe it is seeing a speck or a streak of light," Skov added —  Massive sunspot that brought widespread auroras to Earth now targets Mars  — Mars orbiter notches 1st sighting of simultaneous auroras with different causes — That giant sunspot that supercharged auroras on Earth? It's back and may amp up the northern lights with June solar storms. "Cliffsides or lava tubes would provide additional shielding for an astronaut from such an event the dose rate would be significantly more," Don Hassler RAD's principal investigator at the Southwest Research Institute's Solar System Science and Exploration Division in Boulder In addition to the safety of humans on the Red Planet scientists are also worried about agricultural development there Powerful solar storms like the one last month could make it tougher to plant and grow enough food in the planet's already challenging environment it will be difficult to grow enough food in lava tubes or caves even if the colonists are able to supply enough artificial light to sustain their growth," Skov said the atmosphere on Mars is so tenuous that energetic particles can penetrate all the way to the ground They are like a light drizzle ceaselessly raining down onto the surface With sunspot region AR3697 now making its second appearance facing Mars researchers look forward to the opportunity to see what else they can learn from this sunspot that just doesn't want to quit "This same sunspot group is still active and rotated towards Mars this week and may provide more events to aid in our understanding of the evolution and loss of the Martian atmosphere," Thiemann said Join our Space Forums to keep talking space on the latest missions, night sky and more! And if you have a news tip, correction or comment, let us know at: community@space.com. Mars is covered in evidence of ancient lakes, rain and snow — but scientists aren't sure how that's possible Could Mars volcanoes have supported ancient life on the Red Planet? Well, maybe 10 must-have 'Star Wars' books and novels coming soon to your galaxy Join the conversation You can save this article by registering for free here. Or sign-in if you have an account researchers have discovered a way to convert carbon dioxide into products that could extract harmful emissions from the atmosphere and could even help to colonize Mars Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience says by harnessing the energy from temperature differences on readily available thermoelectric generators they can convert CO2 into a range of fuels and chemicals the tech could even power and provide materials for a colony on Mars says the study’s lead author Curtis Berlinguette Start your day with a roundup of B.C.-focused news and opinion By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc The next issue of Sunrise will soon be in your inbox Interested in more newsletters? Browse here. “This technology enables CO2 captured from air to be upgraded into fuels … our reactor uses electricity to convert the CO2 into fuels,” he said The goal would be to use electricity from renewable sources such as solar or wind researchers show how this electricity could use waste heat or geothermal heat to generate the voltages needed to convert CO2 into fuels The team connected a standard CO2 electrolyzer to commercial thermoelectric generators which produce electricity because of temperature differences between their hot and cold sides When the temperature difference between the two sides reached at least 40 C researchers found they could generate enough electricity to power the electrolyzer it is used by industry safely to form compounds to make various products where the atmosphere is cold and the air is 95 per cent CO2 researchers theorize that thermoelectric generators could be connected to achieve higher voltages and currents scaling up to meet larger sustainable energy goals this technology could be used at geothermal plants where the temperature difference between a hot geothermal fluid and a cooler surface could be used to generate enough electricity to power the CO2 conversion Berlinguette said the conversion of air into fuels requires a number of steps The most expensive step is to use heat or a vacuum to release CO2 from the sorbent — an insoluble material that absorbs liquids or gases — that was used captured the CO2 “Our reactors use electricity instead of heat or vacuum which reduces the cost of converting air into fuels by half,” he said adding they are commercializing the technology invented at UBC through a start-up called Sora Fuel in Boston the temperature differences on the red planet — ranging from 20 C to -153 C— could help power the thermoelectric generators and convert the abundant CO2 in Mars’ atmosphere into useful carbon-based products that could supply a colony the CO2 can be converted into fuel to provide power or into chemicals that can be converted into materials like plastic Thermoelectric generators clamped over a biodome’s surface on Mars could leverage the difference between the indoor temperatures and the frigid temperatures outside to generate power Berlinguette said the next step for his team will be to test how the thermoelectric generators work with an electrolyzer on Earth potentially unlocking ways to convert emissions into clean fuels one more step to help in the race to limit global warming transmission or republication strictly prohibited This website uses cookies to personalize your content (including ads), and allows us to analyze our traffic. Read more about cookies here. By continuing to use our site, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy You can manage saved articles in your account History News Network puts current events into historical perspective Subscribe to our newsletter for new perspectives on the ways history continues to resonate in the present Explore our archive of thousands of original op-eds and curated stories from around the web Whitney Barlow Robles is a Visiting Scholar in the Department of History at Dartmouth College. She is the author of Curious Species: How Animals Made Natural History and has written for outlets including Slate, Nautilus and objectivity.” Modern science earns significant cultural cachet from its claim to be an impartial arbiter of facts But the very words scientists use to describe the world are not value neutral “Friendly bacteria … rapidly colonize a newborn’s intestines,” she writes And yet to call groups of creatures colonies or colonizers — rather than tribes or countries collectives or amalgamations — is not an obvious choice Hydroids are not known for missionizing to other hydroids Honeybees may have a “queen” supported by “workers” and “drones,” a stratified society in miniature But then their hives might just as well be called monarchies or empires become the Basis of new Colonies of Animals from whose Attacks they can no longer defend themselves.” He likewise claimed that corals and become the Basis of some more powerful It is unsurprising that these authors had such bellicose language on the brain; their work was part and parcel of European statecraft When these early scientists looked at the natural world they saw an image of themselves reflected back and responded by endowing animals with the imperial impulses that drove their own research The observations naturalists made about the animals environments — and people — of far-flung colonies helped imperial administrators rule from afar while also maximizing the commercial potential of those lands And they were usually only known to naturalists through reliance on the longstanding expertise of Native experts — people frequently dispossessed by these very colonial ventures who profited handsomely from the wealth his wife accumulated from Jamaican sugar plantations — and thus from slave labor — and would go on to lead London’s esteemed Royal Society as its president Sloane gathered many of his specimens and observations of Jamaican nature while serving as a personal physician to the colony’s governor It was in this tumultuous context of empirical study alongside dispossession that the word "colony" began to creep into accounts of the natural world Modern science often tries to distance itself from bias or present itself as apolitical both relies on state funding to operate and expressly informs public policy But Enlightenment-era thinkers moved fluidly between science and politics one could be both politician and natural philosopher; look no further than Benjamin Franklin or Thomas Jefferson It wasn’t odd to incorporate imperialism into scientific reasoning These scholars could quite effortlessly see nature and politics as symbiotic the first word in Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan a foundational work of political theory published in 1651 is nature (which he defined as “the art whereby God hath made and governes the world”) Hobbes went on to describe the state or commonwealth as an elaborately fabricated organism: specifically Drawing of the frontispiece of Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan, 1651. Wikimedia Commons The ways we now think about science and the state and science and society depart greatly from how people conceived of these relationships when the language of colonization gained a foothold in scientific terminology we’re hardly insulated from metaphorical thinking or able to use language neutrally which still inject biological processes with all-too-human associations we will always be prisoners to our own era (This paragraph alone brims with figurative tics.) And metaphorical language does a lot of good It can help pin down phenomena in an accessible way What matters is learning how we got here: recognizing how certain terms came into being and seeing their historical residue for what it is especially when it comes to something as violent and all-encompassing as colonialism.  have spread hand in hand with human colonists in what historians often call ecological imperialism But the dynamics of both nonhuman beings and human colonization are messy these calls make “decolonization” synonymous with any liberatory or social justice work they ignore the actual history of Native communities sidestepping any discussion of Indigenous sovereignty — and thus ignoring decolonization as a movement to redress past harm and restore Indigenous land Nor is it some historical relic that can now be safely applied to any context It was a devastating historical process that supported — and benefited from — scientific study at the continued expense of Indigenous people around the world Millions are still reeling from colonialism’s historical impact or from its ongoing and even new manifestations Perhaps the language of the colony has never gone away because colonialism never did the actual group dynamics of these organisms evoke more expansive and exciting models of being than colonization language suggests share resources with one another along a highway of connected tissue Certain bat species form what scientists call “maternity colonies”: females will split off from the main group to form a warm new roost of only mothers where they give birth and nurse their pups What unites these incredibly diverse creatures is that they do things together the animal kingdom: scientific language would be hard-pressed to escape subjectivity The trouble lies in thinking science has already accomplished that AMERICAN and Chinese lunar colonies might be just a decade away – but there are some serious risks A senior scientist has detailed plans for long-term Moon bases and why there's a danger you might have missed After a long period of largely ignoring the Moon, Nasa is working to massively upgrade its lunar efforts space agency is currently partway through its Artemis missions to allow astronauts to easily – and regularly – visit the Moon But the ultimate goal is to have a permanent presence on our small "By 2035 – just 10 or so years away – American and Chinese rockets could be carrying humans to long-term lunar bases," said Martin Elvis a senior astrophysicist at the Smithsonian Institution These areas of the Moon that never receive sunlight give hope for a large supply of frozen water to supply human bases And it'll save on the high cost of shipping water across space from Earth to the lunar surface But there are also some big risks to science by dumping giant colonies on Earth's rocky satellite it could affect the ability for lunar-based telescopes to work properly "The rush to build bases on the Moon could interfere with the very conditions that make the Moon so attractive for research in the first place," Martin explained "Although the Moon’s surface area is greater than Africa’s human explorers and astronomers want to visit the same few kilometer-sized locations "But activities that will help sustain a human presence on the Moon, such as mining for water will create vibrations that could ruin a gravitational wave telescope." A gravitational wave detector – which is extremely sensitive – could learn more about how black holes are born and change over time Martin also points out that the Moon has elements that are "extremely valuable" on Earth: "Liquid hydrogen and oxygen make precious rocket propellant and helium-3 is a rare substance used to improve quantum computers." But he warns that one of the places rich in helium-3 is where humans might want to set up telescopes to view signals that could reveal the "Dark Ages" of the universe before stars or galaxies had formed there are at least two internet and GPS satellite constellations planned to orbit the Moon a few years from now Unintentional radio emissions from these satellites could render a Dark Ages telescope useless." Martin points out that it's important for everyone to "share the Moon" fairly © NEWS ENTERPRISES, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED | TERMS OF USE | PRIVACY | YOUR AD CHOICES | SITEMAP plans to continue its push into the Sun Belt Ill.-based company’s objectives during the Baird Global Consumer Technology & Services Conference in New York City “It's a 60-year-old brand that grew up in Chicago and it was like five or six restaurants,” Osanloo said “Our growth right now is building new restaurants in high-performing markets,” he said “We loosely have defined our growth target as the Sun Belt and I'm playing a little loose and fast with geography because we include Colorado in the Sun Belt … the Carolinas Atlanta … but it's really going where America's population is growing “The focus of our growth in the last few years has been Texas “Those states have 2% population growth tailwind We're going in places in those states where there's a ton of new growth great new housing starts and so we want to take a very attractive hugely cash flow positive business in the Midwest and make our investments in the high growth markets across the United States where Americans are moving to.” Related:Portillo’s COO Derrick Pratt is leaving the company Hook said Portillo’s is targeting 10-plus percentage unit growth this year and 12-plus percentage growth in 2025 “Then in ‘26 and beyond we're targeting 12% to 15% growth,” she said adding that the brand continues to expand in the Midwest about 80% of the growth is targeted in Sun Belt Portillo’s is well-situated for traffic-challenged periods “There's obviously a lot of chatter about the low-end consumer feeling pressure,” Osanloo said “You definitely see the QSR players engaging in some more active promotional behavior… but they also have really expensive meals with the Big Mac and the quarter pounder etc “They have done a really nice job of barbell pricing,” he said the lower-end consumer tends to be a small portion of the customer base While Portillo’s saw negative traffic in the first quarter the brand has added a half hour to open hours in the morning and a number of units have lengthened hours in the evening “We have restaurants that are open till 1 a.m.,” he said We have innovated on our menu to add what we think are some traffic drivers … We added two salads that we think are really targeting specific consumers We have a spicy chicken chop salad with bolder flavors and then we have an elevated salad which is a mixed green salad with a grilled chicken pecans and a fantastic dressing.” Portillo’s has also returned to TV advertising in some markets it really works in Chicago-land,” Osanloo said “We have bought a bunch of ads starting with their preseason games going through the season And it's not discounting but just to remind people that they love Portillo's.” Portillo’s is working on what it calls “the restaurant of the future,” which will be about 1,500 square feet smaller than current builds “We're building about 7,800 square feet today,” he said “We're going to pivot to building 6,300 square feet starting in Q4 and forward And so that's going to take at least $1 million off the build cost.” Hook said unit investment costs could be reduced to from $7 million to the low- to mid-$5 million range “We're starting to put shovels in the ground,” she said adding that bids are “coming in at the low end of the range.” Hook said runs newer restaurant shrinks the kitchen size “If you go into a restaurant in Chicago,” she said “you may see a kitchen line that's 100 feet long I mean it is long and there that's a lot of walking back and forth kitchen What we're building now shrunk that to about 65 feet  The restaurant in the future takes it to about 47 feet.” Contact Ron Ruggless at [email protected] Follow him on X/Twitter: @RonRuggless Nation’s Restaurant News / Restaurant Hospitality Ron Ruggless serves as a senior editor for Informa Connect’s Nation’s Restaurant News (NRN.com) and Restaurant Hospitality (Restaurant-Hospitality.com) online and print platforms He joined NRN in 1992 after working 10 years in various roles at the Dallas Times Herald newspaper He also edited several printings of the Zagat Dining Guide for Dallas-Fort Worth and his articles and photographs have appeared in Food & Wine Ron Ruggless’ areas of expertise include foodservice mergers Ron Ruggless is a frequent moderator and panelist at industry events ranging from the Multi-Unit Foodservice Operators (MUFSO) conference to RestaurantSpaces the Council of Hospitality and Restaurant Trainers the National Restaurant Association’s Marketing Executives Group local restaurant associations and the Horeca Professional Expo in Madrid Informa Connect’s Nation’s Restaurant News and Restaurant Hospitality (1992 to present) Features Editor – Dallas Times Herald (1989-1991) Restaurant Critic and Food Editor – Dallas Times Herald (1987-1988) Editing Roles – Dallas Times Herald (1982-1987) Editing Roles – Charlotte (N.C.) Observer (1980-1982) Editing Roles – Omaha (Neb.) World-Herald (1978-1980) Email: [email protected] Twitter: @RonRuggless LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/ronruggless Instagram: @RonRuggless As the restaurant industry struggles toward gender parity in leadership ranks these 52 women have become the standard-bearers for change Registered in England & Wales with number 01835199 2024Once in a Lifetime: City to host special Solar Eclipse event TX – Join The Colony Convention & Visitors Bureau (CVB) and The Colony Parks & Recreation from 12:30 to 2:30 p.m all-ages event will include solar viewing stations and free solar glasses (while supplies last) The City of The Colony is in a unique position wherein the path of the eclipse will fall directly overhead The partial eclipse will begin at 12:23 p.m The Colony will be in total solar eclipse for 2 minutes and 41 seconds at which point the sun will slowly emerge from behind the moon again The last total solar eclipse to pass directly over North Texas was nearly 150 years ago in 1878 NASA predicts the next solar eclipse to pass over the contiguous United States won’t be until 2044 – and it won’t include a Texas fly-by “It really is a once-in-a-lifetime event,” said Megan Charters we want to make sure everyone who attends can make the most of the opportunity by learning as much as possible about eclipses We’ll have a lot of educational material about the science behind the event and it’ll be presented in such a way that it’s accessible and easy to understand for all ages There will be a scale model of the solar system with facts about the sun and planets Visitors to The Colony are encouraged to check out www.VisitTheColonyTx.com for special offers from select hotels related to the solar eclipse “The City of The Colony is in a prime location for this particular eclipse and Stewart Creek Park offers an ideal space for optimal viewing We’re partnering with local businesses such as Raising Cane’s and Chick-fil-A and working to ensure attendees have a great time,” said Mariko Lanicek then stay to explore the food and fun throughout The Colony!” Excluding the brief phase of the total solar eclipse when the moon completely blocks the sun’s bright face it is not safe to look directly at the sun without specialized eye protection for solar viewing Viewing any part of the bright sun through a camera lens binoculars or a telescope without a special-purpose solar filter secured over the front of the optics will instantly cause severe eye injury Visit NASA’s website to learn more about safe ways to view the eclipse and how to be prepared Let us know here. All rights reserved.window.Fusion=window.Fusion||{};Fusion.arcSite="dallas-news";Fusion.contextPath="/pf";Fusion.mxId="00000000";Fusion.deployment="832";Fusion.globalContent={"data":{"SearchLocalGraf":{"totalCount":1,"results":[{"stableID":"12c70590-553c-f3c0-c8b5-fbb0acf5be38","label":"Event","name":"The Colony Total Solar Eclipse Viewing Event","description":"Once in a Lifetime: City to host special Solar Eclipse event Once in a Lifetime: City to host special Solar Eclipse event\r\n\t TX – Join The Colony Convention & Visitors Bureau (CVB\r\n\t)\\ and The Colony Parks & Recreation from 12:\r\n\t30 to 2:30 p.m all-ages event will inc\r\n\tlude solar viewing stations\\ and free solar glasses (while suppl\r\n\ties last) The City of The Colony is in a unique position wherein th\r\n\te path of the eclipse will fall directly overhead The eclipse will last n\r\n\tearly 3 minutes and continue\r\n\t until totality at 1:41 p.m The Colony will be in total solar eclipse for\r\n\t 2 minutes and 41 seconds\\ at which point the sun will slowly emerge from\r\n\t behind the moon again The last total solar eclipse to pass directl\r\n\ty over North Texas was nearly 150 years ago in 1878 NASA predicts the nex\r\n\tt solar eclipse to pass over the contiguous United States won’t be until 2\r\n\t044 – and it won’t include a Texas fly-by “It really is a once-in-a\r\n\t-lifetime event\\,” said Megan Charters\\ we want to make sure everyone who attends can make the most of the o\r\n\tpportunity by learning as much as possible about eclipses We’ll have a lo\r\n\tt of educational material about the science behind the event\\ and it’ll b\r\n\te presented in such a way that it’s accessible and easy to understand for \r\n\tall ages\\ There will be a scale model of \r\n\tthe solar system with facts about the sun and planets\\ solar telescopes\\,\r\n\t “shadow stations\\,” and more Visitors to The Colony are encouraged\r\n\t to check out www.VisitTheColonyTx.com for special offers from select hote\r\n\tls related to the solar eclipse “The City of The Colony is in a pri\r\n\tme location for this particular eclipse\\ and Stewart Creek Park offers an\r\n\t ideal space for optimal viewing We’re partnering with local businesses s\r\n\tuch as Raising Cane’s\\ and Chick-fil-A and working to ensu\r\n\tre attendees have a great time\\,” said Mariko Lanicek\\ “We \r\n\thope folks come out for the eclipse\\ then stay to explore the food and fu\r\n\tn throughout The Colony!” Stewart Creek Park is at 3700 Sparks Road.\r\n\t Gates will open at 11:30 a.m go online to www.Vis\r\n\titTheColonyTx.com Excluding the bri\r\n\tef phase of the total solar eclipse\\ when the moon completely blocks the \r\n\tsun’s bright face\\ it is not safe to look directly at the sun without spe\r\n\tcialized eye protection for solar viewing Viewing any part of the bright \r\n\tsun through a camera lens\\ binoculars or a telescope without a special-pu\r\n\trpose solar filter secured over the front of the optics will instantly cau\r\n\tse severe eye injury Visit NASA’s website to learn more about safe ways t\r\n\to view the eclipse and how to be prepared Prepare to be amazed and inspired by the wonders of nature at the Heard Natural Science Museum & Wildlife Sanctuary in McKinney visitors will have the extraordinary opportunity to explore larger-than-life animatronic insects and arachnids strategically positioned along the beautiful nature trails of the Heard This unique exhibit is not just about entertainment; it's a compelling conservation experience designed to deepen your understanding of these fascinating creatures and their vital roles in the ecosystem surrounded by the natural beauty of the sanctuary lifelike creatures such as colossal beetles each demonstrating the intricate adaptations that make them so essential to our planet's health Bugs LIVE is perfect for nature enthusiasts of all ages The exhibit offers photo ops and educational opportunities encouraging visitors to learn about the crucial conservation efforts needed to protect these often-overlooked yet indispensable members of the animal kingdom Discover how you can make a difference in preserving their habitats and supporting biodiversity Don't miss this extraordinary chance to witness the beauty and importance of insects and arachnids in an awe-inspiring setting Mark your calendars for Bugs LIVE at the Heard Natural Science Museum & Wildlife Sanctuary and prepare for an unforgettable adventure that combines education TWO lunar landers are scheduled for launch next week as scientists gather the data necessary to set up human habitation on the Moon The launch is currently scheduled for 1:11 am EST (6:11am GMT) on 15 January from Launch Complex 39A at Nasa's Kennedy Space Center in Florida The Falcon 9 rocket will eject the Firefly's Blue Ghost lander into Earth's orbit It will perform an engine burn that will put it on a straight path to the Moon The spacecraft will then orbit the Moon for another 16 days before preparing for landing on Mare Crisium or the Sea of Crises - the site of an ancient asteroid impact Blue Ghost will begin sending high-definition images of the lunar surface back to Earth within 30 minutes of touching down Onboard will be 10 Nasa science experiments one of which requires the collecting of Moon dust to measure radiation on the lunar surface Another will observe Earth's magnetic field and how it interacts with solar wind - the molecules that cause Northern Lights "We expect to see the magnetosphere breathing out and breathing in, for the first time," Nasa's Hyunju Connor said in a statement the magnetosphere will shrink and push backward toward Earth and then expand when the solar wind weakens." A third experiment also aims to measure the distance between the Earth and the Moon with sub-millimeter accuracy If it sticks the landing, Blue Ghost will be the second successful mission to the lunar surface since Intuitive Machine's Odysseus lander in February last year Odysseus was not only the first private spacecraft to land on the lunar surface The Resilience lander will deliver a micro-rover named Tenacious to gather lunar soil The lander will also carry a self-contained module designed for experiments in lunar food production As a company that has experienced the frustration of failure iSpace understands the importance of learning from it and trying again The spacecraft comes from the same startup that successfully sent the Hakuto-R lander to the lunar surface in April 2023 However, the ambitious mission ended in failure when it crashed into the lunar surface. Bosses at the company appeared hopeful at the prospects of success at a press conference on Thursday "This will be a new challenge for us," iSpace CEO Takeshi Hakamada said at the time "As a company that has experienced the frustration of failure "We aim to achieve a successful moon landing and deliver excitement to the world." Both landers are heading to the Moon as part of Nasa's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative They have just 14 days to conduct their tasks before lunar night falls - and very few Moon landers are built to survive the nighttime temperatures on the Moon Georgie English Foreign News ReporterPublished: Invalid Date AN abandoned British island colony with crumbling buildings and rotting churches has a dark history Built by rebel prisoners who were subjected to cruel punishments and sick experiments the eerie spot was deserted long ago which lies in the Bay of Bengal off the Indian Ocean was once home to hundreds of Indian convicts as part of a British penal colony But the picturesque and scenic location is a stark contrast to the horrors that happened there The island was used as an experimental station for various methods of torture and medical tests During World War II Chilling tests reported during the war included disease injections controlled dehydration and biological weapons testing But upon arrival, the Island was overrun by thick vegetation, so officers made it the duty of convicts to cleanup the tangled forest while they stayed on ships nearby. In a bid to mask the gloomy atmosphere brought on by atrocities carried out on the land officers developed the archipelago into a glittering paradise. Lavish bungalows, tennis courts, grand mansions, ballrooms, a bazaar, and even a subordinates club used solely for the entertainment of junior officers, were among many buildings constructed across the island. almost eight decades after the penal colony was shut nature has reclaimed the once bustling island A worm-eaten roof covered in rotten tree roots is all that's left of the Commissioner's bungalow and a the once pristine stained-glass windows of a Presbyterian church are shattered Deer species which were introduced into the archipelago by Brit officers in the early 1900s are now the only inhabitants of the island but now has been shrouded by dense vegetation and crumbling walls The once exclusive settlement for high-ranking officers has been dramatically reclaimed by nature Brits abandoned the island in 1942 after an earthquake struck its lands a year before Remaining Brit troops fled after the Japanese invaded In 1947, after India gained independence This website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks The action you just performed triggered the security solution There are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase You can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked Please include what you were doing when this page came up and the Cloudflare Ray ID found at the bottom of this page could you have been tempted to buy land and possibly live right next door to ‘America’s Sweetheart,’ Mary Pickford Land sale pitches like this one were used by cunning promoters to lure ‘starry-eyed’ investors to a brand-new community to be built in Southern Hillsborough County was to be called Sun City (not to be confused with today’s Sun City Center) Planned for a 400-acre site south of Ruskin on today’s US 41 the town of Sun City was being built to lure Hollywood into making Hillsborough County its permanent home: a new ‘Hollywood of the East.’ the only ghostly reminders of the once ballyhooed community are its street names (each designated in honor of famous silent film stars and studios of the era; one example: Chaney Dr a mere nine months after its well-publicized announcement this ‘can’t miss’ investment opportunity was a completely failed project The developers quickly disappeared from Hillsborough County: broke suffering the fate of many other questionable developers in the ’20s Speculative land boom and bust cycles have occurred several times in Florida’s past the Great Land Boom/Bust of the 1920s was the most severe Even the recent 2004-2009 mortgage-fueled crisis cannot compare to the frenzied real estate market of the ’20s where only a few of the early investors made money before the ‘house of cards’ fell land speculators attempted to ‘cash in’ with potentially lucrative land sale schemes Gibson developed ‘Gibsonton-on-the-Bay’ in 1923 as a fishing resort sought sales through land auctions at variable prices with little long-term success most planned developments failed in the 1920s Sun City was not particularly unique in trying to ‘cash in’ on land sales during the Florida Land Boom Sun City developers used the film ‘hook’ to lure investors Everything depended on the movie industry deciding to come to Hillsborough County and anchor the development Sun City developers announced the public sale of land contracts Advertising hype in area newspapers fueled an early bandwagon reaction for the movie colony’s speculative potential local speculators put down deposits but quickly sold those contracts It became clear that successful development depended on the movie industry coming to Sun City the glittering studio wasn’t nearly enough to bring the industry to Sun City creditors forced the dismantling of the studio netting a meager $1,500 against thousands of dollars in debt Developers failed to lure Hollywood to make movies in Sun City and to build a community (That model home still stands on Chaney Dr just off US 41.) But little else remains of this planned there was no mention of Sun City in local papers The planned ‘Hollywood of the East’ had failed quickly I would like to receive emails from Osprey Observer By Irving Mejia-Hilario an Illinois-based renewable energy company is opening a solar manufacturing and distribution facility in The Colony which could help Texas’ power grid ELM Companies is officially opening the doors to its 125,000-square-foot building at 4300 Live Oak Dr. potentially bringing 150 jobs to the city when it’s fully operational its production of battery energy storage systems could help power Texas substations The facility will be the home to a variety of ELM’s operations like engineering it will also produce U.K.-based Naked Energy’s thermal collectors that generate solar heat at temperatures up to 167 degrees Business BriefingBecome a business insider with the latest news GoogleFacebookBy signing up you agree to our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy The company is planning to invest $3 million in technology to bolster production of Naked Energy’s products It will be part of its total investment in The Colony ELM’s microgrids manage the distribution of electricity from batteries and could get their electricity from the sun It’s capable of connecting to the grid and could serve as a backup when it becomes overly stressed no one knows yet how we can get entire neighborhoods to have charging stations in their homes But this can help at the substation sort of level and help utility clients.” The facility in The Colony currently employs 70 people but will raise its employee count in the coming years after it signed a 10-year lease for the facility ELM previously had a facility in Lewisville that shuttered its doors as it became too small to keep up with the growing company now has customers in over 100 countries and employs more than 1,000 people in 22 U.S Though power outages in Texas may still happen, ELM could help prepare the state, said Jason Petermeier, ELM’s chief operating officer. The company already has microgrids in countries affected by natural disasters, like Puerto Rico the battery system can pick up power at a site keep it up and running along with any solar production that’s being produced at the site the batteries will reconnect to the grid seamlessly,” he said the goal is to not even notice that there’s a power outage.” Naked Energy’s thermal technology being manufactured and distributed from The Colony’s facility is another monumental feat for ELM. The two agreed to partner in 2022 to make ELM the seller and distributor for Naked Energy’s thermal collectors “It goes hand in hand with both our battery energy storage and renewable energy,” said Aron Bowman “Solar thermal is a great application because it’s three to four times more effective than a traditional renewable energy solution So we’re very excited about that product coming out of this facility as well.” For The Colony, it’s the latest in a long series of wins the rising Texas city has received in recent years ELM’s presence in The Colony is one of the city’s first attempts to get its feet into solar and thermal energy “We already have a lot of entertainment and dining here But these are some real high-tech jobs and that’s not a segment that we’ve had to a large extent here,” Boyer said “I think a lot of people are going to look at them moving here that we’re thriving with our workforce and commit to making an investment here.” the name of the game will be getting Texans on board with alternative energy “I think the challenge in Texas is that it’s being adopted at the major scale level by large utilities but it’s still kind of growing into the commercial and industrial space where customers are seeing it as an option,” he said “So as the utilities in Texas continue to see stress Thank you for reading. We welcome your thoughts on this topic. Comments are moderated for adherence to our Community Guidelines Please read the guidelines before participating both locals and tourists from around the world crowd into the farm exhibit building at the Alaska State Fair in Palmer to get a look at cabbages the size of huskies and pumpkins that must be lifted by a small crane With its fertile soil and summer days boasting close to 20 hours of sun has garnered a reputation for producing huge record-setting vegetables: a 138-pound cabbage Encircled by snow-capped peaks and criss-crossed by bears and moose the valley is a study in the improbable becoming probable Thousand-pound pumpkins are more curiosity than crop and many of the largest vegetables are donated to the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center in Girdwood as food for bears farmers here harvest remarkable yields of fruit and vegetables and they have been ever since the administration of President Franklin D Roosevelt organized an experimental farm colony in the valley during the Great Depression farmers across the United States struggled to survive in the midst of drought and financial devastation With the New Deal’s rural rehabilitation program Roosevelt’s administration tried anything it could to help including resettlement projects like the Matanuska Colony which were typically situated near needy communities with existing infrastructure off the road system and more than a thousand miles north of Seattle might as well have been located on another planet Creating the Colony was perhaps more a strategic decision than a practical one: It would help farmers start a new life but also allow the United States to expand its presence in the remote The Resettlement Administration chose farmers from Michigan and Wisconsin—the climate in those states was most similar to Alaska’s and intensive logging practices had depleted their soil with their three children when they got word of the new Alaskan Colony drawn by the promise of a new start in the Far North the chosen families traveled by train and ship to the territory and a house—built by transient workers hired for the project with the help of the farmers themselves—all courtesy of loans from the federal government the Matanuska Valley had been hunting and fishing land for the native Dena’ina and Ahtna Athabaskan peoples who had come and gone through the years since Alaska became a U.S was the first large-scale effort to create a farming community in the valley the families moved into hastily erected tents in Palmer and it took some time and trading between colonists before all of the land was spoken for They struggled with the extremely short growing season The Colony saw the birth of its first baby in July and other cool-weather crops that they found thrived in the valley Given the difficulties they faced, many of the original colonists left within several years. By 1965, only 20 of the original families remained Yet the Matanuska Valley Colony succeeded in establishing the community of Palmer and a tradition of experimenting with far northern farming techniques that continues to this day “The colony transformed the area,” says Sam Dinges executive director of the Palmer Museum of History and Art and there’s really not another story like that in Alaska.” The Matanuska Colony farmers found that though the region’s winters were cold and harsh glacial soil helped them to grow large cabbages and spinach quickly—sometimes seemingly overnight “When people started growing large vegetables here they found that the good soil and long daylight hours helped them to succeed,” says Dinges “It’s a point of pride for the area to have the right geographic and geological conditions that allow for that.” owner of the Good Earth Garden School and an original Colony house who tills land farmed by colonists like the Hacks concurs that growing food in the valley is a unique and rewarding experience “The long days make up for a lot of the short season and cool soils,” says Vande Visse but what a burst that long daylight is.” Living on Colony land is a constant reminder of those who came before and Vande Visse sees evidence of that history all around her and get enough wood for winter,” she says “A lot of things formed in Palmer were built on cooperation so people came together to make that happen The Matanuska Electric Association was built as a cooperative Farmers who have succeeded in the valley have done so by adapting to the realities of the far northern climate Some have developed new varieties of vegetables and fruits such as local farmer Bruce Bush’s peanut potato which is still a popular item at Bushes Bunches Produce Stand in Palmer Farmers here have also learned to make the most of the short growing season by using an extensive network of greenhouses Productive farming in the region is a constant work-in-progress but for those willing to take on its challenges “The growth patterns here are extraordinary,” says Zoe Fuller owner of Singing Nettle Farm in Palmer and part of a generation of younger farmers in the Matanuska Valley “I went to a friend’s wedding for two days and there was beautiful sunshine for 20 hours a day and I came back and the vegetables were noticeably larger It’s remarkable how quickly it happens.” farming in Alaska could well change—with seasons potentially shifting and new pests arriving Land and water are both at a premium in the valley as the population increases and farmland is threatened by encroaching subdivisions which has given rise to a number of small-scale “A lot of our farms are hand-worked or modestly machine-worked so there’s a lot of human input and intensive farming with specialty crops on small pieces of land,” says Jodie Anderson who manages the University of Alaska Fairbanks’ Matanuska Experiment Farm and Extension Center in Palmer “That’s unique to the success of Alaska farms.” While not everyone in the area aims to grow monster vegetables those who do will continue to find a rapt audience for their cabbages These farmers work hard to grow their huge vegetables using seeds specially bred for the purpose and carefully nurturing the produce from start to finish “Those giants are not a fluke,” says Kathy Liska crop superintendent and horticulture manager for the fair “It takes time and dedication to grow a vegetable like that draw crowds of people curious about what can and does grow in this remote northern environment “We get visitors from all over the world,” says Liska “I start getting calls in the early summer and a lot of these are farmers from the Midwest and other places To come to Alaska and see giant veggies is on their bucket list We depend on ad revenue to craft and curate stories about the world’s hidden wonders Consider supporting our work by becoming a member for as little as $5 a month Follow us on Twitter to get the latest on the world's hidden wonders Like us on Facebook to get the latest on the world's hidden wonders it’s time to address the practical questions involved in making those visions a reality One of the biggest: What’s the most practical way to power future Mars colonies The seemingly simple question took UC Berkeley engineering students Anthony Abel and Aaron Berliner four years of hard work to figure out In findings published last week in Frontiers in Astronomy and Space Sciences they and their colleagues argue that both solar and nuclear energy sources can provide enough power for long-term crewed missions—but astronauts will face certain limitations including how much weighty equipment they can bring from faraway Earth how much energy solar panels can glean once there and how well they can store energy for when it’s not so sunny “It depends where you are on Mars,” Abel says of their results The engineers based their study on the energy options for a Martian habitat built for a six-person crew the first astronauts would have to bring almost everything they need with them and nuclear reactors needed to generate enough energy for them to survive That means these crewed missions would be shaped by how much one can bring aboard a rocket—what Abel and Berliner refer to as “carry-along mass.” “Bringing stuff from Earth to Mars is really tough and methane for rocket fuel for the return trip which can each carry payloads of at least tens of tons into deep space (The poles also harbor ice that could provide a water source for the astronauts.) These same kinds of trade-offs have already arisen with energy technologies used by Mars rovers Engineers need to find the right balance between transportation weight and an energy system that can handle variations in the availability of sunlight Significant sunlight reaches the surface only during the Martian day and only when dust and cloud particles don’t get in the way an astronomer at the Institute of Space Sciences in Barcelona who was not involved in the study He’s also a member of the Sustainable Offworld Network and architects studying how future colonies on Mars and other worlds might work Anglada-Escudé agrees with Abel and Berliner’s findings one shouldn’t look at solar and nuclear energy as either/or you want to have both solar and nuclear,” he says It’s also important to study solar radiance and how dust and ice affect how much light reaches the planet’s surface, and where that light can best be collected, says Daniel Vázquez Pombo, an energy engineer at the Technical University of Denmark who wrote a paper last year about a possible hybrid power system for a permanent Mars colony that includes PV arrays and storage Maintenance for energy systems can be risky for those conducting repairs “Do you really want to rely on a single technology What happens if you have a systematic error or a design flaw?” Pombo says You don’t put all your eggs in one basket.” The calculus may also change when it’s not just a handful of astronauts visiting for a couple months or a year but rather a permanent colony with long-term visitors “Solar panels are a relatively simple technology and solar gets more attractive for the very long term,” he says finding plutonium to the quality you need for a reactor is not trivial life in Mars’s rugged conditions will be tougher than anywhere on Earth And the science and technology issues are only half the story Settlers will have to navigate complex financial and societal issues as well In your inbox: Get Plaintext—Steven Levy's long view on tech Federal judge allows DOGE to take over $500 million office building for free Big Story: The quantum apocalypse is coming Bluesky can’t take a joke Summer Lab: Explore the future of tech with WIRED It is the essential source of information and ideas that make sense of a world in constant transformation The WIRED conversation illuminates how technology is changing every aspect of our lives—from culture to business The breakthroughs and innovations that we uncover lead to new ways of thinking went on to become a very popular game indeed and spawned three games in the series to StarFox's one (on N64) Because I ran N64.com at the time (later to be renamed to IGN64.com) the thought of a better game on a system with less "bits" was rather depressing Colony Wars is in its third rendition with Red Sun a game that's being created from the ground up with a whole new Psygnosis team which has implemented a slightly different view on the venerable series but it would be a mistake to ignore this massive highly compelling new version of the series Gameplay The first Colony Wars blended prerendered FMV cut-scenes with gorgeous looking crafts placed in various deep space situations to create an atmosphere that looked better than any console game had delivered before The graphics were still great looking the second time around and the gameplay still quite fresh It's no longer the new kid on the block and because of the system's near eclipse by PS2 it appears that few people give a damn about the game the series hasn't lost too much of its charm Using nearly all of my good graces with my wife I have spent the last few nights playing into the depths of the night playing Red Sun It's compelling despite its few problems and it's still great shooting goodness despite some of the novelty that's worn off from the first two and it brings up some of the same old philosophical problems that both CW 1 and 2 first opened up Straight at the heart of the matter is the gameplay in which Red Sun doesn't tread new water The mission selection ranges from locate-and-defend with the occasional grapple mission thrown in The best new levels include "jumping" from asteroid shadows in search of an idol uncloaking mineral rich asteroids while fighting off enemy ships and the detachment of the solar wings on an enemy space station one of the best levels was the fight to Defend Marjorie's Kitchen in which literally dozens of enemy fighters swarm the station that you and a few allies must defend and the enemy comes from all angles to attack but the rush of an all-out massive attack is still a wild thrill that can't be beat Even the miniscule slowdown is totally forgettable Red Sun does several things that the first two games didn't I never finished the first two despite all my hours spent playing them The fact is that both of those games were just too damn hard The game does away with the branching paths of the past and has been streamlined into a linear A-to-B style game as well but remember that because of this honed down version you will get to the end of which there are about 50 taking place on land or in space players will venture in planetary systems from the previous game Instead of making choices in the branching system they have a choice of several missions that they can choose in any order The inventory/exchange system has been revamped freeing you up to buy new ships and weapons Instead of simply acquiring new ships by beating a new level but you'll be able to choose it or any of the other ships you have already unlocked This just means you can specialize in the ship of your choice you need to check inventory and reload weapons and one much preferred over the past solutions Some people may not like the new weapon system which is more flexible in exactly how you attack and defend players relied heavily on switching from specialized weapon to weapon Red Sun includes several weapons that serve more than one purpose players can choose a weapon that's sole purpose is to knock down shields while also choosing a complementary weapon that's only good for blowing up hulls or several new weapons that effectively perform both tasks but they delete the need for the old complementary system The point the new Psygnosis Leeds team wanted to make was to provide the choice for either style The ultimate effect on the game isn't only more choice but rather one that makes the game easier to play I'm just glad I could get to the damn ending Another big change is in the ship designs Past designs have fallen into stark military designs that's A) red; B) complete with three wings; C) looks like the Red Baron's Fokker Triplane Where's the frickin' Sopwith Camel but it's totally out of place for the serious the bulk of the ships are still great looking with lots of anthropomorphic shapes thrown in especially the AI controlled pachoderms and the space Jellies Graphics The graphics in the Colony Wars series have always been amazing and Red Sun is no different than former versions While lighting techniques have been improved and new kinds of space phenomena have been implemented the game doesn't appear to be any more beautiful than its predecessors I suppose the biggest and most noticeable changes are that there appear to be more land-based and non-space style missions which means that while there is more purposeful fogging at least we don't always have to stare at the blackness of space the facial expressions of Valdemar and his female sidekick are almost great but slight robotic expressions and stiff default expressions can't convince me that these folks are real or even human My biggest problem with the cut-scenes is that they're too damn short They are so cut up and staggered that they provide little feeling you're supposed to be on a kind of spiritual quest in search of solving the mystery of the Red Sun and making sense of it all in between each level just as soon as you start digging your mental hooks into the story Why did they only say only two sentences to each other The questions I have from one set of missions to the next cut-scene don't get answered and then a whole new five-second cut-scene shows me something totally obscure and so I end up with a whole new set of questions that aren't answered which would have helped create a better sense of continuity I wish that the cutscenes had more to do with the actual missions Red Sun delivers a story that seems to wrapped around missions that relate to it If the missions somehow tied more in with the story sure the Red Sun's development is really neat but it feels like something that's happening in a different story except that you don't have backstage passes the somewhat interesting story of the Red Sun manifests in forced stilted storyboard fashion that fits messily in between basic shooting levels Sound One of the best aspects of Red Sun is its soundtrack which is recorded by the Midland Symphony Orchestra The orchestral music washes in with sweeping and it appears to react directly to the gameplay experience itself I can recall situation after situation in which an enemy fleet arrives just as the music tempo reaches a titanic crescendo so it's really meant to be delivered with a good set of speakers I recommend turning down the lights and cranking up the volume for a whopping experience Everything from the ship's rocket boosters Given all the logistics involved, it's unlikely that humanity will ever see our way outside the Solar System to colonise exoplanets But the possibility of settling elsewhere inside the Solar System isn't so far-fetched NASA is planning an outpost on the Moon. Crewed missions to Mars aren't far off we even already have humans living off-planet (albeit for temporary stints) on the International Space Station So is there anywhere else in the Solar System that humans could make our home according to physicist and astrobiologist Pekka Janhunen of the Finnish Meteorological Institute in Finland dwarf planet Ceres isn't entirely implausible Ceres is an interesting chunk of rock. It hangs out in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter and with its 952-kilometre (592-mile) diameter it's considered both the largest known asteroid in the Solar System and the only dwarf planet closer to the Sun than Neptune "The motivation," he writes in a preprint paper published on arXiv "is to have a settlement with artificial gravity that allows growth beyond Earth's living area while also providing easy intra-settlement travel for the inhabitants and reasonably low population density of 500 [people per] square kilometre." Mars and the Moon, he argues, might not be the best places for human colonies, because their natural gravity is so different from Earth's. We know that astronauts face health problems when returning to Earth from a low or zero-G environment; we have very little idea of the effects of growing to maturity in low gravity An alternative to the planetary colony model is an artificial space colony, orbiting the Sun - a space station spinning to generate enough centrifugal force to mimic one g: Earth gravity If the population grows too large for one settlement If multiple colonies are in orbit around the Sun at least in concept: use Ceres as a base around which the spinning settlement nodes could orbit This wouldn't just solve the problem of keeping the settlement nodes together without the potential of collision but would also neatly solve the problem of materials since they could be gathered directly from the dwarf planet since it makes up so much of Earth's atmosphere But we also know that Ceres is pretty salty, and recent research suggests that it also might have a lot of water below the surface Solar panels on the dwarf planet's surface could easily power a space elevator to the satellite "Lifting the materials from Ceres is energetically cheap compared to processing them into habitats, if a space elevator is used," Janhunen explains "Because Ceres has low gravity and rotates relatively fast could be built from 80 percent silicate regolith (rock from Ceres) and water The habitats would be divided into rural and urban spaces with a soil depth of 1.5 metres up to 4 metres as needed for trees and gardens mirrors could be used to direct sunlight towards the habitat These mirrors would be hinged on one side of the disc-shaped satellite and could be adjusted to collect the most sunlight as the dwarf planet moves around the Sun "We use a disc geometry for the megasatellite because its symmetry eliminates tidal torque so that reaction wheels are not needed to maintain attitude," Janhunen writes "The habitats are illuminated by natural sunlight The sunlight is gathered onto the disk by two planar mirrors inclined at a 45-degree angle and concentrated to desired intensity by parabolic mirrors." by simply adding more habitats at the edges of the first one there would be no natural disasters or undesirable weather and its modularity would mean that it could just keep on growing with the population Janhunen notes that orbital artificial gravity is still a goal that is yet to be realised and radiation shielding sufficient to protect a space colony and the logistics of transporting that many humans out past Mars it would only take around 22 years to build a human satellite in orbit around Ceres "The overall level of difficulty of executing this project is probably similar to settling Mars," he writes "The delta-v and triptime to Ceres are longer but on the other hand one avoids planetary landings and the atmospheric weather and dust On Ceres it requires some effort to lift the materials to orbit using the elevator Once the materials are in high Ceres orbit the thermal environment is uniform and energy is easy to get due to absence of eclipses." Janhunen's paper, written under the framework of the Finnish Centre of Excellence in Research of Sustainable Space, is available on arXiv H/T: Phys.org For those of you who are unfamiliar with the movie Antz (1998) let me briefly provide the context: Antz was DreamWorks Animation’s first project and the second feature-length computer animated film produced after Toy Story (1995) The movie features a star studded voice cast: Woody Allen Danny Glover and others.Whoever wrote this film absolutely read Marx.The movie opens with Z whose entire character can be summed up as Woody Allen playing Woody Allen as an ant discussing his insignificance within the colony His cynicism is met with enthusiastic approval from his therapist who happily proclaims “You’ve made a real breakthrough You are insignificant!” Despite his minute status Z condemns his fellow ants’ capitulation to an oppressive system That isn’t my interpretation — he describes his fellow ants as “mindless zombies capitulating to an oppressive system.”As he drinks away his sorrows at an aphid dive bar understanding that past their chance encounter they will never meet again Bala represents an escape from his banal existence His desire runs so deep that the next day (or hour Ant time is a loosely defined concept) he risks it all masquerading as a soldier to see her again.The movie then takes a complete turn — transforming from a hijinks-y Woody Allen rom-com into a full blown epic war film — as millions of ant soldiers march towards their impending doom in a pyrrhic victory against a neighboring termite colony.The entire war is a scheme by the devious General Mandible who is aiming to dispose of all “units” loyal to the queen in order to stage a coup d'etat The scene establishes the queen’s colony as a highly militaristic authoritarian society — soldiers knowingly march towards their death while singing a deeply disturbing rendition of “When Johnny Comes Marching Home.” Z seems to be the only one actively opposing the battle that they could create change by “influencing the termite’s political processes through campaign contributions.” I’ll take time here to note that they named the one ant voiced by a black actor who speaks in a thick Carribbean accent “Barbados.”After a horrifying battle where the ant army is eviscerated by acid-spraying termites he comes across the disembodied head of Barbados who in his final moments tells Z to “be his own ant.” Z returns to the colony a war hero much to General Mandible’s horror.When Z meets Bala again it becomes clear that she is uninterested in him faced with the reality of his return to being a worker ant They end up falling down a trash chute together The moment definitely doesn’t age well post Woody Allen and Soon-Yi Previn some ants get set on fire by a giant magnifying glass.Following their departure from the colony an ant who went against the predetermined path Z’s heroic symbolism becomes even more salient as his worker status becomes emphasized –– he becomes a symbol of the new ant one that goes beyond the genetically determined distinctions of queens soldiers and workers.In a moment of collective awareness the workers turn against their supervisors literally chanting “The workers control the means of production!” They go so far as to call their supervisor a “pawn of the oppressor,” rebelling against the system as they institute a general strike creating protest signs out of leaves.Unfortunately this moment of dissidence does not immediately result in a complete overthrow of the classist ant society as Mandible successfully placates the rioting workers with false promises of days off lauding the worker’s contributions to the colony.Meanwhile after the kidnapping and a run-in Chip and Muffy two very WASP-y wasps who at one point refer to the ants as “Eurotrash,” Z and Bala arrive at Insectopia a (utopic?) commune that takes the form of overflowing trash bins filled with stoner insects.However their joyous jaunt is cut short when Bala is once again kidnapped this time by Colonel Cutter on behalf of General Mandible Mandible’s plan becomes clear — he wants to establish an ethnonationalist fascist colony of exclusively soldier ants with the help of Bala using the workers’ labor to create a tunnel to flood the colony he has fooled the workers into digging a tunnel to their own doom.Whether this is a metaphor for all capitalist enterprise is open to interpretation.Z returns to the colony in an attempt to save Bala there is a notable shift in Z’s sense of class consciousness Z was aware of the colony’s oppressiveness yet turned towards individualist solutions to his problems instead of recognising their structural basis in the colony’s classist Z had no broader conception of worker’s potential power as a collective as a flood of biblical proportions ravages the colony Z experiences a moment of realization: workers united can save themselves the worker ants unite and form a giant ant-ladder towards their salvation saving themselves without the assistance of Mandible or any of the soldier ants still under his command.As Z breaks through the surface and extends his hand in a desperate plea for aid Antz goes from a children’s movie with a tinge of class struggle into something reminiscent of Battleship Potemkin — a famous Soviet propaganda film depicting the 1905 mutiny in the Imperial Russian Navy Realizing that Mandible’s manufactured social divisions between soldier and worker ants is false acting in solidarity while condemning Mandible’s genocidal machinations supporting their fellow ants to escape the flood When I say that this is reminiscent of Battleship Potemkin I don’t just mean that there are communist influences Battleship Potemkin literally ends with a Tsarist squadron refusing to open fire on a mutinous battleship and showing solidarity as the rebels and Tsarist soldiers pass a red flag between their ships It’s just like Antz.In line with most revolutionary cinema while Z provides a vague narration about his relationship with Bala and how the colony’s social structure has changed there is no clear visual to establishing a structure of governance Are all the underlying communist themes a ploy to stand out from A Bug’s Life (1998)?Maybe we’ll never know why Antz a horrifically animated movie in which all the ants have hand-feet and human teeth Maybe we’ll never know whether every Marxist reference is just an attempt at differentiation from A Bug’s Life or an attempt at awakening the next generation But what I can definitively say after watching this movie is that it’s a trip.☭☭☭☭☭/☭☭☭☭☭ Mira Kudva Driskell is a freshman in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Harold Lloyd was spectacularly successful by most any measure but he is not as well-known now as his many accomplishments warrant Like many important and interesting people of the early 20th century Though Lloyd was as famous at the time as his contemporaries Charlie Chaplain and Buster Keaton Lloyd came from most humble and tenuous beginnings His mother cultivated an abiding love of the theater in him When unable to sustain himself on the stage alone he broke down and took a job in moving pictures in order to eat He made some 200 motion pictures between 1914 and 1947 and successfully transitioned from silent to talking pictures and in the process made an enormous fortune which he subsequently put to good use He unabashedly purchased a series of fine homes in Los Angeles culminating in assembling a gorgeous swath of land in Benedict Canyon on which he constructed beginning in July 1927 and finishing by year-end in 1928 the acreage was even more impressive than the house Hanson dreamed up plans for the "largest initial private landscaping project ever attempted" in the Los Angeles area The grounds featured a children’s village with a four-bedroom thatched-roof house with electricity and running water, a miniature barn described as a “fairyland estate," a golf course and the largest swimming pool in California: 50 by 150 feet with the new inventions for filtration and chlorination and a glass-windowed side for viewing swimmers from the adjacent tunnel (The swimming pool was the site of a 1953 film shoot with Marilyn Monroe that was captured behind the scenes in glorious Kodachrome stills by Lloyd himself and was recently the subject of an article by Cari Beauchamp in Atla Journal that’s worth looking up Marilyn looks picture-perfect in a gorgeous A farm and greenhouses for growing vegetables and flowers for the house But the waterfall cascade and surrounding gardens echoing of Italian or Spanish architecture Lloyd commissioned a house in the desert in the fashionable style built something more suitably understated and modest even a very fine house would have been considered more modest Located in The Movie Colony on North Avenida Palmas L-shaped house cast a small footprint on its expansive property it was cozy,” recalled Suzanne Lloyd who spent a good deal of her childhood there It was a happy place and everyone enjoyed it.'" Sue Lloyd spent some 20 years coming to the desert with her grandparents and has fond memories of the house and its lush grounds and the many friends in the neighborhood It wasn’t called the Movie Colony for nothing The family were close friends with Robert Wagner (who would eventually spend a lot of time in the desert) and Sue tells a story of how they met “found RJ at a wedding and brought him home” to Harold and the rest is the stuff of celebrity and movie star magic and Sue still calls him “R baby.” While Harold Lloyd might not be as recognized as he should be now the antics he invented and performed for his movies have become iconic He was a highly important star in the nascent movie business and was first among the many notables it produced ultimately amassing a collection of 300,000 stereo slides and he became a fixture in the business and social communities in the desert situated on so much extremely valuable land who also owns Bob Hope’s John Lautner-designed Palm Springs Southridge house The Lloyd estate in the Movie Colony hasn’t fared as well Tracy Conrad is president of the Palm Springs Historical Society. The Thanks for the Memories column appears Sundays in The Desert Sun An Argentine ant. April Nobile / © AntWeb.org / CC BY-SA 3.0 The losses, however, are trivial compared to the Argentine ants’ overall population, estimated at roughly a trillion members. Their invasion of California has crowded out native ants and threatened biodiversity on a bigger scale. Horned lizard populations fell with the displacement of their preferred prey A 2007 survey found that 85 percent of urban pest control services in San Diego were aimed at a single foe: the Argentine ant This item is from the California Sun, a newsletter that delivers must-read stories to your inbox each morning — for free. Sign up here Scientists investigate the factors that enable colonies of sun coral to multiply rapidly and drive out native species An entire colony can regenerate from one tiny fragment (photo: release) An entire colony can regenerate from one tiny fragment By Peter Moon  |  Agência FAPESP – Detected for the first time in Brazil on the coast of the Southeast region in the late 1980s when oil and gas prospecting began in the Campos Basin offshore of Rio de Janeiro sun corals of the genus Tubastraea are now spreading very swiftly throughout the rocky shores and cliffs of Brazilian islands and are considered to be biological invaders “The reefs around Búzios Island in Ilhabela [a municipality in São Paulo State] are in an irreparable condition,” said Marcelo Kitahara a professor in the Marine Science Department of the Federal University of São Paulo (DCMAR-UNIFESP) in Santos and a researcher at the University of São Paulo’s Marine Biology Center (CEBIMAR-USP) Búzios Island’s reefs are now covered with orange stripes no bare rock or other species of coral can be seen and steps must be taken to prevent them from invading other islands Management action is still possible in some places but this requires the complete manual removal of all colonies,” Kitahara said Signs of invasion by sun coral are visible at several locations on the coast of Rio de Janeiro State and São Paulo State which contains the Alcatrazes Archipelago Wildlife Refuge “Sun coral colonies multiply at a great speed in areas such as these. We set out to understand how and why,” said Kitahara, who heads a project supported by FAPESP to study the phylogenomics of two species and the links between their evolution and climate change The first results of the study showing surprising capacity of sun coral to regenerate have just been published in the Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology The paper is intriguingly entitled “A polyp from nothing: The extreme regeneration capacity of the Atlantic invasive sun corals” The lead author is Bruna Louise Pereira Luz a biologist affiliated with the Federal University of Paraná (UFPR) and currently in Australia studying sun coral at James Cook University as part of her PhD research supervised by Kitahara The genus Tubastraea comprises seven species all native to the tropical waters of the Indian Ocean and Pacific The first Brazilian sightings were recorded in the Campos Basin in the 1980s followed by the discovery of colonies on reefs off the southern coast of Rio de Janeiro State in the 1990s sun coral has been found across over 3,000 km of the Brazilian coastline from Santa Catarina in the South to Ceará in the Northeast sun coral could potentially colonize the entire Brazilian coast,” Kitahara said The appearance of these invasive species just when oil and gas production began was not unique to Rio de Janeiro The Gulf of Mexico also has vast offshore oilfields and sun coral has been found on the Mexican coast since the early 2000s There are even records of sun coral attached to the hulls of ships “We can’t be totally sure that offshore oil drilling in the Campos Basin resulted in the invasion of our coast by sun coral but all the evidence points to this conclusion,” Kitahara said A coral reef is a limestone skeleton built by colonies of thousands of tiny animals called coral polyps Most reef-building corals contain photosynthetic algae that live in their tissues The corals and algae have a symbiotic relationship: the polyps provide the compounds required by the algae for photosynthesis and the algae provide the polyps with nutrients sun coral isn’t confined to places with sunlight for photosynthesis It typically occurs at depths of up to 20 meters but sightings have been recorded at 110 meters polyps build huge numbers of colonies and cover 100% of the substrate,” Kitahara explained devastating ecological relations with the marine fauna that depend on or inhabit it Kitahara noticed early signs of sun coral’s regeneration capacity while diving off Búzios island The oceanographer observed colonies with part of the skeleton broken off possibly through the mechanical action of the tides or fish bites he was surprised to see that the colonies had completely regenerated “A colony can regenerate from a small fragment any management action must include measures to avoid fragmentation The entire skeleton must be removed,” he said To investigate the mechanisms that enable sun coral to adapt so successfully and proliferate rapidly in various marine environments the researchers removed from each colony 120 fragments composed of skeleton with living tissue but lacking mesenteries The samples of each species were then separated into two groups of 60 one with very small fragments (3.5-11 mm²) and another with slightly larger fragments (11-53 mm²) All 240 fragments were placed separately in containers with filtered seawater For each combination of species and fragment size individuals were further separated into three groups of 20 fragments and maintained at a constant temperature of 24 °C (historically the average surface water temperature in the region) 27 °C (the average sea surface temperature in summer) or 30 °C (observed during heat waves) the effects of the presence of food were tested by adding equal amounts (10 ml) of live zooplankton every other day to half of the containers The fragments were photographed on the first day of the experiment and when the mouth and complete polyp were first observed The other 199 fragments (86.9%) regenerated 21 (9% of the entire sample) displayed an alternative regeneration pattern with the formation of two polyps instead of one coral fragment survival was affected only by temperature There was no difference between the fragments kept at 27 °C and those kept at 30 °C Food supply and fragment size did not affect survival Regeneration was found to include the following stages Subsequent development consisted either of tissue reorganization around the mouth rudiments or the reabsorption of one of the rudiments in which case significant tissue differentiation around the remaining mouth rudiment resulted in a larger polyp “We observed a very interesting phenomenon,” Kitahara said The polyp in formation consumed tissue as a source of energy to prioritize the production of other body parts.” The results of the experiment generally indicated faster regeneration rates at higher temperatures The fastest mouth regeneration for fragments without contact with food was 23 days at 24 °C or 18 days at 30 °C fragments kept at 27 °C in contact with living zooplankton displayed 30% faster mouth development This suggests optimal mouth development at the intermediate temperature (27 °C) Fragments of both species developed into complete polyps in approximately 25 days at 27 °C and 30 °C coccinea took approximately 41 days to achieve polyp formation the fact that sun coral regenerates faster at higher temperatures is highly germane to its invasive success Most native corals on the Brazilian coast suffer bleaching when surface water temperatures rise “Warmer water interferes with the metabolism of their symbiont algae Bleached coral survives only for a few days The bleaching or death of native coral opens up an opportunity for substrate invasion by sun coral.” to investigate the biological aspects of its invasion and how it affects native marine fauna The future does not appear promising for native corals on the Brazilian coast global climate change and rising seawater temperatures help the invader Not to mention the prospect of expanding oil production in Brazilian waters Tribune photoAdvertisementgoogletag.cmd.push((function(){googletag.display("div-gpt-ad-1737632888622-0")}))Kuldip Bhatia Contrary to common belief that residents in an approved colony are better placed in terms of basic amenities and other facilities in comparison to their counterparts in ‘unlicenced/illegal’ colonies residents of PUDA-approved ‘Sun City’ on Amloh Road in the district have been fighting a sustained battle for last many years to seek basic urban infrastructure like roads It is a different story that their efforts have not yielded the desired results till now Sun City Colony was taken over by the Municipal Council (MC) in Khanna in August 2017 which had rekindled hopes of desperate residents that their fortune might change and the civic body might mitigate their suffering by providing much-needed sewer connectivity and urban infrastructure the MC also seems to have been caught in frivolous administrative wrangles and nothing worthwhile has been done to address grievances of colony residents the developer –Som Sons Colonisers Limited – had obtained a licence from PUDA to develop the colony in 2003 Even after a large number of plots were sold and construction of houses undertaken by buyers development work for the urban infrastructure and basic amenities as per provisions made in the Punjab Apartment and Property Regulation Act (PAPRA) 1995 were not completed by the developer After prolonged litigation and round of several meetings convened by the Deputy Commissioner officials of the Greater Ludhiana Area Development Authority (GLADA) and the Regional Deputy Director with regard to problems being faced by residents the colony was taken over by the Khanna MC deposited by the developer with PUDA as external development charges (EDC) the change of guard brought no relief to residents as the colony was still devoid of proper roads/streets connectivity of sewer lines with main sewer and other amenities including school lamented Grover and many other colony residents They also alleged that the developer had failed to get his licence promoter’s certificate and bank guarantee renewed and handed over colony to the MC without obtaining mandatory completion certificate told The Tribune that the work for connecting sewerage and other urban infrastructure in the colony was delayed because the developer had not transferred ownership rights of common areas to the civic body “Till such time that the authorities wake up and realise the harrowing experience which residents have been going through for the last several years we are keeping our fingers crossed and hoping for the best,” said Harish Gupta 30?"green-strip-scroll":""}">\n ${e.display_status||e.scheduleTime}\n 30?"green-strip-scroll":""}">\n ${e.display_status+" It was started by Sardar Dyal Singh Majithia and is run by a trust comprising five eminent persons as trustees.The Tribune the largest selling English daily in North India publishes news and views without any bias or prejudice of any kind rather than agitational language and partisanship It is an independent newspaper in the real sense of the term.The Tribune has two sister publications Punjabi Tribune (in Punjabi) and Dainik Tribune (in Hindi) Remembering Sardar Dyal Singh Majithia Ward’s touring guitarist and former Decembrists’ drummer On their newest release an eclectic ensemble of instruments — trumpet and even a musical saw — are peppered throughout in a dubious effort to make the album unique the record sounds forced.Not all hope is lost Lead vocalist Adam Selzer saves the record with his earnest voice and knack for charmingly discordant pop “The Longest Stare” exemplifies the band’s best — a simple but tasty piano ballad becomes enchanting with an effortless vocal performance and imperfect drumming Although Norfolk & Western at times loose direction there are moments on this record when their vision unites – at it’s finest Selzer’s keen sense of melody on top of hodge-podge orchestration makes The Unsung Colony worthwhile Performers of the Zoro Garden nudist colony in 1935 People paid 25 cents to watch actors pose as “nudists” at San Diego’s Balboa Park in 1935 The Zoro Garden nudist colony was an attraction at the 1935-36 Pacific International Exposition designed to demonstrate the ideals of the “natural outdoor life.” The public was invited to watch topless women and bearded men in loincloths sun themselves, play games, and perform a quasi-religious rituals to the Sun God. Cheapskates peeked through holes in the fence the outdoor attraction became the exposition’s most lucrative the Zoro Garden is home to free spirits of another kind: butterflies Culture Trip | Atlas Obscura This article is from the California Sun, a newsletter that delivers must-read stories to your inbox each morning . Sign up here The Elephant The seemingly frivolous laws passed by the Kenyan state serve to entrench the hegemony of the elite and the extractive and exclusionary patterns of economics that have existed since colonial times Kenyans have been bombarded with a string of proposed laws and regulations targeted at the agricultural sector Kenyans are bewildered and asking the right questions; what purpose do these bills serve And how are they connected to the trade deals Kenya recently signed with the US and the UK Kenyans first heard of a proposed Livestock Act (2021) that would provide a framework for the regulation and development of the livestock sector at the beginning of June 2021. The provisions relating to beekeeping gathered unusual attention because of the frivolous and punitive regulations they would have imposed on farmers keep their bees in registered and branded hives prescribed by county authorities Only a public uproar caused Amos Kimunya- the Leader of Majority in the National Assembly – to shelve plans to table the bill before Parliament But this was not the first time seemingly frivolous laws relating to the agricultural sector were being proposed or made into law The Irish Potatoes Regulations were quietly passed into law and gazetted toward the end of 2019 barely attracting public attention that was at the time firmly fixated on BBI shenanigans only came to the attention of most Kenyans when the Nyandarua County Government issued notice of a sensitization exercise on the new regulations especially those forbidding small-scale farmers from selling milk to their neighbours and other consumers The new regulations now set a minimum price for a litre of milk to be reviewed every six months based on small-scale farmers’ demands What mischief is the political elite up to through this endless string of frivolous laws Kenya is often portrayed in the news as a developing African nation that has its affairs in order it is a vibrant middle-income country with a young and educated population and blessed with that African beauty that draws tourists year in year out is that Kenya is the quintessential neo-colonial state firmly within the orbit of global finance capital It is debt-ridden after eight years of the UhuRuto administration that has been characterised by ineptitude and is anchored in an economic philosophy of beg With its economy doing poorly and unemployment already high the COVID-19 pandemic has only exacerbated the situation by disrupting livelihoods while adding to the numbers of those unable to find work Salaries have been delayed in several government departments this year and the country is basically floating on economic guesswork military officers and politicians cannot get their pensions Existence for many has been reduced to a daily struggle for survival The facade is held together by a calculatingly ruthless state machinery that is very adept at shaping and controlling narratives through sleek public relations campaigns paid hashtags on social media and intimidation of legacy media Its security organs—the conveyor belts of its monopoly of violence—have no qualms scuttling peoples’ organising through dispersing protests or dispatching citizens to impromptu extrajudicial meetings with their maker Kenya is the quintessential neo-colonial state The Imperial British East African Company was set up and granted a charter in 1888 to run this venture with a view to making profit The profit turned out to be so good that the British crown wanted full control of the cake Britain duly declared Kenya a protectorate in 1895 Thereafter, the Kipande tax, hut or pole tax and the breast tax were introduced to force the African into the cash economy through work and a system of forced labour was imposed on those unable to pay tax African men were taxed for having more than one wife And for every other female in their household The colonial enterprise could now concentrate on its main objective Kenya’s war of independence was waged for land and freedom went into the forests to fight for freedom and to get back their land emotive and close to the hearts of the people their umbilical cords buried in it at birth Independence in 1963 failed to address the land question No one actually fought for the independence project though the collaborators wanted “independence” in order to replace the colonialists in the various spaces they occupied— ownership of prime property living in leafy neighbourhoods with servants Land redistribution schemes were hijacked and vast swathes of land shared out among Jomo Kenyatta and his coterie while the petty bourgeois were allowed to acquire some relatively smaller parcels to not only create a semblance of equality but also fabricate a belief among the struggling masses that it was somehow possible to climb up the social and economic ladder Many of the Mau Mau and their children were never compensated or resettled by the independence government They were never allowed to access or control the land they had fought for in such brave fashion Most of the fertile and highly productive land remained in the hands of this tiny clique of Africans and those settlers who chose to stay on after “independence” These are the people who still own the big tracts of land in Kenya together with an ensemble of crooks and tenderpreneurs Control over the land and its abundant resources gives them the economic power that most of them use to purchase political power that they then use to consolidate their economic power in unscrupulous fashion but wield considerable power behind the scenes flexing their economic muscles every once in a while to keep the political landscape in tune with their interests and those of their masters across the ocean—those same masters of misery who just a few decades ago perpetrated the exploitation and subjugation that Mau Mau and other liberation heroes sought to confine to the dustbin of history The ruling class had again smothered voices from below signed a trade deal that gives British companies that have been extracting since the colonial epoch a 25-year tax holiday despite opposition from small-scale farmers and Kenyans in general According to the Office of the United States Trade Representative Kenya and the United States traded US$1.1 billion worth of goods in total (two-way) trade during 2019 with the US importing goods worth US$667 million from Kenya the US imported edible fruits and nuts worth US$55 million (KSh5.5 billion) from Kenya A joint statement released on July 8 2020 to signify the start of negotiations partly states that ‘’Increasing and sustaining export performance to the United States requires a trade arrangement that is predictable and guarantees preferential market access for Kenyan products’’ Who has the capital and technological know-how to meet the stringent standards set out in such deals and reinforced by ridiculous legislation like those highlighted at the beginning of this article Certainly not the small-scale farmers who account for over 70 per cent of Kenya’s agricultural production It is the class that ensures political power is subservient to its economic power The Kenya-US Free Trade Agreement is an economic partnership of the bourgeoisie It prostrates our collective existence as an untapped market and is aimed at extracting resources for the insatiable consumerism of America it only serves to entrench the hegemony of the elite The neo-colonial state is full of wonders and oxymorons It has adapted and perfected colonial tools of political and economic domination for continued extraction It has equally been moulded in the punitive nature of empire crushing those who stand in the path of primitive accumulation of wealth The capitalist system behind it continues to thrive using slave labour as it has done for the last four centuries this time through wages that leave workers struggling to put a single meal on the table The Kenyan elite have perfected use of the state and its organs to meet their personal interests negating the common wants and demands of the motherland They have further perfected the art of moulding law et cetera to serve and defend their economic interests signed a trade deal that gives British companies that have been extracting since the colonial epoch a 25-year tax holiday What is the difference between last year’s eviction of Korogocho residents who possessed valid land ownership documents and the land alienation perpetrated by the British colonial empire of the early 20th Century What is the difference between the colonial laws that limited what crops black African farmers could grow and these new laws that today aim to criminalise our people Although the basic structure of the exploitative system remains the same today’s agents of neo-colonialism do not blatantly criminalise production They only restrict access to the large and lucrative international trade in select goods for small-scale farmers and peasant producers That is why the state has put minimal effort into enabling the millions of existing small-scale producers to increase production carry out local value addition through their cooperatives or meet the standards demanded by external markets It is instead focussed on criminalising their toil With an abundance of young jobless Kenyans The seemingly frivolous laws serve this purpose currently a teacher at Loreburn Central School will become the new Principal at Clear Spring Colony School "We are very happy to have Shauna take over the Principalship at Clear Spring," stated Sun West Director of Education Vicki Moore "her varied experiences at Loreburn Central School her ongoing efforts at professional development and her background as a PeBL Mentor and GAP teacher will serve the Colony students very well." She added George holds both a Bachelor of Arts and Science and a Bachelor of Education from the University of Saskatchewan She completed the latter in 1996 with majors in both English and Social Studies Since then she has taken an impressive list of professional development courses certificates and other training in such areas as Non-violent Crisis Intervention Special Education Courses in Speech and Language Disabilities to just name a few George started her teaching career at Imperial School in 1997 She was a substitute teacher with Sun West and its legacy school divisions while also working as a Business Representative with SaskPower she resumed teaching full-time at Loreburn Central School where she has been teaching since then George has taught a number of classes and grades including English She has been the Student Support Services Teacher and developed programming for diversity students She has been very involved in many extracurricular activities track and field and cross country as well as refereeing volleyball and basketball the drama program as well as helping with the canteen and timekeeping and scorekeeping at numerous sporting events George is also a very active community volunteer She has been a past manager and/or coach of Kenaston ball and hockey teams and is a past President of the Kenaston Pre-school George stated: "I am extremely excited to join the learning community at Clear Spring Colony," stated Mrs "and look forward to challenging myself in the new role of administrator rejuvenating my teaching repertoire and sharing my experience and knowledge to serve the students and community at Clear Spring." In a world hungry for sustainable energy, Alberta is fast becoming one of the pre-eminent jurisdictions on the planet for hydrogen fuel... Peel District School Board (PDSB) welcomed a distinguished delegation from the United Kingdom's House of Commons Education Select... Michelle Sylvestre (BFA - Art '17, MFA - New Media '21), a PhD student in the cultural, social and political thought program,...