Monday, April 29, 2013

Sunday, the NFL’s Seattle Seahawks drafted Brisbane, Australia native nose tackle Jesse Williams in the fifth round of the NFL Draft. Going into the draft, there were some expectations by the Brisbane Times and other media outlets that Williams might be selected in the first round. Injuries, which resulted in Williams being unable to participate fully in the NFL Combine, likely were reasons why he was not selected higher.

Gridiron football is not the most popular football code in Australia, with rugby league, rugby union, soccer, and Australian rules football all being more popular participation sports. Williams’ youth sporting career reflected this, with Williams playing rugby union until he was 15 years old at which time he switched codes and joined the local gridiron team, the Bayside Ravens. A year later, his playing ability earned him a scholarship offer from the University of Hawaii. He could not meet the university’s academic standards so eventually he attended Western Arizona Community College instead. In 2011, he transferred to the University of Alabama and played for the Alabama Crimson Tide for two seasons. Both seasons, his Crimson Tide team won the national championship.

Williams’ selection is unique amongst Australians as most Australians who have played in the NFL have been kickers. He is also only the second Australian ever to be drafted in the NFL Draft.

Friday, October 19, 2007

The 7th Taipei International Hardware & DIY Show, organized by Kaigo Taiwan (The representative of Koelnmesse in Taiwan) and Koelnmesse GmbH, started on October 18-20 at Taipei World Trade Center Exhibition Hall 3. This show has 183 participants using 300 booths to exhibit accessories and tools on esoteric fabricating, home-living applications, and security.

With people in Taiwan valuing on the quality of home-living, the organizer set a pre-show pavilion of “2008 Taipei Home & Lifestyle Fair” and invited B&Q & HomeBox holding DIY workshops for visitors.

This exhibition is conjuncted with industry and applications, and pursuing with three main topics of “Quality, Innovation and Competitiveness”. International factories such as Hitachi, Rexon, Ryobi participated this show for the export opportunity in the hardware industry.

After the “Product Certificates and Testing” pavilion in TAITRONICS Autumn, Bureau of Standards, Metrology & Inspection, M.O.E.A., R.O.C. (Taiwan) and DIY in Europe magazine were invited for speeches focused on certifications on hardware & DIY products and environment issues in EU.

• Spoty Enterprise Co., Ltd.

• Double Dynasty Co., Ltd.

Saturday, September 15, 2007

Nervous savers have re-formed queues this morning outside many branches of Northern Rock, after the £2.68 billion bank took an emergency loan from the Bank of England, the UK central bank.

Shares in the bank had dropped 25% by lunchtime yesterday in London – and stood nearly 60% lower from their high of February – after the Bank of England acted in its capacity as “lender of last resort” to provide Northern Rock with short-term financing to enable it to continue operations.

The Bank of England hasn’t acted as lender of last resort since 1973, when the collapse of Cedar Holdings – a pioneer of second mortgages to UK home-owners – threatened a crisis in the country’s banking industry.

Northern Rock has been hit hard since June this year by the turmoil in world credit markets. Although only 0.24% of its assets are exposed to subprime US housing debt, the bank’s business model saw it grow its loan book by 43% in the first six months of this year. Rather than lending money deposited with it by savers, Northern has borrowed aggressively in the short-term capital markets.

“Northern Rock is not a reckless lender,” said Angela Knight, head of the British Bankers Association on national radio this morning. Urging the bank’s savers not to withdraw their money in panic, “the mortgage lending it does well and it does in a high quality, high calibre way,” she added.

But savers queuing to withdraw their money from Northern Rock today said they were “horrified” by the Bank of England needing to step in.

“I am going to take out the lot, every penny,” said one Northern Rock saver to Bloomberg as he queued outside the bank’s West End branch in London.

Monday, October 4, 2010

A school bus, with fourteen students from the Temple High School aboard, crashed in Georgia, United States, earlier today on Georgia State Route 113 going southbound, killing one student and leaving a dozen more injured. It is reported that at the time of the crash there was a trainee driving the bus.

According to the Carroll County Schools Superintendent, one student was killed and a dozen others were in need of medical care after the bus rolled over. A spokesman for the mayor and a highway patrolman also confirmed that a student died. The student has been identified as James Rashawn Walker of Temple, Georgia. It is reported that the bus was heading southbound on the highway when the driver lost control and drove into a ditch, which caused the bus to turn over.

Witnesses reported the bus flipped multiple times before coming to a halt. According to a witness, Ben Cole, a lot of the students were crying and in pain. The six injured were taken to the Tanner Medical Center and the Higgins Hospital, among them was the 45-year-old female bus driver. The Carrol County Sheriff’s Department are advising concerned parents to gather at Temple High School.

Thursday, March 17, 2011

Owsley Stanley, mass-producer of LSD, the drug underlying much of the culture of the 1960s California hippie era, died Sunday in a car accident in Australia at the age of 76, his family announced on Tuesday.

According to The New York Times, “Mr. Stanley lent the ’60s a great deal of its color — like White Lightning, Monterey Purple and Blue Cheer, the varieties of his LSD that were among the most popular.”

Stanley, a talented, self-taught chemist who was known for the purity of his LSD, supplied the drug to such music groups as the Grateful Dead, the Beatles, and Jimi Hendrix, and provided the acid for Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters, whose antics were recorded by Tom Wolfe in the The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. The Rolling Stones once called his acid “the best LSD in the world … the genuine Owsley.”

He was also an early sound engineer and designed the high-fidelity sound system for the live rock concerts of the Grateful Dead, known as the “wall of sound”. It was essentially a massive public address system made up of 600 speakers that enabled musicians to mix their sound from the stage and reduce distortion. His recordings of Grateful Dead live performances, some having been commercially released, are valued as a documentary of their early music.

Sam Cutler, formerly the tour manager of the Rolling Stones, said of Stanley: “He was a very sophisticated man, an amalgam of scientist and engineer, chemist and artist.”

Stanley was born in Kentucky and studied engineering briefly at the University of Virginia before dropping out and joining the Air Force. In 1958, he moved to California and worked at a wide variety of jobs, before enrolling at the UC at Berkeley in 1963, at a time when drug use was pervasive. He got his first taste of LSD in April 1964 which transformed him. “I remember the first time I took acid and walked outside, and the cars were kissing the parking meters,” he said in an interview with the Rolling Stone Magazine in 2007.

Deciding to provide his own LSD to ensure its quality, Stanley created his own lab to produce it. According to The Washington Post, “Working at first from a makeshift bathroom laboratory in Berkeley, Mr. Stanley produced at least 1 million doses of LSD between 1965 and 1967.” His LSD was widely distributed. The lab was raided and he spent two years in prison.

Stanley moved to Australia in the 1980s when he become convinced the Northern Hemisphere would be destroyed in the coming of a new ice age. He lived in the Australian bush near Cairns, Queensland.

Sunday, March 21, 2010

A severe sandstorm has struck north-west China over the past few weeks, reaching Beijing on Saturday morning. The sandstorm, which covered homes, streets, and cars in dust, has left the sky a murky yellow. The air quality was rated as level five. Beijing’s Weather Bureau issued a warning for the sandstorm, and advised citizens to stay in their homes until it passes. As much as 1500 micrograms per cubic meter of dust were reported to be airborne.

Beijing has experienced unusually cold weather this year, with temperatures below freezing at night, even after the start of spring. The sandstorm is affecting more than 50 million people, and forecasters do not see signs of it stopping soon. The desertification of the western China and the Mongolian steppes has made the annual spring sandstorm become worse in the recent years, reaching countries such as South Korea and Japan. The sandstorm has turned the rain and snow yellow.

The storm also impacted Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia, Shanxi, Shaanxi, and Hebei for a total of 270 million people over an area of 1.8 million square kilometers. It is expected the storm will last until Monday.