P&O cruise ship staff paid 75p ($1.22) an hour

Just when you think the corporate world can't "sink" (excuse the pun) much lower...it appears that many P&O cruise ship staff are paid a basic salary of 75p an hour (approx. $1.2 an hour). "At the bottom end of the scale, a junior waiter on a ship sailing out of Southampton now earns a basic salary of £250 a month, for shifts lasting a minimum of 11 hours, seven days a week, with a possible £150 extra in bonuses. According to documents seen by the Guardian, this is "a significantly increased basic salary". David Dingle, CEO of Carnival UK, in charge of P&O cruise lines, said the crew were "much happier" and the new arrangement was a win-win for passengers, staff and P&O. He said many crew took home over £1,000 a month, but tougher times meant that "sadly, our customers were reluctant to pay the recommended level of tipping".  
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/apr/29/cruise-firm-performance-bonuses-tips

David Levene for the Guardian

It's interesting to note that Carnival owned the Costa Concordia, the giant Italian cruise liner that sunk on January 13 this year with over 4,200 passengers and crew aboard. Thirty-two did not survive the tragedy but only 30 bodies have been recovered; the search for the final two is ongoing. And on February 27 another Carnival Cruise Ship, Costa Allegra, suffered a generator fire while off the coast of Africa approximately 200 miles southwest of the Seychelles and was towed to Mahé in the Seychelles Islands the following day.

Meanwhile, news today of an Australian billionaire who will build a high-tech replica of the Titanic (Titanic II) at a Chinese shipyard and its maiden voyage in late 2016 will be from England to New York, just like its namesake planned. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/arts-post/post/titanic-ii-between-replica-ship-and-hologram-tupac-resurrections-abound/2012/04/30/gIQAPbVkrT_blog.html

Just why would someone want to relive a tragedy that killed over 1500 people? Am I the only person who thinks they may be living in a parallel universe? 

In this April 25, 2012 photo provided by Crook Publicity, 
Australian billionaire Clive Palmer poses in front of an artist
impression of the Titanic ll at MGM Studios in Los Angeles, Ca. (AP)

Apple avoids billions in taxes

Apple is now the world's most valuable publicly traded company ahead of energy giant ExxonMobil. The media was reverential towards Apple co-founder Steve Jobs when he died last October. He was treated as a Godlike figure.  Now we are being told how his company manages to legally avoid or sidestep billions in taxes by using subsidiaries in Ireland, the Netherlands and other low-tax nations as part of a strategy that enables the technology giant to cut its global tax bill by billions of dollars each year.

The New York Times on Sunday outlined legal methods used by Cupertino, California-based Apple, to avoid paying billions of dollars in federal and state taxes. One approach highlighted in the report: Even though the company is based in California, Apple has set up a small office in Reno, Nevada to collect and invest its profits. The corporate tax rate in Nevada is zero. In California, it's 8.84%. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/29/business/apples-tax-strategy-aims-at-low-tax-states-and-nations.html

When Jean-Louis Gassée (executive at Apple Computer from 1981 to 1990) was asked about his thoughts on the Apple logo, he answered: "One of the deep mysteries to me is our logo - the symbol of lust and knowledge, bitten into, all crossed with the colors of the rainbow in the wrong order. You couldn't dream of a more appropriate logo: lust, knowledge, hope, and anarchy."

"Thou shalt have no other Gods before me". Exodus 20:3 (Deuteronomy 5:7, Judges 6:10, Hosea 13:4)

Words of the Prophets

Thomas L. Friedman (New York Times Sunday Review) reports from Beirut, Lebanon:

"As I walk around the streets of Beirut, that verse from “The Sounds of Silence” keeps rattling around in my head: “The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls, and tenement halls ..."  There is a highly revealing graffiti war going on here pitting opponents of Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, and his Lebanese ally, the Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, on one side and their Lebanese and Syrian supporters on the other."   http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/29/opinion/sunday/friedman-words-of-the-prophets.html

Simon & Garfunkel "The Sound of Silence":

Meanwhile, the bloodshed in Syria continues, despite the presence of UN monitors. Below: a young boy in the center of Homs holds up a sign that reads, "Bashar al-Assad destroyed my home, the street has become my home". http://blogs.aljazeera.net/liveblog/Syria

[Reuters]

Sunday Times List of Britain's Wealthiest

Lakshmi Mittal: Sebastien Pirlet/Reuters
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lakshmi_Mittal

According to the Sunday Times list of Britain's wealthiest residents, steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal retains top spot, with Russian Oligarchs, Alisher Usmanov and Roman Abramovich, in second and third place. http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/apr/29/rich-list-record-fortunes-britain

"Lakshmi Mittal retained his crown as Britain's richest man despite losing almost a quarter of his wealth over the past year following a fall in the share value of his ArcelorMittal, the world's largest steelmaker. The Indian-born businessman saw his personal worth slide by £4.8bn to £12.7bn, but that was still enough to keep him on top of the list. Uzbek-born billionaire Alisher Usmanov, who owns around 30% of Arsenal football club, was again in second place and close behind Mittal with a fortune of £12.3bn. Russian investor Roman Abramovich, who owns rival club Chelsea, held onto third place with a personal value of £9.5bn, down from £10.3bn last year."

Alisher Usmanov
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alisher_Usmanov

Roman Abramovich
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Abramovich

Psychology's Ghosts - a new book

Jerome Kagan, Emeritus Professor of Psychology at Harvard University, has written a new book called "Psychology's Ghosts". http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304537904577277760260276148.html

"Many people will tell you that having many friends, a fortune or freedom is essential to happiness, but Mr. Kagan believes they are wrong. "A fundamental requirement for feelings of serenity and satisfaction," Mr. Kagan says, is "commitment to a few unquestioned ethical beliefs" and the confidence that one lives in a community and country that promote justice and fair play. "Even four-year-olds have a tantrum," he notes, "if a parent violates their sense of fairness." His diagnosis of the "storm of hostility" felt by Americans on the right and left, and the depression and anomie among so many young people, is that this essential requirement has been frustrated by the bleak events of the past decades. War, corruption, the housing bubble and the financial crisis, not to mention the fact that so many of those responsible have not been held unaccountable, have eroded optimism, pride and the fundamental need to believe the world is fair." [Wall Street Journal]

White nose fungus in bats

The devastating white nose fungal syndrome in North American bats appears not to have spread over the Atlantic to the UK as yet...comparisons have been raised to colony collapse disorder in honey bees and chytridiomycosis, a fungal skin disease linked to worldwide decline in amphibian populations. http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/apr/28/bats-fungus-epidemic-white-nose

http://www.fws.gov/whitenosesyndrome/

Here's an article on the National Wildlife Federation blog entitled "Five mass wildlife deaths to really be worried about": http://blog.nwf.org/2011/01/5-mass-wildlife-deaths-to-really-be-worried-about/

Photo white-nose bats@http://journeys4good.com/

CTA Warrior @ Southport Avenue

Time for another CTA adventure...so yesterday I took the CTA Brown Line "El" northbound from the Loop (State & Lake) to the Southport El stop (20 mins. 10 stops). Southport Avenue is west of Lakeview and a few blocks from Wrigley Field. It is a commercial strip with a mix of restaurants, boutiques, cafes. The surrounding tree-lined residential streets are pleasant to stroll along. I walked northbound and stopped at the following three places: 

The Mystic Celt pub, 3443 N. Southport Avenue, which is done up in warm cherry wood. There is a cozy front bar and a dining area in the back. Bar food and Irish specialties make up the menu. Entrees include shepherd's pie.

The second stop was Julius Meinl, 3601 N. Southport Avenue, for coffee and cake! Julius Meinl features standard coffees plus specialty brews, including decadent Vienna ice cream coffee (vanilla ice cream with espresso and whipped cream), more than 20 loose-leaf teas, and plenty of house-made pastries, cakes and strudels. The coffee, tea, chocolate and preserves are imported directly from Vienna.

And the third stop was the Mercury Theater, 3745 N. Southport Ave, to watch the excellent "Freud's Last Session" http://freudslastsession.com/.  Dr. Sigmund Freud invites the rising academic star and writer C. S. Lewis to his home in London. On the day England enters World War II, Freud and Lewis clash on the existence of God, love, sex, and the meaning of life – only two weeks before Freud took his own life. This is a profound and touching play about two men who boldly addressed the big questions of our time. 

A French Sea Odyssey in Liverpool

Sea Odyssey was a huge success in Liverpool last weekend, with 600,000 people lining the streets of the city to see the Royal de Luxe Giants search each other out, in a poignant story of love, loss and reunion. It is thought the event gave the city a £12million economic boost.  A BBC special, ‘Liverpool’s Titanic Girl’, will be screened at 8.30pm on Monday 30 April on BBC 1 in the North West and will be available on i-player when it has been shown on TV.      http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/gallery/2012/apr/20/giant-puppets-liverpool-in-pictures

Photograph: Peter Byrne/PA

Seeing Red in Chicago and China

Chicagoans will get a taste of how it feels to be in a militarized zone next week. Operation Red Zone is the federal government's plan to protect its property in case of civil disobedience in Chicago's Loop during next month's NATO Summit (May 20-21). Federal agents in battle gear will be on patrol in the Loop starting next week -- May 1st (May Day). 

http://www.wgntv.com/news/wgntv-nato-red-zone-federal-agents-enforcement-apr26,0,7404854.story
http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/12151651-418/local-nato-hosts-red-faced-over-red-zone-militarization-plan.html

Associated Press: riot police in Seattle, 2011

And here is an interesting Chinese blog "Seeing Red in China" http://seeingredinchina.com/
which has been reporting on activities surrounding China's blind dissident, Chen Guangcheng, who is in the US embassy in Beijing following a dramatic escape from house arrest. Mr. Chen scaled a high wall and was driven hundreds of kilometers to Beijing. He released the following video addressed to Prime Minister Wen Jiabao.

Chilly swallows and population shrinkage, etc.

Some amazing wildlife images from this week's news at following link, including these chilly tree swallows in New York State:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/gallery/2012/apr/27/week-in-wildlife-in-pictures?intcmp=122#/?picture=389312191&index=19

Photograph: David Duprey/AP

Professor Paul Ehrlich of Stanford University (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_R._Ehrlich) says that nuclear disaster or plague is likely unless the population shrinks and natural resources are reassigned to the poor: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/apr/26/world-population-resources-paul-ehrlich

Photograph: Rex Features

"The optimum population of Earth – enough to guarantee the minimal physical ingredients of a decent life to everyone – was 1.5 to 2 billion people rather than the 7 billion who are alive today or the 9 billion expected in 2050, said Ehrlich in an interview with the Guardian.

"How many you support depends on lifestyles. We came up with 1.5 to 2 billion because you can have big active cities and wilderness. If you want a battery chicken world where everyone has minimum space and food and everyone is kept just about alive you might be able to support in the long term about 4 or 5 billion people. But you already have 7 billion. So we have to humanely and as rapidly as possible move to population shrinkage."

"The question is: can you go over the top without a disaster, like a worldwide plague or a nuclear war between India and Pakistan? If we go on at the pace we are there's going to be various forms of disaster. Some maybe slow motion disasters like people getting more and more hungry, or catastrophic disasters because the more people you have the greater the chance of some weird virus transferring from animal to human populations, there could be a vast die-off."..."


Meanwhile, on a similar theme, the Royal Society warns that the World's population needs to be stabilised quickly and high consumption in rich countries rapidly reduced to avoid "a downward spiral of economic and environmental ills":
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/apr/26/earth-population-consumption-disasters

Barclays and Credit Suisse shareholder pay revolts

32% of Barclays Bank shareholders today refused to back the company's remuneration report. Barclays chief executive Bob Diamond had received a £1.35m salary and a £2.7m bonus for 2011, as well as £2.25m in long-term incentive payments. Roger Barker, the head of corporate governance at the IoD, told the BBC's Today programme: "Executive pay over the last decade has just got out of kilter with performance. It's now at the wrong level, it's become very opaque, very complex and we really I think need to get it on a much more sustainable level." But he said that shareholders had to do more to rein in overpaid executives. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-17860232  Credit Suisse is suffering a similar shareholder pay revolt: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/27/us-barclays-creditsuisse-agm-idUSBRE83Q0IJ20120427

Barclays performance chart (BBC)

Native American drink woes

The Oglala Sioux Tribe of South Dakota have filed a federal lawsuit demanding $500 million from five international beer manufacturers for the cost of health care, social services and child rehabilitation caused by chronic alcoholism on the reservation. The tribe say the beer makers knowingly contributed to alcohol-related problems on South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. The lawsuit also targets four beer stores in Whiteclay, a Nebraska town with a population of about a dozen people on the South Dakota border that sells nearly 5 million cans of beer annually. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17859117

Bob Rowan: Progressive Imge/CORBIS

Banksy: "I remember when all this was trees"

Article in today's Wall Street Journal about Detroit art by English satirical street artist, Banksy:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303990604577365891755262280.html

Photo: Associated Press

"DETROIT—A street-art painting taken from one of Detroit's most famous industrial ruins is finally making its public debut.  The image, painted on a cinder-block wall at the old Packard auto-plant site, is believed to be the work of the elusive street artist Banksy. It shows a boy holding a can and a paintbrush, and alongside him the words, "I remember when all this was trees."..."  More info. on Banksy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banksy

Banksy art photos: weburbanist.com

The Third Industrial Revolution?

Brett Ryder

Will the digitization of manufacturing transform the way goods are made - and change the politics of jobs too?  http://www.economist.com/node/21553017  As someone who was born in Northern England -- where the first Industrial Revolution began -- I find the thought of a 3rd industrial revolution very intriguing. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Revolution

"But labour costs are growing less and less important: a $499 first-generation iPad included only about $33 of manufacturing labour, of which the final assembly in China accounted for just $8."

Word Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates - Chicago

Nobel Peace Prize laureates, including Lech Walesa, Mikhail Gorbachev and Dalai Lama, met in Chicago this week and said the proliferation of nuclear weapons is among the most challenging threats to world peace, but they criticized countries, including the United States, for engaging in what they called unnecessary wars that have caused innocent people to suffer. 

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/ct-met-nobel-laureate-sumit-closing-20120426,0,2837724.story

(AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

"From my own limited experience I have found that the greatest degree of inner tranquility comes from the development of love and compassion." ~ The Dalai Lama
http://www.dalailama.com/messages/compassion

Louis Armstrong lost recording

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Armstrong

Interesting feature on tonight's NBC news - an old recording at the National Press Club in Washington D.C. by "Satchmo" - five months before his death in 1971 - has been recovered. Below is an earlier recording of his classic "What a Wonderful World"....

Werner Herzog -- human life is not sustainable

"Human life is not sustainable...when you look at human life on this planet, we are not sustainable. Trilobites died out, dinosaurs died out. Life on our planet has been a constant series of cataclysmic events, and we are more suitable for extinction than a trilobite or a reptile. So we will vanish. There's no doubt in my heart."  ~ Werner Herzog on death, danger, and the end of the world.

One of the greatest directors of New German Cinema, Werner Herzog talks to the Guardian about his death row documentary "Into the Abyss" -- soon to be released on DVD -- "a gaze into the abyss of the human soul"... "If we perish I want to see what's coming at me, and if we survive, I want to see it as well."  http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2012/apr/14/werner-herzog-into-the-abyss

Werner Herzog photograph: Thomas Rabsch

More information on Herzog: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werner_Herzog

"Microbes can come and wipe us out. It can happen fast. Avian virus or mad cow disease, you name it. Microbes are really after us. Or a cataclysmic volcanic eruption which would darken the skies for 10 years – that's gonna be real trouble. Or a meteorite hitting us, or something man-made. I don't believe we'll see a nuclear holocaust but there are quite a few scenarios out there."

What about a good-old fashioned breakdown of society? "You mean anarchy and cannibalism? Yes but there would be survivors. Maybe 10% would survive, enough to replenish the species. I'm talking about total extinction. We are not sustainable."

Colin Firth and the Awá tribe

 “Be the change you wish to see in the world” ~ Ghandi

Colin Firth and Survival International launched their campaign today -- appealing to viewers to save the Awá from illegal loggers in the Brazilian Amazon:

http://www.survivalinternational.org/awa#intro-film
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aw%C3%A1-Guaj%C3%A1_people 

Photo: Survival International

A heartbreaking story about an Amazon tribal girl burned alive by loggers earlier this year. Luis Carlos Guajajaras, a local leader from a separate tribe, told a Brazilian news website that they tied to her a tree and set her alight as a warning to other natives:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/southamerica/brazil/9005835/Loggers-burned-Amazon-tribe-girl-alive.html 

  Photo: AP

Wikipedia: "In 1982, the Brazilian government received a loan of 900 million USD from the World Bank and the European Union. One condition of this loan was that the lands of certain indigenous peoples (including the Awá) would be demarcated and protected. This was particularly important for the Awá because their forests were increasingly being invaded by outsiders. There were many cases of tribespeople being killed by settlers, but perhaps more significantly, the forest on which they depend was being destroyed by logging and land clearance for farming. Without government intervention it seemed very likely that the Awá and their ancient culture would become extinct. However, the Brazilian government was extraordinarily slow to act on its commitment. It took twenty years of sustained pressure from campaigning organisations such as Survival International and the Forest Peoples Programme before, in March 2003, the Awá's land was finally demarcated. During this time, encroachment on their land and a series of massacres had reduced Awá numbers to about 300, of whom only about 60 were still living their traditional, isolated, hunter-gather way of life."

Asteroids and meteorite showers

Interesting BBC article today about new plans to mine near-earth asteroids for their resources...Space start-up Planetary Resources today launched an ambitious plan to capture water and precious metals from near-Earth asteroids, a feat founders say would enrich earthbound society and enable further space exploration  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17827347

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_mining

On the subject of asteroids, one came very close to earth in January of this year. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16756450  "It's one of the closest approaches recorded" said Gareth Williams, associate director of the US-based Minor Planet Center. "It makes it in to the top 20 closest approaches, but it's sufficiently far away... that there's absolutely no chance of it hitting us" he told the BBC. And last weekend -- April 21 to 22 -- the Lyrids (meteor shower) made their annual spin through the skies, igniting the usual flashes, as they've done for some 2,600 years. This time, they also caused an explosive boom heard in parts of California and Nevada. This year's show was a bit more spectacular than in the past, because the new moon was in a new phase -- meaning the sky was darker than usual, creating a nice, rich background that showcased the celestial sparks. [This tiny but prominent constellation represents a lyre, an ancient musical instrument that is essentially a small harp. In Greek mythology, Lyra represents the lyre or harp of the musician Orpheus. It was said that when Orpheus played this instrument, neither mortal nor god could turn away.]
http://earthsky.org/astronomy-essentials/earthskys-meteor-shower-guide

Etna and Popocatépetl volcanic eruptions

Popocatépetl gives a spectacular display in the Mexican central state of Puebla, but residents at the foot of the volcano can no longer sleep soundly since it erupted back into action more than a week ago, spewing out a hail of rocks, steam, and ashes...http://www.volcanodiscovery.com/news.html

Photograph: Ronaldo Schemidt/AFP/Getty Images

Mount Etna, Italy, put on a spectacular display on Monday evening (April 23) with red hot lava spewing metres up into the night-time sky. The volcanic activity is the seventh eruption that has occurred since the beginning of the year. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Etna Below is a National Geographic video about the inside of a volcano and a Siouxie and the Banshees video "Cities in Dust". [Wikipedia: The song obliquely describes the city of Pompeii, destroyed in a volcanic eruption in 79AD. Imagery describing the volcano and its magma chamber, the condition of the victims of the eruption, and the subsequent discovery and excavation of the city comprises the bulk of the lyrics.]

New NASA Earth Video

A new NASA video draws on detailed maps of the moon's surface made recently to recreate the view of "Earthrise" seen by the astronauts of the Apollo 8 mission. On Dec. 24, 1968, astronauts Frank Borman, William Anders, and James Lovell orbited the moon and caught the first sight of our planet from a distance. The famous Christmas-eve view became known as "Earthrise" and changed the way we view our planet.

Here is a breakdown of video sequences:

:01 – Stars over southern United States

:08 – U.S. West Coast to Canada

:21 – Central Europe to the Middle East

:36 – Aurora Australis over the Indian Ocean

:54 – Storms over Africa

1:08 – Central United States

1:20 – Midwest United States

1:33 – United Kingdom to Baltic Sea

1:46 – Moonset

1:55 – Northern United States to Eastern Canada

2:12 – Aurora Australis over the Indian Ocean

2:32 – Comet Lovejoy

2:53 – Aurora Borealis over Hudson Bay

3:06 – United Kingdom to Central Europe

Awá : the world's most endangered tribe

The Awá are one of only two nomadic hunter-gathering tribes left in the Amazon. Some individuals from the tribe might leave to explore the outside world, but most will return home to its invaluable advantages: free food and housing, as opposed to scraping a living in shantytowns and slums, where life is usually nasty, brutish and short. According to Survival, they are now the world's most threatened tribe, assailed by gunmen, loggers and hostile settler farmers. In the words of actor, Colin Firth, who is supporting a campaign for the tribe: "One man can stop this: Brazil's minister of justice. He can send in the federal police to catch the loggers, and keep them out for good. But right now it's just not his priority.We have to change that before it's too late. We need enough people to message him that he takes notice… You, me, our friends, our families. Everyone counts. But we don't have much time. When the rains stop, the loggers will be back. This is our chance, right now, to actually do something. And if enough people show they care, it will work."

The campaign launches on Wednesday this week at http://www.survivalinternational.org/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/apr/22/brazil-rainforest-awa-endangered-tribe

White killer whale spotted

Scientists have made what they believe to be the first sighting of an adult white orca, or killer whale, in the wild. They have nicknamed him ICEBERG and he was spotted off the coast of Eastern Russia. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17783603

A fascinating article about the white whale's dark message...exploring the fact that our delight at Iceberg, the albino killer whale, is not so very different from the dread Moby-Dick inspired in Herman Melville:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/apr/23/white-whale-dark-message-iceberg-melville

And a NYT article about the recent changes in whale behaviour:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/18/us/scientists-look-for-reasons-for-changed-whale-behavior.html?ref=whalesandwhaling

Farewell to Tarwathie was a track on the Judy Collins 1970 album "Whales and Nightingales" -- she sang to the haunting accompaniment of humpback whales: