DT Fine Art

THESE heart-warming pictures show the baby animals lucky to be alive after
being flooded out of their homes by the awful April floods across Britain.

One of the staples of the Dixon May Fair must be the Livestock Auction.  This year the buyers’ pit was full of bidders who where eager to spend money on the many great-looking animals for sale.  Lets get some of the numbers out of the way.

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A total of 327 animals were for sale Saturday, with lambs leading the pack with 121. Only 10 turkeys were present but they sold for an average of $300.  The Supreme Champion Turkey raised by Wyatt Currie sold for $400 weighing in at 30 lbs.  The Supreme Champion Hog raised by Lily Kett sold for $7 a pound and weighed 263 pounds.  Those are just some of the top animals sold while we where there.  If you have the sale prices for the lambs and steers feel free to post them in the comments below.

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Next to raising the animals, 4-H and FFA kids were on hand to help with the auction itself as well. Running the bill of sale to a buyer or helping out with other jobs.  One of the hardest things to do comes after the auction when you have to say goodbye to your animal.  These kids know the true meaning off know what you eat and where it comes from.

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The video attached to this article gives you a good idea of how the auction works. Personally, I hope this part of the May Fair keeps going, even as some of the meat packing plants that process the meat for this auction have to close because of hard times.

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It was good to see first time buyers purchasing animals and longtime supporters doing so as wells. It was also nice to see first-year FFAers selling animals.  Believe it or not but we need these future producers of livestock.

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A worker pulls merchandise at the Overstock.com warehouse in Salt Lake City. The total paycheck for Americans jumped 2.2 percent in the 12 months through March, keeping consumers in the economic loop.
Photo: Douglas C. Pizac
/ AP

Those fans will fix on how Vincent Kompany span away from Chris Smalling and Rio Ferdinand to deposit the header which won the league derby at the Etihad 15 days ago. Mario Balotellis dismissal in the defeat at Arsenal on 18 April was certainly as significant, because it provided a way back into the starting line-up for Carlos Tevez, who has been iridescent in the six straight wins that wrapped up Citys season.

Titles are won on pieces of serendipity like that. Not to be forgotten, either, are the three late goals in a 10-day period during April (Samir Nasri â?? 85th minute v Chelsea; Yaya Tourà â?? 76th minute at Stoke, Aleksandr Kolarov â?? 86th minute v Sunderland) which allowed City to appropriate that age-old adage about the team from across town: Football â?? 90 minutes of passing and then Manchester United win. Without just one of those three crucial goals, yesterday might well not have happened.

We must actually reach farther back. Mancini eulogises about the cold January Sunday when his side, three goals in arrears to United in the FA Cup third round, recovered with 10 men to a respectable 3-2 against United and grasped a belief that they could make up the five-yard mental deficit on the champions, much talked of by the Italian.

Sunday 23 October was vastly more important, of course. Sir Alex Ferguson claims that Citys 6-1 Old Trafford derby victory that day came too early to matter and Mancini says that Uniteds 10 men reduced its significance. Nonsense. It was a huge strike at the heart of the establishment that day and the reverberations from it were monumental.

Theres also Citys FA Cup semi-final defeat of United on 16 April last year, which punctured the aura of red invincibility and paved the way for what has come, though despite all the talk of that hallowed winning mentality and psychological edge, this is a story about pure commercial advantage. Purchasing a depth of ability, as the Abu Dhabi owners have done, has simply whittled away the percentages and reduced the potential for City failing to a level which not even Sir Alex Ferguson could ultimately match.

So while United have one striker better than any of Mancinis â?? Wayne Rooney and his 26 Premier League goals â?? City have three (Sergio Aguero, Edin Dzeko and Mario Balotelli) among the top 11 goalscorers. When David Silvas problems with a left ankle robbed City of his full powers, Nasri burst into his own for the first time.

And when Mancinis perennial nagging doubt about Micah Richards resurfaced during this finale, he turned to one of yesterdays goalscorers, Pablo Zabaleta, who, with Gaël Clichy, brings a dependability that Rafael da Silva and Patrice Evra have not provided across town.

Those two full-backs failed United in the 4-4 draw against Everton which brought us to where we were at 3pm yesterday. Absolutely ridiculous, Ferguson has said of that Everton game, as if the defensive failings were a fluke, rather than the law of percentages being driven home.

A former member of Mancinis staff told me last week how Mancini asks his defensive coaches to ensure players guard against precisely the same slip by which Chris Smalling allowed Vincent Kompany to give him the slip, 15 days ago.

Mancinis judgement should not be overlooked amid all the spending. Last summer, he outbid Ferguson on Nasri and was not interested in Ashley Young, a player whose abilities were pressed on him by some of his staff. That looks like a good call. This season has seen him richly repaid for the investment of faith in goalkeeper Joe Hart which his predecessor, Mark Hughes, never showed. Ferguson has admitted Hart is one United allowed to pass by.

Mancini has passed the tactical test, too. The first-team coach of a then top six side told me in December that clubs had worked out how to strangle a then buoyant City and those words proved to be prophetic. A few days later, West Bromwich Albion dug in for a Boxing Day draw against City at the Hawthorns. Other clubs followed suit. Mancini has mapped a course between the expressive football of the seasons first six months, playing 4-4-2, and the temptation to revert to something more defensive â?? 4-5-1.

The new champions former chief executive, Garry Cook, who has done as much as anyone to deliver the club to todays pinnacle, has pored over Fergusons biography and once took the chance to quiz him on his formative years running a pub in Glasgows Gorbals.

I respect that man probably more than anyone else in football, Cook once told me. But in the end, it was the money â?? the options it delivered, like a £38m striker called Sergio Aguero â?? that talked.

Manchester City: man-for-man marking

Joe Hart

A quiet day except for the two goals. Would have done very well to save Djibril CissÃs strike, and could not have stopped Mackies header. 6/10

 

Pablo Zabaleta

Must have thought that his goal had won the title in an easier way. Put in a typically selfless performance tracking up and down the right flank, but could not provide the necessary second-half incision. 6

 

Gaël Clichy

A very useful outlet down the left wing all afternoon, stretching the play and sending in crosses of mixed quality. Defensively good enough, absolved of blame for the goals. 6

 

Joleon Lescott

Must have feared that he was responsible for City losing the title. His misjudgement of a simple header let in Cissà for the equaliser. 5

 

Vincent Kompany

Slow for Mackies goal, but must have wondered what more he could have done after an immaculate season looked to be ending trophyless. 5

 

David Silva

Smart movement throughout, but he could not pick the holes in Rangers massed defence. Saw enough of the ball but could not do enough with it until the end. 6

 

Yaya TourÃ

Citys great physical threat went off in the first half, denying them a presence that they could have done with early on in a frenetic second half. 5

 

Gareth Barry

This was never really a game for him: QPRs two goals came well behind him and he was not the man to re-pick the lock. Withdrawn for Edin Dzeko in the second half. 5

 

Samir Nasri

Prompted some of Citys better moves in the first half but when QPR were ahead he struggled to create the openings the home side needed before the very end. 6

 

Sergio Aguero

One of the best strikers in the world, he made an impact when it mattered most. Quiet for 94 minutes before one of the most important interventions in English football history. 8

 

Carlos Tevez

Tried to string together Citys first-half moves, showing for the ball and holding it up, but without the necessary impact. Went off when it looked lost, but gets a medal. 5

 

Best off the bench

Edin Dzeko

Dzeko might not be at City next season, but who cares? He is always an aerial threat and his late header built the platform for Agueros historic winner. 7

Jack Pitt-Brooke

April 28 (Bloomberg) — The US economy expanded less than forecast in the first quarter as a smaller contribution from inventories overshadowed the biggest gain in consumer spending in more than a year.

Gross domestic product, the value of all goods and services produced in the US, rose at a 2.2 percent annual rate after a 3 percent pace, Commerce Department figures showed yesterday in Washington. The median projection of economists surveyed by Bloomberg News called for a 2.5 percent gain. Government spending fell for a sixth straight quarter.

Job creation and income gains propelled sales at car dealerships and retailers like Target Corp., helping cushion the US economy from weakness overseas. Further gains in consumer spending will depend on progress in reducing a jobless rate that has hovered above 8 percent since early 2009.

This report came in less than expected but it was hardly a disaster, said Joel Naroff, president of Naroff Economic Advisors Inc. in Holland, Pennsylvania. Consumers hit the vehicle showrooms hard and consumption was strong.

In addition to the 2.9 percent pickup in the rate of consumer purchases, the economy benefited from the biggest gain in homebuilding in two years and a jump in auto production. GDP was restrained by slower growth in business investment in equipment.

Stocks, Treasuries

Stocks rose for a fourth straight day on stronger corporate earnings. The Standard amp; Poors 500 Index climbed 0.2 percent to 1,403.36 at the close of trading in New York. Treasuries were little changed, with the 10-year note yield at 1.93 percent at 4:34 pm in New York.

Another report yesterday showed consumer confidence rose to the highest in a year in April. The Thomson Reuters/University of Michigans final index of sentiment increased to 76.4 from 76.2 last month. The gauge was projected to hold at the 75.7 level initially reported earlier this month, according to the median forecast in a Bloomberg News survey of economists.

Consumer spending, which accounts for about 70 percent of the economy, contributed 2 percentage points to first-quarter growth, the most since the final three months of 2010. Cars sold last quarter at the fastest pace in four years, according to industry data.

Auto sales softened at the end of the first quarter, and this rapid growth rate is unlikely to be repeated in the second quarter, Ryan Wang, an economist at HSBC Securities USA Inc. in New York, said in a research note.

Doing Better

The US is doing better than some other major economies. The UK slipped into its first double-dip recession since the 1970s, figures showed this week. In Japan and Germany, gross domestic product dropped in the final three months of 2011, while China, the worlds second-largest economy, is also cooling.

The US is where the strength is, Sandy Cutler, chairman and chief executive officer at Eaton Corp., said on an April 23 conference call with analysts.

The Cleveland-based company predicted its US markets, including electrical, hydraulics, aerospace, truck and automotive, will rise 9 percent this year, up from an earlier estimate of 6 percent. For its markets abroad, Eaton reduced its growth forecast to 2 percent from 4 percent, Cutler said.

The GDP data underscore the view of Federal Reserve officials who this week said they expect moderate growth as they repeated borrowing costs are likely to stay low at least through late 2014.

Central Theme

Jobs and the economy are a central theme in political sparring between President Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney.

Obamas job approval rating reached 50 percent in a Gallup Daily tracking poll for April 21-23. The telephone survey of 1,534 adults has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points. The 50 percent approval mark is notable because all incumbent presidents since Dwight Eisenhower at or above the level at the time of the election were re-elected, according to Gallup.

A stabilization in housing also aided first-quarter GDP growth. Residential construction increased at a 19.1 percent rate, the fastest in almost two years.

SAN FRANCISCO — Past midnight, in a dimly lighted warehouse jutting into the San Francisco Bay, Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger introduced something they had been working on for weeks: a photo-sharing iPhone application called Instagram. What happened next was crazier than they could have imagined.

Enlarge This Image

Peter DaSilva for The New York Times

Instagram’s offices in San Francisco. From left, Shayne Sweeney, Mike Krieger, Josh Riedel and Kevin Systrom were at work on their app last May.

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Enlarge This Image

Mike Krieger

Kevin Systrom, an Instagram founder, in a photo taken with the program on the night it was released for the iPhone in 2010.

In a matter of hours, thousands downloaded it. The computer systems handling the photos kept crashing. Neither of them knew what to do.

“Who’s, like, the smartest person I know who I can call up?” Mr. Systrom remembered thinking. He scrolled through his phone and found his man: Adam D’Angelo, a former chief technology officer at Facebook. They had met at a party seven years earlier, over beers in red plastic cups, at the Sigma Nu fraternity at Stanford University. That night in October 2010, Mr. D’Angelo became Instagram’s lifeline.

“Adam spent like 30 minutes on the phone with us,” Mr. Systrom recalled, “walking us through the basic things we needed to do to get back up.”

Mr. Systrom, now 29, offered this as a parable for the roomful of would-be entrepreneurs who came to hear him talk at Stanford last spring: in the intensely competitive start-up scene here, success is as much about who you know as what you know. “Make sure to spend some time after the talk getting to know the people around you,” he told his audience.

Those people, he might have added, might one day shape your destiny. They might one day press money into your palm. They might nudge you to quit your day job and gamble on a vague idea. This week, barely 18 months after that night in the warehouse, Instagram was scooped up by Facebook for $1 billion, turning Mr. Systrom, Mr. Krieger and several of their friends-turned-investors into multimillionaires.

The extraordinary success of Instagram is a tale about the culture of the Bay Area tech scene, driven by a tightly woven web of entrepreneurs and investors who nurture one another’s projects with money, advice and introductions to the right people. By and large, it is a network of young men, many who attended Stanford and had the attention of the world’s biggest venture capitalists before they even left campus.

Among this set, risk-taking is regarded as a badge of honor. Ideas are disposable: if one doesn’t work, you quickly move on to another. Timing matters. You make your own luck.

“There is some serendipity for entrepreneurs, but the people who are the rainmakers are the ones who entrepreneurs need to meet in order to make those connections that lead to success,” said Ted Zoller, a senior fellow at the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation who studies economic development around entrepreneurship. “The social ties that you make are directly correlated to success.”

For Mr. Systrom, the connections forged at Stanford were crucial.

Mr. D’Angelo, a 2006 graduate of the California Institute of Technology, helped him find engineers, set up databases and flesh out features. Soon after Instagram came out of the box, he put his money into it. So did Jack Dorsey, 35, a founder of Twitter; Mr. Systrom had been an intern at the company that became Twitter.

A colleague at Google, where Mr. Systrom worked straight out of college, introduced him to Marc Andreessen, a venture capitalist who had already invested millions in Facebook. In the spring of 2010, even before Instagram was born, Mr. Andreessen wrote him a check for $250,000.

The hothouse for many of these vital connections was a competitive work-study program for budding entrepreneurs called the Mayfield Fellowship Program. Mr. Systrom was a 2005 fellow; Mr. Krieger followed two years later. It was equally important in putting the two men in direct contact with new, hot start-ups in the Bay Area, along with venture capitalists looking to seed newer, hotter start-ups.

“There’s ample opportunity to meet V.C.’s and make connections,” recalled Becky Neil, who was in the Mayfield program with Mr. Systrom in 2005. “We treat them as our peers.” (Mr. Systrom and Mr. Krieger declined to comment for this article, citing regulatory restrictions in advance of Facebook’s public offering.)

Mr. Systrom grew up in a Boston suburb and attended the Middlesex School, a private academy in Concord, Mass., with 375 students and nearly that many acres.

In 2002 he enrolled at Stanford, majoring in management science and engineering, a program created for those who wanted to be knee-deep in the business world. He joined the Sigma Nu fraternity, which, as Ms. Neil recalled, was known for its relatively tame parties, the kind that didn’t end with anyone being rushed to the hospital. They were promoted with music videos, some of which feature an impish Mr. Systrom.

His peers recall Mr. Systrom as having an eye for photography and design, with class presentations that were among the most beautiful. He was naturally gregarious and also keen to be an entrepreneur. He briefly ran a Craigslist-type marketplace catering to Stanford students. As early as 2005, recalled one classmate, Alex Gurevich, Mr. Systrom had his eyes on mobile phones as the wave of the future.

Mr. Systrom wasn’t quite ready to break out on his own.

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Evelyn M. Rusli and Nick Bilton contributed reporting.

 The Public Service Alliance of Canada&’s triennial convention at the Ottawa Convention Centre promises to be a pivotal gathering for the giant union, which is being buffeted by internal strife and facing a hostile government that is eliminating its members&’ jobs, taking away their right to strike and reshaping the role of Canada&’s public service.Photograph by: Nadine Lamoureux

OTTAWA — Canada’s largest public service union is proposing an emergency levy up to $5 a month for all members if job losses resulting from government spending cuts drive membership below 170,000 and pushes the union into a financial shortfall.

The special dues increase will be among the issues debated by more than 825 delegates and observers at the Public Service Alliance of Canada’s triennial convention held this week at the Ottawa Convention Centre.

The giant PSAC is heading into a pivotal convention, buffeted by internal strife and facing a hostile government that is eliminating its members’ jobs, taking away their right to strike and reshaping the role of Canada’s public service.

The Conservatives’ spending cuts will be at the top of the agenda as it maps out a strategy to rebuild its image and political power as part of its campaign to stop the erosion of public services it claims is threatening the health and safety of Canadians.

As delegates dig into the week-long agenda, departments are sending the third wave of written notices to hundreds more public servants warning their jobs will be affected by the government’s spending cuts.

Departments have sent 10,000 notices since the federal budget reduced their spending by $5.2 billion over the next three years. With the latest round, more than 10,000 of PSAC’s 50,000 members in the National Capital Region will have received affected notices. Not all affected employees will be laid off.

But PSAC’s finance committee concluded the union needs a backup plan should spending cuts dig deep enough to throw its revenues off track.

“We can’t scale back services when members need them most,” said one official.

It’s unclear how many jobs will be cut. Unions and opposition parties have hounded the government for details, including the impact on jobs, programs and services. The government says its budget cuts will eliminate 19,200 jobs and 12,000 will be layoffs.

But the $5.2 billion in the budget are only about half of the reductions departments must swallow over the next three years. Departments are still wrestling to absorb reductions of a similar magnitude from the previous two federal budgets.

The union is proposing to monitor the impact of job losses on its membership every six months. The union has about 186,000 members and has prudently built its budget over the next three years on dues revenue from 170,000 members at an average salary of $51,340.

The levy only kicks in if membership dips below 170,000 to make up for revenue shortfall but it can’t “exceed the equivalent of $5 per member” or $60 a year.

But it’s not the only dues increase. A resolution calls for a special levy to shore up the pension plan for PSAC employees which is facing a $30-million deficit by 2015. It will cost the average member $2.58 a month.

Some say the union is facing the biggest challenge in its 45-year history, even surpassing the tensions of the last convention held in Ottawa a dozen years ago when the union emerged from the Liberals’ massive downsizing in the mid 1990s, smaller, torn by divisions and on the brink of bankruptcy.

The union, which vowed then to redouble its membership over the decade, has comfortably regained its financial footing and recruited more than 30,000 new members, mostly from universities. It plans to continue its organizing drive to shore up the 17 unions under the PSAC umbrella being hit by federal cuts.

It has replenished a depleted strike fund with nearly $29 million, boosted its budget for political action campaigns and is proposing a new $1-million fund so resolutions approved at convention can be funded without seeking further dues increases.

But some say the union faces a fundamental rethinking of what it does, how it mobilizes support and harnesses public opinion. Activists argue it must mobilize, organize and be politically active to have the power it needs to do its job at the bargaining table.

The government, with its legislative clout, always holds the power at the bargaining table, but no government has thumbed its nose at collective bargaining like Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservatives, said PSAC president John Gordon.

“They don’t want to bargain. When I look at everything they have done to thwart the ability to free collective bargaining . . . nothing will surprise me anymore,” said Gordon. “The Mulroney Conservatives bargained and were tough negotiators but the Harper Conservatives couldn’t care less about collective bargaining.”

Ken Georgetti, president of the Canadian Labour Congress, said PSAC’s convention comes as labour faces a new “paradigm” and has to new find new ways to mobilize.

Unions have lost the image war and must remake themselves with new tactics and strategies that tap into communities and the support of other like-minded organizations. He argued it’s time unions think hard about merging like the proposed super-union between Canadian Auto Workers and the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers.

“Public servants are a huge group of hard working citizens and when you put a face on them, like the customs officer, the person who delivers the mail or the RCMP, most Canadians like and respect them but as soon as they are the faceless public service, they are seen as people who are overpaid for doing nothing.”

John Fryer, the veteran labour leader who for an overhaul of federal labour relations in a 2001 watershed report, said unions have never faced such a hostile and anti-union government. Treasury Board president Tony Clement regularly derides federal unions as greedy “big union bosses” who only care about jobs losses because fewer dues are going into their pockets.

Federal unions have watched the government take aim at unionized workers in all sectors and say they know it wouldn’t hesitate to take similar action against its employees.

It ordered postal worker back to work; prevented flight attendants from striking; pre-empted Air Canada pilots from striking, backed a private member’s bill to force unions to disclose more financial information and even mused about making the economy an essential service.

“The problem facing them is they effectively no longer have the right to strike and once you don’t have the right to strike you really don’t have and cannot have a proper collective bargaining relationship and when you are in that situation you have choices to make,” said Fryer.

Fryer said PSAC has three choices. It can stay the course and get legislated back to work when it hits an impasse; fight with “rear guard actions to move forward into the past,” such as defying strike ban or change and become more “collaborative.” He acknowledges the Conservatives aren’t open to collaborating with unions “but they won’t be there forever.”

“It’s a real dilemma. They can tough it out and continue to march to the 1960s drummer or they can change.”

Ottawa Citizen

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Copyright (c)
The Ottawa Citizen
Original source article: Spending cuts top of agenda as largest public service union gathers   

Good morning one and all! Welcome to the end of April, to another Sunday, and another rendition of your Sunday Morning Liveblog. My name is Jason. Last night was Washingtons annual Masque Of The Red Death, and yet even still, we wake up and find out that everyone is still having these terrible shows, because we are without shame as a culture, or something. That said, there does appear to be a goody amount of phoning it in set to transpire today — odd guests, B-team panelists, and some Hey Osama bin Laden was killed a year ago today, lets just go with that, guys.

So, lets get on with that first part, where I drink coffee and regret waking up. As per the norm, yall can feel free to have fun and frolic in the comments, drop me a line is you so desire, and, of course, you can always follow me on Twitter, as a matter of last resort.

Okay, well, lets begin with the show that comes on about the same time I bother to get up.

FOX NEWS SUNDAY

So, were going to have a lot of war on terror talk with John Brennan. And then Joel and Victoria Osteen are here? For some reason? And then paneling, with the Fox third stringers.

So, a year ago Wednesday, Osama bin Laden got got by the Seal Team Six. So why not remember it next week? Because this is a Beltway Media Television Show, and its not about you or me or anyone else but them. And they all remember it happening the weekend of the White House Correspondents Dinner, and so this is its anniversary. Where do we stand now in the war on terror, asks Wallace. The answer: far removed from it, and in relative luxury.

But, piss it, lets have John Brennan talk about it. But first! Whats going on with Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng, who yesterday made a rather daring escape from house arrest with the help of what was likely to be a network of people who risked their lives to free him. He is now rumored to be at the American Embassy. SO IS HE, JOHN BRENNAN? TELL NATIONAL TELEVISION ALL THE SECRETS.

LUCKNOW: Chief minister Akhilesh Yadavs outreach programme is not limited to wooing the masses alone. In a bid to make the government-media interaction easier and more seamless, Yadav has also issued orders to create systems that will make it easier for journalists to garner information about government decisions. And, it is all set to happen through a massive technological upgrade that will be effected in the state information department over the coming months.

Confirming the decision, director information, UP, Prabhat Mittal, said: We have been asked to create a centralised mechanism for getting access to all government-related information. For this, we have decided to integrate the entire information department through a single software.

(CBS News) NEW YORK – Facebook and Twitter are now essential tools for protest movements like Occupy Wall Street. According to a survey by the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP), nine in 10 law enforcement agencies say they monitor social media. CBS News correspondent Tony Guida reports they are using what they find to make cases against demonstrators.

When Occupy Wall Street occupied the Brooklyn Bridge last October, police arrested 732 protesters, virtually all charged with disorderly conduct — neither a crime nor a misdemeanor — but a violation, like loitering.

Its a whole lot of fuss over a politicized traffic ticket, said 23-year-old Malcolm Harris, who was among those arrested. However, he was one of just a handful whose Twitter account was subpoenaed.

The DA maintains that Harris public Tweets prove his intent to defy police orders to disperse.

Its a fishing expedition and theyre going fishing for whatever information they can dredge up, whatever will make this harder on the people going out there protesting, said Harris.

Harriss lawyer, Martin Stolar, said the subpoena of Tweets in a case that is not even a crime is much ado about nothing.

Were sitting here with this subpoena smashing a gnat with a sledgehammer, and its absurd, said Stolar.

Judge Matthew Sciarrino disagrees. Citing Twitters user agreement that it is authorized to make your tweets available to the rest of the world…, he ruled that the Tweets the defendant posted were not his, and therefore he has no standing to challenge their subpoena.

Harris plans to keep up his fight.

Twitter remains a major organizational tool for the Occupy Wall Street movement. Its power figures to be on display again next Tuesday when a huge May Day rally is planned at a park.