24 April 2011 Last updated at 12:22Hague denies AV 'lie' claims, but says coalition secure
Many accusations are directed at the No campaign rather than the Conservative Party, Mr Hague said
William Hague has played down claims that the No campaign in the Alternative Vote referendum has lied, but said the coalition will survive any fallout.
He made the comments after a row escalated over the cost of switching to AV and whether it would benefit parties such as the British National Party.
The Foreign Secretary told the BBC's Andrew Marr show that he agreed with the claims made by the No camp.
Lib Dem MP Simon Hughes said earlier the No campaign was "telling untruths".
'Inventing facts'Conservative party chairman Baroness Warsi has said changing the UK voting system to AV would mean more votes and legitimacy for the BNP.
She said it would see politicians "pandering to extremist votes".
Mr Hughes said on the Andrew Marr show that she had been "inventing facts".
But Mr Hague supported Baroness Warsi.
Continue reading the main storyTHE REFERENDUM CHOICE
At the moment MPs are elected by the first-past-the-post system, where the candidate getting the most votes in a constituency is elected.
On 5 May all registered UK voters will be able to vote Yes or No on whether to change the way MPs are elected to the Alternative Vote system.
Under the Alternative Vote system, voters rank candidates in their constituency in order of preference.
Anyone getting more than 50% of first-preference votes is elected.
If no-one gets 50% of votes, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated and their backers' second choices allocated to those remaining.
This process continues until one candidate has at least 50% of all votes in that round.
He said: "I think she's right, because what do you do in a system where there are third and fourth preferences?
"Will the candidates in marginal seats have to think about how they're going to get the second, third and fourth preferences of people who have voted for the BNP?"
He added: "These things are therefore not disputed facts, they're matters of opinion about the implication of AV and they should be understood as that."
He also said "there was no doubt" that having a more complicated system "would cost more" and that it was a legitimate issue to raise in a campaign.
Mr Hughes, the Lib Dems' deputy leader, said: "The people responsible ought to back off, own up that they are inventing things to try and win the campaign for the status quo and argue on the facts and merits of their campaign which is a poor one rather than trying to frighten people into keeping the current position."
He added that he proposed to go to the Electoral Commission to ensure future elections did not see "untrue statements in official campaigns circulated".
Mr Hague stressed his own objections to the AV system.
"You can argue for a decisive system, which we have most of the time in this country, or you can argue for a proportional system as they have in Germany.
"In my view what you can't argue for is a system that is neither decisive nor proportional, that can be indecisive and proportional at the same time," he said.
Coalition survivalBoth Mr Hague and Mr Hughes agreed that despite having differing views on whether to change the voting system, the coalition would survive the referendum.
Nick Clegg has described those campaigning for a "No" vote as "right-wing clique who want to keep things the way they are," in the Independent on Sunday.
In response, Mr Hague said he did not know anyone in government who fitted that description and said the coalition was working well.
"Yes, we all have strong feelings but at the end of it the coalition will work very well together as it is at the moment.
"We're used in general election campaigns to accusations flying back and forth and I think a lot of these accusations are directed at the No campaign rather than the Conservative Party.
"In a referendum campaign feelings run high, people get excited. The important thing for people to know is that the coalition is working well together."
And Mr Hughes said the coalition contained "civilised individuals", who could work well together.
BBC correspondent Louise Stewart said politicians may not have expected the language to be quite so personal but what it did mean was the campaigns were getting their messages across before the public's attention was taken up by the royal wedding.
Sunday, 24 April 2011
BBC News - Hague denies AV 'lie' claims, but says coalition secure
Dwile Flonking - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. Please improve this article if you can. The talk page may contain suggestions. (June 2008) The pastime of Dwile Flonking involves two teams, each taking a turn to dance around the other while attempting to avoid a beer-soaked dwile (cloth) thrown by the non-dancing team.[1]
'Flonk' is probably a corruption of flong, an old past tense of fling; and "dwile" is a knitted floor cloth, from the Dutch dweil, meaning mop.[2]
Appropriate and seasonal dress is important.[citation needed] The BBC provides photos of seasoned flonkers here and here.
Contents
[hide][edit] Rules
According to The Friends Of The Lewes Arms, "The rules of the game are impenetrable and the result is always contested." However, less alcohol-centric authorities provide more clarity.
A 'dull witted person' is chosen as the referee or 'jobanowl' and the two teams decide who flonks first by tossing a sugar beet. The game begins when the jobanowl shouts "Here y'go t'gither!"
The non-flonking team joins hands and dances in a circle around a member of the flonking team, a practice known as 'girting'. The flonker dips his dwile-tipped 'driveller' (a pole 2–3 ft long and made from hazel or yew) into a bucket of beer, then spins around in the opposite direction to the girters and flonks his dwile at them.
If the dwile misses completely it is known as a 'swadger' or a 'swage'. When this happens the flonker must drink the contents of an ale-filled 'gazunder' (chamber pot ('goes-under' the bed)) before the wet dwile has passed from hand to hand along the line of now non-girting girters chanting the ancient ceremonial mantra of "pot pot pot".
A full game comprises four 'snurds', each snurd being one team taking a turn at girting. The jobanowl adds interest and difficulty to the game by randomly switching the direction of rotation, and will levy drinking penalties on any player found not taking the game seriously enough.
Points are awarded as follows:
- +3: a 'wanton'- a direct hit on a girter's head
- +2: a 'morther' or 'marther'- a body hit
- +1: a 'ripple' or 'ripper'- a leg hit
- -1 per sober person at the end of the game
At the end of the game, the team with the most number of points wins, and will be awarded a ceremonial pewter gazunder.
[edit] History
The earliest definitely known game of Dwile Flonking was played at the Beccles Festival of Sport in 1966. According to BBC research, 'No one can remember the score, although team members recalled feeling "pretty fragile" the following morning.' There is a reference to the sport, however, which predates the Beccles Festival - originating in the fertile, if weird, imagination of Michael Bentine, who had a show called "It's a Square World", on the BBC. A skit in one episode had explorers stumble across a group of natives in the darkest reaches of the English countryside playing the sport. The episode aired sometime between 1960 and 1964 when the show was originally broadcast.
The organisers of the Beccles festival event were Andrew Leverett and Robert Devereux, printing apprentices at Clay's of Bungay and Clowes of Beccles, respectively, who had apparently been shown the rules on the only decipherable portion of a parchment document entitled: 'Ye Olde Booke of Suffolk Harvest Rituels', which George High of Bungay claimed to have found the same year while clearing out his late grandfather's attic. The inaugural teams were formed by employees of Clay's and Clowes.
Some suspicion was cast on the game in 1967 when the Eastern Daily Press ran an article which stated inter alia that the county archivist had failed to find any mention of the game amongst the county records. Dwile Flonking featured as a key element in legal hearings later that year assessing an application for a licence extension to cater for the dinner dance of the Waveney Valley Dwile Flonking Association. The Waveney Valley Dwile Flonking Association went on to make their television debut on The Eamonn Andrews television programme in 1967, which resulted in letters from Australia, Hong Kong and America asking for a Flonking rule book, although in the Australians' case this may have been a misprint.
Schott's apparently retcons the game claiming an historical evidence in a 16th century painting by Pieter Brueghel the Elder: Children's games.
[edit] Notes
- ^ Encyclopedia of Traditional British Rural Sports by Tony Collins, John Martin, Wray Vamplew
- ^ dwile, Oxford English Dictionary (2 ed.), Oxford University Press, 1989, http://dictionary.oed.com/, retrieved 2009-08-14.
[edit] Further reading
- Finn, Timothy: Pub Games of England (Oleander Press)
[edit] External links
- "The art of Dwile Flonking" at BBC Suffolk, 11 September 2003.
- Dwyle Flunking at the Lewes Arms in Lewes, East Sussex
- Play Virtual Dwile Flonking online, courtesy of the BBC
- Video of Dwyle Flunking at the Lewes Arms from 2008
- World Wide Words
- http://TheNorfolkBroads.Org/Dwile%20Flonking.html World Dwile Flonking Championships
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwile_Flonking"
Cockchafer - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - "The May Bugs are out!"
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
Cockchafer Scientific classification Kingdom: Animalia Phylum: Arthropoda Class: Insecta Order: Coleoptera Family: Scarabaeidae Genus: Melolontha Species M. melolontha (Linnaeus, 1758)
M. hippocastani Fabricius, 1801
M. pectoralis Germar, 1824The cockchafer (colloquially called may bug, billy witch,[1] or spang beetle,[1] particularly in East Anglia) is a European beetle of the genus Melolontha, in the family Scarabaeidae.
Once abundant throughout Europe and a major pest in the periodical years of "mass flight", it had been nearly eradicated in the middle of the 20th century through extensive use of pesticides and has even been locally exterminated in many regions. However, since an increase in regulation of pest control beginning in the 1980s, its numbers have started to grow again.
Contents
[hide][edit] Taxonomy
There are three species of European cockchafers:
- The common cockchafer, Melolontha melolontha
- The forest cockchafer, Melolontha hippocastani
- The large cockchafer, Melolontha pectoralis, which is very rare and occurs only in south-western Germany.
[edit] Description
Imagines (adults) of the common cockchafer reach sizes of 25–30 mm; the forest cockchafer is a bit smaller (20–25 mm). The two species can best be distinguished by the form of their pygidium (the back end): it is long and slender in the common cockchafer, but shorter and knob-shaped at the end in the forest cockchafer. Both have a brown colour.
Male cockchafers have seven "leaves" on their antennae, whereas the females have only six.
The species M. pectoralis looks similar, but its pygidium is rounded. The cockchafer should not be confused with the similar European chafer (Rhizotrogus majalis), which has a completely different life cycle, nor with the June beetles (Phyllophaga spp.), which are native to North America, nor with the summer chafer (or "European June bug", Amphimallon solstitiale), which emerges in June and has a two-year life cycle. (All of these are Scarabaeidae, have white grubs, and are turf pests.)
[edit] Life cycle
Adults appear at the end of April or in May and live for about five to seven weeks. After about two weeks, the female begins laying eggs, which she buries about 10 to 20 cm deep in the earth. She may do this several times until she has laid between 60 and 80 eggs. The common cockchafer lays its eggs in fields, whereas the Forest Cockchafer stays in the vicinity of the trees. The preferred food for adults is oak leaves, but they will also feed on conifer needles.
The larvae, known as "white grubs" or "chafer grubs", hatch after some four to six weeks. They feed on plant roots, for instance potato roots. The grubs develop in the earth for some three to four years, in colder climates even five years, and grow continually to a size of about 4–5 cm, before they pupate in early autumn and develop into a cockchafer in some six weeks.
The cockchafer overwinters in the earth at depths between 20 and 100 cm. They work their way to the surface only in spring.
Because of their long development time as larvae, cockchafers appear in a cycle of every three or four years; the years vary from region to region. There is a larger cycle of some 30 years superimposed, in which they occur (or rather, used to occur) in unusually high numbers (10000s).
[edit] Pest control and history
Both the grubs and the imagoes have a voracious appetite and thus have been and sometimes continue to be a major problem in agriculture and forestry. In the pre-industrialized era, the main mechanism to control their numbers was to collect and kill the adult beetles, thereby interrupting the cycle. They were once very abundant: in 1911, more than 20 million individuals were collected in 18 km² of forest.
Collecting adults was an only moderately successful method. In the Middle Ages, pest control was rare, and people had no effective means to protect their harvest. This gave rise to events that seem bizarre from a modern perspective. In 1320, for instance, cockchafers were brought to court in Avignon and sentenced to withdraw within three days onto a specially designated area, otherwise they would be outlawed. Subsequently since they failed to comply, they were collected and killed. (Similar animal trials also occurred for many other animals in the Middle Ages.)[2]
In some areas and times, cockchafers were even served as food. A 19th century recipe from France for cockchafer soup reads: "roast one pound of cockchafers without wings and legs in sizzling butter, then cook them in a chicken soup, add some veal liver and serve with chives on a toast". And a German newspaper from Fulda from the 1920s tells of students eating sugar-coated cockchafers. A cockchafer stew is referred to in W.G. Sebald's novel The Emigrants.
Only with the modernization of agriculture in the 20th century and the invention of chemical pesticides did it become possible to effectively combat the cockchafer. Combined with the transformation of many pastures into agricultural land, this has resulted in a decrease of the cockchafer to near-extinction in some areas in Europe in the 1970s. Since then, agriculture has generally reduced its use of pesticides. Because of environmental and public health concerns (pesticides may enter the food chain and thus also the human body) many chemical pesticides have been phased out in the European Union and worldwide. In recent years, the cockchafer's numbers have been increasing again, causing damage to over 1,000 km² of land all over Europe. At present, no chemical pesticides are approved for use against cockchafers, and only biological measures are utilised for control: for instance, pathogenic fungi or nematodes that kill the grubs are applied to the soil.
[edit] Cultural references
Children since antiquity have played with cockchafers. In ancient Greece, boys caught the insect, tied a linen thread to its feet and set it free, amusing themselves to watch it fly in spirals. English boys in Victorian times played a very similar game by sticking a pin through one of its wings.[3]
The cockchafer is featured in a German children's rhyme similar to the English Ladybird, Ladybird:
Maikäfer flieg...
Dein Vater ist im Krieg
Deine Mutter ist in Pommerland
Pommerland ist abgebrannt
Maikäfer flieg!Cockchafer fly...
Your father is at war
Your mother is in Pomerania
Pomerania is burned to the ground
Cockchafer fly!The verse dates back to the Thirty Years' War in the first half of the 17th Century, in which Pomerania was pillaged and suffered heavily. Since World War II, it is associated in Germany also with the closing months of that war, when Russian troops advanced into Eastern Germany.
The cockchafer was the basis for the "fifth trick" in the well-known illustrated German book Max and Moritz dating from 1865.
In the novel The Siege of Krishnapur by J.G. Farrell, the character Lucy rips off her clothes and faints upon being covered in a swarm of cockchafers.
Cockchafers also play a part in Hans Christian Andersen's version of Thumbelina.[4]
There have been five Royal Navy ships named HMS Cockchafer.
The binomial nomenclature Melolontha melolontha was mentioned in an episode of Bones (TV series) entitled "The Tough Man in the Tender Chicken" as Dr.s Brennan and Hodgins enter the lab, Dr. Hodgins said he came in (to the Lab) early to see if his Melolontha melolontha had hatched.
[edit] References
- ^ a b Natural History Museum, London: Image reference 54142: English Insects illustration of Minotaur beetles and Cockchafer by James Barbut, URL last accessed 2010-05-25.[dead link]
- ^ Barton, K.: Verfluchte Kreaturen: Lichtenbergs "Proben seltsamen Aberglaubens" und die Logik der Hexen- und Insektenverfolgung im "Malleus Maleficarum", in Joost, U.; Neumann, A. (eds): Lichtenberg-Jahrbuch 2004, p. 11ff, Saarbrücken 2004 (SDV Saarländische Druckerei und Verlag), ISBN 3930843870. In German.
- ^ Peter Parley's annual: A Christmas and New Year's present for young people.. By Samuel Clark, Ben George, Peter Parley, Samuel Griswold Goodrich; p56
- ^ http://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/Thu.shtml
[edit] External links
Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Melolontha melolontha
Wikispecies has information related to: Cockchafer
- Cockchafers and other chafers
- Der Maikäfer, from the Senckenberg Museum in Frankfurt (German)
- Images (German)
- Pests: The Cockchafer with links to images and French and English text.
- Biological Pest Control Research and risk assessment on the biological control of insect pests in the EU.
- Fact sheet on some other chafers that also have white grubs and are turf pests.
- Elegy by German folksinger Reinhard Mey on the vanished cockchafers of days gone by: Es gibt keine Maikäfer mehr
- Maikäfer flieg
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cockchafer"
BBC News - Lasers could replace spark plugs in car engines
24 April 2011 Last updated at 01:36Lasers could replace spark plugs in car engines
By Jason Palmer Science and technology reporter, BBC NewsTwo or three lasers are focused to ignite fuel in more than one place
Continue reading the main storyRelated Stories
Car engines could soon be fired by lasers instead of spark plugs, researchers say.
A team at the Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics will report on 1 May that they have designed lasers that could ignite the fuel/air mixture in combustion engines.
The approach would increase efficiency of engines, and reduce their pollution, by igniting more of the mixture.
The team is in discussions with a spark plug manufacturer.
The idea of replacing spark plugs - a technology that has changed little since their invention 150 years ago - with lasers is not a new one.
Spark plugs only ignite the fuel mixture near the spark gap, reducing the combustion efficiency, and the metal that makes them up is slowly eroded as they age.
Continue reading the main story“Start Quote
End Quote Takunori Taira National Institutes of Natural Sciences, OkazakiIn the past, lasers that could meet those requirements were... big, inefficient, and unstable”
But only with the advent of smaller lasers has the idea of laser-based combustion become a practical one.
Ceramic powdersA team from Romania and Japan has now demonstrated a system that can focus two or three laser beams into an engine's cylinders at variable depths.
That increases the completeness of combustion and neatly avoids the issue of degradation with time.
However, it requires that lasers of high pulse energies are used; just as with spark plugs, a great deal of energy is needed to cause ignition of the fuel.
"In the past, lasers that could meet those requirements were limited to basic research because they were big, inefficient, and unstable," said Takunori Taira of the National Institutes of Natural Sciences in Okazaki, Japan.
Spark plugs only ignite the fuel mixture very near the spark gap
"Nor could they be located away from the engine, because their powerful beams would destroy any optical fibres that delivered light to the cylinders."
The team has been developing a new approach to the problem: lasers made of ceramic powders that are pressed into spark-plug sized cylinders.
These ceramic devices are lasers in their own right, gathering energy from compact, lower-power lasers that are sent in via optical fibre and releasing it in pulses just 800 trillionths of a second long.
Unlike the delicate crystals typically used in high-power lasers, the ceramics are more robust and can better handle the heat within combustion engines.
The team is in discussions to commercialise the technology with Denso, a major automobile component manufacturer.
Flickr - projectbrainsaver
www.flickr.com
|
