Kepler's brilliant third law "The square of the orbital period of a planet is proportional to the cube of the semi-major axis of its orbit."was discovered on this day in 1618. It tells us how long a year would be for a planet with a known orbit. It was an insight as powerful as any of Ramanujan's, but explicable. Kepler was a rational, religious man. His mother had been denounced as a witch in 1615, but Johannes managed to have her freed. If she had cast a spell, she never did it again.
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For twenty two years I have been responsibly addressing an issue, and I cannot carry on. I am petitioning the NSW Premier Barry O'Farrell to remedy my distress. I leave it up to him if he chooses to address the issue. Regardless of your opinion of conservative government, the issue is pressing. Please sign my petition at http://www.change.org/en-AU/petitions/nsw-premier-barry-o-farrell-remedy-the-persecution-of-dd-ball?
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Happy birthday and many happy returns Lucy Sun and Brendan Bruno. Astronomical significance of the day .. Johannes Kepler discovers the third law of planetary motion in 1618. And although the day will end, the promise of a new one is punctuated with a dawn. The dawn of this day in 415 BC saw the last of Hypatia, daughter of Theon. She was chief librarian of Alexandria, and she invented the astrolabe. She rocked. Remember, birthdays are good for you. The more you have, the longer you live.
- 1286 – John III, Duke of Brittany (d. 1341)
- 1495 – John of God, Portuguese friar and saint (d. 1550)
- 1702 – Anne Bonny, Irish-American pirate (d. 1782)
- 1712 – John Fothergill, English physician (d. 1780)
- 1714 – Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, German composer (d. 1788)
- 1783 – Hannah Van Buren, American wife of Martin Van Buren (d. 1819)
- 1841 – Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., American jurist (d. 1935)
- 1859 – Kenneth Grahame, English author (d. 1932)
- 1865 – Frederic Goudy, American type designer, created Copperplate Gothic and Goudy Old Style (d. 1947)
- 1900 – Howard H. Aiken, American computer scientist, created the Harvard Mark I (d. 1973)
- 1921 – Alan Hale, Jr., American actor (d. 1990)
- 1922 – Ralph H. Baer, German-American video game designer, created the Magnavox Odyssey
- 1943 – Lynn Redgrave, English actress (d. 2010)
- 1945 – Micky Dolenz, American singer-songwriter, drummer, and actor (The Monkees)
- 1947 – Carole Bayer Sager, American singer-songwriter and painter
- 1947 – Michael S. Hart, American author, founded Project Gutenberg (d. 2011)
- 1976 – Freddie Prinze, Jr., American actor
- 1997 – Jurina Matsui, Japanese singer and actress (AKB48 and SKE48)
- 1998 – Fargol Soroush, Graphic designer and Photographer
Matches
- 1010 – Ferdowsi completes his epic poem Shāhnāmeh.
- 1576 – Spanish explorer Diego García de Palacio first sights the ruins of the ancient Mayan city of Copán.
- 1618 – Johannes Kepler discovers the third law of planetary motion.
- 1655 – John Casor becomes the first legally-recognized slave in England's North American colonies where a crime was not committed.
- 1775 – An anonymous writer, thought by some to be Thomas Paine, publishes "African Slavery in America", the first article in the American colonies calling for the emancipation of slaves and the abolition of slavery.
- 1782 – Gnadenhütten massacre: Ninety-six Native Americans in Gnadenhutten, Ohio, who had converted to Christianity are killed by Pennsylvania militiamen in retaliation for raids carried out by other Indians.
- 1801 – War of the Second Coalition: At the Battle of Abukir, a British force under Sir Ralph Abercromby lands in Egypt with the aim of ending the French campaign in Egypt and Syria.
- 1817 – The New York Stock Exchange is founded.
- 1910 – French aviatrix Raymonde de Laroche becomes the first woman to receive a pilot's license.
- 1917 – The United States Senate votes to limit filibusters by adopting the cloture rule.
- 1920 – The Arab Kingdom of Syria, the first modern Arab state to come into existence, is established.
- 1947 – Thirteen thousand troops sent by the Kuomintang government of China arrived Taiwan after the 228 Incident and launched crackdowns which killed at least thousands of people, including many elites. This turned into a major root of the Taiwan independence movement.
- 1949 – Mildred Gillars ("Axis Sally") is condemned to prison for treason.
- 1963 – The Ba'ath Party comes to power in Syria in a coup d'état by a clique of quasi-leftist Syrian Army officers calling themselves the National Council of the Revolutionary Command.
- 1966 – A bomb planted by Irish Republicans destroys Nelson's Pillar in Dublin.
- 1974 – Charles de Gaulle Airport opens in Paris, France.
- 1978 – The first radio episode of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams, is transmitted on BBC Radio 4.
- 1979 – Philips demonstrates the Compact Disc publicly for the first time.
- 1983 – U.S. President Ronald Reagan calls the Soviet Union an "evil empire".
Despatches
- 415 – Hypatia of Alexandria, Neoplatonist philosopher and astronomer
- 1869 – Hector Berlioz, French composer (b. 1803)
- 1917 – Ferdinand von Zeppelin, German general and businessman, founded the Zeppelin Company (b. 1838)
- 1923 – Johannes Diderik van der Waals, Dutch physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1837)
- 1930 – William Howard Taft, American politician, 27th President of the United States (b. 1857)
- 1935 – Hachikō, Japanese dog (b. 1923)
- 1942 – José Raúl Capablanca, Cuban chess player (b. 1888)
Bolt Report tomorrow
Andrew Bolt March 08 2014 (11:31am)
The Bolt Report tomorrow - all the better for being an hour long.
Joining me - Labor’s Anthony Albanese, Michael Kroger and Cassandra Wilkinson.
And our new NewsWatch segment, this week with Rowan Dean.
Among the topics: Abbott’s religious war, the Green’s religion mocked, Qantas, the ABC’s expensive cluelessness and how Obama was blind-sided by Putin.
On Network 10 at 10 am and 4pm.
The videos of the show appear here.
===Joining me - Labor’s Anthony Albanese, Michael Kroger and Cassandra Wilkinson.
And our new NewsWatch segment, this week with Rowan Dean.
Among the topics: Abbott’s religious war, the Green’s religion mocked, Qantas, the ABC’s expensive cluelessness and how Obama was blind-sided by Putin.
On Network 10 at 10 am and 4pm.
The videos of the show appear here.
The Press Council should just publish its own paper
Andrew Bolt March 08 2014 (11:20am)
Gerard Henderson on the dangerous overreach of the Australian Press Council, a body that seems too keen to interfere in free speech - especially that of conservatives:
===On February 27 this year, the APC issued an adjudication in what is commonly called the case of Ashby v Slipper. In December 2012, Justice Steven Rares of the Federal Court threw out a sexual harassment claim brought by one-time political staffer James Ashby against his former employer, Peter Slipper…(Thanks to reader Peter of Bellevue Hill.)
An examination of evidence before the Federal Court suggested that Ashby had a strong case. Yet Rares threw out Ashby’s claim. He found that Ashby’s predominant purpose in taking this action was to pursue a political attack against Slipper and that Harmer had engaged in an abuse of process…
And then along came left-wing activist and former Fairfax Media journalist Margo Kingston, the author of Not Happy John! Defending Our Democracy. Enough said. Kingston, who had no standing in the matter, complained to the APC that The Daily Telegraph’s report of the Rares decision - which appeared on page 17 of the newspaper on December 13, 2012, under the heading “Court rejects Slipper case” - was not prominent enough.
A reasonable person, whether or not legally trained, who read Rares’s judgment should have come to the conclusion that Ashby’s appeal had a reasonable chance of success… But Disney and his colleagues at the APC seemed to assume that Rares’s judgment, at first instance, resolved the matter. In its adjudication of February 26, 2014, the APC upheld Kingston’s complaint…
On the day of the APC’s decision, the Federal Court comprising justices John Mansfield, Antony Siopis and John Gilmour delivered its decision in relation to Ashby’s application for leave to appeal. Mansfield and Gilmour upheld Ashby’s appeal and awarded him costs… The court found that “the primary judge” had made numerous errors…
The Daily Telegraph reported the Federal Court’s decision to grant Ashby’s application for leave to appeal on page 17 (on the right side of the paper) - the same page on which it had reported Rares’s decision to dismiss Ashby’s initial application as an abuse of process…
The APC’s decision in this case amounts to an improper intrusion into the right of an editor to cover a story in accordance with editorial judgment on the day in question. Moreover, it is unlikely that Kingston would have got involved in such a way if the target of sexual harassment complaint was a politician supportive of a Coalition prime minister.
Vulgarians break through the ABC gate
Andrew Bolt March 08 2014 (10:28am)
I was surprised by Don Watson’s complacent claim that the ABC is the home of the cultured:
Example one:
UPDATE
It’s the ABC’s critics who are the vulgarians, playing with their privates and sniffing anuses?
===Former Labor speechwriter Don Watson says critics of the ABC’s Leftist bias are simply not as cultured as, well, Leftist Watson himself:It’s true that the ABC should be at the centre of Australian life and a reproach to vulgarians. But this week came more evidence that the vulgarians have stormed the gates.
The so-called “conservatives” who berate the ABC are not conservatives but heretics, radicals, vulgarians ... it is their fate to feel marginalised, denied, unfulfilled ... like fringe-dwellers excluded from something essential at the centre of Australian life - namely ... the ABC.
Example one:
THE NSW Supreme Court has given The Australian’s columnist Chris Kenny the green light to sue the ABC for defamation over a segment that depicted him having sex with a dog…Example two, via Gerard Henderson’s Media Watch Dog - this week especially excellent:
Kenny launched defamation proceedings against the ABC, presenter Andrew Hansen and production company Giant Dwarf after they refused to apologise for the segment, which included a photoshopped image and the caption “Chris ‘Dog F . . ker’ Kenny”.
Supreme Court judge Robert Beech-Jones said the image and caption were “massively disproportionate” to the show’s criticism of Kenny’s call for ABC funding cuts and exposed him to “extreme ridicule”.
What a thrill, then, when The Book Club on ABC 1 got around to discussing smells – or sniffs – towards the end of the program last Tuesday.Don Watson says those who criticise the ABC are “vulgarians”. So what does that make those I’ve criticised here?
As usual, Jennifer Byrne was in the presenter’s chair and the panellists were comedian Kate Langbroek, The Age’s literary editor Jason Steger, author and commentator Marieke Hardy (who is always telling us that she is the – meaning “a” – granddaughter of the one-time Stalinist Frank Hardy) and crime fiction writer Michael Robotham.
Kate Langbroek was invited to kick off the “favourite book” segment. She chose Chandler Burr’s The Perfect Scent: A Year Inside the Perfume Industry in Paris and New York (Picador, 2009)…
As the discussion continued, the tone lowered. Let’s go to the transcript:
Michael Robotham: [The Perfect Scent] …. did lead me to one of the most entertaining afternoons of my life at the David Jones perfume counter.At this stage, everyone started talking over everyone else – and the discussion got even worse. Some highlights:
Jennifer Byrne: Well, there you go.
Michael Robotham: Where I was talking to these women – I nearly got myself arrested when I said to a woman did she think this perfume had an undertone of fresh sperm?
[Much mutual laughter]
Eventually Ms Hardy got to read the really sought after bit:
Marieke Hardy: Can I please, please read it? Please can I read it? I’ve read this aloud to so many. I would call up strangers and read this. I would get arrested next. Okay, this is about an animalistic scent. “It is one of the most astounding smells you will ever experience. It is, to put it most precisely, the rich, thick scent of the anus of a clean man combined with the smells of his warm skin, his armpits sometime around midday, the head of his ripely scented uncircumcised penis, a trace of ammonia and the sweetish, nutty, acrid, visceral smell of his breath. There’s simply no other way to describe it”. I don’t want to smell like that. I mean, I’m sure it’s delicious. But I –
Jennifer Byrne: And that’s one he liked!
Marieke Hardy: Yeah, he loves that.
Jennifer Byrne: He loves that.
Marieke Hardy: It’s a rich, clean anus.
Kate Langbroek: That’s not a surprise, is it?
Jason Steger: He does say later on, he does say : “The smell of clean anus turns out to be extremely helpful in perfume”.
Marieke Hardy: He loves it. Yes.
Jason Steger: And let me go on: “In trace amounts it deepens and enriches floral scents, it fleshes out green scents Jacques Guerlain – this is a man who was creating perfumes as recently as the 1950s – famously said that all of his perfumes contained, somewhere inside them, the smell of the underside of his mistress. He was referring to all three holes.”
[Much mutual laughter]
Jason Steger: I mean, what a way to write about –
Marieke Hardy: I know! That, I think, is quite sexy. But straight after that it says: “The smell of shit is crucial to any high quality chocolate scent.”
Kate Langbroek: Okay, so now try and tell me you didn’t freaking’ enjoy the book!
[Much mutual laughter]
Kate Langbroek: Oh my God. You [Jason Steger] had to punctuate that by taking your glasses off.
Jason Steger: Well, they were steaming up.
Jennifer Byrne: I’ve gotta say -
- Kate Langbroek declared that “all these people slothing around in a pair of thongs trying to cover up the stench of their unfreshly washed anus – it’s amazing.” [Much mutual laughter]
UPDATE
It’s the ABC’s critics who are the vulgarians, playing with their privates and sniffing anuses?
(Thanks to reader Ed.)
Labor losing the Qantas argument because we’re not that dumb
Andrew Bolt March 08 2014 (9:57am)
One of those deeply reassuring moments when you realise good policy can beat rank populism, after all.
Jacqueline Maley:
Henry Ergas:
UPDATE
Simon Benson:
===Jacqueline Maley:
It is too early to know whether [Opposition Bill] Shorten’s job-killer theme will hit its mark with voters, but MPs on both sides report privately that (possible) greater foreign ownership of Qantas is not something their constituents are clamouring about…Dennis Shanahan:
At times Shorten sounded like he was clutching at reasons for his opposition to the [Qantas Sale Act] changes (which many on his side have supported in different forms and at different times). He risked sounding mired in the 1950s, out of step with a population that has come to accept a fast rate of change when it comes to matters social and economic…
But during question time this week, arguing for opening Qantas to great change, [Prime Minister Tony Abbott] looked like a man for the times, as opposed to a man behind the times. It was disconcerting for some, not least the opposition.
AUSTRALIA’S political and economic debate is caught in a unreasoned bout of iconomania - where something is granted icon status and therefore entitled to special treatment, unbridled taxpayer funds and emotional defences based on misplaced nostalgia…
After cabinet’s decision to amend the Qantas Sale Act to change foreign ownership levels, Opposition Leader Bill Shorten said: “I think Australians, whether or not they fly Qantas ... believe that it is important that Australia, an island continent, the 12th largest economy in the world, is capable of supporting a majority Australian owned business. They will understand that when Australians were stuck in Bangkok or Beirut, it was the flying kangaroo that came to their rescue...”
In addition to Qantas there has been a relay of emotional, but hollow, defences of icons that have come under stress because of poor performance: GM Holden, SPC Ardmona, unions and the ABC. Tony Abbott has adopted a tough-minded approach on industry assistance and an end to corporate welfare, an insistence on the return of the Australian Building and Construction Commission and a royal commission into corruption in the building industry, and demands for higher standards at the national broadcaster…
The difficulty in criticising the Coalition government’s agenda on taxpayer-funded assistance to Qantas, GMH and the car industry generally, on union organisation and on the ABC in cultural “iconic” terms is that the emotional political argument does not reflect economic reality or the attitude of large sections of the electorate. On many of these so-called iconic issues, Labor is on the wrong side of reason and community and consumer views.
The simple point is that all of these areas under pressure from the Coalition to improve performance are fundamentally in trouble because the Australian people as voters and consumers have delivered adverse judgments by simply not buying the product.
Henry Ergas:
...if Qantas’s costs remain too high, its position could unravel.... That makes it crucial that Qantas be given the best chance to compete, which requires repealing the sale act.(Thanks to reader Peter.)
Unfortunately, Qantas’s stubbornness about its line in the sand is rivalled only by Labor’s grim determination to keep its head in the sand on the sale act ...
(W)hat Labor wants (is) a corporate landscape of evolutionary leftovers, sheltered on their way to extinction, providing taxpayer-funded fodder to its union mates. Nothing could be further from Abbott’s vision; nor could anything be further from what is needed to protect jobs and prosperity.
UPDATE
Simon Benson:
[Shorten] presents, however, as a leader lacking not just a sense of conviction but an absence of any comprehensible ideology. The question starting to be asked is whether he is suited to the role of leading the modern Labor Party…(Thanks to reader Brett t r.)
One of Shorten’s own factional colleagues lamented privately on Tuesday after emerging from a caucus meeting that it was like watching a “theatre of the unwell”.
“We are not now at risk of being viewed as pre-Hawke Keating, we are not even pre-Whitlam. We are looking more like a pre-Calwell Labor party,” he decried…
He was referring to the economic nationalism and protectionism which Labor appears to have adopted as the language of the new economy. It started with the auto-industry and reached a crescendo this week over Qantas…
Labor in opposition has historically gravitated back to the Left. But this natural cycling has become demonstrably more pronounced since the post election structural changes to the party — primarily the decision to allow the party branch members a potential veto over caucus in the election of the party’s leader… Shorten is confronted with a new internal constituency often dominated by social misfits, union hacks and members of the Socialist Left…
Labor’s recast policies on asylum boats, climate change, energy policy and industrial relations are all a consequence of this new paradigm. They may make sense to his internal constituency but makes no sense to the majority of Australians.
Wages of sin: Greens could beat Labor in Tasmania
Andrew Bolt March 08 2014 (9:47am)
They supped with the green devil and must pay:
UPDATE
Senator-elect David Leyonhjelm:
===TASMANIAN Labor is on track to suffer the ignominy of not only losing office but also ceding official opposition status to the Greens.If Labor suggests the Greens are just Labor’s purer selves, only less practical, it will be destroyed the minute it proves that it’s not practical, either.
An analysis of the latest opinion poll, published in Hobart’s The Mercury today, suggests the Liberals will win a clear majority of 14 seats in the 25-seat House of Assembly at the state election next week.
But there is worse news for Labor, with the electorate breakdown of the ReachTEL poll of 2680 voters showing it is on track to lose up to half of its 10 seats and will be reduced to five or six seats. The same figures suggest the Greens will win at least four, probably five and potentially six seats, while the Palmer United Party may take one.
UPDATE
Senator-elect David Leyonhjelm:
A good summary came in an article by Jonathan West, director of the Australian Innovation Research Centre and a resident of Tasmania, who described the state as follow: “Tasmania ranks at the bottom among Australian states on virtually every dimension of economic, social, and cultural performance: highest unemployment, lowest incomes, languishing investment, lowest home prices, least educated, lowest literacy, most chronic disease, poorest longevity, most likely to smoke, greatest obesity, highest teenage pregnancy, highest petty crime, worst domestic violence.”(Thanks to readers Peter of Bellevue Hill and Bob.)
Tasmania is also a mendicant state, highly reliant on the rest of the country. It generates about a third of its state budget, the rest being GST allocations and specific purpose payments from the commonwealth. GST and income tax originating within the state fall well short of what it receives, meaning the government effectively receives welfare from the rest of the country. When the NSW economy goes into recession, one of the consequences is less money for Tasmania.
Abbott gets a growth spurt
Andrew Bolt March 08 2014 (8:50am)
Lucky for the Abbott
Government, given Labor and the Greens have stopped it in the Senate
from implementing many of its big changes, including the scrapping of
the carbon tax and the cutting of billions in spending:
Other signs: GDP growth last quarter up (albeit still not enough to create jobs) and retail growth up a lot - three times more than expected. But unemployment still rising slightly, it seems, and business investment falling.
===THE Reserve Bank believes the economy is on the cusp of a revival that would boost the Abbott government’s stocks in its first year in office.
RBA governor Glenn Stevens said he was optimistic Australia could still achieve a growth rate of better than 3 per cent, but he warned that the government still faced a medium-term challenge in bringing the budget under control.
“If growth is starting to firm now, within a few months one should start to see leading indicators respond to that,” Mr Stevens told a House of Representatives economics committee hearing in Sydney yesterday. “As I say, we have had some signs of that already.”
Other signs: GDP growth last quarter up (albeit still not enough to create jobs) and retail growth up a lot - three times more than expected. But unemployment still rising slightly, it seems, and business investment falling.
A Labor tax - costing more than it raises
Andrew Bolt March 08 2014 (8:47am)
A symbol of the Gillard
Government’s astonishing ineptitude - a tax which drove away investment
without actually raising much money:
===THE mining tax that was originally forecast to produce $4 billion in revenue this financial year has raised just $232 million, despite Rio Tinto, BHP Billiton and Fortescue Metals Group posting collective profits of more than $US14 billion from their West Australian iron ore mines.
Artists win, protesting policies that have stopped the dying
Andrew Bolt March 07 2014 (9:57pm)
Australian artists demonstrate the collective instinct that distinguishes the mediocre,
the intolerance of difference that distinguishes the totalitarian and
the contempt for consequences (as in the death of 1100 boat people
thanks to policies they never protested) that distinguishes the
adolescent. In other words, the Left has won:
===The Biennale of Sydney has announced it will sever ties with its founding partner Transfield, caving into pressure from artists angered by the company’s links to Australia’s offshore detention centres.
The board of the Biennale of Sydney also announced on Friday that Luca Belgiorno-Nettis had resigned as chairman, less than two weeks before the event is scheduled to begin.
Mr Belgiorno-Nettis’s resignation after 14 years and the severing of ties with Transfield represents a huge win for artists and refugee advocates and an embarrassing backdown for the Biennale board, which claimed the Biennale could not exist without Transfield and pledged its loyalty to the Belgiorno-Nettis family two weeks ago.
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=== Posts from last year ===
No Crean, says Conroy
Andrew BoltMARCH082013(9:48am)
Simon Crean was the leader Labor should have picked last year so it could show it could govern calmly. Now the only option left is the sugar hit of Kevin Rudd.
But no, says Stephen Conroy, who has reportedly tried and failed to get Bill Shorten to stand:
Senator Stephen Conroy, the leader of the government in the Senate and the Communications Minister, said there was no move to replace Ms Gillard with Regional Australia Minister Simon Crean, who led the party leader in opposition during the Howard government…“Julia Gillard overwhelmingly won a vote last year for the leadership, she retains the majority support of the parliamentary Labor Party and she’ll take us to the next election,” Senator Conroy told ABC Radio in Melbourne.
Too many speech police for our safety
Andrew BoltMARCH082013(8:31am)
Earlier this week I argued the Australian Human Rights Commission - agitating for tougher controls on free speech - should be scrapped and its functions devolved to the many state commissions doing much the same anti-discrimination work.
Save money, preserve our freedoms.
Professor Patrick Parkinson now gives further evidence that a whole layer of “anti discrimination” bossiness could be removed for little cost and much gain.
He says the Gillard Government’s proposed Human Rights and Anti-Discrimination Bill isn’t just an appalling attack on free speech but massive and oppressive duplication:
The proposed law contained 18 different grounds on which someone could complain of discrimination and sue in court if mediation failed. In addition, the Fair Work Act 2008 provides that an employer must not take adverse action against an employee or prospective employee “because of the person’s race, colour, sex, sexual preference, age, physical or mental disability, marital status, family or carer’s responsibilities, pregnancy, religion, political opinion, national extraction or social origin”. The states and territories have comprehensive anti-discrimination laws as well. Tasmania has 20 different grounds on which you can sue for discrimination.No one in government seems to have asked whether we actually need all these laws and why the federal parliament and the states have to compete in demonstrating who is more committed to “equality”.
Read it all. Parkinson is surely right about the bill’s astonishingly impertinent attempt to control the free speech of most of us:
Hitherto, federal anti-discrimination laws mainly prohibited discrimination by persons possessing responsibility, authority or power in areas such as employment and education. The draft bill ...did not just apply to the normal domains of paid employment, education and the provision of goods and services but to membership of and the activities of clubs and associations. That even included informal groups gathering for social and literary purposes… The bill also applied to “participation in sporting activities (including umpiring, coaching and administration)” and to voluntary and unpaid work. Neighbours who help one another are volunteers. Stay-at-home mothers do unpaid work.
The sheer arrogance of Labor wanting to give officials such power over what we say and do. It is utterly disgraceful.
How the ABC pushes the NBN, another taxpayer-funded monster
Andrew BoltMARCH082013(8:13am)
Telecom consultant Kevin Morgan is not the first to fact-check Nick Ross, the ABC’s in-house propagandist of the Gillard Government’s NBN:
Under the heading “politics” in his January 23 blog on the ABC technology website, Ross makes no bones about his objective: “With it being election year, there is a great deal to be done in informing the public about the current NBN policy and the consequences of ditching it in favour of a Coalition alternative.”There we have it, an ABC employee sees absolutely nothing wrong in using the ABC website to sell government policy at the expense of the Coalition objectivity. And factual accuracy can go begging given Ross’s mission.
Read it all and marvel.
UPDATE
How utterly ironic. Communications Minister Steve Conroy, who has proposed tough new controls on journalists and bloggers, punished media critics , had an inquiry set loose against conservatives and sceptics and agitated against Channel 10 showing my program has this morning complained on the ABC that the ABC has disciplined Ross.
AN ABC journalist has been disciplined by the broadcaster’s management over concerns that his online posts about the National Broadband Network failed to meet its “standards of objective journalism”.
You’d laugh if you weren’t throwing up at such hypocrisy.
If Conroy thinks Ross should be free to propagandise to the Coalition’s advantage - and on the public’s dime - he should be just as adamant that the rest of us be free to speak our minds, too.
UPDATE
Nick Ross denies:
If that’s campaigning, go back to governing
Andrew BoltMARCH082013(7:59am)
Apart from the fact this trip was doomed from the start, the conduct of it ensured more bad publicity. Her office seemed to be terrified that the Prime Minister might meet an ordinary citizen in an unscripted circumstance. Here she was, staying next door to one of the largest registered clubs in Australia, and she sought to avoid it like the plague…She could find time for a dinner with the mummy bloggers who seem increasingly influential but she failed to do the obvious. Particularly for a Labor leader, the chance to dine in the bistro with ordinary punters you would have thought would be one not to miss. An $8 chicken schnitzel with the mob while sipping a cool beer would seem to be a no-brainer. Not for our Julia, though… Sure, she avoided the inevitable ugly confrontation, but she left voters believing that she thought she was above them or that they who had put her in her job in the first place were too dangerous to be trusted.
Then there is the mad, unfocussed spending of money Labor doesn’t actually have:
Not only will Gillard and Wayne Swan have to find $15 billion worth of cuts just to fund the National Disability Insurance Scheme and the Gonski reforms, Gillard announces another billion or two almost every day. She kicked off her week in the west with a huge promise to raise the height of Warragamba Dam. Within hours of the promise being made it became apparent that she expected the state government to pay for almost all of it and in any event the cost of the exercise had been significantly underestimated.The problem for her is that the promises come and go so quickly. Virtually no one believes her, so within 24 hours of a promise being made the press drops off and what was supposed to lift Labor’s flagging heartland vote disappears as well.
Gillard pays her AWU dues with employers’ money
Andrew BoltMARCH082013(7:41am)
Julia Gillard pays her union dues to keep the union support she desperately needs to save her job. How the AWU will be pleased with the woman it helped to install - and how pleased, too, with Shorten, its former secretary:
Workplace Relations Minister Bill Shorten yesterday briefed employers and union leaders on the proposed changes to the Fair Work Act that address a series of long-standing union demands.Sources said the changes meant that unions would be able to secure arbitration of their long-running dispute with bionic ear-maker Cochlear, which has spent six years refusing to strike a deal with unions.Employers accused the government of trying to re-impose “compulsory arbitration” on companies ...Unions would also benefit from increased right-of-entry provisions that will allow them to meet employees in their lunchroom during meal breaks.The proposal has been fiercely resisted by resource employers who assert non-unionists should be allowed to take their meal breaks without potentially being harassed.
UPDATE
Er, wait. The Age says the opposite:
Union officials face limits on the number of visits they can make to factories and worksites under the latest changes by the Gillard government to the Fair Work Act.
Although there’s this important caveat:
It is believed the changes will also give unions greater rights as to where they can meet workers.
Swan slimes Costello for a diversion
Andrew BoltMARCH082013(7:23am)
Deputy Prime Minister Wayne Swan wants an inquiry into potential conflicts of interest stemming from Peter Costello’s ownership of a lobbyist firm and his role overseeing an audit of Queensland’s finances.Mr Costello is chairman of Queensland’s Commission of Audit, which has recommended that the Queensland government privatise its energy sector and outsource government services, including health.Mr Costello’s private company ECG (Espstein Costello Gazard) Advisory Solutions has, at the same time as the audit, been registered as a lobbyist for energy company SP AusNet, Primary Health Care, ASG Group and Serco Asia Pacific. All could potentially benefit from the recommendations of the audit report.
Costello is merely offering advice. It is the Government which decides whether to accept it - whether to sell assets and to whom, through independent bodies. That is where questions of any conflict of interest properly arise.
Costello’s former client list may indeed seem an invitation to criticism and jeering. But demands for inquiries are absurd and an exercise in vindictive, partisan politics:
The Brisbane Times news website is reporting the Crime and Misconduct Commission (CMC) has received a complaint that Mr Costello’s report could benefit some of his clients as a lobbyist.
What low rent politics, especially given this:
On Thursday ECG Advisory rejected claims that it represented companies that could benefit from recommendations of its chairman and co-owner, Mr Costello.The company said: ‘’ECG has no current business relationship with SP AusNet, Primary Health Care or ASG. These relationships concluded before the audit made its 28 February, 2013, recommendations. Serco is represented in Queensland by another firm.’’
Attacking legal workers to excuse letting in welfare cases
Andrew BoltMARCH082013(6:58am)
Is this confirmation that Julia Gillard’s attack on temporary workers - invited here to do needed work Australians can’t do - is just to divert anger at her having lured tens of thousands of boat people who come here without passports and claim welfare (in most instances) for at least the next five years?
JULIA Gillard is facing dissent in the cabinet and caucus over her attack on 457 visa rorts…Internal fears are being raised, including by some Gillard supporters, that the move has subjected Labor to claims of xenophobia and failed to ease anger in western Sydney over the influx of asylum-seekers.
Dennis Shanahan says that’s sure how many Labor MPs, including Gillard’s own supporters, see this disgraceful diversion:
There is a widespread view Gillard’s inflated criticism of the 457 visa program is not directed at a policy outcome; undermines Labor’s economic management; is code for “doing something” about the intractable public concerns about illegal boat arrivals and asylum-seekers’ release into the community; is not having a positive political impact in western Sydney where there are lots of “foreign workers”; is damaging our attempts to sell the Asian Century; and is only being done to shore up the PM’s personal support among key union blocs ahead of the last parliamentary sitting before the budget…The suggestion of a “crack-down” is a diversion from the fact the 457 visa program has hit record levels under the Gillard government… Australia needs 457 visa workers, it’s a great pathway to immigration and vast sectors of our community services will collapse without them.
UPDATE
Let’s compare.
The vast majority of boat people say they are from Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran and Sri Lanka, and these are exactly the refugees most likely to be unemployed and living on welfare, even after five years [according to an immigration Department report].Just 9 per cent of Afghan adults have a job and 94 per cent receive benefits… It’s the same story among Iranian adults, just 12 per cent of whom work. Sri Lankans have a better employment rate—34 per cent...
This class of visa allows businesses to bring in skilled workers temporarily where no local workers can be found…Sixty-five per cent of all people who received a 457 visa in the last six months are either managers or professionals… Their average 457 salary is $90,000 a year.
UPDATE
THE Italian company that has the $300 million contract to manufacture and supply the ribbon fibre-optic cable for the National Broadband Network says production would have stalled if it weren’t for skilled workers on 457 visas…A spokesman for Prysmian Group Australia ... said the technology was so niche the company needed workers on 457 visas…The NBN Co uses four “prime” contractors that manage the rollout across all states and territories. A senior source within one of these companies said his firm did employ workers on 457 visas…Experts said they believed a number of the companies contracted to help build the NBN had or continued to employ workers on 457 visas, often doing highly skilled work.
Greens propose another tax on your savings
Andrew BoltMARCH082013(6:27am)
The Greens never saw a profit earned by someone else that it they didn’t want for their own big-spending schemes.
In this case, they don’t understand that the $11 billion they’d like to claw from the banks is money the banks will have to pass on to borrowers or to gouge from savers if they want to stay safe and sound:
A mining tax-style levy would be imposed on the big four banks under a radical Greens policy to make banks surrender a slice of their earnings in exchange for protection from insolvency…The policy would mean a 20 basis point - or 0.2 per cent - levy, on all bank assets above $100 billion and would thus apply exclusively to ANZ, NAB, Westpac and Commonwealth Bank, which among them have loan books worth $1000 billion.
Deputy Greens leader and banking spokesman, Adam Bandt, said the plan had been fully costed by the independent Parliamentary Budget Office which found it would raise $11 billion over four years.
Which, of course, makes this a tax on the savers and investors of this country, to flow to the coffers of the Greens wasters and splurgers.
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Member for Higgins - Kelly O'Dwyer - Thank you Tony for helping us celebrate International Women's Day in Higgins this morning.
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4 her
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Wild Colorado
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The IDF celebrates International Women's Day.
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- 1576 – A letter to King Philip II of Spain contained the first European mention of the Mayan ruins of Copán in modern Honduras.
- 1655 – The court of Northampton County, Colony of Virginia, made John Casor the first legally recognized slave in England'sNorth American colonies.
- 1702 – Princess Anne of Denmark and Norway (pictured) became the Queenof England, Scotland and Ireland, succeeding William III.
- 1924 – Three violent explosions at a coal mine near Castle Gate, Utah, US, killed all 171 miners working there.
- 1978 – BBC Radio 4 transmitted the first episode of English author and dramatist Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, a science fiction radio series that was later adapted into novels, a television series, and other media formats.
Events[edit]
- 1010 – Ferdowsi completes his epic poem Shāhnāmeh.
- 1126 – Following the death of his mother Urraca, Alfonso VII is proclaimed king of Castile and León.
- 1576 – Spanish explorer Diego García de Palacio first sights the ruins of the ancient Mayan city of Copán.
- 1618 – Johannes Kepler discovers the third law of planetary motion.
- 1655 – John Casor becomes the first legally-recognized slave in England's North American colonies where a crime was not committed.
- 1658 – Treaty of Roskilde: After a devastating defeat in the Northern Wars (1655–1661), Frederick III, the King of Denmark-Norway is forced to give up nearly half his territory to Sweden to save the rest.
- 1702 – Anne Stuart, sister of Mary II, becomes Queen regnant of England, Scotland, and Ireland.
- 1722 – The Safavid Empire of Iran is defeated by an army from Afghanistan at The Battle of Gulnabad, pushing Iran into anarchy.
- 1736 – Nader Shah, founder of the Afsharid dynasty, is crowned Shah of Iran.
- 1775 – An anonymous writer, thought by some to be Thomas Paine, publishes "African Slavery in America", the first article in the American colonies calling for the emancipation of slaves and the abolition of slavery.
- 1777 – Regiments from Ansbach and Bayreuth, sent to support Great Britain in the American Revolutionary War, mutiny in the town of Ochsenfurt.
- 1782 – Gnadenhütten massacre: Ninety-six Native Americans in Gnadenhutten, Ohio, who had converted to Christianity are killed by Pennsylvania militiamen in retaliation for raids carried out by other Indians.
- 1801 – War of the Second Coalition: At the Battle of Abukir, a British force under Sir Ralph Abercromby lands in Egypt with the aim of ending the French campaign in Egypt and Syria.
- 1817 – The New York Stock Exchange is founded.
- 1844 – King Oscar I ascends to the thrones of Sweden and Norway.
- 1862 – American Civil War: The iron-clad CSS Virginia (formerly USS Merrimack) is launched at Hampton Roads, Virginia.
- 1868 – Sakai incident: Japanese samurai kill 11 French sailors in the port of Sakai near Osaka.
- 1910 – French aviatrix Raymonde de Laroche becomes the first woman to receive a pilot's license.
- 1911 – International Women's Day is launched in Copenhagen, Denmark, by Clara Zetkin, leader of the Women's Office for the Social Democratic Party in Germany.
- 1916 – World War I: A British force unsuccessfully attempts to relieve the siege of Kut (present-day Iraq) in the Battle of Dujaila.
- 1917 – International Women's Day protests in St. Petersburg mark the beginning of the February Revolution (so named because it was February on the Julian calendar).
- 1917 – The United States Senate votes to limit filibusters by adopting the cloture rule.
- 1920 – The Arab Kingdom of Syria, the first modern Arab state to come into existence, is established.
- 1921 – Spanish Premier Eduardo Dato Iradier is assassinated while exiting the parliament building in Madrid.
- 1924 – The Castle Gate mine disaster kills 172 coal miners near Castle Gate, Utah.
- 1936 – Daytona Beach Road Course holds its first oval stock car race.
- 1937 – Spanish Civil War: The Battle of Guadalajara begins.
- 1942 – World War II: The Dutch surrender to Japanese forces on Java.
- 1947 – Thirteen thousand troops sent by the Kuomintang government of China arrived in Taiwan after the 228 Incident and launched crackdowns which killed at least thousands of people, including many elites. This turned into a major root of the Taiwan independence movement.
- 1949 – Mildred Gillars ("Axis Sally") is condemned to prison for treason.
- 1957 – Egypt re-opens the Suez Canal after the Suez Crisis.
- 1957 – The 1957 Georgia Memorial to Congress, which petitions the U.S. Congress to declare the ratification of the 14th and 15th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution null and void, is adopted by the U.S. state of Georgia.
- 1957 – Ghana joins the United Nations.
- 1963 – The Ba'ath Party comes to power in Syria in a coup d'état by a clique of quasi-leftist Syrian Army officers calling themselves the National Council of the Revolutionary Command.
- 1966 – A bomb planted by Irish Republicans destroys Nelson's Pillar in Dublin.
- 1974 – Charles de Gaulle Airport opens in Paris, France.
- 1978 – The first radio episode of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams, is transmitted on BBC Radio 4.
- 1979 – Philips demonstrates the Compact Disc publicly for the first time.
- 1983 – U.S. President Ronald Reagan calls the Soviet Union an "evil empire".
- 1985 – A failed assassination attempt on Sayyed Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah in Beirut, Lebanon, kills at least 45 and injures 175 others.
- 2004 – A new constitution is signed by Iraq's Governing Council.
Births[edit]
- 1286 – John III, Duke of Brittany (d. 1341)
- 1293 – Beatrice of Castile (d. 1359)
- 1495 – John of God, Portuguese friar and saint (d. 1550)
- 1514 – Amago Haruhisa, Japanese samurai and warlord (d. 1562)
- 1566 – Carlo Gesualdo, Italian composer (d. 1613)
- 1659 – Isaac de Beausobre, French pastor (d. 1738)
- 1702 – Anne Bonny, Irish-American pirate (d. 1782)
- 1712 – John Fothergill, English physician (d. 1780)
- 1714 – Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, German composer (d. 1788)
- 1726 – Richard Howe, 1st Earl Howe, English admiral (d. 1799)
- 1746 – André Michaux, French botanist and explorer (d. 1802)
- 1748 – William V, Prince of Orange (d. 1806)
- 1783 – Hannah Van Buren, American wife of Martin Van Buren (d. 1819)
- 1799 – Simon Cameron, American politician, 26th United States Secretary of War (d. 1889)
- 1804 – Alvan Clark, American astronomer (d. 1887)
- 1814 – Ede Szigligeti, Hungarian playwright (d. 1878)
- 1822 – Ignacy Łukasiewicz, Polish inventor and businessman, invented the Kerosene lamp (d. 1882)
- 1826 – Johann Köler, Estonian painter (d. 1899)
- 1827 – Wilhelm Bleek, German linguist (d. 1875)
- 1830 – João de Deus, Portuguese poet (d. 1896)
- 1841 – Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., American jurist (d. 1935)
- 1847 – John Lister, English politician (d. 1933)
- 1856 – Bramwell Booth, English 2nd General of The Salvation Army (d. 1929)
- 1856 – Colin Campbell Cooper, American painter (d. 1937)
- 1859 – Kenneth Grahame, English author (d. 1932)
- 1865 – Frederic Goudy, American type designer, created Copperplate Gothic and Goudy Old Style (d. 1947)
- 1879 – Otto Hahn, German chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1968)
- 1882 – Charles de Vendeville, French swimmer (d. 1914)
- 1886 – Edward Calvin Kendall, American chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1972)
- 1891 – Sam Jaffe, American actor (d. 1984)
- 1892 – Juana de Ibarbourou, Uruguayan poet (d. 1979)
- 1896 – Charlotte Whitton, Canadian politician, 46th Mayor of Ottawa (d. 1975)
- 1897 – Margot Bryant, English actress (d. 1988)
- 1897 – Damerla Rama Rao, Indian painter (d. 1925)
- 1899 – Elmer Keith, American gun designer and author (d. 1984)
- 1900 – Howard H. Aiken, American computer scientist, created the Harvard Mark I (d. 1973)
- 1902 – Louise Beavers, American actress (d. 1962)
- 1902 – Jennings Randolph, American politician (d. 1998)
- 1904 – Nikos Skalkottas, Greek classical composer (d. 1949)
- 1907 – Konstantinos Karamanlis, Greek politician, 3rd President of Greece (d. 1998)
- 1908 – Lucio and Simplicio Godina, Filipino conjoined twins (d. 1936)
- 1909 – Beatrice Shilling, British aeronautical engineer (d. 1990)
- 1910 – Bernard Benjamin, English statistician and demographer (d. 2002)
- 1910 – Claire Trevor, American actress (d. 2000)
- 1911 – Alan Hovhaness, Armenian-American composer (d. 2000)
- 1912 – Preston Smith, American politician, 40th Governor of Texas (d. 2003)
- 1912 – Meldrim Thomson, Jr., American politician, 73rd Governor of New Hampshire (d. 2001)
- 1914 – Yakov Borisovich Zel'dovich, Russian physicist (d. 1987)
- 1915 – Tapio Rautavaara, Finnish javelin thrower, actor, and singer (d. 1979)
- 1916 – John W. Seybold, American businessman (d. 2004)
- 1918 – Jacques Baratier, French director and screenwriter (d. 2009)
- 1920 – Douglass Wallop, American author and playwright (d. 1985)
- 1921 – Alan Hale, Jr., American actor (d. 1990)
- 1921 – Fritz Luchsinger, Swiss mountaineer (d. 1983)
- 1921 – Sahir Ludhianvi, Indian poet and songwriter (d. 1980)
- 1922 – Ralph H. Baer, German-American video game designer, created the Magnavox Odyssey
- 1922 – Cyd Charisse, American actress and dancer (d. 2008)
- 1922 – Carl Furillo, American baseball player (d. 1989)
- 1922 – Yevgeny Matveyev, Russian actor and director (d. 2003)
- 1922 – Shigeru Mizuki, Japanese soldier and illustrator
- 1924 – Anthony Caro, English sculptor (d. 2013)
- 1924 – Georges Charpak, Ukrainian-French physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 2010)
- 1925 – Warren Bennis, American scholar and author
- 1926 – Grigori Kromanov, Estonian director (d. 1984)
- 1926 – Francisco Rabal, Spanish actor (d. 2001)
- 1927 – Dick Hyman, American pianist and composer
- 1927 – Stanisław Kania, Polish politician
- 1929 – Hebe Camargo, Brazilian actress and singer (d. 2012)
- 1930 – Nancy Burley, Australian figure skater (d. 2013)
- 1930 – Bob Grim, American baseball player (d. 1996)
- 1931 – Neil Adcock, South African cricketer (d. 2013)
- 1931 – John McPhee, American author and educator
- 1931 – Gerald Potterton, English-Canadian director, producer, and animator
- 1931 – Neil Postman, American author and critic (d. 2003)
- 1933 – Luca Ronconi, Italian actor and director
- 1933 – Evelyn Ay Sempier, American model, Miss America 1954 (d. 2008)
- 1934 – Marv Breeding, American baseball player (d. 2006)
- 1936 – Sue Ane Langdon, American actress and singer
- 1936 – Gábor Szabó, Hungarian-American guitarist (d. 1982)
- 1937 – Richard Fariña, American singer and author (d. 1966)
- 1937 – Juvénal Habyarimana, Rwandan politician, 3rd President of Rwanda (d. 1994)
- 1938 – Pete Dawkins, American football player
- 1938 – Hans Fogh, Canadian sailor
- 1938 – Juris Kalniņš, Latvian basketball player (d. 2010)
- 1938 – Bruno Pizzul, Italian journalist
- 1939 – Jim Bouton, American baseball player and author
- 1939 – Lidiya Skoblikova, Russian speed skater
- 1939 – Robert Tear, Welsh tenor and conductor (d. 2011)
- 1940 – Susan Clark, Canadian actress
- 1940 – Jacques Doucet, Canadian sportscaster
- 1941 – Andrei Mironov, Russian actor (d. 1987)
- 1942 – Dick Allen, American baseball player
- 1942 – Palito Ortega, Argentinian singer, actor, and politician
- 1942 – Ann Packer, English sprinter
- 1943 – Lynn Redgrave, English actress (d. 2010)
- 1943 – Dionysis Simopoulos, Greek physicist and astronomer
- 1944 – Buzz Hargrove, Canadian union leader
- 1944 – Sergey Nikitin, Russian singer-songwriter
- 1944 – Pepe Romero, Spanish guitarist (The Romeros)
- 1945 – Bruce Broughton, American composer
- 1945 – Jim Chapman, American politician
- 1945 – Micky Dolenz, American singer-songwriter, drummer, and actor (The Monkees)
- 1945 – Anselm Kiefer, German painter
- 1946 – Randy Meisner, American singer-songwriter and bass player (The Eagles and Poco)
- 1947 – Mike Allsup, American musician (Three Dog Night)
- 1947 – Carole Bayer Sager, American singer-songwriter and painter
- 1947 – Michael S. Hart, American author, founded Project Gutenberg (d. 2011)
- 1947 – Vladimír Mišík, Czech singer-songwriter and guitarist (The Matadors, Blue Effect, Flamengo, and Etc...)
- 1947 – Florentino Pérez, Spanish businessman and engineer
- 1948 – Gyles Brandreth, English broadcaster and politician
- 1948 – Peggy March, American singer
- 1948 – Jonathan Sacks, English rabbi
- 1949 – Natalia Kuchinskaya, Russian gymnast
- 1949 – Karel Lismont, Belgian runner
- 1949 – Antonello Venditti, Italian singer-songwriter
- 1950 – Richard Ouzounian, Canadian-American director and critic
- 1950 – Dimitris Spentzopoulos, Greek footballer
- 1952 – George Allen, American politician, 67th Governor of Virginia
- 1953 – Angelos Anastasiadis, Greek footballer and coach
- 1953 – Jim Rice, American baseball player
- 1953 – Don Werner, American baseball player
- 1954 – Cheryl Baker, English singer (Bucks Fizz and Co-Co)
- 1954 – Bob Brozman, American guitarist (R. Crumb & His Cheap Suit Serenaders) (d. 2013)
- 1954 – David Wilkie, Sri Lankan-Scottish swimmer
- 1955 – Don Ashby, Canadian ice hockey player (d. 1981)
- 1955 – Joellyn Auklandus, American author
- 1956 – Laurie Cunningham, English footballer (d. 1989)
- 1956 – John Kapelos, Canadian actor
- 1957 – Clive Burr, English drummer and songwriter (Iron Maiden, Samson, and Trust) (d. 2013)
- 1957 – John Butcher, American baseball player
- 1957 – William Edward Childs, American pianist and composer
- 1957 – Cynthia Rothrock, American actress and martial artist
- 1957 – Bob Stoddard, American baseball player
- 1958 – Nick Capra, American baseball player
- 1958 – Gary Numan, English singer-songwriter, guitarist, and producer (Tubeway Army)
- 1959 – Lester Holt, American journalist
- 1959 – Aidan Quinn, American actor
- 1960 – Jeffrey Eugenides, American author
- 1960 – Max Metzker, Australian swimmer
- 1960 – Buck Williams, American basketball player
- 1961 – Camryn Manheim, American actress
- 1961 – Larry Murphy, Canadian ice hockey player and journalist
- 1961 – Mark Salas, American baseball player
- 1962 – Kim Ung-yong, South Korean engineer
- 1963 – Mike Lalor, Canadian ice hockey player
- 1964 – Kate Betts, American journalist
- 1964 – Thomas Bezucha, American screenwriter and director
- 1964 – Lance McCullers, American baseball player
- 1965 – Fátima Lopes, Portuguese fashion designer
- 1965 – Kenny Smith, American basketball player
- 1967 – Joel Johnston, American baseball player
- 1968 – Michael Bartels, German race car driver
- 1968 – Jim Dougherty, American baseball player
- 1968 – Rob Dukes, American singer-songwriter (Exodus)
- 1968 – Ellen Forney, American cartoonist
- 1968 – Shawn Mullins, American singer-songwriter
- 1970 – Jason Elam, American football player
- 1970 – Andrea Parker, American actress and dancer
- 1971 – Kit Symons, Welsh footballer
- 1972 – Georgios Georgiadis, Greek footballer
- 1972 – Angie Hart, Australian singer (Frente! and Splendid)
- 1972 – Fergal O'Brien, Irish snooker player
- 1973 – Boris Kodjoe, Austrian-American actor and model
- 1973 – Mark Lukasiewicz, American baseball player
- 1973 – Kurt Mollekens, Belgian race car driver
- 1973 – Justin Thompson, American baseball player
- 1973 – Anneke van Giersbergen, Dutch singer-songwriter and guitarist (The Gathering)
- 1974 – Fardeen Khan, Indian actor
- 1974 – Mike Moriarty, American baseball player
- 1974 – Stefan Müller, German footballer
- 1975 – Mauro Briano, Italian footballer
- 1975 – Peggy Zina, Greek singer
- 1976 – Gaz Coombes, English singer-songwriter, guitarist, and producer (Supergrass, The Jennifers, and The Hotrats)
- 1976 – Juan Encarnacion, American baseball player
- 1976 – Freddie Prinze, Jr., American actor
- 1976 – Hines Ward, American football player
- 1977 – Michael Tarver, American wrestler
- 1977 – James Van Der Beek, American actor
- 1977 – Johann Vogel, Swiss footballer
- 1977 – Estelle Desanges, French pornographic actress
- 1978 – Mohammed Bouyeri, Dutch-Moroccan murderer
- 1978 – Nick Zano, American actor and producer
- 1979 – Tom Chaplin, English singer-songwriter (Keane)
- 1979 – Apathy, American rapper and producer (Army of the Pharaohs and Get Busy Committee)
- 1979 – Andy Ross, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (OK Go)
- 1980 – Stephen Milne, Australian footballer
- 1980 – Charli Robinson, Australian actress and singer (Hi-5)
- 1981 – Michael Beauchamp, Australian footballer
- 1981 – Timothy Jordan II, American guitarist and songwriter (Jonezetta) (d. 2005)
- 1981 – Joost Posthuma, Dutch cyclist
- 1981 – Jessica Jaymes, American porn actress
- 1982 – Nicolas Armindo, French race car driver
- 1982 – Leonidas Kampantais, Greek footballer
- 1982 – Craig Stansberry, American baseball player
- 1982 – Kat Von D, Mexican-American tattoo artist
- 1983 – André Santos, Brazilian footballer
- 1983 – Mark Worrell, American baseball player
- 1984 – Rafik Djebbour, Algerian footballer
- 1984 – Ross Taylor, New Zealand cricketer
- 1984 – Sasha Vujačić, Slovenian basketball player
- 1985 – Ewa Sonnet, Polish model and singer
- 1986 – Princess Tsuguko of Takamado
- 1988 – Armanti Edwards, American football player
- 1989 – Robbie Hummel, American basketball player
- 1990 – Kristinia DeBarge, American singer-songwriter, dancer, and actress
- 1990 – Petra Kvitová, Czech tennis player
- 1990 – Ben Tozer, English footballer
- 1990 – Asier Illarramendi, Spanish footballer
- 1991 – Devon Werkheiser, American actor and singer
- 1993 – Stephanie Davis, English actress
- 1997 – Jurina Matsui, Japanese singer and actress (AKB48 and SKE48)
Deaths[edit]
- 415 – Hypatia of Alexandria, Neoplatonist philosopher and astronomer
- 1126 – Urraca of León and Castile (b. 1079)
- 1144 – Pope Celestine II
- 1223 – Wincenty Kadłubek, Polish bishop and historian (b. 1161)
- 1550 – John of God, Portuguese friar and saint (b. 1495)
- 1641 – Xu Xiake, Chinese geographer (b. 1587)
- 1674 – Charles Sorel, sieur de Souvigny, French author (b. 1597)
- 1702 – William III of England (b. 1650)
- 1717 – Abraham Darby I Leading hand of the Industrial revolution (b1678)
- 1731 – Ferdinand Brokoff, Czech sculptor (b. 1688)
- 1757 – Thomas Blackwell, Scottish scholar (b. 1701)
- 1771 – Louis August le Clerc, French-Danish sculptor (b. 1688)
- 1819 – Benjamin Ruggles Woodbridge, American colonel and politician (b. 1739)
- 1844 – Charles XIV John of Sweden (b. 1763)
- 1855 – William Poole, American criminal (b. 1821)
- 1869 – Hector Berlioz, French composer (b. 1803)
- 1872 – Cornelius Krieghoff, Canadian painter (b. 1815)
- 1874 – Millard Fillmore, American politician, 13th President of the United States (b. 1800)
- 1887 – Henry Ward Beecher, American clergyman (b. 1813)
- 1887 – James Buchanan Eads, American engineer, designed the Eads Bridge (b. 1820)
- 1889 – John Ericsson, Swedish-American engineer, designed the USS Monitor (b. 1803)
- 1907 – Marinos Antypas, Greek lawyer and journalist (b. 1872)
- 1917 – Ferdinand von Zeppelin, German general and businessman, founded the Zeppelin Company (b. 1838)
- 1923 – Krišjānis Barons, Latvian author (b. 1835)
- 1923 – Johannes Diderik van der Waals, Dutch physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1837)
- 1923 – Martin Lipp, Estonian clergyman and poet (b. 1854)
- 1930 – William Howard Taft, American politician, 27th President of the United States (b. 1857)
- 1930 – Edward Terry Sanford, American jurist (b. 1865)
- 1935 – Hachikō, Japanese dog (b. 1923)
- 1937 – Howie Morenz, Canadian ice hockey player (b. 1902)
- 1941 – Sherwood Anderson, American author (b. 1876)
- 1942 – José Raúl Capablanca, Cuban chess player (b. 1888)
- 1943 – Léon Thiébaut, French fencer (b. 1878)
- 1945 – Frederick Bligh Bond, English architect and archaeologist (b. 1864)
- 1951 – Martha Beck, American murderer (b. 1920)
- 1951 – Raymond Fernandez, American murderer (b. 1914)
- 1957 – Othmar Schoeck, Swiss composer and conductor (b. 1886)
- 1961 – Thomas Beecham, English conductor (b. 1879)
- 1971 – Harold Lloyd, American actor and producer (b. 1893)
- 1972 – Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski, German SS officer (b. 1899)
- 1973 – Ron "Pigpen" McKernan, American keyboard player and songwriter (Grateful Dead) (b. 1945)
- 1975 – Georg Faehlmann, Estonian sailor (b. 1895)
- 1975 – George Stevens, American director, screenwriter, and producer (b. 1904)
- 1976 – Alfons Rebane, Estonian commander (b. 1908)
- 1981 – Joseph Henry Woodger, English biologist (b. 1894)
- 1983 – Alan Lennox-Boyd, 1st Viscount Boyd of Merton, English politician, Secretary of State for the Colonies (b. 1904)
- 1983 – William Walton, English composer (b. 1902)
- 1985 – Edward Andrews, American actor (b. 1914)
- 1986 – Kersti Merilaas, Estonian author and poet (b. 1913)
- 1988 – Amar Singh Chamkila, Indian singer-songwriter (b. 1961)
- 1988 – Werner Hartmann, German physicist (b. 1912)
- 1989 – Charles Exbrayat, French author (b. 1906)
- 1991 – John Bellairs, American author (b. 1938)
- 1993 – Billy Eckstine, American singer (b. 1914)
- 1993 – Johannes Türn, Estonian chess and draughts player (b. 1899)
- 1995 – Paul Horgan, American author (b. 1903)
- 1995 – Ingo Schwichtenberg, German drummer (Helloween) (b. 1965)
- 1996 – Jack Churchill, Hong Kong-English lieutenant (b. 1906)
- 1998 – Ray Nitschke, American football player (b. 1936)
- 1999 – Adolfo Bioy Casares, Argentinian journalist and author (b. 1914)
- 1999 – Peggy Cass, American actress (b. 1924)
- 1999 – Joe DiMaggio, American baseball player (b. 1914)
- 1999 – William Wrigley III, American businessman (b. 1933)
- 2001 – Edward Winter, American actor (b. 1937)
- 2003 – Adam Faith, English singer and actor (b. 1940)
- 2003 – Karen Morley, American actress (b. 1909)
- 2004 – Robert Pastorelli, American actor (b. 1954)
- 2004 – Muhammad Zaidan, Syrian terrorist, founded the Palestine Liberation Front (b. 1948)
- 2005 – César Lattes, Brazilian physicist (b. 1924)
- 2005 – Aslan Maskhadov, Chechen politician, 3rd President of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria (b. 1951)
- 2006 – Brian Barratt-Boyes, New Zealand surgeon (b. 1924)
- 2007 – Christopher Barrios, Jr., American murder victim (b. 2001)
- 2007 – John Inman, English actor and singer (b. 1935)
- 2007 – Vicky Vanita, Greek actress (b. 1948)
- 2007 – John Vukovich, American baseball player and coach (b. 1947)
- 2008 – Carol Barnes, English journalist (b. 1944)
- 2009 – Ali Bongo, Indian-English magician (b. 1929)
- 2009 – Hank Locklin, American singer-songwriter (b. 1918)
- 2009 – Zbigniew Religa, Polish surgeon and politician (b. 1938)
- 2011 – St. Clair Lee, American singer (Hues Corporation) (b. 1944)
- 2011 – Mike Starr, American bass player (Alice in Chains, Sun Red Sun, and Days of the New) (b. 1966)
- 2012 – Leslie Cochran, American activist (b. 1951)
- 2012 – Simin Daneshvar, Iranian author and academic (b. 1921)
- 2013 – Haseeb Ahsan, Pakistani cricketer (b. 1939)
- 2013 – Hartmut Briesenick, German shot putter (b. 1949)
- 2013 – Hardin Cox, American politician (b. 1928)
- 2013 – Toby Graham, English skier (b. 1920)
- 2013 – Hakob Hakobian, Armenian painter (b. 1923)
- 2013 – John O'Connell, Irish politician (b. 1927)
- 2013 – George Saimes, American football player (b. 1941)
- 2013 – Raymond Telles, American politician and diplomat, United States Ambassador to Costa Rica (b. 1915)
- 2013 – Ewald-Heinrich von Kleist-Schmenzin, German army officer and publisher (b. 1922)
- 2013 – Ginny Wood, American environmentalist, co-founded the Alaska Conservation Society (b. 1917)
- 2014 – Wendy Hughes Austrailian actress (b. 1952)
Holidays and observances[edit]
- Christian Feast Day:
- Earliest day on which Canberra Day can fall, while March 14 is the latest; celebrated on the second Monday in March. (Australian Capital Territory)
- Earliest day on which Commonwealth Day can fall, while March 14 is the latest; celebrated on the second Monday in March. (Commonwealth of Nations)
- Earliest day on which Passion Sunday can fall, while April 17 is the latest; observed on the fifth Sunday of Lent. (Christianity)
- International Women's Day or Mother's Day (primarily Eastern Europe, Russia, and the former Soviet bloc)
“Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.” - Psalm 139:23-24
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Morning and Evening by Charles Spurgeon
March 7: Morning
"Have faith in God." - Mark 11:22
Faith is the foot of the soul by which it can march along the road of the commandments. Love can make the feet move more swiftly; but faith is the foot which carries the soul. Faith is the oil enabling the wheels of holy devotion and of earnest piety to move well; and without faith the wheels are taken from the chariot, and we drag heavily. With faith I can do all things; without faith I shall neither have the inclination nor the power to do anything in the service of God. If you would find the men who serve God the best, you must look for the men of the most faith. Little faith will save a man, but little faith cannot do great things for God. Poor Little-faith could not have fought "Apollyon;" it needed "Christian" to do that. Poor Little-faith could not have slain "Giant Despair;" it required "Great-heart's" arm to knock that monster down. Little faith will go to heaven most certainly, but it often has to hide itself in a nut-shell, and it frequently loses all but its jewels. Little-faith says, "It is a rough road, beset with sharp thorns, and full of dangers; I am afraid to go;" but Great-faith remembers the promise, "Thy shoes shall be iron and brass; as thy days, so shall thy strength be:" and so she boldly ventures. Little-faith stands desponding, mingling her tears with the flood; but Great-faith sings, "When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee:" and she fords the stream at once. Would you be comfortable and happy? Would you enjoy religion? Would you have the religion of cheerfulness and not that of gloom? Then "have faith in God." If you love darkness, and are satisfied to dwell in gloom and misery, then be content with little faith; but if you love the sunshine, and would sing songs of rejoicing, covet earnestly this best gift, "great faith."
Evening
"It is better to trust in the Lord, than to put confidence in man." - Psalm 118:8
Doubtless the reader has been tried with the temptation to rely upon the things which are seen, instead of resting alone upon the invisible God. Christians often look to man for help and counsel, and mar the noble simplicity of their reliance upon their God. Does this evening's portion meet the eye of a child of God anxious about temporals, then would we reason with him awhile. You trust in Jesus, and only in Jesus, for your salvation, then why are you troubled? "Because of my great care." Is it not written, "Cast thy burden upon the Lord"? "Be careful for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication make known your wants unto God." Cannot you trust God for temporals? "Ah! I wish I could." If you cannot trust God for temporals, how dare you trust him for spirituals? Can you trust him for your soul's redemption, and not rely upon him for a few lesser mercies? Is not God enough for thy need, or is his all-sufficiency too narrow for thy wants? Dost thou want another eye beside that of him who sees every secret thing? Is his heart faint? Is his arm weary? If so, seek another God; but if he be infinite, omnipotent, faithful, true, and all-wise, why gaddest thou abroad so much to seek another confidence? Why dost thou rake the earth to find another foundation, when this is strong enough to bear all the weight which thou canst ever build thereon? Christian, mix not only thy wine with water, do not alloy thy gold of faith with the dross of human confidence. Wait thou only upon God, and let thine expectation be from him. Covet not Jonah's gourd, but rest in Jonah's God. Let the sandy foundations of terrestrial trust be the choice of fools, but do thou, like one who foresees the storm, build for thyself an abiding place upon the Rock of Ages.
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Hezekiah
[Hĕze kī'ah] - jehovah is strength or a strong support is jehovah. Also given as Hizkiah, Hizkijah, Ezekias.
1. Son and successor of Ahaz as king of Judah (2 Kings 16:20). He is referred to in well over one hundred references in 2 Kings, 1 and 2 Chronicles, Jeremiah, Hosea and Micah. The Man Who Asked for Added Years
Hezekiah was one of the best kings who ever sat upon the throne of Judah, and is distinguished as the greatest in faith of all Judah's kings (2 Kings 18:5). Sincere and devout, he was not a perfect man by any means, nor outstanding because of any brilliant gifts he possessed. This good king, however, is to be admired when one remembers his family background. Having such a wicked, apostate father as Ahaz, the wonder is that his son became the noble king he did. He had no pious training, but only a heritage of weakness in his moral fibre, for which God graciously made all fair allowance.
With Hezekiah's ascent to the throne at the age of twenty-five there began a period of religious revival in which he was encouraged by the noblest and most eloquent of the Hebrew prophets, Isaiah, who knew how to carry his religion into his politics.
I. Hezekiah was a man who prayed about the difficulties and dangers overtaking him. What faith and confidence in God he revealed when he spread Sennacherib's insolent letter before the Lord. Both Hezekiah and Isaiah defied mighty Assyria, God using one angel to slay one hundred and eighty-five thousand in the Assyrian camp.
The king knew how to pray about personal matters as well as military dangers. When smitten with a fatal illness, he turned his face to the wall and prayed. Isaiah, his friend and counselor, came to him with a message from God that he would not die but live. "I will add unto thy days fifteen years." Hezekiah asked with all his heart that he might live, and God continued his life.
But the question arises, why did Hezekiah desire the removal of his illness and the continuation of his life? What object did he have in mind? Was the king anxious to live in order to promote the glory of God, or was he actuated by some personal motive? It is apparent that Hezekiah was afraid of death and loved life in itself. Death was not the same to Hezekiah as it was to Paul, who had a desire to depart, seeing death was far better than life.
At the time of his sickness, Hezekiah had no son, and this fact possibly added to his desire to live. Three years after his recovery Manasseh was born, who became a curse upon the earth and an abomination in the sight of the Lord. Here, then, was one of the results of Hezekiah's answered prayer. It might have been better for Judah if Hezekiah had died without such an heir. Many prayers we offer are mistakes. God graciously grants our requests but "brings leanness to our souls" (Ps. 106:15). Perhaps Hezekiah's sin began in his unwillingness to go to heaven when God sent for him ( 2 Kings 20:1-3).
II. Hezekiah's simple faith in God was the source and secret of his strength. He believed God ruled among the armies of heaven and of earth. His faith was the intuitive perception that God was near - a real Personality and not a mere tendency making for righteousness. The loss of faith is ultimately the loss of moral power. One of the main lessons of Hezekiah's life is, Have faith in God.
III. Hezekiah lost favor with God because of pride. After all the divine blessings showered upon him, he allowed his heart to be lifted up with pride. Vanity and self-sufficiency led the king astray. His heart became obsessed with his household treasures. He turned from God to goods. "Hezekiah rendered not again according to the benefit done unto him; for his heart was lifted up: therefore there was wrath upon him, and upon Judah and Jerusalem" (2 Chron. 32:24-25). Sin never ends with the person committing it.
The four crises Hezekiah faced were:
The crisis of choice, and he chose to forsake the idols of his father and purge the kingdom of idolatry (2 Kings 18:22).
The crisis of invasion (2 Chron. 32:1-19). Prayer brought deliverance (2 Chron. 32:20-21).
The crisis of sickness. Obedience furnished the foundation of the king's prayer for healing (Isa. 38:1-5).
The crisis of prosperity. Alas, Hezekiah manifested pride when he displayed his treasures to the ungodly (Isa. 39).
2. A son of Neariah and a descendant of the royal house of Judah (1 Chron. 3:23).
3. An ancestor of the prophet Zephaniah (Zeph. 1:1). Given in Common Version as Hizkiah.
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Phoebe
Scripture Reference: Romans 16:1,2
Name Meaning: Pure or radiant as the moon
We know nothing of this pious female who delivered Paul's "inestimable packet"--The Epistle to the Romans--to Rome. We just have the brief mention of her name and service. Phoebe, a devout Christian, bore without change and without reproach the name of the Moon-Goddess of the Greeks. The goddess Artemis, known by the common epithet "Phoebe," was supposed to have been identified with the light of the moon. But the Phoebe whom Paul so highly commended shone as a light for Jesus, the "Light of the World." That she must have been a woman of some consequence appears from the fact that she planned a long journey to Rome on business of her own, and offered to convey to the saints there Paul's letter--"an inspired masterpiece of logic which struck the keynote of orthodoxy for the universal Church through all the succeeding ages."
In some fifty words Paul gives us a beautiful cameo of this saintly servant of Christ for whom he urged the saints at Rome to do their utmost. The importance of her visit is indicated by the appeal of Paul to the Romans to "assist her in whatever matter she had need of." Phoebe was--
In some fifty words Paul gives us a beautiful cameo of this saintly servant of Christ for whom he urged the saints at Rome to do their utmost. The importance of her visit is indicated by the appeal of Paul to the Romans to "assist her in whatever matter she had need of." Phoebe was--
A Sister
As used by Paul, this designation implies a spiritual relationship. He calls the believing husband and wife, "the brother and the sister" ( 1 Corinthians 7:15; 9:5). Young Timothy was his "son in the faith." Phoebe, then, was a member of a spiritual family in which the relationship is based upon the redemption of Christ and the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit (Galatians 4:4-7 ). Apart from natural relationships, no woman is my "sister" unless she shares my experience of God's saving grace through which alone we are made members of His redeemed family. How or when Phoebe became a Christian and a sister in the Lord, we are not told. What is evident is the manifestation of her sisterly love and labors among her sisters and brothers in Christ. "Our sister" is a term indicating her Christian status.
A Servant of the Church
Phoebe was not only a member of a spiritual family, but likewise a member of the visible church at Cenchrea when Paul arrived there on his third journey and from where he wrote Romans. Phoebe was not merely a confessing and active believer, she was also "a ministrant of the Church." The word for "servant" is diakonos , from which we have "deacon" or "deaconess." It is not certain whether such an official female Order as "Deaconess" was in vogue at that time. Phoebe, however, occupied such a position in the church, and as such could be a teacher of all female inquirers of the faith, and be active in the relief of the temporal needs of the poor among the flock. We can safely assume that Phoebe was one of the first, if not the first, of the noble band of deaconesses in the Christian Church. If hers was not an official ministry, it was certainly a most gracious and effective one, and she was indeed one of the forerunners of the vast army of women who have rendered such loyal service to Christ and His Church.
A Succourer of Many, and of Myself Also
The word Paul used for "succourer"--prostatis --is a most expressive one. It literally means "one who stands by in case of need." It is classical Greek describing a trainer in the Olympic games, who stood by the athletes to see that they were properly trained and not over-trained and rightly girded when they lined up for the signal. Moule translates the phrase, "She on her part has proved a stand-by (almost a champion, one who stands up for others) of many, aye, and of me among them." Phoebe was the unselfish, liberal helper or patroness of the saints, conspicuous for her works of charity and also hospitality. To quote Moule again--
She had been a devoted and it would seem particularly a brave friend of converts in trouble, and of Paul himself. Perhaps in the course of her visits to the desolate she had fought difficult battles of protest, where she found harshness and oppression. Perhaps she had pleaded the forgotten cause of the poor, with a woman's courage, before some neglectful richer "brother."
As for the personal touch "a succourer ... of myself also," it has been suggested that Paul had in mind the visit he paid to Cenchrea and, shaving his head took a Jewish vow ( Acts 18:18). "The vow seems to point to a deliverance from danger to sickness in which Phoebe may have attended him." Because of her saintliness and practical works, Paul urged the believers in Rome to "receive her in the Lord, as becometh saints."
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Today's reading: Deuteronomy 1-3, Mark 10:32-52 (NIV)
View today's reading on Bible GatewayToday's Old Testament reading: Deuteronomy 1-3
The Command to Leave Horeb
1 These are the words Moses spoke to all Israel in the wilderness east of the Jordan--that is, in the Arabah--opposite Suph, between Paran and Tophel, Laban, Hazeroth and Dizahab. 2 (It takes eleven days to go from Horeb to Kadesh Barnea by the Mount Seir road.)
Today's New Testament reading: Mark 10:32-52
Jesus Predicts His Death a Third Time
32 They were on their way up to Jerusalem, with Jesus leading the way, and the disciples were astonished, while those who followed were afraid. Again he took the Twelve aside and told them what was going to happen to him. 33 "We are going up to Jerusalem," he said, "and the Son of Man will be delivered over to the chief priests and the teachers of the law. They will condemn him to death and will hand him over to the Gentiles, 34 who will mock him and spit on him, flog him and kill him. Three days later he will rise...."
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