Pianos and Ivory When Elephants Were Finally Respected

 

Ivory keyboards have long gone the way of ivory dice and billiard balls, hats with egret feathers, leopard-skin coats and tortoise-shell anything.

It has been a long time since ecologists and animal lovers had to picket  piano warehouses. In the aftermath of an announcement in Tokyo back in the 80's, the piano industry turned the corner. While American piano manufacturers were keen to reassure the public that they stopped using ivory years before. It was back in the 80's that things began to look up for the elephant and the respect of the piano industry. While the elephant is still endangered, the ivory keyboard died out in the 80's is almost extinct.

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The world's two biggest piano manufacturers, Yamaha and Kawai, stopped buying ivory to use in piano keys because of public pressure to protect elephants.

Baldwin Pianos responded quickly at the time to congratulate the Japanese, but also remind the world they had been doing the right thing for a very long time.

"We would like to congratulate the Pacific Rim manufacturers who have decided to stop the use of ivory in pianos made for the American market," said Ken Edgington, vice president, sales for Baldwin Piano & Organ Co. the 128 year-old American firm renowned as an industry leader.

"Baldwin was delighted to learn," Edgington commented, "that these manufacturers have now decided to join our effort, which began over thirty-three years ago, to abolish the use of ivory in the manufacture of pianos.

"Our company wishes to encourage all who are concerned with the recognition of ecological needs and the rights of animals," Edgington added. "We strongly urge all European and domestic piano manufacturers still using ivory to join in this cause which we have been championing for the past thirty years, a cause which we feel the entire industry should support in a unified effort.

"As early as 1956," noted Edgington, "Baldwin was aware of the need to prevent the killing of elephants for their tusks and at that time established a corporate policy not to use ivory on any Baldwin piano. Within the year, our ivory stock was depleted."

Since 1959, all Baldwin pianos have keys covered with an especially formulated synthetic material which is easy to maintain, does not yellow or crack, and most critical of all still produces the proper feel when the performers' fingers touch the keys. The best not of all is that the elephants will be here to remember that companies can be ecologically responsible.

The ivory used in piano keys (actually, a thin veneer glued on the top and sides of a wooden key) was replaced by plastic substitutes. The time may come when ecologists campaign for piano keys that are biodegradable, but not yet. Plastic keys are still going strong.

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Now it's the Apple Watch, But some Apple 80's History!

Apple Watch is coming is and new Apple CEO, Tim Cook, has finally announced a multifunctional wearable device that can be a smartwatch and an entertainment center. The Apple Watch has been hinted at before with, Tim Cook saying that once you get Apple Watch, you’ll never wear another watch again!

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Apple is honing in on great design and  functionality rather than price with the Apple Watch. Apple Watch specs have been revealed, so we do know it has its own proprietary OS which links in with iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite. The Apple Watch price will be affordable depending on your price range. The starting price will probably be $350 for the most basic, version of the Apple Watch. If you want gold, stainless steel, aluminium, a bigger face or a more tricked out watchband, you'll be paying a little extra.

But remember you're making history with this watch. You're owning a part of a company that has innovated since the beginning of time.

Remember the in the 80's? Well maybe not if you weren't born, but even back then the  Apple President John Sculley didn't have to fly to Paris for a face-to-face conversation with Apple Europe president Mike Spindler. Sculley just walked down the hall of his building! This was long before skype or video chat, this was in the days of Atari and CRT TVs. In 1989 Apple built a new videoconferencing facility, Sculley talked with Spindler while watching Spindler's image on a video monitor.



Something unheard of in those days. They also shared charts and graphs during their discussions and transmitted computer data stored in a Macintosh II. The Apple videoconference network was a major step forward by Apple back then, especially because it prided itself on technologically advanced internal communications. They even had an such as an elaborate electronic mail system that linked Apple's 10,000 employees worldwide.

See that was email in the 80s! Can you believe it! Apple has long been on the cutting edge and the Apple Watch will be no different!

The Apple Watch release should be February 2015. What better Valentine’s Day 2015 present! Forgot the flowers get him or her the Apple Watch! It used to be called the iWatch, but who knows what happened to that name. Kinda fits better I think!

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ISIS Aims For Saudi Arabia What For Oil?

Forget the OPEC decision, the leader of ISIS, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, has set the ISIS sights on Saudi Arabia. The birthplace of Islam. And worryingly, the the world's largest oil producer and exporter. al-Baghdadi does not refer to Saudi Arabia as Saudi Arabia, as this name derived from the ruling tribe, the al-Saud, whose authority ISIS will not acknowledge.

ISIS calls Saudi Arabia "the land of Haramayn", the land of the two holy places. He's referring to Mecca and Medina. Calling out to ISIS's increasing band of Saudi followers, ISIS sets out a target list for attack. He starts out pointing to the Shia who are a small number of Saudi nationals, inhabiting the oil-rich Eastern Province, and whom hardline Salafi radicals view as heretics.

Deep sectarian divisions in the Middle East mean that many Saudis view ISIS not as a crazy band of terrorists but as holy and strong defenders of Sunni Islam against the threatening forces of Iran and its Shia allies.

Despite the efforts by the US-led team, ISIS is still powering along. That is the bad message US politicians are hearing from a man in the know. The Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem. "All the indications say that (Islamic State) today, after two months of coalition air strikes, is not weaker," Walid al-Moualem emphasized, contrasting the US 'coalition' military efforts with a Russian call for restarting the political process between Damascus and 'the constructive Syrian opposition'.

What would happen if ISIS made it into Saudi Arabia? ISIS already has a presence in the Saudi armed forces and the Saudi regime is hated amongst the ordinary Saudi population. Thousands of normal Saudis would welcome ISIS and likely also join them. The Saudi regime would send the Saudi National Guards out to defend the regime's interests. This would have Saudis facing off against against one another, but would the Saudi National Guard behave the same way as the Iraqi army? Either joining ISIS or just deserting? The Kingdom would likely then turn to its only ally: Pakistan and hope the Pakistan government sends the army to protect the House of Saud protect it.

If these two developments happened, there is one hell of a mess coming. ISIS is full of mercenaries from all over the world. Afghanistan, Algeria Chechnya,  Jordan, Pakistan, Tunisia. Saudi National Guards who remained loyal to the regime and the Pakistan army would be up against battled-hardened mercenaries of the ISIS, ordinary Saudis and breakaway elements from the Saudi armed forces. No matter the winner, the House of Saud will not survive this end game.

Why do we care about Saudi Arabia? They love camels and taking dumps on celebrities for money. The answers revolve around the one thing that the scorching desert holds more of than any other piece of land on Earth: oil.

The disruption to oil prices will be enormous if ISIS got control of Saudi Arabia or even damaged Saudi oil infrastucture as the Saudi's have 16% of the world's oil reserves. With their hostile takeover of much of  Iraq, the maniac group known as ISIS or IS or maybe ISIL are already in control of a small portion of the 5th largest reserve in the world. If they could successfully overrun Saudi Arabia, they could have have 20% or more.

Saudi Arabia is the dominant factor in what is arguably the world's biggest and most important industry. If ISIS controls the vast Saudi petroleum reserves, they can dictate the world oil prices and hold a firm grip on the way the world behaves from Tokyo to Tanzania, from Portland to Perth.

America, whose shale drillers faltered long before the energy independence goal was achieved, stand nearly as vulnerable to the vagaries of Middle East oil politics as they ever have. This time they might be rooting for the terrorists to save their skin. The harsh reality is, unless someone is willing to go onto the ground with force and carry out a war of extermination, ISIS will survive and likely thrive. Soon taking Saudi Arabia.

For American energy companies, the fall of Saudi Arabia to ISIS might just be what they are hoping for.

Paranormal Activity The Ghost Dimension Announced - The Canada Connection!

The next installment of horror series Paranormal Activity is coming in 2015!

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The fifth, currently known as The Ghost Dimension, has had a casting call looking for new characters to torment. This will be first of the series to be shown in 3D. The film will be post-converted (shot will be shot in 2D then altered to appear in 3D).

Gregoy Plotkin will handle directing duties for the low-budget horror film, which has been fast tracked for a quick release next year. Conflicting reports suggest the film begins shooting in February and will reach cinemas in October 2015, while others say it will be released in March 2015. Jason Pagan and Andrew Stark are writing the script.

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This brings us to famous people who have believed in the paranormal. Maybe we should have a Paranormal film about one of Canada's most interesting Prime Ministers?

William Lyon Mackenzie King, outwardly a colorless man, was elected prime minister on Dec. 29, 1921. He served a record 22 years. Defying his bland exterior, King had a secret that leaked out after his death in 1950: he was a spiritualist. He communicated through a medium with what he believed were the spirits of his dead mother and others.

If King's spiritualism had leaked out earlier, his career would have been over. The idea of the paranormal activities and ghosts disturbed a lot of educated people in those times. The academic and scientific community dismiss claims of the paranormal, or parapsychology. Ironically, mainstream religion, including the Presbyterian church, King's church, also dismisses paranormal as rubbish.

But the Canadian prime minister, whose governments balanced marketplace competition with important social programs for the unemployed, is one of many noteworthy people who believed in the paranormal.

Other non-crazies convinced of its reality include philosophers William James and Henri Bergson, psychiatrists Carl Jung and (later) Sigmund Freud, physicists David Bohm, Nobel Prize-winner Brian Josephson and Thomas Edison and literary figures William Blake, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, William Butler Yeats and even Mark Twain.

As well as King, other Canadians interested in the paranormal include McGill University researcher Bernard Grad, turn-of-the- century psychoanalyst Maurice Bucke (a friend of poet Walt Whitman), Vancouver psychologist-author Leonard George and the Gitksan Indians of northern B.C.

The experiences of these proponents went under the microscope in a ground-breaking  book by noted American philosopher of religion, David Griffin, Parapsychology, Philosophy and Spirituality.

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Combining skepticism and open-mindedness, Griffin strongly argues that evidence for paranormal phenomena is overwhelming. Griffin also explains why the scientific and religious establishments attack paranormal research without attending to the evidence. Dismissing the paranormal means they are avoid the need to make any changes in their worldviews.

Griffin examines repeatable cases of extrasensory perception (including sensing that a loved one in another city has died) and psychokinesis (moving a matchstick, say, without using one's body). He also pores over evidence for life after death, including messages from mediums, visual apparitions of dead people, reincarnation and out-of-body experiences.

Griffin's conclusion? Chicanery is involved in many paranormal claims. But even after fakery is weeded out, he says, evidence remains so heavy in favour of the paranormal that at least some of it must be true.

But the paranormal is not soon going to be seen as normal. Even CBC Quirks and Quarks host Bob MacDonald, an otherwise broad-minded popularizer of science, argues against the paranormal by saying virtually no one in science takes it seriously.

It would be risky business to do so. Independent-minded scientists who challenge scientific orthodoxy by showing openness to the paranormal would be penalized and ostracized; their peer-judged research grants would dry up.

Meanwhile, many people in the religious community also view the paranormal as unacceptable, even a threat.

The paranormal, as Griffin say, throws into question claims of religious exclusivity. It would be a shock to many faithful Christians, Jews and Muslims to think that miracles -- such as Jesus' healings and appearance after his death -- were not necessarily one-time supernatural events. Instead, if evidence is to be believed, miracles can happen now.

Although Parapychology, Philosophy and Spirituality is by no means a breezy read, because it is painstakingly methodical, it is potentially revolutionary. It is for those seeking a religion that is not only intellectually defensible, but astonishing.

Before "Episode VII - The Force Awakens" There Was Another Trilogy

With Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens now filmed and the teaser hitting our screens, it's hard to believe it has been over three decades since the Millenium Falcon sailed the skies of the Galactic Empire for the first time - and transformed the motion picture industry. Thirty odd years since movie fans first heard Obi Wan Kenobi utter the now-immortal words, "May the force be with you."

But it has. May 25, 1977, was the release date of Star Wars.

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"A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away . . ." the opening line to the film George Lucas's  wrote and directed and at one time became the second largest grossing movie of all time, selling more than $400 million worth of tickets.

Star Wars introduced now-familiar characters as Luke Skywalker (originally called Skykiller - but changed because it sounded too negative), Han Solo and Princess Leia, who looked as if she had bread rolls stuck to the sides of her head.

While the films had a cartoon quality about them, audiences loved them, a devotion they demonstrated by racing to two sequels: The Empire Strikes Back and The Return of the Jedi, at one time the fifth and third largest grossing films in history.

Then there is the ominous Darth Vader, a name now always recognised as a forces of evil. Vader's voice belonged to James Earl Jones.

Jones never allowed his name to appear on the film's credits. Sir Alec Guinness thought it was ok to be credited for the role of Obi Wan Kenobi. Though he later had other ideas about the fame the film brought him.

Star Wars was nominated for 10 Academy Awards and received seven, mostly for the technical skill of spaceships hurtling across the big screen in a way that audiences had never seen before. This effect mastery changed the special effects field in a way that hardly could have been imagined.

Lucas spent 2 1/2 of what he calls the worst years of his life writing, selling and filming the story. Yet he received no awards. There was the consolation of becoming wealthy enough to do whatever he wanted in the future.


An amazing legacy of Star Wars was the merchandising - the Droids, Ewoks, Wookie, etc., that have brought in several billion in sales. In 1984, the costumes of two of the loved characters, C3PO and R2-D2, were donated to the Smithsonian Institution.

Star Wars has become such a familiar name that in a U.S. District Court, Lucas tried to stop the use of the words "Star Wars" in a commercial praising U.S. President Ronald Reagan's plan for an anti-missile shield.
Though Reagan has insisted he is sorry anybody ever called his program by that name, Lucas lost the suit and the name stuck.

Though in December 2015, no one will remember that when JJ Abrams' Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens brings Star Wars back to cinemas and waiting fans.

ING Home Loan $1 Mortgage Insurance Promotion

Some exciting new news for first home buyers from home loan provider ING. If you want a higher loan to value ratio loan and don't want to pay lender's mortgage insurance, ING has decided to offer direct lender's mortgage insurance for only $1.

If you've been struggling to save the extra money for your deposit or down payment, no problem! You now only need a 10% deposit to get a great home loan with ING and get into the real estate market faster than you thought possible.

Effective for loan applications received from Wednesday 26 November 2014 and until further notice, ING DIRECT will offer Lenders Mortgage Insurance (LMI) for $1 where certain criteria are met.
To be eligible for this promotion, loan applications must satisfy the following criteria:

• New loan application with new to ING DIRECT security property
• LVR (including the $1 LMI premium) must be greater than 80% and less than or equal to 90%
• Loan application must include Orange Advantage
• Loan purpose must be to purchase an Owner Occupied property
• Repayment type must be Principal & Interest (for the total loan amount)
• Meet Lender's Mortgage Insurance credit guidelines

The good thing about this home loan offer from ING is it could save the first home buyer thousands of dollars. There's no good reason to be paying extra on top of your mortgage if you can't quite scrape together a deposit or down payment of more than 20%.

So if you're a first home buyer with a house or unit in mind, but didn't have a large deposit and didn't want to pay lender's mortgage insurance, you may now be able to buy your dream home with this new loan from ING.

The potential savings here are great. On a home loan of $400,000, this cut in lenders mortgage insurance could lead to a saving of almost $9,000! Now wouldn't you like to have an extra $9,000 in your pocket, just to pay off your home loan faster, take a holiday or upgrade some furniture.

Remember ING are a respectable lender across the globe, they may be small in Australia, but this is an important step to counter the big banks and try and take away their market share in home loans.

Don't delay, contact ING or your mortgage broker today for this great opportunity and chance to get started in real estate sooner. It's everyone's dream to buy their first home and ING is offering a better chance for all first home buyers with this great new deal.