Wednesday, January 25, 2012
LEGOs On The Move
LEGO yuh mind!
Published: Wednesday | January 25, 2012
Martin Baxter, Gleaner Writer
In the basement of a Jacks Hill address is a workshop envied by children the world over - more than 35,000 LEGO pieces in all shapes and sizes, meticulously categorised in order of colour and function.
Every few minutes, a youngster from Campion College comes and retrieves a single LEGO piece and takes it back to his work desk. This young man, 11-year-old Dylan Chin, is building a robotic car and using LEGO as its structure.
"This is what an axle is," he explained, giving The Gleaner a lesson in this seemingly sophisticated form of child's play.
"It allows you to put pieces such as gears, wheels and axle connectors on to them, and connector pins are used to join the beams, which are the main hardware of the robot that keep it together. So these pieces are essential for a robot because, without them, the robot would not stay together, or it would not be able to run as smoothly on the board."
In this basement, which is fitted with blackboards, a comprehensive inventory area and a work table, LEGO is no longer just a toy; it is the building block of life.
Empowering lives
Youngsters use the multi-coloured blocks to learn the complex study of robotics, creating their own designs and bringing them to life with the NXT LEGO brick. Fully programmable, with motor, sensor and USB ports, the NXT LEGO brick becomes the brain behind the robot and the bridge between designer and the design.
Dylan is one of 10 youngsters packed into the basement of Marvin Hall, founder of Halls of Learning, a Jamaica-based organisation dedicated to empowering the lives of people through education. The youngsters are participating in one of Hall's 'LEGO Yuh Mind' robotics workshops, offered as a summer programme, after-school activity and inner-city outreach.
Hall, who has a background in teaching, mathematics and computer science, is using the LEGO as an educational vector that can be embraced by all due to its simplicity. He said that for the next generation of Jamaica's engineers and scientists, LEGO is the perfect start.
"Children have an innate curiosity regardless of their background," said Hall, whose voice had to compete with the shrills of excitement from the children.
Building life skills
"Regardless of their class, once we put them in the experience, then as time passes, they become more and more experienced. Generally, the difference between someone who has never had a robotics workshop and is now 18 years old and someone who has been having a robotics workshop since he/she was eight is just two different levels of outlook on life and solving problems of thinking," he said.
"And it's not necessarily that Person A is brighter than Person B, it's really just what kinds of experiences they've (had) and how that positions them to solve problems in the future."
And this can be seen in the aspirations of some of the kids that make up the 'LEGO Yuh Mind' advanced after-school class.
Dylan says when he grows up he wants to be an aerospace engineer. Twelve-year-old Nathan Campbell, who attends Jamaica College, says he wants to be a robotics engineer. "I want to build cars and planes," he told The Gleaner.
"It is about inspiring the next generation of inventors, engineers, scientists, yes, but not everybody is going to become a scientist, okay?" Hall added.
"In another way, it's about developing a set of lifelong skills, you know. Your logical thinking is applicable in any field, your problem solving ability is applicable in any field, your sequential thinking, procedural thinking, your creativity, your ability to work on a team with people."
http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20120125/lead/lead3.html
Friday, January 13, 2012
Shade Grown? Or Growing Shady?
Coffee farmers seek Government stimulant
Published: Thursday January 12, 2012 | 12:42 pm
The All Island Coffee Growers Association is calling for newly appointed agriculture minister Roger Clarke to immediately move to save the industry.
Association president Derrick Simon says the industry is on the brink of seeing the lowest coffee production in decades.
Simon says the low price per box of coffee, reduced markets, unfavourable weather conditions and farmers turning away from the cash crop are affecting the local coffee output.
He says the situation is further compounded by a severe berry borer infestation which he says has been ripping through coffee fields.
The coffee growers association president says based on his calculations he expects output for this crop season to be the lowest in recent years.
It is for this reason he says coffee farmers want the Government to indicate its position on the future of local coffee.
Recently, Christopher Gentles, Director General of the Coffee Industry Board, told the Gleaner that the projection for coffee production had been revised downward from a high of 234,000 boxes to about 150,000 because of issues affecting the industry.
jerome.reynolds@gleanerjm.com
http://jamaica-gleaner.com/latest/article.php?id=34508
Monday, October 24, 2011
Power Of Cricket
Fire in Babylon
Tom Ryan
September 18, 2011 - 12:01AM
Recent documentaries have placed music at the heart of cultural change in the Caribbean. Films such as Stascha Bader's excellent Rocksteady: The Roots of Reggae and Luciano Blotta's Rise Up: Stories from Jamaica's Music Underground (both 2009) are concerned not only with soulful rhythms but also with the social forces that drive them. Now, British director Stevan Riley's Fire in Babylon persuasively moves cricket to centre stage. And just as you don't have to care about formula one to appreciate Senna, you don't have to be a cricket aficionado to be excited by Riley's probing of the rise of West Indies cricket during the 1970s.
For the film and for West Indian author and broadcaster Frank I, that transformation had an anti-colonial struggle as its driving force and the Black Power movement in the US as its inspiration. ''Their fight was our fight, too,'' he says, even if it took a while for it to find its way to cricket grounds around the nation.
Although the West Indies had been playing Test cricket since the 1920s, it wasn't until Frank Worrell was made captain in 1960 that the team had a black leader. In Riley's film, the members of the successful sides of the 1970s and '80s look on this period with mixed feelings. Change was clearly in the air but, in their view, the team lacked the professionalism needed to succeed. ''We were entertainers, not winners,'' fast bowler Andy Roberts laments, rejecting the label of ''Calypso cricketers''.
The memorable West Indies tour of Australia in the summer of 1960-61, which included a tied Test and was narrowly lost 1-2 by the Windies, is regarded as a failure by the cricketers who came on the scene a decade or so later. Of the motorcade that moved through the streets of Melbourne at the conclusion of the tour to the cheers of a 100,000-plus crowd, Roberts observes they were being celebrated for ''being losers''.
It's a harsh assessment. One could equally assess the public's excitement as an endorsement of the Windies' refreshing, free-wheeling approach to a game that had become stodgy. However, the film takes Roberts' comments as a given and endorses the killer instinct he brought with him to the field. He became known as ''the Hit Man'', although it's a nickname he rejects. ''I didn't go out to hit people,'' he explains. ''It was just that a lot of people got hit.''
The turning point was an Australian tour 15 years later, one that Viv Richards describes as ''a nasty series'', which resulted in the team returning home badly beaten, bruised and racially abused on and off the field. Opening batsman Desmond Haynes also recalls that the Australian opening attack of Dennis Lillee and Jeff Thompson was ''terrifying''. So the search began in the Caribbean for fast bowlers and tougher mindsets to combat the foe.
Fire in Babylon becomes the story of how Roberts, Michael Holding, Colin Croft, Joel Garner and Malcolm Marshall battered their opponents into submission. The players are unanimous in their recollection of how cricket became their form of revenge against their oppressors in England and Australia.
For Holding (aka ''Whispering Death'' for his silent approach to the crease and his thunderbolt deliveries rising directly from the pitch at the batsman's throat), Clive Lloyd, captain from 1974-1985, was ''the father''. But the film casts the charismatic, articulate Richards (aka ''the Master Blaster'') as the hero, not only a courageous champion but a noble warrior for the cause on and off the field.
Riley's film offers lots of juicy cricket footage but the off-field battles are equally compelling: the Windies players' ongoing struggle with their mainly white cricket board for appropriate remuneration; the rise of World Series Cricket (including Clyde Packer's spirited defence of those who joined the touring circus); the British press crying foul at the ''terror'' created by the Windies' battalion of fast bowlers; and the betrayal by the ''rebel'' players who toured South Africa after it had been banned from the cricket circuit due to its apartheid policies. Riveting stuff.
http://www.theage.com.au/entertainment/movies/fire-in-babylon-20110916-1kdot.html
Monday, October 10, 2011
Unaccounted For Costs Of An Aluminum Can
St Ann residents say bauxite company has made their lives hell
BY KARYL WALKER
Online news editor walkerk@jamaicaobserver.com
Sunday, October 09, 2011
HERMAN Webb is an angry man.The 65-year-old says that Noranda Bauxite Company has been giving him, his neighbours and hundreds of residents in districts neighbouring the community of Stepney in South East St Ann a raw deal.
"If somebody don't come to we rescue it's going to be a bloody revolution around here. I have been farming this land for 42 years and they want to give me little or nothing," Webb fumed in an interview with the Sunday Observer.
President of the Nine Miles United Districts Association Gerald Lawrence (right) and an unidentified resident view a mined-out crater at Down Lodge in South East St Ann. (Photos: Karyl Walker)Webb's outrage, and that of his neighbours, has its genesis in Noranda's mining operations in the districts which, the residents claim, have been having a negative effect on their lives.
"The dust is terrible," said Webb. "It affects everybody, but the company don't pay anybody who is more than 300 feet from the mining site. It is unfair, because the breeze blow the dust for miles."
Webb's frustration was shared by Gerald Lawrence, president of the Nine Miles United Districts Citizens' Association.
"We want the whole Jamaica to know what we are going through. Our lives have become hell," said Lawrence.
The association represents the districts of Prickly Pole, Glasgow Lodge, Eight Miles, Nine Miles, Stepney, Hessen Castle, Murray Mount and Grants Mountain.
Most of the residents in the bauxite-rich section of the parish are farmers who live on land owned by Noranda.
In recent times, the company served notice that the residents need to clear their crops from designated plots and has been paying compensation to the displaced farmers.
But this has been a bone of contention for the residents who claim that their crops are being grossly undervalued.
"They want to give me $700,000 for my six-and-a-half acres worth of crops. I had a big farm with 3,000 coffee plants valued at $2 million, and 2,000 roots of banana. They valued the coffee at $300,000. That can't be fair after 42 years," Webb said.
He said he has written to the minister of mining and the Jamaica Bauxite Institute about his plight but has so far not received a reply.
The residents produced documents bearing the letterhead of Noranda which gave them six months to clear the land. However, they allege that the company has not honoured the agreement and has been bulldozing crops before the six-month grace period expires.
Percival Cross and Diedre Lewis, whose plots have already been mined, said bulldozers came and destroyed their crops without notice.
The notice letter which Lewis showed the Sunday Observer stated that she had until October 30 to clear the land. However, she showed the newspaper the land that has already been mined.
Cross said his farm was cleared after only three months.
"One day we just wake up and them start clear the land — crop and all. Them say them give me six months, but the tractor come after only three. Them deal with me cold, and now me crop gone and me no have no way to feed my children. What we going do?" he said.
When the Sunday Observer contacted Kent Skyers, public relations officer at Noranda, he denied the residents' claims, saying that clearing land before the notice period expires was not in line with the company's policy.
"Our operations are not like that. We would not be giving notice and then go and push off crops before the time. We don't normally take off crops," Skyers said.
His response, however, ran counter to what was shown to this reporter. Other questions in relation to the residents' claims, sent to Skyers via e-mail on Friday, were not responded to up to press time last night.
In sections of Eleven Miles, Down Lodge and Ballintoy large craters, some more than 100 feet deep, littered the landscape.
Under the Mining Act, bauxite companies must adhere to land reclamation regulations set out by the Jamaica Bauxite Institute. Deep craters must be refilled and the miners must restore the land by placing at least six inches of top soil in mined-out areas.
But the residents of Dry Harbour Mountains complained that the company has not been strictly adhering to the land reclamation requirement.
At Down Lodge a huge crater remained unfilled and although sections of the land have been replanted with grass and cassava, other sections are bare and limestone is visible.
This reporter took at least 100 steps before reaching the base of the crater.
"This can't be right. They have ravaged the land, gone with all the precious nutrients and have left some dust on top of stone," Lawrence said, shaking his head slowly.
While some land had been sold to big money interests decades ago, other residents sold their land to the bauxite miners only recently.
Alvin Hall of Stepney is one such former land owner.
Hall lives in a modest dwelling perched on a mound bordered by a deep crater on one side and another plot of land which is being mined on the other side.
Hall said he sold his land and will be relocated by the company to another section of the island that has already been mined.
The Sunday Observer saw tractors and other heavy equipment being used to load tonnes of red dirt in the backs of tipper trucks as Hall's two sons romped on the little space that was left of their once-sprawling yard.
The mining was taking place almost 30 feet from his house.
Hall said he had signed a deal with Noranda in which the company promised not to disturb a family plot where the remains of his ancestors rested.
Less than 30 feet to the back of his house is a gaping crater stretching for more than 200 metres.
The residents have also complained that the miners have been filling sinkholes in the area, placing them at risk of flooding during heavy rains.
Sinkholes, which are found in many rural communities, are nature's way of providing drainage for rainwater to flow into rivers and eventually the sea.
Janet Smith, a respected resident of Sterling district, was critical of bauxite mining, claiming that it brought more problems than good to communities.
"It has destroyed the topography of many farming communities in the Dry Harbour Mountains. We do not need bauxite mining," she said. "They leave huge craters everywhere they mine and they don't seem to care that people's lives are being turned upside down. The land cannot be farmed after it is mined out. The dust and noise are hazards. This is wrong."
http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/news/St-Ann-residents-say-bauxite-company-has-made-their-lives-hell_9869046
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
Marley Bizness
Marley company says prospects improving despite auditor's concern
Published: Wednesday | October 5, 2011Jammin Java Corp is countering the signal from its Wall Street auditor about its viability as a 'going concern', saying it recently signed a vending machine deal worth US$2.5 million (J$215 million) annually and has nearly US$2 million (J$172 million) in the bank.
The auditor's concern for the company chaired by Rohan Marley is that its revenue intake at US$71,700 (J$6.2 million) over six months ending July are insufficient to cover its expenses to date, unless financed externally.
"The company has an accumulated deficit of US$1.2 million and working capital of US$1.96 million at July 31, 2011. In connection with our January 31, 2011 audit, our auditor has raised substantial doubt about the company's ability to continue as a going concern," read the accompanying statements in the financials sent to shareholders at the end of September.
Jammin Java, a subsidiary of Marley Coffee LLC, is listed on the US Over the Counter Exchange. The company's auditor is listed on its website as KBL, LLP Certified Public Accountants and Advisors.
Jammin Java CEO Brent Toevs, in response to Wednesday Business queries last Friday, said the auditor was conservative and cautious.
"Most auditors ... take a very defensive position as to the viability of all start-up businesses, which is why you see language like that. The reality is that we launched our business into the market around December of 2010 and it's only this last quarter that we deemed ourselves a non-development stage company," said Toevs.
"Since our launch, though, we feel as though we've done quite a bit for any start-up company. At the end of last quarter we had nearly US$2 million in the bank, which shows that we have the necessary funds to continue operations for a while. That coupled with the fact we're constantly growing our business operations," he said.
External funding totalling some US$2.5 million was secured for Jammin Java earlier this year from a company called Straight Path. It allowed Jammin Java to hold US$1.8 million cash at the end of period. Toevs also said numerous distribution deals were recently signed.
No timeline given
"To give you some highlights, we signed a long-term deal with First Choice Coffee Services to roll out 1,000 Marley Branded Bunn machines across offices throughout the US that's worth an estimated US$2.5 million per year," said the CEO.
Toevs declined to state a planned timeline for breaking even. He said that the company would try to raise more capital to grow faster.
"Right now, we're looking to effectively and efficiently grow revenues through entering multiple lines of business. We're always looking to make a profit on every deal, but in this hyper competitive industry it takes a lot to launch a product and it could take a while to turn a true profit. The beauty with the coffee industry is that once you get a client, you usually hold on to them for a very long time," he said.
The company in its financials revealed that it would spend US$595,000 over the next 12 months on marketing/advertising and administrative expenses. It added that additional capital would be sought as deemed necessary.
"In the future, we may be required to seek additional capital by selling debt or equity securities, selling assets, or otherwise be required to bring cash flows in balance when we approach a condition of cash insufficiency. The sale of additional equity or debt securities, if accomplished, may result in dilution to our then shareholders. We provide no assurance that financing will be available in amounts or on terms acceptable to us, or at all," read the statement.
Jammin Java during the quarter embarked on hiring and compensating talent. In May, it began paying president Anh Tran and Marley each US$10,000 a month. "Prior to such date, neither Tran nor Marley received any salary or bonus for their services to the company," it stated.
In August - just outside the review quarter - it began paying Shane Whittle, a director, US$10,000 a month and hired Toevs as CEO for an annual basic salary of US$155,000.
Toevs is a coffee veteran with over 25 years of executive management experience.
business@gleanerjm.comhttp://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20111005/business/business5.html
Friday, August 5, 2011
Gimme Power
John Golding Centre to save $1M from solar system
Friday, August 05, 2011
THE Sir John Golding Rehabilitation Centre in Kingston is expected to save $1 million from the installation of a solar water heating system.
The system, which has five solar water heaters with a capacity of 4,200 litres to serve the Henriques Ward Male Area, Henriques Ward Female Area, Henriques Ward Children Area, kitchen and laundry, was officially handed over on Wednesday by the Petroleum Corporation of Jamaica (PCJ) during a ceremony at the centre.
http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/news/John-Golding-Centre-to-save--1M-from-solar-system_9375626