Salish Sea? | OLD NEWS:British Columbia

Strait of Georgia or Salish Sea? | CTV British Columbia:

: ctvbc.ca

Date: Monday Mar. 10, 2008 8:28 PM PT

A proposal by a Vancouver Island First Nation band to rename the Strait of Georgia the Salish Sea has people across B.C. asking: What's in a name?

For the Chemainus First Nation on Vancouver Island, renaming the strait - the section of ocean between Vancouver Island and B.C.'s mainland -- would recognize the original inhabitants of Canada's west coast.

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Band members pitched the name Salish Sea to B.C. government ministers as a name that's been catching on among natives in the area.

And the government of British Columbia -- celebrating its 150th anniversary -- says it will explore the name change.

Haida Gwaii -- islands off B.C.'s coast that were named the Queen Charlotte Islands -- as an example of how this could work.

Natives have been living on the coast for at least 8,000 years before Europeans sailed ships into Burrard Inlet.

But it was Captain George Vancouver who gave a name to the body of water in 1792, when he named it "Gulf of Georgia" after King George III.

In that monarch's long reign, from 1760 to 1820, and he defeated France in the Seven Years' War but lost the American colonies after the American Revolution.

  

Renaming the Strait of Georgia would require a formal application to the Geographical Names Board of Canada.

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Tsunami Fallout Arrives on the West Coast

There have been reports of cars, tractor-trailers, capsized ships and even whole houses bobbing around in open water.

Adrift: A whole house bobs in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Japan. An enormous field of debris was swept out to sea following the earthquake and tsunami

But even more grisly are the predictions of U.S. oceanographer Curtis Ebbesmeyer, who is expecting human feet, still in their shoes, to wash up on the West Coast within three years.

'I'm expecting parts of houses, whole boats and feet in sneakers to wash up,' Mr Ebbesmeyer, a Seattle oceanographer who has spent decades tracking flotsam, told MailOnline. 

Several thousand bodies were washed out to sea following the disaster and while most of the limbs will come apart and break down in the water, feet encased in shoes will float, Mr Ebbesmeyer said.

'I'm expecting the unexpected,' he added. 

Journey: This graphic depicts the predicted location of the Japan debris field as it swirls towards the U.S. West Coast. Scientists predict the first bits of rubbish will wash up in a year's time


In three years' time the debris field will have reached the U.S. and Canadian West Coast and will then turn toward Hawaii and back again toward Asia, circulating in what is known as the North Pacific gyre

Members of the U.S. Navy's 7th fleet, who spotted the extraordinary floating rubbish, say they have never seen anything like it and are warning the debris now poses a threat to shipping traffic.

'It's very challenging to move through these to consider these boats run on propellers and that these fishing nets or other debris can be dangerous to the vessels that are actually trying to do the work,' Ensign Vernon Dennis told ABC News. 

'So getting through some of these obstacles doesn't make much sense if you are going to actually cause more debris by having your own vessel become stuck in one of these waterways.'

Debris soup: There have been reports of cars, tractor-trailers and capsized ships bobbing around in open water off the coast of Japan

Vast: An aerial view of the debris shows massive amounts of timber, tyres and parts of houses. The U.S. Navy said they had never seen anything like it and warn it now poses a threat to shipping traffic

By DAILY MAIL REPORTER

Gold Bear Market: Storm Clouds On The Horizon

Soros sees gold prices on brink of bear market

Bloomberg News  Dec 29, 2011 – 1:40 PM ET

By Nicholas Larkin, Maria Kolesnikova and Debarati Roy

By Nicholas Larkin, Maria Kolesnikova and Debarati Roy

Gold is poised to complete its 11th consecutive annual gain, the longest winning streak in at least nine decades, on the brink of a bear market.

George Soros, the billionaire who two years ago called it the “ultimate asset bubble,” cut 99% of his holdings in the first quarter, Securities and Exchange Commission data show. Hedge fund managers John Paulson, Paul Touradji and Eric Mindich also sold bullion this year. While speculators in New York futures are the least bullish in 31 months, the median estimate in a Bloomberg survey of 44 traders and analysts is for prices to rally as much as 40% to US$2,140 an ounce in 2012.

The divergence of views is widening after prices declined 19% from a record close of US$1,900.23 on Sept. 5, or 1 percentage point away from a bear market. As some investors retreated to cash amid a US$10-trillion slump in global equity values since May, others bought more metal, taking holdings in exchange-traded products to an all-time high two weeks ago. Bullion’s 7.6% gain in 2011 means it’s on track to beat stocks, bonds and the dollar for a second straight year.

“It’s done its job this year of protecting investors,” said Michael Cuggino, 48, who helps manage about US$15-billion of assets, including US$3-billion in gold, at Permanent Portfolio Funds in San Francisco and correctly predicted in February that prices would keep rising. “Gold has been all over the place. If you bought gold at US$1,800 then you aren’t too happy. Some people will get out of gold, but the longer-term investors will remain.”

Trading Partners

Bullion was at US$1,530.07 at 2:35 p.m. in London, below this year’s average of US$1,572.47 and six times more than when the bull market began in 2001. The MSCI All-Country World Index of equities declined 10%, on track for the worst year since 2008, and the Dollar Index, a measure against six major trading partners, advanced 2%. Fixed-income securities around the world gained 4.3% this year, the weakest performance since 2007, Bank of America Corp. indexes show.

Investment in physical metal is cooling. The U.S. Mint’s sales of American Eagle gold coins in November were the weakest since June 2008, data on its web site show. Holdings in bullion- backed ETPs fell about 35 metric tons since reaching a record on Dec. 14, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. They are still 140 tons higher than at the start of 2011 and the total of 2,326 tons, valued at about US$116-billion, exceeds the reserves of all but four central banks. ETP holdings climbed 0.3% yesterday, the first increase in two weeks.

Federal Reserve

Demand had strengthened most of this year as Europe’s debt crisis widened and the Federal Reserve pledged to keep interest rates near zero until at least mid-2013. The European Central Bank cut rates to 1% on Dec. 8, matching the record low of the euro era that began in 1999. That increases the appeal of bullion because it generally earns investors returns only through price gains.

“The longer-term trends, mainly government fiscal and monetary policies, haven’t changed,” said Tom Winmill, who helps manage more than US$200-million of assets from Walpole, New Hampshire, for Midas Funds and whose Midas Perpetual Portfolio may increase its 19% investment in bullion and gold mining companies in the next quarter. “Gold has that preservation-of-wealth role and was probably used quite a bit in the last several weeks.”

Options traders are also bullish, with the top nine holdings all betting on higher prices. The two most widely held contracts give holders the right to buy gold at US$2,000 by the end of March and May, data from the Comex exchange show.

Hedge Funds

That contrasts with money managers, who cut their wagers on a rally to 117,151 futures and options in the week ended Dec. 20, from as many as 253,653 in August, according to data from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. The hedge funds and other speculators are now the least bullish since May 2009, a month in which gold jumped 10 percent.

Paulson, the billionaire fund manager mired in the worst slump of his career, sold 36% of his stake in the SPDR Gold Trust in the third quarter, an SEC filing showed. New York- based Paulson & Co. remains the biggest investor in the largest gold-backed ETP, with a stake valued at US$3.17-billion.

The 56-year-old manager’s Gold Fund was this year’s best performer among his US$28-billion fund family through about mid- December, people familiar with the figures said last week. Redemption requests for the end of the year were about US$2-billion, two people briefed on the matter said last month. Stefan Prelog, a spokesman, declined to comment.

‘Rational’ Buying

Soros Fund Management LLC, based in New York, sold almost all its shares in the SPDR Gold Trust and the iShares Gold Trust in the first quarter, SEC data show. Its 81-year-old founder, who made US$1-billion breaking the Bank of England’s defence of the pound in 1992, said in January 2010 that buying at the start of a bubble was “rational.”

The fund’s gold sales preceded a decision in July to return the less than US$1-billion managed for outsiders and focus on family and foundation money. It bought more SPDR Gold Trust shares in the third quarter and added options, SEC data show. Michael Vachon, a spokesman, declined to comment.

“Gold became very overbought,” said Charles Morris, who oversees about US$2.2-billion of assets at HSBC Global Asset Management in London and cut his bullion holdings to 6% at the end of November from 15% six months ago. “It will at least consolidate following this almighty rally. When the new bull market arrives, maybe a year or so away from now, then gold will once again prove to be a leading asset.”

‘End of Road’

Dennis Gartman, the economist and author of the Suffolk, Virginia-based Gartman Letter, said Dec. 13 that traders were witnessing the “death of a bull.” He sold the last of his gold the previous day and said Dec. 23 his outlook was neutral. The “megatrend” in bullion is “in all likelihood near the end of the road,” Markus Mezger, co-founder of Zug, Switzerland-based Tiberius Asset Management AG, which manages about US$2.5-billion of assets, said in its 2012 outlook report on Dec. 23.

Eton Park Capital Management LP, founded by 44-year-old Mindich, sold the last of its SPDR Gold Trust shares in the third quarter, according to SEC data. The holding was valued at US$135-million based on the average price over those three months. Jonathan Gasthalter, a spokesman for the New York-based company, declined to comment.

Touradji Capital Management LP, led by its 40-year-old founder, sold all of its shares in the SPDR Gold Trust in the first three months of the year before buying back about 26% of that stake in the third quarter, the data show. Its largest holding in publicly traded equities remains Barrick Gold Corp., the world’s biggest miner of the metal. Prelog, also a spokesman for Touradji, declined to comment.

‘Makes People Nervous’

“Gold is going to go higher, but it’s not going to go in a straight line,” said Martin Murenbeeld, the 67-year-old chief economist at Toronto-based DundeeWealth Inc., which manages about US$100-billion in the Dynamic Mutual Funds. “Gold has given positive returns, but it doesn’t necessarily do it in the way that gives comfort, and that makes people nervous.”

Projections for a steady dollar may stall a gold rally. The Dollar Index, which gained 8% since the end of October, will reach 80.3 in the first quarter, from 80.6 now, the median of 10 analyst forecasts compiled by Bloomberg shows. The 30-week correlation coefficient between the currency and bullion is at – 0.48, with a figure of -1 meaning the two always move in opposite directions.

Trading Patterns

Bullion’s decline since reaching an intraday record of US$1,921.15 on Sept. 6 means it is heading for a quarterly average of US$1,684. While that’s the second-highest in data going back to 1920, it’s 10% or more below what Societe Generale SA, Barclays Capital and BNP Paribas SA predicted in September. This year’s high still managed to exceed the expectations of all but five of 35 analysts and traders surveyed by Bloomberg a year ago, who had a median estimate of US$1,700.

The metal closed below its 200-day moving average on Dec. 14 for the first time since January 2009, a sign for some investors who study charts of trading patterns and prices to predict trends that the rout has further to go. Prices have rallied as much as 2.7% since then and also gained after breaching the moving average in each year from 2003 to 2009.

Gold’s high in September has yet to exceed previous records when adjusted for inflation. The metal peaked at US$850 in 1980, equal to US$2,335 today, according to a calculator on the website of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.

Central Banks

Mining companies are forecast to make the most profit ever. Barrick, based in Toronto, will report net income of US$4.72-billion this year and US$6.01-billion in 2012, according to the mean of 11 analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg. Shares of the company, which Bloomberg Industries estimates mines about 9% of the world’s gold, fell 17% in New York this year. It’s trading at 9.1 times estimated earnings, down from 13.4 a year ago, data compiled by Bloomberg show.

The drop in gold may spur more buying from central banks, putting a “floor” under prices, said Adrian Day, who manages about US$170-million of assets as the president of Adrian Day Asset Management in Annapolis, Maryland. The banks may add 600 tons to reserves next year, the most since at least 1970, according to Goldman Sachs Group Inc., which on Dec. 1 said bullion would reach US$1,940 in 12 months.

“The bubble is in paper currency creation, not in physical gold,” said Ben Davies, the London-based manager of the Hinde Gold Fund, which gained 22% in the first 11 months of the year and invests in bullion stored in a Swiss private bank’s vaults. “Calls for a top in the market are premature.”

Bloomberg News

Leonard Cohen: Democracy - YouTube

Leonard Cohen: Democracy - YouTube: ""

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Flamingos rest on a frozen pond in their enclosure at the zoo in Zurich, Switzerland.






Giant pandas Qiqi (l.) and Zhizhi eat at the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding in Chengdu, Sichuan province, China. China will begin sending pandas bred in captivity into a controlled wilderness area in southwestern Sichuan province next month. The first six pandas will be released to a protected natural area covering more than 2,000 acres.

China Daily/Reuters

1 out of 2 Americans are Poor!!!

Woody Guthrie-This Land Is Your Land - YouTube: ""

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Its a Mean Old World

THIS SHOULD ENCOURAGE THE POPULACE TO EMBRACE THE OCCUPY WALL STREET PROTEST.

Census shows 1 in 2 people are poor or low-income
-  HOPE YEN, Associated Press 


“If Americans ever allow banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks will deprive the people of all property until their children will wake up homeless.”
- Thomas Jefferson


"One of the funny things about the stock market is that every time one person buys, another sells, and both think they are astute."
- William Feather

14 Smart Things Adam Smith Said About Money

1. We want money to buy things
Goods can serve many other purposes besides purchasing money, but money can serve no other purpose besides purchasing goods.

It is not for its own sake that men desire money, but for the sake of what they can purchase with it.


2. You need money to make money

A great stock, though with small profits, generally increases faster than a small stock with great profits. Money, says the proverb, makes money. When you have a little, it is often easier to get more. The great difficulty is to get that little.


3. The pursuit and exchange of money is uniquely human
Nobody ever saw a dog make a fair and deliberate exchange of one bone for another with another dog. 


4. The first money was labor
Labour was the first price, the original purchase-money that was paid for all things. It was not by gold or by silver, but by labour, that all the wealth of the world was originally purchased.

 
5. It is our nature to accumulate money
The natural effort of every individual to better his own condition is so powerful, that it is alone, and without any assistance, not only capable of carrying on the society to wealth and prosperity, but of surmounting a hundred impertinent obstructions with which the folly of human laws too often encumbers its operations.


6. If you have money, you should be able to spend it as you see fit
It is the highest impertinence and presumption, therefore, in kings and ministers, to pretend to watch over the economy of private people, and to restrain their expense, either by sumptuary laws, or by prohibiting the importation of foreign luxuries.


7. The joy of having money is to show it off

With the greater part of rich people, the chief enjoyment of riches consists in the parade of riches, which in their eye is never so complete as when they appear to possess those decisive marks of opulence which nobody can possess but themselves.


8. We want payment on land we control
As soon as the land of any country has all become private property, the landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed, and demand a rent even for its natural produce.


9. The production and sale of goods is not for the welfare of others
It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity, but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities, but of their advantages.


10. Monopolies are a fact of life
People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. It is impossible indeed to prevent such meetings, by any law either could be executed, or would be consistent with liberty or justice. But though the law cannot hinder people of the same trade from sometimes assembling together, it ought to do nothing to facilitate such assemblies; much less to render them necessary.


11. Taxes should be gentle

Every tax ought to be so contrived as both to take out and to keep out of the pockets of the people as little as possible, over and above what it brings into the public treasury of the state.


12. Taxes should be convenient

Every tax ought to be levied at the time, or in the manner, in which it is most likely to be convenient for the contributor to pay it. 


13. The government's job is to protect those who have money from those who don't

Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.


14. Times get rough when too many people don't have money
No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the greater part of the members are poor and miserable. It is but equity, besides, that they who feed, clothe, and lodge the whole body of the people, should have such a share of the produce of their own labour as to be themselves tolerably well fed, clothed, and lodged.


Excerpts from The Wealth of Nations

Happens all the time...

NASA - 2012: Magnetic Pole Reversal Happens All The (Geologic) Time:

Scientists understand that Earth's magnetic field has flipped its polarity many times over the millennia. In other words, if you were alive about 800,000 years ago, and facing what we call north with a magnetic compass in your hand, the needle would point to 'south.' This is because a magnetic compass is calibrated based on Earth's poles. The N-S markings of a compass would be 180 degrees wrong if the polarity of today's magnetic field were reversed. Many doomsday theorists have tried to take this natural geological occurrence and suggest it could lead to Earth's destruction. But would there be any dramatic effects? The answer, from the geologic and fossil records we have from hundreds of past magnetic polarity reversals, seems to be 'no.'

Reversals are the rule, not the exception. Earth has settled in the last 20 million years into a pattern of a pole reversal about every 200,000 to 300,000 years, although it has been more than twice that long since the last reversal. A reversal happens over hundreds or thousands of years, and it is not exactly a clean back flip. Magnetic fields morph and push and pull at one another, with multiple poles emerging at odd latitudes throughout the process. Scientists estimate reversals have happened at least hundreds of times over the past three billion years. And while reversals have happened more frequently in "recent" years, when dinosaurs walked Earth a reversal was more likely to happen only about every one million years.

Sediment cores taken from deep ocean floors can tell scientists about magnetic polarity shifts, providing a direct link between magnetic field activity and the fossil record. The Earth’s magnetic field determines the magnetization of lava as it is laid down on the ocean floor on either side of the Mid-Atlantic Rift where the North American and European continental plates are spreading apart. As the lava solidifies, it creates a record of the orientation of past magnetic fields much like a tape recorder records sound. The last time that Earth's poles flipped in a major reversal was about 780,000 years ago, in what scientists call the Brunhes-Matuyama reversal. The fossil record shows no drastic changes in plant or animal life. Deep ocean sediment cores from this period also indicate no changes in glacial activity, based on the amount of oxygen isotopes in the cores. This is also proof that a polarity reversal would not affect the rotation axis of Earth, as the planet's rotation axis tilt has a significant effect on climate and glaciation and any change would be evident in the glacial record.




A schematic diagram of Earth's interior and the movement of magnetic north from 1900 to 1996. The outer core is the source of the geomagnetic field. 

Graphic Credit: Dixon Rohr

Earth's polarity is not a constant. Unlike a classic bar magnet, or the decorative magnets on your refrigerator, the matter governing Earth's magnetic field moves around. Geophysicists are pretty sure that the reason Earth has a magnetic field is because its solid iron core is surrounded by a fluid ocean of hot, liquid metal. This process can also be modeled with supercomputers. Ours is, without hyperbole, a dynamic planet. The flow of liquid iron in Earth's core creates electric currents, which in turn create the magnetic field. So while parts of Earth's outer core are too deep for scientists to measure directly, we can infer movement in the core by observing changes in the magnetic field. The magnetic north pole has been creeping northward – by more than 600 miles (1,100 km) – since the early 19th century, when explorers first located it precisely. It is moving faster now, actually, as scientists estimate the pole is migrating northward about 40 miles per year, as opposed to about 10 miles per year in the early 20th century.

Another doomsday hypothesis about a geomagnetic flip plays up fears about incoming solar activity. This suggestion mistakenly assumes that a pole reversal would momentarily leave Earth without the magnetic field that protects us from solar flares and coronal mass ejections from the sun. But, while Earth's magnetic field can indeed weaken and strengthen over time, there is no indication that it has ever disappeared completely. A weaker field would certainly lead to a small increase in solar radiation on Earth – as well as a beautiful display of aurora at lower latitudes -- but nothing deadly. Moreover, even with a weakened magnetic field, Earth's thick atmosphere also offers protection against the sun's incoming particles.

The science shows that magnetic pole reversal is – in terms of geologic time scales – a common occurrence that happens gradually over millennia. While the conditions that cause polarity reversals are not entirely predictable – the north pole's movement could subtly change direction, for instance – there is nothing in the millions of years of geologic record to suggest that any of the 2012 doomsday scenarios connected to a pole reversal should be taken seriously. A reversal might, however, be good business for magnetic compass manufacturers.




Related Link:
› Earth's Inconstant Magnetic Field

Patrick Lynch
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center



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