PJ HiFi installs

PJ Hi-Fi, in Guildford, the hub city of Britain's wealthiest county, is the place to find an exceptional home cinema demo room. The sound system is all Genelec, of course, and it features a Barco Cine CRT projector, a 7.5ft wide Studiotek 130 microperf from Stewart Filmscreen and Lumagen VisionPro HDP Video Scaler. An Arcam AV8 processor and Genelec D18A Active Balancer complete the lineup.

This is what Hamish McNair-Wilson, Editor of What's New in Sound and Vision made of it all
'Whether I found myself viewing the latest Master and Commander DVD, Lord of the Rings from a DTS demo disk or even HDTV, the pictures and in particular the sounds were awe-inspiring, In Master and Commander you could feel every lurch of the ship as the bass reverberated around the room, yet also make out the subtlest pattering of feet on the deck above and discern the most distant yelp. Like no other home cinema set-up I've come across, it thrust you into the environment of the movie on screen and enabled you to live and breathe the action.'

'The audacious, earth-shaking sonic performance was relayed by an active speaker system comprising Genelec 1037C's at the left, right and centre, Genelec AIW26's In-Wall at the side left and surround back and right. It is these, supported by two of Genelec's HTS4 Subwoofers, that really seem to make things happen and their presence here alone is enough to boost Genelec's ever burgeoning credentials and reputation.'

Guildford is now home to one of the finest examples of home cinema to be seen in the UK.

http://www.genelec.com/ht/news/pj_hifi.php

Casino Strategy

During the past 50 years the name Las Vegas has become synonymous with gambling. Nine out of 10 visitors gamble while they're in town. It is almost perverse to visit Las Vegas and not gamble. But while unreasonable expectations can lead to disappointment -- or worse, as in the loss of a lot of money -- the key to having a good time is to approach the casinos with the idea that, contrary to popular opinion, you can win or, at the very least, get much more than your money's worth of playing time. Your success depends less on being lucky than on being familiar with the rules of the games, being aware of the concepts behind the games, and being conversant with the strategies that enable you to play not only with confidence but also with a fair shot at walking away a winner.

The House Advantage

The first important concept to understand about gambling in Las Vegas is that the odds for all the games provide an advantage for the casino ("house"), generally known, appropriately enough, as the "house advantage" (or "edge" or "vigorish"). The casino is a business, and wagering is its product. Because the house establishes the rules, procedures, and payoffs on every game, it builds an automatic commission into every bet to ensure a profit margin.

Here's how it works. Let's pretend that I'm the house and you're the customer and we're betting on a series of coin flips. The deal that I make with you is that every time the coin lands heads up, I win and you pay me a dollar. Every time the coin lands tails up, you win -- but I only pay you 90¢. The law of averages maintains that out of every hundred coin tosses, heads will win 50 times and tails will win the other 50. If I take a dime out of every one of your winning payoffs, the longer you play, the more dimes will wind up in my pocket. If you started with a $50 bankroll, after 1,000 tosses, even if you win half of them, you'd be busted out. (Because it requires two trials -- win one, lose one -- for the house to make its 10¢ "commission," your "negative expectation," or house edge, in this example is 5%.)

The second important gambling concept is known as "fluctuation" (or "variance"). In plain English, we're talking about "luck." Looking at our coin-toss game through the lens of averages, if you and I flip a coin 1,000 times, it's reasonable to expect that the coin will land heads up and tails up close to 500 times each. However, if we flip the coin only 10 times, it's conceivable that the coin could land heads up only twice or as many as eight times. Now let's say that we made the same betting deal as above but we limited the number of tosses to 10. This would largely eliminate your 5% disadvantage and leave it up to "the luck of the toss" or, in other words, the fluctuation. Thus, a short-term fluctuation in the law of averages eliminates the long-term threat of the negative expectation.

How do these concepts -- the house advantage and negative expectation, as well as short-term fluctuation -- apply to the choices that you make as a casino customer? Your decisions, based on these concepts, will determine not only what you play, but also how you play, how long you play, and, ultimately, how well you play.

Luck Versus the Edge

The average "bankroll" (cash carried for the sole purpose of gambling) of a Las Vegas visitor who plans to spend some time in the casino is roughly $500. This is a crucial statistic. The amount of your bankroll and your preferred style of "action" (how you risk your bankroll) define your relationship to luck and the house edge.

Basically, the parameters of gambling action are fast and slow. Some people, though they're in the minority, like their action fast and loose and high risk; these are true "gamblers," in the old-fashioned sense of the word. The extreme version of this type of action is to take the whole $500 bankroll and lay it down on a single play -- say, red or black on the roulette table. The odds are not quite even. The green 0 and 00 on the roulette table give the house an advantage of 5.26% (Roulette, below). Still, even though the odds are less than fair, the immediate result will be the same: double or nothing.

Making one play eliminates both the law of averages and the long-term threat of the house advantage; here you rely solely on the luck of the draw. If you want to go on a roller-coaster ride of luck, with a minute or so of adrenaline-pumping, heart-pounding excitement, lay it all down at once. In a matter of moments, you'll either have twice the money you arrived with or none of it.

A less extreme version of this wild ride is to break your bankroll into two units, and make two bets. Here you can either double your money, lose it all, or break even. Similarly, if you separate your $500 bankroll into five units and make five bets, or 10 units and make 10 bets, your ride lasts a little longer and your outcome is a little less black and white: You can double, bust out, break even, or come out somewhat ahead or behind. Still, the cumulative danger of the house advantage barely comes into play.

Luck can supersede the house advantage, but only in the short run. And though luck accounts for winners big and small -- such as the California nurse who lines up four Megabucks symbols on the $3 pay line to win $9 million or the $2 dice shooter who parlays a hot hand into a couple of hundred bucks -- the lack of luck can obliterate a bankroll faster than a crooked S&L.

Besides, most people who come to Las Vegas like to gamble for as long as they can without running out of money. These people take their $500 bankrolls and split them into 100 units to make $5 bets, 250 units for $2 bets, 500 units for $1 bets, or even 2,000 units for 25¢ bets. This guarantees plenty of time for the law of averages to even out the fluctuations. On the other hand, it puts the house advantage and the negative expectation right back into the game.

So how do you play as long as you like without the certainty of the house advantage grinding your bankroll into dust?

Copyright ©2006 by Fodors.com, a unit of Fodors LLC. All rights reserved

Turtles in Crisis

Centuries old Chinese trade routes spread like fingers throughout Asia bringing the fauna of the continent into their food markets. By now, we are accustomed to seeing images of these animals horrifically mistreated while waiting to be sold for food, traditional Chinese medicines or in the rare instance to be released as a good luck omen. What is new here is that the trade in turtles and tortoises, most of which have been captured in the wild, has become massive. When the Chinese currency recently became convertible, it made turtles and tortoises a cash commodity, putting demand pressure on supplies in other Asian countries, who until then, had used the turtles for their own local consumption.

Considerations and Implications of the Food Markets
In order to meet the increased demand from China, harvesting methods of wild turtles and tortoises had to be successful enough to achieve commercial feasibility. Apparently successful enough that in 1996, 7,716,000 pounds (3.5 million kg.) of turtles were imported and consumed in Hong Kong alone. The most common turtle found in this market was Mauremys mutica. Averaging 2 ½ pounds (1.2 kg.) each, that equals well over 3 million turtles in one year (Bosco Chan, pers. com. report to TRAFFIC Hong Kong, in preparation). However, the markets are indiscriminate as to species, and include 80 pound (36 kg.) adult Orlitia borneensis and 31/2 ounce (100 gram) Geomyda spengleri, so the number of turtles in absolute terms varies. In 1993 approximately 200,000 – 300,000 individual turtles and tortoises were exported from the Cau Mong market in Ho Chi Minh City. Approximately 100,000 of these were Indotestudo elongata (Jenkins 1995).

Harvesting methods for the food markets are as varied as the species found in the markets themselves. Turtles are speared, netted, trapped, caught with hook and line, and dug out of the mud during low water periods or while aestivating. Dogs and pit traps are used for many of the forest floor dwelling turtles including Cuora galbinifrons, Heosemys spinosa, Indotestudo elongata and Pyxidea mouhotii. Platysternon are captured on lines using baited straight pins (C. Hansen pers.com.)

However, in order to gauge the thoroughness of the destruction of the turtles of Asia we must consider the three prong attack on the river turtles; the collection of adults, harvesting of eggs and destruction of habitat. This for example, has led to a reduction of Batagur baska in peninsular Malaysia by over 90% in the last century (Jenkins 1995).

The situation in Thailand is certainly no better. Maxwell (1911) calculated 2,600 Batagur baska and Kachuga trivittata nesting communally in the Ayeyarwady river delta in 1890. By 1899 this population was down to 820, while in 1982 the same area accounted for “only a few”. Most recently, a United Nations Development Program found none (van Dijk 1997).

Callagur borneensis, Batagur baska, Kachuga trivattata and the larger riverine softshell species are captured by a technique that targets nesting females. Lines of hemp or nylon are suspended several inches above the riverbanks between poles stuck in the sand so the line runs parallel to the water line. From this line dangle fish hooks which snag the turtles as they cross under the wire to nest and imprisons them while they await collection by the turtle hunters. This technique effectively removes the breeding females from the populations. Eggs are harvested from the few nests that are managed by females eluding the hooks. More recent perils to these species include “sand mining” and dam construction. Dams alter water height, eliminating nesting sites and in some cases precluding access to the shoreline altogether. The sandy riverbanks, which serve as traditional communal nesting sites are literally being scooped out and removed. As the need for sand for construction increases so does the destruction of the habitats themselves affecting all the wildlife, including turtles.

Harvesting for the food markets is by no means limited to professionals. Local peoples are also able to cash in utilizing the ubiquitous “reverse pet shops”. In the villages and hamlets of the Asian countryside, these shops purchase animals of all sorts from the local peoples who collect turtles and tortoises whenever they are encountered. From these shops the turtles and tortoises make their way to the middlemen who then transport them across borders if necessary into the larger Asian and Chinese cites. Mislabeled as seafood, the turtles and tortoises are stacked in wooden crates violating International Air Transport Association (IATA) shipping regulations. They are also hauled over land in buses and trucks. These journeys can take up to several weeks. The trade in turtles is brisk, highly developed and ignored by border guards, customs officials and airline personnel on both the export and import sides of the Asian borders


by James E. Barzyk

Running into the sand

Mr. Kelly's Arabia, the Gulf, and the West is being reissued by Basic Books.

The Arabs consider that they are the victims of a shameful injustice. Iraq and Saddam will henceforth embody, in an imperishable fashion, the spirit of resistance and the refusal to accept what, because one is an Arab, is the calamity of bending the knee."

Sid Ahmad Ghozali, foreign minister of Algeria, March 4, 1991

ONE OF the less edifying sights in recent weeks has been that of French politicians of every stripe scurrying around the capitals of the Maghreb, anxiously reassuring the Algerians, Moroccans, and Tunisians of France's undiminished esteem and affection for them, despite the anti-French demonstrations in Algiers, Rabat, and Tunis provoked by the French participation in the war against Iraq. Uninspiring though the spectacle has been, it has at least had the merit of providing a twofold warning to the United States: of how not to behave in the months ahead in making arrangements for the future security of the Gulf, and of how some of America's partners in the anti-Iraq coalition can be expected to behave.

The present situation at the head of the Gulf bears a distant resemblance to that which followed the military defeat of the Ottoman empire seventy-odd years ago. The vilayets of Basra and Baghdad were under British military administration, which was in the process of being extended to the vilayet of Mosul in the north. To the eastward, Persia was in a state of upheaval, due in part to the effects of the Great War, in part to Shi'i agitation, but most of all to the incapacity of the Qajar shah to govern his country. To the north the nascent Soviet Union was wracked by civil war, its economy was foundering, and its sovereignty was being impaired by foreign intervention. To the southwest the sultanate of Najd (the forerunner of present-day Saudi Arabia) and the sheikhdom of Kuwait had taken advantage of the war to throw off the remnants of Turkish suzerainty, to place themselves under British protection, and to reap the dual financial benefit of British subsidies and profits from running the British blockade of the Tarkish Arabian provinces. Finally, France was staking her claim to dominion over Syria and a share, if not a monopoly, of the oil of Mosul.

Something obviously had to be done to impose order on Turkish Iraq and the upper Gulf, and the only power in a position to do anything was Britain. Acting, in the first instance, by right of conquest, and afterward on the authority of the mandate conferred on her by the League of Nations, Britain united the three former Turkish vilayets into the kingdom of Iraq, installed the Hashemite prince Faisal Ibn Hussein as its sovereign, and laid down the frontiers of the new state. In 1932 Britain relinquished the mandate and Iraq was admitted to the League of Nations as a fully independent state.

Lines in the Sand

BRITAIN'S definition of the frontiers of Iraq with Kuwait and Saudi Arabia has been the subject of much heated comment in recent months, the burden of the complaints being that these frontiers were "arbitrarily drawn" lines on the map, devised by Britain for her own "imperialist purposes" and imposed upon the people of the area "regardless of their wishes." W'hat criticism of this kind ignores is, in the first place, that the frontiers of the Arab successor states of the former Ottoman empire had to be drawn upon the empire's dissolution, and that Britain alone, as the mandatory power in Iraq and the protecting power in Kuwait and Najd, had the legal right to do so. In the second place, the boundaries of Iraq, Kuwait, and Najd were not arbitrarily conceived lines, languidly plucked from the ether, as it were, by the Machiavellian figure of Sir Percy Cox, the British high commissioner in Iraq. On the contrary, they were drawn in consultation with the Arab leaders concerned, and with the knowledge acquired by British officers of the old Indian Political Service, of whom Cox was one, from a century's experience of eastern and northern Arabia.

by J.B. Kelly