Baffling jobs and Muar food

Have you ever looked through job ads and wondered what a particular job is all about? Here is one for you. What do you think Message Therapist Jobs entail?

That's baffling? Wait till you see this menu. The next time you visit Muar, be sure to check out the restaurant. This was submitted by Sharifuddin Sulaiman for The Star's Thumbnail column.

Did you know that Muar is not only famous for otak-otak and oyster omelette, Muar is also known for mee bandung and asam pedas.

Is Chick Beer Politically Incorrect? How About Beer Stocks?

If you are a woman and you were looking for a beer just for women, your wish has come true. There is now a beer with the unforgettable name of 'Chick Beer', described in the video below. The beer was created by a 61 year old mother of five children, and is sold in pink bottles. The six pack carton looks kind of like a purse. Unfortunately, you can't buy stock in the chick beer company.

But according to WallStreetNewsNetwork.com, there are more than a dozen publicly traded breweries and beer retailers. In addition, half a dozen of the beer stocks pay dividends, ranging up to over 3%.

One example is Molson Coors Brewing Company (TAP), a Canadian based company that markets the Coors Light, Molson, Carling, Pilsner, Keystone Light, and Granville Island brands. The stock trades at 11 times current earnings and 10 tkmes forward earnings, with a reasonable price to earnings growth ratio of 0.95. Remember, a PEG below one is a very favorable buy. In addition, the company pays a generous yield of 3.1%.

Another dividend paying brewery is Anheuser-Busch InBev (BUD), which has the memorable stock symbol representing its popular Budweiser brand. It also sells Stella Artois, Beck's, Leffe, Bud Light, Skol, Brahma, Quilmes, Michelob, and many other brands. The stock has a current price to earnings ratio of 18, a forward PE of 12, and a 0.97 PEG. The stock sports a yield of 1.8%.

If you are looking for more beer stock ideas, check out the free list at WallStreetNewsNetwork.com, which can be updated, sorted, and downloaded.

Flat Rate Toll Free Numbers

How would you like to have a toll free number for your business without the worry that you’ll never know how big your bill will be each month? What you are looking for is flat rate toll free service. Your bill is the same every month and you’ll get dozens of features included at no extra cost. Best of all, there’s no risk to try it because you can get a 14 day free trial of flat rate toll free service.

The flat rate service from iTeleCenter is just $49 a month for unlimited calls. You pay no per minute charges, no extra fees for features, no activation fees, no surcharges or hidden fees, no confusing plans and no contracts.

What are some of those special calling features? You get professional grade business phone service such as an auto attendant with main greeting voicemail to email or text transmission, multiple extension mailboxes, online faxing, follow-me call forwarding and 30 additional features.

How about the numbers available? You have two choices in how you pick your toll free number. The first way is to simply select from a list of 10 assorted numbers that are available. These have the prefixes 800, 866, 877 and 888. If you see one you like, just click on the radio button and proceed to order it. If not, then click the “generate more numbers” button and you’ll get a new list.

The other method is to search for a custom vanity number. What is a vanity number? That’s a phone number that spells out a word or phrase using the letters that appear on the numbers of the telephone dial. You can specify any available toll free prefix, or limit your search to 855 or 866 or 877 or 888. You can also use * for wildcard digits. Those are digits where you really don’t care what number comes up. Let’s try a couple of examples and see what we get.

Say you’re in the water conditioning business and want a memorable toll free number to advertise. We’ll say any prefix is OK and that we want the term “water” to be in the toll free number. Enter “water” into the search box and press the search button. Voila! Here’s what we get. There are 10 different toll free numbers available and they all spell out water within the number. You can choose from (877) 95WATER, (855) 60WATER, (877) WATGER88 and another seven options. Don’t much care for these? Click on the Generate More Numbers button and you’ll get another 10 options. These include (855) WATER08, (855) WATER30 and seven more that are similar.

Got the idea? You may want to play around with this search engine a bit to get something that relates to your business and is easy to remember. Note that 855 is a newly added toll free prefix. You’ll likely have more options with the 855 prefix than the others because it has only been available for about a year.

What makes this system better than old-school toll free number ordering is both the interactive vanity search feature plus instant availability of your chosen toll free number. That’s right. You select the number you want and then place your order online right away before anybody else gets the same idea. That starts your 14 day free trial period. Play around with the features, decide how much of an asset this is for your business, and keep using that number as long as you keep your toll free service.

Do you think that a toll free number will increase your opportunity to make more sales and keep customers happy? If so, you can have one for your business right now. It only takes a few minutes to select a number and get it in service. Go ahead and start the 14 day free trial on flat rate toll free service.

Friday Frolics - The Classroom Test

I don't know about being studious but glad school's out and formal schooling is no longer part of my life. On the other hand, we are literally students for life as life is in fact a learning process. What do you think? What have you learned today or yesterday?

You Are a Studious Student

You are wise and thoughtful. You are very philosophical about life. When something is important enough, you will tell people about it. You like to mull things over for a while. You are original in both your thoughts and actions. You think the status quo is boring. You are good at working hard without expecting praise. Others often don't know about your accomplishments.

The Classroom Test

Other Fun Quizzes

Of Glasshouses, Stones and Copyright Infringement

German media reports on alleged copyright infringement by a senior conservative politician (see for example this article in the Handelsblatt). Siegfried Kauder (CDU) recently proposed that copyright infringers should be disconnected from the Internet for three weeks – without a trial, based only on repeat complaints by copyright owners to the relevant internet service provider. He saw this as a milder alternative to criminal prosecution or costly warning letters (costly for the infringer who must pay the right holder’s attorney’s fees).

While that suggestion is constitutionally problematic and was not really taken seriously by anyone even within his own party, it seems to have prompted someone to investigate whether Kauder himself abides by copyright law at all times. Well, apparently not. It is alleged that at least two photographs on his website, showing castles in his constituency, were put there without a licence. The author is not credited either, which would make for an additional infringement of moral rights.

A quick Google Images search reveals the identity of the apparent authors, but as yet neither of them has given a public statement. The pictures have been taken down from Mr Kauder’s website but can still be accessed via archiving sites.

His political rivals and most of the media are understandably delighted by this (minor) scandal. He who sits in the glasshouse should not throw stones or suggest disabling other people's Internet access and all that. However, some people have pointed out that Mr Kauder will hardly have created the website himself. According to the information provided there, it was indeed designed by someone else, but of course that does not answer the question who selected or provided the photographs.

Assuming the person who designed the website also chose the photos and Mr Kauder was unaware that no licence had been given, he would probably not be deemed a direct infringer. He would be liable as a “Störer”, though. The German law concept of “Störerhaftung” does not translate easily – “disturbance liability” would be the literal translation, but liability for breach of a duty of care is probably more accurate in this context. That means that he should have checked that permission to use the pictures had been granted and that he must now make sure that the photos are not used again on his website, but he will not be liable to pay damages.

Not such a big deal then, perhaps, but I guess the public embarrassment hits him harder than a few hundred or thousand euros in damages would. What do you think: poetic justice, preposterous witch-hunt, or politics as usual?

Copyright vs Competition law - a new dawn in European broadcasting??

I early 2007 I spotted what I thought was a very interesting case called MPS v Murphy and blogged about this in March on my Music Law Updates website. The case was (and still is) of great interest to UK publicans and I even got “flamed” in a pub trade weekly magazine’s chat room for daring to suggest anything but the prevailing view, which was that in the UK only Sky TV had the right to show live English Premiership football. I pointed out that whilst that may well be correct as far as copyright and licensing goes, it may not be so right when looking at the general concept of the ‘free movement’ of goods and services within the European Union.

The case concerns South Coast publican Karen Murphy who referred to pay £750 each year for a Nova decoder to get Greek satellite programmes that included live English Premiership football, rather than the reported minimum £4,000 Sky would have charged for live football. She was convicted under s297(1) of the Copyright Designs & Patents Act 1988 for dishonestly receiving a programme with intent to avoid payment. Murphy appealed her conviction to the Portsmouth Crown Court where the conviction was upheld and then onwards to the Divisional Court, who referred the whole matter to the ECJ.

The economics of this are important: BSkyB and Setanta Sports were then reportedly paying £1.7 billion to hold the exclusive rights to screen live matches to the English Premiership in Britain for the next three years. Broadcasters in 208 other countries had recently doubled their payments to secure English premiership rights to a combined £625 million - and of course Sky recoups their investment by charging both consumers for home use and pubs and clubs a fee to publicly show Sky TV in a place of business. Back in 2007 it was said that a public house would often pay upwards of £1,000 per month for Sky Television and whilst this includes Sky Sports and Sky Sports News it would not include all live premiership matches. An additional payment is needed for the full service.]

Now the European Court of Justice is set to rule on the 4th October 2011 in the case of Murphy and the joined case of FA Premier League and Others v QC Leisure following a ‘pro-Murphy’ opinion from Advocate General Juliane Kokott in February this year. In reconciling intellectual property rights with the free movement of services, the judgment has the potential to transform broadcasting in the EU.

On the 11th October City University will be host a panel on this hosted by our very own Jeremy Phillips, and featuring Lorna Woods, Professor at the City Law School, Dan Wilsher, Senior Lecturer at the City Law School and Jonathan Griffiths, Senior Lecturer at the QMUL School of Law. Full details can be found using the link below:

Football, Broadcasting and the Internal Market: Is a common audio-visual space in sight?

http://www.city.ac.uk/events/2011/oct/football,-broadcasting-and-the-internal-market-is-a-common-audio-visual-space-in-sight/_nocache?dm_t=0,0,0,0,0

Background here: http://www.musiclawupdates.com/07Marchlawupdates.htm

Copper Ethernet Line Prices Instantly!

You’re no doubt aware that Ethernet over Copper is making a strong challenge to be the bandwidth service of choice for businesses. How much of a challenge? The bandwidth increases and cost reductions are making it hard to choose anything else if EoC is available. Just how much can you get and for what price reduction? Why not check Ethernet over Copper prices instantly!



Through the magic of the Telarus GeoQuote automated pricing system, it’s now possible to get Ethernet quotes immediately any time you want. Simply use the handy input form you’ll find at CopperEthernet.com and you’ll be automatically set up to get Ethernet over Copper pricing.

How accurate are these prices? They could be considered budgetary pricing, although they are quite accurate. GeoQuote mimics the same procedures that carriers use to make service price quotes. If you go directly to a carrier, however, you’ll probably have to wait a few days or more to get the results back. You’ll also be limited to one provider's offers. Why settle for one quote when you can get several or more to compare?

Telarus is an award winning telecom and network services broker that has agreements with dozens of service providers. You get the same or better pricing through the GeoQuote system as you could by spending hours on the phone calling around for competitive quotes.

It is well worth your while to talk to a Telarus bandwidth consultant, as there are often short term special deals available that don’t show up in the automated results. Your consultant can let you know what’s on “sale” so you can make the best buying decision. At the end of the quote process, you’ll have the option to call Telarus toll free for further discussion or just click a link and a consultant will call you promptly.

You should also know that Ethernet over Copper isn’t the only service that’s available for instant price quotes. If you wish, you can explore options for T1 and bonded T1 lines, business Cable broadband, fixed wireless broadband, Satellite bandwidth, fractional and full DS3 services and Ethernet over Fiber. Yes, quotes are available for fiber optic services from 10 to 1000 Mbps using the same instant pricing process.

Are you anxious to see how much you could be saving over your current telecom services contract? Take just a minute from your busy day and get Copper Ethernet line prices instantly. After you see the results, you’ll probably want to take a few more minutes and call in an order.

Stocks Going Ex Dividend the Second Week of October

Here is our latest update on the stock trading technique called 'Buying Dividends'. This is the process of buying stocks before the ex dividend date and selling the stock shortly after the ex date at about the same price, yet still being entitled to the dividend. This technique generally works only in bull markets. In flat or choppy markets, you have to be extremely careful.

In order to be entitled to the dividend, you have to buy the stock before the ex-dividend date, and you can't sell the stock until after the ex date. The actual dividend may not be paid for another few weeks. WallStreetNewsNetwork.com has compiled a downloadable and sortable list of the stocks going ex dividend during the next week or two. The list contains many dividend paying companies, all with market caps over $500 million, and yields over 2%. Here are a few examples showing the stock symbol, the market capitalization, the ex-dividend date and the yield.

Abbott Laboratories (ABT) market cap: $79.0B ex div date: 10/12/2011 yield: 3.8%

Ennis, Inc. (EBF) market cap: $368.9M ex div date: 10/12/2011 yield: 4.3%

Foot Locker, Inc. (FL) market cap: $3.4B ex div date: 10/12/2011 yield: 3.1%

General Growth Properties, Inc (GGP) market cap: $11.7B ex div date: 10/12/2011 yield: 3.2%

Harsco Corporation (HSC) market cap: $1.6B ex div date: 10/12/2011 yield: 4.2%

Shaw Communications Inc. (SJR) market cap: $8.4B ex div date: 10/12/2011 yield: 4.4%

Wells Fargo Adv Inc Opport Fund (EAD) market cap: $668.5M ex div date: 10/13/2011 yield: 10.8%

The additional ex-dividend stocks can be found at wsnn.com. (If you have been to the website before, and the latest link doesn't show up, you may have to empty your cache.) If you like dividend stocks, you should check out the high yield utility stocks and the Monthly Dividend Stocks at WallStreetNewsNetwork.com or WSNN.com.

Dividend definitions:

Declaration date: the day that the company declares that there is going to be an upcoming dividend.

Ex-dividend date: the day on which if you buy the stock, you would not be entitled to that particular dividend; or the first day on which a shareholder can sell the shares and still be entitled to the dividend.


Monthly Dividend Stock List
Record date: the day when you must be on the company's books as a shareholder to receive the dividend. The ex-dividend date is normally set for stocks two business days before the record date.

Payment date: the day on which the dividend payment is actually made, which can be as long at two months after the ex date.

Don't forget to reconfirm the ex-dividend date with the company before implementing this technique.

Disclosure: Author did not own any of the above at the time the article was written.

By Stockerblog.com

Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore divorce rumours

Sad..

The 33-year-old actor and his wife of six years, Demi Moore, 48, have reportedly been living apart for months as rumors claim they're about to embark in an estimated $290 million divorce battle.

"Ashton and Demi have separated and the marriage is over," a source close to the couple told Star magazine. "The relationship ended because of Ashton's serial cheating. It's a painful time for Demi."
More on Ashton Kutcher cheating on Demi Moore? Couple facing divorce rumors as other woman comes forward - nydailynews.com

Related article:
Ashton and Demi, in Tweets

Haha-jima, the Galapagos of the East [*]

[*] Please see [SIDEBAR] at the end of this post for a discussion of the geographical (in)accuracy and inherent ambiguity of this title.

The location of the Ogasawara Archipelago in the Philippine Sea. 

Regular viewers of my blog postings will have noticed my strange fascination (obsession, almost!) with the locations of my blog readers.  I suppose this is not so strange, considering I am a geographer!  I do track where viewers are pinging in from, quite religiously.  I find it very calming and therapeutic, somehow!  I take great delight when someone enters my blog from a far-off, remote, or inaccessible place, and when that happens, I zoom into the map to see what the place looks like, as far as can be gleaned from road maps and satellite images on google maps.  Some of my favorite viewers so far, in terms of the remote-and-inaccessible factor, have been from Tromso, Norway; Tsetserleg, Mongolia; Manicore, Brazil (accessible only by a tributary river, deep in Amazonia); Arviat up on Hudson Bay in Nunavut Territory, Canada (there are local roads but they don't connect up with anything; access is by plane to tiny airstrip, seasonal shipping, or maybe overland by dogsled!); Estancia Harberton, Argentina (just about the end of the road in Tierra del Fuego!); Tiferte Ait-Hamza, high up in the Atlas Mountains of Morocco (pretty much goat trails to get there); and Sipisipi in the heart of the rain forest in Papua New Guinea (no roads AT ALL visible on the satellite image!).  Ain’t the World Wide Web a wonderful thing!  It's pretty much world wide, at any rate.  The most recent of these far, far away places is Haha-jima. And "remote" doesn't even begin to cover it! 

Recently, for some odd reason, my blog has been getting a lot of traffic from viewers in Japan.  One day, I had over 400 page views from Japan alone!  And yesterday, I noticed a push-pin marker in a location seemingly out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean (well, the Philippine Sea, to be exact), and I figured it was one of those lonely islands in Micronesia, or the North Mariana Islands, or somewhere else equally as far-flung from the mainland continents.  Or maybe it was Dan, my former student who is doing field work in Palau! 

Imagine my surprise when I clicked on the icon and it said “Japan, Tokyo prefecture.”  At first, naturally enough, I figured “Ah HA! This stats tracking program has totally wigged out now!  It has made a BIG mistake!”  It looked like it was about 1,000 km from the city of Tokyo, or anywhere, for that matter.  As an isolated island in the middle of the largest geographic feature on earth (the Pacific Ocean) it certainly did look like it was in the middle of nowhere. Definitely NOT Tokyo.  But the more and more I zoomed in, the more I saw it was an island in a small archipelago called the Ogasawara Group, (formerly the Bonin Islands) and the particular island my viewer came from was Haha-jima (“Mother Island”).  I googled Haha-jima, and found out that indeed, it was part of the Tokyo prefecture, technically one of the eight villages of Tokyo, even though it is over 1,000 km from Tokyo.  There is a supply boat that goes to the main island of Chichi-jima ("Father Island") a few times a month from Tokyo, and the crossing is rough and takes about 26 hours (in good weather!).  From Chichi-jima, there is a ferry crossing of another 2 hours to get to Haha-jima.  There is no airport on either of the two inhabited islands in the Ogasawara Group.  So to say that it is hard to get to is putting it mildly. 

The Ogasawara Island Group is sometimes likened to the Galapagos Islands, because there are a number of striking similarities.  Both sets of islands are volcanic, were never part of any continent, house many species of endemic flora and fauna, and went through a unique evolutionary process.  Like the Galapagos, each island in the group has its own related but separate species.  Rather than the well-known and varied tortoise species of the Galapagos, the Ogasawara Islands are famous for their many endemic species of land snails.  As much as the Galapagos tortoises are huge, the Haha-jima land snails are tiny.  In fact, most of them are so small that they can be digested by birds and still come out of things alive, if you catch my drift.  There are about 90 species of endemic land-snails in the archipelago, most on a remote peninsula of Haha-jima.  And, as in the Galapagos, the endemic species are threatened by invasive species brought in by the human settlers. 

Crab-crossing sign in Hahah-jima, from: http://blue_moon.typepad.com/blue_lotus/2010/04/hahajima.html

A Haha-jima snail, which can apparently survive after having been digested by birds. From http://www.tv3.com.gh/newsdetail.asp?n=3038  “Biogeography of wingless terrestrial invertebrates, in particular snails, is often faced with mysterious long distance dispersal patterns that can only be explained by hand waving arguments involving birds' feet or guts or cyclones. This is the first study showing that birds can indeed transport a substantial [number of] micro land snails in their gut alive.”

For most of their history, the Ogasawara Islands were uninhabited (also like the Galapagos, where people have lived permanently only the past couple of hundred years, although both sets of islands served as seasonal whaling stations before permanent settlements were established).  Both sets of islands are about the same distance from the mainland and the countries that own them.  Both have been designated by UNESCO as World Heritage sites (the Ogasawara Islands gaining that distinction just recently in June, 2011).  But while Ecuador has, over the past three decades or so, aggressively promoted organized tourism in the Galapagos, with tourist ships becoming so frequent as to almost inundate and overwhelm the delicate ecology of the central islands, the Ogasawara Group is still relatively untouched by tourism, and what tourism there is seems very small-scale, probably due to the length of time it takes to get there and the arduous nature of the journey.  Only 2,400 people live there, most of them on the main island of Chichi-jima, and only about 450 on Haha-jima.  Although the archipelago consists of more than 30 islands, and even more islets, only those two are inhabited. 

The archipelago’s original name, the Bonin Islands, is a corruption of Bunin-jima, or “uninhabited islands.”  Stone-age tools found on the islands seem to indicate that the islands were inhabited in ancient times but when the islands were discovered by a Spanish explorer in 1543, and by the Japanese in 1670, they were uninhabited.  Some Americans, Hawaiians, and Europeans formed the first permanent settlement here in the 1830’s.  The islands have at various times been under the jurisdiction of the Japanese, the British Empire, and the United States.  Because the islands’ original settlers were mainly Americans and British, a pidgin or creole language developed on the islands, still spoken today, that is a combination of English and Japanese, called Bonin Islands language.  The U.S. operated a naval facility on the islands until 1968, when the islands reverted to Japan. 

Another island in the Ogasawara Archipelago is Iwo-jima, which was an infamous battleground during WWII, and much memorialized in the U.S. by the iconic photograph of five American Marines and one Navy corpsman raising the American flag.  The island, only 8 square miles, saw 20,000 of the 21,000 Japanese Imperial troops stationed there killed (or dead from ritual suicide) within the 36 days of the battle, and 6,800 Americans dead.  I can't imagine that level of carnage in such a small space.  The Americans captured the island, including the three airports.  Although the chief of Naval Operations expressed doubts on the wisdom of such ferocious fighting to take Iwo-jima, saying “the expenditure of manpower to acquire a small, God-forsaken island, useless to the Army as a staging base and useless to the Navy as a fleet base ... [one] wonders if the same sort of airbase could not have been reached by acquiring other strategic localities at lower cost,” his statements were meant to obscure the real need for the island by the U.S. – to serve as a staging area and emergency landing site for the atomic bombs intended to be dropped on the main Japanese islands shortly thereafter.  Now the island is uninhabited except for a Japanese military base, and civilian access is restricted to those veterans and their families from both sides attending memorial services to honor the war dead. 


The "Fake Map" Part of the Story

One of the “fake” maps based on that by Shimaya Ichizaemon (Tanaka Archives).

 And, of course, there is a map story that figures into the history of the Ogasawara Islands.  Even more interestingly, it is a “fake” map story.  The Japanese did not “discover” the Ogasawaras until 1670, when a merchant ship was blown off-course and drifted there.  Five years later the islands were officially explored and declared as a Japanese territory, although they were more or less abandoned by the Japanese for the next 180 years.  In 1727, a masterless samurai named Ogasawara Kunai Sadatou made a petition to the feudal government for passage to the islands on the claim that he had an ancestor called Ogasawara Sadayori, who supposedly had discovered the deserted islands in 1593.  Sadatou recorded some baseless fantasies in his Tatsumi Bunin Tou Sojou narabi ni Koujou Tomegaki (“Dictated Petition for the Deserted Islands to the Southeast”), which he submitted to the magistrate’s office, in addition to some fake maps and other falsified documents.  His description of the islands’ dimensions is particularly fanciful, making it appear as though Chichi-jima was as large as Taiwan.  The island’s shapes were also drawn wrong, and he located them incorrectly, placing the position of Chichi Jima “at a point where the North Star is somewhat greater than 32 and one half degrees up from the ground,” which is the wrong latitude altogether.  Additionally, he claimed there was gold dust for the taking, and fur seals swimming in the warm seas around the islands, neither of which is true. 

Judging from the numerous popular articles about the Bonin Islands which appeared after Sadatou’s claim and which apparently draw from a common source, it seems that the “Dictated Petition for the Deserted Islands to the Southeast” and the other falsified documents that Sadatou left behind were later copied and widely circulated.  His petition for passage was initially granted, but eight years later the whole thing was exposed as a lie, and Sadatou was put into exile (although it's hard to imagine a better exile place in those times than the Ogasawara Islands themselves!). 

Mori  Kinsai (1752)  Map of the Ogasawara Islands, alias the Bonin Islands.  (Japanese National Library of Public Documents).  On this map, there is a rather extensive explanation of the history of the islands and the products found there, including the presence of fur seals, which would be unusual if not impossible on a tropical island, but the information closely follows the falsified documents that the masterless samurai Sadatou trumped up 25 years earlier.

From: http://nihongo.human.metro-u.ac.jp/~long/bonins/04tanaka.htm

The 2 main industries on the islands are fishing and rum production (sugar cane).  Here is a fisherman in an outrigger canoe showing his lure for catching wahoo.  From: http://john_laplant.tripod.com/links.html

Gastrocopta chichijimana – Chichijima Whorl Snail, now extinct.  Depiction from: ‘G. W. Tryon; H. A. Pilsbry: Manual of Conchology. Second series: Pulmonata, Vol. 24, 1918-1920′

http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org

Gastrocopta chichijimana – Chichijima Whorl Snail

“The reasons for the extinction of the Chichijima Whorl Snail and many other native snail species of the island of Chichijima, are quite easy to find.  At about the middle of the 19th century Japanese settlers begun to cultivate the Ogasawara Islands, which were at that time only sparsely populated, mostly by whalers.  During that period, large areas of native vegetation were destroyed and many animal and plant species, both domestic and wild ones, were imported. Later, in the beginning of the 20th century, when the islands where something like Japans biggest agricultural region, Giant East African Snails (Achatina fulica) were introduced as a food resource.  These snails soon were established and – as in all other places, where they have been introduced, became a pest for agriculture. To stop the uncontrolled spreading of the Giant East African Snails, Rosy Wolf Snails (Euglandina rosea) were introduced to the Ogasawara Islands (to Chichijima in the year 1965), a snail species that has adapted to stalk and kill other snail species.

The worst snail killer, the Snail-eating Land Planarian (Platydemus monokwari), however, was introduced to Chichijima in the 1990s. This creature indeed preys on the Giant East African Snails, on young as well as on adult ones, and it even preys on the Rosy Wolf Snails too. But unfortunately the planarian doesn’t make a difference between introduced, invasive species and such that are native or endemic and rare.

This – the destruction of large parts of the native vegetation plus the persecution by introduced predators – are the reasons for the loss of about 70 % of the native or endemic snail species on the island of Chichijima.”

References:

- Takashi Ohbayashi; Isamu Okochi; Hiroki Sato; Tsuyoshi Ono: Food habit of Platydemus manokwari De Beauchamp, 1962 (Tricladida: Terricola: Rhynchodemidae), known as a predatory flatworm of land snails in the Ogasawara (Bonin) Islands, Japan. Entomology and Zoology 40: 609-614. 2005
- Takashi Ohbayashi, Isamu Okochi, Hiroki Sato; Tsuyoshi Ono; Satoshi Chiba: Rapid decline of endemic snails in the Ogasawara Islands, Western Pacific Ocean. Restoring the Oceanic Island Ecosystem, Part 2: 27-33. 2010

Text from : http://akialoa.wordpress.com/category/animals/1-invertebrates/snails/

Some interesting historical publications about the Ogasawara Islands:

HYPA, THE CENTENARIAN NURSE.

By the Rev. A. F. KING.

http://nihongo.human.metro-u.ac.jp/~long/bonins/hypa.htm

This one was written in 1898, about a nurse who came to the Ogasawara Islands from the Caroline Islands, and eventually died in Chichi-jima at 112 years of age. 

REPORT OF AN EXAMINATION OF THE BONIN GROUP OF ISLANDS,

BY CAPTAIN JOEL ABBOT, U. S. N., U.S. FLAG-SHIP POWHATAN

http://nihongo.human.metro-u.ac.jp/~long/bonins/abbot.htm

This one was written in 1854 about Commodore Perry’s visit to the island, whereby an American colony was established on the island, and Perry himself purchased some land.  

The History of the Bonin Islands (Cholmondeley, 1915)

http://nihongo.human.metro-u.ac.jp/~long/bonins/chol-cont.htm

The Bonin Islands

By Russell Robertson, Esq.

Read before the Asiatic Society of Japan on the 15th March, 1876.

http://nihongo.human.metro-u.ac.jp/~long/bonins/robertson.htm

For a more contemporary look at Haha-jima, see this blog about a recent trip to the islands. Ringed by coral reefs, it is a scuba-diver's paradise. From: http://blue_moon.typepad.com/blue_lotus/2010/04/hahajima.html

[SIDEBAR TO THE POST TITLE]

When I was deciding upon a title for this post, I wanted to convey the geographic, ecological, and evolutionary similarities between the Ogasawara Islands and the Galapagos.  Reference material I had read seemed all to refer to them as the “Galapagos of the Orient,” an appellation I was reluctant to use since “the Orient” as a descriptor has fallen into disrepute as a non-PC term and somewhat pejorative and Euro-centric (and not in a good way!).  Never mind that fact that “Orient” really just means “east” and “to orient oneself” meant to find east and then you would know where you were.  Somehow over the recent years it had taken on unfortunate racial undertones, and calling people “Orientals” was frowned upon as an old-fashioned and insensitive term. 

Then I thought, hmmm, the “Galapagos of Asia”? but that didn’t really capture it either, since by all standards, even though the islands are part of an Asian country, they are really culturally, geographically, geologically, and ecologically part of Oceania.  But the “Galapagos of Oceania” just didn’t have that certain ring to it, besides being of potentially dubious accuracy.  

So I settled on the “Galapagos of the East,” but this brings up another vexing conundrum that has plagued me since graduate school when there was much talk in my theoretical and critical geography classes about “the [global] South,” “the North,” “the East,” and “the West,” none of which was used in the geographically accurate sense, but merely to denote some index of economic development and worldview.  Australia, for instance, was in the global north, Mexico was in “the South,” despite being on the North American continent, and Japan, being a highly developed country, was often considered to be “Western.”  I never understood why we had to use misleading geographical descriptors when we really weren’t talking about geography at all but measurements of economic or technological development, or affluence, or demographic phase, or political influence. And, of course, speaking even strictly geographically, "east" and "west" are relative terms, depending upon your own position. Asia is only "the east" because it is east of the Europeans who coined the term.  

The major island groups of the Pacific Ocean, showing the Galapagos in the eastern portion of the Pacific, and the Ogasawara Archipelago in the western Pacific, just northwest of where the Northern Mariana Islands are indicated on this map.  
     But the real problem for me, vis-á-vis this post title, started when I looked at the geography of the two sets of islands from the perspective of the Pacific Ocean.  The Galapagos, not the Ogasawara Islands, were in the east!  And the Ogasawaras were decidedly in the western part of the ocean.  But “the Galapagos of the Western Pacific” seemed too confusing (and uninteresting), so I stuck with “the Galapagos of the East.”  Please excuse the geographical inaccuracy of the post title. I guess we can think of it as the geographical equivalent of poetic license.
    Oh, and as a coda to my interest in where my blog viewers hail from, today I "captured" viewers from THREE new countries!  This is rare, to get three new countries in one day, especially since there are only a handful of countries remaining "uncaptured." (c'mon, Vatican City, Antarctica, Chad, Tajikistan, and East Timor!)  Three new viewers have appeared, one from Barrigada, GUAM; one from Longdenville, ST. VINCENT AND THE GRENADINES; and one from Ouagadougou, BURKINA FASO.  Wonderful! Have to update my map now!

How newspapers are losing next-gen readers

A new study shows the dramatic degree to which consumers under the age of 40 have repudiated newspapers.The must-read report, which was released Monday by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism, found an alarming disconnect between younger and older consumers in the value they put on newspapers as sources of information about their communities. Pew split the 2,251

Academics v Publishers: Revolution in the air?

Following George Monbiot's scathing article in the Guardian last month, the subject of academic publishing has been weighed and been found wanting. Of course, librarians and academics have long known that journal publishers monopolise the market; even as much as ten years ago the larger publishers were busy buying out the smaller ones who weren't strong enough to compete with them. But outside of academia people are largely unaware of the struggles every electronic resources librarian faces each year as budgets shrink and journal bundle prices steadily increase. Tough decisions often have to be made, and naturally the impact is felt by researchers, academics and students.

Which is why today's announcement that Princeton University is enforcing an Open Access policy forbidding academics from transferring the copyright in their articles to journal publishers is so significant. Academics are required to licence their work instead, so that they retain the copyright and are therefore able to reproduce it elsewhere without having to seek the permission of the publisher. This could spark a welcome trend which would allow academics and universities to maximise their outputs and revolutionise knowledge sharing.

Certainly in the UK, where most universities now have institutional repositories which host research outputs (scholarly articles written by their academics), this trend would be welcome and would resolve numerous difficulties in attempting to interpret publisher policies. Part of the problem is that academics are often unaware of the terms they agree to when they sign a Copyright Transfer Agreement (for an example see here). Yet even when they are aware, academics often don't have time to negotiate licence agreements with publishers as they are under pressure from their institution and/or funding body to publish. Most of the larger publishers either do not allow a version to be deposited in the repository or are very specific about the version which can be deposited, and attempting to contact publishers for permission is usually incredibly difficult if not impossible. And whilst organisations such as SHERPA/RoMEO provide a useful source of information on publisher policies, policies are changing all the time and it is difficult to maintain up-to-date records. Recent woes include publishers moving to automated systems which invoice funding bodies and universities directly for open access; these sorts of issues cause headaches for repository managers and copyright officers alike.

This is is not to decry the value of academic publishing, and indeed it has been interesting to read reactionary pieces and comments to the Monbiot article (including from the publishers themselves) which indicate moves afoot in the publishing world. But what is increasingly obvious is that the current mainstream system cannot continue forever; something's got to give, and one wonders whether Princeton has just thrown down the gauntlet to universities everywhere...

Photo from Flickr: Princeton University by Yakinodi (CC-BY 2.0)

Copyright in court judgments: a matter of access

The Guardian published "The Courts: judgment day" on 25 September. It touches on one of this blogger's favourite topics -- the accessibility of court rulings.  Since England and Wales is a common law jurisdiction in which the decisions of higher courts bind lower ones and even courts of equal standing will not depart from the reasoning of an earlier court without giving at least the semblance of a rational explanation, access to judicial decisions is more than a pleasant pastime for legal dilettantes and an urgent necessity for law students: it's part of the manner in which the legal system works.  Bearing this in mind,

"When the broadcasters finally begin to show English and Welsh judges delivering sentences in court, anyone will be able to watch the spectacle on TV or online. But if they turn to Google to look for a transcript of, say, a court of appeal judgment, the chances are that they will be unable to find it.

This remarkable situation – which, given the importance of case law in this country, is all the more extraordinary – has arisen because of the Ministry of Justice's decision to release significant judgments through a long-standing contract with a site called Bailii (the British and Irish Legal Information Institute). The legal establishment holds Bailii in justified admiration. The site has done a wonderful job of making case law freely accessible to lawyers: books about law are notoriously expensive. It includes historic and European data that is otherwise very difficult to find. But Bailii is a charity [as to who pays, or should pay, for Bailii, see jiplp here], it struggles to afford to host its 297,000 judgments, and does not allow search engines to index them. In some instances it is not even clear whether the crown or the judge concerned holds the copyright to the words, and reproducing them on any other site is forbidden.

The argument for opening up judgments to real public view and scrutiny is an overwhelmingly strong one. The UK supreme court has set an excellent precedent by releasing all of its judgments in a searchable format (and, just as importantly, summarising them succinctly)....

Now a group of digital activists called Judgmental is promising to publish judgments in a searchable format. It is very important – especially in the light of the Cabinet Office's consultation on Making Open Data Real – that its efforts will not be thwarted by threats to sue for breach of copyright. It would certainly be an irony if the MoJ's drive to see justice publicly done were matched by a parallel determination to keep case law texts as inaccessible as possible. "To be able to obey the law, you have to be able to find out what it is," say Judgmental's founders. "And it would useful to be able to find that out online."

... Lawyers and judges are trained to understand and to interpret the law. But in the digital age, no one should be denied the ability to find and read it in an accessible and searchable format.
The argument for opening up judgments to real public view and scrutiny is an overwhelmingly strong one".

BAILII's Copyright Policy can be found in full here.  From the reference to "META tags" it looks as though it may have been established quite a long time ago, when we were all still suspicious of search engines, spiders and robots and when there were still serious doubts as to the legal, commercial and ethical dimensions to their use.  This blogger holds BAILII in awe and in esteem, but wonders whether the time has come for BAILII either to take a fresh look at its copyright policy or to explain more clearly the reasons that lurk behind it and which may justify its retention in an era in which the use of search engines is pretty well standard in every walk of life.    He also doubts whether in reality (i) BAILII would ever have the inclination and the funds to pursue an action for copyright infringement against any search engine, (ii) the courts would grant injunctive relief, taking into account the public interest in greater access to primary legal sources and (iii) the interesting issue of damages in the absence of any convenient head of commercial loss.  It would be good if BAILII and Judgmental could work together for the common good which they both so palpable have at heart.

Explosion at Empire Shopping Gallery in Subang Jaya

Four people were injured while more than 300 were rescued and evacuated after a suspected gas leak caused an explosion on the lower ground floor of the Empire Shopping Gallery here early Wednesday.

The 3.45am explosion damaged two other floors in the complex. It also caused damage to the adjoining office block and studio apartments.

The damage to the lower and ground floor of the mall was caused by the impact of the explosion rather than fire.

Police have ruled out sabotage or terrorism as the cause of the gas explosion. Meanwhile, Selangor Mentri Besar, Tan Sri Khalid Ibrahim, who visited the scene, said the mall would be temporarily closed to the public, pending safety assurance by the authorities and building is deemed safe although no serious structural damage was detected at the location of the explosion. The temporary closure will affect 180 tenants.

Update: Sep 29
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The explosion caused extensive damage to this section of the mall.

Empire Shopping Gallery has been closed for the authorities to determine the cause of a gas explosion which rocked the building, injuring four people.

The closure, which covers the entire complex that houses a hotel, commercial and residential units, is effective until the structures are declared safe by the authorities.

Empire Shopping Gallery is a popular shopping mall attracting thousands of shoppers daily.

The management company that manages the mall confirmed that the building's main structure is still intact, noting that the damage is confined to glass panels, ceiling boards and several brick walls “mainly due to the rapid expansion of air during the explosion”.

About 300 people were rescued and evacuated, including some 170 hotel guests who were relocated to nearby hotels for safety reasons. Employees who turned up for work this morning were asked to go home as the mall is closed until further notice.

The effects of the explosion reached both ends of the mall, and all five levels recorded some form of damage.

Several windows as high up as the eighth floor of the 12-storey office tower were also shattered.

The public can get updates via various channels, including the mall's website (www.esg.com.my), Facebook (www.facebook/esg.com.my) and Twitter (Empire SHGallery.com). Alternatively, they can call 018-701 2880.

Related articles:
- Mall blast: Gas leak from restaurant was the source, Fire Dept confirms (Updated)
- Tenants a worried lot
- One to three months to know source of gas leak in Empire Gallery blast

Source: The Star

Multi-Carrier WAN MPLS Solution

Businesses that want to link their many far-flung locations have had several options available. They could set up their own private point to point lines, go with a Frame Relay network or sign up for MPLS network service. Which of these offers the best cost solution? Let’s have a look.

When companies and small and growing, the temptation is to grow the network along with the company. If there are only two locations, the logical move is to order a point to point T1 line or higher bandwidth service. This directly connects the new locations with dedicated private bandwidth. When another location is set up, add another private line back to headquarters. If you want the two remote locations to talk directly, you can add a third private line between them.

You can see how costs grow rather quickly when you try to create a mesh network using dedicated private lines. Pretty soon you have a rats nest of connections and a soaring telecom bill. What happens then is someone in IT decides that it makes more sense to have only one private line to each location and arrange them in a star network with headquarters at the center. The headquarters router will take care of directing traffic among all locations. This is better, but you are still paying more than necessary.

That conundrum is what led to the development of Frame Relay networks. The idea is that a shared WAN network is more cost effective than every company creating its own private WAN. The Frame Relay network is one of the original clouds. You simply connected to the network from each of your locations and long haul traffic was routed through the cloud. If a cloud is running correctly, you have no sense that there is other traffic on the network while you are using it.

MPLS or Multi-Protocol Label Switching takes the concept of Frame Relay and improves upon it. Frame Relay networks reached the height of their popularity in an era where bandwidth demands were generally lower and most traffic was data packets. MPLS is designed around fiber optic core networks with a regional or nationwide footprint. There are class of service tags included in the labels that encapsulate the user packets. These ensure that time sensitive applications like VoIP telephony or video conferencing get the special treatment they need to work successfully. As the name implies, MPLS can transport any protocol. Multiple customers can transport different protocols simultaneously and they won’t interfere.

Since MPLS networks can handle any protocol, have enormous bandwidth at their disposal and have inherent security because of the proprietary nature of the network technology, doesn’t it make perfect sense to connect to an MPLS network to link business locations?

Yes it does. Your best cost solution for a given performance level across more than two locations is likely to be an MPLS network solution. The one fly in the ointment is that any given MPLS network doesn’t necessarily go everywhere you want it to. You may be able to connect some of your locations to the network but not others. There are some massive MPLS networks that can connect nearly everywhere, but they can also command top dollar. Is there a better solution?

The approach that can give you the connectivity you need with at the best pricing is a multi-carrier or meshed MPLS network. It’s a network of networks. In other words, several MPLS networks are joined to cover all of your business locations at the best price point for each.

Where do you find this type of service? Obviously, contacting any particular carrier will only get you access to their MPLS network. If you want to interconnect them, you have the tricky issue of network to network interfacing. That’s a job better left to telecom network specialists. One company, AireSpring, has the expertise to make this happen and the carrier relationships to gain access.

Does your company need to interconnect multiple business locations? Telecom broker Telarus has access to the best rates on MPLS networks, including Meshed MPLS from AireSpring. Get availability and pricing for MPLS solutions. You are probably spending too much right now.

Coffee May Reduce Depression in Women: Time to Pour Coffee Stocks in Your Portfolio?

Researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston did a study of the effects of drinking coffee on over 50,000 American women who drank four cups of coffee a day. They found that the risk of depression dropped by about 20% on average. Unfortunately for decaf drinkers, there was no reduction in depression risk. The study, called the Nurses' Health Study, ran from 1996 to 2006.

Investors who are looking for coffee stocks to invest in can find half a dozen that pay dividends. According to WallStreetNewsNetwork.com, there are more than ten publicly traded companies in the coffee industry.

Starbucks (SBUX) is the largest coffeehouse retailer in the world, with outlets in 50 countries and over 17,000 shops worldwide. The stock trades at 26 times forward earnings and pays a yield of 1.3%. Earnings for the latest quarter were up 34% on an 12% increase in revenues.

The J. M. Smucker Co. (SJM) is not a pure play but it sells the Folgers brand of coffee. The stock has a forward price to earnings ratio of 14 and a generous yield of 2.6%. The company just increased its dividend by 9%.

Monthly Dividend Stock List
On the non-retail side, there is Coffee Holding Co. (JVA), a roaster of wholesale coffee which markets wholesale green coffee, private label coffee, and branded coffee in the US and Canada. The stock trades at 10 times forward earnings and has a small dividend yield of 1.0%. Unfortunately, earnings for the latest reported quarter dropped by 60% on an 88% increase in revenues.

For a list of all of the coffee stocks, including more than half a dozen that pay dividends, go to WallStreetNewsNetwork.com. The list can be downloaded, sorted, and updated.

Disclosure: Author didn't own any of the above at the time the article was written.

By Stockerblog.com

GigE and FastE Bandwidth Services

Bandwidth upgrades are a matter of course these days. Many companies are moving from T1 line speeds at 1.5 Mbps up to 3x3 Mbps or 10x10 Mbps Ethernet. Often there is little or no additional cost involved in doing so. But what if these bandwidth levels are still to low for your needs? Are there any opportunities at the 100 to 1000 Mbps level?

Carrier Ethernet is now the service to pursue at medium and high bandwidth speeds. These service levels have been dominated by DS3 or T3 lines at 45 Mbps and SONET OCx for higher line speeds over fiber optic cable. Ethernet bandwidth has a cost advantage for this need and also provisioning flexibility.

It’s common knowledge that low and mid-band Ethernet services are readily available over twisted pair copper wiring. In other words, the same telco wires that you currently use for analog business phone lines and T1 lines can also be used to transport Ethernet protocol. The service requires specialized equipment at each end and multiple copper pairs. This is Ethernet over Copper. Bandwidth levels vary from 1 Mbps on up 100 Mbps and beyond. A 200 Mbps service is available in some areas and a new 400 Mbps asymmetrical Internet access is being rolled out.

Most companies opt for Ethernet as a last mile connection to the Internet, metro or wide area MPLS network with bandwidth up to 50 Mbps. This is a direct replacement for their existing copper wire T1, bonded T1 or DS3 connections. By moving up the speed range to 100 Mbps to 400 Mbps, Ethernet can directly replace such fiber optic services as OC-3 at 155 Mbps and perhaps OC-12 at 622 Mbps.

All of this is done over up to 8 bonded copper pair at distances that don’t exceed a few thousand feet to a few miles from the telco central office. This is no problem in densely populated business districts, but as you move out into the burbs, small cities and rural areas, service becomes less available. Ethernet over Copper has a definite distance limitation.

Fast Ethernet at 100 Mbps may be available over copper, but Ethernet over Fiber is a better bet. The beauty of fiber is that once you have it installed and your building is “lit”, just about any bandwidth is possible. That includes FastE, of course, at 100 Mbps, GigE or Gigabit Ethernet at 1,000 Mbps and 10 GigE or 10 Gigabit Ethernet at 10,000 Mbps.

Ethernet over Fiber is available from traditional telephone companies, but it is also available from competitive carriers who have built their own IP-core regional and national networks with Ethernet as a standard service. These companies can bring Ethernet right to your building without having to lease any telephone company facilities. This gives them the ability to offer more bandwidth for less money. You may save half or more for equivalent service levels at the higher bandwidths.

A new wrinkle is Ethernet over Fiber offered by Cable MSOs. This fiber was bought and paid for by the Cable Television industry, but has so much extra bandwidth available that these companies are offering access to their fiber optic networks to businesses and other organizations that need anywhere from 10 to 1000 Gbps. That includes Fast Ethernet and Gigabit Ethernet at prices that are up to half the cost of other fiber providers.

The options are many and the prices are very attractive right now. There is lots of bandwidth to go around, which may not be true when the economy takes off again. If you need to speed up your networks, you can lock in some excellent deals. Check prices and availability for GigE and FastE bandwidth services appropriate for your business location.

Stocks Going Ex Dividend the First Week of October

Here is our latest update on the stock trading technique called 'Buying Dividends'. This is the process of buying stocks before the ex dividend date and selling the stock shortly after the ex date at about the same price, yet still being entitled to the dividend. This technique generally works only in bull markets. In flat or choppy markets, you have to be extremely careful.

In order to be entitled to the dividend, you have to buy the stock before the ex-dividend date, and you can't sell the stock until after the ex date. The actual dividend may not be paid for another few weeks. WallStreetNewsNetwork.com has compiled a downloadable and sortable list of the stocks going ex dividend during the next week or two. The list contains many dividend paying companies, all with market caps over $500 million, and yields over 2%. Here are a few examples showing the stock symbol, the market capitalization, the ex-dividend date and the yield.

Brandywine Realty Trust (BDN) market cap: $1.1B ex div date: 10/3/2011 yield: 7.5%

Mack-Cali Realty Corp. (CLI) market cap: $2.4B ex div date: 10/3/2011 yield: 6.5%

Raytheon Company (RTN) market cap: $14.3B ex div date: 10/3/2011 yield: 4.4%

Toronto-Dominion Bank (TD) market cap: $64.2B ex div date: 10/3/2011 yield: 3.8%

Erie Indemnity Company (ERIE) market cap: $3.4B ex div date: 10/4/2011 yield: 3.0%

American Greetings Corporation (AM) market cap: $771.4M ex div date: 10/5/2011 yield: 3.0%

General Dynamics Corporation (GD) market cap: $20.6B ex div date: 10/5/2011 yield: 3.4%

J.C. Penney Company, Inc. (JCP) market cap: $5.8B ex div date: 10/5/2011 yield: 3.1%

The additional ex-dividend stocks can be found at wsnn.com. (If you have been to the website before, and the latest link doesn't show up, you may have to empty your cache.) If you like dividend stocks, you should check out the high yield utility stocks and the Monthly Dividend Stocks at WallStreetNewsNetwork.com or WSNN.com.

Dividend definitions:

Declaration date: the day that the company declares that there is going to be an upcoming dividend.

Ex-dividend date: the day on which if you buy the stock, you would not be entitled to that particular dividend; or the first day on which a shareholder can sell the shares and still be entitled to the dividend.

Record date: the day when you must be on the company's books as a shareholder to receive the dividend. The ex-dividend date is normally set for stocks two business days before the record date.

Payment date: the day on which the dividend payment is actually made, which can be as long at two months after the ex date.

Don't forget to reconfirm the ex-dividend date with the company before implementing this technique.

Disclosure: Author did not own any of the above at the time the article was written.

By Stockerblog.com

Chelsea Clinton Named to Board of Directors of Match.com Company

Chelsea Clinton, the daughter of former President Bill Clinton and current Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, has been named to the Board of Directors of IAC/InterActiveCorp (IACI). IAC owns the online dating and matchmaking service, Match.com.

60 Minutes Spotlights Counter Terrorism in NYC: Top Anti Terrorism Stocks

On 60 Minutes, the first segment covered how the City of New York is using numerous ways of fighting terrorism, and the pro-active processes in place to prevent anything from happening in the first place. Commissioner Ray Kelly, the chief of the New York Police Department said on the program that they are ready for various types of situations including taking down a plane.

There are many businesses that market to the Federal government, New York City, and other governments and communities to help them with offsetting and preventing terrorism. WallStreetNewsNetwork.com has just updated its list of over 20 different anti terrorism companies which develop products and services in various areas of domestic security. Most of these stocks have market caps over $250 million and over half a dozen of the stocks pay a dividend.

One example is American Science & Engineering (ASEI) makes and markets X-ray inspection equipment and systems for homeland security. The company has a market capitalization of $506.57 million and trades at 11.5 times forward earnings. It sports a yield of 2.1%.

FLIR Systems, Inc. (FLIR) is a provider of thermal imaging and infrared camera systems for force protection, counter terrorism, search and rescue, perimeter security, navigation safety, and law enforcement. The company has a market cap of $4.17 billion with a forward PE of 15. The company is debt free with over $235 million in cash.


Monthly Dividend Stock List
Analogic (ALOG) is in the business of making and marketing security technology products, explosives detection systems, and weapon and threat detection aviation security systems, in addition to their medical imaging business. The stock has a market cap of $554 million, and a forward PE of 18.6. This debt free company has $12.24 in cash per share and pays a yield of 1.00%.

To see all of the counter terrorism stocks, check out the free database at wsnn.com, which can be downloaded, updated, and added to.

Disclosure: Author did not own any of the above at the time the article was written.

By Stockerblog.com