Iceberg: Recession and more

pg 220

"If I was to fail financially tomorrow, it would cause a recession that would be felt from one end of the United States to the other..."

In economics, a recession is a business cycle contraction, It is a general slowdown in economic activity. Macroeconomic indicators such as GDP(Gross Domestic Product), investment spending, capacity utilization, household income, business profits, and inflation fall, while bankruptcies and the unemployment rate rise.

Recessions generally occur when there is a widespread drop in spending (an adverse demand shock). This may be triggered by various events, such as a financial crisis, an external trade shock, an adverse supply shock or the bursting of an economic bubble. Governments usually respond to recessions by adopting expansionary macroeconomic policies, such as increasing money supply, increasing government spending and decreasing taxation.

Andrew Carnegie built librarie, John D. Rockefeller set up foundations for science and education."

Andrew Carnegie November 25, 1835 – August 11, 1919) was a Scottish-American industrialist who led the enormous expansion of the American steel industry in the late 19th century. He was also one of the highest profile philanthropists of his era; his 1889 article proclaiming "The Gospel of Wealth" called on the rich to use their wealth to improve society, and stimulated wave after wave of philanthropy.

Carnegie was born in Dunfermline, Scotland, and emigrated to the United States with his very poor parents in 1848. Carnegie started as a telegrapher and by the 1860s had investments in railroads, railroad sleeping cars, bridges and oil derricks. He built further wealth as a bond salesman raising money for American enterprise in Europe. He built Pittsburgh's Carnegie Steel Company, which he sold to J.P. Morgan in 1901 for $480 million (the equivalent of approximately $13.5 billion in 2013), creating the U.S. Steel Corporation. Carnegie devoted the remainder of his life to large-scale philanthropy, with special emphasis on local libraries, world peace, education and scientific research. With the fortune he made from business, he built Carnegie Hall, and founded the Carnegie Corporation of New York, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Carnegie Institution for Science, Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland, Carnegie Hero Fund, Carnegie Mellon University and the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh, among others. His life has often been referred to as a true "rags to riches" story.

Among his many philanthropic efforts, the establishment of public libraries throughout the United States, Britain, Canada and other English-speaking countries was especially prominent. In this special driving interest and project of his he was inspired by a visit and tour he made with Mr. Enoch Pratt (1808-1896), formerly of Massachusetts but who made his fortune in Baltimore and ran his various mercantile and financial businesses very thriftily. Pratt in turn had been inspired and helped by his friend and fellow Bay Stater, George Peabody, (1795-1869) who also had made his fortune in the "Monumental City" of Baltimore before moving to New York and London to expand his empire as the richest man in America before the Civil War. Later he too endowed several institutions, schools, libraries and foundations in his home commonwealth, and also in Baltimore with his Peabody Institute in 1857, completed in 1866, with added library wings a decade later and several educational foundations throughout the Old South. Several decades later, Carnegie's visit with Mr. Pratt for several days; resting and dining in his city mansion, then touring, visiting and talking with staff and ordinary citizen patrons of the newly established Enoch Pratt Free Library (1886) impressed the Scotsman deeply and years later he was always heard to proclaim that "Pratt was my guide and inspiration".

The first Carnegie library opened in 1883 in Dunfermline. His method was to build and equip, but only on condition that the local authority matched that by providing the land and a budget for operation and maintenance. To secure local interest, in 1885, he gave $500,000 to Pittsburgh for a public library, and in 1886, he gave $250,000 to Allegheny City for a music hall and library; and $250,000 to Edinburgh for a free library. In total Carnegie funded some 3,000 libraries, located in 47 US states, and also in Canada, the United Kingdom, what is now the Republic of Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, the West Indies, and Fiji. He also donated £50,000 to help set up the University of Birmingham in 1899. In the early 20th Century, a decade after Mr. Pratt's death, when expansion and city revenues grew tight, Carnegie returned the favor and endowed a large sum to permit the building of many Carnegie Libraries in the Enoch Pratt system in Baltimore and enabled EPFL to expand through the next quarter-century to meet the needs of the growing city and supply neighborhood branches for its annexed suburbs.

Carnegie Library at Syracuse University

As Van Slyck (1991) showed, the last years of the 19th century saw acceptance of the idea that free libraries should be available to the American public. But the design of the idealized free library was the subject of prolonged and heated debate. On one hand, the library profession called for designs that supported efficiency in administration and operation; on the other, wealthy philanthropists favored buildings that reinforced the paternalistic metaphor and enhanced civic pride. Between 1886 and 1917, Carnegie reformed both library philanthropy and library design, encouraging a closer correspondence between the two

John D. Rockefeller

From his very first paycheck, Rockefeller tithed ten percent of his earnings to his church. His church was later affiliated with the Northern Baptist Convention, which formed from American Baptists in the North with ties to their historic missions to establish schools and colleges for freedmen in the South after the American Civil War. As Rockefeller's wealth grew, so did his giving, primarily to educational and public health causes, but also for basic science and the arts. He was advised primarily by Frederick Taylor Gates after 1891, and, after 1897, also by his son.

Rockefeller believed in the Efficiency Movement, arguing that: "To help an inefficient, ill-located, unnecessary school is a waste... it is highly probable that enough money has been squandered on unwise educational projects to have built up a national system of higher education adequate to our needs, if the money had been properly directed to that end."

He and his advisers invented the conditional grant, which required the recipient to "root the institution in the affections of as many people as possible who, as contributors, become personally concerned, and thereafter may be counted on to give to the institution their watchful interest and cooperation."

In 1884, Rockefeller provided major funding for a college in Atlanta for African-American women, which became Spelman College (named for Rockefeller's in-laws who were ardent abolitionists before the Civil War).The oldest existing building on Spelman's campus, Rockefeller Hall, is named after him. Rockefeller also gave considerable donations to Denison University and other Baptist colleges.

Rockefeller gave $80 million to the University of Chicago under William Rainey Harper, turning a small Baptist college into a world-class institution by 1900. He also gave a grant to the American Baptist Missionaries foreign mission board, the American Baptist Foreign Mission Society in establishing Central Philippine University, the first Baptist and second American university in Asia, in 1905 in the Philippines.

His General Education Board, founded in 1903, was established to promote education at all levels everywhere in the country. In keeping with the historic missions of the Baptists, it was especially active in supporting black schools in the South. Rockefeller also provided financial support to such established eastern institutions as Yale, Harvard, Columbia, Brown, Bryn Mawr, Wellesley and Vassar. The study had been undertaken by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching; it revolutionized the study of medicine in the United States.

Rockefeller and his son John D. Rockefeller, Jr. in 1915

Despite his personal preference for homeopathy, Rockefeller, on Gates's advice, became one of the first great benefactors of medical science. In 1901, he founded the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research in New York City. It changed its name to Rockefeller University in 1965, after expanding its mission to include graduate education. It claims a connection to 23 Nobel laureates. He founded the Rockefeller Sanitary Commission in 1909, an organization that eventually eradicated the hookworm disease, which had long plagued rural areas of the American South. His General Education Board made a dramatic impact by funding the recommendations of the Flexner Report of 1910.

He created the Rockefeller Foundation in 1913 to continue and expand the scope of the work of the Sanitary Commission, which was closed in 1915. He gave nearly $250 million to the foundation, which focused on public health, medical training, and the arts. It endowed Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health, the first of its kind^. It also built the Peking Union Medical College in China into a notable institution. The foundation helped in World War I war relief, and it employed William Lyon Mackenzie King of Canada to study industrial relations. In the 1920s, the Rockefeller Foundation funded a hookworm eradication campaign through the International Health Division. This campaign used a combination of politics and science, along with collaboration between healthcare workers and government officials to accomplish its goals.

Rockefeller's fourth main philanthropy, the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial Foundation, was created in 1918. Through this, he supported work in the social studies; this was later absorbed into the Rockefeller Foundation. In total Rockefeller donated about $550 million.

"...use my money to assist the Cancer Crusade...."

There seems to be no organization called simply the Cancer Crusade. THere is a Kid's Cancer Crusade and things of that nature.

Iceberg: Stock exchange and more

pg 220

"Hermit Limited is international in scope, but you won't find it on any stock exchange..."

A stock exchange is a form of exchange which provides services for stock brokers and traders to trade stocks, bonds, and other securities. Stock exchanges also provide facilities for issue and redemption of securities and other financial instruments, and capital events including the payment of income and dividends. Securities traded on a stock exchange include stock issued by companies, unit trusts, derivatives, pooled investment products and bonds. Stock exchanges often function as "continuous auction" markets, with buyers and sellers consummating transactions at a central location, such as the floor of the exchange

Securities markets took centuries to develop. The idea of debt dates back to the ancient world, as evidenced for example by ancient Mesopotamian clay tablets recording interest-bearing loans. There is little consensus among scholars as to when corporate stock was first traded. Some see the key event as the Dutch East India Company's founding in 1602, while others point to earlier developments. Economist Ulrike Malmendier of the University of California at Berkeley argues that a share market existed as far back as ancient Rome.
In the Roman Republic, which existed for centuries before the Empire was founded, there were societates publicanorum, organizations of contractors or leaseholders who performed temple-building and other services for the government. One such service was the feeding of geese on the Capitoline Hill as a reward to the birds after their honking warned of a Gallic invasion in 390 B.C. Participants in such organizations had partes or shares, a concept mentioned various times by the statesman and orator Cicero. In one speech, Cicero mentions "shares that had a very high price at the time." Such evidence, in Malmendier's view, suggests the instruments were tradable, with fluctuating values based on an organization's success. The societas declined into obscurity in the time of the emperors, as most of their services were taken over by direct agents of the state.
Tradable bonds as a commonly used type of security were a more recent innovation, spearheaded by the Italian city-states of the late medieval and early Renaissance periods.
In 1171, the authorities of the Republic of Venice, concerned about their war-depleted treasury, drew a forced loan from the citizenry. Such debt, known as prestiti, paid 5 percent interest per year and had an indefinite maturity date. Initially regarded with suspicion, it came to be seen as a valuable investment that could be bought and sold. The bond market had begun....

Whenever the Wall Street Journal listed their one hundred wealthiest men in the world, Kelly's name always stood at the top.

Wall Street is the financial district of New York City, named after and centered on the eight-block-long, 0.7 miles (1.1 km) long street running from Broadway to South Street on the East River in Lower Manhattan. Over time, the term has become a metonym for the financial markets of the United States as a whole, the American financial sector (even if financial firms are not physically located there), or signifying New York-based financial interests.
Wall Street is the home of the New York Stock Exchange, the world's largest stock exchange by market capitalization of its listed companies^. Several other major exchanges have or had headquarters in the Wall Street area, including NASDAQ, the New York Mercantile Exchange, the New York Board of Trade, and the former American Stock Exchange. Anchored by Wall Street, New York City is one of the world's principal financial centers


The Wall Street Journal is an American English-language international daily newspaper with a special emphasis on business and economic news. It is published six days a week in New York City by Dow Jones & Company, a division of News Corp, along with the Asian and European editions of the Journal.
The Journal is the largest newspaper in the United States, by circulation. According to the Alliance for Audited Media, it has a circulation of about 2.4 million copies (including nearly 900,000 digital subscriptions), as of March 2013, compared with USA Today's 1.7 million. Its main rival in the business newspaper sector is the London-based Financial Times, which also publishes several international editions.
The Journal primarily covers American economic and international business topics, and financial news and issues. Its name derives from Wall Street, located in New York City, which is the heart of the financial district; it has been printed continuously since its inception on July 8, 1889, by Charles Dow, Edward Jones, and Charles Bergstresser. The newspaper version has won the Pulitzer Prize thirty-four times including 2007 prizes for its reporting on backdated stock options and the adverse effects of China's booming economy.
In 2011, The Wall Street Journal was ranked No. 1 in BtoB's Media Power 50 for the 12th consecutive year.

Iceberg: Smoking a cigar

pg 217

The cigars were carried into the room within a sterling silver case and presented for everyone's selection.... After the lighting ritual, each man holding his cigar over a candle, warming it to the desired temperature, the servants passed around the Rouche brandy, the heavy, yellow-brown liquid in exotically designed snifter glasses

A cigar is a tightly-rolled bundle of dried and fermented tobacco that is ignited so that its smoke may be drawn into the mouth. Cigar tobacco is grown in significant quantities in Brazil, Cameroon, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Honduras, Indonesia, Mexico, Nicaragua, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Canary Islands (Spain), Italy and the Eastern United States. The origins of cigar smoking are still unknown. In Guatemala, a ceramic pot dating back to the tenth century features a Mayan smoking tobacco leaves tied together with a string.

Although some cigars are cut on both ends, or twirled at both ends, the vast majority come with one straight cut end and one end in a "cap". Most quality handmade cigars, regardless of shape, will have a cap which is one or more small pieces of a wrapper pasted onto one end of the cigar with either a natural tobacco paste or with a mixture of flour and water. The cap end of a cigar must be cut off for the cigar to be smoked properly. It is the rounded end without the tobacco exposed, and this is the end one should always cut. If the cap is cut jaggedly or without care, the end of the cigar will not burn evenly and smokeable tobacco will be lost. Some cigar manufacturers purposely place different types of tobacco from one end to the other to give the cigar smokers a variety of tastes, body and strength from start to finish. Smoking a cigar from the wrong end may result in a bad experience.

The "head" of the cigar is usually the end closest to the cigar band. The opposite end of the cigar is called the "foot". The band identifies the type of the cigar and may be removed or left on. The smoker cuts the cap from the head of the cigar and ignites the foot of the cigar. The smoker draws smoke from the head of the cigar with the mouth and lips, usually not inhaling into the lungs.
When lighting, the cigar should be rotated to achieve an even burn and the air should be slowly drawn with gentle puffs. A flame that may impart its own flavor to the cigar should not be used. The tip of the cigar should minimally touch the flame, the heat of the flame from a butane or torch lighter can burn the tobacco leafs. A match or cedar spill flame is a milder flame to be used.
Cigars can be lit with the use of butane-filled lighters. Butane is colorless, odorless and burns clean with very little, if any, flavor; but are quite hot as a flame source. It is not recommended to use (lighter) fluid-filled lighters and paper matches since they can influence the taste.
A second option is wooden matches, but the smoker must ensure the chemical head of the match has burned away and only the burning wooden section is used to light the cigar. Depending on the manufacturer, the chemical head portion of the matchstick may contain one or more of the following: gelatin, paraffin wax, potassium chlorate, barium chlorate, glue, polyvinyl chlorides, phosphorus trisulfide, and clay. The strike plate to ignite the match may contain one more of the following: glass particles, red phosphorus and glue.
A third and most traditional way to light a cigar is to use a cedar spill. A spill is a splinter or a slender piece of wood or twisted paper, for lighting candles, lamps, campfires or fireplaces, etc. A cedar spill for lighting a cigar is a torn narrow strip of Spanish cedar (ideally) and lit using whatever flame source is handy.
Cigars packaged in boxes or metal tubes may contain a thin wrapping of cedar that may be used to light a cigar, minimizing the problem of lighters or matches affecting the taste. Cedar spills, matches and lighters are all commercially available.

Each brand and type of cigar tastes different. While the wrapper does not entirely determine the flavor of the cigar, darker wrappers tend to produce a sweetness, while lighter wrappers usually have a "drier" taste. Whether a cigar is mild, medium, or full bodied does not correlate with quality. Some words used to describe cigar flavor and texture include; spicy, peppery (red or black), sweet, harsh, burnt, green, earthy, woody, cocoa, chestnut, roasted, aged, nutty, creamy, cedar, oak, chewy, fruity, and leathery.
Cigar smoke, which is not typically inhaled, tastes of tobacco with nuances of other tastes. Many different things affect the scent of cigar smoke: tobacco type, quality of the cigar, added flavors, age and humidity, production method (handmade vs. machine-made) and more.A fine cigar can taste completely different from inhaled cigarette smoke. When smoke is inhaled, as is usual with cigarettes, the tobacco flavor is less noticeable than the sensation from the smoke. Some cigar enthusiasts use a vocabulary similar to that of wine-tasters to describe the overtones and undertones observed while smoking a cigar. Journals are available for recording personal ratings, description of flavors observed, sizes, brands, etc. Cigar tasting is in such respects similar to wine, brandy, whisky, tea, coffee, and beer tasting.
The prevalence of cigar smoking varies depending on location, historical period, and population surveyed, and prevalence estimates vary somewhat depending on the survey method. The U.S. is the top consuming country by far, followed by Germany and the UK; the U.S. and western Europe account for about 75% of cigar sales worldwide. The 2005 U.S. National Health Interview Survey estimated that 2.2% of adults smoke cigars, about the same as smokeless tobacco but far less than the 21% of adults who smoke cigarettes; it also estimated that 4.3% of men but only 0.3% of women smoke cigars.The 2002 U.S. National Survey of Drug Use and Health found that adults with serious psychological distress are significantly more likely to smoke cigars than those without. A 2007 California study found that gay men and bisexual women smoke significantly fewer cigars than the general population of men and women, respectively.Substantial and steady increases in cigar smoking were observed during the 1990s and early 2000s in the U.S. among both adults and adolescents. Data suggest that cigar usage among young adult males increased threefold during the 1990s, a 1999–2000 survey of 31,107 young adult U.S. military recruits found that 12.3% smoked cigars, and a 2003–2004 survey of 4,486 high school students in a Midwestern county found that 18% smoked cigars

Iceberg: Rheostat and more

pg 212

The servant turned a rheostat and dimmed the lights.

The most common way to vary the resistance in a circuit is to use a rheostat, which is a two-terminal variable resistor. For low-power applications (less than about 1 watt) a three-terminal potentiometer is often used, with one terminal unconnected or connected to the wiper.

Where the rheostat must be rated for higher power (more than about 1 watt), it may be built with a resistance wire wound around a semicircular insulator, with the wiper sliding from one turn of the wire to the next. Sometimes a rheostat is made from resistance wire wound on a heat-resisting cylinder, with the slider made from a number of metal fingers that grip lightly onto a small portion of the turns of resistance wire. The "fingers" can be moved along the coil of resistance wire by a sliding knob thus changing the "tapping" point. Wire-wound rheostats made with ratings up to several thousand watts are used in applications such as DC motor drives, electric welding controls, or in the controls for generators. The rating of the rheostat is given with the full resistance value and the allowable power dissipation is proportional to the fraction of the total device resistance in circuit.

 It might have been said that Pitt suffered the agonies of the damned for the next hour and a half

Damnation (from Latin damnatio) is the concept of everlasting divine punishment and/or disgrace, especially the punishment for sin as threatened by God (e.g. Mark 3:29). A damned being "in damnation" is said to be either in Hell, or living in a state wherein they are divorced from Heaven and/or in a state of disgrace from God's favor. In Catholic doctrine those Christians in purgatory (the "Church Suffering"), are not considered damned, because their stay there is not eternal, while people who are damned to Hell will stay there eternally.

In some forms of Western Christian belief, damnation to hell is what humanity deserves for its sins. Much of the time, these sins are related to those of Adam and Eve in the book of Genesis. Only through the grace of God and salvation through Jesus Christ, can one atone for their sins and escape damnation. One conception is of eternal suffering and denial of entrance to Heaven, often described in the Bible as burning in a Lake of Fire. Another conception, derived from the scripture about Gehenna is simply that people will be discarded (burned), as being unworthy of preservation by God. The reasons for being damned have varied widely through the centuries, with little consistency between different forms of Christianity (i.e., Catholic or Protestant). Sins ranging from murder to dancing have been said to lead to damnation. In some belief systems, only the sins that the Ten Commandments describe cause damnation, but others apply more strict terms.
In Eastern Christian traditions (Eastern Orthodoxy and Oriental Orthodoxy), as well as some Western traditions, it is seen as a state of opposition to the love of God, a state into which all humans are born but against which Christ is the Mediator and Redeemer.

 "Should the guardian friend or mother..." Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson (18 September 1709 [O.S. 7 September] – 13 December 1784), often referred to as Dr Johnson, was an English writer who made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer. Johnson was a devout Anglican and committed Tory, and has been described as "arguably the most distinguished man of letters in English history". He is also the subject of 'the most famous single work of biographical art in the whole of literature' : James Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson.
Born in Lichfield, Staffordshire, Johnson attended Pembroke College, Oxford for just over a year, before his lack of funds forced him to leave. After working as a teacher he moved to London, where he began to write for The Gentleman's Magazine. His early works include the biography The Life of Richard Savage, the poems "London" and "The Vanity of Human Wishes", and the play Irene.
After nine years of work, Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Language was published in 1755. It had a far-reaching effect on Modern English and has been described as "one of the greatest single achievements of scholarship." This work brought Johnson popularity and success. Until the completion of the Oxford English Dictionary 150 years later, Johnson's was viewed as the pre-eminent British dictionary. His later works included essays, an influential annotated edition of William Shakespeare's plays, and the widely read tale Rasselas. In 1763, he befriended James Boswell, with whom he later travelled to Scotland; Johnson described their travels in A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland. Towards the end of his life, he produced the massive and influential Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets, a collection of biographies and evaluations of 17th- and 18th-century poets.
Johnson had a tall and robust figure. His odd gestures and tics were confusing to some on their first encounter with him. Boswell's Life, along with other biographies, documented Johnson's behaviour and mannerisms in such detail that they have informed the posthumous diagnosis of Tourette syndrome, a condition not defined or diagnosed in the 18th century. After a series of illnesses he died on the evening of 13 December 1784, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. In the years following his death, Johnson began to be recognised as having had a lasting effect on literary criticism, and even as the only great critic of English literature

A Satire

By Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)

LONG-EXPECTED one-and-twenty,
Ling’ring year, at length is flown;
Pride and pleasure, pomp and plenty,
Great (Sir John), are now your own.
Loosen’d from the minor’s tether,	5
Free to mortgage or to sell,
Wild as wind, and light as feather,
Bid the sons of thrift farewell.
Call the Betseys, Kates, and Jennies,
All the names that banish care;	10
Lavish of your grandsire’s guineas,
Show the spirits of an heir.
All that prey on vice and folly,
Joy to see their quarry fly;
There the gamester, light and jolly,	15
There the lender, grave and sly.
Wealth, my lad, was made to wander,
Let it wander as it will;
Call the jockey, call the pander,
Bid them come and take their fill.	20
When the bonny blade carouses,
Pockets full, and spirits high—
What are acres? What are houses?
Only dirt, or wet or dry.
Should the guardian, friend, or mother,	25
Tell the woes of wilful waste,
Scorn their counsel, scorn their pother,—
You can hang or drown at last!

Iceberg: A ship must have hit an old WWII mie and more

pg.  208

"You'e probably thinking along the same lines as Admiral Sandecker. A ship might have hit an old WWII mine

Hundreds of thousands of naval mines had been lain during WWII, placed on chains on the seafloor. When a chain rusts through the mine rises to the surface and occasionally is hit by a modern day ship and explodes.

He helped himself to the hors d'ouvres

Hors d'oeuvre (or-derves)  literally "apart from the [main] work") or the first course, are food items served before the main courses of a meal. The French (singular and plural) is hors d’œuvre; in English, the œ ligature is usually replaced by the digraph "oe" with the plural often written as "hors d'oeuvres" There are several related terms, such as a one-bite appetizer, an amuse-bouche

"Playboy is the only publication I bother with."

Playboy is an American men's magazine that features photographs of nude women as well as journalism and fiction. It was founded in Chicago in 1953 by Hugh Hefner and his associates, and funded in part by a $1,000 loan from Hefner's mother. The magazine has grown into Playboy Enterprises, Inc., with a presence in nearly every medium. Playboy is one of the world's best known brands.  In addition to the flagship magazine in the United States, special nation-specific versions of Playboy are published worldwide.
The magazine has a long history of publishing short stories by notable novelists such as Arthur C. Clarke, Ian Fleming, Vladimir Nabokov, Chuck Palahniuk, P. G. Wodehouseand Margaret Atwood.With a regular display of full-page color cartoons, it became a showcase for notable cartoonists, including Jack Cole, Eldon Dedini, Jules Feiffer, Shel Silverstein, Erich Sokol and Rowland B. Wilson.
Playboy features monthly interviews of notable public figures, such as artists, architects, economists, composers, conductors, film directors, journalists, novelists, playwrights, religious figures, politicians, athletes and race car drivers. The magazine generally reflects a liberal editorial stance

Iceberg: President's mansion at Bessastadier and more

pg 205

the President (of Iceland's) mansion at Bessastadir

Bessastaðir is today the official residence of the President of Iceland and is situated on Garðabær, not far from the capital city, Reykjavík.

After the slaying of Snorri Sturluson in September 1241, Bessastaðir was claimed by the King of Norway. Thereafter it became a Royal stronghold and the dwellings of the King's highest-ranking officers and officials in Iceland. It resisted an attack by Turkish slave raiders in July 1627. In the late 18th century Bessastaðir was changed into a school for a few years and until 1944 when it was donated to the President it was a common farm. The location is named after Sigurður Jónasson Bessastaðir who bought the estate in 1940 and donated it in 1941.

Even a Russian-built Zis stood temporarily in the circular driveway

Zavod imeni Likhachova, more commonly called ZIL (or ZiL, Russian: Завод имени Лихачёва (ЗиЛ)—Likhachev Factory, literally "Factory named after Likhachov") is a major Russian truck and heavy equipment manufacturer, which also produced armored cars for most Soviet leaders, as well as buses, armored fighting vehicles, and aerosani. The company also produces hand-built limousines and high-end luxury sedans (автомобиль представительского класса, also translated as "luxury vehicle") in extremely low quantities, primarily for the Russian government. ZIL passenger cars are priced at the equivalent of models from Maybach and Rolls-Royce, but are largely unknown outside the CIS and production rarely exceeds a dozen cars per year.

Pitt's outfit looked like a cross between a Louis XI court costume and God knew what.

Louis XI (3 July 1423 – 30 August 1483), called the Prudent (French: le Prudent), was a monarch of the House of Valois who ruled as King of France from 1461 to 1483. He succeeded his father Charles VII.
A devious and disobedient Dauphin of France, Louis entered into open rebellion against his father in a short-lived revolt known as the Praguerie (1440). The king forgave his rebellious vassals, including his son Louis, to whom he entrusted the management of the Dauphiné.
Louis' ceaseless intrigues, however, led his father to banish him from court. From the Dauphiné, he led his own political establishment and married Charlotte of Savoy, daughter of Louis, Duke of Savoy, against the will of his father. Charles VII sent an army to compel his son to his will, but Louis fled to Burgundy, where he was hosted by Philip the Good, the Duke of Burgundy, Charles' greatest enemy.
When Charles VII died in 1461, Louis left the Burgundian court to take possession of his kingdom. His taste for intrigue and his intense diplomatic activity earned him the nicknames the Cunning (Middle French: le rusé) and the Universal Spider (Middle French: l'universelle aragne ), as his enemies accused him of spinning webs of plots and conspiracies.
In 1472, the Duke of Burgundy, Charles the Bold, took up arms against his rival Louis, who was able to isolate the Duke from his English allies by signing the Treaty of Picquigny (1475) with Edward IV of England. The treaty formally ended the Hundred Years' War. With the death of Charles the Bold at the Battle of Nancy in 1477, the dynasty of the dukes of Burgundy died out. Louis took advantage of the situation to seize numerous Burgundian territories, including Burgundy proper and Picardy.
Without direct foreign threats, Louis was able to eliminate his rebellious vassals, expand royal power, and strengthen the economic development of his country. He died in 1483 and was succeeded by his son Charles VIII.

Iceberg: Circumstantial proof and more

pg 197

"So you've selected Oskar Ronndheim as your villain," Lillie murmured. :You haven't convinced me with any solid proof."

"I agree, it's all circumstantial," Pitt said.

Circumstantial evidence is evidence in which an inference is required to connect it to a conclusion of fact, like a fingerprint at the scene of a crime. By contrast, direct evidence supports the truth of an assertion directly—i.e., without need for any additional evidence or the intervening inference.
On its own, it is the nature of circumstantial evidence for more than one explanation to still be possible. Inference from one piece of circumstantial evidence may not guarantee accuracy. Circumstantial evidence usually accumulates into a collection, so that the pieces then become corroborating evidence. Together, they may more strongly support one particular inference over another. An explanation involving circumstantial evidence becomes more valid as proof of a fact when the alternative explanations have been ruled out.
Circumstantial evidence allows a trier of fact to deduce a fact exists.^[1] In criminal law, the inference is made by the trier of facts in order to support the truth of assertion (of guilt or absence of guilt).
Testimony can be direct evidence or it can be circumstantial. If the witness claims they saw the crime take place, this is considered direct evidence. For instance, a witness saying that the defendant stabbed the victim is direct evidence. By contrast, a witness who says that she saw the defendant enter a house, that she heard screaming, and that she saw the defendant leave with a bloody knife gives circumstantial evidence. It is the necessity for inference, and not the obviousness of a conclusion, that determines whether or not evidence is circumstantial.
Forensic evidence supplied by an expert witness is usually circumstantial evidence. A forensic scientist who testifies that ballistics proves the defendant’s firearm killed the victim gives circumstantial evidence from which the defendant’s guilt may be inferred. (Note that an inference of guilt could be incorrect if the person who actually fired the weapon was somebody else.)
On the other hand, the additional circumstantial evidence of the defendant's fingerprint on the trigger would dovetail with this piece to provide corroborating evidence.
The two areas in which circumstantial evidence is of most importance are civil and criminal cases where direct evidence is lacking.</blockquote>'

"Shall I mention the name or would you like it written on paper and sealed in an envelope by Price Waterhouse?"

Samuel Lowell Price, an accountant, founded an accountancy practice in London in 1849.^[10] In 1865 Price went into partnership with William Hopkins Holyland and Edwin Waterhouse. Holyland left shortly after to work alone in accountancy and the firm was known from 1874 as Price, Waterhouse & Co. (The comma was dropped from the name much later.) The original partnership agreement, signed by Price, Holyland and Waterhouse could be found in Southwark Towers, one of PwC's important legacy offices (now demolished).
By the late 19th century, Price Waterhouse had gained significant recognition as an accounting firm. As a result of growing trade between the United Kingdom and the United States, Price Waterhouse opened an office in New York in 1890,^[10] and the American firm itself soon expanded rapidly. The original British firm opened an office in Liverpool in 1904 and then elsewhere in the United Kingdom and worldwide, each time establishing a separate partnership in each country: the worldwide practice of PW was therefore a federation of collaborating firms that had grown organically rather than being the result of an international merger.
In a further effort to take advantage of economies of scale, PW and Arthur Andersen discussed a merger in 1989 but the negotiations failed mainly because of conflicts of interest such as Andersen's strong commercial links with IBM and PW's audit of IBM as well as the radically different cultures of the two firms. It was said by those involved with the failed merger that at the end of the discussion, the partners at the table realized they had different views of business, and the potential merger was scrapped.