From Ocean County College’s Student newspaper:
Judging from the numbers for the better part of the last decade, the number of fulltime faculty members at OCC has been steadily decreasing while both student enrollments and tuition have increased significantly.
Can be found here. An excerpt:
The College began with the amalgamation of three flourishing institutions: the Bermuda Hotel and Catering College established in 1965, the Bermuda Technical Institute (1956) and the Academic Sixth Form Centre (1967) Some of these institutions had even earlier antecedents. They had provided opportunities for education and training in the main areas needed by Bermuda in its developing economy. Under the energetic leadership of the Board’s first Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Mansfield H. Brock Jr. (1974-1977), the College made great strides in upgrading and developing curriculum for the education and training of young Bermudians. Advisory committees, established with memberships drawn from professionals in local businesses, helped develop programmes for major trade areas to ensure that Bermuda College graduates were well equipped for employment. Similarly, the basic programmes for hotels and for business offices were developed. The university-preparatory work of the earlier Sixth Form Centre was developed by the construction of a programme which would match the educational pattern of North American universities and enable students to obtain credit at an advanced level for the work done in Bermuda College. This programme was initially offered as an alternative to the GCE ‘A’-levels and its success in gaining recognition in North American universities soon made it the primary programme for university transfer.
Bermuda, much like the Cayman Islands, will likely have the “tax haven” reputation for awhile, even if steps are taken to counteract that image. The following is a bit taken from a Michael J. Moody article on the Bermuda Monetary Authority:
BMA introduces new risk-based capital standard for insurance companies
The past few years have seen an increased emphasis on corporate transparency, not just in the United States, but internationally as well. While there are numerous reasons for this renewed interest, corporate entities worldwide have been going to great lengths to provide proactive governance via complete transparency. And in most cases, it has fallen to the various regulatory bodies to assure that a consistent approach to this effort is provided as well as to monitor its compliance. Some regulators such as the Bermuda Monetary Authority (BMA) believe that it is important to provide an approach to its own transparency that is similar to the transparency it requires from the entities it regulates. As a result, BMA has recently introduced its outline for change in the 2008 BMA Business Plan.
The trial of Libyan terrorists took place on Camp Ziest. Basically, Soesterberg, as an American Military experience, was a cluster of installations. The school and the air field was on one, with the PX, the Rec Center, barracks, and the gym on the other. The elemetary school and commisary were also on separate “bases.” Basically, after the Air Force left, the elementary school became the court trying the terrorists. Here’s the first couple of paragraphs from a 2001 Herald Tribune article on the trial itself:
It began with the whole world watching, but few have stayed the course. Neil Mackay reports from Camp Zeist
WHEN the Lockerbie trial finally limps towards its end this week it will be with a whimper rather than a bang. Somehow or other, the dying days of a court case about mass murder and international terrorism have been muted to the point of anti-climax.
In the opening months of 2000 this was being hailed as the trial of the century. Just over six months later, the courtroom at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands is less than a quarter full. Only a handful of reporters from agencies such as Associated Press and Reuters are present to watch the proceedings.
My mother has been having serious health issues lately, but it’s not necessarily something I’d talk about publically. At any rate, things seem to be on the mend, and she’s recovering. Still, here’s a grainy cell phone pic from visiting her in the hospital — Jersey Shore University Medical Center in Neptune, New Jersey. Mehandru is one of the wings in the massive complex. I don’t remember taking this picture, given the emotional state I was in at the time. Just the other day, I found it on my cell phone, when I was trying to delete a bunch of things because of a memory problem.
One of the things about Bermuda — the houses always seem to be painted pastel like collars. The photo comes from Flickr, under creative commons.
The original Dawn of The Dead (George Romero’s) is one of my favorite films, and since then, I’ve always had weird dreams about shopping malls. Below is the one of the back corridors of the Freehold Raceway Mall in Freehold, New Jersey. It’s fairly large, and this is part of the a laybrinthine set of hallways shoppers never see. Recently, however, the bathrooms were out of commission, and so shoppers were directed to the back to the employee/service bathrooms on the upper level.
The Stars and Stripes has an interesting column featuring quotes from military/overseas brats as grown ups, looking back. The people talked to, it should be noted, chose to stay within the sphere of the DOD/military in some capacity. Here’s a snippet:
Air Force Lt. Col. Robyn Chumley, daughter of an Air Force dad, said she had a hard time finding a downside to her military childhood.
“You know, as soon as I think of a negative, like moving so frequently, I realize it’s a positive: seeing new places, meeting new people,” Robyn said. “I somewhat envy people who’ve known their neighbors for years, watching each other’s children grow up … But I wouldn’t trade my experience as an Air Force brat — as an airman — for their sedentary life.”
Everytime I read about the crime rate in Bermuda, it really saddens me. Via the Royal Gazette:
Violent crime is at its highest point for at least eight years following a surge in gang robberies.
Not all NAZI concentration camps were located in Germany/Eastern Europe. The Netherlands had a few, like Kamp Amersfoort, or Polizeiliches Durchgangslager Amersfoort. It was small, but murder did indeed happen there:
Compared with other concentration camps, Kamp Amersfoort was a small and makeshift affair. In operation from 1941 until the end of the war, it was run not by the military but by the German police. Neglect, starvation, maltreatment and murder marked the lives of over 35,000 prisoners who – in the course of two separate periods of the war – were held here for a brief or extended time.
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