Daily Archives: October 29, 2020

Logistical failures that waste food during transportation can be solved using IT, Singapore port operator says.

One of the largest container port operators is calling on the shipping industry to tackle a growing yet often overlooked major environmental problem: spoiled food from hauling produce around the world.

The food industry accounts for almost a quarter of global carbon emissions. Yet 30% of production is wasted because it doesnt arrive in an edible form caused by logistical failures that can be addressed using information technology, said Tan Chong Meng, the chief executive officer of PSA International Group in Singapore.

Reducing that wastage through digitalization to move food more efficiently is a huge opportunity for the freight industry, which emits about 800 million tons of carbon dioxide, Tan told the Singapore International Energy Week conference.

The shipping companies that move 90% of the worlds goods including food have pledged to decarbonize in the next 30 years by curbing fossil-fuel emissions. That commitment focuses on the pollution caused by fuel, but doesnt include the indirect emissions from food waste. About 1.3 billion tons of global food production is lost before reaching consumers plates every year, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

Supply disruptions caused by the coronavirus pandemic have put the spotlight on food security, prompting calls for reduced wastage to boost self-sufficiency. In August, Chinas President Xi Jinping introduced a Clean Plates Campaign to tackle the shocking and distressing problem of food waste.

In Singapore, which relies on imports for more than 90% of its food and increased wastage by 20% over the past decade, President Halimah Yacob urged citizens to help overcome the problem.

Some 10% of developed nations greenhouse gas emissions are created by producing food thats never eaten, according to the UN Environment Programme. About 14% of the worlds food is lost after harvesting and before reaching the retail level, and good infrastructure and efficient trade logistics are key to preventing food losses, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization.

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Going off on the high seas: Shipping urged to cut food waste - Aljazeera.com

The more Andre Norton I read and reread, the more convinced I am that her real forte, and her real talent, lay in boys adventure. She tried all sorts of genres, and from the Sixties onward she developed a clearly feminist sensibility. My favorite works of hers have strong female protagonists and relatively complicated emotional arcs.

And yet, she seems most at ease in worlds with little or no sexual tension, and nothing to distract from the headlong pace of the action. Usually its a mans world, with womens voices heard seldom if at all. Women exist to die offstage (especially if theyre the protagonists mother) or to act as servants or to play the role of witch or Wisewoman. The relationships that matter are between men.

Yankee Privateer, published in 1955, is a relatively rare excursion into straight historical fiction.

It reads to me like Hornblower Lite. Maybe she had read the first volume of the saga (published in 1950) and been inspired. Or maybe it was in the Zeitgeist.

Norton was no C.S. Forester and I dont think aspired to be, but she did quite a lot of research and made sure to mention it in her front matter. Each chapter header is an excerpt from a song of the period. There are plenty of the tiny, telling details that define a period and encourage the reader to trust that the author has done her homework properly.

The protagonist is her standard-issue plucky orphan pushed through a series of adventures by forces beyond his control. This version is named Fitzhugh Lyon, and hes the son of an English aristocrat and the daughter of a wealthy Maryland family. Hes been raised as a poor relation, and as the story begins, hes riding his mare and toting his long rifle northward to join the American Revolutionary army.

Fate however has other plans for him. When he stops for the night, he runs afoul of a naval officer recruiting for a privateer. After he refuses the offer, by another quirk of fate he finds himself lodged with the captain himself. He still insists on heading for the land armybut ends up being press-ganged and hauled off to the ship.

That is not the stalwart young captains idea, but that of his lieutenant who has taken a violent dislike to poor Fitz. By the time its sorted out, the Retaliation is at sea and the only way Fitz can get back to the mainland is by signing on as a marine and hoping to be sent home either with a prize crew or from the next port of call, which happens to be on the far side of the Atlantic.

Theres a hole in the plot, in that Fitz never makes an effort to ship on any of the prizes captured during an exceptionally lucky voyage. He hangs in until they get to Brittany, then through a series of mishaps and misadventures, ends up back on the ship and being taken captive during a naval battle in the English Channel. This deposits him in prison, from which he and his captain make a daring and clever escapebut fate continues to play games with him. Hes separated from the captain during the escape, and eventually meets his long-lost grandfather and the old mans dissolute rakehell heir.

Despite strong pressure from his grandfather, Fitz has absolutely no desire to depose the heir and take his place, and nothing he sees of the family or its holdings changes his mind. Theyre horrible and hes horrified. All he wants to do is get back to the Americas.

Or so he thinks. Once he has a real, actual choice, he opts to sign on permanently with his doughty captain, and become a wholehearted, fully voluntary Yankee Privateer. And so they sail off together into the sunset.

As happens more often than not in Nortons all or mostly male universes, theres a distinct undertone of male-male romance. When Fitz first meets the captain, he reacts physically the way a romance heroine does on meeting the hero. Of course he never comes out and expresses his feelings, but its clear hes in love, and he follows his love literally through hell and high water. Its presented as the loyalty of a naval officer for his captain, but lets face it, thats not all thats going on there.

Theres an obligatory bit of of-its-time discomfortbefore Fitz went off to war, he earned his keep by serving as an overseer on the family plantationbut the way he expresses it is pretty accurate for the period, and hes not blatantly racist. He has no problem interacting with the free Black man in the ships crew, and theres a reference to the horrors of a slave ship. As these things go, its fairly inoffensive.

All in all its a solid example of its genre. Theres a sort of sequel, Stand and Deliver, published in 1984, which Ill tackle next. It will be interesting to see how the two compare.

Judith Tarrs first novel, The Isle of Glass, appeared in 1985. Since then shes written novels and shorter works of historical fiction and historical fantasy and epic fantasy and space opera and contemporary fantasy, many of which have been reborn as ebooks. She has even written a primer for writers: Writing Horses: The Fine Art of Getting It Right. She has won the Crawford Award, and been a finalist for the World Fantasy Award and the Locus Award. She lives in Arizona with an assortment of cats, a blue-eyed dog, and a herd of Lipizzan horses.

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Andre Norton Takes to the High Seas in Yankee Privateer - tor.com

The offical flag of the DEF CON hacker convention bears a striking resemblence to popular pirate iconography.

Church said people typically think of pirates as raising their flags on their ships to set sail on the high seas and have dramatic battles on the hunt to find buried treasure chests filled with gold and jewels. Most of the time thats not what happened. With the swashbucklers and buccaneers there was as much conflict and battles on land as there was at sea. They identified the weak points in travel. They were hacking a network in the same mental framework as someone whos trying to get illegal access to something online today.

In the early modern period, maritime trade traveled through the same circular networks we have now, and the pirates continually tried to hack those networks. Church, who is writing a book on the topic, said you cant have piracy without trade, so you need to follow the trade networks to find the pirates. Since the early modern period, trade networks have increasingly become transatlantic and even global. Church said the largest transformation in the worlds trade networks took place between the 15 th and 18 th centuries. This is where most of the worlds piracy comes from.

"They were hacking a network in the same mental framework as someone whos trying to get illegal access to something online today."

As the world moved from the late 19 th century to the present, the trade transformation has become more and more virtual, starting with telegraphs, moving to telephones and eventually to fiber optics and cloud computing. At one point in history, pirates moved textiles, sugar and slaves and held them for ransom similarly today, hackers will lock down a computer or an electrical grid for ransom money. Church said its not accidental that virtual data is now one of the most profitable goods. While the players have changed, the game has structurally remained the same.

In the early 2000s Somalian pirates, who initially called themselves the Volunteer Somali Coastguard, hijacked international fishing vessels for disrupting the local trade networks. What started as pushback against globalization, gradually lost its high-minded ideals. Somalian pirates found their tactics were successful and quite profitable and continued capturing large transport vessels purely out of financial gain. If you remove the technology, Church says, whats left is human behavior.

One of the biggest economic ties between historical piracy to the present-day hacker is that piracy is profoundly disruptive. In the earlier periods, piracy was often used to the benefit of the state or rather to the detriment of a given states enemies. Queen Elizabeth I hired pirates to disrupt Spanish trade. Church said the shift in piracy becoming a general economic threat (as opposed to a targeted one) happened at the turn of the 18 th century, when the trade with the New World focused on plantation slavery and sugar. When the pirates started working for the highest bidder and stopped calling any one nation home, the powers that be ran a massive propaganda campaign against piracy.

Church noted a similar process starting to take place today with cybercrime and hacking. Hackers were once seen as helping the little guy the only opposition to large corporations and monopolies. Now, people are starting to see hackers as enemies of society. Church said the tipping point will come at some point in the future because of massive losses to the worlds economy. Although, he said its too early to tell if it will end as a revolution against corporate monopolies or as a backlash against public hackers. Historians are loath to make projections.

By understanding how piracy has progressed and evolved since the 15 th century and looking at how its changing today, its possible to see patterns emerge, and while we cant say for certain just how things will play out, its undeniable that theyre escalating, growing in complexity right alongside our global trade networks.

In the cyber world, if we just treat the economic and technical side of security and dont look at the social side or bring in the political and cultural side, then were only addressing one small piece of cybercrime, Church said.

Church points out that if you were to look at a map of fiber optic lines today and compare that to maritime trade routes and the railroads, the two look eerily similar. Data is travelling the same routes, something end users dont often consider when logging into a coffee shops network. Wi-Fi invites this in the cloud feeling but theres a physical there that evolved with maritime trade, Church said.

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The war on cyberspace: Hackers, cybercrime and how pirate history is influencing the future of cybersecurity - Nevada Today

Police have warned it is unrealistic and impractical to expect officers to board North Sea vessels to enforce fishing rules after the Brexit transition.

Deputy Chief Constable Will Kerr told MSPs on the policing sub-committee at Holyrood there needed to be a bit of realism about the forces capabilities.

And he raised concerns tensions could boil over next year, including at fishing ports in Scotland.

Uncertainty has surrounded the UKs ability to police its waters after leaving the Common Fisheries Policy, which currently determines how many fish countries can catch in different areas.

While giving evidence on Police Scotlands preparations for Brexit, Mr Kerr was asked about the role of the force in policing illegal fishing, smuggling and port closures.

He said: There needs to be a bit of realism as well about what can practically be done offshore, as opposed to what evidence we can gather, the role of police in Scotland, onshore.

So obviously this relates to activity outwith the EEZ, so the European Economic Zone, which is set at 12 nautical miles.

But in the middle of the winter, in the middle of the North Sea, its unrealistic and impractical for Police Scotland to be thinking about, even in terms of our preparation, looking at practical onboarding of fishing vessels which are 13 or 14 miles out into the North Sea, in the middle of January.

That just isnt going to happen, realistically.

So what were looking at is contingencies with protocols to gather evidence where there have been breaches and to make sure that onshore we can actually start to address those and, if necessary, engage with the Crown to see what offences have been committed.

Because there are a range of those tensions not just tensions with fisheries and shipping offshore, either within or outwith that 12 nautical miles, or tension within the ports themselves among members of the fishing community, both Scotland-based and further afield.

There is undoubtedly widespread concern within the fishing sector about the heightened risk of illegal fishing in Scottish waters post Brexit and the damage this could do to the industry if these incidents occur.

Speaking afterwards, Orkney MSP Liam McArthur said:Any illegal activity not only impacts on the livelihoods of fishermen but could also result in confrontations that put the safety of crews at risk.

Any illegal activity not only impacts on the livelihoods of fishermen but could also result in confrontations that put the safety of crews at risk.

For this reason, our fishing sector needs confidence that arrangements are being made by Police Scotland, SFPA and others to minimise the risks and respond in a timely fashion to incidents should they occur.

I was therefore pleased to hear the deputy chief constable provide assurances that contingency planning is under way and that additional capacity has been made available to police our ports.

Hopefully this proactive approach will help reduce the risk and address some of the concerns felt by Scotlands fishing sector.

Issues relating to fishing were just one of the potential problems on the radar for bosses at Police Scotland ahead of what they expect to be a busy year in 2021.

Warning of the possibility of a cumulative impact of a no-deal Brexit and the pandemic, Mr Kerr said: As we enter 2021, as the winter weather worsens, hopefully we dont end up with a pandemic flu on top of Covid-19, but next year is going to be very busy, anyway.

There are a whole range of issues, not least the backdrop of constitutional, economic and ongoing operational issues, and all of those things will compound as the year continues.

So we are just looking at all the risks to see how we can actually minimise the impact of those to the people of Scotland, and the disruption to Scotland.

But inevitably there will be some, particularly if there is a non-negotiated outcome before December 31.

Meanwhile, the policing sub-committee also heard from Detective Chief Superintendent Patrick Campbell about the really significant impact of the loss of the European Arrest Warrant, and shared information systems, after the Brexit transition.

He said new systems were being developed, but they would result in slower, more bureaucratic processes that are sub optimal.

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Brexit fishing rules: Police on high seas 'just isn't going to happen' - Press and Journal

Haunting of the Mary Celeste star Emily Swallow explained why the real-life mystery behind the film's concept drew her to the project and more.

Haunting of the Mary Celeste is bringing horror to the high seas. In this supernatural psychological thriller, researcher Rachel takes her assistants Grant and Cassandra on her mission to discover what happened to the Mary Celeste, an American merchant ship whose crew mysteriously disappeared at sea. After boarding a boat captained by Richard Roundtree's Tulls and his crewman Aldo, the disparate group finds themselves caught in a rift between dimensions, from which they may never return.

Speaking to CBR, Haunting of the Mary Celeste star Emily Swallow, who plays Rachel, broke down her experience working on the film. She explained how the real-life mystery behind the film's concept drew her to the project, as well as how she relates to Rachel's insatiable drive. She recalled what it was like to work with director Shana Betz and how they filmed the movie on an actual boat. She also teased her favorite moment, revealed which horror movie scares her the most and more.

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CBR: What would you want viewers to know about The Haunting of the Mary Celeste before they sit down to watch it for the first time?

I'm personally fascinated by it being inspired by a maritime mystery that's still not really solved. I just think that that's so cool, because we feel like we can figure everything out these days. So that's something that's so fascinating to me.

I guess I would also want them to know that it's obviously kind of a psychological thriller. There's also, I think, at the core of it, it's compelling. One of the reasons that the script was appealing to me is that at the core of it, there's this very human story of this woman who's so obsessed with figuring something out, putting something together, finding answers, being proven right, that she kind of drives herself and all the people around her to disaster. I'm always intrigued by people like that. It's fascinating to get inside the head of somebody with that kind of obsession.

Which aspect of the character do you relate to the most and why?

I relate to being consumed by work and being consumed by something that is, in some ways, incredibly satisfying, but that can never fully satisfy you. I mean, I think I feel that way about a lot of my creative work. I love it. I'm passionate about it. I love getting to connect to people, I love having new experiences. And yet, I finish one thing, and then I'm like, "Okay, when's the next one?" There's never an end to that.

So I definitely relate to the obsession that she has. Fortunately, I don't think I would take it to the lengths that she does -- I try to keep that in check -- but I can at least relate to the the core of that.

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I was delighted to see this film was helmed by a woman director, but how did that change your experience on set?

Oh, it was so, so wonderful. I would use the word luscious, because Shana [Betz] is so smart. She comes from an acting background, and so she also was very attuned to the fact that we had this script that's pretty bare bones. You don't get a lot of details about these people. And certainly, the central character is the the mystery of the story and the thriller part of it. But within that, you have to have real people, or why do you care?

There's so many scary movies, and they do so many different things. I think this one, one of the appealing things is that it does have these very flawed humans and you need to find ways to connect to them. So Shana, she really -- we got to rehearse scenes, we did a lot of improvisations to try to figure out what on earth led these people to this place where they are. That was something that was such a huge gift that she gave us, and I think also it helped her help me connect to this character and connect to the mother in her who has lost her daughter and lost her mind because of that. She's not really thinking clearly about a lot of decisions!

We also had a female DP [Director of Photography], and the two of them working together were just a dream team. And Raquel [Fernndez Nuez], you know, we're shooting on this janky old boat that looks like it's about to sink on screen -- it felt like it was about to sink every time we were on it -- and Raquel would cram herself into corners to get just the right shot, because it wasn't like a set, where you can take out a wall and put your camera there. You just had to fit in the space. They were just a power duo that way. They would go to any lengths to get the right angle, to get the right atmosphere, to work out the scene the right way. So it was awesome.

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As I was watching, something that struck me about the movie was how a lot of the shots were tight on faces. How did that impact the way you approached your scenes?

Yeah! I tried not to think about it as much as possible! [laughs] There's so many things, when you're acting, that you just have to block out. It's funny, because you can do all this work to bring something to a character, but if you can't block out all the distractions, it doesn't matter.

That was an area where Shana also really helped, because she would guide us into the scene and she was very aware when something was playing too big for those tight shots. She was just so patient and so, so confident in guiding us to the right place and maybe just doing it again, doing it again, taking the scene and improvising a few moments leading into it and getting us to that place of relaxation, because otherwise, I think that those tight shots would have been horrific, because there would have been all sorts of schmacting going on and you wouldn't really have a way into those characters' minds. They'd be alienating and you'd be like, "Okay, you're all faking it. It's ridiculous."

Tell me a little about those underwater sequences and what the process of filming them looked like for you.

Oh, it was very cool. It was after we'd finished -- so we shot everything with the boat up in the Bay Area, kind of around South Toledo. I just remember driving out in the desert outside of LA to this big pool. It's a pool that they use for shooting, and all of the actors, we were just wearing the clothes that we had to wear and we would have to have a scuba tank and take a breath and then go down and play out whatever vignette she had and try not to breathe, like not have bubbles. It was so surreal.

I've spent a lot of time in the water, but I've never done anything quite like that. It was such a cool feeling, and then seeing it was really exciting, because I didn't know quite what it was going to look like. It was an adventure! We're doing it in the middle of the night. So it was all just like, "What's going on here?" but it was really fun.

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Richard Roundtree is basically a legend, so I'd love to hear about your experience working with him.

I mean, he is just delightful. He's so lovely. He's such a generous actor. He's such a down-to-Earth guy. Of course, he's done so many incredible things. I think he's at the point where he's like, "I've seen it all." But he was just such a -- working on an independent film like that, where you're trying to scrape a lot of things together, in some ways, you feel like you have a lot of time and in some ways, you don't at all, dealing with budget constraints, you really have to have actors who are just on the team and ready to do the work. He was such a team player.

I definitely fangirled a little bit at first, because he is a legend, like you said, but I found it so easy to connect to him. I loved those scenes that we got to play together, because there is something unspoken between those two; they kind of get each other. Every scene with him, it was fun. Sometimes, he would just go off on some random tangent and improvise something, something bizarre, but it all wound up bringing us back to these great moments and how those scenes played out. So I was so happy that I got to work with him.

Can you tease the one scene you just can't wait for viewers to see?

I think maybe the first moment that we get to see the physical representation of what this rift is. That was something, when I was reading it, I was like, "What on earth is this going to look like?" And that was something that was really in Shana's imagination, like how do we put that image on screen in a way that -- like, it's not something literal that you can play out. There's something that's a little poetic about it.

That's one of the reasons I loved working with her, too, is that there were very creative ways that she found to create these moments of mystery and to make it something that your brain doesn't quite know what it's seeing. I think that that mystery around it serves the film well. So yeah, I think maybe the first moment that that happens, I'm excited to see how people -- whether they dig it or not.

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'Tis the season, so I'd love to hear about your favorite horror movies and perhaps the ones that influenced your role in Haunting of the Mary Celeste.

I don't know if there was a horror movie that inspired me. I think that the movie that will always scare me the most is Arachnophobia, because I am truly terrified of spiders. [laughs] So that's the first one that comes to mind. But yeah, I'll have to think about that one for a while, if there was one that actually inspired this particular character. There's nothing that comes to mind immediately.

What do you hope viewers will take away from the film?

I mean, I hope that they get a good little thrill, and I really hope that they connect to the heart of it, because I feel like that's one of the things that is a little different from some horror -- I don't even know if I call it a horror movie. It's like a spooky thriller. I don't know! But I think that what's compelling to me is that the driving force for all the events, all the scary things that happened and all the bad things that happened to these characters, is this woman's obsession and her inability to let go of this thing. Yeah, I hope that people connect to that, and then I hope that they have a few moments where they jump. [laughs] That's all I wish!

Directed by Shana Betz, Haunting of the Mary Celeste stars Emily Swallow, Richard Roundtree, Alice Hunter, Ava Acres, Dominic Devore and Pierre Adeli. The film is now available on VOD platforms.

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Meagan Damore has served as a CBR Editor since January 2015, though she got her start as a staff reviewer in 2013. She discovered comics thanks to the plethora of movies and television she grew up with, like Batman: The Animated Series, Spider-Man, the original X-Men film trilogy, X-Men: Evolution and Justice League Unlimited. She picked up her first comic in high school and fell instantly in love with the medium. Later, she took her love for pop culture with her to college, where she earned a Bachelor of Arts from Suffolk University and a Masters Degree in Literature from University of Massachusetts Boston. She loves to apply her education to her work writing editorials and conducting interviews. You can catch her writing on Agents of SHIELD, the Arrowverse and more right here on CBR.

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Haunting of the Mary Celeste Interview: Emily Swallow | CBR - CBR - Comic Book Resources