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Gene Ellis

Suspension Bridges - Inca - Andes - New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...08bridg.html

General inca suspension bridges

shared by Gene Ellis on 19 Feb 15 - Cached
  • “Mexicans discovered vulcanization 3,500 years before Goodyear,” said Dorothy Hosler, an M.I.T. professor of archaeology and ancient technology. “The Spanish had never seen anything that bounced like the rubber balls of Mexico.”
  • Dr. Ochsendorf, a specialist in early architecture and engineering, said the colonial government tried many times to erect European arch bridges across the canyons, and each attempt ended in fiasco until iron and steel were applied to bridge building.
  • The Inca suspension bridges achieved clear spans of at least 150 feet, probably much greater. This was a longer span than any European masonry bridges at the time. The longest Roman bridge in Spain had a maximum span between supports of 95 feet. And none of these European bridges had to stretch across deep canyons.
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  • Similar bridges existed in other mountainous regions of the world, most notably in the Himalayas and in ancient China, where iron chain suspension bridges existed in the third century B.C.”
  • The last existing Inca suspension bridge, at Huinchiri, near Cuzco, is virtually rebuilt each year. People from the villages on either side hold a three-day festival and gather stiff grasses for producing more than 50,000 feet of cord. Finally, the cord is braided into 150-foot replacement cables.
Gene Ellis

ECB Raises Pressure on Greece - WSJ.com - 0 views

online.wsj.com/...4097904577538873386439442.html

shared by Gene Ellis on 21 Jul 12 - No Cached
  • FRANKFURT—The European Central Bank said it would reject Greek government bonds as collateral for its normal lending operations beginning Wednesday,
  • Government bonds and other debt securities backed by Greece "will become for the time being ineligible for use as collateral" in the ECB's monetary policy operations, the bank said in a statement.
  • Greek banks, which are largely shut out of private markets for financing, depend critically on cheap ECB loans to meet their daily funding needs. In June, Greek banks tapped the ECB and Greece's central bank for a combined €136 billion ($166 billion) in loans through normal refinancing operations and emergency credit, an amount roughly equal to two-thirds of the country's gross domestic product.
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  • Banks can still access emergency funds through the Greek central bank, but at a higher interest rate than normal ECB loans. The credit risk stays on Greece's books and isn't spread throughout the 17-member currency bloc,
  • It is the second time the ECB declined to accept Greek bonds as collateral. The first was in February, after Athens imposed steep losses on private creditors in a debt restructuring. That suspension ended after a little more than an week, when the ECB received guarantees from euro-zone governments that Greek bonds posted to the ECB as collateral would be repaid.
  • For banks, which are already under intense pressure, it means that they will have to resort to emergency liquidity assistance which will lend them with a higher rate.It is bad news and all we can hope for is that it won't last for long," a senior Greek banker said.
Gene Ellis

Russia shuts four McDonald's restaurants in Moscow - MarketWatch - 0 views

www.marketwatch.com/...staurants-in-moscow-2014-08-20

shared by Gene Ellis on 18 Feb 15 - No Cached
  • Russia shuts four McDonald's restaurants in Moscow
  • To be sure, Russia has shut only four out of 435 McDonald's outlets across the country and said the move was temporary, pending further checks.
  • McDonald's in April closed its three restaurants in Crimea, a Ukrainian peninsula that Russia annexed a month earlier, citing "the suspension of necessary financial and banking services." Those restaurants remain closed. At the time, a Russian nationalist politician called for all McDonald's outlets to be closed and for demonstrations outside restaurants.
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