By Tony Rice As summer unofficially begins this weekend (summer officially begins here in the northern hemisphere at the solstice, June 21) weve already begun seeing the staple of summer weather in our area: isolated thunderstorms in the afternoon and evening. As those storms pass, we are often treated to rainbows. That is just what happened Thursday evening when a series of small storms passed through the area. Occasional sprinkles didn't impede preparations for Apex High School's year-ending pops concert at Koka Booth Amphitheater in Cary. Showtime was a different story. The combined choirs were barely into the opening song when a small but heavy storm put the show on pause. Fifteen minutes later, the crowd was rewarded with one of the most brilliant rainbows Ive seen. You probably know that rainbows are produced by sunlight passing through a raindrop. The light is bent or refracted because the denser water causes the light to travel more slowly. That light, now separated into its component wavelengths (colors), is reflected off the back of the raindrop and back out producing a colorful arc across the sky. Rainbows are actually circles, centered on a point directly opposite the sun. We see just the … Continue reading →

TechCrunch Anatomy of a managed marketplace | TechCrunch TechCrunch Managed marketplaces (also known as end-to-end or full-stack marketplaces) have been one of the hottest categories of venture investment over the past ... and more » Read the rest here: Anatomy of a managed marketplace | TechCrunch - TechCrunch … Continue reading →

By Douglas Anele Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, the dominant political parties that emerged in Nigeria before independence and played prominent roles in defining the direction of her future political evolution were largely regional parties. For instance, in northern Nigeria, the political landscape was dominated by the Northern Peoples Congress (NPC), whose catchphrase One North, One People, accurately encapsulates its core agenda. It was unabashedly a political organisation specifically set up to cater for the concerns of northern region alone, particularly the interests of the domineering feudalist conservative elite, to the extent that it refused to present candidates for elections in the south. Interestingly, NPC leaders were surprised that its gesture of separateness was not reciprocated by political parties in the south. Consequently, they strongly resisted efforts by parties in southern Nigeria to field candidates in the north, which Balewa saw as appropriate to response to the invasion of northern region by southerners, and considered southern politicians campaigning in northern Nigeria an unwelcome challenge to norths territorial sovereignty. Action Group (AG) was the major party in western Nigeria, whereas the first truly national political party was the National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons (NCNC), although it eventually mutated into a … Continue reading →