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At the start they were all laughing. “But by the end of the week, everybody was just… well, nobody was laughing,” says Connor Steven, a fourth-year pupil from John Ogilvie High in Hamilton. “We just stopped and froze.”
Yet as they board the bus at
the start of this school trip no one can imagine it will change them so profoundly. It promises to be fairly routine: 25 pupils and three teachers setting off on a tour of the battlefields of Belgium and France. But their journey will take them deep into the past, deep into their own emotions, challenging their attitudes and sense of perspective.
Des Brogan, a former history teacher who now runs Mercat Tours, insists the pupils board the bus in military fashion, to the sound of pipes and drums. “In the First World War,” he says, “Pals Battalions were recruited from factories and community clubs. Friends joined up together and fought together. For the next few days, we will follow in their footsteps. We will be the 1st John Ogilvie Pals Battalion. And we will begin our journey in the traditional manner.”
Pupils exchange looks of amusement and disbelief; little do they realise that, by the end of the trip, they will be proud to call themselves ‘Pals’.
The Ogilvie Pals travel overnight and for most of the following day, arriving on Thursday evening at a youth hostel in Kortrijk, Belgium.
Early the following morning, their Battlefields experience begins with a rude awakening. ‘Field Marshall’ Brogan marches up and down the hostel corridor, banging on doors and blaring out First World War songs from a ghetto-blaster. “Wake up, Pals,” he commands. “Breakfast in half an hour. Don’t be late.”
Sleepy faces peer around doorways, some laughing, others incredulous. This is all part of the plan to immerse them in the past. Brogan had warned them the previous evening: “By the end of the week, you won’t know whether you’re in 1918 or 2008.”

scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com

No, it’s not a dance craze. Contago is a condition of supply and demand, essentially a fancy word to say that prices for items, typically commodities, are cheaper now than they would be at some point down the line.
Anything that¿s sold in the futures market can be in a case of contango. Futures are exactly that: a contract to buy an item or asset at a price in the future. This is the case with oil, with traders buying and selling contracts to acquire a barrel of oil in months down the line. When a market is in contango, spot prices, or the price of a commodity if you were to buy it right now, are lower than forward prices.
Why is that important? Well, it usually tells you the supply of a given commodity is plentiful (since, according to Economics 101, a large supply usually leads to cheap prices).
Incidentally, if you think contango is a mouthful, its opposite condition is known by the equally tongue-tying term backwardation.
Multi-Platinum Rapper and Actor T.I. Speaks to Toure about His Trouble With the Law in a BET News National Exclusive: ‘T.I. Speaks,’ Premiering Wednesday, May 7 at 7:30PM*
NEW YORK, May 6, 2008 /PRNewswire via COMTEX News Network/ —-In his first televised interview since a plea bargain on weapon charges, multi-platinum recording artist and actor T.I., a.k.a. Clifford Harris, Jr., speaks exclusively to BET News in the half-hour special T.I. SPEAKS, premiering Wednesday, May 7 at 7:30 PM*. He directly answers the tough questions from host Toure and at-risk youth about his life and future after being sentenced to a year in prison. In a compelling moment, he explains why someone who seems to have everything — money, power and fame — would risk it all.
On October 13, 2007, T.I. was set to perform at BET’s second annual HIP HOP AWARDS in Atlanta, but he never made it to the stage. Just hours before the show, the Grammy Award winner and budding actor was taken into custody by federal authorities who alleged that he gave his bodyguard cash to buy firearms. Never bashful in his lyrics about his days of drug dealing and guns, this arrest was just another line in the 27-year old Atlanta native’s already long rap sheet.

foxbusiness.com