CURIOUS?!

Diamond District - In The Ruff Instrumentals

2011-05-04T19:35:00.006-04:00

Via Strictly Beats. Great instrumental album to bump while working.

A couple of the tracks seem to repeat one beat. Maybe I'm just going crazy. All in all, good work album.

In The Ruff Intrumentals by Mello Music Group

Humans Can Fly

2011-04-21T03:53:00.006-04:00

Posted this a while back, but it's just so cool I need to repost it.

The track @ 1:00 is JDiz Organ & Sackcloth Fashion - Under Man. Can't find the 1st song online.

In September 2010, Shin Ito set a world record flying 10.87 miles over Davis, California. He flew for 4:57 and reached a top speed of 177 mph. THAT'S INSANE. Can you imagine flying in the air for 5 minutes? Can you imagine flying in the air period?!

Too Good to be True

2011-04-21T02:57:00.008-04:00

I just tried this drink called Bai5. It's great. It's a sweet juice (actually it's only 4% juice so I'm not sure what to call it - it's a sweet drink). It's also supposedly good for you, as it uses 'coffee's secret superfruit.' Turns out the skin that shells a coffee bean is a fruit and its full of antioxidants, which modern marketing says is really good for me. I don't know why and it's too late to google it.

The bottle goes on to say that "Just one gram of Bai pure coffee fruit extract has the astonishing antioxidant power of 4,000 ORAC UNITS." (their all caps and bolding, not mine). I have no idea what ORAC UNITS are. It sounds like some power metric for a trading card game I would be playing if I were in the 5th grade.

What really struck me about the juice was its low calorie content. It has 5 calories per 8 fl oz, totaling a little over 10 calories for this significantly sweet 16.9 fl oz bottle. I checked the usual suspect; aspartame. It doesn't have any. The trick, ladies and gentlemen, is an ingredient heretofore unbeknownst to me: erythritol. It's now my new best friend, as through some heavy googling (i.e., ~5 minutes), the only negative side effect I could find was farts. And farting I have been. But hey. It's pleasure doing business with you erythritol.

14KT Mix by Rhettmatic

2011-04-19T00:33:00.006-04:00

Dope mix by Rhettmatic of the Beat Junkies.

@0:52, 2:43, 7:04, 11:18

14KT BEAT MIX by Rhettmatic by jrocc

Bill Russell - Mind Games

2011-04-18T00:35:00.009-04:00

I'm a huge Celtics fan. In honor of the beginning of the NBA Playoff season, here is a great video highlighting one of the legends of the game, Bill Russell. Russel played 13 seasons with the Celtics, and won 11 championships, more championships than any North American professional athlete in history. Not only was Russell one of the greatest players of all time, he was active in the Civil Rights Movement, for which he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Obama in 2011.

This video provides some insight into the 'intellectualization' of basketball that Russell was accused of by Wilt Chamberlain. I love the spiritual connotations in the discussion of Russell's playing style, such as this line at 4:10;

"Perhaps his greatest mental ability was to sift through all the mind's clutter to discover and harness purity of purpose. A distilled dedication to one goal: winning."

I also enjoyed this line from Bill at the very end; "There are 10 players, 3 refs, 2 hoops, 20,000 people, 1 ball. What's gonna happen with that ball is the most interesting thing." It may seem obvious to some, but this fact that it all comes down to what happens with the ball has been somewhat of a revelation to me. Everything else that occurs on the field or the court is a means to affect the ball.

Some other notable lines;

Russell: "Psychologically, you have to make the opposite player question what he's doing...you have to create doubts."
"Russell blocked shots without blocking them because people wouldn't take shots because people were afraid to take them. He changed the whole game."
Russell: "I would block a guy's shot and say 'Yes, we did that to you. If you come back, we'll do it again. If you come back again, we'll do it another time. So you're going to have to find something else to do.'" (@2:42)

Insulation is Sexy

2011-04-09T01:08:00.009-04:00

Alexis Ringwald Knows What's Up...

2011-02-28T17:47:00.005-05:00

http://www.greenbiz.com/video/2011/02/05/one-great-idea-creative-sourcing-green-innovation-alexis-ringwald

Jay-Z - The Blueprint [Reconstructed]

2011-02-23T23:53:00.012-05:00

This album [download here] dropped a year and a half ago via Kevin Nottingham, but I just heard it today, 'cause I sleep like that. All the tracks off the original Blueprint come equipped with heavy new beats, and I must say, they are delicious. 2dopeboyz.com gives the background on the project; 'KN ran a contest for folks to rework the production side of Hov’s classic. Each producer used the same samples for each record.' This album has introduced some fantastic new producers: Sima, Bidimridim, G.C., EB Productions, S.T.T.R.E.S.S., and more. If y'all know any good jams from these guys, post 'em in the comments.

My favorite track from the album is below. I've blasted this track right hurr about 20x times today. 'LET'S GET SHIT POPPIN' is the sentiment I'm left with. Let me know your favorite tracks off the album.

"More Girls, Girls, Girls" produced by Sima

Raw Stiles

2011-02-06T00:14:00.011-05:00

Hello Lovely EP by Raw Stiles

What's better than an amazing new producer that comes out of the blue? One that posts their music for free. Raw Stiles dropped his debut album, Hello Lovely EP, a little more than a year ago. Featuring original compositions from the man himself that have been likened to the school of J Dilla and Madlib, you know it's bound to be bangers. If your head isn't nodding straight through, get your ears checked.

Raw Material Vol. 1 is a compilation album featuring some great jazz/funk jams courtesy of Raw Stiles' diligent crate digging.The selections are all gems, with my personal favorite coming in at track 6: Don Rendell's 'Blue Mosque.' Raw Material Vol 2 features two longer mixes, both phenomenal. Listen and download all of Raw Stiles' music here.

It Ain't Hard to Tell (Four Tet Remix) - Nas / Godspeed You! Black Emperor

2011-02-06T00:10:00.007-05:00

Beautiful song. Excellent remix by Four Tet, providing a fresh take on an all time classic. The glitching at the end is a bit jarring, but hey.

Queen Latifah - Just Another Day

2011-02-05T23:34:00.004-05:00

File this one under "insanely dope hip hop." You might be more familiar with Latifah from her acting career beginning in 1993, but Latifah first hit the stage when she dropped All Hail the Queen in 1989. This particular track was a single off her 1993 album 'Black Reign,' which also featured the classic track 'U.N.I.T.Y.' An amazing beat combined with Latifah's flow which is gentle but firm, fitting since (apparently) 'Latifah' means 'delicate' in Arabic.

Are We Lost Mammals of an Approaching Transcendental Epoch?

2011-02-05T23:31:00.001-05:00

Are We Lost Mammals of an Approaching Transcendental Epoch? from StrangeLoop on Vimeo.

You tell me. Awesome video. Awesome song. Deep title. 'Nuff said.

The Force (will one day be) Strong With This One...

2011-02-05T18:33:00.004-05:00

An absolutely adorable / hilarious super bowl ad from VW. Das Auto? More like Das AWESOME!

Bad-Ass Legos

2011-02-05T18:25:00.007-05:00

'In a medieval forest, a simple lumberjack is granted the greatest power of all time. Created by Paganomation for the LEGO Club Show in early 2010.'

SO AMAZING! I would have killed to have some of these lego monsters when I was a kid. The song and video go great together, really tight production all around. You can view some photos from the production here. How they turned those photos into this awesome video is beyond me.

Enjoy!

Test Drive a Tesla Roadster for $25

2011-01-21T13:29:00.003-05:00

Just heard from my friends at GOOD Magazine (definitely check them out) about Getaround, a new company that has a web / smartphone platform enabling peer-to-peer car sharing. Make money from that parked car of yours!

"Since the invention of the automobile, we've been conditioned to think that only one person should own and use each car," says Getaround co-founder Elliot Kroo. "Getaround is changing that paradigm by enabling people to access a vehicle instead of having to possess one."

The best part? One getaround member is helping promote the company and the love of electric vehicles by renting his $100k+ Tesla Roadster for $25 an hour!!

Still trying to find out where this generous owner resides...please post in comments if you find out!

2010-10-23T02:16:00.002-04:00

'Your Brain on Computers'

2010-08-17T10:12:00.007-04:00

“...people are walking around fatigued and not realizing their cognitive potential...What can we do to get us back to our full potential?”

Art Kramer, straight lampin. Photo courtesy of Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

“Attention is the holy grail,” [David Strayer, a psychology professor at the University of Utah] says. “Everything that you’re conscious of, everything you let in, everything you remember and you forget, depends on it.”

----

...technology has redefined the notion of what is “urgent.” How soon do people need to get information and respond to it?...the drumbeat of incoming data has created a false sense of urgency that can affect people’s ability to focus.

...a seminal study from the University of Michigan that showed people can better learn after walking in the woods than after walking a busy street. The study indicates that learning centers in the brain become taxed when asked to process information, even during the relatively passive experience of taking in an urban setting. By extension, some scientists believe heavy multitasking fatigues the brain, draining it of the ability to focus.

Mr. Strayer, the trip leader, argues that nature can refresh the brain. “Our senses change. They kind of recalibrate — you notice sounds, like these crickets chirping; you hear the river, the sounds, the smells, you become more connected to the physical environment, the earth, rather than the artificial environment.”

Mr. Braver accepts the Michigan research but wants to understand precisely what happens inside the brain. And he wonders: Why don’t brains adapt to the heavy stimulation, turning us into ever-stronger multitaskers?

“Right,” says Mr. Kramer, the skeptic. “Why wouldn’t the circuits be exercised, in a sense, and we’d get stronger?”

This has become such a sizzling field of research that two years ago the National Institutes of Health established a division to support studies of the parts of the brain involved with focus.

Behavioral studies have shown that performance suffers when people multitask. These researchers are wondering whether attention and focus can take a hit when people merely anticipate the arrival of more digital stimulation.

“The expectation of e-mail seems to be taking up our working memory,” Mr. Yantis says.
Working memory is a precious resource in the brain. The scientists hypothesize that a fraction of brain power is tied up in anticipating e-mail and other new information — and that they might be able to prove it using imaging.

“To the extent you have less working memory, you have less space for storing and integrating ideas and therefore less to do the reasoning you need to do,” says Mr. Kramer, floating nearby.

“There’s a real mental freedom in knowing no one or nothing can interrupt you,” Mr. Braver says. He echoes the others in noting that the trip is in many ways more effective than work retreats set in hotels, often involving hundreds of people who shuffle through quick meetings, wielding BlackBerrys. “It’s why I got into science, to talk about ideas.”

He wants to use imaging technology to see whether the effect of nature on the brain can be measured and whether there are other ways to reproduce it, say, through meditation.

Mr. Kramer says he wants to look at whether the benefits to the brain — the clearer thoughts, for example — come from the experience of being in nature, the exertion of hiking and rafting, or a combination.

...how and why people are distracted by irrelevant streams of information.

“If we can find out that people are walking around fatigued and not realizing their cognitive potential,” Mr. Braver says, then pauses and adds: “What can we do to get us back to our full potential?”

As they near the airport, Mr. Kramer also mentions a personal discovery: “I have a colleague who says that I’m being very impolite when I pull out a computer during meetings. I say: ‘I can listen.’ ”

“Maybe I’m not listening so well. Maybe I can work at being more engaged.”

The Group;

- David Strayer, a psychology professor at the University of Utah and the trip's organizer.
- Todd Braver, 41, the fast-talking, brain imaging expert, psychology professor at Washington U. in St. Louis.
- Steven Yantis, 54, the tall and contemplative chairman of the psychological and brain sciences department at Johns Hopkins, who studies how people switch between tasks;
- Paul Atchley, 40, a professor at the University of Kansas who studies teenagers’ compulsive use of cellphones
- Art Kramer, 57, a white-bearded professor at the University of Illinois who has gained attention for his studies of the neurological benefits of exercise...Among the bright academic lights in the group, Mr. Kramer is the most prominent. At the time of the trip he was about to take over a $300,000-a-year position as director of the Beckman Institute, a leading research center at the University of Illinois with around 1,000 scientists and staff workers and tens of millions of dollars in grant financing. He is also intense personally — someone who has been challenging himself since early in life; he says he left home when he was a teenager, became an amateur boxer and, later, flew airplanes, rock-climbed and smashed his knee in a “high-speed skiing accident.”
- Also on the trip are a reporter and a photographer, and Richard Boyer, a quiet outdoorsman and accomplished landscape painter

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/16/technology/16brain.html?ref=general&src=me&pagewanted=print

China Takes Lead in Global Clean Energy Race

2010-02-16T20:33:00.003-05:00

'NYT - China Leading Global Race to Make Clean Energy' - January 30, 2010
The following is largely a summary of the above article. Thanks to Keith Bradsher for the informative reporting.

China is now the world's leading manufacturer of wind turbines and solar panels, and is making headway in the nuclear reactor industry and coal efficient power plants.

The US is trying to catch up, and apparently has incentives in place, but clearly not enough. Obama called for a 'redoubling' of US efforts, "yet many Western and Chinese executives expect China to prevail in the energy-technology race."

Unlike the US, China is finding no difficulty in creating renewable energy jobs; 1.12 million such jobs existed in 2008 and are rising at 100,000 a year. Granted, salaries are significantly lower in China, with Vestas (a Danish wind turbine manufacturer, recently built the world's largest turbine factory in China) paying its assembly line workers $4,100 a year.

China has various advantages when it comes to dominating the global renewable energy race. Besides low labor costs, Chinese banks provide loans at a 2% interest rate, "the result of a savings rate of 40 percent and a government policy of steering loans to renewable energy." The Chinese government also understands the importance of energy for their nation and the world; Chian will need to greatly expand its generation capacity as demand has grown 15% a year consistently. Reflecting their sincerity, in January 2010 the government announced the creation of a National Energy Commission led by Prime Minister Wen Jiabao himself.

Chinese companies are increasingly looking to export their renewable energy tech, with western nations complaining that the Chinese have unfair advantages. Congress has considered halting federal spending on imported equipment in response to a November 2009 deal for China t osupply turbines for a large wind farm in Texas.

“Every country, including the United States and in Europe, wants a low cost of renewable energy,” said Ma Lingjuan, deputy managing director of China’s renewable energy association. “Now China has reached that level, but it gets criticized by the rest of the world.”

lol

2009-08-18T22:37:00.003-04:00

Birdy Nam Nam - The Parachute Ending

2009-08-12T16:37:00.003-04:00

BIRDY NAM NAM - THE PARACHUTE ENDING from Steve Scott on Vimeo.

Good song. Sweet video. Directed by Steve Scott.

Check out more of his videos here on Vimeo.

Joshua Dysart On Comic Book Creation

2009-08-12T16:15:00.003-04:00

Comic book writer Joshua Dysart from Marketplace on Vimeo.

Joshua Dysart, writer of the comic 'Unknown Soldier,' describes the creation process here, from script, layout, ink, coloring, etc...

Great comic, I highly recommend it. The series is only 11 issues old now I believe. Takes place in Uganda, centered around the armed conflict there with Joseph Kony's Lord's Resistance Army, their child soldiers, and all that terrible jazz.

Found this video of Dysart's blog, here.

Also, 'Unknown Soldier' was written up in the New York Times. Read the article here.

Getting Outdoors - Backpacking!

2009-08-10T12:02:00.002-04:00

Hello folks.

Sorry it's been a while. Well summer's been cruising along and I still haven't done much camping/hiking/backpacking. But I just read Kristof's editorial on the matter, and he pointed me to some helpful resources:

Backpacker Magazine has a lot of helpful resources, such as nearby trails, skills 101, and gear.

Joe's Ultralight Backpacker Website is a friendly low key place with some more helpful advice.

And lastly, this guy Brett has a blog which is pretty cool. Here is a gear list he recommends.

Well I now have the information. I need to get some gear and pick a trail. Probably taking an experienced friend would be a good idea.

I'll be a backpacking master in no time friends!

Sarah Palin Only Governor to Turn Down Energy Conservation Funds

2009-05-28T18:21:00.003-04:00

'Every single governor except Sarah Palin (R-AK) has written to Energy Secretary Steven Chu accepting millions of stimulus dollars meant to increase energy conservation and efficiency. Last month, Palin rejected $28.6 million for energy conservation work because she said it would force Alaska buildings to adhere to a “universal energy code.” Newsminer points out that the Energy Department has accepted other states’ pledges to simply work with local governments to improve efficiency, and that no “universal” requirement is needed.'

- http://thinkprogress.org/2009/05/12/palin-energy-funds/

Even more hilarious, or depressing, depending on what kind of mood you are in, is that this is the only part of the $931 million federal stimulus package she declined.

'The co-chairs of the state Senate Resources Committee sent Palin a letter Monday urging her to accept the funds, which could go for uses including energy efficiency grants, retrofitting buildings for less energy use and replacing streetlights with LED bulbs that use less electricity and last longer.

Anchorage Republican Sen. Lesil McGuire, one of the lawmakers who wrote the governor, said in an interview that Palin herself set a goal of Alaska receiving 50 percent of its electricity from renewable energy by 2025.

Anchorage Democratic Sen. Bill Wielechowski, the other co-chair of the Resources Committee, said in a written statement that, "...Alaskans need this money far more than residents of many other states with milder climates and substantially lower energy costs."

Palin's main beef is that she doesn't want to have to impose a statewide code that would interfere or force the hand of local government. Wielechowski and McGuire pointed out that 'the state would have eight years to meet the efficiency standards and that much of Alaska already has the energy codes...Many of the structures built in rural communities are built with public funds through agencies like the Alaska Housing Finance Corp., which also already has the energy code requirement. They said the code would need to apply only to communities with more than 2,500 people, and structures without plumbing or central heating would be exempt.'

- http://www.adn.com/palin/story/783397.html

Way to go Palin! Palin 2012!!

Rove Says Sotomayor "Isn't Necessarily" Smart

2009-05-28T18:16:00.002-04:00

'During a debate at Radio City Music Hall in New York on Wednesday, host Charlie Rose said Supreme Court nominee Judge Sonia Sotomayor "is very smart." "Not necessarily," former Bush adviser Karl Rove replied. After Rose noted that Sotomayor graduated with honors from Princeton and attended Yale Law School, Rove said, "I know lots of stupid people who went to Ivy League schools." Rove's claim is ironic considering that in an interview previewing the debate, he cited President Bush's experience at Harvard and Yale to mock claims that Bush is stupid. "The myth was that this guy, who was a Yale history grad and a Harvard MBA, was not smart," Rove told the Chicago Tribune.'

- http://thinkprogress.org/2009/05/27/rove-ivy-league-smart/

Oh, Karl...

PS: From the "Progress Report, Recovery in Progress, May 28, 2009."

'Public reaction to the nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court has been "decidedly more positive than negative, with 47 percent rating the nomination as 'excellent' or 'good'" and 20 percent rating it "only fair." Though Gallup found that the public reacted more positively than negatively to the last four Supreme Court nominees, Sotomayor had the second highest the net positive rating.'

This is a great, great newsletter I highly recommend all of you subscribe to. You can subscribe here: http://pr.thinkprogress.org/subscribe_pr.html

Hilarity at the White House Press Briefings

2009-05-28T18:05:00.005-04:00

'Whenever there’s laughter in the James S. Brady Briefing Room — by either the briefer or the briefed — the official White House stenographer indicates as much by inserting “(Laughter.)” into the transcript.

And in Robert Gibbs’ first four months as President Barack Obama’s press secretary, there have been more than 600 instances of “(Laughter.)” during his regular press briefings — an average of more than 10 laughs per day.

It’s a gaudy statistic — and one that puts his predecessors to shame.

Dana Perino, George W. Bush’s last press secretary, got all of 57 laughs in her first four months. Scott McClellan, another Bush press secretary, got just 66 laughs in his first four months.

Gibbs even bests the late Tony Snow, whose jocular performances — dubbed “The Tony Snow Show” by some — drew a relatively paltry 217 laughs during his first four months on the job.

CBS News’ Mark Knoller, who has covered the White House since Gerald Ford was president, said Gibbs is “more inclined to make a wisecrack than any press secretary” he’s covered. “He's at ease at the lectern, understands the press and is willing to offer a quip at our expense or his own,” Knoller said.

However, Knoller was sure to add that, "Jokes aside, we get business done."'

- http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0509/23015.html

And here is a taste of Gibbs' style:

Follow the President's Hour to Hour Activities

2009-05-28T17:56:00.003-04:00

Or almost at least. This is a cool website I just came across that posts a fair amount of Obama Administration daily schedules. It doesn't have all that many events up there but it's still pretty cool. Check it out.

Schwarzenegger Proposes Welfare Cuts, and WTF is Good in Canada?

2009-05-28T17:46:00.003-04:00

"Arnold Schwarzenegger gave details of spending cuts needed to help close California’s budget deficit. The state’s governor said welfare benefits for around half a million families would have to go along with a health-care programme for low-income children."
- Economist "Politics This Week", may 28th, 2009

I guarantee you there is some bull shit funding that is continuing in lieu of these welfare cuts.

And also, "Canada’s governor-general, Michaëlle Jean, helped to butcher a seal and ate a slice of its raw heart. "
- Same publication.

WTF?!

KBR Receives Huge Bonuses Despite Shoddy Work

2009-05-27T20:40:00.001-04:00

"Congressional investigators have found that KBR Inc. was awarded $83 million in performance bonuses. Even worse, more than half came after Pentagon investigators linked faulty KBR wiring to the electrocution of four soldiers.

An electrical engineer hired by the Army who reported finding that 90 percent of KBR’s wiring work in Iraq was not done safely.

It has ordered emergency repairs, but the electrical inspector found that the building where the showering soldier was electrocuted still was not safely grounded by KBR until last October, 10 months after his death."

The Pentagon has informed Congress that KBR bonuses were suspended pending a full review of the situation. Senator Byron Dorgan described the Pentagon's initial awarding of bonuses as "stunning incompetence."

KBR is an offshoot of Halliburton, the company Dick Cheney is the ex-CEO of and managed to be awarded major contracts in Iraq and after Hurricane Katrina, despite numerous reports of mismanagement and poor performance.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/24/opinion/24sun3.html

Will Machines Be Our Masters?

2009-05-27T20:08:00.000-04:00

'The notion that a self-aware computing system would emerge spontaneously from the interconnections of billions of computers and computer networks goes back in science fiction at least as far as Arthur C. Clarke’s “Dial F for Frankenstein.” A prescient short story that appeared in 1961, it foretold an ever-more-interconnected telephone network that spontaneously acts like a newborn baby and leads to global chaos as it takes over financial, transportation and military systems.

The concept of ultrasmart computers — machines with “greater than human intelligence” — was dubbed “The Singularity” in a 1993 paper by the computer scientist and science fiction writer Vernor Vinge. He argued that the acceleration of technological progress had led to “the edge of change comparable to the rise of human life on Earth.” This thesis has long struck a chord here in Silicon Valley.

for the Singulatarians, A.I. refers to machines that will be both self-aware and superhuman in their intelligence, and capable of designing better computers and robots faster than humans can today. Such a shift, they say, would lead to a vast acceleration in technological improvements of all kinds.

Several years ago the artificial-intelligence pioneer Raymond Kurzweil took the idea one step further in his 2005 book, “The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology.” He sought to expand Moore’s Law to encompass more than just processing power and to simultaneously predict with great precision the arrival of post-human evolution, which he said would occur in 2045.

In Dr. Kurzweil’s telling, rapidly increasing computing power in concert with cyborg humans would then reach a point when machine intelligence not only surpassed human intelligence but took over the process of technological invention, with unpredictable consequences.

Profiled in the documentary “Transcendent Man,” which had its premier last month at the TriBeCa Film Festival, and with his own Singularity movie due later this year, Dr. Kurzweil has become a one-man marketing machine for the concept of post-humanism. He is the co-founder of Singularity University, a school supported by Google that will open in June with a grand goal — to “assemble, educate and inspire a cadre of leaders who strive to understand and facilitate the development of exponentially advancing technologies and apply, focus and guide these tools to address humanity’s grand challenges.”

Other ideas include ' “The Technium,” forecasting the emergence of a global brain — the idea that the planet’s interconnected computers might someday act in a coordinated fashion and perhaps exhibit intelligence.'

“I see the debate over whether we should build these artificial intellects as becoming the dominant political question of the century,” said Hugo de Garis, an Australian artificial-intelligence researcher, who has written a book, “The Artilect War,” that argues that the debate is likely to end in global war.

Concerned about the same potential outcome, the A.I. researcher Eliezer S. Yudkowsky, an employee of the Singularity Institute, has proposed the idea of “friendly artificial intelligence,” an engineering discipline that would seek to ensure that future machines would remain our servants or equals rather than our masters.'

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/24/weekinreview/24markoff.html?_r=1&th&emc=th

Wingsuit Base Jumping

2009-05-23T21:27:00.002-04:00

OMG. The dope song that starts at 1:30 is apparently:

Diz Organ & Sackcloth Fashion - Under Man

Also, check this article on wingsuit jumping and people hoping to land without a parachute.

Waterboarding is Torture

2009-05-23T12:14:00.002-04:00

A conservative talk show host known as 'mancow,' who formerly stated that waterboarding was not torture, after having it done to him, agrees it is "absolutely torture."

Harlem Children's Zone Schools Wildly Successful

2009-05-21T23:27:00.004-04:00

'[Roland] Fryer [a Harvard economist] and his colleague Will Dobbie have just finished a rigorous assessment of the charter schools operated by the Harlem Children’s Zone. They compared students in these schools to students in New York City as a whole and to comparable students who entered the lottery to get into the Harlem Children’s Zone schools, but weren’t selected.

They found that the Harlem Children’s Zone schools produced “enormous” gains. The typical student entered the charter middle school, Promise Academy, in sixth grade and scored in the 39th percentile among New York City students in math. By the eighth grade, the typical student in the school was in the 74th percentile. The typical student entered the school scoring in the 39th percentile in English Language Arts (verbal ability). By eighth grade, the typical student was in the 53rd percentile.

The most common education reform ideas — reducing class size, raising teacher pay, enrolling kids in Head Start — produce gains of about 0.1 or 0.2 or 0.3 standard deviations. If you study policy, those are the sorts of improvements you live with every day. Promise Academy produced gains of 1.3 and 1.4 standard deviations. That’s off the charts. In math, Promise Academy eliminated the achievement gap between its black students and the city average for white students. Let me repeat that. It eliminated the black-white achievement gap. “The results changed my life as a researcher because I am no longer interested in marginal changes,” Fryer wrote in a subsequent e-mail. What Geoffrey Canada, Harlem Children’s Zone’s founder and president, has done is “the equivalent of curing cancer for these kids. It’s amazing. It should be celebrated. But it almost doesn’t matter if we stop there. We don’t have a way to replicate his cure, and we need one since so many of our kids are dying — literally and figuratively.”

Over the past decade, dozens of charter and independent schools, like Promise Academy, have become no excuses schools. The basic theory is that middle-class kids enter adolescence with certain working models in their heads: what I can achieve; how to control impulses; how to work hard. Many kids from poorer, disorganized homes don’t have these internalized models. The schools create a disciplined, orderly and demanding counterculture to inculcate middle-class values.

To understand the culture in these schools, I’d recommend “Whatever It Takes,” a gripping account of Harlem Children’s Zone by my Times colleague Paul Tough, and “Sweating the Small Stuff,” a superb survey of these sorts of schools by David Whitman.

Basically, the no excuses schools pay meticulous attention to behavior and attitudes. They teach students how to look at the person who is talking, how to shake hands. These schools are academically rigorous and college-focused. Promise Academy students who are performing below grade level spent twice as much time in school as other students in New York City. Students who are performing at grade level spend 50 percent more time in school.'

- http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/08/opinion/08brooks.html

I'm not sure why Fryer believes this 'cure' cannot be replicated.

I suggest this book by Geoffrey Canada, "Fist Stick Knife Gun: A Personal History of Violence in America"

Making Congressional Research Publicly Available

2009-05-19T14:10:00.000-04:00

"The Congressional Research Service investigates important issues and produces detailed, well-written reports that are available to members of Congress but not the general public. A resolution has been introduced in the Senate to make these reports freely available online. It would be an important step forward for government openness, and it would narrow the information gap between Washington insiders and ordinary Americans.

Washington lobbyists and special interests can get the reports from contacts in Congress or from a company that collects the reports and resells them. Ordinary Americans without contacts or research budgets are often denied this taxpayer-financed research.

A resolution sponsored by Senator Joseph Lieberman, independent of Connecticut, would require that the research service’s reports be posted on its Web site. The resolution makes an exception for information that is truly confidential.

For the resolution to become law, it needs to be passed by the Senate Rules Committee. Senator Charles Schumer, Democrat of New York and chairman of the panel, has not endorsed Mr. Lieberman’s resolution, but he is working on a plan that would make the research reports publicly available. However it happens, the reports should be put online for all Americans to access free."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/12/opinion/12tue3.html?th&emc=th

Worst Graph Ever?

2009-05-11T22:34:00.002-04:00

Thanks NBA.com - http://www.nba.com/games/20090511/CLEATL/gameinfo.html

Wanda Sykes at WHPC Dinner

2009-05-10T16:59:00.001-04:00

Getting to the Bottom of the Mustard Debacle

2009-05-10T14:59:00.002-04:00

So as you may know, Barack Obama was criticized by the great Sean Hannity for requesting Dijon mustard on his burger. Obama and Biden went out to get burgers about a week ago.

Let us get the facts straight. Thanks to David Frum of NewMajority.com, we are told that "Texans traditionally eat hamburgers with mustard or with mayonnaise (or with both), but without ketchup."

and "a 2000 survey of members of Congress by the National Hot Dog Council found that 73% of Republican lawmakers preferred mustard to ketchup, as opposed to 47% of Democratic lawmakers."

And lastly, and perhaps most importantly, "Grey Poupon is owned and manufactured by Kraft Foods. It is the processed cheese of mustards. It is the fucking Velveeta of faux-French products. Can we all shut the fuck up?" Thanks for that

Arianna Huffington has called this "the lamest political food fight since freedom fries." Agreed.

Do I feel bad for spending so much time writing about this? Yes.

Obama the Comedian

2009-05-10T05:03:00.002-04:00

Obama cites something Jefferson once said, that between a government w/o newspapers or newspapers w/o government, he would take the latter. Very interesting.

Also, for those who haven't seen it:

It was a lot funnier during the campaign because the jokes are very topical. Does take one back and remind one of the silly bickering that occurs during the campaign.

Point is Obama has skills with words.

The Art of Focus

2009-05-05T13:50:00.002-04:00

'Imagine that you have ditched your laptop and turned off your smartphone. You are beyond the reach of YouTube, Facebook, e-mail, text messages. You are in a Twitter-free zone, sitting in a taxicab with a copy of “Rapt,” a guide by Winifred Gallagher to the science of paying attention.

The book’s theme, which Ms. Gallagher chose after she learned she had an especially nasty form of cancer, is borrowed from the psychologist William James: “My experience is what I agree to attend to.” You can lead a miserable life by obsessing on problems. You can drive yourself crazy trying to multitask and answer every e-mail message instantly.

Or you can recognize your brain’s finite capacity for processing information, accentuate the positive and achieve the satisfactions of what Ms. Gallagher calls the focused life.

Ms. Gallagher advocates meditation to increase your focus, but she says there are also simpler ways to put the lessons of attention researchers to use. Once she learned how hard it was for the brain to avoid paying attention to sounds, particularly other people’s voices, she began carrying ear plugs with her. When you’re trapped in a noisy subway car or a taxi with a TV that won’t turn off, she says you have to build your own “stimulus shelter.”

She recommends starting your work day concentrating on your most important task for 90 minutes. At that point your prefrontal cortex probably needs a rest, and you can answer e-mail, return phone calls and sip caffeine (which does help attention) before focusing again. But until that first break, don’t get distracted by anything else, because it can take the brain 20 minutes to do the equivalent of rebooting after an interruption. (For more advice, go to nytimes.com/tierneylab.)

“Multitasking is a myth,” Ms. Gallagher said. “You cannot do two things at once. The mechanism of attention is selection: it’s either this or it’s that.” She points to calculations that the typical person’s brain can process 173 billion bits of information over the course of a lifetime.

“People don’t understand that attention is a finite resource, like money,” she said. “Do you want to invest your cognitive cash on endless Twittering or Net surfing or couch potatoing? You’re constantly making choices, and your choices determine your experience, just as William James said.”

During her cancer treatment several years ago, Ms. Gallagher said, she managed to remain relatively cheerful by keeping in mind James’s mantra as well as a line from Milton: “The mind is its own place, and in itself/ Can make a heav'n of hell, a hell of heav'n.”

“When I woke up in the morning,” Ms. Gallagher said, “I’d ask myself: Do you want to lie here paying attention to the very good chance you’ll die and leave your children motherless, or do you want to get up and wash your face and pay attention to your work and your family and your friends? Hell or heaven — it’s your choice." '

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/05/science/05tier.html?th&emc=th

Sex Workers Protest in India

2009-05-05T02:16:00.003-04:00

One protester had this to say: "May day is labor day. Sex workers are laborers and sex work is just like any other profession. It should be considered as a profession and not viewed in any other way."

The Reuters reporter said that there are around "2,000,000 female sex workers in the country, most of them trafficked or forced into the work by poverty."

Overall, legalization and regulation of prostitution seems like a smart move.

Personally, I doubt there are few if any people who actually enjoy being a prostitute. Trying to empathize and imagine being prostitute is revolting and makes me want to tear my skin off.

Lastly, prostitution is the world's oldest profession? This is what Reuters claims. Wikipedia had this to say: "It has been described as 'the world's oldest profession.'Others would dispute this claim supported by the fact that hunting and farming were likely to have taken place first in human history.' LOL. I am going to have to lean towards the latter. Something tells me food was a priority before sex. Furthermore, what could they have been paid with?

MED + Talib Kweli - Classic

2009-05-05T02:09:00.003-04:00

Produced by Kareem Riggins

Off the new Stones Throw podcast

DL LINK - http://www.sendspace.com/file/ohchn7

http://www.stonesthrow.com/news/2009/04/med-bang-ya-head-2

The 6th Mass Extinction in Earth's History

2009-05-04T23:11:00.000-04:00

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2009/05/the-earths-6th.html

"Over 10,000 scientists in the World Conservation Union have compiled data showing that currently 51 per cent of known reptiles, 52 per cent of known insects, and 73 per cent of known flowering plants are in danger along with many mammals, birds and amphibians.

Experts say that at least half of the world’s current species will be completely gone by the end of the century.

There is hope, but it requires radical changes. Many organizations are lobbying for that change. One group trying to salvage ecosystems is called The Wildlands Project, a conservation group spearheading the drive to reconnect the remaining wildernesses. The immediate goal is to reconnect wild North America in four broad "mega-linkages". Within each mega-linkage, mosaics of public and private lands, which would provide safe migrations for wildlife, would connect core areas. Broad, vegetated overpasses would link wilderness areas normally split by roads. They will need cooperation from local landowners and government agencies.

It is a radical vision to many people, and the Wildlands Project expects that it will take at least 100 years to complete. Even so, projects like this, on a worldwide basis, may be humanity’s best chance of saving what’s left of the planets eco-system, and the human race along with it."

NYT typo

2009-05-04T13:40:00.002-04:00

This is kind of old but better late than never.

Damn you $410 spending measures holding up our congressional happenings!

Genius - It's All About Practice

2009-05-04T13:34:00.002-04:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/01/opinion/01brooks.html?th&emc=th

'In the view that is now dominant, even Mozart’s early abilities were not the product of some innate spiritual gift. His early compositions were nothing special. They were pastiches of other people’s work. Mozart was a good musician at an early age, but he would not stand out among today’s top child-performers.

What Mozart had, we now believe, was the same thing Tiger Woods had — the ability to focus for long periods of time and a father intent on improving his skills. Mozart played a lot of piano at a very young age, so he got his 10,000 hours of practice in early and then he built from there.

The latest research suggests a more prosaic, democratic, even puritanical view of the world. The key factor separating geniuses from the merely accomplished is not a divine spark. It’s not I.Q., a generally bad predictor of success, even in realms like chess. Instead, it’s deliberate practice. Top performers spend more hours (many more hours) rigorously practicing their craft.

The recent research has been conducted by people like K. Anders Ericsson, the late Benjamin Bloom and others. It’s been summarized in two enjoyable new books: “The Talent Code” by Daniel Coyle; and “Talent Is Overrated” by Geoff Colvin.

It’s true that genes place a leash on our capacities. But the brain is also phenomenally plastic. We construct ourselves through behavior. As Coyle observes, it’s not who you are, it’s what you do.'

See this earlier for more on genius and the nature v. nurture debate;

http://curiousspencer.blogspot.com/2009/02/producing-genius-nature-or-nurture.html

Chinese Govt's Brutal Crackdown on Falun Gong Continues

2009-04-29T19:35:00.005-04:00

- Police detaining a Falun Gong protester in Beijing, on Oct 1, 2000. Photo by Chien-min Chung/Associated Press.

It has been a decade since the Chinese government began repressing the Falun Gong practitioners.

'In the past year, as many as 8,000 practitioners have been detained, according to experts on human rights, and at least 100 have died in custody. Among them were Yu Zhou, 42, a popular Beijing musician, and Cao Changling, the 77-year-old vice director of a paper plant in Wuhan, whose bruised body was returned to his family by the police last summer just as China was reveling in the glory of the Olympic Games.

In recent months, scores of practitioners have been given long prison terms, including Zhang Xingwu, a retired physics professor from Shandong Province who last week was sentenced to seven years after the police found Falun Gong literature in his apartment, according to family members.

The continued crackdown highlights the difficulty of eradicating a movement whose adherents stubbornly cling to their beliefs, but it also provides a window into the psyche of an authoritarian government that, despite its far-reaching power, remains deeply insecure.

From the outset, the group, which at its peak claimed to have millions of followers around China, insisted that it wanted only legal recognition, not political power. But the country’s top leaders were alarmed by the group’s ability to attract a devoted following from so many citizens.'

Falun Gong remains a toxic subject in China. Few academics will speak about it on the record, and the Internet is scoured clean of information that might be construed as sympathetic to Falun Gong.

For the Falun Gong devotees who practice in secret, the only glimmer of hope has come from a small but growing number of lawyers who have dared to take on their cases. Even if the legal efforts have mostly come to naught, until recently Falun Gong detainees were denied even the right to a lawyer.

Last week, Jiang Yu, a spokesman for the Foreign Ministry, reiterated the government’s long-held stance that Falun Gong warrants suppression because it emphasizes meditation and the paranormal over modern medicine. “The Falun Gong cult violates human rights by controlling people’s minds,” he said in response to a reporter’s query.

Among experts based outside the country, there is broad consensus that the government’s efforts have not done much to advance its own interests, at least internationally, where it has been dogged by allegations that it uses torture to crush believers into submission.

‘The excesses and the savagery have really lowered the quality of the government and harmed its reputation abroad,” said Jerome Cohen, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and an expert on Chinese law. “They’re paying a high price for the cruelty to these people.”

According to Falun Gong followers and Chinese lawyers who take on their cases, that cruelty continues unabated.'

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/28/world/asia/28china.html?th&emc=th

What Happened to the Assault Weapon Ban?

2009-04-27T14:34:00.004-04:00

It seems the NRA is getting in the way of it, and they're also opposing other reasonable gun control policies. The NRA is known to be one of the most powerful lobbies in America.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/27/opinion/27Carter.html?th&emc=th

This NYT op-ed was written by the one and only Jimmy Carter, 39th president of the United States of America and 2002 winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.

While most Americans believe in the right to own weapons, most also believe in "modest restraints like background checks, mandatory registration and brief waiting periods before purchase." Most Americans also favor a ban on assault weapons.

Some statistics on gun violence; "In 2006, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported more than 30,000 people died from firearms, accounting for nearly 20 percent of all injury deaths. In 2005, every nine hours a child or teenager in the United States was killed in a firearm-related accident or suicide."

The NRA is the main foe in this battle to secure an assault weapons ban. The NRA is even "defending criminals’ access to assault weapons and use of ammunition that can penetrate protective clothing worn by police officers on duty."

By the way, don't fuck with J. Carter. As he says, "I have used weapons since I was big enough to carry one, and now own two handguns, four shotguns and three rifles, two with scopes."

Internet in Some Developing Countries Not Profitable

2009-04-27T14:12:00.003-04:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/27/technology/start-ups/27global.html?_r=1&th&emc=th

Certain internet companies, particularly ones that require large amounts of data transfer and thus bandwidth, including many of the most popular online sites such as Youtube, Facebook, and Myspace, are having trouble finding a balance between profit and idealism. Ideally, most of them agree they would like to have their websites be accessed by all the people around the world, but in reality, developing countries eat up a lot of bandwith and generate very little revenue (I assume because they aren't clicking on ads, which I never do, for that matter, do you?). Some companies, such as Veoh, a video sharing site, have gone so far as to restrict access to their sites in Latin America, Africa, and the Eastern Europe, while others offer 'lite' versions such as Profile Lite (for Myspace) in India.

'This intractable contradiction has become a serious drag on the bottom lines of photo-sharing sites, social networks and video distributors like YouTube. It is also threatening the fervent idealism of Internet entrepreneurs, who hoped to unite the world in a single online village but are increasingly finding that the economics of that vision just do not work.

“I believe in free, open communications,” Dmitry Shapiro, [Veoh]’s chief executive, said. “But these people are so hungry for this content. They sit and they watch and watch and watch. The problem is they are eating up bandwidth, and it’s very difficult to derive revenue from it.”

Internet start-ups that came of age during the Web 2.0 era, roughly from 2004 to the beginning of the recession at the end of 2007, generally subscribed to a widely accepted blueprint: build huge global audiences with a free service, and let advertising pay the bills.

But many of them ran smack into global economic reality. There may be 1.6 billion people in the world with Internet access, but fewer than half of them have incomes high enough to interest major advertisers.

If Web companies “really want to make money, they would shut off all those countries [Latin America, Africa, and parts of the Middle East and Asia]," said Michelangelo Volpi, chief executive of Joost.

“The part of me that wants to change the world says, ‘This is unfair, it shouldn’t be like this,’ ” Mr. Shapiro [of Veoh] said. “On the other hand, from the business side of things, serving videos to the entire world is just not supportable at this time.” '

- an internet cafe(?) in India. photo courtesy of NYT.

BE HAPPY

2009-04-23T14:04:00.001-04:00

WISE DOME

DR. J (aka Julius Erving)

2009-04-23T01:56:00.002-04:00

Dr. J now + his wife:

How Green is Your Stimulus Package?

2009-04-19T21:23:00.002-04:00

http://www.economist.com/daily/news/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13432051&fsrc=nwl

"This week HSBC, a big bank, published a report ranking 17 countries by the green elements of their economic-stimulus packages."

Read the full report here; http://globaldashboard.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/HSBC_Green_New_Deal.pdf

Two US Journalists Jailed in North Korea

2009-04-18T17:48:00.003-04:00

'Ms. [Laura] Ling and Ms. [Euna] Lee, reporters for Current TV, a San Francisco-based media venture founded by former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, were arrested by the North Korean military on March 17 on charges of illegally crossing the border from China. They were in China to report the plight of North Korean refugees who fled hunger at home and were living in hiding there.

This was the first reported case in which a U.S. citizen will be indicted and tried in North Korea, South Korean officials said. The North’s criminal code calls for between 5 and 10 years of "education through labor" for people convicted of "hostile acts" against the state.

In a "severe" case, the code allows more than 10 years in labor camp.'

The US government is attempting to secure their release. Current TV does not seem to have made a statement as of yet. Please keep your eyes and ears peeled for updates.

- http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/01/world/asia/01korea.html?th&emc=th

Damu - Spare Time (2008)

2009-04-16T02:18:00.005-04:00

Free album from Damu.

"Spare Time breaks us off with crispy, sampled drums and intricately chopped to death samples destined to keep heads nodding and mp3 players rumbling until the next release. More than a mere beat snippet compilation, Spare Time presents full length tracks that showcase masterful low pass filtering and phenomenal breakdowns, many of which occur at the very end of the track. Always one to deliver what a beat head really craves, Damu embraces the essence of Hip-Hop by taking us on a sonic sound trip using only a stripped down Akai MPC 2000 and the honed skill of a master craftsman."
- Courtesy of Crate Kings

RZA early production history interview

2009-04-16T02:11:00.004-04:00

One last one while were at it. the ASR-10 appears to be RZA's weapon of choice.

"In 1991-1992, Ensoniq put out the ASR-10, and when they did that, that's when i became a master producer. The whole first 100 wu tang songs were made on the ASR-10."

Damu the Fudgemunk - More Producer Interviews

2009-04-16T01:58:00.003-04:00

He says he stayed up for three days when he got his first sampler. At 17. He's 24 now.

Madlib, PB Wolf interviews

2009-04-16T01:56:00.001-04:00

+ Oh No and DJ Romes

Too bad I don't speak Norwegian. Great interviews though.

Del Tha Funkee Homosapien - Funk Man (The Stimulus Package)

2009-04-12T19:16:00.001-04:00

Single off Del's new free album, Funk Man - The Stimulus Package.

Track is called; "Get it right now"

GET IT RIGHT GET IT NOW GET IT RIGHT NOW

Souls of Mischief - Never No More

2009-04-09T02:26:00.005-04:00

Off their dope '93 'til Infinity album. A must have.

First Coverage of Military Casket in 18 Years

2009-04-08T18:50:00.003-04:00

Air Force Staff Sgt. Phillip Myers was killed in Afghanistan on Saturday via an improvised explosive decvice. He was 30 years old, from Virginia, and is survived by his wife.

Interestingly, the Navy Times reported that "no live filming was allowed" at the event, yet we have the AP video right here. Family permission is required for media coverage.

The Navy Times was supportive of the lift of the ban, calling it "an early watershed in the administration of President Barack Obama, a nod in favor of transparency and away from secrecy favored by prior administrations."

More on the matter here;

http://www.navytimes.com/news/2009/04/gns_hero_returns_040609w/

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2009/04/home-to-dover.html

PS - the LA Times plagiarized the Navy Times with this line; "Almost all of the 4,266 casualties in Iraq and the 668 casualties in Afghanistan through the end of March have come through Dover’s mortuary, military officials said earlier this year." Come on LA Times, step it up.

See this past post for more on the media-ban lift; http://curiousspencer.blogspot.com/2009/02/defense-chief-lifts-ban-on-pictures-of.html

AmeriCorps volunteer base tripled, other congressional happenings

2009-03-31T02:51:00.004-04:00

courtesy of congress.org's megavote;

The Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act - Vote Passed (79-19, 1 Not Voting)

'The Senate passed this national service bill which would increase the number of AmeriCorps volunteers from 75,000 to 250,000 and designate September 11 as a national day of service and remembrance.'

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/24/opinion/24tue4.html?th&emc=th

"Essentially, the measure is an expansion of AmeriCorps, the existing domestic service program. It would increase the number of full-time and part-time service volunteers to 250,000 from 75,000 and create new programs focused on special areas like strengthening schools, improving health care for low-income communities, boosting energy efficiency and cleaning up parks.

Volunteers receive minimal living expenses and a modest educational stipend after their year of service. The bill raises the stipend to $5,350, the same as a Pell Grant. Special fellowships would be available for people 55 and older, as well as summer positions for middle- and high-school students. In tribute to victims of the 2001 terrorist attacks, Sept. 11 would be designated a day of service and remembrance.

In all, the measure would cost about $6 billion over the next five years — a sound investment in the nation’s future. Once the Senate acts, reconciling details in the two bills should not be hard."

Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009 - Vote Passed (285-140, 6 Not Voting)

The House agreed to the Senate amendments to H.R. 146, sending this package of public lands, national parks and water development legislation to the president.

Federal Budget

The House and the Senate will be working on the budget this week, so be sure to call in and voice your opinions. Comment and let me know how it goes if you do.

Easier Access to Morning After Pill

2009-03-27T14:14:00.002-04:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/25/opinion/25wed2.html?th&emc=th

'A federal judge in New York has added his weight to contentions that the Bush administration delayed easy, nonprescription access to the morning-after pill for political and ideological reasons, not from a desire to protect the public’s health. Judge Edward R. Korman wisely ordered the Food and Drug Administration to make the pill available without prescription to women as young as 17 and to consider approving it for girls of any age, as major medical groups have long advocated.

Judge Korman lays out in detail the continuous efforts by the Bush administration to prevent easy access to the pill by requiring a prescription, contrary to prevailing medical opinion. The World Health Organization and a slew of American health groups had urged that the pill be made available without prescription and without age restrictions, and virtually all major industrialized nations did so years ago.

It was only after the Senate threatened to hold up confirmation of a new F.D.A. commissioner in 2006 that the agency finally approved sales without prescription to women 18 and over, provided the drugs were kept behind the counter.

The harder question is whether to remove all age and other restrictions, potentially allowing children as young as 11 or 12 to take the drug without medical supervision.'

Eco-Police

2009-03-26T18:15:00.002-04:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/26/nyregion/26ecocops.html?pagewanted=1&th&emc=th

'As a member of a small force of police officers whose sole focus is enforcing environmental laws, Officer Stevens carries a gun and handcuffs and can haul a suspect off to jail. These environmental conservation officers number barely 20 in New York City, out of about 300 around the state, but issue about 2,000 summonses for violations and criminal charges annually.

Created in 1880, when they were known as “game protectors” and watched over game and fish, these eco-police officers are now part of the State Department of Environmental Conservation and have become more prominent in recent years as public consciousness about the role of pollution in global warming has grown. They now answer complaints and respond to dispatchers’ calls in addition to carrying out spot inspections and longer investigations.

Environmental complaints in the city almost tripled in 2007 — to 621 a year from 226 in 2006 — and criminal summonses more than doubled, from 993 to more than 2,000. The numbers stayed high last year, with more than 1,700 summonses and 600 complaints, the major said.'

New York Eliminates Mandatory Minimum Sentences for Drug Crimes

2009-03-26T18:03:00.002-04:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/26/nyregion/26rockefeller.html?_r=1&th&emc=th

'The deal would repeal many of the mandatory minimum prison sentences now in place for lower-level drug felons, giving judges the authority to send first-time nonviolent offenders to treatment instead of prison.The plan would also expand drug treatment programs and widen the reach of drug courts at a cost of at least $50 million.

The agreement, which requires approval in the Assembly and the Senate, would allow some drug offenders who are currently in prison to apply to have their sentences commuted. It was not clear on Wednesday how many current prisoners would be eligible to apply. Mr. Paterson has pushed to have fewer prisoners than legislative leaders would prefer.

Under the plan, judges would have the authority to send first-time nonviolent offenders in all but the most serious drug offenses — known as A-level drug felonies — to treatment. As a condition of being sent to treatment, offenders would have to plead guilty. If they did not successfully complete treatment, their case would go back before a judge, who would again have the option of imposing a prison sentence.

District attorneys have resisted an overhaul of the state’s drug sentencing laws, arguing that the system in place has led to lower drug crime rates and allowed more drug criminals to enter treatment. “The prison population is going down and public safety has improved, and I’d hate to do anything that would upset either of those trends,” said Michael C. Green, the district attorney of Monroe County, which includes Rochester.

Since [2004], the Assembly, which is dominated by Democrats, has routinely passed legislation that repealed mandatory minimum sentences for many drug crimes. But the bills always failed to get past the Senate, which was controlled by Republicans until January.

The deal comes as the state is facing a $16 billion budget deficit for the coming fiscal year. And finding the money needed to pay for drug addiction programs, which could reach near $80 million, will prove difficult, those involved in the negotiations said.

But in the long run, the changes are expected to save money because sending offenders to treatment is less expensive than spending $45,000 a year to keep them confined.'

Picturesque Green Lawns Are An Ecological Nightmare

2009-03-26T17:14:00.003-04:00

http://www.nytimes.com/ref/opinion/22op-classic.html?th&emc=th

In 1991, Michael Pollan wrote an op-ed in the New York Times urging then president George HW Bush to tear up the white house lawn. Mr. Pollan then recommends the lawn be replaced with an orchard, a meadow, wetlands, or a vegetable garden. What is interesting is that Mr. Pollan is more interested in getting rid of the lawn then in planting, say, a vegetable garden, as the Obamas have now begun to do.

'Beginning in the 19th century, at the urging of such landscape designer-reformers as Frederick Law Olmsted and Andrew Jackson Downing, we took down our old-world walls and hedges (which they had declared to be "selfish" and "undemocratic") and spread an uninterrupted green carpet of turfgrass across our yards, down our streets, along our highways and, by and by, across the entire continent. Front lawns, we decided, would unite us, and, ever since, their maintenance has been regarded as an important ritual of consensus in America, even a civic obligation. Indeed, the citizen who neglects to vote is sooner tolerated -- and far more common -- than the citizen who neglects to mow: in hundreds of communities the failure to mow is punishable by fines.

[The lawn] carries an absurd and, today, unsupportable environmental price tag. In our quest for the perfect lawn, we waste vast quantities of water and energy, human as well as petrochemical. (The total annual amount of time spent mowing lawns in America comes to 30 hours for every man, woman, and child.) Acre for acre, the American lawn receives four times as much chemical pesticide as any U.S. farmland.

The lawn is a symbol of everything that's wrong with our relationship to the land. Lawns require pampering because we ask them to thrive where they do not belong. Turfgrasses are not native to America, yet we have insisted on spreading them from the Chesapeake watershed to the deserts of California without the slightest regard for local geography. Imposed upon the land with the help of our technology, lawns encourage us in the dangerous belief that we can always bend nature to our will. They may bespeak democratic sentiments toward our neighbors, but with respect to nature the politics of lawns are totalitarian.'

My family got rid of our lawn several years ago and not only does our yard look more interesting but I certainly appreciate not having to bring out the mower every other week. So talk to your family and try and get rid of your lawn. Maybe also talk to your local town board and remove punishments for not mowing / try to provide incentives for gardens instead of lawns.

Obamas to Plant Vegetable Garden at White House

2009-03-21T13:51:00.003-04:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/20/dining/20garden.html?th&emc=th

Digging for the garden began yesterday (Friday March 20th). This will be the first vegetable garden at the white house since Eleanor Roosevelt's Victory Garden during WWII.

'While the organic garden will provide food for the first family’s meals and formal dinners, its most important role, Mrs. Obama said, will be to educate children about healthful, locally grown fruit and vegetables at a time when obesity and diabetes have become a national concern.

“My hope,” the first lady said in an interview in her East Wing office, “is that through children, they will begin to educate their families and that will, in turn, begin to educate our communities.”

Whether there would be a White House garden had become more than a matter of landscaping. The question had taken on political and environmental symbolism, with the Obamas lobbied for months by advocates who believe that growing more food locally, and organically, can lead to more healthful eating and reduce reliance on huge industrial farms that use more oil for transportation and chemicals for fertilizer.

The plots will be in raised beds fertilized with White House compost, crab meal from the Chesapeake Bay, lime and green sand. Ladybugs and praying mantises will help control harmful bugs.

For urban dwellers who have no backyards, the country’s one million community gardens can also play an important role, Mrs. Obama said.

But the first lady emphasized that she did not want people to feel guilty if they did not have the time for a garden: there are still many changes they can make.

“You can begin in your own cupboard,” she said, “by eliminating processed food, trying to cook a meal a little more often, trying to incorporate more fruits and vegetables.” '

Rape Prevalent in the US Military

2009-03-21T13:04:00.002-04:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/21/opinion/21herbert.html?th&emc=th

'[Bob Herbert] had a conversation several weeks ago with a former Army officer, a woman, who had been attacked in her bed a few years ago by a superior officer, a man, who was intent on raping her.

The woman fought the man off with a fury. When she tried to press charges against him, she was told that she should let the matter drop because she hadn’t been hurt. When she persisted, battalion officials threatened to bring charges against her.

“They were talking about charging me with assault,” she said, her voice still tinged with anger and a sense of disbelief. “I’m no longer in the Army,” she added dryly.

New data released by the Pentagon showed an almost 9 percent increase in the number of sexual assaults reported in the last fiscal year — 2,923 — and a 25 percent increase in such assaults reported by women serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. Try to imagine how bizarre it is that women in American uniforms who are enduring all the stresses related to serving in a combat zone have to also worry about defending themselves against rapists wearing the same uniform and lining up in formation right beside them.

The truly chilling fact is that, as the Pentagon readily admits, the overwhelming majority of rapes that occur in the military go unreported, perhaps as many as 80 percent. And most of the men accused of attacking women receive little or no punishment.

Louise Slaughter, a Democratic congresswoman from upstate New York, said: “I know of women victims, women in the military, who said to me that the first response they would get if they tried to report a rape was, ‘Oh, you don’t want to ruin that young man’s career, do you?’ ”

Ms. Slaughter has been trying for many years to get the military to really crack down on these crimes. “Very, very few cases result in court-martials,” she said, “and there are not that many that are even adjudicated.”

The Department of Defense has taken a peculiarly optimistic view of the increase in the number of reported sexual attacks. The most recent data is contained in the annual report that the department is required to submit to Congress. The report says that “the overall increase in reports of sexual assault in the military is encouraging,” and goes on to explain:

“It should be noted that increased reports of sexual assault do not reflect a rise in annual incidents of sexual assault. Sexual assault is one of the most under-reported crimes in the United States. Estimates suggest that only a small percentage of sexual assaults are ever reported to the police. The department suspects that the same is true for military society as well. An increase in the number of reported cases means that the department is capturing a greater proportion of the cases occurring each year.”

The military is one of the most highly controlled environments imaginable. When there are rules that the Pentagon absolutely wants followed, they are rigidly enforced by the chain of command. Violations are not tolerated. The military could bring about a radical reduction in the number of rapes and other forms of sexual assault if it wanted to, and it could radically improve the overall treatment of women in the armed forces.

There is no real desire in the military to modify this aspect of its culture. Real change, drastic change, will have to be imposed from outside the military. It will not come from within.'

US Military Spending - Too Much?

2009-03-19T17:50:00.002-04:00

http://www.economist.com/daily/news/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13314915&fsrc=nwl

'According to the latest comparable figures from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, America accounted for 45% of the world's military spending—$1.2 trillion in 2007—more than the next 14 biggest countries combined.'

Getting Nukes Out of the Department of Energy

2009-03-19T17:34:00.003-04:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/18/opinion/18cooke.html?_r=1&th&emc=th

'Today, the department’s main task is managing the thousands of facilities involved in producing nuclear weapons during the cold war, and the associated cleanup of dozens of contaminated sites. Approximately two-thirds of its annual budget, which is roughly $27 billion, is spent on these activities, while only 15 percent is allocated for all energy programs, including managing the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and researching and developing new technologies.

Of the $135.4 billion spent on energy research and development from 1948 to 2005 (in constant 2004 dollars), more than half, or $74 billion, went to nuclear energy, while fossil-fuel programs received a quarter, or $34.1 billion. The leftovers went for alternatives, with renewables getting $13 billion, or 10 percent, and energy efficiency $12 billion, according to a Congressional Research Service report written in 2006.

That historical pattern of spending continues to this day. This year nuclear energy research is receiving $1.7 billion, including for a weapons-related fusion program being touted for its supposed energy potential. Nuclear weapons programs are getting $6.4 billion, with an additional $6.5 billion allocated to environmental cleanup. Millions more are spent on efforts to reduce the risk of weapons proliferation, and recovering nuclear and radioactive materials from around the world.

Against this background, alternative energy solutions are but an afterthought: in the current fiscal year, for example, all of $1.1 billion is apportioned for programs falling under this category, not including the stimulus money.'

“We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories.” - President Barack Obama in his inaugural address

Helping People Vote

2009-03-19T17:27:00.002-04:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/18/opinion/18wed1.html?_r=1&th&emc=th

'At a hearing last week, the Senate Rules Committee released a report sponsored by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on the sorry state of voting. It said that administrative barriers, such as error-filled voting lists or wrongful purges of voter rolls prevented as many as three million registered voters from casting ballots. Another two million to four million registered voters were discouraged from even trying to vote because of difficulty obtaining an absentee ballot, voter ID issues and other problems.

The bad news didn’t end there. According to the report, another nine million eligible voters tried to register but failed to because of a variety of hurdles, including missed deadlines or changes in residence.

One of the main reasons voting is in such bad shape is that the states have far too much leeway in running elections, ranging from what ID they require to the number of polling places they open and the allocation of voting machines, which has a big impact on how long the lines are on Election Day. Registering to vote and casting ballots in federal elections are federal acts, which should be governed by uniform national standards.

Senator Charles Schumer, a Democrat of New York, is the new chairman of the Rules Committee, which oversees elections, and last week’s hearing is an encouraging sign that he intends to push for new laws.

The most important change Congress can make is to require universal voter registration. That would put the burden on states to register eligible voters — identifying them from other government lists such as tax and motor vehicle databases — rather than forcing prospective voters to navigate the obstacle-ridden path to the voting rolls. States should also be required to make registration permanent so voters are not purged from the rolls because of a move to a new address or a name change.

Congress should enact lenient federal rules for voter identification, allowing voters to present a wide array of IDs. Far too many states have onerous requirements that make it particularly hard for poor people and racial minorities to vote. And it should outlaw vote suppression and other campaign dirty tricks.'

USB Finger Drive

2009-03-17T19:52:00.002-04:00

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7949018.stm

'A Finnish computer programmer who lost one of his fingers in a motorcycle accident has made himself a prosthetic replacement with a USB drive attached.

Jerry Jalava uses the 2GB memory stick, accessed by peeling back the "nail", to store photos, movies and programmes.

The finger is not permanently attached to his hand, so it can be easily left plugged into a computer when in use.

He says he was inspired to create the unique storage device when doctors treating him joked that he should have a USB "finger drive" after finding out that he was a software developer.'

CIA Black Site Torture Descriptions

2009-03-17T01:55:00.003-04:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/15/opinion/15danner.html?th=&emc=th&pagewanted=print

When 14 “high-value detainees” were transferred from the overseas “black sites” to Guantánamo, the International Committee of the Red Cross was “advised of their detention, and [given] the opportunity to meet with them.”

'A few weeks later, from Oct. 6 to 11 and then from Dec. 4 to 14, 2006, Red Cross officials — whose duty it is to monitor compliance with the Geneva Conventions and to supervise treatment of prisoners of war — traveled to Guantánamo and began interviewing the prisoners.

Their stated goal was to produce a report that would “provide a description of the treatment and material conditions of detention of the 14 during the period they were held in the C.I.A. detention program,” periods ranging “from 16 months to almost four and a half years.”

As the Red Cross interviewers informed the detainees, their report was not intended to be released to the public but, “to the extent that each detainee agreed for it to be transmitted to the authorities,” to be given in strictest secrecy to officials of the government agency that had been in charge of holding them — in this case the Central Intelligence Agency, to whose acting general counsel, John Rizzo, the report was sent on Feb. 14, 2007.

It is impossible to know definitively what benefits — in intelligence, in national security, in disrupting Al Qaeda — the president’s approval of use of an “alternative set of procedures” [AKA torture] might have brought to the United States. Only a thorough investigation, which we are now promised, much belatedly, by the Senate Intelligence Committee, can determine that.

What we can say with certainty, in the wake of the Red Cross report, is that the United States tortured prisoners and that the Bush administration, including the president himself, explicitly and aggressively denied that fact. We can also say that the decision to torture, in a political war with militant Islam, harmed American interests by destroying the democratic and Constitutional reputation of the United States, undermining its liberal sympathizers in the Muslim world and helping materially in the recruitment of young Muslims to the extremist cause. By deciding to torture, we freely chose to embrace the caricature they had made of us. The consequences of this choice, legal, political and moral, now confront us. Time and elections are not enough to make them go away.'

Preserving Electronic Records in Government

2009-03-17T01:34:00.001-04:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/16/opinion/16mon3.html?_r=1&th&emc=th

'A measure moving through Congress would strengthen the power of the National Archives to require that the White House and other related agencies preserve all of their electronic records. The office of the archivist would establish better procedures and would be required to check and certify that the systems are doing the job. This is crucial, since Congressional investigators found that archive officials backed off from inspections of e-mail storage during the last administration.

Maybe it was a coincidence that hundreds of thousands of the missing e-mail messages went missing during the lead-up to the Iraq war — with its manipulated intelligence — and the outing of Valerie Plame and the decision to destroy C.I.A. interrogation tapes.

Congress must protect this priceless taxpayer property before any more history goes missing.'

Highlights From Ike's Farewell Address

2009-03-12T13:49:00.002-04:00

http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/dwightdeisenhowerfarewell.html

Delivered on January 17th, 1961 by President Dwight D. Eisenhower

"We now stand ten years past the midpoint of a century that has witnessed four major wars among great nations. Three of these involved our own country. Despite these holocausts, America is today the strongest, the most influential, and most productive nation in the world. Understandably proud of this pre-eminence, we yet realize that America's leadership and prestige depend, not merely upon our unmatched material progress, riches, and military strength, but on how we use our power in the interests of world peace and human betterment.

Throughout America's adventure in free government, our basic purposes have been to keep the peace, to foster progress in human achievement, and to enhance liberty, dignity, and integrity among peoples and among nations. To strive for less would be unworthy of a free and religious people. Any failure traceable to arrogance, or our lack of comprehension, or readiness to sacrifice would inflict upon us grievous hurt, both at home and abroad.

...

Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense. We have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security alone more than the net income of all United States corporations.

Now this conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every Statehouse, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet, we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources, and livelihood are all involved. So is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

...

As we peer into society's future, we -- you and I, and our government -- must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering for our own ease and convenience the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.

During the long lane of the history yet to be written, America knows that this world of ours, ever growing smaller, must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be, instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect. Such a confederation must be one of equals. The weakest must come to the conference table with the same confidence as do we, protected as we are by our moral, economic, and military strength. That table, though scarred by many past frustrations, cannot be abandoned for the certain agony of the battlefield.

Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative. Together we must learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose. Because this need is so sharp and apparent, I confess that I lay down my official responsibilities in this field with a definite sense of disappointment. As one who has witnessed the horror and the lingering sadness of war, as one who knows that another war could utterly destroy this civilization which has been so slowly and painfully built over thousands of years, I wish I could say tonight that a lasting peace is in sight.

Happily, I can say that war has been avoided. Steady progress toward our ultimate goal has been made. But so much remains to be done. As a private citizen, I shall never cease to do what little I can to help the world advance along that road."

Proper Ways To Interrogate

2009-03-11T15:12:00.001-04:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/11/opinion/11alexander-1.html?th&emc=th

'The most effective strategies for relationship building are the kind that interrogators used to extract critical information from high-level Japanese and German prisoners during World War II. Interrogators who were familiar with the detainees’ language and culture, and who exhaustively studied each prisoner’s case, used charisma and empathy to patiently elicit vital intelligence. Similarly, it was a relationship-building approach that we used to persuade a detainee to give us information on the whereabouts of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the former leader of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia — information that led to his being located and killed in 2006.

Interrogation is likely to remain critical to waging the global war on terrorism and other future wars. Unfortunately, though, we have not yet taken a scientific approach to improving the way we practice it...our military lacks an elite unit of highly trained interrogators to call upon when high-level people in terrorist organizations are captured. Too often, the questioning is left to whoever is closest at hand.'

Colorado Pays for 85-100% of EV Conversion Cost

2009-03-11T14:25:00.002-04:00

http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/ariel-schwartz/sustainability/green-pimp-my-ride-ree-v-converts-cars-electric

Ree-V, a company that converts cars to run on electricity, has been set up in Colorado to take advantage of this huge tax credit, mentioned below.

'Conversions to a lead-acid battery cost a pretty penny--between $17,500 and $200,000. And most converted cars are only suitable for quick trips around town. Ree-V's 1995 Geo Metro conversion, for example, has a top speed of 70 MPH and a range of 25-35 miles.

But Ree-V CEO Luc Nadeau notes that his Colorado-based customers can receive the Colorado Alternative Vehicle Fuel Credit, that reimburses the majority--and in some cases all--of the conversion. A car older than 10 years is eligible for a 100 percent credit, while newer cars receive an 85 percent credit. And in case that isn't attractive enough, electric vehicle drivers can slash gas completely from their budgets.'

Color Photos From Way Back

2009-03-11T14:18:00.004-04:00

Color photos taken between 1939 and 1945, by Farm Security Administration and Office of War Information photographers.

http://www.pdnphotooftheday.com/2009/03/628

The End of Farmer's Markets?

2009-03-11T14:13:00.002-04:00

http://cryptogon.com/?p=7362

HR 875 - Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009

'What this will do is force anyone who produces food of any kind, and then transports it to a different location for sale, to register with a new federal agency called the “Food Safety Administration.” Even growers who sell just fruit and/or vegetables at farmers markets would not only have to register, but they would be subject inspections by federal agents of their property and all records related to food production. The frequency of these inspections will be determined by the whim of the Food Safety Administration. Mandatory “safety” records would have to be kept. Anyone who fails to register and comply with all of this nonsense could be facing a fine of up to $1,000,000 per violation.'

I haven't read the bill yet, so I'm not sure the above description is accurate. Seems awfully stringent.

"Pentagon Knowingly Exposed Troops to Cancer-Causing Chemicals"

2009-03-10T23:26:00.003-04:00

http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Pentagon_knowingly_exposed_troops_to_cancercausing_0310.html

The hazardous chemicals are released through the practice of burning trash in open air pits. A leaked document (dated Dec. '06) outlining the problem can be seen here;
http://file.sunshinepress.org:54445/us-iraq-balad-burn-pit-hazards-2006.pdf

'The leaked report was signed off by the chief for the Air Force's aeromedical services. Its subject is Balad Airbase, a large US military base about 70 kilometers north of Baghdad.

"In my professional opinion, the known carcinogens and respiratory sensitizers released into the atmosphere by the burn pit present both an acute and a chronic health hazard to our troops and the local population," Aeromedical chief Lt. Colonel James Elliott wrote.

According to the document, a US Army Center for Health Promotion and Preventative Medicine investigator said Balad's burn pit was "the worst environmental site I have ever personally visited," including "10 years working... clean-up for the Army."

Last December, the Pentagon issued a "Just the Facts" sheet about the burn pits to troops. While acknowledging that lab tests from 2004-2006 had found occasional carcinogens, it asserted that "the potential short- and long-term risks were estimated to be low due to the infrequent detections of these chemicals."

The Pentagon report adds, "Based on U.S. Environmental Protection Agency guidance, long-term health effects are not expected to occur from breathing the smoke."

The flyer given to troops appears to contradict assertions by the Air Force's own investigators. In the leaked document, titled "Burn Pit Health Hazards," Air Force Bioenvironmental Engineering Flight Commander Darrin Curtis expressed shock that troops were knowingly exposed to such risks.

"It is amazing that the burn pit has been able to operate without restrictions over the past few years without significant engineering controls being put in place," Curtis wrote.

"In my professional opinion, there is an acute health hazard for individuals," he added. In addition to carcinogens, "there is also the possibility of chronic health hazards associated with the smoke." '

Sustainable Forestry Management Can Create 10 Million Jobs, UN Reports

2009-03-10T22:57:00.002-04:00

http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/03/10/un.forestry.jobs/index.html

Asia, particularly China and India, and nearly every country in Africa are good locations to implement these jobs. Latin America also has opportunities in this regard.

'Sustainable forestry aims to prevent depletion of forests by managing them and making sure their use does not interfere with natural benefits or the local environment.

For example, in forests where wood is being removed, the United Nations is suggesting that people be hired to monitor and manage how much wood is taken out to ensure the forest does not become depleted and can grow back fully. Managers also would make sure the wood harvest wouldn't affect biodiversity and the water supply.

The report will be discussed and analyzed next week at the U.N. Committee on Forestry meeting in Rome, Italy. The Food and Agriculture Organization has designated next week as World Forest Week.'

Solar Balloons

2009-03-07T14:24:00.002-05:00

http://www.economist.com/research/articlesBySubject/displayStory.cfm?story_id=13174508&subjectID=348924&fsrc=nwl

Company making the solar balloons: Cool Earth Solar of Livermore, California

'Cool Earth’s insight was that if you coat only one half of a balloon, leaving the other transparent, the inner surface of the coated half will act as a concave mirror. Put a solar cell at the focus of that mirror and you have an inexpensive solar-energy collector.

Cool Earth’s balloons are rather larger than traditional party balloons, having a diameter of about 2½ metres (eight feet), but otherwise they look quite similar. The solar cell aside, they are ridiculously cheap: the kilogram of plastic from which each balloon is made costs about $2. The cell, the cost of which is a more closely guarded secret, is 15-20cm across and is water-cooled. That is necessary because the balloon concentrates sunlight up to 400 times, and without this cooling the cell would quickly burn out.

The result, according to Rob Lamkin, Cool Earth’s boss, is a device that costs $1 per watt of generating capacity to install. That is about the same as a large coal-fired power station. Of course, balloons do not last as long as conventional power stations (each is estimated to have a working life of about a year). But the fuel (sunlight) is free. When all the sums are done, Mr Lamkin reckons his company will be able to sell electricity to California’s grid for 11 cents a kilowatt-hour, the state’s target price for renewable energy, while still turning a tidy profit.

That belief will soon be put to the test. Cool Earth plans to open a 1-megawatt facility this summer. If it works, more will follow...'

California Drought Has Some Positives

2009-03-07T13:59:00.000-05:00

California's drought has some upsides. It created a water market (sort of like cap and trade) and has led to improved water efficiency like drip irrigation.

http://www.economist.com/research/articlesBySubject/displayStory.cfm?story_id=13237162&subjectID=348924&fsrc=nwl

[Side note: I'd be interested to do more research into the price/cost of water. It's unbelievable that possibly the most valuable resource on the planet is free at any faucet.]

'Before the 1930s this land was desert. Then the federal government built a vast irrigation system. Water from the Sierra Nevada mountains in northern California is pumped out of the Sacramento delta and dumped into a canal that runs 400 miles (640km) through the temperate Central Valley. It is an engineering marvel and an economic boon. In 2006 California’s agricultural output was worth $31 billion, more than any other state. By contrast, worldwide ticket sales for Hollywood’s films in that year amounted to $25 billion.

The trouble is that there is not enough water to go round. Snow levels in the Sierra Nevada mountains are below normal for the third year in a row.

As farmers take land out of production, employment falls and the price of some crops is likely to rise.

But the drought is also forcing changes that will help agriculture in the long run. Farmers like Mr Errotabere have begun to use water more efficiently, dripping it through perforated hoses rather than flooding fields. There is a growing market in water trades between farmers. Most important, the state has set up a water bank. Farmers north of the Sacramento delta, many of whom grow rice, can offer to keep fallow their least productive lands and sell water to cities and needy farmers farther south.

This is no free market. The state sets the price...The market is also crimped by a rule that no more than 20% of farmland in any county may lie fallow.

Yet it is a crucial change. The problem with water in the American West is not that it is too scarce but that it is too cheap. Low, stable prices have encouraged some farmers to waste water and to pour it on low-value crops like rice and alfalfa, while others struggle to sustain valuable almond trees. The water market that is emerging in California helps change that. There is an old saying that water flows towards money. At last it is starting to do so.'

Soft Toilet Paper "Worse Than Hummers"

2009-03-02T13:59:00.002-05:00

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/feb/26/toilet-roll-america

'More than 98% of the toilet roll sold in America comes from virgin forests, said Hershkowitz. In Europe and Latin America, up to 40% of toilet paper comes from recycled products. Greenpeace this week launched a cut-out-and-keep ecological ranking of toilet paper products.

The New York Times reported a 40% rise in sales of luxury brands of toilet paper in 2008. Paper companies are anxious to keep those percentages up, even as the recession bites. And Reuters reported that Kimberly-Clark spent $25m in its third quarter on advertising to persuade Americans against trusting their bottoms to cheaper brands.

But Kimberly-Clark, which touts its green credentials on its website, rejects the idea that it is pushing destructive products on an unwitting American public.

Dave Dixon, a company spokesman, said toilet paper and tissue from recycled fibre had been on the market for years. If Americans wanted to buy them, they could.

"For bath tissue Americans in particular like the softness and strength that virgin fibres provides," Dixon said. "It's the quality and softness the consumers in America have come to expect."

Longer fibres in virgin wood are easier to lay out and fluff up for a softer tissue. Dixon said the company used products from sustainbly farmed forests in Canada.

Americans already consume vastly more paper than any other country — about three times more per person than the average European, and 100 times more than the average person in China.

Barely a third of the paper products sold in America are from recycled sources — most of it comes from virgin forests.

"I really do think it is overwhelmingly an American phenomenom," said Hershkowitz. "People just don't understand that softness equals ecological destruction." '

'Defense Chief Lifts Ban on Pictures of Coffins'

2009-02-27T11:19:00.003-05:00

'In a reversal of an 18-year-old military policy that critics said was hiding the ultimate cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the news media will now be allowed to photograph the coffins of America’s war dead as their bodies are returned to the United States, but only if the families of the dead agree.

The decision, which Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates announced Thursday, lifts a 1991 blanket ban on such photographs put in place under President George Bush.

The original 1991 ban had its genesis in an embarrassment for the first President Bush.

In 1989, the television networks showed split-screen images of Mr. Bush sparring and joking with reporters on one side and a military honor guard unloading coffins from a military action that he had ordered in Panama on the other'

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/27/washington/27coffins.html?th&emc=th

Obama to Ban Sale of Assault Weapons

2009-02-27T11:07:00.001-05:00

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=6960824&page=1

'The Obama administration will seek to reinstate the assault weapons ban that expired in 2004 during the Bush administration, Attorney General Eric Holder said today.

"As President Obama indicated during the campaign, there are just a few gun-related changes that we would like to make, and among them would be to reinstitute the ban on the sale of assault weapons." ' - Eric Holder, 2/25/09

"A Lean War Machine" - Fixing the US Military

2009-02-22T15:14:00.002-05:00

In 2008 alone, the US spent around $700 billion on the military, $500 billion for the Pentagon and ~$200 billion for Iraq and Afghanistan. That is twice as much as the next five largest militaries in the world spent combined.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/21/opinion/21owens.html?ex=1387515600&en=691aa4520ea30b96&ei=5124&partner=facebook&exprod=facebook

'The claim that continuing extraordinary military expenditures are good for the economy is false. There are much better Main Street investments to end the recession around (public works and education, to name a couple). There is no need to keep military spending level — the money is going largely to maintain a military that is increasingly less effective in meeting future security challenges, and hundreds of millions of dollars are squandered because of inefficiency, poor budgeting and greed.

The saddest thing about this is that the Pentagon tends to make cuts by trying to stretch and shave existing programs. What President Dwight D. Eisenhower called the “military-industrial complex” is resurgent, this time driven by defense contractors. Their myopic drive to assure quarterly profits stifles innovation. And little changes because they wield inordinate influence through contracts in nearly every Congressional district.

There is a better way, one that turns the necessity of cost reductions into a military more suited to the national security challenges we will face down the road. We need to realize the principles of what military planners called the “revolution of military affairs” of the mid-1990s. To do so calls for innovations in three areas: first, a joint-service perspective that emphasizes the interdependence of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps; second, investment that focuses on cutting-edge information technology systems that allow our forces to work together more effectively, rather than more spending on the complex and expensive major weapons systems of the past; and last, changes in the way the Pentagon goes about assessing its needs and contracting.

“Jointness” can reduce redundancies: by acting separately, the services needlessly duplicate one another’s efforts in logistics, communications, intelligence, medical services and administration — not to mention several areas of war-fighting. Because each service operates its bases independently, we have far too many. Consolidating them into “megabases” would make for greater effectiveness and save tens of billions. Likewise, an emphasis on information technology can increase the strength of the force while it reduces the need for manpower, the single most expensive aspect of today’s military.'

Biodiesel Made From Coffee Grounds

2009-02-22T15:01:00.002-05:00

'Mano Misra, a professor of engineering [at the University of Nevada] who conducted the research with Narasimharao Kondamudi and Susanta K. Mohapatra, said it was by accident that he realized coffee beans contained a significant amount of oil. “I made a coffee one night but forgot to drink it,” he said. “The next morning I saw a layer of oil floating on it.” He and his team thought there might be a useful amount of oil in used grounds, so they went to several Starbucks stores and picked up about 50 pounds of them.

Analysis showed that even the grounds contained about 10 to 15 percent oil by weight. The researchers then used standard chemistry techniques to extract the oil and convert it to biodiesel. The processes are not particularly energy intensive, Dr. Misra said, and the researchers estimated that biodiesel could be produced for about a dollar a gallon.

One hurdle, Dr. Misra said, is in collecting grounds efficiently — there are few centralized sources of coffee grounds. But the researchers plan to set up a small pilot operation next year using waste from a local bulk roaster.

Even if all the coffee grounds in the world were used to make fuel, the amount produced would be less than 1 percent of the diesel used in the United States annually. “It won’t solve the world’s energy problem,” Dr. Misra said of his work. “But our objective is to take waste material and convert it to fuel.” '

Some Good ol' Pundit Pwnage

2009-02-22T13:19:00.003-05:00

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Moment of Zen - Obama Fear Factor

Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things With Demetri Martin

Funny Political News
Joke of the Day

Rising Meat Consumption = Faster Global Warming

2009-02-22T13:06:00.004-05:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/04/science/earth/04meat.html

The Problem:

'The trillions of farm animals around the world generate 18 percent of the emissions that are raising global temperatures, according to United Nations estimates, more even than from cars, buses and airplanes.

Producing a pound of beef creates 11 times as much greenhouse gas emission as a pound of chicken and 100 times more than a pound of carrots, according to Lantmannen, the Swedish group.

Estimates of emissions from agriculture as a percentage of all emissions vary widely from country to country, but they are clearly over 50 percent in big agricultural and meat-producing countries like Brazil, Australia and New Zealand.'

Possible Solutions:

'At the electricity-from-manure project here in Sterksel [Netherlands], the refuse from thousands of pigs is combined with local waste materials (outdated carrot juice and crumbs from a cookie factory), and pumped into warmed tanks called digesters. There, resident bacteria release the natural gas within, which is burned to generate heat and electricity.

The farm uses 25 percent of the electricity, and the rest is sold to a local power provider. The leftover mineral slurry is an ideal fertilizer that reduces the use of chemical fertilizers, whose production releases a heavy dose of carbon dioxide.

For this farm the scheme has provided a substantial payback: By reducing its emissions, it has been able to sell carbon credits on European markets. It makes money by selling electricity. It gets free fertilizer.

And, in a small country where farmers are required to have manure trucked away, it saves $190,000 annually in disposal fees.

Rising in the fields of the environmentally conscious Netherlands, the Sterksel project is a rare example of fledgling efforts to mitigate the heavy emissions from livestock. But much more needs to be done, scientists say, as more and more people are eating more meat around the world.

High-tech fixes include those like the project here, called “methane capture,” as well as inventing feed that will make cows belch less methane, which traps heat with 25 times the efficiency of carbon dioxide.

Other proposals include everything from persuading consumers to eat less meat to slapping a “sin tax” on pork and beef. Next year, Sweden will start labeling food products so that shoppers can look at how much emission can be attributed to serving steak compared with, say, chicken or turkey.'

In Denmark, by law, farmers now inject manure under the soil instead of laying it on top of the fields, a process that enhances its fertilizing effect, reduces odors and also prevents emissions from escaping. By contrast, in many parts of the developing world, manure is left in open pools and lathered on fields.

Others suggest including agriculture emissions in carbon cap-and-trade systems, which currently focus on heavy industries like cement making and power generation. Farms that produce more than their pre-set limit of emissions would have to buy permits from greener colleagues to pollute.

The best short term solution, however, is to simply reduce our meat consumption. However, "whether you like it or not, there’s going to be rising demand for meat, and our job is to make it as sustainable as possible,”says Laurence Wrixon, executive director of the International Meat Secretariat.

Producing Genius - Nature or Nurture?

2009-02-22T12:43:00.003-05:00

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1879593,00.html

What is genius? It is 'those who "have the intelligence, enthusiasm, and endurance to acquire the needed expertise in a broadly valued domain of achievement" and who then make contributions to that field that are considered by peers to be both "original and highly exemplary." '

How can we quantify genius? Possible methods are to '...add up the number of times an individual's publications are cited in professional literature — or, say, the number of times a composer's work is performed and recorded.' Or 'count encyclopedia references instead. Such methods may not be terribly sophisticated, but the answer they yield is at least a hard quantity.'

And then there is the old 10 year rule, 'the notion that it takes at least 10 years (or 10,000 hours) of dedicated practice for people to master most complex endeavors.' This concept was suggested early as 1899 but Anders Ercisson, a professor of psychology from Florida State University, has conducted numerous studies proving the 10 year rule.

While this article leans more towards the nurture side of the debate, it is important to remember that "you need to be smart enough for practice to teach you something."

235 MPG car - thanks VW!

2009-02-22T12:36:00.003-05:00

http://blog.wired.com/cars/2008/07/laugh-at-high-g.html

"Low weight only gets you so far in the quest for ultimate fuel economy; aerodynamics plays a big role. The One-Liter is long and low, coming in at 11.4 feet long, 4.1 feet wide and 3.3 feet tall. It features an aircraft-like canopy, flat wheel covers and a belly pan to smooth the airflow under the car. The engine cooling vents open only when needed, and video cameras take the place of mirrors. The passenger sits behind the driver to keep the car narrow."

Micronutrients Are Where It's At

2009-02-21T18:09:00.000-05:00

Kristof - Raising the World’s I.Q.

'Almost one-third of the world’s people don’t get enough iodine from food and water. The result in extreme cases is large goiters that swell their necks, or other obvious impairments such as dwarfism or cretinism. But far more common is mental slowness.

When a pregnant woman doesn’t have enough iodine in her body, her child may suffer irreversible brain damage and could have an I.Q. that is 10 to 15 points lower than it would otherwise be. An educated guess is that iodine deficiency results in a needless loss of more than 1 billion I.Q. points around the world.

Development geeks rave about the benefits of adding iodine and other micronutrients (such as vitamin A, iron, zinc and folic acid) to diets. The Copenhagen Consensus, which brings together a panel of top global economists to find the most cost-effective solutions to the world’s problems, puts micronutrients at the top of the list of foreign aid spending priorities.

“Probably no other technology,” the World Bank said of micronutrients, “offers as large an opportunity to improve lives ... at such low cost and in such a short time." '

Green Jobs Galore

2009-02-21T18:07:00.000-05:00

A Splash of Green for the Rust Belt

'The market is potentially enormous. In a report last year, the Energy Department concluded that the United States could make wind energy the source of one-fifth of its electricity by 2030, up from about 2 percent today. That would require nearly $500 billion in new construction and add more than three million jobs, the report said. Much of the growth would be around the Great Lakes, the hardest-hit region in a country that has lost four million manufacturing jobs over the last decade.

Throw in solar energy along with generating power from crops, and the continued embrace of renewable energy would create as many as five million jobs by 2030.'

Powerful Haiti Photos

2009-02-21T18:00:00.000-05:00

photos by Tyler Hicks.

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2008/04/18/world/0418-HAITI_index.html

Anderson Cooper is a Funny Man

2009-02-21T17:48:00.001-05:00

LOL - "active life outdoor challenge" video game

2009-02-21T17:45:00.000-05:00

http://www.amazon.com/Active-Life-Outdoor-Challenge-Nintendo-Wii/dp/B0013LTP5Q

2009-02-21T17:40:00.000-05:00

"NYT - Volunteer to Save the Economy"

Bruce Reed and John Bridgeland, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush's domestic policy advisers, respectively, have a great idea to create 250,000 jobs for $8 billion; focus on non-profits.

'The nonprofit plunge also seriously endangers the nation’s job market. Nonprofit enterprises have 9.4 million employees and 4.7 million volunteers nationwide — together, that’s 10 percent of the American work force, more than the auto and financial industries combined. Yet nonprofit groups have been almost completely overlooked during the economic debate. That’s a mistake.

There is, however, a bipartisan solution ready to go: during the campaign, both Mr. Obama and Senator John McCain, the Republican nominee, endorsed the Serve America Act, which would greatly expand national and community service.

By including key provisions of that bill in the economic recovery package, Congress and the administration would enable 250,000 Americans to do full-time service over the next two years. We can invest in a new generation of volunteers as well: if federal work-study programs were doubled, over half a million part-time opportunities a year would be created for college students. All this could be done through existing nonprofit groups, charities and faith-based organizations, not a new government bureaucracy.

The total two-year cost? Less than $8 billion — adding not even 1 percent to a $825 billion recovery package.'

"Suck on that MLK"

2009-02-21T17:34:00.000-05:00

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Inauguration Day Unity

Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things With Demetri Martin

Funny Political News
Joke of the Day

Utilities Utilize Competition to Lower Energy Use

2009-02-21T17:31:00.005-05:00

'Robert Cialdini, a social psychologist at Arizona State University, studies how to get Americans — even those who did not care about the environment — to lower energy consumption. And while there are many ways, Dr. Cialdini said, few are as effective as comparing people with their peers.

At Central College in Pella, Iowa, students in a new green dorm can go to the school’s Web site to find out how much power their suite is using and compare it with that of other suites."

In Massachusetts, the BrainShift Foundation, a nonprofit that uses games to raise environmental awareness, recruited towns to compete in a reality series, called “Energy Smackdown,” which is shown on a local cable station.

Up to 66% reductions in consumption have been seen as a result.

“As Americans, we are good at entertainment and competition. It’s why on ‘American Idol’ they get 40 million voters. It’s the part of this culture that people really understand, and we should be harnessing it." '

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/31/science/earth/31compete.html

The Iraq War is the Largest Spending Bill Ever

2009-02-21T17:28:00.002-05:00

the iraq war, not the stimulus bill, is the largest spending project ever.

woot woot barney frank.

Global Warming Worse Than Predicted

2009-02-21T17:28:00.001-05:00

http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSTRE51D29E20090214?rpc=60

"We are basically looking now at a future climate that is beyond anything that we've considered seriously," Chris Field, a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, told the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Chicago.

"Recent climate studies suggested the continued warming of the planet from greenhouse gas emissions could touch off large, destructive wildfires in tropical rain forests and melt permafrost in the Arctic tundra, releasing billions of tons of greenhouse gasses that could raise global temperatures even more."

Rape in the Congo

2009-02-21T17:21:00.000-05:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/21/opinion/21herbert.html

'Women and girls of all ages, from old women to very young children, have been gang-raped, and in many cases their sexual organs have been mutilated. The victims number in the hundreds of thousands. But the world, for the most part, has remained indifferent to their suffering.“These women are raped in front of their husbands, in front of their children, in front of their parents, in front of their neighbors,” said Dr. Denis Mukwege, a gynecologist who runs a hospital in Bukavu.

In some cases, the rapists have violated their victims with loaded guns and pulled the triggers. Other women have had their organs deliberately destroyed by knives or other weapons. Sons have been forced at gunpoint to rape their mothers. Many women and girls have been abducted and sexually enslaved.It is as if, in these particular instances, some window to what we think of as our common humanity had been closed.

[An eight year old girl's] father had been killed in an attack, her mother was raped, and the girl herself was abducted. The child was raped by groups of soldiers over a two-week period and then abandoned.

The girl felt too ashamed to allow herself to be held, Ms. Ensler said, because her injuries had left her incontinent. After explaining how she persuaded the child to accept an embrace, to be hugged, Ms. Ensler said, “If we’re living in a century when an 8-year-old girl is incontinent because that many soldiers have raped her, then something has gone terribly wrong.”

Despite the presence in the region of the largest U.N. peacekeeping mission in the world, no one has been able to stop the systematic rape of the Congolese women.'

many organizations are working to help the situation but several I can mention off the bat are;

The ENOUGH project

The International Crisis Group

STAND

Dope Brass Band - 'Hypnotic Underground' - NYC

2009-02-19T19:14:00.001-05:00

Hypnotic Underground from moriza on Vimeo.