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Dave Winer, Branch, Medium e le trappole per contenuti
  Link to Article
  Source: Dave Winer's linkblog feed
  Sat, 18 Aug 2012 18:59
  Che cosa facciamo con le informazioni che mettiamo su Facebook, Twitter e cos¬ via? Regaliamo valore a piattaforme che lo ingabbiano ai loro fini? Partecipiamo da protagonisti a un gioco di intelligenza collettiva? Siamo condotti dalle dinamiche di gruppo in una direzione che non conosciamo? Domande che non cessiamo di porci.
  Le nuovissime piattaforme e le esplorazioni di Dave WinerImmagini alternative di un mondo che cerca ancora le sue metafore ricostruttive: fiumi di messaggi che vanno dove li porta il flusso; silos che immagazzinano e privatizzano i pensieri di chi cerca un modo facile per comunicare; connessioni imprecisate di atomi di idee dotate di metadati che qualcuno user come vuole. Dave Winer ¨ un pioniere dei blog, uno che vede lontano e uno che costruisce intorno alle sue visioni. Seguirlo significa dare uno sguardo nelle ipotesi che si forma un costruttore di futuri possibili nella dinamica della conoscenza. Non ¨ facilissimo peraltro.
  Winer reagisce all'uscita di Branch e Medium. E trova nel secondo servizio il motivo di accettare un compromesso con i suoi principi. Perch(C) ci vede qualcosa di importante. Una sorta di comunit di blogger dove i tag non sono etichette che si aggiungono ai post, ma sono stimoli che invitano a scrivere un post. Forse pu² servire all'emergere di un'agenda civica? Winer non si pone il problema. Sta di fatto che ha l'impressione, da sviluppatore, di qualcosa di nuovo: semplice, aperto, potenzialmente diverso dalla solita piattaforma che si trasforma in una ''trappola per contenuti''.
  Forse ¨ semplicemente la sua speranza. Sempre pi¹ chiaramente stiamo cercando modi per fare informazione e comunicazione online che non siano basati sull'utilizzo di piattaforme che espropriano gli autori-lettori della loro identit e del loro pensiero. Che riconfigurano l'equilibrio tra l'insieme collettivo e le persone.
  E per chi vuole, ecco i link per questa discussione oltre il confine del comprensibile, perch(C) ¨ tutto un insieme di puntini che cercano chi li sappia unire:New, new, new, di Dave WinerMedium, di Evan WilliamsWiner prova Medium, di Dave WinerBranch
Fascist-Style Threats from French Foreign Minister Fabius Against Syria and Assad TARPLEY.net
  Link to Article
  Source: TARPLEY.net
  Sat, 18 Aug 2012 18:19
  ArchivesWebster G. Tarpley, Ph.D.PressTVAugust 17, 2012
US ELECTION SENSATION: Paul Ryan, whatever happened to Barry?
  Link to Article
  Source: A diary of deception and distortion
  Sat, 18 Aug 2012 18:18
  Dear UK Sloggers born before 1955
  I'm so happy (as you must be too) that the late British singer Marion Ryan's twin son Paul is to be the Vice-Presidential running mate of Rintintin Mormon. This is Paul Ryan (left) in 1965:
  '...and this is Paul last week:
  As you can see, his haircut has moved on, but his face is '' miraculously '' little aged. My suspicion is that somewhere in an attic near you is a painting of his twin brother Barry that looks about 163 years old. But I could be wrong.
  You see '' and this conspiracy theory is a lulu '' the man in the White House is also called'.....Barry. So here at The Slog, we asked a make-up artist and plastic surgeon to collaborate on the construction of what a blacked-up Barry Ryan might look like today. This is what they come up with:
  Well I don't know about you, but if that isn't Barack Obama singing Al Green two years ago*, then what is?
  This will, of course, bring a whole new dimension to the American foreign-imposed elite theorists: one Marion Ryan twin will be replaced by another if Mitt wins'...but whatever happens, one of these wicked demons will be in the White House.
  Did you know, by the way, that Joe Biden has three sixes behind one ear, and shaves his scalp-horns down daily'.....
  * The last shot above is in reality Barry Ryan singing on a French TV show three years ago'...in negative.
  Like this:Be the first to like this.
3D printed meat: It's what's for dinner | Cutting Edge
  Link to Article
  Source: ZapLog - externe links
  Sat, 18 Aug 2012 17:06
  Slides prepared by startup Modern Meadow pitch 3D-printed meat as a more environmentally friendly approach to dinner.
  3D printing has been used to create running shoes, medical implants, and, to the delight of firearm enthusiasts, a .22 caliber handgun. So why not a 3D-printed steak for the grill?
  Billionaire investor Peter Thiel's philanthropic foundation plans to announce today a six-figure grant for bioprinted meat, part of an ambitious plan to bring to the world's dinner tables a set of technologies originally developed for creating medical-grade tissues.
  The recipient of the Thiel Foundation's grant, a Columbia, Mo.-based startup named Modern Meadow, is pitching bioprinted meat as a more environmentally-friendly way to satisfy a natural human craving for animal protein. Co-founder Andras Forgacs has sharply criticized the overall cost of traditional livestock practices, saying "if you look at the resource intensity of everything that goes into a hamburger, it is an environmental train wreck."
  "Modern Meadow is combining regenerative medicine with 3D printing to imagine an economic and compassionate solution to a global problem," said Lindy Fishburne, executive director of Breakout Labs, a project of the Thiel Foundation. "We hope our support will help propel them through the early stage of their development, so they can turn their inspired vision into reality." (See CNET's Q&A with Thiel from last year.)
  Modern Meadow co-founder Andras Forgacs, who says 3D-printed meat is better than the "environmental train wreck" of traditional hamburgers.
  Breakout Labs is also giving grants to Bell Biosystems and Entopsis, both medical startups. A Breakout Labs representative declined to give exact figures, saying that each grant was for a sum between $250,000 and $350,000.
  Even though 3D printing of meat is still in the early stages, not least because of its high cost, it's long been a staple of science fiction. In the fictional universe of Orion's Arm, for instance, there are prillets, animals that are "printed without any bones at all, often premarinated." In vitro meat, sometimes called shmeat, appeared in William Gibson's Neuromancer, and an original Star Trek episode featured synthetic meatloaf.
  While Modern Meadow's Web site is currently offline, it prepared a summary of its work as part of a submission to the Department of Agriculture's small business grant program. It says its short-term goal is to create a sliver of synthetic meat that's less than one inch long:
  So far, bio-printing has been applied to build three-dimensional tissues and organ structures of specific architecture and functionality for purposes of regenerative medicine. Here we propose to adapt this technology to building meat products for consumption. The technology has several advantages in comparison to earlier attempts to engineer meat in vitro. The bio-ink particles can be reproducibly prepared with mixtures of cells of different type... Printing ensures consistent shape, while post-printing structure formation and maturation in the bioreactor facilitates conditioning... We anticipate that this Phase I application will result in a macroscopic size (~2 cm x 1 cm x 0.5 mm) edible prototype and will demonstrate that bio-printing-based in vitro meat production is feasible, economically viable and environmentally practical. Successful in vitro meat engineering addresses a number of societal needs, thus the commercialization of the method has high market potential.
'Breivik-imitator' opgepakt in Tsjechi - Nieuws
  Link to Article
  Source: VK: Home
  Sat, 18 Aug 2012 15:58
  Bewerkt door: Redactie ''18/08/12, 16:46 '' bron: AFP
  (C) AFP. Een Tsjechische agent tijdens een oefening op 18 april jl. Foto ter illustratie.
  De Tsjechische politie heeft in Ostrava, in het noord-oosten van het land, een 29-jarige man opgepakt die van plan was om aanslagen te plegen zoals de Noorse massamoordenaar Anders Breivik die vorig jaar in Noorwegen pleegde. De arrestant zou een grote bom willen laten ontploffen. In zijn woning werden explosieven, een politie-uniform en een automatisch pistool gevonden.
  Volgens Radovan Vojta, chef van de politie in Ostrava, zou hij een afstandsbediening bij zich hebben gehad om een bom te laten ontploffen. Het is niet duidelijk wat het doel was van de man. Vojta zei dat er nog onderzoek gedaan moet worden naar de motieven van de man. Hij wordt aan Breivik gelinkt, omdat hij de naam van de Noorse massamoordenaar gebruikte op internet.
  De identiteit van de arrestant is niet bekend gemaakt. Wel is bekend dat hij vijf keer eerder werd veroordeeld. De laatste keer in 2010, hij kreeg toen zes maanden cel voor een poging een zelfgemaakte bom tot ontploffing te brengen voor een benzinestation. Het Tsjechische persbureau CTK interviewde de buren van de man, die zeiden dat er niets op wees dat de arrestant extreem-rechtse sympathien zou koesteren. Hij zou in de war zijn.
  Op 22 juli vorig jaar liet Anders Behring Breivik in Oslo een bom ontploffen, daarna schoot hij jongeren dood tijdens een jongerenkamp van de sociaal-democratische partij op het eiland Utoya. In totaal kwamen 77 mensen om het leven. Breivik motiveerde zijn moorden door te zeggen dat hij Noorwegen wilde behoeden voor de multiculturele samenleving.
Landverrader Jan Kees de Jager moet naar de oogarts?
  Link to Article
  Source: ZapLog - externe links
  Sat, 18 Aug 2012 15:57
  zaterdag, 18 augustus 2012Zit ik vrijdagavond op (C)(C)n van Ne-DDR-lands propaganda-websites (nu.nl onder ''Dossier: Schuldencrisis'') een beetje ''koppen te snellen'', om een leuk onderwerp te zoeken voor mijn artikeltje van vandaag. En wat lees ik?
  Dat Finland zich voorbereidt op het uiteenvallen van de eurozone (slim gezien, van die Finnen).Dat de Griekse schuld weer boven de driehonder miljard zit (goed gedaan jongens, denken jullie nog even aan ons, want wij krijgen alles terug'... met rente).Dat de slechte leningen van de Spaanse banken naar een record gaan (een hoogterecord wel te verstaan, niet dat u denkt dat het er beter gaat, of zo).En dat Spanje snel de eerste noodlening aan de banken gaat vragen.En dat landverrader De Jager zegt, dat hij de eurozone langzaam uit de crisis ziet komen!!!Hallo, landverrader Jan Kees: nodig aan een brilletje toe?
  Bovenstaande onderwerpen/koppen staan op 1 dag op een rijtje op die website. Ik weet niet hoe het met u is, maar hebt u dan nog vertrouwen en zin om die afzonderlijke artikeltjes te lezen? Ik niet. Sorry, beste lezers, maar in dergelijke nonsens-berichtgeving ga ik niet eens serieus naar materiaal zoeken voor een artikeltje.
  Ook ik bereid mij voor op een snikheet weekeinde en ga me niet meer vermoeien dan hetgeen hier nu geschreven staat.
  Pas goed op uzelf, zowel politiek als qua warmte. Wat die warmte betreft: kinderen, ouderen en huisdieren hebben misschien wat extra aandacht en bescherming nodig. Bijvoorbeeld even om een boodschapje voor een bejaarde buurman/-vrouw. Dat vind ik dan weer sociaal doen in de eigen omgeving in de vorm van vrijwillig handelen, zonder dat het opgelegd of afgeroofd wordt.
  Fijn weekeinde,
  MMAP.
http://www.theendrun.com/batman-shooting-nurse-jenny-gallagher-dead-at-46-alleged-drowning
  Link to Article
  Sat, 18 Aug 2012 15:56
  TheEndRun.comAug 17, 2012
  Jenny Gallagher, a nurse who treated victims of the highly suspicious ''Batman'' shooting in Aurora, Colorado last month, is dead at age 46. The reported cause of death: drowning.
  ''She worked the morning after the Batman massacre in a very busy unit of the hospital '-- so she saw everything really, some really bad injuries,'' her husband Greg reportedly told Ireland's Herald earlier today.
  The mass-shooting, which left 12 dead and 58 more injured at a midnight premiere of The Dark Knight Rises at Century theater, is widely suspected to have been a black operation (akin to Columbine or the Sikh Temple shooting) based on the available evidence, numerous inconsistencies and implausibilities in the ''official story'', the timing, and the way the event has been framed (some would say exploited) by certain powerful interests in the media and political arena. See for example'...
  Obama Seeks US Congressional Ratification of UN Global Gun Control Treaty, Susanne Posel (July 16)Colorado Batman shooting shows obvious signs of being staged, Natural News (July 20)James Holmes Batman shooting to justify UN small arms treaty gun grab?, Mike Adams (July 21)Eyewitness: Second Shooter in Batman Massacre, YouTube, (July 21)Witness: Someone let gunman inside Colorado movie theater, CNN/PrisonPlanet.com (July 22)Colorado University Had Identical Drill On Same Day As 'Batman' Massacre, Paul Joseph Watson (July 23)Shooter James Holmes and DARPA Weird Science, Kurt Nimmo/Wayne Madsen (July 24)Fox News Channel Questions Narrative Of 'Batman' Massacre, Infowars/WXIX-Fox19 (July 25)Gun Owners of America President Larry Pratt: Batman Shooting Could be Staged (July 27)James Holmes Is Behaving Like Sirhan Sirhan, Paul Joseph Watson, (July 27)Why Are Republicans Calling To Disarm The American People?, Paul Joseph Watson, (July 30)The Batman op expands: you shot those people, Jon Rappoport (Aug 3)
  U.C.H. HEROINE MEETS OBAMA
  Jennifer Ann Gallagher (''Jenny'') lived in Denver and worked at the University of Colorado Hospital (UCH), where the largest share of the victims of the shooting were taken in the aftermath of the July 20th theater massacre. On July 22nd, Barack Obama personally visited the hospital to meet with the victims and staff. In a speech Obama praised the UCH staff for their ''extraordinary efforts''. As he spoke, he was flanked by Colorado Governor Hickenlooper, Aurora Police chief Oats, and several Congressmen.
  A photo taken during Obama's visit shows Gallagher just feet from Obama. This was just over two weeks before her death.
  WHEN AND WHERE: THE SCANT EARLY REPORTS OF GALLAGHER'S DEATH
  Gallagher was actually found dead ten days ago, on August 7th. Despite recent conflicting and incorrect reports about the location (multiple reports say it was in Colorado, while another says Ohio), The End Run has determined that she was actually found dead in Okoboji Lake, which is in Dickson County, Iowa, about 700 miles from her home town of Denver by car.
  Within 24 hours or less of the discovery of her body, a short blurb about the death, which did not identify her by name, was published by the Associated Press and picked up by several local mediaoutlets. It read:
  Drowning reported at West Okoboji Lake
  OKOBOJI, Iowa (AP) '-- Authorities say someone has drowned at West Okoboji Lake in northwest Iowa.
  The Dickinson County Sheriff's Office said officers responded to a report of a drowning a little after noon on Tuesday.
  The office hasn't released the victim's name or any other details about the drowning.
  On the morning of August 8th, the day after her body was reportedly discovered, the Dickson County Sheriff's office issued a press release identifying Gallagher as the victim (although they misspelled her name) and providing a few additional details. It read (cache):
  Victim identified in West Okoboji drowning
  Published on Wednesday, 08 August 2012 06:30
  On Tuesday, August 7, the Dickinson County Sheriff's Office responded to a drowning on West Lake Okoboji. An investigation found that Jennifer Galagher, age 46, from Denver, Colorado, had been swimming the previous night in West Lake. On Tuesday morning, Galagher was reported missing by family.
  A short time later, a family member located Galagher underneath a nearby dock. Medical personnel responded and she was pronounced dead at the scene.
  Assisting the DCSO were:
  Milford Fire/RescueArnolds Park/Okoboji Dive TeamLakes Regional Healthcare AmbulanceThe incident remains under investigation by the Dickinson County Sheriff's Office.
  The AP then published another blurb based on this press release, which was reworked and/or republished by numerous local media outlets, primarily inIowa, where she was found dead, and in Denver,Colorado, where she lived. However, none of the short stories published in the local press at the time appear to have mentioned her connection to the then-highly-topical ''Batman shooting'', or virtually any biographical information about her. The death of this national heroine does not appear to have been picked up at all by the major U.S. national media. [Note: If this is incorrect, please send in links to the relevant stories by e-mail.]
  DELAYED REVELATION
  Yesterday, nine days after her body was found, an article was published by Ireland's Herald which finally revealed some information about Gallagher and broke the story of her status as a UCH nurse and witness to the bloody aftermath of the carnage in Aurora.
  This revelation has since been picked up and reported on by several other Irish sites, such as Ireland's Independent.ie and the Irish-America IrishCentral.com, as well as the UK-based Belfast Telegraph. However, as of this writing there still do not appear to be any reports by the major U.S. national media.
  Gallagher grew up in Ireland, but has reportedly lived in Denver since moving there for college in the 1990'²s.
  CAUSE OF DEATH: THE ALLEGED DROWNING
  To review: According to the initial press release by the Dickson County Sheriff's office, Gallagher went swimming in West Lake Okoboji on the evening on Monday, August 6th, and didn't come back. The next morning she was reported missing by her family members. ''A short time later, a family member located Galagher underneath a nearby dock. Medical personnel responded and she was pronounced dead at the scene.''
  Ireland's Herald.ie, who, again, revealed the Gallagher/Batman shooting connection yesterday, apparently conducted an exclusive interview with Gallagher's husband Greg Pinson today, and they have now published a second article based upon it. Mr. Pinson is a surgeon with Surgical Specialists of Colorado. According to his curriculum vitae posted to the firm's website, he received his undergraduate degree from Yale in 1994, his Doctorate from GWU in 1998, and did his residency at the University of Colorado School of Medicine through 2003. He is quoted by the Herald as having been married to Jenny for seven years. They have a five year old son, Jack.
  Regarding the question of how Jenny died, the new Herald article says (cache):
  Greg explained that the family had travelled[sic] to nearby Ohio[sic] for a holiday when Jenny tragically drowned.
  He and Jack had gone to sleep when Jenny and her friend decided to take a boat out on to a lake.
  ''She wasn't a very strong swimmer and I suppose she just wasn't able to stay afloat.
  ''The hardest thing is I may never know what really happened to Jenny.''
  Before analyzing this, let's get a critical caveat out of the way: It is very difficult to discern the truth when dealing with second-hand media snippets like these, which are liable to contain misquotes, out of context quotes, misleading statements, and other misinformation. For example, the first Herald article incorrectly said that Gallagher drowned in ''a lake close to her home''. The second article says that it was a lake in ''nearby Ohio''. Besides the fact that Ohio is 1000+ miles from Denver, and thus not ''nearby'' at all, Gallagher was actually found in a lake in Iowa, which is also nowhere near Denver.
  With that said, taken at face value, these two short accounts of Jenny Gallagher's death (Sheriff's Office and The Herald) seem to raise a number of questions:
  1. Was she really not ''a very strong swimmer''? Is her husband even correctly quoted on this matter by the Herald (who seem to have misquoted him elsewhere)? Jenny was 46 years old and a formidable athlete. She has been playing Gaelic football for over a decade, having competed in the North American finals in 2000. Recently, she and her teammates on the Denver Gaels ladies football team competed in a tournament at a the Colorado Irish Festival, which they won, beating teams from San Fransisco and Dallas. A tribute published in the club's newsletter says that ''memories of trips with the Gaels'' such as ''surfing in Costa Rica'' would not ''have been so fond had Jenny not been there''.
  2. Why, while vacationing out of state, did Jenny decide to take a boat out onto a lake, at night, after her husband and son had already gone to bed, especially if she ''wasn't a very strong swimmer''?
  3. If she did decide to do that, wouldn't she at least wear a life vest?
  4. Who is this friend that was allegedly with her? Why is this friend not identified by name? Why has this friend not been mentioned in previous reports?
  5. If she did drown at night while boating with a ''friend'', why were police and rescue crews not notified until the following day? The original Sheriff's office press release said that she was ''reported missing by family'' the following ''morning''. The initial AP report put the time even later '' ''a little after noon'' '-- and The Spencer Daily Reporter wrote on Aug 9th that, ''Emergency crews recieved a 911 distress call at 12:45 p.m.'' If a ''friend'' was out on the lake boating with Jenny and she disappeared in the water, wouldn't this friend immediately rush to notify her husband and/or any other family member that may have been present, and wouldn't they immediately alert rescue crews (assuming the friend hadn't already)? Why did this apparently not happen?
  6. If Jenny was out boating with a friend, disappeared in the water, and was later found drowned, why would her husband say, ''The hardest thing is I may never know what really happened to Jenny''?
  7. Who was the family member that located Jenny's body under the dock? He or she apparently did so shortly after notifying authorities that she was ''missing'', possibly even within minutes. The unnamed family member was apparently able to find her before professionally trained rescue crews. In fact, according to the Spencer Daily Reporter, this family member may have even ''located'' her before the crews could even begin searching: ''Arnolds Park/Okoboji Fire Chief Christ Yungbluth said his department's dive team did not have to conduct a search. '... Resuce teams were on hand for nearly an hour but once they arrived at the scene, Galagher was pronounced dead.'' West Okoboji Lake is approximately 3,847 acres in surface area. The Daily Reporter said that she was specifically found ''in the area near Wheeler's Beach just off of 1st Street in the city of West Okoboji.''
  THE SHERIFF'S OFFICE IS MUM; APPARENTLY GALLAGHER'S DEATH IS STILL UNDER INVESTIGATION
  In an attempt to obtain answers to these questions and clarification about the facts surrounding Jenny Gallagher's death, The End Run contacted the Dickson County Sheriff's Office by phone this evening (Friday).
  The woman who answered the phone was familiar with the case, but refused to answer any questions about Jennifer Gallagher's death. This included a direct question as to whether or not Gallagher was boating with another individual that night as reported by the Herald. The woman referenced the August 8th press release posted to the Sheriff's website, firmly stating that she could not provide any information besides what was contained in that report.
  When asked if she could at least confirm whether or not the incident was (still) under investigation, she again referred me to the press release from nine days ago, which says, ''The incident remains under investigation by the Dickinson County Sheriff's Office''.
  CONCLUSION
  Given the suspicious nature of the ''Batman'' shooting, Jenny''s (heroic) involvement in the rescue operation at the hospital, and the timing of her unnatural death, it is only logical for researchers who understand government black operations (and corresponding cover-ups) to treat it as a potential homocide, and seek further information that confirms or refutes this hypothesis. This does not mean that it was a homocide. Accidents happen. This may have been a heartbreaking example of one. However, the publicly-available information about this death is relatively thin at this point, and it contains significant apparent contradictions and problems. Further investigation is needed by the independent media.
  According to accounts written by those who knew her, Jenny Gallagher was an amazing woman; a loving mother and wife, an excellent nurse, and a person whose personality and kindness brought joy into the lives of those around her. Regardless of the cause, her untimely death is a tragedy, and my condolences go out to the many friends and family who knew and loved her. Hopefully others who investigate her death feel the same, and hopefully her family can understand our desire to seek further information about what happened to her.
  The source of this report is TheEndRun.com. The author can be reached by e-mail at the theendrunblog@gmail.com. Information about how to help support The End Run can be found here.
  This post is tagged
BATMAN-COLORADO SHOOTINGS: MYSTERIOUS DEATH OF NURSE
  Link to Article
  Source: aangirfan
  Sat, 18 Aug 2012 15:54
  Jenny Gallagher, a nurse who treated victims of the highly suspicious ''Batman'' shooting in Aurora, Colorado last month, has died in mysterious circumstances...
  Nurse Who ''Saw Everything'' At Hospital After Suspicious Batman Shooting Found Dead at 46
  (TheEndRun.com Aug 17, 2012)
"WikiLeaks Is The Most Significant Journalistic Enterprise We've Seen In The Last 30 Years"
  Link to Article
  Source: Uploads by wwwMOXNEWScom
  Sat, 18 Aug 2012 15:53
Propane truck burning; U.S. 550 closed
  Link to Article
  Sat, 18 Aug 2012 15:50
  ALBUQUERQUE (KRQE) - U.S. Highway 550 is shut down in central Sandoval County as an 18-wheel tanker truck loaded with propane burns out of control.
  New Mexico State Police report no injuries have been reported, but the highway is closed in both directions around mile marker 27.
  That's 27 miles northwest of Interstate 25 and about four miles west of San Ysidro.
  Police are stopping northbound traffic at San Ysidro and southbound traffic at Cuba. Shortly before 6 p.m. police said the closure is expected to last a couple of hours.
  As of 8 p.m. the road remained closed, according to the state Department of Transportation.
  The fire was reported about 5:10 p.m. At last report the cab and trailer were fully engulfed in flames.
  State Police said the fire is being treated as a hazardous-materials incident.
  Four-lane U.S. 550 is the main route connecting central New Mexico and the Four Corners, will reopen.
BBC News - Hottest UK day of 2012 recorded in Suffolk
  Link to Article
  Source: BBC News - Home
  Sat, 18 Aug 2012 14:44
  18 August 2012Last updated at 10:27 ET Parts of the UK are experiencing the hottest day of 2012 so far, with Cavendish in Suffolk reaching 32.3C, the BBC Weather Centre says.
  Cambridge has also seen hot weather, reaching 31.5C on Saturday afternoon.
  However, not all of the country has such high temperatures. Newquay, in Cornwall, has reached 18C, while Belfast hit 19C and Glasgow 20C.
  Temperatures are expected to return to average August levels by the middle of next week.
  According to the BBC Weather Centre, while south east England and East Anglia are experiencing very warm weather, a dividing weather front across the UK means other areas are not having particularly high temperatures.
  Cardiff and Manchester have reported temperatures of 21C and Carlisle is at 18C, for example.
  Varying temperaturesSunday will see the same sort of contrast in temperature across the country as on Saturday, and temperatures could even be a degree or so higher in eastern England.
  A weather front dividing the country marks the line between fresher weather to the north west of the UK and hotter, more humid weather to the south east.
  The hot weather in south east England is being fed by warm air coming up from the Continent.
  BBC weather forecaster Colin Seddon said that next week temperatures will be cooler.
  "By the middle of next week the South East should see highs in the low 20s, with Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland reaching the high teens," he said.
  Send your pictures and videos to yourpics@bbc.co.uk or text them to 61124 (UK) or +44 7624 800 100 (International). If you have a large file you canupload here.
  Read the terms and conditions
'Brad Pitt dronken op vrijgezellenfeest' - Priv(C)
  Link to Article
  Source: Telegraaf.nl - prive
  Sat, 18 Aug 2012 13:56
  za 18 aug 2012, 15:07
  Van onze redactieAMSTERDAM - Brad Pitt vierde afgelopen donderdag een feestje in de stad in Londen.
  Misschien was het wel zijn vrijgezellenfeest, omdat de acteur wellicht zaterdag 17 augustus in het huweljik treedt.
  Brad heeft zich in ieder geval flink in de nesten gewerkt door zwaar dronken thuis te komen, meldt Daily Star. De acteur kwam om 6 uur 's morgens zijn huis in Richmond binnenstrompelen en daar was Angelina volgens insiders niet zo blij mee.
  Brad zou de avond drinkend hebben doorgebracht met Guy Ritchie. "Angie was geschokt dat hij in zo'n toestand thuis kwam. Zeker omdat hij haar niet had gebeld. Ze zei dat ze hem in jaren niet zo gezien had. Volgens Brad kwam het allemaal door het Britse bier", vertelt een bron.
  De bron vertelt verder: ''Brad probeerde verschillende bieren door elkaar. Hij liet zich even gaan.''
  Angelina Jolie (37) en Brad Pitt (48) maakten in april bekend dat ze gaan trouwen. De trouwdatum blijft een mysterie.
  Proefabonnement, 10 weken '‚¬ 30,-!(C) 1996-2012 Telegraaf Media Nederland | Landelijke Media B.V., Amsterdam.Alle rechten voorbehouden.e-mail: redactie-i@telegraaf.nlPrivacy | Cookies | Disclaimer
What's in a tabbed river?
  Link to Article
  Source: Dave Winer's linkblog feed
  Sat, 18 Aug 2012 13:54
  World OutlineSign-inSign-upv0.64;
  Threads > 8/16/12 by DWThread started by Dave Winer yesterday.A very quick technical overview of what's in a tabbed river.First, a river is a list of items in reverse-chronologic order from a collection of feeds, also known as a subscription list. Feeds are RSS 2.0, 1.0, 0.9x or Atom 1.0. Subscription lists are in OPML 2.0. An example of a subscription list.The rivers are in a new JSON-based format. Example.I would like to see others build on the JSON format, providing new flows, and also providing new user interfaces. A tabbed river is a collection of rivers, presented in a tab format. I'm using the Bootstrap Toolkit for the tabs. View the forum thread.
A simple but well coloured feed reader written in bash (Page 1) / Programming & Scripting / Arch Linux Forums
  Link to Article
  Sat, 18 Aug 2012 13:52
  Hello everyone.I wrote these two functions for my .bashrc:
  #!/bin/bashif [ ! -n "$FEED_BOOKMARKS" ]; then export FEED_BOOKMARKS=$HOME/.feed_bookmarks; fiif [ ! -d "$FEED_BOOKMARKS" ]; then mkdir -p $FEED_BOOKMARKS; fifeed() {if [ ! -d $FEED_BOOKMARKS ]; then mkdir $FEED_BOOKMARKS; fiif [ ! -n "$1" ]; thenecho -e "\\n \\e[04mUsage\\e[00m\\n\\n \\e[01;37m\$ feed \\e[01;31m<url>\\e[00m \\e[01;31m<new bookmark?>\\e[00m\\n\\n \\e[04mSee also\\e[00m\\n\\n \\e[01;37m\$ deef\\e[00m\\n"return 1;filocal rss_source="$(curl --silent $1 | sed -e ':a;N;$!ba;s/\n/ /g')";if [ ! -n "$rss_source" ]; thenecho "The feed is empty";return 1;fi# THE RSS PARSER# The characters "£, §" are used as metacharacters. They should not be encountered in a feed...echo -e "$(echo $rss_source | \sed -e 's/&gt;/>/g' \-e 's/&lt;/</g' \-e 's/<\/a>/£/g' \-e 's/href\=\"/§/g' \-e 's/<title>/\\n\\n\\n :: \\e[01;31m/g' -e 's/<\/title>/\\e[00m ::\\n/g' \-e 's/<link>/ [ \\e[01;36m/g' -e 's/<\/link>/\\e[00m ]/g' \-e 's/<description>/\\n\\n\\e[00;37m/g' -e 's/<\/description>/\\e[00m\\n\\n/g' \-e 's/<p>\|<br\s*\/\?>/\n/g' \-e 's/<b>\|<strong>/\\e[01;30m/g' -e 's/<\/b>\|<\/strong>/\\e[00;37m/g' \-e 's/<u>/\\e[4;37m/g' -e 's/<\/u>/\\e[00;37m/g' \-e 's/<b>\|<code>/\\e[00m/g' -e 's/<\/b>\|<\/code>/\\e[00;37m/g' \-e 's/<a[^§]*§\([^\"]*\)\"[^>]*>\([^£]*\)[^£]*£/\\e[01;31m\2\\e[00;37m \\e[01;34m[\\e[00;37m \\e[04m\1\\e[00;37m\\e[01;34m ]\\e[00;37m/g' \-e 's/<li>/\n \\e[01;34m*\\e[00;37m /g' \-e 's/<!\[CDATA\[\|\]\]>\|>\s*<//g' \-e 's/<[^>]*>/ /g' \-e 's/[<>£§]//g')\n\n";# END OF THE RSS PARSERif [ -n "$2" ]; thenecho "$1" > $FEED_BOOKMARKS/$2echo -e "\\n\\t\\e[01;37m==> \\e[01;31mBookmark saved as \\e[01;36m\\e[04m$2\\e[00m\\e[01;37m <==\\e[00m\\n"fi}deef() {if test -n "$1"; thenif [ ! -r "$FEED_BOOKMARKS/$1" ]; thenecho -e "\\n \\e[01;31mBookmark \\e[01;36m\\e[04m$1\\e[00m\\e[01;31m not found.\\e[00m\\n\\n \\e[04mType:\\e[00m\\n\\n \\e[01;37m\$ deef\\e[00m (without arguments)\\n\\n to get the complete list of all currently saved bookmarks.\\n";return 1;filocal url="$(cat $FEED_BOOKMARKS/$1)";if [ ! -n "$url" ]; thenecho "The bookmark is empty";return 1;fiecho -e "\\n\\t\\e[01;37m==> \\e[01;31m$url\\e[01;37m <==\\e[00m"feed "$url";elseecho -e "\\n \\e[04mUsage\\e[00m\\n\\n \\e[01;37m\$ deef \\e[01;31m<bookmark>\\e[00m\\n\\n \\e[04mCurrently saved bookmarks\\e[00m\\n";for i in $(find $FEED_BOOKMARKS -maxdepth 1 -type f);do echo -e " \\e[01;36m\\e[04m$(basename $i)\\e[00m";done;echo -e "\\n \\e[04mSee also\\e[00m\\n\\n \\e[01;37m\$ feed\\e[00m\\n";fi;}It's a very simple rss reader written in bash with two functions.
  The first one:
  $ feed <url> <new bookmark?>prints the parsed content of <url> and possibly save the url as <new bookmark?>, if specified.For example:
  $ feed http://www.archlinux.org/feeds/news/or
  $ feed http://www.archlinux.org/feeds/news/ archnewsThe second one:
  reads the url previously saved as <bookmark> and prints its content.For example:
  I'd like you to test it and suggest whatever you want The parser is very very simple.
  **EDIT**A better version of this script is this.
  Last edited by grufo (2012-08-15 02:41:19)
http://m.iwgov.com/264942/show/0160e35a72fb3a77587ef4d6b7dacd57/?
  Link to Article
  Sat, 18 Aug 2012 13:49
  Posted on Thursday Aug 16th at 7:45am
  Defense Robots: Fast, Flexible, And Tough (click image for larger view and for slideshow)More than 375 million air travelers have gone through Transportation Security Administration checkpoints so far this year. The agency is exploring a new way of handling such a crowd: helpful, multilingual avatars.TSA, part of the Department of Homeland Security, has issued a request for information for a "hologram imaging, computer-generated imagery and video projection" system. The system would be used "to assist passengers in navigating through security checkpoints as efficiently as possible," according to the RFI, which was posted on FedBizOpps.gov earlier this month.
  The agency is looking for information on technology able to "speak" in multiple languages, including English and Spanish. The system should capture the attention of travelers, be easy to understand, and "be courteous when communicating to the traveling public," according to the RFI.
  The job of these virtual TSA agents would include informing passengers of items not allowed on airplanes, such as firearms, sharp objects, and liquid containers of more than a few ounces. The RFI stipulates that the system not emit anything harmful, such as radiation, or interfere with existing checkpoint systems.
  [ Read DARPA Challenge Seeks Robots To Drive Into Disasters. ]
  TSA is asking vendors to provide information on products that are available or in development that could fit its needs.
  Avatars, some in the shape of a person with hologram imaging projected onto them, are showing up in new places. At the Black Hat conference in Las Vegas in July, at least one vendor used a life-size avatar at its booth. U.S. Customs and Border Protection has begun using an avatar on a kiosk at a border crossing in southern Arizona to interview travelers in advance of interacting with real-life CBP officers, according to Scientific American.
  Digital TSA agents are the latest in a series of technologies to be introduced or tested by TSA, which came under criticism for its use of body-scanning technology that some people considered an invasion of privacy.
  Earlier this year, the agency began testing a new system that verifies an air traveler's identity by matching photo IDs to boarding passes and ensures that boarding passes are authentic.
  Separately, TSA issued a request for proposals, valued at $3 million, to purchase 1,000 Macs and 1,000 iPhones, iPads, and iPods, which it planned to use for a variety of purposes, including developing mobile applications.
  Contributing writer Dan Taylor is managing editor of Inside the Navy.
  InformationWeek Government's GovCloud 2012 is a day-long event where IT professionals in federal, state, and local government will develop a deeper understanding of the options available today. IT leaders in government and other experts will share best practices and their advice on how to make the right choices. Join us for this insightful gathering of government IT executives to hear firsthand about the challenges and opportunities of cloud computing. It happens in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 17.
Why sex could be history | Life and style
  Link to Article
  Source: The Guardian World News
  Fri, 17 Aug 2012 21:28
  Over tea at her north London home, Aarathi Prasad is talking calmly, coolly, about reproduction. But not sex. Specifically not sex. Her subject is technologies that would take intercourse out of the reproductive equation, advances that could challenge everything we know about family and the relationship between men and women. Their potential is summed up in the final paragraphs of her new book, Like a Virgin: How Science is Redesigning the Rules of Sex.
  Here she describes the "ultimate solo parent" of the future. This woman can use her own stem cells and an artificial Y chromosome to produce healthy new eggs and sperm at any age, is capable of reproducing entirely alone by making one of her eggs behave like a pseudo-sperm that can be used to fertilise herself, and has no need to carry the embryo in her own body. Instead it gestates in an artificial womb, which acts as a highly evolved incubator. The same field of technology would enable gay couples to have children created from both their DNA, and make it just as easy for a man to become a single parent as a woman.
  Prasad writes that this would be "the great biological and social equaliser" before adding that the question isn't if it will happen, but when. She is softly spoken and thoughtful, and our conversation circles around chromosomes, DNA and IVF, before returning repeatedly to the artificial womb, the potential of which seems to grow and shift the more we discuss it. If we could grow embryos outside the body, it would change women's life choices entirely. We wouldn't have to worry about when to have children '' between this advance and eggs created from stem cells, it would be possible at any age. Men and women could have an equal role in parenting, right from conception. Of all the current reproductive possibilities, it is this potential advance that could be most revolutionary '' and perhaps the most troubling too.
  The decision to write Like a Virgin grew from Prasad's own desire to have children. She was brought up in Trinidad, then London, with her parents and brother, and dreamed of having a large family. In her mid-20s, while finishing a PhD in cancer genetics, she had a daughter, Tara, but her relationship with Tara's father ended during the pregnancy. By the time she was 30 her hopes for a big brood were faltering. Her mother had experienced menopause quite early, and she suspected she might too.
  "I remember waking up one Saturday morning, on a bed with my daughter in my mum's loft, thinking, well, if some animals can have babies without males, why can't humans? So many women are like me, in their 30s, we do want our careers ... and we're looking for the right partner. And then you get older and it looks less likely to happen."
  Prasad had studied male infertility and other aspects of developmental biology; she decided to find out more about her choices and what was going on at the cutting edge of reproductive science. Her book takes a broad, historical look at the notion of reproduction without sex, moving from ancient stories of virgin birth to a 16th-century experiment involving semen being placed in a glass tube and buried in horse manure, in the hope it might grow into a small, transparent homunculus. (It didn't.)
  But the book is most extraordinary when it considers the future of reproduction without sex. Along with the artificial womb, the other possible advance Prasad finds most exciting is the potential to create healthy, new young eggs from our stem cells. There have been studies conducted on animals, she says, in which bone marrow from a female has been used to generate eggs.
  "You can also take bone marrow from men, to generate sperm, and you can generate eggs from men too, which is quite interesting. It's not magic," she adds. It's because men have an X and a Y chromosome, while women, having two X chromosomes, are more limited in this respect. However, an embryo could still be created that mixed the DNA of two females, a process that has been tried successfully in mice. In 2004, Kaguya the mouse was born without a father. She was created by "constructing an egg out of material from one mature egg, and one immature egg," Prasad writes. Manipulation of DNA essentially allowed the scientists to use an egg's chromosomes as if they had come from a sperm.
  This area of technology would allow a woman to procreate alone too, using two of her own eggs, an idea Prasad laughs off as megalomaniacal when we discuss it initially. "I wouldn't see a woman creating a baby out of herself. I mean, maybe they would. Maybe Lady Gaga would, some maverick."
  The child wouldn't be a clone, she notes, because, "every time you create an egg there's a shuffling of the DNA, which is why siblings don't tend to look the same."
  But surely for people who want to reproduce and don't have a partner, going it alone might not be prompted by narcissism '' more by their confidence in their own DNA and family medical history, versus that of an unknown donor?
  "I can see that happening," says Prasad, "and it might sound weird, but is it? I think the real question is, is the baby going to be healthy? If the answer to that is yes, and the mother is able to look after it, then who are we to say?"
  Artificial wombs would challenge social attitudes too, perhaps even more profoundly. These have long been a staple of science fiction, but they have also been created and used in reality '' although for sharks rather than humans. Prasad writes about the team of scientists who, in 2008, developed an artificial womb to try to halt the decline of the grey nurse shark. Each female shark of this variety has two wombs, and while dozens of embryos are produced in each of their pregnancies, only the strongest two survive, one in each womb.
  This is because the shark foetuses nourish themselves through cannibalism, eating their potential siblings. The outcome is that the female sharks produce only two pups every two years. In addressing this problem, scientists have gestated wobbegong embryos (wobbegongs are similar to grey nurses, but not endangered), for increasingly long periods in an artificial womb, with great success. They hope, soon, to gestate one from conception.
  Scientists in Japan and the US are working to find out whether a similar device could be used for humans, and the noted reproductive researcher Hung-Ching Liu has said that having a child in the laboratory is her final goal. As Prasad writes, Liu has "already managed to grow the lining for a human womb, using a sort of scaffolding over which cells, cultured from a woman's womb, could multiply ... When it was tested using fertilised eggs left over from IVF cycles, the eggs implanted in it, at six days, just as they would in a real womb."
  Liu's experiment had to end eight days after implantation, Prasad explains, because researchers are not allowed to grow human foetuses for more than 14 days in the lab.
  There are therefore regulatory and ethical as well as technological barriers to overcome in many of these reproductive advances, but when I ask Prasad whether she thinks we'll see artificial wombs used by humans in her lifetime, she is positive. "If my lifetime was another 40 years, yes," she says.
  If babies are gestated outside the human body, it would immediately disrupt all our notions about who should be the primary parent, and about male and female roles as a whole. "It would get away from that question of mother and father," says Prasad, "and instead become: what is a parent?"
  In Like a Virgin, Prasad describes some of the ethical dilemmas that might result, exploring, for instance, the bond between a pregnant woman and her baby. This is often considered sacred and essential, but she sees it differently. Watching a child grow from a tiny cluster of cells, right through to birth, might result in a bond that was equally special, she suggests.
  Researching the book, Prasad visited a neonatal unit in Hackney, east London, where she saw very premature babies in incubators. The experience felt voyeuristic, she says, because "you're looking into this womb, this box, and thinking, I shouldn't be able to see that. But it's just so beautiful to see this doll-like creature growing."
  She compares this with the scans pregnant women have '' that moment they're first able to "see" their child. When a woman has a scan at 12 weeks, "Your stomach is completely flat, there's no sign of the pregnancy except the test you've taken. And then there's this beautiful, perfectly formed child [on the screen] and you're in tears. That's bonding. Feeling the baby inside you can be too, but sometimes it's really hard for the mother ... This whole concept of the perfection of maternal bonding '' it's not like that. There's no ideal. And I don't think that having a child in a place that's not in your body is necessarily bad for bonding."
  In fact, she says, it could be good because it would be impossible to get pregnant like this accidentally "and, secondly, the womb can be a bad place for babies." She mentions smoking, drinking and drug use, and adds: "This whole idea of nature being fantastic '' it's not. We can learn from it, but we can also improve on it. And there are situations where it's not healthy, and babies would be better off outside."
  That's true in some cases, but what about positive influences in the womb, the influence a healthy, happy mother has on a growing foetus? Prasad believes it would be possible to replicate these too. "If a baby was growing in a box from beginning until end, and you knew what those influences are, you could manipulate them. The signals that make a person happy are because of certain chemicals they're producing in their brain, dictated by their genes, dictated maybe by one of their parents being like that. But it's a chemical signal, and those are completely replicable in an artificial situation.
  "I mean, we are machines, after all. We have all these ethical and social over-layers, but the body is a machine."
  Continuing in this vein, Prasad says a "hardcore, serious mother" whose child was gestating in an artificial womb could be injected "with stuff to make her produce milk by the time the baby is born, so she is expressing certain hormones that we know are related to maternal bonding. You could recreate all that. There is a pathway of knock-on effects when your body realises an egg has been fertilised: your periods stop and there's a cascade of hormones. You could still do all that."
  Not that it would necessarily be the woman who would breastfeed. Someone pointed out to Prasad that men can produce milk too: "They've got mammary glands, and I haven't looked into this, but say that was possible, then you're really asking who is the mother, and who is the father? If you unhinge all of these things from their very basis, you'd have to rethink who does what."
  Given that men and women would have an equal chance to bond with the baby during gestation, there would be more potential than ever for parenting to be fully shared. So does all this spell the end of sex? Are we about to start reproducing in entirely new ways?
  Prasad says she doesn't think these technologies will be used by everyone. "The people who are interested in it are those who have problems in having babies". But it's not hard to imagine artificial wombs, for instance, being used more broadly. If there was a viable, entirely healthy alternative, would women necessarily choose to go through pregnancy?
  We're some way from finding out.
  Prasad recognises that many people find these ideas and technologies enormously problematic, but takes a scientist's view. She points out that there was criticism when spectacles were first invented, with some saying the advance went against nature. "There are a lot of things animals do that we can't," she says, "like flying and camouflage, and we've adapted, through technology ... It's funny when people say something is natural, or not. Compared with what? Compared with when? It's this vanity of humans to think of themselves as special, as being at the height of evolution. We're not. We're obviously still adapting."
  There has been uproar over reproductive technologies before, she notes. In the late 1970s, when Lesley Brown was pregnant with the world's first "test tube" baby the intense media interest forced her into hiding. "With the first IVF there was an outcry, and then people say, 'Well, if it helps people who are childless '...'"
  Prasad shrugs. "One of the fertility scientists I was speaking to said that every time there's a press story about eggs and sperm being created, his phone doesn't stop ringing. So there are all these people who are high-falutin', and will talk about the ethics and the morals. And then there are people who are infertile who will just pick up the phone and say 'can you help me?'"
  Like a Virgin: How Science is Redesigning the Rules of Sex is published by Oneworld on 23 August, £12.99. To order a copy for £10.39, including free UK p&p, go to guardian.co.uk/bookshop or call 0330 333 6846
BBC News - Oracle confirms paying a blogger but Google names no-one
  Link to Article
  Source: BBC News - Technology
  Fri, 17 Aug 2012 21:26
  17 August 2012Last updated at 22:11 Oracle has disclosed two names after it and Google were ordered to reveal finciancial ties to people who might have influenced coverage of a trial .
  The instruction had been given by a US judge following a copyright and patent lawsuit fought by the two tech firms.
  Oracle said it had relationships with blogger Florian Mueller and Stanford University's Prof Paul Goldstein.
  Google said it did not pay any "journalists, bloggers, or other commentators to write about this case".
  However, the search giant added that it needed further guidance before being able to disclose others it had financial ties to.
  The judge had said he was "concerned" that financial relationships might have influenced analysis published in newspapers and on the net.
  The trial had centred on Oracle's claim that it was owed about $1bn (£640m) in compensation for Google's use of its technologies in the Android system.
  But the jury ruled that the patents involved had not been breached, while a judge dismissed the key copyright claim - a decision against which Oracle has said it would "vigorously appeal".
  Oracle is one of the world's biggest technology firms specialising in computer servers, databases and other services to industry. Its systems power many of the online services used by smartphone and PC users.
  Patent blogger paymentsShortly after the trial began, Mr Mueller had revealed that he was providing consultancy services to Oracle.
  The German blogger's articles are widely read by industry professionals and he was recently quoted by a UN agency in a press release about patent disputes.
  "In April, I proactively announced a broadly-focused consulting relationship with Oracle, six months after announcing a similar working relationship with Microsoft," he told the BBC ahead of Oracle's filing.
  "I can also certify that I wrote all of my blog posts on the trial independently, without being directed or influenced by anyone.
  "All the information I received from Oracle itself was what the company uploaded to its website on each trial day. With the exception of the disclosure statement, Oracle never saw my posts, in whole or in part, before they went live."
  Oracle said it was naming Prof Goldstein "out of an abundance of caution" since he had advised a law firm used by the company about copyright, even though he did not specifically comment about the lawsuit in question.
  The firm added that some of its employees might also have blogged about the case, but said that it "did not ask or approve" this action.
  Google wants guidanceIn its submission to California's Judge Alsup, Oracle also accused Google of maintaining an extensive network of "attorneys, lobbyists, trade associations, academics and bloggers".
  It added that it believed that Google "brought this extensive network of influencers to shape public perceptions concerning the position it was advocating throughout this trial".
  Google said that it had not been involved in any "quid pro quo" arrangements for coverage.
  However, it did acknowledge that it had a financial connection with several types of people and organisations who it did not name, including:
  Universities and non-profit entities Organisations to which it belonged or to which it had made contributions Bloggers and others who had adverts placed by its advertising program on their site, and had commented about the case Its own employees and contractors who might have commented about the trial Expert consultants Witnesses identified for the trial Its lawyers asked for clarification as to how far they should go in naming those who fell into each category.
  They said they had not provided a full list at this time to "avoid flooding the court with long lists of such individuals or organisations".
UPI shirks responsibility : CJR
  Link to Article
  Source: CJR
  Fri, 17 Aug 2012 20:54
  The plagiarism, or problematic paraphrasing, parade continued on Thursday as several reporters from Science Newscomplained on Facebook that the wire service UPI had cribbed their stories.
  Reporting on the charges, the Knight Science Journalism Tracker's Paul Raeburn laid out three examples of passages from Science News articles that UPI reporters loosely rewrote and included in their own pieces. Raeburn contacted UPI's executive editor, John Hendel, seeking an explanation, and received the following response:
  Thanks for your note. We were unaware that the article in question was so close to the sciencenews.org item, which was credited as the source. After it was brought to our attention, we have rewritten the article, still with appropriate attribution to sciencenews.org. Please be assured there was no intention of not crediting another writer's work. Thanks again and regards'--Frustrated by Hendel's dismissive reply, Raeburn wrote back to say that merely rewriting the story was insufficient. He asked how often UPI's reporters relied on light paraphrasing of others' work, and what steps UPI was taking to prevent the practice. Indeed, Raeburn noted, Science News staffers had accused the wire service of similar piracy last year and received the same ''whoops-we-didn't-mean-to'' reply from Hendel.
  ''Our writers feel that what UPI is doing goes too far,'' Science News's managing editor, Matt Crenson, wrote in an email to Raeburn. ''These UPI stories often lift fairly long stretches (whole sentences, or nearly whole sentences) directly from Science News stories, which could be considered plagiarism.''
  In one of three examples of misappropriation that Raeburn cited, UPI did credit Science News, but Raeburn called the attribution inadequate, arguing that it did not ''excuse the UPI story's close paraphrase of the Science News story. If anything, it makes clear this was no coincidence.''
  Unfortunately, UPI appears to be unwilling to take responsibility for seems to be a systemic problem. In second post at the Tracker, Raeburn posted Hendel's reply to the follow-up email he'd sent. Wrote Hendel:
  I didn't recall that the earlier instance was from the same publication. When such instances are brought to our attention we respond as quickly as possible and appropriately. The more recent instance is from a different writer than the April 2011 article. As we do when such problems are pointed out to us, we have spoken with the writer to stress that that is not our practice and we strive to make it so such issues don't arise again. He has expressed remorse, which we believe is genuine.If we find there is a trend of continuing violations along this line (generally if they happen, they are found in the editing process), we sever relationships with that stringer.
  We do try very hard to avoid this and our writers are reminded often to appropriately attribute the source of the information, whether a journal, news release or another publication. It is an ongoing process for us to watch for this.
  So, basically, recurrent offenses from the same writer are a problem, but recurrent offenses from the wire service as a whole are not. Rejecting Hendel's explanation for a second time, Raeburn wrote:
  That's not enough. It is not enough to rewrite stories or to speak to the writer. Management has an obligation to review editorial practices from top to bottom, to institute tough new policies regarding plagiarism, and to apologize to news organizations from which it has borrowed copy. Science News articles are not press releases to be lightly rewritten by UPI reporters and passed off as original.He's absolutely right. Word-for-word paraphrasing is a form of plagiarism, and it's high time that editors and writers acknowledge that.
Ryan Heal Thyself
  Link to Article
  Source: Lame Cherry
  Fri, 17 Aug 2012 20:53
  Yes Paul Ryan likes Barack Obama's money.
  It is always rough to balance things.
  One represents Wisconsin in 2010, and votes against Obama stimulus money..........only to soon enough be writing love letters to Obama asking for Obama stimulus money to be wasted in Wisconsin over some Wisconsin Energy Reserve Corporation.
  Granted that was awhile back before Wall Street purchased the young cheesehead for Mitt Romney, but it does bring one to the certainty that being a whore for a state, most times clashes with being a 'fiscal conservative whore" or a Wall Street whore or a money whore 2012.
  Does not a True Conservative not take money from a nation in the Obama abyss as every million does count? Yet that did not seem to affect Congressman Ryan in his asking for money for something which put America into a greater debt for his 2040 balanced budget.
  Do you realize that most Americans from 2012 are going to be dead in 28 years before Ryan's plan would ever take effect?
  Mitt Romney is another person who seems when no one is watching to appear quite liberal from his early political life in running TO THE LEFT OF TEDDY KENNEDY, to his Romneycare, to his destroying Conservatives, making Mormon Jihad on Christians and decapitating the Republican party, that one begins to wonder if this is all sort of like Germans blindly cheering Hitler in no one heard what the devil he was saying, and were just cheering because every one else was busy yelling.
  Paul Ryan's voting record: Big-spending conservatism - Andrew ...3 days ago '' Paul Ryan rose to the top of the political ranks on his reputation as a conservative budget hawk. But his voting record shows him to be far from a ...Big spending conservative, that must be like British expired Obama and Legal immigrant Romney and ......people thinking the Romney Ryan ticket is going to be Ronald Reagan 1981.One Thing Romney and Obama Agree On: Big Government ...www.businessweek.com/.../one-thing-romney-and-obama-agree-on-...10 hours ago '' He is making matters worse, and he is spending our children into a ...Governor Mitt Romney smiles at a supportive crowd in Zanesville, Ohio ...Holding ones nose and voting for this is not going to change the leopard's spots. It is a certain that Mitt Romney will cut spending in areas of people not his cronies and just like Obama dump in money to Wall Street Insiders who are his patrons.If this follows suit, in being like George H. W. Bush, then America can look for some Savings and Loan collapse, but it will probably come from some thievery connected to the Wall Street Insider and Big Pharm. America has now had 4 years of George H. W. Bush tax and spend. 8 years of Bill Clinton tax and spend. 8 years of George W. Bush cut and spend, and now 4 years of Barack Obama loot and spend.That is 24 years of about 14 trillion dollars you owe and your entire protege will owe, and nothing in Mitt Romney nor Paul Ryan reveals anything but more cut and spend.
  America can not survive this, and for the record, the Ryan 2040 plan will probably have America bankrupt before it reaches it's end......but you see in all of these plans the way they "balance" things is to kill you off, replace you with Mexicans who pay into Social Security off of fake SS numbers and will never collect.
  America is nothing but a damned rationed death and slave trade state, as all of you peer out pretending you are free in the gulag as the holocaust ovens fire up.
  Mark Levin is going to wait and hold Romney's feet to the fire.......how about someone indicting Obama and firing Romney before he gets a chance to dance on the American grave in the Obama Abyss.
  agtG
Hillary Clinton Tells Valerie Jarrett '' NO THANKS
  Link to Article
  Source: The Ulsterman Report
  Fri, 17 Aug 2012 20:52
  New York Times bestelling author Ed Klein gives more recent details regarding Valerie Jarrett's power in deciding nearly every aspect of the Obama administration:
  EXCERPT:
  Klein, whose book is No. 2 on the NYT bestseller list, quoted unnamed sources who revealed that top Obama aide Valerie Jarrett put the vice presidency on the table during a lunch with the secretary of state. ''The lunch was ostensibly about policy issues, but the subject of the vice presidency came up,'' he said. ''Hillary told Valerie Jarrett that she was not interested in running as Obama's vice president.''
  Klein said she cited two reasons: If elected, she didn't want to be tied to Obama's left-leaning politics in her own 2016 bid. Second, if Obama loses, she would be tarred as a loser.
  New on Friday: Klein told Secrets that Bill Clinton is working fast to get a 2016 Hillary for President campaign up and going. His sources told him that Clinton is sniffing around for a major donor to offer up a jet for the potential candidate to use. Also, Klein said, Clinton is looking for somebody to take over the Clinton Global Initiative ''so that he can devote his full time to Hillary's campaign.''
  Klein has sources deep in the Clinton camp and he said that they said she is eager for a rest followed by a makeover. ''She clearly is exhausted. She needs to lose weight and get her energy back for a four-year slog.'' LINK
OBAMA: Obvious election-rigging scam of the week
  Link to Article
  Source: A diary of deception and distortion
  Fri, 17 Aug 2012 20:49
  Barry the Black Dude is going to release strategic oil supplies.
  Old US political adage: ''Nobody ever won an election with high prices at the pumps''.
  And to think that, four years ago, some folks thought President Obama would put a stop to naked Federal manipulation of the paper-tracker gold market.
  Oh how we who once were babes are now rendered tired.
  Like this:Be the first to like this.
Womanising sprinters at strip clubs, kinky foursomes and athletes begging for sex... Team GB member reveals the incredible sexploits that went on in the Olympic Village
  Link to Article
  Source: WT news feed
  Fri, 17 Aug 2012 17:08
  By Deborah Arthurs
  PUBLISHED:11:24 EST, 16 August 2012| UPDATED:14:01 EST, 16 August 2012
  The Olympic Games have drawn to a close, and the incredible spectacle will be remembered as one of the most successful events in British history.
  But as our triumphant athletes celebrate their record-breaking success and thousands international competitors head back to their respective countries, they will be taking with them more than just some exciting memories of their success in the Olympic stadium, pool or velodrome.
  According to one high profile member of Team GB, the Olympic Village was a hotbed (quite literally) of sexual activity, with athletes from every discipline and every nationality making the most of their time together.
  High jinks: Athletes have a lot of energy to expend once their events are over, as Robbie Grabarz demonstrates here by stripping off after winning bronze in the high jump (note: Grabarz's antics are limited to this photograph and he is otherwise unrelated to this story)
  The Games provides one of the few occasions in the sporting calendar where athletes of all disciplines intermingle - and with the training and competition heating up, testosterone levels are at an all-time high.
  The combination is a recipe for sexual heat, he says.
  Choosing to remain anonymous to protect his position within the world-class team, our Team GB member has spilled the beans on some of the antics that went on during the two weeks of the Olympic Games...
  'People often think that because you're an athlete you have to behave a certain way,' he says. 'And of course, when we are competing, we are very well behaved. But once our events are over, we need to let our hair down.
  'Within the village, teams from different countries are segregated in different parts. Everyone is walking past each other, meeting athletes from different countries.
  'They'll start off just swapping pin badges, or some kit. Then as the event progresses, you start visiting other people's dorms, exchanging Facebook or Twitter details and telephone numbers. It starts from there.'
  Seat of the action: The Olympic Village was home to 10,500 athletes this summer - many of which, says our anonymous Team GB member, made the most of their time to get up to steamy antics with fellow athletes
  He says that in the first week while athletes are preparing for their events, everyone is very focused.
  Then, athletes start getting knocked out in the heats, or their events are early '' meaning those athletes have a lot of free time - and a lot of excess energy to expend as well as beginning to get bored - and that's when things heat up.
  'In the second week, it starts getting more exciting,' he reports. 'That is when a fellow Team GB athlete and I arranged to meet a couple of Ukrainian athletes from the track and field team who wanted to have a night out in London.
  'I got us on the guest list at Mahiki, and the cocktails were flying. There was lots of dancing. I kissed one of the girls '' a pretty blonde field athlete with big blue eyes.
  'We invited them back to our dorms for some more fun, and ended up leaving at around 1am to go back to the Village.'
  The Team GB member says they were not supposed to take girls from other teams back to their dorms '' but that as long as the athletes had accreditation to get into the village, the security would usually turn a blind eye to girls being brought into men's accommodation '' especially if they were rewarded with pin badges or free kit.
  'We snuck the girls into our quarters after I ran upstairs to get the security guards some pins,' he says.
  The Team GB members had previously smuggled some contraband alcohol into their accommodation (alcohol was forbidden in the village, and no athlete indulged until they had finished competing): a bottle of blueberry Absolut vodka and a bottle of Disaronno '' which they opened and drank together.
  Just minutes after the four entered the Olympic accommodation, they found themselves entering into a very steamy situation.
  'My friend took one of the girls to the bedroom we shared, while I started kissing the other one in the sitting room. She had an amazing body, obviously, and she was hardly wearing any clothes '' just tiny hot pants and a small top.
  'Just a couple of minutes after we'd started kissing, she stripped off and stood there totally naked. .
  Racy: Hope Solo of the U.S. women's football team said in her experience many athletes 'get down and dirty' during the Olympic Games - even in the open air
  'She was asking me to get a condom and have sex with her. I told her she couldn't have me yet as I love to tease and be in control but she kept saying she wanted me.
  'Fiveminutes later the Ukrainian girl who had been with my friend came out of the bedroom '' she was wearing just a T-shirt and French knickers. Shelooked at us and said, ''don't worry about me, I'm just getting a drink.''
  'I thought I'dtest the water, so I said to the girl I was with that I would have sex with her if she had sex with her girlfriend first.
  'They seemed really keen, giggling and kissing each other. It was clear that one of them at least had done this before.
  'BeforeI knew it, they were kissing each other and I was kneeling on the floorbetween them. I don't need to give you the details, but let's just say Iwas having fun '' and so were they.'
  'My friend from Team GB was a bit nervous, but soon joined in kissing the girl I'd been with earlier.'
  Before long, all four of the athletes were engaged in sex acts in the communal sitting room in the athletes' dorm.
  What is even more surprising is that the athlete revealed that this sort of sex party was not a mere one-off.
  Indeed,a record 150,000 condoms (50,000 more than at the last Olympics) were made available to athletes who found they still have energy left after competing - that amounts to 15 each for the duration of the 17-day Games.
  According to Hope Solo, goalkeeper for the gold medal-winning American women's football team, they are muchneeded. 'There's lots of sex going on at the Olympics,' she remarked.
  Recalling the 2008 Beijing Games, sheadded: 'I've seen people having sex out in the open, getting down and dirty on grass between buildings.'
  'Youhave a lot of good-looking people wearing very little in the same place'' of course things will happen,' our Team GB man says, explaining that adisproportionate number of the athletes are single, thanks to their punishing intensive training programmes.
  'We're away on altitude training camps for five, six weeks at a time. It's almost impossible to hold down a relationship.'
  But even for the athletes with partners, it's very much a ''what happens on tour, stays on tour'' mentality, he reveals.
  'Youcould have slept with a different woman every other night of the Games if you wanted to. More if you had your own room, like some of the athletes did.
  'In fact, some of the more arrogant athletes would say they could have a woman from a different country every night of the Games.'
  Indeed, at Usain Bolt's after-party, held at London club Movida, the Team GB athlete and his friends were propositioned by two very attractive medal-winning Team USA swimmers.
  'They asked us to go back to their dorms for some fun, but we declined. We were with the Ukrainians and thought it would be rude to swap countries.'
  'Team USA was in general the flirtiest and most up for it,' he reveals. 'Then the Eastern Europeans - they're so laidback.'
  Meanwhile, at the same party, 100m and 200m champion sprinter Usain Bolt had to employ security to keep the swarms of girls away.
  Good company: Usain Bolt partied through the night after winning the Olympic 100m final last week - and the popular sprinter was joined by three members of the Swedish handball team
  'It was as if they were on heat,' the Team GB man says. 'Usain was DJing on the decks, and there were women everywhere throwing themselves at him.'
  Mentioning no names - and certainly not implicating Usain, whom he said was fending the women off, the team GB athlete revealed that sprinters have the reputation as being the biggest womanisers '' and are the most likely to find themselves with a different woman every night of the games.
  'The sprinters are the worst,' he says. 'Partly because they are well-known.
  'But they like to go to strip clubs. Personally, I think it's sad to waste £20 on a dance with a woman you can't touch.
  'Unless you're a high profile sprinter, being an Olympic athlete is not like other sports where you're a recognised face.
  'You can't use it to get girls. I'm not the best looking guy around, nor am I the worst '' but girls seem to like my accent. I find it opens doors, along with my ability to come across confident rather than arrogant - there is a fine line.
  'You have to talk to the girls, ask about them and what events they are competing in without talking too much about yourself.'
  'I prefer to chat to girls and have a seductive conversation. Being competitive I love to raise the bar in the conversation and find this way more satisfying than a lap dance with no happy ending.'
  Sprinters and happy endings aside, when it comes to the discipline whose athletes are most up for flirting and fun, our man insists it it the female swimmers who are the most up for it '' followed by the track and field athletes, he says.
  'The swimmers are all but naked in the pool all day, and the girls are staring at men in Speedos,' he said. 'It's no surprise they're up for it.
  'It's all the blue collar sports where the athletes are more likely to be up for a good time '' athletics, swimming, boxing. The kind of sports that anyone can get into.'
  The least likely to 'put out', he says, are those from the so-called 'upper class' sports '' namely equestrian and rowing: the sports dominated by wealthy people from private schools.
  Lovenest: The small shared dorms may not at first glance seem to make the most romantic location, but some athletes have revealed that the single beds saw plenty of action
  'They are the most reserved. Those girls will say that Mummy and Daddy say they aren't allowed out, that they have to be in bed early,' he says. 'You can waste hours talking to a rider or a rower '' she'll never come home with you.'
  His top tip? Find out what sport the girls do early on so you don't waste your time.
  'Competitors all have the same badge, marked 'athlete' '' so you have to ask early on to avoid wasting your time,' he says. 'Avoid anything horsey or rowers.'
  The Olympic beach volleyball teams were a popular attraction, with many male athletes (and in fact Prince Harry) attending the games at Horseguards Parade.
  But according to our man, it was more difficult to pick the volleyball girls out back at the Village.
  'One of my friends was talking to a Canadian single skulls rower for hours. I told him she was just being polite, but he thought she was really into him. I went over to test my theory, inviting her back to ours for a drinking game.
  'But she said she didn't drink, and that all the girls in her dorm had to be in bed by 9.30pm. He would never have got anywhere.'
  The Team GB member said much of his fun during the Games came courtesy of Illicitencounters.com (Britain's largest marital affairs dating website, with over 700,000 members). They offered athletes free membership during the Games '' and he took advantage.
  'Most members are married and looking for a fling,' he says. 'I'm single, but it suits me '' no strings attached. I had so many emails during the Games, it was incredible.'
  Now that it's all over, the Olympic Village antics will come to an end. But the athlete says many of the sportsmen and women who hooked up during the Games are still in touch.
  'That's the beauty of social networking,' he says. 'And when the Commonwealth Games comes around, the fun can start all over again.'
  TOP FIVE SEXIEST NATIONALITES AT THE OLYMPICS ACCORDING TO OUR MAN1. Ukraine
  2. USA
  3. Poland
  4. Greece
  5. Sweden
  MOST 'UP FOR IT' SPORTS, ACCORDING TO OUR TEAM GB MAN 1. Track Athletes
  2. Beach Volleyball
  3. Swimming
  4. Gymnasts
  5. Triathletes
Belgium shuts two nuclear reactors amid safety concerns
  Link to Article
  Source: WT news feed
  Fri, 17 Aug 2012 17:06
  Belgium has seven nuclear reactors at two plants, Doel and Tihange, owned by GDF Suez unit Electrabel. In 2009, atomic energy provided 55% of the country's electricity generation.
  In 2009, Belgium decided to keep its oldest nuclear reactors running for 10 years longer than planned in 2003, but this change never came into force as the government that decided the measure lost power.
  In 2011, the country's political parties reached a conditional agreement to shut down the three oldest reactors by 2015 and to abandon of nuclear energy by 2025. The agreement is conditional on finding enough energy from alternative sources to prevent shortages.
Podcasts apps make their way back to iTunes | Apple
  Link to Article
  Source: CNET News
  Fri, 17 Aug 2012 17:02
  The podcasts are back.
  (Credit:Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)Podcast applications have made their way back to iTunes.
  When users type "podcast" or "podcasts" into Apple's desktop iTunes application, they'll find a full listing of programs that allow users to subscribe and listen to audio and video podcasts.
  Apple's store surprised some searchers yesterday when only the iPhone maker's official Podcasts app was displayed after inputting those queries into the program. Upon searching for the same queries on theiPhone oriPad, all available apps were listed.
  It's not immediately clear when the podcasts apps listing was restored or what might have caused the omission of third-party search results.
  Apple launched its standalone app for podcasts back in June. The program allows users to both listen and subscribe to audio and video podcasts.
  Debate rages over the quality of Apple's Podcasts app. In a posting on the topic back in June, CNET writer Rick Broida offered up three apps that might do a better job handling user podcasts: Downcast, Instacast, and Stitcher Radio.
  CNET has contacted Apple for comment on the change. We will update this story when we have more information.
Florida Health Officials on Look Out For Bioattack Ahead of GOP Convention | Global Security Newswire
  Link to Article
  Source: Global Security Newswire Daily News
  Fri, 17 Aug 2012 17:01
  Medical practitioners in the Tampa, Fla., area have been asked to be "extra vigilant" as they forward information on disease incidents to public health officials ahead of this month's GOP convention, the Associated Press reported on Friday (see GSN, March 12).
  Any signs of a biological weapons attack that could involve such highly infectious disease agents as plague or smallpox are of interest to health authorities in advance of, amid and following the event, the Tampa Bay Times reported.
  Officials also want to be informed quickly of unexpected fatalities of people with no known medical issues, a major contagious disease with no obvious explanation and other health danger indicators.
  The Republican National Convention is to take place in Tampa from Aug. 27 through 30 and is to be attended by presumptive presidential nominee Mitt Romney and vice president pick Representative Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), among a host of others (Associated Press/Sacramento Bee, Aug. 17).
EXCLUSIVE: Troika to accuse Greeks of building secret survival fund
  Link to Article
  Source: A diary of deception and distortion
  Fri, 17 Aug 2012 16:59
  As the true extent of Greek ally France's short-term debt problems came to light, French sources today reported that the Troika will produce ''a damning report'' on Greek austerity and debt repayment progress'....alleging in particular that Athens is building a 'survival fund' to give it greater bargaining power. This muddies the waters still further in relation to the European tour of Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras next week: Berlin now looks to be in a stronger position than previously.
  Events make fools of us all. Last Saturday, The Slog nailed its colours to the mast of an inevitable German exit from the eurozone. I still think the odds are very much on that outcome, but one or two developments in the last 36 hours have moved things back into the realms of possibility for a Merkesch¤uble triumph against those odds. For the risk investor, these are the most significant ones helping Germany:
  1. As The Slog posted this morning, the ECB seems to have theoretically deeper pockets '' and France much bigger debts '' than many had previously assumed. These facts mean, respectively, that Athens is less able to play the damage limitation card, while France is a less valuable ally than Samaras had hoped. (It has been reported today that the Greek PM already has the support of Francois Hollande for his desire to relax the pace of German austerity and debt repayment).
  2. Berlin is (as predicted here) gathering media forces in an attempt to steamroller opposition. German newspaper Handelsblatt reminds Mario Draghi that, under the Lisbon Treaty, the ECB lost its independence: Article 13 of the consolidated treaty (p. 23), states that the Central Bank, along with the other institutions, ''shall aim to promote its [the Union's] values, advance its objectives, and serve its interests''. In short, the ECB is subservient to Berlin-am-Brusssels. Der Spiegel meanwhile headlines with 'Greece Before the Abyss - Only Bankruptcy Can Help Now', adding pompously, 'Greece has disappointed its creditors yet again. Now its government plans to ask for more time '-- and needs billions more in aid. But Greece's euro-zone partners are unwilling to provide any more help, meaning that the only hope now is to admit defeat and let the country make a fresh start'.
  3. Leaks from both the Greek tax authorities and the Troika suggest that the Greek tax intake figures are truly dire. Hardly surprising, but a severe weakening of the Athens position.
  4. Sources close to the Troika are meanwhile suggesting that its September report will accuse Greece again of dragging its feet on asset sales, failing to clamp down on massive tax evasion, and deliberately pursuing policies to benefit itself rather than the creditors.
  This is the point at which we segue into those factors building in favour of the Samaras bargaining position:
  5. As per 4 above, there are signs (and feedback) suggesting that the Athens government is indeed ahead on some of its spend-cutting programmes. Sources there are certain that the Greeks are building a budget bypassing the Troika '' thus giving the country an emergency fund to live on if things go badly wrong next week.
  6. Samaras is carrying with him a compelling dossier of some social and economic consequences of the austerity programme as it stands. These, he will suggest, are more than enough to save face for both the Troika in general and Merkel herself were they to accept a slowing of austerity and lengthening of payback period.
  7. As The Slog has been insisting for weeks now, the pressing geopolitical needs of the US and Israel offer a clear alternative future for Athens to the EU'....one which would be avowedly anti-Turk. Perhaps even more persuasive is the by now very clear evidence that Greece is sitting on massive undersea energy reserves: these could be crucial for a eurozone desperate to reduce its dependence on Russia as a source'...and a major boost to the commercial interests of Israel and the US.
  My own view remains that the pendulum will swing back again, but much now depends on the timescale of that taking place. To explain, I believe that the situations in Spain and Italy will be telling if they each a crisis point during next week '' something I see (along with many credit sector contacts) as a probability. The potential cost of a Greek departure, when added to the de facto bailout of Spain, will bring a furore of alarm from Bankfurt, fear from the German electorate, anger from Paris, panic in the markets'....and horror to Mario Draghi.
  Put together, that combo will, I believe, force Merkel to uncock her gun. And having done so, Berlin will have no choice but to switch to Plan B '' departure from the eurozone. I think it likely that the markets will be the decisive factor as usual: but what of Draghi's ECB itself '' which, according to our indiscreet official of yesterday, could in theory absorb far more debt than most people realise?
  Stay tuned. This one is finely balanced.
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Differentiate '' or die - FT.com
  Link to Article
  Source: Tyler Br&Atilde;&raquo;l&Atilde;&copy; - Financial Times
  Fri, 17 Aug 2012 16:57
  Magazines should focus on what their most loyal customers are looking for '' something new to read
  Late last week there was much in the US media about the sorry state of print media '' magazines were the focus rather than newspapers, as the latter have already been dismissed by a certain type of commentator as irrelevant and doomed. Depending on where you read the story, it was a lot of nuts and bolts reporting with double-digit figures, negative signs and percentage symbols and very little analysis. While the odd title trotted out the same played-out excuses we've been hearing for the better part of a decade now, no one addressed the core issue that's at the heart of print's decline in many markets '' yes, it's a ''d'' word and no, it's not ''digital''.
  As many publishers shift resources to tablet editions (I'm still waiting to see a sustainable advertising model for this format) and developing Twitter teams to push traffic to their core brand (a tremendous waste of money at the expense of real journalism and a terrific way to actually divert people from your core product), the real issue facing publishers is ''differentiation''.
  Spend a bit of time at a US newsstand and it's clear that the crisis in the magazine industry isn't so much about plastering covers with hash-tags, the problem is that everything feels and looks alarmingly the same '' the cover stock is identical across a variety of magazines, the varnishes too.
  Open up any US consumer magazines and you're likely to find the paper is similar, the style of photography (lighting, composition, crop) is the same and the layout is dull and unchallenging. Even the subjects of the news weeklies are starting to look alike '' chief executives over 55 with a look of surprise that gives the impression that they've just seen a shocking round of quarterly results, when in fact they've just been overdoing it on the eye-lifts and Botox shots to the brow.
  Indeed, every sector of the newsstand has its same-y cast of undifferentiated characters '' the reality star with his or her arse falling out of nasty sweats as they push a shopping trolley in a celebrity weekly; the resurrected 1990s TV star with her new volleyball boobs snapped on a beach in Mexico for a beauty title; the political candidate in his ill-fitting suit and shellacked hair surrounded by aides wearing jumbo chinos and bad shoes in any news weekly; and the female TV host in a shift dress and bare arms in a fashion monthly (why do women in TV news insist on bare arms? Studios are not all that hot and they don't all have the best biceps).
  In this competitive world one might think that the whizz kids coming out of business schools would be, whether arriving at multinationals or launching their own start-ups, wanting to produce something new and different from what's gone before but, curiously, it's rather the opposite.
  Because of the dread word ''efficiency'' (cheaper for everyone to use the same suppliers at the expense of being unique), we've come to a point in our popular and consumer culture where uniformity isn't just stifling innovation, it's also making consumers number and dumber. When everything becomes so flattened-out, perma-pressed and rounded at the edges, all sense of aspiration is lost '' even the oddly flat medals podia at the Olympics tried to make everyone a winner, offering little vertical differentiation between gold and bronze.
  Just as magazines in the US (and many other markets) try to figure out where the problems are in the media landscape while failing to innovate with their core products, so a peek at other sagging sectors reveals a similar story. This week saw a host of airlines around the world issue dreadful results. Again, lack of innovation is at the heart of the problem. Uncreative chief executives will argue that there's not a lot you can do with an aluminium/steel/carbon-fibre tube when fuel prices are high, unions are prickly and no one knows whether the Schmidts from Mannheim or the Bengtssons from Gothenburg are going to take a sunny vacation this Christmas.
  Bullshit! The problem with airlines is that they all rely on the same tired ideas that are clearly not working. Their marketing managers will claim there's no brand loyalty and consumers are promiscuous based on price, but wasn't it ever thus? Show me an airline '' or any company '' with a strong point of view, solid product, good customer service and great branding and I'll show you a queue of passengers stretching around the planet ready to fly and willing to pay a sensible premium for a dignified, punctual, safe and serene experience. Unfortunately, we're mostly left with hotels using the same designers; we're welcomed into grocery stores so intent on trying to look like everyone else and match the competition on price that they lack distinction; and in the land of print media we have newsstands around the world that feel they need to be in the food and beverage business rather than focusing on what their most loyal customers are looking for '' something new to read.
  Tyler Br>>l(C) is editor-in-chief of Monocle magazine
  tyler.brule@ft.com
  More columns atwww.ft.com/brule
  Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2012. You may share using our article tools.Please don't cut articles from FT.com and redistribute by email or post to the web.
Patty volgende slachtoffer Sterren Springen - Priv(C)
  Link to Article
  Source: Telegraaf.nl - prive
  Fri, 17 Aug 2012 16:56
  AMSTERDAM - Na Emile Ratelband, Ralf Mackenbach en Jody Bernal is nu ook Patty Brard gewond geraakt bij trainingen van het nieuwe SBS-programma Sterren Springen.
  "Knie verdraaid, wervels in mijn nek verschoven, stuk van mijn tand af? We gaan lekker", twitterde Patty vrijdag.
  Ondanks haar verwondingen blijft Brard deelnemen aan de schoonspringshow van SBS. "Het is nu eenmaal het risico van het vak. Als Patty ergens voor gaat, gaat ze er vol voor," vertelt Patty's manager na het ongeluk.
  "Ik weet alleen dat ze nu in de stoel ligt bij haar tandarts. Het stukje tand dat is afgebroken, wordt er weer terug opgezet," aldus de manager.
  Ralf Mackenbach hield een hoofdwond over na een kunstje van de duikplank en Jody Bernal liep na een salto een hersenschudding op. Emile Ratelband belandde al in het ziekenhuis na een ongelukkige sprong. Hij kneusde zijn arm en verrekte zijn triceps.
  Proefabonnement, 10 weken '‚¬ 30,-!
Sale of London fire engine fleet to equity firm for £2 sparks safety row | UK news
  Link to Article
  Source: The Guardian World News
  Fri, 17 Aug 2012 16:54
  London's fire engine fleet has been sold to the private-equity firm AB&A Investments for £2, it has been revealed. Photograph: Joshua Roberts/AFP/Getty Images
  The Fire Brigades Union has warned that public safety is being put at risk by the privatisation of public services after it emerged that the owner of London and Lincoln's fire engines had sold its UK fleet for £2.
  AssetCo said it had sold its UK fire-engine leasing and maintenance business because the contracts were "based on a flawed business and financial structure". The business owns the leasing and maintenance contracts for the two fire authorities and has been sold to the private-equity firm AB&A Investments. AssetCo said the business made a loss of £16.5m in the 18 months to 30 September 2011 on a turnover of £33.5m.
  "The board and senior management are now able to focus on creating shareholder value through the company's restructured business model, positioning AssetCo as a provider of outsourced fire and rescue operations," the firm said, adding that it operates a, referring to its contract in the United Arab Emirates where it also provides training for staff, alongside fire engines and maintenance. It said it was "pursuing further opportunities in the Middle East".
  AssetCo was established in 2001 after winning a 20-year private finance initiative contract from the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority that included owning and managing vehicles.
  The assistant general secretary to the FBU, Andy Dark, warned, however, that "national resilience and public safety" were at risk. He added: "These are public assets over which the London fire brigade and the elected politicians have no control. They must be brought back into public ownership under direct local authority control."
  Dark said the "carving up" of emergency services had to end. "The fire service is made up of the firefighters and the fire engines which carry the kit. The London fire brigade doesn't own the fire engines or the kit and has no ability to stop the assets being sold on from firm to firm."
  The commissioner of the London Fire Brigade, Ron Dobson, said there would be no negative impact on public safety. "The sale of AssetCo's UK interests has no effect whatsoever on the London fire brigade or its fire engines, which continue to be maintained and available as usual.
  I have met with the new owners of AssetCo London, AB&A Investments Limited, and received every assurance that it is committed to maintaining and improving the service the London fire brigade receives."Unite's assistant general secretary, Gail Cartmail, said the deal evoked parallels with the G4S Olympic security contract and the dangers of privatising public services. Unite has members in the ambulance and police services. "It should serve as a lesson on why the government should halt the privatisation of some of the country's key public assets.
  "Fire engines, which should be in public hands, are now in the hands of private equity.
  Now even core parts of the police force, including crime investigation are up for grabs. We need a fully accountable public sector which puts people first not the search for ever greater profits."
Metrics, metrics everywhere: How do we measure the impact of journalism? >> Nieman Journalism Lab
  Link to Article
  Source: Nieman Journalism Lab
  Fri, 17 Aug 2012 16:50
  If democracy would be poorer without journalism, then journalism must have some effect. Can we measure those effects in some way? While most news organizations already watch the numbers that translate into money (such as audience size and pageviews), the profession is just beginning to consider metrics for the real value of its work.
  That's why the recent announcement of a Knight-Mozilla Fellowship at The New York Times on ''finding the right metric for news'' is an exciting moment. A major newsroom is publicly asking the question: How do we measure the impact of our work? Not the economic value, but the democratic value. The Times' Aaron Pilhofer writes:
  The metrics newsrooms have traditionally used tended to be fairly imprecise: Did a law change? Did the bad guy go to jail? Were dangers revealed? Were lives saved? Or least significant of all, did it win an award?
  But the math changes in the digital environment. We are awash in metrics, and we have the ability to engage with readers at scale in ways that would have been impossible (or impossibly expensive) in an analog world.
  The problem now is figuring out which data to pay attention to and which to ignore.
  Evaluating the impact of journalism is a maddeningly difficult task. To begin with, there's no single definition of what journalism is. It's also very hard to track what happens to a story once it is released into the wild, and even harder to know for sure if any particular change was really caused by that story. It may not even be possible to find a quantifiable something to count, because each story might be its own special case. But it's almost certainly possible to do better than nothing.
  The idea of tracking the effects of journalism is old, beginning in discussions of the newly professionalized press in the early 20th century and flowering in the ''agenda-setting'' research of the 1970s. What is new is the possibility of cheap, widespread, data-driven analysis down to the level of the individual user and story, and the idea of using this data for managing a newsroom. The challenge, as Pilhofer put it so well, is figuring out which data, and how a newsroom could use that data in a meaningful way.
  What are we trying to measure and why?Metrics are powerful tools for insight and decision-making. But they are not ends in themselves because they will never exactly represent what is important. That's why the first step in choosing metrics is to articulate what you want to measure, regardless of whether or not there's an easy way to measure it. Choosing metrics poorly, or misunderstanding their limitations, can make things worse. Metrics are just proxies for our real goals '-- sometimes quite poor proxies.
  An analytics product such as Chartbeat produces reams of data: pageviews, unique users, and more. News organizations reliant on advertising or user subscriptions must pay attention to these numbers because they're tied to revenue '-- but it's less clear how they might be relevant editorially.
  Consider pageviews. That single number is a combination of many causes and effects: promotional success, headline clickability, viral spread, audience demand for the information, and finally, the number of people who might be slightly better informed after viewing a story. Each of these components might be used to make better editorial choices '-- such as increasing promotion of an important story, choosing what to report on next, or evaluating whether a story really changed anything. But it can be hard to disentangle the factors. The number of times a story is viewed is a complex, mixed signal.
  It's also possible to try to get at impact through ''engagement'' metrics, perhaps derived from social media data such as the number of times a story is shared. Josh Stearns has a good summary of recent reports on measuring engagement. But though it's certainly related, engagement isn't the same as impact. Again, the question comes down to: Why would we want to see this number increase? What would it say about the ultimate effects of your journalism on the world?
  As a profession, journalism rarely considers its impact directly. There's a good recent exception: a series of public media ''impact summits'' held in 2010, which identified five key needs for journalistic impact measurement. The last of these needs nails the problem with almost all existing analytics tools:
  While many Summit attendees are using commercial tools and services to track reach, engagement and relevance, the usefulness of these tools in this arena is limited by their focus on delivering audiences to advertisers. Public interest media makers want to know how users are applying news and information in their personal and civic lives, not just whether they're purchasing something as a result of exposure to a product.
  Or as Ethan Zuckerman puts it in his own smart post on metrics and civic impact, ''measuring how many people read a story is something any web administrator should be able to do. Audience doesn't necessarily equal impact.'' Not only that, but it might not always be the case that a larger audience is better. For some stories, getting them in front of particular people at particular times might be more important.
  Measuring audience knowledgePre-Internet, there was usually no way to know what happened to a story after it was published, and the question seems to have been mostly ignored for a very long time. Asking about impact gets us to the idea that the journalistic task might not be complete until a story changes something in the thoughts or actions of the user.
  If journalism is supposed to inform, then one simple impact metric would ask: Does the audience know the things that are in this story? This is an answerable question. A survey during the 2010 U.S. mid-term elections showed that a large fraction of voters were misinformed about basic issues, such as expert consensus on climate change or the predicted costs of the recently passed healthcare bill. Though coverage of the study focused on the fact that Fox News viewers scored worse than others, that missed the point: No news source came out particularly well.
  In one of the most limited, narrow senses of what journalism is supposed to do '-- inform voters about key election issues '-- American journalism failed in 2010. Or perhaps it actually did better than in 2008 '-- without comparable metrics, we'll never know.
  While newsrooms typically see themselves in the business of story creation, an organization committed to informing, not just publishing, would have to operate somewhat differently. Having an audience means having the ability to direct attention, and an editor might choose to continue to direct attention to something important even it's ''old news''; if someone doesn't know it, it's still new news to them. Journalists will also have to understand how and when people change their beliefs, because information doesn't necessarily change minds.
  I'm not arguing that every news organization should get into the business of monitoring the state of public knowledge. This is only one of many possible ways to define impact; it might only make sense for certain stories, and to do it routinely we'd need good and cheap substitutes for large public surveys. But I find it instructive to work through what would be required. The point is to define journalistic success based on what the user does, not the publisher.
  Other fields have impact metrics tooMeasuring impact is hard. The ultimate effects on belief and action will mostly be invisible to the newsroom, and so tangled in the web of society that it will be impossible to say for sure that it was journalism that caused any particular effect. But neither is the situation hopeless, because we really can learn things from the numbers we can get. Several other fields have been grappling with the tricky problems of diverse, indirect, not-necessarily-quantifiable impact for quite some time.
  Academics wish to know the effect of their publications, just as journalists do, and the academic publishing field has long had metrics such citation count and journal impact factor. But the Internet has upset the traditional scheme of things, leading to attempts to formulate wider ranging, web-inclusive measures of impact such as Altmetrics or the article-level metrics of the Public Library of Science. Both combine a variety of data, including social media.
  Social science researchers are interested not only in the academic influence of their work, but its effects on policy and practice. They face many of the same difficulties as journalists do in evaluating their work: unobservable effects, long timelines, complicated causality. Helpfully, lots of smart people have been working on the problem of understanding when social research changes social reality. Recent work includes the payback framework which looks at benefits from every stage in the lifecycle of research, from intangibles such as increasing the human store of knowledge, to concrete changes in what users do after they've been informed.
  NGOs and philanthropic organizations of all types also use effectiveness metrics, from soup kitchens to international aid. A research project at Stanford University is looking at the use and diversity of metrics in this sector. We are also seeing new types of ventures designed to produce both social change and financial return, such as social impact bonds. The payout on a social impact bond is contractually tied to an impact metric, sometimes measured as a ''social return on investment.''
  Data beyond numbersCounting the countable because the countable can be easily counted renders impact illegitimate.
  - John Brewer, ''The impact of impact''
  Numbers are helpful because they allow standard comparisons and comparative experiments. (Did writing that explainer increase the demand for the spot stories? Did investigating how the zoning issue is tied to developer profits spark a social media conversation?) Numbers can be also compared at different times, which gives us a way to tell if we're doing better or worse than before, and by how much. Dividing impact by cost gives measures of efficiency, which can lead to better use of journalistic resources.
  But not everything can be counted. Some events are just too rare to provide reliable comparisons '-- how many times last month did your newsroom get a corrupt official fired? Some effects are maddeningly hard to pin down, such as ''increased awareness'' or ''political pressure.'' And very often, attributing cause is hopeless. Did a company change its tune because of an informed and vocal public, or did an internal report influence key decision makers?
  Fortunately, not all data is numbers. Do you think that story contributed to better legislation? Write a note explaining why! Did you get a flood of positive comments on a particular article? Save them! Not every effect needs to be expressed in numbers, and a variety of fields are coming to the conclusion that narrative descriptions are equally valuable. This is still data, but it's qualitative (stories) instead of quantitative (numbers). It includes comments, reactions, repercussions, later developments on the story, unique events, related interviews, and many other things that are potentially significant but not easily categorizable. The important thing is to collect this information reliably and systematically, or you won't be able to make comparisons in the future. (My fellow geeks may here be interested in the various flavors of qualitative data analysis.)
  Qualitative data is particularly important when you're not quite sure what you should be looking for. With the right kind, you can start to look for the patterns that might tell you what you should be counting,
  Metrics for better journalismCan the use of metrics make journalism better? If we can find metrics that show us when ''better'' happens, then yes, almost by definition. But in truth we know almost nothing about how to do this.
  The first challenge may be a shift in thinking, as measuring the effect of journalism is a radical idea. The dominant professional ethos has often been uncomfortable with the idea of having any effect at all, fearing ''advocacy'' or ''activism.'' While it's sometimes relevant to ask about the political choices in an act of journalism, the idea of complete neutrality is a blatant contradiction if journalism is important to democracy. Then there is the assumption, long invisible, that news organizations have done their job when a story is published. That stops far short of the user, and confuses output with effect.
  The practical challenges are equally daunting. Some data, like web analytics, is easy to collect but doesn't necessarily coincide with what a news organization ultimately values. And some things can't really be counted. But they can still be considered. Ideally, a newsroom would have an integrated database connecting each story to both quantitative and qualitative indicators of impact: notes on what happened after the story was published, plus automatically collected analytics, comments, inbound links, social media discussion, and other reactions. With that sort of extensive data set, we stand a chance of figuring out not only what the journalism did, but how best to evaluate it in the future. But nothing so elaborate is necessary to get started. Every newsroom has some sort of content analytics, and qualitative effects can be tracked with nothing more than notes in a spreadsheet.
  Most importantly, we need to keep asking: Why are we doing this? Sometimes, as I pass someone on the street, I ask myself if the work I am doing will ever have any effect on their life '-- and if so, what? It's impossible to evaluate impact if you don't know what you want to accomplish.
Scripting News: Stupid Corporate Tricks
  Link to Article
  Source: Dave Winer's linkblog feed
  Fri, 17 Aug 2012 16:48
  Some days the web feels like a version of Letterman's Stupid Pet Tricks, except with corporations. Today is one of those days. Seth Godin has a takedown of Progressive Insurance, which keeps rates low by not actually selling insurance. We had all heard the story about the woman who was killed in an auto accident, covered by Progressive for, among other things, accidents caused by an uninsured or underinsured driver. Progressive, trying to avoid paying her family, actually defended the other guy, against their own customer! That part of the story is not new. But Godin dug up the company'sexcuses, which are terrible admissions of corporate malpractice hidden among confusing legalese. Makes me wish there were a corporate death penalty so we could impose it on Progressive. Speaking of Mitt Romney, do you believe his chutzpah! He says he's never paid less than 13 percent. Wow. I wonder if they tested that with focus groups. Here's a clue to Mitt. That's a lot less than middle class people pay. My grandfather, whose life was saved by the United States, taught his grandchildren that it was a privilege to pay taxes. He wasn't a softie, but he was glad to be alive, and I don't think he ever forgot the role this country played in that. Romney appears to feel a sense of entitlement, no gratitude to the country, and no kinship with other Americans. Someone should ask Romney if he believes in the great Kennedy exhortation -- Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country. If so, please tell us Mr. Romney, what have you done for your country lately? How he could fix this. 1. Release the tax returns. 2. Apologize. 3. Write a check to the US Treasury for the difference between what he paid and what he should have paid. Of course he would be appearing to buy the Presidency. We can tell how much it hurts Romney to part with a dollar, so we could at least see how much he wants to lead the country. I suspect that isn't what being President means to him. I suspect it's just a way to lower his tax rate even more. But let's see what he's made of. Finally in the Stupid Corporate Tricks department today there's Twitter. I'm not surprised by what they did yesterday. I saw it coming, and I told you all to be prepared. What I didn't anticipate is how crudely it would be done, and how much confusion would ensue among users who are paying attention. Bottom-line: Twitter is selling their channel to advertisers. They need to prove to them that they have control of how their messages will be seen. I don't think any of what they're doing is stupid or evil or misguided. However, it might not work. It might not turn out to be the big value in what they've built at Twitter. But it certainly is one theory. The good news is that as Twitter focuses, and pulls back, and makes their product smaller -- this will create space for new things to blossom and possibly flourish. So it's a good time to be thinking about and doing new things. I don't think a re-hash of Twitter is the next big thing. Twitter was new in 2006. It's time for new online services and tools that draw inspiration from things like Twitter and Facebook, but if the past is a guide they will not do what the earlier products did. Follow @davewiner
'Mooi weer voor kettingrukkers' - Binnenland
  Link to Article
  Source: VK: Home
  Fri, 17 Aug 2012 12:41
  Bewerkt door: Redactie ''17/08/12, 13:57 '' bron: Omroep West, ANP
  (C) Thinkstock.
  UPDATEDe politie in Den Haag waarschuwt vandaag voor 'kettingrukkers' die waarschijnlijk extra actief zijn door het mooie weer. Alleen al op donderdag kwamen drie meldingen binnen, meldde de politie.
  De rovers hebben het voorzien op gouden kettingen. Ze rukken die vaak onverhoeds van de hals van het slachtoffer. In korte tijd werden donderdag twee vrouwen en een man in Den Haag op die manier beroofd. Agenten wisten (C)(C)n vermoedelijke kettingrukker te arresteren.
  VerdachteEen 20-jarige man uit Den Haag wordt verdach. Het 41-jarige slachtoffer werd besloten van zijn gouden ketting. De dief sloeg rond 16.30 uur toe op de Kempstraat, meldt Omroep West.
  Man in rostoel bestolenEerder deze week werd zelfs een man in een rolstoel bestolen. De politie vraagt getuigen van de straatroven zich te melden.
  Volgens een woordvoerder is het kettingrukken een terugkerend verschijnsel met mooi weer. Waarschijnlijk omdat de sieraden dan beter zichtbaar zijn.
Wilders: 'Badr Hari na veroordeling land uit' - Binnenland
  Link to Article
  Source: VK: Home
  Fri, 17 Aug 2012 12:27
  Door: Sanne Riepema ''17/08/12, 13:58 '' bron: Twitter
  (C) epa.
  Geert Wilders laat op Twitter van zich horen over de zaak Badr Hari. Hij pleit ervoor dat als kickbokser Badr wordt veroordeeld, zijn Nederlandse nationaliteit wordt afgepakt. Ook laat hij weten dat als Badr zijn straf heeft uitgezeten dat hij direct het vliegtuig naar Marokko moet pakken.
  'Als Badr Hari wordt veroordeeld voor geweld: Nederlandse nationaliteit afpakken en na uitzitten straf linea recta op vliegtuig naar Marokko', zo luidt de gewaagde tweet van Wilders.
  Badr Hari is een Marokkaans-Nederlands kickbokser en geboren in Amsterdam. Gisteren maakte het Openbaar Ministerie bekend dat de kickbokser inmiddels is verdacht van zes mishandelingen.
De Jager blij dat Roemer zijn mening heeft herzien - Schuldencrisis
  Link to Article
  Source: VK: Home
  Fri, 17 Aug 2012 12:27
  Bewerkt door: Redactie ''17/08/12, 13:57 '' bron: ANP
  (C) anp. Demissionair minister van Financien Jan Kees de Jager wordt bij aankomst op het Binnenhof voor de eerste ministerraad na het zomerreces ge¯nterviewd
  Minister Jan Kees de Jager (Financin) vindt het 'een goede zaak' dat SP-leider Emile Roemer zijn mening heeft herzien over het betalen van een Europese boete na het overschrijden van de strenge begrotingsregels.
  Dat zei De Jager vrijdag na afloop van de eerste ministerraad na de zomervakantie. De minister wees erop dat Nederland, welke kleur een regering ook had, altijd een land is geweest van solide overheidsfinancin.
  'Het is belangrijk dat hij zijn gedachten herzien heeft', aldus De Jager. Roemer liet donderdag in een interview met het FD weten dat hij een eventuele Europese boete als het Nederlandse begrotingstekort hoger uitvalt dan 3 procent niet zal betalen. 'Over my dead body', aldus Roemer, die het belachelijk vindt dat er strikt naar een norm wordt gekeken en niet naar de economische omstandigheden.
  In het tv-programma Nieuwsuur nam Roemer donderdagavond de woorden niet terug, maar ondanks aandringen herhaalde hij ze evenmin. De Jager heeft daaruit geconcludeerd dat Roemer zijn mening heeft aangepast, en hij juicht dat toe. De financile markten hadden volgens de minister ook al een reactie laten zien op de woorden van de SP-leider.
Jack Kennedy meets with Jesse Jackson, Jr.
  Link to Article
  Source: TheBlaze.com - Blog
  Fri, 17 Aug 2012 12:18
  For more than a month Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. (D-Ill.) has been seeking treatment for what his wife Sandi called a ''completely debilitat[ing]'' depression. Reports now say Jackson has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder.
  Former Rep. Jack Kennedy visited Jackson at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. yesterday. ''I don't think people understand the depth of his depression,'' Kennedy told the AP. ''It's deep. He has a lot of work to continue to do to be able to learn how to treat this illness in the most effective way possible. Depression is a serious thing, and I'm glad that he's taking it seriously.''
  And there's the photo AP snapped of Kennedy meeting with Jackson, who looks thinner and unkempt. Not good.
  [AP]
Real-life Walter White sought on meth charge
  Link to Article
  Source: DaDenMan news feed
  Fri, 17 Aug 2012 12:17
  TUSCALOOSA, Ala. (AP) -- A man who shares the same name with television's most noted meth dealer is wanted by authorities in Alabama for allegedly violating his probation for a past meth conviction.
  The Tuscaloosa News reported Thursday (http://bit.ly/MB9TQi ) that 55-year-old Walter White was placed on probation after a 2008 conviction for making methamphetamine. The Tuscaloosa County Sheriff's Office recently placed White on its most-wanted list after his arrest on similar charges in Bibb County this year.
  On TV, Walter White has so far evaded capture. The character played by Bryan Cranston in AMC's "Breaking Bad" is a high school chemistry teacher who turns to cooking meth to help support his family after he's diagnosed with terminal lung cancer.
  The show is in its fifth and final season. Cranston has won three consecutive Emmys
BBC News - Ayn Rand: Why is she so popular?
  Link to Article
  Source: @adamcurry - Twitter Search
  Fri, 17 Aug 2012 12:13
  17 August 2012Last updated at 05:51 ET By Tom GeogheganBBC News MagazineA Russian-American writer who died 30 years ago is still selling hundreds of thousands of books a year, and this week one of her former devotees, Paul Ryan, became Mitt Romney's running mate in the US presidential election. So why is Ayn Rand and her most famous work, Atlas Shrugged, so popular?
  It's 1,200 pages long and was panned by critics when it was published 55 years ago.
  Yet few novels have had an impact as enduring as Atlas Shrugged, a dystopian allegory in which captains of industry struggle against stifling regulations and an over-reaching government and one by one close down production, bringing the world economy to its knees.
  Rand's philosophy, which she called objectivism, tapped directly into the American ideals of freedom, hard work and individualism. In novels like Atlas Shrugged, and her non-fiction like The Virtues of Selfishness, Rand argued for the removal of any religious or political controls that hindered the pursuit of self-interest.
  Continue reading the main storyFrom Russia with love Born Alisa Rosenbaum in St Petersburg in 1905 Falls in love with New York long before she arrived there in 1926 Chance encounter with Cecil B DeMille in Hollywood leads to a part in his film Marries actor Frank O'Connor in 1929 Becomes a bestselling author, thanks to The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged Begins long affair with devotee Nathaniel Branden, her friend Barbara's husband O'Connor, who consented but was said to be devastated, dies in 1979, three years before Rand As she explained in a 1959 television interview: "I am primarily the creator of a new cult of morality which has so far been believed impossible - namely, a morality not based on faith, not on emotion, not on arbitrary edicts, mystical or social, but on reason."
  She believed, she added, that man's "highest moral purpose is the achievement of his own happiness, and that he must not force other people, nor accept their right to force him, that each man must live as an end in himself and follow his own rational self-interest."
  Atlas Shrugged is her magnum opus, set in an undated American future, although it is reminiscent of the 1950s. The strike by millionaire tycoons is orchestrated by the Christ-like figure of John Galt, who towards the end of the novel makes a 60-page speech that took Rand two years to write.
  Her voice and ideas are clearly present in the noble characters of Galt, railway heiress Dagny Taggart, copper magnate Francisco d'Anconia and steel tycoon Hank Rearden.
  This quartet are idealised figures, capitalist high-fliers who must defeat Rand's "looter" enemies - unions, lobbyists, government officials and any supporters of altruism and welfare.
  Continue reading the main storyCharactersKey quotes Mystery surrounds the identity of John Galt, who persuades the greatest minds in business, music and science to withdraw to a mountain hideaway.
  "I swear - by my life and my love of it - that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine."
  The novel's chief protagonist is Dagny Taggart, vice-president of Taggart Continental railroad company, who has an unwavering commitment to her work. She also has complete sexual freedom, having affairs with Galt, Rearden and D'Anconia.
  "Francisco, what's the most depraved human being?"
  (He answers:) "The man without a purpose."
  Hank Rearden is a steel magnate who finds his ability to produce is continually limited by over-regulating lawmakers who seize the property of capitalists in order to redistribute the country's wealth. Rearden's struggle, clearly articulated when he appears in court, illustrates the over-reaching of government and the dangers of altruism.
  "I work for nothing but my own profit, which I make by selling a product they need to men who are willing and able to buy it. I do not produce it for their benefit at the expense of mine, and they do not buy it for my benefit... we deal as equals by mutual consent to mutual advantage - and I am proud of every penny I have earned in this matter."
  Francisco d'Anconia is a childhood friend and first love of Dagny's, also an heir to the world's biggest copper company. But he deliberately runs down his company to keep it out of state hands.
  "There's nothing of any importance in life - except how well you do your work. Nothing. Only that. Whatever else you are, will come from that. It's the only measure of human value."
  Continue reading the main storyRand herself saw this struggle play out in the most traumatic way.
  Born into a Jewish family called Rosenbaum in St Petersburg, she was just 12 when she witnessed her father's pharmacy being seized by the Bolsheviks.
  Continue reading the main storyDon Draper's reading listAyn Rand has become shorthand in popular culture for "ruthless selfishness, intellectual precocity, or both", says historian Jennifer Burns in her Rand biography Goddess of the Market.
  In Mad Men, Bertram Cooper, senior partner at ad agency Sterling Cooper, is an avowed Ayn Rand fan. While giving his protege Don Draper a hefty bonus, he encourages him to read Atlas Shrugged. "Take $1.99 out of that $2,500 and buy yourself a copy."
  In Dirty Dancing, womanising waiter Robbie urges Baby to read The Fountainhead as she confronts him about getting dancer Penny pregnant. "Some people count and some people don't," he shrugs.
  "Ooo, The Fountainhead!" coos Marge appreciatively in The Simpsons. "Mom! Isn't that book the bible of right-wing losers?" chides daughter Lisa.
  A previous Simpsons episode saw Maggie placed at the Ayn Rand School for Tots, where "A means A".
  "Many scenes from Atlas Shrugged are transmuted and re-enacted scenes from Rand's childhood," says biographer Anne Heller. "When the government comes to take Hank Rearden's patent from him and he refuses, that is what she wished would have happened to her father."
  She never forgot that injustice and humiliation, says Heller, author of Ayn Rand and the World She Made, even when she arrived in the US eight years later.
  "They [her family] were told it was for the good of the people, but she saw that people who worked hard like her father had to sacrifice years of hard work for people she thought had not educated themselves. She saw the same forces at work in the US when FDR's New Deal got a foothold."
  Her first novel, The Fountainhead, about an architect, was a word-of-mouth success and made into a film starring Gary Cooper.
  It drew a committed group of supporters to Rand, some of whom gathered every Saturday at her New York apartment to read extracts from her next book. Among them was an economic forecaster called Alan Greenspan, who became her close friend and eventually chairman of the US Federal Reserve.
  Despite this dedicated following, reviews of Atlas Shrugged in 1957 were not favourable, and its message united both left and right in condemnation. Gore Vidal described it as "almost perfect in its immorality".
  Continue reading the main storyAtlas Shrugged inspired meI read Atlas Shrugged when I was 26 and it connected with me greatly, especially the heroine. I identified with Dagny Taggart, the way she was very good at her job. A year later, when I was setting up the company and discussing with someone who also read the book what it should be named, the answer was John Galt, because of the way he represented the coming together of great minds.
  We have a lot of strong-minded, independent individuals and each individual has a goal on a team, but we are all moving in the same direction.
  But this didn't stop it from becoming an international bestseller, as millions were drawn to her central message of individualism and unfettered capitalism, even if they didn't buy into her whole philosophy. In the 1990s, a survey by the Library of Congress named Atlas Shrugged as the most influential book in the US, after the Bible.
  And more than 50 years after publication, sales are booming. According to Nielsen BookScan, more than 300,000 copies were sold in the US in 2009, pushing sales for all her works past the half-million mark that year.
  The extent of her influence was demonstrated this week when Paul Ryan joined the Mitt Romney ticket, although he has now distanced himself from her work.
  In 2005, Ryan told the Atlas Society how Rand "taught me quite a bit about who I am and what my value systems are". But earlier this year, he told the National Review that as a Catholic he rejected her atheism.
  Beyond politics, the novel also had an impact in Silicon Valley, where entrepreneurs identified with its emphasis on heroic individuals and their work ethic. Some have named their companies or their newborn children after the author or her characters.
  Rand's popularity is not confined to the US, however, with healthy book sales in the UK, India, Australia, Italy and South Africa.
  But she speaks most directly to American conservatives, says Timothy Stanley, a British historian at the University of Oxford who writes about US politics for the Daily Telegraph.
  "American Conservatism is fundamentally about the relationship between the individual and the community, about jealously protecting the individual's liberty.
  "British Conservativism is about the Queen, the Anglican Church and rituals like tea. It's less about the economy or your relationship with government, so there is very little in Ayn Rand that they could identify with."
  Continue reading the main storyRand's viewsSupported:
  Unfettered markets Civil rights Right to choose (abortion) Sexual freedom Rejected:
  Homosexuality Welfare Beards and moustaches Robin Hood Religion Vietnam War/miltary draft Income tax Paul Ryan genuinely fell out of love with Randian ideas, says Stanley, and that comes with age.
  "Atlas Shrugged was a very exciting book to read when you're young but then you grow up and get a family and develop a relationship with God.
  "Rand teaches you that the individual is in complete control of their life and adolescents are terrified of being told what to do.
  "She tells students that when they leave college they will work for liberals who will take their taxes and don't know anything. She massages the egos of juveniles."
  The emergence of the Tea Party - a wing of the Republican Party which favours a shrinking of the state - appears to be driving her recent resurgence. John Galt is often referred to on placards and T-shirts.
  "She's become a more dominant influence than she's ever been and that's bad because she's made it cool to be selfish. It's bad for the people outside her favoured elite, the 99%. And it's bad for the morality of the US," says Gary Weiss, author of Ayn Rand Nation: The Hidden Struggle for America's Soul.
  In Rand's later life, her followers turned away from her - some were appalled to learn she had been conducting a 14-year affair with her associate Nathaniel Branden, apparently with the consent of her own husband and Branden's wife, Rand's close friend Barbara.
  Continue reading the main storyIn praise of objectivismObjectivism is designed as a guide to life, and celebrates the remarkable potential and power of you, the individual. Objectivism also challenges the doctrines of irrationalism, self-sacrifice, brute force, and collectivism that have brought centuries of chaos and misery into the lives of millions of individuals. It provides fascinating insights into the world of politics, art, education, foreign policy, science, and more, rewarding you with a rich understanding of how ideas shape your world. Those who discover Objectivism often describe the experience as life-changing and liberating.
  The Atlas Society
  Others were put off for other reasons. One former acolyte, Jerome Tuccille, recalls supporters being "robotic" in their admiration and after two or three years, he turned his attention to less "flawed" libertarian causes.
  "She could give a great speech but she was very harsh and very vindictive to anyone who challenged her. She wasn't open to debate but trounced them as irrational, altruistic and hopeless.
  "Rand's world was black and white. You are either all good or all bad. Her world is a good fictional representation but it doesn't work in reality in terms of human beings."
  This difficulty was most clearly illuminated in Rand's final, lonely years when she claimed social security - an act her critics saw as inherently hypocritical but others said was her due.
'Hyves gaat nog eens groot worden'
  Link to Article
  Source: GeenStijl
  Fri, 17 Aug 2012 12:11
  PERSBERICHT - TMG Het sociale medium Hyves.nl, onlangs voor miljoenen aangekocht door de Telegraaf Media Groep (TMG), "gaat nog eens echt heel groot worden". Dat laat TMG-topman Herman van Campenhout vrijdag weten. "We verwachten dat Hyves.nl binnen een half jaar groter is dan het hele internet. Met de vooruitziende TMG-strategie zijn we op het juiste moment ingestapt. We zien nu een enorme toename van zaken die in de volksmond ook wel 'soosjel miediejaa' worden genoemd. Dat zijn sites waar een persoon dan bijvoorbeeld foto's kan laten zien en 'vrinden' kan maken waardoor een groot netwerk ontstaat. Ook kan er dan worden 'geliked' (met een duimpje omhoog) en 'gekrabbeld'. De komende maanden zal dit zogenaamde 'soosjel netwurken' erg populair worden onder jongeren waardoor iedereen straks een eigen Hyve wil hebben. Ook BN'ers zijn massaal enthousiast over Hyves: Jan Peter Balkenende, Henk Bres en Alexander Kl¸pping hebben zich inmiddels ingeschreven bij Hyves en maken nu al veel online vrienden". De TMG-topman heeft zelf uiteraard ook een Hyve en wil iedereen bij dezen oproepen te komen Hyven. "Het is echt heel erg leuk! Het zal ons niets verbazen als er in de toekomst nog veel meer 'soosjel miedieaa' initiatieven ontstaan. TMG ontwikkelt nu iets met korte berichten van 140 tekens waarmee je dan met elkaar kunt 'kwetteren'. We willen er nog niet teveel over zeggen vanwege onze concurrenten, maar ook dat gaat heel groot worden". Het door papier groot geworden TMG heeft zich de laatste jaren toegelegd op investeren in crossmedia zoals social media, widgets, online gastenboeken en bulletinboards. Inmiddels schieten de winsten omhoog, mede dankzij de kennis en expertise die de medewerkers van Hyves bezitten. Meer informatie: www.hyves.nl.
  BertBrussen | 17-08-12 | 13:13 | Link |
British city launches own currency
  Link to Article
  Source: bertb news feed
  Fri, 17 Aug 2012 12:08
  Bristol goes rogue: British city launches own currency
  By Judith Evans (AFP)''1 day ago
  BRISTOL, United Kingdom '-- As Britain loses faith in its banks and feels shockwaves from the euro crisis, one city is trying to keep local wealth in local pockets with the launch of its own currency.
  The Bristol pound -- usable only with member businesses in the city in southwest England -- is to launch in September, and organisers are deluged with local firms wanting to sign up.
  "The perception of banking and money is that it's a very ruthless system: people are out for what they can get," co-founder Ciaran Mundy told AFP.
  "This is about saying yes to something new. It's tapping into a different set of values about money."
  The scheme has "captured people's imaginations", he added, in a recession-hit year when British banks have been beset by scandals and ministers talked openly of a possible euro collapse.
  Hundreds of businesses have joined, from the acclaimed Arnolfini arts centre to the Chandos deli chain, and the launch had to be postponed from May to September 19 because of the level of interest.
  Security professional Richard Wright signed up his company Wright Guard as soon as he heard about the Bristol pound, hoping it would help him fight back against encroaching security giants.
  "I'm Bristol born and bred, and I always want to support local businesses," he told AFP. "I'll want to keep the Bristol pound flowing."
  The notes feature symbols of local pride from nineteenth-century religious writer Hannah More to the Concorde aircraft, partly developed in Bristol, and images of the St Paul's Carnival Caribbean street festival.
  Evoking a long history of dissent, one side of the £5 note shows a tiger writing on a wall in graffiti: "O Liberty!"
  Other British towns have launched local currencies, but Bristol, home to half a million people, is the first big city, and its scheme is ambitious.
  Businesses can pay local taxes in Bristol pounds and the council has offered its 17,000 staff the option of receiving part of their pay in the currency.
  Mundy's team -- funded initially by grants -- have designed an electronic system for payments by text message, plus what they say are forgery-proof notes.
  Stores selling products from cider to skate shoes said they were considering joining the scheme, which Mundy believes will have a tangible economic effect.
  "Eighty percent of the money leaves the area if it is spent with a multinational -- but 80 percent stays if it is spent at a local trader," he said.
  Such localism might seem strange in a city that grew to prosperity as an international port and is now a centre for aircraft manufacture.
  But Bristol is also a left-wing haven with an activist tradition. The People's Republic of Stokes Croft, an urban renewal group, made headlines last year with a campaign that became a riot in protest at the opening of a Tesco supermarket.
  They have greeted the Bristol pound warmly.
  "We need to run things from the bottom up and from the grassroots, so that people have control over how things happen where they live," said spokesman Chris Chalkley.
  But Louisa Jones and Joh Rindom, co-owners of Stokes Croft vintage clothing store Shop Dutty, thought the scheme would just add to their administrative burden.
  "We're sceptical that having a micro economy within a macro economy is a bit backward," Rindom said.
  Ben Yearsley, investment manager at Bristol-based financial services firm Hargreaves Lansdown, also won't be rushing to convert his sterling.
  "It's just a big gift voucher scheme... I'm sceptical that it's going to make any difference," he told AFP.
  "Local businesses need to compete on quality and service."
  The Bristol pound will not be legal tender and must be exchanged through the Bristol Credit Union, with a three percent charge for conversion back to sterling.
  This and charges on electronic transactions will pay its running costs.
  Despite the naysayers, Mundy hopes hundreds of thousands of Bristol pounds will be traded in its first year, increasing to "double figures of millions" by the third.
  His model is the Chiemgauer, a German complementary currency of which millions of euros' worth is traded yearly.
  Online database complementarycurrency.org lists more than 225 such minority currencies worldwide, of which 102 are in Europe.
  They have won a high-profile advocate in Bernard Lietaer, a Belgian economist who helped design and implement the convergence mechanism for the euro.
  "We will never have a stable, sustainable monetary system with a single monopoly of a single type of currency, whoever manages it," he said in a lecture in Brussels.
  "Everybody can do something at their own scale... sustainability requires diversity," he added.
  Mundy said that the ultimate test of his system would be the market.
  "If people freely decide to market and trade with each other (in the currency), they should be able to do it," he said.
  "If we're not doing a good job they won't use the system. Consumers will decide."
  Copyright (C) 2012 AFP. All rights reserved.More >>
Het is blondt en het jokt voor Badr?
  Link to Article
  Source: GeenStijl
  Fri, 17 Aug 2012 12:06
  Het was de opening van het journaal dus u zou het moeten weten. Als u het antwoord weet, niet meteen zeggen want Estelle is nog aan het nadenken, het ligt op het puntje van haar tong. De Badr Incident-o-Meter staat inmiddels op zes aanklachten, dat heb je nou eenmaal met beroeps-sloopmachines afkomstig uit het nietsontziende Indische Buurt-ghetto alsook geplaagd door schaamtecultuur-issues en intrinsieke verwarring omtrent hun interculturele identiteit. Of zo iets, B(C)n(C)dicte Ficq lult er wel weer een punt aan, willen we maar zeggen. Maar de samenleving kan rustig slapen zonder angst voor onvrijwillige verherpositionering van knieschijven danwel tanden nadat Badr zijn 50 uur taakstraf (waarvan 75 uur voorwaardelijk plus een schadevergoeding aan de arme knul want al veroordeeld door de media, u weet zelf) heeft uitgediend. Estelle heeft namelijk een stok achter de deur. Meid, wat verstandig. Wij hielden ons hart vast, mag je best weten. Jij en die twee bloedjes alleen in dat grote huis met een kerel van 2 meter 12 waarbij af en toe een rood waas voor de ogen zakt, we waren er niet gerust op. Wat heb je voor stok? Alu honkbalknuppel? Cattle prod? Oh, wacht. Blondt he. "Als Badr Hari nog (C)(C)n keer in een vechtpartij belandt, gaat Estelle Cruijff bij hem weg." Ah. Dt zal hem leren. Hee Estelle? "Estelle!" Ja, jij ja. "Dat is het antwoord! Op de vraag! Heb ik gewonnen?" Zucht. Ja, tuurlijk, ook JIJ bent een winnaar, ergens. Maar wat denk je nou meid? "Meestal niks, hihi. En Badr was de hele avond van de negende juli jongere.. jongstle.. jonglere.. nouja, laatst, bij mij. Tfoe, zweren met spuug. Deed ik het zo goed, mevrouw Ficq?" Nouja, het is vast eigenlijk een hele lieve jongen, niemand begrijpt hem behalve jij, jullie zijn soulmates en hij doet geen vlieg kwaad maar je moet hem niet boos maken, hebben we het zo dan een beetje samengevat? "Tjeempie, hoe weten jullie dat? Heeft Ruud nog ergens een microfoontje meelopen?" Succes met de aanklachten, de meineed en de voogdijzaak, Estelle.
  A. Nanninga | 17-08-12 | 10:10 | Link |
'Groen' energiebedrijf Rabobank doet energierekening Bonaire exploderen
  Link to Article
  Source: Een andere kijk op nieuws @ infomag.nl
  Fri, 17 Aug 2012 12:00
  Was er dankzij alle 'groene'plannen op Bonaire vorig jaar 24 augustus al stroomuitval. Nu blijkt ook dat dankzij alle 'groene'energie uit windmolens van Ecopower (eigendom Rabobank, de WNF-bank) de stroomrekening omhoog moet met 50 procent, zo meldt de Wereldomroep.We herhalen: 50 procent hogere energierekening dankzij een windmolenpark.De reden?De exploitatiekosten van het windmolenpark van Ecopower vallen vele malen hoger uit dan voorzien. (= ze werden veel te rooskleurig afgeschilderd om gesubsidieerde roofkapitalisten hun zin te laten krijgen) Dit na uitspraak van een arbitragecommissie, en beroep is niet mogelijk. Bonaire is in het klein, wat Groentopia in Europa kan uitrichten.
A Remarkable Quote From The 1970s That Perfectly Predicted Why The Euro Would Be A Disaster
  Link to Article
  Source: Een andere kijk op nieuws @ infomag.nl
  Fri, 17 Aug 2012 11:52
  Ramanan rounded up some pretty incredible Nicholas Kaldor quotes on Europe from the early 70'²s. It's really remarkable commentary given the time it was written. Given its pre-Euro timeframe, one could even argue that this is more prescient than the Wynne Godley comments in the early 90'²s that predicted why the Euro would not work. Kaldor passed away in 1986 but he likely would have had a similar view of the Euro that Godley had before it was implemented, but that's just a guess. Unfortunately, he wasn't around to advise on the European Monetary Union.
Grote rol voor Eva Jinek rond verkiezingen op Radio 1 - VK Dossier Verkiezingen van 2012
  Link to Article
  Source: VK: Home
  Fri, 17 Aug 2012 11:47
  Door: Redactie ''17/08/12, 11:47
  (C) anp. Eva Jinek
  WNL-presentatrice Eva Jinek krijgt een grote rol op Radio 1 gedurende de verkiezingsstrijd. Ze is vanaf maandag 3 september veelvuldig op de nieuwszender te horen.
  Eva Jinek begint binnenkort ook weer met haar tv-programma's Vandaag de Dag en Eva Jinek op Zondag, maar maakt nu een uitstapje naar de radio. Ze houdt luisteraars dagelijks op de hoogte van de verkiezingsstrijd in een speciaal programma dat drie keer per werkdag zal worden uitgezonden.
  'De stemming van Nederland' brengt om 10.30, 15.00 en 20.30 uur een half uur lang actuele gesprekken en debatten rond de verkiezingen, zo maakte Radio 1 vanmorgen bekend. Met in de avonduitzending de nadruk op beschouwingen van het belangrijkste politieke nieuws van die dag. Op 3 september is om 15.30 uur het Radio 1 Lijsttrekkersdebat live te volgen. Op 12 september, de dag van de verkiezingen, presenteren Eva Jinek en Tim Overdiek de uitslagenavond op Radio 1.
  Jinek is overigens volgende week donderdagmiddag ook een paar uur te horen bij Radio 538. Dan schuift ze aan bij dj Frank Dane en is ze gedurende de uitzending zijn sidekick. Dane heeft die week verschillende bekende Nederlanders als medepresentator wegens de vakantie van het vaste presentatorenteam.
Paper, plastic, or fee? - Philly.com
  Link to Article
  Source: ZapLog - externe links
  Fri, 17 Aug 2012 11:46
  The issue emerged during a hearing this week on the decline of Barnegat Bay. Environmental advocates list - among a host of problems - plastic bags as a cause of rising pollution there.
  "They clog up storm drains so they don't function," said Jeff Tittel, director of the New Jersey Sierra Club.
  Conservationists argue that the bags and other plastics also are a big source of debris in oceans, posing dangers to marine life and sea birds.
  John Weber, Northeast regional manager with the Surfrider Foundation, said the United Nations estimated that 100,000 marine mammals and up to one million sea birds die each year from ingesting or becoming tangled in plastics in various forms.
  "Bans and fees work," Weber said. "Bag usage drops significantly whenever either is passed. In Washington, D.C., a five-cent fee curtailed plastic bag use by 60 percent within weeks. This not only reduces unsightly litter, it can also reduce the lethal impact on wildlife."
  Representatives of the plastics-manufacturing industry disputed that view, telling legislators Monday in Lavalette that plastic bags were more environmentally friendly than paper bags.
  "Paper bags have a lot larger carbon footprint than plastic bags," said Donna Dempsey, a spokeswoman for the American Progressive Bag Alliance.
  The American Chemistry Council supports that view. According to its website, using paper bags doubles the amount of carbon dioxide produced compared with paper bags; plastic-bag production requires less than 4 percent of the water needed to make paper bags; and paper bags create almost five times more solid waste than plastic bags.
  Nonetheless, several regions in the nation have enacted bans on plastic bags, including 50 jurisdictions in California, according to a memo from the New Jersey Office of Legislative Services prepared for the Senate Environment and Energy Committee.
Mothers' chemotherapy safe for unborn children, study finds - Health
  Link to Article
  Source: ZapLog - externe links
  Fri, 17 Aug 2012 11:44
  Chemotherapy during pregnancy does not lead to increased health complications for newborn infants, a new study has found.
  Researchers examined a group of more than 400 women from across Europe who were diagnosed with early-stage breast cancer while pregnant.
  Just under half of the mothers-to-be had chemotherapy and experts found the only difference with their newborns was a slightly lower birth weight.
  The findings were welcomed by cancer charities who described the new findings as ''reassuring'' for women and their families who found themselves diagnosed with cancer while pregnant.
  Professor Sibylle Loibl, of the German Breast Group which led the study, said: ''Babies exposed to chemotherapy in utero appeared to have no higher risk of birth defects and no more frequent blood disorders than those whose mothers did not receive chemotherapy while pregnant.
  ''If our findings are confirmed by other studies, breast cancer during pregnancy could be treated as it is in non-pregnant women without putting foetal and maternal outcomes at substantially increased risk.''
  The number of chemotherapy treatments a women had while pregnant also did not appear to cause any different side affect on her babies' health.
  The experts did find a slightly higher number of women who underwent cancer treatment had their babies slightly earlier than their due date compared with mothers who had not had cancer treatment.
  But they said any complications those early babies had were the same seen in other babies born early whose mum had not had cancer.
  The team concluded the children would probably have been born early irrespective of their mother's exposure to chemotherapy.
  Prof Loibl said: ''Our work suggests treating patients with breast cancer while pregnant is possible, and there is no need to interrupt the pregnancy or receive inferior therapy.''
  ''Our findings emphasise the importance of prioritising a full-term delivery in women who undergo chemotherapy while pregnant. Illness and mortality in newborn babies is directly related to gestational age at delivery.''
  The team said the number of mothers-to-be diagnosed with cancer was increasing due to the rise in women delaying having children until they are older.
  Previous studies have suggested pregnant women who have chemotherapy have a 5 per cent chance of giving birth to a child with a birth defect.
  They claim the cancer treatment can hinder its growth and development in the womb.Doctors say there is a range of drugs available to treat pregnant women, depending on their individual circumstances such as age, health history and how many weeks pregnant they are.
  Martin Ledwick, Cancer Research UK's head information nurse, said: ''There's already evidence women with breast cancer can safely have chemotherapy during pregnancy. So it's reassuring for pregnant women to see new results confirm this.
  ''Chemotherapy for pregnant women with breast cancer is usually delayed until the second or third trimester of the pregnancy and given after the woman has had surgery to treat the disease.
  ''By the time pregnant women have discovered the disease they are usually likely to be in their second or third trimester.''
BBC News - Twitter changes provokes anger from developers
  Link to Article
  Source: BBC News - Technology
  Fri, 17 Aug 2012 11:36
  17 August 2012Last updated at 11:03 Developers and users of Twitter have reacted angrily to changes made by the social network to restrict creation of third-party applications.
  Any new app that wants to serve more than 100,000 users must now seek the company's explicit permission.
  Apps which already have more than 100,000 users are allowed to expand by 200% before having to get Twitter's go-ahead to grow further.
  Critics said it would stifle the development of innovative products.
  Revoked keyThe changes came as part of Twitter's overhaul of its Application Programming Interface (API).
  An API allows different parts of a program to communicate together, as well as letting one application share content with another.
  In Twitter's case, its API has allowed for the development of extremely popular third-party services like Tweetdeck, Hootsuite and Twitpic.
  Twitter says the new rules, announced by its director of consumer product Michael Sippey, aim to "deliver a consistent Twitter experience".
  Continue reading the main storyI sure as hell wouldn't build a business on Twitter''
  End QuoteMarco ArmentInstapaperMr Sippey wrote: "If you are building a Twitter client application that is accessing the home timeline, account settings or direct messages API endpoints (typically used by traditional client applications) or are using our User Streams product, you will need our permission if your application will require more than 100,000 individual user tokens."
  In this context, "tokens" are individual users.
  The guidelines also covered how tweets are displayed within apps.
  "If your application displays Tweets to users, and it doesn't adhere to our Display Requirements, we reserve the right to revoke your application key," Mr Sippey explained.
  'Wiggleroom'
  The changes are not expected to have an immediate impact on users.
  However, the announcement was heavily criticised by developers.
  Marco Arment, creator of popular reading service Instapaper, advised developers who were building on Twitter to "start working on another product".
  "Twitter has left themselves a lot of wiggle room with the rules," he wrote in a blog post.
  "Effectively, Twitter can decide your app is breaking a (potentially vague) rule at any time, or they can add a new rule that your app inadvertently breaks, and revoke your API access at any time.
  "Of course, they've always had this power. But now we know that they'll use it in ways that we really don't agree with.
  "I sure as hell wouldn't build a business on Twitter, and I don't think I'll even build any nontrivial features on it anymore."
  Twitter is not the only service to put such restrictions in place. Last year, Google announced that it would begin charging companies that made heavy use of its Maps product.
As TODAY Ratings Continue To Struggle, Staffers Feel 'It Was A Mistake' To Replace Ann Curry
  Link to Article
  Source: Radar Online
  Fri, 17 Aug 2012 11:30
  WENN
  By Jen Heger - Radar Assistant Managing Editor
  Despite huge efforts by TODAY show producers, Good Morning America continues to nip at their heels in the ratings war, and staffers of the embattled morning show are grumbling that they feel it was a mistake to replace co-anchor Ann Curry with Savannah Guthrie, RadarOnline.com is exclusively reporting.
  "The staffers of the TODAY show miss Ann tremendously and feel it was a mistake to replace her with Savannah," a source close to the situation tells Radar. "Ann had been part of the TODAY show for over 15 years, and her send off was just horribly executed. It's not lost on anyone that GMA beat the TODAY show on Wednesday in the ratings yet again. Viewers have had enough and the show just isn't staying relevant. Morale is extremely low and something is going to need to change very quickly before they can get the TODAY show back in first place for good."
  PHOTOS: Stars Who Look Like Other Stars
  The TODAY show beat GMA on Monday and Tuesday, but the ABC show won the ratings race on Wednesday when Robert Pattinson did his first morning show interview since the cheating scandal involving girlfriend Kristen Stewart erupted.
  As RadarOnline.com previously reported, during Thursday's show Al Roker seemed to take a dig atMatt Lauer for throwing Ann "under the bus."
  "The ladies threw you in the water after winning the gold?" Lauer asked Olympic women's rowing team member and California-native, Mary Whipple. "The tradition here in New York is you throw her in the Hudson River."
  PHOTOS: The Name Game - Celebs Who've Changed Their Names
  Roker cheekily quipped: "Which is different to our tradition here which is to throw one of us under the bus! But that's a different story'..."
  After a second of stunned silence -- and nervous laughter -- both Lauer and Guthrie, said with a sarcastic tone, "Mr. Roker!"
  The sly dig comes just a week after Ann practically stonewalled Lauer and his awkward attempts at small talk in her very first appearance on the TODAY show in London since she was replaced with Savannah earlier this summer.
  "The crew would LOVE Ann back on set, some have even suggested privately that Matt Lauer take a long vacation and see how the ratings would shake out in that scenario," the source says.
  RELATED STORIES:
  Savannah Guthrie Officially Announced As Ann Curry's Replacement On TODAY
  What Was Behind Ann Curry's TODAY Show Breakdown?
  Savannah Guthrie Settles Into Ann's Chair, Is This The New TODAY Team?
  Matt Lauer's Wife Going To London Olympics To Keep Tabs On Him!
Celebrity Twitter Pics Of The Week! The Good, The Bad & The Outrageous
  Link to Article
  Source: Radar Online
  Fri, 17 Aug 2012 11:23
  Twitter
  By Leah Ornstein - Radar Features Editor
  Talk about a snap-happy week!
  Hollywood's hottest friends steamed up social media this week, sharing their personal photos from around the world. From stripped down sunbathers to Olympic hunks, Radaronline.com has all the good, the bad and the most outrageous Twitter photos of the week in our special Friday feature.
  PHOTOS: The Good, Bad & Most Outrageous Celebrity Twitter Pics Of The Week
  Who was the sexiest star of the week on social media? While Kim Kardashian scorched up the shoreline on her Hawaiian vacation with Kanye West wearing several sexy swimsuits, Coco shocked with her weekly Thong Thursday snap and LeAnn Rimes flaunted her suddenly skinny again body with a self-portrait.
  Ryan Lochte flew back from the 2012 Olympic Games, celebrating his gold medal wins on a private plane, while Michael Phelps retired from the pool with an all-boys fishing trip in the Maldives.
  And Miley Cyrus managed to up the shock factor, chopping off her blonde locks and snapping several pics of her new, punk rock look.
  For the rest of the good, the bad and the most outrageous Twitter pics of the week, click here.
The media's 'happily ever after' : CJR
  Link to Article
  Source: CJR
  Fri, 17 Aug 2012 11:22
  Why are women like Jennifer Aniston portrayed as sad and lonely if they aren't married?
  In her column, Minority Reports, Jennifer Vanasco analyzes how the mainstream media covers social minorities.
  Jennifer Aniston is one of the wealthiest women in the entertainment industry. She has appeared in 27 feature films, starred in the hit sitcom Friends, owns a film production company, and just secured her own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. But the poor woman only found happiness after she got engaged.
  For ''proof,'' just look at the headlines. USA Today: ''Has Jennifer Aniston finally found her happy ending?'' Huffington Post: ''Jennifer Aniston engaged: Insiders hope she 'has finally found Mr. Right.''' ABC news, in an online story, led with this: ''It looks like America's sweetheart may finally be getting her happily ever after.''
  But why does the media'--do we'--consider ''happily ever after'' to equal marriage? Perhaps it's because women are still in constant danger of being reduced to their roles as wives or mothers (you'll recall that dust-up last month over news that new Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer is pregnant). It's as if, once married or pregnant, women can't focus on anything else. As if they can't be anything else.
  Relationships and children are important and make many women happy and fulfilled, of course, but so do lots of other things, from spiritual practices to career success to creative challenges. Yet the tale of Jennifer Aniston is an example of a story in which a woman's accomplishments are eclipsed by a cultural need to see an unmarried woman as a woman who is lonely and desperate.
  The story of ''America's sweetheart'' pre-fianc(C) Justin Theroux went like this: Aniston and Brad Pitt were married for five years. They got divorced. Pitt went on to have a happy, child-filled life with the darkly sexy Angelina Jolie (and perhaps fell for her on the set of Mr. and Mrs. Smith while he was still with Aniston.) But Aniston? She couldn't hold down a man! She regretted losing Brad! She was locked in a duel with Jolie! And, at 43, she still wasn't married or pregnant. Clearly, before she became engaged, Aniston's life was sad and ruined, despite her career success.
  The thing is, this narrative fed to us by both the tabloids and the legitimate media just isn't true. Aniston has said so herself. In 2009 she told Elle magazine wearily, ''If I'm the emblem for 'this is what it looks like to be the lonely girl getting on with her life,' so be it. I can make fun of myself, and I'll bring it up as long as the world is bringing it up.''
  That article, written by Aniston's friend and colleague Kristin Hahn, noted that Aniston is surrounded by a warm circle of friends. ''I think of the irony of all those magazine covers that borrow Jen's face to tell a soap opera about a lonely girl who just can't catch a break,'' Hahn wrote. ''What those of us who've been close to her for so long know is that she can't catch a break from the media's perception of who she is and the projection of what our culture seems to need her to be.''
  Funny how even the most successful women can be reduced to their marital status, huh? Although male celebrities are often forced into media narratives as well, they are rarely ones in which a longing for spouse and baby obliterate talk of all other achievements. Says Jezebel:
  I duly note that people are also incredibly obsessed with George Clooney's love life. But with him, it's always about which young woman he's been showing off and what a great life he has as the single man about town. Don't get me wrong, I admire him and his politics. But there is never an air of desperation in the stories about him. His stories are about freedom.Happily, some in the media stepped back to look at the big picture around Aniston's engagement.New Yorkspeculated that we are fascinated by Aniston because she is divorced, and a ''divorced woman past the age of 40 still elicits disappointment and disapproval'--no matter how rich, beautiful, and independent she is or how girl-friendly culture becomes.''
There's a war on for your mind!
  Link to Article
  Source: Infowars &Acirc;&raquo; Featured Stories
  Fri, 17 Aug 2012 11:21
  Michael Snyder The Economic CollapseAug 17, 2012
  If you want to figure out what is going to happen next in the financial markets, carefully watch what the insiders are doing.
  Those that are ''connected'' have access to far better sources of information than the rest of us have, and if they hear that something big is coming up they will often make very significant moves with their money in anticipation of what is about to happen. Right now, Wall Street insiders and central banks all around the globe are making some very unusual moves. In fact, they appear to be rapidly preparing for something really big. So exactly what are they up to? In a previous article entitled ''Are The Government And The Big Banks Quietly Preparing For An Imminent Financial Collapse?'', I speculated that they may be preparing for a financial meltdown of some sort. As I noted in that article, more than 600 banking executives have resigned from their positions over the past 12 months, and I have been personally told that a substantial number of Wall Street bankers have been shopping for ''prepper properties'' this summer. But now even more evidence has emerged that quiet preparations are being made for an imminent financial collapse. That doesn't guarantee that something will happen or won't happen. Like any good detective, we are gathering clues and trying to figure out what the evidence is telling us.
  Why Is George Soros Selling So Much Stock And Buying So Much Gold?
  I am certainly not a fan of George Soros. He has funneled millions upon millions of dollars into organizations that are trying to take America in the exact wrong direction.
  However, I do recognize that he is extremely well connected in the financial world. Soros is almost always ahead of the curve on financial matters, and if something big is going to go down George Soros is probably going to know about it ahead of time.
  That is why it is very alarming that he has dumped all of his banking stocks and that he is massively hoarding gold. The following is from shtfplan.com'....
  In a harbinger of what may be coming our way in the Fall of 2012, billionaire financier George Soros has sold all of his equity positions in major financial stocks according to a 13-F report filedwith the SEC for the quarter ending June 30, 2012.
  Soros, who manages funds through various accounts in the US and the Cayman Islands, has reportedly unloaded over one million shares of stock in financial companies and banks that include Citigroup (420,000 shares), JP Morgan (701,400 shares) and Goldman Sachs (120,000 shares). The total value of the stock sales amounts to nearly $50 million.
  What's equally as interesting as his sale of major financials is where Soros has shifted his money. At the same time he was selling bank stocks, he was acquiring some 884,000 shares (approx. $130 million) of Gold via the SPDR Gold Trust.
  Why would you dump over a million shares of stock in major banks and purchase more than 100 million dollars worth of gold?
  Well, it would make perfect sense if you believed that a collapse of the financial system was about to happen.
  Earlier this year, George Soros told the following to Newsweek'....
  ''I am not here to cheer you up. The situation is about as serious and difficult as I've experienced in my career,'' Soros tells Newsweek. ''We are facing an extremely difficult time, comparable in many ways to the 1930s, the Great Depression. We are facing now a general retrenchment in the developed world, which threatens to put us in a decade of more stagnation, or worse. The best-case scenario is a deflationary environment. The worst-case scenario is a collapse of the financial system.''
  It looks like he is putting his money where his mouth is.
  Perhaps even more disturbing is what he believes is coming after the financial collapse'....
  As anger rises, riots on the streets of American cities are inevitable. ''Yes, yes, yes,'' he says, almost gleefully. The response to the unrest could be more damaging than the violence itself. ''It will be an excuse for cracking down and using strong-arm tactics to maintain law and order, which, carried to an extreme, could bring about a repressive political system, a society where individual liberty is much more constrained, which would be a break with the tradition of the United States.''
  That doesn't sound good.
  George Soros has told us what he believes is going to happen, and now he is making moves with his money that indicate that he is convinced that it is actually about to start happening.
  But he is not the only one that has been busy accumulating gold.
  Billionaire John Paulson (the one that made 20 billion dollars on the subprime mortgage meltdown) has been buying gold like crazy and his company now ''has 44 percent of its $24 billion fund exposed to bullion.''
  So why are Soros and Paulson buying up so much gold?
  Central Banks Are Also Hoarding Gold
  According to the World Gold Council, the amount of gold bought by the central banks of the world absolutely soared during the second quarter of 2012. The 157.5 metric tons of gold bought by the central banks of the world last quarter was an increase of 62.9 percent from the first quarter of 2012 and a 137.9 percent increase from the second quarter of 2011.
  Prior to 2009, the central banks of the world had been net sellers of gold for about two decades. But now that has totally changed, and last quarter central banks stocked up on gold in quantities that we have not seen before'....
  At 157.5 metric tons, gold buying among central banks came in at its highest quarterly level since the sector became a net buyer of the precious metal in the second quarter of 2009, data in the organization's quarterly Gold Demand Trends report show.
  So why have the central banks of the world become such gold bugs?
  Is there something they aren't telling us?
  Rampant Insider Selling
  Wall Street insiders have been dumping a whole lot of stock this year.
  In my previous article, I linked to a CNN article from back in April'....
  First quarter earnings have been decent, if not spectacular. And many corporate executives are issuing cautiously optimistic guidance for the rest of the year.
  But while insiders' lips are saying one thing, their wallets are saying another. The level of insider selling among S&P 500 (SPX) companies is the highest in nearly 10 years. That is not good.
  A lot of insiders appear to be getting out at the top of the market while the getting is still good.
  Other insiders appear to be bailing out before the bottom falls out from beneath them.
  Just check out what has been happening to Facebook stock. It hit another new record low on Thursday as insiders dumped stock. The following is from a CNN article'....
  Facebook's life as a public company has been a nightmare from day one, and the pain continued on Thursday as some company insiders got their first chance to dump shares.
  Facebook stock hit a new intra-day low of $19.69 Thursday morning, and ended the day 6.3% lower at $19.87.
  Sadly, Facebook has now lost close to half of its value since the IPO.
  Will Facebook end up being the poster child for the irrational stock market bubble that we have seen over the past couple of years?
  Overall, retail investors have been very busy pulling money out of stocks in recent weeks.
  The following are the net inflows to equity funds over the past five weeks (in millions of dollars) according to ICI'....
  7/11/2012: -537
  7/18/2012: 637
  7/25/2012: -2,999
  8/1/2012: -6,866
  8/8/2012: -3,684
  According to the figures above, more than 10 billion dollars has been pulled out of equity funds over the past two weeks alone.
  So does this mean anything?
  Maybe.
  Maybe not.
  But it is very interesting and it bears watching.
  Why Does The U.S. Government Need So Much Ammunition?
  In my previous article, I also noted that the U.S. government appears to be very rapidly making preparations for something really big.
  This week, it was revealed that the Social Security Administration plans to buy 174,000 hollow point bullets which will be delivered to 41 different locations all over America.
  Now why in the world does the Social Security Administration need 174,000 bullets?
  And why do they need hollow point bullets? Those bullets are designed to cause as much damage to internal organs as possible.
  But of course this is only the latest in a series of very large purchases of ammunition by U.S. government agencies. The following is from a recent article by Paul Joseph Watson'....
  Back in March, Homeland Security purchased 450 million rounds of .40-caliber hollow point bullets that are designed to expand upon entry and cause maximum organ damage, prompting questions as to why the DHS needed such a large amount of powerful bullets merely for training purposes.
  This was followed by another DHS solicitation asking for a further 750 million rounds of assorted bullets, including 357 mag rounds that are able to penetrate walls.
  Now why in the world would the government need over a billion rounds of ammunition?
  If it was the U.S. military I could understand this. You can burn through a whole lot of ammunition fighting wars.
  A d v e r t i s e m e n tBut this makes no sense '' unless they believe that big trouble is coming.
  Personally, I wouldn't blame them for getting prepared. Our economy continues to fall apart and there are signs of social decay everywhere around us.
  The American people are more frustrated and more angry than at any other time in modern history. This upcoming election is only going to cause Americans to become even more angry and even more divided.
  All it would take is just the right ''spark'' to cause this country to erupt.
  It could be the upcoming election.
  It could be the collapse of the financial system.
  Or it might be something else.
  But the conditions are definitely there for it to happen.
  Unfortunately, the American public is never told to prepare because authorities never want ''to panic'' the general population.
  We are always the last to know, and that stinks.
  So don't wait for someone to come on the television and announce that a crisis is happening.
  If you wait that long, it will be too late.
  Instead, open up your eyes and think for yourself.
  We all need to work hard to get prepared for the coming crisis while we still can.
  As you can see, Wall Street insiders, the U.S. government and the central banks of the world are busy getting prepared.
  Don't put your head in the sand.
  The warning signs are there and time is running out.
  Tags: Economics, Financial, money
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There's a war on for your mind!
  Link to Article
  Source: Infowars &Acirc;&raquo; Featured Stories
  Fri, 17 Aug 2012 11:20
  Mac SlavoSHTFplan.comAug 17, 2012
  In a harbinger of what may be coming our way in the Fall of 2012, billionaire financier George Soros has sold all of his equity positions in major financial stocks according to a 13-F report filed with the SEC for the quarter ending June 30, 2012.
  Soros, who manages funds through various accounts in the US and the Cayman Islands, has reportedly unloaded over one million shares of stock in financial companies and banks that include Citigroup (420,000 shares), JP Morgan (701,400 shares) and Goldman Sachs (120,000 shares). The total value of the stock sales amounts to nearly $50 million.
  What's equally as interesting as his sale of major financials is where Soros has shifted his money. At the same time he was selling bank stocks, he was acquiring some 884,000 shares (approx. $130 million) of Gold via the SPDR Gold Trust.
  When a major global player with direct ties to the White House, Wall Street, and the banking system starts off-loading stocks and starts stacking gold, it suggests a very serious market move is set to happen.
  While often lambasted for his calls to centralize global banking, increase government intervention in the economy and his support of what he has called an ''emergence of the new world order,'' if there's anyone with an inside track of where things are headed next it's Soros.
  Soros, who has written extensively of a coming global paradigm shift in his book The Crash of 2008 and What It Means, calling the current economic and political model ''an end of an era,'' hasrecently suggested that the financial and economic situation across the world is so serious that Europe could soon descend into chaos and conflict. He also notes that the world is entering ''one of the most dangerous periods in modern history'', and foresees violent riots in America and a brutal clamp-down by the government that will dramatically curtail civil liberties.
  This is an individual who not only predicted the collapse of 2008 and took action to insulate himself, he also proposed the various fixes that governments in Europe and the US would eventually implement in order to stave off a deflationary depression. In his aforementioned book he suggested that central banks infuse the system with massive amounts of monetary expansion, but also warned that not injecting enough money would simply extend the onset of deflation and printing too much could lead to hyperinflationary currency collapse.
  Based on recent activity in Soros' US held accounts, it seems that governments and central banks have failed at those efforts to stabilize the system. As such, Soros is getting out of those companies which are most at risk should the financial system buckle like it did in 2008 and he's shifting his assets into what may be the only asset class left standing when it's all said and done.
  Tags: Economics, Financial, money
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Wall Street Must Pay for the Depression '' Not the American People! TARPLEY.net
  Link to Article
  Source: TARPLEY.net
  Fri, 17 Aug 2012 11:19
  Recent PostsGrass Roots Response to Anti-Austerity Call: Wall Street Must Pay for the Depression '' Not the American People!With 50 Million Americans Destitute, Austerity Cuts Mean Genocide'' Forget Ron Paul and Occupy; Organize for the Five-Point Program to End Depression, Begin RecoveryWould President Mitt Romney be Bound by the Mormon Oath of Vengeance Against the United States? Would He Try to Fulfill Joseph Smith's Theocratic White Horse Prophecy?Russia, China, India, Iran, Pakistan, Indonesia, Venezuela, Algeria, Iraq, Cuba, Belarus '-- 30 Nations Meet in Tehran for Alternative to Hillary Clinton's Attack on SyriaReactionary Feudal Monarchies of Gulf Increasingly Unstable; End of Ramadan Will Escalate Demonstrations Against Saudi RoyalsArchives
REVEALED: Eurodebt now 80% of global total. But ECB official claims that central bank ''is immune''.
  Link to Article
  Source: A diary of deception and distortion
  Fri, 17 Aug 2012 11:18
  So why is Greece on the rack?
  Take a look at the ECB's latest paper on Short Term European Paper (STEP) '' bond debt to you and me.
  In the one day from the 8th to the 9th of August, it grew three billion euros. In the day from 9th to the 10th of August, it grew four billion euros. The rate of acceleration is still growing. It is today nearly 480 billion euros'...a YOY increase of 100 billion euros, aka 25%.
  Now take a look at French private (but especially bank and government-related) borrowing in the STEP sector.
  Whereas other borrowing across Europe still looks dodgy at two or three numerals of millions per programme, the French debt is more commonly at four to five numerals.
  French social security, '‚¬10.3bn, Credit Agricole '‚¬12.4bn, BNP Paribas '‚¬60bn, SocGen '‚¬39bn: these are all massively in excess of Holland, Germany, and even Italy.
  And it's clear, looking across as well as down, how incestuously interrelated all the buying and selling of this debt is.
  But here's the bottom line: whereas the total debt denominated in euros is '‚¬374bn, expressing other currency debt in euros gives us a US figure of 50 billion, and a UK figure of 23 billion.
  Euro STEP debt, as of three days ago, accounted for 80% of the global total.
  Surely the ECB is, one day soon, going to wind up insolvent? Well, late last year I unwittingly wrote something that isn't true in relation to ClubMed sovereign debt, to the effect that if the ECB could no longer finance its operating expenses out of earnings, it would require support from national government central banks.
  Most observers assume (I think) that there is a huge difference between the US Fed buying its own Treasuries, and the ECB buying sovereign bonds of, say, Greece. When buying Treasuries, the Fed only does monetary easing; it does not acquire credit risk, because it IS the creditor. When buying the sovereign bonds of Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal, the ECB however does monetary easing as well as acquiring credit risk.
  Not so, said the ECB bureaucrat dinner guest of a prominent Greek commentator a few weeks ago. The ECB has no credit risk because it is constituted in a way that allows it to continue even if all its assets are negative in value.
  As it happens, he appears to be correct: if you look at the ECB's Constitution, as so often with things set up by the EU, so great was the hubris at the time, disaster clauses are absent'....after all, there weren't going to be any disasters. For instance, no provisions were made for the exit of a member State from the eurozone. So too is the insolvency of the ECB never addressed in its Constitution: the only references are to reserves: (my Italics)
  33.2. In the event of a loss incurred by the ECB, the shortfall may be offset against the general reserve fund of the ECB and, ifnecessary, following a decision by the Governing Council, against the monetary income of the relevant financial year inproportion and up to the amounts allocated to the national central banks in accordance with Article 32.5.
  And at 32.5, we find:
  32.5. The sum of the national central banks' monetary income shall be allocated to the national central banks in proportion totheir paid up shares in the capital of the ECB, subject to any decision taken by the Governing Council pursuant to Article 33.2.
  Just to be on the safe side, however, this article appears right at the end:
  The ECB shall enjoy in the territories of the Member States such privileges and immunities as are necessary for the performanceof its tasks, under the conditions laid down in the Protocol on the privileges and immunities of the European Communities.
  The are two pretty obvious extrapolations from this. First, the ECB's Governing Council can do what it wants, when it wants, regarding shortfalls and income. And second, given the nature of how banks conduct their insane accounting rules in relation to outstanding debt, without any formal default by the national central bank's Sovereign, Mario Draghi can take on debt from now until Domesday with no apparent ill-effects.
  But what Dinner Guest ECB man claims goes beyond even this: his point is that the ECB's Constitution can effectively refuse to recognise any outsider's definition of it being insolvent. His words (roughly) are presented by the correspondent as:
  ''There is absolutely no requirement on the part of the ECB to recapitalise should it end up with a negative net worth after a significant write-off of bonds. The ECB could buy all the sovereign bonds of all the eurozone countries, end up holding several trillion of them '' but even if all of those sovereign bonds defaulted and would never get paid, the ECB would survive perfectly well. It would simply show a negative net worth to the tune of several trillion euros''.
  It gets madder, does it not?
  But all this must make the average Greek '' even the average Greek politician '' ask why such a big deal was made about August 20th for the repayment of Hellenic bonds, when the ECB could absorb debt and even default indefinitely.
  And above all, it puts the EU on the spot in relation French debt. How long will it be, I wonder, before Paris finds itself in the same spotlight as Madrid, Rome and Athens?
Do you Have 50 Dollars? Join a service that helps you talk to people about how you have $50.
  Link to Article
  Source: Dave Winer's linkblog feed
  Fri, 17 Aug 2012 11:17
  Kristy Tillman @digitalmissDesigner at Ideo What @daltonc is doing is pretty forward. Not in the "make out with me in the elevator out of the blue" kind of forward, but in the "I'll forward you $50 kind of forward". >>
Seth's Blog: Corporations are not people
  Link to Article
  Source: Dave Winer's linkblog feed
  Fri, 17 Aug 2012 11:15
  You may have read Matt Fisher's story about the tragic death of his sister and the response of her insurance company. My heart goes out to his family.
  She had Progressive insurance and they refused to pay. Instead, the company paid to send a lawyer to coordinate a defense with the other driver--in other words, they paid their lawyers to go to court to prove that Matt's deceased sister, their client, was at fault. They went to court against their client even though there was significant evidence to the contrary and even though the other driver's insurance company (Nationwide) had already paid her family $25,000. The amount at stake: just $75,000.
  Progressive's weasely first response is here.
  You can read Progressive's more nuanced, but still doublespeak update here. They could have done the right thing from the start, or almost anywhere along the way, but never did, and they used fancy language to disguise that fact. Of course it's not against state law for them to settle a case. And of course losing a jury trial is not the same as settling with the family.
  If Progressive is proud of their tactics, they should say so. "We fight against claims to keep our costs low, saving you money." But if they're not proud, they should tell the truth, learn from it and apologize.
  Like many people, I'm disgusted by their strategy, but my point here is this: if someone in your neighborhood used this approach, treating others this way, if a human with a face and a house and a reputation did it, they'd have to move away in shame. If a local businessperson did this, no one in town would ever do business there again.
  Corporations (even though it's possible that individuals working there might mean well) play a different game all too often. They bet on short memories and the healing power of marketing dollars, commercials and discounts. Employees are pushed to focus on bureaucratic policies and quarterly numbers, not a realization that individuals, not corporations, are responsible for what they do.
  I hope all smart marketers realize just how dumb Progressive's marketing has been. But what I really hope is that all smart humans will realize how misguided Progressive's systems and lack of understanding are. And of course, it's not just this one corporation, it's the mindset.
  Corporations don't have to act like this. It's people who can make them stop. Corporations aren't people, people are people.
Interpreting some of Twitter's API changes '' Marco.org
  Link to Article
  Source: Dave Winer's linkblog feed
  Fri, 17 Aug 2012 04:33
  August 16, 2012 ' 'ž '
  Twitter has posted some of their upcoming API-policy lockdowns and restrictions in this post from Michael Sippey, euphemistically titled ''Changes coming in Version 1.1 of the Twitter API''.
  First, from Twitter's Display Guidelines, which will become requirements for all apps:
  ''Individual Tweet'' sectionEmbedding tweets in a blog post in any way other than their dynamic embed code is effectively prohibited:
  [3a] Reply, Retweet, and Favorite action icons must always be visible for the user to interact with the Tweet.
  [5b] ''The Twitter logo or Follow button for the Tweet author must always be displayed in the top right corner.
  I'm pretty sure this means that I can't just display a tweet as a link and blockquote when I want to quote it here.
  Sending links to Instapaper or its clones, viewing a tweet on Favstar, and certainly sharing links to tweets on other social services is probably prohibited:
  [3b] No other social or 3rd party actions may be attached to a Tweet.
  Whether email clients (''Email link'') and web browsers (''Open in Safari'') count as third-party actions is yet to be determined.
  Zooming full-sized pic.twitter.com images in their own windows or screens is probably prohibited:
  [6b] pic.twitter.com images may not be detached and displayed separately from the Tweet.
  That also seems to prohibit apps that render only photos, such as gallery or photo-browsing apps. And it might create a Twitpic-ownership-like issue.
  ''Timelines'' sectionRule groups 1''4 dictate tweet layout with very little flexibility. Timelines in all conforming clients will look extremely similar.
  Rule 5a is far-reaching:
  [5a] Tweets that are grouped together into a timeline should not be rendered with non-Twitter content. e.g. comments, updates from other networks.
  In other words, apps cannot interleave chronological groups of Twitter posts with anything else.
  This is very broad and will bite more services and apps than you may expect. It's probably the clause that caused the dispute with LinkedIn, and why Flipboard CEO Mike McCue just left Twitter's board.
  Closer to home for me, it affects Instapaper's ''Liked By Friends'' browsing feature, which will need to be significantly rewritten if I want it to comply. (If.)
  Naturally, this also prohibits any client from interleaving posts from Twitter and App.net, or any other similar service, into a unified timeline.
  ''Requiring developers to work with us directly''The rest of the ''Changes'' post is full of bad news for developers:
  One of the key things we've learned over the past few years is that when developers begin to demand an increasingly high volume of API calls, we can guide them toward areas of value for users and their businesses. To that end, and similar to some other companies, we will require you to work with us directly if you believe your application will need more than one million individual user tokens.
  How, exactly, will Twitter ''guide'' developers who are required to ''work with them directly''? What exactly are ''areas of value for users and [our] businesses''?
  Translation: ''Once you get big enough for us to notice, we're going to require you to adhere to more strict, unpublished rules to make sure you don't compete with us or take too much value from our network.''
  And ''big enough'' might not be as big as you think:
  Additionally, if you are building a Twitter client application that is accessing the home timeline, account settings or direct messages API endpoints (typically used by traditional client applications) or are using our User Streams product, you will need our permission if your application will require more than 100,000 individual user tokens.
  Instapaper's ''Liked By Friends'' feature reads timelines and will need more than 100,000 tokens. And that's a relatively minor feature in a small web service run by one guy.
  We will not be shutting down client applications that use those endpoints and are currently over those token limits. If your application already has more than 100,000 individual user tokens, you'll be able to maintain and add new users to your application until you reach 200% of your current user token count (as of today) '-- as long as you comply with our Rules of the Road. Once you reach 200% of your current user token count, you'll be able to maintain your application to serve your users, but you will not be able to add additional users without our permission.
  Got a successful Twitter app or Twitter-integrated service already? Either ''work with'' Twitter quickly and make whatever changes they require before you get too many more users, or shut down.
  Finally, there may also be additional changes to the Rules of the Road to reflect the functional changes in version 1.1 of the Twitter API that we've outlined here.
  There will definitely be more rules that we're not ready to discuss yet, possibly because we haven't decided what they are yet, or possibly because we know you're not going to like them.
  For instance, I bet this is finally how clients will be required to display tweet ads. That requirement, probably worded roughly as ''you must display every tweet in a timeline, and display them all consistently'', will also kill any clients' filter and mute features.
  Twitter for Mac and iPadTwitter for iPhone has been thoroughly gutted of any traces of its Tweetie origins, and it's clearly Twitter's premiere client. (It probably gets more usage than their website.)
  But Twitter's own Mac and iPad apps, both also acquired as versions of Tweetie, haven't been meaningfully updated in many months. Both lack significant features and have glaring bugs, and neither of them comply with the Display ''Guidelines''.
  Twitter's inaction on these apps suggests that they're probably going to be either discontinued entirely (most likely for Mac) or gutted and replaced with an interface more like their iPhone app (most likely for iPad).
  Subjectivity and uncertaintyTwitter has left themselves a lot of wiggle-room with the rules. Effectively, Twitter can decide your app is breaking a (potentially vague) rule at any time, or they can add a new rule that your app inadvertently breaks, and revoke your API access at any time.
  Of course, they've always had this power. But now we know that they'll use it in ways that we really don't agree with.
  Anil Dash wants us to compare this to Apple's App Store review process (while not using App.net if we're white geeks, or something like that). The amount of power Twitter has over developers is similar to the App Store setup, but the incentives are completely different.
  Many uses of Twitter's platform compete with Twitter on some level. Twitter doesn't need a lot of its nontrivial apps, and in fact, they'd be happier if most of them disappeared. Twitter's rules continue to tighten to permit developers to add value to Twitter (mostly ''Share on Twitter'' features) but not get nearly as much out of it (e.g. piggyback on the social graph, display timelines, analyze aggregate data).
  By comparison, Apple needs its apps much more than Twitter does, and Apple's interests conflict much less with its developers'. Even its famous anticompetitive rules, such as the prohibition against ''duplicating existing functionality'', have been minimally enforced and have actually diminished over time.
  Furthermore, we know pretty well how Apple will behave and what sort of rules we'll need to follow in the future. They've been consistent since the App Store's launch. But Twitter has proven to be unstable and unpredictable, and any assurances they give about whether something will be permitted in the future have zero credibility.
  I sure as hell wouldn't build a business on Twitter, and I don't think I'll even build any nontrivial features on it anymore.
  And if I were in the Twitter-client business, I'd start working on another product.
Prins Friso al half jaar in coma na ski-ongeluk - Ski-ongeluk prins Johan Friso
  Link to Article
  Source: VK: Home
  Fri, 17 Aug 2012 04:18
  17/08/12, 03:40 '' bron: ANP
  (C) ANP. Prins Johan Friso tijdens de uitreiking van de Prins Claus Prijzen in Paleis op de Dam in Amsterdamin 2010.
  Prins Friso ligt vandaag precies een half jaar in coma. De prins kwam 6 maanden geleden, op 17 februari, onder een lawine terecht in het skigebied van het Oostenrijkse Lech. Door dat ongeluk liep Friso een ernstige hersenbeschadiging op en raakte hij in coma.
  Artsen van het ziekenhuis in Innsbruck lieten destijds weten dat de prins mogelijk nooit meer bij bewustzijn komt. Begin maart is Friso naar het Wellington ziekenhuis in Londen overgebracht voor verdere behandeling en verzorging. De Britse hoofdstad is de woonplaats van Friso, zijn echtgenote prinses Mabel en hun twee dochters.
  Prins Willem-Alexander liet tijdens een fotosessie vorige maand weten dat er sinds de diagnose in Innsbruck geen verandering is opgetreden in de toestand van zijn broer. Zodra er verandering optreedt, zal de Rijksvoorlichtingsdienst (RVD) dat naar buiten brengen.
  De RVD heeft vorige week de biografie van Friso bijgewerkt op de officile website van het Koninklijk Huis. Nu staat ook het ski-ongeval vermeld.
'Estelle gaat nieuwe verklaring afleggen in zaak Badr' - Binnenland
  Link to Article
  Source: VK: Home
  Fri, 17 Aug 2012 04:11
  17/08/12, 05:40 '' bron: Redactie
  (C) Brunopress. Badr Hari
  Estelle Cruijff gaat een nieuwe verklaring afleggen voor de rechter-commissaris die de zaak van haar vriend Badr Hari in behandeling heeft. Volgens advocate mr. B(C)n(C)dicte Ficq heeft 'de diepe verliefdheid bij haar invloed gehad op wat ze tegen de politie heeft gezegd'.
  (C) Brunopress.
  Estelle Cruijff
  Dit meldt De Telegraaf.
  In eerste instantie ontkende getuige Estelle Cruijff bij de recherche dat Hari iets had gedaan. Maar inmiddels heeft Hari zelf in twee zaken bekentenissen gedaan. Volgens Ficq is ze nu bereid om te vertellen wat ze heeft gezien.
  Omdat Hari en Cruijff niet getrouwd zijn, heeft de vriendin geen verschoningsrecht. Dat betekent dat zij bij de onderzoeksrechter strafbaar is als zij weigert om antwoord te geven op vragen.
  Donderdag maakte justitie bekend dat het aantal mishandelingen waarvan de gewelddadige kickbokser wordt verdacht is gestegen van twee naar zes.
Come here my little Nigger
  Link to Article
  Source: Lame Cherry
  Fri, 17 Aug 2012 00:48
  ......and you brats thought this blog was using racial epitaphs and were too dense to know by Inspiration this blog was predicting EXACTLY the climate which is now being openly spoken of.
  Niggazi.
  Nigger Hoodie
  and now.............
  MSNBC Host: Romney Engaging In 'Niggerization' Of Obama...Democrats' nerves start to show...
  I actually have more concern if Mormon Romney sends out LDS signals and attempts to convert Islam Obama to Masonization Obama.You know with pointy ears, green skin and the Vulcan sign, Obama would still look like a faggot, but smouldering as a Vulcan would be more appropriate as Obama does not have enough Negroid blood in him to qualify as a Nigger anything.If Obama was Native American in his low percentage bloodlines, he would not even get a BIA handout. That is how little Afroid Obama has in his veins, even if he does gravitate toward his sloven nature more, but that could be that siesta thing he has going on from his Filipino ancestry as this blog exclusively exposed in most Chinese immigrants there are Spanish as it made better commerce under Spanish dominion.It is getting too repetitive to keep saying Lame Cherry right again, but right again with full credit to God is something which must be noted.Come here my little nigger and rub massah's feet.......Should have remembered that quote as plantation man Romney just took the nigger code in speaking "going back to Chicago"......and children, Romney knew damn well like Bill Clinton what he was saying and how it would resonate with Clinton redneck racists.....you know like the Wall Street Insider and those Al Sharpton types who know what " why don't you go back to Africa" means.Lipstick on a pig.......yes they all know the code words.A white guy, a black guy and a Jew guy find a lamp and rub it and out pops a genie.The genie says I only have 3 wishes I will grant, so each of you can only have one wish.The Jew steps up first and says, "I wish I was richer and back in Israel".Poof!!! The genie puts him back into the Middle East.The black steps ups and says, "I wish I was white and back in Africa".Poof!!! The genie puts him back into Africa.The white guy looks around and says, "You mean to tell me all the niggers and Jews are back where they came from and it is only white people in America?"The genie nods his head "Yes".The white guy says, "In that case, I'll have a beer".You would be surprised the cocktail jokes bandied about by blacks about white women, and the jokes about the things which Romney slipped out from the Clinton lips.Biden knew his nigger chains dialect and Romney knows his nigger on the boat dialect.Wouldn't it just be easier to follow all this for the limited minds if we just all used the word nigger.
  Rhetorical
  agtG 267Y
Gedenkplaat voor eerste zoen Obama's - Opmerkelijk
  Link to Article
  Source: VK: Home
  Fri, 17 Aug 2012 00:26
  Bewerkt door: Redactie ''17/08/12, 02:01 '' bron: hln.be
  (C) getty. De gedenkplaat
  Zij werkte in een groot advocatenkantoor in Chicago. Hij was een rechtenstudent die er een vakantiebaantje had. Voor hem was het liefde op het eerste gezicht, zij was minder zeker. Maar hij kon haar verleiden en ze kusten elkaar voor het eerst bij een ijskraam in Hyde Park. Dat is het verhaal hoe Barack en Michelle Obama in 1989 een stel werden.
  Woensdag werd er op de hoek van Dorchester Avenue en 53rd Street een gedenkplaat voor die eerste kus geplaatst. Op de metalen plaat staat naast een foto van het koppel een quote van president Obama uit een interview in 'O, The Oprah Magazine' in 2007. 'Op onze eerste date trakteerde ik haar op het beste ijs dat Baskin-Robbins aanbood. Onze tafel was de stoep. Ik kuste haar en ze proefde naar chocolade.'
  Michelle en Barack Obama trouwden in oktober 1992 en in 1998 verwelkomden ze hun eerste dochter: Malia Ann. In 2001 werd Natasha ('Sasha') geboren.
Wanda Sykes: Don't Say 'That's So Gay'
  Link to Article
  Fri, 17 Aug 2012 00:20
Claiming Interference, Editors Quit at University Of Georgia's Student Paper
  Link to Article
  Source: NYT &gt; Most Recent Headlines
  Fri, 17 Aug 2012 00:14
  Much of the staff of the University of Georgia's student newspaper, including the top editors, resigned Thursday, claiming interference, even censorship, by the nonstudent managers hired to oversee it.
  Polina Marinova, the editor in chief of the newspaper, The Red and Black, said in a statement that ''recently, editors have felt pressure to assign stories they didn't agree with'' and ''take 'grip and grin' photos.''
  In the last month, she said, officials at the nonprofit publishing company that owns the newspaper had hired nonstudent employees ''with veto power over students' decisions.'' (The publishing company and the newspaper are independent of the university.)
  In particular, students objected to the editorial adviser, Ed Morales, being elevated to editorial director with the authority to veto decisions on editorial content, rather than simply advise.
  The paper's publishing board took issue with most of the students' complaints on Thursday, although they did not detail Mr. Morales' powers, and he declined to comment.
  ''It is not, nor has it ever been the intention of the board to censor student content,'' said a statement released by the board and the publisher, Harry Montevideo. ''We expect our students to collaborate with our professional staff to establish and maintain standards for quality, develop plans for content and create quality journalism products, which engage our audience.''
  The Red and Black did not report on the controversy until Thursday afternoon, when it posted its statement online.
  The walkout came after Ms. Marinova obtained a draft memo written by a board member that contained proposed guidelines for the newspaper. The memo listed, among ''bad'' news that was to be played down, ''content that catches people or organizations doing bad things.''
  The author, who was not identified, added, ''I guess this is 'journalism' ''
  Officials said the memo was not a policy statement, but reflected internal discussion.
Top Transhumanism CEO Says AI Singularity Will Go 'Very Badly For Humans Set You Free News
  Link to Article
  Source: Set You Free News
  Fri, 17 Aug 2012 00:13
  Anthony Gucciardi | NaturalSociety
  Promises of 'immortality' and a disease-free life have led many individuals to long for the hope of artificial intelligence and what is known as Singularity. It is essentially a merging of man and machine, the development of a 'new species' '-- a 'borg' of sorts.
  The subject recently made headlines when a major Russian scientist promised Singularity to the wealthy elite and ruling class by 2045 through the 2045 program, with artificial bodies available as early as 2015.
  On the surface it may sound enticing to those who are willing to trust their new artificial brains and bodies hooked up to a massive super computer that has control over their every action (through the utilization of RFID-like chips).
  Even the CEO of one of the largest and most well-known organizations known as the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence admits, however, that the boom in artificial intelligence leading up to Singularity will not go very well for humans. The high-powered CEO admits that not only is the research on artificial intelligence outpacing the safety research that is intended to keep it in check, but that Singularity would actually make humans the 'prey' of sorts to the 'super-human' AI.
  While doing an open Q&A on the community website Reddit, CEO Luke Muehlhauser explains that the superhuman AI would end up 'optimizing' the entire globe and starving resources from humans. In other words, the AI would suppress humans similar to the premise of iRobot or other similar works. This is particularly interesting when considering that artificial bodies and brains have been promised first to the wealthy elite by the 2045 program creator, allowing world rulers and the financial elite to achieve 'immortality' and subsequently a never-ending rule over the humans of the world.
  Muehlhauser explains how humans would become a 'prey' to the ruthless 'super-human' AI with the completion of Singularity:
  ''Unfortunately, the singularity may not be what you're hoping for. By default the singularity (intelligence explosion) will go very badly for humans'... so by default superhuman AIs will end up optimizing the world around us for something other than what we want, andusing up all our resources to do so.''
  The concerns echo those put forth by researchers and analysts who have been following the concept of Singularity for decades. With the ultimate goal of linking all hyper-intelligent androids into a 'cognitive network' of sorts and eventually even forfeiting physical bodies, it's clear that the Singularity movement even has its top supporters openly speaking out against it in many regards. What's even more clear, however, is the fact that AI Singularity has no place for humankind '-- not even in a form of co-existence.
Press Briefing by Press Secretary Jay Carney, 8/16/2012
  Link to Article
  Source: White House.gov Press Office Feed
  Fri, 17 Aug 2012 00:09
  The White House
  Office of the Press Secretary
  For Immediate Release
  August 16, 2012
  James S. Brady Press Briefing Room
  11:47 A.M. EDT
  MR. CARNEY: Welcome, everyone, to the White House for what has become a less frequent briefing here from the podium, as we spend a lot of time on the road. Glad you are all here -- very nice to see you. I do not have any announcements to make, so why don't we just go right to questions? Ben. Q Thanks, Jay. Two topics. I know Jen Psaki yesterday addressed the question about Governor Romney's comments on anger and hate and the type of campaign that he was accusing the President of running. But I wanted to ask, follow up on that with you, and just get your thoughts more broadly from your conversation with the President about whether he thinks the tone of the debate is the right one, whether it's befitting a race for the White House and if it's helpful to voters. MR. CARNEY: Well, sure, let me say a couple of things. For those of you who were out with us the last few days, I think you hear the President speak frequently about incredibly important, substantive issues -- substantive issues on which we have policy differences with the Republicans. We talked about drought relief and the need for Congress to take action on a comprehensive long-term farm bill, something that Republicans have blocked. We talked about the vitally important need to extend the wind energy tax credit that has bipartisan support, that the industry has made clear if not extended could threaten up to 37,000 jobs in the United States, and that is part of an overall vision for an all-of-the above energy future that the President has put forward at a substantive policy level again and again. And thirdly, he spoke about Medicare and the competing visions on a policy and a program that affects tens of millions of American seniors. That's what the President talked about these past few days. I took this question in a different way yesterday and I noted that having covered a number of presidential campaigns myself and other campaigns, that there is often a point at which one side begins to distract attention from the policy debates by suggesting, sometimes without foundation, that there's another story that you all ought to pay attention to, and that is invariably because that side is losing the policy debates. We are focused on, the President is focused on the issues that matter to the American economy and the American people. I think Medicare is a perfect example. What we have seen since late last week, early this week, when the ticket for the other side was filled out, was this initial announcement that there was a desire for a substantive policy debate, and once that substantive policy debate focused on the critical issue of Medicare, there's been, obviously, a desire on the other side to change the subject. Q Let's talk about Medicare as well. MR. CARNEY: Well, I think that Medicare is a very important issue. The President thinks it's a very important issue. The President's Affordable Care Act, according to the AARP, an independent voice that seniors value and take seriously, strengthens and protects Medicare. According to the AARP, the Republican plan, the Ryan plan, the Romney plan, undermines Medicare. We think that's incredibly important. The President believes strongly that we cannot, we must not, for the sake of our seniors, turn Medicare into a voucher program, because the Congressional Budget Office has said that if you do that, seniors, on average, will see costs rise by $6,400 per year. Not the right policy. Those are the kinds of issues that the President is out there talking about, and that's what this campaign ultimately is about and will be about. And there are always going to be distractions, both inadvertent and deliberate, but in the end, the American people are focused on the economic issues, principally, that affect their daily lives. And that's what this President is talking about. Q Thanks. The other topic I want to ask you about that's not getting as much attention this campaign season is the violence in Afghanistan. A Black Hawk was shot down today, seven American troops, four Afghans killed. We've seen more cases recently of Afghan troops firing on American servicemen. More than 220 Americans have been killed this year in Afghanistan. Does any of this give the President concern about the stability of the Afghan government, of the country there? And does it affect his thoughts about the American presence? Even though the war is winding down, troops will still be there for another two years. Does it affect his thinking about our posture there? MR. CARNEY: Well, let me start with the helicopter. ISAF did announce that an ISAF helicopter crashed today in southern Afghanistan, killing seven American servicemembers, three Afghan security forces and one Afghan civilian interpreter. Based on my information, as of this time, the cause of that crash is still under investigation. But, of course, our thoughts and prayers are with those American and Afghan families who lost loved ones in that incident. More broadly, on the matter of what's called green on blue incidents, there's no question that these incidents are deeply concerning, and our hearts go out to the families and friends of those who have lost loved ones in those incidents. You've heard General Dempsey and Secretary Panetta speak in some detail this week about the steps ISAF is taking in Afghanistan to ensure our military servicemembers are as safe as possible. And ISAF is continuously assessing and refining procedures and force protection so that we can both meet mission requirements and ensure the safety of our forces. As I have also said, Ben, it's important to remember that -- well, first of all, that our relationship with our Afghan partners is strong, and that every day our forces fight alongside Afghan forces. There are now about 350,000 Afghan forces, and we partner with those Afghan forces on 90 percent of operations. And while whenever there is a so-called green-on-blue incident, it is concerning and the fact that there have been the number of incidents that you mentioned is deeply concerning, it is also important to put it in perspective. And then, more broadly, the President's policy in Afghanistan was, after his review, predicated on the principle that our goal, our principle goal for being there is to go after al Qaeda, to eliminate al Qaeda and those who threaten the United States from the AfPak region. In the service of that overarching goal, we have helped build up Afghan security forces, helped stabilize portions of the country, and we are in the process of drawing down our forces as we turn over more and more responsibility to Afghan security forces. Reuters. Q I wanted to ask you about the situation in Lebanon where there has been violence this morning -- as seen as a spillover from Syria. Is the President concerned about the more regional upheaval at the moment? And has it affected his vision or plan over how to proceed in confronting Assad? MR. CARNEY: Well, as we have said for some time, the longer that President Assad stays in power and the longer he continues his assault on his own people, the more likely it becomes that we will witness a broader sectarian conflict that can spill over Syria's borders. We have repeatedly said that we're concerned about this conflict spilling over into other countries in the region and destabilizing other countries in the region. And that's why the way to prevent it from happening is to bring about the political transition that the Syrian people so deserve and desire. As for -- I think in terms of the President's view and his policy, I think this development reinforces what he's been saying, that we cannot -- that those people and organizations and states that continue to support Assad need to recognize that they are on the wrong side of history. It is unquestionable that the momentum in Syria is with opposition forces and that -- and with the Syrian people, and that Assad will not be a part of the future in Syria. We've seen a series of high-level defections, another indicator of the fact that Assad's hold on Syria is loosening. And we are taking action with our international partners to further isolate Assad, to starve his regime of the resources it needs to continue to perpetuate this violence against the Syrian people. And at the same time, we are providing substantial humanitarian aid to the Syrian people as well as non-lethal assistance to the opposition. Nancy. Q Jay, going back to the anger and hate accusation for a moment. When we asked the Romney campaign why he would make that charge, they cited not so much the things that the President has said on the stump but things that have happened by the campaign and from the White House -- things like you and the campaign refusing to condemn this outside ad about the steelworker's wife and his connection to Mitt Romney, the fact that someone on the campaign suggested that Mitt Romney might be a felon for the way that he ran Bain Capital, and also the Vice President's "chains" comments. Are you ready to condemn any of those things? MR. CARNEY: First of all, let's go back to the obvious attempt to distract attention by focusing so much of your attention on an ad that never ran, as I understood it -- understand it. Q It did end up running in some places. MR. CARNEY: Inadvertently -- according to a press report and a station error. That stands in stark, stark contrast to an advertising campaign behind which there is millions of dollars, endorsed by and paid for by the Romney campaign, that is built entirely on a fiction about the President's policy, and that's his policy on the work requirement necessary in welfare reform.
  You know and everybody in this room knows that every outside expert on this issue has declared that the advertising campaign on welfare reform is false. Just false. Factually false. And yet there's all this attention on an outside ad that, again, has barely run. I think that you know that there are plenty of third-party ads out there that -- in support of Governor Romney that allege certain things that are ridiculous, including suggesting that the President is not an American citizen. What this President is doing is focusing on the issues that matter to the American people -- okay? Q What are you saying to Republicans who say that the Vice President's comments about putting people back in chains is an example of why he should be replaced on the ticket? MR. CARNEY: Well, I'd say a couple of things. One is, they know that what they're saying about this is ridiculous. The Vice President was clearly making, as he repeated later, a statement about the Republican insistence that if they are able to by taking control of the White House, they will immediately repeal Wall Street reform -- Wall Street reform that was put in place and fought for by this President because we cannot afford to have happen what happened in the financial sector to this country just a few short years ago. We need to make it impossible for the taxpayers to be holding the bag when big institutions fail, if they fail. We need to make sure that we have the consumer protections in place that are part of Wall Street reform that were fought tooth and nail by Wall Street and by Republicans on the Hill. And the point was obvious to, I know, everyone in this room, to every one in that room, and to every Republican who is making this charge that that's what the Vice President was talking about. So I understand -- going back to my other point -- that there's an attempt to distract attention from the actual substance of the discussion, which is should we or should we not have Wall Street reform. They don't want to talk about that because they know that most Americans answer that question, "Absolutely, definitely yes." But they're opposed to it. Should we or should we not turn Medicare into a voucher system that costs seniors an extra $6,400 per person, per year? Overwhelmingly, the American people say no. But Republicans don't want to debate that because they know that's the answer. So, look, we're going to keep talking about the issues. And there's going to be along the road here, as there always is, an attempt to distract attention from the issues when one side is losing the debate over the issues. And that's what we're seeing right now. Q But does he just regret the choice of words? Because some took it as a reference to slavery. And he had a chance to go back -- MR. CARNEY: Nobody took it as a reference to -- Q -- and he said, I always say exactly what I mean. MR. CARNEY: -- anything, except for those who are trying to make something out of nothing here and distract attention from the policy debates. This is -- you know that's not what this is about. You know he was talking, if you look at what he said, about Wall Street reform, about the desire of some to put banks and Wall Street back in charge of your financial transactions and life. That's not what this President believes is the right policy. We understand that there's going to be efforts to distract attention from the policy debates because the other side is losing these policy debates pretty overwhelmingly. But we're going to keep talking about the policy issues. Q Can I follow on that question? MR. CARNEY: Jake. I said I'd call on Jake next. I'll get to you. Q The President the other day made three allusions to Mitt Romney putting his dog on his roof. Is that part of this important policy debate? MR. CARNEY: I think he made one allusion in three different speeches that was a joke -- just like I think the Romney campaign and others have joked about the fact that in the President's memoir he talked about as a boy eating dog meat in Indonesia, because that is something that's done there. I think a little levity is a lot different from the kind of ridiculous charges that are being made here. But that's an interesting case in point. The President on that day spent a great deal of time talking about the importance of the wind energy tax credit, the importance to the renewable energy sector in this country, which has doubled its output, its production under this President because of the historic investments that this administration has made in that sector -- and about the fact that extension of that tax credit is supported by both Democrats and Republicans -- Republicans in the states that are principally affected, including governors and senators, but is opposed by Congress, Washington Republicans. That's an issue that affects the jobs and livelihood of up to 7,000 people in Iowa. It affects the jobs and livelihood of up to 37,000 people around the country, in an industry that employs roughly 75,000 people in this country. And it's an industry that has been growing and will continue to grow if we make the kinds of wise investments that will ensure that as we move forward in this century, we rely less and less on foreign imports of energy and more and more on American energy. And that is a substantive policy issue. And one joke, as an aside, should not become the focus of the campaign or the coverage of the campaign. I understand that Republicans don't want to talk about the wind energy tax credit, but -- Q I don't think you guys are so na¯ve as to think that the President talking about Mitt Romney putting his dog on his roof isn't going to elevate that and become what Chuck Todd might refer to as "cable catnip," and that will step on the President's own message on wind energy. I mean, especially considering it was obviously in his prepared remarks. MR. CARNEY: Well, let me make clear that the President's message that day was on wind energy. It was not on a joke. And maybe I am na¯ve to think that a one-line joke about a dog would not then become the principal focus of the coverage of the President for the day. I know it wasn't in Iowa the principle focus of the coverage. The focus was on the importance of the wind energy tax credit. But I take your point and I'll be less na¯ve in the future. (Laughter.) Q All right, I appreciate that. Can we talk about Medicare for a second? MR. CARNEY: Please. Q Does the President believe that Medicare is on a sustainable path right now? MR. CARNEY: The President believes and knows -- and others have judged it so -- that the Affordable Care Act that he fought hard for and that Congress passed and he signed into law extends the life of -- Q Right, but -- MR. CARNEY: -- no, wait, I'll answer your question more fully -- extends the life of Medicare by eight years. He knows that, as outside experts have made clear, if the Affordable Care Act is repealed, as Republican leaders, the Republican nominee have ardently expressed their desire to do, Medicare's insolvency will come eight years sooner. That's an irrefutable fact. He knows that, as he said in the discussions and debates and the proposals about the steps we need to take to get our fiscal house in order through a balanced approach to reducing our deficit, that we need to make additional reforms that protect beneficiaries, but ensure that Medicare remains in place as Medicare -- not a voucher system -- for future generations. Q Okay. So the fact is he has, through his actions and despite great resistance from Republicans, extended the life of Medicare, but he knows that much more needs to be done to keep it sustainable. MR. CARNEY: There's no question that we have serious fiscal challenges that we need to address, and we need to address them in a balanced way. We don't need to do it in a way -- I mean, one of the marvels of the marvelous, exciting Ryan budget is that, despite claims to deficit hawkishness, is that that budget makes no claims to balancing deficits -- or eliminating deficits until something like 30 years from now -- because it's so preoccupied with giving, and dominated by giving tax cuts to wealthy Americans. Q So, about a year ago when the grand bargain talks were going on, I believe right before they fell apart, the President came into this room, and I asked him what was one thing he was willing to concede on Medicare in doing all this negotiation -- and he said that he would be -- he wouldn't talk about the retirement age, he wouldn't touch it, but he did talk about how maybe further means-testing would be something that he'd be willing to consider. But since then, we haven't really seen any serious proposal to help the sustainability of Medicare. And say what you will about the Ryan plan, it does look forward. It does -- it is a plan -- or the Romney plan -- there is an outline there for trying to change the system to preserve it. Again, I understand you disagree with that. Where is the President's plan? MR. CARNEY: Well, I think the President, what he said to you in this briefing room remains true today. And it's reflected in the budget proposal he put forward both for the super committee and again this year -- has additional reforms and savings from out of federal health care spending. But what it does not do is attempt to get our fiscal house in order by placing the entire burden on seniors and families with disabled children, or other low-income Americans who depend on these health care programs literally for, in some cases, for their survival. That's just not -- and you know what, the thing is we don't have to do that. The President's plan, other balanced plans that have been put forward demonstrate that you do not have to do that. You do not have to voucherize Medicare, basically eliminate Medicare and turn it into a voucher system, if you're willing to, on the other side, make some compromises on the principle that everyone ought to pay their fair share, that we need revenue to be part of the package when we address our fiscal challenge. It's a complete inside-baseball, inside-the-beltway conversation, but I am constantly amazed at the willingness of Republicans, who in one breath will say absolutely no revenue, absolutely no defense cuts, in fact, I want defense increases, but I love the Simpson-Bowles plan. And you know, because you know what's in the Simpson-Bowles plan, that they don't know what they're talking about. Maybe they haven't read it. Maybe they deliberately put their fingers in their ears when there are reports on it, but the Simpson-Bowles plan has more tax revenue than what the President called for, has far deeper defense cuts than what the President has called for, but it has similar discretionary cuts that the President has already signed into law and pledged. So there has to be -- and I'll end here -- I know I'm testing your patience -- but there has to be some -- you can't blithely say, as Governor Romney has, and Lindsey Graham and others -- my plan, says Romney, is very similar to Simpson-Bowles. Well, I think Erskine Bowles made clear that that's laughable. It's simply not. Because if you stand up on stage and say, I won't ask the wealthiest -- I won't ask for $1 of revenue for every $10 in spending cuts, you don't know what you're talking about when you say your plan is very similar to Simpson-Bowles. Q Just to summarize, you're saying the President's Medicare plan is contained within his budget. MR. CARNEY: The President has put forward in his budget proposal additional savings in our health care programs, not through -- not by cuts in benefits, but by savings from providers and insurance companies, which is the kinds of savings he achieved in the Affordable Care Act -- Q It's not really in itself a solution for Medicare. MR. CARNEY: But I'm not saying that ends the discussion about the kinds of further challenges we face in our fiscal future, but it does achieve the $4 trillion in deficit reduction that we need and it does achieve it in a balanced way that includes savings -- Q I'm just talking about Medicare. MR. CARNEY: No, but it achieves it in a balanced way that includes savings in health care reform -- I mean, savings in health care -- which, by the way, demonstrates the approach he took during deficit reduction talks and the debt ceiling talks, which was one of a willingness to compromise and make tough choices, sometimes against the wishes of some of his fellow Democrats, because he knew that in order to achieve this you needed to do it in a bipartisan way and you needed to reach a compromise. But instead, there was an absolute refusal to accept the notion that we needed revenue. And there was a role played in the failure of those discussions, the failure of Simpson-Bowles and the failure of the grand bargain talks, by the guy who's now running for vice president. Brianna. Q You and Jen were asked about this yesterday, but you didn't have an answer at the time, so I just want to circle back. Has the President actually spoken to Vice President Biden about the "chains" comments, or does he plan to do so? MR. CARNEY: I don't know if the President has had -- I mean, he speaks with the Vice President all the time. I don't know if they -- I know you can see -- I think the President was asked about this and it was put out in one of his interviews yesterday that he absolutely understands and knows what the Vice President was talking about, as does everybody in this room -- I'm sure there are some exceptions who pretend otherwise -- but he was talking about Wall Street reform. And you know that the President is one hundred percent with the Vice President in his commitment to ensuring that Wall Street reform stays in place. Q I understand that he defended the Vice President, but was he frustrated at all that this took attention away from what he was trying to do in Iowa? MR. CARNEY: Not that I saw. I mean, look, I think that he understands what I was talking about earlier, that there are going to be confected distractions from the important issues of the day. That's part of every campaign, and it's often the result of one side trying to change the subject when they're losing the debate on the substantive policy issues that matter most to the American people. And there is no question that when it comes to protecting seniors on Medicare, when it comes to protecting businesses, small and large, that are part of our renewable energy sector, especially wind energy, that this President has been making very strong policy arguments, and that at a substantive level as well as at a level of support from the American people, he's winning those arguments. Q Does he have any concern that the Vice President will make these types of verbal missteps moving forward? MR. CARNEY: I understand this unbelievable obsession about trivia, as I've been trying to discuss. The fact of the matter is that the Vice President was talking about a policy issue, which there is an attempt to turn into an insubstantial campaign issue that's divorced from policy because Republicans don't want to talk about the fact that they are ardently in favor of repealing Wall Street reform because they know that the American people are determined to see that Wall Street reforms stay in place. Q Also, Jay, does the President have a reaction to the case in Pennsylvania, the voter I.D. laws that were upheld -- does he see that in any way as a blow to his reelection effort, or his effort in Pennsylvania at least? MR. CARNEY: Well, I'd say a couple of things about that. I know the campaign has addressed this and I would point you to the campaign's statements. The broader principle here is one that I think I've talked about, which is that this President is committed to, and I know the Department of Justice is committed to, ensuring that Americans enjoy and get to take advantage of that most basic and fundamental right, which is the right to vote. But in terms of the specific cases, I would refer you to the Department of Justice or to the campaign. Q Arizona Governor Jan Brewer has issued an executive order ordering state agencies to deny driver's licenses and other public benefits to young illegal immigrants who get work authorization under this new Obama administration policy. Do you have a reaction to that? MR. CARNEY: I don't. It looks like you just pulled it up online, so I haven't seen that. Q I'm just reading it off my work document -- (laughter.) Let's go to the Vice President's comments. MR. CARNEY: You know, you guys are -- you're almost -- you're -- well, go ahead. (Laughter.) Q Former Virginia governor, Douglas Wilder, a Democrat, he basically called it inappropriate, the comments. He said you can't defend it. Do you think that the first African American governor since Reconstruction is, as you put it, trying to make something out of nothing and distracting policy debates, or does he have a point? MR. CARNEY: He doesn't have a point. The Vice President was talking about Wall Street reform. As everyone who speaks publicly for a living, or as part of what they do in this arena -- and I include myself -- every day that you go out there and give a speech or answer questions, there is always the possibility that something you say and the way you say it can be misunderstood or taken out of context and made a big deal of, when everyone knows -- and I know you know and everyone who watched the tape, who knows the Vice President, knows that he was talking about Wall Street reform. Q Don't you think it speaks to the sensitivity in using words like that? MR. CARNEY: There's no question that there are -- there are sensitivities around words. But again, as I just said, the Vice President, the President, Governor Romney, Congressman Ryan, others in the arena go out there and speak all the time; they answer questions all the time. And I think that it's important to acknowledge in the remarkable amount of air time for something that is so weightless that is being devoted to this subject, that you also make clear that you know that the Vice President was talking about Wall Street reform. Q But you don't understand why Wilder would be offended by the comments? MR. CARNEY: I understand that one person has expressed his opinion that he's offended by it -- Q This isn't one person. This is the first African American governor since Reconstruction. MR. CARNEY: Brianna, the Vice President's intention was clear. What he was talking about is clear. Q Obviously not. It was obviously not clear. MR. CARNEY: Was he not clear to you? Was he not talking about Wall Street -- Q I thought that personally I think when you use the word "chains" in a crowd with many African Americans, you better be careful of what you're talking about. MR. CARNEY: I think the Vice President, at a later event, made clear that his word choice was off, that he had been using similar phrases -- saying similar things with slightly different phrasing. But the purpose of that section of his comments was to talk about the absolute need to ensure that Wall Street reform is not repealed. And you know that that's not -- that this is not what the campaign is about. The campaign is about do we repeal Wall Street reform or do we continue to implement it? Do we turn Medicare into a voucher system, or do we ensure that we take steps to strengthen it and preserve it for America's seniors? Do we pass $5 trillion in tax cuts that disproportionately benefit the wealthy -- think about the size of that -- $5 trillion. That's $500 billion a year. I mean, that's real money, and do we do that -- doing incredible damage to our deficits, devastating investments in education, innovation, research and development, infrastructure spending, roads, bridges, highways schools -- or do we take a balanced approach to our fiscal challenges that, in addition to the substantial spending cuts the President has signed into law, the substantial savings he has put forward in his budget proposal, we ask millionaires and billionaires to pay a little bit more -- to go back to, when it comes to the Bush tax cuts, the top marginal rate that was in place when Bill Clinton was President. And I never cease to marvel at the rhetoric about the doom and gloom that Republicans promise if this rate was reinstated, because it's eerily similar to the doom and gloom that they promised would occur in this country the first time around when the Clinton budget passed in the spring of 1993. And what we saw instead was the opposite of what was predicted and promised by Republican leaders, including the current Speaker of the House. We saw record economic growth, record expansion and record job creation. April. Oh, Ed. No, I said Ed, then April. Q I want to follow on that, though. MR. CARNEY: Well, you will. Q On the Vice President, one short question. I'm not going to get -- I hear exactly what you're saying, I'm not going to repeat the same stuff, but since the President has given the vote of confidence and you've defended the Vice President repeatedly, does this settle it once and for all, all the speculation, this is the ticket? Obama-Biden? (Laughter.) That's a yes or no, it's not -- MR. CARNEY: Yes. And that was settled a long, long time ago. And while I appreciate -- I have great admiration for and respect for and a long relationship with Senator John McCain, but one place I would not go for advice on vice presidential running mates is to Senator McCain. Q Okay -- on that -- MR. CARNEY: You said you had one question. (Laughter.) Q One question on that, and I wasn't going to belabor it. You answered it, thank you. On Medicare -- a substantive issue. In the answers to Jake, you said at the end of it you acknowledged that the President had not put all the details on the table. You acknowledged that more -- MR. CARNEY: No, no, I didn't say that. Q You said more savings could be achieved. MR. CARNEY: I said there's no question that as we go forward as a country we're going to have to continue to deal with -- and that includes this President and future Presidents -- with our fiscal challenges. But the President has put forward a budget proposal that creates $4 trillion in deficit reduction -- more than $4 trillion -- does it through a balanced approach of cuts in discretionary spending -- non-defense and defense -- cuts in savings out of health care and -- Q -- he said his budget plan then is where the Medicare details are. And you said, well, that's a start, but there needs to be more. So my question -- MR. CARNEY: Well, it's a process where the Affordable Care Act, in addition to extending insurance to 30 million people who didn't have it, in addition to providing seniors with millions and millions of dollars in savings on their prescription drugs by closing the doughnut hole, in addition to allowing young Americans 26 and under to remain on their parent's health insurance, in addition to making sure that those with preexisting conditions can get insurance and that Americans who develop an illness can't be thrown off their insurance policies -- in addition to all that, it extends the life of Medicare by an additional eight years. And this is obviously a project that we have to continue to address. There are additional savings put forward in the President's budget, and I'm certainly accepting the supposition that we will, as a country, continue to need to address our fiscal challenges and the growth of spending in our federal health care programs. What we cannot do is eliminate Medicare. What we cannot do is turn Medicare into a voucher system and basically tell seniors, you know what, the way we're going to deal with this problem is not find savings within the system, not reduce the cost of health care, but just basically shift it to you, so that your elderly relatives are going to have to -- would have to pay, or you when you get older would have to pay $6,400 extra per year for your health care. There are a lot of seniors out there who will not be able to afford that. Q But my question is, Ryan has put his details out there; you're hitting them. When does the President put his details out, those extra details -- before the election or after the election? MR. CARNEY: Look, the President -- Q -- that we still have to continue to confront our fiscal challenges, what's on the table now? An extra eight years to Medicare only kicks it down eight more years. Everyone acknowledges you've got to do more. MR. CARNEY: But I think you need to focus a little more attention on what's in the Ryan budget proposal. Again, it does not even -- Q Yes, but where's the proposal that is the counter to that, I guess? MR. CARNEY: The President's budget -- Q -- in the budget. That's all he's -- MR. CARNEY: Paul Ryan has put forward a proposal that I think claims to achieve something like $5 trillion in deficit reduction, I believe it is. And the President put forward a proposal that achieves over $4 trillion. The Romney/Ryan plan, if you will, has to cut drastically discretionary spending -- investments in education, innovation, infrastructure, Department of Transportation -- everything that people think of as federal investments dramatically. And it also has to turn Medicare into a voucher program -- in order, largely, to pay for not reducing our deficit, not building the economic foundation of this country, but to give tax cuts. Now, I understand that they believe in their hearts that that's good for the economy; that, as the President says, that the fairy dust will be sprinkled across the country and everyone will benefit. Q He said snake oil yesterday. MR. CARNEY: Or snake oil. (Laughter.) I think I'd rather be sprinkled with fairy dust than snake oil. (Laughter.) Q So last question -- as part of this serious discussion of policy issues, the President sat down with Entertainment Tonight yesterday and said that he -- nobody could say that he's dividing the country, we've always tried to bring the country together. So you were asked before about the cancer ad again. Why, then, won't the President say, in that interview or anywhere -- that since he wants to focus on these serious issues, why doesn't he tell any of his advisors out there, this does not fit with that, this does not fit with this -- MR. CARNEY: Well, of course, we do not -- he doesn't dictate to or coordinate with third-party groups. Q I disagree with that. That's not what -- MR. CARNEY: And I know you're out there with us often. You hear his tone when he speaks. You hear the issues that he talks about. And there's no question that these -- we have tough debates about the issues, and as you know, there has been a relentless critical evaluation by the Republican side of the President's record, of his proposals, paid for in hundreds of millions of dollars of advertising over the past several years, and specifically by the Romney campaign. And on the issues, the President is obviously going to engage and has engaged because he thinks the stakes are so very high for the American people. He will continue to focus on the issues, continue to talk about his very optimistic vision for the American economy and the American people, because he knows that that's what this is all about, for him and for the country -- and that those issues, to go back to my earlier point, are what the American people want to decide this election. And those are the issues that will decide this election. So a third-party ad that essentially had no money behind it, never appeared except accidentally on one station once, versus a focus on the issues that's backed up by the President's campaign and all the efforts that it's engaged in, on the one hand, and to compare apples to apples, as opposed to apples to oranges or pears or pomegranates, the Romney campaign has as a matter of policy, invested tens of millions of dollars in an advertising campaign that's based on a blatantly false assertion about the President's policy. I think you know my feelings on that. April. Q I have a couple of questions on a couple of subjects. And thanks to Mark Knoller's great pool report, Vice President Biden and the President are having a lunch right now. What should we anticipate? Yes, Mark said it. He was just with the President. MR. CARNEY: Mark, I know you're an intrepid reporter, but you probably got that from the published schedule, right? Q I did. (Laughter.) Q Yes, okay. But either way -- Q I didn't say otherwise. Q Right, right -- but he just left the President saying that he walked -- in the pool report if you follow Mark's pool report -- MR. CARNEY: You guys know that since you've been covering this, the President and the Vice President have as a standing proposition, lunch every week -- right? Every week, when they're in town. Obviously, they're both traveling a lot, so it may not be every week, but this is something that happens every week -- as do the President's weekly meetings with Secretary Clinton and Secretary Geithner, which the Vice President, when he's in town, always participates in. This is routine stuff. Q So what's the stuff that's not routine, that's going to be on the plate? MR. CARNEY: Nothing. It's all routine. Q They're not going to talk about the "chains" at all, by any chance? MR. CARNEY: I think the focus on this is pretty much entirely yours and not ours. This is a, as I said before, non-issue. The Vice President was talking about Wall Street reform, the absolute urgent need to ensure that it remains in place, the opposition to that principle by the Republican Party and the Republican candidates for president and vice president. And as I said before, there's always an attempt during campaigns to distract attention from the substantive policy issues when you're losing the substantive policy issues and debates. Q I understand the dynamic power habits -- it started with Ryan, then with Biden, and then, you had other people chime in. But have you ever heard of the word "pun", a play on words? MR. CARNEY: No. (Laughter.) Q Understanding what happened -- and listening to Jake, Jake was right, and going back to what Brianna said about Governor Wilder. Governor Wilder said that race was interjected -- and he even says, understanding as a grandson of slaves. MR. CARNEY: April, I think you heard or saw that the Vice President said in his next appearance, or soon thereafter, explained the use of his words, his language and how he had meant to phrase it. And I think I made the point that we all -- all of us who are out there every day giving speeches, taking questions, talking about the issues, sometimes don't use the exact language that we thought we were going to use or wanted to use. But you know what he was talking about. You know that he was talking about a substantive issue. And it certainly was not his intention -- Q So he was not using a pun at all, is that what you're trying to say? MR. CARNEY: No, he wasn't. Q Okay, wait a minute -- I'm not finished. Just one second. Do you think race ever needs to be interjected in this campaign, as many African Americans -- the day that Ryan was announced, many African Americans, particularly black ministers, bombarded this White House with concerns because of the Ryan budget, how it cut into middle and low-income programs, support for those programs. Do you think race will ever have to be injected in this campaign? MR. CARNEY: I think the issue with the Republican budget proposals, the Romney/Ryan plans, is that they harm Americans across the board -- middle-class Americans, low-income Americans, seniors. They're just not the right economic prescription. As the President says, the vice presidential nominee on the other side is an articulate spokesman for Governor Romney's economic vision. He just happens to disagree with that vision. And that's the debate we're having. That's the debate in many ways we've been having for the last couple of years. And the President looks forward to continuing to talk about why we cannot pursue -- we cannot afford as a country a $5 trillion tax cut. We cannot afford as a country the decimation of our investments in education and innovation and infrastructure. We can't attempt to get our fiscal house in order by asking seniors to accept vouchers instead of Medicare and to shoulder the burden of an extra, on average, $6,400 per year in costs for their health care. That's just not the right economic policy vision this President believes for this country. Q Governor Romney just held a news conference and you may want to respond to this. Using a whiteboard, he sketched out the difference between his Medicare and Congressman Ryan's Medicare plan and the President's. And one of the points he makes is that under President Obama's approach, those approaching retirement -- 55 and over -- would indeed see changes, and under his plan they would not. Would you remind us whether the President would change benefits to the plan of Social Security for those who are 55 and over? MR. CARNEY: I'm sorry, you mean Medicare? Q Excuse me, Medicare. MR. CARNEY: The President's plan protects benefits. The AARP has said -- let's be clear -- has said that the President's Affordable Care Act strengthens and protects Medicare benefits and beneficiaries. The Ryan budget -- the Romney/Ryan proposal, which, by the way -- I didn't see this press conference, but just because it's constantly unclear every day, the answer to this question -- that Governor Romney said -- actually, this is in an interview I believe last night in Wisconsin, Romney -- "Actually Paul Ryan's and my plan for Medicare I think is the same. It is probably close to identical." So we know what that plan is. I mean, we've been debating it. It's passed the House. It voucherizes Medicare. It shifts costs to seniors. The President's plan does none of that. The President's plan extends the life of Medicare. It has already bequeathed millions of dollars in savings to seniors by closing the doughnut hole. It has given millions of seniors the opportunity for free preventive services like mammograms and cancer screenings. This is just a different vision. Look, this is exactly what we want to be talking about. These are the substantive issues that will be decided for this country and that will have a huge impact on this country and on America's seniors and others for years to come. Q Is he correct that those 55 and over under the Obama plan would have a change in their Medicare benefits? MR. CARNEY: I don't know what change you're talking about. The President protects Medicare beneficiaries and Medicare benefits. The savings he achieved through the Affordable Care Act have extended the life of the Medicare program by eight years. And they come not from Medicare beneficiaries, not from benefits, but from providers and insurance companies through savings in waste and fraud. This is a very important debate and the President looks forward to engaging in it. Q Hey, Jay, one other thing from that press conference -- Romney said he has never -- MR. CARNEY: We should have had it up here, so I could -- (laughter) -- Q No, you'll probably want to respond. He's never paid less than 13 percent of an income tax over the past 10 years. Any reaction? Q I don't have a reaction. I think my statement to that would simply be that this President believes that the tradition of a -- for presidential candidates to put forward multiple years of their tax returns is a useful and valuable one, not always a comfortable one, but one that he has certainly abided by, and he thinks is one that the American people believe is right and expect their candidates to abide by. Q Does the new immigration order potentially leave all these young people in a state of limbo because it doesn't confer legal status? And then also, following up on Brianna's question earlier about Governor Brewer, since she did -- the Governor issued this executive order last night. And it would basically be denying driver's licenses to these same people who are applying. It's obviously very hard to get to work if you don't have a driver's license. So is there concern about how some states are trying to skirt this rule? MR. CARNEY: I simply -- and I appreciate that it was last night and that Brianna didn't just call it up on her screen -- but I have not seen it and I simply don't know enough about it to give you a comment on it. The answer to your first question is, yes, this is not a long-term solution. The President believes and fought hard for the DREAM Act and believes that Congress ought to pass it. And the administrative action taken by this administration, led by DHS, is to make sure that we're using prosecutorial discretion in a way that focuses our resources on criminals and not on so-called DREAM Act kids, who, as the President said, got here -- arrived in this country when they were very young, grew up in the United States, consider themselves Americans, and who are or can contribute mightily to this country. Q I would imagine that the President would not be pleased seeing what Governor Brewer -- MR. CARNEY: Again, I just hesitate to offer an assessment since I have not seen that story. Q And then keeping -- any surprise on the turnout? We're seeing so many people around the country coming out applying for this. Is the administration surprised by this number? MR. CARNEY: I don't know how to judge that because I'm not sure what numbers were expected. Q Thank you. MR. CARNEY: Thank you very much, guys. Q Do you have any comment on the Family Research Council shooting, Jay? Can you talk about that? MR. CARNEY: I made a statement about it yesterday. The President was informed about it by his Homeland Security Advisor, John Brennan, and he was very concerned about the victim -- the person who was shot -- and made clear to me, and I conveyed this to the pool, that he firmly believes that violence of that kind has no place in our society. And this goes to the greater discussion we've had about violence in America and the need to tackle it on multiple fronts. Q Does he consider it a hate crime or an act of -- MR. CARNEY: Those kinds of determinations are made by the FBI, and I know the FBI is part of this investigation. Thank you. END 12:40 P.M. EDT
BreakingNews: Attorneys try to block prosecutors from obtaining university records on Colorado theater shooting suspect - @denverpost http://t.co/YRvJlY9V
  Link to Article
  Source: Twitter / BreakingNews
  Thu, 16 Aug 2012 20:50
  Attorneys for Aurora theater shooting suspect James Holmes sought Thursday to block prosecutors from obtaining records about him from the University of Colorado.
  In a hearing in Arapahoe County District Court, Holmes' lawyers filed a motion to quash a subpoena for records served on CU by prosecutors.
  Attorneys for the university turned over two envelopes to Judge William Sylvester, each one containing an identical set of approximately 100 pages of documents.
  Whether the judge will ultimately turn those documents to prosecutors will be determined at a hearing Aug. 23.
  Sylvester also further postponed a hearing about a notebook Holmes allegedly mailed to his psychiatrist. That hearing will now be held Aug.
  30.Holmes, 24, faces 24 counts of murder and 116 counts of attempted murder in the July 20 attack at the Century Aurora 16 theater. Holmes allegedly opened fire during the premiere of the new Batman movie, "The Dark Knight Rises."
  Twelve people died and another 58 were wounded in the attack.
  Holmes appeared in court at Thursday's hearing.
  His attorneys and prosecutors have filed competing motions over the fate of the notebook he allegedly mailed to his psychiatrist at CU, Dr. Lynne Fenton.
  The question of its fate is wrapped in doctor-patient confidentiality laws.
  Originally scheduled for Thursday, that hearing was pushed back after prosecutors filed the motion asking for a delay because they had not received documents they said they need to properly prepare for the debate.
  Also at Thursday's hearing, Sylvester directed prosecutors to turn over contact information for theater victims to Colorado Organization for Victims Assistance '-- if those victims approve '-- so the organization can figure out how to distribute about $4 million that has been donated.
  "There are many victims who may be incapacitated or have lost family members and are in very dire financial straits." Prosecutor Rich Orman told the judge.
Weer aardbeving in Groningen - Binnenland
  Link to Article
  Source: VK: Home
  Fri, 17 Aug 2012 00:07
  16/08/12, 22:55 '' bron: ANP
  (C) Thinkstock.
  UPDATEIn de provincie Groningen is donderdagavond opnieuw een aardbeving geweest. Net als woensdag trilde de aarde in Noordoost-Groningen, maar de beving van donderdag was sterker, aldus een woordvoerder van het KNMI.
  Hoe krachtig de beving was en waar het epicentrum precies lag, zoekt het KNMI nog uit. Inwoners van de stad Groningen meldden dat zij de aardbeving hebben gevoeld.
  Het European-Mediterranean Seismological Centre (EMSC) meldde aanvankelijk dat de schok een kracht had van 4,1 op de schaal van Richter, maar zwakte dat later af naar 3,7. Volgens het KNMI had de beving een kracht van 3,4 op de schaal van Richter.
  GaswinningSinds 1986 doen zich in Noord-Nederland geregeld aardbevingen voor die veroorzaakt worden door gaswinning. Het gaat om 30 tot 40 bevingen per jaar. De zwaarste schok tot nu toe in Groningen had een kracht van 3,5 op de schaal van Richter en vond plaats in augustus 2006 in Westeremden. De aardbeving van 1992 met Roermond als epicentrum geldt als de zwaarste tot nu toe in Nederland: die had een kracht van 5,8.
Male contraceptive pill a step closer
  Link to Article
  Source: The Conversation
  Fri, 17 Aug 2012 00:05
  Women's contraceptive options have evolved over time, but men have limited options. This could change following a new discovery. AAP/KRTUS researchers have identified a compound that may offer the first effective and hormone-free birth control pill for men.
  The discovery, reported in medical journal Cell, is of a small molecule which the researchers found makes male mice reversibly infertile without destroying their sex drive.
  ''A pharmacologic approach to male contraception remains a longstanding challenge in medicine,'' the researchers, from the Baylor College of Medicine, University of Oxford and Harvard Medical School, said in the report.
  ''Toward this objective, we explored the spermatogenic effects of a selective small-molecule inhibitor (JQ1).''
  Harvard Medical School's James Bradner said JQ1 is a new small molecule inhibitor of a bookmark placed throughout human genomes at regions of chromatin that are associated with gene activation.
  ''We developed JQ1 in my laboratory first as a cancer therapeutic with the idea that we might cause cancer cells to forget, in effect, that they are cancer,'' Dr Bradner said.
  With the discovery that JQ1 effectively blocks the cell division necessary for normal sperm production, the researchers have also demonstrated quite clearly that it's possible to separate the male hormonal production of testosterone from sperm production and that you can interfere with one without interfering with another, said David de Kretser, founding director of the Monash Institute of Medical Research.
  ''It's a nice piece of work which describes a process that can be interfered with in terms of sperm development which basically does not interfere with the hormone secretions of the testis which define sex drive and masculinity,'' Professor de Krester said.
  But couples looking for a quick and easy male contraceptive option might be disappointed.
  ''This was developed by injection '' I'm not sure it would survive being given by a pill,'' Professor de Krester said. ''The next step really would be trying to see if you could find a molecule that survived being swallowed.''
  The development of a potential new contraceptive is also likely to very long and arduous process leading up to the first human studies, said Robert McLachlan, director of clinical research at Prince Henry's Institute of Medical Research.
  ''This requires industry partners, who at this point in time have been reluctant to engage in male contraceptive initiatives because of concerns such as side effects, efficacy and the size of the potential market,'' Professor McLachlan said.
  However Moira O'Bryan, head of the Male Infertility and Germ Cell Biology Laboratory at Monash University, said the medical and social costs of unplanned pregnancies are enormous and studies from both academics and drug companies have repeatedly shown that there is a strong desire for male-based contraceptives.
  ''Although there is undoubtedly an urgent need for additional contraceptive options, the path between this paper and a new product is likely to be long,'' Professor O'Bryan said.
  ''Several doses of drug will need to be tested and the method of delivery improved. Frequent injections are unlikely to be acceptable to many.''
  ''It will be fascinating to see how JQ1 evolves, but we know that such pipelines may require 15 years of evaluation and there are many potential pitfalls along the journey,'' Professor McLachlan said.
  Post a Comment TagsContraceptive pill
  Related articles30 July 2012 Monday's medical myth: the pill affects long-term fertility 8 December 2011 Catholic church urged to give nuns the pill to protect against cancer21 October 2011 Why the contraceptive pill won't stop you sniffing out your soulmate21 July 2011 Birth control pill shrinks bones
Chemists do a double take on the double helix
  Link to Article
  Source: Phys.org - latest science and technology news stories
  Fri, 17 Aug 2012 00:05
  Frequent examples of double helices occur in art and science, clockwise from bottom center, DNA model, Momo's staircase in the Vatican Museums, USU chemists Ivanov and Boldyrev's model and Giambologna's 'Rape of the Sabine Women.'
  (Phys.org) -- When most people think of a double helix, they think of DNA structure — a now familiar image thanks to Watson and Crick's landmark 1953 discovery of the double-stranded molecules of nucleic acids. Yet human fascination with the distinctive twisted ladder-shape stretches back through ancient history, says Utah State University chemist Alexander Ivanov.
  'It's a beautiful structure and one can see many examples in art and architecture,-- says Ivanov, a doctoral student in physical chemistry. 'Think of Giambologna's ‘Rape of the Sabine Women' and Momo's spiral staircase in the Vatican Museums.--
  The geometric structure plays a significant role in metabolism and evolution. While it appears in forms great and small in varied organisms, it is very rare in inorganic chemistry.
  'So, you can imagine our excitement when, using computer models, we predicted the existence of double-helix structures in simple lithium-phosphorus species,-- Ivanov says.
  The findings stem from a National Science Foundation-funded study Ivanov conducted with USU faculty mentor Alexander Boldyrev; his previous faculty mentor Konstantin Bozhenko of the Peoples' Friendship University of Russia and colleagues Andrew Morris and Chris Pickard of Great Britain's University College London. The team's research appears in the Aug. 13, 2012, editions of Angewandte Chemie Internationale, journal of the German Chemical Society, and Chemical & Engineering News.
  Finding the spirals wasn't the initial goal of the team's study, says Boldyrev, professor in USU's Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry.
  'We planned to probe these simple species, which consist only of lithium and phosphorus, and expected to find round, crown-like structures similar to those of sulfur compounds,-- he says. 'It was surprising to find the double helices.--
  The findings challenge 20th century studies that suggested simpler structures for lithium-phosphorus species. With this new discovery, the chemists suspect many more inorganic compounds may also have double-helix structures.
  'The new findings expand our knowledge of these compounds and have implications for future nanotechnology applications,-- Boldyrev says. 'Now it's up to experimentalists to take explore our theories.--
  Provided byUtah State University
BBC News - Norway police chief quits over Breivik report
  Link to Article
  Source: BBC News - Europe
  Fri, 17 Aug 2012 00:03
  16 August 2012Last updated at 18:29 ET Norway's police chief Oeystein Maeland has resigned after an inquiry found that mass killer Anders Behring Breivik could have been stopped last year.
  Mr Maeland took up his post days before Breivik murdered 77 people in a bombing in Oslo and a gun attack on a summer camp on Utoeya Island.
  The independent report said on Monday the bombing could have been prevented.
  It also criticised the "unacceptable" amount of time which police took to respond to the shootings.
  The tone of the inquiry was also markedly different from an earlier police report which concluded that none of the officers on duty had hesitated in carrying out their duties.
  Damaging reportContinue reading the main story 8 people killed and 209 injured by bomb in Oslo 69 people killed on Utoeya island, of them 34 aged between 14 and 17 33 injured on Utoeya Nearly 900 people affected by attacks The resignation of Mr Maeland was revealed by Justice Minister Grete Faremo during a TV debate late on Thursday.
  Mr Maeland said later that he could no longer continue in the job without the minister's confidence.
  "If the ministry and other political authorities do not clarify this matter unequivocally, it will become impossible for me to continue," he said in a statement.
  Among the most damaging of the report's conclusions is that a two-man local police team reached the lake shore first, but chose to wait for better-trained colleagues rather than find a boat and cross to Utoeya themselves.
  Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg said shortly after the report was published that he deeply regretted the mistakes that had been made and took responsibility for what happened.
  But he stopped short of saying there would be ministerial resignations.
  Breivik, 33, admits carrying out the murders on 22 July last year but denies criminal guilt.
  His 10-week trial ended in June and a verdict is due to be announced on 24 August.
  The panel of five trial judges will have to rule on Breivik's sanity when they deliver their ruling.
  Their conclusion will determine whether he is given a long prison sentence or is sent to a secure psychiatric ward.
  The attacks, regarded as the worst act of violence in Norway since World War II, sparked a national debate about the nature of tolerance and democracy in the country.
Open-air quantum teleportation performed across a 97km lake Set You Free News
  Link to Article
  Source: Set You Free News
  Fri, 17 Aug 2012 00:01
  by Matthew Francis | ars techinca
  Photo illustration of the beacon laser, used to track an entangled photon signal across Qinghai Lake. The statue is Padmasambhava at the Lotus Temple at Gangcha.
  It only works at night, but the technique sets a new distance record.
  Sending signals through fiber optic cable is reliable and fast, but because of internal absorption and other effects, they will lose photons'--which is a problem when the number of photons being sent is small. This is of particular concern in quantum networks, which typically involve a small number of entangled photons. Direct transmission through free space (vacuum or air) experiences less photon loss, but it's very difficult to align a distant receiver perfectly with the transmitter so that photons arrive at their destination.
  A group in China has made significant progress toward solving that problem, via a high accuracy pointing and tracking system. Using this method, Juan Yin and colleagues performed quantum teleportation (copying of a quantum state) using multiple entangled photons through open air between two stations 97 kilometers apart across a lake. Additionally, they demonstrated entanglement between two receivers separated by 101.8km, transmitted by a station on an island roughly halfway between them.
  Though the authors do not make this clear in the paper, their method is currently limited to nighttime communication. Nevertheless, their results achieved larger distances for multi-photon teleportation and three-point entanglement than before, and the tracking system used may even enable ground-to-satellite quantum communication'--at least if it happens at night.
  Quantum communication requires transmitting an arbitrary quantum state between two points, similar to how ordinary communication sends bits (voice or other data) across distances. However, a quantum state is a small amount of information, typically carried by a single photon, so many methods used in ordinary communication are out of the question (including broadcasting).
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Enormous, possibly radioactive sinkhole swallows an acre of Louisiana, causes forced evacuations Set You Free News
  Link to Article
  Source: Set You Free News
  Thu, 16 Aug 2012 23:59
  by: J. D. Heyes | Natural News
  A huge, foul-smelling and potentially radioactive sinkhole has gulped an entire acre of cypress trees south of Baton Rouge, forcing the evacuations of about 150 homes and leading affected residents to file a class-action lawsuit against the Texas Brine Co. for its alleged responsibility.
  ''On Friday, August 3, 2012, a sinkhole, 422 feet deep and 372 feet wide emerged releasing a foul diesel odor and created salt-water slurry, which contains diesel fuel,'' the suit begins.
  Lisa LeBlanc, the lead plaintiff in the case, and others affected by the sinkhole reside in Assumption Parish, which is about 60 miles east of New Orleans. According to the federal complaint, a salt cavern being utilized by Texas Brine to store radioactive materials that are byproducts of the drilling industry failed.
  The complaint accuses Texas Brine of being complicit, saying the company knew the cavern walls were at risk of failing as early as January 2011 but did not provide any advance warning to the public.
  ''The public was not warned in January 2011 or any time thereafter or prior of the potential danger resulting from the failure of this cavern and the general public had no knowledge of the storage of the radioactive material in the cavern,'' says the complaint.
  Full non-disclosure
  The suit says the company ''used the cavern as a deposit area for naturally occurring radioactive material arising from drilling into two defendant-owned salt caverns.''
  ''In early September 2010, defendant began reworking the cavern well, milling a section of salt higher than the existing cavern roof, at 3,400 feet deep, to see if the upper strata could be mined. This area extends for about 100 feet through the well casing above the cavern roof,'' it says.
  ''On January 21, 2011, Mark J. Cartwright, President of Texas Brine Co. Saltville informed the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources (LDNR), via letter, about a failed integrity test of the cavern and suspicion that the cavern may have breached the Napoleonville Dome's outer wall.
  These problems with the cavern led to the cavern being plugged in June 2011. The area milled in September 2010 may be the source of the salt dome breach,'' the noted, adding: ''LDNR records show that Defendant had been examining the cavern's wall at least since June 2010.''
  Texas Brine has been providing updates on its website regarding the incident. Earlier this week, the company said in a statement that clean-up efforts at the site were ongoing.
  ''Clean-up efforts to remove any hydrocarbon material from the surface of the sinkholecontinue,'' said the statement.
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In NYT's search for transformation, Thompson a surprising choice : CJR
  Link to Article
  Source: CJR
  Thu, 16 Aug 2012 23:55
  ''If Thompson manages more than failure, it will, in some ways, be an astonishing achievement''
  Is Mark Thompson the right person to be chief executive of The New York Times? The cynical might note that, as he likely arrived at the building in a town car rather than a Batmobile, and with no discernible cape, he is unlikely to be the perfect fit for a company which requires not so much management as miraculous reincarnation.
  The 55-year-old director general of the publicly funded BBC initially seems a surprising choice for a commercial newspaper company in New York City. Thompson's background as a news journalist and senior broadcast executive has been conducted in a very different commercial environment to that currently endured by the Times.
  The entire news industry is riding a downward curve in profitability and revenues; the NYT's decline from a company which made $300 million a year 10 years ago to one marginally in loss is only atypical in that it has fared better than most. It has money in the bank and a growing national and international user base. Since former CEO Janet Robinson left the company at the end of 2011, it has looked for and failed to find a replacement. Now it has Thompson, who is neither the commercial manager nor the Silicon Valley entrepreneur the Times allegedly sought for the post. So what does the company want from him, and what can he give them?
  Transformation, that magical term invoked freely and found so rarely, will be at the top of the list. Every legacy news organization whose principal product is a daily newspaper is currently looking for transformation'--of revenues, of its products, and of its structure and costs.
  It is unlikely that Thompson will magically find new revenue streams'--no one else has'--and he is not an entrepreneurial manager. Battling for licence fee payer support, as the BBC must, is a tough business model in its own way, but it is entirely alien to the advertising market. But Thompson's understanding of media brand extension, platform developments, and the global digital environment match those of any current Times board members, none of whom, aside from Arthur Sulzberger Jr., have comparable business experience. A more difficult question is whether Thompson can be sufficiently strategic and win support for the kinds of changes the Times will have to make. He will be given no time, no buffer, and no second chance by investors, and probably no money by advertisers.
  If Mark Thompson has a superpower, though, it's soldiering on with few resources, sweeping the stables of previous excesses. Both as chief executive of Channel 4 and as director general of the BBC, he followed visionary expansionist regimes. Maybe as a consequence of the conditions he has operated in, Thompson never won many popularity contests with his own staff outside his natural domain of the newsroom. His intellectual self-confidence is intimidating for some, his self-sufficiency has frustrated some senior managers, and others acknowledge his considerable intelligence and his flair for austerity but find it hard to locate his creative vision.
  The jobs of running the BBC and running the NYT are similar in one overriding respect: that as leader of the corporate body, you are never allowed to become dictator of the whole operation. At the BBC, the director general is basically tottering down a perilous obstacle course carrying the cultural equivalent of the crown jewels which he must try not to drop, lose, or inadvertently hand to Rupert Murdoch. Similarly, the chief executive of The New York Times is a steward who has to do the bidding of the family and the shareholders, bear the scrutiny of the newsroom and New Yorkers. Both at the Times and the BBC, editorial remains the powerful focus of the operation.
Finland prepares for break-up of eurozone http://t.co/5CvQ17sl #via
  Link to Article
  Source: Een andere kijk op nieuws @ infomag.nl
  Thu, 16 Aug 2012 23:46
  Finland prepares for break-up of eurozone http://t.co/5CvQ17sl #via | Een andere kijk op nieuws @ infomag.nl
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UPDATE - Treasury Admits Auto Bailout Will Cost Taxpayers $3.4 Billion MORE Than Previously Thought - Home
  Link to Article
  Source: The Daily Bail
  Thu, 16 Aug 2012 23:46
  Thursday
  Aug162012
  'Drinking with Bob' on GM. This is an absolute must see rant.
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Jerry Sandusky Sex Abuse Case: 'Highly Incriminating Evidence' Revealed, New Charges Expected
  Link to Article
  Source: Radar Online
  Thu, 16 Aug 2012 23:38
  Mark Wilson/Getty Images
  By Debbie Emery - Radar Reporter
  The criminal investigation into the Jerry Sandusky sex abuse case is a far from over as prosecutors claim they have a "great deal" of "highly incriminating" evidence that they never brought up during his trial that could lead to more charges.
  The statements are part of a transcript released Thursday from a closed-door meeting held in June, after Sandusky had been found guilty of child sex abuse, reported ABCNews.com, that were kept secret for fear of interfering with an ongoing investigation.
  "We turned over transcripts of other potential victims and transcripts relating to the Penn State University and some of the potential events involving Penn State's connection with this case that I think would be highly sought by the media and that would not be in the best interests of anybody, especially potentially ongoing matters to be disclosed," said Pennsylvania's deputy Attorney General Frank Fina.
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  The Attorney General did not comment on who the investigation will be targeting, and it is not known if it is related to RadarOnline.com's recent exclusive report that both the FBI and a criminal investigative division of the United States Postal Service are looking into the possible existence of a pedophile ring that involved Sandusky sharing boys with other men connected to Penn State.
  ''Investigators have interviewed at least one man who claims to have knowledge of Sandusky, 68, and a very prominent man, with strong ties to Penn State, both sexually abusing a boy,'' a source familiar with the situation told RadarOnline.com.
  PHOTOS: Disney's Most Scandalous & Scandal Free Stars
  In June, the former Penn State assistant coach was found guilty of 45 counts of sexual assault against minors following allegations that ranged from rape to indecent touching, and covered a 15-year period involving ten victims.
  The meeting was called after a recording of Jerry's son, Matt Sandusky, talking to the Pennsylvania attorney general was leaked to NBC. On the tape, Matt told prosecutors that his adopted father had acted inappropriately with him, a charge that stunned Sandusky's defense team in the middle of the trial.
  Prosecutors, investigators and Jerry Sandusky's defense attorneys all denied supplying NBC with the recording, and asked the judge to institute an all-encompassing order sealing all of the evidence in the case, according to ABC.
  PHOTOS: Celebs Who Have Done Jail Time
  Fina revealed that only three copies of the tape existed, one of which was given to Sandusky's attorneys, Joseph Amendola and Karl Rominger and the others were held by the state. Rominger claims he never listened to the recording and it is "still in his car. I made no copies of it, and I have no copies of it."
  Penn State athletic director, Tim Curley, and former vice president of finance, Gary Schultz, have already both been charged in connection with the Sandusky case, relating to lying to the grand jury and having prior knowledge of the abuse and it is not yet known who else will join them to face trial.
  According to the internal investigation report released by former FBI director Louis Freeh in July, both Curley and Schultz, along with former head coachJoe Paterno and former university president Graham Spanier, all knew about two incidences in which Sandusky was showering with boys on Penn State's campus.
  PHOTOS: Sex Tape Celebs
  Instead of reporting him to the police after a 1998 investigation, they merely banned the former football coach from bringing children onto campus '' which was then not enforced.
  Spanier has not yet been charged but many believe that he could be the next on the chopping block for his role in covering up a 2001 abuse allegation against Sandusky from assistant coach Mike McQueary, and the newly released report "suggests potential liability for Spanier."
  As RadarOnline.com previously reported, Joe Paterno died of lung cancer in January at age 85, he was diagnosed with the disease in November just days after he was ousted as PSU's head coach.
  RELATED STORIES:Jerry Sandusky Found Guilty!Jerry Sandusky's Adopted Son Drops Bombshell: I'm A Victim Too!
  Defense Abruptly Rests In Jerry Sandusky Sex Abuse Trial Without Him Testifying
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  Jerry Sandusky Labeled 'Pedophile' By Psychologist In 1998
The web is socialist, but it's not a family
  Link to Article
  Source: Dave Winer's linkblog feed
  Thu, 16 Aug 2012 23:31
  In 2003, after having heart surgery and leaving UserLand to try to rescue what was left of my life, I was caught in a tough spot, having to run a big dynamic blog hosting website on one of my servers. This was a "gift" from the people who were running the company. I don't know what led them to do this at the time, but there I was holding the bag, and when the flow hit my server it crashed. Every time I tried to bring it back up, it crashed again. Having been responsible for managing this site a year before, when the stress was one of the factors that put me on the operating table, I understood what I was looking at. I could buy more servers, and you know what -- the site would still crash. So I put up a static page that said I was going to do the best to get people their data, but that the server was gone.
Daily Press Briefing - August 16, 2012
  Link to Article
  Thu, 16 Aug 2012 23:27
  12:44 p.m. EDT
  MS. NULAND: Happy Thursday, everybody. Let's start with whatever's on your minds.
  QUESTION: Do you have any thoughts at all on the decision by Ecuador to grant diplomatic asylum to Mr. Assange?
  MS. NULAND: This is an issue between the Ecuadorans, the Brits, the Swedes. I don't have anything particular to add.
  QUESTION: You don't have any interest at all in this case other than as of a completely neutral, independent observer of it?
  MS. NULAND: Well, certainly with regard to this particular issue, it is an issue among the countries involved, and we are not planning to interject ourselves.
  QUESTION: But Assange (inaudible).
  QUESTION: Have you not interjected yourselves at all?
  MS. NULAND: Not with regard to the issue of his current location or where he may end up going, no.
  QUESTION: Well, there has been some suggestion that the U.S. is pushing the Brits to go into the Ecuadorian Embassy and remove him.
  MS. NULAND: I have no information to indicate that there is any truth to that at all.
  QUESTION: Does '' and the Brits '' Foreign Secretary Hague said that the Brits do not recognize diplomatic asylum. I'm wondering if the United States recognizes diplomatic asylum given that it is a signatory to this 1954 OAS treaty which grants or which recognizes diplomatic asylum, but only presumably within the membership of the OAS. But more broadly, does the U.S. recognize diplomatic asylum as a legal thing under international law?
  MS. NULAND: Well, if you're asking me for a global legal answer to the question, I'll have to take it and consult 4,000 lawyers, but --
  QUESTION: Contrasting it with political asylum, this is different '' diplomatic asylum.
  MS. NULAND: With regard to the decision that the Brits are making or the statement that they made, our understanding was that they were leaning on British law in the assertions that they made with regard to future plans, not on international law. But if you're asking me to check what our legal position is on this term of art, I'll have to take it, Matt, and get back to you.
  QUESTION: Yeah, just whether you recognize it outside of the confines of the OAS and those signatories. And then when you said that you don't have any information to suggest that you have weighed in with the Brits about whether to have Mr. Assange removed from the Embassy, does that mean that there hasn't been any, or just that you're not aware of it?
  MS. NULAND: My information is that we have not involved ourselves in this. If that is not correct, we'll get back to you.
  Is that it? Hey, have a weekend? No. Jill. (Laughter.)
  QUESTION: No, not so fast.
  MS. NULAND: No? Okay.
  QUESTION: Could I change the subject to Syria?
  MS. NULAND: You can.
  QUESTION: Okay. Let's see, where do we start? Could we get a readout on Wendy Sherman's meetings with the Russians? Apparently, they are saying that they asked her to support this idea of extending the monitoring mission '' UN. And of course, I'd like to find out what's the latest on the U.S. view on extending these monitors.
  MS. NULAND: Well, first of all, I have to admit to you that as we were coming down here, she was not yet finished in Moscow, so I don't have a full readout. I do know that she talked about Iran, she obviously talked about Syria. With regard to the Russian proposal which they have now made in New York as well, we are in New York seeking more information from them with regard to what they have in mind. We have said consistently that we don't support an extension of the current UNSMIS mandate because we don't think that they're able to do the job that they were sent there to do, which was to monitor a ceasefire which we don't have and to be able to move freely around the country, which they haven't been able to do.
  We would support a small UN observer presence in Syria, and we are talking to our colleagues on the UN Security Council about how this might move forward. As you know, there are some meetings and reports in New York today on this subject, so consultations continue.
  QUESTION: So that would be '' I think there are 150 of them left now?
  MS. NULAND: I don't have a precise number. I'll send you to the UN.
  QUESTION: Would it be smaller?
  MS. NULAND: Yeah. I mean, the proposal that the UN has made is relatively small, but again, I'm going to send you to New York for the precise number. I think we're talking 20 or so.
  QUESTION: And how do you --
  QUESTION: (Inaudible.)
  QUESTION: How do you assess '' just one more '' how do you assess what the Russians are doing right now in terms of trying to bring this to some type of conclusion? I mean, they're '' they continue to say let's do it peacefully. It seems pretty far beyond peaceful at this point. But how do you assess the efforts of the Russians to cooperate and do something?
  MS. NULAND: Well, you know that we've been trying to work with Russia for many, many, many months on Syria. We thought that we had made quite an important advance with the Geneva transition plan, which we still stand by. Unfortunately, when Kofi Annan was unable to get Assad moving at all, either on his six points or in the direction of support for the Geneva plan, it was our view that we should go back to the UN Security Council, endorse the plan as a council, and put some sanctions against it if it wasn't implemented. It was Russia who blocked that.
  So our lines of communication with Russia remain open on this subject, as evidenced by the fact that Under Secretary Sherman is there today, and we're also talking in New York. But I will leave it to them to characterize how they think we should move forward in the current period.
  QUESTION: Will you have something later perhaps from her meetings?
  MS. NULAND: If I have something more to share from her meetings, we will get that out to you. As you know, by common agreement, we won't be out tomorrow, but we'll find a way to get you something.
  Yeah, Said.
  QUESTION: So are you not receptive to the idea that Mr. Churkin proposed just a little while ago to have a meeting tomorrow with the presidents of Iran and Saudi Arabia?
  MS. NULAND: Again, we're talking about it in New York. This proposal was made this morning. Frankly, we're not sure we understand the objective and the goal of the meeting. As we've said all along, to have meetings for meetings' sake is not what any of us needs to do. What we need to do is have meetings that support the Syrian people and support an end to the bloodshed. So I'm going to leave it to colleagues in New York as they try to work through with the Russians what they think the impact of such a session might be.
  QUESTION: And on the small presence that you are suggesting, what good would they do? I mean, if you reduce their presence, let's say, from 150 now to about 50, what do you want them to do? What could they possibly do?
  MS. NULAND: Well, again, this is a subject that we're discussing in New York. This is the proposal that the UN leadership has made. So we have to look at, if we're going to go in this direction, what the mandate for this smaller group might be presumably. But I don't want to get too far out in front of discussions in New York. One thing that they could do is support the UN humanitarian efforts that are coming in and out and moving around Syria. As you know, we have Valerie Amos there saying that we need to '' all of us '' increase our support for the UN appeal with some 2.5 million Syrians now needing UN support. So that's one potential function. The other question is whether '' if and when we can get to a political transition, there is a role to be played there, so '' but I don't want to get ahead of the discussions in New York because these are exactly the questions that we're all looking at up there.
  Please.
  QUESTION: Do you have any information about how serious the injuries are to Assad's brother? We were told that he was hurt in that bomb blast last month, may have lost a leg.
  MS. NULAND: We are not in a position independently here to confirm these press reports that Maher was injured in the explosion on the Defense Ministry last July. But frankly, rather than focusing on the injuries of a couple of leaders, I think we all need to stay focused on the egregious abuses that the regime is exacting on its people.
  Please.
  QUESTION: How do you read evacuating the Lebanese kidnapped people who were wounded in the attack on Azaz to Turkey and then bring them back after they were taking care of their wounds? Is Turkey receiving people kidnapped and then sending them back to their kidnappers?
  MS. NULAND: I mean, I frankly don't have any details to substantiate some of this press reporting about the movement of these people one way or the other. More broadly, I would say, as we said yesterday, we are deeply concerned about spillover from the Syrian crisis that could impact on the stability, on the sovereignty of Lebanon, and we firmly condemn kidnapping as a tactic, obviously. We call on all sides to exercise restraint. We welcome efforts by Lebanese leaders and security forces to try to calm the situation. We think that in general, Lebanese security forces have done a superb job.
  But again, this kind of violence that we've seen in Lebanon, violence we've seen with regard to Lebanese citizens, is further to the damage that Assad is wreaking not only on his own country, but potentially on the neighborhood with his violence.
  Please.
  QUESTION: Are you contemplating telling the Americans that are in Lebanon to leave? Because yesterday, after the Saudis told their citizens they should leave, I think there were a lot of countries that said the same thing.
  MS. NULAND: Well, we do have Travel Warnings with regard to American citizen travel in Lebanon. You'll find them on www.state.gov. We did update them when '' about a month ago when some of this violence began to spike, but I don't have any information to share on a broader notice to Americans at this time.
  Said.
  QUESTION: Yes, Victoria. I know you addressed this before, but more and more there is almost universal acknowledgement that extremist elements, including al-Qaida elements, are making their way and their presence to Syria, and in fact, they are targeting, let's say, like the Christian community in Aleppo. I mean, there has been a complaint by the nun's orders '' the Syrian nun orders and so on that they have been chased out, many members have been killed, and so on.
  So is the United States doing anything to sort of ensure, one, that these elements don't have a permanent presence in any future Syria, and second, that the Christian community in particular and the Alawites, the minorities, are protected?
  MS. NULAND: Well, first of all, as we've said for a number of weeks here, we do remain concerned that extremist terrorist elements '' al-Qaida elements '' may be trying to take advantage of the lack of governance, of the chaos, of the violence in Syria for their own agenda. We are, in our work with the Syrian opposition, making clear that they need to take a strong stand, not collaborate with these kinds of extremists, speak against violence, and that they must defend the rights and protect the freedoms of all Syrians under their care. We make that point in all of our conversations with Syrian opposition members. We make it publicly, we make it privately. We are also, in our work with neighboring countries of Syria, working quite intently to try to understand and intercept the intentions of nefarious groups like this who might want to exploit the situation.
  QUESTION: Another subject?
  MS. NULAND: Please. Yeah.
  QUESTION: Pakistan?
  MS. NULAND: Yeah.
  QUESTION: Al-Qaida and terrorists are after Pakistan's nuclear establishment, and there was an attack against the Pakistan military because they were trying to get maybe the nuclear weapons and so forth. Is there a position or is the Secretary worried about future of Pakistan's nuclears, it may end up in the hands of terrorists?
  MS. NULAND: Well, first and foremost, we express our condolences for the loss of life suffered by the Pakistani military, again, at the hands of terrorists. As you know, Pakistanis have suffered more than their share at the hands of terrorists inside Pakistan, which speaks to our efforts to address this threat together and to try to address it as a community operating in that region. Pakistan itself has issued a statement in the last couple of hours denying that there was either any nuclear material or any nukes at this site, and we don't have any information that would contradict that.
  QUESTION: Sorry, just --
  QUESTION: But generally, is the U.S. worried about the future of this nuclear, because (1) terrorists are after them, and (2) it may not be secure as much as U.S. wants or under the international security code?
  MS. NULAND: Well, as we've said all along, we have confidence that the Government of Pakistan is well '' or well aware of the range of potential threats to its nuclear arsenal and has secured its nuclear arsenal accordingly. We do talk about these issues and support Pakistani efforts to keep them secure, and we have for quite a long, long time. And we don't have any reason to be concerned at this moment.
  QUESTION: Sorry, can I just '' Pakistan has suffered more than their fair share? Who has suffered their fair share? Is there a fair share?
  MS. NULAND: There is not a fair share, Matt.
  QUESTION: Okay.
  MS. NULAND: Please.
  QUESTION: On that very same thing. Actually, one of the ideas of why this might have happened is that it might be the Taliban warning to the Pakistani military not to cooperate with the United States, because they '' these sources say that there is some discussion at having '' or let's say speculation '' that the Pakistani military would launch an offensive in North Waziristan using jets that happen to be located at that base. Do you have any indication of what the ultimate reason for that attack was?
  MS. NULAND: Well, obviously I'm going to send you to the perpetrators of the attack as to why they would choose a weapon like terror to make their point. But we have been working well with Pakistan in trying to look again at what we can do now that the GLOCs are open to strengthen our counterterrorism cooperation. I think I mentioned yesterday that we've seen improvement in recent weeks in the cooperation we are having '' Afghanistan, Pakistan, and ISAF '' trying to squeeze these networks. And it's not unusual that when they feel squeezed, they lash out. But that just speaks to the necessity of continuing our efforts to end their ability to exact violence on Pakistani citizens or any of us.
  Please.
  QUESTION: On Egypt, there are reports about intimidating the press. And the case of two journalists '' Tawfiq Okasha and Islam Afifi '' arrested with charges of inciting violence and promoting false information against the President, did you see these reports?
  MS. NULAND: We've seen these reports, Samir. We are very concerned by reports that the Egyptian Government is moving to restrict media freedom and criticism in Egypt, including preventing the distribution of Al-Dastour and the suspension of broadcasting of the Al-Faraeen satellite television channel and that they've also announced investigations against these two news outlet owners. Freedom of the press, freedom of expression are fundamental tenets of vibrant, strong democracies. They are part and parcel of what the Egyptian people went into the streets for, and we join the Egyptian people in expecting that their new government will support and extend freedom of the press. So this is something that we are watching closely.
  QUESTION: Thank you.
  MS. NULAND: Please.
  QUESTION: Iran.
  MS. NULAND: Yeah.
  QUESTION: On Egypt.
  MS. NULAND: Yep.
  QUESTION: Do you feel that President Morsi, giving himself all that authority that he did, in a way can compromise Egypt's democratic transition?
  MS. NULAND: Well, again, the situation is quite complicated and quite confused and quite evolving, shall we say in Egypt with regard to powers. As we said at the beginning of the week, our expectation is that this full democratic transition will continue, that we will get to '' that the Egyptian people will get to a constitution that they can support by referendum and that then the issue of a fully elected parliament will be settled, and this will elaborate all of the powers and structures of the democratic state going forward. But this is very much a work in progress, and we are calling on all players in Egypt who are involved in this to support democratic principles moving forward.
  QUESTION: So giving himself the ability to choose those who are going to write the constitution, does that bode well for the constitution?
  MS. NULAND: Well, the constitutional drafting committee, which is still working now is my understanding, came out of the original parliament that was elected. So I'm going to reject the premise of where you started. I think what we need to see is how this constitution emerges, whether it truly protects democratic freedoms and lives up to the high standards that the Egyptian people expect, and then obviously it'll need to be put to referendum.
  Please.
  QUESTION: How do you read the low-key reaction to the OIC with regard to the membership of Syria, suspending the membership of Syria?
  MS. NULAND: Low-key by --
  QUESTION: I mean, the President was there, but there was nothing big. They opposed it, but was there anything positive in that?
  MS. NULAND: The reaction by --
  QUESTION: Iran.
  MS. NULAND: The reaction by Iran?
  QUESTION: Yeah.
  MS. NULAND: You can speak to the Iranians about how they reacted and why they reacted. We issued a statement last night, as you know, commending the OIC on taking this step and making clear that this is another important signal to Syria that its isolation is deepening.
  QUESTION: But you don't have any special readout of --
  MS. NULAND: I don't.
  QUESTION: Do you --
  MS. NULAND: I'm not going to speak for the Iranian motivations there.
  QUESTION: Yeah, but is this a sign of weakness by the Iranians?
  MS. NULAND: I'm not going to speak for Iran.
  QUESTION: How'd you look at Secretary General Ban Ki-moon visit to Tehran to '' for the Non-Aligned Movement summit?
  MS. NULAND: Well, I think we may have spoken to this a little bit yesterday from our mission in New York. We think that this is a strange choice for where to hold this meeting particularly given how many aspects of their UN obligations Iran is not in compliance with. We've made that point to non-states. We've made that point to the Secretary General. And '' it's just '' does not send a good signal.
  QUESTION: What doesn't? His visit or the fact that the meeting is there?
  MS. NULAND: The fact that the meeting is happening in a country that's in violation of so many of its international obligations and posing a threat to neighbors, et cetera, is '' sends a very strange signal with regard to support for the international order, rule of law, et cetera. And we've made that point to participating countries; we've also made that point to Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.
  QUESTION: Well, what does the presence of the UN Secretary General there do? Does that send a bad message as well?
  MS. NULAND: Well, again, we just find it interesting, if he does choose to go, that he would go in the context of all of these violations of UN obligations that Iran is engaged in now. If he does choose to go, we hope he will make the strongest points of concern.
  QUESTION: What is interesting? We find it interesting that he would choose to go? Why? Why is it interesting? Iran is a member of the UN, correct, whether or not --
  MS. NULAND: Iran is --
  QUESTION: -- whether or not they're in compliance with it. So why would it be particularly interesting for you if Ban Ki-moon were to go? Was this '' would it just '' would it, in your eyes, under '' I don't know, underscore the impotence of the UN, and in particular the Office of the Secretary General, if he goes to a country that is flouting numerous UN resolutions?
  MS. NULAND: I think our expectation would be that if he goes at this time that he will use the visit to make the point about our broad concern as an international community and the UN's concern about the number of aspects of their UN obligations that Iran is flouting.
  QUESTION: But you would prefer that he not go?
  MS. NULAND: Again, he's going to make his own decision. We've made our views known that we think that this is a strange place and an inappropriate place for this meeting.
  QUESTION: Another issue?
  MS. NULAND: Yeah. Please.
  QUESTION: If I can just follow up on Iran.
  MS. NULAND: Yeah.
  QUESTION: Is there a city in the world that would be acceptable for this meeting to be held?
  MS. NULAND: Again, this is an organization that we're not a member of. Our point is simply that Tehran, given its number of grave violations of international law and UN obligations, does not seem to be the appropriate place.
  Please.
  QUESTION: I have to ask this question, Madam, and diplomatic viewpoint I know it has been covered by the Administration and by the media as far as attacks on the Sikhs in Oak Creek, Wisconsin. This issue also was '' became a big issue in the Indian parliament, a lot of big debates, and also parliamentary were saying that Foreign Minister should bring this issue to the Administration in Washington.
  My question is that if officially '' I'm not saying protestor or any kind of this thing '' official message, any kind of message came to the State Department on that issue or anything by the Embassy in '' U.S. Embassy in Delhi?
  MS. NULAND: Well, you'll remember, Goyal, that right after the incident, the President spoke to his counterpart, the Secretary spoke to her counterpart, so we had an opportunity to express condolences and to talk through these issues.
  Scott.
  QUESTION: In Bahrain --
  MS. NULAND: Yeah.
  QUESTION: -- do you have anything to say about the three-year prison sentence that was handed down to the human rights advocate Nabeel Rajab for a tweet that was critical of the Prime Minister?
  MS. NULAND: Well, we have two issues now. We have the issue of the tweet where the '' my understanding is that that '' the decision on his appeal has now been postponed, but we have a three-year sentencing today for his participation in what the Bahrainis called illegal gatherings.
  So with regard to the sentencing today on the gathering, as you know, we've long made clear that it's critical for all governments, including Bahrain, to respect freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, so we are deeply troubled by the sentencing today of Nabeel Rajab to three years in prison on charges of illegally gathering. We believe that all people have a fundamental freedom to participate in civil acts of peaceful disobedience, and we call on the Government of Bahrain to take steps to build confidence across Bahraini society and to begin a really meaningful dialogue with the political opposition and civil society, because actions like this sentencing today only serve to further divide Bahraini society.
  QUESTION: Do you want him released?
  MS. NULAND: We have said that we think that this is an inappropriate case to begin with.
  Please.
  QUESTION: Right. But are you telling the Bahrainis that you think he should be released?
  MS. NULAND: I don't think that we are now that the sentence has come down. We're not getting in the middle of that. We've said from the beginning that we thought that this case shouldn't have gone forward.
  QUESTION: Well, I understand that. But it is appropriate while the case is still pending for you to be calling for him to be released, but once --
  MS. NULAND: This case he's '' this case he has now been sentenced --
  QUESTION: I understand that.
  MS. NULAND: -- and the other case hasn't '' hasn't come forward.
  QUESTION: But since you think that it's inappropriate and shouldn't have --
  MS. NULAND: Well, obviously, we think --
  QUESTION: -- you certainly want him freed?
  MS. NULAND: Obviously, we think that this should be vacated.
  Please.
  QUESTION: So have you guys been in touch with Bahraini authorities about this case today?
  MS. NULAND: We have all the way through, and we also have today. Yeah.
  QUESTION: Who spoke to whom today?
  MS. NULAND: I think our Embassy spoke to the Bahraini authorities today.
  QUESTION: Victoria, the King of Bahrain claimed that his country still needs the help of foreign troops, let's say from Saudi Arabia, and it is still being threatened by the minority of the country and perhaps by Iran. Do you concur with his assessment?
  MS. NULAND: Our message to the Kingdom of Bahrain throughout this has been to first complete the recommended reform steps that the Bahraini Independent Commission recommended. As you know, they got about halfway through and some of the rest of that implementation has not gone forward. But secondarily, and the Secretary made these points the last time that we had the Foreign Minister here and the Crown Prince here, we strongly support a national dialogue to try to heal the country and get the constituencies talking to each other about reform that's going to protect the rights of all citizens.
  QUESTION: Do you feel that the presence of foreign troops, in this case from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Cooperation Council countries, is actually an intimidating factor for the minority or for the majority in this case to demand its equal rights under the law?
  MS. NULAND: Again, we think the best course of action here is for the communities to talk to each other and talk about how reform can strengthen everybody's confidence and everybody's sense of security.
  Please.
  QUESTION: About Japan?
  MS. NULAND: Yeah.
  QUESTION: On the territory issue between Japan and South Korea which has small island, Takeshima, now Japan plan to appeal the case to International Court of Justice. Do you support that or --
  MS. NULAND: We've talked about this all week long. We want to see our allies work this out together. That's '' you're talking about the Japan-Korea dispute. Is that the one you're talking about, or you're talking about --
  QUESTION: Yes.
  MS. NULAND: -- Japan-China dispute? We've got islands a-popping here. Yeah.
  With regard to Japan and Korea, we want to see our two allies work this out together.
  Please.
  QUESTION: Okay. My question is not about the territory issue. There were so many women who were forced into sexual slavery during the Second World War. The South Korean called them the wianbu in Korean, and this '' I know you called them sometimes comfort women and sometimes sexual slavery. So I'd like to know what is your principle to call them, the comfort women or the sexual slavery?
  MS. NULAND: Well, as you know, we speak to this issue in our Human Rights Report on an annual basis. We always raise it in bilateral dialogue. We sometimes use the one term, we sometimes use the other term. There's no particular mystery to that.
  QUESTION: One more question.
  MS. NULAND: Yeah.
  QUESTION: There was a report about that. Secretary Clinton called them sexual slavery during the meeting with the South Korean '' the Foreign Minister. And Secretary Clinton also told him that from that times the Department of State would call them the sexual slavery not the comfort women. Is that report right or wrong?
  MS. NULAND: Well, first of all, I'm not going to get into her private diplomacy and back and forth with individual ministers. We've made clear to both governments, all governments, that we use the terms interchangeably and will continue to do so.
  Please.
  QUESTION: The Senkaku Islands '' Secretary Clinton has previously said that it falls within Article 5 of the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty. Does the State Department continue with that opinion?
  MS. NULAND: Our position on all of that has not changed.
  Okay. Anything else?
  QUESTION: Yeah. I've got --
  MS. NULAND: Please, Scott.
  QUESTION: On Venezuela.
  MS. NULAND: Scott, yeah.
  QUESTION: Anything new on this guy?
  MS. NULAND: Yeah. We did get in to see him. I think it was yesterday. They met with him where he is being held. But we do not have a Privacy Act waiver for speaking to the press, so I don't have anything further to report, but we did get in.
  QUESTION: So now that you've been in to see him, is there anything else that you want the Venezuelans to do? Or they've given you consular access, so that's --
  MS. NULAND: Well, we'll continue to provide him consular access, but I can't speak about the case because he hasn't given us permission to do so.
  QUESTION: Was it yesterday or do you just think it was yesterday?
  MS. NULAND: August 15th, yesterday, right?
  QUESTION: All right.
  QUESTION: Actually, (inaudible), Toria, yesterday you suggested that the Venezuelans were not cooperating or hadn't followed protocol. Do you feel now that they are?
  MS. NULAND: Yeah. We had sort of an evolution here, where first we didn't have any notification, then we had notification in Washington, not in Caracas. We've now had '' yesterday, I spoke to the fact that we'd had appropriate notification in Caracas, but we were trying to get in to see him. We've now been in to see him. Okay. So that's your --
  QUESTION: Do you have any comment on Ecuador granting political asylum to Julian Assange?
  MS. NULAND: We talked about this at the top. I don't have anything to '' no comment on that one at all.
  QUESTION: Okay. I'm sorry. I was a little late. Sorry.
  QUESTION: Well, wait. I got '' I've got to go back to that, but I have one in the Middle East first, and that is '' do you know what the status is of the $200 million in budget support that was supposed to go the Palestinians? It's usually delivered in June. Has there been a '' are you aware of any hold being placed on it for --
  MS. NULAND: You're talking about the 2012 money?
  QUESTION: I believe the money that was supposed to arrive there --
  MS. NULAND: Not the 2011 money, where --
  QUESTION: The money that was supposed to arrive there in June.
  MS. NULAND: Why don't '' can you ascertain whether you're talking about 2011 or 2012, and then we'll get back to you, Matt? Because the answer is different depending upon --
  QUESTION: Okay. Well how about giving us both answers? If it's 2012 money, what's the deal with that?
  MS. NULAND: My understanding is we're still working with the Congress on some of the 2012 money, but the 2011 money did move forward. But if I have messed that up, I will get back to you.
  QUESTION: Do you know how much, when you say some of the money you're still working with Congress on?
  MS. NULAND: I have to get back to you on that. Let me do that. I don't have it here.
  QUESTION: All right. And then just back to the Assange thing, the reason that the Ecuadorians gave '' have given him asylum is because they say that they agree with his claim that he would be '' could face persecution, government persecution, if for any reason he was to come to the United States under whatever circumstances. Do you find that that's a credible argument? Does anyone face unwarranted or illegal government persecution in the United States?
  MS. NULAND: No.
  QUESTION: No?
  MS. NULAND: No.
  QUESTION: And so you think that the grounds that '' in this specific case, the grounds for him receiving asylum from any country or any country granting asylum to anyone on that basis that if they happen to show up in the United States they might be subject to government persecution, you don't --
  MS. NULAND: I'm not going to comment on the Ecuadorian thought process here. If you're asking me whether there was any intention to persecute rather than prosecute, the answer is no. Okay?
  QUESTION: Okay. Well, wait. Well, hold on a second. So you're saying that he would face prosecution?
  MS. NULAND: Again, I'm not '' we were in a situation where he was not headed to the United States; he was headed elsewhere.
  QUESTION: Right.
  MS. NULAND: So I'm not going to get into all of the legal ins and outs about what may or may not have been in his future before he chose to take refuge in the Ecuadorian mission. But with regard to the charge that the U.S. was intent on persecuting him, I reject that completely.
  QUESTION: Okay. Fair enough. But, I mean, unfortunately this is '' this case does rest entirely on legal niceties. Pretty much all of it is on legal niceties, maybe not entirely. So are you '' when you said that the intention was to prosecute, not persecute, are you saying that he does face prosecution in the United States?
  MS. NULAND: Again, I don't '' that was not the course of action that we were all on, but let me get back to you on '' there was '' I don't think that when he decided to take refuge that was where he was headed, right?
  QUESTION: No. He was headed to Sweden.
  MS. NULAND: Obviously we have '' right. Right. But obviously we have our own legal case. I'm going to send you to Justice on what the exact status of that was. Okay?
  QUESTION: Okay. There is '' so you're saying that there is a legal case against him?
  MS. NULAND: I'm saying that the Justice Department was very much involved with broken U.S. law, et cetera, but I don't have any specifics here on what their intention would have been vis-a-vis him. So I'm not going to wade into it any deeper than I already have, which was too far. All right?
  QUESTION: Okay. Well, wait, wait. I just have one more. It doesn't involve the '' it involves the whole inviolability of embassies and that kind of thing.
  MS. NULAND: Right.
  QUESTION: You said that at the beginning that you have not involved yourselves at all, but surely if there was '' if you were aware that a country was going to raid or enter a diplomatic compound of any country, of any other country, you would find that to be unacceptable, correct? I mean, if the Chinese had gone in after '' into the Embassy in Beijing to pull out the '' your '' the blind lawyer, you would have objected to that, correct?
  MS. NULAND: As I said at the beginning, our British allies have cited British law with regard to the statements they have made about potential future action. I'm not in a position here to evaluate British law, international '' as compared to international law. So I can't '' if you're asking me to wade into the question of whether they have the right to do what they're proposing to do or may do under British law, I'm going to send you to them.
  QUESTION: Right. But there's '' but it goes beyond British law. I mean, there is international law here, too. And presumably the United States would oppose or would condemn or at least express concerns about any government entering or violating the sovereignty of a diplomatic compound anywhere in the world, right?
  MS. NULAND: Again, I can't speak to what it is that they are standing on vis-a-vis Vienna Convention or anything else. I also can't speak to what the status of the particular building that he happens to be in at the moment is. So I'm going to send you to the Brits on all of that. You know where we are on the Vienna Convention in general, and that is unchanged.
  QUESTION: Okay.
  MS. NULAND: Okay?
  QUESTION: Well, when the Iranians stormed the Embassy in Tehran back in 1979, presumably you thought that was a bad thing, right?
  MS. NULAND: That was a Vienna Convention covered facility and a Vienna Convention covered moment. I cannot speak to any of the rest of this on British soil. I'm going to send you to Brits. Okay?
  QUESTION: Very quick follow-up. You said there is a case against him by the Justice Department. Does that include --
  MS. NULAND: I did not say that. I said that the Justice Department is working on the entire WikiLeaks issue, so I can't speak to what Justice may or may not have. I'm going to send you to Justice.
  QUESTION: Is there a U.S. case against him?
  MS. NULAND: I'm going to send you to Justice, because I really don't have the details. Okay? Thanks, guys.
  (The briefing was concluded at 1:19 p.m.)
  DPB #146
Changes coming in Version 1.1 of the Twitter API
  Link to Article
  Source: Dave Winer's linkblog feed
  Thu, 16 Aug 2012 23:26
  The important part:Additionally, if you are building a Twitter client application that is accessing the home timeline, account settings or direct messages API endpoints (typically used by traditional client applications) or are using our User Streams product, you will need our permission if your application will require more than 100,000 individual user tokens.
  We will not be shutting down client applications that use those endpoints and are currently over those token limits. If your application already has more than 100,000 individual user tokens, you'll be able to maintain and add new users to your application until you reach 200% of your current user token count (as of today) '-- as long as you comply with our Rules of the Road. Once you reach 200% of your current user token count, you'll be able to maintain your application to serve your users, but you will not be able to add additional users without our permission.
  So Tweetbot et al will work until they have twice as many users as today. And then what? Surely Twitter won't give them permission to continue after that, given that the entire point of this update was to get rid of 3rd-party clients.
  To be fair, they've made the restrictions pretty liberal for the long tail of applications. But this still rubs me the wrong way.
  I actually use and love the official Twitter iPhone app. But I don't want to live in a world where 3rd-party apps, which often introduce and popularize new features, cease to exist.
  reply
  And then what?Best case scenario is: those client apps get in touch with Twitter and negotiate a per-user rate to be paid to Twitter.
  This could be a great way for Twitter to allow third-party clients, but get a cut of the revenues from the non-free ones.
  And it allows Twitter to decide this on a case-by-case basis.
  reply
  Seems like they're saying this: "If you plan on using the API like many people already use it, don't bother."Also, what category would LinkedIn and Instagram's usage of the API fall under?
  reply
  But there's not much change. For most developers it will require no more changes than replacing "api.twitter.com/1" with "api.twitter.com/11" (or whatever it is) and testing a little bit for the new rate limits (which, as Twitter says, will be enough for apps that are currently within those limits).The bigger problem is for apps than don't authenticate: Search apps, analytics... anything that does not write to Twitter is probably not authenticated. They'll have to migrate to OAuth and requiring user authorization.
  But, as I said, this will not be the case for most of apps. Anyways, it wouldn't be bad that Twitter gave more margin to developers.
  reply
Southern Bread Blog >> People are different.
  Link to Article
  Source: Southern Bread Blog
  Thu, 16 Aug 2012 23:24
  I just saw a news blurb about a recent study on childhood activity:
  Children who spend more than three-quarters of their time engaging in sedentary behaviour, such as watching TV and sitting at computers, have up to nine times poorer motor coordination than their more active peers, reveals a study published in the American Journal of Human Biology.
  ''Ben Norman, Wiley
  My red flags immediately went up, and I hope you see why. They continue:
  ''It is very clear from our study that a high level of sedentary behaviour is an independent predictor of low motor coordination, regardless of physical activity levels and other key factors'' said Lopes. ''High sedentary behaviour had a significant impact on the children's motor coordination, with boys being more adversely affected than girls.''
  ''Ben Norman, Wiley
  Ok, so firstly, this entire study is bull crap for one reason: if you reverse the criteria, you get the same result. The study says ''a high level of sedentary behaviour is an independent predictor of low motor coordination.'' But, you can reverse that and say that low motor coordination is an independent predictor of high levels of sedentary behaviour, and the study would prove the same.
  Secondly, this is bull crap because my family is literally a case-study on this very topic. My 10 year old daughter is going into her 6th year as a ballerina. She is very active and has always had excellent large motor skills from as early as I can recall. My 8 year old son, on the other hand, is sedentary. He'd much rather play video games than play sports. We used to force him to play soccer, but he just never enjoyed it. He is not fast, and his large motor skills have never been very good.
  Having raised these two kids from birth, I can tell you that the motor skills are a predictor of activity levels. Not the other way around. My daughter has wonderful motor skills. And, because of that, she enjoys being active. It makes her feel good to move. But, my son finds no joy in activity, because it's difficult for him. When you are always the slowest, or most awkward on the team, it's not very fun to play sports is it?
  The other interesting thing is that even though my son has poor large motor skills, he has way better fine motor skills than my daughter does. Sometimes, she is borderline clumsy. I can count on one hand the number of times my son has fallen and hurt himself in any significant way. But, my daughter used to face plant on a daily basis almost. She just didn't have that sense of balance like he did.
  The heart of the matter is really this: people are different. My daughter and my son are different. He is not inferior to her in any way, except according to some pseudo-scientific health bureaucracy which I could care less about. In order for the active among us to do their job, they had to rely on a whole lot of people just like my son. It's the sedentary among us that make the world go round. It's the guys with low motor skills that do all of the programming and design for the tools we use to do our jobs.
  Let me know the next time the high-school quarterback programs you a website and I'll take it back.
  Everybody is different. Get over it.
Meet The Man Who Wrongly Accused Fareed Zakaria of Plagiarism
  Link to Article
  Source: Dave Winer's linkblog feed
  Thu, 16 Aug 2012 23:22
  Clyde Prestowitz, founder and President of the Economic Strategy Institute listens during a session of the 4th edition of the Women's Forum for the Economy and Society 'Building the future with women's vision'. at the Congress center on October 16, 2008 in Deauville. (MYCHELE DANIAU/AFP/Getty Images)
  Yesterday, the Washington Postretracted its story accusing Fareed Zakaria of scalping quoted material from a book by Clyde Prestowitz.
  The quoted material was in fact properly attributed in all editions of Fareed's The Post-American World. See below for the details.
  One question remains: What was Clyde Prestowitz thinking? After all, it was he who brought the accusation to the Washington Post.
  Clyde Prestowitz has released a statement, which follows at the bottom of this post. I spoke to Clyde Prestowitz yesterday, by phone at his residence in Maui for further clarification.
  Here's Prestowitz's story: Prestowitz had read Fareed's book when it appeared in 2008. He had seen the quoted words, but somehow overlooked the footnote. He had been annoyed at the time, wrote to Fareed, and then dismissed the matter from his mind. Four years later, when the New Yorker matter erupted, Prestowitz had recalled his old grievance. He happened to have a copy of the 2009 paperback at hand, glanced through it, and again overlooked the footnote.
  He then set about to find a journalist to take his story. When he spoke to Paul Farhi of the Washington Post, Farhi did use Amazon's look inside feature to check Prestowitz's complaint against the most current edition of the book. Farhi told Prestowitz that his name was indeed mentioned.
  On the basis of that remark, and no further information, Prestowitz said that Fareed must have corrected the book in his response to his years-ago email'--but insisted that the credit was missing from the 2008 and 2009 editions.
  Farhi accepted Prestowitz's word and called Fareed for comment.
  Fareed responded with a general defense of his work methods, but in print, that read very much like what it was not: a confession of the validity of Prestowitz's specific claim.
  The rest unfolded as we saw.
  Prestowitz has since apologized for his actions: but what was he originally thinking? In his own statement, Prestowitz claims that "I had overlooked this reference earlier because the note was attached to Tom's book title". How was it he didn't notice his own, very easy to resolve mistake for so long? And why did he decide to recklessly launch a damaging accusation on such a casual basis'--starting a controversy that damaged not only Fareed's reputation, but that of the reporter, Paul Farhi, who incautiously trusted Prestowitz's word?
  The answer to that question takes us inside Clyde Prestowitz's head, and there my press pass does not gain me access.
  Here is Prestowitz's statement in full:
  When Fareed Zakaria's Post American World first appeared in 2008, I found that it contained a quotation from my 2005 book, Three Billion New Capitalists. There was no end note number next to the quote. Thinking it may have been an oversight, I sent a note to Mr. Zakaria suggesting the addition of an end note. I received no response.
  Recently I suggested that Mr .Zakaria may have neglected properly to attribute the quote. However, since carefully reviewing several editions of his book, I have discovered that in an odd juxtaposition, reference to my book is made at the conclusion of an end note to one of Tom Friedman's books. I had overlooked this reference earlier because the note was attached to Tom's book title.
  While I believe that the current standards and format for attribution have become confusingly sketchy and misleading, the error was mine and I offer sincere apologies for the confusion, misunderstanding, and hurt that my suggestions and inaccurate reading caused.
The Next Big Idea From Twitter's Founders? Pinterest, Basically
  Link to Article
  Source: Dave Winer's linkblog feed
  Thu, 16 Aug 2012 23:21
  Evan Williams and Biz Stone think their new site, Medium, could mark an "evolutionary step" in web publishing. It's a lofty aim. And if the two weren't responsible for Twitter (and Blogger before that), we probably wouldn't have much faith in them. But their new venture, a platform for collecting and displaying stories, images, musings and more, isn't just noteworthy for its web-visionary pedigree. It's got something else going for it. It looks just like Pinterest.
  In a sense, Medium's intended to be a Pinterest for our own lives, an elegant repository for photos, projects, and stories we've actually lived, as opposed to a re-blogged clearing house for pictures of wedding dresses and eggs baked into avocados found elsewhere around the web. Here's how Medium works: A user posts an item and assigns it to a collection. Collections are presented as a series of tiles laid out in a clean grid. Some sample collections already live on the site include When I Was a Kid, a series of childhood images, and This Happened To Me, a collection of amusing, inspiring, or unlikely real world anecdotes. Readers can peruse other people's posts, note that they thought a particular item was cool and leave a comment, or, if the collection is open to the public, add their own content to the page. The most popular tiles get prominent placement up top. Basically, Medium combines the noncommittal ease of posting to Facebook or Tumblr with the strange allure of Pinterest's tile-based layout.
  The Pinterest-style grid forces the eye to zig-zag through content, slowing down your scrolling.Okay, maybe the allure isn't so strange. After a decade and change of wearing out our scroll wheels on vertically oriented blogs, Pinterest arrived as something strikingly different. Unlike those earlier blogs which put every new post above the last and encouraged readers to flick through at top-speed, the Pinterest-style grid forces the eye to zig-zag through content, slowing down your scrolling but packing more images onto the screen at any given point. David Galbraith, the web giant who co-created RSS and Yelp, wrote recently for GigaOM about his experience developing Wists, a grid-style visual bookmarking site that predated Pinterest. Comparing the grid-style layout with the traditional "river of news" model, he writes, "they look pretty, but require scanning in two directions. This is not good for news, where you need to understand the timeline at a glance. However, for scanning thumbnails, a grid is particularly efficient."
  The inherent inefficiency of tiles might seem like a failing. But then again, consider that the very ease of whizzing past so much content using a vertical scroll is a problem in itself: It doesn't lend itself to lingering a while. It doesn't lend itself to emotional heft, but rather transactional speed. By contrast, the tile-based layout urges the user to consider objects as a group instead of discrete items. For Medium, this may be just the point: The tightly packed tiles serve to visually reinforce the idea that these photos and stories are part of a collection. If you're flicking through a blog, a 200-word story titled "Beat-boxing saves lives" probably wouldn't grab your attention. But when it's a tile in a collection headed "This Happened To Me," you automatically have a context that makes it a bit more compelling.
  There's also something about the grid and tiles, on a visceral level, that just feels more cohesive and still lively. Where the standard river of news-style blog post comes with all the traditional blog trappings--headlines, timestamps, bylines, and the rest--grids put all the focus on the content. It's equal parts organized and overwhelming. There's so much visual stuff on your screen, you can't help but feel like someone has designed the experience for you. The tiles impart a sense of curation--and thus, human emotion--to the content.
  The tiles impart a sense of curation--and thus, human emotion--to the content.If you need further evidence of the Pinterest-ization of the web, look no further than Facebook. While the News Feed is still a pure river of news experience, Facebook's much-ballyhooed Timeline profiles are distinctly more tiled in appearance, even though they're still organized reverse-chronologically. On Facebook's newly redesigned photo pages, the Pinterest influence is even more apparent. The thumbnails are bigger, the borders between them are smaller, and options for liking or commenting materialize on top of the tiles as you float your cursor above them, just like they do on Pinterest.
  Medium's vision of the web's tiled future may be right on the mark, and as readers continue to migrate from mouse-bound desktops to trackpads and touch screens, the informationally dense experience offered by the tile format--one predicated on scanning as much as scrolling--will likely continue to thrive. Still, there are times when the tried-and-true river just makes more sense. Take a look at Medium's own About page, and you get the idea that tiles can actually end up obscuring content, especially when it comes to text. Scanning may be easier than scrolling, but scrolling's still easier than scanning and clicking, and that extra click is necessary any time you want to jump from a short text preview to a full story or blog post.
  It's no small irony that Medium, a bold step into a tiled future, is being made by Williams and Stone, along with former Twitter product lead Jason Goldman. Twitter took the river of news concept and turned it into something like a fire hose: all the content, all the time, with very little curation outside of who you chose to follow. The emerging popularity of tile-based layouts could even be seen as a response the breakneck speed and Sisyphean scrolling engendered by the Twitter timeline.
  Currently, anyone with a Twitter account can log in to Medium to browse collections, though posting is currently limited to a small group of test users. Whether it will achieve the popularity of Twitter or Pinterest remains to be seen. But at the very least, it'll be a beautiful way to look at everyone's Instagram photos.
Preserving title over Save
  Link to Article
  Source: Dave Winer's development work
  Thu, 16 Aug 2012 23:20
  Top > August 2012 > 8/16/12 by DWWhen saving an outline in the filesystem, if the window already has a title, don't change it to the filename. This allows us to change the title of dropbox-based outline in the most natural way, by changing the title of the window. PartsFrontier.tools.data.windowTypes.outlinerFile.saveopmlEditor.menuCommands.setOutlineTitleopmlEditor.worldOutline.buttons.archive.["00002000\tTitle"]Posted on Thursday, August 16, 2012 at 12:59 PM by Dave Winer.
Diaspora, the privacy-first Facebook competitor, shifts focus to meme generation
  Link to Article
  Source: Dave Winer's linkblog feed
  Thu, 16 Aug 2012 23:17
  Diaspora, the social network inspired by privacy concerns about Facebook, has some odd news. Its high-minded, idealistic founders have taken a break from preaching against the dangers of giving personal data away to corporations like Facebook and Google. They're now touting Makr.io, the meme generator they've been developing during their time at the elite accelerator program Y Combinator.
  Diaspora's founders insist that Makr.io is a related product and will not replace Diaspora. "We have launched Makr.io, a sister project to D* that tackles different, but related problems to giving people ownership over their data," the company wrote on its blog last month for the product's soft launch. "Makr is not replacing D* in any way, and it will complement it even more in the future." The company says it will continue to work on Diaspora and Makr.io simultaneously.
  The company says it will continue to work on Diaspora and Makr.io simultaneously
  "Nope D* isnt dead. It's a successful open source project, with its own community, and YC gave us an opportunity to branch out and try working on some ideas we had stewing," CEO Max Salzberg said in an email to The Verge. "Makr actually started as features inside of D*, and YC pushed us to spin it off into its own thing."
  However, it's hard to see how the two products are similar. Diaspora is a social network that resembles Google+, while Makr.io is a collaborative image editor that resembles Canvas, the startup from 4chan founder Chris Poole. Meanwhile, Diaspora's homepage has been replaced with a teaser advertising "a creative way to remix your world."
  Hopes were high in 2010 when four NYU students raised more than $200,000 on Kickstarter for Diaspora. "We believe that privacy and connectedness do not have to be mutually exclusive," the founders wrote. "We think we can replace today's centralized social web with a more secure and convenient decentralized network." In other words, people should be able to keep up with their friends without being spied on by $FB and its advertisers.
  To call the project "ambitious" would be an understatement, and Diaspora suffered terribly for it. The startup's trials included a delayed release, running out of money, a fallout with a volunteer who said he was Diaspora's CEO, and the death of one of its founders. Two of the remaining founders regrouped, recruited a third, and joined Y Combinator.
  Diaspora's original Kickstarter pitch.
  By contrast, Makr.io looks like a pivot to something more fun and less dense. Diaspora's previous pitch involved a lot of thinking and caring about the implications of storing personal data with gigantic, publicly-traded companies. The original plan called for users to set up their own Diaspora web servers; now the company is merely asking users to write captions and make GIFs.
  It may be that Diaspora establishes a new social network built around meme creation that upholds its original principles. The company has already open-sourced its code, for example. But it seems Diaspora has decided it's time to quiet down about changing the world. "D* could make perfect servers and protocols, but unless we can train people to care, we won't see the change we want to see in the world," Salzberg said. "So to that regard, Makr is a take to try and solve that bottleneck we know we would hit. It may seem somewhat counter intuitive, but after living in the bits for two years, its clear that this kinda thing has to happen first."
  If you miss the idealistic talk about data ownership, however, the users-first social network App.net was just funded on the basis of a similar proposition.
  This post has been corrected to reflect the fact that two of Diaspora's founders continued into Y Combinator with Rosanna Yau as the third founder.
50 Shades Of Grey '' Pedophilia Hiding In Plain Sight (Letter from a reader)
  Link to Article
  Source: The Ulsterman Report
  Thu, 16 Aug 2012 23:04
  NOTE: This message was left on on unrelated political story on my site. My first instinct was to simply delete it. As I read further though it became apparent the author is being very sincere in what she is communicating here. I also, like many of you, continue to be outraged by the sickening Gerry Sandusky tragedy. While I am not nearly so familiar with the story 50 Shades of Grey beyond the apparent fact it's very popular among women, the author of this message details a compelling case for something far more dangerous and sinister going on with a book that has been embraced by the mainstream. I won't make any judgments as to the validity of this author's claims quite yet. Perhaps those of you more familiar with the book, who can corroborate or dispute the evidence, can do so on your own in the comments section. If what Kat says is right though, what does that say of our society that so many so willingly embraced a story of pedophilia that, as she has put it, was ''hiding in plain sight''.
  _____________________
  (People like Gerry Sandusky are viewed with hatred, revulsion, and disgust. Rightfully so. What mother would want to condone anything having to do with the sexual abuse of children? Of innocents? But that is exactly what 50 Shades of Grey is really about.)
  ___________________________
  UM, Way off topic here but I thought I could post something that is really sickening to me in a forum that I know gets a lot of readers. If you want to remove it I totally understand. It is a letter I wrote to society I guess on the subject of pedophilia and a warning that a whole lot of us are being in a way I guess, abused by something that has become very popular.
  50 Shades of Grey '' Pedophilia Hiding In Plain Sight
  The story of convicted child rapist Gerry Sandusky is well known. So too is the 50 Shades of Grey phenomena, a book that has become so popular among women that some are referring to it as ''Mommy Porn'' for the masses. That description is actually a lot more disturbing than a lot of folks are currently realizing.
  Yes, 50 Shades is pornography. Like most pornography, the storyline is weak, the characters one-dimensional, while the sex itself graphic, detailed, but formulaic. The underlying theme to 50 Shades is something far more sinister and appalling though than your mere run-of-the-mill porn. It is pedophilia. It is child porn. Kiddie porn.
  Now I know after saying that, many female fans of 50 Shades, many of them mothers, will naturally put up a defense against that kind of description. These women, being mothers, are naturally wired to protect kids. People like Gerry Sandusky are viewed with hatred, revulsion, and disgust. Rightfully so. What mother would want to condone anything having to do with the sexual abuse of children? Of innocents?
  But that is exactly what 50 Shades of Grey is really about. It is a story of a girl being sexually molested, over and over again, by a male figure with all the power, all the control. It is the classic abuse scenario. And mothers are, in some cases, quite literally getting off on it, which takes the disgust of this phenomena to a whole other frightening level.
  So having put that out there, and I hope I haven't lost any of you just yet. I owe you an explanation after having made that kind of accusation about a book some of you may be reading right now. I'll start with a bit of background first.
  My professional experience centers around nearly 20 years with Child Protective Services. Over that time, I've seen situations that do, literally, keep me up at night. The amount of abuse that is going on in our society, that sexualization of our kids'...well basically, what you hear about, what is reported in the news, that is only a small sample of just how large of a problem and the disgusting acts that are going on every day. Kids are being raped. Kids are being abused. Every single day. Over and over and over again.
  I didn't seek out 50 Shades of Grey. It was brought to my attention by a longtime friend who is also a clinical psychologist at a university. She's a bit older than me. She grew up in the counter culture era and did her fair share of experimentation of all kinds. So she's hardly a prude. What she today though is a mother and grandmother. And she's smart. One of the things that fascinates her is this age of cultural phenomena. How due to technology things now spread so quickly throughout society and become the next big thing at an increasingly rapid pace. She says sometimes this phenomena is pretty much harmless, and other times it can be very damaging to kids and or adults who begin to emulate something out of a need to belong to the ''next big thing''.
  Her reaction to 50 Shades of Grey though was much more aggressively negative than anything I could recall her talking about before. It came up because I mentioned it to her offhand. I had seen a couple mentions of it on the news and knowing her interest in cultural trends, asked her about it. She stopped talking, looked right at me, and said the book was about pedophilia. And it was her who then connected it to theSanduskytragedy where so many young boys had been sexually abused. Sanduskycommitted his acts of crime under the cover of actually helping youth. That is how he gained access. My friend said 50 Shades was basically the same exact thing. Its cover was a story of a young woman engaging is a very graphic sexual relationship with a somewhat older man.
  The problem for her, and it was a BIG PROBLEM, was that the narrator in the story, was in fact, an underage girl. My friend indicated, based on the use of language in the narration, that this girl was likely no more than 12 or 13 years of age. I made mention that the girl in the story was actually getting ready to graduate college. My friend, a woman with years of experience as a clinical psychologist, whose expertise I had personally witnessed a number of times over the years, shook her head and told me that she would not be able to convince me by simply talking about it. She said I should read the book myself, but do so with the eyes of somebody whose job it had been for many years to try and protect children. As someone who has seen over and over the signs of abuse, and the damages of abuse. Because there are always warning signs. I know that. How many times have I heard people horrified in saying ''I can't believe I didn't see that'' ''How couldn't I have known?'' Or even worse, ''I knew something wasn't right but I didn't want to believe they were capable of doing something like that.''
  I'll try and summarize my friend's words at this point as best I can.
  ''Sexual predators are cons. They almost always have a cover. It's that cover which allows them access. 50 Shades of Grey is a con. It now has access to millions of readers. It is a story about abuse from beginning to end. And it's not just the abuse of a man and a woman '' it's the abuse of a man and a girl.
  When you read it, look for the signs. They are all there.
  The female character has no sexual experience. None. She is given the age of 21, but that age is itself a cover. Her true emotional age is much-much younger. She has never even masturbated. She has never even experienced an orgasm. That alone is one of the greatest attractions to the pedophile. That is the psychology of that kind of act. You get off on taking purity.
  But move from the fact the girl has no sexual experience whatsoever. Now pay attention to her narrative dialogue. Really listen to how she talks. Again, she's not talking like a young woman, she's talking like a girl. She talks about cartwheels, and skipping, over and over again it is the language and the imagery of a girl.
  After that this girl has her innocence taken from her. The abuser, the older man, makes her think its her choice. Again, you and I both know that is one of the primary tools of the pedophile. They create an environment where the child feels it's their idea. It's what they want. But what happens after that innocence is taken away? Then the abuser becomes more openly abusive. Controlling. In this story he tells the little girl how to speak. What to wear. What to eat. He is Daddy and she is daughter. When you read it read it like a mother who is also a woman who is experienced with the real life tragedy of abuse.
  And there is many more themes about that abuse in this book. There is spanking and the use of Baby oil. Why baby oil? Think about it. The girl wears pigtails. She complains that he is treating her like a child. He says she acts like a child. There is even a scene where the abuser creates a situation to take her innocence from her again. He rips out her tampon and engages in forceful sex yet again. Her hymen is ripped, and the bloody remnants of it are again symbolized in an act of pedophile rape.''
  She went on to say there are women now defending the book, and she understands that, but it concerns her. A great deal, because she is absolutely convinced the book is purposely advocating the raping of a child and attempting to normalize that atrocity.
  So, I left that conversation thinking maybe my friend was exaggerating. I had a hard time believing something so popular could actually have such a sinister and revolting theme, and while I respected her expertise and experience, thought this time she had to be seeing something that just wasn't there.
  I got the book, I sat down, and I read it.
  The first thing that struck me was how poor the writing was. It wasn't just bad. It was horrible. But horrible writing is no crime, (thank goodness or I would have been put away a long time ago) and it doesn't make the content of the story evil. But in my reading of it, just like my friend said, the theme of child abuse, of pedophilia, was right there in plain sight. I remember being told a long time ago that sometimes the best way to hide something is in plain site. That is what 50 Shades of Grey is really doing.
  The main character had no sexual experience. None. She was an innocent. She was a kid who had just had her first drink of alcohol. No way that was an accident by the author. That author had to have purposely made her, despite her given age of 21, by any other measure, a little girl. At that point, it struck me as odd. In my business, we call that a warning signal. A sign we may have a problem.
  From there, just like my friend had warned, it got worse. Much worse. And she was right, her telling me about it did not have the impact of me reading it myself with eyes open. She had given me the signs to look for, and as I turned the pages, those signs confirmed it over and over again.
  The narration, which is the voice of the girl talking to the reader, was the voice of a little girl. It's unmistakable. There is very little emotional maturity and absolutely no sexual maturity. She is seduced by this man in the very same way a pedophile seduces a child. The male character is Gerry Sandusky. He makes a show of his money, his power, the things he can buy for her, but while this is going on, we are reading the thoughts of a child. We are reading the seduction of a little girl by a pedophile. She is almost completely powerless. She is na¯ve even for a teenager, and certainly much much more na¯ve than a college student. She is incapable of even making the most simple of every day decisions and must be told what to do by her abuser, who in turn though spends a lot of time and effort convincing this child this is really what she wants. I've seen this before. Too often. Too many times. And it always leaves me sickened.
  We are reading child pornography. Remove the false age of the girl, which has no basis in reality, and what we are actually reading is the abuse of a little girl.
  The main character is described in pigtails, given words like ''Holy Cow'' ''down there'', ''jeez'' ''double crap'' she can't operate a computer (but is supposedly a college graduate), describes skipping and doing cartwheels, repeatedly says she is made to feel like a child, has her imaginary friend (inner goddess) feels shame, is spanked and slathered in BABY OIL, told what to say, what to eat, what to do, until finally and sadly so predictably, is physically beaten. (But she returns to him soon after, which is again, a very common theme of abuse, including pedophilia)
  And beyond all of this evidence there is the fact that the male character is himself a product of sexual abuse at the hands of a pedophile. The girl whose thoughts we listen in on as she is being abused, recognizes this aspect of the male abuser, but apparently, is too na¯ve or unwilling to realize she has continued this cycle of abuse herself. (Which again reinforces the idea that she is actually herself just a child) There is no way the author did this by accident. She puts out the theme of pedophilia openly, therefore hiding it in plain sight.
  People who have had to deal with the real world of sexual abuse of children will understand this perhaps more easily than others. How the pedophile is so often themselves victims of earlier abuse. They enter society, they become fathers or mothers, but so often they too become abusive. They seek out dominance, control, and the taking of innocence just as it was taken from them. Those who were once abused, become the abuser. It is the sad sick and tragic cycle of pedophilia.
  With 50 Shades of Grey this abnormal condition is trying to be normalized. Thanks to the insight of my friend, and my own experience, I know it for what it truly is '' a story of the sexual abuse of child, wrapped in the clich(C) cover story of a mysterious and troubled wealthy man. That is another thing my clinical psychologist friend pointed out later. Take away the aspect of money, and the character of the abuser becomes much less attractive and therefore it would have been much more difficult to pull of the deception. Are women actually that shallow? Yes, we can be.
  But women, the vast majority of us, are not people who knowingly condone the sexual abuse of children. We do not condone in any way, the horror that is pedophilia.
  Sadly though, that is exactly what is happening with the popularity of 50 Shades of Grey. It's a pedophilia con.
  It is one of the most horrible and sickening acts against the most powerless of our society, hiding in plain sight.
  Maybe my friend put it best when we talked all of this over. 50 Shades of Grey didn't excite her. She didn't find it interesting, sexy, or romantic.
  50 Shades of Grey made her weep. It made her sick. It made her think of the abuses of all of those kids by a demented, warped monster like Jerry Sandusky, who, just like the pedophilia of 50 Shades of Grey, was hiding in plain sight.
  _______________________
Washing machines that do it without electricity
  Link to Article
  Source: What Jamie Flarity is reading.
  Thu, 16 Aug 2012 22:57
  posted Aug 16th 2012 3:01pm by Mike Szczysfiled under: home hacks
  Those of us living in the first world take clean clothes for granted. Throw them in the washing machine, transfer to the dryer after 45 minutes, and you won't smell for another two weeks or so. But for people living in areas without electricity, clean clothes are a huge amount of work. Hand washing a family's clothes is estimated at 6 hours per day, three to five days per week. Here's a post that looks at some of the different human-powered washing machines out there.
  We've built our own human-powered machine before using a five-gallon bucket with a hole in the lit to receive the handle of a toilet plunger which acts as an agitator. But that pales in comparison to some of the machines seen here. The concept we like the most is shown above. It's an MIT project being used at an orphanage in Peru. The bicycle lets you easily power the spinning basket inside of the drum. The rear derailleur has been mounted on the axle so that the rider has a wider range of gears when spinning heavy loads. Take a look at the post linked above to see all of the offering, but we've also embedded video of two of them after the break.
  If you were looking for a washing-machine powered bike instead of a bike-powered washing machine you'll want to head on over to this post.
  [via Reddit]
Changes coming in Version 1.1 of the Twitter API
  Link to Article
  Source: Dave Winer's linkblog feed
  Thu, 16 Aug 2012 22:54
  At the end of June, I wrote about how we're working to deliver a consistent Twitter experience, and how we would soon introduce stricter guidelines about how the Twitter API is used. I'd like to give you more information about coming changes to the API and the migration plan while offering insights into today's Twitter ecosystem and why we're making these changes.
  In the coming weeks we will release version 1.1 of the Twitter API. To help you plan ahead, we're announcing these changes now, before the new version of the API is available. Changes will include:
  required authentication on every API endpointa new per-endpoint rate-limiting methodologychanges to our Developer Rules of the Road, especially around applications that are traditional Twitter clients.Authentication requiredCurrently, in v1.0 of the Twitter API we allow developers access to certain API endpoints without requiring their applications to authenticate, essentially enabling them to access public information from the Twitter API without us knowing who they are. For example, there are many applications that are pulling data from the Twitter API at very high rates (scraping, bots, etc.) where we only know the IP address of the applications. To prevent malicious use of the Twitter API and gain an understanding of what types of applications are accessing the API in order to evolve it to meet the needs of developers, it's important to have visibility into the activity on the Twitter API and the applications using the platform.
  In version 1.1, we will require every request to the API to be authenticated. For developers who are already using OAuth when making API requests, all of your authentication tokens will transition seamlessly from v1.0 to v1.1. If your application is currently using the Twitter API without using OAuth, you will need to update your application before March 2013. There's more information about the timing of the transition from v1.0 to v1.1 below.
  Per-endpoint rate limitingRight now, in version 1.0 of the Twitter API we limit the number of authenticated requests applications can make to 350 calls per hour, regardless of the type of information the application was requesting. This "one size fits all" approach has limited our ability to provide developers more access to endpoints that are frequently requested by applications, while continuing to prevent abuse of Twitter's resources.
  In version 1.1, we will provide per-endpoint rate limiting on the API. While an application that only accesses one endpoint may be more restricted, applications that use multiple endpoints will run into rate limiting issues less frequently.
  Most individual API endpoints will be rate limited at 60 calls per hour per-endpoint. Based on analysis of current use of our API, this rate limit will be well above the needs of most applications built against the Twitter API, while protecting our systems from abusive applications.
  There will be a set of high-volume endpoints related to Tweet display, profile display, user lookup and user search where applications will be able to make up to 720 calls per hour per endpoint.
  Full documentation of the rate limiting by endpoint will be released with API v1.1.
  Changes to the Developer Rules of the RoadIn addition to the functional changes outlined above, we will be making changes to our Developer Rules of the Road when we release API v1.1. Those changes include:
  Display Guidelines will be Display RequirementsTo ensure that Twitter users have a consistent experience wherever they see and interact with Tweets, in v1.1 of the Twitter API we will shift from providing Display Guidelines to Display Requirements, which we will also introduce for mobile applications. We will require all applications that display Tweets to adhere to these. Among them: linking @usernames to the appropriate Twitter profile, displaying appropriate Tweet actions (e.g. Retweet, reply and favorite) and scaling display of Tweets appropriately based on the device. If your application displays Tweets to users, and it doesn't adhere to our Display Requirements, we reserve the right to revoke your application key.
  Requiring pre-installed client applications to be certified by TwitterWith v1.1 we will require developers that are building client applications that are pre-installed on mobile handsets, SIM cards, chipsets or other consumer electronics devices to have their application certified by Twitter. Due to the long lead time required to update pre-installed client applications once they're "in the wild", we want to make sure that the developer is providing the best Twitter experience possible '-- before the application ships. If you ship an application pre-installed without it being certified by Twitter, we reserve the right to revoke your application key.
  Requiring developers to work with us directly if you need a large amount of user tokensOne of the key things we've learned over the past few years is that when developers begin to demand an increasingly high volume of API calls, we can guide them toward areas of value for users and their businesses. To that end, and similar to some other companies, we will require you to work with us directly if you believe your application will need more than one million individual user tokens.
  Additionally, if you are building a Twitter client application that is accessing the home timeline, account settings or direct messages API endpoints (typically used by traditional client applications) or are using our User Streams product, you will need our permission if your application will require more than 100,000 individual user tokens.
  We will not be shutting down client applications that use those endpoints and are currently over those token limits. If your application already has more than 100,000 individual user tokens, you'll be able to maintain and add new users to your application until you reach 200% of your current user token count (as of today) '-- as long as you comply with our Rules of the Road. Once you reach 200% of your current user token count, you'll be able to maintain your application to serve your users, but you will not be able to add additional users without our permission.
  Finally, there may also be additional changes to the Rules of the Road to reflect the functional changes in version 1.1 of the Twitter API that we've outlined here.
  API v1.1 migration periodWhen we release version 1.1 of the API we will simultaneously announce the deprecation of v1.0. From the day of the release, developers will have six months to migrate applications from v1.0 to v1.1. For developers who are already making authenticated calls to the API, this migration will be relatively easy, and should only involve updating the API endpoint, and testing your application's behavior against the new rate limiting policies. For developers whose applications are accessing the API without authenticating, you will need to update your applications to use OAuth.
  Today's Twitter ecosystemToday on Twitter we see a broad and deep variety of individual developers and companies buildingapplications using data and content from the Twitter API. Roughly speaking, we bucket these applications based on their target audience (i.e. consumers or businesses) and their core feature set (i.e. do they enable users to engage with Tweets, or do they use Tweets for data analysis purposes).
  With our new API guidelines, we're trying to encourage activity in the upper-left, lower-left and lower right quadrants, and limit certain use cases that occupy the upper-right quadrant.
  Let me explain.
  On the left side of the grid are applications that are targeted at businesses.
  In the lower-left quadrant, we've seen tremendous innovation in applications and services that serve the business market with analytics products based on Twitter content. For example, Crimson Hexagon builds actionable reports for brands, media companies and political campaigns based on the conversation on Twitter; Topsy has built a real-time analytics dashboard to help finance, government, news and brands react to news; and DataMinr provides analytics for the finance industry.In the upper-left quadrant are providers of tools that help businesses engage with Twitter including social CRM providers like Sprinklr, HootSuite and Radian6 (acquired by salesforce.com), and integration companies like Mass Relevance, which aggregates and filters Tweets for display on TV.On the right-hand side of the grid are applications that are targeted at consumers.
  In the lower-right quadrant are services that use Twitter content for social influence ranking, such as Klout. In the upper right-hand quadrant are services that enable users to interact with Tweets, like the Tweet curation service Storify or the Tweet discovery site Favstar.fm.That upper-right quadrant also includes, of course, "traditional" Twitter clients like Tweetbot and Echofon. Nearly eighteen months ago, we gave developers guidance that they should not build client apps that mimic or reproduce the mainstream Twitter consumer client experience." And to reiterate what I wrote in my last post, that guidance continues to apply today.Looking aheadBeyond API v1.1, we look forward to creating new ways for developers to not only build applications using data and content from Twitter, but to also build interactive Twitter Cards.
  Since we announcedTwitter Cards in June for twitter.com (and in July for Twitter for iPhone and Twitter for Android), we have seen tremendous response; more than 400 developers and publishers are participating in the program, distributing content through expanded Tweets. And over the next several quarters we will introduce new ways for developers to build content experiences and applications into Twitter, through Twitter Cards. Finally, we are hard at work on a new set of features for Twitter for Websites, to enable web developers to easily embed real-time Twitter content on their own sites.
  We hope that all of this information gives you more clarity around where we are headed with API v1.1. We look forward to sharing more news about additional and new platform capabilities in the very near future.
Hollywood Bureau - Muslim Public Affairs Council
  Link to Article
  Thu, 16 Aug 2012 22:36
  MPAC's Hollywood Bureau serves as a bridge between the Muslim community and the entertainment industry. The Bureau is responsible for advancing Muslim American perspectives in the entertainment industry by serving as an information clearinghouse in Islam for the Hollywood community. The Bureau also works with the Muslim American community to nurture creative talent and connect aspiring Muslim filmmakers, writers and actors with Hollywood professionals.
  MPAC experts provide information, background, and consultation that addresses cultural and religious sensitivities in such areas as civil rights, politics, foreign affairs, art, culture, history, law, family issues and more.
  WHAT THE HOLLYWOOD BUREAU OFFERS
  Fostering Relationships with Industry ProfessionalsBureau staff meet regularly with executives, producers, directors, screenwriters and actors to develop mutually beneficial relationships, and share expertise and insight that can lead to financially and critically successful projects.
  Consulting on Film and TV ProjectsThe Bureau works with studios and production companies to serve as a consultant on film and television projects that depict Islam or have an impact on the Muslim community. The Bureau seeks to promote balanced and accurate portrayals of Muslim-related issues in such movies and shows, as well as educate the filmmakers and producers about religious, political and cultural issues in the Muslim world in order to give deeper context to their creative work.
  Networking EventsThe Bureau will host events in order to create opportunities for industry insiders to interact with aspiring Muslim filmmakers with the goal of facilitating Muslim American involvement in Hollywood. It will also provide opportunities for studios and filmmakers to screen their work before Muslim audiences and gather feedback.
  Honoring Voices of Courage and ConscienceIn coordination with the MPAC Foundation, the Bureau recognizes professionals in the entertainment industry whose work offers humanizing and multi-dimensional portrayals of Islam and Muslims. The Media Awards gala dinner honors artists, actors, authors, and activists for their artistic contributions in promoting diversity and mutual understanding.