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Windmills Tilted, Scared Cows Butchered, Lies Skewered on the Lance of Reality ... or something to that effect.


Monday, February 4, 2013

The Daily Drift

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Do you ever feel like it's all wrong

Some of our readers today have been in:
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Colombo, Sri Lanka
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Swarzedz, Poland
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Lagos, Nigeria
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Manama, Bahrain
Bordeaux, France
Szczecin, Poland
Bangor, Wales
Makati, Philippines
Cheria, Algeria
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Belgrade, Serbia
Slough, England
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Panevezys, Lithuania
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Sanaa, Yemen
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Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Pretoria, South Africa


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Today in History

786   Harun al-Rashid succeeds his older brother the Abbasid Caliph al-Hadi as Caliph of Baghdad.
1194   Richard I, King of England, is freed from captivity in Germany.
1508   The Proclamation of Trent is made.
1787   Shay's Rebellion, an uprising of debt-ridden Massachusetts farmers against the new U.S. government, fails.
1795   France abolishes slavery in her territories and confers slaves to citizens.
1889   Harry Longabaugh is released from Sundance Prison in Wyoming, thereby acquiring the famous nickname, "the Sundance Kid."
1899   After an exchange of gunfire, fighting breaks out between American troops and Filipinos near Manila, sparking the Philippine-American War
1906   The New York Police Department begins finger print identification.
1909   California law segregates Caucasian and Japanese schoolchildren.
1915   Germany decrees British waters as part of the war zone; all ships to be sunk without warning.
1923   French troops take the territories of Offenburg, Appenweier and Buhl in the Ruhr as a part of the agreement ending World War I.
1932   Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt inaugurates the Winter Olympics at Lake Placid, N.Y.
1941   The United Service Organization (U.S.O.) is formed to cater to armed forces and defense industries.
1944   The Japanese attack the Indian Seventh Army in Burma.
1945   The Big Three, American, British and Soviet leaders, meet in Yalta to discuss the war aims.
1966   Senate Foreign Relations Committee begins televised hearings on the Vietnam War.
1980   Syria withdraws its peacekeeping force in Beirut.
1986   The U.S. Post Office issues a commemorative stamp featuring Sojourner Truth.

Non Sequitur

http://media.zenfs.com/en_us/News/ucomics.com/nq130204.gif

Krugman has it right

From The New York Times


Makers, Takers, Fakers
by Paul Krugman

The repugicans have a problem. For years they could shout down any attempt to point out the extent to which their policies favored the elite over the poor and the middle class; all they had to do was yell "Class warfare!" and Democrats scurried away. In the 2012 election, however, that didn't work: the picture of the repugican cabal as the party of sneering plutocrats stuck, even as Democrats became more openly populist than they have been in decades.

As a result, prominent repugicans have begun acknowledging that their party needs to improve its image. But here's the thing: Their proposals for a makeover all involve changing the sales pitch rather than the product. When it comes to substance, the repugican cabal is more committed than ever to policies that take from most Americans and give to a wealthy handful.

Bulletproof Left

Paul Krugman Guts the NRA’s Last Shred of Intimidation








krugman-nra
Paul Krugman completely gutted the NRA, and in the process became the the latest example of the left’s absolute lack of fear of the gun lobby.
Video:


Here’s the transcript from ABC News:
KRUGMAN: But what really strikes me — I don’t know how this plays, you know, what will happen. What strikes me is we’ve actually gotten a glimpse into the mindset, though, of the pro-gun people and we’ve seen certainly Wayne LaPierre and some of these others. It’s bizarre. They have this vision that we’re living in a “Mad Max” movie and that nothing can be done about it, that America cannot manage unless everybody’s prepared to shoot intruders, that — the idea that we have a police forces that provides public safety is somehow totally impractical, despite the fact that, you know, that is, in fact, the way we live.
So I think that the terms of the debate have shifted. Now the craziness of the extreme pro-gun lobby has been revealed, and that has got to move the debate and got to move the legislation at least to some degree.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Are you comfortable with where the NRA has been on this?
BARLETTA: Yeah. I am. I mean, this is a perfect example why people believe Washington is broke. This horrific incident in Newtown, and here, what is our debate? It’s focusing on guns, when there is not one person at this table who really believes that that’s the root of what happened there. And when we have people that get into the mindset that they want to harm people, as a former mayor, I know people will get guns no matter what laws we pass, just like the illegal drug…
(CROSSTALK)
KRUGMAN: … just caught you on a false statement there, because at least I do believe that guns are the root. There are crazy people everywhere, but mass murders are a lot more common here than in countries with effective gun control.
BARLETTA: If you believe guns are more important than — than dealing with mental health and our culture — is our culture lending itself that we’re raising children that are desensitized to — to murder, to killing people?
(CROSSTALK)
KRUGMAN: I love that the international differences — countries that have effective gun control have a lot fewer incidents.
BARLETTA: We’re banning spoons stop obesity? Of course not.
KRUGMAN: Banning the large soda drinks…
RAMOS: There’s high tolerance for — for violence in this country. I mean, after Columbine, after Virginia Tech, after Aurora, we should have done something, and we haven’t. Sometimes it seems that it’s only minor changes that we’re talking about, even ban on assault weapons or background checks, or we’re talking about high-capacity magazines. I mean, we know what works. I mean, in Japan, it works. But as a country, I don’t think we are willing to even revisit the Second Amendment.
(CROSSTALK)
STEPHANOPOULOS: And then…
(CROSSTALK)
FIORINA: But Paul said something that…
(CROSSTALK)
RAMOS: We know exactly what works, but we don’t want to do it. We have to recognize that.
FIORINA: Paul said something that’s illustrative of what I meant when I said people overplay their hands. What Paul just did was lump everybody together as a crazy radical gun-owner.
KRUGMAN: Not true.
FIORINA: Yes. So you’re condemning people…
KRUGMAN: No, there are plenty of gun-owners who are fine. But the lobbying groups, the NRA is now revealed as an insane organization, and that matters quite a lot.
What we witnessing is the national destruction of the myth that the NRA has some sort of intimidating power that the left is afraid to challenge. The mainstream media has helped the NRA create this aura of power around itself that is being exposed as having never existed. When the White House released the picture of President Obama skeet shooting, they were sending a message to the NRA.
The White House isn’t going to back down. Democrats aren’t going to back down, and the majority of the country will not stand down until meaningful reform has been enacted to deal with gun violence. Krugman was right. The NRA has revealed itself to be a right wing fringe group, and their leadership is not representing the views of a the majority of gun owners in this country.
The NRA has been outed as nothing more than the tool of the gun manufacturers. They don’t represent gun owners anymore. The organization has become so entrenched in repugican politics that they actually endorsed the governor who signed the nation’s first assault weapons ban for president in 2012.
The NRA has no real power. They can bluster. They may be able to stop an assault weapons ban through the repugican members of Congress that they have bought and paid for, but they can’t stop the shifting opinion on their view that America is an all guns, all the time nation. The tide has shifted, and the NRA and their unpopular positions are being swept out to sea.
As Paul Krugman’s comments illustrated, no one is afraid of the NRA. They are just another group of corporate repugicans who have marginalized themselves with extremist views.
The reality is that the crazier the NRA gets, the closer this nation comes to real gun reform.

Did you know ...

About the dumb media (abortion edition)

That the U.S. has the worst health of nearly all industrialized countries

That the repugicans decide the answer to their problems is to screw America over with a smile

That ER visits tied to energy drinks doubles in 4 years

Wayne LaPierre Gets so Crazy that Even Faux News Calls Out His Bull Shit

Wayne LaPierre went so far off the crazy cliff today that even Faux News had to call out his conspiracy laden Bull Shit.
Here is video of the interview (Note: audio is not in synch):
LaPierre was in full blown crazy mode. When Chris Wallace brought up Supreme Court Justice Scalia’s opinion in the Heller decision that the Second Amendment is not unlimited, LaPierre said, “We have all kinds of reasonable laws right here, the NRA supports, that they enforce them in Chicago and cut crime. But for the most right is to protect yourself, and the American public wants to be able. Semi-automatic technology has been around for a hundred years. If you limit the American public’s access to semi-automatic technology, you limit their ability to survive. If someone’s invading your house, I mean you shouldn’t say you only have fix or six shots. You ought to have what you need to protect yourself, not what some politician thinks is reasonable.”
Chris Wallace played a clip of the NRA ad that uses the president’s kids, and LaPierre’s reply spoke volumes about how far over the cliff the NRA has gone,
LaPierre: The point of the ad is this. It wasn’t picking on the president’s kids…The president’s kids are safe and we’re all thankful for it.
Wallace: They also face a threat that most children do not face.
LaPierre: Tell that to the people of Newtown.
Wallace: Do you really think that the president’s children are the same kind of target as every school child in America? That’s ridiculous, and you know it, sir.
LaPierre: You know unfortunately, I think there are parents all of the school, I mean all over the country that think their kids are entitled to the same amount of protection when they go to school.
Wallace: So they should have Secret Service?
LaPierre: No, but what they should have is police officers, or certified armed security in those schools to keep people safe. If something happens, the police time, despite all their good intentions is 15-20 minutes. It’s too long. It’s not going to help those kids. Certified armed security in schools just like…
Wallace: But that isn’t going to protect them in the shopping mall, in the movie theater, on the street.
LaPierre went on a rant about gangs, and Wallace said mass shooters weren’t in gangs. Wallace then called out LaPierre for attacking the “elites” who have armed security, when he has armed security.
Wayne LaPierre and the NRA have officially gone so far off the rails that even Faux News had to call them out. Wallace gave LaPierre every opportunity to sound reasonable, but he couldn’t stop himself from jumping off the crazy cliff. What the NRA is doing is running a fear campaign. Their whole argument about fantasy intruders who are apparently armed with assault weapons invading YOUR home is meant to scare the holy heck out of the American people.
The whole idea that personal survival is dependent upon access to semi-automatic technology would be laughable if it wasn’t so sad.
The more desperate the NRA gets, the crazier their arguments against gun control become. LaPierre broke out the tin foil hat conspiracy fears that universal background checks would lead to some sort of national government database of law abiding Americans. It is obvious that the NRA is losing, so they are throwing all of their arguments against the wall and hoping something sticks.
The NRA is so far gone that even Faux News is telling them to cut back on the crazy. That is really all you need to understand about which side is currently winning the debate on gun control.

The NRA Puts Pro Sports Teams In Its Crosshairs But Not the RNC

nra blood logo
The NRA Institute for Legislative Action has a list on their website titled the “National Organizations With Anti-Gun Policies”, also known as an “enemies list”. They even include cartoonists, Olympic athletes and NFL players on their enemies list – that’s how ridiculous and paranoid the current NRA is.
The Royals, Chiefs and Rams are in the NRA’s crosshairs, too. Why, you ask? Did they make an ad preaching against the second amendment? Almost. They did the exact same thing the repugicans did at their convention — no concealed carry guns at games, please.
Yahoo sports reported:
So, what put the Royals, Chiefs and Rams in the NRA’s, uh, crosshairs? After a series of failures, the state of Missouri in 2003 passed a law that allows individuals to apply for a permit to carry a concealed weapon. The Royals, Chiefs and Rams — quite understandably — didn’t want to encourage fans to pack heat at ballgames.
The end result was, “And the K.C. sports teams got what they wanted; the law doesn’t apply to stadiums with a capacity over 5,000. You still can’t bring a gun to a Royals game, thank goodness. And those sneaky Cardinals and Blues get the same benefit without making the NRA’s bogeyman list.”
Yet, nowhere will you see the NRA taking aim at the repugican cabal, who banned ALL guns at their convention for the very same reason. Heck, repugicans know their base so well, they wouldn’t even allow knives.
The repugicans even banned toy guns from their 2012 convention. Seriously. These are very scared people. Has Obama come for repugicans’ toy guns yet?
The NRA may just be the craziest organization in the country.
The repugican convention took place before the NRA published their hit list on September 17, 2012, and yet the NRA is completely ignoring that the repugicans did exactly what the sports teams did. Sports teams who don’t want to die = evil enemies. The repubgcans who don’t want to die or even get squirted with water from a toy gun = heroes of the second amendment.
Based on the length of the NRA’s enemies list, it looks like the anti-crazy people might just have a chance in this country. Additionally, thanks to their enemies list, those of us who are against assault weapons in the hands of people who refuse to even submit to a background check know who to support. The enemy of my enemy is my friend indeed, especially when there are other substantial areas for common ground.

Police arrest balloon-inhaling suspect following chase

A man wanted on suspicion of drunken driving led police in California on a slow-speed pursuit, pulled over and started inhaling from balloons in a bizarre standoff that ended with officers smashing his window and pulling him from the vehicle. The suspect was identified by his father, who was at the scene, as 24-year-old Jorge Leonardo Sanchez.


The man's father said that Sanchez had problems in the past with nitrous oxide, an inhalant typically known as laughing gas that when huffed creates a feeling of euphoria. According to Los Angeles Superior Court records, Sanchez was found guilty of possession of nitrous oxide in 2009.

The slow-speed chase started at about 10:45am on Friday and lasted approximately 10 minutes before Sanchez pulled over in Panorama City. The man pulled the car forward and then reversed it multiple times. An officer snuck in front of the vehicle and put down a spike strip, which the driver ran over, entangling it under the sedan.



Aerial video showed the man inhaling from balloons and then refilling them with some sort of tank inside the car. At 11:12am, six police officers with guns drawn approached the vehicle. After talking to Sanchez through the passenger-side window, one of the officers fired a low-impact BB round into the car, striking him. Police then swarmed the vehicle. One officer smashed in the driver-side window, opened the door and pulled the man to the ground. He was handcuffed and taken into custody.

There will be no show trial for Neo-Nazi

A senior German judge has rejected calls to give the public greater access at the trial of a woman suspected of involvement in a far-right murder spree that has shaken the country's security establishment since coming to light over a year ago.
(AP Photo/hopd/BKA). The 2004 photograph provided by German federal criminal investigation office BKA shows terror suspect Beate Zschaepe.The trial of Beate Zschaepe - the sole surviving member of a neo-Nazi trio that allegedly killed nine businessmen and a policewoman between 2000 and 2007 - is expected to generate intense media interest in Germany and Turkey, where at least four of the victims were born.
Part of the case will center on how Germany's well-funded police and intelligence services failed to link the killings of nine men with ethnic minority backgrounds to far-right fugitives for more than a decade. Several senior security officials have resigned following revelations that authorities for years believed the murders to be the work of immigrant gangs, had informers close to the suspects and destroyed evidence linked to the case.
Karl Huber, the president of the Munich regional court where the case will be heard starting April 17, said in an interview published Saturday that reporters and members of the public will share just 100 seats during what is expected to be a yearlong trial.
"We are going to conduct proceedings in accordance with the rule of law, and not a show trial for the public," he was quoted as saying by Munich's Sueddeutsche Zeitung. "We won't do this in a football stadium the way totalitarian states do."
Huber said the court considered screening the proceedings in overflow rooms used in trials such as that of Anders Behring Breivik, who was sentenced to a 21-year prison term by a court in Norway last year for killing 77 people and wounding 200 others in 2011. Norwegian authorities even broadcast the trial to courthouses across the country, so the victims' relatives could watch.
But German court rules prohibit such arrangements and so access will be strictly limited to avoid a mistrial being declared, Huber told Sueddeutsche Zeitung.
Zschaepe, 38, faces a possible life sentence if convicted of involvement in the murders. She is also charged with helping found the group that called itself National Socialist Underground and with many other crimes.
The other two core members of the group, Uwe Mundlos and Uwe Boenhardt, were found dead in an apparent murder-suicide after a bungled bank robbery on Nov. 4, 2011.
Four other men are also charged with various crimes for allegedly helping the NSU, including providing the murder weapon. The prosecution case against the men has been complicated by the fact that some may have been informers for Germany's security services at the time of their alleged crimes.

German customs catch Iranian man with €54 million check

Customs officers confiscated a foreign currency check worth €54 million on Friday after catching an Iranian man trying to smuggle it illegally into Germany at Dusseldorf airport. The man had hardly bothered to hide his loot, which was stashed in the side pocket of his hand luggage.
Customs officials randomly checked the 59-year-old's bag as he got off a flight from Turkey which landed at Dusseldorf airport in western Germany. The man had stopped over in Turkey on his way to Germany from Iran. When asked how much money he was carrying, the man declared that he was carrying less than €10,000 in cash.


Yet German officials found a check made by the Venezuelan state-owned bank, Banco de Venezuela, made out for 300 million Venezuelan bolivares - about €54 million - in the side pocket of his hand luggage. The man had indeed only been carrying €5,000 in cash in various currencies, but passengers entering the EU are required to declare any cash or assets - including securities such as checks, travelers checks, savings certificates, shares - worth more than €10,000.

As the man was unable to tell the officials anything about the check, the intended recipient or the reason for money being transferred, customs officials said they had confiscated the document due to suspicion of money-laundering. The unnamed Iranian traveler will now face charges of having committed an administrative offense - of not declaring assets over €10,000 and if he is found guilty could be fined up to €1 million.

Armed man arrested outside Buckingham Palace

Stun gun used on armed man near Buckingham Palace A cornered off area containing knives, a hat and Taser wire outside Buckingham Palace in central London after a man armed with two knives was stunned by police, Sunday Feb. 3, 2013. Scotland Yard said the man, thought to be in his 50s, acted aggressively when challenged by police outside the gates of the heavily touristed landmark on Sunday. Queen Elizabeth II and her husband Prince Philip were at their country retreat, Sandringham Estate, at the time.    UNITED KINGDOM OUT -  - NO ARCHIVES Photo: Jonathan Brady/PA
A cornered off area containing knives, a hat and Taser wire outside Buckingham Palace in central London after a man armed with two knives was stunned by police, Sunday Feb. 3, 2013.
Scotland Yard said the man acted aggressively when challenged by police outside the gates of the heavily touristed landmark on Sunday.
Queen Elizabeth II and her husband Prince Philip were at their country retreat, Sandringham Estate, at the time. Police used a stun gun to arrest a man armed with knives outside Buckingham Palace on Sunday, as throngs of tourists gathered to watch the Changing of the Guard ceremony there.
 Scotland Yard said the man, thought to be in his 50s, was spotted carrying two knives outside the central gate of the London tourist landmark. He did not threaten other people at the scene, but when challenged by police he acted aggressively.
Officers used the stun gun on him and took him to a London police station, Scotland Yard said. No one was injured.
A video posted onto YouTube by a witness showed mounted police clearing tourists from the area as the unidentified man put a kitchen knife to his neck and shouted. The man took several swipes with one of his knives at an approaching policeman, who fired the stun gun. The man then fell to the ground and was surrounded by policemen in front of hundreds of onlookers.
Other witnesses said the man had broken through a security cordon and was attempting to walk toward the palace guards when he was stopped by police.
About 15 officers surrounded the man once he'd been subdued, said witness Kevin Burrows, 33. "Everybody was standing back when it happened, and people were actually quite calm. I think everyone was surprised," said Burrows.
The confrontation took place just before noon — a busy time when visitors from around the world flock to the front of the palace to watch the Changing of the Guard ceremony, which takes place every other morning during the winter.
Two knives and a pair of sneakers were left inside a cordoned off area outside the palace gates.
Queen Elizabeth II and her husband, Prince Philip, were not at the palace at the time, and its staff declined to comment about the confrontation.

Pakistani girl shot by Taliban has successful skull surgery

Hospital staff assists Malala Yousufzai, a 14-year-old schoolgirl who was wounded in a gun attack, at the Saidu Sharif Teaching Hospital in the Swat Valley, northwest Pakistan October 9, 2012. REUTERS/Mohammad Muzamil 
A Pakistani schoolgirl shot in the head by the Taliban for advocating girls' education has undergone successful surgery at a British hospital to reconstruct her skull and help restore lost hearing.
A team of doctors carried out a five-hour operation on Saturday on 15-year-old Malala Yousufzai, who was shot in October and brought to Britain for treatment.
The procedures carried out were cranial reconstruction, aimed at mending parts of her skull with a titanium plate, and a cochlear implant designed to restore hearing on her left side, which was damaged in the attack.
"Both operations were a success and Malala is now recovering in hospital," said a statement on Sunday from the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, central England, where she is being treated.
The girl's condition was described as stable and the statement said her medical team were very pleased with the progress she has made. "She is awake and talking to staff and members of her family," it added.
The attack on Yousufzai, who was shot in the head at point blank range as she left school in the Swat valley, drew widespread international condemnation.
She has become an international symbol of resistance to the Taliban's efforts to deny women education and other rights, and more than 250,000 people have signed online petitions calling for her to be nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize.
Yousufzai will now continue recuperating at the Queen Elizabeth hospital, which has a specialist unit where doctors have treated hundreds of soldiers wounded in conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, the hospital statement said.

The 787 is grounded, but the batteries can fly

FILE - In this Feb. 3, 2011, file photo, Boeings' new 787 Dreamliner takes off from Houston's Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston. While Boeing’s 787 Dreamliners are grounded, the batteries causing airliner’s troubles can still fly. At the time the government certified the 787 as safe, federal rules barred the type of batteries used to power the airliner’s electrical systems from being carried as cargo on passenger planes because of the fire risk. But new rules exempt aircraft batteries from the ban on large lithium ion batteries as cargo on flights by passenger planes. (AP Photo/Pat Sullivan, File)  
At the same time the government certified Boeing's 787 Dreamliners as safe, federal rules barred the type of batteries used to power the airliner's electrical systems from being carried as cargo on passenger planes because of the fire risk. Dreamliners worldwide were grounded nearly three weeks ago after lithium ion batteries that are part of the planes led to a fire in one plane and smoke in a second. But new rules exempt aircraft batteries from the ban on large lithium ion batteries as cargo on flights by passenger planes. In effect, that means the Dreamliner's batteries are now allowed to fly only if they're not attached to a Dreamliner.
The regulations were published on Jan. 7, the same day as a battery fire in a Japan Airlines 787 parked at Boston's Logan International Airport that took firefighters nearly 40 minutes to put out. The timing of the two events appears coincidental.
Pilots and safety advocates say the situation doesn't make sense. If the 787's battery system is too risky to allow the planes to fly, then it's too risky to ship the same batteries as cargo on airliners, they said.
"These incidents have raised the whole issue of lithium batteries and their use in aviation," said Jim Hall, a former National Transportation Safety Board chairman. "Any transport of lithium batteries on commercial aircraft for any purpose should be suspended until (an) NTSB investigation is complete and we know more about this entire issue."
Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger, a former US Airways pilot famed for his precision flying that enabled passengers and crew to survive an emergency landing on the Hudson River in New York, said in an interview that he wouldn't be comfortable flying an airliner that carried lithium ion aircraft batteries in its cargo hold.
"The potential for self-ignition, for uncontained fires, is huge," he said. The new regulations "need to be looked at very hard in the cold light of day, particularly with what has happened with the 787 batteries."
The battery rules were changed in order to conform U.S. shipping requirements with international standards as required by Congress, the federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration said in a statement.
The International Civil Aviation Organization, a U.N. agency that sets global aviation standards, adopted the aircraft battery cargo exemption in October 2011, and it went into effect Jan. 1. The organization's standards normally aren't binding. But a provision inserted into U.S. law at the behest of the battery industry and their shippers says the rules can't be stricter than the U.N. agency's standards.
Previously, U.S. regulations prohibited the shipment of lithium ion batteries on passenger planes in packages weighing more than 11 pounds, although heavier batteries could be shipped on cargo planes.
The new rules allow the shipment of lithium ion batteries weighing as much as 77 pounds, but only if they are aircraft batteries. Shipments of other lithium ion batteries greater than 11 pounds are still prohibited. The 787's two batteries weigh 63 pounds each. It's the first airliner to make extensive use of lithium ion batteries, which weigh less and store more power than other batteries of a similar size.
The aircraft battery exemption was created for the convenience of the airline industry, which wants to be able to quickly ship replacement batteries to planes whose batteries are depleted or have failed. Sometimes it's faster to do that using a passenger plane.
The NTSB is investigating the cause of the 787 battery fire in Boston. Japanese authorities are investigating a battery failure that led to an emergency landing by an All Nippon Airways 787 on Jan. 16. All Dreamliners, which are operated by eight airlines in seven countries, have since been grounded.
The International Air Transport Association, which represents U.S. airlines and other carriers that fly internationally, asked for the aircraft battery exemption at the October 2011 meeting of the U.N. agency's dangerous goods committee.
The association argued that the exemption would give airlines "significant operational flexibility in being able to move aircraft batteries on a passenger aircraft where cargo aircraft may not be available over the route, or within the time required if a battery is required at short notice," according to a copy of the request obtained by The Associated Press.
Since the batteries have to meet special safety standards in order to be installed on planes, "it is believed that exceeding the (11-pound) limit for passenger aircraft will not compromise safety," the request said.
Some members of the committee opposed allowing shipments of lithium ion aircraft batteries on passenger planes, saying safety regulations that let the batteries be used onboard planes don't necessarily ensure they can be transported safely as cargo, according to a summary of the meeting posted online by the U.N. agency.
"One member had discussed this proposal with an engineer in their (country's) airworthiness office who was familiar with standards for batteries installed in aircraft," the summary said. "This colleague did not believe testing standards for installed aircraft batteries warranted special treatment for transport purposes." It was pointed out that the safety standards applied to batteries used in the operation of an aircraft are "narrowly tailored to performance issues and how the battery interacted with aircraft systems," the summary said.
The summary doesn't identify the committee member, but a source familiar with the deliberations said it was the U.S. representative, Janet McLaughlin. She abstained from the vote on the standards, said a federal official with knowledge of the meeting. Neither source was authorized to comment publicly and both spoke only on condition of anonymity.
The Japan Airlines fire ignited about half an hour after the plane had landed in Boston and nearly 200 passengers and crew members had disembarked. Firefighters were alerted after a cleaning crew working in the plane smelled smoke. It took nearly 40 minutes to put out the fire.
The "multiple systems" that were designed to prevent the 787's batteries from catching fire "did not work as intended," Deborah Hersman, the current NTSB chairman, told reporters recently. The "expectation in aviation is never to experience a fire on an aircraft," she said.
Concern about transport of lithium ion aircraft batteries on passenger planes isn't limited to the batteries used in the 787. The Airbus A350, expected to be ready next year, will also make extensive use of lithium ion batteries.
Aircraft manufacturers are also considering retrofitting some planes to replace their batteries with lithium ion batteries to save weight, according to the airline association. The less a plane weighs, the less fuel it burns. Fuel is the biggest operating expense of most airlines.
Cargo airline pilots long have complained about the dangers of transporting lithium batteries. The batteries are suspected of causing or contributing to the severity of an onboard fire that led to the September 2010 crash of a United Parcel Service plane near Dubai, killing both pilots. The two pilots of another UPS plane barely managed to escape the aircraft before it was consumed by fire moments after landing in Philadelphia in 2006.
Fires involving rechargeable lithium-ion batteries can reach 1,100 degrees and are extremely difficult to put out.

Daily Comic Relief

At the crematorium

School system seeks copyright ownership of students’ work in Maryland

 
In Maryland, the Prince George’s County Board of Education is considering a proposal that would allow the school system to copyright ownership of all work created by students and teachers. The sweeping intellectual property grab could mean that anything from a drawing to an app to a lesson plan would become the property of the school system, not the creator.
From Ovetta Wiggins' piece in the Washington Post:
The proposal is part of a broader policy the board is reviewing that would provide guidelines for the “use and creation” of materials developed by employees and students. The boards’s staff recommended the policy largely to address the increased use of technology in the classroom. Board Chair Verjeana M. Jacobs (District 5) said she and Vice Chair Carolyn M. Boston (District 6) attended an Apple presentation and learned how teachers can use apps to create new curricula. The proposal was designed to make it clear who owns teacher-developed curricula created while using apps on iPads that are school property, Jacobs said.
It’s not unusual for a company to hold the rights to an employee’s work, copyright policy experts said. But the Prince George’s policy goes a step further by saying that work created for the school by employees during their own time and using their own materials is the school system’s property.
Read the rest. It seems that the idea here is to protect possible revenue that could come from "the growing secondary online market for teacher lesson plans," or from software or other internet-based applications and services that might be developed within the classroom, but have greater revenue potential in secondary sales outside the classroom.

Will Marathon Viewing Become the TV Norm?

television setI used to watch new episodes of my favorite shows every week on television. Now I watch one show, episode by episode, in sequence and on a computer screen. Then the next show. According to New York Times reporter Brian Stelter, that's become normal:
Binge-viewing, empowered by DVD box sets and Netflix subscriptions, has become such a popular way for Americans to watch TV that it is beginning to influence the ways the stories are told — particularly one-hour dramas — and how they are distributed. [...]
On Friday, Netflix will release a drama expressly designed to be consumed in one sitting:“House of Cards,” a political thriller starring Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright. Rather than introducing one episode a week, as distributors have done since the days of black-and-white TVs, all 13 episodes will be streamed at the same time. “Our goal is to shut down a portion of America for a whole day,” the producer Beau Willimon said with a laugh.
“House of Cards,” which is the first show made specifically for Netflix, dispenses with some of the traditions that are so common on network TV, like flashbacks. There is less reason to remind viewers what happened in previous episodes, the producers say, because so many viewers will have just seen it. And if they don’t remember, Google is just a click away. The show “assumes you know what’s happening all the time, whereas television has to assume that a big chunk of the audience is always just tuning in,” said Ted Sarandos, Netflix’s chief content officer.
Television producers now have to grapple with customers who won't even start watching a series until it's over:
Some hoarders wait years: Mr. Mazzara, for instance, said he’s waiting to watch HBO’s “Girls” until the whole series is over, several years from now. This stockpiling phenomenon has become so common that some network executives worry that it is hurting new shows because they cancel the shows before would-be viewers get around to watching them.
Economist Tyler Cowen reflects on this trend and notes where immediate sequentialization does and does not work:
You can buy an entire book at once, as serialization — while not dead — has ceased to be the norm for long novels.  At MOMA they do not run an art exhibit by putting up one new van Gogh painting each day.  Coursera, you will note, still uses a kind of serialization model for its classes rather than putting up all the lectures at once; presumably it wishes to synchronize student participation plus it often delivers the content in real time.  Sushi is served sequentially, even though several cold courses presumably could be carried over at once.  Still, a plate in an omakase experience typically has more than one piece of fish.
For TV I do not think upfront bingeing can become the norm.  The model of “I don’t really care about this, but I have nothing much to talk to you about, so let’s sit together and drop commentary on some semi-randomly chosen TV show” seems to work less well when the natural unit of the show is thirteen episodes and you are expected to show dedication.
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In Praise of Shortened Attention Spans

texting while driving
Popular wisdom holds that American attention spans have diminished over the past few decades. But cultural critic Terry Teachout thinks that's just fine:
The latest alleged trend to set the world in a tizzy is the Crisis of Shorter Attention Spans, a dire development that has been brought about by the rise of the Internet. Or texting. Or iTunes. Or Twitter. Or whatever. I find it hard to get upset about this existential threat to Western civilization, though, perhaps because I'm part of the problem. My attention span is much shorter now than it was a decade ago—and that's just fine with me.
Part of the "problem," after all, turns out to be that Americans have gotten smarter, or at least quicker on the uptake. Take a look at any TV sitcom of the 1950s and '60s and compare it to modern-day televised fare. It's startling to see how slow-moving those old shows were. The same thing is true of live theater. The leisurely expositions of yesteryear, it turns out, aren't necessary: You can count on contemporary audiences to get the point and see where you're headed, and they don't want to wait around for you to catch up with them.
Does this mean that the discursive masterworks of the past are no longer accessible? Yes and no. A great work of art that is organically long, like "The Marriage of Figaro" or "Remembrance of Things Past," will never lack for audiences. But just as most of Shakespeare's plays can and should be cut in performance, so should today's artists always keep in mind that most of us are too busy to watch as they circle the airport, looking for a place to land.
What is the benefit of a shortened attention span? It encourages people to (as I find myself often asking in business meetings) get to the point, please:
Anyone who doubts the virtues of brevity should take a look at Oxford University Press's "Very Short Introduction" series, in which celebrated experts write with extreme concision about their areas of expertise. Each volume in the series is about 140 pages long and runs to roughly 35,000 words of text. (Most serious biographies, by contrast, run to between 150,000 and 200,000 words.)
How much can you say about a big subject in 35,000 words? Plenty, if you're Harvey C. Mansfield writing about Alexis de Tocqueville or Kenneth Minogue writing about politics. These "Very Short Introductions" are models of their kind—crisp, clear and animated by a strong point of view.
Teachout goes on at length about the series. But, honestly, I didn't read the whole article.
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The Most-common Job for Women in 2013?

(Just like in the 1950s!)


It's like the 1950s all over again.In 1950, the most common job for women in the United States was "secretary." With fewer careers open to women back then, it doesn't come as much of a surprise that secretarial work was a popular option.


But the most-common job for women these days? It's still "secretary"—in spite of the fact that more women are earning graduate degrees than men, are rising through the management ranks, and are starting their own businesses in record numbers.

Out of the roughly 4 million secretaries and administrative assistants in the United States between 2006 and 2010, 96 percent of them were women, according to the latest U.S. Census data available. (The Census is conducted every 10 years, though data is analyzed, updated, and released at other times.) Employment data released by the U.S. Labor Department on Friday shows that the economy gained about 157,000 jobs overall in January. A report released Thursday by payroll provider ADP noted that the bulk of those jobs were in the service sector -- housekeepers, teachers, retail sales, health care workers, and restaurant workers, all jobs traditionally dominated by women -- followed by an increase in jobs in the business service industry, which would include administrative positions. Given all of the options women have today, why is being a secretary still a girl's top job?

"The most significant issue has to do with young women, women reentering the workforce, and women in career transitions still getting the advice that the best entry into a field is through an administrative position," Danna Greenberg, Associate Professor of Organizational Behavior at Babson College in Boston, told Yahoo! Shine in an interview. "We would never tell a 21-year-old male college grad that the way into a job is to start in an administrative position. But we're still, unfortunately, in this country, still stereotyping it as a fashionable place for women to start. And data shows that women don't traditionally transition out of administration positions into more white-collar work."

Though over the years career experts have warned that secretaries will become obsolete, government data proves otherwise. The U.S. Labor department predicts that secretarial and office administration jobs will grow as much as 12 percent by 2020.

"Every time a major new technology showed up, there were always predictions that this would spell the end of secretaries," former secretary Ray Weikal, spokesman for the International Association of Administrative Professionals, told CNN. "You saw that with the development of electric typewriters, the personal computer, and the internet, but every time technology gets more efficient, the amount of business increases. You continue to need people who can use those tools."

And those people tend to be women.

Money and education don't seem to be the main factors—entry level jobs in popular male-dominated fields like truck driving, manufacturing, and construction pay about the same as secretarial work (about $34,000 a year, though legal and executive secretaries earn more). It's likely that men tend to shy away from jobs traditionally held by women simply because they were traditionally held by women.

In the 1950s, the top non-secretarial jobs for women were bank teller, dispatcher, clerical worker, sales clerk, private household worker (like a cleaning lady, cook, or caregiver), and teacher. Fast-forward 60 or so years, and not much has changed: After secretary, the other top jobs for women are cashier, elementary or middle school teacher, nurse, and nurses aide.

"Even the titles may seem to exclude men," Dominique Gomez wrote in the Christian Science Monitor last year. "Society has created alternative terms for them in these professions: male nurse, male nanny, or, worse yet, the derogatory 'murse' and 'manny.' Just as policeman, congressman, and chairman implicitly excluded women, the bias against men may be built right into these professions."

But even in those fields where women dominate, they still tend to earn about 13 percent less than their male coworkers, CNN reported.

Women may also be pigeonholed into secretarial spots because of what some experts call a "boomeranging of barriers" to women in the workforce.

"Back in the sixties the barrier was that women were simply not allowed to rise in the ranks and it was a seriously rare exception when one did," Amy Richards, co-author of "Mainfesta: Young Women, Feminism, and the Future," told Forbes. "Then there was this acknowledgement that women were really needed to fill gaps in all levels of a company and so the barrier became a corporate problem. The next barrier, which is where we're stuck—and have been for the past 30 years—is the accepted idea that women really value their home lives more than their corporate lives. That they care more about work-life balance than their careers."

A need for work-life balance—or even a fear of being penalized for needing work-life balance—could push women toward clerical positions rather than management ones, in spite of increases in education levels. And a resurgence of "Mad Man" era interest may be influencing women's choices as well.

"It's really hard to watch but it actually makes us think about how far we have come. Now you couldn't get away with half of the stuff men do in the show, and women fought really hard to change that," Cindia Cameron, organizing director at 9to5, National Association of Working Women, told CNN. "It's a pretty hard time period to be nostalgic for, though."
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Retro Photo

Rake_Jan1962_Vol1_No1_012 by it’s better than bad on Flickr.

A Brief History Of Nerds In Pop Culture

v
Videogum hits the highlights of a timeline of nerds in pop culture, from the Dr. Seuss creature to the new game show King of the Nerds. Yes, Eddie Deezen is there, making an early appearance in nerd history. Notice how the popularity of the stereotypical character moves up and down, but gradually up since we all got on the internet. The penultimate entry:
2013: In the newest season of Portlandia, one episode opens with a sketch where a real nerd (clearly not an actor) pleads for people to stop saying they’re nerds when they’re not. Sure, it could have used a female nerd in there somewhere (instead of reinforcing the idea that fake nerds = girls and real nerds = boys), but more to the point, it’s the crowning jewel of the growing backlash against “fake nerds”. You know you’re mainstream when you start trying to exclude people for not being enough like you.
The suggested soundtrack for this article: "Hip to be Square" by Huey Lewis. More

Hazel Lee

lostsplendor:

Hazel Lee [1912-1944] 
Experienced women pilots, like Lee, were eager to join the WASP, and responded to interview requests by Cochran. Members of the WASP reported to Avenger Field, in wind swept Sweetwater, Texas for an arduous 6-month training program. Lee was accepted into the 4th class, 43 W 4.[2] Hazel Ying Lee was the first Chinese American woman to fly for the United States military.
Although flying under military command, the women pilots of the WASP were classified as civilians. They were paid through the civil service. No military benefits were offered. Even if killed in the line of duty, no military funerals were allowed. The WASPs were often assigned the least desirable missions, such as winter trips in open cockpit airplanes. Commanding officers were reluctant to give women any flying deliveries. It took an order from the head of the Air Transport Command to improve the situation.
Upon graduation, Lee was assigned to the third Ferrying Group at Romulus, Michigan. Their assignment was critical to the war effort; Deliver aircraft, pouring out of converted automobile factories, to points of embarkation, where they would then be shipped to the European and Pacific War fronts. In a letter to her sister, Lee described Romulus as “a 7-day workweek, with little time off.” When asked to describe Lee’s attitude, a fellow member of the WASP summed it up in Lee’s own words, “I’ll take and deliver anything.”
Described by her fellow pilots as “calm and fearless,” Lee had two forced landings. One landing took place in a Kansas wheat field. A farmer, pitchfork in hand, chased her around the plane while shouting to his neighbors that the Japanese had invaded Kansas. Alternately running and ducking under her wing, Lee finally stood her ground. She told the farmer who she was and demanded that he put the pitchfork down. He complied.
Lee was a favorite with just about all of her fellow pilots. She had a great sense of humor and a marvelous sense of mischief. Lee used her lipstick to inscribe Chinese characters on the tail of her plane and the planes of her fellow pilots. One lucky fellow who happened to be a bit on the chubby side, had his plane dubbed (unknown to him) “Fat Ass.”
Lee was in demand when a mission was RON (Remaining Overnight) In a big city or in a small country town, she could always find a Chinese restaurant, supervise the menu, and often cook the food herself. She was a great cook. Fellow WASP pilot Sylvia Dahmes Clayton observed that “Hazel provided me with an opportunity to learn about a different culture at a time when I did not know anything else. She expanded my world and my outlook on life.”
Lee and the others were the first women to pilot fighter aircraft for the United States military.
Image (via World War II Database)
Text [click for full article] (via Wikipedia)
Hazel Lee [1912-1944]
Experienced women pilots, like Lee, were eager to join the WASP, and responded to interview requests by Cochran. Members of the WASP reported to Avenger Field, in wind swept Sweetwater, Texas for an arduous 6-month training program. Lee was accepted into the 4th class, 43 W 4.[2] Hazel Ying Lee was the first Chinese American woman to fly for the United States military.
Although flying under military command, the women pilots of the WASP were classified as civilians. They were paid through the civil service. No military benefits were offered. Even if killed in the line of duty, no military funerals were allowed. The WASPs were often assigned the least desirable missions, such as winter trips in open cockpit airplanes. Commanding officers were reluctant to give women any flying deliveries. It took an order from the head of the Air Transport Command to improve the situation.
Upon graduation, Lee was assigned to the third Ferrying Group at Romulus, Michigan. Their assignment was critical to the war effort; Deliver aircraft, pouring out of converted automobile factories, to points of embarkation, where they would then be shipped to the European and Pacific War fronts. In a letter to her sister, Lee described Romulus as “a 7-day workweek, with little time off.” When asked to describe Lee’s attitude, a fellow member of the WASP summed it up in Lee’s own words, “I’ll take and deliver anything.”
Described by her fellow pilots as “calm and fearless,” Lee had two forced landings. One landing took place in a Kansas wheat field. A farmer, pitchfork in hand, chased her around the plane while shouting to his neighbors that the Japanese had invaded Kansas. Alternately running and ducking under her wing, Lee finally stood her ground. She told the farmer who she was and demanded that he put the pitchfork down. He complied.
Lee was a favorite with just about all of her fellow pilots. She had a great sense of humor and a marvelous sense of mischief. Lee used her lipstick to inscribe Chinese characters on the tail of her plane and the planes of her fellow pilots. One lucky fellow who happened to be a bit on the chubby side, had his plane dubbed (unknown to him) “Fat Ass.”
Lee was in demand when a mission was RON (Remaining Overnight) In a big city or in a small country town, she could always find a Chinese restaurant, supervise the menu, and often cook the food herself. She was a great cook. Fellow WASP pilot Sylvia Dahmes Clayton observed that “Hazel provided me with an opportunity to learn about a different culture at a time when I did not know anything else. She expanded my world and my outlook on life.”
Lee and the others were the first women to pilot fighter aircraft for the United States military.

Grand Central Terminal: 100 Years, 100 Facts

From a secret trap door to a Nazi target, the 100 things you never knew about Grand Central Terminal, a commuter rail terminal station at 42nd Street and Park Avenue in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, USA.

Awesome Pictures

enjoy mother nature

Curiosity on Mars

Mars rover hammers down into rockHammer mark

The US space agency's Curiosity Mars rover uses its drill for the first time, hammering down briefly into a flat slab of rock on the floor of Gale Crater.

Amazon Rainforest Reeling from Eight-Year Megadrought

New research led by NASA has found that a swath of the Amazon rainforest is reeling from eight years of devastating megadrought. More

The Only Volcano on Earth You Can Explore From the Inside

Iceland is known for its many volcanoes, but Thrihnukagigur stands out as the only one you can explore on the inside. More

Spectacular Basalt Formations

Basalt is a common volcanic rock formed from the rapid cooling of basaltic lava exposed at or very near the surface of our planet. Jointed basalt columns, as the most famous and most beautiful basalt formations, exists on many places on earth. These unusual columns are predominantly hexagonal in cross-section, but basalt polygons with three to twelve or more sides can be observed.

Most Bizarre Looking Sharks On Earth

The earliest known sharks date from more than 420 million years ago. Since that time, they have diversified into over 470 species. And some of those sharks are really bizarre looking.

Animal Pictures

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Lion #2 (by S Hutchinson)