Welcome to the Overnight News Digest (OND) for Tuesday, January 22, 2014.
OND is a regular
community feature on Daily Kos, consisting of news stories from around the world, sometimes coupled with a daily theme, original research or commentary. Editors of OND impart their own presentation styles and content choices, typically publishing near 12:00AM Eastern Time.
Creation and early water-bearing of the OND concept came from our very own Magnifico - proper respect is due.
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This diary is named for its "Hump Point" video: Ramblin' On My Mind by Robert Lockwood Jr.
News below Aunt Flossie's hairdo . . .
Please feel free to browse and add your own links, content or thoughts in the Comments section.
Any timestamps shown are relative to each publication.
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Top News |
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Why Women Are Not Going To Stop Being Pushy
By Rebecca Solnit
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Feminism is an endeavor to change something very old, widespread, and deeply rooted in many, perhaps most, cultures around the world, innumerable institutions, and most households on Earth—and in our minds, where it all begins and ends. That so much change has been made in four or five decades is amazing; that everything is not permanently, definitively, irrevocably changed is not a sign of failure. A woman goes walking down a thousand-mile road. Twenty minutes after she steps forth, they proclaim that she still has 999 miles to go and will never get anywhere.
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It's important to note that the very idea that marriage could extend to two people of the same gender may only be possible because feminists broke out marriage from the hierarchical system it had been in and reinvented it as a relationship between equals. Those who are threatened by marriage equality are, many things suggest, as threatened by the idea of equality between heterosexual couples as same-sex couples. Liberation is a contagious project, speaking of birds coming home to roost.
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So the cat is out of the bag, the genies are out of their bottles, Pandora's box is open. There's no going back. Still, there are so many forces trying to push us back or at least stop us. At my glummest, I sometimes think women get to choose—between being punished for being unsubjugated and the continual punishment of subjugation. If ideas don't go back in the box, there's still been a huge effort to put women back in their place. Or the place misogynists think we belong in, a place of silence and powerlessness.
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The new feminism is making the problems visible in new ways, perhaps in ways that are only possible now that so much has changed. A study of rape in Asia drew alarming conclusions about its widespread nature but also introduced the term "sexual entitlement" to explain why so much of it takes place. The report's author, Dr. Emma Fulu, said of rapists, "They believed they had the right to have sex with the woman regardless of consent." In other words, she had no rights. Where'd they learn that?
Feminism, as writer Marie Sheer remarked in 1986, "is the radical notion that women are people," a notion not universally accepted but spreading nonetheless. The changing conversation is encouraging, as is the growing engagement of men in feminism. There were always male supporters. When the first women's rights convention was held in Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848, 32 of the 100 signers to its Declaration of Independence-echoing manifesto were men. Still, it was seen as a women's problem. Like racism, misogyny can never be adequately addressed by its victims alone. The men who get it also understand that feminism is not a scheme to deprive men but a campaign to liberate us all.
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The 30 US landmarks most likely to be obliterated by climate change
By Xeni Jardin
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From the Statue of Liberty in NYC to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, American landmarks are threatened by a likelihood of floods, rising sea levels and fires, said a group of scientists today. "National Landmarks at Risk," a report from the Union of Concerned Scientists, listed 30 sites at risk for serious natural disasters associated with climate change. They include Annapolis, Maryland; Boston's historic districts; the Jamestown colony site in Virginia; and a number of NASA sites.
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U.S. to release memo that sanctioned killing of American citizen
By (Al Jazeera)
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The Obama administration intends to publicly reveal a secret memo outlining its legal justification for using drones to kill U.S. citizens it accuses of terrorism overseas, it emerged Tuesday.
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The decision to release the documents comes a day before the Senate is to vote on advancing President Barack Obama's nomination of the memo's author, Harvard professor and former Justice Department official David Barron, to sit on the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., had vowed to attempt to block Barron's confirmation with a filibuster if the documents were not made public. Paul issued a statement Tuesday saying he still opposes Barron's nomination.
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Until now, the administration has fought in court to keep the writings from public view. But an official told Al Jazeera that Solicitor General Donald Verrilli Jr. decided not to appeal an April 21 ruling requiring disclosure by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York and that Attorney General Eric Holder concurred with his opinion.
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The American Civil Liberties Union and two reporters for The New York Times, Charlie Savage and Scott Shane, filed a FOIA suit calling for the memo to be made public. In January 2013, U.S. District Court Judge Colleen McMahon ruled that she had no authority to order the documents disclosed, although she chided the Obama administration for refusing to release them.
But a three-judge appeals court panel noted that after McMahon ruled, senior government officials spoke about the subject. The panel rejected the government's claim that the court could not consider official disclosures made after McMahon's ruling, including a 16-page Justice Department white paper on the subject and public comments by Obama in May in which he acknowledged his role in the Awlaki killing, saying he had "authorized the strike that took him out."
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International |
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Putin wins China's support on Ukraine but fails to close $400 billion gas deal
By Alexei Anishchuk and Fayen Wong
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China and Russia failed to sign a $400 billion gas supply agreement on Tuesday, despite growing urgency for the Kremlin to seal a deal as it faces economic and political isolation in the West over the crisis in Ukraine.
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China's gas consumption is forecast to more than double between 2014 and 2020, while Beijing's move to curb coal use led to a severe gas supply shortage last winter.
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"China wants to really squeeze the price lower. China has other options such as the gas project in Sichuan and North American liquefied natural gas. I think it will be a mistake by Russia if they couldn't agree on a deal just because of the price."
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Analysts said other issues, such as details over pipeline construction, upstream equity participation for Chinese firms and pre-payment, may have also contributed to the delay.
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Assange targeted by FBI probe, US court documents reveal
By Philip Dorling
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Confirmation that US prosecutors have not closed the book on WikiLeaks and Mr Assange comes as a consequence of litigation by the US Electronic Privacy Information Centre to enforce a freedom of information request for documents relating to the FBI's WikiLeaks investigation.
Justice Department lawyers last month told the US District Court in Washington DC that there had been "developments in the investigation over the last year." In a document filed with the court on Monday, the US Government further affirmed that the "main, multi-subject, criminal investigation of the [Department of Justice] and FBI remains open and pending" making it necessary "to withhold law enforcement records related to this civilian investigation."
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Since June 2012 Mr Assange has resided at Ecuador's London embassy where he has been granted political asylum by Ecuador on the grounds that he is at risk of extradition to the US to face conspiracy or other charges.
British police are on guard outside the embassy 24 hours a day, waiting to arrest Mr Assange so he can be extradited to Sweden to face questioning about sexual assault and rape allegations that were first raised in August 2010. The cost of the continuous police presence has now exceeded £5.9 million ($10.7 million).
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Japan paper says Fukushima workers fled during 2011 crisis
By (BBC)
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About 90% of workers at Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant fled at the height of the meltdown crisis in 2011, a Japanese newspaper has reported.
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When disaster struck the plant three years ago, there were about 720 workers on the site. For three days, they struggled as one reactor after another began to meltdown.
But on the fourth day, the Asahi Shimbun said that 650 workers fled, leaving fewer than 70 employees to deal with the crisis.
The report is based on more than 400 pages of transcripts of interviews prosecutors conducted with the former Fukushima plant director, Masao Yoshida, after the disaster.
Mr Yoshida, who died of cancer last year, was questioned 13 times in 2011, the paper said.
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USA Politics, Economy, Major Events |
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BP court appeal over Deepwater compensation rejected
By (BBC)
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Oil giant BP has suffered a setback in its attempt to limit payouts over the 2010 Gulf of Mexico spill.
A US court has refused to reconsider its decision that firms do not have to prove they were directly harmed by the oil spill to get settlement payouts.
It means the compensation claims process, which has been suspended since a separate court ruling in December, should now be able to resume.
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In the latest ruling, Judge Leslie Southwick stated that a 2012 policy statement, issued by the court-appointed claims administrator and developed with "input and assent from BP," clearly spelled out the criteria for business compensation claims.
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US 'in denial' over poor maths standards
By Sean Coughlan
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The maths skills of teenagers in parts of the deep south of the United States are worse than in countries such as Turkey and barely above South American countries such as Chile and Mexico.
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This analysis, from academics at Harvard and Stanford in the US and Munich University in Germany, punctures the idea that middle-class US pupils are high achievers.
Southern states Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana are among the weakest performers, with results similar to developing countries such as Kazakhstan and Thailand.
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New York and California are similar in ability to countries such as Bulgaria, Rumania and Turkey, well below the averages for the US and OECD industrialised countries.
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Report authors, Prof Peterson, Eric Hanushek at Stanford University and Ludger Woessmann at the University of Munich, wrote in Education Next magazine: "Lacking good information, it has been easy even for sophisticated Americans to be seduced by apologists who would have the public believe the problems are simply those of poor kids in central city schools. "
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Welcome to the "Hump Point" of this OND.
News can be sobering and engrossing - at this point in the diary, an offering of brief escapism:
Random notes related to this video:
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Among the giants of Delta and Chicago blues, Robert Lockwood Jr. may have been the last of the greats, having outlived Muddy Waters, Jimmy Rogers and John Lee Hooker.
He learned at age 11 directly from the itinerant blues singer Robert Johnson, who had become romantically involved with Lockwood’s widowed mother in Helena, Ark. By 15, Lockwood was playing juke joints and fish fries throughout Mississippi and Arkansas with Johnson.
One legend from those days has him playing a fish fry on one side of the Sunflower River, with Johnson on the other bank. The audience could not tell which guitarist was Johnson.
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Performing as a soloist, Lockwood could take apart a classic piano piece like “Cow Cow Blues” or “Pinetop’s Boogie Woogie” and flawlessly re-create both the left- and right-hand parts on the guitar. It was an approach that harked back to such greats of the 1920s and 1930s as Big Bill Broonzy and Hacksaw Harney — an era when the guitar or the piano could be the entire band. At this type of fingerpicking, Lockwood was the last master of his generation.
Question-and-answer sessions often followed performances at festivals, and at one, a long-haired fan in a tie-dye shirt and jeans asked him if you had to live the blues to sing it.
“No,” he answered, then paused. “If you lived the blues, you’d be dead.”
It was a typical Lockwood response: witty and laconic. Most of his audiences were a generation, a race and a world removed from his and Robert Johnson’s experience as impoverished African Americans in the Jim Crow South. If Lockwood seemed happiest playing Johnson’s music, he often felt obligated to tell these earnest new fans that Johnson did not sell his soul to the devil at the crossroads, as myth had it.
Back to what's happening:
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Environment and Greening |
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India’s new prime minister is big on solar power
By John Upton
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The world’s biggest-ever election just spat out a potentially worrying result. Narendra Modi, a conservative Hindu nationalist who ran on a pro-development platform, will soon be India’s prime minister. What does that mean for the climate?
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We’ve previously told you that India is making tremendous strides in building powerful solar arrays, boosting its grid-connected solar capacity from 18 megawatts to more than 2,000 megawatts in just four years. That’s a heartening trend in a nation that depends heavily on coal and frequently runs short of power — and that has shown belligerence in the face of international pressure to curb greenhouse gas emissions.
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“We look upon solar as having the potential to completely transform the way we look at the energy space,” said Narendra Taneja, convener of the energy division at Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, which swept to power on May 16 in the biggest electoral win in three decades . . .
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Modi will inherit the awkward issue of a burgeoning trade dispute in which the U.S. is complaining about India’s protectionist policies that are designed to spur a domestic solar industry. India’s outgoing government has been working up a counter-complaint, arguing that America’s own solar policies violate World Trade Organization rules. It’s hard to imagine Modi’s administration backing away from this fight, particularly given that American environmentalists are on India’s side.
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The bottom line is why Big Food should take a stand on climate
By Nathanael Johnson
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Oxfam has a new report out predicting that climate change will drive up food costs, leading to hunger and suffering. Though that’s not exactly news, what’s interesting is that Oxfam has aimed this report at the 10 largest food and beverage companies in the world.
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The report finds that the food industry “has a very patchy record, which for some companies verges on downright negligence.” It singles out Kellogg and General Mills for special criticism: “Both companies are highly vulnerable to climate impacts but also well positioned to lead the industry towards a more sustainable future.”
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If companies would benefit from climate regulation, what’s holding them back from advocating for that? Well, it’s a bit like that moment when a teacher begs a class for someone to raise her hand and answer a question. Everyone probably knows the answer, but no one wants to risk getting it wrong (and looking like an idiot), or getting it right (and looking like a showoff). In the same way, big companies are scared of alienating any customers by taking a political stance — it’s easier to let someone else get that attention. And so Oxfam, like a substitute teacher, is left calling out, “C’mon, you guys can do this! Anyone?”
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Water goes 'missing' with snow loss
By Jonathan Amos
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A new study finds that if temperatures rise and more precipitation falls as rain rather than snow, it will reduce the total amount of water in rivers.
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But this is precisely what scientists discovered when they examined the histories of 420 catchment basins in the US spanning the period 1948-2001.
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In contrast, with warmer conditions, more water can be held in the ground for longer, to be later evaporated or transpired by plants. Less of the overall volume of water would then make it to streams and rivers.
"This issue is important because quite a lot of the snow at the moment is in the places we call the 'water towers' - the places that provide water to the great bulk of society," said Dr Woods.
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Science and Health |
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E-cigarettes 'help smokers to quit'
By Nick Triggle
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Smokers who use e-cigarettes to quit are more likely to succeed than those who use willpower alone or buy nicotine replacement therapies, such as patches or gum, a study suggests.
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But he also pointed out that despite the findings - published in the journal Addiction - by far the most effective way of quitting was to use NHS stop smoking services which tripled the odds of a smoker quitting when compared to buying nicotine replacement treatments without specialist help.
And he added: "Some public health experts have expressed concern that widespread use of e-cigarettes could 're-normalise' smoking. However, we are tracking this very closely and see no evidence of it.
"Smoking rates in England are declining, quitting rates are increasing and regular e-cigarette use among never smokers is negligible."
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Public interest in climate change unshaken by scandal, but unstirred by science
By (ScienceDaily)
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The good news for any passionate supporter of climate-change science is that negative media reports seem to have only a passing effect on public opinion, according to Princeton University and University of Oxford researchers. The bad news is that positive stories don't appear to possess much staying power, either. This dynamic suggests that climate scientists should reexamine how to effectively and more regularly engage the public, the researchers write.
Measured by how often people worldwide scour the Internet for information related to climate change, overall public interest in the topic has steadily waned since 2007, according to a report in the journal Environmental Research Letters. Yet, the downturn in public interest does not seem tied to any particular negative publicity regarding climate-change science, which is what the researchers primarily wanted to gauge.
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One outcome of the research might be to shift scientists' focus away from battling short-lived, so-called scandals, said Michael Oppenheimer, Princeton's Albert G. Milbank Professor of Geosciences and International Affairs. The study should remind climate scientists that every little misstep or controversy does not make or break the public's confidence in their work, he said. Oppenheimer, who was not involved in the study, is a long-time participant in the IPCC and an author of the Fifth Assessment Report being released this year in sections.
"This is an important study because it puts scientists' concerns about climate skepticism in perspective," Oppenheimer said. "While scientists should maintain the aspirational goal of their work being error-free, they should be less distracted by concerns that a few missteps will seriously influence attitudes in the general public, which by-and-large has never heard of these episodes."
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Best way to rid a garden of pesky snails? Use your strong throwing arm
By (ScienceDaily)
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he new study published May 16 in the journal Physica Scripta has used statistical models to show that simply killing the snails you find in your garden offers little advantage if you want to remove them completely.
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As opposed to simply killing a snail, throwing it over the wall is pretty effective, and the results showed that if snails are moved out of the garden by a distance of 20 meters or more, the likelihood of those particular snails finding their way back home into the garden was almost zero.
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"Gardeners should be setting out to minimise the damage done by snails, which our results showed could be quickly achieved by simply removing the snails over 20 meters away.
"A recent poll by the Royal Horticultural Society showed that one-in-five gardeners in the UK have thrown snails into their neighbours' gardens. Whilst our study shows that this may be more beneficial than actually killing them, we believe the gardening community would benefit as a whole by removing the snails to a convenient wasteland rather than passing the burden onto their neighbours."
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Chronic pain 'may be inherited'
By (BBC)
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Four common chronic pain conditions share a genetic element, suggesting they could - at least in part - be inherited diseases, say UK researchers.
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While environmental factors probably still play a role in the four conditions, genes could account for as much as two-thirds of someone's chances of developing the disease, they believe.
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While the pain can be related to other medical conditions, it is thought to be caused by problems with the nervous system, sending pain signals to the brain despite no obvious tissue damage.
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Lead investigator Dr Frances Williams said: "This study is one of the first to examine the role of genetic and environmental factors in explaining the links between different chronic pain syndromes. The findings have clearly suggested that chronic pain may be heritable within families. With further research, these findings could then lead to therapies which may change the lives of those suffering with chronic pain."
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Technology |
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Electric Grid, You Have Software Updates Available
By Martin LaMonica
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The electric grid was designed as a one-way highway, with power cascading out from big power plants to cities and towns at the end of the line. But because of changes to how we consume and generate electricity, managing power flows on the grid is becoming more complex—and will be more so in the future.
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Wind and solar generators make the picture more challenging. Wind farms in Ohio could produce an unexpected burst of power, but if there isn’t an available line to transport that electricity, wind turbine–produced electricity needs to be dialed down, or “curtailed” in industry jargon. In other words, clean energy with no fuel cost goes unused. “Under most conditions, regional grid operators cannot dispatch the lowest-cost resource because of transmission congestion,” Ruiz says. “The transmission system often becomes the limiting factor.”
Grid operators are addressing bottlenecks by installing beefier transmission lines and improving the forecasts of wind and solar farms. There is also hardware that can route power along alternate pathways. But researchers like Ruiz, with funding from ARPA-E’s Green Electricity Network Integration program, are exploring whether software and a new generation of power-flow controllers can achieve some of the same benefits cheaper and faster.
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Better power flow control through software is just one piece of the puzzle when it comes to preparing the grid for high levels of variable renewable energy, says J. Charles Smith, the executive director of the Utility Variable-Generation Integration Group. But because computing power continues to grow at an exponential rate, it’s a promising avenue for research, he says. “The raw horsepower you need in a computer to run the load flows and contingency analysis to make decisions for the next minute in operation is huge,” Smith notes. “The tremendous advances taking place in computers are one of the reasons that these things can now be considered.”
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The FBI Is Struggling to Hire Hackers Who Don't Smoke Weed
By Adam Clark Estes
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The FBI has a problem. The agency needs to hire hackers to build out its cyber crime division, but it also will not hire anyone who's smoked weed in the past three years. And guess what? A lot of hackers like to smoke weed.
It's a real conundrum. However, it's a conundrum the FBI is working through. On Monday—the same day the agency made headlines by issuing wanted posters for Chinese Army hackers—FBI director James Comey told an audience at the White Collar Crime Institute about this little pot problem. "I have to hire a great work force to compete with those cyber criminals, and some of those kids want to smoke weed on the way to the interview," Comey said. Exactly how to do that is the hard part. Comey added that the agency is "grappling with the question right now."
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China bans Microsoft Windows 8 on government computers
By Kevin Rawlinson
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Beijing issued the restriction as part of a decree about the use of energy-saving products.
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Xinhua said Beijing had felt compelled to act after Microsoft ended security support for its Windows XP operating system, which is still widely used in China.
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"China's decision to ban Windows 8 from public procurement hampers Microsoft's push of the OS to replace XP, which makes up 50% of China's desktop market," said data firm Canalys.
Former Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer reportedly told employees in 2011 that, because of piracy, the firm earned less revenue in China than in the Netherlands, even though demand matched that of the US.
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Business Adapts to a New Style of Computer
By Antonio Regalado
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The technology industry is preparing for the Internet of things, a type of computing characterized by small, often dumb, usually unseen computers attached to objects. These devices sense and transmit data about the environment or offer new means of controlling it.
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Yet for every killer app that wasn’t, there’s another computer-sensor combination that has quietly added to the capabilities of some machine. Since 2007, for instance, every new car in the United States has had a chip in each tire that measures pressure and sends data by radio to the car’s central computer. It’s starting to add up. The average new car has 60 microprocessors in it, according to the Center for Automotive Research. Electronics account for 40 percent of the cost of making a car.
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But every shift promises pain, too. Large companies like Intel are already reeling from the rapid emergence of smartphones. Intel, with its powerful, power-hungry chips, was shut out of phones. So was Microsoft. Now both these companies, and many others, are groping to find the winning combination of software, interfaces, and processors for whatever comes next.
And it’s not just technology companies that must stay alert this time around. The reason, explains Marshall Van Alstyne, a professor at Boston University, is that as ordinary products become connected, their manufacturers may enter information businesses whose economics are alien to them. It’s one thing to manufacture shoes, but what about a shoe that communicates? Products could turn out to be valuable mainly as the basis for new services. “You might find the data is more valuable than the shoe,” says Van Alstyne.
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Cultural |
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"Blowing Smoke Up Your Ass" Used to Be Literal
By Terynn Boulton
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When someone is "blowing smoke up your arse" today, it is a figure of speech that means that one person is complimenting another, insincerely most of the time, in order to inflate the ego of the individual being flattered.
Back in the late 1700s, however, doctors literally blew smoke up people's rectums. Believe it or not, it was a general mainstream medical procedure used to, among many other things, resuscitate people who were otherwise presumed dead. In fact, it was such a commonly used resuscitation method for drowning victims particularly, that the equipment used in this procedure was hung alongside certain major waterways, such as along the River Thames (equipment courtesy of the Royal Humane Society). People frequenting waterways were expected to know the location of this equipment similar to modern times concerning the location of defibrillators.
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The practice of using tobacco smoke enemas on drowning victims quickly spread as a popular way to introduce tobacco into the body to treat an array of other medical conditions including: headaches, hernias, respiratory ailments and abdominal cramps, among many other things. Tobacco enemas were even used to treat typhoid fever and during cholera outbreaks when patients were in the final stages of the illnesses.
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This practice quickly spread, reaching its peak in the early 20th century before, in 1811, English scientist Ben Brodie via animal testing discovered that nicotine was toxic to the cardiac system. Over the next several decades, the popularity of literally "blowing smoke up someone's arse" gradually became a thing of the past. Figuratively, though, this practice is still alive and well.
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The Philippines' forgotten generation
By (BBC)
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The United States military is set to return to the Philippines 22 years after being evicted. The imminent arrival of US forces has renewed focus on the thousands of "Amerasians" fathered by US military personnel. . .
"It wasn't easy growing up being a different colour from everyone else," says Ashley Descalier, 23, who is of African-American and Philippine heritage.
"People deny you work simply because of the colour of your skin."
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Many Amerasians still dream of finding their fathers. However, in most cases, the search has proved nearly impossible. Even if they did, it is another task to persuade their long-lost father to acknowledge paternity.
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Since the military bases closed over 20 years ago, most of the children are already too old to claim citizenship.
The impending return of the US military has not been universally welcome.
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#BBCtrending: Native Americans reject 'super drunk' label
By (BBC)
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Who would want to be called "super-drunk"? Or how about Sioux per drunk? Sioux is the name sometimes used for the Native American Lakota and Dakota tribes. And these were the words on a T-shirt worn by some students at the University of North Dakota at a gathering earlier this month.
The T-shirt shows a logo of the Fighting Sioux - which used to be the mascot for the university - with a "beer bong" funnel in his mouth and two large glasses of overflowing drink. Students posted smiling pictures of themselves wearing the T-shirts to Twitter and Facebook, and it wasn't long before the images came across the timelines of Native Americans in the area.
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"It was highly offensive," says Native American hip hop artist Jordan Brien, aka Mic Jordan, who was one of those who tweeted about the story. For him, the depiction of a Native American drinking alcohol had a personal resonance. According to the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, chronic liver disease and cirrhosis is the fifth most common cause of death among Native Americans - significantly higher than among the general US public. And Brien has seen this first hand. His uncle died of liver cirrhosis, and his stepfather has recently been diagnosed too. "My stepdad is that siouxperdrunk," he says. "He's dying." It's just plain wrong, says Brien, to make a joke out of this.
The backlash against the T-shirts is the latest in a series of social media campaigns by Native Americans, unhappy at the way they are often represented in wider US society. Sports teams, Hollywood films, and major fashion companies have all been singled out for criticism, often with specially-created hashtags.
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Meteor Blades is known to offer an enlightening Evening Open Diary - you might consider checking that out tonight if you haven't already. |