All Things News

GPS Kitteh

Straight from Slashdot: “To cut down on accidents caused by drivers who aren’t paying attention, in Ontario it is now a ticketable offense to text, email, or navigate with your GPS while driving. But it seems to me that they have thrown the baby out with the bathwater, because it is now also a $500 fine to change your radio station, change songs on your MP3 player, or even drink your morning coffee. It can also be enforced to the point where changing the climate controls on your dash can get you fined because it requires you to take your hands off the wheel. Though this was a good idea, it seems to have been taken a little too far.”

Straight from the Slashdot: “The New York Times reports in this week’s Science section that hardware and software trojan kill switches in military devices are an increasing concern, and may have already been used. ‘A 2007 Israeli Air Force attack on a suspected, partly-constructed Syrian nuclear reactor led to speculation about why the Syrian air defense system did not respond to the Israeli aircraft. Accounts of the event initially indicated that sophisticated jamming technology was used to blind the radars. Last December, however, a report in an American technical publication, IEEE Spectrum, cited a European industry source in raising the possibility that the Israelis might have used a built-in kill switch to shut down the radars. Separately, an American semiconductor industry executive said in an interview that he had direct knowledge of the operation and that the technology for disabling the radars was supplied by Americans to the Israeli electronic intelligence agency, Unit 8200.’”

I’m not a Stewart Smalley fan in the least, but I must admit, this is pretty good stuff…

I invented Global Warming!

Straight from the Examiner: “In a study sure to ruffle the feathers of the Global Warming cabal, Professor Richard Lindzen of MIT has published a paper which proves that IPCC models are overstating by 6 times, the relevance of CO₂ in Earth’s Atmosphere. Dr. Lindzen has found that heat is radiated out in to space at a far higher rate than any modeling system to date can account for.

Editorial: The science is in. the scare is out. Recent papers and data give a complete picture of why the UN is wrong.

The pdf file located at the link above from the Science and Public Policy Institute has absolutely, convincingly, and irrefutably proven the theory of Anthropogenic Global Warming to be completely false.

Professor Richard Lindzen of MIT’s peer reviewed work states “we now know that the effect of CO2 on temperature is small, we know why it is small, and we know that it is having very little effect on the climate.””

Obama Wants You To Chill!

Straight from the Metro: “US companies that received massive government bailouts last year have been ordered by Barack Obama’s administration to slash the salaries of their top executives by up to 90 per cent.

The cuts apply to the 25 highest paid executives at the seven companies that received the most aid from the US Treasury.

Kenneth Feinberg, the special master at Treasury appointed to handle compensation issues as part of the government’s $700 billion financial bailout package, is making the pay decisions.

The seven companies are Bank of America Cor, American International Group Inc., Citigroup Inc, General Motors, GMAC, Chrysler and Chrysler Financial.

The pay restrictions for all seven companies will require any executive seeking more than $25,000 in special benefits – things such as country club memberships, private planes and company cars – to get permission for those perks from the government.

Until now, these companies were only required to provide guidelines for the use of such luxuries.

The inspector general at Treasury who oversees the bailout program found a range of standards. GM, for instance, generally prohibits employees from flying in private jets for business travel. Bank of America, on the other hand, encourages senior management to use corporate aircraft ‘for safety and efficiency purposes’.

Feinberg’s decisions come days after administration officials voiced sharp criticism of plans by some firms, particularly those on Wall Street, to pay huge bonuses even as the country continues to struggle with rising unemployment and the effects of the recession.

Goldman Sachs, which has paid back its bailout money, has said it earmarked $16.7 billion for compensation so far this year, more than $500,000 per employee. Citigroup is paying $5.3 billion in bonuses to its employees and Bank of America $3.3 billion.

Elsewhere, Freddie Mac is giving its chief financial officer compensation worth as much as $5.5 million, including a $2 million signing bonus. The government-controlled mortgage finance company doesn’t have to follow the executive compensation rules because it is being paid outside the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP.

President Barack Obama has heavily criticised the payment of bonuses – when the rest of the country is struggling with the effects of the global economic recession.

He said he was “outraged” by plans by bailed-out insurer AIG to pay $165m bonuses pledged to executives.

And this week his senior aide, David Axlerod, told ABC that firms “ought to think through what they are doing and they ought to understand that a year ago lot of these institutions were teetering on the brink and the United States government and taxpayers came to their defence”.

Congress passed legislation in February requiring Treasury to oversee pay at companies that took bailout money.

Treasury created the pay czar’s office in June as one means of implementing that law.”

Vienna International Center

Straight from Dvorak Uncensored: “Police in Austria are investigating the mysterious death of a British nuclear monitoring expert. Early news reports said that Timothy Hampton, who worked for an international monitoring unit called the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO), died after falling 12 stories in a building in the Vienna International Center, one of the United Nations’ main office complexes in Europe. Reports said Austrian authorities would order an autopsy. “Everything points towards a suicide, and there are no signs of any third party being involved,” a police spokesman, Alexander Haslinger, told the French news agency AFP. Authorities in Vienna have privately indicated to other governments that while suicide is the principal cause of death under investigation, they haven’t ruled out the possibility that it could have been an accident or even murder, according to an official source in Washington. Official reports and a former U.N. official indicate that Hampton fell 12 stories down an internal emergency stairwell—from the 17th to the fifth floor—in the high-rise Vienna building.

Some news reports said that Hampton had been involved in the current round of negotiations between Iran, the U.S., and several other Western countries regarding Tehran’s controversial nuclear program.”

Straight from the Wall Street Journal: “We thought cash for clunkers was the ultimate waste of taxpayer money, but as usual we were too optimistic. Thanks to the federal tax credit to buy high-mileage cars that was part of President Obama’s stimulus plan, Uncle Sam is now paying Americans to buy that great necessity of modern life, the golf cart.

The federal credit provides from $4,200 to $5,500 for the purchase of an electric vehicle, and when it is combined with similar incentive plans in many states the tax credits can pay for nearly the entire cost of a golf cart. Even in states that don’t have their own tax rebate plans, the federal credit is generous enough to pay for half or even two-thirds of the average sticker price of a cart, which is typically in the range of $8,000 to $10,000. “The purchase of some models could be absolutely free,” Roger Gaddis of Ada Electric Cars in Oklahoma said earlier this year. “Is that about the coolest thing you’ve ever heard?”

The golf-cart boom has followed an IRS ruling that golf carts qualify for the electric-car credit as long as they are also road worthy. These qualifying golf carts are essentially the same as normal golf carts save for adding some safety features, such as side and rearview mirrors and three-point seat belts. They typically can go 15 to 25 miles per hour.

In South Carolina, sales of these carts have been soaring as dealerships alert customers to Uncle Sam’s giveaway. “The Golf Cart Man” in the Villages of Lady Lake, Florida is running a banner online ad that declares: “GET A FREE GOLF CART. Or make $2,000 doing absolutely nothing!”

Golf Cart Man is referring to his offer in which you can buy the cart for $8,000, get a $5,300 tax credit off your 2009 income tax, lease it back for $100 a month for 27 months, at which point Golf Cart Man will buy back the cart for $2,000. “This means you own a free Golf Cart or made $2,000 cash doing absolutely nothing!!!” You can’t blame a guy for exploiting loopholes that Congress offers.

The IRS has also ruled that there’s no limit to how many electric cars an individual can buy, so some enterprising profiteers are stocking up on multiple carts while the federal credit lasts, in order to resell them at a profit later. We should note that some states, such as Oklahoma, have caught on to the giveaway and are debating whether to cancel or limit their state credits. But in Congress they’re still on the driving range.

This golf-cart fiasco perfectly illustrates tax policy in the age of Obama, when politicians dole out credits and loopholes for everything from plug-in cars to fuel efficient appliances, home insulation and vitamins. Democrats then insist that to pay for these absurdities they have no choice but to raise tax rates on other things—like work and investment—that aren’t politically in vogue. If this keeps up, it’ll soon make more sense to retire and play golf than work for living.”

Farrakhan and Castro

Straight from UPI: “Nation of Islam leader Minister Louis Farrakhan told an audience in Memphis he believes the H1N1 flu vaccine was developed to kill people, a witness said.

Farrakhan, 76, spoke for nearly three hours Sunday at a gathering to observe the religious group’s Holy Day of Atonement, which also marked the 14th anniversary of the Million Man March in Washington, the (Memphis) Commercial Appeal reported, citing a source who attended the speech.

“The Earth can’t take 6.5 billion people. We just can’t feed that many. So what are you going to do? Kill as many as you can. We have to develop a science that kills them and makes it look as though they died from some disease,” Farrakhan said, adding that many wise people won’t take the vaccine.

“The black community has become toxic and must cleanse and restore peace from within,” Farrakhan said.

Farrakhan told listeners not to become complacent as a result of Barack Obama’s election as the United States’ first black president, the newspaper said.

“You have to understand that he was voted in to take on the affairs of a nation, not yours and mine. He is the American president, not the black president,” he said.”

Straight from the Debka File: “The commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) Maj. Gen. Mohammad Ali Jafary, Monday, Oct. 19, threatened “crushing” retaliation against the US, UK and Pakistan including the invasion of its eastern neighbor. Tehran links all three to the suicide bombing attack in Sistan-Baluchistan Sunday, Oct. 18, which killed 42 people including seven senior Guards officers. One was Gen. Nur Ali Shoustari, Jafari’s deputy, who was identified by DEBKAfile’s counter-terror sources as commander of the al Qods clandestine terror bases in Iraq, Pakistan, Lebanon and the Gaza Strip.

Jafary said: “Behind this scene are the American and British intelligence apparatus and there will have to be retaliatory measures to punish them.”

DEBKAfile’s Iranian sources note that is the first time in Iran’s 30-year Islamic revolution that a military leader has gone to the extreme lengths of threatening to strike US and British military targets, a measure of the damage the regime and Guards suffered from the suicide attack, which has since been condemned and denied by Washington.

Jafari expanded on his charge by saying: “New evidence has been obtained proving the link between yesterday’s terror attack and the US, British and Pakistani intelligence services.” He spoke of evidence showing that all three supported the group. “A delegation would soon travel to Pakistan to present it,” he said.

A military official in Tehran then suggested Iran might launch a military thrust into Pakistan against the group blamed for the attack. Lawmaker Payman Forouzesh said: “There is even unanimity that these operations (could) take place in Pakistan territory.”

Tehran accuses the Sunni secessionist terrorist group Jundallah of Baluchistan, which is fighting for the predominantly Sunni province’s independence, of carrying out the suicide bombing in provincial town of Pisheen near the Pakistan and Afghanistan borders. In the past, Tehran has charged the Pakistani Inter-Service Intelligence agency and the CIA of supporting the group. It has carried out a string of terrorist attacks on regime and Shiite targets including in 2007 a failed assassination attempt on president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

DEBKAfile’s Iranian sources report that Tehran will have to make good on its threats without too much delay or lose face among the political and ethnic minority dissidents plaguing on the regime, especially those who rose up in protest against the tainted June 20 presidential election. Hesitation will be seen as weakness.

Past Iranian reprisals were usually carried against the US or Britain indirectly in the Persian Gulf or by local Islamic surrogates like Hizballah in Iraq. Jafari’s words point to a more direct showdown this time by the IRGC or its terrorist arm al Qods.”

Straight from Dvorak Uncensored: ““We ask you to free us from the epidemics that are currently devastating the state of Jalisco,” pleaded Guadalajara Auxiliary Bishop Jose Trinidad, in front of 7,000 worshippers outside the Instituto Cabañas. “Especially dengue, influenza and other calamities that don’t permit us to live life to the full.”Between September 27 and October 3, health authorities confirmed 373 new cases of dengue in Jalisco – the highest number ever recorded in a single week. Sixty-seven of those were the more serious hemorrhagic kind.The total number of cases of dengue confirmed in Jalisco is now 2,360, over ten percent of which are hemorrhagic.Jalisco leads the Mexican league table for suspected cases of dengue, with 26,537 probably cases recorded up until late September, more than double than second-placed Guerrero.”

Straight from the Washington Times: “Senators diverted $2.6 billion in funds in a defense spending bill to pet projects largely at the expense of accounts that pay for fuel, ammunition and training for U.S. troops, including those fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to an analysis.

Among the 778 such projects, known as earmarks, packed into the bill: $25 million for a new World War II museum at the University of New Orleans and $20 million to launch an educational institute named after the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, Massachusetts Democrat.

While earmarks are hardly new in Washington, “in 30 years on Capitol Hill, I never saw Congress mangle the defense budget as badly as this year,” said Winslow Wheeler, a former Senate staffer who worked on defense funding and oversight for both Republicans and Democrats. He is now a senior fellow at the Center for Defense Information, an independent research organization.

Sen. Tom Coburn, Oklahoma Republican, called the transfer of funds from Pentagon operations and maintenance “a disgrace.”

“The Senate is putting favorable headlines back home above our men and women fighting on the front lines,” he said in a statement.”

Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft

Straight from PhysOrg.com: “The Moon is a big sponge that absorbs electrically charged particles given out by the Sun. These particles interact with the oxygen present in some dust grains on the lunar surface, producing water. This discovery, made by the ESA-ISRO instrument SARA onboard the Indian Chandrayaan-1 lunar orbiter, confirms how water is likely being created on the lunar surface.

It also gives scientists an ingenious new way to take images of the Moon and any other airless body in the Solar System.

The lunar surface is a loose collection of irregular dust grains, known as regolith. Incoming particles should be trapped in the spaces between the grains and absorbed. When this happens to protons they are expected to interact with the oxygen in the lunar regolith to produce hydroxyl and water. The signature for these molecules was recently found and reported by Chandrayaan-1’s Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3) instrument team.

The SARA results confirm that solar hydrogen nuclei are indeed being absorbed by the lunar regolith but also highlight a mystery: not every proton is absorbed. One out of every five rebounds into space. In the process, the proton joins with an electron to become an atom of hydrogen. “We didn’t expect to see this at all,” says Stas Barabash, Swedish Institute of Space Physics, who is the European Principal Investigator for the Sub-keV Atom Reflecting Analyzer (SARA) instrument, which made the discovery.

Although Barabash and his colleagues do not know what is causing the reflections, the discovery paves the way for a new type of image to be made. The hydrogen shoots off with speeds of around 200 km/s and escapes without being deflected by the Moon’s weak gravity. Hydrogen is also electrically neutral, and is not diverted by the magnetic fields in space. So the atoms fly in straight lines, just like photons of light. In principle, each atom can be traced back to its origin and an image of the surface can be made. The areas that emit most hydrogen will show up the brightest.

Whilst the Moon does not generate a global magnetic field, some lunar rocks are magnetised. Barabash and his team are currently making images, to look for such ‘magnetic anomalies’ in lunar rocks. These generate magnetic bubbles that deflect incoming protons away into surrounding regions making magnetic rocks appear dark in a hydrogen image.

The incoming protons are part of the solar wind, a constant stream of particles given off by the Sun. They collide with every celestial object in the Solar System but are usually stopped by the body’s atmosphere. On bodies without such a natural shield, for example asteroids or the planet Mercury, the solar wind reaches the ground. The SARA team expects that these objects too will reflect many of the incoming protons back into space as hydrogen atoms.

This knowledge provides timely advice for the scientists and engineers who are readying ESA’s BepiColombo mission to Mercury. The spacecraft will be carrying two similar instruments to SARA and may find that the inner-most planet is reflecting more hydrogen than the Moon because the solar wind is more concentrated closer to the Sun.”

Run free! Run free!

Straight from Fox News: “Suspected enemy combatants held at the Guantanamo Bay prison can now be transferred to U.S. soil for trial.

Handing President Obama a partial victory in his effort to close the military prison, House Democrats on Thursday repelled a Republican effort to block transfer of any of the detainees to the U.S.

Instead, by a 224-193 vote, the House stood by a Democratic plan to allow suspected enemy combatants held at the controversial Guantanamo facility to be shipped to U.S. soil — but only to be prosecuted for their suspected crimes.

The Guantanamo restrictions were attached by House-Senate negotiators on a $42.8 billion homeland security appropriations bill.

Obama has ordered the closure of the prison but congressional Democrats have refused to spend any money on the project until the president assembles a plan to shut down the facility and move the prisoners.

The top Republican on the House Appropriations Committee, Rep. Jerry Lewis of California, charged that Democrats have “turned a blind eye to the dangers that these prisoners of war pose to the American people.”

He went on to call the detainees “enemies of the state.”

Democratic leaders had to push hard to win the vote because many Democrats two weeks ago had cast a nonbinding but politically safe vote against any Guantanamo detainee transfers. But several Democrats from swing districts said they saw little political risk on Thursday’s vote.

“It’s a non-issue. Inside the beltway stuff,” said first-term Rep. Dan Maffai, D-N.Y. “People care about jobs, the economy, health care.”

“I haven’t had one person ask me about Guantanamo,” said Rep. Baron Hill, D-Ind. He added that he does “not in the least” fear it as an issue in next year’s elections.

Permitting Guantanamo prisoners to be transferred to U.S. soil to stand trial had been a bipartisan compromise earlier. It mostly tracks current restrictions put in place in June and is similar to a version backed by Republicans earlier in the year. In fact, Republicans such as Lewis helped fashion the compromise.

But in the absence of a plan from the administration for closing the facility, Lewis has toughened his talk, calling the administration’s plan misguided and potentially dangerous.

“Terrorists should not be treated like common criminals in federal court,” Lewis said. “These detainees are enemies of the state, and should be treated as such by being held and brought to justice right where they are — in Guantanamo Bay.”

Democrats say that Republicans are simply seeking a political opening.

Still, the public is mixed at best on the idea of closing Guantanamo and transferring some of its prisoners to the U.S. Respondents to an AP/Gfk poll in June found Americans evenly divided on whether they support Obama’s decision to close Guantanamo. A Gallup poll taken around the same time — but with the question worded differently — found that respondents opposed closing Guantanamo by a 2-1 margin and rejected the idea of moving detainees to their states by a 4-1 margin.

Several of the fiscal 2010 funding bills contain varying restrictions on the transfer of Guantanamo detainees, reflecting widespread opposition among voters. The Senate-passed defense appropriations bill, for example, contains an outright ban on releasing Guantanamo detainees into the U.S., including for trial or incarceration.

The underlying spending bill also backs the Obama administration’s refusal to release new photos showing U.S. personnel abusing detainees held overseas. The measure supports Obama’s decision to allow the secretary of defense to bar the release of detainee photos for three years.

The American Civil Liberties Union has filed suit to obtain unreleased photos of detainee abuse under the Freedom of Information Act and won two rounds in federal court. The measure would essentially trump the ACLU’s case.

In response, the administration has appealed to the Supreme Court and Obama has said he would use every available means to block release of additional detainee abuse photos because they could whip up anti-American sentiment overseas and endanger U.S. troops. His powers include issuing an order to classify the photos, thus blocking their release.

But the detainee photos provision earned a sharp rebuke from Rep. Louise Slaughter, D-N.Y., normally a leadership loyalist from her perch as chairwoman of the powerful Rules Committee. She said that “the people’s right to know is more important than the government’s desire to keep things secret.”"

This is madness

Straight from NBC San Diego: “Gordon Hageman couldn’t believe the credit card offer he got in the mail.

“My first thought, it was a mistake,” Hageman said.

The wine distributor called the number on the offer, gave them the offer code and verified his information. Sure enough, it was right: the pre-approved credit card came with a 79.9 percent APR.

Yes, 79.9 percent.

The offer is for a Premier card from First Premier Bank, which is based in South Dakota. On its Web site, First Premier says it is the country’s 10th largest issuer of Visa and MasterCard credit cards. The site also says it “focuses on individuals who have less than perfect credit but are actually still creditworthy.”

“I think they’re trying to take advantage of me,” said Hageman.

Ya think?

Hageman acknowleged that his credit isn’t perfect, but he said it’s about average. He said the pre-approved offer didn’t mention the actual interest rate on the card — for that, he had to read the enclosed fine-print disclosure.

“I think you’re beginning to border on deception there,” San Diego State marketing professor Michael Belch said.

Belch said the card is offering a bad deal to people who are desperate.

“They’re just finding different ways to gouge the consumer,” Belch said.

The California Attorney General’s office said there’s nothing it can do about the cards since they are issued out of state and out of its jurisdiction.

A spokesman with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) said interest rate limits on bank cards are set by the individual state and not on a federal level. According to information on the South Dakota Legislative Web site, there is “no maximum or usury restriction.” In other words, the individual bank can set its own interest rate limits.

Several calls made to First Premier for a comment were not returned.”

Straight from Slashdot: “Previous estimates are now thought to skimp on the entropy of the observable universe. The researchers contend that super-massive black holes are the largest contributor of entropy. Since they contribute two orders of magnitude more than previously thought, the total of all the observable universe is correspondingly higher. The paper highlights (in gruesome detail) new issues that arise with these new calculations — like estimating us a little bit closer to heat death (moving entropy totals from 10^102 to 10^104 out of a maximum of 10^122).”

Former Astronaut Franklin Chang Diaz

Straight from Slashdot: “Former astronaut Franklin Chang Diaz believes that the private sector can revitalize NASA, and his company is developing a plasma rocket to back up that claim. Chang Diaz argues that private industry can be used to develop much of the basic technology needed for space exploration, allowing NASA to focus on more sophisticated and critical components. His company, Ad Astra, is developing a variable specific impulse magnetoplasma rocket (VASIMR) that will be used to reposition the International Space Station. Last week, the rocket passed an important milestone in testing — reaching 200 kilowatts (enough to move the ISS). A video of the rocket can be seen on Ad Astra’s site.”

Hadron Collider

Straight from Fox News: “A nuclear physicist working at the world’s largest atom smasher has been arrested on suspicion of links to the Algerian branch of Al Qaeda, another blow to a project that has been plagued by glitches and was shut down after a massive electrical failure a year ago.

The scientist, arrested in France, is suspected of having links to Al Qaeda’s North African offshoot, which has carried out a deadly campaign against security forces in recent months, a French official said Friday.

The judicial official said the suspect was one of two brothers arrested Thursday in southeastern French city of Vienne. The official spoke anonymously because the case is ongoing.

The scientist has been assigned to analysis projects at the laboratory since 2003, and was one of more than 7,000 scientists working on the Large Hadron Collider, the world’s largest atom smasher, said the European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN.

The physicist had no contact with anything that could be used for terrorism, it said.

“None of our research has potential for military application, and all our results are published openly in the public domain,” the organization said.

The LHCb experiment where he worked is the smallest of a series of installations along the 17-mile circular tunnel under the Swiss-French border.

The nuclear research organization said the man, whom it did not identify, was arrested Thursday in the eastern French city of Vienne, 20 miles south of Lyon.

The men were French and aged 25 and 32, police said. The arrest was part of a French judge’s probe into suspected terrorist links.

Police searched the suspects’ apartments and seized their computers.

Al Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb regularly targets Algerian government forces and occasionally attacks foreigners.

The collider started spectacularly in September 2008 with beams of particles flying in both directions on the first day of trying. But later that month an electric failure because of a construction fault caused the entire machine to shut down. It has been undergoing repairs almost ever since.

Spokeswoman Renilde Vanden Broeck said there was no indication of sabotage in the shutdown and that the arrested man would have had access only to the small experiment he was working on, and not to the tunnel itself.

The projects are aimed at making discoveries about the makeup of matter when the Large Hadron Collider starts collecting data later this year or early next year.

“LHCb is an experiment set up to explore what happened after the Big Bang that allowed matter to survive and build the universe we inhabit today,” said a description on the organization’s Web site.

The Big Bang was a vast explosion that scientists theorize was the beginning of the universe 14 billion years ago.

The European laboratory has been working for years to build the $10 billion collider.

Not all physicists working on the LHCb project were informed of the arrest.

“This is news to me,” said Ken Wyllie, one of dozens of scientists in the department.

The prosecutor’s office in the Isere region said the arrest of the physicist had been transferred to the anti-terrorist section of the Paris prosecutor’s office.

Many of the scientists at the laboratory, whether or not they are employees of the organization or of other institutes around the world, live in France, and about half the operation is on French territory.

The nuclear research organization said the man was affiliated with an outside institute.

The laboratory said it is providing the support requested by the French police in the inquiry.”