Francis's News Feeds

This combines together on one page various news websites and diaries which I like to read.
Also: BBC In Pictures | mySociety panopticon | mySociety Google reader | Francis is (my own blog)

March 19, 2010

Cuba: Peace Prize Nominee | by Global Voices (Cuba) | 19 March 2010, 01:48 PM

Uncommon Sense confirms that Cuban dissident leader Oswaldo Payá has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, saying, “There should be little doubt that if he were to be named this year's recipient, it would elevate his status and that of the entire dissident movement on the island. And it would be a big win for the cause of Cuban freedom.”

Barter and echoes of money | by Knowing and Making (Leigh Caldwell) | 19 March 2010, 01:38 PM

I went to a very interesting speech by Frances Dickens of Astus on Wednesday. She runs a company which acts as a barter exchange between other firms.

She started out describing the business model (eliding a few intriguing things which we were obviously meant to know already - such as the fact that the barter is always backed by spare media space, usually TV inventory).

By the end I felt like I'd been listening to a monetary economist talking about the founding of a new central bank.

So many of the issues confronting them are exactly like the issues faced by a currency issuer (which, after all, they are, kind of):

• Is the currency backed by anything? Previous barter companies have failed because they issued promises with no capital behind them, and the promises were quickly devalued
• Network effects - now that they are the market leader and the majority of companies use their "currency" by default, they have a hugely defensible position
• Reputation and credibility - the backing of the currency becomes less important as the reputation of the issuer grows
• Intermediation and fungibility - currently Astus stands in the middle of all transactions and nearly everything is exchanged for media space. But presumably people can now start to trade other services for the currency or for each other, without going via Astus. I didn't get to ask her this question
• Regulation and balance sheets - they disclose two balance sheets and two profit and loss accounts - one based on standard accounting practices (GAAP) and the other based on their own estimate of the real numbers - including the non-cash component which is excluded by GAAP

• Inflation
• Exchange rates with other barter exchanges (or cash)
• Creating sufficient money supply to enable business to take place at the optimal rate - managing the tradeoff between credibility of the currency, and the liquidity requirements of businesses
• Seigniorage and interest rates...I suspect that participants currently don't earn interest on their credit balances, but I could imagine them wanting to

jamesykwak | by The Baseline Scenario | 19 March 2010, 01:29 PM

By James Kwak

I’ll be traveling and probably not blogging (hopefully not using a computer at all) until next weekend (March 27 or 28). Simon will be around, though. Bye.

On the Street.....The Charmer, Paris | by The Sartorialist | 19 March 2010, 01:05 PM

KOP Mall will not be selling vibrators, thank YOU | by PW Style | 19 March 2010, 01:00 PM

Jill McDevitt, who owns the West Chester female-friendly sex-toy shop Feminique, was looking to open a spinoff boutique in the King of Prussia Mall, but she posts on her blog how the conversation as she was checking out storefronts with the leasing manager turned sour when she mentioned that her store would, in fact, sell vibrators:

Her: Oh no you can’t sell that. This is an upscale, family mall.

Me: Well you have a Spencer’s. They sell vibrators.

Again with the cringing and ear covering at the “v” word.

Her: Yes, and we in the mall management business don’t like them either but they have millions of dollars.

Me: Meaning they have the resources to sue you for discrimination and I don’t?

Her: This is not a democracy. This is private property and we can rent to whoever we want. But we are a high-end shopping destination. We have a Neiman Marcus. We have a reputation to uphold.

So, firstly, “We have a Neiman Marcus! We have a reputation to uphold!” is now my go-to response for things along the lines of “Do you want to watch a spinoff of Flava of Love?” or “It’s cool, I totally remember how to make a pipe out of an apple,” or “McGlinchey’s is too crowded, wanna try Tops?”

Secondly, this is ridiculous. I actually remember when I was a teenager, getting a vibrator was super intimidating. Not only was there the horrifying idea of one of my parents accidentally finding it (which would have resulted in some very earnest, nonjudgmental birds-and-bees talk possibly involving the word “flower” or “special,” or, for that matter, “special flower” and would have ended in my ritual suicide), but the ONLY places that sold them were Spencer’s and the creepy windowless cinderblock building in the corner of the strip mall that might as well have had a blinking RAPES ‘R’ US sign out front.

Fact was, when I was a teenager, there was no place that a girl could purchase her very first vibrator that did not involve walking past a litany of lady-friendly messages along the lines of “This isn’t gonna suck itself!!” and “This job requires hand and mouth coordination!!” and of course who can forget the women’s shirts proclaiming the wearer a bitch, princess, porn star or Playboy bunny. Furthermore, there was at least a 75% chance of having my purchase witnesssed by at least one person wearing an Insane Clown Posse T-shirt, probably the wink-y guy behind the register. Spencer’s communicates over all that sex is something tacky, awkward, embarrassing and full of scary/sad power dynamics (don’t even get me started on I have the pussy, I make the rules!!); even though I was a fairly unembarrassed youngun, I definitely got the message that as a girl, doing something that publicly admits you have sexual feelings will make you feel embarrassed and bad.

I wouldn’t really make a deal out of it now if there were anywhere else to buy the stupid things, but there generally aren’t lady-friendly sex stores outside of big cities, and McDevitt’s experience with KOP pretty much explains why. And with the (large) exception that you can just order a hitachi magic wand off amazon now as long as you intercept the package, it’s still tough to go buy a vibrator as a non-city kid without making a pilgrimage to the temple of barely veiled misogyny.

And you know what, even if the reasoning is somehow benign, like they think female-friendly sex toy store is too much of a niche market, or that it’s unlikely that women are going to buy sex toys at a giant hideous mall when the anonymity of the internet exists, that place has like five different stores that sell only candles. It’s a recession. They should have at least given it a shot.

So yeah, there’s a petition. Go sign it, because internet petitions definitely have bearing on real life. May our daughters j/o without fear or shame, or something.

P.S.:I’m fairly certain there’s some readers right now that are all like, “Ugh, TMI with the History of Vag, already. First the IUD, and now vibrators?” But… I mean, when’s the last time you heard a dude on the internet mention or joke about his dick or masturbation?

Fresh Stuff From Vhils in Bogota | by Wooster Collective | 19 March 2010, 12:52 PM

You can see more photos from Bogota Stencil Festival here.

Wendell Mc Shine - An Introduction | by Wooster Collective | 19 March 2010, 12:52 PM

BEHIND THE BLUE DOOR from wendell mc shine on Vimeo.

Nick Walker's "Coran Can" | by Wooster Collective | 19 March 2010, 12:46 PM

The piece above was done yesterday morning on Quai de Valmy in Central Paris by Nick Walker. It's in response to Sarkozy's decision to ban the burkha. From Nick:

"It's particularly tense in Paris. They are in between elections and the reaction is expected to be quite strong. The police discovered the piece 30 minutes after it was completed and we don't expect it to stay up long. After months of wrangling,The government are believed to be only days away from ratifying the ban."

Fresh Stuff From BEST EVER | by Wooster Collective | 19 March 2010, 12:40 PM

More from Best Ever here.

Report: Mississippi, Montana, Louisiana and Oklahoma most vulnerable to oil spikes | by Climate Progress | 19 March 2010, 12:03 PM

A new report finds that comprehensive climate and clean energy legislation is needed to protect Americans from oil shock.  Brad Johnson has the details in this repost.

America’s exposure to oil spikes acts as a crippling do-nothing energy tax. In a white paper prepared for the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), David Gardiner and Associates explore the vulnerability of the United States to price spikes in the oil market, such as the one in 2008 that drove the average cost of gasoline above four dollars, if it happened now, in the midst of a recession. The report finds that Mississippi, Montana, Louisiana, and Oklahoma residents are most vulnerable to a new price shock, as about 10 percent of the average driver’s income would be spent on gasoline:

If prices spiked again, Connecticut and New York drivers’ spending on gasoline would go up moderately, to around 4.3 percent; Mississippi drivers, on the other hand, could see their spending on gasoline skyrocket to more than 11 percent.

MAP OF U.S. OIL VULNERABILITY IF PRICES SPIKED AGAIN

Unfortunately for their citizens, these most vulnerable states are largely represented by senators with deep ties to the oil industry who dismiss the threat of global warming: Republicans Jim Inhofe and Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, Republicans Thad Cochran and Roger Wicker of Mississippi, and Democrat Mary Landrieu and Republican David Vitter of Louisiana. Even the Democratic senators of Montana, Max Baucus and Jon Tester, have merely indicated openness to capping our dependence on oil and confronting the climate threat.

A bright spot comes for the residents of the fifth most vulnerable state, South Carolina, where Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) is working on comprehensive climate legislation with Sen. John Kerry (D-MA). Graham’s work in building the green economy is earning praise from the Christian Coalition and local veterans, both of whom recognize the dangers of oil addiction to our nation.

“America’s dependence on oil is problematic in several ways,” the authors write:

• The United States has less than 2 percent of the world’s oil supplies but is responsible for about a quarter of the world’s oil consumption. We currently import almost two-thirds of our crude oil supply from foreign countries, and more and more of the world’s future supply will come from regions that are either politically unstable or unfriendly to U.S. interests.
• Our dependence on unstable oil supplies threatens our national economy, particularly since about 96 percent of our transportation system is reliant on oil.
• Oil consumption is a leading contributor to the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that cause global warming. In the United States, the oil-based transportation system is responsible for roughly one-third of our global warming pollution.

To respond to these combined threats from oil vulnerability, the report concludes that Congress must:

• Pass comprehensive climate and energy legislation that limits carbon dioxide emissions, helps us break our oil addiction, and invests in creating millions of clean energy jobs here in the United States.
• Fundamentally reform federal transportation policy to support smart, public transportation-oriented development; assist states and regions in saving oil; and provide ample funding for energy-efficient transportation alternatives including rail and bus lines, bike paths, sidewalks, and other alternatives to driving.

Related Posts:

• The Do-Nothing Energy Tax: $3 Gasoline Dead Ahead

Copenhagen's Seasonal Early Warning System | by Copenhagen Cycle Chic | 19 March 2010, 11:30 AM

Wooly stocking combinations, begone. The seasonal transitions bring all manner of clothing-related...

For the full photographic glory and the rest of the text, you know where to go. The Original Cycle Chic awaits.

Do the numbers make anything clearer? | by FOI News | 19 March 2010, 10:25 AM

Mr Graham: The age old debate of quality v quantity

Since Christopher Graham took over the hot seat at the Information Commissioner’s Office there has appeared to outsiders to be a somewhat unseemly haste to get down the number of outstanding FoI appeals.

We all know that the geological timeframe it was taking to get Decision Notices out of the ICO was causing frustration on all sides and was one of the things Mr Graham said he would aim to improve.

Well nobody can complain that he hasn’t been a man of his word. The number of Decision Notices issued has increased, yet the grumbling from both applicants and respondents has not gone away.

Why? Because some people feel that there has been a clear trade off between quality and quantity, and while the number of Decision Notices issued has clearly increased the quality of those decisions has been on the decline.

It is a very difficult thing to prove. But I have made an effort to have a look at the trees rather than the wood by getting some figures from the ICO’s office about the number of Decision Notices it has dealt with.

What is clear from the figures is that Mr Graham’s vow to get to grips with the backlog of complaints has been followed through. When he took over in June 2009 the FoI caseload stood at 1,508 and by February this year that had been reduced to 1,057.

This is in some ways explained by a huge increase in the number of Decision Notices issued. In the 2008/09 financial year there were a total of 295 DNs. In the first eleven months of this financial year – Mr Graham started in the third month of the financial year – there have already been 538, and November 2009 saw a record number of 102 DNs issued.

Some might say that part of this increase was due to the crystallisation of the BBC’s derogation, where the High Court’s ruling effectively pulled the rug from under a great number of appeals.

But what is probably more significant is the movement away from issuing DNs and an increasing reliance on informal resolution. The comparable figures for disputes resolved informally is 1,490 in 2008/09 rising to 2,038 in the first 11 months of this financial year.

So we have a situation where with still a month to go this year we have had an extra 243 DNs issued and an additional 548 resolved informally.

Critics suggest that the increasing reliance on informal resolution is short-sighted as the system needs fully reasoned DNs so that people can use these as guidance for the future. Others state that some of the informal resolutions have been the complete opposite of DNs that have already been posted and as such ought to have been made public.

But how can we assess if this undoubted increase in quantity has been matched by a reduction in quality? Not an easy task, but one way might be to look at the number of appeals lodged at the Tribunal, where one party clearly believes the Information Commissioner has made an error in assessing the case.

The number of appeals lodged at the Tribunal has increased from 87 last year to 145 in the first eleven months of this year.

So we have a situation where the number of DN’s has increased 82% and the number going to Tribunal has increased by 67%. This would seem to suggest that there has not been a disproportionate drop in the quality of the DNs.

However, I think we need more time to get a clearer picture of the situation and my own feelings are that the quality of DNs is falling. What really annoys me is that, if this is true, it is such a short-term approach to the problem. Because what will happen is that more people will appeal and more resources in the ICO’s office will be taken up defending poor decisions leaving fewer people to deal with complaints and the whole vicious spiral will start up all over again.

But for now Mr Graham must be feeling quite pleased with himself. So much so that perhaps he might get a bonus at the end of the year. I wonder if getting the caseload down was one of his targets? Perhaps that’s a question I should be asking.

For those of you interested I have posted the ICO’s figures Decision numbers and here Decision numbers 2. You can see a full history of this request on WhatDoTheyKnow here.

Loud Tweets | by DJ Drive's LJ (Georgia) | 19 March 2010, 10:01 AM

• 15:30 Sync your files online and across computers with @Dropbox. 2GB account is free! tinyurl.com/yllmv47 #
• 10:37 A claim for equality of material position can be met only be a government with totalitarian powers. - F.A. Hayek #

Lloyds: Back to black | by Robert Peston (BBC business editor) | 19 March 2010, 08:50 AM

Hold the front page: big bank says it's going to make a profit.

Yes, it has come to this.

A few years ago, there was widespread concern that banks were making excessive profits. Then the worst banking crisis since the 1930s meant we worried whether the likes of Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds would ever make a profit again.

And today - let's declare it a national holiday - Lloyds has said it will make a profit in 2010, which is the first time it has said it expects to be in the black since its troubles arrived by the trainload in wagons marked "HBOS".

What will be the scale of the turnaround?

Well its accounts have become very confusing because of the impact of its controversial takeover of HBOS and assorted one-off factors.

But it says that on a "combined" (Lloyds plus HBOS) basis, pre-tax losses were £6.7bn in 2008 and £6.3bn last year.

So a profit in 2010 would be an improvement of many billions of pounds. I would imagine that analysts will shoot for something of the order of £1bn or so of profit for 2010.

Which sounds like a lot of money. But that is many billions less than it will end up generating, as and when the losses it incurs on the loans it has made fall to more normal levels.

So what's driving the recovery?

Well most important is that losses on those reckless loans it provided to companies and households during the bubble years are falling quite significantly.

In its results announced at the end of February, it disclosed a charge of £24bn for loans going bad.

This was a mindboggling sum to lose as a consequence of borrowers being unable to keep up the payments.

But the rate of loss was at least falling as 2009 progressed. In the first half of 2009, the so-called impairment charge was £13.4bn; in the second six months, it was £10.6bn.

What Lloyds said in those last results is that it expected the impairment-charge improvement rate of just over 20% every six months to be sustained into 2010 (forgive that horrid construction). But it now believes that losses on bad debts will shrink faster.

Phew.

There are two other contributors to Lloyds return to the oh-so-attractive black.

First, and as Lloyds staff anxious about losing their jobs know only too well, the bank is proving adept at generating cost reductions from its takeover of HBOS.

It had expected cost savings on an annual basis to be £1.5bn by 2011. Lloyds now expects those annual cost reductions to be £2bn (although Lloyds is paying more than expected in reorganisation charges to secure those efficiency improvements).

And then there's what it can squeeze from customers. It has been able to push up the interest rate on mortgages and other loans a bit. So its margin is expected to widen fairly significantly this year, from 1.77% to 2%.

If you are a borrower from Lloyds, you probably therefore won't take the view that its recovery is good news for everyone.

That said, a successful economy requires banks that make profits.

However we also need banks that can finance themselves from commercial sources, rather than borrowing from taxpayers. And £157bn of Lloyds' funding comes in various ways from taxpayer supported schemes, both in the UK and elsewhere.

It has a plan to wean itself off that public-sector drip by reducing the loans and investments on its books.

Whether it can shrink enough without damaging the British economy (by depriving households and businesses of valuable loans) is the big unanswered question.

Girl drinking a cup of milk in the kitchen, SOS… | by Two Talk | 19 March 2010, 07:58 AM

Once again, children came together to call for peace and participated in the Global Peace Games organised by SOS Children's Villages Cape Verde.

Interesting photos - 18 Mar 2010 - Flickr | by Daily interesting photos - Flickr | 19 March 2010, 07:50 AM

Death, Sex and Children at Risk | by anecdote - putting stories to work | 19 March 2010, 06:33 AM

I've just found Garr Reynold's recent post on stories and experience. He makes the good point that people remember stories because they convey emotions, which is very true. We remember what we feel. In this post I would like to briefly explore another reason why we remember stories and touch on the types of stories which are most memorable. Let's take the last point first.

Garr tells us that he visited Haleakala National Park in Japan The park has beautiful but dangerous water falls and sign-posts warn visitors to be careful. Garr noticed that one of the sign-posts seemed more effective that the others because it included actual news clippings of people who had lost their lives. These tragic incidents were told as stories.

Apart from the obvious emotion these stories generated what else might be drawing our attention to these stories? One possibility comes from taking a human evolution and natural selection perspective. Over the 10,000s of years our species has been evolving we've been preoccupied by our own survival (avoiding death), the survival of our children (continuing the species) and sex (creating the next generation). Consequently we care deeply about death, sex and the safety of our children. Any story that feature these topics gains our attention. It helps explain the proliferation of hospital and police dramas on our TVs. So stories of death are hard for us to resist and warning signs that contain these types of stories are attention magnets.

It's true that we remember what we feel but we also remember what we conjure for ourselves. To illustrate this point would you please read this story. I have some questions at the end.

After 21 years of marriage, my wife wanted me to take another woman out to dinner and a movie. She said, 'I love you, but I know this other woman loves you and would Love to spend some time with you.'

The other woman that my wife wanted me to visit was my Mother, who has been a widow for 19 years, but the demands of my work and my three children had made it possible to visit her only occasionally.

That night I called to invite her to go out for dinner and a movie. 'What's wrong, are you well,' she asked?   

My mother is the type of woman who suspects that a late night call or a surprise invitation is a sign of bad news. 'I thought that it would be pleasant to spend some time with you,' I responded 'just the two of us.' She thought about it for a moment, and then said,'I would like that very much.'That Friday after work, as I drove over to pick her up I was a bit nervous. When I arrived at her house, I noticed that she, too, seemed to be nervous about our date. She waited in the door with her coat on.   

She had curled her hair and was wearing the dress that she had worn to celebrate her last wedding anniversary. She smiled from a face that was as radiant as an angel's.

'I told my friends that I was going to go out with my son, and they were impressed,' she said, as she got into the car.. 'They can't wait to hear about our meeting.' We went to a restaurant that, although not elegant, was very nice and cozy. My mother took my arm as if she were the First Lady. After we sat down, I had to read the menu.

Her eyes could only read large print. Half-way through the entrees, I lifted my eyes and saw Mother sitting there staring at me. A nostalgic smile was on her lips..'

It was I who used to have to read the menu when you were small,' she said. 'Then it's time that you relax and let me return the favor,' I responded. During the dinner , we had an agreeable conversation nothing extraordinary but catching up on recent events of each other's life. We talked so much that we missed the movie. As we arrived at her house later, she said, 'I'll go out with you again, but only if you let me invite you.' I agreed.

'How was your dinner date?' asked my wife when I got home. 'Very nice, much more so than I could have imagined,' I answered.

A few days later, my mother died of a massive heart attack. It happened so suddenly that I didn't have a chance to do anything for her. Sometime later, I received an envelope with a copy of a restaurant receipt from the same place Mother and I had dined.   

An attached note said: 'I paid this bill in advance. I wasn't sure that I could be there; but, nevertheless, I paid for two plates - one for you and the other for your wife. You will never know what that night meant for me.

'I love you, son'

OK, as you were reading this story what could you see in your mind's eye? Could you see the mother and son having dinner? Did you see them walking arm in arm? Did you see him ring his mother? Did you see the envelop and the receipt it contained?

People see stories. We literally re-experience the story with the person telling it and this act of re-creation make the story our own. We remember what we can see and experience.

OK, what about this.

• Stories are memorable because they evoke emotion.
• We remember stories because we visualise what's happening and create our own personal version of the story
• Three of the most memorable types of stories feature death, sex and the safety of children.

What did you see? If you are like me you didn't see a thing. Dots points and opinions don't create imagery and therefore don't conjure emotions and are mostly forgettable.

The story was posted to PassionHR list 16/3/10 by Mannish Aggarwal

Hat tip to David Zinger's post 23 Employee Engagement Eclectic Resource Zingers (No. 13) for the link to Garr's post.

Obama, Neo Cons and the Middle East | by John Redwood MP | 19 March 2010, 06:13 AM

I do not regard myself as a Neo Con. As readers will know, I have been sceptical of the wisdom of being in Afghanistan, and a critic of the way Iraq was handled.

However, the Neo Cons do have at least one good point. If the President is going to remain engaged in the Middle East, as he seems to want to do, he needs to show resolve and strength. Dithering, alternating between more diplomacy and more military intervention, whilst wavering over alliances, is not the best way to handle a very volatile situation.

Recently the Vice President went on a visit which passed off relatively well. On return Washington became very critical in public of Israel. Shortly afterwards Mrs Clinton had to issue a statement stressing the closeness of the Israeli relationship to the USA. It was a bad wobble, leaving most people more on edge and dubious about the US position.

The Neo Cons say rightly that any US President, Democrat or Republican, Clinton, Bush or Obama, is going to remain engaged in the Middle East. Each successive President is heir to what his predecessors did, whether he likes it or not. In practise all recent Presidents have followed a similar general policy. This has been broadly supportive of Israel and the moderate Arab states, has sought to export democracy to certain troubled states, and has fought a war against people the US characterises as radical and armed insurgents. From time to time a peace process is offered.

When President Obama came into office, he implied that it would be different. He seemed to want to offer the hand of friendship to people the USA had seen as enemies before. This was popular with many around the world, and with the liberal wing of US politics. One year or more on, and it all looks very different.

After long deliberation, he has intensified the military involvement in Afghanistan. After flirting with a friendlier approach to China, he has agreed to contact with the Dali Lama, inflammatory to the Chinese, and agreed to send weapons to Taiwan, even more inflammatory to them.

The new fulcrum of the Middle east conflicts is the issue of Iran. Is Iran arming herself with nuclear weapons? Should Israel take pre-emptive action? Would the US allow her to do so by standing aside, would the US support her, or try to bring pressure to bear against it? If the US is not going to condone military action or undertake it itself, what is Plan B if diplomacy fails to prevent a nuclear armed Iran emerging?

The President is going to discover that diplomacy works better if difficult countries and forces think there could be resolve and military intervention. If diplomacy fails and leads to military intervention that often proves difficult to guide and to end successfully. It is especially difficult if the President’s heart is not in a military solution, whilst sending troops into action. He who would commit his country’s troops has to give them full backing, and plenty of time and resource to do what he wants them to do. Each expedition has to have realistic aims and enough force to make victory likely. The danger of intervention in the Middle East is that it has too many diverse aims, and is a backdrop to some fluctuating diplomacy.

The Family Zoo | by Copenhagen Cycle Chic | 19 March 2010, 05:00 AM

At long last, the weather is improving. Goethe's last words were allegedly "Mehr licht..." or "more...

For the full photographic glory and the rest of the text, you know where to go. The Original Cycle Chic awaits.

Myron keeps boiling the oil | by Myron Ebell Climate | 19 March 2010, 04:56 AM

Myron Ebell is spreading himself thin between Freedom Action Network work where he is pitching in against US healthcare reform (he likes it just the way it is), and wrecking any potential action to save us from the most life threatening effects climate change.

While it is morally acceptable (though sad) for the seriously defunct United States political system to self-inflict unnecessary pain and suffering on its own people through gross medical and financial maladministration, causing irreparable harm to the global environment is another matter.

Myron's expertise with the minutae of Congressional procedures exposes his pleasure in a system that consistently comes out with the wrong answer on easy questions.

Back to his CEI work, where Myron has decided to don his Cambridge University, England tie again:



This is the same one he wore to the Select Committe on Energy Independence in December 2007, as you can see from this picture:



(Although that was shortly after abandoning his tie for the CEI website that September in a picture he now uses for F.A.N.)

So, what has Myron been boiling the oil about this time?

Climategate: Alarmist Scientists Plan a Snow Job

According to recently disclosed e-mails from a National Academies of Science listserv, prominent climate scientists affiliated with the U.S. National Academies of Science have been planning a public campaign to paper over the damaged reputation of global warming alarmism. Their scheme would involve officials at the National Academies and other professional associations producing studies to endorse the researchers’ pre-existing assumptions and create confusion about the revelations of the rapidly expanding "Climategate" scandal...

In my view, the response of these alarmist scientists to the Climategate scientific fraud scandal has little to do with their responsibilities as scientists and everything to do with saving their political position. The e-mails reveal a group of scientists plotting a political strategy to minimize the effects of Climategate in the public debate on global warming.

I would like to invite all members of the NAS (Ralph - please send this to all sections) - to sign a declaration that there is clear scientific evidence that burning of fossil fuels by humans will will alter the climate. I want that to be on the back page of the NYT and other newspapers in the US, sponsored by the NAS- without any outside contributions - unless they sign a contract making it clear that the NAS will not endorse any private companies. For this - I offer $1000.00 of my personal funds- but I will only donate these funds if 50 members of the NAS come with matching funds.

Highest energy ever | by Cosmic Variance | 19 March 2010, 04:10 AM

At this very moment the LHC is busy trying to set a new world record. The goal is to achieve beams circulating at 3.5 TeV, bringing collisions between protons to 3.5+3.5=7 TeV center-of-mass energy. This would be the highest particle energy ever accomplished by humans (nature somehow routinely manages to produce cosmic rays at energies 8 orders of magnitude higher!). This news is hot off the press: we had a talk today by Lyn Evans, and he gave us the latest update. He should know what’s going on, since he’s project leader of the LHC. Evans shared some entertaining anecdotes from the last few years of commissioning, including:

They use superfluid helium to cool the superconducting magnets. One of the many weird properties of this stuff is that it has zero viscosity. Which means that, if there’s any sort of hairline fracture anywhere in the 27 kilometer long tunnel, the stuff comes spewing out, and very, very bad things happen. Every component, every joint, every one of the tens of thousands of tiny connections has to be perfect. It is this sort of failure which brought the machine to its knees shortly after commissioning, over a year ago.

The magnets are kept very, very cold; the superfluid helium is at 1.9 Kelvin (-271 Celsius), or a couple of degrees above absolute zero. We’re not talking a little vial in a laboratory being kept at this temperature. We’re talking many thousands of tonnes of magnets, kept just above absolute zero (using 96 tonnes of liquid helium). As things cool down, they naturally contract. The decks on bridges do the same thing, hence those serrated grills at the ends of bridges to absorb the expansion and contraction due to weather (if you’ve ever motorcycled across a bridge, you know exactly what I’m talking about). There are equivalent serrated joints in the LHC beam pipe to ensure that it doesn’t contract and rip open upon cooling (which, needless to say, would be bad). But upon reheating a section of the LHC, it turned out some of these devices left little fibers in the beam tube. Not good. How to find them, without ripping open the entire collider (costing millions of dollars and setting the project back precious months)? They ended up blowing a ping pong ball (with electronics embedded) down the tube, and tracking where it would get stuck. A simple, elegant, cheap solution to fix a multi-billion dollar enterprise.

For a while during the construction they ended up with roughly a billion dollars worth of superconducting magnets being stored in a parking lot at CERN. For reference, this is comparable to the entire GDP of many small countries (Bhutan, Guyana, Burundi, etc.), sitting out in the rain and snow. Big science.

Hopefully sometime in the next few days they’ll be running at 3.5 TeV. Apparently it’s been slow going because the system to prevent catastrophic quenching of the magnets (which is what “broke” the machine previously) is on a hair-trigger, setting off all sorts of false alarms (and when it goes off it quenches the magnets [in a controlled manner]). You can keep track of the progress on the LHC webpage (clicking on the image of the ring gives real-time data on the temperature of the magnets). Although this would be the highest energy ever achieved, it still doesn’t significantly surpass the science reach of Fermilab’s Tevatron, since the latter has run for many years (albeit at a lower energy of 1 TeV+1TeV). Both energy and (integrated) luminosity matter in this game, and the Tevatron has gotten more than 8 inverse fb (femtobarns; one of the best units in all of science [think "there's no way to miss it, it's as big as a barn"]). The LHC is shooting for 1 inverse fb. All being well, in a few months they’ll bump the energy up to 5 Tev on 5 TeV. This should significantly open up the scientific discovery space, and could conceivably kick off the next revolution in particle physics. Exciting times!

Time Machine | by xkcd | 19 March 2010, 04:00 AM

What To Do This Weekend | by PW Style | 19 March 2010, 02:49 AM

Hallelujah!  Take off your wool socks and turn on the kettle—Spring has sprung and mother nature is just begging you to show your gams.  Plenty of crafty things to get you out and roaming the city this weekend…enjoy!

Starting today and lasting all weekend is the Sugarloaf Craft Festival out in Oaks, PA. (The trek is really only a half hour on 76).  Over 300 artists making everything from hair swizzle sticks to light switch covers, plus plenty of demonstrations to keep you occupied.  Because watching someone spin a pottery wheel will always be interesting.  Check out the show venue and artist list here.

Also tonight is the opening of Trick Go’s newest show, Paper Blog, feauturing works from artist Bradford Haubrich.  From 6-10pm, roam the store that’s raffling Keds and offering free drinks while you browse Haubrich’s custom t-shirts.

All day Saturday and Sunday, take your inner (or outer) vintage-nerd over to TONY boutique for their Trash & Treasures sale.  Everything from household knick-knacks to jewelry and old media goodies will be up for grabs, but the real bargain lies in the women’s vintage (you might score some YSL or Dior)—with prices from 25 cents to $25. 

Grasshopper is also hosting their Spring Fever sale on Saturday.  As mentioned earlier on the Style blog, the entire store will be 25% off.  Additionally, the boutique will be showing off the new lines they’re carrying for Spring, like Numph, a Danish import, and Mink Pink.  Also, it’s hosted by ShmittenKitten, so if you’re angsty about your new (or old) boyfriend…

Our friends over at uwishunu spotlighted an event coming up on Saturday at JimmyStyle, where attendees can make their own terraniums with gardener Julie Henderson.  The classy little glass gardens will be $20 to make, including all parts.  

Lastly, Yelp.com, your (presumably) favorite “Where do I eat?” website, is hosting a Homegrown Philly party at CitySpace starting at 8pm.  In an effort to make Philadelphians familiar with their local businesses, retailers across will set up shop, offering attendees (to the FREE event) the chance eat at Supper and Elevation Burger, shop and Sugarcube and Art in the Age, and grab a Victory Beer along the way.

Have a good weekend everyone!

With Hague disabled, Labour team v Tory team even more important | by Alistair Campbell | 19 March 2010, 02:43 AM

Not had time to read any of the papers, not heard any of the news, but the debate that has suddenly kicked off on my Facebook page re William Hague and Lord Ashcroft tells me that one has some way to run yet. Labour supporters scenting blood, Tories kicking out in all sorts of different directions.

The debate was around my tweet on the subject of a headline in The Guardian - 'Tories rally round beleaguered Hague' - which I suggested it was not exactly the kind of headline you wanted for a key campaigner just before a key campaign.

Before going out to the Leukaemia and Lymphoma Research dinner last night, where I shared the bill with Jeffrey Archer - one of the auction prizes was tea with the two of us at The Wolseley btw and someone paid several thousand for this dubious honour - I saw William Hague on the news talking about his role in the Ashcroft murk.

Hague's straight-forwardness and straight talking is one of his strengths but he looked distinctly uncomfortable. He managed to get away with a clip for the news, but the look on his face suggested to me he would not fancy ten rounds with Jeremy Paxman or a select committee on the subject. The tough questions are not going to go away on this.

It brings me to a different point though. Every campaign has a list of key campaigners and of course Hague, as a former leader and de facto deputy leader of the Tory Party, is one such. The Ashcroft murk could force him to be less active and engaged than has been planned. Cameron is of course THE key campaigner. With the economy central to the campaign, George Osborne is another, and is not very popular with the public or the City. Kenneth Clarke is popular but, as shown by his mis-speak on tax policy in debate with Peter Mandelson yesterday, marginalised. Tory HQ has decided Michael Gove is a secret weapon, but I have yet to decide in which direction he is being targeted. All in all, it is a thin list.

It is why Labour as a team has to be a central part of the election campaign. Alistair Darling has seen his authority and reputation enhanced. The Miliband brothers are both clever and attractive politicians. Alan Johnson has the kind of popular touch DC's public school toffs' party would give half of their inheritance tax cut for. Harriet Harman, Yvette Cooper and Tessa Jowell belie the claim there are no women at GB's top table. Ed Balls, Andy Burnham, Liam Byrne, Jim Murphy, Peter Hain, Jack Straw ... Bob Ainsworth is far more popular with the military than the press pretend. Shaun Woodward understands strategy and understands how to attack the Tories. Peter Mandelson and Douglas Alexander are class acts on the campaigns front.

Of course these elections are about electing individual MPs. But they are also about electing governments and the lack of strength in depth on the Tory side is a real problem for them. Here we are, a few weeks away, and the vast bulk of the team that could soon be running our country could walk down most of its streets without a soul knowing who the hell they are.

They banked on Cameron the one-man-band being enough. They were wrong.

* Buy The Blair Years online and raise cash for Labour http://www.alastaircampbell.org/bookshop.php.

March 18, 2010

Global: Furs And Fashion | by Global Voices (India) | 18 March 2010, 11:58 PM

If you thought that wearing fur was outdated - what with all those green movements and animal rights activists who put this cruel sense of fashion in its right place with the likes of Cruella de Vil - fashionista's say, think again.

Last month the fashion world went literally “wild” in New York, Paris and Milan during the unveiling of their fall collection. They had models strutting the catwalk in so much fur, it was scary enough to make animal rights activists and environmentalists jump out of their skins.

In this era of global warming and dwindling animal species, one would think that we humans would come to our senses and rethink our actions. Not so, it seems, as there is a whole other world out there - the fashion industry of the west - whose endorsement and use of fur and exotic animal products simply encourages the mass slaughter of many endangered species.

A dealer's bounty at the Quartzite annual show for art and crafts. Image by Flickr user cobalt123. Used under a Creative Commons License

To name a few, the Chiru or Tibetan antelope, whose underbelly fur is used to make “Shatoosh” the world's most expensive shawls, also known as “shawls of death”. It takes 3 dead antelopes, to make one shawl, so fine it can fit through a finger ring, and each one can cost between $5000 to $20,000 in the international market. Even babies, and mother's who have just delivered, are not spared.

According to WWF, the population of this species has declined by over 50 percent in the last 20 years and the Tibetan Plateau Project says that it was the fashion-driven demand for Shatoosh in the U.S that resulted in as many as 20,000 antelopes being slaughtered. It is alarming to know that the animal could become extinct in the next three years at this rate.

In a blog run by Uma and Hurree called Animal Rights India, they argue how farming of Chiru's - like Eider ducks in Iceland for eider (as an alternative), will not make a difference to the dwindling numbers.

But hello: Eider ducks are now a protected species, and farmers in iceland use a technique of collecting the down without harming the bird. And no, it is not possible to obtain the shahtoosh wool without killing the chiru.

They go on to say:

It's impossible to justify killing three beautiful wild animals every time you want to push a length of shawl through a ring, blah blah. And to farm them just to kill them for shawls?

Raja Basu, another blogger said:

The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) – which controls the trade in endangered species products – has completely banned international trade in Tibetan antelope products (including Shahtoosh). It is illegal to import Shahtoosh into many countries, including the USA (ironically, Shahtoosh products are so popular in the US fashion industry). Unfortunately, despite such laws being in place, the Shahtoosh trade is going on in full swing. This is because it is not enough to have laws. There must also be a strong public protest across the board against every person who is by any means related to the Shahtoosh trade. There should be a widespread public sensitization campaign to educate the common people.

Bloggers in the west, however, were giving this some thought and debated:

Rachel Menashy wrote on her blog:

1. People eat rabbits at restaurants. These rabbits have been killed to provide ‘dinner' for people like us (I would like to point out that I have never eaten rabbit and by ‘us' I mean people who eat in restaurants). Why is it right that rabbits can feature on a menu in a restaurant but wrong to wear a fur coat? These rabbits inevitably are skinned in preparation to be cooked - what else should we do with the fur?

2. Is it more acceptable if the coat is Vintage? Why?

3. Is rabbit fur better/worse than Mink? Some argue that rabbit fur is not as bad because rabbits are not in danger of becoming extinct, unlike mink which is. Then again, people keep rabbits as pets so is it more cruel to wear rabbit than mink?

4. If a fur coat is hanging on a rail at a store and one customer refuses to buy it, somebody else will…

5. Should role models such as Kate Moss be seen wearing fur? Kate's style is copied by millions of girls (and women) - is she giving a bad impression?

To which Denise replied:

1. I would personally be more likely to wear rather than eat rabbit. The eating of it seems less acceptable somehow.
2.Vintage coats have been around for a while and should be recycled - which I'm definitely into.
3. Mink are feral creatures and even though their fur is more desirable, mink are not aiming for extinction, so why not wear it?
4. Agreed.
5. I don't mind fur being worn by anyone, and Kate Moss is just showing that this is acceptable. Too many people are on the “fur is bad” bandwagon. I bet most of these people eat meat and wear leather, so what's the difference?

But there is a difference as Barry Williams responded to a thread: Wearing Fur is not immoral on www.helium.com

If we go around killing cattle for leather, alligators for shoes, deer for chamois and see nothing morally wrong in that , why it is immoral to wear fur. What I see as immoral is the killing of animals simply for the fur alone. It really is such a waste, isn't it? Apart from the leather we obtain from cattle not much of the animal is wasted. Beef cattle supply our meat.

There are a multitude of arguments out there, but in the meantime the Humane Society for the United States, says that Canada will slaughter 388, 200 harp, grey and hooded seals this year, an increase of 50,000 from 2009. This, because of the overall demand for fur. The site of the Fur Council of Canada shows styles and celebrities modelling various furs in what it describes as a fashion trend of 2010.

And unfortunately in the U.S, and much of the west, where Global Fashion trends are set, laws don't seem to be enough to curb their greed. According to the International Fur Trade Federation Blog:

..the shift in the attitude towards fur can be attributed to “changes within the fur trade, such as the introduction of the new Origin Assured initiative, which guarantees that fur bearing the label comes from a country with animal welfare regulations”. This shows that the fur trade efforts and initiatives to challenge the outdated ideas of our industry have been noticed. We are a transparent and well-regulated industry that supports high animal welfare standards and we welcome the confidence and support shown by the fashion designers as well as the European Commission, who recently recognised the importance of the Origin Assured label.

Fashion designers who have been courted by Furriers say they are “confident using fur after examining the chain of production and finding it humane. But could this confidence be based on a lack of investigation or knowledge? According to an endangered species handbook :

The New York luxury department store, Bergdorf Goodman, advertised shahtoosh in 1995 as a “royal and rare” fabric, making incorrect statements about the wool having been obtained from the Mountain Ibex goat of Tibet which “sheds its down undercoat by scratching itself against low trees and bushes” from where it is gathered by local shepherds (Schaller 1998)

And if the clubbing of baby seals and mass slaughtering of Chiras, mothers and babies, is “humane” then its sad to think of what “humane” means anymore, and what we are willing to condone in the name of “Fashion”.

elevation. | by HI | 18 March 2010, 10:38 PM

elevation for the house.

On the Street.....Before Lanvin, Paris | by The Sartorialist | 18 March 2010, 10:38 PM

India: Masters, Not Representatives | by Global Voices (India) | 18 March 2010, 10:34 PM

Amit Verma at India Uncut comments on the news that garlands of thousand-rupee notes were presented to a political leader in India: “this kind of behaviour demonstrates, yet again, how our politicians believe that they are our rulers, and not our servants.”

glow robe. | by HI | 18 March 2010, 10:31 PM

(after j. dine).

One more reason that recent U.S. polling on global warming is down slightly | by Climate Progress | 18 March 2010, 09:56 PM

A large majority of Americans continue to understand that global warming is real.  In fact, warming of the climate system in recent decades is “unequivocal,” according to comprehensive analysis of observations around the globe by the world’s leading climate scientists.

Most of the decline in understanding seen in recent polls comes from conservatives and conservative-leaning independents, who are incessantly hammered with the myth of “global cooling” in the conservative and mainstream media.

And, in a rather unfortunate coincidence, we’ve seen below average temperatures in parts of the United States over the last two years.  That’s particularly true during this uber-warm winter.

Accuweather’s Joe Bastardi admitted earlier this month:  “Earth continues warmest winter since satellite measurements started.” NASA’s recently released data confirms that December through February was the second warmest globally (after winter 2006/2007) since records began in 1880.  NASA also released a figure showing where it was warm and where it was cold around the globe.  Guess where it was cold:

Yes, during a blistering Dec-Feb planet-wide, it just happened to be relatively cool once again in the country with the biggest cumulative greenhouse gas emissions and with a political system unable to overcome a do-nothing minority of anti-science ideologues.  Uber-meteorologist Jeff Masters goes through the data in his recent post, “An upside-down winter: coldest in 25 years in U.S., warmest on record in Canada.”

Stanford communications expert Jon Krosnick notes that “One factor that can influence opinion is the perception of local changes in the weather.”  And since “June-August 2009 summer temperature for the contiguous United States was below average – the 34th coolest on record“:

As a result, when the November 2009 survey asked if average world temperatures were higher or lower in the last three years than in previous years, only 43 percent said higher, compared to 58 percent in the 2008 survey, which was conducted in the summertime.

As for the local weather’s impact on even more recent polling, consider that, as Nick Sundt blogged recently:

Winter 2009-2010 was only the second time in 16 years (since the cold winter of 1993-4) that the U.S. has had a winter colder than the long-term mean. The only other colder than normal winter during the 16 year period was the winter of 2000-2001.  The trend in the U.S. is towards warmer winters, with temperatures increasing an average of 0.17oF per decade between 1880 and 2010.

It’s unfortunate that public opinion on this crucial issue in the most recalcitrant country is significantly influenced by the temperature over about only 2% of the planet.  Now it is very likely to get very hot here on our current path of unrestricted emissions (see “Our hellish future: Definitive NOAA-led report on U.S. climate impacts warns of scorching 9 to 11°F warming over most of inland U.S. by 2090 with Kansas above 90°F some 120 days a year — and that isn’t the worst case, it’s business as usual!“).

But obviously the annual and seasonal temperature trends of the contiguous United States are far more erratic than that of the planet as a whole, and that makes public opinion here — which is already subjected to the world’s most intense disinformation campaign and generally poor media coverage — far more hard to predict.  The only good news is that in spite of the trendline on understanding of global warming, every major recent poll shows the public still strongly favors the transition to clean energy.

Sit Up Straight, Sydney | by The Copenhagen Bicycle Culture Blog | 18 March 2010, 09:53 PM

Here's a cartoon that accompanied an article in the Sydney Morning Herald:

"Sydney will never be a bicycle-friendly city until it develops a ''second cycling culture'' which encourages relaxed European-style riding without the compulsory use of helmets, experts have warned."

John Pucher does most of the talking in the interview but renowned documentarist turned cycling blogger Mike Rubbo is quoted as well.

It's an interesting angle in the article. Mr Rubbo has gotten hold of the upright bike angle in order to differentiate what I call Citizen Cyclists from sports enthusiasts. Indeed, his blog is named Sit-Up Cycle.

In every city on the planet where cycling is mainstream transport, the majority of the people you see resemble the chap on the right, and on bikes like that. Hilly cities, flat cities, cold cities, hot cities, established bicycle-friendly cities and developing bicycle-friendly cities.

Using this bicycle design angle is fresh. It is, after all, the most popular bicycle design on the planet. Should we guess by 10 to 1? It's worked for more than a century in every country and across every topography.

The sports bike manufacturers have had free reign regarding marketing for a few decades in many countries. They may have encouraged a few people to join cycling clubs, take up recreational cycling on the weekends and maybe even inspired some cycle sport stars who we love to watch in Le Tour or the Giro. Great but hardly mainstream. Hardly re-democratizing the bicycle and re-establishing it as transport in any great numbers.

So why not focus on bicycle design in order to sell urban cycling to the masses? Upright bikes may be exotic to many in countries like Australia now, but they used to be a main feature on the urban landscape. Maybe it's time to let the 'other' bike brands have a go. The Batavus', Velorbis', Pashley's, et al. Let a whole new demographic realise that they don't have to invest in space age bicycles and all the gear. Tell them, "Um... you don't actually have to look like a 'cyclist' to ride a bike..." And pssst... it's safer sitting upright...

They couldn't do worse for selling cycling than decades of sports branding. I'll bet they'll get a lot further, a lot quicker. The results will be brilliant for society. The sports industry won't give up without a fight, of course, but a little competition never hurt. We're talking about a 'second cycling culture' after all, not a replacement cycling culture.

Although judging by many of the comments under the article, there is an uphill battle. Then again, it's the City That Hates Bikes...

Copenhagenize the planet. And have a lovely day.

Map!: The Undiscovered Country | by round the merseyrail we go | 18 March 2010, 09:14 PM

A couple of people have got in touch with me via Twitter to alert me to a brand new permutation of the Merseyrail map: a line diagram above the windows in the trains. For years now, the trains have featured poster sized representations of the network on the wall. I'm guessing that someone at Rail House twigged that if you got rid of them, you'd have a few extra spots for advertising, and the line diagram was born.

It should, of course, be noted that the line diagram is nothing new or innovative. London Transport - and indeed most metros across the world - have been doing them for years. They're at their best when you have a line like the Jubilee or Victoria, one straight line without any branches. Once you start getting variation, it gets complex, and indeed the Tube completely cops out of trying to show the whole of the District Line on one diagram, and splits the Wimbleware branch off onto a diagram of its own.

Merseyrail has an additional problem, in that the trains used are not exclusively favouring one line or the other. They may tend towards the Northern or the Wirral, but there tends to be a lot of interworking, so a line diagram will by necessity have to show both of them.

As is usual with this sort of thing, my apologies for only being able to offer you photos snapped in the flesh. Just click the smaller version for a bigger one and then squint a bit.

At first glance, they've done an excellent job in just fitting the whole thing in. Given the wide geographic spread of the network - think of the difference between Southport in the north and Chester in the south, or West Kirby in the east to Hunts Cross in the west - the fact that they managed to squeeze it into a horizontal stripe should be applauded. Though it feels counter-intuitive to have Chester and West Kirby lined up at the edge beside one another, it somehow works. And the use of the Mersey in the centre as a dividing line is a great visual marker.

But of course, I have to criticise. I'm sorry. My biggest bugbear is the incorporation of the City Line. As the key itself notes, only selected stations are shown. The question must therefore be asked - what's the point? The City Line makes an uncomfortable fit on the map, with a really unnecessary curve between Lime Street and Edge Hill so that it can slot in next to the Northern Line, and a very nasty split at South Parkway. A simple red marker indicating that interchange with the City Line was available would have been better. The choice of stations seems off, too - the points where the lines split, fair enough, and St Helens Central earns its place as a major destination, but Garswood? Hough Green over, say, Widnes? And Warrington and Wigan are both represented by one station, which isn't true.

That odd little curve after Meols Cop annoys me too.

Crossing to the Wirral side, and things are a bit better. I really like the way that Chester has been lined up with Shotton and the Borderlands Line - that's a nifty bit of design. My main gripe here is that the Wirral itself isn't shown. If you follow this map, you have no idea that West Kirby or New Brighton are by the sea. Personally I'd have sent the West Kirby up towards the sea at the end, like New Brighton, and placed a blue border top and bottom so that the Wirral Peninsula was marked out clearly. It would just be a pleasing visual (though admittedly there's no indication that Southport's near the coast, either). And why are all the stations on the Borderlands Line shown, when some (Hawarden Bridge) are barely served, and others (Upton, Heswall) are request stops? This wouldn't be an issue if, say, the Kirkby-Wigan line wasn't shown as having only one station, or the zero intermediate stops between Preston and Ormskirk. Is this a way of conditioning us to see the Borderlands as a branch of the Wirral Line?

General notes: they still haven't found a way to show the Merseytravel/TrioPlus area properly. It still has a raggedy, rough area, and the colour difference between the Ormskirk/Chester/Ellesmere Port branches and the rest is too stark for me. It's still a FUCKING SQUARE in the city centre, and I will go to my grave cursing that.

The biggest change is of course the addition of tourist attractions, shopping centres and transport interchanges in Birkenhead and Liverpool. I have to admit I'm a purist when it comes to this sort of thing. I hate the New York subway's purely geographic map, and I think that the Madrid Metro map, while a thing of beauty in the way it lays out the different lines, would be a lot better if they didn't show the different parks. Imagine if the London Underground map suddenly featured the various Royal Parks - squeezing Regent's Park, at least, into the map would result in a horrible distortion.

The Merseyrail diagrams haven't gone that far (they've resisted the urge to mark Birkenhead or Sefton Parks) but there are blobs in the Liverpool city centre. My issue with these is the somewhat haphazard placing: for example, positioning the Met Quarter and Cavern Walks closer to Central than Moorfields, or Chinatown closer to Lime Street. I'd have preferred a boxout, telling you to where to alight for each attraction, perhaps in the same way that the Underground line diagrams show airport and National Rail connections. It would also help with crowd management - the drivers on Wirral Line trains already suggest alighting at James Street for Liverpool ONE, but its positioning within the "Loop" on the diagram means that it looks miles away. Removing its "physical" position on the map, and simply showing it as accessible from James Street would make people use that station a lot more than Central.

Bus stations and ferry termini are a good, logical addition, though I'd question just marking the Beatles Story at the Pier Head and not the frigging Liver Building. I mean, come on. I'd have marked the triangular ferry route in the river (which would have sneakily enabled you to shove Wallasey and Spaceport in there, too). The Soccerbus at Sandhills is marked, but not at Birkenhead Central (poor Tranmere). And it's great marking the MtoGos, but how about keeping it up to date - Liverpool Central's has been open since November, and Hooton's just got one, but neither is marked on the diagram.

It's first generation stuff, so I'm willing to forgive it. If it were a bit tighter, a bit more consistent, and the tourist/transport features weren't so clumsy, I'd like it a lot more. It's certainly a valuable addition to the family of maps, and, as I said, it frees up all that space for more adverts. Which is of course great.

New Doctor Who series press launch in Cardiff | by scyfilove.com (Liverpool) | 18 March 2010, 09:03 PM

Two BBC video interviews and a sneaky pic at The Eleventh Hour. Hurry up April 3!

New Doctor Who series press launch in Cardiff has just flown in from scyfilove.com - click through for the rest of the good stuff

Oma Vintage Spring Sale | by PW Style | 18 March 2010, 08:49 PM

Here’s the deal, kittens. You already know this, but: It’s fucking be-yoo-tiful outside right now and it’s staying this way through the weekend.

But come Tuesday, it’s going to be chilly-willy again.

If you can’t bear the thought of wearing your winter coat one more day this year, why not splurge and invest in something new for next winter? Sure, it’s a little early, but every smart shopper knows now is the time to stock up cheaply.

NoLibs boutique Oma Vintage is knocking 20 percent off the price of all coats and heavy sweaters to make way for lightweight wearables. Stop by soon and be prepared for Mother Nature’s spring cockblock.

Monbiot: There is no simple way to battle public hostility to climate research. As the psychologists show, facts barely sway us anyway. | by Climate Progress | 18 March 2010, 08:45 PM

There is one question that no one who denies manmade climate change wants to answer: what would it take to persuade you? In most cases the answer seems to be nothing. No level of evidence can shake the growing belief that climate science is a giant conspiracy codded up by boffins and governments to tax and control us.

That’s UK Guardian columnist George Monbiot.  I don’t agree with everything he says — and I don’t think the primary goal should be to persuade the unpersuadable.

But I am trying to bring you a variety of views on this central problem of climate science messaging, and this is a pretty good piece, which I excerpt below:

The new study by the Met Office, which paints an even grimmer picture than the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, will do nothing to change this view.

The attack on climate scientists is now widening to an all-out war on science. Writing recently for the Telegraph, the columnist Gerald Warner dismissed scientists as “white-coated prima donnas and narcissists … pointy-heads in lab coats [who] have reassumed the role of mad cranks … The public is no longer in awe of scientists. Like squabbling evangelical churches in the 19th century, they can form as many schismatic sects as they like, nobody is listening to them any more.”

Views like this can be explained partly as the revenge of the humanities students. There is scarcely an editor or executive in any major media company – and precious few journalists – with a science degree, yet everyone knows that the anoraks are taking over the world. But the problem is compounded by complexity. Arthur C Clarke remarked that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”. He might have added that any sufficiently advanced expertise is indistinguishable from gobbledegook. Scientific specialisation is now so extreme that even people studying neighbouring subjects within the same discipline can no longer understand each other. The detail of modern science is incomprehensible to almost everyone, which means that we have to take what scientists say on trust. Yet science tells us to trust nothing, to believe only what can be demonstrated. This contradiction is fatal to public confidence.

Yes, this conundrum lies at the heart of much of the messaging problem.

Distrust has been multiplied by the publishers of scientific journals, whose monopolistic practices make the supermarkets look like angels, and which are long overdue for a referral to the Competition Commission. They pay nothing for most of the material they publish, yet, unless you are attached to an academic institute, they’ll charge you £20 or more for access to a single article. In some cases they charge libraries tens of thousands for an annual subscription. If scientists want people at least to try to understand their work, they should raise a full-scale revolt against the journals that publish them. It is no longer acceptable for the guardians of knowledge to behave like 19th-century gamekeepers, chasing the proles out of the grand estates.

But there’s a deeper suspicion here as well. Popular mythology – from Faust through Frankenstein to Dr No – casts scientists as sinister schemers, harnessing the dark arts to further their diabolical powers. Sometimes this isn’t far from the truth. Some use their genius to weaponise anthrax for the US and Russian governments. Some isolate terminator genes for biotech companies, to prevent farmers from saving their own seed. Some lend their names to articles ghostwritten by pharmaceutical companies, which mislead doctors about the drugs they sell. Until there is a global code of practice or a Hippocratic oath binding scientists to do no harm, the reputation of science will be dragged through the dirt by researchers who devise new means of hurting us.

Yesterday in the Guardian Peter Preston called for a prophet to lead us out of the wilderness. “We need one passionate, persuasive scientist who can connect and convince … We need to be taught to believe by a true believer.” Would it work? No. Look at the hatred and derision the passionate and persuasive Al Gore attracts. The problem is not only that most climate scientists can speak no recognisable human language, but also the expectation that people are amenable to persuasion.

Well, actually people are amenable to persuasion.  But there’s no possibility of a “prophet” because one of the major strategies of the anti-science ideologues is to attack the credibility of anyone who is any good at articulating the science:  Hansen, Santer, Mann, Schneider, and on and on.

In 2008 the Washington Post summarised recent psychological research on misinformation. This shows that in some cases debunking a false story can increase the number of people who believe it. In one study, 34% of conservatives who were told about the Bush government’s claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction were inclined to believe them. But among those who were shown that the government’s claims were later comprehensively refuted by the Duelfer report, 64% ended up believing that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

Fundamentally, people negatives are weak (”Don’t think of an elephant”), so one has to be very careful in messaging not to repeat the misinformation or at least to replace it with something more memorable.

There’s a possible explanation in an article published by Nature in January. It shows that people tend to “take their cue about what they should feel, and hence believe, from the cheers and boos of the home crowd”. Those who see themselves as individualists and those who respect authority, for instance, “tend to dismiss evidence of environmental risks, because the widespread acceptance of such evidence would lead to restrictions on commerce and industry, activities they admire”. Those with more egalitarian values are “more inclined to believe that such activities pose unacceptable risks and should be restricted”.

These divisions, researchers have found, are better at explaining different responses to information than any other factor. Our ideological filters encourage us to interpret new evidence in ways that reinforce our beliefs. “As a result, groups with opposing values often become more polarised, not less, when exposed to scientifically sound information.” The conservatives in the Iraq experiment might have reacted against something they associated with the Duelfer report, rather than the information it contained.

That’s why it will be impossible to move conservatives until conservative political and intellectual leaders and conservative media outlets stop repeating disinformation endlessly.

That said, I don’t think one should spend a lot of time trying to persuade the unpersuadable — I certainly try to minimize the amount of time I waste on that here.

Perhaps we have to accept that there is no simple solution to public disbelief in science. The battle over climate change suggests that the more clearly you spell the problem out, the more you turn people away. If they don’t want to know, nothing and no one will reach them. There goes my life’s work.

The highlighted statement is a commonly held view but has no basis in fact.  Ironically, much of the environmental and progressive political  community started downplaying any talk of global warming just as the disinformers ramped it up.

People want to know the essential facts, but the main intermediary in disseminating information to public, the media, simply isn’t distinguishing between what’s essential and what’s nonessential, what’s information and what disinformation.

The Power of 'No' | by onlineSpin | 18 March 2010, 08:30 PM

Simple words can be very powerful. One of the most important tools a worker in the media and marketing world has is the power to say "no." Learning how and when to use the word is a vital lesson. This is true whether you are in sales, client service or product development. It's particularly true in start-up companies, where resources are scarce, historical guidance is short, and making too many promises is devastatingly more dangerous than making too few.

jamesykwak | by The Baseline Scenario | 18 March 2010, 08:12 PM

By James Kwak

So, we have a book that goes on sale a week from Tuesday (although you can pre-order it now). We created another blog for book-specific news, in order to avoid cluttering this blog with too much book stuff. But we are going to provide occasional updates (like this one) here with a few highlights.

In the last week, we got a friendly review by Arnold Kling, we learned that the books do actually exist, and we put up a page with some in-person events in case you’re wondering if we look like our photos. We also put up our first factual correction, having to do with the 10 percent cap on deposits. Note that we are interested in correcting errors of fact — we put a lot of effort into getting the facts right, including hiring our own professional fact-checkers (that’s another blog post for another time). If you think we made an error of interpretation (or an error of theory) . . . well, we’re happy to think about it, but don’t expect a correction.

Share/Bookmark | by Rosie Niven | 18 March 2010, 07:06 PM

The Scottish Saltire with the Northumbrian flag at Carter Bar Originally uploaded by neonwilderness. Yesterday, revellers without even the most tenuous Irish connection packed into pubs across Britain to toast Ireland’s patron saint. The popularity of St Patrick’s day celebrations (which from what I hear only really took off in Dublin after Irish visitors to [...]

Exclusive: Chief sponsor of landmark climate manipulation conference maintains close financial ties to controversial geo-engineering company - Goodell: "Is this conference about advancing the science and governance of geoengineering or about advancing and raising the profile of the Climate Response Fund?" | by Climate Progress | 18 March 2010, 06:48 PM

I am not comfortable with the the idea that a meeting set up to create guidelines governing geoengineering field tests might be used to help raise funds for geoengineering field tests, without the informed consent of meeting participants. I am also concerned with possible conflicts of interest related to the profit motive.

That’s from an e-mail that climatologist and geo-engineering expert Ken Caldeira sent me this week.

I had heard last week that Caldeira was not going to the star-studded “Asilomar International Conference on Climate Intervention Technologies” — the “Woodstock” of geo-engineering.  I asked him why.  I reprint his full email below, along with concerns raised to me by geo-engineering expert David Keith.

Frankly, I think all of the conference attendees (and they include some of the biggest names in climate, full list here) need to ask themselves whether they are helping to legitimize — and thereby ultimately helping to raise funds for — a nonprofit that will not unequivocally forswear funding geo-engineering experiments, a nonprofit that is closely tied to the financing efforts of a for-profit company that has already started pursuing dubious geo-engineering schemes.

This Asilomar conference, which begins next week, proclaims its lofty goal “to develop norms and guidelines for controlled experimentation on climate engineering or intervention techniques.”  That’s one reason why, as journalist Jeff Goodell put it to me, it “needs to be purer than pure.”

My Monday post pointed out that it appeared to fail that test because its  Sole “Strategic Partner” is Australia’s “dirty coal” state of Victoria.  Goodell, author of the forthcoming book, How to Cool the Planet, said of that sponsorship, “I think it looks awful.”

But a far bigger issue, according to many leading experts I spoke to, is that the “developer” of the entire conference is the Climate Response Fund, which has close ties to a very controversial geo-engineering firm, Climos.  As Science magazine’s Eli Kintisch reported in November:

Critics of the Response Fund and its conference worry about its ties to Climos, a geoengineering startup company started in 2005 by entrepreneur Dan Whaley, Leinen’s son. With Leinen as its chief scientific officer, Climos sought to perform ocean iron fertilization experiments and sell carbon credits it could show it earned.

Facing international opposition to the idea of selling credits for the controversial technique, the firm decided last year to morph into an ocean logistics company, with scientists doing the ocean experiments funded by charity, presumably through Leinen’s nonprofit, or other means. Whaley said he helped conceive of and launch the nonprofit, introducing Leinen to its fundraiser, Danielle Guttman. “Since then I’ve had no role,” he said of the Response Fund. Leinen said she no longer had “any financial interest” in the company, and Whaley agreed.

The situation is a tad more complicated than that.  Climos and the Climate Response Fund still have a very close financial relationship, as we will see.  Also, if Climos is no longer pursuing research into ocean fertilization, you’d never know that from its FAQ or the rest of its website, for that matter.  The Science story continues:

Since geoengineering involves techniques that could have global repercussions, say experts, it’s particularly important that any discussions about regulating the new technologies avoid the appearance of possible commercial interests or conflicts. These issues are particularly acute with commercial ocean fertilization.

“It would be better for people with less of an appearance of a conflict of interest [to] play this role,” said Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution for Science in Stanford, California, when discussing the Response Fund’s role. “There’s a perception that you’ve got a fox in the henhouse—for-profit companies or their nonprofit surrogates looking at governance of geoengineering.” Physicist David Keith of the University of Calgary in Canada  “welcomes” the effort but called Leinen’s nonprofit “nontransparent and appears to be closely tied to Climos, which was conceived to do ocean fertilization for profit.

Goodell told me that he thinks the meeting could be an important turning point in thrashing out key issues of governance.  But Goodell posed to me the key question:  “Is this conference about advancing the science and governance of geoengineering or about advancing and raising the profile of the Climate Response Fund?  That’s what a lot of the scientists I talked to are worried about.”

Goodell who interviewed many of the leading geo-engineering players for his book told me that Caldeira and Keith “have thought about the ethical issues of geo-engineering longer than most,” so their concerns “have to be taken seriously.”  I have new comments from both of them below, but first let’s look closer at Climos.

One of the few remaining non-aerosol strategies still taken seriously by some is ocean fertilization, yet a recent Nature article argued  that strategy for geoengineering “should be abandoned.”

The idea of selling carbon credits — i.e. offsets — to fund such projects was truly dreadful, as I discussed by in 2007 (see “Rule Three of Offsets: No Geo-engineering“).  It was such a dubious idea that 18 leading experts from 13 countries, who comprise the Scientific Steering Committee of the Surface Ocean–Lower Atmosphere Study (SOLAS)–a leadin group studying the ocean-atmosphere system–went to the trouble of issuing a “Position Statement on Large-Scale Ocean Fertilisation”:

Given our present lack of knowledge, the judgement of the SOLAS SSC is that ocean fertilisation will be ineffective and potentially deleterious, and should not be used as a strategy for offsetting CO2 emissions.

Ouch.

Indeed, a press release from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences about a brand new study notes:

A design scheme to engineer microalgae blooms in the world’s oceans to reduce atmospheric CO2 levels could contaminate the oceans with a neurotoxin, according to a study. Charles Trick and colleagues report that fertilizing the ocean with iron, a strategy proposed to boost the number of CO2-consuming organisms living in the ocean’s surface waters, would likely favor the growth of Pseudo nitzschia, a genus of phytoplankton that produces a component of the neurotoxin that causes Amnesic Shellfish Poisoning. The naturally occurring toxin could potentially cause human health risks if fish that feed on the algae, such as anchovies and sardines, were consumed, and may harm marine mammals and seabirds that feed on these fishes.

This I suspect we’ll be the kind of thing will be reading more about — the unanticipated negative consequences of geo-engineering schemes.  Indeed, it’s easy to like geo-engineering when you don’t know anything about it.  Then it’s just a magic panacea.

Certainly no company should have been proposing to do large-scale iron fertilization experiments funded by selling carbon offsets before there was far more data about the safety of such an approach and before their were established norms and guidelines.  As Dr. Keith put it in an email to me:

“Driving iron fertilization by the carbon offset market combines two marginal ideas that are both subject to gaming, its among worst ways one could imagine to govern geoengineering.”

So having Climos set up and bankroll the Climate Response Fund, which in turn has set up and helped bankroll this landmark geo-engineering conference on governance is just a bad idea.  Keith emailed me:

Given the diversity of views around geoengineering, such as the sense that links to experimentation and commercialization with solar radiation management technologies set a very dangerous precedent, it’s important that the meeting set the right precedent by being as divorced from commercial interests as possible. As the sole sponsor for the meeting (as I understand it) I would like to see the Climate Response Fund make a formal and unequivocal statement that they will not fund experiments nor will they fund any for-profit organization with a substantial interest in geoengineering technologies.

I haven’t been able to get such an unequivocal statement.  But first, let me reprint Caldeira’s full email in response to my question about why he wasn’t going to this historic conference:

I have learned that the Asilomar geoengineering meeting is expected to play an important role in legitimizing and helping raise funds for Margaret Leinen’s Climate Response Fund.

I have not seen any statement from Margaret Leinen or her  Fund saying that the Fund will not support geoengineering field tests nor have I seen a statement saying that the Fund would not directly or indirectly transfer resources to for-profit companies like Climos.

I am not comfortable with the the idea that a meeting set up to create guidelines governing geoengineering field tests might be used to help raise funds for geoengineering field tests, without the informed consent of meeting participants. I am also concerned with possible conflicts of interest related to the profit motive.

Guidelines governing such tests should be developed as a product of an ongoing process involving established professional societies and organizations, established major non-profit institutions, intergovernmental institutions, or others who do not have an apparent stake in specific outcomes.

Margaret Leinen can obviate my concerns by stating clearly  (1) that the Fund will not support geoengineering field tests and (2)  that the Fund would not directly or indirectly transfer resources to for-profit geoengineering companies like Climos (or other for-profit companies with significant financial participation by members of Margaret Leinen’s family).

Without such statements, I cannot be confident that I am not being used without my consent for purposes of which I do not approve. Thus, I cannot attend the meeting.

I am also busy and have plenty of other things I need to do.

1. Funds made available by Bill Gates support several post-doctoral researchers in my lab, as well as access to computational facilities. Some, but far from all, of this research was geoengineering-related. (I attach the most recent paper supported by these funds, showing that about 1/4 of Chinese CO2 emissions support consumption, primarily in the developed world.)

2. David Keith and I have used some of these funds to support meetings at which geoengineering was discussed. The flow of money was uniformly out and not in. All of the participants at these meetings were fully informed of their nature. No funds were ever raised in activities surrounding these meeting.

3. I am listed as an inventor on patents related to vertically pumping water in the ocean and related to storing carbon dioxide in the ocean by dissolving carbonate minerals. I have publicly stated that if any of these patents are used for climate modification purposes, I will donate my share of the proceeds to non-profit charities and NGOs.

When some of these concerns were first brought to my attention late last week, I emailed Dr. Leinen.  Based on my interviews, there is some disagreement about whether a dinner immediately after the conference was ever going to be used for fundraising or not.  But Leinen assures me in an email that it “is not, nor was it ever intended to be a fundraising dinner.”

I also asked her the question that Caldeira had raised with me, “Will the Climate Response Fund assert that it will not fund geoengineering field tests?“  At the time, the CRF had basically a one-page website, but Sunday night they put in place a comprehensive website.  Dr. Leinen directed me to the “About Us” tab, which lists all of their goals and ends:

CRF is dedicated to this work and has no plans for funding field experiments.

As someone who lives in Washington DC and follows politics closely, the phrase “no plans” leaped out at me.  For instance, FoxNews reported in May 2002, “The United States has no plans to invade Iraq or any other country, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Friday.”  Doh!

Since CRF is based in Alexandria, VA (i.e. inside the DC beltway), I asked Dr. Leinen:

Many people have stressed to me the need to separate issues of governance from support/funding for actual tests.  The optics issue is, according to some, especially significant for CRF given your personal connection to Climos.

The phrase on the website:  CRF “has no plans for funding field experiments” is not a very definitive statement, at least in Washington DC, where politicians are constantly asserting they have “no plans” to do  things that they in fact end up doing.

Q:  Will the Climate Response Fund simply assert without hedges that it will not fund geoengineering field tests now or in the future?

Her full reply:

Dear Dr. Romm,

None of us has a crystal ball for the future.  But I think I understand the thrust of your question and want to respond fairly and not with wording that you would interpret as a “DC statement”.  This requires thinking about whether there were any future conditions under which CRF would consider changing out plans.

Geoengineering field experiments are not in our current strategic plan. Our focus is on the norms and guidelines for research.  Others are also focused on governance and see the norms and guidelines as an element of that
governance.  If in the future norms, guidelines and national/international governance were in place that made geoengineering field research acceptable and the scientific research community called on CRF to serve as a research funding entity, we might consider changing our plans.

Margaret Leinen

That is obviously not an unequivocal statement and disappointing to those who wanted a very bright line

Just yesterday, I was sent information that will be even more disappointing to those who wanted a bright line between nonprofit work to establish norms and guidelines for geo-engineering governance and for-profit work into geo-engineering strategies.  The November Science article leaves the distinct impression that there is no financial connection between CRF (run by Leinen) and Climos (founded by Leinen’s son, Dan Whaley, with Leinen as its chief scientific officer):

Whaley said he helped conceive of and launch the nonprofit, introducing Leinen to its fundraiser, Danielle Guttman. “Since then I’ve had no role,” he said of the Response Fund. Leinen said she no longer had “any financial interest” in the company, and Whaley agreed.

But yesterday I was sent the “Conference Attendee Biographies” list and who is on the list under “CLIMATE RESPONSE FUND and CLIMATE INSTITUTE STAFF”:

Bill Kohrs
VP. Finance and Administration
Bio: Financial advisor to Climate Response Fund

Who is Bill Kohrs?

You’ll find his bio on the Climos website:

Bill Kohrs holds the position of VP Finance and Administration and Head of Operations for Climos, Inc.

So the VP for Finance at Climos is The financial advisor to CRF.  Again, here is what Climos does, according to its website:

We are in active collaboration on the scientific, technical and regulatory steps necessary to bring a next generation Ocean Iron Fertilization (OIF) project to realization. Our focus is providing services to enable these larger more complex field trials to be conducted, including legal, regulatory, environmental impact work, communications, iron distribution and overall project management and logistics.

It’s bad enough that the “Asilomar International Conference on Climate Intervention Technologies” has as its sole “Strategic Partner” Australia’s “dirty coal” state of Victoria.

But I think it is just absurd that the landmark conference whose goal is “to develop norms and guidelines for controlled experimentation on climate engineering or intervention techniques” is so closely tied to a company that clearly wants regulatory freedom to pursue an extremely dubious geo-engineering scheme for profit.

I think CRF needs to make an unequivocal statement that they will not support geo-engineering field experiments — in order to remain a credible nonprofit in the arena of developing norms and guidelines for geo-engineering experiments.

I think all of the conference attendees need to ask themselves whether they are helping to legitimize — and thereby ultimately helping to raise funds for — a nonprofit that will not clearly forswear funding geo-engineering experiments, a nonprofit that is closely tied to the financing efforts of Climos, a for-profit company that has already started pursuing dubious geo-engineering schemes.

Related Posts:

• Science: “Optimism about a geoengineered ‘easy way out’ should be tempered by examination of currently observed climate changes”
• Caldeira calls the vision of Lomborg’s Climate Consensus “a dystopic world out of a science fiction story.”
• British coal industry flack pushes geo-engineering “ploy” to give politicians “viable reason to do nothing” about global warming.

Two L.A. Evenings | by BLDGBLOD | 18 March 2010, 06:17 PM

This is just a quick reminder to anyone in Los Angeles that Architizer's official L.A. launch party is tonight down at the A+D Museum's new location on Wilshire Boulevard. Stop by Architizer for more details—but it should be a beautiful evening to be out and about, and things kick off at 6:30pm.

This is a further reminder, as well, that Peter Cook of Archigram and Crab Studio will be throwing open the doors for a new exhibition over at SCI-Arc tomorrow night: London Eight features work by professors and their "proteges" from the Bartlett School of Architecture in London. Tomorrow night—Friday, March 19—also includes a group discussion, moderated by Peter Cook, with Yousef Al-Mehdari, Pascal Bronner, Johan Hybschmann, CJ Lim, marcosandmarjan, and Mark Smout and Laura Allen of Smout Allen. That's at 6pm. Hope to see you at both events!

Emergency: Liverpool Twestival seeks venue | by Liverpool Blogs | 18 March 2010, 06:07 PM

The Liverpool Twestival is happening next Thursday 25th but as was announced earlier on their twitter feed, the venue (who shall remain nameless) has dropped out.

If you are a venue that has a window next Thursday night and you think you can accommodate about a hundred Tweeters, a band, a raffle and other fun and games, please contact the Twestival organisers via their website.

Or their twitter feed. Or email me feelinglistless@btopenworld.com and I'll pass you on to the organisers. Thanks.

Favelas: central to a sustainable Rio? | by Green Futures | 18 March 2010, 05:17 PM

It’s time to make Rio’s favelas an integral part of its success, says Damian Platt.

The colourful sprawl of make-shift housing over the hillsides of Rio de Janeiro are as much a symbol of the city as Christ the Redeemer or Copacabana beach. Taking their name from a resilient shrub found in northern Brazil’s inhospitable backlands, the favelas have been home to the city’s poorest communities since the end of the 19th century, and now number over 1,020 in Rio alone.

Relations between city authorities and the vibrant favela communities have always been strained, with officials unwilling to recognise the economic benefit their inhabitants bring to the city through poorly paid service jobs. But though held back by labels of poverty and violence, the favelas are home to an aspirational population ready to take its place in society. Initiatives that integrate the favelas with the city are an essential step on the road to a sustainable Rio, and forward-thinking businesses are beginning to wake up to this reality.

Mobile phone and computer companies are among those taking a lead. Many of the favelas now have free wifi, and inhabitants are turning the technology to their advantage. One non-profit organisation, Rede Jovem or “Youth Net”, has recruited five young women to log and name the unmapped streets, shops and meeting points of five favelas. The project is funded by a research institute belonging to Oi, Brazil’s largest telephone operator. “People think that there’s nothing here but violence,” says Alini dos Santos Silva, a ‘wikireporter’ from Pavao-Pavaozinho. “But I want to show them! The favelas are above all places of life, of meetings.”

Mixed messages

Favelas have other advantages, too. For many, they provide the best low-cost housing currently on offer. And the central location of favelas like Rocinha takes some weight off the heavily congested public transport system.

But while businesses are recognising their potential, the state is sending out a different message. 2009 saw the start of construction of a three metre high concrete barrier around 11 of Rio’s favelas. The authorities argue that the wall will help the police to overcome violent drug gangs, and that it will protect the edges of the Atlantic rainforest, which borders on the city, from deforestation due to expanding settlements.

But for many residents, it means further rejection and segregation, inciting comparisons to Israel’s much criticised ‘security wall’. According to the national newspaper O Globo, over 500 houses will be destroyed to make way for the wall in Rio’s South Zone. Its construction has been planned to coincide with social investment programmes aimed at residents of the favelas, such as micro-credit schemes for small businesses. While many dismiss these programmes as cynical attempts to win over the locals, they do suggest that the state government is beginning to recognise the potential social and economic value of the favelas, and to invest in their future. Now perhaps, it needs to reassure them that it isn’t trying to wall off the favelas from the future Rio.

Yes, toucan...

On the hillside above Rio’s beach district of Leme, looking down over the ocean and across to Sugarloaf Mountain, sits the favela of Babilônia – home to some 4,000 people. Bird-watchers can catch a glimpse of rare species, including the toucan and jacupemba, and well designed ‘eco-paths’ mean tourists can get a close-up of the natural wonders without any threat to the wildlife.

It hasn’t always been so idyllic. Deforestation, to make way for informal settlements like Babilônia on the mountain slopes, had caused severe erosion, leaving the city vulnerable to landslides. But in 2001, a group of residents set up CoopBabilônia, the Co-operative for the Reforestation of Babilônia. With financial support from the nearby Rio Sul shopping centre, one of the largest in the city, the Co-operative employs 23 workers to clear areas of weeds and grass, and replant species native to the rainforest using tools supplied by the mayor’s office. And it has begun to earn its way like a business, hiring out its technical expertise to both public and private sector clients, and designing environmental projects for them.

Recently, CoopBabilônia has begun to encourage eco-tourism, organising walks three times a year that are open to the public. The design and maintenance of ‘eco-paths’ has also served as a means of setting and protecting the borders of the APAs (‘Areas of Ambiental Preservation’) with a specific objective of monitoring irregular construction projects.

It was also involved in the construction of one of Rio’s first green roofs. The naturally filtered rainwater is captured for use in the school – a welcome bonus in Babilônia, where water shortages are commonplace. For Carlos Antônio Pereira, a founder of the project, this sort of reward is no more than expected: “The more you invest in a community and its workers, the more benefits you reap for the entire city”. – Damian Platt

Damian Platt is a writer and cultural activist based in Rio de Janeiro.

Overview of competitiveness issues in Poland | by Climate Strategies | 18 March 2010, 05:17 PM

Author: Simone Cooper
Report Date: 01 Jan 2010
Status: Blank

This short paper examines the GHG profile of manufacturing sectors in Poland and assesses which of them may merit further study into the competitiveness impacts of carbon pricing.

Energy and Global Warming News for March 18th: China squeezes U.S. firms out of its massive wind-power market; Major concentrated solar project in Mojave moves ahead | by Climate Progress | 18 March 2010, 05:14 PM

Report says China is squeezing U.S. firms out of its massive wind-power market

U.S. companies are getting squeezed out of the big Chinese wind-power market even as Dallas investors are bringing Chinese firms here via a big wind farm in Texas, according to a new industry report.

“They’ve used every measure you could possibly think of to enhance production of renewable energy equipment in China,” said report author Alan Wolff of the trade law firm Dewey & LeBoeuf LLP.

U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk won a pledge from the Chinese last fall to drop rules giving preference to Chinese makers of wind-power equipment. But Kirk’s office hasn’t seen any evidence that the pledge has been carried out, said spokeswoman Carol Guthrie.

Meanwhile, Chinese manufacturers are entering the U.S. wind market under a joint venture led by Dallas investor Cappy McGarr.

McGarr’s U.S. Renewable Energy Group, with Cielo Wind Power LP of Austin and China’s Shenyang Power Group, is planning a $1.5 billion, 600-megawatt wind farm on 36,000 acres in West Texas.

Major California Solar Project Moves Ahead

After two years of environmental review, state regulators in California have given the nod to a large new solar installation planned for the Mojave Desert.

California regulators on Wednesday recommended that the state’s first new big solar power plant in nearly two decades be approved after a two-and-half-year review of its environmental impact on the Mojave Desert.

The recommendation by staff members of the California Energy Commission — which still must be accepted by the commission board — comes three weeks after the federal Department of Energy offered the project’s builder, BrightSource Energy, a $1.37 billion loan guarantee to construct the 392-megawatt Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System.

The Sierra Club, Defenders of Wildlife and the Center for Biological Diversity favor solar energy projects, but objected to building the BrightSource power plant in the Ivanpah Valley of Southern California, saying it would harm rare plants and animals like the desert tortoise.

Other environmentalists argued that the project, which features thousands of mirrors that focus the sun on 459-foot-tall towers, would mar the visual beauty of the desert.

China Drawing High-Tech Research From U.S.

For years, many of China’s best and brightest left for the United States, where high-tech industry was more cutting-edge. But Mark R. Pinto is moving in the opposite direction.

Mr. Pinto is the first chief technology officer of a major American tech company to move to China. The company, Applied Materials, is one of Silicon Valley’s most prominent firms. It supplied equipment used to perfect the first computer chips. Today, it is the world’s biggest supplier of the equipment used to make semiconductors, solar panels and flat-panel displays.

In addition to moving Mr. Pinto and his family to Beijing in January, Applied Materials, whose headquarters are in Santa Clara, Calif., has just built its newest and largest research labs here. Last week, it even held its annual shareholders’ meeting in Xi’an.

It is hardly alone. Companies — and their engineers — are being drawn here more and more as China develops a high-tech economy that increasingly competes directly with the United States.

Cancun Climate Talks Get Dim Prognosis Nine Months Before Start

Government negotiators are already writing off chances for a global treaty to fight climate change, nine months before the annual talks begin in Cancun, Mexico.

Kunihiko Shimada, principal international negotiator at the Japanese Ministry of the Environment, said yesterday a deal this year is “almost impossible.” Jos Delbeke, who spearheads European Union climate policy at the European Commission, ruled out a “comprehensive legal agreement” in 2010.

Deal nearing on Senate climate bill: lawmaker

“We’re planning to button up our efforts somewhere I hope next week,” Senator John Kerry told reporters after meeting with a coalition that represents automakers, forestry and paper companies, Big Oil, steel, mining, electricity and others.

Kerry is working with Republican Senator Lindsey Graham and independent Senator Joseph Lieberman on a bill to require U.S. industry to cut emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases associated with global warming.

Indicating there was still work to be done, Kerry said, “We’re trying to build support as we develop (bill) language.”

Bruce Josten, an executive vice president at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, left Wednesday’s meeting with the three senators and told reporters: “They’re being very constructive; they’re trying to figure out how to make this work for the American economy.”

GE Tells Obama ‘Sell Hard’ in Indonesia With China in Pursuit

General Electric Co. Chief Executive Jeffrey Immelt wants Barack Obama to “sell hard” in Indonesia as he extols U.S. expertise in industries such as clean energy. He’ll have to work fast — Premier Wen Jiabao will make China’s sales pitch in Jakarta next month.

President Obama’s trip to his childhood home, already delayed once and currently scheduled for March 23-25, is key to a pledge to boost U.S. exports and “lead the global economy” in providing alternatives to fossil fuels. Southeast Asia’s biggest economy, which Immelt included last week among nations that may provide the growth “surprise” of the next decade, has the world’s largest geothermal reserves.

Winning orders for plants that harness the earth’s heat to produce electricity is a test of the U.S.’s ability to compete with China for exports in a region where its investments lag the European Union and Japan. China profited from Indonesia’s earlier energy needs, supplying coal-fired plants in the last decade, said Ravi Krishnaswamy, Singapore-based Asia-Pacific director for Frost & Sullivan, an energy consultancy.

API uses Gulf of Mexico lease sale to push wider drilling

The American Petroleum Institute, the oil industry’s biggest trade group, said strong industry bidding in Wednesday’s latest Gulf of Mexico lease sale shows that the Obama administration should make more areas available for offshore oil-and-gas drilling.
The Interior Department attracted over $949 million in high bids in the sale, which covered tracts in a 2.4 million acre region of federal waters off the coasts of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.
“The U.S. government could replicate this success by providing leasing opportunities in unexplored areas of the Outer Continental Shelf – like offshore Virginia, the eastern Gulf of Mexico, and the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas off Alaska,” said API President Jack Gerard in a statement Wednesday, calling it a way to bring in new revenues and create jobs.

Could Climate Bill Boost Auto Workers?

If bundled with the right incentives, comprehensive climate and energy legislation will generate as many as 150,000 jobs in the American auto sector by 2020, according to a study released Tuesday.

This report “tracks a trend where more efficiency means more jobs,” said Bracken Hendricks, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, which commissioned the study along with the Natural Resources Defense Council and the United Auto Workers. “More efficiency means more investment in skilled labor, and in high-quality manufactured content, and that directly translates to jobs.”

“The move to greater fuel economy means greater labor content per vehicle and higher employment across the fleet,” the report states. “This will include new investment in a host of incremental improvements to conventional gasoline powered internal combustion engines, from new controls for valves and timing, to variable speed transmissions and advanced electronics. It will also include entirely new systems like hybrid drive trains and advanced diesel engines.”

Wyo.’s Crash Program to Develop ‘Green’ Coal

In the summer of 2008, Wyoming’s governor, Dave Freudenthal, went to California for meetings with state officials and utility executives. What he brought was, quite literally, a burning question.

California was in the throes of putting together the nation’s first cap on greenhouse gases, and it appeared that if a Democrat were elected president, there might soon be a federal law, as well. At stake was Wyoming’s biggest industry — coal production. Wyoming lawmakers worried that California would lead the nation to impose a ban on imports of out-of-state electricity if it were produced by coal-fired power plants.

For both states, these are meat-and-potatoes questions. Wyoming is, by far, the nation’s biggest coal producer. California is the second-largest electricity market in the United States. Freudenthal took the issue one step further: Were there any circumstances under which California regulators and utilities would consider power produced by Wyoming coal to be “green” enough to sell for premium prices?

The governor, a Democrat, and Wyoming state Rep. Thomas Lubnau II, a Republican, had both been impressed by the exploits of Anadarko Petroleum Corp., a Texas-based oil exploration company that had rejuvenated a century-old Wyoming oil field by injecting carbon dioxide into the formation. The company was touting its new production as “green oil,” because it had taken millions of tons of man-made carbon dioxide being vented into the atmosphere and successfully injected it underground to produce more oil.

Would California recognize “green coal”? Moreover, if engineers in Wyoming figured out a way to separate and bury most of the CO2 emissions resulting from generating electricity by burning coal, could the electricity fetch the high prices being paid by California utilities for wind and solar energy?

Auto alliance opposes Murkowski on EPA greenhouse gas regs

The Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers is officially opposed to Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s (R-Alaska) effort to block EPA from regulating greenhouse gases through a congressional resolution of disapproval.

The Alliance, which includes 11 major carmakers, worries the resolution to overturn EPA’s finding that greenhouse gases endanger human health and welfare would derail an agreement reached with the Obama administration on higher fuel efficiency standards. The so-called endangerment finding is the legal underpinning of EPA’s efforts to regulate carbon emissions.

Renewable Energy Investment May Reach $200 Billion in 2010

Renewable energy investment may rise by 23 percent this year as government stimulus funds mainly in the U.S. and Europe are spent wind turbines and solar panels.

Spending may rise to between $175 billion and $200 billion this year from $162 billion in 2009, said Bloomberg New Energy Finance Chief Executive Officer Michael Liebreich today.

On the Street.....Milan V., Milano | by The Sartorialist | 18 March 2010, 05:13 PM

Putting Service Design on the Front Page | by thinkpublic.com | 18 March 2010, 04:41 PM

The remit of the service designer is rapidly expanding. More and more organisations are seeking to involve designers in order to improve their work processes and drive innovation in service provision. The growing interest in the area was compounded this week by the publication of a supplement with Monday’s Media Guardian dedicated to explaining the unique processes of service design and how design thinking is powering creative change across all sectors, especially in the field of public services. Reflecting on the opportunities and challenges presented in the new information age, Mathew Taylor, chief executive of the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce explains that, ”Good design process brings in a good understanding of the context : financial constraints, processes and how human beings behave”. Companies like thinkpublic are using the principles of observation on which service design research is founded to channel new technologies and develop ideas through co-design. Design Council chief executive, David Kester remarks how, “Technology is just ideas. design is about taking those ideas and making them work for people” By recognising the capacity for their employees and services users to become involved the the design process, companies can stay ahead, letting everyone across the organisation have responsibility for research and development and have ‘a connected flow of innovative ideas flowing at every level in the enterprise’. 

An article by Pamela Buxton looked at how the pioneering work of thinkpublic provides powerful insight through engaging nteractive research techniques. Focusing on social innovation, the pieces considers how, “people using services may feel isolated and vulnerable” and that “with its holistic and participatory approach to problem solving, service design can directly engage with these end users to identify what they need and how best to deliver it”. The article spoke about a thinkpublic project, part of a Design Council mentoring programme for managers, working with Lewisham Borough Council on investigating ways to improve performance of their homelessness prevention unit. Context was provided for the work by extensive research through visual ethnographic media comprising of three ‘insight’ films. Sean Miller a service designer who collaborated with thinkpublic on the project found the films produced to be ‘incredibly raw and real’ and remarked on how the research was ‘hugely enlightening to both front line staff and management’.

The films were shown at a workshop event with council workers, leading to a ‘What’s next document’ and the generation of 35-40 initial ideas based on this preliminary client research. Ten ideas are now being prototyped which mean that more clients will be able to move the process faster to get off the streets and ultimately into permanent accommodation. Another thinkpublic client, Lynne Maher, acting innovation director at the NHS Institute for Innovation, further elaborates on how by using innovative design processes such as producing ethnographic films, institutions can use the tacit knowledge and experience of frontline staff to identify areas for improvement. “We usually talk about helping patients, but we can also help out own staff, particularly by observation”. thinkpublic worked with the institute on their Productive Ward programme which delivers efficiency with NHS ward staff in order to ‘release time to care’ for patients. 

Gaynor Aaltonen, author of much of the Service Design supplement, illustrates that by introducing users and front line staff to the fundamentals of design practice, they can contribute to the generation and testing of low risk prototypes, and improve upon the quality of services. The need for allowing design thinking to inform on how services are delivered follows a great change in how we live today. Society is at saturation point with ‘things’. The emphasis now is on improving experiences, and according to author Dan Pink, “Design without empathy is mediocre design”. The co-design work carried out at thinkpublic puts an emphasis on the iterative, understanding user issues, and working things out with people. Aaltonen proclaims that the public sector is riddled with complexity, and how institutions are increasingly looking to designers, with their  ‘ingenious problem solving’ techniques to improve efficiencies and allow civil servants to deliver better services. A participatory approach is the best way to make improvements and public services need to be a two-way dialogue. Given the current pressure on institutions to reform in the wake of the econonic crisis, organisations will need to ‘listen adapt and collaborate’. The UK has outgrown Beveridge’s Welfare state, having built up up layer upon bureacratic layer. “If what is needed is systemic change, design is a highly practical force as well as a driver of innovation”

Siem Reap government buildings swapped with private company | by Cambodia Calling | 18 March 2010, 04:24 PM

This just in:

Phnom Penh - The local government in Cambodia's tourist hub of Siem Reap is to relocate outside the city next month in an opaque property swap that is to see a private company take over government buildings, many on prime riverfront land, national media reported Thursday. The news followed a number of similar reports about swaps of government land in central Phnom Penh, which has rocketed in value in recent years, for cheaper land outside the capital. Details of the deals are seldom made public.

Siem Reap Deputy Governor Bun Tharith told the Cambodia Daily newspaper that every provincial government department would move to the new site except one, the meteorology office, whose specialized equipment means it has to stay in the city.

"It is a special plan, and it is good for providing efficient services," he said. "The old buildings will be handed over to the company for investment. This happens in every developed country."

However, neither he nor the Ministry of Interior, which has authority over the deal, would be drawn on the details of the land swap or the cost of the new 42-hectare site, which is located 16 kilometres from the city centre.

Siem Reap is home to the Angkor Wat temple complex, which draws millions of local and foreign tourists each year.

reBlog from Manuelg: Manuel "Moe" G. | by Only In It For The Gold | 18 March 2010, 04:21 PM

I found this fascinating quote today:

There is no evidence that humanity likes science or the burden of responsibilities that pay out decades in the future. Humanity does not mind playing with some the end products of both, like consumer electronics or the body of modern medical knowledge, but humanity really doesn't like either science or the responsibility of the very long view.Manuelg, Manuel "Moe" G., Mar 2010

Also trying the Zemanta "reblog" widget on Moe's site for size. It auto-reposts a single paragraph of your choice. Go read the rest of the article; it's germane.

Standing on the verge of an epic win: can gaming make the world a better place? | by Futurismic | 18 March 2010, 04:00 PM

Jane McGonigal’s recent TED talk is getting a lot of attention, and with good reason, because it’s a radical idea she’s pushing – radical in both senses of the word, in fact.

Here’s the thesis: computer games give us a sense of being able to achieve greatness, of being able to attempt awesome things and of that attempt being worth the effort, in a way we rarely feel in our meatspace lives. Why else would we spend so much time playing them? Just one gamer might spend thousands of hours a year chasing XP, completing quests and levelling up – but what is it that these people getting good at doing, exactly? And can we maybe encourage them to get good at things that can have an effect in the real world as well as in a virtual one?

McGonigal isn’t talking through her hat, either – she’s been working on this stuff for some years now. She was part of the team behind the Superstruct project, which was mentioned here a number of times (and in which peripatetic Futurismic columnist Sven Johnson took part, alongside Jamais Cascio and many other futurist types, professional or otherwise)… and there’s a new one in the works called Urgent Evoke. But let’s hear her tell it in her own words:

The easy angle for criticism is her incredible optimism (which, incidentally, she ascribes to a fundamental aspect of the gamer’s mindset), but given all the doom and gloom around at the moment, it’s a refreshing change. Instead of saying why it won’t work, maybe we should think about how it could?

And here’s a serendipitous supporting story [via SlashDot]: an Australian lecturer altered the structure of his university courses to reflect that of games – experience points, levelling up, and so on – and saw his students respond with far greater enthusiasm as a result. Now he’s suggesting that absorbing similar ideas into the workplace could engage greater engagement among employees from those notoriously (or allegedly, depending on your point of view) feckless Generation Ys and Millennials. What do you think?

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Khmer for Barangs | by Cambodia Calling | 18 March 2010, 03:52 PM

My friend Dale Edmonds who runs Riverkids Project is learning Khmer and has started a blog Khmer101 to share her experience with readers. This is her latest entry:

"After considering jailbreaking my iPhone so I could install Khmer fonts on it, I decided to wait until May. I'm heading up around then, and will be able to get it done by one of the experts at Surya as well as pick up some more Khmer software.

In the meantime, I found and bought two small apps, both by the same guy, Phal Ngim, who has quite a few small iPhone apps. I had his iSpeakKhmer which is decent for phrases but was very basic tourist stuff that I already know.

iKhmerABC and iKhmerVowel are each $0.99 and are basically flashcards and an overview screen. They're nicely done and the pronunciation is clear.

I'll be using this over the next couple of weeks to memorize the alphabet. I'm not quite sure what the best way to learn it is - probably flashcards and practice handwriting.

Right now, as I struggle with the keyboard, I'm muttering "the little basket with the fish hooks, now the dancing ribbon..."

jamesykwak | by The Baseline Scenario | 18 March 2010, 03:44 PM

By James Kwak

I only recently finished reading Freefall,* Joseph Stiglitz’s book, so this review comes about two months late. It took me a while partly because I was busy, but partly because I didn’t feel a lot of dramatic tension . . . since I agreed with almost everything he said.

Unlike most crisis books, Freefall is relatively short on what caused the financial crisis. The historical background is mainly laid out in Chapter 1, “The Making of a Crisis,” although there is discussion of specific problems in later chapters, such as Chapter 4, “The Mortgage Scam.” Mainly this book is about the response to the crisis, what was wrong with it, and what needs to change in the future.

Reading the book gave me a familiar feeling. You see, our book (13 Bankers) is largely about historical and political background–our Chapter 1 begins with Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton, although most of the book is about the period since 1980–so there is relatively little topical overlap between the two. But where they do overlap, particularly in the discussion of government responses to the crisis, I had the sensation that we were saying much the same thing.

In Chapter 5, “The Great American Robbery” (by which Stiglitz is referring specifically to the bailouts of 2008-2009), Stiglitz replays the debate of a year ago over how to rescue the financial system–a debate that pitted Stiglitz, Paul Krugman, Nouriel Roubini, and others, who favored government takeovers of sick banks, against Tim Geithner, who convinced the rest of the administration that it was better to support the banks in their existing form. Stiglitz is actually considerably more acerbic than Simon and I:

“Almost surely, the failures of the Bush and Obama administrations will rank among the most costly mistakes of any modern democratic government at any time” (p. 110).

“The Bush and Obama administrations had made a simple mistake . . . that the banks’ pursuit of their own self-interest was necessarily coincident with what was in the national interest. . . .

“Nor did the deregulators and the politicians who stood behind them want to admit the failure of the economic doctrines that they had advocated. They wanted to return to the world as it was before 2007″ (p. 111).

“Just as Bush used 9/11 and the fears of terrorism to justify so much of what he did, the Treasury under both Bush and Obama used 9/15–the day that Lehman collapsed–and the fears of another meltdown as a tool to extract as much as possible for the banks and the bankers that had brought the world to the brink of economic ruin” (pp. 118-19).

The problem, Stiglitz argues, is that even if the financial system was stabilized, the way it was stabilized has made the recovery “slower and more difficult than need be” (p. 135), and has also helped undermine public confidence in government, exacerbating the dysfunctions of our political system.

When it comes to financial regulation, Stiglitz is also highly critical, although here he aims his guns more at the financial sector than at the administration (the chapter is titled “Avarice Triumphs over Prudence”). Because of the threat of regulatory capture, he favors simple rules: “the regulations have to be simple and transparent, and the regulatory structure has to be designed to prevent excessive influence from the financial markets” (p. 149).

And this is what gave me that comforting feeling. I generally feel insecure about what I write. Having a Nobel Prize winner saying many of the same things makes me feel a little more confident. That doesn’t mean that what we wrote is true (many Nobel Prize winners have said many things that were false), but it reduces the chances that we wrote something that is stupid.

Freefall has a considerably wider scope than just finance, however. Stiglitz also discusses other issues such as the role of government in the economy, global imbalances, and the faults of the economics profession. So I would consider it more than just a crisis book; it’s Stiglitz’s blueprint for what needs to change in the world.

* I got a free copy from the publisher.

One Million Trees for Ethiopia | by Cambodia Calling | 18 March 2010, 03:32 PM

A friend in Singapore pointed me to this, after yesterday's post. Awesome. I have a cunning plan - I am going to walk about with mango seeds and stick them in the ground on my walk to the shop! This is because whenever I throw a seed in my garden (after eating the fruit of course), out sprouts a mango tree. They must grow quite easily. Obviously I am mad, cos in this heat the tress would never survive. For this to work, I'll have to take a watering can along with me on my walks!

I think I'll wait till the rainy season to give the trees a headstart. I will need also to pick spots where the tress will not be easily destroyed - run over by cars and motos and what not. Ok that's what I'll do.

Spring Shoes for Men | by PW Style | 18 March 2010, 03:30 PM

As you all have probably figured out by this point, I have a strange obessession with men’s fashion. The sight of a well-tailored suit gives me goosebumps and a man who keeps his kicks shiny and scuff-free makes me a bit weak in the knees. Speaking of the latter, I recently stumbled upon a few choice men’s shoes that left me speechless. Below are five of my favorites.

A casual twist on a classic that makes Casual Friday worth Tweeting about:

The Carrack x Asics Onitsuka Tiger 2010 Global Collection

The most comfortable almost-boat-shoe you will ever meet:

Adidas Originals by Originals-Gazelle Vintage

A dress shoe that pairs best with a margarita:

The Savant in Perforated Black by The Generic Man

An old standby that, like a fine wine, gets better with age:

The Desert Trek by Clarks in Sand Suede

Weird, but in that sexy and intriguing, I want to know you better kind of way:

Calfskin Lace-Up Sandals by Krisvanassche

The Landfill Prize | by Forum for the Future | 18 March 2010, 03:17 PM

The Landfill Prize 2010 highlights just how idiotically wasteful our world still is – in a very entertaining way! Members of the public vote on the year’s most pointless, wasteful and needlessly complex gadgets and a panel of expert judges headed up by John Naish, author of Enough: breaking free from the world of more, vote for the ‘best’ one.

My favourites are the ‘Dryear Ear Dryer’ and the ‘100% organic cotton toilet tissue’! It’s quite controversial to see the ‘Kindle’ in there too!

A run down of the top ten landfillers is available here: http://www.enoughness.co.uk/. Enjoy.

Physics on TV | by Cosmic Variance | 18 March 2010, 03:08 PM

You never know where you’ll find it.

The war of words over home-produced electricity feed-in tariffs could cost dearly | by Forum for the Future | 18 March 2010, 02:55 PM

On March 2nd, Guardian columnist George Monbiot launched an extraordinary attack on feed-in tariffs and on solar photovoltaics (PV) in particular. Even for George, who has honed his invective skills to a fine point over the years, his language was remarkably intemperate: “pricey conceit… great green rip-off… scam… comically inefficient… squandering the public’s money… perfectly useless…  a swindle… blinded by sentiment” etc, etc.

A lot of this seemed to be aimed, very personally, at Jeremy Leggett, Executive Chairman of Solarcentury. For years, Jeremy has been flying the flag for the UK solar industry and for the benefits for introducing the kind of feed-in tariffs that have transformed the renewable energy scene in many other countries.

Within a couple of days, Jeremy had mounted a robust defence of PV, feed-in tariffs and the importance of maintaining a long-term perspective. Citing 13 examples of inaccuracy, misrepresentation and hyperbole (reinforced by a further 12 points following up on a response from George), he has set out to set the record straight.

Over the weekend I spent a happy hour reading through this four-phase battle, point by point. It matters. There’s a lot resting on the success of these feed-in tariffs, and that in turn depends on trust on the part of the general public. A George Monbiot polemic is purpose-built to undermine that trust.

I really admire George. He’s a brilliant campaigning journalist, and a deep, persistent thorn in the side of today’s political and business elites. I often end up reading his Guardian articles metaphorically punching the air at the blows that he’s landed – on my behalf, as it were. This week’s article on biodiversity here in the UK is hugely impactful.

But I’m sorry to say, on this occasion, that he’s way out of line. Jeremy Leggett’s detailed refutation of so much of what he was claiming in the original article demonstrates just how poor George’s initial research was, and how (on this occasion, at least) his love of adopting deliberately controversialist positions simply overwhelmed basic journalistic standards.

This too is a serious matter. As one or two bloggers have already pointed out, if he’s got it this badly wrong on feed-in tariffs, what’s to say he hasn’t got it equally wrong on other critical issues?

One of the talking points for me was that George declined on a number of occasions to meet with Jeremy and talk all this through – despite knowing full well the impact his article would have. More than anything else, this reveals a streak of know-it-all arrogance that has always been there in George, but which he usually keeps under control.

But rather than take my word, why don’t you check it out for yourself on the Guardian and Jeremy’s own websites. If nothing else, it will help you get your head around the complexities of feed-in tariffs.

George Monbiot's article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/mar/01/solar-panel-feed-in-tariff
 
Jeremy Leggett's response: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/cif-green/2010/mar/09/george-monbiot-bet-solar-pv or http://www.jeremyleggett.net/solar-revolution/

Grasshopper/Shmitten sale | by PW Style | 18 March 2010, 02:38 PM

Some of the ladies of Shmitten Kitten are going to be playing music at Grasshopper this Saturday; I’m not sure exactly what “playing music” entails, but while they’re there, everything is 25% off. Woo!

Interview with Futurismic’s fiction editor Chris East | by Futurismic | 18 March 2010, 02:19 PM

Hard-workin’ Futurismic fiction editor Christopher East doesn’t post here very often; not only does he spend hours combing through the slush pile for this very organ, a lot of his time is taken up by, y’know, having a life, and a job and a family. That sort of stuff. Not that I’m jealous or anything. Ahem.

So, if you want to know a bit more about him (and you should, because he’s not only one of the sharpest unpaid fiction eds in the business, but also a jolly decent chap, as we Brits might say), Chris has been interviewed recently by Andrew Porter of writer/reader blog The Science Of Fiction. Here he is talking about how he knows when a story is the right one, and on how he writes rejections:

Chris East: Of course, now that I’ve been at it for a while, I understand why most editors don’t [write personal rejections].  It’s not always possible (crush of time, number of submissions), it’s not always warranted (sometimes there’s not much to say – the story just doesn’t do it for me), and really, the effort rarely pays off (I mean, except for personal satisfaction, there isn’t much incentive).  It’s also not really an edtior’s job to teach writers — it’s the editor’s job to find stories.  But as a writer I always appreciate it when the editor says something helpful, so I do still try to provide some feedback.  I’m also proud that I’ve never resorted to using a form rejection.  I can see how people might think I do, of course – you do tend to repeat yourself once you’ve written a few thousand responses!  But take my word for it, I write every rejection from scratch.

Andrew Porter: As a zine that only publishes one story a month I would imagine that you are often sitting with several stories that you would like to publish but can’t. How do you make final determinations between near equals (i.e. topical relevance, good title, etc.)

Chris East: This has never been a real problem for us, actually.  In fact, our inventory tends to run on the thin side most of the time.  I suspect this is a combination of high standards and a fairly specific focus on near-term future SF – I guess there aren’t that many available stories that fall perfectly into our wheelhouse. So I honestly don’t recall having the kind of one-or-the-other decisions you describe.  The exception might be when we’ve  received a story very similar to something that we’ve already published.  If we’ve recently featured a story about brain implants, for example, we might hesitate to publish another brain implant story close on the first one’s heels.  (Which, since we publish so infrequently, equates to “the past several months.”)  But mostly, it’s kind of a know-it-when-I-see-it situation.  In other words, “Yep, this is a Futurismic story!”  Or, “Nope, it isn’t!”

Lots more after that… some of it quite surreal, in fact. Enjoy!

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Memo to policymakers: Public STILL favors the transition to clean energy | by Climate Progress | 18 March 2010, 02:14 PM

Conservatives have been doing their best to torpedo the movement toward clean energy by hyping controversies about the science behind global warming. But whatever effect these controversies have had on the public they do not appear to have undermined support for action on the clean energy front, as polling expert and CAP Senior Fellow Ruy Teixeira explains.

Take support for a cap-and-trade approach to limiting carbon dioxide emissions. Back in October, views on this approach were running 50-39 in favor according to a Pew Research Center poll. Recently, Pew tested this approach again and actually found a slight widening of support to 52-35 in favor.

The same poll also shows support for a wide range of ways to address America’s energy supply. But, as in almost all other polls, the most popular option is to promote alternative energy. By 78-17, the public wants to see increased federal funding for research on wind, solar, and hydrogen technology.

Policymakers, take note. The public hasn’t given up on clean energy and neither should you.

– Ruy Teixeira.  [For more of his public opinion analysis, go here.]

JR:  I’d add that pretty much every major poll in the past six months makes clear that the public supports climate and energy legislation because it achieves multiple benefits, including reducing greenhouse gas emissions:

• Swing state poll finds 60% “would be more likely to vote for their senator if he or she supported the bill” and Independents support the bill 2-to-1 (9/09)
• New CNN poll finds “nearly six in 10 independents” support cap-and-trade (10/09)
• Voters in Ohio, Michigan and Missouri overwhelmingly support action on clean energy and global warming (11/09)
• Overwhelming US Public Support for Global Warming Action (12/09)
• Public Opinion Stunner: WashPost-ABC Poll Finds Strong Support for Global Warming Reductions Despite Relentless Big Oil and Anti-Science Attacks (12/09)
• It’s all about Independents — and Independence (1/10)
• Yale:  When asked whether they “support or oppose regulation carbon dioxide…as pollutant,” 73 percent said yes, with only 27 percent opposed, including 61 percent of Republicans (2/10)

Big oil and coal jump on the natural gas bandwagon - But continue to oppose clean energy future -- and diss natural gas! | by Climate Progress | 18 March 2010, 02:10 PM

The natural gas lobby is fighting coal, whose lobbyists “continue to stress the economic advantages of the fossil fuel.”  And the coal companies are trashing natural gas in advertisements as having “higher and more volatile prices” (click here).

But even as they lobby hard to prevent passage of comprehensive clean energy jobs and climate legislation, some oil and coal companies are making investments to prepare themselves for a coming clean energy, low carbon future.  Purchasing natural gas, they think, may be the way out.  Guest blogger, Sarah Collins, an intern with CAP’s Energy Opportunity team, has the story:

Several big energy companies, notably Exelon Corporation and Shell, have joined the United States Climate Action Partnership: “a group of businesses and leading environmental organizations that have come together to call on the federal government to quickly enact strong national legislation to require significant reductions of greenhouse gas emissions.”  In February, BP America, a founding partner of the group, and ConocoPhillips left the group because pending climate legislation reduced incentives to switch over from coal to natural gas.  E&E News reports:

Both BP and ConocoPhillips wrestled with how they fit in a group that is promoting itself as a solution to U.S. energy independence by using less oil for transportation fuel. “How does an oil company engage and contribute to reducing the use of oil?” Corneli said. “It’s a little bit of a challenge for an oil company.”

Underpinning the oil companies’ exodus, several sources said, is the growing dispute between coal and natural gas, the latter of which is seeing a sharp boost in production due to the use of hydraulic fracture drilling techniques in mid-Atlantic and Northeastern states. U.S. EPA models show that the House-passed climate bill would give large benefits to coal but would lead to flat demand for natural gas, a trend the oil and gas companies would like to see flipped.

On Monday, Consol Energy Inc., the fourth-largest coal producer in the U.S., announced its planned $3.48 billion purchase of natural gas resources from Dominion Resources Inc., making it the latest coal or oil company to make such an investment.  The company hopes to close the deal by the end of April.

“Gas is a perfect hedge against draconian moves on coal in the short term,” Consol Chief Executive J. Brett Harvey admitted.

The Wall Street Journal observes that Consol is just one of several companies to jump on the natural gas bandwagon in recent months:

In December, Exxon Mobil Corp. agreed to pay about $30 billion for XTO Energy Inc., a big gas producer. France’s Total SA and Britain’s BP PLC both bought stakes in Texas gas fields earlier this year. On Monday, Petrohawk Energy Corp. said it had sold its interest in a Louisiana gas field for $320 million to an undisclosed buyer.

While this is partially due to the recently declining price of natural gas, which has encouraged coal and oil companies to burn this cheaper fuel instead, that is not the whole story.  These companies are becoming increasingly aware of the very possible future of a low-carbon economy and are building up their cleaner energy resource stockpiles in response.  This means that tougher standards on greenhouse gas emissions would be less likely to impact the bottom line.  WSJ reports:

Consol’s move into natural gas comes even as the gas industry increasingly tries to play up its advantages over coal. Gas producers have argued that switching from to gas from coal to generate power could help reduce carbon-dioxide emissions. The coal industry has fought back, arguing that gas is prone to price spikes. But Mr. Harvey said such battles are short-sighted. “I think there’s a lot of wasted effort fighting with each other,” Mr. Harvey said.

Coal and oil companies are placing their bets on natural gas as the bridge fuel to a lower-carbon future.  Horizontal drilling combined with hydraulic fracturing, a technique of extracting natural gas from deep shale sources previously considered unreachable, is also on the rise, making natural gas more readily accessible and available on the market.  Natural gas currently is responsible for only about a quarter of electricity generation in the U.S., but this may soon change.

Demand for U.S. gas shale is on the rise on the global market as well, most markedly noted by India’s Reliance Industries, which hopes to partner with Atlas Energy, an independent oil and gas company, to develop the Marcellus shale, which spans from eastern Tennessee to upstate New York.  Reuters reports:

U.S. shale looks even more precious as so many other countries lock up their domestic energy reserves.  Further, because shale wells typically produce several times more gas than conventional ones, the cost of production falls.  Add to the mix that gas shale generates half the carbon emissions of coal.  That provides a hedge against tougher climate change rules for the likes of U.S. coal producer Consol.

The demand has driven up prices.  The average cost of an acre in the Marcellus shale, for example, doubled in 2009 to $4,000, according to research firm IHS Herold. Mitsui & Co acquired Anadarko’s drilling expertise as part of its deal there, but also stumped up $14,000 per acre. The inflation has come despite the fact that gas prices are still less than half their 2008 peak. Before the economic recovery revives them, globetrotting U.S. oil majors would be well advised to book their tickets home.

Change already appears underway.  In 2007, coal generated 49 percent of U.S. electricity, and dipped to 48 percent in 2008.  In 2009, coal produced only 45 percent of electricity – a nine percent drop in two years.  Meanwhile, generation by natural gas and renewable (broadly defined) increased by 1 percent each from 2007-09, which is a one-third increase for renewables.

According to a Pew poll released Monday, the public overwhelmingly supports a transition to a clean-energy economy, with 52-35 in favor.  Big oil and coal, the major contributors to greenhouse gas emissions, know that they will have to clean up their act in the future, so are fastening their seatbelts now.  If only they would stop spending millions of dollars to defeat clean energy legislation, which would delay the inevitable clean energy future that they are preparing to meet.

Related Posts:

• Game Changer, Part 1:  There appears to be a lot more natural gas than previously thought
• Game changer, Part 8: ExxonMobil’s $41 billion XTO deal — A big bet on unconventional natural gas AND on climate change

Wooster Collective Interviews Legendary Photographer Jon Naar on Faith of Graffiti | by Wooster Collective | 18 March 2010, 02:03 PM

To celebrate Wooster Special Edition of the 35th Anniversary Edition of the Faith of Graffiti we sat down with legendary photographer Jon Naar and artist Snake I to better understand the impact of the book when it was released in 1974.

This first video explains the difference of the new edition from the old edition, the reason for choosing the "Red Bird - Stay High 149" as the cover and Wooster print and how Jon took over 3000 photos in 10 days.

Redbird In The Bronx
Limited Edition Print of 300
8 1/2" by 11"
Archival paper
Signed and Numbered by Jon Naar - 2010

Faith of Graffiti
Words by Norman Mailer. Photos by Jon Naar
128 pages
Paperback

$75 USD
Shipping US: $12 USD
Shipping EUR $25 USD

Smart grid stimulus is a big win for consumers | by Official google.org Blog | 18 March 2010, 01:57 PM

(Cross-posted from the Google Public Policy Blog)

President Obama today announced $3.4 billion in federal stimulus funding to build a "smarter" electricity grid. The funds are the largest single energy grid modernization investment in U.S. history, according to the Department of Energy, and are expected to create tens of thousands of jobs.

We're excited because the vast majority of the projects will benefit consumers directly by giving them tools and information to save energy and cut utility bills. For example, the Sacramento Municipal Utility District will receive $127 million to install 600,000 smart meters and 50,000 programmable thermostats and home energy management systems. Oklahoma Gas and Electric Company will receive $130 million to provide 771,000 meters to 100% of its customers. These technologies will enable consumers to receive direct feedback on their energy use, which can lead to energy savings of up to 15% on average. Altogether the awards will fund the installation of 18 million smart meters, 1 million in-home energy displays and 170,000 smart thermostats.

With the advent of smart meters and other information technologies, we have the opportunity to rebuild the electricity grid, which still uses century-old technology in places. Most importantly, we can make the grid work better for consumers. Today's announcement is an ambitious step toward that goal.

Posted by Michael Terrell, Energy Policy Counsel

A simple way to curb climate change | by Official google.org Blog | 18 March 2010, 01:50 PM

(Cross-posted from Google's Public Policy Blog)

People often get up in settings like the international climate change conference in Copenhagen and make complicated pronouncements that leave heads spinning. Today was different. Google, GE, the Climate Group, and NRDC, supported by other leading businesses and NGOs, had a simple message: governments across the world should ensure people have real-time access to their home energy information.

Most of us know little about how we use energy in our homes, other than what our monthy power bill tells us. Yet studies show that when people can see in real-time how much energy they are using, they save up to 15% on their electricity use with simple behavioral changes, and even more with investments in energy efficiency. The savings are huge when added up: if all US households reduced 15% of their energy use by 2020 it would be equivalent to taking 35 million cars off the road and would save consumers $46 billion on their energy bills.

As 40,000 people gather in Copenhagen to fight global warming, we think that's a solution that governments should be paying attention to. This group, which will take other actions after the meeting has ended, has begun a push to give ordinary citizens the tools to save money and save the planet. A lot of the decisions on the table in Copenhagen are hard, we believe this one is simple.

Copenhagen statement signers: Google, GE, The Climate Group, NRDC, Alliance to Save Energy, Center for American Progress, Demand Response and Smart Grid Coalition, Digital Energy Solutions Campaign, Dow, Energy Future Coalition, Intel, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, US Green Building Council, Whirlpool

Posted by Michael Terrell, Energy Policy Counsel, Google.org

FCC broadband plan to call for access to real-time energy info | by Official google.org Blog | 18 March 2010, 01:42 PM

(Cross-posted from Public Policy Blog)

Over the past six months we have been providing you with periodic updates and comments on the FCC's National Broadband Plan, which is scheduled for release in mid-March. Earlier today FCC energy and environment director Nick Sinai gave a sneak preview of one of the Plan's key components: how broadband will facilitate smarter energy usage.

He told an audience at the Clean-tech Investor Summit that the FCC will call on States and the Congress to give consumers and consumer-authorized third parties access to real-time energy information. This kind of information could have a huge financial and environmental impact. Studies show that access to real-time usage data results in energy savings of up to 15%. He talked about how, combined with other measures, this information could create a platform that could lead to new products and services to help consumers manage energy. Picture it: a smart phone apps store for home energy management.

Sinai singled out for praise technologies like "smart" electricity meters and recent efforts in California to include consumer data access policies as part of a statewide smart meter roll out. (Learn more by reading Google's comments.) While encouraged by state-led initiatives like this, Sinai said if state efforts don't work, the FCC could recommend that Congress consider national energy data accessibility legislation.

Posted by Michael Terrell, Energy Policy Counsel

Renewed incentives for offshore wind | by Green Futures | 18 March 2010, 01:18 PM

Added value sparks a wave of new investment

Increased financial support for offshore wind in the UK is helping to make borderline developments viable. Throughout 2010, each megawatt will earn two renewable energy certificates (ROCs) – instead of just one. The resulting boost in value has sparked new investment, with Centrica investing £725 million to build a 270MW farm off the Lincolnshire coast. The farm, to be called Lincs, will be financed in part by the sale of a stake in Centrica wind farms to asset management firm, TCW. 

Centrica plans to begin the construction of Lincs next year, installing 75 3.6MW Siemens AG turbines. Due for completion in 2012, the wind farm is expected to meet the needs of 200,000 households.

Britain currently leads the world in both number and capacity of planned offshore projects, with a total of 8GW on the drawing board. But installed capacity totals just  600MW, according to the British Wind Energy Association (BWEA).

“Centrica’s project definitely generates momentum for the industry,” said BWEA’s Charles Anglin.

According to a review by the Carbon Trust, bold investment could see the UK account for 45% of the global offshore wind market by 2020. – April Streeter

A quick checkup on Total Place | by Freesteel | 18 March 2010, 12:36 PM

I haven’t got time for this, not being a professional journalist investigator, but I’ve got the background material collected and would regret it if I never presented it. What is Total Place? Total Place, is an ambitious and challenging programme that [brings] together elements of central government and local agencies within a place… This work weaves [...]

Looking for a good time? New scheduling tool in Calendar | by Official Google Blog | 18 March 2010, 12:36 PM

Scheduling meetings is tough, but rescheduling is even harder. We all know how frustrating it can be to try to find just the right time that accommodates everyone's availability and preferred working hours. Throw in different time zones and conference rooms and it goes from painful to excruciating. We'd rather schedule dental appointments.

On the Google Calendar team, we've noticed that when people talk about scheduling they say things like "I'm trying to find a time" or "let's search for a new date." We wondered what would happen if we treated calendaring more like a search problem. Just as Google search applies ranking algorithms to return the most relevant results from the web, we hoped we could rank meeting times based on criteria important to the person scheduling the meeting.


Today we're launching the result of that experiment, a gadget called Smart Rescheduler, in Google Calendar Labs. Once you enable the Lab, you can find a new time for an event simply by clicking on a link. Our schedule search algorithm will return a ranked set of the best candidate dates and times based on the calendars others have shared with you. You can read more about it on the Gmail Blog.

So next time your boss says "We need to reschedule," just smile and say "I'm feeling lucky."

Posted by Ken Norton, Product Manager

A peer-reviewed response to McLean's El Nino paper | by Skeptical Science | 18 March 2010, 12:00 PM

A paper published mid-2009 claimed a link between global warming and the El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) (McLean et al 2009). According to one of it's authors, Bob Carter, the paper found that the "close relationship between ENSO and global temperature, as described in the paper, leaves little room for any warming driven by human carbon dioxide emissions". This result is in strong contrast with two decades of peer-reviewed research which find ENSO has little influence on long-term trends. Why the discrepancy? A response has now been accepted for publication in the American Geophysical Union (Foster et al 2009) explaining why McLean 2009 differs from the body of peer-reviewed research.

First, let's examine how McLean et al arrived at their conclusion. They compared both weather balloon (RATPAC) and satellite (UAH) measurements of tropospheric temperature to El Niño activity (SOI). To remove short-term noise, they plotted a 12 month running average of Global Tropospheric Temperature Anomaly (GTTA, the light grey line) and the Southern Oscillation Index (SOI, the black line).

Figure 1: Twelve-month running means of SOI (dark line) and MSU GTTA (light line) for the period 1980 to 2006 with major periods of volcanic activity indicated (McLean 2009).

The Southern Oscillation Index shows no long term trend while the temperature record shows a long-term warming trend. Consequently, McLean et al found only a weak correlation between temperature and SOI. Next, they applied another filter to the data by subtracting the 12 month running average from the same average 1 year later. The comparison between the filtered data for El Nino and Temperature are as follows:

Figure 2: Derivatives of SOI (dark line) and MSU GTTA (light line) for the period 1981–2007 after removing periods of volcanic influence (McLean 2009).

From this close correlation, McLean et al argued that more than two thirds of interseasonal and long-term variability in temperature changes can be explained by the Southern Oscillation Index. This result contradicts virtually every other study into the connection between ENSO and temperature variability, particularly with regard to long-term warming trends. Past analyses have found ENSO was responsible for 15 to 30% of interseasonal variability but little of the global warming trend over the past half century (Jones 1989, Wigley 2000, Santer 2001, Trenberth 2002, Thompson 2008). Why does McLean come to a different result? This question is examined in Comment on "Influence of the Southern Oscillation on tropospheric temperature" by J. D. McLean, C. R. de Freitas, and R. M. Carter (Foster et al 2010).

Foster et al examine the filtering process that McLean et al applied to the temperature and ENSO data. This filtering has two steps - they take 12-month moving averages then take the differences between those values which are 12 months apart. The first step filters the high-frequency variation from the time series while the second step filters low-frequency variation. The problem with the latter step is it removes any long-term trends from the original temperature data. The long-term warming trend in the temperature record is where the disagreement between temperature and ENSO is greatest.

Why do McLean et al remove the long-term trend? They justify it by noting a lack of correlation between SOI and GTTA, speculating that the derivative filter might remove noise caused by volcanoes or wind. However, taking the derivative of a time series does not remove, or even reduce, short-term noise. It has the opposite effect, amplifying the noise while removing longer-term changes.

To further illustrate how the filtering process increases the correlation between SOI and temperature, the authors construct an artificial "temperature" time series as -0.02 times the SOI time series. They then add white noise and a linear trend. This has the effect of creating a temperature time series with a long term warming trend. The correlation between the raw artificial temperature series and the SOI series is very low (R² = 0.0161). However, when the McLean et al filters are applied to both time series, the correlation is now very high (R² = 0.8295). This is because the filtering removes low frequency elements such as the long term warming trend.

Figure 3: (a) Southern Oscillation Index (SOI) data (black) versus artificial data proportional to the SOI, and with normally-distributed white noise and a sinusoidal signal added (red). (b): Filtered versions (using the McLean et al procedure) of the series in (a).

Despite the extreme distorting effect of their filter, McLean et al consistently refer to the correlations as between SOI and tropospheric temperature. They draw no attention to the fact that the correlations are between heavily filtered time series. This failure causes what is essentially a mistaken result to be misinterpreted as a direct relationship between important climate variables.

Another interesting feature of McLean et al 2009 is a plot of unfiltered temperature data (GTTA) against the Southern Oscillation Index (SOI) to illustrate the quality of the match between them. However the temperature signal is a splice of weather balloon data (RATPAC-A) to the end of 1979 followed by satellite data (UAH TLT) since 1980. RATPAC-A data show a pronounced warming trend from 1960 to 2008 with the temperature line rising away from the SOI line. This warming trend is obscured by substituting the weather balloon data with satellite data after 1980. It is especially misleading because the mean values of RATPAC-A and UAH TLT data during their period of overlap differ by nearly 0.2 K. Splicing them together introduces an artificial 0.2-degree temperature drop at the boundary between the two. Unfortunately, the splicing is obscured by the fact that the graph is split into different panels precisely at the splicing boundary. This splicing + graph splitting technique is an effective way to "hide the incline" of the warming trend.

 
Figure 4: Seven-month shifted SOI with (a) weather balloon RATPAC-A temperature data 1958–1979 and satellite UAH temperature data (b) 1980–1995. Dark line indicates SOI and light line indicates lower tropospheric temperature. Periods of volcanic activity are indicated.

It has been well known for many years that ENSO is associated with significant variability in global temperatures on short timescales of several years. However, this relationship cannot explain temperature trends on decadal and longer time scales. McLean et al 2009 grossly overstates the influence of ENSO, primarily by filtering out any long-term trends.

simonhrjohnson | by The Baseline Scenario | 18 March 2010, 11:58 AM

By Peter Boone and Simon Johnson

As Greece acts in an intransigent manner, refusing to act decisively despite deep fiscal difficulties, the financial markets look on Ireland all the more favorably.  Ireland is seen as the poster child for prudent fiscal adjustment among the weaker eurozone countries. 

The Irish economy is in serious trouble.  Irish GDP declined 7.3% as of third quarter 2009 compared with third quarter 2008.  Exports were down 9% year-on-year in December.  House prices continue to fall.  While stuck in the eurozone, Ireland’s exchange rate cannot move relative to its major trading partners – it thus cannot improve competitiveness without drastic private sector wage cuts.  Yet investors are so pleased with the country that its bond yields imply just a one percent greater annual chance of default than Germany over the next five years.

Ireland’s perceived “success” is partly due to its draconian fiscal cuts.  The government has cut take home pay of public sector workers by roughly 20% since 2008 through lower wages, higher taxes, and increased pension payments.  As the head of the National Treasury Management Agency John Corrigan proudly advised the Greeks (and everyone else):  “You have to talk the talk and walk the walk”.

So is Ireland truly a model for Greece and other potential problems in Europe and elsewhere? Definitely not – but it does provide a cautionary tale regarding what could go wrong for all of us.

Ireland’s difficulties arose because of a massive property boom financed by cheap credit from Irish banks.  Irelands’ three main banks built up 2.5 times the GDP in loans and investments by 2008; these are big banks (relative to the economy) that pushed the frontier in terms of reckless lending.  The banks got the upside and then came the global crash in fall 2008: property prices fell over 50%, construction and development stopped, and people started defaulting on loans.  Today roughly 1/3 of the loans on the balance sheets of banks are non-performing or “under surveillance”; that’s an astonishing 80 percent of GDP, in terms of potentially bad debts.

The government responded to this with what is now regarded – rather disconcertingly – as “standard” policies.  They guaranteed all the liabilities of banks and then began injecting government funds.  The government is now starting a new phase – it is planning to buy the most worthless assets from banks and pay them government bonds in return.  Ministers have also promised to recapitalize banks than need more capital.  The ultimate result of this exercise is obvious:  one way or another, the government will have converted the liabilities of private banks into debts of the sovereign (i.e., Irish taxpayers).

Ireland, until 2009, seemed like a fiscally prudent nation.  Successive governments had paid down the national debt to such an extent that total debt to GDP was only 25% at end 2008 – among industrialized countries, this was one of the lowest. 

But the Irish state was also carrying a large off-balance sheet liability, in the form of three huge banks that were seriously out of control.  When the crash came, the scale and nature of the bank bailouts meant that all this changed.  Even with their now famous public wage cuts, the government budget deficit will be an eye-popping 12.5% of GDP in 2010. 

The government is gambling that GDP growth will recover to over 4% per year starting 2012 — and they still plan further major expenditure cutting and revenue increasing measures each year until 2013, in order to bring the deficit back to 3% of GDP by that date.  The latest round of bank bailouts (swapping bad debts for government bonds) dramatically exacerbates the fiscal problem.  The government will in essence be issuing 1/3 of GDP in government debts for distressed bank assets which may have no intrinsic value.  The government debt/GDP ratio of Ireland will be over 100% by end 2011 once we include this debt.

Ireland had more prudent choices.  They could have avoided taking on private bank debts by forcing the creditors of these banks to share the burden – and this is now what some sensible voices within the main opposition party have called for.  However, a strong lobby of real estate developers, the investors who bought the bank bonds, and politicians with links to the failed developments (and their bankers), have managed to ensure that taxpayers rather than creditors will pay.  The government plan is – with good reason – highly unpopular, but the coalition of interests in its favor it strong enough to ensure that it will proceed.

Investors may wish to remain pleased today with Ireland, but Ireland’s “austerity” – reflecting an unwillingness to make creditors pay for their past mistakes – hardly seems a good lesson for Greece, the eurozone, or anyone else. 

Countries – like the US – with large banks that are prone to reckless risk taking should limit the size of those banks relative to the economy and force them to hold a lot more capital.  If you thought the “too big to fail” issues of 2008-09 were bad in the US, wait until our biggest banks become even bigger – today the big six banks in the US have assets over 60 percent of GDP; there is no reason why they won’t increase towards Irish scale.

When Irish-type banks fail, you have a dramatic and unpleasant choice.  Either takeover the banks’ debts – and create a very real burden on taxpayers and a drag on growth.  Or restructure these debts – forcing creditors to take a hit.  If the banks are bigger, more powerful politically, and better connected in the corridors of power, you will find the creditors’ potential losses more fully shifted onto the shoulders of taxpayers.

 An edited version of this post appeared this morning on the NYT’s Economix; it is used here with permission.  If you would like to reproduce the entire post, please contact the New York Times.

Overview of competitiveness issues in the Midwest | by Climate Strategies | 18 March 2010, 11:33 AM

Author: Simone Cooper
Report Date: 01 Jan 2010
Status: Blank

This paper offers a brief insight into the potential impacts of introducing carbon pricing to the Midwest US. The region is relatively more carbon intensive than the average levels for the US because of the high dependency on coal and concentration of manufacturing industries. Carbon pricing may disproportionately affect Midwestern industries' cost schedules in the short term.  However, in the mid-long term, carbon pricing may present a real opportunity for the region to reverse the trend of declining manufacturing output and employment in traditional industries and transform the region into a leader in low carbon production and 'green collar' jobs.

Overview of competitiveness issues in Japan | by Climate Strategies | 18 March 2010, 11:24 AM

Author: Simone Cooper
Report Date: 31 Dec 2009
Status: Blank

This paper offers a brief insight in to what the expected impact of carbon pricing may be for Japanese industry subsectors if a carbon price of 3000¥/t (approx 30 USD/t) was introduced. It identifies the 17 subsectors most at risk, comparing them to those identified by similar modelling exercises undertaken in other regions.
 

Oxford Medical Innovation Conference | by thinkpublic.com | 18 March 2010, 11:19 AM

Today, Deborah Szebeko is speaking at  the Medical Innovation 2010 Conference at the Saïd Business School, University of Oxford. She will be discussing “A Global Perspective on Healthcare Innovation”  alongside prestigious panelists from 9.15 onwards. To listen to the conference you will be able to download the live cast on University of Oxford iTunes site. 

The lessons of Lehman for other banks | by Robert Peston (BBC business editor) | 18 March 2010, 11:05 AM

Lest we forget, Lehman Bros was regarded as one of the world's most sophisticated, well-managed investment banks, just a year or so before it went belly-up.

Investors loved the stock, valuing the bank at more than $30bn as late as January 2008. Financial institutions, including the world's most lauded banks and hedge funds, lent it hundreds of billions of dollars. Regulators trusted that it had the appropriate systems to control the risks it was taking.

But it turns out that those at the top of the bank were - to an extent - flying blind about the risks being taken by Lehman. And so too, therefore, were US and British regulators.

That is the inescapable conclusion of the 400-page valuation section of the recent report on the collapse of Lehman by the examiner for the New York bankruptcy court.

That section hasn't as yet received much media attention, because it is much less sexy than the examiner's finding that Lehman shunted $50bn of assets off its published balance sheet, to exaggerate its financial strength, using the highly questionable Repo 105 technique (see my earlier note on this).

And, to be clear, the examiner does not believe that Lehman deliberately understated losses on its loans and investments in a way that could lead to substantial damages claims by creditors.

But his report tells a disturbing story of a bank with $700bn of assets and 900,000 derivative positions woefully ill-equipped to assess whether the values that its traders were putting on their deals were the correct values.

And before I quote one or two choice passages from the report, I will state the bloomin' obvious - which is that trusting the valuations of traders, whose enormous bonuses depend on whether their investment and dealing positions are showing a loss or profit, is as sensible as trusting a bunch of five-year-olds not to eat the sweeties in a chocolate factory.

Now Lehman did have a so-called Product Control Group whose job was to assess the valuations or "marks" put on assets by the assorted business desks. This is what the examiner says about the capability of the Product Control Group in respect of its checks on the prices claimed for collateralised debt obligations, those toxic bonds made out of home loans:

"The Product Control Group did not appear to have sufficient resources to price test Lehman's CDO positions comprehensively. Second, while the CDO product controllers were able to effectively verify the prices of many positions using trade data and third-party prices, they did not have the same level of quantitative sophistication as many of the desk personnel who developed models to price CDOs...
 
"The effectiveness of the Product Control Group was also limited because it did not have the technical sophistication to develop complex models for pricing CDOs, as did certain of the desk personnel (commonly referred to as 'quants') they were charged with monitoring."

Or to put it another way, in the absence of reliable market prices the Product Control Group lacked the intellectual tools to challenge the prices put on CDOs by those who created them.

This is profoundly shocking, and not just for what it says about woeful risk controls at Lehman.

It calls into question the assurances given by those who run all the world's big investment banks that they have reliable techniques to control the risks taken by their employees.

The point is that the bosses of Barclays, Goldman, Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan and so on have never claimed that they personally understand each and every one of the millions of investments that are on their respective balance sheets. Nor could they ever do so. The size and complexity of their businesses would baffle an X-Men style mutant superhero with a brain the size of a planet.

But they do claim that they have highly skilled risk controllers who vet their traders' and bankers' valuations on their behalf. So the really important question raised by the Lehman report is whether these extant banks' respective risk controllers and product control groups are a cut above Lehmans'.

What was the practical consequence of the physical and intellectual under-resourcing of the team that was supposed to keep Lehman's bankers and traders on the straight and narrow?

Well, on one measure some half of Lehman's CDO portfolio was unreviewed in May 2008. Bizarre mistakes were made, such as using a lower discount rate to value tranches of CDO that were intrinsically more risky. And on one securitisation called CEAGO, the court examiner valued one tranche of bonds at 3% of the price put on them by Lehman's Product Control Group.

Here's the important point. We pay money to be passengers in planes not because we have a detailed understanding of all those complex computer and engineering systems that keep planes in the air, but because we are confident that the airlines and manufacturers have that understanding.

The corollary for banks like Lehman is that they are given licences to trade because they are trusted to keep a firm grip on the high complicated risks they are running. The examiner's report should make us ponder whether we've been a bit too trusting, not just in Lehman's case but for all those global mega investment banks.

Sustainability meets big brands | by Forum for the Future | 18 March 2010, 10:53 AM

Sustainability is no longer the preserve of niche brands. Major manufacturers and retailers are now recognising the value that integrating sustainability into their key product lines can deliver, both in terms of strengthening ties with the consumer and for protecting their market share in an increasingly uncertain future.

At our recent Mainstreaming sustainability into brands event, Ben Eavis from Sainsbury’s explained the principles behind making their bananas exclusively Fairtrade and Alex Cole from Cadbury spoke passionately about the motivation and the journey that the chocolate manufacturer embarked on in their Purple Goes Green transformation.

We captured the essence of the event in a short video:

You can also watch or download it here: http://vimeo.com/10174247

Video round-up:

Dr Sally Uren, Deputy Chief Executive of Forum for the Future, introduced the session by talking about the opportunity for brands to accelerate the transition to a more sustainable world (0:00-03:08 mins)
 
Ben Eavis, Corporate Responsibility and Ethical Trading Manager, Sainsbury's gave examples of how they are making the more sustainable decision on behalf of the consumer (e.g. by making all their bananas Fairtrade), and talked through some of what is going on 'behind the scenes' to get sustainability at the heart of the Sainsbury's brand (03:09-09:09 mins)
 
Alex Cole, Global Corporate Affairs Director, Cadbury, set out how they segment consumers and what that means for Cadbury. She then described the story of how Cadbury Dairy Milk has embedded sustainability into the brand. (09:10-18:23 mins)

Loud Tweets | by DJ Drive's LJ (Georgia) | 18 March 2010, 10:03 AM

• 19:22 The punk ain't nothin' but an evil man havin' nothin' to do, thinkin' 'bout a women he never will be with. #

On the Street.....Caped & Chloe, Paris | by The Sartorialist | 18 March 2010, 10:03 AM

Liverpool's foothold in financial services and wealth management | by Liverpool Daily Post - Dale Street Blues | 18 March 2010, 09:28 AM

Did you know that almost £12bn of assets are managed from Liverpool in the form of 64,500 private portfolios? I had always known that Liverpool had a firm foothold in financial services, but those two facts delivered by Liverpool Council...

[[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

Guest blog: Garry Banks worries that Liverpool's business district may overheat in future | by Liverpool Daily Post - Dale Street Blues | 18 March 2010, 08:53 AM

An unbearably hot Liverpool city centre can be hard to imagine when you have emerged from one of the coldest winters in decades. But the stark possibility of an overheated business district has been quietly discussed in the property world...

[[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

Copenhagen Mix - Links from around the world | by The Copenhagen Bicycle Culture Blog | 18 March 2010, 08:43 AM

International
My Bike Number is a free registration service where you print out a QR code and stick it on your bicycle. Link from An Affair With Fashion.

Sydney
The City That Hates Bikes. Link from Reuben.

And this article Safety Experts Urge Cyclists to Sit Up and Take Notice. Sydney will never be a bicycle-friendly city until it develops a ''second cycling culture'' which encourages relaxed European-style riding without the compulsory use of helmets, experts have warned.

London
Hackney, London is A Cycling Hell according to Crap Waltham Forest in this post called Crap Cycling and Walking in Hackney. Oft heralded as London's bicycling mecca, there's little bicycle infrastructure to speak of and that's a problem (surprise, surprise).

Australia
Green Lights for Bikes - Providing for bike riders at traffic signals. From Bicycle Victoria.

Bristol
The Bristol Bike Project is a short documentary about a bike recycling workshop on City Road in Bristol. If you know of anyone with an old or unwanted bicycle then you could consider contacting The Bike Project at www.thebristolbikeproject.org

London
What's Stopping Women From Cycling. Link from Mark at I Bike London.

Cambodia
Here's a BBC clip about the pedi-cabs in Phnom Penh. Link from Ed.

Portugal
A blogpost with cool photos about Scientists on Bikes.

San Francisco
Cycle Tracks - Smartphone app from San Francisco. Link from Greg.

Dublin
Contraflow lanes for cyclists being considered by council in Dublin, says Padhraig.

New York
Biking the Big Apple by James from The Urban Country.

Canada
Share the Road Green Paper in Canada. Link from Autumn.

First our Toronto bike sharing program comes under fire and now we learn that the police are "powerless" to enforce no parking in bike lanes. Link from Duncan.

Copenhagenize the planet. And have a lovely day.

links for 2010-03-18 | by McFilter (Adrian McEwan) | 18 March 2010, 08:05 AM

Common Queries Tree Good to keep track of this - never know when one of these MySQL queries will come in handy. (tags: mysql reference webdev)...

Interesting photos - 17 Mar 2010 - Flickr | by Daily interesting photos - Flickr | 18 March 2010, 07:49 AM

Let me answer the PM Question about RBS | by John Redwood MP | 18 March 2010, 07:06 AM

As I did not get a satisfactory answer yesterday, let me have a go firstly at an answer the PM could have given, and then at a fuller answer to the problem I was highlighting.

Question: “The balance sheet of RBS shows £700 billion less in loans and other assets at end December 2009 compared to a year earlier. Where has the £700 billion gone?”

Possible PM answer ” The Rt Hon gentleman should understand that when we took over RBS it had a very overextended balance sheet. Management is currently working to shrink the size of the balance sheet by selling off trading and other assets, reducing liabilities at the same time. I am very keen that they should not allow this process to impede levels of lending to persons and companies in the UK and will take further action as shareholder to ensure they do not restrict their supply of credit in a damaging way”

I wished to highlight two related questions. The first is the actions and attitudes of the Banking Regulator, at a time when we need an economic recovery. The Regulator has chosen this time to demand higher levels of cash and capital from banks than they were required to hold during the boom. This means that at the weakest point in the cycle they are forced to reduce their lending and other risky activities, as a bank like RBS has no easy way to raise further large sums of capital to sustain its former balance sheet. Why is the Regulator behaving in a way which aggravates the cycle rather than smoothing it? Many now say they believe in the counter cyclical regulation I have been advocating, so why aren’t they putting it into effect?

The second is shareholder value. Taxpayers have been made to buy 84% of RBS at an average price higher than today’s share price. Taxpayers would like to get their money back with profit, and will want to know what impact such a rapid reduction in the overall size of the bank will have on the future value of their shares. There has been no guidance from the government as shareholder’s representative on this important matter.

I think it is wrong that these huge sums of money at risk for taxpayers are neither properly reported nor debated in the House of Commons. As I keep explaining to the government, they have got us into a situation where the state is the best part of a couple of large banks with a medium sized government attached. The sums at risk in our bank ownership far exceed annual public spending. Ministers should take a more serious interest in what is happening in these large state owned and influenced banks, and report it to us. Ministers should also be able to answer questions on the main strategic thrust of what they are doing with them in our name.

Links for 2010-03-17 [del.icio.us] | by Alison Gow (Liverpool Echo / Daily Post) | 18 March 2010, 07:00 AM

• The future of context and the future of journalism
  ..."The content industries think that the recipe for digital success is to digitise and monetise content. It ignores the fact that more content is competing for a finite audience and a reduced advertising spend in the midst of a frail recovery. On the other side of the divide, you have digital companies that know the competition is not over content but attention. Who’s winning in the battle for attention? The average time spent reading news on local newspaper websites is 8-12 minutes a month. The average time spent on Facebook is seven hours a month"...

Children and SOS mother in the garden - CV Sanankoroba,… | by Two Talk | 18 March 2010, 06:01 AM

During a meeting between Mali's interior minister and representatives from the French SOS Children's Village association in 1984, SOS-Kinderdorf International was able to form first contacts with Mali and find out whether they were interested in building an SOS Children's Village there. A government agreement was signed in 1985 and SOS-Kinderdorf International was able to start realising Hermann Gmeiner's idea here. In August 1987, the first SOS Children's Village children and their mothers were able to move into the first SOS Children's Village, which is situated in Sanankoroba, 30 km from the capital, Bamako.

Cycle Chic is Cicloeleganza! | by Copenhagen Cycle Chic | 18 March 2010, 05:00 AM

Oh goodness. Oh goodness me. Cicloeleganza. by Cigno. Thanks to Velorution, London's coolest...

For the full photographic glory and the rest of the text, you know where to go. The Original Cycle Chic awaits.

Top Ten One-Liners from CommandLineFu Explained | by good coders code, great coders reuse | 18 March 2010, 03:00 AM

I love working in the shell. Mastery of shell lets you get things done in seconds, rather than minutes or hours, if you chose to write a program instead.

In this article I’d like to explain the top one-liners from the commandlinefu.com. It’s a user-driven website where people get to choose the best and most useful shell one-liners.

But before I do that, I want to take the opportunity and link to a few of my articles that I wrote some time ago on working efficiently in the command line:

• Working Efficiently in Bash (Part I).
• Working Efficiently in Bash (Part II).
• The Definitive Guide to Bash Command Line History.
• A fun article on Set Operations in the Shell.
• Another fun article on Solving Google Treasure Hunt in the Shell.

And now the explanation of top one-liners from commandlinefu.

#1. Run the last command as root

$ sudo !!

We all know what the sudo command does - it runs the command as another user, in this case, it runs the command as superuser because no other user was specified. But what’s really interesting is the bang-bang !! part of the command. It’s called the event designator. An event designator references a command in shell’s history. In this case the event designator references the previous command. Writing !! is the same as writing !-1. The -1 refers to the last command. You can generalize it, and write !-n to refer to the n-th previous command. To view all your previous commands, type history.

This one-liner is actually really bash-specific, as event designators are a feature of bash.

I wrote about event designators in much more detail in my article “The Definitive Guide to Bash Command Line History.” The article also comes with a printable cheat sheet for working with the history.

#2. Serve the current directory at http://localhost:8000/

$ python -m SimpleHTTPServer

This one-liner starts a web server on port 8000 with the contents of current directory on all the interfaces (address 0.0.0.0), not just localhost. If you have “index.html” or “index.htm” files, it will serve those, otherwise it will list the contents of the currently working directory.

It works because python comes with a standard module called SimpleHTTPServer. The -m argument makes python to search for a module named SimpleHTTPServer.py in all the possible system locations (listed in sys.path and $PYTHONPATH shell variable). Once found, it executes it as a script. If you look at the source code of this module, you’ll find that this module tests if it’s run as a script if __name__ == '__main__', and if it is, it runs the test() method that makes it run a web server in the current directory.

To use a different port, specify it as the next argument:

$ python -m SimpleHTTPServer 8080

This command runs a HTTP server on all local interfaces on port 8080.

#3. Save a file you edited in vim without the needed permissions

:w !sudo tee %

This happens to me way too often. I open a system config file in vim and edit it just to find out that I don’t have permissions to save it. This one-liner saves the day. Instead of writing the while to a temporary file :w /tmp/foobar and then moving the temporary file to the right destination mv /tmp/foobar /etc/service.conf, you now just type the one-liner above in vim and it will save the file.

Here is how it works, if you look at the vim documentation (by typing :he :w in vim), you’ll find the reference to the command :w !{cmd} that says that vim runs {cmd} and passes it the contents of the file as standard input. In this one-liner the {cmd} part is the sudo tee % command. It runs tee % as superuser. But wait, what is %? Well, it’s a read-only register in vim that contains the filename of the current file! Therefore the command that vim executes becomes tee current_filename, with the current directory being whatever the current_file is in. Now what does tee do? The tee command takes standard input and write it to a file! Rephrasing, it takes the contents of the file edited in vim, and writes it to the file (while being root)! All done!

#4. Change to the previous working directory

$ cd -

Everyone knows this, right? The dash “-” is short for “previous working directory.” The previous working directory is defined by $OLDPWD shell variable. After you use the cd command, it sets the $OLDPWD environment variable, and then, if you type the short version cd -, it effectively becomes cd $OLDPWD and changes to the previous directory.

Don’t forget that if you wish to change to directory named “-“, you have to escape the future arguments by double dashes:

$ cd -- -

This cds to directory named “-“.

#5. Run the previous shell command but replace string “foo” with “bar”

$ ^foo^bar^

This is another event designator. This one is for quick substitution. It replaces foo with bar and repeats the last command. It’s actually a shortcut for !!:s/foo/bar/. This one-liner applies the s modifier to the !! event designator. As we learned from one-liner #1, the !! event designator stands for the previous command. Now the s modifier stands for substitute (greetings to sed) and it substitutes the first word with the second word.

Note that this one-liner replaces just the first word in the previous command. To replace all words, add the g modifer (g for global):

$ !!:gs/foo/bar

This one-liner is also bash-specific, as event designators are a feature of bash.

Again, see my article “The Definitive Guide to Bash Command Line History.” I explain all this stuff in great detail.

#6. Quickly backup or copy a file

$ cp filename{,.bak}

This one-liner copies the file named filename to a file named filename.bak. Here is how it works. It uses brace expansion to construct a list of arguments for the cp command. Brace expansion is a mechanism by which arbitrary strings may be generated. In this one-liner filename{,.bak} gets brace expanded to filename filename.bak and puts in place of the brace expression. The command becomes cp filename filename.bak and file gets copied.

Talking more about brace expansion, you can do all kinds of combinatorics with it. Here is a fun application:

$ echo {a,b,c}{a,b,c}{a,b,c}

It generates all the possible strings 3-letter from the set {a, b, c}:

aaa aab aac aba abb abc aca acb acc
baa bab bac bba bbb bbc bca bcb bcc
caa cab cac cba cbb cbc cca ccb ccc

And here is how to generate all the possible 2-letter strings from the set of {a, b, c}:

$ echo {a,b,c}{a,b,c}

It produces:

aa ab ac ba bb bc ca cb cc

If you liked this, you may also like my article where I defined a bunch of set operations (such as intersection, union, symmetry, powerset, etc) by using just shell commands. The article is called “Set Operations in the Unix Shell.” (And since I have sets in the shell, I will soon write articles on on “Combinatorics in the Shell” and “Algebra in the Shell“. Fun topics to explore. Perhaps even “Topology in the Shell” :))

#7. mtr - traceroute and ping combined

$ mtr google.com

MTR, bettern known as “Matt’s Traceroute” combines both traceroute and ping command. After each successful hop, it sends a ping request to the found machine, this way it produces output of both traceroute and ping to better understand the quality of link. If it finds out a packet took an alternative route, it displays it, and by default it keeps updating the statistics so you knew what was going on in real time.

#8. Find the last command that begins with “whatever,” but avoid running it

$ !whatever:p

Another use of event designators. The !whatever designator searches the shell history for the most recently executed command that starts with whatever. But instead of executing it, it prints it. The :p modifier makes it print instead of executing.

This one-liner is bash-specific, as event designators are a feature of bash.

Once again, see my article “The Definitive Guide to Bash Command Line History.” I explain all this stuff in great detail.

#9. Copy your public-key to remote-machine for public-key authentication

$ ssh-copy-id remote-machine

This one-liner copies your public-key, that you generated with ssh-keygen (either SSHv1 file identity.pub or SSHv2 file id_rsa.pub) to the remote-machine and places it in ~/.ssh/authorized_keys file. This ensures that the next time you try to log into that machine, public-key authentication (commonly referred to as “passwordless authentication.”) will be used instead of the regular password authentication.

If you wished to do it yourself, you’d have to take the following steps:

your-machine$ scp ~/.ssh/identity.pub remote-machine:
your-machine$ ssh remote-machine
remote-machine$ cat identity.pub >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys

This one-liner saves a great deal of typing. Actually I just found out that there was a shorter way to do it:

your-machine$ ssh remote-machine 'cat >> .ssh/authorized_keys'  .ssh/identity.pub

#10. Capture video of a linux desktop

$ ffmpeg -f x11grab -s wxga -r 25 -i :0.0 -sameq /tmp/out.mpg

A pure coincidence, I have done so much video processing with ffmpeg that I know what most of this command does without looking much in the manual.

The ffmpeg generally can be descibed as a command that takes a bunch of options and the last option is the output file. In this case the options are -f x11grab -s wxga -r 25 -i :0.0 -sameq and the output file is /tmp/out.mpg.

Here is what the options mean:

• -f x11grab makes ffmpeg to set the input video format as x11grab. The X11 framebuffer has a specific format it presents data in and it makes ffmpeg to decode it correctly.
• -s wxga makes ffmpeg to set the size of the video to wxga which is shortcut for 1366×768. This is a strange resolution to use, I’d just write -s 800x600.
• -r 25 sets the framerate of the video to 25fps.
• -i :0.0 sets the video input file to X11 display 0.0 at localhost.
• -sameq preserves the quality of input stream. It’s best to preserve the quality and post-process it later.

You can also specify ffmpeg to grab display from another x-server by changing the -i :0.0 to -i host:0.0.

If you’re interested in ffmpeg, here are my other articles on ffmpeg that I wrote while ago:

• How to Extract Audio Tracks from YouTube Videos
• Converting YouTube Flash Videos to a Better Format with ffmpeg

PS. This article was so fun to write, that I decided to write several more parts. Tune in the next time for “The Next Top Ten One-Liners from CommandLineFu Explained” :)

Have fun. See ya!

PSS. Follow me on twitter for updates.

jamesykwak | by The Baseline Scenario | 18 March 2010, 03:00 AM

By James Kwak

Fresh on the heels of A Failure of Capitalism, the new title is A Crisis of Capitalist Democracy. Maybe the next will be The Downfall of Everything Good in the World.

I haven’t read it. BusinessWeek has a curious review (curiously titled “Slapped by the Invisible Hand” . . . which is the title of Gary Gorton’s book). Here’s the funny bit:

“Posner, who less than a year ago began his dissection of the crisis of 2008 with A Failure of Capitalism (Harvard, May 2009), has enormous credibility when he casts a skeptical eye on Wall Street. As an influential free-market thinker, he helped shape the antiregulatory ideology that inspired so much public policy since 1980. Belatedly he admits error.”

Wait a sec. Being wrong for decades gives you “enormous credibility”? So if, say, James Inhofe were to admit that he is wrong and that climate change is occurring, then he would suddenly be an important voice on what to do about it?If James Gilleran (former director of the OTS) were to write a book about the problems with lax regulation and what needs to change, would you buy it?

This particular marketing angle is probably not Posner’s fault, but he should still be embarrassed by it. Here’s what he said in an interview:

“1. The general wisdom is that you switched from a laissez-faire approach to one that accepts the role of government regulation to stabilize the economy. What has changed your view of capitalism?

“This has really been only since September 2008—since the crisis, when I took another look at everything. There was erroneous monetary policy and much too low interest rates, which encouraged excessive borrowing. And then there’s this very lax regulation of financial institutions, which reflects a failure to recognize that the financial industry is very unstable and requires regulation. It is connected to everything in the economy—consumers and businesses alike depend on it—so when it collapses, you’ve got real problems. A lot of people failed to see that. The financial backbone of the economy is a corner of capitalism that requires more intrusive and careful regulations than a lot of economists thought. Because of the centrality of credit in a capitalist economy, a capitalist economy is inherently unstable. This instability can become catastrophic unless you have something in place to mitigate it. Unfortunately no one seems to have very many great ideas on how to do this.”

A lot of people failed to see that? More intrusive and careful regulations than a lot of economists thought? No one seems to have very many great ideas? Posner wants to pretend that this was some deep, dark mystery, like relativity; it’s hard to criticize physicists before Einstein for not figuring out relativity. But it wasn’t. There has been a debate over free market principles and their applicability to the real world (including finance) for decades (see the books by Justin Fox, John Cassidy, or Joseph Stiglitz for more), and Posner was on the wrong side of that debate. He wasn’t a Newtonian physicist who wasn’t quite as smart as Einstein. He was part of the problem, and he made it worse.

Readers may wonder why I have it in for Richard Posner, of all people. The reason is that I am in law school, and as a result I have had to read multiple opinions in which Posner smugly reflects on the production of efficient equilibria through the operation of incentives, without bothering to sully his logic with the faintest scrap of empirical evidence. Posner is also in part responsible for the hegemony of the law-and-economics theory of vast areas of the law, which I described on an exam this way:

“What you end up with is judges who know little about economics making uninformed guesses about economic tradeoffs, and then being upheld by appeals courts who (a) know just as little about economics and (b) wouldn’t find reversible error in any case.”

The Man Behind Miuccia | by The Sartorialist | 18 March 2010, 01:19 AM

Did you see this article about Prada and Mr. Bertelli in The Wall Street Journal Magazine this weekend?

Very good but too short.

I would have loved for the writer to really dig deeper into the vision Mr. Bertelli has for the future of Prada.

I'm not into "conspiracy theories" but Mr.Bertelli bought and basically destroyed his nearest competition in Jil Sander and Helmut Lang. Some "analyst" think it was a huge debit-creating mistake on his part but I think it was genius to remove them from his retail/wholesale playing field.

I mean...if you can't beat'em, buy'em!
and then get rid of the namesake...and then sell them again!....Genius!

Tory lack of clarity gets candidates jittering | by Alistair Campbell | 18 March 2010, 01:12 AM

There now follows an extract from this morning's media monitoring report by the Labour Party....

‘Conservatives left puzzled by policy pyramid' (Timesp4) - ‘Wired up but not fired up for IT elex' (Ti p4) - Conservative MPs are warning Cameron that the party's election campaign is too complicated and lacks clear messages says Coates. MPs and candidates were left baffled after being told at a private meeting to campaign on a combination of one slogan, three promises and six pledges. Letwin told MPs to think of a policy pyramid when talking to voters. The top of the pyramid has the slogan: ‘We can't go on like this. Vote for change.' The three promises - to change the economy, society and politics - have been criticised for being too negative. The six promises include to ‘Act now on debt', ‘Get Britain working', and ‘Make Britain the most family-friendly nation in Europe', and were called vague and random by MPs. Senior Tory MPs, including frontbenchers, said that Letwin had ‘over-intellectualised' the main message, which should have been simpler. Two said that they would ‘make it up on the doorstep', while several felt the lack of a specific reduction target for immigration was damaging. Senior figure: ‘Letwin personifies the mad professor ... You could have got colleagues to sit down and come up with something much simpler in a couple of weeks, but instead CCHQ researchers and think-tanks churn out over-complicated ideas.' Shadow ministers have admitted that if there was a Tory victory it would not come with the same enthusiasm that TB enjoyed. Clark: ‘If you considered today's circumstances, you've got an economy which is a major source or worry, people worrying if they will keep their jobs and the expenses scandal dealing a blow to people's confidence in politics and politicians. That combination means that I don't think for any party the same degree of euphoria is available.' - Manifesto commitments, background policy information and regional anti-Labour data will be available to all Tory candidates on a secure application on their BlackBerry or iPhone says Coates. It will accompany, but not replace, the Campaign Guide, which has been produced by the Conservative Research Department before each election since 1950. Several MPs barely hid their dismay when approached by The Times to discuss the new platform. One MP showed how the new software had frozen on his BlackBerry, displaying the message ‘Downloading Campaign Guide' for the past 24 hours. MP: ‘It doesn't bloody work.' Another admitted that he did not have a BlackBerry or iPhone. (Ti)'

.... All quite cheering really and among the reasons why, at a dinner for industry PRs I spoke at last night, so many people seemed to echo the view that the election had gone from being all over a few months ago to wide open now. From thinking not long ago that the Tories had a slick campaign machine headed by a supercommunicator in Cameron, the majority view seemed to be it had descended into something close to a shambles, propped up only by the media's continuing soft approach to matter Tory.

The lack of clarity is a real problem for them, and Oliver Letwin probably the last man you would want explaining message to nervy MPs and candidates. But the problem is of Cameron's making. He has not really had, or if he has he has not seen through, the difficult conversations about what the modern (sic) Tory Party really stands for. So even in their 'pyramid' they have an overflow of conflicting ideas and messages leaving candidates feeling they will have to 'make it up on the doorstep.'

'Vote for Change' is fine for an Opposition Party, indeed blindingly obvious. But it is limited. And unless people have the answer to the question 'change to what?' its limitations are even greater. If the MPs and candidates don't know the answer, and Central Office can't send it to a blackberry without clogging the damn thing up, what chance does the voter have?

* Buy The Blair Years online and raise cash for Labour http://www.alastaircampbell.org/bookshop.php.

March 17, 2010

Global cooling bites the dust: Hottest January followed by second hottest February. Now March is busting out. | by Climate Progress | 17 March 2010, 11:20 PM

Last month, NOAA reported the world experienced the warmest January in both satellite records.  And NOAA just reported (here) that it was the second warmest February on record in both satellite records.  Now the UAH satellite data shows record-smashing temperatures in the first half of March:

The yellow line is the 20-year average temperature, the purple line is of the 20-year “record highs,” and the green line is the 2010 temperature [make your own chart here -- I have a more complete, though messier, graph at the end].

Other temperature datasets show slightly different results.  For NASA, January and February were tied for the second hottest on record.

Of course, there never was any global cooling — see Must-read AP story: Statisticians reject global cooling; Caldeira — “To talk about global cooling at the end of the hottest decade the planet has experienced in many thousands of years is ridiculous.” The vast majority of the warming went right where scientists had predicted — into the oceans (see “How we know global warming is happening” and below).

In fact, 2005 was the hottest year on record in both NOAA’s and NASA’s dataset — and in every dataset, the 200os were the hottest decade on record.  But the anti-science crowd loves their much-vaunted satellite data.  Why?

First, the satellite data shows the warmest year on record to be the uber-Niño year of 1998, allowing the disinformers to ignore the long-term trend and keep repeating the mantra, no warming since 1998.

Second, I think many in the anti-science crowd still operate under the mis-impression that the satellite data doesn’t show any significant long-term warming — a mis-impression creating by some mis-analysis by anti-scientists John Christy and Roy Spencer, mis-analysis that just happened to bias the data in the direction of their beliefs (see “Should you believe anything John Christy and Roy Spencer say?”).  Go figure!

In fact, NOAA points out that both satellite data sets show about the same amount of warming as the land-based record, “which increased at a rate near 0.16°C/decade (0.29°F/decade) during the same 30-year period” — once you remove the expected stratospheric cooling from the satellite records (see NOAA discussion here).

This is from Spencer’s blog on March 5:

It’s clearly warming, and Spencer himself says the “trends since 11/78 [are] +0.132 deg. C [+0.234 F] per decade.”

It’s also worth noting that this current El Niño is puny compared to the one in 1998.  This is from the weekly update, “ENSO Cycle: Recent Evolution, Current Status and Predictions“ from NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center:

The current El Niño is already winding down, although the temperature anomaly in the key region of the tropical Pacific has stayed steady in the last few week around 1.2°C.

Finally, the record temperatures we’re seeing now are especially impressive because we’ve been in “the deepest solar minimum in nearly a century.” It now appears to be over.

But, of course, it’s hard to stop the upward march of human-caused global warming — other than by a sharp reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.

Anyway, the media and anti-science crowd probably only have a few more months to push the “global cooling” meme, because it’s looking increasingly likely that — barring a very sharp drop into a La Niña like we saw 2 years ago (or a major volcano) — this will be the hottest year on record in every temperature dataset.

Memo to media:  If you are going to try to squeeze in one more global cooling story before the end of the year, please do remember that 80% of anthropogenic warming was always expected by scientists to go into the oceans, which have seen a pretty steady increase in heat content:

Figure 1: “Total Earth Heat Content [anomaly] from 1950 (Murphy et al. 2009). Ocean data taken from Domingues et al 2008.”

And from another JGR article, “Global hydrographic variability patterns during 2003–2008” (subs. req’d, draft here [big PDF])

Figure 2: Time series of global mean heat storage (from 0 to 1.24 miles).

So perhaps we are near the end of the global cooling nonsense, at least until the next big La Niña or volcano….

UPDATE:  Their are flaws in Spencer’s graphing system.  Dr. Danny Braswell, NSSTC, an author of the graphing page, writes me, “The period used to compute the 20yr record highs ended several years ago.  Gaps are because of missing data.”  He also writes, “The yearly plots are computed with temperature data from AMSU. The first AMSU was launched in May 1998 on NOAA-15 and data became available later that year.  The 20 year records are only there for a few channels and are based on data from the older MSU.”

That means if you want a plot that includes the first half of 1998, which set many records, you need to use Channel 5 and include the “20-year record highs.”  But if you want the true record highs, you need to include all recent years (although that makes the graph messy).  That’s what I’ve done here:

So March 2010 still looks like it will blow out the records.

Related Posts:

• FoxNews, WattsUpWithThat push falsehood-filled Daily Mail article on global cooling that utterly misquotes, misrepresents work of Mojib Latif and NSIDC
• Anti-science disinformers to media: Please make case for something that isn’t true using data we don’t believe.

Graham, Kerry, Lieberman share details of bipartisan climate and clean energy jobs bill with industry groups | by Climate Progress | 17 March 2010, 10:05 PM

UPDATE:  More details at the end.

Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), John Kerry (D-MA), and Joe Lieberman (I-CT) “shared an eight-page outline of their draft legislation that would reduce greenhouse gas emissions over the next four decades, including provisions to limit business costs while ramping up domestic production of oil, gas and nuclear power.”

E&E News PM (subs. req’d) reported the following details of the bill, which leaked out from the Senators “closed-door meeting with major industry groups they are courting”:

According to several sources in the meeting room, the bill calls for greenhouse gas curbs across multiple economic sectors, with a 2020 target of reducing emissions by 17 percent below 2005 levels and an 80 percent limit at mid-century. Power plant emissions would be regulated in 2012, with other major industrial sources being phased in starting in 2016.

In a bow to industry demands, the senators’ proposal would preempt U.S. EPA climate regulations under the Clean Air Act and halt dozens of state climate laws and regulations now on the books. Also, only facilities that release 25,000 tons per year of greenhouse gases must participate in the climate program.

Additional layers of certainty for industry come via a “hard price collar” that limits greenhouse gas allowances to between $10 and $30 per ton tagged to inflation, with an increase at a to-be-determined “fixed rate” over time. The legislation would also set aside a “strategic reserve” of 4 billion greenhouse gas credits that could be released into the market to help control price volatility fluctuations.

Well, I’m not a fan of a hard collar (i.e. a pure safety valve, with an unlimited amount of allowances sold if you hit the ceiling price) — but some sort of collar was inevitable (see How the Senate can fix cost containment in the climate bill with ‘price collar plus’).  If the reserve is created from tons skimmed off of each year’s total allowances from 2012 to 2050, that is a good idea.

Also, if there is going to be a hard collar than the “fixed rate” of rise over time needs to be something like 6% plus inflation.  The $30 starting price fora ceiling, presumably in 2012, isn’t that bad, but again, only if you are rising at a pretty rapid rate.

The floor price, however, is just too low.  I’d want to start at least $12 if not higher.  As an aside, I would strongly recommend starting the regulations in 2013 (or 2014), to give more time to set rules and keep this clearly away from the economic recovery.  Also, the amount of allocations in the early years are likely to be too high anyway, thanks to the economic recession and the success of the stimulus bill, so you’re really not getting any environmental benefit from starting in 2012.

Preempting the EPA was inevitable if there is to be anywhere near 60 votes for this thing.  [Pause for 10 seconds of angst, now get over it.]

Overall, the bill will include eight titles: Refining, America’s Farmers, Consumer Refunds, Clean Energy Innovation, Coal, Natural Gas, Nuclear and Energy Independence. And it will set up new nationwide standards for energy efficiency and renewable energy, as well as ideas on carbon market regulation crafted by Sens. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine).

One can certainly make good use of the Cantwell-Collins idea of allowing only regulated entities to own permits.

The senators’ meeting included about a dozen top trade associations, including representatives from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Edison Electric Institute and American Petroleum Institute. Several of those officials left the meeting giving the three senators credit for their effort.

“Directionally speaking, the way they’re trying to conform and shape this bill I’d suggest is largely in sync with what most people in American industry think is the direction you’re going to have to go if you’re going to have a successful program,” said Bruce Josten, executive vice president for government affairs at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. “Now there’s a lot of ifs, ands and buts, but if you’re asking for a broad statement, that’s a broad statement.”

John Shaw, senior vice president of government affairs at the Portland Cement Association, called the meeting’s tone “very positive.”

“I think many of the industry sectors are willing to work with the senators to achieve positive public policy results,” Shaw said, “but the devil is in the details, and folks are very anxious to see those details.”

If the Chamber were to support this bill — or even if not actively oppose it — that would be a miracle, and I don’t really believe in miracles.

Right now, the conventional wisdom is the bill has a very, very, very hard climb to 60 votes.  More on that soon.

CQ has more details (apologies for the repetition):

As expected, the measure would set a mandatory cap on carbon emissions across the economy but apply different sets of regulations to different polluting sectors….

• An economy-wide cap on carbon emissions that would begin in 2012, with a target of reducing carbon pollution 17 percent by 2020 and 80 percent by 2050.

• Separate caps on carbon emissions by the electric utilities and manufacturing sectors, which would have to buy permits to pollute from the federal government.

• A straight fee or tax, paid by consumers at the pump, on transportation fuels. The levy would be linked to the carbon content of the fuel and the price of carbon in the other markets.

• A combination for the regulated sectors of a “cap and trade” model, under which polluters could trade pollution permits on an open market, and a “cap and dividend” model, which would return revenue from the sale of permits directly to consumers.

• Direct rebates to consumers of half the revenue from the sale of pollution permits.

• Delay until 2016 in starting the phase-in of carbon caps on manufacturers.

• Application of a “carbon tariff” to imports of goods from countries that do not regulate their carbon emissions.

• A “hard collar” on the price of emission permits of no less than $10 per ton of carbon emitted and no more than $30 per ton. The government would keep a strategic reserve of 4 billion credits, and would flood the market if the carbon price exceeded $30 per ton. The price would be indexed to inflation rates and rise over time.

• A threshold of 25,000 tons of carbon per year before a polluter would be subject to regulation.

• A single federal system to cap emissions, pre-empting separate state limits.

• Sections or titles devoted to oil refining, farming, coal, clean energy innovation, and increasing production of nuclear energy and oil and natural gas drilling.

Leaked document reveals Canadian federal climate scientists being muzzled from media contact | by Climate Progress | 17 March 2010, 09:38 PM

“The Government of Canada has cut virtually all programs aimed at funding climate science. I get the sense that they feel that science is a nuisance. They ignore science in their decision making; they muzzle their federal scientists by imposing impossible media-contact regulations; they cut programs designed to allow scientists to develop knowledge.” — Andrew Weaver, professor at the School of Earth and Ocean Sciences, University of Victoria, and Canada Research Chair

That’s from “Troubling Evidence,” a startling new report from the Climate Action Network Canada.  It was “released just days after a federal budget that effectively slashed funding for university-based climate science.”

A CAN Canada spokesman says of the Harper government, “they’re putting climate deniers in key oversight positions over research, and they’re reducing funding in key areas.…  It’s almost as though they’re making a conscious attempt to bury the truth.”

The muzzling is quite extensive, as the Montreal Gazette reported Monday:

OTTAWA — A dramatic reduction in Canadian media coverage of climate change science issues is the result of the Harper government introducing new rules in 2007 to control interviews by Environment Canada scientists with journalists, says a newly released federal document.

“Scientists have noticed a major reduction in the number of requests, particularly from high profile media, who often have same-day deadlines,” said the Environment Canada document.

“Media coverage of climate change science, our most high-profile issue, has been reduced by over 80 per cent.”

The analysis reviewed the impact of a new federal communications policy at Environment Canada, which required senior federal scientists to seek permission from the government prior to giving interviews.

In many cases, the policy also required them to get approval from supervisors of written responses to the questions submitted by journalists before any interview, said the document, obtained in an investigation into the government’s views and policies on global-warming science that was conducted by Climate Action Network Canada, a coalition of environmental groups.

The document suggests the new communications policy has practically eliminated senior federal scientists from media coverage of climate-change science issues, leaving them frustrated that the government was trying to “muzzle” them.

Apparently Harper learned some tricks from Bush and Cheney.

A 2007 report by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee concluded:  “The Bush administration has engaged in a systematic effort to manipulate climate change science and mislead policymakers and the public about the dangers of global warming.”  The U.S. House Report found, “It was standard practice for media requests to speak with federal scientists on climate change matters to be sent to CEQ for White House approval. By controlling which government scientists could respond to media inquiries, the White House suppressed dissemination of scientific views that could conflict with Administration policies. The White House also edited congressional testimony regarding the science of climate change….  There was a systematic White House effort to minimize the significance of climate change by editing climate change reports.”

Sounds familiar:

Many (federal climate change) scientists are recognized experts in their field, have received media training, and have successfully carried out media interviews for many years,” said the document, leaked by an Environment Canada employee who asked not to be named.

“Our scientists are very frustrated with the new process. They feel the intent of the policy is to prevent them from speaking to media.”

The Environment Canada analysis noted that four prominent scientists, who regularly spoke for the government on climate change science issues, appeared in only 12 newspaper clippings in the first nine months of 2008, compared with 99 clippings over the same period in 2007.

“There is a widespread perception among Canadian media that our scientists have been ‘muzzled’ by the media relations policy,” said the Environment Canada document. “Media coverage of this perception, which originated with a Canwest story in February 2008, is continuing, with at least 47 articles in Canadian newspapers to date.”

Shame on the Harper government for trying to hide the truth from the citizens of Canada, especially when climate change is already hitting their country very hard:

• Climate-Driven Pest Devours N. American Forests
• Nature on stunning new climate feedback: Beetle tree kill in British Columbia releases more carbon than fires

Cambodia, Singapore heatwave and the importance of trees | by Cambodia Calling | 17 March 2010, 08:53 PM

I haven't been inspired to blog, or do anything, really, in this heat. According to the BBC it is 38 degrees today here in Siem Reap. And tomorrow. And Saturday. (Friday will be 37 degrees...)

I was watching Singapore news on telly the other day. Feb 2010 was the driest month in history. It was also the month with the lowest rainfall in 140 years. According to the NEA (National Environment Agency), February 2010 also saw the hottest day - 35°C on Friday, 26th. The NEA explains "February falls in the dry phase of the Northeast monsoon season when the rainbelt shifts southwards away from Singapore." But experts also point a finger at the El Nino effect (the irregular warming of surface water in the Pacific) which occurs every two to seven years, and is likely to last until May.

“We had to make this a First World oasis ... Without having to tell anything to the (foreign investor) CEO, I knew he would understand that ... this is a country where the administration works,” Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew recalled in a dialogue during the 150th anniversary of the Singapore Botanical Gardens last May.

“You just can’t plant a tree and walk away. The tree will die ... If you plant under a flyover, you’ve got to get forest shrubs that grow in shaded areas. It’s complex (maintenance) that all people who run big organisations will understand,” he said.

In other words, landscaping was to be Singapore’s hidden “green trump card”.

jamesykwak | by The Baseline Scenario | 17 March 2010, 07:12 PM

By James Kwak

According to ex-Lehman executives interviewed by Max Abelson (hat tip Felix Salmon). To summarize, they say that using borderline-legal transactions to massage your balance sheet at the end of a quarter is completely normal, everyone does it, $50 billion is no big deal anyway, only “nonprofessionals” would even notice, and the only reason the bankruptcy examiner made so much noise about it was to justify the fee for his work. (Abelson does point out that, according to internal Lehman emails cited in the report, there were Lehman executives at the time who were worried about what they were doing and did not think it was standard practice.)

The unnamed sources may be right about one thing: it may be true that everyone was doing it, or at least something similar for the same purpose. One source said, “If Valukas went into Goldman Sachs, what do you think the report would look like? This would be a fairly tale compared to that.” In other words, Lehman simply had the misfortune to not be bailed out by the U.S. government, leaving its finances open for all the world to see.

But it’s not clear to me how this makes the situation any better. So instead of just Lehman cooking the books, the point is that everyone is cooking the books? And they are cooking the books more, so $50 billion is only chump change? Even if it’s legal, this seems like a problem. (And I don’t think you can resort to the argument that sophisticated money managers knew what was going on and weren’t worried, so therefore the rest of us shouldn’t worry either; if sophisticated money managers were so good, then the collapse of Lehman wouldn’t have had systemic consequences.)

The Lehman report could be interpreted two ways. One is that Lehman was a case of bad apples. If you had asked me before about fraud and the financial crisis, I would have said that there was probably some fraud around the edges, but it was unnecessary–the crisis could have been produced by entirely legal behavior, and probably was. But exposure of accounting fraud (or near-fraud) at Lehman could have the unfortunate effect of causing people to focus on fraud as an explanation of the crisis, implicitly letting all the other banks (and regulators) off the hook.

The other interpretation is that if Lehman was doing it, then probably everyone was, or at least a lot of people were. Maybe Goldman didn’t need to because it was shorting the housing market, but any other bank that was about to get blown up by its own toxic assets would have a strong incentive to push the limits of legal accounting as far as it could to buy itself a little more time.

The implication of Abelson’s sources is that the latter interpretation is correct.

On the Street.....via Manzoni, Milano | by The Sartorialist | 17 March 2010, 06:05 PM

письмово звернутися до НТКУ з проханням показати фільм "Бодетаун. Місто на ко... | by Successful - PledgeBank | 17 March 2010, 05:51 PM

'Я обіцяю письмово звернутися до НТКУ з проханням показати фільм "Бодетаун. Місто на кордоні" за умови, що 10 інших людей зроблять те ж саме.' -- Євген Вязалов, мешканець Києва

Autoplaying ads: an apology | by Futurismic | 17 March 2010, 05:49 PM

Hey, folks; I’ve had a few comments and emails from regular readers informing me that they were seeing ads on the site that were autoplaying video and audio, and which in some cases were hard or impossible to close down. I want to thank those of you who got in touch for doing so; Futurismic’s readers are its lifeblood, and I long ago vowed never to subject you to tacky crap ads of that sort.

Indeed, the agency now managing those ad blocks made a point of telling me that they don’t accept ads of that sort on their network, which is why I decided to start working with them and drop the old Project Wonderful slots (whose new geolocational bidding system had pretty much deep-sixed the tiny income they used to make for the site). I’ve now informed the agency of the problem, and they’re looking into removing the offending ads from their system forthwith.

In the meantime, please pipe up and get in touch if you’re still seeing them: what would be extra helpful is if you could let me know what browser you’re using when you see them, whereabouts you’re located in the world (i.e. which US state, or which smaller nation), and – most importantly – what the offending adverts are promoting.

Thanks again for your patience; normal service will hopefully be resumed very soon.

Project Wonderful - Your ad here, right now, for as low as $0.00

Jimmy the German | by Mark McNulty Photography | 17 March 2010, 05:25 PM

This is Jimmy, he’s German and he lives in Austin and whilst we’re in town we’ve been lucky enough to hang out with him.  He rides a Harley Davidson and as the banner says, he’s a son of anarchy.  Jimmy lives in the house of Randy who’s a superstar in cut off shorts and who has very kindly opened his home to myself and the Nashville Liverpool Underground Medicine Show.  You’ll be meeting lots of new people over the next few days!

Jimmy the German

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The Lightbulb Shop | by Mark McNulty Photography | 17 March 2010, 05:16 PM

So I’m in Austin , Texas for SXSW or at least a few things that surround it.  It’s been a mad few days and I’m just starting to look at what I’ve been shooting though most of the work I’m doing is video based. I’m sure there’s gonna be a few post like the Lightbulb Shop and fingers crossed I get the chance to go back at dusk as they leave the lights on!!!

The Light Bulb Shop

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Has The Time For Mobile Marketing Sailed By? | by onlineSpin | 17 March 2010, 04:45 PM

Do you ever get the feeling that the ship has set sail and you may have missed the boat? When I think about the mobile advertising space, I tend to feel that way -- at least a little bit. Based on the lack of standardization and the rapid growth of competing platforms, I am going out on a limb and may be the first person to say that mobile advertising has plateau-ed -- at least in its current iteration.

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Updated using Planet on 19 March 2010, 01:56 PM