Category: News

Google has released a new Gmail API that enables developers to create what it calls “contextual gadgets” for the email service. This will enable users to enhance their email experience by integrating additional data and tools with the emails themselves. Google has been using the same API to make YouTube videos and Picasa photos viewable from the Gmail inte… (read more)

Jonathan Rhys Meyers is back in rehab.

The Irish actor, famous for his role on the Showtime period drama Tudors, was banned from boarding a United Airlines flight at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York after he hurled the N-word at a company employee in a drunken tirade.

Now Jonathan’s set to return to London where he will receive treatment for alcoholism for a fourth time, a source told PEOPLE Magazine Wednesday.

“He just really wants to get better. This has been an ongoing battle for him.”

Legendary fund manager Seth Klarman of the Baupost Group made some rare public comments recently at the CFA Institute in Boston.  Suffice it to say that he does not have a bright and sunny view of the world.

Some choice quotes relayed by Aaron Pressman at Reuters:

* “Given the recent run-up [in stocks], I’d be worried that we’ll have another 10 years of zero returns.”

* “I’m more worried about the world broadly than I’ve ever been in my whole career.”

* Current market conditions remind Klarman of a Hostess Twinkie snack cake because “everything is being manipulated by the government” and appears “artificial.”

* Publicly traded real estate investment trusts…have “rallied enormously” and are “quite unattractive.”

* Inflation is a risk that Klarman said he is particularly concerned with given the government’s high rate of borrowing to bail out the financial system. Baupost has purchased far out-of-the-money puts on bonds to hedge the risk, he said.

Baupost has 30% of its assets in cash.

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• Rosenberg: Stocks Now 35% — A Whole Standard Deviation — Overvalued
• THE GREAT DISCONNECT: Stocks 30% Overvalued And Still Going Up… And Housing Rolling Over
• Stocks Are 40% Overvalued, Says Smithers

Via Prison Planet.com » Commentary

Russia Today
May 19, 2010

Iran’s deal to ship its’ uranium to Turkey, while insisting on continuing to enrich nuclear fuel, is getting a mixed response globally. Russia’s giving it a guarded welcome, but the U.S. and Britain are far from convinced. They’re continuing to push the UN into more sanctions against Tehran. The sticking point for the United States is Iran’s insistance to carry on enriching its own uranium. But U.S. investigative journalist Webster Tarpley says the deal means his country’s strategy to isolate Tehran has failed.

Mitsubishi Electric today announced [PDF] it has installed five 80 person-capacity elevators at an office building in Osaka, which opened two weeks ago. The elevators, Japan’s largest, can carry 5,250 kilograms in load and offer a floor space of 9.52 square meters. That means that theoretically, up to 400 people could go up the 41 floors of said office building at once.

The cars have glass windows, allowing passengers to look outside while using the elevator.

Mitsubishi Electric itself doesn’t say its elevators are the world’s largest, but that might very well be. Let us know in the comments if you know better.

Via Gizmodo via Gizmag

Via Prison Planet.com » World News

Press TV
May 19, 2010

Captured Jundallah leader Abdolmalek Rigi has said that while in Morocco, suspected Israeli or US agents had given him a list of people to assassinate in Tehran.

In a recent interview, Rigi told Press TV that before his arrest Jundallah had held a series of meetings in Casablanca with a group who had claimed to be NATO contacts.

“When we looked back at all the things that had happened we felt that two things were unclear. First, if they are from NATO why did they not meet with us in Afghanistan where they have bases and where they can contact us in a much more easy and secure manner,” said Rigi.

“The second issue was that the first time they informed us that NATO forces wanted to meet with us we thought they were going to speak about eastern parts of Iran, because NATO forces are stationed in Afghanistan,” he added.

“But they insisted that we should transfer our operations from the eastern border region to the capital. We thought that this was very strange. When we thought about it we came to the conclusion that they are either Americans acting under NATO cover or Israelis,” he further explained.

Accordign to Rigi, the Israeli or US agents said they would provide him with a list of names, addresses, and photos of people who they had to assassinate in Tehran as well as any other equipment and explosives they may need to carry out their operations.

He further pointed out that they had promised him very high sums for the overall project as well as specific amounts for each assassination.

Iranian security forces arrested Rigi while he was onboard a flight from Dubai to Kyrgyzstan in late February.

Jundallah, which is based in Pakistan, has carried out numerous bombings, assassination attempts, and terrorist attacks in Iran, one of which killed at least 40 people in the southeastern city of Pishin.

After his arrest, the ringleader confessed that Western intelligence agencies supported his terror activities against Iran.

During the interview, Rigi also said that his activities were undoubtedly the result of “a mix of ignorance and hatred.”

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Attorney General Richard Blumenthal’s troubles – and how he handled them – evoked memories Tuesday of another high-profile controversy in his long career.

During his 1990 race for attorney general – his first race for statewide office – Blumenthal faced a story that a restrictive covenant on his home mortgage in Stamford prevented the sale of the property to African Americans. The covenant, which was present on other properties throughout the country, would have allowed discrimination of buyers of the property on Dolphin Cove Quay – an upscale area near Stamford’s waterfront. The home was a condominium, where the surrounding land was held in common ownership.

The story spread quickly, and Blumenthal handled it by holding a press conference in much the same way as he did Tuesday. Instead of the army of veterans who gathered around him Tuesday, Blumenthal appeared in April 1990 with state Sen. Margaret Morton, an African American from Bridgeport who supported him.

Morton spoke on behalf of Blumenthal at the time – in which he was facing a bitterly fought contest against Jay B. Levin, a New London attorney who was also seeking the Democratic nomination for attorney general.

Farmington attorney John Droney, who was a Democratic powerhouse at the time as the state party chairman, said that Blumenthal had handled the issues in the same way. Droney, who served in Vietnam, attended Tuesday’s news conference in West Hartford with the veterans.

“It’s repeating itself – both in 1990 and now,” Droney said.

Droney, though, says that the current stories about Blumenthal are far more severe than the 1990 ones about the real estate covenant.

“It didn’t have the sizzle that this thing has,” Droney said. “It wasn’t that big a deal.”

In both instances, various supporters rallied around Blumenthal.

“That’s a tribute to him – in both instances,” Droney said. “You’re going to get attacked and when you’re attacked, you stand up.”

Reached Tuesday night in Washington, D.C., Levin said that he battled Blumenthal for the nomination for 1 1/2 years, four nights a week at Democratic town committees and events around the state. He said that people brought Blumenthal’s Vietnam record to him as a source of controversy.

In addition, Levin said both in 1990 and Tuesday night that he had nothing to do with the stories about the real estate covenant. Stating that both he and Blumenthal are Jewish, Levin said that he cannot imagine anyone of Jewish ancestry being involved in the restrictive covenant.

“I accept his explanation on that as I did back then,” Levin said of the covenant.

Despite their clashes, Levin says now that he considers Blumenthal to be a friend. As such, he strongly defended Blumenthal – saying they were together numerous times in front of crowds where Blumenthal could have embellished his record.

“It was crystal clear to me that he never, ever said he served in Vietnam,” Levin said. “We were much closer to that era when we ran.”

Via Prison Planet.com » Commentary

Bruce Fein
Campaign For Liberty
Wednesday, May 19th, 2010

It is the best of times for the American Empire. The United States bestrides the planet as an unrivalled colossus.

Its annual military budget exceeds $650 billion. That staggering sum is greater than the annual military expenditures of the next 25 countries combined. The defense spending of Russia, the superpower opponent of the United States during the Cold War, is now one-twelfth of the Pentagon’s. Russia’s military is struggling against Islamic forces in Chechnya, Dagestan, and Ingushetia. Its assertiveness in South Ossetia and Abkhazia are unthreatening to the national security of the United States. Sen. John McCain’s patently absurd exhortation that “we are all Georgians now” during the 2008 presidential campaign, joined in lower octaves by competing politicians, reflected an Empire philosophy in full blossom — inflate danger to frighten the people to justify a global military footprint, control for the sake of control, and ubiquitous encroachments on civil liberties. James Madison, an icon of the American Republic, had warned, “The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home.”

The American Empire sports a military presence in 135 countries, which host more than 400,000 U.S. troops. Tens of thousands of U.S. military personnel are abroad to defend the people and interests of South Korea, Japan, Western Europe, Saudi Arabia, et cetera. They are risking that “last full measure of devotion” not to “secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity,” but to protect foreigners against attack, foreigners who pay no American taxes and have no allegiance to America.

Nothing is too insignificant to attract U.S. military attention and concern: puny conflicts between Russia and Ukraine over gas prices or Sevastopol; the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda; mass killings in Darfur; the fate of Kosovar Albanians in Serbia or the Karen in Myanmar; a handful of juvenile al-Qaeda followers in Mali or Mauretania; Maoist terrorism in Nepal; or a refugee crisis in Bangladesh that could be occasioned by global warming — a newly designated national-security threat.

The Empire seeks to control events everywhere on the planet. The idea of neutrality or disinterestedness — the leitmotif of President George Washington’s Farewell Address — has been retired from public discourse. Washington issued a neutrality proclamation in 1794 when Great Britain and France were at war. The United States remained scrupulously neutral when Central and South America were in upheaval against Spain and Portugal for two decades from 1809 to 1829.

In contrast, presidents of the contemporary American Empire concoct national-security interests from trifles as light as air to justify U.S. intervention. The United States transfers arms to the ramshackle and monumentally corrupt government of Somalia fighting for survival against bandits and Islamic extremists. It frets over a border dispute between Eritrea and Ethiopia. It worries over the national-security implications of global warming and AIDS. The vast majority of American citizens– whether Democratic, Republican, or Independent — instinctively assume that the United States should project itself into every nook and cranny of the globe because of its moral superiority and putative aptitude for plucking democracy from despotism.

The American Empire is committed to defend from military attack all 28 members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), including Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Albania, and Croatia. If Russia, today, were to invade Hungary as in 1956, or the Czech and Slovak republics as in 1968, the United States would be at war to fight and die for Hungarians, Czechs, and Slovaks. The United States has corresponding defense obligations to South Korea and Japan. It is the policeman of the world.

The Empire is at perpetual war with international terrorism. The entire globe (including the United States) is a battlefield where military force may be employed and military law may be imposed against any al-Qaeda suspect, including American citizens. Military commissions that combine judge, jury, and prosecutor and that take shortcuts through due process are authorized to try detainees accused of novel war crimes, for example, conspiring to train in a terrorist camp or serving as Osama bin Laden’s driver.

Enemy combatants, i.e., persons “associated” in any way with al-Qaeda, may be detained indefinitely without accusation or trial. When required to defend its enemy-combatant designations in federal courts, the president loses in the overwhelming number of the cases. The Congress of the United States prohibits Guantánamo Bay inmates from being transferred to U.S. soil on the assumption that all are guilty of terrorism even if they have been exonerated. (A temporary provision has been made for transfers for criminal prosecution.)

The detentions of noncitizens who have been illegally detained for long years are regularly continued because the United States refuses to grant them asylum even if they — like China’s persecuted Uighurs — have well-founded fears of persecution, torture, or death if returned to their native countries. The United States no longer welcomes the tired, poor, huddled masses yearning to be free as immigrants. The Statue of Liberty’s spirit is honored more in the breach than in the observance.

Detainees may be held completely outside the legal system at Bagram prison in Afghanistan — a first cousin of the Soviet Union’s Gulag Archipeligo limned by Alexander Solzhenitzen.
Secrecy

The state-secrets privilege is invoked by the president to protect executive-branch officials from liability for flagrant violations of constitutional rights, for example, torture, kidnapping, and illegal surveillance. Justice has capitulated to a national-security psychosis.

Secret government is the rule and transparency the exception. The people do not know what the executive branch is doing or why in national-security affairs. They knew nothing of U.S. torture of al-Qaeda suspects or Abu Ghraib interrogation abuses until there were leaks to the media. Ditto for the illegal Terrorist Surveillance Program that flouted the criminal prohibitions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. President Barack Obama is withholding from the public the photographs of U.S. interrogation abuses of detainees sought in a Freedom of Information Act suit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union.

The president worries that revealing the wrongdoing might awaken anger against the U.S. military abroad and compel prosecutions of the criminal abusers, as in the My Lai massacre. “Trust me” is the creed of the president and his subordinates.

Even in domestic affairs, the multitrillion dollar financial transactions of the Federal Reserve Board are secret; and the United States does not require transparency in the private use of multi-billion dollar bail-out monies to private businesses under the Troubled Asset Relief Program. The American Empire’s massive secrecy shields public officials from political or legal accountability to its citizen-subjects.

The few members of Congress who are skeletally informed about national-security secrets meekly accept executive-branch edicts to remain silent. By cowardly inactivity or passivity, members become complicit in crimes such as torture or illegal interceptions and retentions of phone conversations or emails that have been shared with them by the National Security Agency or Central Intelligence Agency.

The president asserts executive privilege to prevent his advisors from appearing under subpoena to testify before Congress without provoking congressional retaliation. When former White House counsel John Dean recited chapter and verse of conversations with Richard Nixon in the Oval Office to the Senate Watergate Committee, his testimony was pivotal in uncovering Watergate crimes and repudiating the idea that if the president does it, it is legal.

The president approves bills passed by Congress, but appends signing statements stating his intent to ignore provisions that would confine his discretion in national-security or foreign-policy matters — for instance, placing U.S. troops under UN command or meeting with nations designated as state sponsors of terrorism. The signing statements are tantamount to absolute line-item vetoes, which the Supreme Court held were unconstitutional in Clinton v. New York. They arrogate power over the legislative process to the executive branch by preventing Congress from bundling into one bill provisions the president likes and provisions he dislikes and confronting him with the Hobson’s choice of either taking the good with the bad or taking nothing. In addition, Congress cannot override a signing statement by two-thirds majorities in the House and Senate.
The costs of war

The president enjoys counter-constitutional power to initiate preemptive wars unilaterally to abort pre-embryonic foreign dangers to the United States or its allies. Congress, manifestly intended by the Constitution’s makers to decide on war or peace, routinely funds and endorses by inaction whatever the president ordains. Even presidential lies to obtain congressional authorization for war are accepted with equanimity or droopy resignation by senators and representatives. A bill — the Executive Accountability Act of 2009, which would criminalize intentional presidential lies to Congress or the American people to obtain authorization for war — is greeted largely with congressional yawns and popular indifference.

The United States is at war in Iraq and Afghanistan, deploying hundreds of thousands of troops in utopian quests to transform primitive political despotisms into thriving democracies at supersonic speeds. Thousands of American soldiers have been killed and tens of thousands have been wounded while making the United States less safe by killing innocent civilians and squandering vast resources through military spending.

The war in Iraq was initiated by George Bush through an unconstitutional delegation of authority from Congress. George Washington, who presided over the Constitutional Convention of 1787, lectured, “The constitution vests the power of declaring war in Congress; therefore no offensive expedition of importance can be undertaken until after they shall have deliberated upon the subject and authorized such a measure.” He was echoed by the father of the Constitution, James Madison, who, as president, asked Congress for a declaration of war against Great Britain in 1812. But the Constitution’s text and original intent are impotent against the prevailing orthodoxies of the American Empire, in which overwhelming authority is concentrated in the president because constant war for the sake of control is the Empire’s chief mission.

The Founding Fathers correctly feared that the president would gratuitously initiate war, because military conflict confers on the commander in chief patriotic or jingoistic public support, secrecy, money, appointments, and the tempting opportunity to transform the world.

As in Iraq, in Afghanistan the United States is supporting a hopelessly corrupt, inept, and unpopular regime. The administration of Hamid Karzai has recently stolen an election with a cast of thugs, thieves, and murderous tribal chiefs opposed to the destruction of opium poppies but in favor of a law reducing wives to chattels, including a requirement of spousal permission to leave the house. In neither country is the president able to define military success or progress beyond Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s definition of hard-core pornography: “I know it when I see it.” To paraphrase philosopher George Santayana, a fanatical nation redoubles its efforts when it has forgotten its aim. Thus, Obama escalates the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan and corresponding funding of civilian programs as his special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke, confesses he is clueless about whether either initiative could plausibly be successful. As with the Vietnam debacle, U.S. failures in Afghanistan engender more of the same flawed strategy, the identical folly pursued by the British and Soviet Empires in that barren and desolate land.

Hundreds of billions of dollars are readily appropriated by Congress and approved by the American people for the Iraq and Afghan wars. Nothing is too expensive when national security is mentioned. U.S. killings of Afghan and Iraqi civilians and interrogation crimes, including torture, at Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo Bay, Bagram prison, and secret dungeons in Central and Eastern Europe, have created an indeterminate number of new enemies. The hundreds of billions of dollars spent in Iraq and Afghanistan hunting for al-Qaeda in remote caves and mountains have largely been wasted. But a prime earmark of Empire is to brand as unpatriotic any criticism of actions taken in the name of national security. When the Empire began its baby steps from a republic in the Mexican-American War, President James K. Polk branded as traitors all who questioned his counterfactual claim that Mexico initiated the conflict by killing American soldiers on American soil.

The American Empire is assumed without debate by Congress and the American people to be the right course for the United States. It is no more subject to mainstream dispute than the heliocentric theory of the universe. Congressmen Ron Paul (R-Tex.) and Walter Jones (R-N.C.) are the rare members of Congress who recognize and protest the Empire’s profanation of the nation’s charter documents and signature creed. Thomas Jefferson’s first inaugural address is emblematic: “peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none.”
The loss of the Republic

It is the worst of times for the American Republic.

The American Republic celebrated the idea that the purpose of government was to secure unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That idea has succumbed to the belief that the mission of the United States is to control and dominate the world through military and economic might at the expense of individual rights, checks and balances, limited government, and transparency at home.

The lion’s share of power was once entrusted to Congress — the branch closest to the people, most readily accountable to constituents, and least inclined towards war. The power of the purse, strict oversight of the executive branch, and the exclusive power to initiate war made Congress the most powerful branch. During the Nixon administration, Congress wielded the power of the purse to end the bombing of Cambodia and to prohibit U.S. ground troops in Thailand. That legislation was followed by the so-called Church Committee hearings, which disclosed massive civil-liberties abuses during 40 years of unchecked spying by the FBI, CIA, and NSA.

But Congress has now been reduced to a political cipher. It appropriates whatever money the president seeks for war or for economic “stimulus.” It holds no serious oversight hearings on the conduct of war by the president; interrogation abuses; criminal violations of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act; or the distribution of enormous bailout sums to financially reckless or irresponsible banks or other businesses, or the efficacy of it.

The Republic understood that the informing function of Congress was its most important. Freedom and ignorance are incompatible. Voters must be informed of what the government is doing to inform their political loyalties and activities. As the historian Henry Steele Commager put it in 1972, “The generation that made the nation thought secrecy in government one of the instruments of Old World tyranny and committed itself to the principle that a democracy cannot function unless the people are permitted to know what their government is up to.”

There is only one thing that will restore the safe Republic from the unsafe clutches of the American Empire: an unequivocal repudiation by the American people of a risk-free existence and a quest to dominate foreign lands not through example but by military force or threats.

Food chemistry Professor J. Scott Smith of Kansas State University studied the anti-oxidant properties of some spices: cumin, finger root, tumeric, rosemary, coriander seeds, and galangal. Rosemary, tumeric, and finger root contain the highest level of antioxidants. Antioxidant -rich spices, according to Smith, lessen the amount of heterocyclic amines (HCAs) found in cooked beef for up to 40 percent. HCAs are carcinogenic compounds produced when meat is grilled, fried, boiled, or barbecued. Rosemary extracts alone blocked HCAs by 61 to 79 percent. Some Thai spices also inhibited 40-43 percent of carcinogens.

With this development, Smith recommends that spices become basic ingredients in cooking. HCAs increase with higher temperatures and extended cooking time, but they will be lessened if spices are mixed in which will block the formation of carcinogens while cooking even when under increased heat.

As it is commonly implied, prevention is better than cure.

Related posts:

1. Trey Smith: Son of Will Smith Before Marrying Jada Pinkett Smith
2. Unprocessed Meat Better Than Processed Meat
3. Cancers From The Environment More Numerous

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Via Prison Planet.com » Sci Tech

David Gutierrez
Natural News
Wednesday, May 19th, 2010

The widespread toxin bisphenol-A (BPA) damages the intestines and may lead to a painful condition known as leaky gut syndrome, according to a study conducted by researchers from the National Institute of Agronomic Research researchers in Toulouse, France, and published in the Proceedings of the National Academy Sciences.

The study “shows the very high sensitivity on the intestine of BPA,” the National Institute of Agronomic Research said.

BPA is used to make hard clear plastics for products such as water and baby bottles. It is also used to make dental sealants and composites, and is in the liners food cans, beverages and infant formula. More than 130 studies have linked the hormone-mimicking chemical to a wide variety of health problems, including cancers, birth and reproductive defects, obesity, early puberty onset, behavior disorders and brain damage.

In the new study, researchers exposed both living rats and human intestinal cells to a dose of BPA 10 times lower than that currently considered safe by most governments. They found that the permeability of intestinal cells in both humans and rats decreased upon exposure to the chemical. The intestinal lining developed damage characteristic of the condition known both as “poor intestinal permeability” and “leaky gut syndrome.”

Normally, a mucus lining prevents undigested substances from passing through the intestinal lining and into the bloodstream. When this lining is damaged, however, toxic substances and foreign pathogens can enter the body more easily. Because the intestinal lining also contains immunoglobin A, its disruption can affect the entire body’s immune system.

People with leaky gut syndrome often experience abdominal pain, digestive upset, rashes, hampered immune function and chronic muscle pain. Damage to the intestinal lining can cause poor nutrient absorption, leading to vitamin and mineral deficiencies.

Adding to the body of evidence that BPA is particularly dangerous to developing fetuses and children, the researchers found that exposure to BPA in utero or immediately after birth significantly increased rats’ risk of developing severe intestinal inflammation as adults.

Via Prison Planet.com » World News

Joe Weisenthal
Business Insider
Wednesday, May 19th, 2010

Jim Cramer is a gold bull!

During his STOP TRADING segment, he told Amanda Drury he likes gold bullion, the SPDR Gold Trust (GLD) and miner Eldorado Gold (EGO).

And on the news of the day — Germany’s attack on speculators — he said: “They think there’s a Lehman out there… A Lehman II, as some guys are calling it.”

A few months ago, people began questioning the difference between reality and rhetoric when it came to the “threat” of “cyberwar.” Many of the claims were clearly exaggerated with people purposely confusing script kiddies doing basic vandalism with some sort of organized “war” or threat. One of the folks, who has been given the most attention for playing up this threat, is former director of national intelligence, Michael McConnell, who just happens to have scored a job as a top exec at Booz Allen. So it seems worth noting that Booz Allen has racked up over $400 million in gov’t contracts in just the past few weeks. Of course, most of the press that McConnell has been able to get about this issue plays up his former gov’t role, but plays down the fact that his new job seems to be scaring the gov’t into shoveling truckloads of cash to Booz Allen, no matter how serious the “threat” really is.

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UPDATED FROM TUESDAY VERSION ABOUT RICK BAYLESS GUEST CHEFING AT THE WHITE HOUSE WITH CLARIFICATION….
Clarification: Bayless at Gapers Block said he did not send his Twitters from the White House kitchen. Bayless also sent a Twitter out about my post. To clarify: Bayless Twittered about the upcoming dinner and about the White House kitchen, but not from the White House kitchen. My apology.

The lede below is what appeared in the priint editions.

WASHINGTON — Rick Bayless, the Chicago superstar chef, was Twittering from the White House kitchen about today’s Obama White House state dinner honoring Mexican President Felipe Calderon and his wife, Margarita Zavala. Until the Tweets stopped. The White House kitchen is for cooking, not Tweeting.

Bayless’ contemporary Mexican cuisine made his Frontera Grill and Topolobampo restaurants at 445 N. Clark a favorite of President Obama and first lady Michelle.

He was given the unpaid honor of being a guest chef, working the state dinner — the second of the Obama administration — alongside of White House House chef Cristeta Comerford.

The White House press operation wanted to downplay the glamor aspect of the state dinner; these are tough economic times.

Bayless talked about the dinner in interviews — he gave up a few facts about what he may be cooking — his Oaxacan mole, for example. “He’s been blabbing,” wrote the Washington Examiner “Yeas and Nays” column. “He’s done interviews with the New York Times and NPR, revealing bits and pieces of the menu.”

On Tuesday morning Bayless, an inveterate Tweeter wrote, “Thanks 2 the 100s of well wishers! Ready 4 day 2 n rather small White House kitchen. Chef was challenged by some ingred, but last arrive 2day.”

He flew to Washington on Monday from Chicago and when he arrived, he Twittered, “Just arrived in DC. Headed to the White House kitchens. I have to say: I’m a little nervous.”

After he checked out the White House kitchen — which is fairly small — Bayless Twittered, “The White House staff could not be nicer&more professional! Most worried about ingredients, but all will b here 4 big day!”

But after his Tuesday Tweet early in the morning, Bayless was shut down on Twitter.

Last year, when the Obamas entertained the prime minister of India, Manmohan Singh, the guest chef, Marcus Samuelsson, a big name in the cooking world, was neither seen nor heard from and asked not to give interviews about the dinner in advance. He was not allowed to appear at the press preview of the dinner.

The White House at first was keen on limiting reporting opportunities from the state dinner, but Tuesday eased up on a restrictions. Michelle Obama and Mrs. Zavala will visit an elementary school in the Maryland suburbs of Washington with students from Central and South America on Wednesday morning. That is the picture of the day the East Wing wants.

At first, the White House was not planning any advance event to preview the dinner. Last year on the afternoon of the India dinner, the East Wing set up sample table settings; the first lady arranged for a briefing on the history of state dinners for the group of girls she is mentoring.

In a reversal, the White House now will allow a pool to see the dinner set up in the East Room “for a few minutes” and to see “for a few minutes” the tent on the South Lawn where more guests will be invited for dessert and entertainment.

Lynn Sweet

Pistachios offer health benefits such as lower levels of triglycerides, and controlled blood sugar. It has both weight management and antioxidant properties. All of these contribute in having a healthy heart. And health conscious people are likely to benefit more from eating nuts than plain sweets.

And new finding adds that nuts reduce bad cholestrol (LDL) and lower the risk of cardiovascular disease. Joan Sabate of Loma Linda University School of Public Health penned the report which was published in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

It included a comprehensive study of several researches from seven countries with 600 topics, 25 clinical tests, and 583 men and women participants aged 19 to 86 years old. It was found out that eating 67 grams of nuts a day reduce bad cholesterol (LDL) by 5 to 7 percent and triglycerides by 10.2 percent.

So give your heart a treat and grab a handful of nuts like pistachios – a healthy snack without the guilt.

Related posts:

1. Nuts Can Lower Cholesterol Levels…For Some
2. Unprocessed Meat Better Than Processed Meat
3. Eat Chocolates to reduce Heart Risk

Grist has an article on some DOE research funding for energy storage for solar thermal power – A hot technology: Feds push solar solution to coal addiction.

The Obama administration last week gave a $62 million boost to efforts to make solar power truly competitive with coal.

“The projects announced today will seek to improve component and system designs to extend operation [of concentrated solar power projects] to an average of about 18 hours per day, a level of production that would make it possible for these plants to displace traditional coal-burning power plants,” the Department of Energy said in a statement announcing cash grants that are being doled out over the next five years.

The recipients are companies developing technology to store energy generated by solar thermal plants so that it can be used at night or when the sun doesn’t shine. In the utility biz, that’s called baseload power. (Solar thermal plants typically use vast arrays of mirrors to focus the sun on a liquid-filled boiler to create steam that drives an electricity-generating turbine.)

It’s hardly a huge amount of cash. But it’s going to a mix of startups and big old-line tech companies — many in California — that are working on some potentially game-changing technology.

But how much of the game needs to be changed? That question seems heretical — we’ll have achieved renewable-energy nirvana when solar farms grow electrons 24/7, right? But it was raised by J.D. Sitton, chief executive of Infinia, a solar startup backed by prominent green-tech venture capitalist Khosla Ventures as well as eSolar founder Bill Gross’ Idealab and Vulcan Capital, the Seattle investment firm run by Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen.

“There’s a raging debate in the solar thermal business about how much is storage worth and how much it matters,” says Sitton, whose, Kennewick, Wash., company, scored $3 million from the Department of Energy to create storage technology for its Stirling solar dish.

Resembling a large mirrored satellite receiver, Infinia’s 21-foot-tall PowerDish focuses the sun on a Stirling engine suspended on an arm over the center of the device. The heat causes a gas inside the engine to expand and drive a piston that generates electricity.

The DOE grant — and others Infinia has received from the federal government — will allow the company to integrate storage capacity into the dish apparatus. Sitton says that will involve some form of molten salt that will store PowerDish-generated heat that can be released to drive the Stirling engine when the sun is not shining.

A surefire way to get people talking about your previously unheard-of brand? Beating a large Apple logo-shaped ice-sculpture with hammers. Job done. More »










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Singapore, Fehmarn Consulting

 Responsibilities:
• Conduct research on new controller platforms for wind turbine generators (WTG),
set roadmaps for control system architecture, as well as create system requirement
specifications and patent new inventions
• Ensure the successful execution of research projects and feasibility studies on
brand-new wind turbine controller platforms in terms of functionality, performance,
interface, feasibility and scalability
Requirements:
• Masters/Bachelor’s Degree in Electrical/Electronic/Computer Engineering with 3 –
7 years of experience in control system/PLC development or research (hardware &
software)
• Good in modular system architecture, networked infrastructure, backplane
system, SCADA, wireless, optical, fault tolerance, I/O interfaces, diagnostics, etc.
• Research experience in controls design, and working experience in the power
and energy industry are preferred
• Background in automotive or aerospace will be an added advantage