Category: News

Local legislators in Michigan counties battle over a bill that will expand on water protections established by the 2008 Great Lakes Compact.

Photo Courtesy NASA

A proposed bill that declares Michigan’s groundwater a “public trust” has set off a storm of controversy, with opponents claiming that the legislation would expose property owners to new state fees, and supporters arguing that it will protect against outside interests siphoning off the state’s water.

The latest skirmish came last week, when a panel of the Oakland County Board of Commissioners narrowly passed a resolution asking the state legislature to vote against the bill. The resolution claims that the legislation would interfere with traditional water rights and limit the ability of farmers and lakeside homeowners to use the resource. It passed by a six-to-five vote along party lines in the southeastern Michigan county, with Republicans opposed to the bill and Democrats in support, respectively. The full board is scheduled to vote on the resolution Thursday.

The legislator at the center of the upheaval, State Rep. Dan Scripps (D-Leland), said that the bill’s intent is to strengthen property rights rather than reduce them.

“I’m trying to end the idea of groundwater as a commodity,” Scripps told the Traverse City Record-Eagle in March. Scripps told Circle of Blue that he introduced the bill in September because 2008’s landmark Great Lakes Compact did not go far enough to protect the rest of the state’s waters.

“Groundwater, surface water, Great Lakes water—these are public resources that should be protected in the future,” he said.

Since its introduction, House Bill 5319 has been praised by water rights experts, pilloried by the conservative Mackinac Center for Public Policy, and argued over in numerous letters to the editor in newspapers across the state.

Meanwhile the move by Oakland County politicians has been “sharply criticized” by Clean Water Action, a national citizens’ group working for clean, safe and affordable water.

“What the vote today says is that the groundwater that feeds Oakland County’s streams, keeps Oakland County lakes alive and is the circulatory system for our entire Great Lakes ecosystem doesn’t deserve to be safeguarded from a state government that is sometimes all too willing to allow our waters to be sold for profit and exported to thirsty countries like China,” Cyndi Roper, Clean Water Action’s special projects director, said in a news release. “We strongly urge the Board of Commissioner to reject those who want to turn Michigan’s waters over to corporate interests so, like our jobs, water can be outsourced in unlimited amounts to China and other places.”

Jim Olson, an environmental attorney from Traverse City, Michigan, and one of the region’s foremost authorities on water law, called for the passage of Scripps’ bill in a commentary in the Detroit Free Press.

“If public trust principles are not reaffirmed then the water commons that supports all life and economy here will be diminished in flow, level and quality, and claimed by special or foreign interests under international treaties such as NAFTA… In other words, industries and the jobs they produce, like farming—Michigan’s second largest industry—will be forced to compete with the infinite demand for water anywhere in the country, continent or world,” he wrote.

Half of the world’s population will be without safe drinking water in less than 30 years if current levels of water waste and pollution are not curbed, Olson noted. He said recent surveys have estimated that the world’s freshwater demands will outstrip the supply by more than 30 percent.

Scripps has introduced a new bill that he hopes will calm fears of new state fees on water, according to the Michigan Messenger. Introduced last week, the bill forbids state and local governments from imposing “any taxes or fees on water withdrawals from water wells on residential property.”

Sources: Detroit Free Press, Michigan Messenger, Traverse City Record-Eagle

Read More: Congress, Michigan Legislature Asked to Fix Leaks in Great Lakes Compact

Erin Kutz wrote:

Qualtré, a maker of motion sensors for consumer electronics such as cellular handsets, navigation devices, and gaming controllers, has closed an $8 million Series B round of funding, the Marlborough, MA-based company announced today. Matrix Partners and Pilot House Ventures participated in the round, which will go to product development, sales, and operations, and brings the company’s total funding raised to $13 million.

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42 Year old Mike Michalak is changing careers. Michalak’s been an options trader for more than a decade, but he says he’s ready to find something else, maybe a position as “a financial analyst or in the banking environment”. But the last time Michalak’s had to go on a job interview, was 15 years ago, and he’s nervous about it…so he called in a coach to help him score the big job. Its what many job seekers are doing these days, to get an advantage, or just stay in game of today’s super competitive job market. “Having a great interview is so critical, and the only way to have a really great interview is to have someone who can coach you through that interview process. This is the only opportunity you’re going to have to make that first great impression and in order to do that, you have to be coached through the interview and prepared for that” says Vickie Lenchner of HR Staffing.

The tough economy and lack of job openings has lead to an increase in the number of interview coaches nationwide. Terry Kozlowski, of jobinterview911.com, holds seminars and gives mock interviews to prepare clients on how to best answer the tough questions that might come up during the interview process. “Interviewers will sometimes just pick a question out of the blue just to try to throw you, and just to see how you think under pressure, so you gotta be prepared for the predicatable questions and as much as you can, be prepared with your own stories and your own life experiences to handle the unpredictable questions that come your way” she says.

A fast talking, 23 year old, Joyce Yin turned to Kozlowski for help, while she looks for her first job in the non-profit sector. She’s a barely 5 foot tall, ball of energy, with a lot of enthusiasm, but says she had to learn from a coach how to calm down and keep her nerves in check when she’s being interviewed “I feel like my heart is beating so fast, its like in my throat and its about to come out because i’m so nervous, because I’m already an energetic person, so to have all that other energy just makes me kinda like fffzzzz” Yin says, as she demonstrates her emotions by shaking her hands in the air. Nervousness is normal, says Lenchner, you just have come to the table well prepared and ready to put your best foot forward. Kozlowski says one of the most important tips she gives to those preparing for that big interview: “Practice, practice, practice”.

CLICK HERE TO SEE MORE TIPS AND SUGGESTIONS FROM INTERVIEW COACHES LENCHNER AND KOZLOWSKI:

Square Enix seems to be bolstering its stable of releases even further with something called “Chocobo’s Crystal Tower”. The company has recently filed a trademark for it over in Europe.

With energy experts forecasting substantial increases in solar power in the coming decades, scientists at GE Global Research are working with Arizona Public Service, the state’s largest electric utility, to understand how large amounts of solar can best be integrated into today’s grid. The first-of-its-kind study, which was approved earlier this month by the state’s regulators and is part of the utility’s ongoing smart grid efforts, will focus on methods and technologies to make the grid more reliable and efficient in a setting in which solar power is generated and delivered in close proximity to its customers.

Here comes the sun: The team at the Arizona Public Service Solar Test and Research Center studies a wide variety of solar technologies, such as this array made up of many different types of photovoltaic panels. Photo: APS

As Kathleen O’Brien, Project Leader for GE and an Electrical Engineer in GE’s Smart Grid Lab explains: “Much of the focus has been on new cell developments and system improvements to make solar more cost competitive, but the larger question is how to reliably integrate the higher penetrations of solar power expected. Through this study, we hope to gain more insight and answers.”

Kathleen says her team will also look at the effect fluctuating solar power production has on the power network’s stability and how new features on GE’s Solar Inverter technology — which plugs solar power into the grid — can improve stability. The work in Flagstaff, Ariz. has been green-lighted by the U.S. Department of Energy — which recently awarded APS, along with four partners including GE, a $3.3 million High Penetration Solar Deployment grant to pursue it. In the project, APS will integrate 1.5 megawatts of solar power — about one-third each from residential, commercial, and solar park sites. That’s enough power for about 500 homes.

Middleman: GE’s Brilliance Solar Inverter was adapted from the technology used with GE’s fleet of over 13,000 1.5 MW wind turbines. It turns the direct current generated by solar cells into the alternating current that we use with our appliances. It also has advanced grid functions that meet critical needs for utilities, such as regulating voltage and adjusting for voltage dips — known in the industry as “low voltage ride-through.”

The solar power in this study is known as “distributed energy” because it is generated and delivered in close proximity to its customers and is often decentralized from the larger electric grid network. The researchers say that’s an important distinction for this demonstration project — as it will help the teams simulate what will happen when larger amounts of solar power eventually impact the grid from many locations. Although 1.5 megawatts of solar by itself is not a lot of power, it will represent a substantial amount for the study area’s distributed energy system.

As Kathleen writes on the GE Global Research blog today: “This evaluation is more complex than it sounds because both the load (the amount of power being drawn from the feeder) and the source (the amount of power being created by the sunlight) are constantly changing.”

* Read the announcement
* Hear straight from our scientists on their blog

Learn more about our solar technologies in these GE Reports stories:
* “From the lab: ‘Why it’s time to take solar seriously’”
* “Cracking the thin film solar code in GE’s 4 global labs”
* “The GE Genius Series: Catching rays with ‘solar sails’”
* “Sipping on sun-water at SOS Children’s Village in Haiti”
* “Smart grid wind technologies breeze into solar”
* “Reflecting on solar’s bright side at industry confab”
* Read more Global Research stories on GE Reports

Today, New York Times economics writer David Leonhardt has a good column on why it might be a good time to buy a home in some unlikely parts of the United States.

Leonhardt shows that the rent ratio — the price of the home divided by the estimated annual cost to rent one like it — in many metro districts has fallen enough to signal that it is a good time to consider purchasing a home rather than renting one. Housing market experts believe that if the rent ratio is lower than 20, a home is of good enough value to consider buying. If the number is higher than 20, a purchaser is counting on real estate prices to rise to make up the higher aggregate cost of paying a mortgage. (During the worst of the housing bubble, homebuyers in places like Ft. Myers, Fla., were bidding on homes with sky-high rent ratios in the 40s.)

Leonhardt’s analysis shows that homes seem to be a decent deal in markets like California’s Inland Empire and Las Vegas — the very markets that stoked the worst of the housing crisis. But those parts of the country are suffering from high, high unemployment and a long real-estate hangover. And Leonhardt’s analysis does not take into account the fact that many mortgage experts believe those markets still have a ways to fall. I took the markets the Times column indicates might be a good deal — with rent ratios below 20 — and overlayed the data with information from RealtyTrac indicating the proportion of houses that received a foreclosure notice last month. In places like Washington, D.C., and Seattle, just one in 1,800 homes received a foreclosure notice. But in Las Vegas, one in 69 did, meaning a whole lot of houses might be coming on the market soon.

Indeed, the foreclosure crisis looks like it might worsen in many already hard-hit markets this summer and fall. The blue line on the graph below shows the rent ratio. The purple line shows the proportion of homes in the midst of foreclosure last month — and indicates markets that look likely to gain some capacity in the next few months.

So people looking to buy new homes might want to think twice before sinking their savings into one of the markets with a long purple line here, like Las Vegas or Riverside or Miami. On the other hand, the real estate markets in cities like Indianapolis, Dallas and Washington look considerably safer.

Article Tags: Alan Caruba

It is no accident that April 22, Earth Day, is also the birth date of Vladimir Lenin, an acolyte of Karl Marx, the lunatic who invented communism as an alternative to capitalism.

Earth Day is naked communism.

To begin, it substitutes a worship of the Earth, Gaia, for the worship of God, creator of the universe and the instructor of moral behavior for mankind.

The Earth does not demand a moral code of personal behavior. Indeed, the lesson it teaches is “the survival of the fittest “and an indifference to suffering. The “natural events” mankind fears most all involve the potential for significant loss of life and for injury.

The Earth is a beautiful place, but it is utterly merciless. Man has learned to adapt to it and, by adapt, I mean to use its resources to build shelter and protection from it, to plant and harvest crops from it, and to domesticate some of its species while hunting and fishing for others for food.

Source: factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com

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Here’s a little teaser video for your enjoyment, and a quick reminder that Monday’s special offer will be ending in 24 hours (10 am PST, Thursday, Apr. 22). Pre-order your copy of The Primal Blueprint Cookbook today and get 20% of the regular cover price, a free Primal Blueprint Poster ($14.95 value) and free S&H for U.S. orders (reduced S&H for international orders).

Stay tuned for today’s regularly scheduled article!

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Related posts:

1. Announcement: The Primal Blueprint Poster
2. Announcement: New Recipe Theme for the Cookbook Contest
3. Announcement: New Recipe Theme for the Cookbook Contest

We’re big big fans of the Plug-in Development Kit for webOS. It’s the magic that allows the Palm Pre to be the only phone on multiple US networks with real 3D gaming and one of the under-rated features of the platform.

Anyhow, as of right now the only PDK apps you see come from big, professional development houses like Gameloft. They’ve obviously done a great job with the apps and we’re also pleased to see that they occasionally put stuff on sale (Hero of Sparta is only 99 cents for a limited time, for example). You know us, though, we like to root for the little guys too.

To that end, Ben Combee of Palm’s Developer Relations team is following up on March’s release of a public beta of the PDK by asking if any developers have "ready-to-deploy" PDK apps. Which is to say that Palm has decided to open up the App Catalog to PDK apps a little earlier than originally planned. If you’ve been working on a PDK app, be sure to check out his post – there are a few caveats and provisos to be aware of.

If you’re not a developer, stay tuned. Palm’s deadline for these apps is tomorrow, so it’s entirely possible that we might see some indie PDK apps sooner than we previously thought.

Thanks to slp15 for the tip!

Despite the Droid Incredible’s release date still being a long week away, some unnaturally lucky types received have their new toys early.

There seems to have been a glitch in the Matrix that caused the phones to travel back in time 9 days. By “Matrix” I mean “Verizon’s phone ordering system” and by “travel back in time 9 days” I mean “get sent out immediately after the pre-order was placed”.

Now, now, before you get too excited and run off to pre-order your Incredible in the hopes it will be sent out early, I have some bad news for you: the glitch has been fixed.
Oh well. At least you can live vicariously through the video posted by one of the lucky pre-order guys over at the Android Forums.

[via Engadget]

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

In an indirect yet obvious way, Section 3.3.1 of Apple’s new iPhone developers’ agreement binds developers to a promise that whatever they bring to the iPhone will be created exclusively for the iPhone. It effectively bans the use of cross-platform tools or middleware like Adobe Flash, by saying anything Apple approves must be coded in the company’s own Objective-C, or in C or C++.

If Adobe were to have proceeded with its previous plans to forge an official, working Flash platform for iPhone, that would have been the defiant move. Instead, Mike Chambers, the company’s product manager for Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR), found himself yesterday afternoon sounding the retreat.

“We will still be shipping the ability to target the iPhone and iPad in Flash CS5,” Chambers wrote. “However, we are not currently planning any additional investments in that feature.”

It isn’t clear to anyone, including Chambers, exactly how Apple will be able to enforce its provisions. The two possibilities are very strict policing of each and every one of its thousands of incoming App Store entries, or selective rejections that are intended to send a very clear message (similar to the record industry’s former strategy of selectively prosecuting file sharers). But as Chambers said yesterday, if Apple were to be selective, the selections that would send the clearest message would more likely concern Flash than Titanium, MonoTouch, or Unity.

Adobe won’t stop developers from using the tools the company already baked into its Creative Suite 5, for targeting the iPhone if they so choose, Chambers said. He just warned that if they do so, Apple may make their lives difficult. He said that personally, he’ll devote the attention he would have paid to iPhone to the Android platform instead, inviting fellow Flash developers to follow suit.

To that end, in an interview with Fox Business last week, Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen said Flash development for smartphones has reached the point where the latest versions may be released “in the second half of the year.” Narayen made clear it won’t be Adobe doing the releasing, but rather the companies that handle their respective platforms — specifically Google, RIM, and Palm.

Apple’s insistence on restricting development to its own tools and to an absence of middleware could have a detrimental effect on the quality of the iPhone platform over time. First, middleware such as Unity made it feasible for smaller development shops to get a handle on iPhone OS — whether they were developing cross-platform or not — engaged and excited an entire realm of developers who felt they could exploit the power of the platform using tools they could manage.

Unity is perhaps the most popular cross-platform game development tool that supports the iPhone platform. Like MonoTouch, its scripting engine is Mono, the open source work-alike for the .NET Framework funded by Novell. Although that scripting is essentially C#, the object-oriented C created by Microsoft (Objective-C is the object-oriented C originally conceived for the NeXT platform, brought to Apple when it reacquired Steve Jobs’ services in 1996), the tools built by Unity around that platform are much more intuitive, and the language as a whole is both more popular and more widely taught. At the time of the iPhone’s unveiling, the TIOBE Programming Community Index ranked Objective-C the #38 most popular language in the world, actually declining to #42 by April 2009. Today, Objective-C has risen all the way to #11, though C# (#6 and climbing) picks up new converts at about the same pace.

Objective-C’s converts have apparently come rather suddenly, probably in anticipation of Apple shutting the door on approvals for apps built using other tools.

Second, Apple’s move forces a decision among professional apps developers and service providers: Should they risk everything on one platform, even if it’s a successful one?

That’s not a decision that developers enjoy making. As Microsoft Chief Software Designer Ray Ozzie told reporters last November, from his discussions with mobile developers, he saw apps companies preferring to leverage as many platforms as they could, in order to justify the development costs they were putting in. Using widely accepted cross-platform tools helps lower those costs; using a tool that targets just one platform, and that requires specialization, raises those costs and thus reduces margins.

Ozzie foresaw a time when “app phones,” as he called them (iPhone being one) were known not just for what features they contained, but what popular apps they were capable of running. And to be a popular app, you need to be available more than one place. (It’s notable that Robbie Bach wasn’t in the room to hear this at the time.) “If there’s a market there, all the apps that count will be ported. Every app that matters will be ported to every one of them, because if there’s a set of users and it costs $50,000 of consulting time to have somebody port a little app, it’s going to get ported,” Ozzie said. “So I just don’t think there’s going to be significant differentiation at the app level.”

Apple’s move disallows differentiation at the app level, at least on paper. But that’s only if it enforces that differentiation. In a discussion among Unity developers today, developers there are hopeful that as long as their toolset can be used to produce binary code that can then be compiled by Apple’s Xcode — its prescribed iPhone OS developers’ toolkit — they will still be able to use libraries such as Unity iPhone 1.7 — released just days ago — to create their products.

The hope here among Unity developers is that Apple’s only grievance is with the existence of middleware or JIT compilers or interpreters on its platform, which would enable developers to bypass its strictly regulated deployment channel.
That hope could have been brightened last week by the announcement from the makers of PhoneGap, an iPhone app development tool that doesn’t use Objective-C, but rather enables apps to be built using common Web app languages such as JavaScript and CSS. Last Wednesday, PhoneGap announced it had communicated directly with Apple, and that it was told its tools were not in violation of Section 3.3.1.

In comments for that announcement yesterday, however, one independent Web developer whose profile lists cross-platform work, including .NET, advised PhoneGap developers to adhere to the spirit of Section 3.3.1 anyway. “Apple has strict iPhone / iPad Design Guidelines and you should follow [them] as much as you can,” he wrote. “Don’t do just ‘porting,’ that’s why this Apple vs. Flash fight started and as you can see, Apple is winning! Rethink your app for the Apple devices if you can.”

Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010

Johnson & Johnson's slower growth future has already been discounted by investors, leaving shares pretty close to fair value, Glenn Novarro, an analyst at RBC Capital Markets says. 

"We project that JNJ will deliver mid-to high-single-digit EPS growth over the next three years," the analyst told clients in a note Tuesday.

"While this is below the growth rates that JNJ delivered earlier in the past decade, we believe that investors should take comfort in JNJ's ability to cut costs and deliver
consensus expectations.

Trading at roughly 12x forward estimates, Mr. Novarro believes that the stock is already discounting the slower growth estimates and reiterated his 12-month price target of $65.  

On Tuesday, JNJ reported better than expected earnings and revenues for its first quarter, but also cut its earnings guidance to reflect a higher U.S. dollar and healthcare reform.

David Pett

Article Tags: Nigel Lawson

The revelation that the decision to close Europe’s skies following last week’s eruption of an unpronounceable Icelandic volcano, and the spewing of ash into the sky, was triggered by advice from the Volcanic Ash Advisory Centre of the UK Met Office, based not on all relevant empirical evidence but on their computer model, has led to no small controversy. IATA, representing the airlines, has condemned the advice as absurd and unnecessarily alarmist, while others have noticed the parallel with the drastic decarbonisation policies promoted by the climate change lobby, similarly based largely on alarmist interpretations of the projections generated by Met Office computer models.

However, the folly of everyone relying on Met Office computer modelling is only half the story. An even more important read-across concerns our old friend the precautionary principle.

What the Met Office/Volcanic Ash Advisory Centre model does is essentially to provide short-term predictions of the extent and location of the clouds of ash. It may well do this (not a very difficult task, after all) pretty accurately. It is clearly a very much simpler and hugely less uncertain task than predicting the likely temperature of the planet a hundred years from now. It is, however, a very limited model, which does not even pretend to predict the intensity of the ash within the cloud, or in different areas of the cloud. Nor, of course, does the VAAC have any knowledge at all of what level of ash intensity is a serious hazard to jet aircraft and what level is not a serious hazard. When tackled about the intensity issue by the BBC, the Met Office spokesman claimed that this was irrelevant, since the policy in force was one of ‘zero tolerance’. This, of course, is complete idiocy (and is conspicuously not the policy in the US, whose air safety record is as good as Europe’s). It is, however, the so-called precautionary principle again – and indeed only a few days ago the Eurocontrol spokeswoman was explicitly justifying the original blanket flying ban on the grounds of the precautionary principle.

Source: thegwpf.org

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The Hills’ Stephanie Pratt isn’t afraid to bare her buns to save bunnies for the cover of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals’ “Be Nice to Bunnies” Apple iPhone application, but the geniuses at the tech giant have branded the risque image — which features the recently-rehabbed reality starlet stark naked, beaming, and cuddling a bunny — a tad too R-rated to be featured on Apple’s friendly-family iTunes website.

From reality star to bunny protector…..

Instead, PETA will use a clothed image of Pratt for the app’s cover and launch the nude version as a print public service announcement on PETA.org.

Joining stars like Eva Mendes, Khloe Kardashian, and Sophie Monk who’ve gone naked for PETA campaigns, Pratt’s teamed up with the often-outspoken animal rights group to encourage consumers never to buy beauty and household products that have been tested on animals.

“Guinea pigs and rats and bunnies … [are] blinded, poisoned, and burned for such a useless experiment that’s not needed,” says Stephanie, who calls out companies like Clorox and Unilever — which continue to perform safety tests on animals despite more sophisticated methods of measuring product efficiency.

Desde principios de este mes de abril ya se encuentra en los concesionarios de la marca alemana el nuevo BMW Serie 5, de esta nueva generación ya os hemos dado todos los detalles en cuanto a gama de motores y demás datos, incluso la gama de precios de la nueva berlina alemana.

Pero siempre que se presenta un modelo, una cosa diferente es verlo en fotos oficiales y otra muy distinta verlo en persona, hace unos días pudimos asistir a la presentación en Vigo del nuevo Serie 5 realizada en el concesionario Celtamotor de BMW en Vigo.

La imágen exterior de la nueva generación del BMW Serie 5 destaca por unos trazos más redondeados y formas más musculosas, manteniendo un cierto aire con el Serie 3 y el Serie 7, el frontal se aleja de aquellas formas más rectas del Serie 5 anterior y en la parte trasera cuenta con los nuevos faros que ganan en fluidez similares a los del Serie 3.

Como siempre tal y como pudimos comprobar in-situ, el Serie 5 sigue con la calidad a la que nos tiene acostumbrado el fabricante bávaro, con un interior con todo lujo de detalles, más propio de un Serie 7 incluso, y con la calidad como seña. El salpicadero está orientado hacia el conductor y todos los BMW Serie 5 tienen una pantalla LCD de 7 pulgadas para proyectar información.

Por último los precio de esta berlina parten de los 41.900 euros del 535i de 204 CV y llegan hasta los 70.500 euros del potente 550i de 407 CV. El resto de la gama de compone de la siguiente manera:

• 523i 204 CV 41.900 €
• 528i 258 CV 45.400 €
• 535i 306 CV 50.300 €
• 550i 407 CV 70.500 €
• 520d 184 CV 39.950 €
• 525d 204 CV 44.700 €
• 530d 245 CV 49.300 €

BMW Serie 5 2010

Agradecimientos al concesionario Celtamotor Vigo.

Nancy Kraft,  Head of Preservation at the University of Iowa Libraries, will present two webinars to librarians and other curators across the country through The Association for Library Collections & Technical Services (ALCTS).

Disaster Preparedness and Planning
May 12, during Preservation Week (May 9-15)
Are you prepared for a disaster to your collection? According to the Heritage Health Index Report issued by Heritage Preservation in partnership with the Institute of Museum and Library Services, 78 percent of us are not prepared, putting more than 1.6 billion items at risk in our libraries in the U.S. Preparedness is of utmost importance in the event of a disaster, large or small. Learn about the fundamentals of emergency planning, which include identifying key players, assessing risks, establishing collection priorities and other preparations for protection of your collections. Kraft discusses tools available for and gives tips on overcoming roadblocks to writing a disaster plan. Lessons learned in this session can be applied to any size institution.

Disaster Response
June 9
Once a disaster strikes, the knee-jerk reaction is to rush in and save everything. Rushing in without advance planning puts collections at risk of more damage and staff at risk of injury. This session discusses managing a disaster situation and salvaging collections. Topics covered include: assessment and planning, working with a vendor and volunteers, handling public relations and managing collection salvage. A single-building incident will be used as a case study to illustrate the implementation of a disaster response effort. Lessons learned in this presentation can be applied to disasters large or small no matter the size of the institution.

Kraft is responsible for directing the preservation and conservation of the library collections at the University of Iowa. In 2009 she received the Midwest Archives Conference Presidents’ Award for her extraordinary work following the historic levels of flooding that struck Iowa in the summer of 2008. She is also active in the American Library Association, where she served as 2005-2006 Chair of the Preservation & Reformatting Section of the Association for Library Collections & Technical Services.

For registration information visit the Events & Conferences page on the ALCTS Web site at www.ala.org/alcts. Registration is only $39 for ALCTS members. $49 for non-members, and $99 group rate. All webinars are scheduled for 2 p.m. EDT (1 p.m. CDT, 11 a.m. PDT).

Preservation Week is a joint project of ALCTS, the Library of Congress, and the Institute for Museum and Library Services with contributing support from many other library and museum organizations. Corporate support is provided by Gaylord, Familyarchives.com, and Archival Products. For more information on Preservation Week, visit the Web site at www.preservationweek.org.

ALCTS is a division of the American Library Association.

Legislation drives chemical industry to increase transparency, prioritize risks, and consider green chemistry strategies for alternatives to more toxic materials. …

… “EPA would be instructed to create a public database containing information about each chemical and EPA actions on that chemical, and the legislation would restrict which data can be claimed by industry to be confidential. The bill also seeks to promote green chemistry by establishing a program to develop incentives for companies to make and use safer alternatives to some chemicals. ” …

Via New York Times: Chemicals Reform Bill

Safe Chemicals Legislation (PDF).

Social networking sites are gaining pace these days, and the competition in the area is increasing accordingly. Among various social media destinations, Facebook and Yahoo are detaching from rivals and are steadily taking over the social web, shows recently unveiled data from comScore, a leader in digital analytics and intelligence, according to M… (read more)

Click here to follow Roto Arcade on Facebook. Fun is promised for all. 

You’re using catchers this year, right? Okay, let’s price them. Assume a 5×5 format, as always (shame on the founding fathers for ignoring runs scored), and don’t stress too much on any singular dollar value here – the important thing is noting how the players relate to one another.

$25 Joe Mauer(notes)
$22 Victor Martinez(notes)
$21 Brian McCann(notes)

When they ask Martinez what position he plays, he should say "hitter." But he’s going to carry catcher eligibility for a while, no matter what eventually happens to his position.

$17 Jorge Posada(notes)
$16 Matt Wieters(notes)
$15 Kurt Suzuki(notes)
$14 Bengie Molina(notes)
$13 Geovany Soto(notes)

The Orioles are a train wreck, but it’s not the kid’s fault. Let’s hope he sees a team over .500 before too long; catching and losing is an unfair burden for anyone. … Molina probably looks like 4-5 guys on your weekend softball team. You want players like this in your bunker. … Suzuki’s counting stats get a boost from the heavy workload the A’s throw his way. Let’s just hope they don’t break him down early in his career.

$12 Russell Martin(notes)
$11 Ryan Doumit(notes)
$10 Yadier Molina(notes)
$10 Miguel Montero(notes)
$9 Miguel Olivo(notes)
$8 Mike Napoli(notes)
$8 Carlos Santana(notes)
$8 A.J. Pierzynski(notes)

Yadier Molina is another backstop getting run into the ground, but I’m sure the genius knows what he’s doing. Molina played six days in a row (one of the games was 20 flipping innings) before getting Tuesday off. … There’s no universal right answer with the Santanas and the Poseys; it depends on the scope of your league, the value of your bench spots, how competitive the waiver wire is, etc. Gotta take it on a case-by-case basis. … Montero’s just a shot in the dark; I loved him in March, like we all did.

$6 Ivan Rodriguez(notes)
$5 Jeff Clement(notes)
$4 Chris Iannetta(notes)
$4 John Baker(notes)
$4 Buster Posey(notes)

I’m not going to totally bury Clement yet because if he’s able to snap out of this funk he immediately becomes uber-valuable as a faux-catcher. … There’s always a stat-defense for Iannetta, or an excuse, but I’ll be surprised if he’s able to get anything past a time share with Olivo this summer.

$3 Rod Barajas(notes)
$3 Ramon Hernandez(notes)
$3 Carlos Ruiz(notes)
$2 Jarrod Saltalamacchia(notes)
$2 Chris Snyder(notes)
$2 Ronny Paulino(notes)
$2 Nick Hundley(notes)

I think Hundley could handle a regular catching gig (at least for our stat-grab purposes) but it’s not happening yet. … Anyone else sick of waiting on Salty? . . . Baker is what he is, a useful part-timer but in a mixed league where just one catcher goes to post, you need to be above him on the list. … A few people got excited when Snyder fell into a full-time gig, but I don’t see it. Go look at those career totals again.

$1 Kelly Shoppach(notes)
$1 John Buck(notes)
$1 Jeff Mathis(notes)
$1 Jason Varitek(notes)
$1 Jason Kendall(notes)
$1 J.R. Towles(notes)
$1 Dioner Navarro(notes)
$0 Rob Johnson(notes)
$0 Gregg Zaun(notes)
$0 Gerald Laird(notes)

I refuse to rank Taylor Teagarden(notes) until he actually gets a hit. Your witness.