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In addition to her appearance on next Tuesday’s Oprah, Octomom Nadya Suleman will pop up for a guest spot in a skit that will air during Idol Gives Back, American Idol’s annual charity fundraiser, premiering next Wed., April 21 on FOX.

There are cars, and then there are Ferraris. No one questions the distinction between those two groups. The same is true for ultra-portables and the Acer Ferrari One. The former are laptops, and the latter is, well, Ferrari. The distinctive design of the Ferrari One is what first grabs the attention, but with a little more investigation it becomes apparent how much laptop is crammed into the thin, small case. Sometimes you have to settle for form over function, but in the case of the Acer Ferrari One you get both in one small package.

The Ferrari One is an ultra-portable notebook with an 11.6-inch display that clocks in at an impressive 1366×768. It is a bright display that is customized with Ferrari wallpaper that displays a calendar. The race car noise heard when the notebook fires up is impressive the first time, not so much on subsequent boots. The sleek red lid is rounded with distinct edges, and other touches include the power button that lights in red, and the touchpad that is integrated into the palm rest.

The evaluation unit supplied by AMD is configured as follows:

• CPU: AMD Athlon X2 L310, 1.2 GHz
• Memory: 3 GB
• Storage: 250 GB
• Display: 11.6-inch, 1366×768 resolution
• Camera: Acer Crystal Eye, Acer PrimaLite technology
• Graphics: ATI Radeon HD3200 integrated, 2 GB Video Memory
• Battery: 6-cell
• Communications: 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi; Ethernet
• Ports: 3-USB 2.0 (one powered), VGA out, LAN, Multi-format card reader slot, audio in, audio out, ATI XGP video
• OS: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
• Dimensions: 11.2 x 8.0 x 1.2 inch; 3.2 lbs.

The AMD processor gives decent performance for such a small laptop. These processors usually have a dual hit — battery life and heat. I am seeing about 4.5 hours on the 6-cell battery, and while the bottom of the Ferrari One does get warm it’s not alarmingly so.

The graphics performance of the ATI Radeon is as good as I have seen on an ultra-portable. It is possible to watch high quality Hulu videos in full-screen; it is not quite fluid but easily tolerable. Video playback on YouTube is equally acceptable.

I am a keyboard snob when it comes to notebooks, and find the Ferrari One keyboard to be quite good. It provides a comfortable typing experience that lets me type as fast as I can. The key layout is standard and while the key tops are fairly flat, the feel is good and key travel is decent.

The trackpad is integrated into the palm rest, not usually one of my favorite features. This one is clearly delineated so it is easy to see where the trackpad ends and the palm rest begins. I am finding it easy to use, and suspect in a short time I will find it fine for constant use. Acer went with one button on the trackpad, a rocker switch that serves as both the left and right click. I don’t like these at all, although this one has a distinct feel to the click and not the worst one I’ve tried. Two buttons would have been much better.

I will be giving the Ferrari One a good look for a while, and I have to admit the sexiness of it has impressed me so far. The size is as small as can be, yet it has good performance.

It’s easy to get sidetracked over the 47% of Americans who don’t pay taxes. Don’t lose sight of the bigger picture. When that 47% figure gets chucked into the dustbin of cable news statistics, we will be back to the old familiar debate about taxes. Conservatives will complain the wealthy pay an ever-higher share of taxes. Liberals will complain that the wealthy pay taxes at ever-lower rates.

Both sides are right. The top 10 percent of earners pay a higher percent of the government’s taxes than any time in the last 30 years, but at historically low tax rates. This is possible for one, simple reason: rich people are making more money. Much more money. In fact, in 2007 the top one percent of Americans held its highest share of income than at any time since 1928.

Total federal tax rates (including income taxes, capital gains taxes, payroll taxes, estate taxes, and corporate income taxes) have fallen dramatically for the rich and remained flat for low- and middle-income earners in the last 50 years (via NYT).



In the last 40 years, the top 10 percent’s tax rates went down, but
their tax burden went up, because their household income grew faster
than the rest of the country. To get a better sense of how taxes have changed since 1979, let’s look at tax rates (the percentage of your income you give the government based on your tax bracket), tax share (the percentage of total taxes that each income bracket pays) and share of total income (the percentage of total US income earned by households in each bracket).*

Tax Rates
Big picture: the United States is still big, it’s the tax rates that got small.

In 1979 the overall tax rate was above 22 percent. In 2009 it is closer to 18 percent. Every quintile paid a lower effective tax rate in 2006 than in 1979. Since 1979, total tax rates have fallen across the spectrum, including for the top 10, 5 and 1% of taxpayers.

Tax Share
Big picture: the cost of paying for the US government falls increasingly on the rich.

In 1979 the top quintile contributed 56% of all federal taxes. In 2006 they contributed nearly 70%. The share of federal taxes paid by the top 1% nearly doubled in that time from 15% to 29%. Tax shares declined for every group except the top 20 percent, as the tax burden shifted from the bottom 80% to the top 20%. But again, this was not the result of rising tax rates. It was the result of rising household income at the top…

Share of Total Income
Big picture: the rich are get richer, faster.

Just as the share of total taxes declined for the bottom 80% and increased for the top 20%, so did the share of total income fall in every quintile and concentrate in the top 20% since the early 1970s.

The numbers are even more dramatic for the top percentile. Between 1979 and 2004, after-tax income increased 20% for the middle 20% and jumped 176% for the top 1%. Wealth in the top one percent has accelerated over the last three decades so fast that income concentration in the top percentile is the highest since the late 1920s.**

Sometimes it takes a lot of numbers to say something very simple. When critics say the rich are shouldering an undue and historically unique tax burden, the correct response is that this has much more to do with their rising income than the rate at which it is taxed.

_________________

*If you want to dive into the numbers and swim around yourself, you can find historical tax rates here, historical tax burdens here, and historical aggregate income data here. All data up to 2006.

** Update: From the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities:

BMW M135i? from MrBTG on Vimeo.

We’re not sure if that’s ultimately what BMW will name this wide-bodied hoonmobile, but it’s probably that or the 135tii in homage to the revered 2002 tii. BMW was pretty clear in saying that it won’t be called the M1, since that name already occupies a significant place in BMW history.

Whatever they call it, the idea of a lightweight, de-contented 1 series with more horsepower and a stiffer suspension appeals to me. No word yet on whether or not we’ll see this in the U.S., or at what price point.

Source: VIDEO: BMW’s Performance 1-Series Coupe with Wide Bodykit Spied on the Track

After the jump, a series of choice photos from the Tea Party Express rally on the Boston Common today:

Art renderings will inspire future solar photovoltaic installation. …

… “Probably only the fact that they are the inspirations for designs submitted by three internationally renowned artists, finalists in a UB-sponsored public art competition for a solar installation to be constructed on the university’s North Campus in partnership with the New York Power Authority (NYPA). ” …

Via SUNY at Buffalo: Vision for solar installation

It seems like people are starting to keep their satellite radio subscriptions. Sirius XM announced today that it added more than 171,000 subscribers in the first quarter of 2010, benefiting from better car sales and users continuing the service after free trails. Sirius also said that its stock rose more than 9 percent.

Sirius said that total subscriber additions increased by 29 percent, while deactivations dropped by 11 percent from a year earlier. It said that it ended the quarter with 18.9 million subscribers, up 344,765 from a year earlier.

Sirius said that most of the gains came from new car purchases. It said about 45.2 percent of those who had a free trial when they bought a car kept the service, up from 44.6 percent in the first quarter of 2009.

– By: Stephen Calogera

Source: Reuters

Is the Suspension of MON810 Maize Cultivation by Some European Countries Scientifically Justified?
Agnes E. Ricroch, Jean Baptiste Berge and Marcel Kuntz
http://www.isb.vt.edu/news/2010/Apr/Suspension-of-MON810-Maize-Cultivation.pdf

MON810 is a transgenic trait introgressed into a number of maize varieties, consisting of a Bacillus thuringiensis-derived gene (Bt), or more precisely, a truncated cry1Ab gene encoding an insecticidal protein for control of some lepidopteran pest insects such as Ostrinia nubilalis, the European maize borer. We examined the justifications invoked by the German government in April 2009, and the previous year by the French government, to suspend the cultivation of these genetically modified maize varieties.

The circumstances surrounding the French Government?s decision and two  meta-analyses by J.B. Bergé and A. Ricroch of the “scientific”  arguments commissioned by the French Government can be found at:
 http://www.marcel-kuntz-ogm.fr/article-germany-france-45973948.html

Conclusions:
Neither government has provided scientific data justifying its ban. Both governments have deliberately commissioned biased reports, with  an incomplete set of scientific references and presenting false
conclusions on an environmental impact of MON810 to satisfy a political agenda.

This just in: Larry King, host of CNN’s Larry King Live, has filed for divorce from his seventh wife. After nearly 13 years of marriage, King is calling it quits with Shawn Southwick — the mother of his two young sons, a rep for the star said this afternoon. Although Larry was accused of bedding his wife’s young sister in a report from The National Enquirer in 2009, in divorce papers filed in Los Angeles Superior Court on Wednesday, the veteran newsman counts only the ever-popular “irreconcilable differences” as the driving force behind the couple’s split.

“Larry’s major [concerns] are his kids and their well being,” says a rep for the late-night giant.

Shawn, who was treated for addiction to painkillers in 2008, filed dissolution of marriage papers of her on Wednesday, requesting primary custody of their kids, ages 9 and 11.

King has been married to seven different women, but this is his eighth divorce, because he remarried former wife Alene Akins and then later divorced her a second time.

King, 76, and Shawn, 50, wed in a hospital room, shortly before Larry had surgery to clear a clogged blood vessel, in 1997.

More amazing things have happened to me in 4Runners than have happened since I discovered bourbon.

“What is the best car in the world?”

I’m often asked that question. Actually, I don’t recall ever being asked that question. I nonetheless offer this definition in the hope that I can stretch this admittedly meager concept into an entire column, which, sadly for me, is due in about 12 hours: The best car in the world is the car in which you’ve had the most fun. What? Yes. Anyway.

Keep Reading: John Phillips: Could There be Such a Thing as “The Best Car in the World”? Probably Not – Column

No related posts.

Today, Rep. George Miller (D-CA) — chair of the House Committee on Education and Labor — released a list of 48 mines identified by federal officials last fall as facing possible sanctions for repeated violation of worker safety rules, but which had yet to be targeted by federal officials because of unresolved appeals from mine operators.

The list includes the Upper Big Branch mine in West Virginia owned by Massey Energy, where 29 miners died from an explosion on April 5.

As Miller’s office explained in a press release:

Under current law, the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration issues a letter to frequent violators warning them that they may be sanctioned under a so-called ‘pattern of violation’. Once a mine is notified that they may be under a pattern of violation, the mine must take immediate actions to reduce future violations – approved by federal mine safety officials – or face drastic sanctions including mine closure for any future significant and substantial violation.

The list released by the committee today are those 48 mines that would have received this notice of a potential pattern of violation sanctions in October 2009 but for contested citations that had not been resolved due to delays caused by the backlog of more than 16,000 operator appeals.

“Pattern of violation” investigations aren’t just for occasional rule violations, but for mines believe to be habitual offenders: Criteria for targeted companies includes mines that receive at least 20 significant and substantial violations, at least two elevated enforcement actions, and one unwarrantable failure violation over the previous 24 months. On top of that, targeted mines must have a violation rate that is 25 percent higher than the industry average over the same period.

Below are the mines on the MSHA’s list. All but five of the mines are located in Kentucky or West Virginia:

They say there’s no such thing as a free lunch, but a hotel in Copenhagen lets you get closer to that goal–it just asks for sweat equity.

The Crowne Plaza Copenhagen Towers wants its guests to hit the gym, pedal on special bikes, and generate power for the hotel to help it reduce its carbon footprint. If a guest generates a certain amount of energy via pedal-power, she’ll be rewarded with a free meal.

The eco-friendly hotel is already a carbon-neutral building that’s cooled and heated by Denmark’s first ground water-based cooling and heating system, and which has a facade covered with high-tech solar panels. And starting next week, The Guardian reports, the 366-room hotel will encourage guests to help out the environment by working on on new electricity-generating exercise bikes:

The bikes have iPhones mounted on the handlebars which monitor how much power is being produced and fed into the mains supply of the hotel. Any guest producing 10 watt hours or more will be rewarded with a free meal.

Getting the free meal appears to be surprisingly easy. According to the hotel’s calculations, pedaling the bike for an hour would produce 100 watt hours–that’s enough power to fire up a 100-watt bulb for an hour. That means that just six minutes would produce the 10 watt hours that would qualify the guest for a free meal.

Some critics have scoffed that a guest who produces 100 watts of power won’t make a dent in the energy consumption of this huge hotel. Supporters counter that the effort that goes into producing 100 watts of power would make people more conscious of how difficult it is to produce energy, with Alex Randall, a spokesman for the Centre for Alternative Technology telling The Guardian:

“Realistically, this isn’t a practical way of generating a useful amount of energy, but I certainly wouldn’t criticize it…. As a lesson, and a means of public engagement, it’s excellent – if you sit someone on a bike, pedaling hard, and show them they are only generating enough to power one light bulb or TV, is makes them appreciate how difficult energy is to produce, and therefore why we should be careful not to waste it.”

The bike-for-energy program is a pilot project due to run for a year. If it’s a hit, the program will be rolled out to all 21 Crowne Plaza hotels in Britain.

Related Content:
Discoblog: Bizarre New Treadmill-Bike Lets Gym Rats See the Outside World
Discoblog: Musical, Fahrvergnügen-Inspired Staircase Makes Commuters Less Lazy
80beats: Would You Pay $39.99 for an Energy-Efficient Light Bulb?
80beats: Green Makeover Aims to Cut Sears Tower Electricity Use by 80%
80beats: Windmills on NYC Skyscrapers Sound Cool, but Wouldn’t Work

Image:Wikimedia

Even as the White House is on the hot seat over claims that it’s been too lax on mining safety, one coal-country lawmaker has already shifted focus, ripping into federal regulators for being too strict on environmental protection.

Rep. Shelley Moore Capito, the lone Republican representing West Virginia on Capitol Hill, blasted the Obama administration Wednesday over recent actions by the Environmental Protection Agency to rein in mountaintop coal mining for the sake of protecting local streams. That move, Capito said, “only confirms their anti-coal agenda.”

“Decisions being made by federal environmental regulators are not focused enough on the importance of coal to the economy,” Capito said during a House hearing examining coal’s future in U.S. energy policy. “In my conversations with Lisa Jackson, the head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, she said that she explicitly omits economic considerations from her decision-making process.”

For the EPA to focus only on environmental protection, Capito says, is “particularly troubling.”

Earlier this month, the EPA announced that it would apply a new, stricter set of standards to proposed mining projects in Appalachia. Before EPA will approve new mining permits in that region, the agency announced, companies will have to show that they won’t raise the toxin levels in nearby streams above a certain level. The move largely targets the technique known as mountaintop removal, in which companies literally lop the peaks off of mountains to access the seams of coal inside. The process is popular with the industry because it’s cheap. But it also ravages neighboring communities, poisons headwater streams, causes flooding and contaminates the air.

The new standards will apply to all future Appalachian mine proposals, as well as the nearly 80 pending permits that the EPA announced last year it would scrutinize more closely.

The delays haven’t made Capito happy, who said Wednesday that they would “jeopardize jobs in Appalachia and weaken energy security for the nation.”

Mining safety officials only wish they were being criticized for being too strict.

Two pictures of the 2011 Chevrolet Camaro Convertible have ended up on Facebook – we’re not sure how and we really don’t care – all we know is we can’t wait for the drop-top Camaro to make its debut later this year.

Click here to get prices on the 2010 Chevrolet Camaro.

The 2011 Chevrolet Camaro Convertible will hit dealerships in the first quarter of 2011 and GM expects to sell about 20,000 units in the first-year – somehow we think it’ll sell better than that.

2011 Chevrolet Camaro Convertible (Facebook Leak):

– By: Omar Rana

Source: Facebook (via AutoBlog)

(This guest post originally appeared on the White House Council of Economic Advisers Blog)

As part of the unprecedented accountability and transparency provisions included in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA), the Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) was charged with providing to Congress quarterly reports on the effects of the Recovery Act on overall economic activity, and on employment in particular. Today we released our third report (pdf), with an assessment of the effects of the Act through the first quarter of 2010.

The main macroeconomic findings include:

• The magnitude of the fiscal stimulus increased substantially in the first quarter of 2010 (from $83 billion in 2009:Q4 to $112 billion in 2010:Q1) largely because of a surge in tax refunds and lower final tax liabilities due to the Making Work Pay tax credit.
• Government investment outlays in areas such as infrastructure and clean energy, which increased $16 billion in 2010:Q1, are expected to rise further throughout 2010.
• The CEA estimates that as of the first quarter of 2010, the ARRA has raised employment relative to what it otherwise would have been by between 2.2 and 2.8 million. These estimates are broadly similar to those of other analysts. Our estimates incorporate the most recent information about actual Recovery Act spending and tax reductions, as well as current trends in employment and production.

A special section of the report focuses specifically on the impact of the tax relief and income support provisions of the Recovery Act:

• To date, there has been more than $200 billion of tax relief and income support provided to households by the ARRA. These funds have had a disproportionately large impact on the incomes of middle- and lower-income families.
• CEA estimates that without these provisions, household real disposable income would have fallen substantially in 2009. Figure 6 from the report (reproduced below) shows actual after-tax family income alongside income without the tax relief and income support provisions of the Recovery Act. Without the tax cuts and income support provisions of the ARRA, consumer spending would not have rebounded as it did and, indeed, would likely have continued to fall.
• As of 2010:Q1, the tax relief and income support provisions of the Recovery Act have saved or created between 1.1 and 1.4 million jobs, or roughly one-half of the total number of jobs saved or created by the Act.

Identifying the impact of policy actions is inherently difficult, and the estimates must be understood to be subject to large margins of error. For this reason the CEA has approached its task from a wide range of perspectives, all of which point to a key role for the ARRA in helping the economy recover from the worst recession since the Great Depression. The CEA will continue to monitor the effects of this important policy initiative over the coming months and years.

Join the conversation about this story »

A few days ago, we published the scariest magazine cover we’ve seen in a while–Newsweek’s “America’s Back!” 

This set off too many echoes of the famous “Death of Equities” at the start of the Great Bull Market from 1982 to 2000.

But the writer of that Newsweek story, Dan Gross, is a smart cookie.  And he stopped by TechTicker today to defend it…

Peter Gorenstein: Cover-story author Daniel Gross says the economy is making a strong comeback, defying the odds and surprising the naysayers. “The turnaround we’ve had since [Lehman Brothers’ bankruptcy], while not completely satisfying, has been pretty remarkable,” he tells Henry Blodget in the accompanying clip.

A combination of unprecedented government intervention matched by rapid restructuring and increased productivity in the private sector has resulted in an economy stronger than anyone would have imagined just 18 months ago, Gross argues. Although the National Bureau of Economic Research – the official tracker of recessions – continues to wait to officially declare its end, Gross dismisses their hesitation, saying economic forecasters “have consistently underestimated the rate of economic growth.”

Gross points to several factors to back his case:

• – The economy is growing. The U.S. economy has gone from shrinking at a 6.4 percent annual rate in the first quarter of 2009 to growing at a rate of 5.9 percent at the end of the year.
• – Bull market. The Dow Jones Industrial Average is now hovering around 11,000, having rebounded 70% off the bottom.
• – Job creation. The unemployment rate remains stubbornly high; however, 162,000 jobs were created in March. That’s a long way from losing 800,000 per month at the height of the panic. Job growth “is going to be slower than many people would like it to be but I think it’s going to be faster than many of the professional forecasters are expecting it to be,” he says.
• – Productivity. From the fourth quarter of 2008 to the fourth quarter of 2009, productivity rose 5.8 percent.

True, too many people are out of work and the housing market remains stuck in the mud but “we’re having this recovery in spite of housing,” Gross notes.

Magazines don’t have a great track record with their predictions. Business Week’s “The Death of Equities” cover story in August of 1979 ushered in the greatest stock market bull run in history. Gross isn’t worried about the “jinx”, noting he and his colleagues at Newsweek have been prescient during the crisis. In January 2008 they were correct in reporting the country was headed for recession and were on the money again when they called an end to the recession in July of last year.

Let’s hope he’s right again.

Join the conversation about this story »

BOSTON — Sarah Palin delivered a scathing indictment of the Obama administration at a rally for the Tea Party Express today on the Boston Common. But some in the crowd, while enthusiastic in their disapproval of the president, were skeptical of Palin herself.

Palin’s message was a familiar one: lower taxes, less spending and smaller government. “Americans now spend 100 days out of the year working for government before we even start earning money for ourselves,” said the former vice presidential nominee, who spoke for about 20 minutes.

This was the penultimate in a series of rallies for the Tea Party Express, which began in Searchlight, Nev., on March 27 and will end tomorrow in Washington. The crowd appeared to be a few thousand, but the Boston Police do not make crowd estimates. As at other Tea Party rallies, many participants held American flags and “Don’t Tread on Me” flags.

The crowd cheered at Palin’s anti-Obama rhetoric. “It sure seems to me like the playbook is all Alinsky, all the time,” said Palin. She parodied Obama’s campaign slogans. “When they say yes we can, we’ll say oh no you don’t,” she said, adding, “We’ll keep clinging to our Constitution, and our guns and religion, but you can keep the change.”

“I think she’s waking America up,” said Karen Iolli, who runs a career school in Lakeville, Mass. She did not, however, think Palin was ready for the presidency.

Other Tea Partiers were less charitable toward Palin. “I’m not a big fan of Sarah Palin; she reminds me of Dan Quayle,” said Gary Gayrelian, a financial adviser from western Massachusetts wearing an American flag shirt. He carried a sign with a picture of the Constitution that read “Born 1787, died 2010.”

Almost all Tea Partiers thought tax rates were too high. “I’m sick of being taxed to death, and they’re going to add a VAT to pay for health care reform,” said John Boyle of Quincy, holding a sign that read, “Don’t Tax me Bro.”

Other speakers used more extreme rhetoric than Palin. “Political correctness is a virus like HIV, and we’ve got full-blown AIDS,” said Tea Party Express chair Mark Williams. Victoria Jackson, a former SNL cast member-turned-Tea Party activist, said, “Impeach Obama for his bribes! He’s giving free stuff to people so they’ll vote for him!”

Newly elected Republican Senator Scott Brown did not attend the rally, but few in the crowd seemed to mind. Jody Harney, a member of the Lowell Tea Party wearing a “Scott Brown for Senate” sweatshirt, didn’t see it as a snub: “He’s got a job to do.”

This was the first rally held in a Democratic bastion on this Tea Party Express tour. (Boston Common has been the site of many anti-Iraq War protests, for example.) A vocal number of counter-protesters showed up to the event. “These people can’t accept that we voted in a black man as president,” said Jay Farro, a retired teacher living in Beacon Hill. “The tea-baggers are a new disguise for the KKK.”

But most disagreements were civil. “Do you even pay taxes?” yelled a Tea Partier at some self-described young socialists. “Yes, I do,” replied one. “I do for this park, since I live here and not in the suburbs!” They went back and forth a few times before the protester walked off.

It was too nice a day for a drawn-out argument.

Does the Prague Treaty (aka New START) limit missile defenses? Certainly the text mentions defenses, but does it limit them?

“Limit” is a very particular word — The definitions in OED suggest usage most often involves those things that we can measure: time, acreage, troops, eggs, and whatnot.

That usage holds true, too, in the context of arms control treaties, where we use “limit” to mean a numerical constraint such as so-many ICBMs or so-many warheads. So, for example, the practice in START documents of referring to treaty’s “central limit” of 1600 strategic nuclear delivery vehicles, as well as various “limits” and “sub-limits” of delivery vehicles and warheads. In all cases, a “limit” refers to something numerical. Try search strings like start nuclear limit site:.gov or start nuclear limit site:.mil and the pattern is clear.

In that narrow sense, START does not limit US missile defenses. Nevertheless, the treaty touches upon missile defenses in three ways, which I gather will be the subject of discussion during the ratification process:

1. The preambular language recognizes that there is an interrelationship between strategic offenses and strategic defenses.
2. Article 3 (7A) excludes missile-defense interceptors from the definition of a ballistic missile, irrespective of other characteristics like trajectory or range.
3. Article V (3) prohibits further conversion of ICBM and SLBM launchers to hold missile defense interceptors, and vice versa. (Previously converted launchers are grand-fathered.)

Preambular Language

The preamble to the Prague Treaty contains a passage that comments on the relationship between strategic offenses and defenses:

Recognizing the existence of the interrelationship between strategic offensive arms and strategic defensive arms, that this interrelationship will become more important as strategic nuclear arms are reduced, and that current strategic defensive arms do not undermine the viability and effectiveness of the strategic offensive arms of the Parties.

You could utter any or all these things at a Defense Policy Board meeting and no one would spit coffee through his nose. This is pretty bland stuff.

What will complicate the preambular language is Russia’s unilateral statement that “the extraordinary conditions” that might lead to Moscow’s withdrawal would include the development of US defenses that “would result in a threat to the potential of the strategic nuclear forces of the Russian Federation.”

Such statements are not new — as Kingston Reif and Travis Sharp have both noted, Moscow made a similar statement after signing the original START. (I hasten to add that the vote on START was 93-6 with yes votes including Chuck Grassley, Orrin Hatch, Richard Lugar, John McCain, and Mitch McConnell.) The Administration, too, seems aware of this history.

Yet, it seems some are set to make an issue of this language and the Russian statement. I really don’t understand the issue. It is a fact of life that Russia takes current and anticipated US missile defense capabilities into account when making decisions about its nuclear forces. It is also the fact that the treaty has a withdrawal clause. The New START Treaty would not last long if the United States developed extraordinarily capable defenses that would allow the United States to negate the Russian deterrent.

That is precisely why even the Bush Administration sought to make clear that missile defense did not threaten Russia. On that score, I think missile defense advocates should welcome the preamble, which commits Russia to the statement that “current strategic defensive arms do not undermine the viability and effectiveness of the strategic offensive arms of the Parties.” That’s going to be useful at some point.

Missile Defense Exclusion

The treaty defines intercontinental and submarine-launched ballistic missiles and, for good measure, enumerates them by type. Although missile defense interceptors are not listed as treaty-limited equipment, the treaty contains a further provision to make clear that interceptors — without regard to their range or other properties — are simply not ballistic missiles to be covered by the treaty:

A missile of a type developed and tested solely to intercept and counter objects not located on the surface of the Earth shall not be considered to be a ballistic missile to which the provisions of the treaty apply.

No Silo Conversion

Finally, Article IV of the Treaty contains a number of provisions that confine the location of treaty limited equipment. So, for example, there are restrictions on joint basing of nuclear-equipped and non-nuclear-equipped heavy bombers. The principle is a straightforward one: Requiring parties to declare the locations of equipment substantially eases the task of verification.

Article V, which deals with the development of new offensive arms, contains a provision that prohibits the parties from using ICBM and SLBM launchers to house missile defense interceptors and vice versa:

Each Party shall not convert and shall not use ICBM launchers and SLBM launchers for placement of missile defense interceptors therein. Each Party further shall not convert and shall not use launchers of missile defense interceptors for placement of ICBMs and SLBMs therein. This provision shall not apply to ICBM launchers that were converted prior to signature of this Treaty for placement of missile defense interceptors therein.

The advantages of this are obvious: otherwise, you would have Russian inspectors crawling all over US missile defense interceptors to ensure they weren’t stocked with contraband treaty-limited equipment.

Keith Payne and others have erroneously claimed the Prague Treaty counts the five Minuteman III silos at Vandenberg that were converted for missile defense missions and that “the launchers themselves probably will be eliminated.”

That is incorrect. The passage from the treaty clearly notes that the provision does not apply to launchers previously converted. (Nor, obviously, would it apply to new missile-defense launchers in Alaska or Poland.)

Moreover, the Seventh Agreed Statement of the Protocol contains procedures to conduct an exhibition to demonstrate that the silos at Vandenberg really were converted to hold missile defense interceptors. It is evident that nothing need be eliminated. All one had to do was read the treaty.

Ah, there is the rub! I confronted a colleague making this accusation the other day. He responded that we won’t know until the treaty text is released. The text had been released a couple of days before (and I had slogged through it before doing interviews). Not having read the treaty didn’t stop my colleague from being very confident about his assertion in a public setting, which is a life lesson, I suppose.

Does The Treaty Limit Missile Defenses?

I think it is very hard to conclude that the treaty “limits” missile defenses. The treaty may have some implications for missile defense programs, but on the whole it is written in such a way as to create space for current and planned missile defense programs, including language that exempts interceptors from the definition of an ICBM and the provision to “grandfather” the converted silos at Vandenberg.

Still, I suspect we will continue hear from some quarters that the treaty “limits” missile defense. This is a form of special pleading. The common-sense test is that no one would claim that the treaty “limits” conventional bombers, despite some provisions to separate conventional bombers from their nuclear-equipped brethren. By any consistent standard, the treaty limits neither.

If you’ve turned on a TV recently, you’ve probably seen one of the seemingly countless Walmart ads where the retail behemoth brags about its latest round of price cuts. But a new study says Walmart’s actually been raising its prices on groceries in 2010.

According to a report by JPMorgan Securities, since February they have seen a 2.3% average price increase for the items in their 31-item basket of grocery goods at Walmart. This follows a 1.9% increase between January and February.

As expected, Walmart responded to the report with marketing speak instead of actual answers.

“We’ve stepped it up where our customers need us to — with the basics of consumables and food,” a mouthpiece for Walmart said by way of a non-explanation, adding that the company is “adding new rollbacks and deeper price cuts.”

On the opposite end of the grocery neighborhood, WHole Foods, the nation’s most expensive grocer, has actually dropped their prices by about 5% since December.

The report does clarify that, even with the increase in prices, Walmart is still 12% less expensive than “traditional” grocers, while Whole Foods shoppers can still feel snooty about paying 14% more than they would elsewhere.

Report: Wal-Mart food prices going up [NY Post]

Not Exactly Pocket Science is a set of shorter write-ups on new stories with, where possible, links to more detailed takes elsewhere. It is meant to complement the usual fare of detailed pieces that are typical for this blog.

Tyrant leech king – a new T.rex found in the nose of a Peruvian girl

Three years ago, a nine-year-old girl was admitted to La Merced hospital in Peru with a headache that had lasted for two weeks and a strange “sliding sensation” in her nose. Her parents quickly discovered the source of the problem – a sizeable black worm lodged up her right nostril. They quickly sought medical help and it came in the form of Dr Renzo Arauco-Brown, who “with some effort” removed a seven-centimetre leech from the girl’s nose. Brown sent the animal to leech guru Mark Siddall from the American Museum of Natural History, who immediately recognised it as a new species. Uniquely among leeches, the bloodsucker had a single jaw (most have three) but it was lined with eight enormous sharp teeth. For this reason, the Siddall gave it the fanciful name of Tyrannobdella rex, or “tyrant leech king”. A new T.rex had arrived.

It turns out that T.rex has a history of feeding on humans. After describing the new species, Siddall found two other specimens. Both had been removed from the nostrils of young boys in 1997. Like the most recent case, these children had also been bathing in local lakes and streams, which is almost certainly how they picked up their tyrant vampire.

While most leeches are found on the skin, Tyrannobdella is a member of the praobdellid group, which have a disturbing propensity for entering human orifices. They have specialised at feeding on mucous membranes, such as those found in the nose, eye, vagina, anus and urethra (don’t click on these links if you’re squeamish). These bloodsuckers can stay inside for days or weeks on end. They lead to a condition called “orificial hirudiniasis” and they could be potentially life-threatening, especially if secondary infections kick in. It’s likely that many more members of this group are awaiting discovery, although finding them may be a tricky business. As Siddall slyly writes, “Our standard methods of attracting leeches to our exposed selves may prove awkward given their established propensity for particular anatomical feeding sites.”

Reference: PLoS ONE http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0010057

Why losers ejaculate more

Not every male is a fighter and, as a result, many don’t become lovers either. But for these losers, there’s another option for passing on their genes to the next generation – make sure that you ejaculate copiously when you get the chance.

The male flour beetle has to battle other males over the right to mate with a female. Kensuke Okada from Okayama University found that males who lose these fights become less aggressive and avoid fighting again. However, they make up for avoiding combat by doubling the amount of sperm they produce when they ejaculate. This extra investment is a temporary one; after five days, things were back to normal.

These results show that males can fine-tune their sexual strategies according to the competition they face. Males who triumphed in combat didn’t feel the need to produce more sperm. They are strong enough to guard females they mate with and can stop other males from displacing his sperm with their own. Losers have to move about into new territories and when they do get to mate, they run the risk that a stronger male will just flush their sperm out with his own afterwards. For those who lose physical fights, contributing to the next generation means winning the sperm wars, and doing that means producing more sperm.

Reference: Biology Letters http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2010.0225

More on sperm competition: sperm wars of ants and bees, glowing sperm races, spiky penises, traumatic insemination and frigid echidnas

Could cuttlefish “see” with their skin?

Cuttlefish and their cephalopod relatives, squid and octopuses, are capable of nature’s most spectacular acts of camouflage. They can change the colour of their skin on a whim, send moving waves of stripes down their body, and send messages to one another in shifting hues. This ability is even more incredible when you consider that, according to all evidence to date, cuttlefish are colour-blind. If they can’t actually see colour, how can they mimic it so accurately?

Now, cephalopod specialists Lydia Mäthger and Roger Hanlon have made an intriguing discovery that could potentially answer this question. They found that a gene called opsin is active all over a cuttlefish’s skin; opsin proteins are sensitive to light and an essential part of the visual system. It’s possible that these animals can sense light using their entire skin, and that their colour-changing skill is based on this distributed “sight”.

The idea isn’t without precedent. Some squid have organs on their skin that double as an extra pair of “eyes”. But so far, Mäthger and Hanlon’s idea is still a hypothesis. The skin opsins may have no significance at all and the duo has some work ahead to them to show that they actually play an important role. For a start, there’s some evidence that opsin-like genes are active in the skin of humans, and we certainly change colour without a significant amount of make-up. And the opsins in a cuttlefish’s fin, underside and retina are all the same, so it’s unlikely that they could discriminate between different colours.

However, Mäthger and Hanlon suggest that the opsins may be useful in matching brightness and contrast. They could also interact with chromatophores – the tiny, expandable sacs of pigment that underlie a cuttlefish’s colour-changing ability. Chromatophores come in different colours and they could act as filters for the opsins. Light passing through these sacs could provide information on different wavelengths of light coming in from the environment.

Reference: Biology Letters http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2010.0223

More on cephalopods: the squid with living, seeing flashlights, coconut-armoured octopuses, the mimic octopus, clever cuttlefish, and the secret signals of squid