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Democratic Senatorial candidate Rep. Joe Sestak (D-PA7) (photo: Progress Ohio)
Joe Sestak’s primary campaign against Republican-turned-Democrat Arlen Specter just hasn’t been able to gain traction, and he’s been searching for some angle to get back into the race. You cannot go wrong in a Democratic primary linking your opponent to Rick Santorum, I’d gather, so Sestak has to love this development:
Rick Santorum said Saturday that he endorsed then Republican Arlen Specter over Pat Toomey in the 2004 U.S. Senate primary because he received a guarantee from the incumbent that he would support President Bush’s Supreme Court nominees.
The statement could be politically tricky for Specter, who faces Joe Sestak in the Democratic Senate primary on May 18, and his opponent immediately jumped on the statement as more evidence that Specter puts electoral survival over principle.
Santorum, speaking at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference, responded to a question from a conservative who asked why he supported Specter over Toomey in what was a bitterly fought contest that year.
“The reason I endorsed Arlen Specter is because we were going to have two Supreme Court nominees coming up,” said Santorum, according to The Washington Post. “I got a commitment from Arlen Specter that no matter who George W. Bush would nominate, he would support that nominee.”
With the Supreme Court in the spotlight with John Paul Stevens’ retirement this has the potential to be major news. If this deal is correct, Sestak can lay a multitude of bad decisions from the Roberts/Alito court at Arlen Specter’s feet, up to and including all the truly horrible corporate decisions, like the Citizens United case.
Sestak’s initial statement was extremely aggressive:
“Rick Santorum’s stunning confirmation that Arlen Specter sold his influence as Chairman of the Judiciary Committee for a political endorsement should be extremely troubling to Pennsylvanians. There are few people in this nation who have a greater impact on the lives of the American people than the men and women who serve lifetime appointments on the Supreme Court. For Arlen Specter to take his marching orders from Rick Santorum and George W. Bush and pledge to support any nominee — no matter how partisan, no matter how unqualified — in order to win an election is a stunning betrayal of his duty as a public servant. This is one of the most glaring of the many red flags in Specter’s record that he is willing to put his own political survival over his principles and his duty to the people.”
Sestak actually cited the Citizens United decision in a follow-up statement.
Specter denied the existence of any deal today, but Santorum appeared to confirm it. . .:
UPDATE: A spokeswoman for Santorum didn’t back down from the former senator’s account despite Specter’s denial.
“Senator Santorum stands firmly by the statement he made today about the commitment he received from Senator Specter in 2004 to support President Bush’s nominations to the Supreme Court,” Santorum spokeswoman Virginia Davis told PoliticsPA. “And there was no better illustration of that commitment than Senator Specter’s ardent defense of both Justices Alito and Roberts during their confirmation hearings.”
Santorum could be engaging in a political dirty trick here by trying to choose Pat Toomey’s opponent for him, as well as defending himself from some conservative purists as he seeks (no really) a Presidential nomination. Regardless, I think this controversy has the potential to become a cornerstone of Sestak’s argument in the final weeks of the campaign. The primary is May 18.
Two of the most powerful singers in music today have reportedly collaborated on a duet that will appear on the upcoming Sex And The City 2 soundtrack. We hear English songbird Leona Lewis has recorded a song with singer Jennifer Hudson for the eagerly-anticipated chick flick.
“The pair have recorded the song and it’s being discussed as either the main theme or to feature on the soundtrack. They each have incredible voices and will appeal to both the UK and the US. It’s perfect for the next SATC (Sex and the City) film,” sources told London’s The Sun.
Leona performed the theme song to the 2009 Oscar-nominated epic Avatar. J-Hud appeared as Carrie’s assistant in 2008’s Sex And The City: The Movie. The full theatrical trailer for the upcoming Sex sequel premiered last week.
Brighton, 2M Careers Ltd
Solar Technical Expert (Italian Speaker)
An excellent opportunity for a career focused solar expert looking to work on high profile international projects for the largest power consultancy in the world
Job Description
Dependant on the level of joining:
To take a prominent role in the development of the Renewables/Low Carbon’s Team technical advisory work in solar powered energy technologies.
To manage solar and other renewables/low carbon projects
To participate in renewable technical advisory projects/assignments
To promote technical and professional excellence
To support team leader and team members
Candidate Specification
Engineering degree
Experience in project development/analysis of solar powered energy technologies
Project management experience
Fluent in Italian is essential for this role for their expanding European market
Knowledge of solar powered technologies for energy generation
Project management
Problem solving
Customer focus
Communication skills
Team player
Brighton with International Travel
If every person on our blue Earth watched this video, the world would be a much better place. At least for a few minutes. Listen closely to Carl Sagan’s words till the end. It won’t fail to get you teary.-JD More »
Brighton, 2M Careers Ltd
Senior EIA Project Manager
Our client is seeking an experienced EIA project manager to support the growth of its Energy Environment Business.
The successful candidate would be required to manage environmental and social impact assessments for all types of energy infrastructure projects including thermal power plants, renewables, transmission lines and gas infrastructure in the UK and internationally.
The role is likely to include international travel within Europe, Africa, the CIS and Asia as well as within the UK. Opportunities arise to be closely involved with a wide range of projects supporting international development goals as well as supporting the UK energy infrastrcture replacement programme.
The EIA project manager will be required to carry out the following duties;
– setting up and managing EIA project team who may be geographically dispersed
– establish communications protocols with project team and client
– specify work programme and scope for inputs and deliverables
– client liaison
– liaison with other environmental teams
– inputs to business development and proposals as required
– budget and programme management
– report quality control
– project team mentoring and training
– provide inputs to sub-division EIA development strategy and training plan as required
– other duties at the discretion of the sub-divisional manager in connection with sub-divisional management and strategy.
Candidate Specification
Degree level educated preferably with a post graduate qualification in an environmental subject.
Extensive experience as an EIA project manager for energy infrastructure projects.
Working knowledge and understanding of the technical nature energy generation plant and other types of energy infrastruture.
Working knowledge of UK and international environmental standards such as UK, EU, IFC, EBRD and World Bank guidelines as applied to ESIA and to energy projects.
Working knowledge of the UK planning system as it applies to energy infrastructure.
Proven ability to project manage large multi-disciplinary project teams to deliver on time and to budget.
Organised with a focus on achieving high quality deliverables.
Ability to work under pressure.
The masked birch caterpillar creates its own home by weaving leaves together with silk. Once built, it vigorously defends its territory but, like many animals, it prefers to intimidate its rivals before resorting to blows. To display its strength and claim its territory, it drums and scrapes its jaws against the leaf. It also drags its anus across the surface to create a complex scratching noise. This “anal scraping” message seems utterly bizarre, but its origins lie in a far more familiar activity – walking.
Warding a rival off with your anus might seem unseemly to us, but caterpillars that do this turn out to be rather civilised species. The scraping is based on the same walking movements that their ancestors used to chase after rivals. The other parts of their signalling repertoire – drumming and scraping jaws – are ritualised versions of fighting moves like biting, butting and hitting. While their earlier cousins might resort to such fisticuffs, the anal-scrapers conduct their rivalries with all the restraint of Victorian gentlemen.
These signals and their evolution have been decoded by Jaclyn Scott from Carleton University. They a great examples of how ritualised animal communiqués evolve from much simpler actions that have little if anything to do with communication – walking, breathing, hunting and the like. Crickets, for example, sing by rubbing their wings together, which may originally have been done to release pheromones or to prep the wings for flight. The whistling of wind through the feathers of crested pigeons has turned into an alarm. The competitive knee-clicks of eland antelopes are made by tendons that slide as a natural part of their gait.
Often, these origins are hard to test and scientists need to be careful if they aren’t to rely on fanciful just-so stories. To avoid that, Scott analysed 36 species of caterpillars from two different families. Some of them had simple struts called “pro-legs” on their end segment, which they use to inch their way along. Other species lacked these structures and in their place, they had a pair of “anal oars” – thicker, harder, spatula-shaped versions of the caterpillar’s normal hairs. These are the instruments that the larvae use to scrape their leaves.
These two groups of caterpillars put their bums to different uses – walking and talking – but the movements they make are the same. They lift the anal segment forward, place it on the leaf and their push backwards against it. The big difference is that in the walkers, the end stays put and the front half launches forward, while in the talkers, the front stays attached and the bum moves backwards. When the masked birch caterpillar makes its anal scrapes, it is essentially talking by walking on the spot.
To confirm this analogy, Scott sequenced DNA from her three dozen species and built a family tree that charted their evolutionary relationships. She found that the species with the pro-legs – the walkers – came first. They solve their conflicts with violence, crawling towards intruders and physically attacking them.
Those with anal oars – the talkers – are an offshoot that descended from this larger group and lost their anal pro-legs. In this group, all the aggressive movements on their cousins have become ritualised into signals. Instead of a confrontational crawl, they do an anal scrape. Instead of biting, hitting and butting, they scratch and drum the leaves with their jaws instead.
Scott also found that the original movements already had the foundations of a good signal. The crawling and pushing movements of a defensive caterpillar produce vibrations that you can pick up over background noise. As these movements became ritualised into signals, they became simpler too, so that caterpillars that send messages by anal scraping produce much larger and more repetitive vibrations using fewer body movements. This is exactly what you’d expect to happen over time – as messy but informative behaviour evolves for use in communication, it becomes clearer and less ambiguous.
Reference: Nature Communications http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ncomms1002
More on animal communication:
WILSONVILLE, Ore., April 12, 2010 – Mentor Graphics Corporation (NASDAQ: MENT) today announced that it has received the 2010 Design News Golden Mousetrap Award for Best Product for its FloEFD™ mechanical analysis technology. Mentor’s Mechanical Analysis Division (MAD) announced the FloEFD technology (version 9.0) in October 2009, which provides Concurrent CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) for rapid virtual prototyping required for fluid flow simulation. The Mentor Graphics FloEFD solution received the best product award for Design Tools – Rapid Prototyping, Materials, Tools and Services.
Welcome back to Molarity Redux, the updated, continuing adventures of Jim Mole and friends.
It’s either stupidly long names like Microsoft Windows Phone Series 7 or monosyllables like Kin, the final moniker for Microsoft’s Turtle and Pure Pink phones. The Kin One or the Kin Two, according to this Verizon database. [PhoneArena via 9to5] More »
Last fall, Crystal Lee Sutton — a woman whose bravery in organizing textile workers in the 1970s was immortalized in the film “Norma Rae — died of brain cancer after battling her insurance company for years.
As Facing South wrote in January:
Formerly Crystal Lee Jordan, Sutton was fired from her job folding towels at the J.P. Stevens textile plant in her hometown of Roanoke Rapids, N.C. for trying to organize a union in the early 1970s. The firing came after she copied a racially divisive flier posted by management warning that blacks would run the union.
Her last action at the plant was writing the word “UNION” on a piece of cardboard and standing on her work table, leading her co-workers to turn off their machines in solidarity. The incident was memorialized in the 1979 film, in which the character inspired by Sutton was played by actress Sally Field.
Below is a video of a moving memorial service held in Sutton’s honor in Greensboro, N.C. in January, 2010, featuring friends, family and labor activists.
Among the speakers was Ajamu Dillahunt, a long-time Southern union activist and co-chair of the Institute for Southern Studies board, whose comments start at the 4:00 mark:
Dillahunt, who began his speech by saying “In 2010, we need hundreds and thousands of Crystal Lee Suttons,” went on to say the following:
Today we join those assembled and thousands around the world to lift up the amazing and courageous life of Crystal Lee Sutton, the real “Norma Rae.”
Her death in September of last year brings to an end a life that was inspirational to all those who love justice and deplore oppression.
Sister Sutton’s determined efforts to empower workers in her textile plant will forever remain a part of working class history that is too often hidden from those who have benefited from it and those who need to learn its lessons.
We are compelled to say that that history is connected to the black freedom struggle in the South that fought, and continues to fight, for civil, human and democratic rights.
Her work in Roanoke Rapids, against great opposition, was side by side with African-American workers who suffered under the harsh working conditions in the plant and in society. She united with them, and them with her, to fight the employer. This is as it always should be.
As life would have it, Crystal Lee Sutton in her final years, as a victim and a fighter, became a leader in the struggle for a decent and humane health care system. She raised her voice to let people know about the disgusting and criminal practices of the health insurance industry, as they delayed a decision approving critical medications to treat her cancer.
She was not only standing up for herself, but was shining light on an enemy of the working people in this country at a vital time in our struggle for universal health care.
Crystal Lee Sutton, presente.
Filed under: Etc.
Been hankering for a little British car show action? So have we. But it looks like we’ve got a few months to go until our favorite shows from the Beeb return with new episodes.
After having been spied filming a segment atop an active volcano in Iceland, Top Gear is – according to its own magazine – confirmed to begin airing its latest season this coming June. (In the meantime we can wish Jeremy Clarkson a happy 50th birthday, which he celebrated on Sunday.)
The Top Gear scheduling was rather expected, but it now appears that some setbacks have forced rival program Fifth Gear to be delayed until the same month. The troubled show was expected to air its new season – with a new format and two fewer hosts – later this month, but according to an entry on anchor Tiff Needell’s Twitter page, the impending British elections have forced a schedule change. So come June, it looks like we’ll be knickers-deep in British motoring television, but we’ll just have to sit tight until then.
[Source: FinalGear.com]
Top Gear and Fifth Gear reportedly back on the air in June originally appeared on Autoblog on Mon, 12 Apr 2010 07:57:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Two Supreme Court picks already. THIS is why I urged everyone to put your problems with McCain aside and vote.
Apparently, Justice John Paul Steven fancies himself a “judicial Conservative.” If he truly was he would have retired during Bush’s Presidency so another “judicial Conservative” would take his place. I mean, he was 88 years old during Bush’s last year…it’s not like he would have been retiring early…
And before the Left starts their “party of no” (they really are the bumper sticker party huh?) chants…please remember that both Barack Obama and Joe Biden voted against John Roberts and Sam Alito. (*Watch video -Obama praises Roberts as a judge but says he’ll vote against him?*)
So here we are again, with the most liberal president to date on his second SCOTUS pick. If he has any balls whatsoever he’ll realize that he’s probably going to be one and done and pick the most far-out liberal he can to sit on the highest court in the land… I think his pick will give us some insight as to how he sees his Presidential future…
About an hour ago, the NATO command in Afghanistan, the International Security Assistance Force, sent out a disturbing release expressing “dee[p] regrets” for an incident outside the southern city of Kandahar — soon to be the scene of a major military offensive. What happened? As too many of these things often do, the incident occurred on the roads:
Before dawn this morning, an unknown, large vehicle approached a slow-moving ISAF route-clearance patrol from the rear at a high rate of speed. The convoy could not move to the side of the road to allow the vehicle to pass due to the steep embankment.
The ISAF patrol warned off the approaching vehicle once with a flashlight and three times with flares, which were not heeded. Perceiving a threat when the vehicle approached once more at an increased rate of speed, the patrol attempted to warn off the vehicle with hand signals prior to firing upon it. Once engaged, the vehicle then stopped.
Upon inspection, ISAF forces discovered the vehicle to be a passenger bus.
ISAF says four people, including one woman, are dead on the scene, and five others received ISAF on-scene medical treatment; 13 others with “minor injuries” are in hospitals. The New York Times has reporters at the scene interviewing bus passengers, including the apparent bus driver, and they say the bus attempted to pull over to get out of the ISAF convoy’s way:
“I was going to take the bus off the road,” said the man, Mohammed Nabi. Then the convoy ahead opened fire from a distance of 60 to 70 yards.
“It is a huge bus full of passengers, and if they think we were a suicide bomber, we are sad that the Americans have killed innocent people,” he said. “We don’t feel safe while traveling on the main highways anymore because of NATO convoys.”
Mr. Ayoubi, the provincial spokesman, said, “We strongly condemn this action carried out by NATO forces, and we want a thorough investigation of the incident, to find out why they targeted the civilian bus.”
That last quote, from Nabi expressing unease driving on the same roads as NATO forces, has to catch Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s attention. In August, he issued guidance for his troops about waging a counterinsurgency that specifically instructed them to be as solicitous as possible of Afghan civilians driving along the country’s (barely-paved, if at all) roads. Its very first page offers this parable:
An ISAF patrol was traveling through a city at a high rate of speed, driving down the center to force traffic off the road. Several pedestrians and other vehicles were pushed out of the way. A vehicle approached from the side into the traffic circle. The gunner fired a pen flare at it, which entered the vehicle and caught the interior on fire. As the ISAF patrol sped away, Afghans crowded around the car. How many insurgents did the patrol make that day?
That’s a hypothetical example and not what happened in this case. (The ISAF convoy doesn’t appear to have sped away; it provided medical support to the civilians it mistakenly shot at.) But McChrystal has said that what’s important in 2010 is the right output. If Afghan bus drivers do not feel safe driving near NATO convoys lest their buses get riddled with what the Times thinks may be “scores or even hundreds of rounds,” that’s the exact opposite output he is trying to yield.
So you’ve seen our Zestimates, explored Zillow Advice and even browsed the Zillow Mortgage Marketplace. You’re done with Zillow now, right? Wrong. Zillow offers dozens of amazing tools, all at your fingertips. Allow me to share one of my favorites: Zillow’s Web Tools and Webpage widgets.
Zillow’s Web Tools section is one of our best “hidden gems”, and our Webpge widgets are the 20-carat diamond. Few things are as interesting to your visitors, or as powerful for co-branding, as Zillow’s homebrew quizzes, tools and home-search widgets – and best of all, they’re incredibly simple to set up. If you can cut and paste, you can use Zillow to draw more traffic to your site. Here’s just a sample of our toys, all absolutely free:
Everyone loves to look at the latest homes for sale in their area. By giving visitors to your blog the opportunity to shop as they read, you’re making your website an even more invaluable resource.
Poll – “When Will The Market Bottom?”
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Zillow Mortgage Payment Calculator
Mortgage calculators are the granddaddy of top-tier interactive widgets for real estate, finance and agent websites – and few are as simple, elegant and welcoming as Zillow’s. Your visitors simply enter their loan amount, loan type and interest rate for calculation, and they’re presented with estimated monthly payments.
It’s the feature our lenders love to hate, and hate to love! Zillow Mortgage Marketplace customers can, and often do, rate their experience with mortgage lenders. This widget can help you promote your amazing customer service and competitive rates.
And there are dozens of others: the most expensive homes in your area, up-to-the-minute mortgage rates, Zillow All-Star badges and more. Check out what Zillow can do for your Web site today.
The next release of WiMax is coming, and some industry heavy hitters have lined up to support the backwards-compatible 802.16m standard. The group, calling themselves the WiMAX 2 Collaboration Initiative (WCI), is pushing interoperability in the new protocol, basically hoping to scoot things along a little faster to aid in the 4G arms race against LTE. Noticeably absent from the group? Current WiMax superstars Sprint and Clearwire, who made it clear at this year’s CTIA that they’ll happily jump ship to LTE if and when it’s necessary. More »
Article Tags: David Archibald, Headline Story, Meetings, Press Release, Vaclav Klaus
Internationally acclaimed Perth-based environmental scientist, David Archibald, will visit the Czech Republic this week to meet with the country’s leader, Vaclav Klaus. The pair will discuss climate and energy issues.
Mr Archibald is recognised as one of the world’s leading climate change sceptics. His theory that change in the Earth’s climate is caused by the solar (or sunspot) cycle, rather than by human activity, is gaining widespread attention.
The Czech President has been vocal in stating that the implementation of legislation based on global warming theory is a dangerous infringement of personal liberty.
Mr Archibald’s arguments are based on his detailed studies of the solar cycle.
The current cycle, Solar Cycle 24, commenced in December 2008 and has been unusually weak. Mr Archibald believes that this will cause the planet’s climate to continue to cool for at least the next twenty years.
Google has recently acquired a ‘mobile visual search’ startup from UK which goes by the name of Plink. This is the first time a Google acquisition has set foot in UK. Plink has announced this on the Plinkart blog and their twitter account. The financial details of this acquisition have been kept secret though.
The official blog post at the PlinkArt blog says,
We have some very exciting news – Plink has just been acquired by Google.
We started Plink to bring the power of visual search to everyone, and we’re delighted to be taking a big step towards that goal today. Google has already shown that it’s serious about investing in this space with Google Goggles, and for the Plink team the opportunity to take our algorithms to Google-scale was just too exciting to pass up.
Bruce V. Bigelow wrote:
With all the life sciences news in San Diego last week, it would be understandable if you thought there was no high-tech news to be had. A simpler explanation, though, is that I was out of the country. So I cast the net a little beyond Xconomy’s pages for this summary.
—A shakeup at San Diego’s V-Vehicle occurred after the U.S. Department of Energy rejected the startup automaker’s request for more than $321 million in loans. Chairman Ray Lane of the famed VC firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers stepped in as CEO, replacing founding CEO Frank Verasano. With Lane in Northern California and V-Vehicle’s planned production facility in northeastern Louisiana, it seems unlikely the company’s headquarters will remain in San Diego much longer.
—Aptera Motors, the Carlsbad, CA-based startup developing a two-door, three-wheel electric vehicle, has been seeking a production partner in China, according to the China Car Times. Aptera CEO Paul Wilbur later said the Aptera model to be built in China will be sold in China. Wilbur says, “We have no plans to build U.S. vehicles in China.”
—Falling somewhere between healthcare and information technology, bioinformatics is an emerging field that represents new opportunities for San Diego’s high-tech community. UCSD’s new chief of biomedical informatics, Lucila Ohno-Machada, told Denise that San Diego has all the ingredients necessary to become the country’s No. 1 center for bioinformatics.
—What’s left of San Diego’s Veoh Networks was acquired by Los Angeles-based 2Peer Ltd., which operates the Flash-based social video startup Qlipso. The Wall Street Journal’s Digits blog says 2Peer CEO Jon Goldman acquired Veoh just hours before its planned bankruptcy liquidation filing for less than $20 million. Veoh had raised close to $70 million from its venture backers.
—Ryan reported that a gold rush of sorts is underway as software companies develop technology to share medical images. A case in point is eMix, a separate corporate entity created within San Diego-based DR Systems.
—In an extensive review of Apple’s iPad, Xconomy’s early adopter (Wade) concluded that the hype was largely justified. He found the electronic tablet is useful in a genuinely new way, and represents the beginning of the end of the mouse-and-keyboard era of personal computing. A few days later, however, Xconomy’s fearless leader (Bob), declared that the iPad won’t become a breakthrough success.
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