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The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced new guidance April 1 that should limit the impacts of mountaintop coal mining in Appalachia. The agency issued the guidance to clarify EPA’s expectations regarding legal and scientific interpretations when issuing permits for the destructive surface mining practice.

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The practice of mountaintop mining involves blasting off the tops of mountains to access coal seams hidden below. The debris from blasting is pushed down the mountainsides into the valleys below. This "valley fill" not only covers miles of streams but also damages rivers, water sources, and aquatic life downstream when the fill leaches pollutants.

A summary of EPA’s guidance describes the damage from this practice: "Since 1992, nearly 2,000 miles of Appalachian streams have been filled at a rate of 120 miles per year by surface mining practices. A recent EPA study found that nine out of every 10 streams downstream of surface mining operations exhibit significant impacts to aquatic life." Health impacts result from highly toxic pollutants such as selenium leaching into downstream water sources.

One of the "midnight regulations" completed by the George W. Bush administration made it legal for mining companies to dump this fill. The rule became effective on Jan. 11, 2009, just days before Barack Obama was inaugurated. The Obama administration has struggled with how to approach overturning or revising the rule. The agency conducted reviews of the permitting process and the scientific impacts of the mining practice before announcing the new policy.

EPA had been under pressure from environmentalists, coal companies, and even Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV), who had met with EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson several times, to provide clarity on the permitting process. Byrd’s office released a press statement April 1 saying, "I am pleased that EPA Administrator Jackson took our concerns about the need to provide clarity very seriously and has responded with these guidelines."

In announcing the new guidance, Jackson noted the extensive scientific study and review the agency had conducted. She said that the agency would also begin focusing on the "emerging evidence of the potential health impacts" of mountaintop mining. "Let me be clear: this is not about ending coal mining. This is about ending coal mining pollution. Coal communities should not have to sacrifice their environment, or their health, or their economic future to mountaintop mining. They deserve the full protection of our Clean Water laws," Jackson said.

The policy change comes on the heels of an announcement March 26 that EPA was proposing to significantly reduce or stop mining at the Spruce No. 1 surface mine in Logan County, WV, one of the largest surface mining operations ever proposed, according to EPA’s press release. The mining proposal "would bury over 7 miles of headwater streams, directly impact 2,278 acres of forestland and degrade water quality in streams adjacent to the mine," EPA said. Spruce mine received a permit in 2007, but the permit was challenged in court, thus delaying any mining. EPA and the mine’s owners could not reach an agreement that would have significantly mitigated the environmental impacts of the mine.

The new guidance applies to all pending and new mountaintop mining permit requests and to permit renewals. The policy was sent to EPA’s regional administrators in regions 3, 4, and 5, covering Appalachian states from Pennsylvania south to Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi. Under the Clean Water Act (CWA), states have the responsibility for issuing permits to discharge pollutants into waterways. The guidance is intended to provide the regional and state offices with a framework for evaluating individual permit applications consistently and in keeping with the requirements of the CWA, the National Environmental Policy Act, and the Environmental Justice Executive Order (E.O. 12898).

The guidance contains the latest scientific information important to determining compliance with the CWA, clarifies how the law applies to mountaintop mining and its debris to achieve water quality protection, and enhances opportunities for members of coal mining communities affected by potential mining activity to participate in reviewing proposed new actions.

The policy also calls for a greater emphasis on numerical standards to measure the electrical conductivity of streams, the first time EPA has used a conductivity standard. By measuring electrical conductivity, regulators can determine the extent of pollutants in water. Specifically, the conductivity measure is the amount of salt in the water which results from mine debris and runoff, essentially turning fresh water into salt water and damaging aquatic life.

Reaction to the new guidance by environmental groups was laudatory. Earthjustice, one of the environmental groups that sued on behalf of Appalachian conservation groups to overturn the Bush midnight regulation, issued a statement quoting its president Trip Van Noppen, saying, "We commend Administrator Jackson and the EPA for recognizing that the people of coal communities deserve the full protection of our clean water laws, and we’re glad to see that EPA is back on the job."

Rob Perks of the Natural Resources Defense Council said, "At long last, the EPA is committing to protecting Appalachian communities from the world’s worst coal mining. Today’s action to protect waterways from the impacts of mountaintop removal is restoring science to its rightful place and reinforcing the agency’s commitment to the Clean Water Act…. For every ton of coal extracted, another 20-25 tons of mining waste is disposed of in so-called valley fills. Strict enforcement of scientific requirements in the Clean Water Act is a much-needed step in the right direction."

Bruce Watzman of the National Mining Association expressed the displeasure of mining companies, saying, "America’s coal mining communities are deeply concerned by the impact of policy announced today by EPA on coal mining permits, employment and economic activity throughout Appalachia…. The policy was announced without the required transparency and opportunity for public comment that is afforded to policies of this magnitude."

EPA will take public comment on the guidance, which is effective on an interim basis pending completion of the comment process. According to EPA’s press release, the agency will consider revising the guidance after the comment process and after the agency’s Science Advisory Board completes its review of EPA’s scientific studies.

Photo in teaser by flickr user NRDC media, used under a Creative Commons license.

Great news for music fans: the lineup for Lollapalooza 2010 was formally announced on Tuesday and the rumors have turned out to not be rumors after all – Lady Gaga, Soundgarden, and Green Day are among the headlines set to rock Chicago’s Grant Park this summer! Other acts expected to hit the stage for the August 6-8 fest include Cypress Hill, Erykah Badu, and Raphael Saadiq. There’s also a good mix of veteran acts joining this year’s Lollapalooza lineup, including Devo, Social Distortion, and Mavis Staples.

Take a look at the lineup after the jump……

Soundgarden, Green Day, Lady Gaga, Arcade Fire, the Strokes, Phoenix, Social Distortion, MGMT, Jimmy Cliff, Hot Chip, the Black Keys, the National, Spoon, Devo, Cypress Hill, Cut Copy, the New Pornographers, Erykah Badu, Slightly Stoopid, Grizzly Bear, Gogol Bordello, Chromeo, Wolfmother, Yeasayer, X Japan, MUTEMATH, Metric, Dirty Projectors, AFI, Mavis Staples, Matt & Kim, the xx, Drive-By Truckers, Blues Traveler….

Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros, the Temper Trap, Jamie Lidell, Frightened Rabbit, F Buttons, Deer Tick, Blitzen Trapper, Stars, Raphael Saadiq, the Cribs, Minus the Bear, Switchfoot, the Walkmen, Mumford & Sons, Wild Beasts, Rogue Wave, Los Amigos Invisibles, the Big Pink, the Dodos, Hockey, Cymbals Eat Guitars, B.o.B, Dawes, Warpaint, the Antlers, the Soft Pack, Rebelution, Balkan Beat Box…..

Wavves, American Bang, the Ike Reilly Assassination, Company of Thieves, Nneka, Harlem, the Constellations, Miniature Tigers, Mimicking Birds, the Kissaway Trail, HEALTH, Javelin, the Morning Benders, Foxy Shazam, Violent Soho, Royal Bangs, NEON TREES, Freelance Whales, Semi Precious Weapons, Dan Black, The Band of Heathens, Dragonette, My Dear Disco, Shawn Fisher, Neon Hitch, Skybox, The Ettes, Jukebox the Ghost, These United States, MyNameIsJohnMichael….

For ticket info, visit Lollapalooza.com…..

Name of Business: Henrico Citizen/T3 Media, LLC
Type of Internship: Advertising Sales

Description of Organization: The Henrico Citizen is Henrico County’s award-winning, hometown newspaper, published twice monthly with a circulation of 35,000 per month. The newspaper also has an online home, HenricoCitizen.com.

Intern Responsibilities: An advertising sales intern will have the opportunity to put his or her sales and advertising training to work in the real world, developing leads, meeting with potential clients and working with customers to design advertising campaigns that will appear in the Henrico Citizen and on HenricoCitizen.com.

Intern Qualifications: Candidates should have some training in sales and/or advertising and some familiarity with print publications, as well as an outgoing personality, motivated attitude and strong writing and oral communication skills. A familiarity with design programs such as Photoshop and Quark XPress is helpful but not required.

Other: This internship is available year-round. It does not include any base pay, but does pay a commission on all advertising sold and may lead to future full-time employment. The Henrico Citizen is located just north of downtown Richmond in Lakeside.

Who to Contact: Tom Lappas, publisher, [email protected], (804) 262-1700 or 4807 Hermitage Road, Suite 204, Richmond VA 23227.

How to Contact Us: Interested applicants should e-mail Publisher Tom Lappas at [email protected] with a copy of a resume. A recommendation letter is preferred but not required.

The stock price for Massey Energy might have dropped today, following Monday’s explosion at the company’s Upper Big Branch mine. But don’t count the coal giant out just yet.

Despite the disaster, Wall Street analysts still see strong earnings potential in Massey. ABC News reports today that analysts at Jefferies & Co. are encouraging investors to scoop up Massey shares. The reason?

“We believe Massey Energy is a well-capitalized Eastern coal producer and ranks as the largest, most diversified, and lowest-cost coal producer in Central Appalachia,” they wrote in a research note.

That “lowest cost” could in any way be related to a history of safety problems at Massey’s mines, of course, is of no interest to the barons of Wall Street. But it has caught the attention of Congress. As Aaron pointed out earlier, Rep. Nick Rahall (D-W.Va.), the powerful chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee and a longtime defender of the coal industry, is calling for “accountability” surrounding the explosion.

Rahall might want to take a look at this short video clip, in which a young Don Blankenship, now Massey’s outspoken CEO, outlines his business philosophy.

“Unions, communities, people — everybody’s gonna have to accept that, in the United States, we have a capitalist society,” Blankenship said. “And that capitalism, from a business viewpoint, is survival of the most productive.”

h/t: Gooznews.

Last week, we were very excited about all the possiblities offered by adding OAuth with IMAP/SMTP to Gmail, but as we noted then, don’t let those acronyms cause your eyes to glaze over. What sounds like complicated, techie stuff really means simply useful additions to your email experience and this time, we’re talking about Yahoo Mail, still the leading webmail provider.

As Programmable Web pointed out this morning, it looks like Yahoo actually implemented OAuth several days before Gmail got around to it.

Sponsor

OAuth access to your email means that you can give simple, one-click authorization to external applications to have full access to your emails. This also means you can have seemless access to the information in your email account, from the contents of the emails themselves to your contact list, on other websites.

If you think of going to a website and finding all the people you know on there by using Twitter, you’re most likely already familiar with OAuth – it’s that window that pops up that you click “Allow” on.

From the Yahoo! Mail Developer Community group on March 25:

Today we’re super exited to announce our OAuth API for Yahoo Mail! Not only have we moved to a much cleaner authentication technology, but we have removed all the restrictions limiting message access of “free” accounts. That means that you can now use the full API for all Yahoo Mail users regardless of their free/premium status, accessing full message contents if your application needs it. Cool, eh?

For those of you out there using Yahoo Mail, which is still a majority, expect to see some cool new add-ons for the age old email service to be released soon. At least, that’s what we’re hoping for.

Discuss

Erected to highlight an English river’s pollution, this 14m-tall metal flower has dozens of LEDs which glow brighter the more the wind around it increases. More »

I was in the audience for Saturday’s performance of The Glass Menagerie at Herberger Theater and I’m happy to report that all of the reviews are true: The play is phenomenal. And bring a tissue.

To fully appreciate The Glass Menagerie, you should know a little about American playwright Tennessee “Thomas” Williams (1911-1983). Williams wrote The Glass Menagerie in 1945. He grew up in St. Louis, Missouri, with a stern, alcoholic father, a borderline hysterical mother, and a schizophrenic sister who was later lobotomized, something that would haunt Williams for the rest of his life. Interestingly, The Glass Menagerie takes place in St. Louis and follows Tom, Amanda, and Laura Wingfield as they try to survive together inside a claustrophobic tenement apartment in the 1930’s.

Tom Wingfield (Noel Joseph Allain) is the frustrated son of Amanda Wingfield (Catalina Maynard). A wannabe writer, Tom spends long days at a factory job he loathes and avoiding his domineering mother who wants desperately to return to her Southern belle glory days and the husband who abandoned them. His painfully shy sister Laura (Barbra Wengerd) spends her days polishing her glass collection and falling deeper into a psychological abyss. Quickly, you realize that each member of the Wingfield family is as breakable as Laura’s glass collection. But then one day Tom brings home a gregarious “gentlemen caller” for Laura, Jim O’Connor (Brian Ibsen), and for a moment you wonder if Jim also brings a glimmer of hope to the Wingfields.

The Glass Menagerie is a timeless play about delicate family relationships, unrealized dreams, and betrayal. Through Tom Wingfield, you could imagine Tennessee Williams’ early years in St. Louis and the painful experiences that would shape his life. In particular, I thought that Catalina Maynard’s performance as Amanda stole the show. She was perfect as the controlling mother who talked more than she listened and demanded more than she shared, while simultaneously vulnerable and intolerable. In addition to the cast, the stage was also a character in the play. The furniture and walls from the Wingfield apartment moved effortlessly on and off the stage, making the story feel lighter, darker, and more claustrophobic as the story required. Additionally, Jay Golden (Violin Player) provided achingly beautiful music that captured the emotional tone throughout the play.

Bring a few tissues and let yourself fall back in time as you watch The Glass Menagerie and the story that shaped Tennessee Williams. The play is at The Herberger till April 11.

Call the Herberger Box Office at 602.256.6995 or visit ArizonaTheatre.org.

Several key requirements of the Open Government Directive are due on April 7, turning the day into a critical moment for government transparency. The main materials being released are specialized Open Government Plans that federal agencies are mandated to produce based on stakeholder input. There will also be a document to address federal spending transparency, as well as a review of policies that impede open government efforts.

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The plans will state the individual agency’s strategy for improving transparency, public participation, and collaboration. Meanwhile, open government groups are gearing up to evaluate the strategies. Expectations are that the plans will be quite substantive, both in scope of issues addressed and goals being set, at least for the major agencies. At the same time, it is also widely expected that there will be wide variations in the plans, with some being in an advanced state of implementation and others in very early stages. Numerous independent agencies are also developing Open Government Plans, though their obligation to do so under the directive is unclear.

Agencies across the federal government have been collecting input and ideas from the public for weeks through online discussions on their newly launched open government webpages, also required under the directive. The process has elicited hundreds of ideas from the public, with thousands of votes to help agencies prioritize the proposals. Many agencies have described their online discussions around open government as huge successes and announced intentions to keep the dialogue going beyond the launch of the agencies’ plans on April 7.

Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra recently elaborated on the additional content of the upcoming plans during a Senate hearing on government secrecy. In his testimony, Kundra stated that the plans would include details of “internal controls implemented over information quality, including system and process changes, and the integration of these controls within the agency’s existing infrastructure.” Although the spirit of the directive is to make information useful to the public widely accessible, Kundra noted that information controls would also need to exist to protect personally identifiable and security-related information.

Open government organizations are poised to assess the plans as soon as they come out. Working together under the OpenTheGovernment.org coalition, these organizations are auditing individual agency plans based on preset criteria through a Google Wiki. The criteria for this initial assessment are basic and based on the Open Government Directive requirements, but also allow for additional points to be awarded for agencies that go above and beyond the call of duty.

The Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) will also produce materials from a review regarding policy impediments to open government. The Open Government Directive required that OIRA, along with the Federal Chief Information Officer and Federal Chief Technology Officer, review existing policies of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). The overall purpose of this process is to create an improved policy framework that enables open government. The OIRA policy materials are expected to identify impediments to open government and either propose revisions to eliminate the impediments or clarify interpretation to reduce confusion.

Open government advocates have been calling for policy changes in several areas that would increase government transparency. Many of these recommendations are included in a November 2008 report, Moving Toward a 21st Century Right-to-Know Agenda. Such problems include the lack of resources and accountability for implementation.

Additionally, OMB’s Deputy Director for Management is required to release a long-term comprehensive strategy for federal spending transparency that includes requirements from the Federal Funding Accountability Transparency Act (FFATA) and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The plan will require quarterly reports from agencies on their progress toward improving the quality of federal spending information.

Finally, the Open Government Dashboard on the White House website is also expected to be updated in the near future to include access to all agency Open Government Plans. Currently, the dashboard is only an assessment of whether an agency has completed a task required under the Open Government Directive, and that is likely to remain the case in this update. Ultimately, however, this dashboard is expected to be revised to include aggregate statistics and visualizations that provide an assessment of the state of openness within the federal government.

Photo in teaser by flickr user seagers, used under a Creative Commons license.

Richard Fisher, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, built a reputation as an outspoken inflation fighter in the summer of 2008, when he lobbied the Fed to push interest rates higher to combat rising consumer prices even though the financial crisis was still raging.

Today, inflation is low on his list of worries. In fact, he says there is small risk that deflation, or falling consumer prices, could become a bigger problem for the Fed in the months ahead than higher inflation. That puts him on the side of those who want to keep interest rates near zero for at least several more months — if not much longer — to help the recovery get on stronger footing.

In a wide-ranging interview, Mr. Fisher said the global economy is burdened by such large amounts of unused industrial capacity and idle labor that consumer prices face little risk of shooting higher. “Because of the enormous slack in the system, and as you know I tend to be very vigilant about inflation, we’re just not seeing price pressures right now,” Mr. Fisher said. “If anything, the tail risks are on the deflationary side.” (“Tail risk” is market-speak for nightmare scenarios, low probability events that can be very damaging to markets and the economy.)

Fed officials have been engaged in recent weeks in a deepening debate about whether inflation is slowing even as the economy recovers. Many measures of inflation are slowing, but some Fed officials dismiss these measures because they might be getting skewed by a sharp slowdown in housing costs. It is an important debate: If Fed officials come to the view that inflation is slowing a lot; it could push interest-rate increases further down the road, possibly into 2011.

Though he says he’s still worried about longer-term inflation risks tied to immense U.S. budget deficits, Mr. Fisher’s current view on inflation puts him close to others, like San Francisco Fed President Janet Yellen, who say inflation is not a risk and is still trending down.

“I don’t see the need to tighten monetary policy right now,” Mr. Fisher said. “We have other things to do,” he added, noting that the Fed has been intensely focused on unwinding many of its emergency lending programs in recent months.

The Dallas Fed produces its own inflation measures which weigh heavily on Mr. Fisher’s outlook. Its inflation gauge uses Commerce Department measures of price changes on a wide range of consumer purchases of goods and services and trims the most volatile components. It works something like judging in figure skating, where the highest and lowest scores get thrown out. The Dallas Fed’s “trimmed mean” approach shows that consumer price inflation was up 1.0% in February from a year ago, well below the Fed’s goal of annual inflation in the 1.5% to 2.0%, and much lower than a rate of nearly 3% in mid-2008, when Mr. Fisher was lobbying for tighter monetary policy.

“We examine all of the entrails [of inflation] and what the entrails are telling us right now is that we are not seeing significant price pressures,” he says. “That gives you a little bit of leeway… We’ve got to make sure that we do exit in a way that doesn’t create inflationary pressure, but I think that’s way down the road,” he added.

The Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland produces a similar “trimmed mean” measure which strips out the most volatile components of the Labor Department’s consumer price index. It also has slowed sharply. In February, it was up 1.1% from a year earlier, compared to increases of more than 3.5% in mid-2008.

by Jeff Goodell

Editor’s note: We are very pleased to welcome author Jeff Goodell, who will be blogging for Grist while on tour with his new book: How to Cool the Planet: Geoengineering and the Audacious Quest to Fix Earth’s Climate.

For a writer, publishing a book is like letting an animal
out of a cage—you never know how it will behave in public, whether people
will be charmed by it, or scared by it. Or
bored.

This is
doubly true with book about geoengineering—an issue that is volatile, profound,
and morally fraught. Is it
a sci-fi nightmare writ large, or a sensible back-up plan in case our climate
spins out of control?

I have my own ideas about all this—and wrote about them in my new book, How
to Cool the Planet. But now, as I
travel around the country for the next month, I get to hear your
ideas. Are you scared by geoengineering? Worried about rogue nations—or rogue billionaires—taking the fate of the
planet into their own hands by launching a geoengineering project? Is geoengineering another way for rich,
technologically-advanced nations to exert their will over the rest of the
world? Does geoengineering the planet necessarily mean the end of nature as we know it?

I’d like to talk about all this—both on the road, and here in this blog.

I’d also
like to test a whole bunch of assumptions that scientists and academics who
have been thinking about geoengineering tend to make, but that might not in fact be true.

But before we get to the assumptions, here’s a
quick backgrounder on geoengineering: The British Royal Society defined
geoengineering as “the deliberate, large-scale intervention in the Earth’s
climate system in order to moderate global warming.” We could intervene with technologies that
reflect sunlight away from the earth, or with technologies that pull CO2 right out of the air. Sucking out CO2 tends to be slow, expensive,
and uncontroversial; reflecting sunlight is fast, cheap, and dangerous.

Here’s one assumption I’ll explore in upcoming posts: does taking geoengineering seriously—investing in research, setting up possible governance structures—undercut our collective will to cut greenhouse gas
pollution?

One of the most commonly expressed
fears about geoengineering is that it’s likely to be promoted by Big Coal and
Big Oil as a “quick fix”—in other words, we don’t have to change our lives or
rebuild our energy infrastructure, we can just spray some sulfur particles in
the air and be done with it.

First, let me be blunt and say
unequivocally that geoengineering is not a quick fix for global warming. It
could very well cause many more problems than it solves. (Of course, that may not matter. Diet pills often cause more problems than
they solve, but that has not stopped the pharmaceutical industry from turning
them into a multi-billion dollar business.)

That’s why you could just as easily make the case that taking geoengineering seriously might in fact be a really good idea. It might turn out to be the
climate equivalent of those crack-up movies they show in driver’s ed classes—the theory being that if you see enough blood splattered on the dashboard, you’ll
think harder about drinking a case of tall boys before climbing behind the
wheel.

Maybe if you knew that reckless
geoengineering could shift the Asian monsoons, which hundreds of millions of
people depend on to grow their crops, you’d be more likely to
buy a Nissan Leaf, give up beef, and march on Washington to demand tough
climate legislation.

What do you think?

Related Links:

Sole “Strategic Partner” of landmark geo-engineering conference is Australia’s “dirty coal” state of

Jeff Goodell: ‘It’s a bad idea for geoengineering to be the equivalent of the Pompeii sex room’

Adding iron to sea boosts deadly neurotoxin, study finds

Toward the end of 2009, I began to notice that my computing needs had changed quite a bit. I’d begun to do a lot more heavy duty work in video, requiring Final Cut Studio and a large screen for editing, so I purchased a 24″ iMac for the office. At the same time, I had been traveling for business much less than before, and began to grow weary of toting my laptop (a rev A MacBook Air) back-and-forth each day. I decided a new strategy was in order and determined that I could make my life much easier if I could just leave my laptop at home on most days. Then I’d be able to carry it only when needed it for a local presentation, traveling, or if I knew I’d be mobile for a good part of the day. Subsequently, I’ve ordered an iPad, and hope it can replace my laptop in many cases.

As I tend to work at home during early mornings and evenings, the biggest challenge in this new strategy quickly became how to keep files and app data in sync across the two computers. Now, to be fair, I didn’t approach this in any strategic way, but over the ensuing few months, I have migrated much of my Mac life into the cloud. Here are a few of the key ways I made this happen.

Mailplane + Gmail

I have several email accounts for various projects and my personal needs, and they are all either Gmail or Google Apps accounts. Previously, I set them all up as IMAP accounts and used Mail.app as a client. Even though I accessed most accounts on a daily basis, Mail.app — despite its superior UI — quickly became an untenable solution. True, I can sync accounts, rules and other data using MobileMe, but I noticed some inconsistencies in the way messages were displaying, and I was using precious disk space on duplicate mailbox files, caches, and temporary files.

Mailplane is the perfect solution for me. As a direct view of the Gmail web interface, Mailplane ensures that there aren’t any inconsistencies. And nothing gets stored locally unless I choose to download it. Like Mail, I can easily switch between accounts, and I also have direct, integrated access with Address Book.

MobileMe for Address Book and Bookmark Syncing

Speaking of Address Book, Google’s contact manager is pretty weak, and despite integration with Gmail, I am not ready to turn my contacts over to Google’s less than desirable product. So I keep Apple’s Address Book as my primary contact manager, and sync it across MobileMe among my Macs and the iPhone. Syncing only certain contacts with others — my wife, for example, for our shared social contacts — is the next step for me. I am also using MobileMe to synchronize Safari bookmarks. Having the same bookmarks across devices has proven to be a lifesaver from time-to-time.

Google Calendar (including Mobile Sync) + Fluid for Calendars

As I described earlier, I have several Gmail and Google Apps accounts. With Mailplane, you get to see a list of accounts in a sidebar, and easily switch among them without having to enter your username and password each time. I’ve even combined some accounts by using one to send and receive mail from another, and deleting the account in Mailplane. To my knowledge, there isn’t a similar solution for Google Calendar. So I’ve set all my calendars to be shared with my primary account, then used Fluid to create an app-specific browser for the consolidated Google Calendar. As a result, I have one calendar app that displays all my various calendars but allows me to keep them separate (different colors, turn on/off, etc.).

SugarSync for File Synchronization

I have longed for Mac OS X features that allow file and folder-level synchronization across computers, to no avail. Many in the Mac community swear by DropBox, but I chose SugarSync for a couple of reasons. First, with SugarSync, you can add any file or folder on a computer to your sync profile, regardless of where that file lives. At least when I looked at it previously, DropBox required you to set up a special sync folder and move your files there, forcing me to reorganize my files, not something I wanted to do. And there’s always price: SugarSync is $5/month less than DropBox at the 100GB storage level. I now often save a file on my office computer as I’m leaving the office, then open it at home with those changes reflected.

Google Docs for Collaboration

More and more, I find myself working with others on projects that require collaborative editing. Google Docs is a great solution, as it allows multiple people to access and share documents, spreadsheets and presentations. The user interface and available styles aren’t exactly aesthetically pleasing, but Google Docs works really well. Google recently added the ability to entire folders, not just documents, which made it even more valuable to me and my collaborators.

OmniFocus and Evernote

I’ve got a lot going on (probably too much), and I’ve started and stopped using various task management applications multiple times. I love Things, but I can’t live without hierarchical organization of my information and the Wi-fi based syncing with iPhone is tedious. I also really dig The Hit List, but after many months Potion Factory is still taking pre-orders and hasn’t released an iPhone app. I’m worried that it has stalled. I keep returning to OmniFocus from The Omni Group, which has some powerful organization and management capabilities, and also syncs perfectly among Macs and the iPhone. Lastly, I’ve recently rediscovered Evernote, whose web-based syncing has proven effortless and reliable (more on Evernote in a future post).

My Mac Life in the Cloud

I haven’t yet bothered syncing media, as I tend to simply use my iPhone for music, photos and more when I’m away from home. In the meantime, it seems like I can be anywhere and have access to all the files and data I need.

So, how are you keeping multiple devices in sync and using the cloud to make your life easier and more efficient?

 

We just reported on the LG Aloha and now we have some speculative pictures that point this South Korean LG LU2300 Android device (pictured above) as the actual Aloha. Remember, the Aloha is purported to be the next great Android device with one new wrinkle: it has a full QWERTY keyboard.

A QWERTY keyboard is found on the LU2300 along with a 800×480 screen and Android 2.1, both which are expected to be on the Aloha. The other ‘new’ specs of the LU2300–Snapdragon, AMOLED 3.5-inch screen, and optical trackpad–seem to fit in with the Aloha’s "high end" nature, so if you connect the dots and take a leap of faith the LU2300 just might be the LG Aloha. We definitely wouldn’t be mad if it was. What do you guys think? [via androidcommunity]

read more

(This guest post previously appeared at The White House blog)

There has been a lot discussion about reports that some businesses are expecting some additional costs from health reform.  The problem doesn’t lie with corporate accounting, it lies with those who have politicized that accounting, treating first quarter earnings from about a dozen companies as a way to judge the entire impact of health reform on America’s business.

The markets didn’t make that mistake. And today, a New York Times editorial elaborates on why the critics have it wrong.

As we’ve explained, the 2003 Medicare prescription drug bill included not only a subsidy to help companies pay for retiree prescription drug coverage, but also allowed them to deduct that subsidy from their taxes as if it was their own spending. Thus the headline of the editorial: “We Call That Double-Dipping.” After health reform was signed, which kept the subsidy in tact but simply eliminated the ability to deduct the subsidy as well, affected companies posted earnings figures indicating they had taken big losses as a result of this change — but as the editorial says:

Those look like staggering amounts until one understands that they don’t require any immediate cash payments and that the added taxes will be paid out slowly — over perhaps 30, 40 or more years, depending on a company’s retiree plan.

Wall Street certainly gave a collective yawn. Stock prices for the companies that made announcements barely budged (some went up), and analysts urged investors not to overreact because the accounting change would have a negligible impact on these companies’ valuation, or market capitalization.

As for the question of how this change will affect seniors, the editorial closes on this note:

The remaining tax subsidy is substantial and many companies and their workers value the retiree drug benefit, so defections may be small. If some retirees do lose their company drug benefits, they can buy government-subsidized coverage in Medicare that may be just or almost as good and will be getting better as health care reform progresses. Willing employers could also help subsidize their retirees’ drug coverage in Medicare.

That’s the least they should do in return for the generous tax benefits they have been receiving.

Dan Pfeiffer is White House Communications Director

Join the conversation about this story »

Reader el chief asks:

Dear Dr. R.,

1. What is the best type of man for a woman to marry? For both the man and the woman.

It ain’t the badboy, cuz he will cheat or fuck off shortly after they marry, if at all.

It ain’t the beta, cuz she’ll be miserable the whole time, and then so will he.

Is it the Good Alpha? Does that exist?

The best type of man for a woman to marry is a man she loves. Sounds trite, but without that prerequisite in place, the marriage is doomed to either divorce or dissimulation. Maybe arranged marriages work better than love marriages on paper, but loveless, arid business arrangements designed to smoothly usher in the next generation of cogs for the belching corporaglobomilitaryeducationalswplstatuswhoringmachine is no way to go through life, son. Now that that’s out of the way, let’s get down to brass tacks.

He should be higher status than her, i.e. superior to her in some observable trait or accomplishment. That status can come in many forms. He could be better educated, smarter, richer, funnier, more socially savvy, better connected, more charming, more confident, more dominant, better traveled, more artistic, or really really good at inspiring interest from other women.

But there are two big caveats. One, he should not be much higher status than her. A large discrepancy in status between a husband and wife — where the wife’s status is measured by her looks, not her accomplishments — virtually guarantees his straying. For instance, a man with 9 status (let’s say he’s a war zone photographer who travels the world for work) will cheat if the woman he marries is only an 8 or lower in looks, and the frequency and haste with which he cheats will be in proportion to the gap between his status rank and her looks rank. So if his wife is a 9, there is a 50/50 chance of monogamous bliss. If she’s a 10, he will be less likely to stray than he would be to remain faithful to her. But if she’s a 6, he’ll be cheating with a bridesmaid in the upstairs bathroom during the reception dinner.

Two, under no circumstance should he be better looking than her, regardless of his non-looks status. This is the one area where a woman’s status must reign supreme for there to be harmony in the land. Of course, it’s difficult to directly compare men’s looks to women’s looks. Cross gender beauty comparisons must rely on contrasting two distinct templates without much overlap. But generalizations can be made. Does he look like a male model and she look like a plain jane? Release the cheats! It doesn’t matter if he’s unemployed or dumb; if he’s better looking than his wife he will feel a strong primal pull to leverage his looks for short term flings with better looking women. A groom’s wedding vows are only as strong as his bride’s looks. If the wife looks comparatively less good-looking than the husband, she has completely relinquished any power over him. This is a recipe for marital unrest.

Maxim #59: The most successful marriages are those with a balance of power that slightly favors the husband’s status over the wife’s looks.

So what does this mean for women attracted to bad boys? Well, bad boys have status in the areas of social savviness, dominance, confidence, and usually charm. A woman who wants a bad boy — that is, she specifically wants a man who is good at getting other women — needs to parse the lesser bad boys from the greater badder boys, based on an honest assessment of her looks. If she’s a hard 10, she can shoot for the baddest boys. Bad boys are more likely to stray than other men in almost any scenario, but even they have weak underbellies. A bad boy engaged to a bodacious woman will work harder to curb his instincts than he would with a more average woman, especially if that bodacious woman has credible options in the dating market.

My advice for women seeking to maximize their domestic bliss windows at the expense of their drama windows is to avoid the bad boys or date one with a steady job and at least ten years older. The age gap will make him more grateful to be with you, and his primal pull to spread his seed will have mellowed.

Betas need not feel left out from all this fun. There is an army of fatter, uglier women out there who will be relieved happy to settle in their 30s for a beta.

I don’t want to shit all over the betas. There is hope. Plenty of betas get married. If you are a beta with no game, the key is to marry a woman not too much hotter than what you can normally get, and to be excellent in at least one pursuit. It could even be computer programming. As long as you can lord one accomplishment or status marker over your wife, her attraction for you will percolate. But betas would be much better off learning game. That well-paid computer programmer with an understanding of relationship game can safely marry a woman one or two points higher than what he could otherwise get, without worrying too much that he’ll be cuckolded.

2. Is a woman’s attractiveness absolute or relative or both? Does Brad Pitt think that a 9/10 woman is still hot? Or is she ugly, cuz he can bang 10s on the regular?

I believe that positive pheromones are correlated with good looks. Does that mean a 9/10 stinks to a 10/10, or do they still smell good?

Thanks

el chief

A woman’s attractiveness is an absolute. There is no Uglitopia where Rachel McAdams could go that would make her look ugly and Cigstache look good. Brad Pitt, no matter how bored he gets fucking the same 10 over and over, will always recognize that a 10 is a 10 and a 2 is a 2. When Brad Pitt cheats, 99% of the time he’ll cheat with other 9s and 10s. If female beauty weren’t an absolute, Pitt would randomly cheat with whichever woman was available, and that would include fatties and uglies. In fact, with obesity in the US at record levels, a “beauty is subjective” world would feature lots of high status men cheating with fat, ugly women. But that is not what we see.

Pheromones are an interesting clause to the above truths. Evidence is mounting that smell — the scent of our lovers — plays a role in how attracted we feel to them. Women who smell the yellow pits of t-shirts worn by men with histo-compatible profiles feel more strongly attracted to them. Personally, I know that from my own experience two women of equal looks can trigger divergent boner responses from me if I prefer the smell of one over the other. None of this is conscious, by the way. A lot of this pheromone stuff happens at the subconscious level. So maybe women should cut men a break when they catch them sniffing their panties. We’re just checking to see if you’d make a good wife.

Only once the basic biomechanical criteria are met should a man or woman prospecting for a marriage partner begin the task of gathering clues from his or her lover’s personality that would indicate a predilection for faithfulness or for unreliability. Does he actually remember small details of what you say? Check one for the keeper column. Does she get a little too irate when she catches you innocently flirting with women at a mixed social event? Check one for the chucker column. Do this for six months, then tally your keeper and chucker columns. If 3/4s or more of your check marks are in the keeper column, you may risk marriage and its attendant drudgery.

But don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Filed under: Biomechanics is God, Marriage Is For Chumps, Reader Mailbag

by Brad Johnson

Cross-posted from Think Progress.

Massey Energy is actively contesting millions of dollars of fines
for safety violations at its West Virginia coal mine where disaster
struck yesterday afternoon. Twenty-five miners were killed and another four are missing after a explosion took place at 3 pm Monday at Massey subsidiary Performance Coal Co.‘s Upper Big Branch
Mine-South between the towns of Montcoal and Naoma. It is “the most people killed in a U.S. mine since 1984, when 27 died in a fire at Emery Mining
Corp.‘s mine in Orangeville, Utah.” This deadly mine has been cited for
over 3,000 violations by the Mine Safety and Health Administration
(MSHA), 638 since 2009:

Since 1995, Massey’s Upper Big Branch-South Mine has been cited for 3,007 safety violations. Massey is contesting 353 violations, and 127 are delinquent. [MSHA]

Massey is contesting over a third (34.7 percent) of the
516 safety citations the Upper Big Branch-South Mine received in 2009,
its greatest count in the last 15 years. [MSHA]

In March 2010, 53 new safety citations were issued for Massey’s Upper Big Branch-South Mine, including violations of its mine ventilation plan. [MSHA]

Massey is now contesting $1,128,833 in fines for safety violations
at the deadly Upper Big Branch-South Mine, with a further $246,320 in
delinquent fines:

Over $2.2 million in fines have been assessed against Massey’s Upper Big Branch-South Mine since 1995, with $791,327
paid. Massey is contesting $1,128,833 in fines. Massey’s delinquent
fines total $246,320. [MSHA]

Massey is contesting $251,613 in fines for citations for Upper Big Branch-South Mine’s ventilation plan. [MSHA]

Before yesterday’s tragic explosion, there have been three
fatalities at Massey’s Upper Big Branch-South Mine in the last 12
years—one each in 1998, 2001, and 2003. Massey’s corrupt CEO, U.S. Chamber of Commerce board member Don Blankenship, has previously told employees that it was more important to “run coal” than follow safety regulations.

In 2002, President George W. Bush “named former Massey Energy official Stanley Suboleski to the MSHA review commission that decides all legal matters under the
Federal Mine Act,” and cut 170 positions from MSHA. Bush’s MSHA chief, Dick Stickler, was a former manager of Beth Energy mines, which “incurred injury rates double the national average.” On Oct. 21, 2009, the Senate confirmed
President Barack Obama’s choice to replace Stickler, Joe Main, a “career union official and mine safety expert.” Massey’s Suboleski is still an active review commissioner.

Related Links:

‘Britain’s Appalachia’ engineers a brighter post-coal future

More evidence that Sen. Byrd sees the writing on the wall for coal

Citizens gather in Washington to end ‘mountain bombing’ of Appalachia

Two employees of a Compton auto shop were fatally shot and a third injured after a group of men tried to rob the store, authorities said Tuesday.

Deputies responded to a burglary-in-progress call just before 8 p.m. Monday at Custom City Auto in the 300 block of North Long Beach Boulevard, said Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Sgt. David Infante.

When deputies arrived, they found three workers inside with gunshot wounds, and they saw a green van matching a description of the suspects’ vehicle driving away.

Deputies pulled the van over a few blocks away at Ward Avenue and Compton Boulevard, and, after a brief foot pursuit, arrested the six men inside.

Five of the men were questioned in connection with the robbery and killings. One, however, became unresponsive in the back of a patrol car and was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead of an apparent heart attack.

Two workers were pronounced dead at the scene and a third was sent to the hospital. Authorities had not yet identified the victims. Calls to the auto shop early Tuesday went unanswered.

— Tony Barboza

[Updated at 10:05 am: A previous version of this post showed a map of North Long Beach Boulevard in Long Beach. The map has been updated to show the 300 block of Long Beach Boulevard in Compton.]

Map: The location of the shooting. There have been 111 homicides within two miles of this location since Jan. 1, 2007, according to the Times’ Homicide Report database.

[JURIST] Turkish police on Monday detained 19 retired military officers, including four generals, in connection with an alleged 2003 coup plot, before the chief prosecutor intervened. Istanbul Chief Prosecutor Aykut Cengiz Engin stopped police from arresting up to 90 suspects, replacing two lower-level prosecutors. The alleged coup plot, known as the Balyoz Security Operation Plan, or the “Sledgehammer plot,” was originally revealed in January by the newspaper Taraf. The plot included detailed plans to bomb Istanbul mosques and provoke Greece into shooting down a Turkish plane as part of an effort by the military to undermine the government. The most recent arrests could increase existing tensions between military forces and the Turkish government.
The investigation into the alleged coup plot has led to heightened political unease and conflicting judicial results. In late February, Turkish officials brought charges against 11 military officials in connection with the coup just one day after three high ranking military officials were released. The release came after Turkey’s prime minister and president met with the head of the armed forces, General Ilker Basbug, to discuss potential resolutions to the increased political strain. In response to the initial exposure of the plot in January, Turkish officials detained more than 40 people and 12 military officers were charged in connection with the alleged coup plot. After the most recent round of arrests, almost 70 military officials have been detained in connection with the alleged plot.

I have fallen ill. Amidst vivid fever dreams I have a vision of a mechanical monstrosity, a great roaring beast that spits smoke and fumes as it careens down a black ribbon of asphalt, headed for certain death. I’m still not sure it’s real.

We really can’t imagine breakfast without eggs, can you? When we start thinking about all the ways eggs can transformed into something delicious, we just get hungrier and hungrier. Here’s a quick guide to everything we know about buying, preparing, and cooking eggs for breakfast!

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