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Along with Android 2.2 comes a new version of the Android Market. While we still wish something could be done in regards to content (the Wild West still is in effect), Google’s begun to at least clean up the interface a bit. Comments are now in their own tab — no more scrolling down to see just one or two.

You also can see here the "Allow automatic updating" checkbox — hit it and the app will update on its own, in the background. No muss, no fuss.

(Thanks Russ! Find a cool new feature in Froyo and want to tell the world about it? E-mail us here and we’ll make you famous!)

This is a post by Android Central. It is sponsored by the Android Central Accessories Store

The Illinois House this week voted to borrow nearly $4 billion needed for the state to make its scheduled payment to the pension systems but the Senate needs to act on the House bill to make sure the systems get their money.

Borrowing was the best option since the likely alternative would be for the state to do what has been done in the past: Take a “pension holiday” and forgo the payment until next year, further weakening the pension systems and incurring billions of dollars in additional debt.

The Democrats in the House needed help from Republicans to pass the pension borrowing plan and the same is true in the senate.

Doug Finke at Gatehouse reports

“I have been told there are no votes in the Republican caucus for borrowing,” said Sen. John Sullivan, D-Rushville, one of the Democrats’ budget negotiators.

The Senate did not return to Springfield until late Wednesday afternoon and did not take up any budget issues. Both parties planned to hold private meetings with members Wednesday to talk over positions on the remaining budget issues.

Sen. Larry Bomke, R-Springfield, said Republicans have not yet taken a position on the pension borrowing bill.

“The governor called me (Tuesday). I said I will consider it. Right now, I haven’t ruled it out or decided to support it,” Bomke said.

It’s worth noting that Bomke represents Springfield and thousands of state workers who want their pensions funded.

Keep checking the IEA Website for updates.

by Sue Sturgis.

A special Facing South investigation.

After coal is burned at power
plants, leaving massive heaps of ash, not all of the waste ends up in
landfills and impoundments like the one that failed
catastrophically in east Tennessee in December 2008.

A growing share of the nation’s coal ash is being reused and recycled,
finding its way into building materials, publicly used land and even
farmland growing food crops. And despite the presence of toxins like
arsenic, chromium, and lead found in coal ash, these reuses go largely
unregulated by state and federal officials.

The latest
report from the American Coal Ash Association, the industry group
representing major coal ash producers, found that of the more than 136
million tons of coal ash produced in 2008, about 44 percent—60
million tons—was reused. Some of the reuses for coal ash, such as
recycling it into concrete, are not very controversial even among
environmental advocates, since they’re believed to lock in toxic
contaminants.

But there are growing concerns about other reuses
of coal ash. For example, the recent revelation that
Chinese-manufactured drywall made with coal ash was releasing noxious
chemicals inside people’s homes spurred a
CBS investigation that also found problems with U.S.-made drywall
products. The discovery led the Consumer Product Safety Commission to
call for a closer look at drywall products made with coal ash.

Another
popular destination for coal ash that is raising concern is its use as a
substitute for fill dirt in construction projects. Because this reuse
can put coal ash directly in contact with groundwater, environmental and
public health advocates fear serious contamination problems. Right now,
the Environmental Protection Agency is mulling
new rules for the use of coal ash, including whether it should
strictly regulate ash used in fills or simply put forward guidelines and
leave oversight up to the states.

As federal officials consider
how to regulate reuse of coal ash, North Carolina’s experience in
overseeing structural fills provides a case study with valuable lessons
for the entire country.

North Carolina: A case study in
neglect?

North Carolina has long been a leader in promoting
the use of coal ash as structural fill. Heavily dependent on coal, with 60
percent of its electricity generated by coal-fired plants, the
state has a glut of ash to contend with—and has been encouraging
utilities to use it as fill for more than 20 years.

“It is
encouraging to see the commitment being made to develop reuse
applications for the coal ash as opposed to the continued use of county
landfills,” stated a
1989 letter from North Carolina’s solid waste chief to ReUse
Technology, now known as Full Circle Solutions. The Georgia-based firm
is a wholly owned subsidiary of Charlotte-based Cogentrix, which in turn
is a wholly owned subsidiary of The Goldman Sachs Group and operates a number of
small coal-fired power plants in the eastern U.S.

The letter
continued, “The Solid Waste Management Section has and will continue to
support the reuse and recycling of waste materials when performed in a
manner consistent with the environment.”

But the use of coal ash
as fill has not always been done in a manner “consistent with the
environment.” Even though North Carolina began overseeing coal ash fills
in 1994 after groundwater contamination was found at one fill site,
state records and independent research show that the rules—which were
cooperatively written by utilities and state regulators—have failed
to prevent coal ash fills from damaging the environment and threatening
public health.

Facing South examined records from the state
Division of Waste Management, which oversees the use of dry coal ash as
fill, and the Division of Water Quality, which is responsible for fills
that use wet coal ash from impoundments like the one that failed at the
Tennessee Valley Authority’s Kingston plant. We also considered the
findings of a recent report from the Sierra Club’s North Carolina
chapter titled “Unlined
Landfills? The Story of Coal Ash Waste in Our Backyard.”

The
public record shows that dry coal ash was used as a substitute for fill
dirt at more than 70 locations across North Carolina from the late
1980s through 2009 (click here for a spreadsheet with details about the locations). Sites sitting on
top of coal ash fills include airports, roads, industrial parks,
shopping centers, office buildings, a municipal gym, a church, a science
center at Duke University, a rifle range at a Marine base, and
livestock pens at a commercial hog farm.

Unlike new surface
impoundments where coal ash is dumped in North Carolina, which now must
be lined under state law, liners are not mandated for even the largest
fill sites. As a result, coal ash has contaminated groundwater or
surface water in at least three structural fill sites across the state:

*
At the Alamac Road site in Robeson County, N.C., about 45,000
tons of coal ash from small power plants owned by Cogentrix were used as
structural fill on 12.8 acres of land. ReUse began placing ash at the
site in 1992 without proper state authorization, and state tests of
groundwater near the site found levels of contaminants exceeding state
groundwater standards. In 1993, the North Carolina Division of Solid
Waste Management issued a notice
of violation, stating that tests showed “levels of arsenic,
cadmium, chromium, lead, selenium, sulfate and total dissolved solids”
exceeding safety standards—and that some of the contaminated samples
came from a monitoring site near a private residence thought to have a
drinking water well.

In response, ReUse removed the coal ash from
the site in 1995 with plans to use it elsewhere, including at an
agricultural demonstration project testing the ability of coal ash to
enhance crop yields—an increasingly common
way for coal ash to be reused, especially in the Southeast and
Midwest.

The EPA’s new proposals for coal ash regulation don’t
address the agricultural use of coal ash, but the agency and the U.S.
Department of Agriculture are currently studying such uses and are
scheduled to release a report of their findings in 2012.

* At the
Swift Creek site in Nash County, N.C., ReUse placed coal ash
from Cogentrix plants as fill on a property along Highway 301 beginning
in 1994. Two years later, the company got special
permission from the Division of Waste Management to also use ash
from a facility burning a mix of coal and shredded tires, which contain arsenic and other
toxic substances.

A 2004
letter from the state agency to ReUse, which by then had changed
its named to Full Circle Solutions, reported that state tests of
groundwater samples taken near the site found arsenic at almost three
times the state standard for groundwater and lead at more than four
times the standard. The letter stated, “The detection of contamination
beyond the boundary of the fill shows that constituents from the [coal
ash] are migrating.”

* Though our own review of the division’s
files did not turn up any mention of violations at the location, Sierra
Club found records showing that state environmental inspectors
discovered high levels of arsenic, iron, and selenium in wetlands at the Arthurs
Creek coal ash fill site in Northampton County in 2009. Since 2004,
the 21-acre site has been the dumping ground for ash from
Kentucky-based energy giant E.ON’s Roanoke Valley Energy plant near
Weldon, N.C. There are plans to eventually build office buildings and a
parking lot atop the fill.

The problem of groundwater
contamination at structural fill sites across North Carolina may be even
more widespread, because state law does not require groundwater
monitoring at such sites—or even require regular inspections. Most of
the problems that have been found to date were discovered following
complaints from nearby residents.

The areas of North Carolina
contaminated by coal ash fills are notable for being poor and having
large African-American, Latino, and Native American populations.

While
the statewide poverty rate is 14.6 percent, the poverty rates for the
counties with known damage cases from coal ash fills are much higher—
15.5 percent in Nash County, 26.6 percent in Northampton, and 30.4
percent in Robeson, according to Census Bureau data.
Those counties’ non-white populations are also greater than the state’s
26.1 percent, at 39.4 percent in Nash, 59.4 percent in Northampton and
64.2 percent in Robeson.

Building a community on coal ash

Water contamination is not the only
problem that’s occurred at structural fill sites across North Carolina.
At some of the sites, work occurred without the required notification
of state regulators. At others, the companies improperly excavated the
sites before placing the ash, increasing the risk that the coal ash
would come in contact with groundwater. And in some instances, coal ash
generators may have made ash available for use as fill that shouldn’t
have been allowed because it contained excessive levels of contaminants.

For
example, state Division of Water Quality records show that Progress
Energy distributed ash for fill use that exceeded limits for arsenic.
“Based on your 2007 annual report, 14,025 tons of ash was distributed in
December of 2007 in which the arsenic concentrations of all three
samples exceeded the ceiling and monthly average concentration,”
according to a March
2009 letter from the agency to the company. “Based on the 2008
annual report, five out of the 12 ash samples exceeded the ceiling
concentration.”

Progress Energy’s permit allows coal ash with
arsenic concentrations exceeding those limits to be distributed for fill
as long as it will be overlain by impervious surfaces like pavement so
rainwater can’t penetrate and leach out contaminants. But the division
was apparently not sure that was the case: It asked the company for a
site plan showing where the ash was used, but no plan was included in
the files.

Furthermore, some coal ash fill sites in North
Carolina had problems with erosion that left the toxic waste exposed—
posing a direct threat to local residents.

Among those was the
Fountain Industrial Park site near the city of Rocky Mount in Edgecombe
County, N.C. In 1989, ReUse Technology in cooperation with the Edgecombe
County Development Corp. began placing at the site ash from various
Cogentrix plants as well as from the coal-fired cogeneration facility at
the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Following
Hurricane Floyd in 1999, the industrial park was turned into a trailer
park for about 370 eastern North Carolina families displaced by the
disaster. Many of the residents were from Princeville, a historic
African-American community that was devastated by flooding from the
storm. By that time the soil covering the fill had eroded, leaving ash
exposed.

Employees of a nearby correctional facility, who for
years had watched industrial-sized trucks dumping large quantities of
unknown materials at the site, began asking if this was a good place to
locate a trailer park. They brought their concerns to the attention of
Saladin Muhammad with the group Black Workers for Justice, who was
working with trailer park residents. He in turn discussed the situation
with graduate students at the University of North Carolina’s School of
Public Health, and one of them—Aaron Pulver—investigated the
situation for his master’s
paper.

Pulver’s experience in trying to track down the
history of the site shows how difficult it can be under the current
regulatory environment for the public to get information about the use
of coal ash for structural fill.

While the Edgecombe County
development officer told Pulver a study of the land had been done prior
to construction of the trailer park, she refused to release it to him— as did the director of the N.C. Office of Temporary Housing.

When
Pulver finally managed to get a copy of the report, he discovered there
had actually been no thorough testing of the site for possible health
impacts before the placement of the trailers. His adviser, UNC
epidemiology professor Dr. Steve Wing, raised concerns about inhalation
of the coal ash dust and children ingesting it while playing in the
dirt.

In response to mounting worries about the site’s safety,
epidemiologists with the state health department collected samples from
the trailer park for testing, comparing the
results to EPA’s standards for potential health effects. One of the
samples exceeded those standards for two contaminants, with arsenic at
25 milligrams per kilogram compared to a recommended level of 22, and
chromium at 31 mg/kg compared to the standard of 30.

However, a press
release put out by the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services
—under the headline “SOIL TESTS FIND NO PROBLEMS AT FOUNTAIN TRAILER
PARK”—said only that the soil samples “showed no significant risk”
for the residents. It did not mention the elevated arsenic and chromium
levels.

‘We’ve been unable to bring attention to this’

The problems that have occurred at
coal ash structural fill sites across North Carolina highlight the
difficulty states face in overseeing ash placement programs in the
absence of federal regulations.

Under North Carolina’s rules,
companies placing dry coal ash as fill are supposed to record its
presence on the property deed—a provision fought by Duke Energy,
which along with Progress Energy is one of the state’s two big
investor-owned utilities and a major producer of coal ash.

However,
the Sierra Club found that only 56 percent of the closed structural
fill sites that held 1,000 cubic yards or more of coal ash had complied
with the deed-recording requirement.

State officials aren’t
required to do their own tests of coal ash fill to see if it has
potentially dangerous levels of arsenic of other contaminants—that’s
left up to the companies, and there’s no rule to check the accuracy of
what the companies report. No advance permits are required for fills,
even for the largest sites. And while the state can comment on a
company’s coal ash fill plans, it does not have the power to deny them.

Following
the Kingston disaster in Tennessee in 2008, state Rep. Pricey Harrison
(D-Guilford) tried to change the way coal ash is regulated in North
Carolina, including its use in structural fills. In 2009, she introduced
a bill that would have created a permitting system for coal ash fills—but
the final
version of the legislation that passed the General Assembly and was
signed into law by Gov. Beverly Perdue (D) had the structural fill
provision stripped out.

Instead, the measure simply subjected the
state’s massive coal ash impoundments to dam safety rules, an approach
aimed at preventing catastrophes like Kingston but that does nothing to
protect against potentially more insidious environmental contamination
from ash fills.

But even that basic safeguard was difficult to
win at the state capitol, with the politically
powerful utility companies and electric cooperatives working
against it. “They fought every aspect of the bill tooth and nail,”
Harrison said. “They lobbied hard against even a hearing.”

This
week Harrison introduced another
bill to better regulate structural fill sites in North Carolina.
And as co-chair of the state Environmental Review Commission and House
Environment Committee, she is also planning on holding hearings on coal
ash next month.

Meanwhile, spurred by the Kingston coal ash
disaster in Tennessee, North Carolina regulators have stepped up their
inspections of structural fill sites. In 2009, they visited 48 sites—
and found violations at 28 of them, ranging from water contamination to a
lack of cover that could stop coal ash from escaping fill sites.

But
the regulators themselves acknowledge that more must be done.

“We’ve
been unable to bring the attention to this that we feel it needs,” said
Paul Crissman, chief of the Division of Waste Management’s Solid Waste
Section, which oversees dry coal ash fills.

Since the
recession-triggered state budget crisis began in 2008, Crissman’s staff
has declined from 54 to 49 people, while the workload has increased. He
does not expect that situation to change any time soon, with state
lawmakers facing a $1
billion budget gap.

“We’ve got more work to do in a day than
workers to put at it,” Crissman added.

While North Carolina’s
regulatory approach to coal ash fill has proven inadequate for ensuring
against environmental damages, the administration of Gov. Perdue does
not support strict federal regulation of coal ash as hazardous waste. In
fact, her departments of Transportation and Commerce are both on record opposing that regulatory approach. The state’s Utility Commission and the commission’s Public
Staff also oppose strict regulation, citing cost concerns.

What
next from Washington?

The lack of strong state rules for
using coal ash as structural fill in places like North Carolina has
caused community health and environmental advocates to rest their hopes
for protective standards on Washington.

The EPA’s
much-anticipated new proposals
for regulating coal ash released earlier this month allow for the
continued recycling and reuse of coal ash. However, they draw a
distinction between turning the waste into manufactured products, which
would not be regulated under the proposals, and the reuse of coal ash in
large fills, which as the EPA notes pose “an array of environmental
issues” and would be regulated as a type of land disposal.

How
the EPA will address the issue won’t become clear until after the
comment period for the proposed rules end and final regulations are
announced. The agency has not announced any time line for that.

In
the meantime, patchwork and scatter-shot state regulations like those
in North Carolina continue to carry the day—a situation that
environmental advocates say amounts to allowing utilities to push their
ash waste problems onto the public in dangerous ways.

“Because
this ‘reuse’ is subject to little or no regulation in many states,” contend the watchdog groups Earthjustice and the Environmental Integrity
Project, “some structural fills may be little more than dumpsites in
disguise.”

Related Links:

A chat with energy analyst Trevor Houser about how to assess climate legislation

Coal: Good News, and An Opportunity for More

Endocrine disruptors really do suck

Beginning June 1, Susan Docherty will be based in Shanghai, China, and will serve General Motors Co. as its international operations vice president of sales, marketing and aftersales.

In this role, Docherty will coordinate GM sales and marketing efforts outside of North America and Europe. Docherty is one of several GM executives to have risen under the tutelage of former-CEO Fritz Henderson but has been observed to fade under new CEO Ed Whitacre. About half of GM’s sales come from international operations, covering 90 markets. In a statement, Whitacre said that GM is relying on Docherty to make a significant contribution to the company’s growth in China and other emerging markets. She reports directly to president of GM International Operations, Tim Lee, who said that the company is “fortunate” to have her join the division at this “important time in GMIO’s history.” He also said that GM will focus on this region and that Docherty brings with her “a wealth of sales and marketing experience.”

Source: Car news, Car reviews, Spy shots

Whoever is running the disaster response is going to have limited success and what appear to be very visible failures (see Will eco-disasters destroy Obama’s legacy? and 20-year veteran of the Coast Guard: “With a spill of this magnitude and complexity, there is no such thing as an effective response.”)

The St. Petersburg Times argues, “Federal takeover of spill work isn’t the answer.”  But CAP’s Tom Kenworthy and Brad Johnson make a compelling case below that it is.  What do you think?

There are obvious limits to how much control the federal government can exert over the frantic and so far hapless effort to stem the catastrophic oil eruption that threatens the entire Gulf of Mexico with ecological devastation. As Coast Guard Commandant Thad Allen said Monday, the government does not have the equipment or technical expertise to simply shove aside BP and its industry partners a month after the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig off the coast of Louisiana. “To push BP out of the way, it would raise the question, to replace them with what?” Allen said.

The Obama administration’s embattled and frustrated Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, who on Sunday had threatened to do the pushing, recognized the sobering reality 24 hours later. “This administration has done everything we can possibly do to make sure that we push BP to stop the spill and to contain the impact,” Salazar said. “We have also been very clear that there are areas where BP and the private sector are the ones who must continue to lead the efforts with government oversight, such as the deployment of private sector technology 5,000 feet below the ocean’s surface to kill the well.”

But if government has little choice but to keep the perpetrator on the job at the immediate crime scene, it does have a choice when it comes to operations beyond the urgent task of quelling the erupting well. BP will necessarily remain in charge of plugging the hole; but the federal and state governments in the gulf must take greater charge of containing the onshore ecological impacts.

This requires a greater mobilization than exists today, and Washington needs to send the message that it is in full command of the disaster response with the following actions:

• One highly visible leader at the White House should lead the command and coordination at the cabinet level between the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of the Interior, the Department of Commerce, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Department of Energy, the EPA, the Department of Justice, the White House Office of Energy and Climate Policy, the White House Office of Science and Technology, and the Department of Defense. Two excellent choices for this role would be Vice President Joe Biden or energy advisor Carol Browner. This leader should also work directly with the affected states’ governors.
• The Federal Emergency Management Agency should be in charge of onshore coastal recovery and disaster response, assisted by the Army Corps of Engineers. The National Guard should be fully deployed under the control of each state’s governor, with Army units if necessary. The EPA, NOAA, and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service should exercise relevant oversight. And any environmental and disaster response contractors working for BP should instead work directly for the federal government.
• The federal government should clearly be in charge of surface-water recovery and maritime disaster response. The Vessels of Opportunity and other maritime contractors now working for BP should be under contract with the federal government, including research vessels. The Coast Guard with the EPA, NOAA, and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service oversight should manage dispersant use for cleanup.
• The Environmental Protection Agency should immediately bar BP from new federal contracts—including drilling in federally controlled oil fields—because of its repeated environmental crimes.
• The State Department should continue to reach out to other nations that have experience with disastrous oil spills to see if assistance and ideas are available. This should be a government-to-government effort, not one undertaken by private companies.
• Claims for damages and lost revenues should be put under the authority of the U.S. Coast Guard National Pollution Funds Center. The scope of this disaster far exceeds the NPFC’s traditional resources, and other federal, state, and local claims processing resources must therefore be brought to bear, particularly from the Coast Guard’s sister agency FEMA.
• The EPA, the Justice Department, the Internal Revenue Service, and other law enforcement branches of the federal, state, and local government should exercise subpoena authority to seize or monitor relevant communications and data collection, and assets if necessary.
• The EPA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention should begin a health-monitoring program for the most at risk populations so there is a baseline from which to measure health complications from the spill and cleanup.
• Federal agencies, not BP, should handle spill response hotlines for volunteers, technology ideas, affected wildlife, and others. Full call records need to be logged with incident reports and technology ideas presented publicly on dynamic websites.

BP is required as the responsible party for this apocalyptic disaster to provide full and instant funding for the response by the federal, state, and local governments and their contractors. BP personnel and equipment being used for disaster response in the Gulf should be put under governmental control during the crisis.

BP’s funding should come in the form of an escrow account that draws on BP’s $100 billion in capital reserves, without limit. The federal government should require BP to use its first quarter 2010 profits—$5 billion—to establish the escrow account. Congress needs to pass the Big Oil Liability Bailout Prevention Act, S. 3305, to lift the liability limit to $10 billion.

The Center for American Progress also supports a full moratorium on new leases or new drilling for all companies until the commission issues its report and recommendations….

Congress and the administration must meanwhile take further steps to end our dependence on big oil. The administration should beef up federal research and development efforts into how to prevent oil spills and better contain them if they occur. The federal government should establish additional protection for continental shelf areas beyond just the three miles states can control. Congress should cut tax loopholes and other handouts to big oil companies, which would save $45 billion over 10 years—money that can be spent on investing in a clean energy economy instead. And clean energy legislation that caps the oil and coal pollution that is heating the atmosphere and acidifying the oceans is long overdue.

This is a repost by Tom Kenworthy, Senior Fellow, and Brad Johnson, a Researcher and Blogger at the Center for American Progress.

For more information, see:

• Making Money on the Oil Spill: Will BP Take Responsibility, or Squeeze this Disaster for Profits?
• Learning from Tragedy: BP Disaster Investigation Must Be Free, Clear, and Complete
• The Oil Disaster Is a Health Disaster, Too: How to Protect Public Health in the Aftermath of Major Disasters
• The High Costs of Offshore Drilling: Deepwater Horizon Underscores Need to Find Sustainable Energy Solutions
• Oil Spills by the Numbers: The Devastating Consequences of Exxon Valdez and BP Gulf

Usually, I can get batter evenly divided into a muffin tin without any problems using a spoon or a small ladle. Once in a while, however, the stars align against me and I end up with muffin batter that wants to get stuck to the top of the pan, rather than sitting neatly in its muffin cups. It was after I had spend some time scrubbing caked-on batter off of the top of a pan that I started to wonder if there was an easier way to get batter into those muffin cups in the first place. It turns out that there is. The Wilton Easy Pour Funnel is a funnel with a trigger that opens and closes the spout of the funnel as you pull it, letting melted chocolate, cake batter, or even pancake batter flow out neatly and easily.

The funnel is not huge and is primarily designed for getting melted chocolate into candy molds, but it is large enough to handle most batters and will do well with thinner ones (like pancakes and some cupcake batters). Its size means that it is easy to clean and handle, even if you might need to refill it from the main mixing bowl as you work. Not only will it work well for you, but it will also work well for kids who might not have as steady of a hand when pouring batter and will enjoy the novelty and stability that the funnel gives them – especially if you let them do some chocolate work with it!

It seems Home will finally be leaving its beta phase behind later this year. That’s according to Veemee, a company that has had a hand in a bunch of Home content including the London Pub and some

The Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University has announced the 48 women and men selected to be Radcliffe Institute fellows in 2010–11. These creative artists, humanists, scientists, and social scientists were chosen — from a pool of nearly 900 applicants — for their superior scholarship, research, or artistic endeavors, as well as the potential of their projects to yield long-term impact. While at Radcliffe, they will work within and across disciplines.

Two Radcliffe Institute professors will join the community of fellows next year. Joanna Aizenberg, the Susan S. and Kenneth L. Wallach Professor at Radcliffe and the Amy Smith Berylson Professor of Materials Science at Harvard’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), will lead a thematic cluster in biomimetics, and Nancy E. Hill, the Suzanne Murray Professor at Radcliffe and a professor of education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, will study cultural belief systems and ethnic group variations in parenting and children’s development.

“We welcome these distinguished fellows to the Radcliffe Institute and we enthusiastically await the important discoveries, artistic creations, and collaborations — within Radcliffe and in the wider Harvard and local communities — that will emerge during their time here,” said Barbara J. Grosz, dean of the Radcliffe Institute and Higgins Professor of Natural Sciences at SEAS.

Now in its 10th year, the Radcliffe Institute Fellowship Program has awarded fellowships to more than 500 accomplished and promising artists, scientists, and scholars. Past fellows include Elizabeth Alexander, the fourth U.S. presidential inaugural poet; Mulatu Astatke, founder of the hybrid musical form Ethio Jazz; Debra Fischer, who has participated in the discovery of roughly half the known extrasolar planets; and Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Tony Horwitz.

For a list of fellows and their projects.

Is Mariah Carey with child?

The singing star, now 40, has reportedly been undergoing fertility treatments in hopes of conceiving a child with hubby Nick Cannon. Now she’s fueled pregnancy rumors after jumping ship on a new Tyler Perry drama, citing medical reasons.

The singer was slated to follow up her award-winning success in the Lee Daniels drama Precious by appearing in Perry’s film adaptation of Ntozake Shange’s 1975 play For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf, set to begin shooting next month. However, Carey mysteriously pulled out this week, offering little explanation.

Her rep hasn’t been much help either.

“She is not doing the movie because her doctor advised her not to,” the star’s publicist Cindy Berger tells PEOPLE.com. “More than that I cannot comment further.”

For Colored Girls will begin filming as scheduled, featuring an all-star cast, which includes: Janet Jackson, Kimberly Elise, Whoopi Goldberg, Kerry Washington, Macy Gray, Phylicia Rashad, Jill Scott, Loretta Devine and Anika Noni Rose.

Article Tags: Facebook, Met Office, Updated, World Temperatures, You could not make it up

Their promises of a barbecue summer and a mild winter in 2009 could hardly have been more wrong, but the Met Office is now predicting extreme droughts like the one that gripped Britain in the summer of 1976 could become much more common.

The drought of 1976 culminated in a 18-month period of below average rainfall which started in May 1975. The period was marked by daily fires and dry river beds, while agriculture suffered badly, with an estimated £500 million in failed crops.

A study by the meteorologists looked at how frequently droughts could occur in the UK by 2100 in the face of global warming.

The researchers ran a series of simulations of their climate model to see how weather patterns may change in the future, and the majority showed extreme dry spells would become more common.

There was a range of 11 different versions of the model.

Updated below with FaceBook/Ask Jeeves link for Met Office Competition TODAY!! (27th May)

Source: dailymail.co.uk

Read in full with comments »   

Successful people are considered to be better future prognosticators than average. Why? Because it is assumed they must have known something about the future at some previous point in order to become as successful as they are. (Unfortunately Taleb’s various injunctions as to the workings of randomness fall on deaf ears, as do Gladwell’s many observations as to the tricky relationship between cause and effect.)

In 1995, at the height of Microsoft’s power over the economy and the zeitgeist (before Google came into its own, before Apple renewed, etc.) Bill Gates wrote “The Road Ahead,” which was, as one would expect, a broadly techno-optimistic look at the future. Did it see 9/11? No. Iraq War 2? No. The Credit Crunch? No. For a start it only really thinks about digital technology, and that’s going to be a very partial guide to the road ahead, at best.

But, in a recent The Atlantic article, “Bill Gates: More Profit than Prophet,” Tom McNichol evaluates Gates’s foresight on its own terms. As reproduced below, he finds it more “miss” than “hit.”

In general, Gates makes the mistakes outlined in Future Savvy, particularly in predicting the future based on its technological possibility rather than economic or social practicality. He’s short on systemic/feedback thinking and therefore misses side effects and unintended consequences. He also falls into the wishful-thinking bias: mixing up what he and (and Microsoft business) would like the future to be with what it really will be.

This last factor is less a mistake than a classic tool of future advocacy, and Gates would no doubt admit to a bit of this. It is illuminating (and sobering for future predictors) to see how much of the digital future Microsoft had within in its area of control in 1995, which it ceded to others. That lowered Microsoft’s ability to influence the road ahead and therefore weakened Gates’ predictions.

The McNichol analysis (shortened in places):

E-Mail
Prediction: Gates wrote, “Electronic mail and shared screens will eliminate the need for many meetings. … when face-to-face meetings do take place, they will be more efficient because participants will have already exchanged background information by e-mail. … information overload is not unique to the (information) highway, and it needn’t be a problem.”
Verdict: Miss. Gates’s view of e-mail now seems naively Utopian, failing to account for unintended consequences. If anything, e-mail has made workplace meetings more frequent and less efficient. “Didn’t you get that e-mail?” is probably the single most common question posed at meetings, a query that often leads to … another meeting.

The Wallet PC
Prediction: “You’ll be able to carry the wallet PC in your pocket or purse. It will display messages and schedules and also let you read or send electronic mail and faxes, monitor weather and stock reports, play both simple and sophisticated games, browse information if you’re bored, or choose from among thousands of easy-to-call up photos of your kids.”
Verdict: Hit. Gates’s wallet PC is more or less today’s mobile smartphone with voice capability added.

Wireless Networks
Prediction: “The wireless networks of the future will be faster, but unless there is a major breakthrough, wired networks will have a far greater bandwidth. Mobile devices will be able to send and receive messages, but it will be expensive and unusual to use them to receive an individual video stream.”
Verdict: Miss. Today, receiving a wireless video stream is neither expensive nor unusual; in fact, it’s so commonplace that most people don’t give it a second thought. Gates failed to anticipate that wireless would become cheaper and faster, but his chief mistake was a common but flawed assumption among techno-futurists: that new technology is adopted chiefly on the basis of technological superiority rather than social factors.

Social Networking
Prediction: “The (information) highway will not only make it easier to keep up with distant friends, it will also enable us to find new companions. Friendships formed across the network will lead naturally to getting together in person.”
Verdict: Hit and Miss. One of the killer apps of the information highway has turned out to be social networking… But friendships formed online don’t regularly lead to face-to-face meetings. Far more common is the user with 250 Facebook friends, most of whom he rarely, if ever, sees in person.

Online Shopping
Prediction: “Because the information highway will carry video, you’ll often be able to see exactly what you’ve ordered. … you won’t have to wonder whether the flowers you ordered for your mother by telephone were really as stunning as you’d hoped. You’ll be able to watch the florist arrange the bouquet, change your mind if you want, and replace wilting roses with fresh anemones.”
Verdict: Miss. Gates was right that the information highway would carry video, but he completely misread the social and economic factors that would shape its use in online commerce. How on earth would a harried florist find the time to hold a videoconference with every customer who orders flowers for Mother’s Day? What company would absorb the colossal expense of having orders changed at the last second according to customers’ shifting whims? Gates’s vision of online shopping has turned out to be a lot like past predictions about personal jet packs and moving sidewalks: a future that’s technologically possible but socially and economically impractical.

Videoconferencing
Prediction: “Small video devices using cameras attached to personal computers or television sets will allow us to meet readily across the information highway with much higher quality pictures and sound for lower prices.”
Verdict: Hit. What came to be called webcams are standard issue on PCs, or can be purchased from Bill Gates’s favorite company for under $30.

The Internet and the Web
Prediction: Gates’s 286-page book mentions the World Wide Web on only four of its pages, and portrays the Internet as a subset of a much a larger “Information Superhighway.” … Verdict: Miss. Gates’s notion that the Internet would play a supporting role in the information highway of the future, rather than being the highway itself, was out-of-date the day The Road Ahead was published… and he made major revisions to a second edition of The Road Ahead, adding material that highlighted the significance of the Internet. In many ways, Gates’s cloudy crystal ball regarding the Internet amounted to wishful thinking. Gates built Microsoft into a global powerhouse by selling proprietary software that users loaded onto their PCs. He wasn’t likely to warm to the idea that the same functions could be delivered cheaper and faster through a decentralized network that he couldn’t control.

Privacy
Predication: “A decade from now, you may shake your head that there was ever a time when any stranger or wrong number could interrupt you at home with a phone call. … by explicitly indicating allowable interruptions, you will be able to establish your home — or anywhere you choose — as your sanctuary.”
Verdict: Little Hit, Big Miss. It’s true that technology lets you explicitly indicate allowable interruptions — you can use caller ID to dodge unwanted calls or sign up at the National Do Not Call Registry to nix telemarketers. But the notion that technology would pave the way to greater privacy has turned out to be anything but true.

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Remember when everyone was like “I’m returning my iPad? It’s the garbage?” That was SO early Spring 2010. The new hotness is increased iPad affection with a soupcon of wistful disappointment that comes to the folks who originally attacked the iPad and are now smitten. It was so fun to have a flat, glassy enemy back in April!

First, anecdotally, Disrupt this week featured so many iPads you could have feasibly placed one on every seat in the auditorium and still had iPads left over to pave halls by the loading dock. The iPad is the new iPhone but the tamagotchi effect – that thing you see where people just endlessly fiddle with their iPhones in public, rubbing them like hamsters – just doesn’t happened. The iPad sits, open, on your table in front of you and you occasionally brush your hand over it like a sleepy wizard. It doesn’t require as much attention as the iPhone.

Then you have Fred Wilson who, at first, was against the iPad and then he was for it. Why? Because it is unobtrusive.

Here’s what I think is going on. The iPad hits a sweet spot between a “device” and a piece of printed matter. If you see someone at dinner whipping out a phone, they’re a douche. But the iPad requires a bit more preparation and since it looks like a book or a magazine, we process its intrusion differently. If you pull it out in mixed company, it’s to show them something. It’s not so you can check 50 email messages and send tweets while everyone else is toasting the bride and groom.

Because the iPad looks like a book, the rules of book reading apply. If you’re outside using it, you’re available. You wouldn’t shush someone as you skimmed the Do’s and Don’t in Glamour just as you wouldn’t shush someone while using the iPad. It’s not a private activity, really. The screen is big and there’s always something you can share on the iPad’s screen with the other person. It’s inclusive rather than exclusive.

So go ahead and hate your neighbor and go ahead and cheat a friend, but don’t claim the iPad hasn’t hit a sweet spot with far to many people to dismiss it.

It’s the slow season here at the footnoted global campus: Filings are coming in at a trickle compared to the flood we saw in April and early May. Many of the ones we’re seeing are the results of recent annual meetings.

Cablevision aside, these tend to be dull affairs: Uncontested incumbents are re-elected, vague executive incentive plans are adopted, auditors are rehired, and shareholder proposals are shot down — from greenhouse gas emissions at coal company Massey Energy (MEE) to bird welfare at BJ’s Wholesale Club (BJ).

Once in a while, however, there’s a little excitement on the stockholder proposal front, and that’s what we saw earlier this week — with very different outcomes — at both Williams Cos. (WMB) and Hartford Financial Services (HIG).

At Williams Cos., shareholders passed a “say on pay” proposal — akin to one of the measures in pending congressional regulatory-reform legislation — despite stern opposition from the board and management. The final vote was 224.8 million share for, and 201.5 million shares against, or 53% to 47%, according to one of the 8-Ks the company filed yesterday. (The Tulsa World Herald got the scoop on the day of the actual meeting last week.)

The proposal, published in the April 8 proxy, was pretty straightforward:

“That the shareholders of THE WILLIAMS COMPANIES request its Board of Directors to adopt a policy that provides shareholders the opportunity at each annual meeting to vote on an advisory resolution, prepared by management, to ratify the compensation of the named-executive officers listed in the proxy statement’s Summary Compensation Table. “

It wouldn’t, the sponsor stressed up high, “affect any compensation paid or awarded any named-executive officer.” Gerald Roberts, the sponsor identified by the World Herald, who has campaigned for similar proposals for years, explained his motivation there:

“As a shareholder, I am concerned about the levels of compensation afforded our top management and members of the board of directors, who are to be independent, when the dividend seems frozen for the last two years.”

For the record, total compensation for Chairman and Chief Executive Steven J. Malcolm for last year was $9.5 million, according to the proxy’s summary compensation table.

No word from Williams Cos. on implementation, but one can imagine the board wasn’t pleased, given its invective against the original proposal. It called the proposal unnecessary and misleading, and said primly (echoing just about every other corporate rebuttal to a pay proposal that we’ve seen) that

“The Board has carefully considered this stockholder proposal and believes that the proposal is both not necessary and not in the best interests of our stockholders … [in part] because of the strong linkage between pay and performance that currently exists within our pay programs … Our pay program is structured to motivate and drive performance, emphasize long-term performance, and align our NEOs’ interests with those of long-term stockholders.”

Mind you, it’s not as if Williams Cos. shareholders were in a full-on, throw-the-bums-out revolt: The three directors on the ballot each received at least 97% of the vote, amendments to the 2007 incentive plan were approved 329 million to 35.3 million, and a proposal requesting an environmental report on some gas exploration and production business was shot down 149 million for vs. 207 million against.

Over at Hartford, meantime, another modest proposal failed, but the nays only squeaked past the yeas by a relatively slim margin: 164.5 million against vs. 152 million for, according to the 8-K it filed on Tuesday. That’s a good bit short of the 222 million it would have needed to pass (a majority of outstanding shares), but interesting nonetheless, because the proposal — from the pension plan of the big public-workers union, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees — would have required the company to change its bylaws and “allow for the reimbursement of certain proxy expenses incurred in connection with a stockholder proposed director nomination.”

It would have covered proxy efforts fielding a partial slate of directors as long as at least one won a seat and the move wasn’t meant to take over the board, according to the proposal Hartford’s proxy. AFSCME added:

“In our opinion, the power of stockholders to elect directors is the most important mechanism for ensuring that corporations are managed in stockholders’ interests. … The safety valve is ineffective, however, unless there is a meaningful threat of director replacement.”

Hartford opposed it in part on the grounds that the SEC was already proposing rules that would give shareholders proxy access in certain circumstances. But really, it just didn’t like the idea:

“The AFSCME proposal would encourage an increase in contested elections, which would result in increased distraction of management from the Company’s ordinary business and could result in increased costs to the Company and its shareholders, with no showing that it is needed. “

Management and the board won the day, of course. But the strong showing by AFSCME’s supporters may lead them to perk up and take note.

Image source: Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com via Flickr

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Brabus Stealth 65

About two weeks ago, we saw something called the Brabus VANISH a one-off Mercedes-Benz SL 65 AMG Black Series that makes 788-hp and goes from 0-62 mph in 3.6 seconds. It was known as the fastest, most exclusive SL 65 AMG Black Series on planet Earth… until now.

Click here for prices on the 2011 Mercedes-Benz SL-Class.

Meet the new Brabus Stealth 65. The 6.0L AMG V12 biturbo engine from the Mercedes-Benz SL 65 AMG Black Series has been upgraded to produce a whopping 809-hp with a maximum torque of 1,047 lb-ft. The standard SL 65 AMG Black Series makes 661-hp and a peak torque of 738 lb-ft.

The Brabus Stealth 65 uses the T65 RS tuning kit from the VANISH, but engineers at the tuning firm added a little something extra to give that extra 21-hp.

Of course, the Stealth 65 is owned by some very rich guy in Dubai with a very expensive license plate.

Hit the jump for the high-res image gallery.

Brabus Stealth 65 (Mercedes-Benz SL 65 AMG Black Series):

– By: Omar Rana

Source: Brabus (via WCF)

Almost 10 percent of the country is traveling this weekend, and most will be going more than 50 miles. This makes Memorial Day the perfect time to get caught speeding. You may think more cars on the road equals more cover. But there will also be more police. We have a few ideas for your trip, and all of them involve not getting caught and ticketed.

It helps if you’re armed with some intelligence about speed traps.

That’s where Trapster from Reach Unlimited Corporation comes in. It’s a free iPhone app that keeps track of speed traps, heavy enforcement zones and speed cameras in real-time. Users post their own trap and camera locations, and other drivers can see and avoid them. When a driver goes through an area, he can vote on how serious the police presence is. Once started, the app works hands-free. The best way to use it is to mount it on your dash where a GPS usually is, this way it won’t distract you.

If you don’t have an iPhone, there’s always www.speedtraps.com. This site lists all the major speedtraps in across the country. For those who don’t know, a speedtrap is a spot where police usually hide to catch fast drivers. Sometimes it’s just over a hill or around a curve. Other times, the natural scenery gives officers the perfect cover. In either case, when you’re informed, it’s much easier to check your speed or to just avoid the area entirely.

Here are some places to really mind your speed.

California

– Outside LAX, southbound on Sepulveda

The officer sets up in a bus stop catching drivers as the speed limit changes.

– 805 Freeway southbound, just south of the 8 Freeway

The California Highway Patrol sits around the wide sweeping curve, just past the 8 Freeway. Look out.

New York

– FDR Drive under the Brooklyn Bridge

Slow down before climbing the hill to get on FDR. If you can see the officer, it’s too late.

– Clearview Expressway southbound off Throngs Neck Bridge

It’s a large empty road with few vehicles, easy to speed, easy to get caught.

Michigan

– I-94 near Ten Mile Road

The speed limit drops from 70 to 55 near a curve. Keep your head up and speed down.

– Eight Mile Road near John R. Road.

It’s easy to come off the freeway at a good clip onto Eight Mile, but the speed limit is 40 mph.

Texas

– U.S. Highway 183 near Oak Knoll Drive

Cops target cars going north. Drivers have to illegally cross three lanes to get to Frontage Road. Don’t do it!

North Carolina

– Liles Parkway between Poplar Tent and Weddington Road.

Police sit on an unused turnoff; they point toward Poplar Tent.

Maryland

– I-95 southbound in Baltimore near Whitemarsh Boulevard. The speed limit changes near the McHenry tunnel, right by the speed cameras.

Arizona

– I-10 westbound to SR51 north

This is another place where the speed limit drops unexpectedly, with an unmanned speed camera waiting.

Rural Road near Rio Salado Parkway

– One of many speed traps in the Tempe-Scottsdale area, the limit goes to 35 mph and the sign is hard to see.

For more

Source: Car news, reviews and auto show stories

The BBC will be one of the first content providers in the UK to have video available on the Apple iPad when it ships across the pond tomorrow, according to Mark Prigg of the Evening Standard. Prigg tweeted yesterday that Erik Huggers, the BBC’s director of future media and technology, said an iPad-ready version of the BBC’s latest iPlayer site would be ready for viewing on the device when it becomes available to users in the UK market.

The news comes just a day after the Beeb launched the latest version of its iPlayer site online, which integrates more social viewing features into the video catchup service. And it follows on the heels of similar high-profile video services from Netflix, ABC and CBS, which were made available during the iPad launch in the U.S.

Unlike Netflix and ABC, which came out with dedicated apps for video playback, the BBC iPlayer will be available through an iPad-optimized browser. And since the BBC currently uses Adobe Flash for its web videos, which isn’t supported on the iPad, the broadcaster will instead rely on HTML5 video encoded in the H.264 video format. That’s the same approach taken by CBS in the U.S., which is working to ensure that all videos available on CBS.com through PC web browsers will also be viewable on the iPad.

While the BBC iPlayer will initially be available in the browser on the new tablet device, it may release an iPad app at some point in the future. The broadcaster is still trying to determine whether it can release free apps of its content on mobile devices such as the iPad or iPhone, or if that action would be considered harmful to its commercial peers. That decision — which would be made by the BBC Trust — has already delayed the release of news and sports iPhone apps in the UK, due to concerns by newspaper rivals that allege such apps would undermine their ability to create commercial services on those devices. In the meantime, Huggers says the broadcaster will make sure its iPlayer videos are playable in the iPad’s Safari browser.

“The BBC Trust has decided that it wants to take a look at the BBC’s plans for applications in general. That is within the gift of the BBC Trust to decide,” Huggers told the Register. “But through the browser we will absolutely make iPlayer available on the iPad.”

Related content on GigaOM Pro: TV Apps: Evolution from Novelty to Mainstream (subscription required)

This NASA time lapse video shows how the Gulf of Mexico oil rig disaster evolved from April 20, the day of the explosion, to May 24. The images were taken by the MODIS instrument in NASA’s Terra and Aqua satellites. More »










NASA – Space – Gulf Oil – Gulf of Mexico – Technology

A while back, a young blogger named Jaden wrote about his college biology teacher who used the opportunity of his class to teach creationism and abstinence:

He started off his discussion by saying that there are two ideas (not theories, but ideas) of how life became how it is on Earth. He closed the classroom’s door. Once the door was closed, he glossed over the scientific explanation very quickly (less than 20 seconds), then explained Creationism for about five minutes (5000 year old Earth, no evolution, etc). He then said that accepted scientific thought is the first, and that’s what the school wants him to teach, “…but we all know which one is right.” WHOA! […] After he finished his Creationism lecture, he opened the classroom door again.

Yegads. That post was from April 23. Now that classes are over and grades finalized, on May 21 Jaden gave details. He did what I would’ve: approached the Dean of Science and told her the biology teacher was a crackpot.

What happened?

[The Dean] acted like I was being unreasonable. She said two things that really sit poorly with me. She told me that he is completely entitled to share his opinions in class. Then, she said eluded to the fact that I’m being intolerant of his beliefs and need to show more respect for him.

Ha!

First, this is not public high school, so the teacher can, if he so pleases, teach that Thor created the Universe by cracking an ostrich egg in two and then dancing around nude on one foot while swinging a lawn mower blade around his head (being careful not to nick his winged helm, of course). He can do that, but should he do that there should be repercussions. Just as there should be if he teaches creationism, a provably wrong idea that goes counter to everything a science class represents.

But clearly the Dean disagrees. Here’s what Jaden learned:

What I took away from this meeting with Dr. Williams was that my school didn’t care about science content in its science classes.

He’s right. The next step I would take would be to talk to the people that accredit colleges in Oklahoma. I am not saying that Jaden’s college should have their accreditation taken away, but I certainly think a focused and deep investigation is warranted. What other wacky (and useless) stuff is being taught there?