I thought you would be interested in this article I found on MSN from Bloomberg: No one saw Tesla's solar roof coming
Image © Noah Berger/Bloomberg
Bloomberg
The Powerwall 2 may be the cheapest lithium ion battery for the home ever made when deliveries start in January. Tesla is selling the batteries at retail prices that are cheaper than the average manufacturing cost at most companies, according to data compiled by Bloomberg New Energy Finance. We "certainly expect it will move the market prices downwards as we saw last year with the first Powerwall," said Yayoi Sekine, a BNEF analyst who covers battery technology.
"The future is going to overwhelmingly be solar plus battery," Musk said. "They go together like peanut butter and jelly."
The mosquito genocide is beginning. Millions of genetically modified versions of the useless vampire insects are being prepared for release in Brazil. If all goes according to plan, the mosquitoes will have a huge sex party and begin to kill off all of their natural counterparts.
The world's "first and biggest factory" for genetically modified mosquitos is in Piracicaba, Brazil. Its owner, Oxitec, is manufacturing male mosquitos that die quickly after they mate and pass on a genetic defect that causes any offspring to kick the bucket as well. In a country that has been hit hard by the Zika virus and dengue, this could be a game-changing, life-saving effort.
Resource Insights / 2016-10-30 09:31
It's hard not to see the urban/rural divide in the United States--unless you just don't look. Perhaps the most iconic image representing that divide is a map of presidential election results by county. The map below is from 2012.
Most of the land area of the United States represents Republican territory. But, of course, dense urban areas taking up much less land, but having far more voters per square mile, proved decisive for the incumbant Democratic presidential candidate, Barack Obama.
It might seem that this is merely a cultural divide, hicks versus city slickers. But it is also an economic divide. Rural areas have been pummeled economically by the globalizing economy. That economy rewards the innovations and technology invented and deployed in cities more than the commodities that come out of the countryside. Hidden beneath these cultural and economic factors is an energy imbalance that Howard Odum, the great pioneer in understanding energy flows in nature and society, first identified in his work on what he called transformities.
Let me quote from a previous piece of mine in which I explain transformities:
To read the chart below one must know that Odum turned all measurements into equivalent calories of solar energy which he dubbed solar emcalories. Concentration of emcalories leads to their greater and greater usefulness to human society. Diffuse sunlight on a field only warms a person for as long as the sun shines. But the energy concentrated in field crops can be stored until needed for food or fuel. Such is the role of what Odum calls transformities, that is, the transformation of previously concentrated energy into more concentrated, more energy-intense forms. Transforming fossil fuels into electricity is another example.
Item | Solar Emcalories Needed Per Calorie Produced |
| Sunlight energy | 1 |
| Wind energy | 1,500 |
| Organic matter, wood, soil | 4,400 |
| Potential of elevated rainwater | 10,000 |
| Chemical energy of rainwater | 18,000 |
| Mechanical energy | 20,000 |
| Large river energy | 40,000 |
| Fossil fuels | 50,000 |
| Foods | 100,000 |
| Electric power | 170,000 |
| Protein foods | 1,000,000 |
| Human services | 100,000,000 |
| Information | 1 X 1011 |
| Species Formation | 1 X 1015 |
Transformities reveal the amount of energy embodied in things central to the well-being of human societies. Rural areas have long been servants to cities which simply do not have the land area to provide all their needs. Rural areas essentially concentrate the sunlight in the form of crops before shipping them off to cities.
The problem for rural producers is that they do not get all the value which is embodied in the things they grow. They especially do not get credit for the concentration of energy. Most of that valuable work is done for free by nature. But, the farmer typically receives only the cost of inputs and perhaps a small profit to grow and deliver crops for further processing, mostly to cities. Sometimes the farmer gets paid less than the cost of inputs, selling at a loss.
Cities add value to those crops by milling, cooking, combining, and packaging, in short, by creating foods for the marketplace. Those foods are then shipped not only to city residents, but also back to rural residents and with a significant markup for the value added.
The marketplace assigns a far higher value to the value added by urban workers than that added by farmers (due in part to the energy component of the value added). This accounts for the higher incomes of city dwellers and for the perennial economic imbalance between city and countryside.
The same is true for mining. Though some miners and landowners strike it rich, they do so because nature has done practically all the work for them by concentrating minerals in deposits accessible to humans (and often because prevailing legal and social arrangements allow them to claim the minerals as their own property). Again, most of the value added is done by refiners and then manufacturers who fashion the minerals into products--and then sell some of them back to the miners and landowners.
Miners and other owners of minerals can face the same economic deprivation as farmers do. Although we don't often think of oil as a mineral, it is--though the means to mine it are different from those used to mine copper and zinc. The boom experienced by such places as North Dakota and Texas when oil prices were high has been followed by a punishing bust brought on by a price collapse. City dwellers don't much care whether oil producers are being paid enough to cover their costs. In fact, these city dwellers rejoice when fuel prices fall.
Of course, most of the value added to oil comes from refining it into the products we require such as gasoline, diesel fuel, jet fuel and heating oil. Integrated oil companies reap some of this reward while companies that focus only on exploration and development do not. And, of course, major refineries--and the jobs and taxes that go with them--are near their greatest concentration of customers, namely, cities.
There is one very important difference today from the past regarding the urban/rural divide. In the past, the vast majority of humans lived on farms; only a tiny minority lived in cities. Today, the productivity of modern farming techniques has shrunk the ranks of farmers in the United States to about 3.2 million in a country of 324 million or about one percent.
Mining has never employed a large percentage of the population, but even that percentage has fallen as huge machines have taken over tasks once performed by miners with pick axes.
The urban population of the United States now accounts for more than 80 percent of the total U.S. population. Rural residents have long ceded much of their economic power to cities--something that has been true from the beginning of civilization. But, rural residents who used to constitute a large majority are now vastly outnumbered, and their political power is seriously diminished.
It is no wonder that rural populations are feeling ignored and even threatened. It is harder and harder to make a living in rural locations. And, with the advent of 24/7 communications, it is harder and harder to maintain a rural culture that is distinct from that of most cities. Rural populations face a double attack on both their livelihoods and their "way of life."
Redressing the imbalance between city and countryside could take the form of investing in value-added processes closer to farms and mines. That would require huge capital investments. Small-scale investments have already allowed some farms to expand operations to process and package their own products for sale.
Perhaps just as important would be a rise in public investment in rural communities, the tax bases of which have been eroded by the exodus of industry and people. Though Republicans know how to speak to the cultural anxieties of those in rural communities, both major U.S. political parties have de facto adopted the view that the decline of rural life is an inevitable result of globalization, and that there is little anyone can or should do about it.
Therein lies an opportunity for the political party that awakens to the upside inherent in once again embracing rural lives and livelihoods as important to the country as a whole.
Kurt Cobb is an author, speaker, and columnist focusing on energy and the environment. He is a regular contributor to the Energy Voices section of The Christian Science Monitor and author of the peak-oil-themed novel Prelude. In addition, he has written columns for the Paris-based science news site Scitizen, and his work has been featured on Energy Bulletin (now Resilience.org), The Oil Drum, OilPrice.com, Econ Matters, Peak Oil Review, 321energy, Common Dreams, Le Monde Diplomatique and many other sites. He maintains a blog called Resource Insights and can be contacted at kurtcobb2001@yahoo.com.
I thought you would be interested in this article I found on MSN from Newsweek: Sweet revenge: A sugar tax for public health
Image © Peter Nicholls/REUTERS
Newsweek
Local officials like the tax revenue, but soda makers are spending millions to defeat more sugar taxes.
The coming election isn't just about a U.S. president who will affect the citizenry for years to come. It's also about local initiatives that could have a huge public impact by reducing both disease and health care costs. To wit: Voters in Boulder, Colorado, and three cities in California have a chance to approve a tax on sugary drinks. There's some hope this is a trend.
Zero Hedge / 2016-10-29 14:48
Submitted by Raul Ilargi Meijer via The Automatic Earth blog,
There is so much in innuendo and guesses and biased opinion floating around on this 'morning after' the Comey bombshell that the only option we have is to read and watch a ton of stuff and see what sticks. One thing that definitely should stick was published late last night by Paul Sperry for the New York Post.
He scores a solid and massive point that looks as damning for the FBI itself (or at least the superiors), as it does for Hillary Clinton. It is, in that regard, perhaps telling that one of the alleged reasons whispered for FBI director Jim Comey to come forward on Friday is that he feared details of the probe would otherwise be leaked to the press.
Sperry's point: the emails that are at the center of Friday's announcement that Hillary Clinton 's entire email server investigation will be re-opened -whether formally or not is moot-, were obtained by seizing devices from Anthony Weiner in relation him sexting to a 15-year old girl.
And seizing devices was exactly what was never done in Hillary's case, though "agents assigned to that case knew Abedin hoarded classified emails on her electronic devices." They were seized neither from Hillary nor from her closest aide Huma Abedin, who now probably- and probably rightly- fears that she may be thrown under the bus at the first convenient moment.
Hillary doesn't appear to know what exactly is on the Weiner/Abedin device, but her staff is undoubtedly preparing a defense based on Hillary denying she knew anything about what emails Huma kept and/or sent. Such a defense may well be useless, depending on the contents of the mails. But by now it's full blown panic danger control in the campaign.
While at the FBI the mood may now be that a second consecutive investigation that would end in a second consecutive 'dismissal' would be unacceptable to -a lot of- agents. Something Comey is undoubtedly painfully aware of. His 'own people' may have given him an ultimatum: either you do it right this time, or we will.
A few bits from Paul Sperry's piece:
On page 3 of their 11-page report, the agents detail how they showed Abedin a classified paper on Pakistan sent from a State Department source which she, in turn, inexplicably forwarded to her personal Yahoo email account — an obviously unclassified, unencrypted, unsecured and unauthorized system. The breach of security was not an isolated event but a common practice with Abedin.
This is one of those things that Hillary will likely try to plead innocence on. Not that that should be good enough: the server, illegal as it may have been, was still her responsibility. That either she herself or Abedin would play fast and loose with the confidentiality and classification of the material involved, on top of using a server whose very existence played fast and loose with the law, is the kind of thing that disqualifies her from public office, let alone the presidency.
Hillary's 'defense' has been 'I made a mistake', and that was enough for her, for Comey, and for the entire American media. It's still hard to believe. And it certainly doesn't look like it will be enough a second time. Just imagine what some FBI agents must have thought when they found out, and when Comey subsequently decided to hush the case.
"She routinely forwarded emails from her state.gov account to either her clintonemail.com or her yahoo.com account," the agents wrote. Why? "So she could print them" at home and not at her State Department office. Abedin contended that she "would typically print the documents without reading them" and "was unaware of the classification." Uh-huh.
The FBI also pointed out that "the only person at DoS (Department of State) to receive an email account on the (clintonemail.com) domain was Abedin." "Multiple State employees" told the FBI that they considered emailing Abedin "the equivalent of e-mailing Clinton." Another close Clinton aide told the FBI that "Abedin may have kept emails that Clinton did not."
The phrase "the equivalent of e-mailing Clinton" says a lot about how closely the two worked together. And that in turn says something about the odds that Huma acted alone, without Hillary knowing.
In her April interview with the FBI, Abedin incredulously maintained that she "did not know that Clinton had a private server until about a year and a half ago, when it became public knowledge." [..] .. another witness told agents that he and another Clinton aide with computer skills built the new server system "at the recommendation of Huma Abedin," who first broached the idea of an off-the-grid email server as early as the "fall (of) 2008."
So if you believe Abedin, she didn't know the private clintonemail.com server that hosted her huma@clintonemail.com account even existed until she heard about it in the news. Comey was a believer; he didn't even bother to call her back for further questioning. Case closed.
Yes, Huma knew the server existed, long before she admitted knowing it. That's a bold faced lie. But wait, didn't she get immunity? Apparently perhaps not officially (?!), but FBI agents seriously suspect she did:
During research, FBI assets and federal law enforcement sources concluded the only way Abedin could have walked away from the probe without criminal charges was because her legal team struck a secret immunity deal with Justice. "She has a deal in place or (FBI Director James) Comey and (Attorney General Loretta) Lynch let her just walk out the door," a FBI source said.
Wait a minute! Anybody seen Loretta Lynch lately? Did she know Comey would make his announcement Friday? She's his boss…
If Huma knew the server existed when she said she did not know, it's 99% sure Anthony Weiner knew it, too. Which is important in more than one way. They shared at least one device, which means he had access to classified material. That in itself is highly illegal. And in the -year long- first stage of the probe, FBI agents knew this, or could have suspected it, and asked Huma for details. Apparently, that didn't happen.
Perhaps even more important, Weiner is a huge and obvious risk as a blackmail target. For all we know, he may have already provided classified files to parties threatening to go public with photos he sent exposing his weiner to underage girls.
Was the clinton email server hacked? So far the word is there's no proof of that, but… Did Huma delete and/or bleach-bit information on her devices the same way Hillary did? We can't know, because despite Huma's obvious untruths, these devices were not seized for the earlier investigation.
Why? We can only guess. But to quote Hillary from last night (albeit on a slightly different topic): "your guess is as good as mine, and that's not good enough".
What we do know is that, obviously, there is still enough material left for the FBI to re-open the case. They may have found as many as tens of thousands of mails belonging to Huma (well, actually, to the US government) on Weiner's laptop.
[..] Abedin's role in this caper begs for fresh scrutiny. Making false statements to a federal agent is a felony. So is mishandling classified information. By forwarding classified emails to her personal email account and printing them out at home, Abedin appears to have violated a Classified Information NonDisclosure Agreement she signed at the State Department on Jan. 30, 2009, in which she agreed to keep all classified material under the control of the US government.
Classified emails sent to an unprotected server and printed out at home. How dumb exactly is Huma Abedin? And how dumb does all this make Hillary?
Let's see if Comey puts the screws to Abedin and leverages her for information on her boss. If he agrees to cut another immunity deal, we'll know the fix is still in.
Will the media propaganda caravan now turn on Hillary to save its face? I would predict perhaps not immediately, since they bet a lot on their horse. But give it a few days and they may conclude it's high time to cut their losses. And so may a lot of other parties involved.
The thumbscrews put on Huma this morning by the campaign must be hurting. Can she cut another immunity deal or will she end up under the bus?
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Zero Hedge / 2016-10-29 07:49
Yesterday, for the first time since 2006, Russia failed to be re-elected for a spot on the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) - which until July was chaired by none other than Saudi Arabia - after being narrowly beaten by Croatia in a vote. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia was successfully re-elected, despite vocal criticism from human rights organizations. The 47 places on the council are distributed on a regional basis, with staggered elections seeing a third of the body re-elected each year. Russia had finished its three-year term, and was running against Hungary and Croatia for the two available seats from Eastern Europe.
The decision was close, and came down to just two votes: with Hungary far ahead, Croatia received the votes of 114 of the 193 member countries, and Russia was selected on 112 ballots.
"It was a very close vote and very good countries competing, Croatia, Hungary. They are fortunate because of their size, they are not exposed to the winds of international diplomacy. Russia is very exposed. We've been in the UNHRC for several years, and I am sure next time we will stand and get back in," Russia's UN envoy Vitaly Churkin said quoted by RT. Russia is eligible to run next year, against a new set of countries.
Ahead of this year's vote Russia came under concerted pressure from human rights organizations. "The non-election of Russia shows that the nations of the world can reject gross abusers if they so choose," said executive director Hillel Neuer. "This makes the election of Saudi Arabia, China and Cuba even more preposterous."
As we reported earlier this week, a petition signed by 80 NGOs, including Human Rights Watch and Refugees International, asked the voting countries to "question seriously whether Russia's role in Syria which includes supporting and undertaking military actions which have routinely targeted civilians and civilian objects renders it fit to serve on the UN's premier inter-governmental human rights institution." Russia dismissed the petition, published this week, as "cynical" and "dishonorable," and said the accusations were motivated more by politics than by concern for human rights. Moscow, which has been conducting airstrikes in the country over the past year, says that it is acting legally, following an official call for assistance from the Syrian government, and insists that its war efforts are targeted at terrorists.
However, most perversely, in what was clearly a politically-motivated choice, Saudi Arabia sailed through the Asian regional ballot with 152 votes, and will sit on the UNHRC alongside China, Japan and Iraq for the next three years.
No joke: Saudi Arabia is running for the UN Human Rights Council—and their campaign brochure cites the Saudi record on. . . women's rights. pic.twitter.com/2xqO62V1GS
— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) September 22, 2016
As RT notes, the elections took place against a backdrop of criticism from non-governmental human rights organizations, who say that the body has been hijacked by oppressive regimes looking to deflect criticism and drive their own agendas. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International produced a joint statement earlier this year condemning Riyadh for "an appalling record of violations" in Yemen, where it has conducted a bombing campaign against Houthi rebels since 2015, which has resulted in the deaths of up to 4,000 civilians. The two organizations called for Saudi Arabia, a member of the UNHRC since it was created in 2006, to be suspended – to no avail.
Among other countries that were elected on the Council were South Africa, Rwanda, Egypt and Tunisia from the African group, Cuba and Brazil from Latin America and the Caribbean, and the US and the UK will represent the Western bloc, which comprises Western Europe and North America.
Over the next term, which will last between 2017 and 2019, the 14 chosen members will be tasked with formulating the UN's official position on conflicts occurring around the world, as well as the domestic policies of member states.
But the biggest surprise in yesterday's vote was the reelection of Saudi Arabia: revealing the political clout of the Middle-eastern nation as a result of its pay ro play back and forth with the Clinton Foundation, the kingdom used its power in the council to block an outside inquiry into the campaign last month, while leading a successful resolution that placed the responsibility of investigating human rights abuses in the hands of its allies, the exiled Yemeni government.
Saudi Arabia carried out 157 executions domestically last year – the highest number in two decades, and is on pace to match the number this year. Critics of the regime have often faced detention, while women do not enjoy autonomy and equal status before the law.
Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International produced a joint statement earlier this year condemning Saudi Arabia for "an appalling record of violations" in Yemen, where it has conducted a bombing campaign against Houthi rebels since 2015, which has resulted in the deaths of up to 4,000 civilians. The two organizations called for Saudi Arabia, a member of the UNHRC since it was created in 2006, apart from a mandatory year-long break after two terms, to be suspended – to no avail.
Riyadh has repeatedly refused visits from UNHRC rapporteurs looking to investigate the justice system, incidences of torture, and discrimination. In its official campaign brochure, published ahead of the vote, Saudi Arabia boasted about its human rights record, claiming, for example, that it supports "the empowerment of women at all levels" in compliance with "Sharia law, which guarantees fair gender equality."
* * *
The current human rights body replaced the United Nations Commission on Human Rights in 2006, which was plagued with identical accusations of domination by authoritarian regimes and preoccupation with Israeli violations in Palestine, at the expense of human rights crimes elsewhere in the world. Ironically, just yesterday a 2006 recording emerged of Hillary Clinton suggesting that the election in the Palestine that same year should have been rigged to deliver the "desired" outcome. The election of Muammar Gaddafi's Libya to head the commission in 2003 was lambasted by Western media and politicians, and was seen as the catalyst for the reforms that have resulted in the formation of the UNHRC.
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Baylor Details 'Horrifying' Alleged Sexual Assaults by Football Players
The Wall Street Journal
Since 2011, 17 women accused football players of sexual or domestic assault, including four gang rapes. The new disclosures could reignite a scandal that cost the head coach and university president their jobs. Read the full story
One big part of the answer is that states with legal marijuana—medical or recreational—have lower rates of drug prescriptions.
https://a.msn.com/r/2/AAjuZmI?m=en-us&ocid=News
Islamic State forces in Iraq have abducted "tens of thousands" of men, women and children from areas around Mosul and are using them as human shields in the city as Iraqi government troops advance, the U.N. human rights office said on Friday.
The ultra-hardline Sunni militants, known as ISIL, killed at least 232 people on Wednesday, including 190 former Iraqi security forces (ISF) and 42 civilians who refused to obey their orders, U.N. human rights spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani said.
"Credible reports suggest that ISIL has been forcing tens of thousands of people from their homes in sub-districts around Mosul and have forcibly relocated numbers of civilians inside the city itself since the operation began on the 17th of October to restore Iraqi government control over Mosul," Shamdasani told a briefing
A new cache of hacked e-mails, released Wednesday by WikiLeaks, is shedding new light on how Bill Clinton made millions of dollars while Hillary Clintonserved as secretary of state, and raising questions about whether there may have been conflicts of interest between foreign donations to the Clinton Foundation and the former president's personal business.
In one 2011 memo written by Doug Band, a longtime aide to Bill Clinton, Band explains how he worked for years to raise $46 million for the Foundation through the Clinton Global Initiative, while also leveraging his relationships with corporate sponsors to secure lucrative speaking arrangements and consulting gigs for the former president. Band, who wrote the 12-page memo in response to an internal audit being conducted by lawyers for the Clinton Foundation, described the money-making endeavor as "Bill Clinton, Inc.".......
Great article. I've pulled out the quotes from the chief but I would encourage you to click the title and read the whole article.
Techdirt. / 2016-10-27 19:37
"I have given nine years of my life to the Austin Police Department," Acevedo told his commanders. "Nine years aren't going to go down the drain because we have people in this room that don't want to do the hard lifting, that don't want to be the bad guys. Sorry, we have to be the bad guys sometimes.
And the problem ain't the cops. It's the leadership."
Directly addressing the shooting, Acevedo had this to say:
"If you can't handle a kid in broad daylight, naked, and your first instinct is to come out with your gun, and your next instinct is to shoot the kid dead, you don't need to be a cop. I don't give a shit how nice you are," Chief Acevedo told the group.
"The union got all pissed off because I fired Freeman. Some of you might have gotten pissed off. I'm going to tell you right now. If we have another Freeman tomorrow, that is what's going to happen."
When top Bill Clinton aide Douglas Band wrote the memo, he was a central player at the Clinton Foundation and president of his own corporate consulting firm. Over the course of 13 pages, he made a case that his multiple roles had served the interests of the Clinton family and its charity.
In doing so, Band also detailed a circle of enrichment in which he raised money for the Clinton Foundation from top-tier corporations such as Dow Chemical and Coca-Cola that were clients of his firm, Teneo, while pressing many of those same donors to provide personal income to the former president.
Who's is the most greedy, the Woman, the Lawyer or KFC? From The Washington Post: A grandmother is suing KFC for $20 million because she didn't get enough chicken
Image © David Duprey/AP
The Washington Post
The company tried to placate her with gift cards, but she wants cash instead.
Techdirt. / 2016-10-25 09:14
Alarmed by Donald J. Trump's record of filing lawsuits to punish and silence his critics, a committee of media lawyers at the American Bar Association commissioned a report on Mr. Trump's litigation history. The report concluded that Mr. Trump was a "libel bully" who had filed many meritless suits attacking his opponents and had never won in court.With the ABA chilled into suppressing a report about Donald Trump chilling free speech, the Media Law Resource Center picked up the fumbled ball and released the report on its own. The opening executive summary is pretty clear:
But the bar association refused to publish the report, citing "the risk of the A.B.A. being sued by Mr. Trump."
David J. Bodney, a former chairman of the media-law committee, said he was baffled by the bar association's interference in the committee's journal.
"It is more than a little ironic," he said, "that a publication dedicated to the exploration of First Amendment issues is subjected to censorship when it seeks to publish an article about threats to free speech."
Donald J. Trump is a libel bully. Like most bullies, he's also a loser, to borrow from Trump's vocabulary.The full article then goes on to examine in more detail seven speech-related cases, and uses the paper to argue in favor of stronger anti-SLAPP laws to prevent such speech chilling.
Trump and his companies have been involved in a mind-boggling 4,000 lawsuits over the last 30 years and sent countless threatening cease-and-desist letters to journalists and critics.
But the GOP presidential nominee and his companies have never won a single speech-related case filed in a public court.
... this examination of Trump's libel losses also provides a powerful illustration of why more states need to enact anti-SLAPP laws to discourage libel bullies like Trump from filing frivolous lawsuits to chill speech about matters of public concern and run up legal tabs for journalists and critics.The ABA's refusal to publish the report is really ridiculous, but only serves to highlight the issue here. When an organization that absolutely must know better is still too afraid to publish a report like this, it highlights just how successful Trump can be in stifling speech with just his threats. And, yes, this report eventually was released, thanks to some First Amendment lawyers who knew how ridiculous this was, but we don't know how many others have been scared away into silence.
TechCrunch / 2016-10-25 08:43
Scientists writing in the Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific have found unusual signals emanating from a group of stars that are "signals probably from extraterrestrial intelligence." The signals "have exactly the shape of an signal predicted in the previous publication and are therefore in agreement with this [extraterrestrial intelligence] hypothesis."
Their paper, "Discovery of peculiar periodic spectral modulations in a small fraction of solar type stars," details their hypothesis that these signals indicate some sort of alien intelligence.
"The fact that they are only found in a very small fraction of stars within a narrow spectral range centered near the spectral type of the sun is also in agreement with the ETI hypothesis" the paper's authors, E.F. Borra and E. Trottier, wrote.
Before you go out and found a doomsday cult it should be noted that these signals are not completely confirmed to be generated by intelligent life. In fact, the signals could be formed by chemical reactions in certain stars.
"At this stage, this hypothesis needs to be confirmed with further work," write the authors. "Although unlikely, there is also a possibility that the signals are due to highly peculiar chemical compositions in a small fraction of galactic halo stars."
The signals are a set of repeated bursts that woulds suggest an effort by aliens to notify us of their presence. Not many are buying the claim. Seth Shostak, senior astronomer at the SETI Institute, told Astronomy Magazine that the paper is ringing bells in the astronomy community.
"Apparently several — more than three or four — referees have been disinclined to see this published. I am quite skeptical, in particular of the data processing that can take spectrally sampled data, and infer time variations. So I'd be a little careful," he said.
Even the authors note they took a few leaps in their conclusions. In the end they stand by their hypothesis but ask for further study.
"This is a complex and highly speculative issue and we shall not delve on it," they wrote.
Reason.com Full Feed / 2016-10-25 06:20
The United States is in the midst of an election where allegations about mistreatment of women abound. But in parts of the world, women do not enjoy even the most basic of rights—let alone a shot at political leadership and power over their male counterparts. In some Middle Eastern, Central Asian and African countries, women are subjected to "honor killings," sex trafficking and slavery. Female genital mutilation belongs among the most serious violations of women's rights. In fact, as the World Health Organization explains, there are, four distinct types of FGM:
At Human Progress, we have just added new statistics relating to FGM. In the above mentioned parts of the world, FGM remains a serious problem, but there are signs of hope. In Egypt, for example, over 92 percent of women had undergone some form of FGM in 2014. That was lower than 97 percent in 1995, but still shocking. Furthermore, a 2014 survey by the Egyptian Ministry of Health and Population has "estimated that 56 percent of girls under 19 [years of age] were expected to undergo it [FGM] in the future." Other major culprits, including Kenya, Chad and Senegal, have seen similar declines in FGM—though the practice remains widespread.
Another positive development pertains to the increasing disapproval of FGM among its intended victims. In Kenya, for example, women's disapproval of FGM rose from 73 percent in 1998 to 93 percent in 2014. Even in Egypt, the share of women opposed to FGM rose from a paltry 13 percent in 1995 to 31 percent in 2014. Whether that disapproval will lead to the total elimination of FGM throughout the world will depend, among other things, on further empowerment of women, the evolution of political culture in more primitive societies, and the spread of information. For more data on gender equality, please visit www.humanprogress.org.
Zero Hedge / 2016-10-24 19:00
Remember when Obama toured around the country telling everyone that Obamacare was going to increase competition and lower healthcare premiums? If not, here is an example to help jog your memory (comments taken from Obama remarks delivered at Prince George's Community College on 9/26/13):
Now, this is real simple. It's a website where you can compare and purchase affordable health insurance plans, side-by-side, the same way you shop for a plane ticket on Kayak -- (laughter) -- same way you shop for a TV on Amazon. You just go on and you start looking, and here are all the options.
It's buying insurance on the private market, but because now you're part of a big group plan -- everybody in Maryland is all logging in and taking a look at the prices -- you've got new choices. Now you've got new competition, because insurers want your business. And that means you will have cheaper prices. (Applause.)
As it turns out, pretty much nothing that Obama and his healthcare "experts" predicted about Obamacare actually came true. With 2017 rates now finalized across the country, in fact, Obamacare premiums are expected to increase an average of 25% nationally according to data from the Kaiser Foundation. Meanwhile, the 10 hardest hit states will see premiums increase an average of 62% while Arizona is officially the biggest loser with rates in Phoenix soaring 145%.
Of course, as we've pointed out before, these skyrocketing rates could inevitably toss the entire Obamacare system into a death spiral from which it may never recover. In order to function properly, Obamacare required a substantial number of young/healthy people to sign up on the exchanges...we call it the "Young & Healthy Tax." Unfortunately, many young/healthy people decided that they would rather not pay their "Young & Healthy Tax" and decided instead to pay the penalties associated with just not having healthcare at all. These shortfalls in new participants, of course, resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars in losses for health insurers who, in hindsight, miscalculated their risk pool. These losses have now resulted in the massive premium spikes we're currently seeing which will likely just result in even lower sign ups until the entire system eventually just collapses.
As we pointed out before, the following two maps below beautifully illustrate the epic collapse of Obamacare coverage in just 1 year. Notice that, despite Obama's promises of increased competition, in reality, the majority of the country will go from having 3+ options for healthcare in 2016 to just 1 option in 2017 (charts per the New York Times).
2016 healthcare insurance carriers by county:
2017 healthcare insurance carriers by county:
Meanwhile, the Obama administration continues to insist that all is well with the Affordable Care Act because many people participating in the exchanges receive taxpayer-funded subsidies...which is fine unless you're one of the 1mm+ people in the country who purchase private insurance without the benefit of subsidies (or the taxpayer who has to fund those subsidies for everyone else).
In a call with reporters on Monday, officials with the Obama administration stressed that the new numbers don't reflect what most people will end up paying.
"We think [consumers] will ultimately be surprised by the affordability of the product," said Kevin Griffis, assistant secretary for public affairs for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
The first step is admitting you have a problem.
Slashdot / 2016-10-24 13:42
Zero Hedge / 2016-10-20 20:58
Submitted by Vaughan Famularo via TheDuran.com,
As the Iraqi military with US support closes in on Mosul it is becoming clear that the US plan is to transfer the ISIS troops defending the city to Syria as part of the regime change plan there.
The Russian news media RIA Novosti, has revealed that US and Saudi leaders have decided to allow the safe passage of 9000 ISIS terrorists to vacate Mosul in Iraq and, relocate into Syria.
The surprising information was leaked by an anonymous diplomatic source. It was also claimed that this decision was conditional on the terrorists agreeing to fight Syrian and Russian troops in Palmyra and Deir Ezzor.
In the past two weeks we have witnessed the chaotic musing within the US Political and diplomatic corps once their impotence was exposed in Syria due to the collapse of the ceasefire and, the resumption of hostilities in Aleppo.
The bedlam and frustration exhibited by Western leaders has been apparent to all with wild claims of possible shooting down of Russian jets in Syria and, the continued ache and longing for the implementation of their, No Fly Zone.
Despite the turbulent political rumblings and threats, Russia and the government of Syria have steadfastly worked to free eastern Aleppo from the remaining terrorists who are now surrounded there.
The decision to allow ISIS to flee safely into Syria once again reveals to the world the gloved hand that shepherds and steers these terrorists.
The bombing of Syrian Army soldiers in Deir Ezzor by US and coalition Jets now appear purposed and calculated rather than an accident claimed by the US.
To add to the controversy, what was generally unreported in the media was a further attack a few days later that destroyed the last two surviving bridges spanning the Euphrates River.
Their destruction, will isolate the Syrian forces stationed at Deir Ezzor and, make life more difficult for the Syrian people who are already wearing the burden of six years at war.
As the ISIS terrorists leave Mosul and travel into Syria their objectives are the recently freed city of Palmyra, and the brave city of Deir Ezzor. Whether their safe passage from Mosul includes US and Saudi cover into Syria remains a mystery.
Regardless their location in eastern Syria allows their masters the tactical advantage of mobilising these proxy forces at the time of their choosing in their ultimate goal of deposing Syrian President Assad.
