As Iranians go to the polls to elect a president, American neoconservatives are openly rooting not for moderate reform candidate and former prime minister Mir-Hossein Mousavi but for anti-U.S. hardliner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. This is an obvious sign both of the neocons’ preference for conflict over peace between the U.S. and Iran and of the generally bankrupt state of conservatism in America, reduced now to banking on failure for the Obama administration (see Huffington Post, Rachel Maddow).
Should the reformist Mousavi win the Iranian election and become president, it would likely signal a new and more positive direction for U.S.-Iranian relations as well as providing support for the “Obama Doctrine” of engagement with Iran and other adversaries. Such a development would at the same time undercut the neocon attitude of hostility and suspicion toward Iran, as well as undercutting the right-wing Israeli government’s aggressive stance toward Iran. Indeed it is likely that right-wingers in Israel as well as America see nothing good for themselves in any warming of relations between the U.S. and Iran.
MSNBC – Looking out the 11th floor window of her law office, Jane Wiggins did a double take and grabbed her camera. The dark, undulating clouds hovering outside were unlike anything she’d seen before.
“It looked like Armageddon,” said Wiggins, a paralegal and amateur photographer in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. “The shadows of the clouds, the lights and the darks, and the greenish-yellow backdrop. They seemed to change.”
They dissipated within 15 minutes, but the photo Wiggins captured in June 2006 intrigued — and stumped — a group of dedicated weather watchers who now are pushing weather authorities to create a new cloud category, something that hasn’t been done since 1951. Breaking into the cloud family would require surviving layers of skeptical international review. Still, Gavin Pretor-Pinney and his England-based Cloud Appreciation Society are determined to establish a new variety. They’ve given Wiggins’ photo and similar pictures taken in different parts of the world to experts in England, and are discussing the subject fervently online.
“They (the clouds) were the first ones that I noted of this type and I was unsure which category to put them under,” said Pretor-Pinney, author of “The Cloudspotter’s Guide.” “When we put pictures up online we list the category, and I wasn’t sure how to categorize it.” Some scientists are skeptical. They argue that researchers who have long watched the sky haven’t seen anything distinctly new for decades. There are three main groups of clouds: cumulous, cirrus and stratus. Each has various sub-classifications built on other details of the formation.
For 15 years, scientists have benefited from data gleaned by U.S. classified satellites of natural fireball events in Earth’s atmosphere – but no longer.
A recent U.S. military policy decision now explicitly states that observations by hush-hush government spacecraft of incoming bolides and fireballs are classified secret and are not to be released, SPACE.com has learned. The satellites’ main objectives include detecting nuclear bomb tests, and their characterizations of asteroids and lesser meteoroids as they crash through the atmosphere has been a byproduct data bonanza for scientists.
The upshot: Space rocks that explode in the atmosphere are now classified.
“It’s baffling to us why this would suddenly change,” said one scientist familiar with the work. “It’s unfortunate because there was this great synergy…a very good cooperative arrangement. Systems were put into dual-use mode where a lot of science was getting done that couldn’t be done any other way. It’s a regrettable change in policy.” Scientists say not only will research into the threat from space be hampered, but public understanding of sometimes dramatic sky explosions will be diminished, perhaps leading to hype and fear of the unknown. Most “shooting stars” are caused by natural space debris no larger than peas. But routinely, rocks as big as basketballs and even small cars crash into the atmosphere. Most vaporize or explode on the way in, but some reach the surface or explode above the surface. Understandably, scientists want to know about these events so they can better predict the risk here on Earth.
Standby mode is often accused of being the scourge of the planet, insidiously draining resources while offering little benefit other than a small red light and extra convenience for couch potatos. But now Nokia reckons a mobile phone that is always left in standby mode could be just what the environment needs.
A new prototype charging system from the company is able to power itself on nothing more than ambient radiowaves – the weak TV, radio and mobile phone signals that permanently surround us. The power harvested is small but it is almost enough to power a mobile in standby mode indefinitely without ever needing to plug it into the mains, according to Markku Rouvala, one of the researchers who developed the device at the Nokia Research Centre in Cambridge, UK.
This may sound too good to be true but Oyster cards used by London commuters perform a similar trick, powering themselves from radiowaves emitted by the reader devices as they are swiped. And similarly old crystal radio sets and more recently modern radio frequency identification (RFID) tags, increasingly used in shipping and as antitheft devices, are powered purely by radiowaves.
The difference with Nokia’s prototype is that instead of harvesting tiny amounts of power (a few microwatts) from dedicated transmitters, Nokia claims it is able to scavenge relatively large amounts of power — around a thousand times as much — from signals coming from miles away. Individually the energy available in each of these signals is miniscule. But by harvesting radiowaves across a wide range of frequencies it all adds up, said Rouvala.
Wonder if I could use this tech to keep my coffee warm.
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John and Adam discuss the news of the day from an international perspective
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No Agenda Archive
Running time: approx. 90 mins.
- Microsoft all over the news. The company will not ship a browser with Win7 in Europe.
- Bing has boosted ads for MSFT 8-percent in one week.
- Meanwhile, the company will release anti-virus software for free.
- Sales of vid games down big time.
- Look for the teardown trend to worsen.
- Tesla founders suing each other.
- Microsoft settles with Mississippi.
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A prison photograph of Phil Spector has offered a rare view of the jailed music producer without one of his many wigs.
The mug shot, taken on 5 June, shows a gaunt, bald-pated man with long stringy hair on the sides of his head.
Spector, 69, was sentenced last month to 19 years to life for killing actress Lana Clarkson at his home in 2003.
Over the course of two trials the “Wall of Sound” pioneer turned heads with his flamboyant hairpieces – forbidden in US prisons unless medically necessary.
“They took my husband’s freedom and dignity. So why not his hair?” said Spector’s wife Rachelle. “In case you don’t know, they don’t allow for much accessorising while in prison.”
Har!
An Italian woman who arrived late for the Air France plane flight that crashed in the Atlantic last week has been killed in a car accident.
Johanna Ganthaler, a pensioner from Bolzano-Bozen province, had been on holiday in Brazil with her husband Kurt and missed Air France Flight 447 after turning up late at Rio de Janeiro airport on May 31.
Creepy – just like the “Final Destination” movies…
The World Health Organization has told its member nations it is declaring a swine flu pandemic — the first global flu epidemic in 41 years.
The move came after an emergency meeting with flu experts here [Geneva] that was convened after a sharp rise in cases in Australia, which reported 1,224 cases on Wednesday, and rising numbers in Britain, Japan, and elsewhere in Asia.
In a statement sent to member countries, the W.H.O. said it decided to raise the pandemic alert level from phase 5 to 6, indicating a global pandemic outbreak, The Associated Press said, attributing the information to health officials from Scotland, Indonesia and Thailand. An official announcement of the change was due at 6 p.m. Geneva time Thursday (12 p.m. in New York).
General Motors Corp. has told its roughly 4,000 surviving dealers to stop selling non-GM brands in their showrooms by the end of this year, said an official of the company.
Mark LaVeve, GM’s vice president for sales, services and marketing, told the Detroit News in a letter that the dealers must also be prepared to sell more vehicles and improve the look of their showrooms, if necessary.
GM is seeking to close at least 2,400 of its nearly 6,200 dealers during its stay in bankruptcy court.
The company said it expects that its continuing dealers will remove non-GM brands from the GM showroom by Dec. 31, 2009, and will operate a showroom exclusive to GM products going forward…
Nearly 90 percent of GM’s continuing dealers have signed or verbally agreed to the participation agreements…
Should franchise agreements have this kind of power?
A woman in Tel Aviv, Israel, gave her elderly mother a new mattress as a surprise gift, throwing out the old tattered bed her mother had slept on for decades. The gesture ended up bankrupting Annat’s mother, who had stuffed her savings of nearly $1 million inside her old bed for decades, Annat told Israel Army Radio.
A massive search is under way at the city dump, where security has been beefed up to keep out treasure-seekers who have heard Annat’s story in Israeli media.
Annat, who did not want to reveal the rest of her name, told Israel Army Radio that she woke up early Sunday to get a good deal on a new mattress as a surprise for her mother.
She fell asleep that night, exhausted after lugging up the new mattress and hauling down the old one to be taken out with the trash.
When her mother realized the next day what her daughter had done, she told her that she had been using the mattress to stash away her life savings and had nearly $1 million padding the inside of the worn-out mattress.
Annat ran downstairs, but it was too late. The garbage truck had already taken away the money-stuffed mattress.
And speaking of banks…
San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors voted today to require all businesses and residences to recycle and compost their garbage or face fines, which could lead to a lien on their property.
The ordinance, approved in a 9-2 vote, will force building owners to sign up for the city’s existing composting and recycling programs. The Board will deliver a final vote on the ordinance next week.
“Many tenants want to recycle and compost but the building does not offer the service,” Mayor Gavin Newsom said in a statement. “We’re going to change that.”
The city could enforce the ordinance with citations and penalties that “could not exceed $1,000, although the Directors could by regulation cap penalties at lower levels,” it said. The ordinance specifically pegs fines for buildings generating less than a cubic yard of trash per week, such as single-family homes, at less than $100.
Other cities, notably Seattle and San Diego, have mandatory recycling laws in place but fines are rarely leveled. Unpaid fines in San Francisco could lead to lien proceedings.
San Francisco generates some 2 million tons of solid waste annually, according to the city, but it also enjoys the highest waste diversion rate in the country — 70 percent. By 2020, the city wants to send no waste to landfill.
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