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USFWS National Digital Library
The greater sage-grouse (Centrocercus
urophasianus) was first described by
Lewis and Clark in 1805. Its original
territory spanned over a dozen states
throughout the western region of the
United States. Currently, greater sage-grouse
occur in Washington, Oregon,
Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, South
Dakota, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah,
Nevada, and California. Greater sage-grouse
may also be found in parts of the
Canadian Provinces of Alberta and
The greater sage-grouse's niche is
sagebrush vegetation, at elevations
between 4,000 and 9,000 feet above sea
level. Research suggests that sagebrush
once covered about 156 million acres in
the United States. However, almost
none of the original area has been left
untouched, and about half of the current
sagebrush areas are seriously degraded.
A recent die-off in Utah, apparently
related to sustained drought conditions,
affected nearly one million acres of
sagebrush habitat. Most of this
sagebrush consisted of older plants, and
little new growth is occurring in this
region. Destruction of sagebrush habitat
is typically associated with overgrazing,
agricultural conversion, invasive species,
development, herbicides, and wildfires.
It can take up to 80 years for sagebrush
to return to a sustainable condition.
Degradation of habitat extent and quality
likely has been a main contributor to
greater sage-grouse population declines.
Range-wide estimates were thought to
be around 1.1 million birds in 1800. A
1998 range-wide spring census recorded
157,000 birds; more recent range-wide
estimates vary from 100,000 to 500,000.
Greater sage-grouse populations
declined an average of 3.5 percent per
year from 1965 to 1985. Although the
greater sage-grouse population is still
declining, the rate of decline since 1985
has slowed to 0.37 percent annually
across its range.
The greater sage-grouse is a large round-winged
ground-dwelling bird. It can
measure to 30 inches in length and two
feet in height, weighing from two to
seven pounds. Greater sage-grouse have
long, pointed tails with legs feathered to
the base of the toes. Females are a
mottled brown, black, and white color.
Males are larger than the females, and
have a characteristic white "ruff" around
their neck with bright yellow air sacs on
their breast, which they inflate during
mating displays.
During the spring mating season, large
numbers of males congregate on sites
called "leks" (or "drumming grounds")
to perform a communal courtship
strutting display. Leks are relatively
small, open sites often surrounded by
denser sagebrush. Males strut with their
tails fanned and emit loud "plops"
produced by large air sacs on their
After mating, females build nests, lay
eggs, and raise chicks, without the
male's assistance. On average, a female
greater sage-grouse will lay 2 eggs every
3 days for about 9 days. Generally,
clutch size is 6 to 8 eggs and the
incubation period is 25 to 27 days.
The greater sage-grouse depends almost
entirely on sagebrush for food and cover.
It constructs a nest from grasses and
other plants that are typical of sagebrush
habitat. During the summer, the greater
sage-grouse diet consists of insects that
are found in the sagebrush ecosystem.
During winter, 99 percent of their diet is
sagebrush leaves and buds. The average
lifespan is 1 to 1-1/2 years but sage-grouse
have been known to live up to 10
Greater Sage-Grouse
(Centrocercus urophasianus)
U.S. Department of Defense and U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service
Male greater sage-grouse.
Photo: Gary Kramer, USFWS
Range of greater sage-grouse (NatureServe,
2003) and Department of Defense lands.
Map: Chris Eberly, DoD PIF
Drawing: USFWS
FWS Status Review
Between 1999 and 2001, the U.S Fish
and Wildlife Service (FWS) received
three petitions to list the greater sage-grouse
range-wide as endangered or
threatened and began a formal status
review in April 2004. The review was
completed late in 2004. The FWS
determined that the species does not
warrant protection under the Endangered
Species Act at this time. However, the
status review clearly illustrated the need
for continued efforts to conserve sage-grouse
and sagebrush habitat on a long-term
basis. The status review found 92
percent of the known active leks occur in
10 core populations across 8 western
states and that 5 of these populations are
large and expansive. The greater sage-grouse
is currently identified as a Bird of
Conservation Concern by FWS and is
listed as endangered in Canada.
The Military's Role
At least 35 different Army installations,
as well as numerous Army National
Guard and Army Reserve properties, fall
within the current range of the greater
sage-grouse; the Air Force, Navy, and
Marine Corps have a combined 12
installations in this species' range. There
are eight known military installations
with confirmed populations of greater
sage-grouse. Six of these are Army
sites—Dugway Proving Ground (UT),
Sheridan Training Area (WY), Camp
Guernsey (WY), Hawthorne Army Depot
(NV), Tooele Army Depot (UT), and
Yakima Training Center (WA). The other
two are Air Force Bases (AFB)—Nellis
AFB (NV) and Mountain Home AFB
Through the use of Integrated Natural
Resource Management Plans (INRMPs),
the military has implemented
conservation actions for this species.
These plans are unique to each
installation and outline the steps that need
to be taken for land, resource, and species
conservation. Installations that have
confirmed the presence of sage-grouse
include the species in the INRMP. Other
installations with appropriate sagebrush
habitat within the range of sage-grouse
conduct surveys and manage potential
Yakima Training Center developed and
implemented a greater sage-grouse
management plan as part of its INRMP.
This plan includes translocating birds to
diversify the gene pool, maintaining high
quality habitat, and reducing threats from
fire and predation. Efforts taken by the
Yakima Training Center have
significantly improved the numbers and
genetic diversity of the Columbia Basin
distinct population segment of greater
sage-grouse, a candidate species that is
warranted for listing but precluded by
higher listing priorities. At Hawthorne
Army Depot, nesting and lek sites are
fenced for protection, cattle have been
excluded, and sage-grouse hunting
Mountain Home AFB has been
implementing conservation actions for
the greater sage-grouse since 1998,
including research, habitat mapping,
surveys, and avoidance protocol. To
support these efforts, the installation has
trained ground emitter crews to identify
the species, sagebrush habitat, and
noxious weeds. Emitter crews must
report any sightings of sage-grouse or
noxious weeds to the natural resources
office. The base also restricts ground use
of emitter sites during the breeding
season, strives to prevent man-made
fires, and coordinates with the local Sage-
Grouse Working Group, one of many
such groups that exist to coordinate and
evaluate conservation efforts. Between
1998 and 2004, the installation invested
over $3 million in greater sage-grouse
conservation efforts.
Nellis AFB discovered a small group of
greater sage-grouse on one of its training
ranges. Another restricted-access range
has suitable habitat, but cannot be
surveyed on foot. Helicopter surveys are
being considered to determine the extent
of suitable habitat and confirm the
presence of greater sage-grouse, if
possible. The installation is considering a
number of projects to include in their
INRMP update, such as the potential for
additional ground and aerial surveys,
initiation of a monitoring program,
assessment of potential sage-grouse and
habitat management needs, and a study of
the potential impact of the wild horse
population on sage-grouse habitat.
Naval Air Station Fallon (NV) has not
confirmed the presence of greater sage-grouse.
However, populations occur in
nearby mountain ranges, and suitable
habitat is found on the Naval Air Station.
The installation conducts surveys to
determine species presence and has
implemented noxious weed and soil
erosion control programs. Much of the
historic sagebrush habitat around Naval
Weapons Systems Training Facility
Boardman (OR) has been converted to
agriculture. Boardman's sagebrush is
largely isolated from other large blocks
of sagebrush. Though greater sage-grouse
are not currently known to occur on the
installation, invasive weed and erosion
control efforts are benefiting native plant
communities, including sagebrush, and
may ultimately result in suitable habitat
for population translocation.
Department of Defense (DoD)
installations are committed to
stewardship that will benefit current and
future populations of greater sage-grouse.
T h r o u g h p a r t n e r s h ips an d
implementation of installation INRMPs,
DoD is enacting conservation measures
on existing sagebrush habitat and
appropriate restoration actions for
degraded habitat to stabilize or increase
populations of this enigmatic species of
the sagebrush steppes.
Program Contacts:
Conservation Team Leader, Office of
the Deputy Under Secretary of Defense
(Installations and Environment)
Program Manager, Department of
Defense Partners in Flight Program
Chief, Division of Partnerships and
Outreach, Endangered Species
Program, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
August 2006
Sagebrush habitat, Yakima Training Center.
Photo: Yakima Training Center
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text:
Tim Wright03.16.09
Through the Glaurit brand of auto refinishes, BASF has expanded its presence in the Middle East. The coatings firm recently opened two paint and body shops in the Sultanate of Oman on the Arabian Peninsula. One of the two new Glasurit customers is the Sayarti Bodyshop in Muscat, Oman's capital. The shop belongs to Sayarti LLC, with whom BASF Coatings has been working in a close partnership for several months. The other customer is BMW Muscat, which uses the Glasurit 90 line.

subset: commoncrawl


text: Hi there I have some questions about swapping... I am running 3gb RAM/Fedora 6/Core duo 1. I wonder what is: Max I/O Buffer Size is this RAM memory that litespeed can use to handle big files? So, if the limit is reached then litespeed will begin to dump in TMP directory and use it as RAM I guess? 2. What will later clean Swapping Directory ? how can I speed up cleaning TMP directory and is it recommended? 3. My server must handle large file uploads (650mb) what would you recommend? should I increase Max I/O Buffer Size or increase TMP directory size? Thank you


text:
JERSEY CITY AND BEYOND -- The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission this evening approved the controversial proposed natural gas pipeline that Spectra Energy plans to build through Jersey City and Bayonne into New York City. The announcement was made this evening by an aide to Jersey City Mayor Jerramiah T. Healy during tonight's city council caucus meeting.
Healy Chief of Staff Rosemary McFadden confirmed the city will file a lawsuit to block Spectra from breaking ground.
Healy is expected to release a statement on the decision this evening.
This is a developing story. Please check www.hudsonReporter.com for updates . -- E. Assata Wright


text:
Turkey's Science Research Council Stops Publication of Evolution Books 444
An anonymous reader writes "The Scientific and Technical Research Council of Turkey (TÜBITAK) has put a stop to the publication and sale of all books in its archives that support the theory of evolution, daily Radikal has reported. The books have long been listed as "out of stock" on TÜBTAK's website, but their further publication is now slated to be stopped permanently. Titles by Richard Dawkins, Alan Moorehead, Stephen Jay Gould, Richard Levontin and James Watson are all included in the list of books that will no longer be available to Turkish readers. In early 2009, a huge uproar occurred when the cover story of a publication by TÜBITAK was pulled, reportedly because it focused on Darwin's theory of evolution."


text:
Lilly "Lil" Michelsen, 71, Omak, died Tuesday evening, Feb. 4, 2014, at University Hospital in Seattle of complications due to a "silent heart attack." She was born on Aug. 2, 1942 in Odessa, Wash., to Morgan and Lilas Chambers. At the age of 15 she moved with her family to Twisp.
Lil attended school for one year in Twisp, and then the family moved to Okanogan, where she graduated from Okanogan High School in 1960. After graduation she worked at the telephone company as a telephone operator.
Lil married Bob Michelsen on Oct. 15, 1960. They moved to Oroville, where Bob owned and operated the Chevron station. They moved back to Omak in 1966 and purchased an orchard in 1968. During that time, Lil worked at the Seafirst Bank in Okanogan for several years. They downsized in 1994 and moved to their current location on Elmway.
Lil enjoyed going to yard sales, selling antiques and collectibles at Apple Annie Antique Gallery in Cashmere, researching family tree (Genealogy) information, quilting and traveling.
She is survived by her husband, Bob; son Dean (Anna) Michelsen and their children, Daniel, Katrina and Emilia of Black Diamond; daughter Kay (Greg) Boatright and their children, Nicole, Danielle and Erin of East Wenatchee; one brother, Dave (Phyllis) Chambers of Okanogan; first cousin Bonnie Morehouse of Soap Lake; brothers-in-law and sisters-in-law Don and Joan Michelsen, Marlene Ragland, Richard and Janice Benjamin, all of Omak; and numerous nieces and nephews. She was preceded in death by her parents.
Donations may be given to the Okanogan County Historical Society.
A memorial service will be held 2 p.m. at Precht-Harrison-Nearents Chapel, Okanogan, Wash., on Thursday, Feb. 13, 2014. Precht-Harrison-Nearents Chapel is caring for the arrangements.
Use the form below to express your condolences.


text:
Australia's sport reputation tarnished: Coates
7 March 2013
DOPING: National Olympic boss John Coates says publicity surrounding the Australian Crime Commission (ACC) report into doping and potential crime links has clouded the worldwide reputation of Australia sport.
Coates said the report was a hot topic of discussion when he attended a recent International Olympic Committee meeting in Switzerland, at which he was at pains to point out the ACC investigation focussed principally on the AFL and NRL football competitions.
"In Lausanne, I certainly had a lot of questions and some explaining to do," Coates said.
The top administrators from the AFL, NRL, Football Federation Australia and Cricket Australia presented a united front in response when the ACC report was released last month, though only AFL and NRL came up for specific mention in it.
"We congratulate the professional sports on their approach, but we are not naive enough to think there won't be Olympic sports involved at some stage," said Coates.
"We have explained ourselves ... but it is probably more the public that have those concerns."
Coates said it was too early for critics to draw any conclusions about what may emerge as a result of the ACC investigation which has now been taken over by the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority (ASADA).
"I'm not prepared to bag it (the ACC report) until we know more," said Coates.
"My attitude to all this is that we very much welcome co-operation between ASADA, customs and the ACC."
Speaking at the official opening of the AOC's new offices in Circular Quay, Coates said swimming's recent Stilnox bonding session drama involving the London Games men's freestyle relay team had dragged the Olympic sport into the drugs maelstrom.
The AOC had banned the Australian Olympic team from using the sleeping drug, though it is not a performance-enhancing substance on the WADA list.
"Stilnox is not a prohibited drug but the unwashed public out there tend to group it all together and view it as the same," Coates said.
"But for me the swimming issue is more a behavioural disappointment."
Coates suggested Australia's ability to punch above its weight as an international competitor meant the country had a target on its back when it came to doping issues.
"I bet there are a lot of people in England and whatever ... our friendly competitors who are salivating," he said.
"There may be questions because we do shoot above ourselves."
James MacSmith


text:
Former Florida State quarterback Adrian McPherson's misdemeanor gambling trial began Wednesday in Tallahassee. Defense lawyers are trying to shift the blame to two of the state's witnesses.
Adrian McPherson faces up to 60 days in jail and a $500 fine if convicted of gambling on football games. He had entered the courtroom.
Prosecutor Georgia Cappleman is the daughter of former Seminole quarterback star, Bill Cappleman. She told jurors McPherson tried to disguise his gambling connections by using accounts set up by friends.
"This is a case about gambling, and a person who doesn't care how high the stakes get, because he doesn't think he can lose," Cappleman stated.
McPherson is accused of betting up to $1,000 a game on pro and college football games, including Florida State games while he was a member of the team, but lawyer Grady Irvin got Department of Law Enforcement agent, Robert Hill, to admit none of the accounts or documents had McPherson's name.
Former McPherson friend, Otis Livingston, one of two names on western union transfers and internet accounts, fought back when the defense tried to portray him as one of the bad guys.
For McPherson, the trial is itself a big gamble. McPherson was offered a plea deal, but turned it down in hopes a not guilty verdict might give him a chance to play college football, not for FSU, but for someone else. No matter how this trial turns out, McPherson still faces felony charges for passing worthless checks and grand theft.
The defense has FSU football coach Bobby Bowden, and an assistant FSU athletic director on their witness list. The defense will begin its case Thursday.


text:
The United Chinese Association of Florida (UCAF) presented the 10th Annual South Florida Dragon Boat Festival on September 29th at Haulover Park welcoming a crowd of more than 3,000 people. The highlight for our City, as one of the sponsors, was that our Sunny Isles Beach "Sunny Dragons" Racing Team took first place in their racing division! Sunny Isles Beach City Commission was there to cut the ribbon and participate in opening ceremonies including painting the eyes of the ceremonial dragons.
Many businesses and government agencies sponsored or provided entertaining stations including, a 1987 Mercedes smash booth, operated by Taiwanese Chamber of Commerce Miami. The Taiwanese Junior Chamber sold authentic Taiwanese iced Bubble Tea. The Church by the Sea of Bal Harbour brought a live rescued pelican to educate about the plight of local wildlife.
The day-long festival entertained the crowd with cultural performances, a kite tournament, an egg-roll eating contest, games and play areas for the children and other activities for their parents. Viva Classic Rock Band and Cayote entertained the crowd playing two sets each. The South Florida Dragon Boat Race had over 30 teams in participation. The UCAF hosted another successful event and our team can hardly wait until next year to defend the racing title!


text:
Anytime anyone even thinks about mixing "nuclear" and outer-space (even radioisotope generators as used on many space probes) all the anti-nuclear groups kick up a huge fuss.
Unless this mob has something different they can use to convince the anti-nuclear mob that its safe, they will have a hard time actually launching anything without massive protest.
My opinion is if this thing blows up, it will kill the crew and pollute an area of space millions of kilometres from anything I personally give a shit about. This is pretty much the same end result as if a chemical rocket blows up. Sounds like a fantastic application for nuclear, makes good use of what nuclear is good at (fuel energy density) while minimising what it is bad at.
I figure, presumably after the engine actually works and has been tested etc. we put this thing in orbit without any fuel, make sure it's an orbit that will stay stable for at least 20 years if something screws up. We then send up the fuel in small amounts, so if anything goes wrong, the amount of poisonous uranium or plutonium or whatever released is not going to kill whatever forest or reef or city etc it lands on.
Then if something goes like really bad, we fire up the partially fueled engine and fly it into the sun. If not, we complete the mission.
Then if something goes like really bad, we fire up the partially fueled engine and fly it into the sun. If not, we complete the mission.
Flying something into the sun is rediculously difficult (compared to Earth's orbit, the sun is pretty small). Much easier to just send the thing on its way and forget about it. If it's got enough delta-V to get it out of the solar system, we need not worry about it ever again.
From Wikipedia:
Earth orbital speed: 29.78 km/s
Sun's escape velocity at Earth (42.1 km/s)
Thus, the delta V to completely de-orbit from Earth's orbit is far lower than to escape the solar system. After de-orbiting, hitting the sun is quite easy, it just will tend to fall in.
Yes, the escape velocity is 42.1km/s. But anything in Earth's orbit already has a velocity of 29.78km/s (+/- a bit if in orbit around the Earth). This means that the delta-V required to escape the solar system from Earth's orbit is 12.32km/s. Less than half that required to de-orbit and fall into the sun.
This is actually a mistake that I make quite often (forgetting to factor in the current orbital velocity).
I don't think you understand how "falling" works.
Earth is moving at about 30 km/s relative to the Sun. That happens to be just the right velocity to keep it in an orbit at a distance of about 150 M km.
Apply thrust along that same vector, and you go into a higher orbit. Apply thrust against that same vector, and you go into a lower orbit. Apply enough thrust against your vector long enough -- long enough to change your velocity by about 30 km/s, which is a heck of a lot -- and you eventually intersect the Su
You don't have to apply the entire 29.78km/s, just enough that the thing passes through the corona at some point in it's orbit.
From Wikipedia:
Earth orbital speed: 29.78 km/s
Sun's escape velocity at Earth (42.1 km/s)
Thus, the delta V to completely de-orbit from Earth's orbit is far lower than to escape the solar system. After de-orbiting, hitting the sun is quite easy, it just will tend to fall in.
Hogwash. You do not know your stuff. Think before quoting Wikipedia.
As you have Earth's velocity of 29+ km/s already for free when departing from Earth in its orbit around the Sun, you are virtually "halfway to anywhere" (Robert A. Heinlein) when making it into Low Earth Orbit (LEO). Thus, the delta v needed for going from Earth surface to escape velocity out of the solar system is *much less* (~12.9 km/s) than for going to the Sun. In order to do the latter, you first need to get into LEO and then you need to decelerate from Earth's orbital velocity of 29.8 km/s to 0. So, your total delta v is around 40 km/s (!!!). More than three times than for going to infinity (and beyond
Hitting the Sun is anything but being "quite easy" (your words). That is the reason why it has never been done before.
You are right. It's very hard to hit the sun. You could do it with less energy than the 40km/s delta implies by doing multiple slingshots, starting with the moon.
I like your style.
I'd be like the half-qualified director of NASA and would make this rousing as hell speech "do you want to be remembered as just some ordinary guy, or as the hero who flew a nuclear powered spaceship into the sun" and all of these cynical know it all guys would be like "you dumbass, you forgot to subtract Earth's orbital velocity from the Sun's escape velocity". And you'd be the promising young mathematician would would run to the front of mission control with a stack of paper and diagrams and be like "no, we need to launch this deadly broken nuclear spaceship at the moon first", then I'd smile and puff my cigar, knowing that everything would be awesome in the end.
I'd pay my $8 to see that movie, I really would.
Also, you suggest needing to go to zero, which is untrue, if something enters the corona it will be decelerated, the corona takes about 2 degrees of arc in the sky meaning an elliptical orbit will be just as good, which does not require zero orbital velocity.
Dropping something into the corona of the sun from LEO....
Okay, assume that that requires us to get down to ~3,000,000 km (about four times the radius of the sun).
orbital speed up at this end of the hohmann ellipse is ~5900 m/s.
If we assume our orbital speed in LEO is about 7100 m/s (corresponding to an escape speed of about 10 km/s), then a single burn of about 18800 m/s is required to reach the corona of the sun.
Note, for reference, that from the same LEO, solar escape speed requires ab out 8800 m/s deltaV.
No matter how you slice it, it's easier to just toss something out of the solar system than it is to toss it into the sun...
I won't answer it again (siblings posts have done a far better job of it than I could), but to sum up- no. That isn't how space works.
"My opinion is if this thing blows up, it will kill the crew and pollute an area of space millions of kilometres from anything I personally give a shit about. This is pretty much the same end result as if a chemical rocket blows up. "
You mean like the Challenger and Columbia? Except with nuclear fallout. I know the reactors in spaceships are usually much smaller than a nuclear plant, but this is definitely bigger risk than a chemical rocket.
You mean like the Challenger and Columbia? Except with nuclear fallout.
What, are you a Flash Gordon fan!?
Nobody designs even a chemical-powered interplanetary spaceship to land it's main mass (including it's main propulsion system) on a planet surface. That's what landers are for. Even Apollo used a Lunar Module to land on the moon and a small Command Module for Earth re-entry.
This thing would be assembled in orbit and would never land on a planet. For something like a nuclear-powered interstellar spaceship, I imagine most of the construction would be done in low Earth orbit and then moved to a parking orbit at a La Grange point for final departure preparations, including loading the nuclear fuel.
I think you understand this, but are allowing your nuclear fears to cause you to post ridiculous and unrealistic scenarios in an effort to fight the idea of nuclear-powered space propulsion systems.
If not, why not use a nuclear engine to get off the surface?
Short answer: Shit happens.
Longer answer:
Why tempt Murphy's Law and/or an unlucky turn of the odds? Seems to me to just be smart risk management if you choose NOT to have critical fission piles screaming through the atmosphere of an inhabited planet at thousands of miles per hour if it's not necessary, even if the tech itself is very mature.
Besides, the mass of shielding and armoring/hardening for the reactor core necessary to make it reasonably safe and resilient in a crash on the Earth's surface or in the
Usually because you won't get enough thrust out of the engine. At an unachievable optimum efficiency, you need a theoretical 48 watts of power per kilogram just for the thrust to counteract gravity at the surface of the earth. This is ignoring aerodynamic effects entirely, of course, but it's just illustrative. So, if you want to actually go up, you need more power than that. So, the absolute maximum that 1 MW could lift would be a bit more than 20 tons. With an imaginary efficiency of 25 % (still unrealist
I'm talking about accidents, obviously. Space rockets are more fragile and less reliable than our usual nuclear power plants. That's what I'm talking about. Assembling the thing in the orbit doesn't really change the fact that space rockets are prone to fail.
I'm talking about accidents, obviously. Space rockets are more fragile and less reliable than our usual nuclear power plants. That's what I'm talking about. Assembling the thing in the orbit doesn't really change the fact that space rockets are prone to fail.
What kind of "accidents" do you mean here? We're talking about an interstellar spaceship that stays in space and doesn't ever land. If you're worried about a meltdown or explosion in space, then I hate to break it to you, but there are a whole lot of extremely dangerous, deadly-radiation-emitting, and lethal things in space. One of the most dangerous is a titanic ongoing thermonuclear reaction millions of times the size of Earth only about 93 million miles away, which is practically in our laps.
Assuming the
...closest Earth-Moon La Grange point (L2)...
Oops. Should read L1, not L2.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrangian_point [wikipedia.org]
but this is definitely bigger risk than a chemical rocket.
You'd rather get showered in hydrazine than plutonium?
pollute an area of space millions of kilometres from anything I personally give a shit about.
Though in space things don't stay where you put them - they have an annoying habit of forming closed orbits (unless they're going fast enough). So the area of space that you personally don't give a shit about could soon find itself on an intersecting path with a person, place or planet that you do have some small gravitational attachment to.
Added to which, if the engine does go <bang> then it's hard to say which pieces will go in which directions, and at what speed - so making any predictions about w
To the uninitiated, I agree it sounds bad. "OMGWTFBBQ we're putting NUKES in SPACE!!1!"
But it's not actually that bad. The fact is, uranium is not that radioactive before it has been in a nuclear reactor. I have held kilogram-quantities of uranium in my hands -- and still have all 10 fingers to show for it. Plutonium is more radioactive -- half a kilogram is warm to the touch -- but it's not deadly as long as it stays external to your system.
The nastiness starts coming in after the re
I have held kilogram-quantities of uranium in my hands -- and still have all 10 fingers to show for it. Plutonium is more radioactive -- half a kilogram is warm to the touch
Just out of curiosity, have you ever tried to figure out what went down in between all those times when you got angry and those times you woke up somewhere in torn pants?
Anytime anyone even thinks about mixing "nuclear" and outer-space (even radioisotope generators as used on many space probes) all the anti-nuclear groups kick up a huge fuss.
Sucks to be them, then. Any time you push beyond the inner solar system, you need some sort of nuclear power to get electricity, as you can't burn things or use hydroelectric or wind-power. You can use solar panels in the inner solar system, but the further out you go the less practical that becomes. IIRC, solar is a no-go much beyond about the orbit of Mars, even for relatively low-power applications. High thrust engines are not low-power!
What's more, as long as you're outside the Earth's magnetosphere, any nuclear explosion is exceptionally unlikely to contaminate Earth (or the Moon) as the solar wind will push all of the small particles out to interstellar space. Yes, you could be hit by a large piece even so, but that would be amazing bad luck; space is damn big.
Anytime anyone even thinks about mixing "nuclear" and outer-space (even radioisotope generators as used on many space probes) all the anti-nuclear groups kick up a huge fuss.
Yes, look at the fuss kicked up over New Horizons and Curiosity... Oh, wait there wasn't any.
Seriously, this myth (about anti-nuclear activists) needs to die in a fire. Over time, the protests have gotten quieter and quieter and come from ever further out on the lunatic fringe - until, over the last few years, they've become es
Yes, look at the fuss kicked up over New Horizons and Curiosity... Oh, wait there wasn't any.
Probably because noone told them there were RTG's on those spacecraft. It's not like they glow from radiation, after all (and I suspect that many of the anti-nuke whackjobs really do believe that "nuclear" power plants/etc GLOW)....
I don't believe NERVA can be throttled that deeply... if that's true, it can't be used as a lander engine.
Nearest Star = 4.2 light years. At the moderate speeds we would be able to generate to accelerate, but then an equal amount of fuel to decelerate to enter orbit around such a star in time measured in something larger than 10s of thousands of years at survivable speeds that don't erode the probe down from "plasma erosion" like you have with a plasma jet cutting machine.
Helium, Hydrogen and Protons and electrons hitting any metal or ceramic surface at huge speeds eventually cut through, even if only in thousands or tens of thousands of years.
A signal back from the probe would then take 4.2 light years to reach back to earth......if it didn't hit the smallest little rock or ice chunk along the way, which is a real undetectable possibility, and at the high speeds it takes, those would be fatal.
I understand the thrill of the thought process and the income if you are on the program and getting paid.
As a taxpayer, it leaves me as cold as intersteller space.
As a taxpayer, it leaves me as cold as intersteller space.
It leaves me with a warmer feeling than most of the things we spend our money on. Er, excuse me, we spend our kid's and grand kid's money on.
Your cold hearted appraisal of the issues certainly has validity, but stuff like that hasn't stopped us in the past.
Where are you getting your data from? The hydrogen in interstellar space is very sparse and what little there is might be scooped up and used for fuel with a magnetic scoop. A super-Orion sized craft could reach speeds of up to about 0.1c. At that speed Alpha Centauri is only 44 years away. The chances of hitting a macro sized object in interstellar space are low. The vast majority of matter in the galaxy has already clumped into solar systems.
Citation needed, on the travel time aspect.
Project Orion (the 1970's attempt at a thermonuclear rocket) would have take 44 years to reach Alpha Centauri (assuming a fly-by with no deceleration time, and excluding 36 days worth of acceleration to it's top speed). A long time by human standards, but a very very long way short of "10s of thousands of years". If you launched one today, you could get your first pictures back in almost the same amount of time as between Apollo 11 and today. That's travelling abou
Project Orion (the 1970's attempt at a thermonuclear rocket) would have take 44 years to reach Alpha Centauri (assuming a fly-by with no deceleration time, and excluding 36 days worth of acceleration to it's top speed).
That was Freeman Dyson's calculation of what sort of extreme the technology could be pushed to; it's by no means a sure thing. However, the Orion drive was vastly more complicated (and expensive) than the nuclear thermal rockets they're talking about in the article, which would never be able
Also, an NTR is something that a private company could theoretically build,
Yeah, they can build it, they just won't be able to fuel the reactor. Governments get nervous at the thought of plutonium in private hands that can leave an easily monitored site.
I'm thinking recalculate for http://www.thorium.tv/en/thorium_reactor/thorium_reactor_1.php [thorium.tv]thorium reactors. Thorium reactors don't go 'boom'.
However, the Orion drive was vastly more complicated (and expensive) than the nuclear thermal rockets they're talking about in the article
Not really, no. Ol' put-put is a dirt simple device: a gun to fire bombs a short distance, and a big honking pusher-plate on heavy suspension. A NTR needs some pretty esoteric construction materials to maintain integrity at the very high operating temperatures used (and some rather creative layout of the fuel elements to allow good hypersonic flow), whereas the Orion drive just needs to be big and heavy. The bigger the better, in fact; it scales up better than it scales down.
Nearest Star = 4.2 light years. At the moderate speeds we would be able to generate to accelerate, but then an equal amount of fuel to decelerate to enter orbit around such a star in time measured in something larger than 10s of thousands of years at survivable speeds that don't erode the probe down from "plasma erosion" like you have with a plasma jet cutting machine.
As a taxpayer, it leaves me as cold as intersteller space.
Well, it's a good thing then that you aren't paying for it. I imagine people who live much longer than we do, would have a different take on the value and cost of such things. But they'll get to use their own money for that. Nuclear-powered propulsion has more practical uses within the Solar System than without.
Brad Appel of General Propulsion Sciences frames the situation in more familiar terms: "To look at it another way, imagine you are planning a road trip from New York to Los Angeles and back. Except, there are no gas stations along the way -- you need to pack all of the fuel along with you. Using a chemical rocket to send humans to Mars would be like making the road trip in a cement truck. You might barely make it, but it would be one enormous, inefficient, and expensive voyage. Using an NTR, however, would
I think your title was damaged by a radioactive particle.
Nothing at all like Orion. This is using hydrogen as the reaction mass, heating it with a fission reactor. Orion uses nuclear bombs set off repeatedly behind a fscking huge steel plate.
You're right about there being international nuclear regulation that may stop it, though - if I recall correctly, there are legal hurdles to even test-flying nuclear reactors up to orbit and all kinds of international agreements following near-misses with both soviet and american test reactors in the 60s.
Nuclear thermal rocket != nuclear pulse rocket. The latter is the classic "Project Orion" engine, utilizing super-critical explosions for propulsive force. The former is actually more akin to a traditional chemical rocket, in that it works by expelling reaction mass from thruster nozzles. However, the energy of the reaction mass is imparted by heat generated in critical or sub-critical (but not super-critical) nuclear reactions. You can use any number of materials for this reaction mass, though the popular ones are hydrogen and water. Neither is inherently harmful, nor is there any reason they would need to pick up radioactivity from the reactor (any more than the cooling water which cycles through the heat exchangers of nuclear electrical plants or naval vessels becomes radioactive).
The test ban treaty has nothing to do with this. Nuclear pulse rockets are certianly forbidden by the test ban treaty - after all, they are literally exploding nuclear bombs as part of the engine's normal operation - but there's no reason nuclear thermal rockets would be that I can see. The argument about a "dirty warhead" is potentially valid (in that some would claim it, not in that it would be a plausible danger when you consider we already have nuclear-tipped ICBMs). However, there's no law or treaty against launching radioactive material into space. In fact, quite a few of our space probes and planetary rovers use radioactive thermal generators.
Compared to chamical rockets, nuclear thermal rockets have a vastly higher specific impulse, which is to say that a given quantity of reaction mass (rocket fuel or hydrogen flowing past a reactor) can produce a greater thrust (simply put, higher efficiency). This is due to their (much) higher exhaust velocity. Remember, E (in Joules) = mass (in kg) * velocity (in meters/second) squared. If you divide both sides by kilos (fuel or reaction mass), your energy per unit of reaction mass becomes a function of v^2. In other words, doubling the speed of the reaction mass will get you four times as much energy for a given unit of reaction mass.
Since the amount of thrust you can get out of the quantity of reaction mass that can be placed on a spaceship is the current limit on spacecraft range, speed, and payload, increasing that efficiency has the potential to revolutionize space travel.
Clearly you are either unfamiliar with Project Orion, or you didn't read the article.
It would be easier to believe in these guys if they provide more technical details in how they pretend to achieve fission propulsion. As it is mentioned in the article, this is not a new idea. Is there any new development that could cast new light on the problem of fission propulsion?
Is there any new development that could cast new light on the problem of fission propulsion?
What problem? We've built and tested fission rockets; the only problem is getting them into space when politicos would prefer to listen to the anti-nuclear luddites.
There's nothing new here. It's another "study" rehashing technology that's been rehashed over and over for at least sixty years. And anyway nuclear thermal rockets don't address the biggest problem we have with space exploration, which is getting to orbit in the first place. Heinlein famously observed "Get to low-Earth orbit and you're halfway to anywhere in the solar system." But the converse is also true - no matter how good your deep space rocket is you're only half way to where you want to be.
Nuclear thermal rockets have a wonderful ISP, but they don't have as much thrust as chemical rockets, and they're heavy. Even assuming you wanted to use one for the first stage it probably wouldn't have enough thrust to do the job. And you wouldn't want to start one up on earth, either. They never did figure out how to keep bits of the radioactive core from breaking off and entering the exhaust stream,
You could build the ship in orbit thus circumventing those problems.
Well, yes, you could. But now you'll have to send up a bunch of extra kg into orbit, and the whole point of having an engine with high ISP is to get really good performance from your fuel because you didn't want to send a bunch of extra kg to orbit.
If we wanted to go to another star system far in the future would it be possible to build an electromagnetic ramscoop [wikipedia.org] ship or is that still in the realms of fantasy? Such a ship could get to the centre of the Milky Way galaxy in 25 years ship time, although 50,000 years would have passed by on Earth. The only question is what would the Earth look like politics wise in 100,000 years?
Would they have forgotten about you? What sort of technology do you really need to construct a ship to constantly accelerate at
I have read rebuttals to the ramscoop concept. Not sure if they are valid or not. One thing however that seems right: the amount of radiation produced by such a system is thought to be deadly to life. So such ships would have to be unmanned.
At the point where we can actually do it, perhaps we can create an inverse field to protect crew. But they're theoretically plenty useful for unmanned probes, anyway.
Ramscoops, as described in the literature have basically two problems:
1. Getting protons (as opposed to deuterium or something heavier) to fuse at a decent rate requires conditions substantially hotter and denser than found in the cores of even quite large stars. Something more like the conditions met in shockwaves in exploding supernovae. Without this your ramscoop isn't much use.
2. The interstellar medium is very unevenly distributed. The sun is deep inside the bubble created by an ancient supernova, so t
This type of problem is why fusion is also considered an ideal propulsion system - because the fusion reaction itself is an electrically responsive plasma, so you can go more or less directly from energy generation -> propulsion.
Regarding the weight of nuclear reactors - I don't know exactly what 'a lot' means, in terms of weight, to WindBourne. I can mention that newer designs of nuclear (fission) power plants are smaller. The steam turbine will be replaced by a helium turbine. One of the advantages of space (when away from stars) is that heat loss due to radiation is high, so cooling is easier, so the difference in gas pressure between helium heated by a fission reaction and that at the other end of the turbine, cool be radiation
Basic physics tells you that total delta-V for any kind of rocket comes down to just two things: how much of the ship you can throw away to get thrust (mass ratio) and how fast you can throw it (exhaust velocity). For mass ratios of less than say 1000 (ie ship at launch no more than 99.9% reaction mass at launch), and non-relativistic exhaust velocities, total delta-V is no more than 8-10 times the exhaust velocity. Exhaust velocity of chemical rockets tops out at about 3-5 km/s, nuclear thermal rockets g
What we need is a reusable and reliable system to get objects out of earth's orbit. I would think the nuclear energy would be better utilized in a magnetic launch system. After that is established, then building an ORION/NERVA powered vehicle in space would be practicle. Using an ORION/NERVA powered launch rocket isn't my idea of a good start, so to speech.
"Mass ejection" propulsion is so last century. Where are the darn warp drives? I say: "Go FTL or go home."
Oh, sure. "Nukes are too scary, so let's just goatse a big hole in space itself right next to an effectively unlimited reservoir of condensed matter."
Goatse: now a verb!
I thought this was banned by international treaty.
Reminds me of one of my favourite geek-out websites:
If only more writers of science fiction television trash would spend just one afternoon of their life skimming that website...
Anyone who has any knowledge of space travel knows the issues raised in the referenced article. If you didn't care about space, you wouldn't read the article. Please, can we have reference to more scientific articles which advance the knowledge of geeks (that's what slashdot is for, remember)? I feel dumber just for having read that article.
Experience varies directly with equipment ruined.


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Nothing works properly. I try to pull up a terminal to edit some of the features manually, but it just bobs the little cursor, and doesn't pull up any terminals. It gives me a sorry box that states KDEinit could not launch 'konsole'.
I tried getting root acces, but it pops the password window up, and I of course enter, and hit the ok switch, but it doesn't open any terminals. In fact it doesn't do anything, it just goes through the motions, and dies off.
I'm new to this Gentoo way of doing things, and this is the first time I've used KDE. I'm baffled, how do I get up a terminal if KDEinit won't open one? I couldn't find any hotkey settings that will allow me to do this.


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Ding Junhui will play Neil Robertson tomorrow in the pick of the quarter-final ties, as the Shanghai Masters reaches the business end at the Grand Stage.
It will be a repeat of last season's PTC Grand Final where Ding came from 3-0 down to stun the world number one 4-3 in Galway.
That was one of 13 encounters between the two of them, with Robertson on top in seven of those.
Both players scraped through to the last eight today as the Australian beat Mark King 5-3, while Ding was taken to a final-frame decider before overcoming Shaun Murphy.
Mark Selby and Barry Hawkins complete a tough bottom half of the draw, in a repeat of their last 16 encounter at the World Championship, where eventual finalist Hawkins won 13-10.
Hawkins overcame Ryan Day 5-2 today, and Selby edged out Robert Milkins 5-4.
Elsewhere defending champion John Higgins was ousted 5-1 by the in-form Mark Davis, who will play Xiao Guodong after the 24-year-old home favourite beat Peter Lines 5-3 this afternoon.
World number 100 Kyren Wilson is the surprise name left in the draw, as he added Marco Fu to his list of scalps that already includes Stuart Bingham.
He will face Michael Holt, whose final-frame win over Martin Gould sealed his sixth quarter-final appearance at a major ranking event – though he has never gone further.
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A man and a woman from Oklahoma died Monday afternoon after a motorcycle and a pickup hauling a flatbed trailer collided on east Amarillo Boulevard, police said.
About 1:05 p.m., a red Chevrolet pickup was headed eastbound on Amarillo Boulevard and turned north into the Valero station in the 5500 block of east Amarillo Boulevard near Columbine Street, Sgt. Warren Gross said. A Kawasaki motorcycle with a male driver and female passenger, both in their 30s, was headed westbound on Amarillo Boulevard, Gross said.
The pickup failed to yield right-of-way before turning, and the motorcycle hit the trailer, Gross said.
The driver and passenger died after paramedics transported them to a hospital, police said.
The driver of the pickup, a white man in his 30s, was not injured, and police determined he was not under the influence of alcohol. No arrests were made and the wreck is under investigation, authorities said.
Police did not identify the victims Monday afternoon because their next-of-kin were not yet notified, authorities said.


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Jess Ennis-Hill has been forced to pull out of the World Championships in Moscow because of an Achilles injury.
The Olympic gold medalist at the London games last year has struggled with the injury all season and only made her return to action earlier this month at a low-key event in Loughborough.
The 27-year-old struggled through two events at the Anniversary Games at the Olympic Stadium last weekend, finishing last in the long jump and 4th in the hurdles, which prompted her to admit she was "disappointed" with her performance.
UK Athletics chief Neil Black had tipped Ennis-Hill to take up her place in the World Championships following her appearance in Stratford, however now she has conceded defeat in her race to be fit in time to compete.
"To say I am gutted is an understatement," she said.
"No athlete likes to miss the opportunity to compete at a major championships - they don't come round that often."
"Up until now we have been focusing on managing the pain so I can train and get myself in shape to win in Moscow," she said. "The time has now come to stop chasing fitness and look to cure the problem."
The Sheffield-native had previously admitted she would only take part if she felt 100% fit.
Coach Toni Minichiello added: "We have not seen enough improvement that would have made completing the two day, seven events of the heptathlon possible.
"There are nine global medals up for grabs over the next three years not including Moscow. So a long term view has been taken."
Had Ennis-Hill been able to compete in Moscow she would have been hopeful of taking gold after main rival Tatyana Chernova was also forced to pull out with a knee ligament injury.
As it stands Katarina Johnson-Thompson will fly the flag for Britain in the Heptathlon at the World Championships in Moscow, which gets underway on August 10.
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The Institute communicates its scientific and educational information in a number of ways. One major outlet is peer-reviewed publications and reports. Cary Institute staff regularly publish in the best-rated journals in their respective fields.
Export 2 results:Sort by: Author Title Type [ Year]
Filters: Author is Hess, T.A. [Clear All Filters]
Effects of diet breadth on autogenous chemical defense of a generalist grasshopper", J. Chem. Ecol., vol. 13, p. 283-297, 1987., "
Idiosyncratic variation in chemical defenses between individual generalist grasshoppers", J. Chem. Ecol., vol. 12, p. 749-761, 1986., "


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By John Hernandez
I have been traveling regularly to Puerto Penasco, (Rocky Point) Sonora Mexico for the past 25 years. My wife and I make it a point to go to Mexico five or six times a year.
In all those years, my family and I have never had a problem. Over the last few years we have seen security tighten on both sides of the border and have adjusted to it.
The American side of the border has become more militarized. Before 2008, the Americans had little interest in stopping you going down to Mexico. On the Mexican side, you are generally waived through.
On occasion, they will randomly have you pull over and search your trunk. It will take no more than five minutes. Returning to the United States, you will pass through the border and then be stopped at two more checkpoints along the highway by American agents armed with automatic weapons.
They will ask you if you are American citizens. The last eight times I visited Rocky Point, while returning to the United States I have been pulled over for a search of my vehicle on the American side of the border crossing in Lukeville.
During the 2008 elections, the border and immigration became big issues especially with the Republican Party. Who can forget Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu and John McCain and the "build the dang fence" election campaign advertisement?
Later Babeu would say that the drug cartels controlled parts of Pinal County (Vekol Valley) and Governor Brewer was saying that beheaded bodies were being found in the Arizona desert.
Along with Senate bill 1070 and Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio's immigration raids, the rhetoric combined to hurt tourism on both sides of the border but really affected the businesses in Rocky Point.
Rocky Point is economically dependent on tourism. Over the last four years, there was a concerted effort to warn Americans about going to Mexico. Every time there was a violent incident in Mexico, the media and politicians played up the drug cartel involvement.
The U.S. Government would issue travel warnings for Mexico including Rocky Point. Arizona would warn its college students not to travel to Rocky Point. They also played the fear card by claiming that immigrants entering the country illegally were smuggling drugs, had criminal records, or ties to a cartel.
As a regular visitor to Rocky Point and other points in Mexico, I have not felt uncomfortable staying in Mexico nor could I understand the fear others expressed about traveling south of the border.
I decided to research the issue by interviewing tourists, Mexicans and business owners in Rocky Point as well as find out about crime in Rocky Point as compared to places in Arizona.
Rocky Point has a population of 57,000. A comparable city in Pinal County would be Casa Grande. In 2009, there were five homicides in Casa Grande and one in 2010 compared to 15 homicides in Rocky Point in 2010 and again in 2011.
Yes, there are drug cartels in Rocky Point and there has been drug violence including gun battles between rival gangs and between police and cartel members. There are drug cartels and drug dealing gangs in every major city in the United States as well.
If you look at all the other crimes such as burglary, theft, auto theft, sexual assault, etc., Rocky Point's crime rate is less than or equal to Casa Grande.
There are a large number of Americans living in Rocky Point and there are many businesses owned or partially owned by Americans. Governor Jan Brewer is said to own property there and visit on occasion.
In Feb. of 2012, there was a video tape of the Arizona Sonora Commission meeting in Rocky Point showing Governor Brewer telling a group of Mexican businessmen and Mexican government officials that she was an ambassador for Sonora and it was safe to visit Rocky Point.
She urged people to travel to Mexico and invest money in Mexico. It never made the news in Arizona. A number of the business owners I spoke to said that the media has made too much of the violence in Mexico especially Rocky Point.
There is no question that there is an extreme amount of violence in Mexico. Personally, I would not travel to Juarez or Tijuana but would have no trouble visiting resort areas of Mexico like Cancun or Cabo.
Two women in their 70s said that they both drive down to Mexico from Phoenix by themselves and are not afraid. They have been doing it for years and never had any trouble.
They are not afraid of living in Rocky Point. Some people say they worry more about driving on the freeways through Phoenix or Tucson on the way to Mexico than they do about the drug cartels in Rocky Point.
No American has been killed in Rocky Point as a result of the drug war.
On my last trip to Rocky Point this past week, I noticed that there were more tourists in town. The trailer park where I stayed had trailers with license plates from Arizona, California, New Mexico, Utah, Texas and even Canada.
One couple from Utah said they were staying for a month. They have had no problems in all the years they have been coming down to Puerto Penasco.
On our first night in town, my wife and I decided to go out for an early dinner. We chose to go to Al Capone's for some fish and chips.
As we approached the restaurant, I noticed next door was an armored military vehicle. On top, a man in a black uniform was manning the gun turret with the machine gun pointed across the street.
The vehicle had Policia Federale written on it. I didn't know whether to feel relieved that there was a police presence nearby or worried that this area would need an armored vehicle guarding it.
We asked our waiter about it and he laughed and said that there was supposed to be some big political figure in town. He said that the vehicle had been there for one week so far.
There is more of a military and federal police presence in Rocky Point due to the drug war. The people of Rocky Point have adjusted to it.
I guess it is a matter of your personal perspective on Mexico and the drug war whether or not you feel comfortable traveling to Rocky Point. What I don't understand is that 19 people can be shot with six dying in a supermarket parking lot in Tucson or 12 killed in a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado and no travel warnings are issued for those areas.
We still go to the movies or shop at Safeway. To put it into more of a local perspective, more Americans have been murdered in the last seven months in the town of San Manuel (population 3,000) than in Rocky Point in the last seven years. Personally, I believe Rocky Point is a safe place to visit and to live.
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"....About six months ago, I had an on air ding dong with BBC London 94.9 presenter Jeni Barnett. One of the topics she was discussing on her show was dyslexia. She made a comment that dyslexia should be treated as a wonderful gift and how lots of dyslexic people she knows have "special talents". I was livid.
This is the sort of ignorant claptrap which is at the root of all the problems people with dyslexia have to endure.
What did my "special gift" give me? It gave me 14 years of misery at school. Every test I ever did was a major source of anxiety. If you are not dyslexic, you won't understand what it is like to do a test, think you've done well and then get a low mark because your brain has meddled with the answer you actually wrote down. It made me endure years of pisstaking and humiliation at the hands of teachers, who would use such encouraging phrases as "were you dropped on your head when you were born" or the even more motivational "I taught your brothers and sistes and they were quite intelligent, what went wrong with you?..."


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A Sydney grandmother who said her firefighter grandson admitted to lighting fires was "playing the sympathy card" and cried on cue, to hide her "oppressive" behaviour towards him, a court has been told.
Joshua Bruce Staples, 20, has pleaded not guilty to several charges related to lighting scrub and rubbish fires in Sydney's west in January 2011.
He was a volunteer at the Rural Fire Service at the time of the alleged offences.
His grandmother, Veletta Heron, this week told Downing Centre Local Court Mr Staples had broken down and admitted lighting the fires during a discussion at her house in mid-2011.
Mrs Heron said the admission came after she questioned him about police surveillance evidence that allegedly linked him or his car to the scenes of the blazes.
"I love my grandson. I love him very much. But I will not lie for him, or any of my children," she told the court, at one point crying and looking across at Mr Staples.
Mr Staples's barrister, Michael Coroneos, on Friday challenged the admissability of Mrs Heron's evidence.
Mr Coroneos said Mrs Heron had put a lot of pressure on her grandson to plead guilty when he didn't want to.
Mr Coroneos said Mrs Heron put on a performance in the witness box.
"She tried to play the sympathy card, she did the whole act of crying on cue,
"This is a grandmother who cares for her grandson? I'd invite your honour to come to a different view."
He said it was possible she had some kind of "ulterior motive", because of disagreements with her daughter, Mr Staples's mother, about the case.
"It's really unclear what the dynamics of that family unit really are, or what her motives really are."
Earlier, Mr Staples completed his evidence and denied he'd decided to take his mother's side over his grandmother.
"When the family unit started to fall apart ... over the course of these proceedings ... you decided to stay with your mother and hang your grandmother out to dry," police prosecutor, Sergeant Daniel McMahon, said.
"What do you mean?" replied Mr Staples.
The court has heard Mr Staples pleaded guilty in mid-2011, but changed his plea to not guilty at the end of that year.
Sergeant McMahon said Mr Staples had told his former solicitor he wanted to plea guilty.
"No," Mr Staples said.
"The reason you did that was you already admitted and agreed with your grandmother you were guilty and you were going to plea guilty," Sergeant McMahon said.
"I strongly deny that," Mr Staples said.
The hearing continues before magistrate Michelle Goodwin.


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THE SQL Server Blog Spot on the Web
I'll be speaking in Detroit on the morning of Wednesday, September 5th and Chicago on the morning of Thursday, September 6th in the Quest Software "Breakfast with the Experts" series. If you live in the area, I'd love to see you there. Details are at http://www.quest.com/events/listdetails.aspx?ContentID=5962&site=&prod=&technology=&prodfamily=&loc.
If you live in central Europe, you might be interested in the sessions I'll be presenting all over Germany the week of August 20th. I'll be in a different city each night of the work week. I'm already tired just thinking about it. Read all of the details (in German) at http://www.sqlpass.de/.
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WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House says President Barack Obama and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe are consulting on a response to North Korea's test this week of a nuclear device at a remote underground site.
Obama has called the test a "provocation." He and Abe spoke Wednesday and pledged to work together to seek action against North Korea by the U.N. Security Council. They also agreed to cooperate on measures aimed at impeding North Korea's nuclear and ballistic missile programs.
North Korea's official news agency said the test was conducted to counter what it called "ferocious" U.S. hostility toward the regime.
Obama reiterated to Abe the U.S. commitment to defending Japan, including by nuclear means.
He said he looked forward to further talks when Abe visits Washington later this month.


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Release Notes: The sous-marin GUST lists, tagfile script, and installer building script have been combined into more complete package releases. Release tarballs contain all the sous-marin elements for each Slackware release. Only GUST, maintained by another project, needs to be downloaded separately.
Release Notes: Two missing packages have been added to the minimized printing lists on both the sm and smx lists.
Release Notes: A missing dependency in the smaller kernel package stack was added to both the sm and smx lists.
Release Notes: Releases of sm-13.37-10 and smx-13.37-03. Fixes in the slackpkg optional stack. Both package lists have been tested in their new, much smaller installation.
Release Notes: The sous-marin core package list has been refined and reduced according to the progress made in the sous-marin-x list. It now consists of 41-70 packages with a minimal install of 191Mb. This install includes Vim, SSH, lynx, and ncftp on top of a pure Slackware install of a minimal but complete system.
Release Notes: The xserver version of sous-marin is now smaller (270Mb) than the console version (300Mb). Installation has a minimum of 88 packages for an X server, Vim, ncftp, lynx, SSH, and mailx. Adding a compiler, bootloader, slackpkg, wireless, a printer stack, and a smaller kernel brings it to only 116 packages.
Release Notes: The core package list now includes options for smaller kernels, minimal printing stacks, and the smallest possible email stack for local and remote SMTP, IMAP, and POP3 sessions.
Release Notes: This release adds kernel-headers and binutils to the compiler package list in the sm-13.37 list. They were already in the smx list.
Release Notes: Minor changes to the sous-marin script include adding a default mirror and fixing some typos.
Release Notes: sous-marin turtle: README and INSTALL files have been added. All documentation is in the new /README directory. Entering 'lynx' on the command line brings up an index of all docs and relevant Internet links. Standard networking has been introduced by adding Slackware's rc.inet1 and rc.inet1.conf. All non-standard run control commands have been moved to rc.local. Installation to a new partition by unpacking the cpio archive has been tested. Details for both the local and Slackware installer installation are in the INSTALL file.


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The 22-year-old is on the verge of returning to Serie A in a 20 million pound deal and is currently in Italy ahead of the move, which is set to be officially completed on Thursday.
Balotelli had his medical at a hospital in Busto Arsizio on Wednesday afternoon and then went to have dinner with the club official after his three-hour examination.
Prior to meeting with Galliani, the Italy international was greeted by a large crowd of Milan supporters, who were chanting: "You threw the shirt of s**t [referring to Inter in the Champions League semifinal against Barcelona in 2010] on the ground, now you're with Milan. The dreams have come true, you score the best goals. We will win with Mario Balotelli."
The swarm of supporters also set off fireworks and police were required to use tear gas in order to break up the crowd.
A policeman was also taken to hospital after being hit on the head with a bottle which was thrown by one of the fans.
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Longtime head of state bankers association to retire
The head of the Pennsylvania Bankers Association, the commonwealth's major banking trade association, announced today he will step down from the organization next year.
James Biery said in a statement that he plans to retire Nov. 30, 2013, as president and CEO. Biery has been with the PBA for 37 years — 22 of those as CEO.
"It has been a long, great ride," Biery said. "I have been very fortunate to have worked with some of the most principled and talented men and women in the nation to shape and influence banking policy. Bankers are the cornerstones of our communities and our commonwealth and it has been an honor to work alongside them."
Biery has led the organization through membership growth and the addition of a for-profit subsidiary, expansive product offerings and educational opportunities.
The association's board of directors has authorized a formal search committee to find Biery's successor.


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Whitehall is a city in Pennsylvania.
Get in
By car
By air
The primary and most convenient point of airline entry to Whitehall and Lehigh Valley is Lehigh Valley International Airport (ABE). Various airlines operate out of this airport. Philadelphia International Airport (PHL) is a major international airport that is about 70 miles away. Since it is a hub for several national airlines, it is easy to obtain non-stop flights to Philadelphia International compared to ABE and usually cheaper.
Get around
Whitehall is not a walking town.
If you don't have a car of your own, the easiest way to get around is by LANTA (Lehigh And Northampton Transportation Authority) Buses [5].
If you're traveling to more rural areas of Lehigh Valley, a car is the only option and can be rented through LVIA[6].
There's the Ironton Rail Trail[7] for hiking, biking, jogging. Connected to the Ironton Rail Trail is the Whitehall Parkway, over 100 acres to fish, hike, watch birds and even see some historical buildings.[8]
For more things to do in the area, check out the Allentown, Bethlehem (Pennsylvania) or Easton pages.
Whitehall is primarily a shopping and dining town, centered around MacArthur Road. However, there are a few "hidden" things to do:
Whitehall is a short distance from lots more to do in Lehigh Valley. For more things to do, check out the Allentown, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania or Easton pages.
While the Lehigh Valley Mall is the big boy on the block, next door is the Whitehall Mall, which is anchored by a Sears and Kohls. There's also a Border's books, Apple store and a few others in a small strip just outside the Whitehall Mall.
Moving north on MacArthur Road, you'll find another shopping center on the left side, which has a Sports Authority, Redner's Supermarket, and clothing and furniture stores.
Continuing north, on the right will be a shopping center anchored by a Walmart, Dick's Sporting Goods and Old Navy. On the left will be a shopping center with a Kmart and Weiss Supermarket.
Aside from the store mentioned, there are small shops of all shapes and sizes selling everything from mattresses to pet supplies to cars up and down MacArthur Road. The best way to see what's there is to literally drive the main drag.
Due to the abundance of shopping, restaurants line the main drag of Whitehall, MacArthur Road, and shopping centers. Dining options include:
As far as I know, this is the only hotel in Whitehall. But, luckily, there are plenty of hotels just two exits east off Route 22 (the Airport Road exit). Check out the listings on the Allentown page.
Get out
Other Lehigh Valley locations
Regional cities and locations


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The last time anyone saw David Gettis, he was a reasonably productive receiver on a reasonably awful 2010 Panthers team.
He's finally back.
According to Steve Reed of the Associated Press, Gettis will be activated from the physically unable to perform list today, and the Panthers will place receiver Kealoha Pilares on injured reserve to make the roster spot.
After catching 37 passes for 508 yards and three touchdowns in 2010, while catching passes from Jimmy Clausen, Matt Moore and Brian St. Pierre, Gettis looked like a promising prospect in 2010, when the Panthers went 2-14. But an ACL tear in 2011 ended his season, and a nagging hamstring kept him on PUP this year.
A former track recruit at Baylor, Gettis has deep speed, and could give the Panthers an option in the passing game. They'll be looking for a return man now, but Pilares suffered a shoulder injury at Washington and that made it an easy like-for-like swap.


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As the Texas A&M football team continues to hammer its competition, Aggie students are knocking out the supply of student tickets.
With Saturday's game against Oklahoma State University already sold out, students are scraping up their allotment of tickets with nothing left to spare.
"It's crazy for me, especially from three years ago from my freshman year, the big difference," said senior Cody Cravens.
So far this season, the Aggies have had the sixth and seventh largest crowds ever in Kyle Field history. This weekend, with two of the top teams in the country going head to head, A&M could tie its biggest crowd ever with over 90,000 people. That has students doing anything they can to get their tickets.
"We're just a bunch of idiots out here to have fun," joked senior Michael Riemer, who put up a pop up camper near the Kyle Field ticket booth.
Riemer is a familiar face around the A&M campus. Last year he was known as the "Cooler Guy" for riding his motorized cooler around campus. Now he's "Pop-up Camper Guy."
"We used to camp out on Wednesday night for the worst seats in the stadium and it's just progressed every year. We've gotten bigger and bigger and starting with the SMU game this year, we just decided to bring the pop-up camper here," said Riemer.
And Riemer didn't waste any time putting up his portable palace placing it in position after the Aggie win over Idaho Saturday night.
"We set this up about 11 o'clock and there were people out here already. So you can just feel the excitement and everyone is pumped about the game," said Riemer.
So pumped that they're willing to rough it in a new army kind of way.


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"Everyone is entitled to his own opinion," the late former Sen. Patrick Moynihan once said, "but not to his own facts." Does this explain why The New York Times' editorial board appears to believe that its opinion pieces don't require fact-checking? Their routinely misleading editorials are based on opinions that the editorial boards are entitled to have, after all; never mind the idea that opinions should be based on fact. And a prime example of flimsy Times editorializing can be found in a piece dated from April 18 about a subject that exemplifies catastrophic dishonesty itself: the economy of Iceland.
The piece theorized Iceland was better off than other crisis-stricken European countries - even to the point of having recovered - because it "let its banks fail" and forced creditors to "share in the pain." However, to believe that to the extent it was being pushed by the Times and to buy their argument that the collapse is behind Iceland, would require a suspension of reality required of a loyal Glenn Beck viewer. Iceland didn't "let its banks fail." Here, on planet Earth, the extent to which the collapse wreaked havoc in Iceland remains uncertain. But one thing is clear: Iceland did not "let its banks fail." And furthermore, perhaps if the country took a more comprehensive or compassionate interventionist tack - one not limited to helping bankers and foreign creditors - feelings of grave injustice and fears that the worst of the crisis is yet to come might have been assuaged.
All the Skews Fit to Print
It doesn't even take a great deal of knowledge about Iceland's collapse to know that the Times was well wide of the mark in its assessment. In the fourth paragraph, for example, directly after the "let its banks fail" claim, the Times admits that the Icelandic government "transferred domestic deposits and loans, at a discount, into new banks, with some $2 billion in money from taxpayers." What is that if not a bailout and rebranding of failed financial institutions? The banks were even nationalized - two of them only temporarily - and in a State Department Cable released by WikiLeaks, an American diplomat not only referred to the saving of Glitnir as a "bailout" of the institution, but also pointed out that the $878 million intervention was greater than 6 percent of Iceland's 2007 GDP. Moreover, $2 billion - the cost of the intervention according to the Times itself - amounts to about 15 percent of Iceland's 2007 GDP. If the US government staged a proportionally comparable $2 trillion intervention to save financial institutions here and The New York Times claimed the US "let its banks fail," its editorial board would be laughed off the island of Manhattan.
And beyond the $2 billion quoted by the Times, the Icelandic government's approach to the collapse was far from laissez faire. After the collapse, large sums of public money "were arbitrarily transferred to the banks to make their books look a little better" prominent Icelandic economist Thorvaldur Gylfason said in an email to Truthout.
"Also, before the crash," he added, "the Central Bank lent the commercial banks a lot of money against collateral of dubious value with the result that the Central Bank became technically bankrupt. For this reason, the recapitalization of the Central Bank was about as costly to the taxpayers as the recapitalization of the three failed banks."
It is hardly surprising, considering the size of the collapse, that Iceland intervened. Gylfason said that the fiscal cost of the crisis "is considered by the IMF [International Monetary Fund] (to be equal to 64 percent of GDP [about $7.7 billion in absolute terms], breaking the previous world record held by Indonesia."
But Iceland's government refusal to "let its banks fail" went deeper than sinking billions in taxpayers' money into its hemorrhaging financial institutions. After being effectively revived by the public purse, two of Iceland's three major commercial banks - rebranded as Arion (formerly Kaupthing) and Islandsbanki (formerly Glitnir) - were then sold to the old banks' creditors, despite these moneylenders' previous failure to manage their own risk, i.e. despite their enabling the Icelandic banksters. And it's true that the old executives, whose take on ethics didn't differ much from their Viking forefathers, might no longer be in charge - mitigating moral hazard. But contempt for bankers in the Icelandic street has hardly subsided. With Iceland's financial system effectively controlled by shareholders whose primary interests lie off the island, a great number of Icelanders may face a lifetime of difficulty; a concern not necessarily the result of xenophobia in this community-sized country, with its population just over 300,000.
"Many observers have expressed the concern that the foreign creditors who own two of the three failed banks are short-term-oriented profit-maximizers who have little long-run interest in establishing a foothold in Icelandic banking by winning the confidence of the local customer base," Gylfason said.
It could be argued that selling the new banks to the old banks' creditors - despite the discount - saved the government money and hassle. If these banks remained nationalized, the government, in order to avoid a default (itself not the end of the world), probably would have had to pay the old banks' creditors with the old banks' assets, new bank revenue and probably would've needed to negotiate debt write-downs. But the way the situation has unfolded, the public hanging onto the banks might have helped the country out more. In spite of the Icelandic government's generosity toward the old banks' creditors, the new banks will hardly save it a headache in the long run, as social problems galore loom.
"The new banks got these loans or assets at 45-55 percent of their face value but are not willing to give any discounts or write-downs except if they are definitely sure that the household or firm can't pay and that takes time," Lilja Mósesdóttir, an independent Parliamentarian explained.
With so much uncertainty in the air, the situation has created a logjam in credit markets in addition to being unduly harsh on households that have fallen prey to turbulent circumstances wrought by the mismanagement of a few.
"Many observers," Gylfason remarked, "have commented that the banks have done too little - in fact, almost nothing - and too late to accommodate their most distressed customers, both households and firms."
And to compound Icelanders' anxieties about their financial system being under the thumb of foreign financiers, little is known about who actually owns Islandbanki and Arion.
"I am very worried about this," Mósesdóttir said. "We don't have really an overview of who are the owners of the banks." Arion is owned by a group called Kaupskil Ehf; Islandsbanki is owned by ISB Holding Ehf. But that is the most that the public knows about who owns the banks.
Thus, to argue that creditors have "shared in the pain" is disingenuous, even if Iceland's bailout wasn't as obvious as Ireland's and some creditors might have to accept a "bondholders' haircut."
"[S]ome of the funds borrowed abroad by the Icelandic banks and not paid back were invested and remain, in Iceland," Gylfason said. "The magnitude of the shortfall was such that honoring the debts of the Icelandic banks - they were private banks, remember - to their foreign creditors was completely impossible."
But given that it is not known who owns the new banks themselves, it appears that these foreign creditors might eventually get what they believe is theirs.
Even if they don't, there is hardly reason to claim with authority at this point that Iceland "let its banks fail."
Optimistic, but for Whom?
The Times, however, is right that Iceland is better off than Ireland, Greece, and other European crisis economies. However, the North Atlantic island nation is not doing better than expected for any reason that the Times cites.
For one, the nature of the old Icelandic banks' debts made the crisis seem worse than it turned out to be. The old Icelandic banks had assets that retained a great deal of value after the global collapse (and bailouts). While Icelandic bankers might not have known a great deal about these assets - mainly high street retail chains in the UK - and they may have engaged in questionable practices in order to acquire them, unlike Spanish and Irish banks, Icelandic bankers largely avoided being stuck with worthless property assets after the bubble burst. Not only does this further illustrate that creditors weren't forced to "swallow their loses," but it is a main reason that the severity of the Icelandic debt crisis is not as extreme as some initially feared. Iceland's banks, simply put, didn't have as much debt to put on "the shoulders of taxpayers" as it was once believed; the assets acquired gave the new banks the means to repay a significant amount of the old debt.
Another reason that Iceland is better off than Ireland and the other continental crisis countries is that Iceland's economy is not fettered by monetary union. The fact that Iceland still has its own currency - many had declared it to be a liability at the onset of the crisis - has given Icelandic exports a leg up when the country needs it most. It is certainly true that a country highly dependent on imports for consumer goods has felt the pain of its currency losing much of its value in a short amount of time. And capital controls themselves, while they have helped mitigate the trauma of the crisis, come at a price. But devaluation has had its upside for Icelanders, in that the unemployment rate is probably lower than it would be if Iceland was on the euro.
Still, claims made by the Times praising Iceland for having put the crisis behind it are, more or less, hooey.
Primo, antsy, foreign investors currently own billions in assets that are frozen by the aforementioned capital controls. It is a situation that will most likely result in much of the money eventually being withdrawn; an outcome that would put even more of a strain on Iceland's financial system.
Secondly, there is an impending mortgage crisis that is constantly put off by a government trying to reconcile its fear of people power with its close ties to the financial sector. Wanting to avoid an orgasm of street protests like The Kitchenware Revolution of 2008-2009 that forced out the right-wing government responsible for the boom and bust, the Social Democrat/Left-Green coalition government has implemented a series of foreclosure moratoriums to appease angry citizens, while it simultaneously panders to bankers.
If the government took a stance that looked more kindly upon these crisis-stricken households, perhaps the situation would be as optimistic as the Times described it. Unfortunately, the most significant interventionist measures have not been directed to the innocent victims affected most profoundly by the crisis.
"The government is always talking about Scandinavian Wellfare, but it seems they are building a welfare system for the financial elite and the banks," said Gunnar Kristinn Thordarson, a spokesperson for a group of indebted homeowners known as Hagsmunasamtök Heimilanna (HH).
In Iceland, according to the HH, almost half of households are in need of some sort of financial assistance; 20 percent of all households are unable to pay their debts and another 20 percent are "headed for trouble," while a mere 22 households have agreed to the government's and banks' adjusted payment plans (with most preferring traditional bankruptcy). Moreover, Thordarson said that the IMF estimated last year that 64 percent of households and businesses are in possession of "non-performing" loans.
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"The most common misunderstanding is that people think that the recession is over," said Thordarson.
"Speaking plainly, we are in deep shit."
Why Iceland is pursuing its welfare-for-the-elite policies is anyone's guess, but with the IMF providing emergency currency support, it has had influence in diverting Icelandic resources back toward the financial sector. In 2009, Mark Flanagan, the IMF's Iceland mission chief, said that discussions concerning a second review of Iceland's program revolved, in part, around "steps to fully recapitalize the banking sector" even though many commentators and Parliamentarians believe that the banks were and still are too large. Moreover, it was revealed in a WikiLeaks State Department cable that Flanagan encouraged the Icelandic government in 2009 to facilitate debt restructuring outside of the court system, even though there remained - and still remains - a host of questions concerning the legality of interest payments tied to the consumer price and foreign exchange indexes. It is the position of Thordarson and the HH, for example, that loans tied to the consumer price index are illegal "according to the constitution and EU consumer laws" and the Icelandic legal system has already ruled Krona loans tied to foreign exchange rates to be illegal. A class-action type settlement, as opposed to this piecemeal approach to debt, might prove to yield a better deal for troubled households and remedy both the problem and uncertainty in an expedient matter. But despite the abject systemic failure of the previous regime, the IMF and the Icelandic government believe that this across-the-board approach would be morally hazardous.
This belief that the new banks must be "fully capitalized" above all else is not only causing significant harm, but raising questions about undue influence in Iceland. Beyond the policies toward indebted households and the austerity measures that the IMF is far less shy about promoting, it has raised suspicion about whether or not the privatizations of Arion and Islandsbanki themselves were done at the behest of the IMF. If Iceland had refused to share the IMF's worldview, it could have been denied funds necessary to implement capital controls and stop the Krona's tailspin. Failure to adhere to the IMF's demands could have also caused Iceland's sovereign credit rating to drop significantly, which could have isolated Iceland from international capital markets (despite the fact that credit ratings agencies, in the wake of 2008, are in need of urgent reform). Given that the IMF recently bullied the German government into guaranteeing a Greek bailout by threatening to trigger a seismic Greek default, it is obvious that strong-arming countries is still an IMF forte. But given the lack of transparency in matters concerning finance in general and the IMF in particular, it isn't clear just what sort of influence the supranational institution wields in Iceland.
"You know, they never said directly that all policy and legislation concerning the banking sector had to be agreed with the IMF," Mósesdóttir said. "The IMF always makes sure that they don't make public anything that can be interpreted as a political view or a political policy."
Although it should be noted that not all Icelanders view the IMF as villainous. Gylfason described the IMF as "the only game in town" and said it has "done well by Iceland." Thordarson personally feels that the IMF, despite its reputation, isn't to blame and denounced Steigrimur Sigfússon, the current finance minister and leader of the junior coalition member Left-Green Party, for making an "unholy deal" with foreign creditors, which has enabled them to "profit off of the terrible debt burden of Icelandic households."
But whatever the cause of intervention on behalf of the elite is, it is clear that many Icelanders are actually wringing their hands over their future - contrary to the Times' assessment.
Their anxiety doesn't originate solely from issues of personal finance, either; Icelanders are concerned about the future of their natural resources as the government looks to raise cash. A geothermal energy company called HS Orka, Iceland's third-largest energy company, was effectively privatized by a Canadian mining company to the dismay of many. The hastily cobbled-together sale - marred by allegations of unlawful activity and corruption - may have been called into question due, in part, to the efforts of Bjork (no joke) and other less famous Icelanders opposed to the deal. But it serves as a reminder to Icelanders that the collapse will have long lasting and far-reaching consequences.
The resolution of the infamous Icesave dispute, too, remains far from complete. While the need for Iceland to foot the bill is a hotly contested issue - why should the Icelandic taxpayer pay for private losses, it is argued, when state guarantees of cross-border saving schemes are illegal in Europe? - it remains likely that the Icelandic taxpayer will have to pony up for Icesave. Because domestic depositors were bailed out by the Icelandic government, the British and Dutch governments argue that under European Law, Iceland must also cover British and Dutch depositors (who were reimbursed by their governments), a sum roughly equal to half of the country's annual GDP.
the Times even admitted that Iceland is being sued by Britain and Holland, yet doesn't seem to think that this massive blip on the radar should dampen their optimistic assessment of the situation.
But even with the worst perhaps yet to come, the crisis has hit Iceland harder than The New York Times, or traditional macroeconomic measures have reported.
"An unemployment rate of only 7.2 percent in May this year is also seen as sign of successful recovery," explained MP Mósesdóttir. "However, the unemployment rate would be twice as high if we add to those registered as unemployed those who have left the country since the bank crash in 2008 and those who have left the labor market," she added. "Young, well educated people with young children are emigrating to countries like Norway." There is a palpable fear that they may never come back. A handful have even been goaded by hardship to join the Norwegian Army, some of whom have fought in Afghanistan.
To add insult to injury, many executives who illegally took out loans for a myriad of illicit reasons - one of them being criminal stock manipulation - have had debts erased by banks while homeowners face foreclosure. And while many of these banking executives have been charged for their crimes, the same can't be said about politicians who may have broken Iceland's law on Ministerial responsibility. Former Prime Minister Geir Haarde is being charged with violating that statute, but is the only one who has been charged. Meanwhile, other equally (if not more) culpable politicians, including those in the ruling Social Democratic party, have escaped punishment. David Oddsson, another former Independence Party prime minister who was the architect of Iceland's corrupt push toward privatization and the country's premier libertarian ideologue, appears to have avoided being held accountable for his influential role in marching Iceland over the edge.
In that vein, perhaps The New York Times' assessment isn't entirely off base; some Icelanders were allowed to fail and the future looks optimistic to the well connected. Their narrative, however, lacks a few crucial twists and turns. For those commoners who were infected by the Icelandic illness, the grim reality is scarcely reflected in a brief editorial of a chest-beating libertarian bent. Despite the country appearing to do better than had been feared, any claims that Iceland is playing host to something of a new economic miracle (how did the last one turn out?) or that the worst days are over should be dismissed outright, even if Icelanders' resistance to the imposition of Icesave and their prosecution of bankers and a former prime minister are rare feel-good stories in the context of global finance's implosion.
Portraits of Failed Finance, Journalism
Considering that 21st-century Iceland is synonymous with financial catastrophe, it is only appropriate that the Times distorted the situation there to fit its editors' narrow worldview. When Iceland collapsed, it was known as the canary in the coalmine, an indicator that the West (and by extension the world) was taking a nosedive. Similarly, the Times' take on the situation in Iceland is a glaring example of how that paper regularly keeps its readers at arm's length from the truth. If the Times can't discuss the situation in tiny Iceland with precision, why should readers assume that its editorials on other weighty issues are based on reality?
One out of many possible examples of dishonest editorializing from the Times can be found in a piece from June 27, in which the editorial board ponders how the government can rein in high agricultural commodity prices without once proposing limits on (or even mentioning) speculation. It has been shown that speculators have had a massive role in inflating world food prices.
Articles based on selective analysis aren't just limited to the Times' opinion pages, either. In their federal deficit reporting, the Times coverage of Tea Party proposals to put together a plan that addresses the deficit discussed them as serious plans. Yet, a reality-based and far more popular already-hashed-out alternative plan from the left, The Progressive Caucus' "People's Budget," never received full coverage.
Similarly, in their May 14 coverage of Palestinian Nakba demonstrations in the occupied territories, the Times depicted the initial Palestinian refugee crisis as a result of the Arab Invasion of Israel. But as Yousef Mounayyer explains in Adbusters, the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were displaced by Zionists in the run-up to Israel's war for independence; not the other way around.
That the Times ' own reporting from 1948 - as Mounayyer pointed out - contradicts its new narrative is perhaps the ultimate proof of the paper's changed primary allegiance from the facts to the status quo: Once, it published the Pentagon Papers and defended Daniel Ellsberg; today, it distanced itself from WikiLeaks and Julian Assange as soon as the web site and its eccentric founder were deemed useless to it. America's paper of record's cozying up to the establishment at the expense of the news perhaps helps to explain the decades-long decline in Americans' trust in the media, and is indicative of a systemic problem.
For whatever the reason - a desire to please corporate advertisers, perhaps - the Times carries a growing amount of water for America's elites much to the detriment of an already malfunctioning American civil society. It's no accident that Iceland - our asphyxiating canary - is in the process of attempting sweeping media and transparency reforms following its economic trauma, an initiative that those involved are even looking to expand globally. The Icelandic public were duped, for the longest time, into thinking everything was going swimmingly. When the media fail to do their job - in Iceland and elsewhere - societies are doomed to repeat past mistakes. Even the establishment would ultimately benefit from the public actually knowing the facts.


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So, for a long time I thought I was the only Seahawks fan at my work as well as one of only a handful in Sacramento. It turns out that's not the case.
I sit in a high visibility area and proudly rock all my 'Hawks gear, flag, and other such things year round. Needless to say being in Niner country the last couple seasons has been rough.
Apparently there is another fan on the other side of the building who recently ordered some Seahawks gear and through some sort of shipping shenanigans/error/mistake whatever he just happened to have an extra #3 elite jersey.
Now I have a #3 elite jersey, gratis. From one Seahawks fan to another. How sweet it is to be a #12.


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Sing Protest, Sing Peace
Friday Oct 12, 2012
Main Stage Theatre, Janet Wallace Fine Arts Center & Gallery
Directed by award-winning Minneapolis Fringe Festival Director Isabel Nelson '04, this piece will kick off a season of new and devised work. A cast of first-year students brings to life a story steeped in not-so-recent history, when the youth lived out the rumblings of a great social unrest. Developed by the ensemble using physical theater techniques and the pedagogy of Jacques Lecoq, this 30-minute piece investigates questions of love, duty, and honor in a time of war.
Contact: email@example.com
This event is for: Alumni, Students, Staff, Faculty, Parents and Families and Public
Admission: Admission to Free
Sponsored By: Theatre and Dance
Categories: Front Page Events, Alumni Events, Art, Music, Theater and Campus Events
Add Event: Macalester.edu Google Calendar | Google Calendar | iCalendar [.ICS]