Wednesday, October 30, 2013
manessmorrison2@yahoo.com


News of the day



Mystery barges on two coasts set tech world abuzz -- from NBC


Three mysterious structures that appeared on the water in California and Maine have the tech world abuzz. 
Each of the boxy structures sits atop a barge and looks like a four-story building made up of metal boxes. Little is known about them, but they appear to have been registered by someone familiar with geek speak — and with a sense of humor. 
The structures are registered with a Delaware corporation as BAL0001, BAL0010, BAL0011 and BAL0100. In binary code used in computing, the numbers spell out "one," "two," "three" and "four." Currently, Nos. 1 and 2 are on the water in San Francisco and No. 3 is in Portland Harbor. 
Online speculation has focused on Google Inc., which has a patent for a floating data center that uses ocean water for cooling. Neither Google nor the company outfitting the vessel shed any light on the matter Tuesday. 
Sharon Gaudin, a writer for Computerworld, told the Portland Press Herald that the way the vessels were named suggested a technology origin or use. 
"That's a little telling," she said. 
Also, the Delaware company to which they're registered is called Buy and Large, a likely joking reference to "Buy N Large," the fictional mega-corporation in the 2008 film "WALL-E." 
While the floating structures may one day have a high-tech purpose, their construction appears to be fairly low tech. They consist of shipping containers welded together and placed atop barges. 

Barges – from New York Times
Over the weekend, a report by KPIX, CBS’s Bay Area affiliate, said the barge could be a floating store to sell Google Glass, the Internet-connected eye wear. According to this theory, the company reportedly wants to move the store from port to port, anchoring it near cities. A similar barge has been spotted in the harbor at Portland, Me.
What is known for sure is that Google is increasing production and sales of the consumer version of Glass, which will be broadly available next year, according to the company. On Monday, it said that the people who had been chosen to buy a test device could invite three people to sign up, too. The company also said its latest version of Glass would be compatible with prescription lenses.

From Computer World – barges
The barges, each carrying a large, modular looking structure about 40 feet wide and 70 to 80 feet long, have been moved into and docked in harbors in San Francisco and Portland, Maine.
"We know what's inside," said a Portland Coast Guard station spokesman. "We know it's not a threat to public safety here in Portland. It's following all regulations."
Both structures, which are four stories tall, appear to be built out of or are surrounded by modular containers. Most of the modules have thin slits instead of windows and each has an enclosed section on the second floor that goes down to the ground level at one end.
The structure in Maine also has four modules on the end that are covered by wood.
Industry analysts all point to the fact that Google received a patent for a floating data center back in 2009. The plan included he use of ocean water to cool the systems and waves to help power it.
"This appears to be an offshore data center," said Rob Enderle, an analyst at Enderle Group. "You can use water for cooling and there are a number of creative ways to get energy. More likely these will be moved around to provide localized support or backup as needed."


There is apparently very little known by the media about these barges, because all the reports said the same few things. I was able to get a closer description of them from Computer World. All the mystery must be to thwart industrial spies. It's a brave new world. We'll find out more over the next few years, I'm sure.




Little boy joins Pope Francis on stage, refuses to leave – NBC

A young boy joined Pope Francis on stage in front of an estimated crowd of 150,000 people on Saturday, and liked his moment in the limelight so much that he decided to stick around.
The boy hugged the pope's legs as he made his address at an event titled Family, Live the Joy of Faith!
Aides encouraged the boy to return to his seat, but he was having none of it.
After hanging out with the pontiff for a while the boy eventually settled for the best seat in the house, taking a pew on the pope's special white chair.


This is really charming. I do like the new Pope – he loves people, I think, despite his high position. This boy is the cutest!








Why aliens won't look like Flipper: The science of extraterrestrial tales – NBC

Alan Boyle, Science Editor NBC News
Video: As technology advances, scientists and social experts are taking the search for alien life forms to a new level. NBC's Rhonesha Byng meets up with some academics who say "it's good to be prepared."

Lots of aliens will be hitting the streets this Halloween. There'll be big-headed, beady-eyed grays ... pointy-eared Starfleet officers ... reptiles with mouths that bristle with fangs ... fur-faced wookiees and more.
But you hardly ever see depictions of extraterrestrials that live underwater — and there's a good reason for that, says Don Lincoln, author of a new book titled "Alien Universe: Extraterrestrial Life in Our Minds and in the Cosmos."
The reason? It's hard to build a fire underwater.
Some experts speculate that many of the habitable planets in our galaxy are water worlds, with no land in sight. But those wouldn't the best places for technologically advanced civilizations to take root.

"There could be alien cavemen underwater," Lincoln, a physicist at Fermilab in Illinois, told NBC News. "But truly, you can't smelt metal." And that means it's unlikely that intelligent dolphins will ever develop the technology for spaceflight.
In "Alien Universe," Lincoln blends together a compendium of alien tales going back to H.G. Wells and even earlier, plus a look at the scientific parameters that define the search space for intelligent aliens.
The book isn't aimed at veteran UFO fans looking for the latest revelations about the alien conspiracy. It doesn't address the search for microbial life on Mars, or Europa, or Enceladus — and it doesn't delve deeply into the search for planets beyond our solar system. Instead, "Alien Universe" is meant for those who wonder how all the stories about intelligent aliens got their start, as well as those who wonder how much science is behind those stories.
"It's not just fiction. It's not just pretend," Lincoln said. "There's some real scientific thinking going on."
"Alien Universe" looks at the fiction and the facts about the prospects for extraterrestrial life.
The chemistry of alien life
For example, there's a reason why all life on Earth is carbon-based, and why alien life is likely to be based on carbon as well. Carbon atoms can handle four chemical bonds (unlike a puny single-bonding hydrogen atom), and yet it's relatively easy to swap those bonds around (unlike, say, silicon-based chemistry ... sorry, Horta!).
There are also chemical reasons why water works so well as a solvent for life's processes, but it's possible to imagine other liquids serving a similar role. Methane, for example, could have some advantages over water — and liquid methane exists in abundance on Titan, a smog-shrouded moon of Saturn.
"This leads us to speculate that if life is an inevitable outcome of chemistry, then Titan should have at least primitive life," Lincoln writes. "If it turns out not to have life, then we must begin to suspect that there is something unique about the environment of Earth, perhaps including the use of water as a solvent."
The sociology of alien tales

Lincoln makes a distinction between primitive forms of life, which may well turn out to be common in the universe, and advanced forms of life that could head out from their home planets and contact us. In the book, he refers to those life forms as Aliens with an capital "A." Those types of Aliens are the main focus of "Alien Universe," as well as thousands if not millions of books and movies about extraterrestrials.
Surveys suggest that most Americans think such aliens have already visited Earth, and are behind at least some of the UFO sightings that have been reported over the past few decades. Today, the 1947 Roswell UFO Incident looms large on the list of UFO tales — but Lincoln said that story didn't make much of an impression when it happened. 

"The Roswell saucer disappeared from history," Lincoln said. "It only reappeared in the 1970s when the National Enquirer reran the report from the Roswell Daily Record."
He said the interest in UFOs actually got more of a boost from other tales in the 1950s and '60s, such as George Adamski's stories of flying saucers and Betty and Barney Hill's account of an alien abduction. Such accounts triggered a long string of Hollywood productions, ranging from "The Day the Earth Stood Still" to "Men in Black." And such movies, in turn, make the public more receptive to UFO stories.
"There's a loop between the stories, the media and Hollywood — they feed each other," Lincoln said.
That kind of alien appeal is what drove Lincoln to write the book in the first place. He's a particle physicist, not an astrophysicist — but his interest in the prospects for intelligent life beyond Earth began long before his interest in the Large Hadron Collider. "Aliens are something that absolutely fascinated me when I was a kid," he said.


This author speaks of life on other planets as possibly being inevitable given the nature of matter. From the article above, "This leads us to speculate that if life is an inevitable outcome of chemistry, then Titan should have at least primitive life," Lincoln writes. "If it turns out not to have life, then we must begin to suspect that there is something unique about the environment of Earth, perhaps including the use of water as a solvent."

Personally, I would be glad to find even the simplest forms of life. Life is so prevalent on earth and appears in so many forms that it does seem to me to be a natural occurrence, and therefore, probably has developed on other planets as well. As he points out, most life forms, at least on earth, could not have developed a technology capable of space travel, so we will probably never see them unless we go to their planets, and I personally think that even that is unlikely. It's a very long way to the other planets, taking 6 to 8 months in the case of Mars according to one web site on the subject, and then there are the dangers of landing on the planet and surviving in the atmosphere and the temperature extremes. I personally hope that mankind doesn't try to land on Mars. Space travel should take into account the likely loss of life on the project. I think some adventures should not be undertaken.




Gold rush sparked by global financial crisis devastates Amazon – NBC

LIMA, Peru — The ravaging of the Peruvian Amazon by a wave of illegal gold mining is twice as bad as researchers had thought.
That is according to a new study using groundbreaking technology that’s discovered thousands of previously undetected small mines in the Madre de Dios region of Peru, near the Bolivian border, a global biodiversity hotspot.
Thanks to its stunning wildlife, the region is home to various nature and indigenous reserves and dozens of thriving jungle lodges that welcome tourists from around the world.
Yet it’s also experienced widespread devastation since the 2008 global financial crisis saw gold prices rocket. Thousands of miners have flooded into the region, dredging riverbeds and carving up vast tracts of the forest floor in remotes areas beyond the reach of the authorities.

They have also poisoned the water table for miles around by dumping hundreds of tons of mercury, which miners use to extract gold from the soil.
According to the report, by the Carnegie Institution for Science and published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the mining has cleared 15,180 acres of forest per year since 2008 — twice previous estimates. That’s roughly the size of 20 Central Parks.
The researchers made their discovery thanks to new technology including LiDAR, a laser mounted on a plane overflying the Amazon that creates 3D maps of the forest in far greater detail than anything previously achieved.

“Our results reveal far more rainforest damage than previously reported by the government, NGOs, or other researchers,” said Greg Asner, the American scientist who led the study, in a statement.
“The gold rush in Madre de Dios exceeds the combined effects of all other causes of forest loss in the region, including from logging, ranching and agriculture,” he added.
“This is really important because we are talking about a global biodiversity hotspot. The region’s incredible flora and fauna is being lost to gold forever.”
Ernesto Raez Luna, from Peru’s Environment Ministry and co-author of the report with Asner, added: “We are using this study to warn Peruvians on the terrible impact of illegal mining in one of the most important enclaves of biodiversity in the world, a place that we have vowed, as a nation, to protect for all humanity.
“Nobody should buy one gram of this jungle gold. The mining must be stopped.”
Twice the size of California, the Peruvian Amazon is one of the largest surviving stretches of tropical rainforest anywhere on Earth.
It’s home to a staggering array of plants, fish, birds, mammals, reptiles and amphibians. And its trees warehouse vast quantities of carbon that contribute to global warming when the jungle is destroyed.
While many of the gold miners are poor locals desperate to support their families, others are wealthy businessmen using expensive mechanical diggers and even large boats to dredge riverbeds.
Police have raided some of the largest mining camps, where a Wild West atmosphere of guns and liquor rules. They have also blown up mining equipment and freed underage girls being forced to work in brothels, yet they have rarely been able to catch the miners working deeper in the jungle.
This story originally appeared on GlobalPost.


This story is too discouraging for words. The life of green plants and especially of the rain forests is one of the main processes that removes carbon dioxide from the world's atmosphere, not to mention the loss of the many lifeforms that are native to those regions. The local governments don't control logging and ranching in the region as they should, but this illegal gold mining is apparently even worse than that. Some of it is being done by poor local people, but it is also the work of businesses as well, and the police are having little success at catching them. Could the national military help? I hope the media follows the story and uncovers more information.





Trapped in van wreckage, dying man wrote letters to family – CBS
SALT LAKE CITY A missing Kansas man spent his final days trapped in the wreckage of his van in a rural Utah ravine - writing goodbye letters to the family he unexpectedly left in early September.
David Welch, 54, was found on Oct. 18 by a hitchhiker who spotted the crash in a desolate stretch of eastern Utah more than 50 miles from any town, said Utah Highway Patrol trooper Gary Riches.
They found Welch trapped inside his mangled minivan at the bottom of a 50-foot ravine - with hand-written notes to his wife and four adult sons.
What's in those letters, though, is not being made public. The Welch family declined comment for this story and the Utah Highway Patrol isn't sharing what they call very personal.
The discovery brought a tragic end to a difficult several weeks for Welch's family that began on Sept. 2 when they reported him missing from his home in Manhattan, Kan. The family said Welch, a retired salesman, left in a 2000 Pontiac Montana without telling anyone where he was going, said Riley County Police spokesman Matt Droge.
Over the next several days, Riley County Police of Kansas did several searches of the area that came up empty, said agency. Welch was put in the national missing persons database.
As the days went on, the family struggled with not knowing what happened.
They posted missing signs around the city and started a Facebook page to bring attention to the search, Droge said.
On the Facebook page, "Find Dave Welch," they asked people to drive two extra blocks each day in hopes of finding him somewhere in Manhattan. On. Oct. 17, the day before he was found, there was a post written directly to Welch, perhaps in hopes he might read them.
"Dear Dave, it has been 7 weeks since you left. Your wife, children and grandchildren miss you more than the sky is high. Your classmates and friends are concerned for your health and want to help. As we sit at home tonight with tears welling up; Our hearts aching, we wonder where you are. We only pray that you see this message and ask God to bring you home soon. We love you!"
Investigators believe Welch fell asleep at the wheel of his minivan as he approached a curve on Interstate 70 in eastern Utah around Sept. 3, Riches said. His minivan sped off the road and went airborne, smashing into the side of the ravine. It came to rest upside down, resting on the passenger side, he said.
Evidence suggests Welch was injured and unable to get out of the van, Riches said. The medical examiner has not yet determined his cause of death. Even if we would have been able to get out, the nearest city, Green River, was about 50 miles west.
Thousands of cars sped by on the nearby interstate without a clue - Welch's van couldn't be seen from the highway, Riches said. He may never have been found if not for the hitchhiker walking on the side of the road.
"It is very desolate," Riches said.
They believe he survived for days, maybe weeks, keeping a journal and writing notes to family in Kansas.
In his obituary, the family said Welch was a salesman at Pepsi Co. and later Frito-Lay until he retired in 2009. He liked landscaping his yard, being outdoors and scuba diving in the ocean. He had been married to his wife, Kelly Welch, an assistant professor at Kansas State University, for 31 years.
He was looking forward to the upcoming birth of his second grandchild, the obituary said.
It remains a mystery why he left his home state in the first place, said authorities in Utah and Kansas.
"I wish it would have turned out better for the family," said Droge. "It was an unpleasant turn of events for them."


This is very sad. The hitchhiker found him, but too late. I don't usually focus on how dangerous driving can be, because I want to continue to drive. Sometimes I can feel that my attention isn't on my driving when my speed starts creeping up, and I make a special effort to think about what I'm doing. I do pull over if I feel sleepy and get coffee, stay within the speed limit on highways – 65 mph is fast enough -- keep a good distance from the next driver's bumper, and keep my eyes on the road. Life is short enough without making it shorter.



­
Arguments Over Social Security Pit Old Vs. Young – NPR
­ Congress has until Jan. 15 to come up with another spending plan. As they negotiate, one thing you'll hear a lot about is overhauling entitlement programs — particularly Social Security.
The program accounts for about 20 percent of federal spending. One argument in favor of cuts is that Social Security amounts to a huge transfer of wealth from the young to the old.
­ One person making that argument is Stanley Druckenmiller, a retired hedge fund manager. He's been touring college campuses, hoping to rile up the young folks about Social Security the way he and his peers were riled up during the war in Vietnam.
"I watched the young people at that time bring down a president and change the whole political spectrum and end that horrible war," he told an audience at New York University.
Using a lot of charts and graphs, Druckenmiller argued that with the retirement of the baby boomers, spending on Social Security will rise so much there will be no federal dollars left over for things that young people care about and that the country needs: education, the environment, infrastructure, medical research and so on.
"This is all current seniors just feeding at the trough, stealing from future seniors," Druckenmiller said.
If "stealing" sounds like a harsh term, how about "war"?
"Older Americans, their lobbies and the politicians who do what they ask are actually waging war on young people," says Jonathan Cowan, the director of Third Way, a centrist Democratic think tank. Young people, he says, "aren't doing much of anything" about the problem.
Cowan has been concerned about the growth of Social Security spending since the 1990s, when he co-founded an organization called Lead or Leave. That group tried to worry young people that Social Security's reserve fund would run dry before it was their chance to collect.
In fact, if nothing is done, it actually will run dry in about 20 years. Cowan blames the lack of action in large part on the major lobby for seniors, the AARP.
"The AARP has stood in the way of virtually every serious entitlement reform that's come along for quite a long time," Cowan says.
That statement just makes AARP President Rob Romasco laugh. "We seem to get painted with that brush on everything," Romasco says.
Romasco says his organization isn't necessarily against changes to Social Security. He just doesn't think those should be part of the budget process, because the program doesn't contribute to the deficit. It's self-funded through the payroll tax.
"It should be part of a separate conversation to deal with retirement," says Romasco, because of vanishing pensions, declining 401(k)s and the difficulty that older people have finding work.

Third Way (think tank)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Third Way is a Washington, D.C.-based public policy think tank.
Founded in 2005, the organization develops policy ideas, conducts public opinion research and hosts issue briefings. The organization has four policy divisions: Economics, National Security, Clean Energy, and Social Policy & Politics.
Third Way develops and advocates for policies that it claims "represent the political center".[1]
Third Way was honored as "2013 North American Think Tank of the Year" by Prospect, a British monthly current affairs magazine, for its "original, influential, and rigorous work on the most pressing challenges facing people, governments, and businesses". In 2012, the first year that Prospect issued a prize for North America, the award went to The Carnegie Endowment. The judges commended Third Way for "making a real impact on debate in the center ground of American politics".[2]
Third Way was founded in 2005 by Jonathan Cowan, Matt Bennett,[3] Jim Kessler,[4] and Nancy Hale[5] in the wake of the 2004 election as a policy, messaging and strategy "idea center" and think tank. The organization was dedicated to understanding the wants, needs and expectations of self-described moderate Americans, who comprise 44% of the voting public
Third Way's President and Economic Program director made the case that progressives needed to reorient themselves and set forth a modern agenda focused on growth and middle class success for the 21st century in an opinion piece published on the Politico website in 2010.
Third Way has four major policy programs: the Economics Program[6] focuses on helping the middle class in America in the midst of growing global competition. The National Security Program[7] aims at issues of security and the US military. Third Way has also undertaken a program on [8] clean energy intended to influence policy decisions on reducing carbon emissions. In the fall of 2010, it unveiled a new Domestic Policy Program[9] to examine issues including poverty, education and the politics of the center. The Domestic Policy Program also includes Third Way’s Initiative Culture Initiative, which examines how progressives handle contentious culture issues.
CNN senior political analyst Bill Schneider is a Resident Scholar and a Distinguished Senior Fellow at Third Way. A few of the staff members for the organization now work in the Obama administration and several former Third Way Honorary Co-Chairs serve in President Obama's cabinet including Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius and Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar.[10]
In February 2011, Third Way announced [11] that Assistant House Democratic Leader James Clyburn (D-SC), and U.S. Representatives John Dingell (D-MI), Allyson Schwartz (D-PA) and Jared Polis (D-CO) would be joining as Honorary Co-Chairs.
On October 6, 2011, Jonathan Silver, the director of the Department of Energy's loan office, and a figure involved in the Solyndra loan controversy, resigned and become a distinguished visiting fellow at Third Way; Department of Energy officials stated that the decision was unrelated to the controversy.[12][13]
Third Way works with Senate Democratic leadership, including Senator Dick Durbin, to help define policy ideas and strategy.[21] In the wake of the loss of control of the House after the 2010 elections President Obama appointed former Third Way Trustee William Daley to replace Rahm Emanuel as White House chief of staff. This decision was intended to signal to the nation the administration's prioritization of economic growth and a willingness to work with both parties.[22]
Third Way contributed ideas regarding health reform debate that were eventually enacted into law. The often repeated message that health care reform would deliver "stability and security"[16] to the middle class traces its roots to a series of Third Way reports and memos issued in the spring and summer of 2009. Third Way's work was described as having "really become central to the White House's message".[17] A Third Way op-ed published in Roll Call in late summer 2009 urged progressives, upset by early reports on the contours of the bill, "Don't Pass on the 'Next New Deal'".[18]
Deficit reduction.[24] One example: a proposal to cut federal pensions was adopted by the Simpson-Bowles Deficit Commission and the House Republicans’ deficit package. The Grand Bargain - an over-aching tax and budget deal to reduce the deficit by cutting Social Security and Medicaid [25] is an issue they champion. [26]
Third Way proposals to reform Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security were included in White House debt talks and the congressional “Super Committee” deliberations.

Social Security (United States)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Social Security is funded through payroll taxes called Federal Insurance Contributions Act tax (FICA) and/or Self Employed Contributions Act Tax, (SECA). Tax deposits are collected by the Internal Revenue Service, IRS and are formally entrusted to the Federal Old-Age and Survivors Insurance Trust Fund, the Federal Disability Insurance Trust Fund, the Federal Hospital Insurance Trust Fund, or the Federal Supplementary Medical Insurance Trust Fund which comprise the Social Security Trust Funds.[
Total Social Security expenditures in 2013 were $1.3 trillion, 8.4% of the $16.3 trillion GNP (2013) and 37% of the Federal expenditures of $3.684 trillion.[5][6] Income derived from Social Security is currently estimated to keep roughly 20% of all Americans, age 65 or older, above the Federally defined poverty level.


I've never heard of Third Way, but they are apparently central to much of the Democratic Party's current policy positions. I was trying to find exactly what had been proposed to cut the Social Security program. If they allow young people to opt out of Social Security and buy their own pension plans, I would be against it, because it is my understanding that the actual source of money going out to Seniors is the current taxes being collected at the time. I had heard that there is no actual Social Security Fund; at the same time there used to be complaints about Congress borrowing from the Social Security Fund, with the danger of bankrupting it. When the young people reach age 67 or so they will be able to collect. The Wikipedia article does define what the sources of the Social Security Fund are, so it does exist.

One theory is that the Baby Boom generation – us – is too large to be covered without bankrupting the “fund” before the young ones come along. If that is so, maybe we need to raise the FICA and SECA taxes now, though there are always complaints when taxes are raised. We need the financial safety net of Social Security and Medicare for elderly people and the disabled. They can't work anymore, after all, even if someone would give them a job. We can't let politicians dismantle the safety net – too many people depend on it now, and many of those young ones certainly will, too, when they come of age. If you haven't done very well all your life and saved your money, you can't afford to retire on your own resources. It just costs too much money to live.


The end for today.