More Fights Breaking Out Over Shrinking Airline Seats

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Have you noticed that more and more fights are breaking out in airlines lately? It seems most of them start out with passengers arguing about knee room since they're being squeezed by increasingly tight seating by the airlines.

The AP reports that over the last eight days, three U.S. flights have made unscheduled landings after passengers got into fights over the ability to recline their seats. Disputes over a tiny bit of personal space might seem petty, but for passengers whose knees are already banging into tray tables, every bit counts. 

To boost their profits, airlines have been adding more rows of seats to planes. Southwest and United both took away 1 inch from each row on certain jets recently to make room for six more seats. American is increasing the number of seats on its Boeing 737-800s from 150 to 160. Delta installed new, smaller toilets in its 737-900s, enabling it to squeeze in an extra four seats. (Remember the last time you tried to use an airplane toilet? ;-}) And to make room for a first-class cabin with lie-flat beds on transcontinental flights, JetBlue cut the distance between coach seats by one inch.

Today's flying experience is far from glamorous. Passengers wait in long lines for security screening, push and shove at the gate to be first on board, and then fight for the limited overhead bin space. They are already agitated by the time they arrive at their row and see how cramped it is.

The latest spate of passenger problems started Aug. 24, when a man on a United flight prevented the woman in front of him from reclining thanks to a $21.95 gadget called the Knee Defender.

It attaches to a passenger's tray table and prevents the person in front from reclining. A flight attendant told the man to remove the device. He refused, and the passenger one row forward dumped a cup of water on him.

Three days later, on an American flight from Miami to Paris, two passengers got into a fight, again over a reclining seat, and the plane was diverted to Boston.

There were 14,903 flight diversions by U.S. airlines in the 12-month period ending in June, according to an Associated Press analysis of Department of Transportation reports. That means 41 flights a day, on average, make unscheduled landings at other airports, for one reason or another. It seems banged knees and frayed nerves are the cause of more and more of them.

Italian Politician 'Cursed' After Orangutan Remark

Roberto Calderoli, an Italian Senator, apparently said something last year that has gotten him into a whole lot of trouble. It seems the Senator mentioned that the new Italian Integration Minister, Cecile Kyenge, who is Italy's first black minister by the way, reminded him of an orangutan.

I assume that Ms.Kyenge didn't appreciate being compared to a species of the great ape family and she apparently mentioned this to her daddy, Clement Kikoko Kyenge, who is a minister of the religious kind residing in the African Congo.

At his next prayer meeting, Preacher Kyenge said a prayer in which God was asked to free Mr. Calderoli from his evil thoughts. A photo of Mr. Calderoli was then placed before an altar dedicated to the ancestors of the village, and the same request made.

All of a sudden, Senator Calderoli appears to have begun having all sorts of strange things happen to him. According to the Senator, over the past year he's incurred a series of misfortunes including six hospital operations, the death of his mother, two broken fingers and two broken vertebrae, all of which he says prove that he's been cursed by Mr. Kyenge.

To cap his year of bad luck, Mr Calderoli this month tweeted a photo of himself holding a six foot long snake he said he had found and killed at his home in Italy. He apologized to Ms. Kyenge, but that didn't seem to help very much.

Mr. Calderoli also told Oggi magazine that friends from Naples had given him a lucky charm in the shape of a red chili pepper – believed to ward off evil spirits – only for it to mysteriously snap in half a day later. A mystic, he added, "saw a tremendous force active around me."

Mr. Kyenge denies any curse had been placed on Mr. Calderoli. "We are Christians like him, we have forgiven him and our prayer was only meant to encourage him to make statements befitting his role," he said.

Mr. Kyenge said that if Mr. Calderoli had been sincere in the apology he made to his daughter after the orangutan remark, the case was closed. If, however, Mr. Calderoli had not been contrite, "the ancestors may become nervous," he said.

Ms. Kyenge, who has lived in Italy since 1983, is an Italian citizen and now a European MP, dismissed all talk of curses. "I ask myself what religion Mr. Calderoli practises," she said. "I am Catholic and therefore do not believe in many other practises and rites and I don't agree with his statements, which I consider irreligious."

Senator Calderoli is now facing prosecution for his remarks. Perhaps he owes Ms. Kyenge a more sincere apology?

Solar Powered Death Ray Frying California Birds

There's a solar plant out in California that generates electricity a little closer to the old fashioned way, by using mirrors to concentrate sunlight on water towers - the water boils and turns turbines and voilà, electricity! It works pretty well too, except for one tiny thing. It fries birds in the process.

Federal investigators have requested that BrightSource, owner of these thermal solar plants, halt the construction of any more of the plants until their impact on wildlife has been investigated a little further. Unlike most other solar plants that use solar panels, the one in Ivanpah has hundreds of thousands of mirrors, each the size of a garage door, and together, they cover about 3,500 acres. Each mirror collects and reflects solar rays, focusing and concentrating solar energy from their entire surfaces upward onto three boiler towers, each looming up to 40 stories high. The solar energy heats the water inside the towers to produce steam, which turns turbines that generate enough electricity for about 140,000 homes. 

It appears that in the process, the concentrated solar energy chars and incinerates the feathers of any birds passing through these death rays. BrightSource estimates about a thousand birds die this way every year, but an environmental group claims the real number is much higher.

Hey, what say we set up a barbecue on their roof and toast some hot dogs & marshmallows? Well, maybe not if we have to watch out for the falling birds ....

Booze & Underwear Delivery Begins in L.A.

Welcome to the future. The future of delivery services. Beginning tomorrow afternoon, in the City of Angels, in the most forward-thinking state of our Union (other than Colorado and Washington), a delivery company will arrive on Los Angeles doorsteps offering to bring you alcohol and underwear at the same time.

The company, Saucey, an alcohol delivery service, has partnered with MeUndies, a Los Angeles-based underwear company, to bring us a week-long promotion where customers can order their desired booty shorts and boxers along with their favorite bourbon and beer.

Yes, get ready for the phone lines to be swamped with orders! The alcohol and undies are being sold in special Sleepover Packs that are going to cost you between $40 and $100, depending on the number of customers who order.

Each pack will include a fresh pair of underwear, socks, a T-shirt, sunglasses, a hangover-fighting vitamin (?) and your choice of alcohol and mixers, according to a report in the Los Angeles Times.

Saucey will start delivering the booze-and-briefs packages at noon, but discerning customers may want to target their orders between 4 and 9 p.m. according to the report since that's when the company plans to have at least some of the Sleepover Packs delivered by underwear models in nothing but their skivvies. Hurrah! Hurrah! ;-}

RIP

Robin Williams

1951 - 2014

More of Our Junk Found in the Oceans

The ocean might look clean to you, except for all that stuff you see floating on top from plastic ducks and nuclear disasters, etc., but what you probably don't know is that the surface is covered with tiny fragments of paint and fiberglass as well. That's the finding from a study that looked for plastic pollution in the uppermost millimeter of ocean done by a laboratory in Korea, and their ocean is connected to ours. The microscopic fragments come from the decks and hulls of boats, and they could pose a threat to zooplankton, an important part of the marine food web.

No, we're not all going to die from this. Well, not yet, anyway. The discovery is “continuing to open our eyes to how many small synthetic particles are in the environment,” says Kara Law, an oceanographer who studies plastic pollution at the Sea Education Association in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and wasn't involved in the study.

The researchers focused on the ocean's microlayer and collected water samples along the southern coast of Korea, up to 16 kilometers offshore. Examining the samples in the lab, the researchers found well-known kinds of plastics: polyethylene, polypropylene, and expanded polystyrene. But, to their surprise, these made up just 4% of the particles.

Eighty-one percent of the synthetic particles in the microlayer consisted of alkyds, a binder in paints. Another 11% were polyester resins used in paint and fiberglass. On average, a liter of water from the microlayer contained 195 particles—this concentration is 10 to 100 times higher than microplastic particles in water collected by other methods.

The paint and fiberglass particles are coming from the more than 17,000 small fishing boats that ply these waters, the researchers determined. Under the microscope, the fragments were dark green and dark blue, typical colors for the boats. In addition, a laboratory test using infrared spectroscopy matched the particles with paint chips that the researchers collected from local shipyards. Alkyd paints are used above water, so these coatings (and the fiberglass) end up in the water after being abraded by nets, ropes, or anchors, or when the boats are scraped and repainted.

The researchers now plan to study the metals and organic chemicals on the paint particles and determine whether they can harm marine life.

U.S. Exports Oil First Time in 40 Years

For the first time in 40 years the U.S. is exporting oil, effectively ending a half-century ban on selling American oil abroad and opening the door for a radical transformation of the world economy. The BW Zambesi, a Singaporean tanker, set sail from Texas headed for South Korea late Wednesday night, carrying some $40 million worth of American crude oil.

Who cares, right? Well, it's a big, big thing. The U.S. has not exported crude since the 1970s, when an embargo led by the Arab members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries pushed gasoline prices to unsustainable levels. The embargo prompted Congress to pass a law forbidding the overseas sale of American oil. The ban was instituted at a time when U.S. oil production was in steep decline. But now, the opposite is true.

New technologies have made it possible to extract oil from places where nobody would have thought to look in the 1970s. Hydraulic fracturing, or ‘fracking,’ injects water and chemicals into the ground at very high pressures, literarily extracting oil and natural gas from rocks. Of course it creates earthquakes in Oklahoma, Ohio and everywhere else, but money talks and the oil guys got there first, OK?

This increase of production could have huge political consequences, as the U.S. becomes less and less dependent on foreign oil and gas, much of which comes from volatile regions where America has few friends — think of Iran, Venezuela, and Russia. But it could also pose big problems. The environmental consequences of fracking are not clear (except for the folks in Oklahoma, Ohio and everywhere else where homes are disappearing into the ground). What's more, the sudden surplus of oil could also hurt the U.S. economy. In what may be the ultimate first world problem, having too much oil can push prices so low that drilling for it is simply not worth it anymore.

Solar Storm Calamity Missed by Just One Week 

Where were you on July 23, 2012? Notice anything unusual? Sun a shade brighter maybe, or ??? Well, if you didn't notice anything, you weren't alone. It seems just about everybody missed a rather large solar flare that, it turns out, was the most powerful one that we know about in at least the last 150 years. The storm it created went galloping through space and right through the path of our little Earth. We had been in the exact spot it rampaged through exactly a week earlier. Yes, if this storm had happened just one week earlier, our little planet would have been in the direct path.

But we missed it. This time. And, you might ask, what would have happened? “If the eruption had occurred one week earlier, Earth would have been in the line of fire,” said Daniel Baker, professor of atmospheric and space physics at the University of Colorado. Scientists have concluded that it would have been comparable to the largest known space storm they know about that occurred back in 1859, known as the Carrington Event, and it would have been twice as bad as the 1989 solar storm that knocked out power across the entire province of Quebec in Canada.

The iconic Carrington Event of Sept. 1859, is named after English astronomer Richard Carrington who actually saw the instigating flare with his own eyes.  In the days that followed his observation, a series of powerful CMEs hit Earth head-on with a potency not felt before or since.  Intense geomagnetic storms ignited Northern Lights as far south as Cuba and caused global telegraph lines to spark, setting fire to some telegraph offices and thus disabling the 'Victorian Internet."

“I have come away from our recent studies more convinced than ever that Earth and its inhabitants were incredibly fortunate that the 2012 eruption happened when it did,” said Baker. The National Academy of Sciences has said the economic impact of a storm like the one in 1859 could today cost the modern economy more than two trillion dollars and cause damage that might take years to repair. 

"If it had hit, we would still be picking up the pieces," says Baker. "In my view, the July 2012 storm was in all respects at least as strong as the 1859 Carrington Event. The only difference is, it missed." This time, yes, but what about tomorrow?

Court Releases "Bunga Bunga" Berlusconi 

Former Italian Prime Minister (and billionaire) 77-year-old Silvio Berlusconi has been acquitted (cough, cough, does money talk?) in an appeal against his original seven-year conviction for paying for sex with a teenage prostitute, Moroccan-born nightclub dancer nicknamed Ruby the Heart Stealer, at his notorious “bunga bunga” parties, and for abusing his office by having her released from police custody. Apparently he also put pressure on officers in a police station in Milan to let her go when she was later arrested on a theft charge. He told them she was the grand-daughter of Hosni Mubarak, the then Egyptian leader, and that her detention could cause an international incident.

Berlusconi escaped additional corruption charges that he was involved with former Panamanian President  Ricardo Martinelli in about $24 million in kickbacks paid for Panama's overpriced purchases of Italian radar systems, helicopters, and electronic mapping services.

Another interesting part of the case involved Martinelli and several fellow politicians and officials, as well as several unidentified women, spending weekends at a posh resort (Berlusconi's?) in Italy. Sources familiar with the case claim they have video recordings of Martinelli using cocaine and engaging with prostitutes.

Shortly after the Berlusconi acquittal was announced in court, he left the residence by car, but said nothing to journalists. The court in Milan now has 90 days in which to release the reasoning behind its decision. It's not clear if the Milan judges have also requested bribes to cement the acquittal, but perhaps it's too early to tell at this point.

CDC Transports Anthrax in Ziplock Bags

The Ziplock people must be so proud. Our own CDC, alias the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention - you know, the people who work for you with these cherished words proclaiming their mission to work for you ...

Well, Monday they found that some folks at the CDC were transferring some dangerous stuff (anthrax) around in Ziploc bags, storing it in unlocked refrigerators in an unrestricted hallway, and misplacing containers of the stuff. 

And, let's see, some other CDC employees failed to note that the anthrax they shipped to other labs last month wasn't dead, it was still alive. Oops! Oh, and they also failed to post warning signs about possible anthrax exposure for a couple of days, allowing people to just wander into the room "without approval." Seems it took the CDC's on-site clinic five days to examine some lab workers that might have been exposed, and others were told that rather than visiting the clinic, they should just keep "an eye out for signs of anthrax infection."

Huh? Yes, alright, they probably will ask, do you feel OK? Well, if you do, you're probably fine. If you don't, you probably inhaled some of our live samples of anthrax, samples that can kill you in minutes, literally like it destroys the tissue in your brain like acid and you, well, die.

A House Energy and Commerce subcommittee has a hearing scheduled for Wednesday about the anthrax incident last month at the CDC, and it sounds like they'll have plenty to talk about.

World's First Air-Conditioned City

What if you had a a ton of money and liked where you lived but there was one problem, it was always sunny and unbearably hot just about all the time, like maybe 110 to 115 F. (43 - 46C) in the daytime? Why not cool everything off by building an air-conditioned city? 

Sure, no problem. It seems Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum of the United Arab Emirates has decided to build the world's first temperature-controlled city on Earth right there in the middle of the desert in Dubai. The ambitious project is not only going to feature a mall, an indoor family theme park, and a "network of temperature-controlled openable promenades." According to developer Dubai Holding, the 7 kilometer (4.35 mile) expanse of covered walkways will allow week-long stays without the need for cars or exposure to Dubai's harsh desert climate.

The project will be built in phases in alignment with the gradual growth of family tourism in Dubai.” The "Mall of the World will be the world’s largest mall occupying 8 million sq. ft. connected to 100 hotels and serviced apartments buildings with 20,000 hotel rooms. There will also be a temperature-controlled covered retail street network spreading over 7 km, the largest indoor family theme park in the world, a wellness district catering to medical tourists. Around 180 million visitors are expected to visit the mall annually. "The objective is to create an integrated city with a plethora of best-in-class options within pleasant environments," says the Prime Minister.

Neither a budget nor a completion date have been announced as of yet. The Mall of the World might seem like an outlandish, capitalistic fantasy, but Dubai is no stranger to extravagance. Among other things, the city is famous for containing the world's tallest building and throwing a record-breaking fireworks display.

The Prime Minister says, “We announced recently that we plan to transform Dubai into a cultural, tourist and economic hub for the two billion people living in the region around us; and we are determined to achieve our vision.

Fidget a Little & Save Your Heart

I ran across this yesterday and normally don't put things like this in here, but it struck home and I wanted to share it. It seems they've figured out what is probably obvious to just about everybody that the longer you sit working at a desk, watching TV or driving, the higher your risk is for a heart attack. You probably already knew this, but did you realize that there’s actually something you can do while you sit that will help save your cardiovascular system.

Fidget. What a great word. While you sit, just move around a bit. Don’t use the remote control for the TV, get up to change channels. Stand up and stretch while you are at work. Shift positions. Pace.

A study at the University Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, shows that every moment you sit motionless increases the danger for your heart. “We also found that when sitting for prolonged periods of time, any movement is good movement, and was also associated with better fitness,” says researcher Jacquelyn Kulinski. “So if you are stuck at your desk for a while, shift positions frequently, get up and stretch in the middle of a thought, pace while on a phone call, or even fidget.”

I have this thing about the Mayo Clinic. There are some really good clinics and hospitals around the world, but to me the absolute best and the final authority about anything medical, I trust the Mayo Clinic above everybody else. To me, what they say is gospel. So the Mayo Clinic did some studies about this same thing, and their conclusion is, "sedentary behavior appears to have an inverse association with fitness. These findings suggest that the risk related to sedentary behavior might be mediated, in part, through lower fitness levels."

The scientists also recommend taking short walks during the day, climbing stairs instead of using an elevator or escalator, working at a treadmill desk and meeting with people while you walk instead of sitting down.

Pay attention to the experts. It all makes sense. Remember, it's your life.

Cardboard Box with Smallpox Virus Found in Maryland

You probably know that smallpox was this horrible disease that killed something like 300–500 million people during the 20th century. As recently as 1967, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimated that 15 million people contracted the disease and that two million died in that year. Well, they finally were able to eradicate the disease in the 1980's and just to make sure they had some of the virus left over for a "just in case" scenario, they stored a few samples away in super-secure laboratories in Atlanta and Russia. 

Well, oops, it seems somebody forgot about a cardboard box full of the stuff in an old storage room near Washington. A government scientist was cleaning the room out last week when he came across a box of decades-old vials of smallpox packed away and forgotten by everybody.

The six glass vials of freeze-dried virus were intact and sealed with melted glass, and the virus might have been dead, officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Tuesday. Officials said this is the first time in the US that unaccounted-for smallpox has been discovered. By the way, it was the second recent incident in which a government health agency appeared to have mishandled a highly dangerous germ. Last month, a laboratory safety lapse at the CDC in Atlanta led the agency to give scores of employees antibiotics as a precaution against anthrax.

The smallpox virus samples were found in a building at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, that has been used by the Food and Drug Administration since 1972, according to the CDC. The scientist was cleaning out a cold room between two laboratories on July 1st when he made the discovery, FDA officials said.

Officials said labeling indicated the smallpox had been put in the vials in the 1950s. But they said it's not clear how long the vials had been in the building, which did not open until the 1960s. 

No one has been infected, and no smallpox contamination was found in the building. Smallpox can be deadly even after it is freeze-dried, but the virus usually has to be kept cold to remain alive and dangerous. In an interview Tuesday, a CDC official said he believed the vials were stored for many years at room temperature, which would suggest the samples are dead. But FDA officials said later in the day that the smallpox was in cold storage for decades.

The samples were rushed to the CDC in Atlanta for testing, after which they will be destroyed.
In at least one other such episode, vials of smallpox were found at the bottom of a freezer in an Eastern European country in the 1990s, according to Dr. David Heymann, a former World Health Organization official who is now a professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Heymann said it is difficult to say whether there might be other forgotten vials of smallpox out there. He said that when smallpox samples were consolidated for destruction, requests were made to ministers of health to collect all vials. "As far as I know, there was never a confirmation they had checked in with all groups who could have had the virus," he said.

Smallpox was one of the most lethal diseases in history. For centuries, it killed about one-third of the people it infected, including Queen Mary II of England, and left most survivors with deep scars on their faces from the pus-filled lesions. The last known case was in Britain in 1978, when a university photographer who worked above a lab handling smallpox died after being accidentally exposed to it from the ventilation system. Global vaccination campaigns finally brought smallpox under control. After it was declared eradicated, all known remaining samples of live virus were stored at a CDC lab in Atlanta and at a Russian lab in Novosibirsk, Siberia. The labs take extreme precautions. 

Scientists who work with the virus must undergo fingerprint or retinal scans to get inside, they wear full-body suits including gloves and goggles, and they shower with strong disinfectant before leaving the labs. The US smallpox stockpile, which includes samples from Britain, Japan and the Netherlands, is stored in liquid nitrogen. There has long been debate about whether to destroy the stockpile. Many scientists argue the deadly virus should be definitively wiped off the planet and believe any remaining samples pose a threat. Others argue the samples are needed for research on better treatments and vaccines. At its recent annual meeting in May, the member countries of the WHO decided once again to delay a decision.

Boeing Loses Plane Fuselages in Montana River

Here's something you don't see every day. Sure, there are train wrecks every week or two that spill all kinds of stuff down ravines and into city streets, etc. But when's the last time you spotted a few airplane fuselages dumped out of a crashed train? It seems, a Burlington Northern freight train had a little problem near Rivulet, Montana last Saturday and dumped some of its cargo down a ravine and into the Clark Fork River. The cargo, as you might guess from the above image, consisted of six single-aisle 737s, fuselage panels for a long-range 777, and a few wing parts for a jumbo 747.

Most of those pieces are manufactured by Spirit AeroSystems in Wichita, Kan., where the shipment originated, and were destined for the Boeing Renton and Everett, Washington final assembly lines that piece together the majority of its commercial aircraft. Boeing said an investigation into the accident was under way. The company has "deployed experts to the scene to begin a thorough assessment of the situation," a spokesman said. "Once we determine the extent of damage we will assess what, if any, impact there will be to production."

It seems that major aircraft makers like Boeing and Airbus spread their jetliner factories across multiple regions and countries, necessitating a finely tuned logistics network to move aircraft components around the world. Both also use cargo ships and specially modified cargo jets to speed body, wing and tail sections to final assembly lines in sites as disparate as China to Charleston, S.C. And Boeing uses Burlington Northern to ship their parts, even though this time they probably didn't expect them to land in a Montana river. 

Boeing shipment trains are common on that route through Montana, and that area of track has a speed limit of 35 miles an hour. Neither of the two or three personnel who were on board the train were injured.

Nigerian Teens Create Fuel from Urine

No, you're not going to be able to pee in your gas tank to get that extra mile, but here's an idea: Four teenage girls figured out a way to use a liter of urine as fuel to get six hours of electricity from their generator. Some teenagers in Nigeria displayed their invention this week at a science fair in Lagos, an annual event meant to showcase ingenuity.

Here’s how the urine-powered generator works:

• Urine is put into an electrolytic cell, which separates out the hydrogen.

• The hydrogen goes into a water filter for purification, and then into a gas cylinder, which looks similar to the kind used for outdoor barbecue grills.

• The gas cylinder pushes the filtered hydrogen into another cylinder that contains liquid borax, in order to remove moisture from the gas. Borax is a natural mineral, commonly used in laundry detergent.

• The hydrogen is pushed into a power generator in the final step of the process.

The idea of using urine as fuel is not new. The girls have come up with a practical way to put the idea into action, though. Their method for using urine to power a generator is one the average household can appreciate. Power generators are used far more often in Africa than here, where they are relegated more to emergency use, as in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. But power outages happen multiple times a day in Lagos, so all those who can afford a backup generator have one.

Gerardine Botte, a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at Ohio University, is among those working on practical ways to make urine into a more useful hydrogen source, essentially by turning power into a byproduct of wastewater treatment. She says it takes more energy to extract hydrogen from urine than you end up getting in return as electricity. The energy equation gets even more skewed by the inefficiency of the generator used in the girls’ project. Botte says. “With this project, they’re doing both: using less energy to reutilize water sources.” So, when put in the context of wastewater treatment, the concept of using urine as a hydrogen source to produce energy has great potential.

Since wastewater treatment plants already collect the raw material needed – urine – extracting hydrogen from it makes sense, Botte says. Doing so could regain some of the vast amounts of energy already being spent all over the world to treat waste. “You will never get more energy out than you put in,” she says. “But it is a unique and elegant way to treat urine waste, which will allow you to co-generate electricity.”

To give you a sense of how much energy it is possible to recapture from this method of treating urine, Botte says “At Ohio University, where there are about 22,000 students, if we would collect the urine and produce hydrogen, we would be able to produce enough electricity to perhaps power about 100 to 150 residential houses for a year, continuously.”

As the technology evolves, it could be applied to vehicles someday. Gasoline-powered internal combustion engines can be converted relatively easily to run on hydrogen, which raises the question of whether there is potential for pee-powered cars in the future.

Facebook Experimented with Your News Feeds

Yeah, it was legal, but ???? Big Brother has a new face, and it's name is Facebook. Just in case you haven't heard, according to a new paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, Facebook altered the News Feeds for hundreds of thousands of their users as part of a "psychology experiment" devised by the company's on-staff data scientist. By scientifically altering News Feeds, the experiment sought to learn about the way positive and negative effect travels through social networks, ultimately concluding that "in-person interaction and nonverbal cues are not strictly necessary for emotional contagion."

To test the hypothesis, the researchers identified 689,003 different English-language Facebook users, and began removing emotionally negative posts for one group and positive posts for another. According to the paper, "when a person loaded their News Feed, posts that contained emotional content of the relevant emotional valence, each emotional post had between a 10 percent and 90 percent chance (based on their User ID) of being omitted from their News Feed for that specific viewing." The posts were still available by visiting a friend's timeline directly or reloading the News Feed. The researchers also state that they did not alter any direct messages sent between users.

As the researchers point out, this kind of data manipulation is written into Facebook's Terms of Use. When users sign up for Facebook, they agree that their information may be used "for internal operations, including troubleshooting, data analysis, testing, research and service improvement." While there's nothing in the policy about altering products like the News Feed, it's unlikely Facebook stepped outside the bounds of the Terms of Use in conducting the experiment. Still, for users confused by the whims of the News Feed, the experiment stands as a reminder: there may be more than just metrics determining which posts make it onto your feed.

All of a sudden, Twitter looks a lot more palatable.

Antarctic Sea Ice Growing Despite Global Warming

I know, I know, the earth is heating up, the polar ice caps are disappearing, the seas are rising, Miami & New Yawk are gonna be under water in half a century or so, but wait! Here's a new report out that says the sea ice coverage around Antarctica over the weekend just marked a record high, with the ice surrounding the continent measuring at 2.07 million square kilometers, according to an environmentalist and author who says the ice there has actually been increasing since 1979 despite continued warnings of global warming.

The new record was posted for the first time by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s online record, The Cryosphere Today, early Sunday morning. It's not apparent if the record actually occurred on Friday or Saturday, says Harold Ambler on his blog, Talking About the Weather. Ambler is a journalist and author of the book "Don't Sell Your Coat: Surprising Truths About Climate Change." 

"The previous record anomaly for Southern Hemisphere sea ice area was 1.840 million square kilometers and occurred on December 20, 2007," said Ambler. Meanwhile, he pointed out, global sea ice area on Sunday was standing at 0.991 million square kilometers above average, a figure he arrived at by adding anomalies for the North and South hemispheres.

While early models predicted the sea ice would decrease because of global warming, other models are showing that the opposite is happening around Antarctica, where sea ice growth is increasing. "A freshening of the waters surrounding the southernmost continent as well as the strengthening of the winds circling it were both theorized as explanations for the steady growth of Antarctica’s sea ice during the period of satellite measurement," said Ambler. 

However, he pointed out that climatologists have discounted the importance and growth of the Antarctic sea ice. According to Walt Meier, formerly of the National Snow and Ice Data Center and currently of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, most of the Antarctic sea ice does not survive between years, and it's less significant to the Earth's climate than is the ice around the Arctic.

Meanwhile, Ambler said that the growth of the Antarctic sea ice is providing "a public relations problem, at a minimum, for those warning of global warming’s menace." During the past 18 months, global sea ice "has seen its most robust 18-month period of the last 13 years, maintaining, on average, a positive anomaly for an 18-month period for the first time since 2001," he wrote. In addition, Ambler said, the South Pole's temperature has been dropping over the past 40 years.

Confused yet? Yeah, me too.

Protesters Launch Blimp Above New NSA Center

The NSA has this new facility out in Utah that cost you, the taxpayer, ONE AND A HALF BILLION DOLLARS. Ouch! What they are supposed to do with it, I don't know, since most of their mass surveillance programs are under question after a Mr. E. Snowden (now in Russia) started talking about their escapades. Anyway, the place is pretty big, around a million-square-feet. That's about six times the size of a Wal-Mart Superstore (179,000 sq. ft.). 

Well, nobody is going shopping at NSA, but the place has attracted something else, a massive 135-foot Greenpeace blimp that's now hovering about 1,000 feet directly over the center, with a big arrow and the words NSA ILLEGAL SPYING BELOW printed on its side for everybody to see for miles and miles.

I know you're laughing to tears right now so this is where you can have a short moment of silence ....

Activist groups including the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Greenpeace launched the gigantic thermal airship early Friday morning to protest the agency’s mass surveillance programs and to announce the launch of Stand Against Spying, a website that rates members of Congress on their support or opposition to NSA reform.

“We thought it would be fun to fly an airship around the Utah data center, which in many ways epitomizes the NSA’s collect-it-all strategy,” says Rainey Reitman, an activist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “We wanted to have a way to symbolize that our movement is getting quite confrontational with NSA surveillance in a visceral way.”

The protesters launched the blimp, which is named the AE Bates after a longtime Greenpeace volunteer, at 6 a.m. to capitalize on calm weather.

The stunt was timed, Reitman says, to approximately a year after the political debate on NSA spying began. “Many members of congress have acted as roadblocks or sat on the sidelines of this debate,” she says. “The time had come for us to be very honest with the general public about those who have and haven’t called for NSA reform.”

Greenpeace became involved in the project as a plaintiff in a lawsuit the EFF filed against the NSA last year, which accused the agency of intimidating activists with its mass phone metadata collection programs. Their blimp has made earlier appearances to protest coal-fired power plants in North Carolina, overfishing in the pacific northwest, and the Koch brothers in Southern California. Reitman says they can rest assured the blimp isn't a menacing new surveillance technique. “The only people we’re surveilling with this airship is the NSA.”

By the way, in case you're interested, the Stand Against Spying URL is https://standagainstspying.org/

The Drones are Coming!

They're coming, they're coming! Yes, whether we like it or not, the drones are coming. Possibly to our back yard, or onto the roof, through a window, or who knows where? According to the Washington Post, more than 400 large U.S. military drones have crashed in major accidents around the world since 2001, a record of calamity that exposes the potential dangers of throwing open American skies to drone traffic.

Now, commercial drone flights are set to become a widespread reality in the United States, starting next year, under a 2012 law passed by Congress. Drone flights by law enforcement agencies and the military, which already occur on a limited basis, are projected to surge too.

Military drones have slammed into homes, farms, runways, highways, waterways and, in one case, an Air Force C-130 Hercules transport plane in midair. No one has died in a drone accident, but this is just the beginning. “All I saw were tents, and I was afraid that I had killed someone,” Air Force Maj. Richard Wageman told investigators after an accident in November 2008, when he lost control of a Predator that plowed into a U.S. base in Afghanistan. “I felt numb, and I am certain that a few cuss words came out of my mouth.”

Pent-up demand to buy and fly remotely controlled aircraft in the States is enormous. Law enforcement agencies, which already own a small number of camera-equipped drones, are projected to purchase thousands more; police departments covet them as an inexpensive tool to provide bird’s-eye surveillance for up to 24 hours straight.

Businesses see profitable possibilities for drones, to tend crops, move cargo, inspect real estate or film Hollywood movies. Journalists have applied for drone licenses to cover the news. Amazon.com chief executive Jeffrey P. Bezos wants his company to use autonomous drones to deliver small packages to customers’ doorsteps. 

Public opposition has centered on civil-liberties concerns, such as the morality and legality of using drones to spy on people in their back yards. There has been scant scrutiny of the safety record of remotely controlled aircraft. A report released June 5 by the National Academy of Sciences concluded that there were “serious unanswered questions” about how to safely integrate civilian drones into the national airspace, calling it a “critical, cross cutting challenge.”

Serious, unanswered questions indeed. Be afraid, be very afraid.

Chinese Now Invading the U.S. with Jobs

My how times have changed. It hasn't been very long since everybody was griping about American jobs being taken away by them foreigners, remember? Well guess what? Jobs are coming back. And where from? Of all places, China! Yup.

Take for example Wilcox County, Alabama. They have the state's highest unemployment rate, lots of long abandoned textile mills and furniture plants. In short, Wilcox County desperately needs jobs. And now they're coming, and from a most unlikely place: Henan Province, China, 7,600 miles away. Henan's Golden Dragon Precise Copper Tube Group opened a plant in the town just last month. It will employ more than 300 in a county known less for job opportunities than for lakes filled with bass, pine forests rich with wild turkey and boar and muddy roads best negotiated in four-wheel-drive trucks. "Jobs that pay $15 an hour are few and far between," says Dottie Gaston, an official in nearby Thomasville.

And what's happening in Pine Hill is starting to happen across America. After decades of siphoning jobs from the United States, China is creating some. Chinese companies invested a record $14 billion in the United States last year, according to the Rhodium Group research firm. Collectively, they employ more than 70,000 Americans, up from virtually none a decade ago.

Powerful forces — narrowing wage gaps, tumbling U.S. energy prices, the vagaries of currency markets — are pulling Chinese companies across the Pacific. Mayors and economic development officials have lined up to welcome Chinese investors. Southern states, touting low labor and land costs, have been especially aggressive. "Get off the plane and the mayor is waiting for you," says Hong Kong billionaire Ronnie Chan.

Among other Chinese projects in the United States that are creating jobs: In Moraine, Ohio, Chinese glassmaker Fuyao Glass Industry Group Co. is taking over a plant that General Motors abandoned in 2008 and creating at least 800 jobs. The site puts Fuyao within four hours' drive of auto plants in Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana. In Lancaster County, South Carolina, Chinese textile manufacturer Keer Group is investing $218 million in a plant to make industrial yarn and will employ 500. South Carolina nudged the deal along with a $4 million grant. In Gregory, Texas, Tianjin Pipe is investing over $1 billion in a factory that makes pipes for oil and gas drillers. The company expects to begin production late this year or early in 2015. It will have 50 to 70 employees by the end of this year and 400 to 500 by the end of 2017.

The United States and China have long maintained a lop-sided relationship: China makes things. America buys them. The U.S. trade deficit in goods with China last year hit a record $318 billion. And for three decades, numerous U.S. manufacturers have moved operations to China.

The flow is at least starting to move the other way. One reason is that in the past decade, the cost of labor, adjusted for productivity gains, has surged 187 percent at Chinese factories, compared with just 27 percent in the United States, according to Boston Consulting Group. Those rising costs have cut China's competitive edge. In 2004, manufacturing cost 14 percent less in China than in the United States; that advantage has narrowed to 5 percent. If the trend toward higher wages, energy costs and a higher currency continues, Boston Consulting predicts, U.S. manufacturing will be less expensive than China's by 2018.

Alabama and other Southern states have followed the example of South Carolina, which nabbed the first Chinese plant in America 14 years ago when appliance giant Haier built a refrigerator plant in Camden. John Ling, who runs South Carolina's Shanghai office, has an empty factory he's pitching to Chinese firms. It's been shuttered for four years — since the former owners closed it and moved the jobs to China. "We will see more and more Chinese projects coming," Ling says. "It's at the very beginning."

Protesters Launch Blimp Above New NSA Center

The NSA has this new facility out in Utah that cost you, the taxpayer, ONE AND A HALF BILLION DOLLARS. Ouch! What they are supposed to do with it, I don't know, since most of their mass surveillance programs are under question after Mr. E. Snowden (now in Russia) started talking about their escapades. Anyway, the place is pretty big, around a million-square-feet. That's about six times the size of a Wal-Mart Superstore (179,000 sq. ft.). Well, nobody is going shopping at NSA, but the place has attracted something else, a massive 135-foot blimp that's now hovering about 1,000 feet directly over the center, with the letters NSA printed on its side.

I know you're laughing to tears right now so this is where you can have a short moment of silence ....

Activist groups including the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Greenpeace launched the gigantic thermal airship early Friday morning to protest the agency’s mass surveillance programs and to announce the launch of Stand Against Spying, a website that rates members of Congress on their support or opposition to NSA reform. The full message on the blimp reads “NSA: Illegal Spying Below” along with an arrow pointing downward and the Stand Against Spying URL.

“We thought it would be fun to fly an airship around the Utah data center, which in many ways epitomizes the NSA’s collect-it-all strategy,” says Rainey Reitman, an activist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “We wanted to have a way to symbolize that our movement is getting quite confrontational with NSA surveillance in a visceral way.”

The protesters launched the blimp, which is owned by Greenpeace and named the AE Bates after a longtime Greenpeace volunteer, at 6 a.m. to capitalize on calm weather.

The stunt was timed, Reitman says, to approximately a year after the political debate on NSA spying began. “Many members of congress have acted as roadblocks or sat on the sidelines of this debate,” she says. “The time had come for us to be very honest with the general public about those who have and haven’t called for NSA reform.”

Greenpeace became involved in the project as a plaintiff in a lawsuit the EFF filed against the NSA last year, which accused the agency of intimidating activists with its mass phone metadata collection programs. Their blimp has made earlier appearances to protest coal-fired power plants in North Carolina, overfishing in the pacific northwest, and the Koch brothers in Southern California.

Reitman says they can rest assured the blimp isn't a menacing new surveillance technique. “The only people we’re surveilling with this airship is the NSA.” Let's give 'em a hearty Ha Ha Ha!

Russian Police Short Skirts Banned

Ah, man, this is terrible. Just when things started getting interesting, the Moscow Times reports that the Russian Interior Ministry has launched a crackdown on modifications to uniforms after concerns over female officers shortening their skirts. Russian authorities decided to ban short skirts and other uniform modifications, amid concerns over rising police hemlines. The new rules, which also prohibit officers from wearing wrinkled items, and combining their uniforms with civilian clothing, follow a decree from Sergei Gerasimov, the deputy interior minister.

According to the Izvestia newspaper, Gerasimov said: "When you meet people, the first thing you see is their clothing, and for a police officer fulfilling his duties, it is crucial to have a tidy and neat appearance. From time to time, we have seen instances of officers improperly wearing their uniforms. … Heads [of departments] must pay more attention to the appearance of their subordinates."

The striking image above purporting to show radical uniform modifications in the town of Yekaterinburg appeared on Twitter, but was met with claims it was fake as they appeared to show officers in high heels. (Who cares, I used it anyway!)

Mikhail Pashkin, chairman of the coordination council of the police officers' union, told the Moscow Times that he saw no reason to complain over the shortening of skirts. "Perhaps the girls want to get married, " he said.

EPA Employees: No Pooping In The Hallway!

Yes, your government is certainly a pride to behold. It seems federal employees at the EPA in Denver have been instructed to stop defecating in the hallways. Huh? I'm sure Deputy Regional Administrator Howard Cantor was thrilled to tears to send an email out to employees describing the "several" inappropriate bathroom "incidents" that had taken place in the building, including a description of "an individual placing feces in the hallway" outside the restroom. 

"Management is taking this situation very seriously and will take whatever actions are necessary to identify and prosecute these individuals," Cantor wrote in his email, asking any employee with knowledge of the individual's identity to notify management.

Of course, this is a government agency, right? So, instead of leaving the matter to an email and moving on, EPA management had to consult with a workplace violence specialist, John Nicoletti, who called the behavior "very dangerous" and (horrors!) warned that the perpetrators would "probably escalate" their behavior, according to GovExec. God knows how many committees and sub-committees they probably formed just to study the problem.

EPA spokesman Richard Mylott added that Nicoletti’s expertise was sought in an effort to maintain a "safe workplace" in a statement to GovExec Wednesday. "EPA cannot comment on ongoing personnel matters. EPA's actions in response to recent workplace issues have been deliberate and have focused on ensuring a safe work environment for our employees," Mylott said. "Our brief consultation with Dr. Nicoletti on this matter, a resource who regularly provides our office with training and expertise on workplace issues, reflects our commitment to securing a safe workplace."

The EPA has been plagued with a range of cases involving employee misconduct over the last several months, including one ethics violation involving a political appointee accepting travel gifts from lobbyists. Another investigation revealed an employee receiving pay despite having moved to a retirement home, where the employee was allegedly not employed, one or two years earlier.

In May, another EPA employee was investigated for downloading 7,000 porn files on his work computer and viewing them two to six hours a day. The same month, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee accused the EPA of sustaining a system riddled with high-ranking fraud and "criminal conduct,” costing taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars. 

As of March, EPA’s Office of Inspector General was investigating 78 open integrity cases -- five involving political appointees –- according to the OIG’s employee misconduct report released twice a year. "This is truly a broken agency," committee chairman Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) said in May.

Louisiana Man Mouth-feeds Marshmallows to Gators

This has got to be something to see. There's a tourist stop on a swamp boat tour in south Louisiana where the guide jumps into the water to feed chicken and marshmallows to alligators. At one point the guide actually puts a marshmallow in his mouth and lets one of the gators snatch it away.

The scene was captured on video by a guy from Ht. Helens, Oregon, Stacy Hicks, who visited the area in May. "When he jumped in I was a little scared, more for him than us though," Hicks said. "I am surprised at the attention this video has gotten. I just thought that this was a thing that happens all the time on the tours."

The video has now been shared more than 100,000 times on Facebook. It also has attracted attention of local and state wildlife officials. There is no state law prohibiting luring and feeding of alligators, but it's against local law in Jefferson Parish, where the Airboat Adventures tour company is based.

No charges had been filed as of Tuesday. Legal or not, wildlife officials say the video shows the unidentified guide took a risk. "There is no taming an alligator," said Aleutia Scott, a supervising ranger at Jean Lafitte National Historical Park and Preserve. The preserve includes the swamps in Jefferson Parish, just outside New Orleans.

Scott said alligators are "eating machines," and a big one has massive force in its jaws. The alligators in the video appear to be about 5 feet long, indicating they are still growing, Scott said. Alligators are roughly a foot in length at birth and at full maturity, females can reach lengths of 8 to 10 feet and males 12 to 14 feet, she said.

"This is not a zoo. This is a natural habitat," she said. "The animals need to be doing their normal things. Feeding. Foraging. Reproducing. And we, as humans, don't want to interrupt that."

SF Says NO to Charging for Your Parking Space

San Francisco has a problem. Somebody has come up with a mobile app that lets drivers know when a parking space is going to become available. Say you've somehow managed to find a parking space, which apparently is pretty special out there, and you've finished with your business and are getting ready to drive away. Ummm, you say, what if I could tell everybody driving around that my space is going to become available, and then charge them to have it? Great idea, eh?

Well, San Francisco's city attorney decided it wasn't such a good idea, and issued a cease-and-desist demand Monday to the mobile app called Monkey Parking, which does exactly what we were talking about - it allows people to auction public parking spaces that they're using to other nearby drivers.

In a letter to Paolo Dobrowolny, the CEO of the Rome, Italy-based tech startup, city attorney Dennis Herrera cited a provision in San Francisco's police code that prohibits people and companies from buying, selling or leasing public on-street parking and mandates fees of up to $300 for drivers who violate the law.

Herrera's warning to Monkey Parking is the latest attempt by city government officials and state lawmakers nationwide trying to figure out how to regulate Web-based businesses that offer shared parking, transportation and housing services using mobile applications. Among the more popular ridesharing services are Uber and Lyft, and popular housing apps include Airbnb.

The Monkey Parking app allows drivers to get an often elusive parking spot and sell it for $5, $10, even $20, and then wait until the buyer arrives to take their place.

Herrera has given its creators until July 11 to shut down operations in San Francisco or possibly face a lawsuit under California's Unfair Competition Law. Herrera added that besides the violations, Monkey Parking's app encourages drivers to unsafely use their mobile devices and engage in online parking bidding wars while behind the wheel.

Dobrowolny said in an email Monday that he is talking with his legal staff and didn't immediately have a specific comment about the letter.

"As a general principle, we believe that a new company providing value to people should be regulated and not banned," Dobrowolny wrote. "This applies also to companies like Airbnb, Uber and Lyft that are continuously facing difficulties while delivering something that makes users happy. Regulation is fundamental in driving innovation, while banning is just stopping it."

The city attorney's warning to Monkey Parking comes about a month after his office started investigating the startup, which began its San Francisco operations in April.

"Technology has given rise to many laudable innovations in how we live and work -- and Monkey Parking is not one of them. It's illegal, it puts drivers on the hook for $300 fines, and it creates a predatory private market for public parking spaces that San Franciscans will not tolerate," Herrera said in a written statement. "People are free to rent out their own private driveways and garage spaces should they choose to do so. But we will not abide businesses that hold hostage on-street public parking spots for their own private profit."

Parking in San Francisco has long been known as a driver's worst nightmare. A recent San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency parking census reported that the city has 440,000 parking spots available -- but only 275,000 of those are street parking.

Herrera's letter to Monkey Parking also asked Apple Inc. to immediately remove Monkey Parking from its app store. Apple did not immediately respond to emails seeking comment.

San Francisco-based technology expert Charles Belle, who runs the Startup Policy Lab, whose objective is to connect the startup community with policymakers and government, believes the issue between Monkey Parking and the city attorney is a great example of the need to create more forums for the two entities to engage.

"Companies need to be familiar with local laws, but threatened legal actions, such as cease-and-desist letters, only divert attention away from the opportunity to rethink how the community can use technology to improve government services," said Belle, who's a former executive director the Privacy and Technology Project at the University of California, Hastings College of the Law.

Two other tech companies, Sweetch and ParkModo, which Herrera said also violates city and state laws, will receive similar cease-and-desist warnings later this week. Sweetch co-founder Hamza Ouazzani Chahdi, whose $5-per-parking-spot swapping app was also warned to cease and desist, said Monday the goal is just to reduce congestion, which creates pollution and other problems.

"We don't understand why they want to shut us down. We are trying to solve the huge parking problem, which is not only bad for drivers but for all the city," he said.

Dallas Police Screw Up - Prisoners Set Free

Blame it on the software. It seems the Dallas Police Department went live with some new software last June 1st that replaced a system that was about 30 years old. Well, it seems the software was a wee bit too complicated for most of the officers. After they struggled with it for about three days or so, some prisoners remembered that Texas law requires the department to file cases within three days or prisoners being held there have to be set free, no matter what the crime or how bad it might have been.

So, something like 20 jail inmates, including a number of people charged with violent crimes, had to be set free. "The law is real simple," Judge Rick Magnis from the 283rd Judicial District Court says. "The Constitution in America says you can't hold people without charges."

A Dallas police media relations staffer said the department had no further comment beyond what the Dallas Police Chief David Brown said in an interview this week with a local reporter. "We expected that there would be a significant learning curve," Brown said. One problem is that officers using the system didn't get trained recently enough and may have forgotten how to use the software properly, he said. Also, some officers didn't take the training that was made available, he added. "It was a voluntary thing to get familiar with it, and some didn't take advantage of that." 

Dallas PD's legacy system "was outdated, antiquated, not easily worked on, but it was familiar," Brown said. "This is a new system and very unfamiliar." While the mishaps can partly be attributed to user error, the software is also running slowly and needs to be sped up, Brown said. "We let the vendor know that."

I'm sure all that is really consoling to the victims of the criminals that were set free and are now roaming the streets of Dallas with smiles on their faces from ear to ear because of their extraordinary good fortune.

Florida Man Loses Case to Marry His Computer

We are sad to report that Chris Sevier has lost the case he filed to marry his Apple computer. It seems Mr. Servier purchased an Apple computer several months ago and found out, apparently much too late, that it didn't have the proper filters to block out pornography. Further, he says he was not provided with any warning by Apple that pornography was highly addictive. Over time, he claims, he began preferring sex with his computer over sex with real women and subsequently 'fell in love' with the machine.

OK, this is where it gets even weirder. Mr. Servier became aware of a Federal Gay Marriage Case, James Domer Brenner et al., v. Rick Scott, which challenges Florida's refusal to recognize gay marriages that are performed legally elsewhere. Mr. Servier filed a motion to intervene in the case on behalf of "other minority sexual orientation groups." He says in the filing, "sexual orientation" never existed as a classification until President Obama came along to advance his "social agenda to make America a 'gay nation.' In the 24-page document, Mr. Sevier says that if gay couples "have the right to marry their object of sexual desire, even if they lack corresponding sexual parts, then I should have the right to marry my preferred sexual object." Which is? "My porn filled Apple computer," according to Sevier's filing.

Sevier said he wanted to make the courts "put up or shut up" on the equal protection argument upon which the push for gay marriage is based. Fortunately, the federal judge manning the gay marriage case has tossed out Sevier's motion. "Chris Sevier has moved to intervene, apparently asserting he wishes to marry his computer," Judge Robert Hinkle wrote in an April 24 ruling. "Perhaps the motion is satirical. Or perhaps it is only removed from reality. Either way, the motion has no place in this lawsuit."

I guess the only option left for Mr. Sevier and his beloved is to lay low and try not to get arrested for having illicit relations with Miss Apple.

Solar City to Build One-Gigawatt Plant in N.Y.

The future-thinking guy who brought us the Tesla and SpaceX, Elon Musk, has another company you might not have heard of by the name of Solar City, in San Mateo, California. Solar City is one of the top solar panel installation companies in the U.S., and they have just acquired a company called Silevo, which makes solar panels that are said to achieve unheard of electrical output at low cost. Using Silevo technology, Solar City plans to build a manufacturing plant in upstate New York with a one gigawatt per year capacity. But this will only be the beginning, as they intend to build even more manufacturing plants in the future with several higher orders of magnitude capacity. The goal appears to be for the company to become the biggest manufacturer of solar panels in the world.

Given that there seems to be excess solar panel supplier capacity today, this may seem counter-intuitive to some who follow the solar industry. But what Solar City says is that the panels being made today have low efficiency and cost too much. The future, they say, is that industry must start making solar panels that provide higher output at lower cost in order to meet the massive volume of affordable, high efficiency panels needed in order to provide unsubsidized solar power to the world and outcompete the fossil fuel grid power simply that is destroying our planet.

According to Musk, SolarCity was founded to accelerate mass adoption of sustainable energy. The sun, that highly convenient and free fusion reactor in the sky, radiates more energy to the Earth in a few hours than the entire human population consumes from all sources in a year. This means that solar panels, paired with batteries to enable power at night, can produce several orders of magnitude more electricity than is consumed by the entirety of human civilization.

Even if the solar industry were only to generate 40 percent of the world’s electricity with photovoltaics by 2040, that would mean installing more than 400 GW of solar capacity per year for the next 25 years. Musk says, "We absolutely believe that solar power can and will become the world’s predominant source of energy within our lifetimes, but there are obviously a lot of panels that have to be manufactured and installed in order for that to happen. The plans we are announcing today, while substantial compared to current industry, are small in that context."

Chinese-Built Cars Coming to the U.S.

Volvo cars have been around since 1927 and they have always been regarded as a quality-made product of Sweden. The main company is still there, but they sold the car division to Ford back in 1999. Ford had some financial difficulties in the mid-late 2000's (along with everybody else) and in 2010 they sold Volvo to Geely, one of China's largest car manufacturers. Now they're making Chinese-built Volvos, and in 2015 they plan to export a brand new Chinese-made sedan, the S60L, to the U.S.

To date, there haven't been Chinese-built cars in the U.S. If Volvo manages to convince buyers that its cars built in China are just as good as those currently built in Europe, it will save on production costs and help buffer against exchange rate fluctuations. The reason is that the dollar and the Chinese yuan have, historically, had a more stable relationship than the euro and the dollar.

Volvo has two plants in China and they should be able to achieve full capacity of about 250,000 vehicles a year by about 2018. However, the ultimate question is whether consumers in the U.S. will be able to tell the difference between Chinese-built cars and European-built cars. It seems we shall soon see if they can, thanks to Volvo.

6 Stupid Ways Facebook Ruins Your Life

People who spend hours every day on Facebook, the social networking site, are more likely to get divorced than those who don't use it, finds a new study in Computers in Human Behavior. 

1. It could be that people in crappy relationships are just more likely to spend time avoiding their spouses by posting statuses and liking photos, says study coauthor Sebastián Valenzuela, Ph.D., of the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile. On the other hand, Facebook exposes you to old flings and new mates, makes sneaking around on your wife easier to hide, and also leads to addictive behaviors—all of which won't do your marriage any favors, Valenzuela adds. Like the old “guns don’t kill people . . . people kill people” line, you can't blame all your problems on Mark Zuckerberg. 

2. But a broken marriage isn't the only bad thing researchers have linked to Facebook use. It saps your motivation to give back. “Liking” or showing support for charity organizations on Facebook lowers the odds that you'll donate your time or money to those causes, finds research from the University of British Columbia. Your public thumbs-up satisfies your desire to look charitable in front of others and makes you feel good about yourself, which wipes out your motivation to volunteer time or cash, the researchers say.  

3. And it crushes your mood. The more time you spend on Facebook, the more your attitude sours, shows a study from Austria. You probably realize that staring at profiles and pictures isn't a very productive use of your time. And the recognition that you've wasted a big chunk of your day on something meaningless clouds your mood, the researchers explain. 

4. Plus, it makes you dumb. After looking at their own Facebook pages for 5 minutes, people took 15 percent longer to answer simple math questions. That's because your profile inflates your ego, which undercuts your brain’s motivation to perform, say the researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

5. And, it renders your life unsatisfying. The more you surf, the less satisfied you feel about life in general, indicates a study from the University of Michigan. It’s inevitable that some of your friends will be posting about the fun, interesting stuff they're doing. And contrasting your own boring life to theirs—something Facebook basically forces you to do—could explain these negative consequences, the authors say.  

6. And finally, it leaves you lonely. Scanning your friends’ profiles increases feelings of social exclusion and “invisibility,” finds research from Australia. Because you’re observing your buddies but not interacting with them, you feel cut off or left out, the study suggests. (The good news: If you actively post things—pics, updates—and your pals respond to your posts, these bad feelings go away, the study shows.)

All of this was compiled by Mark Heid from MensHealth Magazine, so please don't blame me. Use Twitter instead. Thanks!

$700,000 Home on Cliff Destroyed

Wanna build your dream home on a cliff overlooking a really nice lake? You might want to think twice, especially if it's a cliff overlooking Lake Whitney in Texas, about 55 miles south of Fort Worth.

Robert and Denise Webb bought the 4,000-square-foot home back in 2012 when it was only 5 years old, and they planned to leave it to their grandchildren. However, a few weeks ago they started noticing large cracks in the walls. An inspection by local officials revealed chunks of both the cliff and the home were falling into Lake Whitney. The house was condemned and the Webbs removed their personal items and relocated.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was called in and they recommended three options for removing the home from the site before it fell into the lake. The first option was to wrap the home with a large net and then try to pull it away from the edge of the 75-foot cliff, so that the debris could be safely removed from the site. That option was determined not to be feasible, leading engineers to consider the second option — burning the home to the ground. Officials did consider a third option: Letting Mother Nature eventually claim the home through landslides. That would have involved the expense of removing debris from the lake which made it the most expensive option.

So, the other day at about 10 a.m. workers could be seen bringing three bales of hay into the garage along with a gallon of gasoline. They then began breaking out windows and partially knocking holes in some walls to help the fire spread. The hay was then saturated with the gas and scattered around the inside of the garage before being lit at about 11:45 a.m. After only a few minutes, flames had overtaken the garage and smoke was visibly spewing from the eaves. An hour after the fire was started, most of the home had been consumed by the fire. Spectators in dozens of boats witnessed the demolition from a safe distance.

"You know, that's my life there that we're watching fall off," Robert Webb said the day before the demolition. Geologists and inspectors had told them before they purchased the land that the property was perfectly stable, "and so we bought it in good faith," Webb said. "It's really tough, that house was special and I don't even know why it was so special but it was special to me," Denise Webb said.

"You hear about landslides happening in California," said Kari Poole, who lives in nearby Whitney. "But not in Texas. Not on Lake Whitney. Not where you live."