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Source: http://twitter.com/joinRED/statuses/238702197376946178
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Saturday, August 25, 2012
Friday, August 24, 2012
T-Mobile announces the no-contract Concord with Android 2.3 for $99
Want some Android on T-Mobile without the hassle of a two-year contract, a current operating system or 4G data? Then the T-Mobile Concord's your new choice. It'll fun you $99.99, sports Android 2.3 Gingerbread on a 3.5-inch display and has a 2-megapixel camera. It'll be available Aug. 26.
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Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/androidcentral/~3/ou2VeSFxERE/story01.htm
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USF Fall camp: DE/ST Coach Vernon Hargreaves
Copyright ? Scout.com. All rights reserved. This website is an unofficial independent source of news and information, and is not affiliated with any school, team, or league.
Copyright ? USFNation.com and Scout.com. All rights reserved. This website is an unofficial independent source of news and information, and is not affiliated with any school, team, or league.
Source: http://southflorida.scout.com/2/1214137.html
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Robert Gordon University at Bon Accord and St Nicholas Shopping Centres
| Event Date: | Saturday, 25 August, 2012 | Time: | 9:00 AM ? 5:00 PM |
|---|---|---|---|
| Location: | Bon Accord and St Nicholas Shopping Centres, Aberdeen | ||
We?re hitting the shopping centres of Aberdeen to give you the opportunity to find out more about some of the opportunities which are available to you at Robert Gordon University.
Come and see us at the?Bon Accord and St Nicholas Shopping Centres?on 25 August.
Go to Home Page
Source: http://www.rgu.ac.uk/index.cfm?objectid=51DC8810-D609-CB06-499D13701CE3E923
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Thursday, August 23, 2012
Afghanistan Blames Spies for Insider Attacks on Western Troops
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Source: www.nytimes.com --- Wednesday, August 22, 2012
Afghan officials claimed that foreign intelligence services from neighboring countries were behind the wave of deadly insider killings of Western Troops by Afghan security forces, a statement directly at odds with NATO?s assessment of the crisis. ...
Cultural signaling and energy | Peak Oil News and Message Boards
An image that struck me recently and has stayed with me since was a license plate. Specifically,?a jet-black Kentucky license plate, emblazoned ?Friends of Coal.?
The first thing that ran through my mind was, ?Who in their right mind proudly trumpets supporting that?? It struck me as about the same contrarian attitude as waving around a Confederate flag (or its more common contemporary, sporting a Confederate flag bumper sticker; which again, some people actually do that.) These are things that, to an uninitiated Midwestern exile like myself, should seem?embarrassing?to display, to say the least.Yet, oddly enough, much like the confederate flag?paraphernalia?one encounters with depressing frequency south of the Mason-Dixon line, Kentucky?s ?Friends of Coal? license plate is the state?s most popular custom license plate design ? more popular than veteran?s plates and those supporting the University of Kentucky. As it turns out, several other states in the area have their own?variations, including Virginia and West Virginia.
Obviously, coal is a major economic player in Appalachia, so strong support is to be expected. But the image in my mind started making me think about a broader issue in energy politics, and perhaps why it seems why so often it seems like there are two sides talking past one another (where, incidentally, nuclear tends to be neglected in the crossfire). Specifically, a part of me wonders if what one sees in trends of public support for various energy sources has to do with the economic phenomenon of ?signaling? behavior.
I?ve of course speculated about how cultural perceptions might play a role in public opinion over energy sources numerous times before, but what struck me here was whether support for energy sources ? and specifically, some of the most stark divides that manifest ? are perhaps deeper expressions of the cultural and aspirational values of the proponents, trumping factors including economics and environmental considerations (as well as basic issues of numeracy).
To back up a bit ? in economics parlance, ?signaling? is usually used as a way which people convey information which can?t always be directly inferred or observed. Signaling can exist both in the banal, uncontroversial sense ? wearing a suit and tie signals conformity, particular conformity to societal expectations of professional behavior ? to somewhat more contested areas (such as whether higher education acts as a signal to employers as to characteristics including intelligence,?diligence, or again, conformity).
Thus, my hypothesis ? I am left to wonder if strong, highly polarized opinions on energy sources ? particularly on divides such as coal (and to a lesser degree, natural gas) as well as wind and solar don?t perhaps serve as signaling ?stand-ins? for statements of individual values and cultural affinity.
In particular, the coal industry has capitalized on this in a particularly effective way, with their ?America?s power? re-branding, and in particular attempting to link coal exclusively to the idea of low-cost, reliable energy generation (again, despite the fact that the levelized costs of nuclear, with its capital costs folded in, are not wildly out of line with coal, particularly if carbon capture and sequestration is a mandated component.) Coal is, in effect, a signal of working-class values, and in particular an expression of solidarity with the working-class communities typically associated with coal-mining.
In a less regionally confined sense, one has to wonder whether some of the pushback from the right over President Obama?s ?War on Fossil Fuels? also has more to do with outward expressions of cultural affiliation than it does practical concerns over energy. (Nevermind that favoring one fossil source over another hardly consistutes a ?war? on fossil fuels).?Consider if you will how often right-wing pundits complain about how curtailing fossil fuel use for electricity would spike energy prices ? again, as if nuclear energy weren?t supplying a fifth of our electricity at the lowest marginal cost of baseload production next to hydro.
I can?t help but feel like the effect is intentional ? although perhaps not for the reasons folks like Rod Adams might assert (i.e., no, this is not a fossil-fueled conspiracy). Instead, look to the numbers ? while support for nuclear energy is strong among self-identified Republicans, it trails far behind support for exploration of new fossil sources. Ultimately, one has to wonder if such public rending of garments pertains more to a cultural push-back response ? rallying around fossil sources because of perceptions of?the other?- and less about actual, considered evaluation of economic and environmental trade-offs of different energy sources.
Contrast this with renewables ? support for renewables is much like recycling ? a token expression of environmental concern which can be done for minimal required effort. It is, in essence, expressing support for the environment without actually requiring any kind of substantial commitment from the individual. Considerations such as reliability of supply, economics, or even sheer scale are immaterial ? support for renewables is, in essence, ?green cred.? Among the more radicalized, the inherent limitations of renewables are even considered a feature, not a bug?-?the limited capacity and availability of renewables are an exhortation to consume less, and ultimately to de-industrialize. In either case, support for renewables is less about the practical reality of the enormous challenge in powering an industrial society at the whims of nature and more about the value expression (or, as it were, aspiration) that it entails.
This process playing out prominently on the campaign trail right now. In Iowa, President Obama blasted Mitt Romney for his support of allowing a wind power production tax credit to expire. Meanwhile, Mitt Romney and his supporters have been slugging back, contending that Obama has been waging a ?war on coal.??(Note as well the targeted blue-collar audience.)
One can easily see where this one is going. Orphaned from any such discussions is nuclear; something at least now (mercifully) is given tepid support by both sides, if only because excluding nuclear from energy discussions on the grounds of both environmental and economics grounds is inherently a politically self-marginalizing position, even if it doesn?t seem to command strong feelings among most.
So what does?support for nuclear energy signal, if you will (and likewise, its opposition)? I would hypothesize that the dividing line for nuclear turns on issues of technological optimism and energy abundance. A common thread I have observed among many nuclear professionals and advocates is a belief that the technology can consistently be made cheaper, more abundant, and ever safer. In particular among these people ? myself included ? is a belief in the imperative of energy abundance (this in fact was part of the reason I became a nuclear engineer). By contrast, nuclear opponents are frequently (although not always) in the opposite role ? sometimes technological pessimists and with a shocking frequency advocates of energy austerity ? believing that the answer always is to consume less?(despite the unmistakable positive correlations between prosperity and energy consumption, namely due to what energy enables?us to do in modern society).
I remark that nuclear opponents are not always?technological?pessimists, namely because one occasionally encounters the odd nuclear opponent with delusional beliefs about the capability of renewables ? although almost universally they fall back to the position of energy austerity when the limitations of renewable sources are brought up.
What do you think? Is energy advocacy a marker for more deeply-held cultural values? And if so, what does?a strong preference for nuclear indicate?
Aside:?On a personal note, I hope to be back to more regular blogging soon; this month I started out as a new faculty in the Nuclear Engineering department at the University of Tennessee, and suffice to say, the life of a new faculty can at times be? overwhelming.
Source: http://peakoil.com/generalideas/cultural-signaling-and-energy/
Wednesday, August 22, 2012
Syrian army batters parts of Damascus, 47 killed
AMMAN/ALEPPO, Syria (Reuters) - The Syrian army shelled southern Damascus on Wednesday and helicopters fired rockets and machineguns during an assault meant to shore up President Bashar al-Assad's grip on the capital 17 months into an uprising, opposition activists said.
The army has this week used tanks and helicopter gunships in an offensive around Damascus that coincided with the departure of U.N. military observers, their mission to stop the bloodshed and nudge Syria towards a peaceful transition a failure.
The United Nations estimates that more than 18,000 people have been killed in what has become a civil war after the state's violent response to peaceful street protests triggered an armed rebellion in the pivotal Arab country.
Anti-Assad activists said at least 47 people had been killed in Damascus in what they called the heaviest bombardment this month. "The whole of Damascus is shaking with the sound of shelling," said a woman in Kfar Souseh, one of several districts hit in the military offensive to root out rebel fighters.
The United Nations said some of the weapons being used by government forces appeared to have been supplied by Iran, in violation of a U.N. resolution that banned such exports.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will raise the Syria crisis with Iran at a summit of non-aligned developing nations in Tehran next week, a U.N. spokesman said.
As the army continued to shell southern Damascus, activists said at least 22 people had been killed in Kfar Souseh and 25 in the nearby district of Nahr Eisha.
One of the dead was named as Mohammad Saeed al Odeh, a journalist employed at a state-run newspaper who was sympathetic to the anti-Assad revolt. Activists said he had been executed in Nahr Eisha.
"There are 22 tanks in Kfar Souseh now and behind each one there are at least 30 soldiers. They are raiding houses and executing men," an opposition activist in Kfar Souseh, who gave his name only as Bassam, told Reuters by Skype.
More than 250 people, including 171 civilians, were killed across Syria on Tuesday, mostly around Damascus, Aleppo and the southern city of Deraa, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based opposition monitoring group.
Activists in the southwestern Damascus suburb of Mouadamiya said Assad's forces had killed 86 people there since Monday, half of them by execution. It was not possible to verify that report.
There was no immediate government account of the latest fighting. But state television broadcast footage of weapons it said had been seized from rebels in Mouadamiya, one of the first districts to join the uprising.
The conflict, which pits a mainly Sunni Muslim opposition against a ruling system dominated by Assad's Alawite minority, threatens to destabilize neighbors including Lebanon, where Sunni-Alawite violence flared for a third day.
The death toll from the fighting in the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli rose to at least 10 with more than 100 wounded, medical sources said, in what residents said were some of the fiercest clashes there since Lebanon's 1975-90 civil war.
The Syria conflict has revived old tensions in Tripoli between pro-Assad Alawites in the hilltop district of Jebel Mohsen and their Sunni neighbors in Bab al-Tabbaneh below.
ALEPPO BATTLES
In Syria, Assad's forces have lost swathes of territory in recent months, but have fought back hard in Damascus and in Aleppo, the country's biggest city and commercial hub until it became a theatre for urban warfare.
Reuters journalists in Aleppo on Wednesday heard gunfire and shells exploding every minute.
Rebels trying to advance in Saif al-Dawla, a front-line Aleppo district, encountered mortar and rocket-propelled grenade fire. At one point, their escape route was cut off by gunfire as tank shells exploded nearby. Much of the area was destroyed.
State television said government forces were pursuing "the remnants of armed terrorist gangs."
Donatella Rovera, a senior crisis response adviser for Amnesty International, who recently returned from a 10-day visit to Aleppo, said the rights group investigated some 30 attacks in which scores of civilians not involved in hostilities, many of them children, were killed or injured in their homes, while queuing for bread and even in places where those displaced by the conflict were sheltering as a result of indiscriminate attacks against residential neighborhoods.
"The use of imprecise weapons, such as unguided bombs, artillery shells and mortars by government forces has dramatically increased the danger for civilians", Rovera said.
While the situation at the front line remained difficult, just 400 meters (400 yards) behind it, women and children were walking down the streets casually - some carrying groceries - and just 1 km back streets were bustling with normal life.
Children carried groceries from shops doing brisk business and couples held hands as smoke from the fighting rose into the sky behind them.
Away from the main cities, government forces fought rebels for control of a military base and airfield near the eastern town of Albu Kamal on the Iraqi border, according to a local Iraqi official and a Syrian rebel commander.
The rebel commander, known as Abu Khalid, said his forces now controlled Albu Kamal, straddling a supply route from Iraq where many Sunni tribes sympathize with their Syrian kin.
But rebels were on the back foot near the border with Turkey after Syrian soldiers backed by helicopters attacked a village to try to cut off a supply line, opposition sources said.
At least three people were killed and 10 wounded when army helicopters bombarded Qastoun, a village in Hama province, 24 kms (15 miles) east of the Turkish border, and rebels fought loyalist troops, the Hama Revolutionary Council said.
As Syria slips deeper into chaos, the United States and Israel have voiced concern that Assad might lose control of his chemical weapons arsenal or even be tempted to use it.
Russia, a Syrian ally since Soviet times, believes Syria has no intention of using its chemical weapons and is able to safeguard them, the Russian newspaper Kommersant reported on Wednesday, citing an unidentified Foreign Ministry official.
U.S. President Barack Obama threatened Assad on Monday with "enormous consequences" if he employed chemical weapons or even if he moved them in a menacing way, drawing a warning from Russia against any unilateral action by the West.
In telephone conversations with Obama and French President Francois Hollande, British Prime Minister David Cameron discussed "how to build on the support already given to the opposition to end the appalling violence in Syria," Cameron's office said.
The White House said Obama conveyed his concerns on the call about the "increasingly dire humanitarian situation in Syria," and the need for contributions to humanitarian appeals in the region.
Lakhdar Brahimi, the incoming U.N. mediator on Syria, met representatives of the Free Syrian Army in Paris on Wednesday. The group said it was skeptical he would succeed where his predecessor - Kofi Annan - had failed.
"Foreign intervention that is not through a Security Council resolution is something that very seldom works," Brahimi told Finnish public broadcaster YLE.
"My instinct is to say please, let's see if we can solve this problem without external military intervention."
(Additional reporting by Steve Gutterman in Moscow, Nazih Siddiq in Tripoli, Terhi Kinnunen in Helsinki, John Irish in Paris, Louis Charbonneau and Michelle Nichols in New York, Margaret Chadbourn in Washington, and Mariam Karouny and Tom Perry in Beirut; Writing by Tom Perry; Editing by Andrew Osborn, Robin Pomeroy and Peter Cooney)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/syrian-army-batters-parts-damascus-47-killed-002724800.html
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