Eideard

See any dissent on behalf of the Bill of Rights in this photo?
Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission

Top lawmakers in the House and Senate reached a deal to extend the Patriot Act for four years, a week before key provisions were set to expire…

Extending the Bush-era surveillance law has not been a slam dunk for House GOP leaders this year. In fact, Republicans were unable to muster enough votes to fast-track the bill through the House earlier this year because of objections from lawmakers ranging from libertarian-minded conservatives to liberal Democrats. When a 90-day extension passed earlier this year, Republicans needed Democrats to carry it across the finish line…

Another plus for both parties: the four-year compromise places the vote in 2015 — which is not an election year.

Civil liberties groups reacted with anger to the news of a four-year extension for the controversial law without committee review.

“That is how the Patriot Act first came into being 10 years ago—without meaningful debate,” said the Bill of Rights Defense Committee in a statement issued on Thursday night.

“Today, despite the prior approval of the Senate Judiciary Committee of a bill introduced by Senator Patrick Leahy to impose some (albeit inadequate) reforms, the congressional leadership is dictating the result of a long overdue policy debate that has never happened.”

I would expect nothing less. Like foreign policy since World War 2, there is no debate, little dissent from the party line – from either wing of the ruling political hacks.

The smallish progressive Democrat caucus + the very few libertarian Republicans oppose this crap. Blue Dog Democrats, Republicans and the Kool Aid Klowns are as united against freedom as ever. Congress hasn’t been so well-defined by cowardice since the witch-hunt days of Joe McCarthy.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is a big, serious government agency with a big, serious job: protecting public health from threats ranging from hurricanes to bird flu.

So when the good doctors of Atlanta warned people this week about how to prepare for a zombie apocalypse, the world took notice.

“That’s right, I said z-o-m-b-i-e a-p-o-c-a-l-y-p-s-e,” Dr. Ali S. Khan wrote on the CDC website this week, adding casually that “Resident Evil” is his “personal favorite” zombie movie.

As it happens, Khan, one of the nation’s top-ranking public health professionals (he’s a rear admiral and an assistant surgeon general), doesn’t actually believe the living dead are about to claw their way out of graves and start chewing on your brain.

But, he and his communications team recently noticed, what they’d want you to do if the world really did suddenly go “Night of the Living Dead” is pretty much the same thing they’d want you to do in case of a hurricane or a major pandemic…

The CDC got a question about zombies during an online chat about radiation leaks related to the meltdown at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in March, and they saw traffic spike.

Khan and his communications team knew they’d found a way to get the public interested in disaster preparedness, he said.

So they posted the advice on Monday. Their website crashed on Wednesday.

The advice is mostly stuff you should already know: Make an emergency plan. Stockpile food, water and medicine. Have a utility knife, duct tape and battery-powered radio handy, along with some changes of clothes and bedding…Have basic first aid supplies handy for a hurricane or a pandemic — although, Khan says, “you’re a goner if a zombie bites you.

Animal welfare officers in Wales were on Thursday trying to trace a man seen trying to board a train with a pony.

CCTV images showed the pair unsuccessfully attempting to buy a ticket at a station in Wrexham. The man then led the horse onto the platform as a train pulled in, but they were turned away by the conductor.

Later in the day the man also took the horse to a hospital in the town, media reports say.

Wrexham Council’s animal welfare staff are now trying to speak to the man to confirm the horse is not in danger, spokeswoman Gill Stevens told CNN…

Arriva Trains Wales said dogs and other small pets were allowed to travel on its trains, but larger animals such as horses were banned for “common sense” reasons.

A spokesman said: “Apart from dogs all other animals have to be in a basket or a cage. Obviously it’s common sense that we don’t allow horses or ponies on the train. He tried to buy a ticket and was refused and then left the station.”

Are we certain the horse wasn’t trying to put the man on the train?

China has slashed AIDS mortality by nearly two-thirds since it began distributing free antiretroviral drugs in 2002, Chinese government scientists are reporting.

About 63 percent of all those needing AIDS drugs are getting them, up from virtually zero in 2002. That has caused a 64 percent drop in mortality in “person-years,” as China measures it, an estimate of how long someone would have lived without the disease. AIDS mortality dropped to 14.2 per 100 person-years in 2009, from 39.3 in 2002.

The study, led by China’s national center for control and prevention of AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases, was published online by Lancet Infectious Diseases.

China’s success in such a short time “is a testimony to the young midlevel scientists who convinced the leadership that this was the right thing to do,” said Dr. Myron Cohen, an AIDS specialist from the University of North Carolina who has lived in China and helped it battle the epidemic.

A different report, released Wednesday by the International Labor Organization of the United Nations, criticized China’s health-care system, saying that people infected with H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS, were frequently turned away by hospitals.

The report, based on interviews with patients, health care workers and hospital managers, says patients are sent by general hospitals to infectious-disease hospitals. But they often refuse to perform surgery, for example, for fear that paying patients will avoid the hospital if word spreads that it operates on AIDS patients. China’s national center for AIDS control, a co-author of the report, agreed that hospital discrimination was a problem…

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Amazon.com…now sells more eBooks than books printed on paper.

“Customers are now choosing Kindle books more often than print books,” said Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s founder and chief executive, in a statement. “We had high hopes that this would happen eventually, but we never imagined it would happen this quickly — we’ve been selling print books for 15 years and Kindle books for less than four years…”

“This includes sales of hardcover and paperback books by Amazon where there is no Kindle edition,” the company said. “Free Kindle books are excluded and if included would make the number even higher.”

The success of eBooks isn’t limited to just Amazon and its Kindle. The entire industry is pushing more digital copies now, with eBook sales tripling over the last year.

Among the recent contributors to eBook sales for the Seattle-based retail giant is the newest, cheapest version of its Kindle — Kindle with Special Offers — which sells for $114 and has risen to be the company’s best selling eReader, Bezos said.

Unlike other Kindles, Kindle with Special Offers runs advertisements and digital coupons on the eReader’s display in a strip across the bottom of the home screen or as a screen saver when the device isn’t in use.

A few sources have published a breakout by category – but, most of those require a subscription. I did see a note that gave me a chuckle: the growth of e-readers surpasses print in every category Amazon sells – except books on religion. Got to get past that Gutenberg thing, folks.

NEWS: ANALYSIS & COMMENTARY
By Cliff Edwards

For years, Apple Computer CEO Steven P. Jobs has tried working with retailers to make shopping for Apple’s stylish products as appealing as using them–everything from setting up kiosks to special sections adorned with Apple’s Think Different posters. Still, the computer maker’s share has fallen, and Jobs figures he knows why. “Buying a car is no longer the worst purchasing experience. Buying a computer is now No. 1,” he griped at the MacWorld trade show in January.

Now, he’s taking matters into his own hands. On May 19, Apple will open a swanky new retail store–the first of as many 110 nationwide–at Tyson’s Corner Galleria mall outside Washington. While Apple execs won’t comment on their plans, the idea seems clear: Well-trained Apple salespeople in posh Apple stores can convince would-be buyers of the Mac’s unique advantages, including its well-regarded iMovie software for making home videos and its iTunes program for burning custom CDs…

The way Jobs sees it, the stores look to be a sure thing. But even if they attain a measure of success, few outsiders think new stores, no matter how well-conceived, will get Apple back on the hot-growth path. Jobs’s focus on selling just a few consumer Macs has helped boost profits, but it is keeping Apple from exploring potential new markets. And his perfectionist attention to aesthetics has resulted in beautiful but pricey products with limited appeal outside the faithful: Apple’s market share is a measly 2.8%. “Apple’s problem is it still believes the way to grow is serving caviar in a world that seems pretty content with cheese and crackers,” gripes former Chief Financial Officer Joseph Graziano.

Rather than unveil a Velveeta Mac, Jobs thinks he can do a better job than experienced retailers at moving the beluga. Problem is, the numbers don’t add up…Apple would have to sell $12 million a year per store to pay for the space. Gateway does about $8 million annually at each of its Country Stores. Then there’s the cost of construction, hiring experienced staff. “I give them two years before they’re turning out the lights on a very painful and expensive mistake,” says Goldstein…

Maybe it’s time Steve Jobs stopped thinking quite so differently.

An example why – before making a business decision, equity purchase, or maybe just buying a new TV set – you should consider the opinions of several analysts. Not just one.

Thanks, Charles Jade

A German insurance firm has admitted rewarding its 100 best salesmen with a prostitute-filled “sex party” in Budapest’s most famous thermal baths.

Hamburg-Mannheimer International (HMI), now part of the huge Munich Re insurance conglomerate, rented out the historic Gellert Baths in the Hungarian capital and turned it into an “open-air brothel”, where it let staff run riot.

At least 20 prostitutes were hired by HMI top brass for the so-called “incentive trip”. According to those present, the women were colour-coded to indicate which men were allowed to have sex with them. Those wearing white ribbons were reserved for “the very best salespeople and executives”, said one HMI employee.

After an investigation printed in the German newspaper Handelsblatt, Munich Re has admitted that the party – described in one German magazine as “Bunga-Bunga in Budapest” – did occur…

“The women wore red and yellow ribbons,” one guest told Handelsblatt. “Some were there just as hostesses; the others made clear with the colour of their ribbon that they weren’t just there to chat.”

Then there were women wearing white ribbons. They, allegedly, were reserved for the “best of the best” in the company.

Another guest said that beds had been set up around the baths where the salesmen could “do what they wanted”. The women, he claimed, were then given an ink stamp on their forearms to show how popular they had been: some of the women ended up with more than a dozen stamps, it is alleged.

Maybe European insurance salesmen are mutants from the American breed. Most of the domestic species I ever met haven’t progressed beyond the Benjamin Franklin close.

Was this somehow influenced by the internationalization of traditional German industries? Or has this level of sleaze been around all along and existed in disguise like Family Values are used in American politics?

 
With whisper-quiet electric cars set to proliferate, the motor industry is under pressure to give them an artificial noise for safety purposes, but should they sound like traditional petrol vehicles?

It is an unsettling experience watching a car drive around, hearing little more than the whisper of the wind it generates as it glides down the road.

There would have been little time to get out of its way had it gone unseen.

Such a moment is the essence of the debate over how electric and hydrogen fuel cars should sound in the future.

The answer could determine how different cities could sound in 10 or 20 years. The rise of the electric car presents a rare opportunity to tackle the persistent roar of traffic that many city dwellers are used to.

Electric and hydrogen fuel vehicles are inherently quiet. The sound of the tyres on the road is noisier than the engine and this could prove lethal at slow speeds for pedestrians and cyclists. Which is a specious argument. Since there already any number of well-made cars quieter than tyre noise at low speeds.

Motor manufacturers acknowledge there is a problem. Some, like Nissan, are already fitting speakers under the bonnets of these vehicles to emit sounds for the safety of other road users…

So why not just stick with the current sound of a conventional combustion engine?

“That would be losing a huge opportunity,” says Prof Paul Jennings from Warwick University who leads a project looking into alternative vehicle noises…

He says: “The challenge is to create sounds that are as safe as possible but also ones that are much more pleasing for the urban environment…”

“It’s important that the sound is associated with transport and a lot of how people interpret sound is based on their experiences,” says Prof Jennings. “For electric vehicles and futuristic vehicles a lot of those experiences are from the media, from games and from science fiction films.”

We don’t get to have that discussion in the U.S.. Congress already passed a law requiring electric cars and hybrids to make a certain amount of noise. Some offer a range of sounds – including a Star Trek sound.

Nanny State fools in both parties supported that one. Idiots.

A British businessman is facing jail for insulting the Prophet Mohammed after getting into an argument in a shop in Dubai.

The man, named in court papers as Andrew Graham, 40, is said to have told Hassan Habib, a Pakistani computer salesman, that the Prophet was a “terrorist”. Insulting Islam is a serious offence in the United Arab Emirates, as in other Gulf countries, and can attract a fine and a sentence of up to a year in prison.

Mr Graham pleaded not guilty at a hearing in Dubai Courts on Tuesday, admitting he had an argument with Mr Habib but denying he had attacked the Prophet or muslims…

“It was not the first time – he has had arguments in other outlet stores, according to my friends. But they are Indians and with me he increased the argument.”

The court was told Mr Graham had got into an argument with Mr Habib about the Taliban. When Mr Habib insisted that muslims were peace-loving, Mr Graham allegedly said: “All Muslims are mad and your Prophet Mohammad was a bad man. Your Prophet Mohammad was a terrorist.” Mr Graham…had to be told to change after arriving at court wearing shorts…

When you are a stranger in a strange land, discretion can be the better part of valor. Instead of trying to win every argument – especially with invective barely acceptable in your homeland – consider shutting up. And wearing long pants.

You can bet Pepsi had insurance
Daylife/Getty Images used by permission

Heavy rains, deep snowfalls, monster floods and killing droughts are signs of a “new normal” of extreme U.S. weather events fueled by climate change, scientists and government planners said on Wednesday.

“It’s a new normal and I really do think that global weirding is the best way to describe what we’re seeing,” climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe of Texas Tech University told reporters.

“We are used to certain conditions and there’s a lot going on these days that is not what we’re used to, that is outside our current frame of reference,” Hayhoe said on a conference call with other experts, organized by the non-profit Union of Concerned Scientists.

An upsurge in heavy rainstorms in the United States has coincided with prolonged drought, sometimes in the same location, she said, noting that west Texas has seen a record-length dry period over the last five years, even as there have been two 100-year rain events.

Hayhoe, other scientists, civic planners and a manager at the giant Swiss Re reinsurance firm all cited human-caused climate change as an factor pushing this shift toward more extreme weather…

“What we’re seeing is the new normal is constantly evolving,” said Nikhil da Victoria Lobo of Swiss Re’s Global Partnerships team. “Globally what we’re seeing is more volatility … there’s certainly a lot more integrated risk exposure…”

Aaron Durnbaugh, deputy commissioner for natural resources and water quality for Chicago, said adapting to climate change is a daunting task…

The city of Chicago’s cost of dealing with extreme weather events through the end of this century has been conservatively estimated in a range from $690 million to $2.5 billion, Durnbaugh said, with the cost to homeowners and local businesses expected to be far higher.

Globally, da Victoria Lobo said the annual average economic losses from natural disasters have escalated from $25 billion in the 1980s to $130 billion in the first decade of the 21st century.

Having your nation answer to the imperatives of investment bankers and corporate greed isn’t likely to encourage planning beyond 2 fiscal quarters. Don’t be so surprised at the expansion rate of disasters as normal.

Perish the thought that a bit of science and understanding creeps into the consciousness of someone who thinks Fox offers news and network television anything more than cheap circuses.