Eideard

Too bad we don’t warehouse dwi addicted as well as we do ideologues

It is the other Guantánamo, an archipelago of federal prisons that stretches across the country, hidden away on back roads. Today, it houses far more men convicted in terrorism cases than the shrunken population of the prison in Cuba that has generated so much debate.

An aggressive prosecution strategy, aimed at prevention as much as punishment, has sent away scores of people. They serve long sentences, often in restrictive, Muslim-majority units, under intensive monitoring by prison officers. Their world is spare…

In recent weeks, Congress has reignited an old debate, with some arguing that only military justice is appropriate for terrorist suspects. But military tribunals have proved excruciatingly slow and imprisonment at Guantánamo hugely costly — $800,000 per inmate a year, compared with $25,000 in federal prison.

The criminal justice system, meanwhile, has absorbed the surge of terrorism cases since 2001 without calamity, and without the international criticism that Guantánamo has attracted for holding prisoners without trial. A decade after the Sept. 11 attacks, an examination of how the prisons have handled the challenge of extremist violence reveals some striking facts:

Big numbers. Today, 171 prisoners remain at Guantánamo. As of Oct. 1, the federal Bureau of Prisons reported that it was holding 362 people convicted in terrorism-related cases, 269 with what the bureau calls a connection to international terrorism — up from just 50 in 2000. An additional 93 inmates have a connection to domestic terrorism.

Lengthy sentences. Terrorists who plotted to massacre Americans are likely to die in prison. Faisal Shahzad, who tried to set off a car bomb in Times Square in 2010, is serving a sentence of life without parole at the Supermax, as are Zacarias Moussaoui, a Qaeda operative arrested in 2001, and Mr. Reid, the shoe bomber, among others. But many inmates whose conduct fell far short of outright terrorism are serving sentences of a decade or more, the result of a calculated prevention strategy to sideline radicals well before they could initiate deadly plots.

Special units. Since 2006, the Bureau of Prisons has moved many of those convicted in terrorism cases to two special units that severely restrict visits and phone calls. But in creating what are Muslim-dominated units, prison officials have inadvertently fostered a sense of solidarity and defiance, and set off a long-running legal dispute over limits on group prayer. Officials have warned in court filings about the danger of radicalization, but the Bureau of Prisons has nothing comparable to the deradicalization programs instituted in many countries.

Quiet releases. More than 300 prisoners have completed their sentences and been freed since 2001. Their convictions involved not outright violence but “material support” for a terrorist group; financial or document fraud; weapons violations; and a range of other crimes. About half are foreign citizens and were deported; the Americans have blended into communities around the country, refusing news media interviews and avoiding attention.

RTFA. It examines much more than the simple case for dollars and sense I pointed out in the headline – the author points out in the 3rd paragraph.

Are we supposed to feel confidence, assured that President Obama has agreed to every facet of what Bush/Cheney Republicans established as fiscal responsibility?

For the second year in a row, Tokai University can lay claim to the winner’s laurels in the 2011 Veolia World Solar Challenge, a sun-powered race challenge in Australia that winds over 1,800 miles between Darwin and Adelaide using only 5 kWh of on-board energy and the rest beamed in directly from the sun. As the race’s website says, “These are arguably the most efficient electric vehicles.”

According to the provisional results…seven teams managed to go the entire 2,998 kilometer but Tokai came out on top because their average speed – 91.54 kilometers an hour – was faster than any other finisher. The Tokai’s final time was 32 hours and 45 minutes. The fact that only seven teams finished out of a starting list of 37 shows that this is not an easy race, and this year was particularly difficult thanks to brush fires (set by arsonists) along the route.

Bravo!

We have kin who have worked their butts off for similar competitions in North America – and especially appreciate the effort not only by the designers and teams; but, everyone who works to produce the competition.

French solo sailing star Florence Arthaud fell off her boat during a toilet break but was saved from the Mediterranean waters by rescuers after she called her mother by mobile phone.

Ms Arthaud, winner in 1990 of the Route du Rhum single-handed transatlantic sailing race, was located and rescued near the island of Corsica thanks to a headlamp and the GPS system on her phone.

A small wave hit the boat and knocked her overboard while she was taking a toilet break without her usual harness, she said.

“I quite simply fell into the water while preparing to take a pee,” the 54-year-old told BFM television.

Ms Arthaud, alone on her 10-metre (33ft) yacht The Argade II when she fell overboard, managed to hold her phone, encased in a waterproof covering, above water and call her mother in Paris to raise the alarm. Her mother alerted a rescue team, which set off in search of the sailor.

She spent almost two hours in the water before being rescued. And probably won’t pee over the side of the boat for a while, I’ll bet.

Invading a truck in Massachusetts

The price of a couple’s Hertfordshire house has dropped by more than £250,000 because Japanese knotweed has invaded it, according to an independent surveyor.

With its value falling from an estimated £305,000 to £50,000, experts have told owners Matthew Jones and Sue Banks from Broxbourne that, unless action is taken, it will be impossible to sell.

They have been told 10ft of soil needs to be removed from beneath the foundations to remove the plant.

The invasive weed was discovered in the garden of their new-build house in April 2009 after they had been living there for about a month.

A couple of months later it was found growing in the dining room…

Mr Jones, 38, explained that he first discovered the climbing plant outside one evening after it had made its way from a nearby field over the garden fence.

“I was out in the garden and I noticed some stems coming through the lawn,” he said.

“They were like asparagus tips but they had a reddish tinge to them. I had never seen anything like that before so I didn’t touch it, I went to bed and in the morning it had grown a couple of inches.”

Broxbourne Borough Council sent an environmental specialist along who identified Japanese knotweed straight away and advised the couple to contact a solicitor immediately.

Just two months later it had forced its way into the house through the flooring and skirting boards.

Experts have advised that demolishing the house and removing the soil will provide a permanent eradication.

Right now, they’re stuck in the middle of negotiations with the homebuilder over warranties that supposedly are standard in the UK – but, you can guess happy the contractor is about sorting out a problem of this magnitude.

Angry Birds, the hugely popular mobile phone game, is played by 30 million people every day for a total of 300 million minutes, its creators have revealed.

The simple game, which is made by Rovio, a Finnish company, is played by around 130 million people every month.

The figures were announced by Andrew Stalbow, Rovio’s American chief at the annual Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco…

Stalbow said that company was now focusing building a “next generation digital entertainment company” and growing the game into a “big entertainment franchise”. Rovio’s new ventures are set to include an Angry Birds cookbook of egg recipes. In Angry Birds, the birds are angry because their eggs have been stolen by the pigs.

Stalbow also confirmed to The Telegraph that the Angry Birds movie is slated for release in 2014, after a series of cartoons have been released…

The company’s second largest market after the US is now China, where both the game and merchandise such as toys and jumpers are hugely popular.

Obviously, with this number of people enjoying the game instead of their job or studies – it must be the work of the AntiChrist. Or at least someone who doesn’t vote Republican/Tory/Conservative.

Electronics giant Sony Corp has suffered a fresh blow after several of its Bravia LCD televisions sets emitted smoke or parts began to melt. Sony said it will offer free inspection and repairs available to 1.6 million of the TV sets.

Sony’s television unit is already heading for its eighth straight year of losses, as it battles fierce competition from Samsung and LG of South Korea.

The 11 overheating incidents all took place in Japan, but the faulty parts may affect TV sets sold around the world, the company said in a news release.

There have been no reports of injuries or damage to anything other than the televisions, Sony said.

Sony hasn’t figured out, yet, whether to compete head-to-head in a commoditized market – or try to come up with a product sufficiently advanced to survive as an upper end niche.

The fact that Howard Stringer shut down most of their R&D as one of his earliest decisions in just another symptom of the incompetence he brought to leadership of that once-great company.

Launched in 2009, MIT’s “1K House” project challenges designers to come up with affordable, sustainable housing solutions that can improve conditions for the billions of people in the world living on less than $1 per day. The “Pinwheel House” designed by MIT graduate student Ying chee Chui is the first prototype.

The 1K House concept was initiated by Tony Ciochetti, the Thomas G. Eastman Chairman at MIT’s Center for Real Estate, after seeing a family of four emerge from a tiny mud hut while he was traveling through rural India. “There is a huge proportion of the world’s population that has pressing housing needs,” says Ciochetti. “Can you build affordable, sustainable shelter for such a large population?”

Ying chee Chui’s “Pinwheel House” is the first prototype to be constructed and is located in Mianyang, in the Sichuan Province, China. The design incorporates a modular layout with hollow brick walls, steel bars for reinforcement, wooden box beams, a central courtyard space and it’s also built to withstand a magnitude 8.0 earthquake.

“The construction is easy enough, because if you know how to build a single module, you can build the whole house,” says Chui.

Chui came out a little over the long-term goal of building a $1000 house, with the total cost coming to $5,925. Not bad considering it’s tough to buy a good second hand car for that price! A larger building than was originally designed was a factor in the cost – the whole house came to about 800 square feet, rather than 500 square feet. Chui is confident that the smaller module could easily be built for US$4000 or even cheaper if a large number of houses were built at the same time.

There are a number of individual and production processes that could lower the cost of construction significantly. Economies of scale really kick in if producing a modular design like this off-site – to be trucked in and assembled on-site. Wooden box beams can be replaced with several less expensive construction techniques, wood, composite or steel. IMHO, steel being the best choice – recycled and recyclable, easy to train installers/framers, fire rating reduces insurance requirements.

No doubt – even in China – the cost of land is probably higher than the cost of the house erected. At least in urban China.

Scumbag-in-chief Thomas says corporations have a right to political secrets

A U.S. Supreme Court ruling last year opened the floodgates to corporate political donations, much of it secret, but a process begun in another government agency may force those donations into the light of day…

The Supreme Court’s narrow decision in Citizens United vs. the Federal Election Commission…said the political speech of corporations was protected by the First Amendment. That applied even if the funds corporations were spending in political races belonged to stockholders…

Justice Kennedy said limiting corporate political contributions was an exercise in thought control…Not that Justice Kennedy has anything against thought control on behalf of corporations.

Since then, Americans were faced with the prospect of increasingly expensive elections funded by increasingly covert political donations from corporations, not from individuals, with both major parties, Democratic and Republican, scrambling for their share of unlimited money.

Riding to the rescue were 10 corporate law professors who call themselves the “Committee on Disclosure of Corporate Political Spending.” In August, the group submitted a “petition for rulemaking” to the Securities and Exchange Commission with a simple message: “We ask that the commission develop rules to require public companies to disclose to shareholders the use of corporate resources for political activities.”

In other words, if executives want to participate in high-stakes politics using corporate funds, they should have to publicly tell stockholders what they’re doing. After all, those corporate funds belong to the stockholders, not corporate management with their own political agendas…

“Disclosure of corporate political spending is necessary not only because shareholders are interested in receiving such information, but also because such information is necessary for corporate accountability and oversight mechanisms to work,” the petition argued. “The Supreme Court has often recognized, and indeed relied upon, these accountability mechanisms, particularly when corporations use shareholder resources for political purposes…

The petition was filed using Rule 192. Under the rule, if the SEC decides to act on the petition it must file notice in the Federal Register of the time and place of the rulemaking procedure.

But the SEC is under no compunction to act on the petition at all. Meanwhile, the money is flowing and the clock is ticking toward the 2012 election.

The odds are split on whether or not the SEC actually gets off their rusty-dusty and does anything about this petition for a decision.

On the other hand, the SEC is still a bit gunshy about appearing to be complete phonies under the corporate thumb – even though it’s true – because of all the bad press they’ve gotten for ignoring the buildup of corruption that dropped everything from the Madoff Ponzi fraud to the subprime massacre and the resulting Great Recession – into their responsible laps. They may do something about the petition just to cover their buns.

“I don’t know how much God has to do to get the attention of the politicians,” Bachmann said Sunday at a campaign appearance in Sarasota, Fla.

“We’ve had an earthquake; we’ve had a hurricane. He said, ‘Are you going to start listening to me here?‘”

On Monday, a Bachmann campaign spokeswoman said the Minnesota congresswoman was just joking…

Speaking at a Tea Party-sponsored event in Sarasota, Bachmann slammed President Obama’s economic agenda and promised deep cuts in government spending, the Sarasota Herald-Tribune reported.

You know, at first I considered taking the word of Bachmann’s flunky – and skipping over this story.

But, [a] I don’t think she has a sense of humor and [b] her God is one of the fire-and-brimstone myths that people as dull as she is often believe in. I don’t think she’d have the courage to joke about “him”.

A bullet train was halted in Japan the beginning of the week after a snake was found coiled on a passenger seat.

The red and black snake, measuring three feet in length, was discovered by a surprised conductor shortly before 9am on board the Kodama 642 bullet train just outside Kyoto in Shiga prefecture.

Staff immediately halted the train before a worker from a nearby animal protection centre was sent to the scene to remove the snake from the seat.

The reptile is currently being treated as lost property by police, who suspect it may be the escaped pet of a rail passenger. They are currently searching for its owner…

The animal is believed to be a Honduran milk snake, which is commonly bred in captivity and has become a popular pet choice due to its distinct colouring.

Bullet train operators normally request that passengers do not bring animals other than small birds or fish in containers on board their vehicles.

There are so many delightful differences in culture delivered on our cyber-doorstep in this article. We start by boarding a bullet train – something we’ll probably not see in the United States in the next couple of decades.

Then we see transportation staff treating the incident as lost goods from a perfectly ordinary passenger. Stateside, there could be a search of the train for poisonous snakes deliberately planted as part of a terrorist plot – eventually leading to a Congressional mandate for increased spending on searching train passengers – accompanied, of course, by a matching bill to reduce research in herpetology to keep the budget balanced.