Eideard

I have been nominated by Mary Lupin (Tailfeather) and Craig Hill (Craig Hill) for the Versatile Blogger Award. Thanks to both of you for this recognition.

Mary offered this nomination several weeks ago – and being the hermit I am I tried to ignore her good will and thoughtfulness – she is a talented and perceptive writer. I guess that doesn’t insulate me from the natural social feelings among bloggers — because, now, here’s Craig doing the same.

I relent.

The rules of the Versatile Blogger Award are:

Add the Versatile Award photo on a blog post. Thank the award-giver and link back to them in your post.

Share 7 things about myself.

I am a cranky old geek who’s been online since 1983
I am a cranky old radical/progressive/atheist
I live in a community just outside Santa Fe, New Mexico
I am of Scots and Italian descent
I learned to cook from the Italian half of the family
I learned to stand up against hypocrisy from the Scots half of the family
I believe firmly in love, music, nature, science

Pass the award along to 15 favourite bloggers. Contact the chosen bloggers to let them know about the award.

blog that should not be
Crossing Wall Street
Edge
exult49
Four Blue Hills
Misanthropic Scott
Motley News
Om Malik
photobotos.com
RealClimate
Sex, Spirit, Soul Mates and Chocolate….Ivonne’s Journey
The Stephen W Terrill [Music] Web Log
Tracie Louise Photography
Travel Photography by Dimitrii Lezine
Vikram Roy’s Blog

This list is in alphabetical order and no doubt I have missed some I enjoy and respect.

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.

The world’s largest sperm bank has started turning down redheaded donors because there is too little demand for their sperm.

Ole Schou, Cryos’s director, said that there had been a surge in donations in recent years, allowing the facility to become much more picky about its donors.

“There are too many redheads in relation to demand,” he told told Danish newspaper Ekstrabladet. “I do not think you chose a redhead, unless the partner – for example, the sterile male – has red hair, or because the lone woman has a preference for redheads. And that’s perhaps not so many, especially in the latter case.”

Mr Schou said the only reliable demand for sperm from redheaded donors was from Ireland, where he said it sold “like hot cakes”…

Cryos pays donors up to $500, and sends its semen to over 65 countries worldwide.

All I can picture in my mind is hot cakes filled with little wiggling tails.

Members of a Scarborough mosque have expressed shock and disbelief that their “nice” and “humble” religious leader has been charged with a string of sexual assaults. Mohammad Masroor, the imam at the Baitul Mukarram Islamic Society…faces 13 charges involving sexual offences and death threats relating to five alleged victims…

Det. Const. Karen Armstrong said Masroor used his position of leadership “to his advantage.” She said Masroor, who teaches in the mosque as well as in private homes, knew the alleged victims…

“The victims are both male and female,” Armstrong said. “We believe there are other victims as (the accused) has lived and worked worldwide.”

Masroor taught in Florida, Michigan and Bangladesh before coming to Canada, according to police. He has also lived and taught in Germany, France, Hungary, Singapore and Sri Lanka but police said the investigation is not limited to those areas…

Members of the mosque were especially upset that the allegations come during the holy month of Ramadan…

Yes, I think he’s actually a Romulan pretending to be a Vulcan.

Thanks, James

Research led by the Warwick Crop Centre…at the University of Warwick has developed a unique collection of information about the disease resistance of 96 of the world’s onion varieties. It will be a crucial resource for commercial growers and seed producers trying to combat one of the most difficult diseases affecting onion crops. This work may also have key-benefits of reduced fertiliser consumption and enhanced drought tolerance.

The work on onions, in this research funded by Defra (The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs), is being carried out by Dr Andrew Taylor…who has tested and recorded key traits of 96 varieties of onion from Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Africa , India, the US and Japan. The data provides information that will be crucial to growers seeking to create onion varieties that can resist Fusarium oxysporum (which causes basal rot in onions), and which also respond well to Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi – beneficial fungi. An improved interaction with these fungi assists nutrient uptake in onions potentially decreasing the amount of fertiliser required. These fungi can have other beneficial effects such as increased disease resistance and drought tolerance.

This research will not only help individual commercial growers and seed producers but will also contribute significantly to global food security, particularly in situations where rising temperatures are an issue. Enhanced resistance to Fusarium oxysporum will be of importance in dealing with rising temperatures as basal rot is more active and acute in warmer conditions…

A Defra spokesperson said: “This important research shows how farmers can farm smarter – producing crops that are naturally resistant to rot and disease can help them reduce the amount of fertiliser and pesticides they need in our changing climate.”

A topic near and dear to my heart. My wife’s wonderful organic garden has a critical bed dedicated to onions. We are high and hot and dry – though we have sufficient irrigation rights to take care of water needs. She has proven year after year that our alkaline soil needs only slight modification and moderate organic fertilizing to produce a bumper crop of those wonderful bulbs.

Rising forest density in many countries is helping to offset climate change caused by deforestation from the Amazon basin to Indonesia, a study shows.

The report indicated that the size of trees in a forest — rather than just the area covered — needed to be taken into account more in U.N.-led efforts to put a price on forests as part of a nascent market to slow global warming.

“Higher density means world forests are capturing more carbon,” experts in Finland and the United States said of the study in the online journal PLoS One, issued on June 5 which is World Environment Day in the U.N. calendar.

Trees soak up carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, as they grow and release it when they burn or rot. Deforestation in places from the Congo basin to Papua New Guinea is blamed for perhaps 12 to 20 percent of all emissions by human activities.

The report, based on a survey of 68 nations, found that the amount of carbon stored in forests increased in Europe and North America from 2000-10 despite little change in forest area.

And in Africa and South America, the total amount of carbon stored in forests fell at a slower rate than the loss of area, indicating that they had grown denser…

“Forests that were established in China a few decades ago are now starting to reach their fast-growing phase. That is a reason for rising density now,” lead author Aapo Rautiainen said…

The United States has had among the most striking shifts — timberland area expanded by just one percent between 1953 and 2007 but the volume of growing stock surged by 51 percent…

The report also suggested that forest managers might rotate fellings less frequently since trees kept thickening.

Ain’t nothing wrong with good news. Not that good news means anything to climate change-deniers. They’re unwilling to accept any scientific understanding no matter how it impacts their ideology.

Unwillingness to investigate fits right in with fear of responsibility.

Trafalgar Square in London
The Telegraph

In front of Zurich Cathedral
Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission

Union Square in Manhattan
Daylife/Getty Images used by permission

Yes, there are a few Congressional politicians who get it. Not many.
Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

The United States has been overtaken by Sweden and Singapore in the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) competitiveness survey for 2010-11.

The change meant that the US slipped two places to fourth in the WEF’s latest ranking.

Switzerland, which overtook the US last year, remains the top ranked economy.

Germany rose to fifth, and was the best placed eurozone country. The UK, after falling back in recent years, moved up one place to 12th position…

The WEF says the US has lost ground because of what it calls a weakening of its public and private institutions, as well as what it describes as “lingering concerns about the state of its financial markets”…

The WEF report reflects the improving fortunes of the developing world, but shows it still has a long way to go before it matches the developed world for competitiveness…

Klaus Schwab, founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum, said: “Policy-makers are struggling with ways of managing the present economic challenges while preparing their economies to perform well in a future economic landscape characterized by uncertainty and shifting balances.”

Understand that the Republican Party and their Tea Party flunkeys could give a rats’ ass about a report like this.

As lame and cowardly as is the Democratic Party barely clinging to the economic and political leadership from Obama and the White House cadre, they offer a better chance for growing the United States’ economic performance than the reactionaries lining up on the other side of the aisle for lobbying perks – already planning on the mid-term elections fitting historic patterns.

The number of victims in a credit card scam involving El Chico Café customers – in Melbourne, Florida – has more than quadrupled during the course of the month long or so investigation, police said.

Authorities said the number of victims uncovered by their investigation into fraudulent purchases made on the credit and debit cards of customers at the Melbourne eatery has climbed from 70 in late March to at least 300 last week. No arrests have been made.

Authorities said they first began receiving complaints in late March from the Evans Road restaurant and customers who noticed the bogus purchases on their credit card statements or whose banks notified them of suspicious activity.

According to about a dozen people who contacted FLORIDA TODAY, the scam involves patrons who ate at the restaurant as far back as mid-February and includes credit and debit transactions from retail stores and other businesses across the United States and in other countries, including Canada, Japan, Mexico and Spain.

Detectives last month said they had uncovered fraudulent transactions totaling “well over” $100,000.

A great reason to pay with cash or use a debit card. And using that debit card, check your purchases online on a daily basis.

I only had a crooked waiter pull this on me once and being genetically frugal, I checked the credit card statement – and caught a double-billing from month to month. Run through the system the evening I ate at the restaurant in question. And again the following month – when I wasn’t even in the same state.

A holiday snap from DefCon

One of the world’s most notorious computer hackers was sentenced to 20 years in prison on Thursday after he pleaded guilty to helping run a ring that stole tens of millions of payment card numbers.

Albert Gonzalez, a 28-year-old college dropout from Miami, had confessed to helping lead a global ring that stole more than 40 million payment card numbers by breaking into retailers including TJX Cos Inc, BJ’s Wholesale Club Inc and Barnes & Noble.

It was the harshest sentence ever handed out for a computer crime in an American court, said Mark Rasch, former head of the computer crimes unit at the U.S. Department of Justice.

Altogether, Gonzalez and conspirators scattered across the globe caused some $200 million in damages to those businesses, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephen Heymann.

He said it was not possible to quantify how much money was stolen from individuals. “They would quite literally go to ATMS and take out bundles of money from victims’ accounts,” Heymann told the court in Boston.

Under his plea agreement, Gonzalez had faced up to 25 years in prison, but asked the judge for leniency in sentencing, saying he had been addicted to computers since childhood, had abused alcohol and illegal drugs for years and suffered from symptoms of Asperger’s disorder, a form of autism…

Gonzalez, who buried $1 million cash in the backyard of his parents’ home, said that his crimes got out of control “because of my inability to stop my pursuit of curiosity and addiction…”

Throw away the fracking key!

There’s a much longer, more detailed account – if you find this crook interesting – over here.