links for 2009-08-21

"July marked the hottest the world's oceans have been in almost 130 years of record-keeping. The average water temperature worldwide in July was 62.6 degrees, according to the National Climatic Data Center, the branch of the U.S. government that keeps world weather records."

"The US Justice Department has given its approval for business software firm Oracle to take over computer hardware software maker Sun Microsystems." Europe still has to approve.

"This kind of mania can't be co-opted: it can only be overruled. Sometimes in politics you will have enemies, and they must be democratically defeated. The political system cannot be gummed up by a need to reach out to the maddest people or the greediest constituencies. There is no way to expand healthcare without angering Big Pharma and the Republicaloons. So be it. As Arianna Huffington put it, "It is as though, at the height of the civil rights movement, you thought you had to bring together Martin Luther King and George Wallace and make them agree. It's not how change happens." However strange it seems, the Republican Party really is spinning off into a bizarre cult who believe Barack Obama is a baby-killer plotting to build death panels for the grannies of America. Their new slogan could be – shrill, baby, shrill." I totally agree.

Just what it says.

"Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) CFO Cathie Lesjak says the company does not expect the debut of Microsoft (MSFT) Windows 7 to trigger a major PC refresh cycle." Well crudy.

"In a new book, former Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge reveals new details on politicization under President Bush, reports US News & World Report's Paul Bedard. Among other things, Ridge admits that he was pressured to raise the terror alert to help Bush win re-election in 2004." Homeland Security meet politics.

"The price of sugary Starbucks concoctions with several ingredients, like Frappuccinos and caramel macchiatos, will increase an average 10 cents to 15 cents, but in some cases as much as 30 cents, or about 8 percent, said Valerie O’Neil, a Starbucks spokeswoman. The price of the most popular beverages — 12-ounce lattes and brewed coffees — will decrease an average of 5 cents to 15 cents. This is the first time Starbucks has lowered prices, she said. It last increased the price of drinks by 5 cents in 2007." Smart move.

"The division’s operations are carried out at hidden bases in Pakistan and Afghanistan, where the company’s contractors assemble and load Hellfire missiles and 500-pound laser-guided bombs on remotely piloted Predator aircraft, work previously performed by employees of the Central Intelligence Agency. They also provide security at the covert bases, the officials said. The role of the company in the Predator program highlights the degree to which the C.I.A. now depends on outside contractors to perform some of the agency’s most important assignments. And it illustrates the resilience of Blackwater, now known as Xe (pronounced Zee) Services, though most people in and outside the company still refer to it as Blackwater. It has grown through government work, even as it attracted criticism and allegations of brutality in Iraq." Everything is going private industry.

"Now the bank projects significant losses to the Russian economy as this investment tapers off because of the financial crisis. A decline to 22 percent of gross domestic product over a decade — which is far above the average investment of the last decade of about 12 percent — would cost Russia about half a trillion dollars in economic disruptions, bottlenecks and lost growth, the bank estimated."

" But economists say — and data is beginning to show — that a significant change may in fact be under way. The rich, as a group, are no longer getting richer. Over the last two years, they have become poorer. And many may not return to their old levels of wealth and income anytime soon. For every investment banker whose pay has recovered to its prerecession levels, there are several who have lost their jobs — as well as many wealthy investors who have lost millions. As a result, economists and other analysts say, a 30-year period in which the super-rich became both wealthier and more numerous may now be ending."

"Afghan President Hamid Karzai's campaign chief says he has won enough votes to secure a majority without the need for a second round run-off."

"The Justice Department is investigating whether three military defense lawyers for detainees at the Guantánamo prison illegally showed their clients photographs of C.I.A. interrogators, two leaders of civilian legal groups that are working with the defense lawyers said Thursday. It was not clear what law investigators may think had been broken. Both Mr. Romero and Mr. Dratel disputed that there could have been anything illegal about showing photos taken in public to the detainees."

"Scientists have long complained that the Bush administration's stem cell funding policy restricted their research to only a handful of human embryonic stem cell lines. A study published Friday in Nature Biotechnology confirms that the majority of lab experiments over the last decade has indeed focused on two or three cell lines — the result of choices made by both President George W. Bush and the scientists themselves. Though the Bush administration said the bank maintained 21 cell lines eligible for funding from the National Institutes of Health, three of those lines have never been available to researchers, and a fourth line just became usable this year, the researchers said."

"Hal Turner, the blogger and radio personality, remains jailed pending charges over his recent online rants, which prosecutors claim amounted to an invitation for someone to kill Connecticut lawmakers and Chicago federal appeals court judges. But behind the scenes the reformed white supremacist was holding clandestine meetings with FBI agents who taught him how to spew hate “without crossing the line,” according to his lawyer, Michael Orozco." Sounds like someone is a little crazy.

"Last month, we wrote about Foursquare’s potential from a business perspective thanks to its location data. This week, the service has started actively tapping that potential by alerting users when locations close to them are offering special deals." This is an awesome marketing move and a great way for Foursquare to make money.

"In a city that is synonymous with faded American industrial and automotive power, Carriage Town’s success is both unexpected and inspiring. A persistent group of long-term urban homesteaders — along with newer arrivals eager to live near a downtown showing signs of life — has restored dozens of Victorian-era houses and buildings in the last 20 years. While many Flint neighborhoods feel all but abandoned, in Carriage Town home ownership has increased 10 percent over the last decade, according to Census data."

"The name of my bank would be something supremely boring, like SafeBank. The idea behind it is that bad behaviour in the banking world has been largely inevitable because their compensation structures incented people to do overly risky things. SafeBank would maintain a reserve level 2-3x higher than Fed requirements and any other bank. SafeBank would have no bonuses. Critics would say this would make it impossible to attract top-shelf talent. Every time the bank gets attacked we’d turn it into an advertising opportunity to emphasize why we’re different. “We can’t attract top-shelf talent? We take your money and put it in a vault. We don’t need the million-dollar bonus geniuses on Wall Street to do that. SafeBank. Bank, safe.”" Make this bank people.

"NASA now has technology in place for data transfer from the Earth to the Moon at an astounding 100 Mbps. That's right, NASA has more bandwidth on the (literally) long haul between the Moon and the Earth than most Americans between their ISPs and their homes."

"Apple Store provides a focal point for the Apple lifestyle, around digital activities like listening to music and watching, making or sharing videos. The iPhone adds a mobile lifestyle component, extending from the others but more connected through the applications and the Web. Apple's lifestyle is dimensional, with different facets. In the 1990s, there was a clearly identifiable Windows lifestyle, but it lost definition coming into the new century. Today, Windows is more a utility, like the kitchen stove or refrigerator. There are no defining applications, outside businesses. What? Is there a SharePoint or Windows Server lifestyle that people aspire to? Or Outlook?" Really good argument.

"While much attention has been focused on Mr. Ahmadinejad’s decision to try to pack his cabinet with loyalists, his choice of a well-respected physicist, Ali Akbar Salehi, as a vice president and the head of Iran’s nuclear agency has been greeted in the diplomatic and scientific community as signaling a possibly less dogmatic, more pragmatic nuclear policy." Good news?

"It Seems To Me… Since Twitter can add location metadata to each tweet, they could also add the full URL." Indeed.

"In an interview with the BBC, Gen Petraeus acknowledged there was a need to show progress before the November 2010 US Congressional elections. He also warned that conditions might get worse before they got any better."

"We're gearing up to launch a new feature which makes Twitter truly location-aware. A new API will allow developers to add latitude and longitude to any tweet. Folks will need to activate this new feature by choice because it will be off by default and the exact location data won't be stored for an extended period of time. However, if people do opt-in to sharing location on a tweet-by-tweet basis, compelling context will be added to each burst of information." Twitter will add geo-coding to tweets.

"The American Civil Liberties Union today appealed a decision by the Transportation Security Administration to refuse a job to an Air Force Veteran because he has HIV. In a fax to the ACLU, TSA claims it denied Michael Lamarre a job as a baggage handler in order to protect his health because his lowered immune system made him vulnerable to infectious diseases at the airport. TSA claimed among other reasons that the fact that Lamarre is taking three antiviral medications is evidence that he has a suppressed immune system." The way this reads it doesn't make much sense on the TSA's part.

"People with conditions such as HIV, TB and malaria should not rely on homeopathic treatments, the World Health Organization has warned. It was responding to calls from young researchers who fear the promotion of homeopathy in the developing world could put people's lives at risk."

"Sixty House Democrats have warned the Obama administration–in no uncertain terms–that they'll vote against a health care bill unless it contains a public option." That's a line in the sand.

"The irony here is that this same message is often used in American politics to mean something completely different — as a slogan of the pro-choice movement, to which Bachmann most certainly does not belong." I've said this many times.

"Banks are now losing money and going broke the old-fashioned way: They made loans that will never be repaid. As the number of banks closed by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation has grown rapidly this year, it has become clear that the vast majority of them had nothing to do with the strange financial products that seemed to dominate the news when the big banks were nearing collapse and being bailed out by the government."

"The Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education is just starting to survey whether colleges are offering continuing education courses related to sustainability, and not all are doing so. However, “we do have a sense from our members that these types of courses have increased in the past few years,” Paul Rowland, the group’s executive director, said in an e-mail message."