links for 2009-09-14

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"More than one-third of all global energy is consumed by, or in, buildings, which in turn account for about 15 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, according to the Clinton Climate Initiative, a program initiated in 2006 by former President Bill Clinton’s foundation. In modern cities, with their high densities of multiunit residential and office structures, inefficient buildings can account for as much as 80 percent of the carbon dioxide emissions."

And some more.

Stuff science has yet to fully understand.

"At the same time, the effects of religious attendance on generous behaviors are not limited to the religiously affiliated. Even for the religiously unaffiliated, religious attendance is associated with a higher likelihood of respondents saying that they have donated money, volunteered, and helped a stranger. In particular, volunteering increased from 19% to 29% among secular respondents, while donating goes from 28% to 36%. While these activities may be associated with the additional opportunities that religious organizations provide for donating money and time, the same relationship exists for helping strangers. Although helping strangers is not always a behavior that religious organizations directly facilitate, 44% of secular respondents who attended such services engage in such activities, but only 40% of non-attenders said the same."

"There's the rub. To cash your paycheck without paying a fee, you need a bank account, and for working-class people, a bank account costs a great deal more than $150 a year. Last year, U.S. banks collected about $36 billion in overdraft protection fees. This year, they expect to transfer about $38.5 billion out of customers' accounts in the form of such fees." The working poor have so many problems it's no wonder that Republicans have no understanding when they say just get a job.

"China unexpectedly increased pressure Sunday on the United States in a widening trade dispute, taking the first steps toward imposing tariffs on American exports of automotive products and chicken meat in retaliation for President Obama’s decision late Friday to levy tariffs on tires from China. The impact of the dispute extends well beyond tires, chickens and cars. Both governments are facing domestic pressure to take a tougher stand against the other on economic issues. But the trade battle increases political tensions between the two nations even as they try to work together to revive the global economy and combat mutual security threats, like the nuclear ambitions of Iran and North Korea."

"Obama and his judge-pickers define their choices with the same post-partisan vocabulary that the President uses with most issues: excellence, competence, common sense. And so far Republicans have regarded Obama’s claims in this realm with the same skepticism that they have displayed for his arguments on the economy and health care. Still, this is not just a replay of the usual ideological debate. Obama’s choice of judges reflects ferment in the world of legal liberalism, which is tied ever more closely to the fate of Democrats in the executive and legislative branches of government. Liberals who once saw judges as the lone protectors of constitutional rights are now placing their hopes on elected politicians like Obama. At its core, Obama’s jurisprudence may rest less on any legal theory or nomenclature than on a more primal political skill—the ability to keep winning elections."

"According to the research, people whose smiles were weakest in snapshots from childhood through young adulthood were most likely to report being divorced in middle and old age. Among the weakest smilers in college photographs, one in four ended up divorcing, compared with one in 20 of the widest smilers. The same pattern held among even those pictured at an average age of 10."

"Browserscope is a community-driven project for profiling web browsers. The goals are to foster innovation by tracking browser functionality and to be a resource for web developers." Go and try out your browser.

"So Apple gets a unique advantage in the video camera market not because it makes a better camera, but because it can connect its camera more easily to a proprietary music ecosystem. In other words, iTunes is no longer just a tool for Apple to defend its iPod sales; it's now a tool to help Apple take over new markets. I was heavily involved in the Apple-Microsoft lawsuits when I worked at Apple in the 1990s, so I know how passionately we believed that Microsoft's tactics were not just unethical, but also harmful to computer users and the overall economy. So it's very disappointing to see Apple using tactics it once bitterly denounced, and declaring that it's decided to take over a market because "we want to get in." If Apple can use iTunes as a weapon against Pure Digital and Palm, what's to stop it from rolling up every new category of mobile entertainment product? Where's the incentive for other companies to invest?"

"Still, the House leadership has decided to take this incident to the floor, and many top Republican leaders have termed Mr. Wilson’s behavior “inappropriate” or worse. While Speaker Nancy Pelosi initially said she believed people should move on, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, Democrat of Maryland as well as Representative James Clyburn, the Democratic majority whip from South Carolina, were among those who rather publicly and forcefully pushed for official action to be taken against Mr. Wilson."

"Here’s a front page story the New York Times (NYT) would rather not be running: The paper is warning readers to be aware of bogus ads running on its Web site." I saw this a few times yesterday, not a good thing for the New York Times.