Great Lakes ice coverage falls 71 percent over 40 years

MNSBC:

Great Lakes ice coverage declined an average of 71 percent over the past 40 years, according to a report from the American Meteorological Society.

The amount of decline varies year to year and lake to lake, according to the report's lead researcher, Jia Wang, an ice research climatologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory in Ann Arbor, Mich.

Wang’s report said that based on Coast Guard scanning, satellite photos and other research from 1973 to 2010, ice coverage dropped most on Lake Ontario, 88 percent; the second-largest loss was on Lake Superior, at 79 percent.

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Oh, the clocks "spring ahead" tonight

I didn't even remember.  My mom always told me the saying was "spring forward, fall back," but spring ahead works too.  Looking forward to sunny evenings.  And to the next week of temps in the 70s in DC. Read the rest of this post...

Sydney Moon, sex-positive feminist

An amazing surprise interview occurred on Sam Seder's Majority Report on Friday, when former Playboy model, actress and adult website owner Sydney Moon spontaneously called into his Internet show without invitation.

Seder responded perfectly and conducted an excellent interview. Listen for Moon's feminism and command of her subject. Also her playful nature. Now connect that with the "slut" discussion going on in the media today.

This is a delight. Enjoy:



The discussion about "sex-positive feminism" vs. something else has been going on since the birth of feminism. I've been in a number of those discussions myself. In my opinion, one of the keys to real feminism is to avoid the male-controlling trap — that women have to be "protected" or prevented from having or enjoying sex. Whatever rights men have, women also have, period.

If you want to read real feminists, read people like Amanda Marcotte. Folks like her and Ms. Moon are not uncommon. But those views still aren't well received. Real female sexuality scares so many people, it seems.

Puritans — will we ever be finally free of them?

GP

(To follow on Twitter: @Gaius_Publius) Read the rest of this post...

Family Research Council email: "Rush is Right"

There's a reason the Southern Poverty Law Center has labeled the religious right group Family Research Council an official hate group.

The group's C4, FRC Action, sent an email today about some voter registration tour it's doing, and the title of the email is "Rush is right."  They're  being cute with that title.  It sure seems that they're trying to get people to think that they mean Rush is right about calling law student Sandra Fluke a "sl*t" for testifying before Congress about the medical necessity of birth control for some women.

Think about that.  A group that claims to be a Christian organization seems to be playing off of calling a woman a "sl*t" in order to get more traction on a donor email.

Even if they weren't trying to make people think that they meant Rush is right about calling Fluke a sl*t, why would any Christian group associate itself with Limbaugh in the middle of this controversy?

But of course, a Christian group wouldn't.  But a hate group would. Read the rest of this post...

How the FBI caught LulzSec hacker Sabu, and what that says about the FBI

We wrote recently about the FBI turning a Anonymous-type LulzSec hacker into a mole, a double agent. This mole then worked with the FBI to (among other things) crack into the email server of a top private security firm, Stratfor, and pass 5 million emails to Anonymous, who gave them to WikiLeaks for release.

(To come up to speed on that story, see here; it's fascinating. There's a Julian Assange angle.)

Now thanks to The Register, we know just how "Sabu" was found (h/t John Byrne via Twitter):

The man named by the FBI as infamous hacktivist Sabu was undone by an embarrassing security blunder, it has emerged. ... "They caught him because just once, he logged onto IRC without going through Tor [an anonymization service], revealing to the FBI his IP address," Graham claims.

And that was all they needed.

According to Robert Graham of Errata Security [Sabu] exposed his IP address, which allowed federal investigators to request records from ISPs and track down his location to a flat shared with his two sons on Manhattan's Lower East Side.

About the FBI, Graham said:

"This reveals a little bit about the FBI, namely that they've infiltrated enough of the popular IRC relays to be able to get people's IP addresses. We've always suspected they could, now we know."

And:

The report said investigators had coerced the unemployed dad [Sabu] into co-operating by threatening him with two years in prison away from his children on the easy-to-prove ID theft charges alone if he failed to turn informant on the rest of the LulzSec crew. The feds also persuaded him to turn over the encryption keys on his battered laptop, allowing them to obtain evidence of Monsegur's "hacking activities".

There's more, including information about the anti-Anonymous hackers the FBI was working with, how some LulzSec members confronted the now-turned Sabu, and how he evaded identification as a mole. It's quite a story.

There's lesson here for non-hackers as well. You have no idea who's peeping at you when you browse or chat. The FBI is apparently watching IRC traffic, and we learned years ago about "NSA telecom closets" that routinely monitor calls and internet traffic.

Anonymization services, on the other hand, are perfectly legal and have a variety of uses, especially in this world of hoped-for–PIPA and government spying.

I've seen Tor in particular recommended a number of times. More here, as well as at the google.

Safe browsing,

GP

(To follow on Twitter or to send links: @Gaius_Publius) Read the rest of this post...