Dutch 'strandbeests' walk the beach

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The creepy computer that learned to play Jeopardy

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Stockholm Central Station using excess body heat to warm office buildings

What a neat program. Read the rest of this post...

Proposed SD law would legalize murder of abortion providers

What do you know, it's a Republican sponsored law. From Mother Jones:

A law under consideration in South Dakota would expand the definition of "justifiable homicide" to include killings that are intended to prevent harm to a fetus—a move that could make it legal to kill doctors who perform abortions. The Republican-backed legislation, House Bill 1171, has passed out of committee on a nine-to-three party-line vote, and is expected to face a floor vote in the state's GOP-dominated House of Representatives soon.

"The bill in South Dakota is an invitation to murder abortion providers."
The bill, sponsored by state Rep. Phil Jensen, a committed foe of abortion rights, alters the state's legal definition of justifiable homicide by adding language stating that a homicide is permissible if committed by a person "while resisting an attempt to harm" that person's unborn child or the unborn child of that person's spouse, partner, parent, or child. If the bill passes, it could in theory allow a woman's father, mother, son, daughter, or husband to kill anyone who tried to provide that woman an abortion—even if she wanted one.

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Mubarak ordered Tiananmen-style massacre of demonstrators, Army refused

Buried in this Robert Fisk report for The Independent is a startling account of the Egyptian army refusing to move with tanks against the Tahrir Square protesters on January 30. If this is true, it must be the defining moment in the history of the movement that toppled Hosni Mubarak's 30-year reign. My emphasis below:

Last night [Feb 10], a military officer guarding the tens of thousands celebrating in Cairo threw down his rifle and joined the demonstrators, yet another sign of the ordinary Egyptian soldier's growing sympathy for the democracy demonstrators. We had witnessed many similar sentiments from the army over the past two weeks. But the critical moment came on the evening of 30 January when, it is now clear, Mubarak ordered the Egyptian Third Army to crush the demonstrators in Tahrir Square with their tanks after flying F-16 fighter bombers at low level over the protesters.

Many of the senior tank commanders could be seen tearing off their headsets – over which they had received the fatal orders – to use their mobile phones. They were, it now transpires, calling their own military families for advice. Fathers who had spent their lives serving the Egyptian army told their sons to disobey, that they must never kill their own people.

Thus when General Hassan al-Rawani told the massive crowds yesterday evening that "everything you want will be realised – all your demands will be met", the people cried back: "The army and the people stand together – the army and the people are united. The army and the people belong to one hand."

Robert Fisk is a seasoned journalist and Middle East expert with a long history. Though this event has not been widely reported (and Fisk does not give his source), I did find some corroboration, for example here. And Fisk's claim is repeated here, with Fisk cited as the source. Given his history (Fisk is one of the few journalists to have interviewed Osama bin Laden three times), it's unlikely he's wrong.

GP Read the rest of this post...

Iran calls for death penalty for opposition and Egypt-style protesters

Same old, same old.

Members of Iran's parliament have called for opposition leaders Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi to be tried and executed.

Some 50 conservative MPs marched through parliament's main hall on Tuesday, chanting "Death to Mousavi, death to Karroubi", shown on state TV.

Thousands of opposition supporters had protested in Iran's capital on Monday.

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Obama budget to promote generic pharmaceuticals

Big Pharma and their GOP cheerleaders will no doubt scream but it's the right thing to do. If health care costs are ever going to even stabilize (let alone fall) cost control has to be part of the program.

What would ultimately be the best direction would be to negotiate with Big Pharma on prices. How is it that the largest potential buyer in the world doesn't use that power to negotiate? It's standard capitalism. Maybe someone has heard of it before? Then again, maybe some people are looking for one of those lucrative jobs with Big Pharma at a later stage and hate to hurt their chances by getting tough.

Big pharmaceutical companies could face increased competition from generic drugmakers under two proposals put forth by the Obama administration on Monday despite earlier savings extracted from drugmakers as part of last year's healthcare law.

President Barack Obama, as part of his 2012 budget proposal, called for cutting the number of years drugmakers could exclusively market brand-name biologic drugs to 7 years from 12.

He also set his sights on ending controversial "pay-for-delay" deals that affect traditional, chemical drugs by giving the U.S. Federal Trade Commission power to block them. Under such pacts, brand-name and generic drugmakers settle patent challenges with payoffs that delay lower-cost rivals from reaching the market.

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Prices to soar this year

As always, how hard it hits home will depend on your household income. There are a number of issues involved including the growing demand from China as well as traders looking for new sources of income. Businesses are in a touch spot because buyers are much more cautious due to the delicate economy. Many have held off increasing prices but that is likely to end as the year progresses. NY Times:

By the fall, people will most likely be paying more for each of them, as rising prices hit most consumer goods, say retailers, food companies and manufacturers of consumer products.

Cotton prices are near their highest level in more than a decade, after adjusting for inflation, and leather and polyester costs are jumping as well. Copper recently hit its highest level in about 40 years, and iron ore, used for steel, is fetching extremely high prices. Prices for corn, sugar, wheat, beef, pork and coffee are soaring. Labor overseas is becoming more expensive, meanwhile, and so are the utility bills to keep a factory running.

“There are cost pressures from virtually everywhere,” said Wesley R. Card, the chief executive of the Jones Group, whose brands include Nine West and Anne Klein. After trying to keep retail prices flat or even lower during the recession, Jones says prices for its brands will climb 15 to 20 percent by autumn.

NOTE FROM JOHN: I'll be curious what pressure this puts on the Fed to try to dampen inflation. Raising interest rates in this kind of economy could really hurt growth. But inflation isn't very welcome either. It will also be interesting to see what happens when prices rise. I don't know about you, but my income hasn't come back to pre-crisis levels, and people I know who lost their jobs haven't found new ones yet. It's not entirely clear that the price increase will bring in more money, or instead, cut back on demand significantly. Read the rest of this post...

Obama accidentally says sh-t during press conference

Okay, it's juvenile, but it's also kind of funny. I've been there.

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How AT&T; is destroying the iPhone

AT&T; is running a series of TV ads, aimed at folks thinking of buying the new Verizon-run iPhone, claiming that Verizon's phones don't let you talk on the phone and surf the Web at the same time. And it's true, they don't.

But funny thing. It's not entirely clear that AT&T;'s phone lets you talk or surf because you can't get a g-damn signal in parts of the largest cities in America, now including Washington, DC, our nation's capital.

I was a happy iPhone customer going back to the very first day they sold that very first phone, and a happy AT&T; customer going back to the year 2000. So yes, I stood in line for hours with my friend Ari's wife Julie, just to get my hands on the iPhone that first day. I think I've earned the right to gripe.

Why so unhappy? Because at the two most important locations in my life - my neighborhood in DC and my hometown of Chicago - AT&T;'s iPhone reception is suddenly bordering on zero. The weird thing, it wasn't always this way. I mean, sure, AT&T;'s reception in the Chicago area was seriously crappy in parts, like down to one bar at times while inside, but if you sprinted strategically to the nearest window and kissed it every time you got a call, you'd likely be able to finish your call.

Not anymore.

What was once seriously mediocre service at my parents' place has now turned into 1 bar hell, even outside, and even when you drive around to other nearby suburbs - entire area is now, inexplicably, suddenly, a dead zone. When I talked to AT&T; about it, with the help of Steve Jobs, who I'm pretty sure forwarded my email to him to the nice folks at AT&T; (otherwise, how did they know to contact me?), I was told that the problem was trees. You see, my town has a lot of them, and being such a flat town, with trees and all, it's very hard for AT&T; to get a signal to your home.

Sure. Because no other town in America is flat and has trees.

And, that explanation still didn't explain why service had degraded in my town over the past year - did the trees suddenly suffer an unnatural growth spurt from global warming? And why weren't the trees a problem - or that much of a problem, a year ago?

I will say that AT&T; was kind enough to send me two of their amplifier towers to help me use my cell phone at my parents' place, since I quite literally was no longer able to make a single phone call, or use the iPhone's data network, in this rather populated part of the Chicago area (but those mini tower devices, I believe, only help you place calls, not receive them). But then I got back to DC and a funny thing happened. Just a few days ago, AT&T;'s iPhone network suddenly evaporated in one of the most popular neighborhoods in town, which just happens to be where Joe and I both live. It's gone. Sometimes. I used to get full coverage, 5 bars, all the time, inside and out, when I was in town. Suddenly last week, I started getting one bar, a lot, in my apartment, on the street, and today right outside Joe's place, a good 6 blocks from me. Never happened before. As of a week ago, happens all the time, now.

This is outside Joe's house yesterday:



And this is at my place the other day:



And I turned the phone off and on again, didn't help.

Then I remembered what my other friend Joe had recently told me - he's had the iPhone from the beginning as well, and suddenly his home in DC, in a different part of town, became an AT&T; dead zone about four months ago, and has statyed that way. I remember thinking "isn't that odd," until last week when it happened to me.

Now, if the guy from AT&T; was telling me the truth, and somehow the trees back home in Chicago grew exponentially in the last year, then how has that same degradation of service now happened in two different neighborhoods in Washington, DC that used to have excellent AT&T; iphone coverage and now have next to none, depending on the moment of the day? And how does the coverage wax and wane - such as, right now, it's back to five bars again for the first time in a week? And how did my dad get 5 bars on his cheapo AT&T; not-an-iPhone when I was getting one bar on my iPhone, in the same location - if in fact those darn trees were blocking the signal?

When I talked to some Apple employees in the Chicago area, they told me the problem was AT&T.; The service sucks in the burbs, I was told, because AT&T; simply can't handle the capacity of all the users they have. Not my problem. If AT&T; doesn't have the capacity to sell any more iPhones, than it shouldn't be selling any more iPhones. What they're doing right now, if this is true, is setting themselves up for one hell of a class action law suit. I didn't pay for a phone that sometimes works.

The coverage back home in the Chicago area is still crappy, even with the towers AT&T; gave me. The tower only covers half of my parents' place. As soon as I get outside, and drive anywhere in the multi-suburb area, I can't use my iPhone, there simly is no service. We're talking Chicago, folks. And now Washington, DC. And from reports I hear from friends, NYC as well. That would be the nation's capital, the largest city, and the third largest city. You don't really have "nationwide service" when you leave out Washington, DC, New York and Chicago.

I really don't want to switch to Verizon - I don't want a CDMA phone, and I want to be able to multi-task when I'm on the phone. Then again, I'd like to think I'm paying $80 a month for something more than a shiny coaster. Read the rest of this post...

Newt Gingrich and Nancy Pelosi, BFF

AMERICAblog Elections: The Right's Field reminds us that Mr. Conservative agrees with Nancy Pelosi and Al Gore on global warming.

Get ready for Newt to repudiate his former views almost as quickly as he switches wives (Newt loves traditional marriage so much, he's had 3 - so far). Read the rest of this post...

Livestream of Obama's press conference

We learned this morning that the President would be holding a press conference today. Here's the livestream from the White House:

It's over now. Read the rest of this post...

Rumsfeld, Gates ignored rape, sexual abuse at DOD, lawsuit claims

The current and past Secretaries of Defense are being sued over their failure to deal with cases of rape and sexual assault in the military:

A group of U.S. veterans who say they were raped, insulted and otherwise abused by their comrades want to force the Pentagon to change how it handles such cases.

More than a dozen female and two male current or former service members say servicemen get away with rape and other sexual abuse and victims are too often ordered to continue to serve alongside those they say attacked them.

In a federal class-action lawsuit to be filed Tuesday, they want an objective third party to handle such complaints because individual commanders have too much say in how allegations are handled.

The complaint can be viewed here. The details we're learning are shocking. This is the kind of thing that should not be happening in the U.S. military (or anywhere.) But, the fact that these crimes did occur and aren't dealt with shows a stunning lack of leadership. It sounds like what we've come to expect from the Catholic Church.

The force behind the lawsuit is Service Women's Action Network (SWAN):

Anuradha Bhagwati, 35, executive director of the Service Women's Action Network, said the Defense Department's own statistics show that fewer than one in five of these cases are even referred for court martial. She said unit commanders are the judge and the jury in these types of cases. Too often, she said, perpetrators are given non-judicial punishments.

"A lawsuit like this is needed because change cannot happen on the inside. DoD has had literally decades, perhaps more, to change the culture within the military. They've proven that they can't, and even the minor changes they've made the last few years are so superficial," Bhagwati said.

Bhagwati and SWAN were strong advocates for the repeal of DADT, too.

NBC's Michael Isikoff interviewed several of the service women for a piece that appeared on the TODAY Show this morning:
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Just announced: Obama to hold press conference at 11 AM ET today

Via email, just got this update to the President's schedule:

This morning, the President will hold a news conference in the South Court Auditorium.

It's scheduled for 11 AM ET.

Interesting. Presidential press conferences are usually announced a couple days in advance, not a couple hours. Read the rest of this post...

BP official resigned due to safety concerns months before Deepwater oil spill

There's plenty of stories about the safety problems that BP experienced but it's a tough obstacle to overcome when you have members of Congress apologizing for any criticism. Overcoming the power and influence of Big Oil won't be easy.

A former official with BP's drilling operations in the Gulf of Mexico resigned just months before last year's oil spill because of disagreements with the oil giant over its commitment to safety, according to a class-action federal lawsuit related to the spill.

Documents filed Monday night in Houston claim Kevin Lacy, BP's former senior vice president for drilling operations for the Gulf of Mexico, reached a mutual agreement with the company to resign in December 2009 because he believed the company was not adequately committed to improving safety protocols in offshore drilling operations to the level of its industry peers. The Deepwater Horizon rig explosion occurred on April 20, 2010, killing 11 workers and causing the worst oil spill in U.S. history.

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Chevron guilty in 'world's worst oil-related disaster'

It's likely that this case will be appealed, but it's a good day for justice. The court agreed to an $8.6 billion settlement as opposed to the $113 billion that Ecuador was requesting, but this should still go a long way towards repairing the damage left behind decades ago. Chevron is now relying on friendly US courts to help them avoid any responsibility. They will no doubt find plenty of friendly faces in Congress as well as we witnessed during the BP disaster. The Guardian:

Pablo Fajardo, the plaintiffs' lawyer, told Associated Press the judgment at the provincial court of justice of Sucumbíos in Lago Agrio was "a great step that we have made towards the crystallisation of justice", but the fine was too small and he may appeal.

The epic and bitterly fought lawsuit over the "Amazon Chernobyl" has been going on for 18 years. It was brought on behalf of 30,000 people whose health and environment were allegedly damaged by chemical-laden waste water dumped by Texaco's operations from 1972 to 1990. Chevron bought Texaco in 2001.

The lawsuit alleges that Chevron should be held responsible for $27bn in damages from illness, deaths and economic loss suffered by the Amazon residents. The case was the subject of 2009's award-winning documentary Crude and has attracted celebrity supporters including Sting, Trudie Styler and Daryl Hannah.

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Many dead across Middle East during protests fueled by Egypt

Another ugly incident from the latest round of protests across the Middle East. Al Jazeera:

At least one person has reportedly been killed and several others injured after riot police in Bahrain opened fire at protesters holding a funeral service for a man killed during protests in the kingdom a day earlier.

Fadhel Ali Almatrook was hit with bird-shotgun in the capital, Manama, on Tuesday morning, Maryam Alkhawaja, head of foreign relations at the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights, told Al Jazeera.

"This morning the protesters were walking from the hospital to the cemetery and they got attacked by the riot police," Alkhawaja said.

In Iran, the protesters were met with tear gas and at least one death was reported there as well as many more injuries from clashes with police. In Yemen, 3000 people marched and fortunately there were no reports of death. There were many injuries and fights involving pro-government protesters. Read the rest of this post...

GOP NJ governor destroyed state's finances

But let's not let a few real world details interrupt a right wing media slobberfest. Unlike the real Ronald Reagan who raised taxes eleven times as president, the wingnuts all believe that raising taxes is against the law of Reagan. (They also think climate change doesn't exist, of course.) By failing to get a grip on the problem and doing what needs to be done by raising taxes, one of the rating agencies has lowered NJ bond ratings. The rating agencies may have a lot of problems (ahem, financial crisis) but in the current real world, a ratings drop means more expensive debt.

All of the choices governors like Christie are facing today are unpleasant. There's no doubt about that. But Christie is the one who has made a name for himself within right wing circles by playing the tough guy who can kick unions and then wave a wand to fix all of the financial problems in New Jersey. It's not that easy and it's not that pain-free. The bluster may have been fun for him in the beginning, but now he's going to get a taste of what happens when you ignore a problem simply to appease your fan base. Reuters:

State governments continue to struggle with the effects of the 2007-2009 recession. Their revenue remains weak and altogether they face budget deficits of at least $100 billion for the next fiscal year, beginning for most in summer.

S&P;'s action turns up the heat on New Jersey Governor Chris Christie. S&P; downgraded New Jersey to AA-minus from AA two weeks before the Republican governor proposes his own fix for the state's shaky finances.

Let's say Obama bails out Chris Christie's state. Does anyone believe for a second Christie would be so courteous as to say "thanks" to Obama? Me neither. Read the rest of this post...