Ameridumb
October 8th, 2013Via: AP:
It’s long been known that America’s school kids haven’t measured well compared with international peers. Now, there’s a new twist: Adults don’t either.
In math, reading and problem-solving using technology – all skills considered critical for global competitiveness and economic strength – American adults scored below the international average on a global test, according to results released Tuesday.
Adults in Japan, Canada, Australia, Finland and multiple other countries scored significantly higher than the United States in all three areas on the test. Beyond basic reading and math, respondents were tested on activities such as calculating mileage reimbursement due to a salesman, sorting email and comparing food expiration dates on grocery store tags.
Not only did Americans score poorly compared to many international competitors, the findings reinforced just how large the gap is between the nation’s high- and low-skilled workers and how hard it is to move ahead when your parents haven’t.
In both reading and math, for example, those with college-educated parents did better than those whose parents did not complete high school.
The study, called the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies, found that it was easier on average to overcome this and other barriers to literacy overseas than in the United States.
Researchers tested about 166,000 people ages 16 to 65 in more than 20 countries and subnational regions. The test was developed and released by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which is made up of mostly industrialized member countries. The Education Department’s Center for Education Statistics participated.
The findings were equally grim for many European countries – Italy and Spain, among the hardest hit by the recession and debt crisis, ranked at the bottom across generations. Unemployment is well over 25 percent in Spain and over 12 percent in Italy. Spain has drastically cut education spending, drawing student street protests.
Microsoft and Lockheed Martin Team Up for Government Cloud Platform
October 8th, 2013Via: Information Week:
Microsoft will soon launch a dedicated multi-tenant cloud environment that meets the distinct requirements of U.S. government agencies.
The Windows Azure U.S. Government Cloud will be an exclusive community cloud available for U.S. state, local and federal government agencies. It will be hosted in Microsoft data centers located in the U.S. and managed by U.S. citizens. Cloud facilities that share content with non-governmental organizations or fail to meet data residency and oversight requirements have generally been out of the running for most federal agencies due to security concerns.
The difference between this government-only cloud and Microsoft’s public Windows Azure cloud computing environment is “we can guarantee government tenants are physically and logically separated from other tenants — and we’ll meet the more stringent security controls required by Department of Defense,” said Susie Adams, CTO for Microsoft’s federal government business, in an interview with InformationWeek.
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According to details in a blog post by Adams, Microsoft is working with Lockheed Martin and others to meet government-mandated requirements. The dedicated government cloud will be hosted in two specially constructed data centers collocated in Boydton, Va., and Des Moines, Iowa, with logical, physical and network isolation from Microsoft’s Azure Public Cloud. Data will reside on servers that contain only data from other U.S. federal, state and local government customers. All operating personnel will be U.S. citizens screened for PPT-Moderate clearance.
“Soon, Drones May Be Able to Make Lethal Decisions on Their Own”
October 8th, 2013Acronym of the day:
LAR – Lethal Autonomous Robot
Via: National Journal:
Scientists, engineers and policymakers are all figuring out ways drones can be used better and more smartly, more precise and less damaging to civilians, with longer range and better staying power. One method under development is by increasing autonomy on the drone itself.
Eventually, drones may have the technical ability to make even lethal decisions autonomously: to respond to a programmed set of inputs, select a target and fire their weapons without a human reviewing or checking the result. Yet the idea of the U.S. military deploying a lethal autonomous robot, or LAR, is sparking controversy. Though autonomy might address some of the current downsides of how drones are used, they introduce new downsides policymakers are only just learning to grapple with.
NSA Director Alexander Admits He Lied about Phone Surveillance Stopping 54 Terror Plots
October 8th, 2013Via: AllGov:
The head of the National Security Agency (NSA) admitted before a congressional committee this week that he lied back in June when he claimed the agency’s phone surveillance program had thwarted 54 terrorist “plots or events.”
NSA Director Keith Alexander gave out the erroneous number while the Obama administration was defending its domestic spying operations exposed by whistleblower Edward Snowden. He said surveillance data collected that led to 53 of those 54 plots had provided the initial tips to “unravel the threat stream.”
But Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said on Wednesday during a hearing on the continued oversight of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that the administration was pushing incomplete or inaccurate statements about the bulk collection of phone records from communications providers.
“For example, we’ve heard over and over again that 54 terrorist plots have been thwarted by the use of (this program),” Leahy said. “That’s plainly wrong,” adding: “These weren’t all plots and they weren’t all thwarted.”
Alexander admitted that only 13 of the 54 cases were connected to the United States. He also told the committee that only one or two suspected plots were identified as a result of bulk phone record collection.
FBI Accused of Using No-Fly List to Recruit Informants
October 8th, 2013Via: AllGov:
Is this the beginning of the end for the federal government’s no-fly list? Just weeks after federal Judge Anna J. Brown of Portland, Oregon, refused to dismiss an ACLU suit against the list because there is “a constitutionally-protected liberty interest in traveling internationally by air which is affected by being placed on the list,” a separate lawsuit alleges that the FBI has been placing Muslims on the list “in retaliation for their refusal to work as informants against their communities and submit to questioning.”
And The Winner Of The World Food Prize Is… The Man From Monsanto
October 8th, 2013Via: NPR:
Ever heard of the World Food Prize? It’s sometimes called the “Nobel Prize for food and agriculture,” but it has struggled to get people’s attention. Prize winners tend to be agricultural insiders, and many are scientists. Last year’s laureate, for instance, was , a pioneer of water-saving “micro-irrigation.”
This year, though, the World Food Prize is likely to get some publicity, some of it in the form of anger and protests. The prize will go to who played prominent roles in creating genetically engineered crops: Marc Van Montagu, Mary-Dell Chilton and Robert Fraley.
Of the three, Fraley is by far the youngest, but also the most pivotal and divisive. He’s spent his entire career at Monsanto. He was hired in 1981 as one of the company’s very first molecular biologists, led the company’s intense drive to sell genetically engineered crops in the 1990s, and is now the company’s chief technology officer. In fact, if there’s a single person who most personifies Monsanto’s controversial role in American agriculture, it’s probably Robb Fraley.
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The winners were announced Wednesday at the U.S. State Department, with Secretary of State John Kerry contributing his own remarks. It’s hard to imagine a similar event taking place in Europe, where government authorities have refused to approve the planting or importation of some of these GMO crops.
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The prize has been criticized in the past for close relationships with agribusiness companies.
Carter: Middle Class Today Resembles Poor of 1970s
October 8th, 2013Via: AP:
Former President Jimmy Carter said Monday that the income gap in the United States has increased to the point where members of the middle class resemble the Americans who lived in poverty when he occupied the White House.
Carter offered his assessment of the nation’s economic challenges Monday at a Habitat for Humanity construction site in Oakland — the first of five cities he and wife Rosalynn plan to visit this week to commemorate their three-decade alliance with the international nonprofit that promotes and builds affordable housing.
Recovery: Alcatel-Lucent to Cut 10,000 Jobs
October 8th, 2013Via: Dice:
Alcatel-Lucent is planning to cut 10,000 workers by 2015 as the telecom equipment maker continues to restructure.
Alcatel-Lucent logoBack in June, Alcatel-Lucent announced its Shift Plan, which aims to save 1 billion Euros in fixed costs as it retools its operations. However, at the time, it didn’t give an estimate of how many jobs would be cut. Today, the other shoe dropped.
Of the 10,000 jobs that will be cut, 2,100 will come from North America, the company says. At the end of 2012, Alcatel-Lucent employed 72,344 workers worldwide, of which 16,507 were based in North America.
The layoffs, which amount to nearly 14 percent of the company’s worldwide workforce, will largely be in sales, support and administrative areas. IT positions tied to legacy technologies, like 2G and 3G wireless technology, are also expected to feel the pain.
Social Security Warns Benefits Could Get Cut
October 8th, 2013Via: Wall Street Journal:
The Social Security Administration has begun warning the public it cannot guarantee full benefit payments if the debt ceiling isn’t increased.
When asked by the public, the agency is notifying beneficiaries that “Unlike a federal shutdown which has no impact on the payment of Social Security benefits, failure to raise the debt ceiling puts Social Security benefits at risk,” according to a person familiar with the agency directive.
The warning was assembled after the agency consulted with the Treasury Department, which would play a lead role in determining how the government handles payments if the borrowing limit isn’t raised soon.
Related: On the Possibility of Social Security Payments Not Going Out
America’s Police Are Looking More and More Like the Military
October 8th, 2013Via: Guardian:
America’s streets are looking more and more like a war zone. Last week, in a small county in upstate New York with a population of roughly 120,000 people, county legislators approved the receipt of a 20-ton Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicle, donated by the US Defense Department to the county sheriff.
Between the Armored Personnel Carriers locking down main streets in major American cities – mimicking our MRAPs in Afghanistan – or Special Weapons and Tactics (Swat) and Special Forces units canvassing our country, if we’re not careful, this militarization of our domestic policing will make-over America, and fast.
