Phoenix-Area Residents Squawking About Backyard Chicken Coops
November 28th, 2012I can understand not wanting roosters in packed neighborhoods. (I live in a very rural area, and I’ve had about enough of Corneleus, our Barred Rock rooster.) Hens, though, are a different matter. People with backyards should be allowed to keep a few hens for eggs and gardening purposes.
Reading about the struggles that people go through in cities to do things that make sense just reminds me of why we’re living all the way out here. Oh yeah, and we slaughtered another cow in our driveway this morning—another activity that wouldn’t go over well with the HOA. *chortle*
Via: Los Angeles Times:
Proponents call themselves an underground society of backyard chicken owners. Arizona authorities are squawking that they’re just a bunch of code breakers.
In recent months, hundreds of Phoenix-area chicken owners have faced nuisance and zoning violations after neighbors griped about odor and noise – clucking hens and crowing roosters. They say poultry poses a health risk and doesn’t belong near homes, claims that chicken owners vehemently dispute.
The clandestine chicken owners are accused of defying city zoning laws. City of Chandler code-enforcement officers say the poultry owners are violating an ordinance prohibiting chickens in most residential areas.
“I think these chicken owners have been getting away with it for awhile and now people are starting to complain,” Chandler police spokesman Joe Tyler told the Los Angeles Times. “And so the code enforcement folks are going out and telling them, you can’t have chickens.”
Some say the face-off is a result of a national movement toward urban agriculture, where a desire for locally raised, environmentally sustainable foods clashes with traditional ideas of what consists of a suburban neighborhood.
Why $16 Trillion Only Hints at the True U.S. Debt
November 27th, 2012Via: Wall Street Journal:
As Washington wrestles with the roughly $600 billion “fiscal cliff” and the 2013 budget, the far greater fiscal challenge of the U.S. government’s unfunded pension and health-care liabilities remains offstage. The truly important figures would appear on the federal balance sheet—if the government prepared an accurate one.
But it hasn’t. For years, the government has gotten by without having to produce the kind of financial statements that are required of most significant for-profit and nonprofit enterprises. The U.S. Treasury “balance sheet” does list liabilities such as Treasury debt issued to the public, federal employee pensions, and post-retirement health benefits. But it does not include the unfunded liabilities of Medicare, Social Security and other outsized and very real obligations.
As a result, fiscal policy discussions generally focus on current-year budget deficits, the accumulated national debt, and the relationships between these two items and gross domestic product. We most often hear about the alarming $15.96 trillion national debt (more than 100% of GDP), and the 2012 budget deficit of $1.1 trillion (6.97% of GDP). As dangerous as those numbers are, they do not begin to tell the story of the federal government’s true liabilities.
The actual liabilities of the federal government—including Social Security, Medicare, and federal employees’ future retirement benefits—already exceed $86.8 trillion, or 550% of GDP. For the year ending Dec. 31, 2011, the annual accrued expense of Medicare and Social Security was $7 trillion. Nothing like that figure is used in calculating the deficit. In reality, the reported budget deficit is less than one-fifth of the more accurate figure.
Mortgage Interest Tax Deduction Might Be Eliminated
November 27th, 2012Via: New York Times:
A tax break that has long been untouchable could soon be in for some serious scrutiny.
Many home buyers deduct their mortgage interest when assessing their tax bill, a perk that has helped bolster the income of millions of families — and the broader housing market.
But as President Obama and Congress try to hash out a deal to reduce the budget deficit, the mortgage interest deduction will likely be part of the discussion.
Limits on a broad array of deductions could emerge in any budget deal. It is likely that any caps would be structured to aim at high-income households, and would diminish or end the mortgage tax break for many of those taxpayers.
TrueTime API: How Google’s Servers Know What Time It Is
November 26th, 2012Via: Wired:
But with Spanner, Google discarded the NTP in favor of its own timing-keeping mechanism. It’s called the TrueTime API. “We wanted something that we were confident in,” Fikes says. “It’s a time reference that’s owned by Google.”
Rather than rely on outside clocks, Google equips its Spannerized data centers with its own atomic clocks and GPS (global positioning system) receivers, not unlike the one in your iPhone. Tapping into a network of satellites orbiting the Earth, a GPS receiver can pinpoint your location, but it can also tell time.
These time-keeping devices connect to a certain number of master servers, and the master servers shuttle time readings to other machines running across the Google network. Basically, each machine on the network runs a daemon — a background software process — that is constantly checking with masters in the same data center and in other Google data centers, trying to reach a consensus on what time it is. In this way, machines across the Google network can come pretty close to running a common clock.
China: Man Who Blew Whistle on Tainted Milk Killed
November 26th, 2012Via: Stuff:
The man who blew the whistle on milk contamination in China has been killed, but the circumstances of his death are shrouded in mystery.
Jiang Weisuo, 44, started to expose how milk was being contaminated in 2006, two years before the scandal that enveloped Sanlu, then a subsidiary of New Zealand dairy giant Fonterra.
Jiang, the general manager of dairy products plant in Shaanxi province, died on November 12, 10 days after suffering two knife wounds, the Xian Evening News reported.
The newspaper cited an unidentified local police source who said Jiang had been stabbed by his wife during a family dispute. Police had detained his wife as a suspect and were waiting for autopsy results to confirm if the wounds were lethal.
But on Friday, the Beijing News, citing an anonymous source, said Jiang’s wife did not stab her husband. ”Several people were present and it was unclear who did it,” the source said. “It probably had to do with monetary matters.”
Research Credit: HW
Cambridge University Center Will Study Technologies that Pose ‘Extinction-Level’ Risks to Humanity
November 26th, 2012Flashback 2000: Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us
Via: Cambridge University:
A philosopher, a scientist and a software engineer have come together to propose a new centre at Cambridge to address developments in human technologies that might pose “extinction-level” risks to our species, from biotechnology to artificial intelligence.
…
While few would deny the benefits humanity has received as a result of its engineering genius – from longer life to global networks – some are starting to question whether the acceleration of human technologies will result in the survival of man, as Good contended, or if in fact this is the very thing that will end us.
Now a philosopher, a scientist and a software engineer have come together to propose a new centre at Cambridge, the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (CSER), to address these cases – from developments in bio and nanotechnology to extreme climate change and even artificial intelligence – in which technology might pose “extinction-level” risks to our species.
“At some point, this century or next, we may well be facing one of the major shifts in human history – perhaps even cosmic history – when intelligence escapes the constraints of biology,” says Huw Price, the Bertrand Russell Professor of Philosophy and one of CSER’s three founders, speaking about the possible impact of Good’s ultra-intelligent machine, or artificial general intelligence (AGI) as we call it today.
Palm-Scanning Technology ‘as a Handy ID System’
November 26th, 2012Via: USA Today:
At schools in Pinellas County, Fla., students aren’t paying for lunch with cash or a card, but with a wave of their hand over a palm scanner.
“It’s so quick that a child could be standing in line, call mom and say, ‘I forgot my lunch money today.’ She’s by her computer, runs her card, and by the time the child is at the front of the line, it’s already recorded,” says Art Dunham, director of food services for Pinellas County Schools.
Students take about four seconds to swipe and pay for lunch, Dunham says, and they’re doing it with 99% accuracy.
“We just love it. No one wants to go back,” Dunham says.
Palm-scanning technology is popping up nationwide as a bona fide biometric tracker of identities, and it appears poised to make the jump from schools and hospitals to other sectors of the economy such as banking and retail. It also has applications as a secure identifier for cloud computing.
A Dangerous Future of Killer Robots
November 26th, 2012Via: Washington Post:
The use of drones to kill suspected terrorists is controversial, but so long as a human being decides whether to fire the missile, it is not a radical shift in how humanity wages war. Since the first archer fired the first arrow, warriors have been inventing ways to strike their enemies while removing themselves from harm’s way.
Soon, however, military robots will be able to pick out human targets on the battlefield and decide on their own whether to go for the kill. An Air Force report predicted two years ago that “by 2030 machine capabilities will have increased to the point that humans will have become the weakest component in a wide array of systems.” A 2011 Defense Department road map for ground-based weapons states: “There is an ongoing push to increase autonomy, with a current goal of ‘supervised autonomy,’ but with an ultimate goal of full autonomy.”
The Pentagon still requires autonomous weapons to have a “man in the loop” — the robot or drone can train its sights on a target, but a human operator must decide whether to fire. But full autonomy with no human controller would have clear advantages. A computer can process information and engage a weapon infinitely faster than a human soldier. As other nations develop this capacity, the United States will feel compelled to stay ahead. A robotic arms race seems inevitable unless nations collectively decide to avoid one.
Don’t Worry: Pentagon: A Human Will Always Decide When a Robot Kills You
Company Fires 150 Employees for Not Getting Flu Shots
November 26th, 2012Via: WLWT:
One of Cincinnati’s largest employers fired approximately 150 employees Wednesday for failing to get a required flu shot.
TriHealth offered all of its 10,800 employees free flu shots. Employees had a month to get the flu shot. The deadline was Nov. 16. Employees who did not get the shot were terminated Wednesday, a company spokesperson said.
‘Self-Boosting Vaccines’
November 25th, 2012Oh sure.
Via: Ars Technica:
The negative sides, however, are very substantial. Cytomegalovirus doesn’t normally cause symptoms in healthy people, but it tends to be active in very young babies and among those with immune defects, where it can cause serious complications. Herpes viruses cause unpleasant symptoms as well. Plus, with public acceptance of vaccines having issues at the moment, convincing people that they should voluntarily get infected with one might be a very hard sell.
