Germany Decides to Abandon Nuclear Power by 2022
May 30th, 2011Via: AP:
Germany’s governing coalition said Monday it will shut down all the country’s nuclear power plants by 2022. The decision, prompted by Japan’s nuclear disaster, will make Germany the first major industrialized nation to go nuclear-free in years.
It also completes a remarkable about-face for Chancellor Angela Merkel’s center-right government, which only late last year had pushed through a plan to extend the life span of the country’s 17 reactors — with the last scheduled to go offline in 2036.
But Merkel now says industrialized, technologically advanced Japan’s helplessness in the face of the Fukushima disaster made her rethink the risks of the technology.
“We want the electricity of the future to be safe, reliable and economically viable,” Chancellor Angela Merkel told reporters on Monday after overnight negotiations among the governing parties. “We have to follow a new path.”
While Germany already was set to abandon nuclear energy eventually, the decision — which still requires parliamentary approval — dramatically speeds up that process.
The Whistleblower
May 30th, 2011If you don’t know what this is about, see the handy Employee involvement in child sex slave traffic section on the Wikipedia page for DynCorp. And remember: “We Serve Today For a Better Tomorrow.”
Bolkovac, who worked as part of the UN peacekeeping mission in Bosnia in the late 1990s, provides yet another perspective on why private military contracting has encroached on U.S. foreign policy, threatening our image, national security, and the lives of those we are supposed to be protecting. A police officer turned human rights investigator, she worked at uncovering international sex trafficking and cover-ups by her bosses at DynCorp International, which led to her firing, a mad rush across the border, and a subsequent wrongful termination lawsuit in which she was victorious and became the self-described poster girl for everything wrong about security-for-hire. Most galling is the sad truth that DynCorp answered to no law, nor to the military, the U.S., or the Bosnians. The criminality, including rape and murder, committed by corporate military contractors has proliferated in the past decade, and Bolkovac’s cautionary tale ends on the sourest of notes. DynCorp won another federal contract on the heels of her lawsuit, and no one was prosecuted for crimes against the women whose lives she struggled to save. Infuriating and heartbreaking.
Dozens of Pages Disappear from Intelligence File on Canadian Socialist
May 30th, 2011Via: The Canadian Press:
Dozens of pages from a decades-old intelligence file on socialist icon Tommy Douglas have mysteriously disappeared.
The disappearance came to light during a lengthy court battle over the federal government’s refusal to fully disclose the RCMP dossier on the former Saskatchewan premier and one-time federal NDP leader.
Library and Archives Canada, which currently holds the 1,142-page dossier, initially released just over 450 heavily censored pages in response to a request by The Canadian Press under the Access to Information Act.
But the government partially lifted the shroud of secrecy a week before a court hearing into the matter began in February, releasing almost 400 additional pages under a new, more relaxed policy governing the release of historically significant documents.
It was only then, with fuller access to the file, that Paul Champ, lawyer for The Canadian Press, realized about four dozen pages were missing.
Research Credit: cptmarginal
Robot Juggles Five Billiard Balls at Once
May 30th, 2011The audio is the chilling part.
Via: io9:
This a robotic juggler built by the Department of Control Engineering at Prague’s Czech Technical University. Researchers have taught this machine to lob and catch five billiard balls all on its own. It’ll someday do the same with our skulls.
Fukushima: Tepco Admits That Stabilizing Reactors by Year’s End May Be Impossible
May 30th, 2011Via: Japan Times / Kyodo:
Stabilizing the crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 power plant by the end of the year may be impossible, senior officials at Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Sunday, throwing a monkey wrench into plans to let evacuees return to their homes near the plant.
The confirmation of core meltdowns hitting reactors 1 through 3, accompanied by breaches to the critical pressure vessels that hold the nuclear fuel, has led officials to believe that “there will be a major delay to work” to contain the situation, one official said.
Pledge of Allegiance
May 30th, 2011Research Credit: gatorcountry
Greece: Massive Outside Intervention Over Bailout
May 30th, 2011Via: Financial Times:
European leaders are negotiating a deal that would lead to unprecedented outside intervention in the Greek economy, including international involvement in tax collection and privatisation of state assets, in exchange for new bail-out loans for Athens.
People involved in the talks said the package would also include incentives for private holders of Greek debt voluntarily to extend Athens’ repayment schedule, as well as another round of austerity measures.
Police Threaten CNN Journalist Looking for “Secret Morgue” [???]
May 29th, 2011What’s this all about?
UK Training Saudi Forces Used to Crush Arab Spring
May 29th, 2011Via: Guardian:
Britain is training Saudi Arabia’s national guard – the elite security force deployed during the recent protests in Bahrain – in public order enforcement measures and the use of sniper rifles. The revelation has outraged human rights groups, which point out that the Foreign Office recognises that the kingdom’s human rights record is “a major concern”.
In response to questions made under the Freedom of Information Act, the Ministry of Defence has confirmed that British personnel regularly run courses for the national guard in “weapons, fieldcraft and general military skills training, as well as incident handling, bomb disposal, search, public order and sniper training”. The courses are organised through the British Military Mission to the Saudi Arabian National Guard, an obscure unit that consists of 11 British army personnel under the command of a brigadier.
The MoD response, obtained yesterday by the Observer, reveals that Britain sends up to 20 training teams to the kingdom a year. Saudi Arabia pays for “all BMM personnel, as well as support costs such as accommodation and transport”.
Get Lamp: A Documentary About Adventures in Text
May 29th, 2011Via: Get Lamp:
Trailer:
Film:
In the early years of the microcomputer, a special kind of game was being played.
With limited sound, simple graphics, and tiny amounts of computing power, the first games on home computers would hardly raise an eyebrow in the modern era of photorealism and surround sound. In a world of Quake, Half-Life and Halo, it is expected that a successful game must be loud, fast, and full of blazing life-like action.
But in the early 1980s, an entire industry rose over the telling of tales, the solving of intricate puzzles and the art of writing. Like living books, these games described fantastic worlds to their readers, and then invited them to live within them.
They were called “computer adventure games”, and they used the most powerful graphics processor in the world: the human mind.
Rising from side projects at universities and engineering companies, adventure games would describe a place, and then ask what to do next. They presented puzzles, tricks and traps to be overcome. They were filled with suspense, humor and sadness. And they offered a unique type of joy as players discovered how to negotiate the obstacles and think their way to victory. These players have carried their memories of these text adventures to the modern day, and a whole new generation of authors have taken up the torch to present a new set of places to explore.
Get Lamp is a documentary that will tell the story of the creation of these incredible games, in the words of the people who made them.
