Why a One-Room West Virginia Library Runs a $20,000 Cisco Router
February 26th, 2013Via: Ars Technica:
Marmet, West Virginia is a town of 1,500 people living in a thin ribbon along the banks of the Kanawha River just below Charleston. The town’s public library is only open Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays. It’s housed in a small building the size of a trailer, which the state of West Virginia describes as an “extremely small facility with only one Internet connection.” Which is why it’s such a surprise to learn the Marmet Public Library runs this connection through a $15,000 to $20,000 Cisco 3945 router intended for “mid-size to large deployments,” according to Cisco.
In an absolutely scathing report (PDF) just released by the state’s legislative auditor, West Virginia officials are accused of overspending at least $5 million of federal money on such routers, installed indiscriminately in both large institutions and one-room libraries across the state. The routers were purchased without ever asking the state’s libraries, cops, and schools what they needed. And when distributed, the expensive routers were passed out without much apparent care. The small town of Clay received seven of them to serve a total population of 491 people… and all seven routers were installed within only .44 miles of each other at a total cost of more than $100,000.
Foxconn Reshuffle: Some Manufacturing Going to Taiwan, Brazil, Indonesia and USA
February 25th, 2013Via: Forbes:
Last Monday, Gou announced that Foxconn’s next major expansion push would be focused on Taiwan, where he wanted to put plants in New Taipei City, Taichung, and Kaohsiung. This comes at a time when the company is putting off the expansion of one of its China facilities, in Zhengzhou.
Gou founded Foxconn in Taiwan in the 1970s, and moved manufacturing away from the island republic to Shenzhen at the end of the 1980s. Now, he is beginning to reverse the process. Moreover, Gou is committing even more funds outside China. For instance, Foxconn will soon open facilities that will employ another 10,000 workers in Brazil. At the same time, he is negotiating with authorities to commit as much as $10 billion to factories in Indonesia.
And then there is the good ole U.S.A., where Foxconn already makes server parts in California and Texas. Said Louis Woo, the spokesman, “We are looking at doing more manufacturing in the U.S. because, in general, customers want more to be done there.”
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Why should Gou leave the country that made him rich and famous? There are, for starters, spiraling wages, worker discontent, forced unionization, tough environmental enforcement. But the big factor today—and the one no one thought about three years ago—is political risk. Beijing wants territory controlled by its neighbors and, as a result, China is getting itself into nasty scrapes, especially with Japan. Moreover, the Chinese have designs on the sovereign state of Taiwan, which they consider their 34th province. For IT companies, China’s friction with these two countries is a problem because many of their products rely on Japanese and Taiwanese components.
And the Chinese have not only gone after neighbors. Since late 2010, Beijing has sought to punish American, European Union, and Norwegian companies for perceived misdeeds of their governments. In Norway’s case, it was the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to dissident Liu Xiaobo that started a multi-year Chinese war against salmon imports from the Scandinavian country.
Costs can always be passed on to customers or absorbed. Supply chain disruptions, however, can kill a business. Beijing’s retaliation last September against Japanese companies showed that China is no longer a reliable member of global supply chains.
Farm Theme Boosts Enrollment in Rural Kansas School
February 25th, 2013What? No In-School-Suspension program?
Via: Reuters:
The first clue is a sign “Fresh Eggs for Sale” in front of the school. There is a sheep pen on the baseball field and the sounds of farm animals greet pupils every morning.
This is not your ordinary elementary school. It is the Walton Rural Life Center, a kindergarten-through-fourth grade charter school in rural Kansas that uses agriculture to teach students about math, science, economics – and responsibility.
The farm theme is so popular that the center has a waiting list to enroll and has given the town of Walton, population 235, a boost, said Mayor Evan Johnson.
“It’s been a priority for us and a source of pride,” Johnson said.
Students take turns each week feeding chickens, sheep, pigs and cattle. They wash and sell the eggs, make yarn from sheep wool and raise pigs for market – with pork coming back to the school for meals. They also raise vegetables for school snacks.
“The kids love it, and they are learning,” said Principal Natise Vogt, pointing to better test scores as one example.
At a time when many small towns struggle to keep their schools open due to shrinking enrollment, Walton is turning students away for lack of space. In 2007, enrollment dipped to around 100, putting the school at risk of closing, Vogt said. But the school has 168 students today.
About half the students come from outside the school’s enrollment boundaries and some live outside the school district, which is based five miles away, in Newton, Kansas.
“The parents like the unique curriculum, the project-based learning,” said Jennifer Sauerwein, co-president of the school’s Parent-Teacher Association. “The kids get that real-life hands-on, day-to-day connection to learning.”
NZ: Disgruntled Snitch Sues Police
February 25th, 2013Via: Stuff:
A former police spy has lifted the lid on his decade of deception under the codename Muldoon.
The details of Rob Gilchrist’s double life infiltrating protest groups and leading trade unions are contained in a draft claim for more than $500,000 from police for lost income, for humiliation, distress, and loss of reputation.
He claims that, to bolster his “cover” for what he says became a $600-a-week job, he became a vegan, an anarchist, an animal rights activist and a tino rangatiratanga supporter.
Police say they cannot discuss the Christchurch man’s claim, but do not accept the allegations and will be “vigorously” defending the proceedings.
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He says that he was directed to spy on unions, including the Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union, Service and Food Workers, Maritime Union, and the Council of Trade Unions, along with environment, peace, animal rights and political groups.
Research Credit: ottilie
Widespread Seafood Fraud
February 25th, 2013Via: Oceana:
From 2010 to 2012, Oceana conducted one of the largest seafood fraud investigations in the world to date, collecting more than 1,200 seafood samples from 674 retail outlets in 21 states to determine if they were honestly labeled.
DNA testing found that one-third (33 percent) of the 1,215 samples analyzed nationwide were mislabeled, according to U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) guidelines.
Of the most commonly collected fish types, samples sold as snapper and tuna had the highest mislabeling rates (87 and 59 percent, respectively), with the majority of the samples identified by DNA analysis as something other than what was found on the label. In fact, only seven of the 120 samples of red snapper purchased nationwide were actually red snapper. The other 113 samples were another fish.
Research Credit: RP
China Acknowledges ‘Cancer Villages’
February 24th, 2013Via: BBC:
China’s environment ministry appears to have acknowledged the existence of so-called “cancer villages” after years of public speculation about the impact of pollution in certain areas.
For years campaigners have said cancer rates in some villages near factories and polluted waterways have shot up.
But the term “cancer village” has no technical definition and the ministry’s report did not elaborate on it.
There have been many calls for China to be more transparent on pollution.
The latest report from the environment ministry is entitled “Guard against and control risks presented by chemicals to the environment during the 12th Five-Year period (2011-2015)”.
It says that the widespread production and consumption of harmful chemicals forbidden in many developed nations are still found in China.
“The toxic chemicals have caused many environmental emergencies linked to water and air pollution,” it said.
The report goes on to acknowledge that such chemicals could pose a long-term risk to human health, making a direct link to the so-called “cancer villages”.
“There are even some serious cases of health and social problems like the emergence of cancer villages in individual regions,” it said.
Related: Secret Organic Gardens for China’s Elite
PBS NOVA Rise of the Drones
February 24th, 2013Via: PBS:
Related: Drone ‘Nightmare Scenario’ Now Has A Name: ARGUS
6 Tanks at Hanford Nuclear Site Leaking Radioactive Waste
February 23rd, 2013Via: Reuters:
Six underground storage tanks at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation along the Columbia River in Washington state were recently found to be leaking radioactive waste, but there is no immediate risk to human health, state and federal officials said on Friday.
The seeping waste adds to decades of soil contamination caused by leaking storage tanks at Hanford in the past and threatens to further taint groundwater below the site but poses no near-term danger of polluting the Columbia River, officials said.
The newly discovered leaks were revealed by Governor Jay Inslee a week after the U.S. Energy Department disclosed that radioactive waste was found to be escaping from one tank at Hanford.
Inslee said he was informed on Friday by outgoing U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu that a total of six of the aging, single-walled tanks were leaking radioactive waste.
Moody’s Downgrades Britain’s Credit Rating
February 23rd, 2013Via: Reuters:
Britain suffered its first ever sovereign ratings downgrade from a major agency on Friday when Moody’s stripped the country of its coveted top-notch triple-A rating, dealing a major blow to finance minister George Osborne.
Moody’s said weak prospects for British economic growth, which have thrown the government’s deficit reduction strategy off course, lay behind its decision to cut the rating by one notch to Aa1 from Aaa.
Bank ‘Profits’
February 22nd, 2013Via: Bloomberg:
So what if we told you that, by our calculations, the largest U.S. banks aren’t really profitable at all? What if the billions of dollars they allegedly earn for their shareholders were almost entirely a gift from U.S. taxpayers?
Granted, it’s a hard concept to swallow. It’s also crucial to understanding why the big banks present such a threat to the global economy.
Let’s start with a bit of background. Banks have a powerful incentive to get big and unwieldy. The larger they are, the more disastrous their failure would be and the more certain they can be of a government bailout in an emergency. The result is an implicit subsidy: The banks that are potentially the most dangerous can borrow at lower rates, because creditors perceive them as too big to fail.
