Via CNet Green Tech - The Methanol Institute supports the introduction of the Open Fuel Standard Act of 2011 (H.R. 1687) in the U.S. House of Representatives. Originally posted at The Car Tech blog...

The Great Tennessee Air Show | Flying Friday - Leaving Terra Firma | I don’t know what your plans are this weekend, but if you’re near Smyrna, TN you should get to The Great Tennessee Air Show. The air show gates open at 8 a.m. this Saturday and Sunday at the Smyrna Airport. There are still tickets are still available for $20 at the gate or $10 for kids under 12 and kids under 4 are free...

Picture gallery: 2011 N'Awlins Air Show preview day thrills students, military families - NOLA | Near perfect weather greeted the crowd during the 2011 N'Awlins Air Show preview show for students, military members and their family members and invited guests Friday at the Naval Air Station-Joint Reserve Base in Belle Chasse, Louisiana...

VIDEO: High flyin' times at Central Texas Airshow - KCEN | Brace for daring stunts in the skies over Temple, with the return of the Central Texas Airshow! The three day event kicks off Friday, but pilots started arriving Thursday evening to practice their hair-raising tricks with our KCEN-HD camera on board...

War Dog - Foreign Policy | The question of how the dog got into bin Laden's compound is no puzzle -- the same way the special ops team did, by being lowered from an MH-60s helicopter. In fact, U.S. Air Force dogs have been airborne for decades, though the earliest flying dogs accompanied Soviet forces in the 1930s...

JetMan delayed his flight through Grand Canyon - Aviation News EU | Yves Rossy and his team want to do some test runs before the actual flight. Just before 10 a.m., they announced that they had scrubbed the event. Rossy reportedly saying he didn’t have enough time to train...

VIDEO: Aluminum Overcast B-17 Flying Fortress - BlueRidgeNow | The Aluminum Overcast B-17 is at the Asheville Regional Airport for tours and flight experiences.

Bomber brings back memories - The Adobe Press | High winds sweeping along the Santa Maria Public Airport runway couldn’t keep 88-year-old Joel Johnson from crossing the tarmac for an up-close look at a restored B-17 parked outside the Radisson hotel last week. A 10-year Nipomo resident, Johnson fought back tears as he examined the World War II bomber nicknamed Aluminum Overcast...

Honor Flight sends another 105 WW2 vets to Washington - KSFY |  They are among the best this nation has ever produced.
 The men and women of World War II literally saved the world from unspeakable evil. Friday morning, 105 World War II veterans left Sioux Falls for Washington D-C, to see for themselves the memorial dedicated to the war that left a mark on them and the world...

North Korea hands over remains of RAF pilot - Histroy News Network | North Korea has handed over the remains of a British pilot who died in the Korean War nearly 60 years ago...

Strizhi: 20 years up in the sky - Voice Of Russia | Russia’s famous aerobatic team Strizhi is celebrating their 20th anniversary. Breathtaking air shows by Strizhi ace pilots stunned the public in dozens of countries in the past years. Not a day passes without Strizhi’s six MiG-29 fourth-generation fighter jets rocketing almost vertically into the sky at Kubinka airport near Moscow on routine training flights...

Parachute Team Lands In Loudoun To Support Veterans' Project - Leesburg 2Day | Leesburg, VA - Residents shouldn't be alarmed Monday if they see a group of Army Rangers parachuting into Loudoun. The drop by the Obligated, Dedicated and Determined Ranger Group Veteran Parachute Team will be part of the Fisher House Golf Classic to be played on the Norman Course at Lansdowne Resort...

Women in Aviation receive scholarship pledges of $375,000 so far - Dayton Daily News | WEST ALEXANDRIA — Businesses and individuals have pledged a total of $375,000 in funding to be used by the Women in Aviation International organization for training and academic scholarships in 2012...

Young Eagles Flight Rally at Minute Man Airfield - Community Advocate | Stow - All those between ages 8-17 will have a chance to take to the skies Saturday May 14, from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m., as EAA Chapter 196 hosts a Young Eagles Flight Rally at Minute Man Airfield, 302 Boxboro Rd., Stow...

New Buoyant-Aircraft Design Could Lead to Fleets of Efficient Cargo Zeppelins - PopSci | A California company is working on a new airship design that could solve one of the biggest problems facing buoyancy-aided aircraft — how to control floatworthiness without wasting fuel.
Aeros, founded by Russian-born entrepreneur Igor Pasternak, is working on a rigid-hulled airship that varies its buoyancy to take off and land vertically...

CoolPix: Scaled Composites Model 355 - Pilot Optional - Martt | A few days ago there were some aviation news stories about a mysterious, apparent Rutan designed, UAV-looking flying machine that had been spotted flying near Beale Air Force Base north of Sacremento California. Today, much more info has been revealed about what this airplane is. It started life as Scaled Composites Model 355, and it first flew in February 2010. It's now officially known as the Northrop Grumman Firebird...

SPACE.com Facebook Q&A: 10 Alan Shepard Questions for Biographer Neal Thompson - Space | This year marks the 50th anniversary of American human spaceflight, and yesterday (May 5), NASA celebrated the historic suborbital flight that made astronaut Alan Shepard the first American to reach space. On May 5, 1961, Shepard launched aboard his Freedom 7 spacecraft on a 15-minute journey that changed the face of the nation's space program...

STS-134 moves to NET May 16 target amid APU wiring and thermos work - NASA Space Flight | Endeavour’s final mission is now tracking a No Earlier Than (NET) May 16 launch date, following a Program level meeting to evaluate the schedule for the troubleshooting work on the orbiter’s Auxiliary Power Unit (APU-1) heater system. Work has – and continues to – focus on the Aft Load Controller Assembly (ALCA-2), while additional work is being performed on replacing wiring and thermostats to provide improved fault mitigation...

FOXSports.com talks with PGA Tour veteran Ben Crane about his golf game, his recent viral video popularity and more.
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It wasn't that long ago that:

• Serena Williams was the player to beat

• Maria Sharapova was a very bright star on the tour

• Kim Clijsters was headed toward a great 2011 season

• Jelena Jankovic was "a step away" from meeting her potential

• Sabine Lisicki appeared to be Germany's Next Big Thing

• Julia Goerges was a good-enough German player who showed some potential

• Ana Ivanovic looked like she was regaining her prestige

• Sam Stosur was heralded  on clay surfaces

Things have changed. Williams, a victim of especially nasty bad health luck, has been out for months and months. Clijsters has three injuries and may not play in the French Open. Sharapova is slowly getting her groove back, but fans are nervous. Stosur hasn't been the same since she lost the 2010 French Open to Francesca Schiavone.

Ivanovic, who can't even keep a coach in her employ, is lost somewhere in the tennis cosmos, and her countrywoman, Jankovic, has sadly misplaced her confidence. Lisicki, who was either sick or injured for months, is finally making a bit of a comeback, but she is still a shadow of the player who came out of nowhere and won Charleston in 2009. In the meantime, German player Andrea Petkovic has steadily increased both her skills and confidence, and has become a threat in many tournaments.

The most interesting German story, however, is that of Julia Goerges. Goerges has shown potential for a long time, with her strong hitting on both sides, but she broke through and won Stuttgart, beating world number 1 Caroline Wozniacki in the final. Then she beat her again in Madrid, and will play in the semifinals tomorrow. Sometimes people forget how important confidence is, and Goerges must be feeling a lot of it right now.

Consistency has been Wozniacki's strength, though she hasn't yet won a major, and her chance to do so may not come until the U.S. hard court season arrives.

Then there's Petra Kvitova--whom some of us have been watching for a long time. She sneaked into the 2011 season with two titles, then backed off a bit (there was an injury issue), but is making a surprising run on red clay in Madrid. Kvitova has semifinal points to defend at Wimbledon, and her chances of defending them are pretty good. More focused and careful than she used to be, Kvitova is mentally strong and probably has nowhere to go but up.

What about the other Russians? Elena Dementieva has retired, and the extraordinarily gifted Svetlana Kuznetsova has trouble winning. Dinara Safina was taken out of the tour by a serious back injury, and has not found her way since her return. Nadia Petrova has some health problems, but she has run hot and cold for a few years now. Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova keeps getting better, but it's Vera Zvonareva has outshown them all. A two-time major finalist, Zvonareva has a lot to prove this year; she is now "the" Russian, and it's a bonus that she is intelligent and articulate (and can break a racquet with more panache than anyone in history). But despite Zvonareva and Pavlyuchenkova, the Russians no longer dominate.

Since we're talking about change, Ii's only natural that people would speculate about the Williams sisters' retirement. I think they will try to be around for the 2012 Olympic Games, but both of them now have health issues that make it hard for them to compete. Of course, it's the work of a fool to ever count out Serena Williams, so--like everyone else--I'm waiting to see what will happen.

Everything, by the way, could change again tomorrow--that's the nature of professional tennis. And if you doubut that, I have two words for you: Francesca Schiavone.

David Ladd and Andrew Pope shared medalist honors in local qualifying for the U.S. Open.

There's a huge debate in journalism and open goverment circles about the wisdom of releasing the photos of the dead Bin Laden with bullets in his head. A lot of people who normally push open-government issues say this one's dangerous; if the photos get circulated, it could incite violence around the world. On the other hand, they were taken by U.S. troops using U.S. tax dollars; we paid for this stuff, grisly as it is, and the public ought to be able to look at it.

But it's complicated. And the topic of today's poll. Check it out after the jump.<!--break--> 

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Free polls from Go2poll.com

Tomorrow, Saturday, May 7, 2011 is Free Comic Book Day here in the U.S. Once again a chance for comic book shops to open their doors to the curious and unaccustomed, hold special events, creator signings and sales; and for publishers to show off their wares in special titles and editions created for the occasion, [...]

More and more, elite female athletes are taking on a challenge greater than sports. They're returning to the competitive world of sports while juggling motherhood.

Soccer moms have long led the charge. The U.S. Women's National Team has consistently featured mothers on its roster since 1994, when Joy Fawcett became the first "Soccer Mom" to give birth and continue playing at the highest levels of international soccer. Carla Overbeck and Danielle Fotopoulos also had kids while on the U.S. team, and more recently, three moms have played for the USA in defenders Kate Markgraf (mother of Keegan), Christie Rampone (mother of Riley and Reece) and Tina Frimpong (mother of MacKenzie). Though retired from competitive play, Mia Hamm joined the Soccer Moms Club when she and husband Nomar Garciaparra welcomed twin daughters in 2007. Four years ago, Brandi Chastain became mom to little Connor and three years ago Julie Foudy, former captain of the US Women's soccer team, had a baby girl named Isabel. Former captain Kristine Lilly returned to play after daughter Sidney was born. She retired from professional soccer at the beginning of 2011 and announced she is expecting Baby #2.

Obviously, competitive women aren't waiting until their athletic careers are over to start families. And while the physical and emotional challenges of motherhood can be difficult, most athlete moms wouldn't have it any other way.  WNBA player Lisa Leslie sat out a season with the Los Angeles Sparks to give birth to a daughter but she returned to the pro team for a year and had a great season before giving birth to baby #2 and retiring. Leslie's teammate, MVP and Rookie of the Year Candace Parker is also a new mom enjoying baby Laila while playing in both the Euroleague and the WNBA. Other WNBA moms share their favorite Mother's Day memories on WNBA.com. But Parker and Leslie are far from the first WNBA stars to have their basketball careers impacted by pregnancy. In previous seasons, Sheryl Swoopes, Tina Thompson, Taj McWilliams-Franklin and others have missed time, and occasionally entire seasons, to focus on their families.

After pitcher Jennie Finch had a son named Ace with husband Casey Daigle she competed with the Women's National Softball Team at the Beijing Olympics and played for the Chicago Bandits. She is expecting her second child this summer. US National teammate Jessica Mendoza continues to play for National Pro Fastpitch usually bringing young Caleb on the road with her.

When the U.S. women's hockey team beat Finland to win the bronze medal at the 2006 Olympic Winter Games, forward Jenny Potter skated around the rink in celebration with her then 5-year-old daughter Madison in her arms. Potter's daughter was a fixture at the rink at an early age. A week after Madison was born in January 2001, Jenny was skating again. Three months later, she was back playing for the U.S. women's hockey team in the world championships. What's even more impressive is that Jenny did it all again. Just 83 days after having her second child, Potter helped the 2007 U.S. Women's National Team to a 9-0 victory over Kazakhstan in the opening game of the 2007 IIIHF Women's World Championship. 

Tennis player Lindsay Davenport had an amazing comeback after giving birth to her son Jagger. Just three months after the birth of her first child, Davenport became an instant and almost shocking success winning a number of high profile tournaments. She recently gave birth to her second child. Kim Clisjters came out of retirement after her daughter was born and famously won the U.S. Open as an unseeded player.

Other images from the world of women's sports clearly show the tide has turned. Legendary Czech cross county skier Katerina Neumannova collapsed on her knees at the finish line after winning gold in the 30-kilometre race at the 2006 Turin Olympics, her poles askew as she hugged her two-year-old daughter, Lucie. Former Ironman world champion Lori Bowden placed second at Ironman Austria, just 10 months after giving birth to her son Tyson. And pro cyclist Sue Palmar-Komar, a 2002 Commonwealth Games silver medallist, at age 41, had a sibling for her seven-year-old daughter Trinity. And who can forget long distance runner Paula Radcliffe who won the New York Marathon months after giving birth to daugher Isla. Kara Goucher is the newest marathon mom having completed this year's Boston race six months after having her son.

On the long list of athlete moms is Gold medal-winning swimmer Dara Torres, who made an amazing comeback while mothering toddler Tessa, and fellow swimmer Summer Sanders who is married to three-time Olympic skier Erik Schlopy with whom she has a daughter and a son.

Most of these working moms admit they can't do it alone. And while their spouses and families pitch in, they are also assisted by their leagues and teams. Potter said USA Hockey provides helpful financial assistance during Olympic years. And before the Women's United Soccer Association (WUSA) folded, the league mandated that home teams must provide child care for the mothers on visiting teams. The Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA) takes things to a whole new level. Since 1993, the LPGA has operated the LPGA Child Development Center, which travels to more than 25 tournaments per year. Bardine May, the Center's director, said the LPGA was motivated to provide child care so that its athletes didn't have to choose between playing the game and having a family.

There are many different kinds of mothers in this world. There are professionals and homemakers. Some are fashionable, some conservative, some are modern and some are cool. Fortunately some are competitive athletes as well.

Be sure to tell YOUR mom how much you appreciate her this Mother's Day.

crossposted on prettytough.com

@jschonb

dare to dream

The government appears to be up to its old tricks again. As Mozilla General Counsel Harvey Anderson reports, the Department of Homeland Security recently requested that Mozilla take down a Firefox add-on that helps users access information on the Internet. DHS apparently told Mozilla that the MafiaaFire add-on at issue circumvents a courtder entitling DHS to seize certain domain names in an attempt to prevent individuals from accessing websites allegedly engaged in copyright infringement.

Leaving aside the issue of whether DHS can constitutionally seize websites through court proceedings without first providing due process rights to the websites, whether speech is unlawful is for the courts to determine, not for DHS any government entity to decide. The U.S. government should not be in the business of trying to get speech removed from the Internet absent valid courtders declaring that speech to be unlawful. After all, online content, like all speech, is protected by the First Amendment.

This is not the first time that government entities have tried to get speech removed from the Internet without first obtaining a courtder. It unfortunately won't be the last time either. Mozilla did the right thing, and it should be applauded. Instead of blindly doing what DHS requested, Mozilla asked the government reasonable questions to determine if there was really a lawful basis for taking down the speech, and it let the public know that it received this request. Twitter also stood up for user privacy and free speech earlier this year in response to a government demand for information about its users. Will the services you use do the same?

It's time for all ISPs and other online service providers to commit to protecting user rights and to be transparent about government demands. Sign our petition and tell Internet companies that you expect them to stand up for your rights and be transparent about government demands. A free and open Internet depends on them.

Learn more about free speech online: Subscribe to our newsletter, follow us on Twitter, and like us on Facebook.

In the age of instant news, when headlines last at most a few hours before being replaced by the next "big story," the death of Osama Bin Laden has unusual staying power. Ever since word started to leak late Sunday night -- first on Twitter, quoting a Congressional aide, then in confirmation from the White House itself -- the press corps, Washington, most of the nation and much of the world, has been riveted. The horrific nature of his crimes, the video of the planes flying into the World Trade Center, the reports of phone calls from airplane passengers to husbands and wives as they faced an awful death, the memory of loved ones wandering lower Manhattan for days searching for the lost. Not to mention the jagged face of the Pentagon and the crash scene in Shanksville, Pa. All those memories came rushing back, to give a fresh, raw quality to the news that al-Qaida's leader had not only been located, he had been shot and killed.

And the questions poured out: how long had the CIA suspected his presence there? (At least 6 months.) How had they discovered him? (Years of painstaking work, tracking down a courier based on a nickname.) If the evidence Bin Laden was in the house was "circumstantial" as White House counter-terrorism adviser John Brennan noted, why had the operation gone forward? Just how risky was this venture, compared to other operations Navy SEALS are used to carrying out? How could Bin Laden have been living in Pakistan without Pakistani officials knowing about it -- especially since it was so close to Pakistan's equivalent of West Point -- an elite military training academy? Who else was living in the compound? How many were armed when the raid took place? How much and what sort of resistance did they put up? Why didn't bin Laden try to escape, or was there no option to do so? What really went wrong with the "stealth" helicopter that U.S. officials said malfunctioned as it reached its destination? If there was only one person inside the compound using a gun - reportedly the courier - why were we first told it was a 40-minute firefight? What were President Obama and secretaries Clinton and Gates and others looking at in the White House Situation Room in that amazing photograph taken as the raid was underway?

Those were questions for the first and second days, but because it was an operation conducted in secret, and because of its success, more questions popped up by the hour: Why weren't neighbors around the compound in Abbottabad (named after a British major, James Abbott, who helped govern the area when it was part of India in the mid-19th century. See below for a poem Abbott wrote about the city.) Why weren't they more suspicious of a place with barbed wire, unusually high walls and tinted window glass? Had bin Laden ever emerged on the outside, with or without any sort of disguise? Why had the myth persisted so long that he was living in a cave or another remote, rugged location, when he was actually living comfortably in a city just 30 miles from Islamabad? What sort of material did the Navy SEALS, who pulled off the raid, take away? What has happened to bin Laden's three wives who reportedly were in the house at the same time, including the youngest, who was with him when he was found? (They're reportedly in custody of Pakistani security.) What sort of information are they providing? (One is saying bin Laden had been living in the house for at least five years.) How could bin Laden have been operationally directing the al-Qaida network if he had to rely on couriers traveling on foot to make contact with those on the outside?

Of course, the answers to many of these questions are emerging in a flood of news reports - reporters working overtime to get what details they can from their sources.

But still, new questions keep coming: How embarrassing is this episode for the Pakistani government - the fact that U.S. forces could swoop into their country and conduct such a daring operation without their knowledge? (This and the question of whether anyone in the Pakistani government knew that bin Laden was living in their midst, are under investigation, according to Pakistani officials.) How will U.S. relations with Pakistan change as a result, at a time when our country relies on Pakistan to help fight Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan? Will Congress want to reduce the now-billions of dollars in aid this country provides annually to Pakistan? And a different line of questions: Why did the U.S. government -- the Obama administration -- decide to announce that it had captured a "treasure trove" of documents, computer material, hard drives, thumb drives and other potential valuables from the compound, thus giving al-Qaida a "heads-up" that they have this knowledge, and signaling to them the need to change phone numbers, couriers, codes, plans, etc.? Why not leave them guessing about what was retrieved? In fact, why did the administration feel the need to say much of anything about the operation and what they found? Why not keep more of it secret?

And possibly the most enduring questions: What does bin Laden's death mean for al-Qaida and its affiliates? How many are mourning his passing, in private, or in the open, as hundreds of Islamist Salafists -- a group with fundamentalist beliefs -- did Friday in Cairo? Who will take bin Laden's place at the head of al-Qaida? Where is his second-in-command, Egyptian-born Ayman al-Zawahiri? For that matter, where is former Taliban leader Mullah Omar? Are reports of a split in al-Qaida accurate? Will Bin Laden's death inspire more young Muslims to join the cause, or will it discourage them from moving toward radicalism? Coinciding with the Arab Spring taking place in Muslim countries across the Middle East and North Africa -- will al-Qaida ever be able to pose the threat it once did? Its confirmation Friday morning that its own founder, Osama Bin Laden, was indeed dead was the acknowledgement many didn't expect. But it was accompanied by a warning that any happiness would soon be replaced by sadness, as it planned to retaliate.

It's these questions, and scores more still surfacing, that will keep this story alive. Osama Bin Laden in hiding has been such a giant presence in American life for such a long time that his death will continue to fascinate and puzzle us.

Will we ever know everything there is to know about him and his "evil empire," the term Ronald Reagan once used to describe the Soviet Union? Probably not, and that's the reason this story will not only outlast the usual short news cycle in American journalism, it'll keep historians occupied for some time to come.

In the meantime, there is some irony in the lines of the simple poem British Major James Abbott wrote about Abbotabad in 1853, when he left it to return to England:

"Abbotabad"

I remember the day when I first came here
And smelt the sweet Abbottabad air

The trees and ground covered with snow
Gave us indeed a brilliant show

To me the place seemed like a dream
And far ran a lonesome stream

The wind hissed as if welcoming us
The pine swayed creating a lot of fuss<</span>!>

And the tiny cuckoo sang it away A song very melodious and gay

I adored the place from the first sight And was happy that my coming here was right

And eight good years here passed very soon And we leave you perhaps on a sunny noon

Oh Abbottabad we are leaving you now To your natural beauty do I bow

Perhaps your winds sound will never reach my ear My gift for you is a few sad tears

I bid you farewell with a heavy heart Never from my mind will your memories thwart

Via

New York Review of Books/Wikipedia

Listen to the Audio

JIM LEHRER: And finally tonight, the analysis of Shields and Brooks, syndicated columnist Mark Shields, New York Times columnist David Brooks.

Mark, did you know about SEAL Team Six until this -- until a few days ago?

MARK SHIELDS: No.

JIM LEHRER: Did you, David?

DAVID BROOKS: No, I did not.

JIM LEHRER: Yes. It's fascinating.

MARK SHIELDS: Truly fascinating. And, I mean, talk about a great segment, fascinating spokespersons. I mean, they were compelling.

JIM LEHRER: Yes, the two -- you mean the two men themselves.

MARK SHIELDS: The two of them, yes.

JIM LEHRER: You could tell that they were ready to go.

MARK SHIELDS: They were.

(LAUGHTER)

JIM LEHRER: If called upon, they could go now.

DAVID BROOKS: Yes.

I often think why the military really is the one institution that is -- that has high regard -- and we have had loss of faith in all these institution. And why is that? And one theory, I think, is that they really tear people down.

It's not about ego in the military. They tear down the ego, before you build up towards service to something else. And we actually have very few institutions that do that anymore. And there are pros and cons to tearing people down. But it does lead to this sort of understated sense of service and commitment to something other than themselves, and an aversion to publicity, which is admirable.

JIM LEHRER: And the idea, as both of them said, that they function as teams.

DAVID BROOKS: Right.

JIM LEHRER: And that's where the breaking down goes, and then you come back together. You go down there as individuals; you come out as a team.

DAVID BROOKS: And we have done well in general, most institutions, in celebrating the individual, not so much the team you're on.

MARK SHIELDS: Yes. No, I just think it -- I agree with you. They do break down.

But what they put in the place is a sense of your dependence upon each other. And they submerge rampant individualism, which our society too often celebrates.

DAVID BROOKS: Right. Exactly.

JIM LEHRER: What about Ray's question, though, about scrutiny, about oversight? Are these -- is there a danger that these guys are so good, and so at the command of the president, that other people may not know what's going on until it's too late?

MARK SHIELDS: Well, I think, in this particular instance, they did inform the leadership.

JIM LEHRER: Congress.

MARK SHIELDS: Congress. But I thought the point of scrutiny that the senator made about watching this did bring to it a level of civilian control and oversight that was unimaginable in an earlier era.

JIM LEHRER: All right, to the killing of Osama bin Laden.

David, do you agree with the conventional wisdom that that forever has changed -- not forever, but has changed the way Americans view President Obama?

DAVID BROOKS: Yes. No, I really don't think so. I think he will -- his reputation is certainly enhanced. He made a brave decision. He stood by it. And I think the reputation of -- America feels better because it has been a long time since we have had something function really well.

JIM LEHRER: Because of guys like this.

DAVID BROOKS: Guys like that.

JIM LEHRER: Yes.

DAVID BROOKS: So -- and even for President Obama, it has been a long time since he has done something popular. Whether you agree or not with stimulus or health care or GM, they were not popular.

And now he's done something really popular. And he did a difficult thing and enhanced his authority. But will it transform his view? I'm doubtful, because this is not central to his presidency. The economy and other things are central to his presidency. And when you look at his standing, it's gone up significantly in the last week, and it's gone up in his handling of terror.

But overall views about the economy, despite these numbers, have not gone up. And his handling of the economy in some polls was flat, and, in some polls, it went down a little. And I think the economy will still be the central way he will be judged.

JIM LEHRER: Do how do you feel, Mark?

MARK SHIELDS: I think it has changed. And I think it's changed -- there was a growing narrative, Jim, that was getting traction that the president was the professor in chief, that he was too nuanced, that he was leading from the rear, that -- perhaps too cerebral, and a question of maybe not ready to pull the trigger, to make the bold statement.

This was a -- this was decisive. It was cool. It was bold. And I agree, I mean, that it was a success. And we have been yearning for success. We have been dying for success. But I also think it's important -- if one thinks just historically, since World War II, with the possible exception of the Cuban Missile Crisis, there has not been an unambiguous military intelligence success under a Democratic administration in that long time.

I mean, you have had Vietnam. You had Korea. You had Mogadishu. You had the Iranian hostages. I mean, there really hasn't. And this was. And...

JIM LEHRER: Just in pure political...

MARK SHIELDS: In pure political -- but, you know, in an act of -- a decisive act.

And there's a recognition in the political world that the president really did roll the dice. I mean, this was a high-risk -- high-reward, but very high-risk, not only to the brave men involved, but to his own political future.

JIM LEHRER: What do you think about the decision he has made not to release the photographs of Osama -- of the dead Osama bin Laden?

DAVID BROOKS: Yes, I agree with it. And I think they did it in the right way. It's really not up to us. It's up to how people in the Arab world are going to receive it.

And according to the reporting, what they did was, Sec. Clinton and Sec. Gates called around and said, what do you guys think of this? And there was nobody in that region who thought it would help. And so you're dealing -- it's a rare moment of American cultural sensitivity. And so, I think he made the right call.

JIM LEHRER: Mark?

MARK SHIELDS: I agree.

I think it's -- the commander in chief aspect of the president's job was on display in the mission itself. This was, I think, the most presidential thing he did this week, was to say no. I mean, there was a growing demand, a lot of people on the Hill saying, they have got to do it, and you have got to them out and show them.

And I thought he showed that there was -- it was a gloat-free zone. There was -- he said, we're not going to do the self-congratulatory celebration dance in the end zone of spiking the ball, I think as he put it. And this -- it serves no positive purpose at all, other than to satisfy maybe the prurient interest of some people for graphic...

DAVID BROOKS: ... a little celebration. I mean, he did go to New York and to the...

MARK SHIELDS: Yes. No, no, but, I mean, it wasn't -- it wasn't -- there wasn't a "Mission Accomplished" aspect to it. It wasn't strutting on an aircraft carrier.

DAVID BROOKS: Right.

JIM LEHRER: Do you disagree with that?

DAVID BROOKS: Well, you know, I don't blame him. I mean, he had a big victory. He went to New York. He went to the base. He took a little stroll. But I think that's fine. The president, he's running a campaign.

I do think that there is something a little ambivalent. The debate has really begun stirring about how the information was gathered. And I do think that General -- Attorney Gen. Mukasey had a piece in The Journal today saying it was gathered through water-boarding.

And I frankly, don't know the answer, because the experts are testifying 100 percent on both sides of this issue.

JIM LEHRER: Yes.

DAVID BROOKS: And, so, I don't know. But it will be -- that's the debate that will be interesting to see how it affects this.

JIM LEHRER: Now, I'm now going to use a tortured segue to say, speaking of debates, there was a -- the first Republican presidential debate last night in South Carolina.

And bin Laden, the killing of bin Laden, was a big subject in that debate. The debate was on the FOX News Channel.

Our Kwame Holman has some excerpts.

KWAME HOLMAN: This week's blockbuster foreign policy development consumed the early part of the first Republican presidential debate of the 2012 cycle, held last night in Greenville, S.C.

Former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty credited the president for acting against Osama bin Laden, but stopped his praise there.

TIM PAWLENTY, (R) former Minnesota governor: I do congratulate President Obama for the fine job that he did in taking some tough decisions and being decisive as it related to finding and killing Osama bin Laden. He did a good job. And I tip my cap to him in that moment.

But that moment is not the sum total of America's foreign policy.

KWAME HOLMAN: And former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum was less taken by the president's actions.

RICK SANTORUM, (R) former U.S. senator: If you look at what President Obama has done right in foreign policy, it has always been a continuation of the Bush policies. He's done right by keeping Gitmo open. He's done right by finishing the job in Iraq. He has done right by trying to win in Afghanistan. Those were existing policies that were in place.

KWAME HOLMAN: But the views of libertarian Texas Congressman Ron Paul highlighted the divide within the GOP over the U.S. role in Afghanistan.

REP. RON PAUL, (R) Texas: Now that he's killed, boy, it is a wonderful time for this country now to reassess it and get the troops out of Afghanistan and end that war that hasn't helped us and hasn't helped anybody in the Middle East.

KWAME HOLMAN: At least half-a-dozen Republicans still weighing a run passed on the debate broadcast by FOX News. The no-shows included those who have moved toward bids, such as Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich.

Those absences left a void that was filled by long-shot candidates, such as former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson, who favors the legalization of marijuana.

GARY JOHNSON, (R) former New Mexico governor: I advocate legalizing marijuana, control it, regulate it, tax it. It'll never be legal for kids to smoke pot or buy pot. It'll never be legal to smoke pot or do harm to others.

KWAME HOLMAN: And former Godfather's Pizza chief executive Herman Cain sought to play up his lack of political experience.

HERMAN CAIN, businessman: I'm proud of the fact, quite frankly, that I haven't held public office before, because I ask people -- most of the people that are in elective office in Washington, D.C., they have held public office before. How is that working for you?

(LAUGHTER)

KWAME HOLMAN: The next GOP presidential debate is scheduled for next month in New Hampshire.

JIM LEHRER: And the winner was?

MARK SHIELDS: The winner was, you know, I mean, Ron Paul, just on sort of a consistent world view.

But Herman Cain gets the award for turning the sow's ear into the silk purse. He said, you know -- disparaging people who held office. He sought office and the Republican nomination for the Senate in Georgia. He got 23 or 24 percent of the vote against Johnny Isakson. So, it isn't like -- you know, he's sort of turning his non-office holding into credentials.

I think any time you get on the stage, it's good, and you are answering serious questions. And, you know, I think, in that sense, it's helpful to the candidates who are up there.

It was a tough week, because, as I said, their narrative about President Obama was kind of pulled out from under them. Rick Santorum, of course, consistent, and persisted in his indictment of him.

But one test, Jim, that is a great test is how candidates handle something like this. And what I did was go through and look at how each of the Republican candidates, which one of them praised President Obama, while praising the SEALs and praising the action and the result.

Tim Pawlenty did, as you heard in Kwame's piece. Mitt Romney did. And Mitch Daniels did. And Newt Gingrich didn't, and Mrs. Palin didn't. Gov. Palin didn't. And, obviously, Rick Santorum didn't. And the others didn't.

But it's just -- it's a rational thing to do. I mean, I know it's difficult. And you are upset. And your base is going to be angry with you if you acknowledge that the person on the other side you are running against has done anything good. But I thought that was revealing.

JIM LEHRER: Yes.

What do you make of that?

DAVID BROOKS: Yes. That's actually a very good test, because of the people you mentioned who did, those are the serious candidates.

And I might throw in another. Jon Huntsman seems to be running. And I suspect he's a serious candidate. I'm not sure what his odds are. But it's going to be a -- the good thing about this debate was, there were only five people up on the stage.

JIM LEHRER: Yes.

DAVID BROOKS: When the serious candidates come in, there's going to be a lot. And they will be very inconclusive. And it will just be hard to have a good debate with so many of the people who are not going to get the nomination up there.

And, so, you know what? I -- but I think we will known in 10 days. I have been talking...

JIM LEHRER: Ten days?

DAVID BROOKS: ... to some of the candidates. And I think they have a feeling that, within 10 days, the people who are half-in, half-out have to say, yes, I'm in; yes, I'm out.

So, I think we will know very soon, and by the next president -- the next debate next month, it will be a real debate.

JIM LEHRER: Do you think, as a result of last night, that -- take Pawlenty and Santorum, just to pick two. Were they helped in a way that helps move them into the major candidate category with -- if these others do -- that you just mentioned do come along?

DAVID BROOKS: Yes. Pawlenty -- if you want to judge by buzz, Pawlenty is a major candidate. He is one of the top two. And there are a lot of people who think he's the most likely.

And I sympathize with that, that all the other candidates have severe weaknesses. And, as a lot of other Republicans would say, he is the Dukakis of the race. When they're all knocked out, he is the guy left standing. So, Pawlenty is clearly a serious candidate.

Santorum is clearly not. He has a social conservative base, but the guy got killed in Pennsylvania when he tried to run for re-election. And him expanding beyond that base is hard to see.

JIM LEHRER: Do you see anything happening as a result of last night that helps any of these folks sort of move up the...

MARK SHIELDS: I think -- I think the exposure is good. And the question is what effect it had among people who did watch it.

I think -- you know, the one, I think, drawback for Tim Pawlenty -- and I agree with David's assessment of him -- is that, in that field last night, he should have been more dominant, I think, than he was, than he came across. I mean, he didn't make any mistakes. He didn't stumble, but you would have thought that he filled up the room a little bit more.

But, you know, Michael Dukakis didn't fill up the room, and he won the nomination and...

DAVID BROOKS: There was one good moment I thought he had, where he was asked about cap and trade. He previously supported something like the...

MARK SHIELDS: Yes.

DAVID BROOKS: And he said: "I'm not going to mess around. I was wrong."

JIM LEHRER: When he was governor of Minnesota.

DAVID BROOKS: Right.

JIM LEHRER: Yes.

DAVID BROOKS: "I was wrong."

And that is an indictment of Mitt Romney, who is sort of dancing around his support for a health care that looks like what Obama did. And so that was his best moment, I would say.

JIM LEHRER: To admit mistakes is -- is considered an act of courage in American politics; is it not?

MARK SHIELDS: Well, I mean, when John Kennedy admitted responsibility -- took responsibility for the Bay of Pigs, he went to 82 percent. And he said, two more foul-ups like this, and I will be at 95.

(LAUGHTER)

MARK SHIELDS: But, I mean, people do respect somebody who will accept responsibility. And that is a lesson very rarely learned by office-seekers.

JIM LEHRER: Because most of the people watching probably made a mistake or two of their own, so they understand that.

MARK SHIELDS: Sure -- maybe that day.

JIM LEHRER: Yes.

DAVID BROOKS: But consultants -- remember -- if you remember, when President Bush had a debate, he was asked in one of these town hall debates, have you made a mistake? And he said, in public, no. And then the debate ended. Well, he didn't say it quite that way, but more or less.

MARK SHIELDS: Yes.

DAVID BROOKS: And then, when the debate ended, he rushed over to the woman. And he said to her privately: "I want you to know of course I have made a lot of mistakes. I just -- I'm not allowed to say that."

JIM LEHRER: Not allowed to...

DAVID BROOKS: And so the rule is -- the rule is, you are not allowed to. But I hope they all know they have made mistakes.

JIM LEHRER: OK.

Well, David, Mark, thank you both.

MARK SHIELDS: Having made mistakes.

JIM LEHRER: Having made mistakes.

(LAUGHTER)

JIM LEHRER: I don't -- did I? I didn't say a thing.

(LAUGHTER)

The bill directs the U.S. Forest Service and BLM to acquire rights of way and other land interests from willing-seller landowners to open access to existing public lands...

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There's a terrific piece in the National Journal today, adding up the costs of the "war on terror" and pointing out that unlike some other costly wars in American history, this one has produced almost no economic benefits. That is, unless you think people standing in TSA lines are using those idle minutes (hours?) to dream up lots of innovative new ideas that will fire up the U.S. economy. I rather doubt it.

If we had a rational discourse on this subject, it ought to provoke two questions.  First, how did we get into this mess in the first place? Specifically, what were the U.S. policies that contributed to the rise of groups like Al Qaeda, and made it difficult-to-impossible to head them off before they hit us? (You'd think the 9/11 Commission would have tackled this question head on, but of course that proved too controversial for them). This subject hasn't been wholly neglected since 9/11 (i.e., there was some discussion of the familiar "why do they hate us?" question), but even raising the question could get you accused of being someone who "blamed America first." So hardly anybody asked if maybe 9/11 was also a wake-up call, and that there were some aspects of U.S. foreign policy that needed to be rethought. Of course, raising the question doesn't necessarily mean that the policies that contributed to Al Qaeda's rise (e.g., stationing troops in Saudi Arabia, unconditional support for Israel, propping up the Mubarak regime in Egypt, etc.) were necessarily wrong, but it does suggest that these policies were more expensive than we previously believed.

The second question would be: which responses to 9/11 have worked well, and which policies have proven to be costly failures?  Ideally, the United States ought to conduct a ruthless assessment of the post-9/11 response, in order to determine -- to the extent possible -- which of the post 9/11 policy changes were effective and which were not. The purpose here isn't a witch-hunt directed at former government officials, as I assume that even the neocons who led us blindly into Iraq believed that this decision was in the best interests of the country. But now, nearly ten years later, we ought to be mature enough to recognize that some of the actions we took after 9/11 weren't that smart, while some other responses turned out to be quite effective. And both ends of the political spectrum should be open to revising their views: some policies abhorred by liberals (such as electronic eavesdropping) may actually have been a net positive, while some actions favored by hardline conservatives (such as waterboarding and other forms of torture) should be seen as misguided failures.

That is how a mature great power would deal with the vast and costly response that began on 9/11: it would try to learn the right lessons from the past decade so that it did better the next time it faced an unexpected challenge. But in the polarized, partisan, and fact-free world of contemporary policy discourse, how likely is that?

Let's face it, putting this week's events in historical perspective is a bit of a fool's errand. I'll leave it to you to figure out why they turned to me to help on that mission, one that has a dramatically lower likelihood of success than, say, flying under cover of darkness deep into the heart of the world's fourth most populous nation, dispatching the world's most elusive fugitive, and getting out ahead of a hornet's nest of scrambling fighter jets.

Frankly, I'm still not even entirely sure I'm capable of putting the major events of the last century in perspective, much less those of last weekend. After all, Germany lost two world wars and today we are told it is Europe's indispensable nation, more influential than ever. And most folks think we lost in Vietnam, but three and half decades later the Soviet Union is gone, communism is discredited, and Vietnam is both a vibrant economy and open to business with the United States -- so whose vision of victory was realized?

Nonetheless, let's try to put this week in perspective by highlighting a few winners, a few losers, and then a few stories that were overshadowed by this week's headlines that may actually turn out to be more important.

The winners who have thus far emerged from the shootout at the Abbottabad corral include, in reverse order of the size of the win:

10. Sohaib Athar: The mild-mannered 33-year-old programmer who tweeted the news of the attack has enjoyed his 15 minutes of fame and managed it with a wry sense of humor.

9. Anwar al-Awlaki: The New Mexico-born Merchant of Venom is among the front-runners to pick up the bin Laden mantel as the world's most wanted terrorist along with Ayman Al-Zawahiri and a handful of others. The bad news for them, they just moved up on the U.S. counter-terrorism target list ... which may be the most dangerous place in the world to find yourself.

8. India: The most Paki-skeptic of all places on earth is quietly ... and not so quietly ... reveling in all aspects of the raid: the damage to their historic enemy's credibility, the apparent porousness of their likely adversary's borders, and the general blow to Pakistan's stature in the world.

7. War Dogs: Whether it was a German Shepherd or a Belgian Malginois who went along with the Navy SEAL team on the raid, the pooch is definitely not only the world's top dog for a week, he or she has done a great service to combat canines everywhere. If you doubt it, see FP's own Becky Frankel's great photo essay on the subject

6. Leon Panetta: The super-public servant greased the skids for his smooth ascendancy to the top job in the Pentagon by not only being the man overseeing the successful bin Laden mission but for reportedly being alone among cabinet members suggesting the president go for the plan he ultimately followed. He could have been the sacrificial lamb; instead he made himself a slam dunk (sorry, George Tenet) for bigger and better things.

5. The Shooter: We don't know his name in keeping with the secrecy and the low-key code of the SEALs. But this is a guy who is one leak away from a book deal, a movie, the key to every city in America and to never having to buy himself a beer ever again. Oh, and there's also that eternal gratitude of a nation thing on top of it all. 

4. SEAL Team Six: The elite of elites has placed themselves permanently in the history books with a feat that ranks up there with the raid on Entebbe and well beyond virtually all movie fiction. They have not only done credit to their brethren in the U.S. special forces community but may have done more than any senior officers to change the way the war on terror is fought going forward.

3. The Families of U.S. Service Men and Women in Afghanistan: They're coming home sooner now. This was their mission too. You can hardly beat that ... and because there are so many of you, that's why you edge out those folks at the pointy end of the spear who completed the mission.

2. Barack Obama: His finest hour. Decisive. Cool. Able to both strike hard and do so with the kind of American values and restraint that elevated the mission and stands in stark contrast to the bombast and recklessness of some of his predecessors.

1. The Planet Earth: A day without bin Laden is a better day for everyone.

Losers

It is hard to imagine losers from an almost universal victory like the death of a mass murderer, but there were a few. They include:

5. Fringe Critics of the President: One big argument against Obama has fallen by the wayside. In fact, if you want another big winner, one possibility might be the American people. There is a chance that by marginalizing the nutcases and Tea Partiers further, this win for Obama will leave only the serious candidates like Mitt Romney, Jon Huntsman, and Mitch Daniels in the Republican field. Who knows, we might even have a thoughtful, respectful, substantive debate in the 2012 elections. I know it's difficult to imagine, but take a moment. Imagine.

4. Osama bin Laden: He's dead. Otherwise he would be higher up the list. But dead men know no shame -- especially those who apparently knew none in life, either.

3. Hamid Karzai: Say goodbye to all the nice men with fat checkbooks in all the desert camo outfits. U.S. officials may say what they might, but their departure from your country was accelerated substantially this week. Think that's good news, Hamid? Patience, friend.

2. Pakistan: It's hard to pick out who are the bigger losers -- the military and intelligence low-level types who will be rounded up and punished for helping OBL, the higher level types who will be punished for letting the Americans in and out with nary a scratch or an alarm, the even higher level types who are likely to see the flows of cash they are skimming from American aid cut off, or the highest level types who have seen their credibility shattered and their hold on power put in jeopardy. Unfortunately, also threatened are the good people of Pakistan who don't deserve more chaos or weaker leaders, many of whom were actually helping fight the war on terror and will now be compromised by their countrymen who were abetting enemies of civilization.

1. Mullah Omar, Ayman Al-Zawahiri, Anwar Al-Awlaki: See above. You guys all moved up the list. Time to get your affairs in order, write good-bye notes, that kind of thing.

Finally, while this story dominated the news this week, to put it in perspective, consider that as we raided Abbottabad, at other locations in Pakistan, scientists and technicians were continuing to build up Pakistan's nuclear arsenal even as the country's political and military leaders saw their grip on power grow more tenuous.

While OBL was being gunned down, Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Haqqani network, and al Qaeda cells everywhere were planning new attacks.

While the story buzzed, the story that would otherwise have been the top story of the week -- the deal between Hamas and Fatah brokered by the Egyptians -- assured that after the Arab Spring may come an even more unsettling and dramatic Arab Autumn.

While bin Laden was the topic on everyone's mind, unemployment went up, housing in the United States continued its double dip, Europe teetered, and inflation remained a serious issue in China, Brazil, and elsewhere.

In other words, to put this week's momentous events in perspective, it's worth noting that as is always the case, the next stunning headline was being written somewhere else, beyond our attention, possibly even beyond our imagining.

Osama bin Laden's death at the hands of U.S. Navy SEALs ignited debate about al-Qaeda's future as well as the future of militancy in Pakistan, where various outfits retain the capability to strike locally and globally. In the near term, analysts expect al-Qaeda Central's leaders in Pakistan will seek to ensure their security and execute a succession plan in the wake of bin Laden's capture, necessitating a communications lockdown and forestalling any direct retaliation. Instead, al-Qaeda Central is likely to rely on other outfits to respond on its behalf, either locally or globally. It already has called on fellow Muslims in Pakistan "to rise up and revolt to cleanse this shame that has been attached to them by a clique of traitors and thieves who sold everything to the enemies."[[BREAK]]

The threat of retaliation comes from a mélange of militants from various established outfits, splinter groups and independent networks. The internecine nature of this confederation also means that even if bin Laden's demise does provide space for a political resolution in Afghanistan, the threat from militants in Pakistan is unlikely to disappear. Despite understandable frustration, the United States must continue to engage with Pakistan. But the nature of that engagement should change, with a view toward the longer term, which means a greater focus on building civilian as opposed to military capacity. 

Taking Stock of the Major Players

The Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has already promised retribution in Pakistan, which is understandable given that it has acted as a stalking horse for al-Qaeda in the past. Although the TTP has been on the front end of attacks in Pakistan, bin Laden's organization is believed to have been pulling some of the strings behind the scenes. Militants formerly associated with Punjabi outfits, such as Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM), Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami (HuJI) and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ), could contribute to a fresh round of attacks, as they have to previous operations in the past. These groups forged ties with al-Qaeda during the 1990s and some of their members began working with it to launch attacks in Pakistan soon after 9/11. Thus, at precisely the same time the army and ISI can expect additional (and deserved) pressure from the U.S. to stop playing favorites and crack down on all of the militants on Pakistani soil, the country may also be poised to witness a new wave of violence.

Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), the group responsible for the 2008 Mumbai attacks, maintains the most robust transnational networks of any Pakistani militant outfit and is viewed as an increasingly global threat. However, despite the fact that its above-ground wing Jamaat-ul-Dawa organized street demonstrations to mourn bin Laden, it is far from certain the group would be willing to launch an operation on behalf of al-Qaeda. The army and ISI are believed to be putting significant pressure on LeT's leaders to refrain from overtly engaging in attacks on Western interests abroad. Unless Pakistan wants a showdown with the United States this is unlikely to change. However, this also presumes a level of organizational coherence and control that may be at odds with the ground reality. LeT militants are present on both sides of the Durand Line, meaning not all of them rely on safe haven in Pakistan. Furthermore, individuals or factions within LeT can utilize its infrastructure as well as transnational capabilities to pursue their own operations without the leadership's consent. Enhanced organizational integration with other outfits heightens the opportunities for freelancing, with former LeT members acting as an important bridge to al-Qaeda as well as other militant outfits.

Al-Qaeda is not a significant military force in Afghanistan, and any organizational turmoil it experiences is unlikely to impact the start of the spring fighting season. Neither the Taliban nor the Haqqani Network, the two most prolific actors in the Afghan insurgency, has embraced out-of-area attacks or operations in Pakistan, though the latter has supported actors that do. The bigger question is how bin Laden's demise will impact their respective Pakistan-based leaderships.

The army and Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) are unlikely to end their support for either entity, both of which are considered essential to protecting Pakistan's interests in Afghanistan. However, America's ability to unilaterally strike bin Laden's compound in the heart of Pakistan provides it leverage, in part because the operation raised questions about the ability of the army and ISI to protect senior leaders in the Taliban and Haqqani Network. More importantly, although al-Qaeda's connection to both of those entities goes deeper than just bin Laden's history with either outfit, that personal relationship was an important one. Osama's demise creates space for a political reconciliation in Afghanistan, in the event the U.S. chooses to pursue such a path. Problematically, there is no guarantee the army and ISI could, or would attempt to, dismantle the militant infrastructure in its entirety even if Afghanistan is settled according to Pakistan's interests.

The Protean Militant Milieu

Historically, there were three loci in which militants in Pakistan were active: Afghanistan, Indian-administered Kashmir and sectarianism attacks at home. Two new areas of activity have emerged during the past several years: a revolutionary locus manifested by the insurgency against Pakistan, and a global locus characterized by out of area attacks against America and its allies. Sectarian attacks continue, and have become a means of destabilizing the state. The Kashmir jihad has stagnated, though LeT remains committed to that cause and to attacks against India. Afghanistan, on the other hand, has become a focal point for every major militant outfit as well as a host of smaller networks and splinter groups.

Regardless of official army and ISI policy vis-à-vis militants on its soil, any political settlement in Afghanistan is likely to have positive and negative ramifications at the ground level. With the Kashmir jihad moribund, the abatement of the Afghan insurgency would mark the first time in decades that Pakistani militants were not faced with active open fronts on which to fight. A solution deemed acceptable by the Taliban would provide an impetus for many militants to demobilize and would rob jihadist leaders of a valuable rallying cry. However, those unwilling to lay down their arms could drift further into the sectarian, revolutionary or global orbits. Furthermore, whereas the Taliban might be willing to break ties with al-Qaeda, other actors might not. At this point the country is host to a consortium of established outfits, splinters, networks and freelance operators whose most enduring feature is its protean nature. These actors will continue to pose a threat to Pakistan, its neighbors and the West until the entire militant edifice is torn down.

Too Big To Fail

The response in Pakistan has not been promising. By focusing on the raid into Pakistani territory and glossing over the fact that bin Laden was living on Pakistani soil, the army appears to be doubling down on obstinacy. Nor is it helpful that the government says it will refuse the U.S. access to those who survived the raid. The one glimmer of hope thus far was the statement earlier this week by the Pakistani Ambassador to the U.S., Husain Haqqani, that the government would launch an investigation into how bin Laden managed to live for so long in Abbotobad and whether his support system included any serving officials. It now appears the military has taken charge of the investigation, which does not bode well for transparency. None of this is particularly surprising; even after being humbled by the U.S. raid the army remains the most powerful institution in the country, and regardless of what misgivings they may have, those in the civilian government have a history of circling the wagons in times like this.

Despite all of this, the United States must continue to engage Pakistan: first, because the Pakistani populace should not be punished for the behavior of its military leadership; second, because the United States cannot degrade the militant threat emanating from Pakistan on its own; third, because doing so would help to disprove the narrative in Pakistan that American will abandon it after objectives vis-à-vis al-Qaeda are achieved; and fourth, because Pakistani stability is necessary for greater stability in South Asia, a region in which the United States will continue to have equities for a long time to come.

The question is, who should the United States engage and assist? While recognizing the contributions and sacrifices the Pakistani military has made in the struggle against some militant outfits, it should also be apparent by now that relying so heavily on the military is not a recipe for long-term stability in a militant-free Pakistan. Instead, the U.S. should focus more attention on capacity building for civilian intelligence agencies and law enforcement, which are precisely the institutions that should be on the front lines of counter-terrorism in Pakistan.

This must be part of a wider realignment of the U.S.-Pakistan relationship and one that sees greater emphasis given to building up civilian institutions in Pakistan. For too long the United States has relied on the army as its primary interlocutor out of perceived operational necessity, often with frustrating results. The military-to-military relationship is an important one, but over-reliance on the army is at odds with the aim of fostering civilian governance in Pakistan. The United States finds itself with additional leverage this week, and should use some of it to promote that cause. Doing so is in keeping not only with American interests, but also American values.

Stephen Tankel is a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the author of the forthcoming book, "Storming the World Stage: The Story of Lashkar-e-Taiba."

May 5th was the 50th anniversary of the first U.S. manned space flight.

The astronaut was Alan Shepard, and it was a huge deal back in 1961 -- the Russians had beaten the U.S. with the first satellite in 1957, and again with the first manned space flight a month before.

Computers played a huge role in that flight, and Art Cohen was the main mathematician behind them.

As the leader of IBM's Space Computing Center in Washington, D.C., Cohen's team was responsible for all computing support for every Project Mercury flight from 1961 through 1963.

Cohen is now 83 years old, and he retired from IBM in 1988. But he gave us an interview as part of the company's 100th birthday celebration this year.

Things were very different back then, as he explains:

• The two computers that directed the first space flights filled a large room, but only had 1/100,000 as much storage space as today's least powerful iPhone. They also had the processing speed of 3Mhz -- about the same as an early 1980s vintage PC.

• All data about the space craft -- position, velocity, and so on -- was tracked by radar on the earth. The only data sent directly to earth was medical data from sensors connected to the astronaut's body.

• Data traveled from the radar stations to Cohen's team at a blistering fast pace of 1,000 bits per second -- about 1/5,000th as fast as today's wireless connections.

Here's a transcript of the interview, edited slightly for length.

Business Insider: What was the computer system like that you used in the Mercury Mission and how would you compare it with today’s PC or a smart phone in terms of power and storage? 

Art Cohen: We were at something called the Guided Space Flight Center, which was in Beltsville, Maryland. That was the central communication hub for Mercury. And we supplied all the information to the Cape, to mission control and so on.

What we had there were two 7090s. They were second generation computers, transistorized. And at that time NASA was so concerned about transistorized - would it be reliable enough? - that they made us have a duplex system. They felt that tubes were more reliable than transistors because they weren’t sure about transistors.

We had two of these things right next to each other. It took up a whole room. And by room, I mean a large room -- with tapes and DASD and storage units, and so and so forth -- a very, very large set up.

We had 32,000 "words" of storage -- ten-digit words of storage -- that’s what we had.

[Ed: This is equivalent to about 150 kilobytes (kB) of storage on today's computers, which store data in different-sized chunks. Most hard drives today are measured in gigabytes (GB), which are 1,000,000 kB each. Wikipedia articles on the IBM 7090 and 36-bit word length have more background.]

Now you’ve got things you could hold in your hand that are more powerful than what we had. With tremendously more storage. But compared to the world I lived in ... in ‘52, we worked on something called the CPC, the Card Program Calculator, and we had 34 -- get this -- 34 ten-digit storage units. 34 units of ten digits each. But we solved all kinds of problems with that. It was a challenge, but we did it.

So we thought this was gravy. I mean, we had 32,000 units of internal storage -- that was pretty good.

We had pretty sophisticated programs for Mercury. All kinds of mathematics -- orbit mathematics. Orbit mechanics. Differential correction, sliding wire techniques, short arc techniques, re-entry, knowing the positions of all the radar sites, acquisition. We told them where to point the radars and we told the ships where to go for landing.  So it was a lot of complicated stuff that we did we those 32,000 pieces of storage. It’s kind of remarkable when you think about it, isn’t it?

MR: What was the rate of processing?

AC: [After checking] The 50,000 transistors could read and write a the rate of 3 million bits per second.

[That's about 3Mhz, which is about the same as the Tandy TRS-80 -- one of the first personal computers introduced in the early 1980s. Today's fastest processors are over 5Ghz, and benefit from multiple cores and other advances as well.]

It was slow. In those times, it was very fast, and that’s why we used the 7090.

At that time we were always worried -- can you pack integrated circuits close enough, because the heat would build up so badly that there’d be a limitation on how much you could do, how fast you could go.  And we obviously broke that sound barrier, right?

BI: You had to get that data in there, process it in real time, and then send it back.

AC:  Yes, you're absolutely right. IBM had built up in Kingston something called the 7281 which was called the real time channel.

By the way, the data that was coming in from down the Atlantic missile range -- hold onto your hat -- was 1,000 bits per second. The fastest data we had for Shepard’s flight was 1,000 bits per second coming in -- that’s position data coming in and we also were receiving velocity data. 

[By way of comparison, Verizon's 4G wireless network is at least 5,000 times faster.] 

And then later we improved it -- it was a big deal to get it up to 2,400 bits per second. And the radar data was coming in much slower than that.

All that data was coming in fast enough so that the people down at the Cape were able to make decisions.  We drove all the displays at mission control and they were able to make decisions about retro fire, separation from the booster, and all this kind of stuff.  All that was done with the data that we provided to mission control.So it was good enough.

BI: How was the data getting from the rocket back to earth?

AC: We had radars that were actually tracking that thing. They were watching it. And that data was then being sent over this 1,000-bit-per-second line.

MR: So there wasn’t any positioning data coming from the spacecraft to you? 

AC: No. The position data was coming from the radars which were watching the craft. 

MR: Was there any way for Alan Shepard to communicate?

AC: We had voice communication.

MR: How did that work? 

AC: I suppose radio. [In 1962, John] Glenn orbited the earth. Whenever he got near a radar site, there was an astronaut there with voice contact with the astronaut. And then, all of sudden he went over the horizon, and then they lost contact. So, there was a short period of time when there was contact.

It was voice communication to find out how things are, and also, they had telemetry data coming down which was like medical stuff. He was hooked up, and that came to us and we also sent that down to mission control.

They couldn’t bounce signals off of satellites at that time. It was all direct. What they could see is what they could get.

MR: When you see some of the consumer technology today, do you see any technologies that came out of the space program in the 1960s?

AC: You name it.  First of all, we had all the radar sites, and all these sites in the United States where we knew exactly what the latitude and longitude were. That was done by people who were on Mercury. Not IBM, but other vendors who were doing that -- and they did a great job. And that of course helped GPS.

Guys who worked for me then went on to were in charge of the airline reservation system. The Saber and the Passenger Airline Registration System, PARS, came out of that.

The people who developed the air traffic control system, which now has to be replaced from what I understand.  But the one who was in charge of that was a guy that I hired.

Computers are the silent partners behind medicine, particle physics, you name it.  

BI: When the mission was happening, what were you most concerned about? 

AC: We had a great team of people -- and I developed a system where we communicated very well -- whether it be the launch system or the orbit or the re-entry or whatever. That was number one.

Number two, this system was tested at the sub-system and at the systems level very, very well -- very, very carefully. And we used simulation techniques to simulate orbit or launch.  We had data put in so we would think that it was actually real data, and then they would be able to indicate that there’s an abort, and we would get an abort signal or an interrupt, and we’d find a landing zone for that thing.

We had the duplex in case one computer broke down, we had tested out that we could switch from one to the other and it was self-correcting. Even though each computer might be getting data a millisecond sooner than the other, we worked it out so it would all smooth out nicely.

The only thing is that we were a little anxious about were the astronauts. We had met these astronauts. I had never met Shepard, but I met [Gus] Grissom and [Deke] Slayton. The booster, sitting on top of an 83 foot Redstone rocket, with this little capsule and a guy who’s strapped into it, and a tremendous amount of rocket fuel that’s going to send the guy up into space going 5,000 miles an hour, suffering 11 Gs of force. So there was a lot of anxiety about this, but it had nothing to do with the computing.

By the way, this thing started May 2nd, and even before that, we had been prepared for the countdown, then there were weather delays, things happened. So it didn’t go off until the 5th. We were sleeping on the ground. We had people who brought in mattresses and sleeping bags and I was sleeping on top of the console of the 7090 I did damage to the 7090. IBM never fined me for it, but I dented the vent.

MR: How many people were working on your team?

AC: I had about 100 people. We had machine operators, we had systems programming, and they were terrific. I mean, that was key. I mean, the monitor that was handling the real-time channel. But they were really systems people, not necessarily mathematicians...say, off hand, about half of the group [were mathematicians].  At least 50.

MR: What do you think about the state of space exploration today? Is it going private?

AC: NASA can give you a better answer about their plans. Of course, right now the budgetary problems are crippling what they want to do.

I don’t know exactly what the private people -- if it’s just tourist stuff, you know, that’s private enterprise, we can’t really talk against that. But I would think that the government will have to still be involved with any concerns of looking into deep space.  I think that’s important work that I don’t think you would be having private entrepreneurs doing that kind of work. I think that’s important, and I hope NASA will stay in that business.

For the latest tech news, visit SAI: Silicon Alley Insider. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

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See Also:

• The Bull's Case For Research In Motion (Yes, There Is One)
• Weird Timing: The Facebook Exec Who Just Launched The Open Compute Project Is Leaving
• WHOOPS: HP Exec Spills Huge Company Secret On LinkedIn Profile

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No Sewage Sludge In "Organic" School Gardens! Millions Against Monsanto: See You in Chicago, Seattle & New York! Get Ready for World Food Day Actions 10/16/11 Videos of the Week Via Organica Updates Little Bytes     Quote of the WeekWhy Being a Foodie Isn't "Elitist""America's current system of food production - overly centralized and industrialized, overly controlled by a handful of companies, overly reliant on monocultures, pesticides, chemical fertilizers, chemical additives, genetically modified organisms, factory farms, government subsidies and fossil fuels - is profoundly undemocratic. It is one more sign of how the few now rule the many. And it's inflicting tremendous harm on American farmers, workers and consumers." - Eric Schlosser, "Why Being a Foodie Isn't 'Elitist'," May 1, 2011, The Washington Post Read More     Essay OF THE WEEK The Xtremes: Subversive Recipes for Catastrophic Times "Minor political reforms and corporate 'greenwashing' at this stage of history are too little, too late. The lesser of indentured evils in the White House is not going to save us. Increased market share for organic, green, and Fair Trade products will amount to little or nothing in the closing era of the Xtremes. What we need is a bold determination to carry out regime change and build a new green and egalitarian society, inside the deteriorating infrastructure of the old." Read More     Alerts of the Week Get Monsanto Out of Trader Joe's & Whole Foods Market! Trader Joe's is 80% GMO-free. All of their store-brand products are sourced from non-genetically modified ingredients, and Trader-Joe's-brand products are 80% of what they carry.But Trader Joe's definitely sells foods that contain GMO ingredients. For example, Trader Joe's sells products by:* Morningstar Farms, which admits that all but one of their products (the Breakfast Patties Made with Organic Soy) contain genetically modified organisms. * Tofutti, which uses non-GMO soy protein, but admits that other ingredients, like the partially hydrogenated (trans fat) soybean oil in their Better Than Cream Cheese, are genetically modified. Ask Trader Joe's to go from 80% to 100% GMO-free. In the meantime, demand that they respect consumers' right to know what's in our food by labeling any food that may contain ingredients made with genetically engineered organisms, including ingredients from animals raised on genetically engineered feed. Take Action Likewise, Whole Foods Market claims to support mandatory GMO labels, but admits selling unlabeled foods made with genetically modified organisms. Whole Foods & Trader Joe's both have non-GMO policies for their store-brand products, but the policy doesn't apply to the rest of the food they sell.The Millions Against Monsanto campaign is stepping up our efforts to get Monsanto out of Whole Foods Market and Trader Joe's. Click here for action ideas, including a video on GMO Food Dumps!     Alerts of the Week No Sewage Sludge In "Organic" School Gardens! Some of Hollywood's "green" celebrities - Rosario Dawson, Ed Begley, Jr., and a bevy of starlets - thought they were promoting organic school gardens for inner-city kids.But the Environmental Media Association (EMA) teamed them up with a secretive corporation, Kellogg Garden Products, whose main business is selling Los Angeles sewage sludge!That company calls its Kellogg brand "quality organics" and deceptively labels bags sold at the garden store as "garden soil" made from "compost" - with no mention of which products are made from industrial and human waste that contains tens of thousands of contaminants. That's why federal law bars the use of sewage sludge-based products in organic gardens.So, when news broke that Kellogg Garden Products provided sewage sludge products to EMA's "organic" school gardens, and its spokesperson even posed with sewage sludge-derived products at the gardens, you'd think EMA and its stars would cut all ties to the sludge industry.But you'd be wrong. Instead of denouncing the contamination of the kids' gardens and the corporation's effort to "greenwash" its brand through associating with stars devoted to organic produce, EMA is sticking with its corporate donor. So far.Help OCA's ally, the Center for Media and Democracy, tell Hollywood it's not green to partner with a company that put sewage sludge on school gardens. Tell Hollywood to Stop Greenwashing Sewage Sludge!     PLEASE DONATE Millions Against Monsanto Fundraising Appeal Three hundred thousand have already signed up as participants and supporters in our Millions Against Monsanto Truth-in-Labeling Campaign. But we need money to print leaflets, to buy educational videos, to print up T-shirts and bumper stickers, and to pay our campaign staff. As you know, GMOs, Factory Farms, and deceptively labeled consumer products pose a mortal threat to public health, climate stability, and all living things. As we speak, organic crops are being contaminated with Monsanto's GMOs. We need your financial contributions to educate and mobilize consumers, to protect and maintain strict organic standards, and to pressure the entire food industry, including natural food stores and co-ops, to adopt Truth-in-Labeling practices. Please Donate     Millions Against Monsanto See You in Chicago, Seattle & New York! To gear up for the Millions Against Monsanto actions on World Food Day, October 16, 2011, we're hosting regional anti-GMO summits at each of the Green Festivals around the country: Chicago May 14-15, 2011 Seattle May 21-22, 2011 New York October 1-2, 2011 We need volunteers in each city to host gatherings at their homes or community centers, to put up OCA staff and volunteers in their homes and to work in the Millions Against Monsanto booths.To volunteer, please click here. If you've already volunteered, thank you! Campaign Director Alexis Baden-Mayer will be contacting you shortly.    Millions Against Monsanto Get Ready for World Food Day Actions 10/16/11 On Sunday, October 16, 2011, the Organic Consumers Association's Millions Against Monsanto campaign is calling for World Food Day actions to get genetically engineered organisms out of our food. Get involved by joining your local Millions Against Monsanto chapter! The goal is to have 435 actions, one in each U.S. Congressional District, and for each action to represent 2300 Millions Against Monsanto supporters.435 x 2300 = 1,000,000 Against MonsantoIt would be great to have 2300 people participating in each event, but we can also demonstrate our numbers by delivering petitions signed by 2300 people in each Congressional District.Anyone who can't attend an action on 10/16/11, can join the virtual rally by signing the Millions Against Monsanto petition. Time to start planning! Here's how to get started.     Videos of the WeekDumping GMOs: Guerrilla Theatre OCA's Thalia Kazakos offers another great video on how and why anti-GMO activists should organize local activists and dump GMO-tainted products in front of natural food stores, especially industry leaders such as Whole Foods Market and Trader Joe's. Watch  Carbon Nation Carbon Nation is the logical next step after An Inconvenient Truth: We know there's a problem; now, how do we get everyone to do something about it? Watch this and more of OCA's favorite videos on our YouTube Channel!     Via Organica Join Us In Mexico for a Spring Sustainability Conference Engineers without Borders, The Center for Appropriate Technology and Indigenous Sustainability- Mexico (CATIS-Mexico) and the Earth and Lime Institute are hosting a month-long spring workshop in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.  The OCA's sister organization Via Orgánica has been invited to teach during the Small Scale Sustainable Farming week, June 20-24th, 2011. A solution-based course, this program teaches skills in small-scale organic food production for both urban and rural dwellers. Participants will have the opportunity to link practical skills in variety of locales, as well as analyze how overarching global issues like climate change and food scarcity can be confronted.   We are inviting our members to participate in this exciting course.  Register by May 7th for the early bird special.  Combine your spring vacation with an enlightening and authentic educational experience in the outskirts of beautiful San Miguel.  Meet OCA Director Ronnie Cummins and the Vía Orgánica staff.  Learn More  Planet to Plate TourJoin Planet2Plate with a small group on a private 8-day tour of the foods and agricultural origins of the sustainable movement in San Miguel de Allende. Meet the people working with the OCA's sister organization, Vía Orgánica. On this tour you'll trace the region's agriculture from the pre-colonial milpa (considered the original perma-culture technique), to the colonial hacienda system. Then get a brief look at agribusiness for exports compared to rural organic cooperatives working together to support the livelihoods of many families. Celebrate the sustainable food movement, which is flourishing in the fertile,high-desert of Central Mexico by sampling the best organic food the region has to offer.   For more information please visit Planet2Plate's website.     Little Bytes Will the Real Food Movement Please Stand Up? READ MORE A Closer Look at the USA Assassination of "Osama bin Laden" READ MORE Take the Pledge for Climate Protection READ MORE Some Developers are Starting to Incorporate a New Feature into Neighborhoods: A Food Supply READ MORE Coke, BPA, and the Limits of 'Green Capitalism' READ MORE     LOCAL [[State]] NEWS OF THE WEEK Book of the WeekHelp Us Build a Sustainable Future!  Our friends at Chelsea Green offer the latest books on sustainability, democracy, new science, and pathways to peace. Thanks to our new Affiliate Program, your online purchase supports the OCA! This weeks featured book is: Food Not Lawns Gardening can be a political act. Creativity, fulfillment, connection, revolution-it all begins when we get our hands in the dirt. Food Not Lawns combines practical wisdom on ecological design and community-building with a fresh, green perspective on an age-old subject. Activist and urban gardener Heather Flores shares her nine-step permaculture design to help farmsteaders and city dwellers alike build fertile soil, promote biodiversity, and increase natural habitat in their own "paradise gardens." But Food Not Lawns doesn't begin and end in the seed bed. This joyful permaculture lifestyle manual inspires readers to apply the principles of the paradise garden-simplicity, resourcefulness, creativity, mindfulness, and community-to all aspects of life. Plant "guerilla gardens" in barren intersections and medians; organize community meals; start a street theater troupe or host a local art swap; free your kitchen from refrigeration and enjoy truly fresh, nourishing foods from your own plot of land; work with children to create garden play spaces. Flores cares passionately about the damaged state of our environment and the ills of our throwaway society. In Food Not Lawns, she shows us how to reclaim the earth one garden at a time. Learn More     Message From Our SponsorsiSpaces Gives the World a Free Virtual Desktop! The Conscious CloudAt last there is a technology company focused on serving the highest good! iSpaces is working to reduce the digital divide by giving everyone access to a personal desktop, even if they can't afford to own the actual machine. What is iSpaces?iSpaces is a free virtual desktop you can access from any computer with an Internet connection. All of your open browser windows, tabs and files will be ready and waiting for you no matter what computer you login from. Get ready to leap into the cloud and visit www.ispaces.com to set-up your free account today - it's pure web ecstasy!      Become an OCA Sponsor!Every issue of Organic Bytes now goes to 265,000 organic consumers with a thousand new subscribers each week. Please help us and your business by letting our subscribers know who you are and that you support the work of the OCA. Please contact us if you want more information!     Please forward this publication to family and friends, place it on web sites, print it, duplicate it and post it freely. Knowledge is power! Organic Bytes is a publication of Organic Consumers Association 6771 South Silver Hill Drive - Finland, MN 55603 - Phone: 218-226-4164 - Fax: 218-353-7652 Subscribe & Read past issues and print- friendly PDF versions of Organic BytesConnect with us:

The International Press Telecommunications Council (IPTC) has just launched rNews, a consistent, machine-readable way of expressing news metadata in RDFa (a linked data language). This post explains some of the differences between rNews and hNews and why, if you publish news on the web, you ought to be using one or the other.

In a now infamous incident at Cambridge University back in October 1946, mid-way through a seminar, the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein is said to have threatened the philosopher Karl Popper with a red-hot poker (the exact circumstances and use of the poker are still disputed, 65 years on). The argument? Over whether there are, or are not, such things as philosophical problems. Popper said there were, Wittgenstein said there were only puzzles.

Step into the similarly rarefied world of online publishing languages and, though you might not be threatened with a red-hot poker, someone will almost certainly wave its online equivalent at you -- as we found when we were developing hNews -- a news microformat -- with the Associated Press.

We started, back in 2008, with a problem: Very few online news stories had consistent, machine-readable information about their provenance (i.e. basic stuff like who wrote it, who published it, when it was first published, etc.). This was a problem because without this information -- or metadata -- it was incredibly difficult to differentiate news from other content on the web, or to figure out where news had come from.

Two Solutions to the Problem

We searched about for a solution to the problem, thanks to grants from the Knight and MacArthur Foundations, and found not one but two. The first was microformats -- which are straightforward, open mark-up formats built on existing standards. The second was RDFa, a method of embedding full RDF, the linked data language of the semantic web.

We made a decision to use microformats. We did this for highly pragmatic reasons. We figured that most news organizations (and journalists and bloggers) were not yet ready to make the big leap to linked data. The easier we made it to integrate consistent metadata, we thought, the more likely news organizations were to do it. Our chief concern was less about exactly how people made the provenance of online news more transparent, just that they did it.

The Associated Press came to a similar conclusion, and together we developed hNews. Our pragmatism has so far borne fruit. The hNews microformat has since been integrated in about 1,200 news sites in the U.S. This means that there must now be a hundred-plus million news stories on the web with hNews. And, the AP has based its new news registry business and its forthcoming rights clearinghouse around hNews.

This did not stop some semantic web evangelists from waving their metaphorical red-hot pokers, or from suggesting we were not born of parents in wedlock or other less warm and fuzzy responses.

So, when we learned that the IPTC were launching an equivalent of hNews in RDFa we were over the moon. Hooray! Now people have a choice to mark up their news in microformats or in linked data.

The Ambitious rNews

"Equivalent" is not quite right. rNews is more ambitious than hNews. If hNews is like a ham sandwich then rNews is like a baked Alaska. rNews covers lots of aspects of provenance and content. You can, if you want to mark up additional aspects of news stories, mix-and-match rNews with other RDF ontologies (i.e. different linked data vocabularies). It's also more "correct" than hNews, but as a result more verbose and intrusive. It's a much bigger change to existing HTML pages than hNews. That said, it is, by RDF standards, pretty straightforward. All this makes it a very good alternative way of creating consistent, machine-readable mark-up for news.

The big difference between two is in their complexity. Making a ham sandwich is much simpler and requires less expertise than cooking a baked Alaska. The same goes for hNews and rNews. As a result, my prediction is that rNews will be the format of choice for big news organizations who want to do things fully and properly and are willing to commit the time and resources (like the New York Times -- which was central to the development of rNews). In the same way it will probably suit high end proprietary content management systems. For smaller news organizations, journalists and bloggers, hNews goes a good part of the way there and is much easier to integrate and lighter to use.

In other words, the two complement each other rather well, and ought to provide the foundations for consistent, machine-readable metadata for news.

Pros and Cons of Each Approach

The AP's Stuart Myles was one of the creators of hNews and worked with the IPTC on rNews.

"The fact that hNews and rNews have similar names is no coincidence," Myles told me via email. "To me, microformats and RDFa are two different technical approaches to the same challenge. Each approach has pros and cons and many tools that support one also work with the other."

Evan Sandhaus of the New York Times, one of the original authors of rNews, also emphasizes the compatibility of the two standards: "rNews was designed from the start to provide publishers with many of the same features offered by hNews.  And future versions of the rNews will likely bring the standards into even closer alignment," he told me via email.

Should you care about hNews and rNews? If you publish news on the web then you most certainly should. The arrival of rNews and the continuing take-up of hNews show that metadata is central to the future of digital news. Consistent, machine-readable metadata makes your news easier to find, more distinguishable, more straightforward to check, more programmable, more targetable, and less hard to track. If you are not yet publishing your news with metadata then don't be surprised if someone soon comes at you flailing a red-hot poker.

A Utah judge has awarded nearly $2 million to the family of an 11-year-old boy who was mauled to death by a bear but the verdict won't necessarily make it much easier for plaintiffs to hold wildife officials liable for animal attacks.

The black bear that attacked Samuel Ives during a weekend camping trip on June 17, 2007 had struck another camper earlier the same day. After eluding a pursuit by state wildlife agents, it returned after dark to the same campsite in American Fork Canyon and ripped Samuel from his tent.

In what he called a “heart-wrenching” case, U.S. District Judge Dale Kimball found the U.S. Forest Service liable for failing to warn the Ives family of the prior bear attack on Jake Francom or close the campground, saying it was foreseeable that the bear “would return to the campsite where it had earlier attacked campers and had found food.”

He singled out Carolyn Gosse, a Forest Service law enforcement officer who, after being notified of the earlier attack, told the dispatcher that she was not on duty and that it would be impossible to find someone to watch her children on a Sunday.

Gosse's supervisor “credibly” testified, Kimball said, “that if Ms. Gosse had told him about the Francom bear attack, he would have immediately responded by going to the area and warning campers in and around the Francom campsite (as well as people in the Timpooneke Campground) about the dangerous bear.”

The decision awarding $1.95 million to Sam's parents is a rare victory for plaintiffs in a wild animal attack lawsuit. Courts have usually dismissed similar cases against government officials under an immunity that applies to “discretionary” decisions.

But the Ives case may not help other plaintiffs since it is so fact-specific. “The ruling here,” Kimball cautioned,

is limited to a situation where (1) there had been an aggressive bear encounter at the identical site where Plaintiffs set up camp; (2) the encounter had been approximately twelve hours before Plaintiffs arrived; and (3) it would not have been onerous for Defendant to have warned Plaintiffs about the earlier attack.

Samuel Ives’s death is the only recorded fatality caused by a black bear in Utah history. Earlier on the day of the attack, the bear had rummaged through food coolers at the campground and slashed open Francom's tent before being chased away by Francom and his friends.

The campers reported the attack on their way out of the canyon and officers with the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources (DWR) spent four to six hours looking for the bear. They classified it as a Level III nuisance animal, meaning they considered it a “threat to human safety.”

During a bench trial before Kimball, lawyers for the Forest Service argued that Sam's mother, Rebecca Ives, was intoxicated the night of the attack, which could have resulted in a messy campsite that attracted the bear to its victim.

Ives said she drank only a 22-ounce beer and Kimball concluded that “any alcohol consumption by Ms. Ives did not affect the events that occurred that night.”

The judge found the Forest Service 65 percent responsible for a total award of $3 million, the DWR 25 percent responsible, and the Ives family 10 percent responsible, noting there was food in the family's tent that might have attracted the bear.

Rebecca Ives and Sam's father, Kevan Francis, have a separate suit pending against the DWR. Under Kimball's formula, it would be liable for $750,000 in damages.

By Matthew Heller
On Point

And debate whether it even has a future at all

By the year 2020, when we're all using ubiquitous organic touchscreens, augmented reality social networks, and ultra-powerful computers to communicate, will we still be using the mail? A group of technology evangelists and postal advocates will gather this summer to talk about that, and what the U.S. Postal Service can do to make sure the answer is yes.

The PostalVision 2020 conference will highlight how social networks and electronic communications continue to reshape the role of mail. Participants include Vint Cerf, Google's "chief Internet evangelist," and Jeff Jarvis, a blogger and journalism educator who has asked whether the Postal Service is even necessary anymore. Plenty of postal advocates will also be on hand, including members of a panel who have suggested post offices start selling gift cards and other retail items.

The goal is to discuss how snail mail might be saved, through dramatic structural changes or methods like privatization.

The USPS is on track to lose about $7 billion during the current fiscal year, the Washington Post reports. With that hemorrhaging unlikely to stop anytime soon, it's unlikely any investors would want to buy it.

John Callan, a mailing industry consultant who is organizing the meeting, told the Washington Post that the USPS is already working to address its current problems, but outsiders might have some useful ideas for its long-term future.

The meeting will also review what foreign postal services are doing - like forgoing stamps for digital codes sent via text, and scanning all mail into PDFs for digital delivery.

Eventually, postal services may be more useful for a much broader purpose than delivering coupons and J. Crew catalogs. The mail's unparalleled ability to reach everyone, everywhere could be useful for a host of services - delivering drugs in case of a disease outbreak or bioterrorism, for instance. Or monitoring air quality and traffic in neighborhoods. Or playing a role in the delivery and maintenance of nationwide broadband services ... the list goes on. For those reasons, at least, it could be well worth saving.

[Washington Post]

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Washington, D.C. - U.S. Senators Mike Enzi, John Barrasso and Representative Cynthia Lummis, all R-Wyo., encourage residents who care about public access and recreation in Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks to let their voices be heard on how the park should be managed. The National Park Service is ready for public review and comment on the draft environmental impact statement to guide the winter use management of the parks.

            The National Park Service has put together seven plans that range from a snowcoaches only plan, a mixed use plan that closes Sylvan Pass, a plan to return to 2007 levels of 720 snowmobiles and 78 snowcoaches per day and several more. 

            Electronic comment forms can be submitted at the National Park Service’s Planning, Environment and Public Comment website at http://parkplanning.nps.gov/yell by picking Winter Use Plan/EIS, then clicking on the ‘Open for Comment’ link in the upper left of the page. Comments may also be submitted by mail to Yellowstone National park Winter Use DEIS, P.O. Box 168, Yellowstone National Park, Wyo. 82190, or in person. Comments will not be accepted over the phone, by fax, or e-mail.

            The comment period will be open for 60 days and will end mid-July.

            There will be six public meetings:

            June 1 - Jackson

            June 2 - Cody          

            June 7 - West Yellowstone, Montana

            June 8 - Bozeman, Montana

            June 21 - Denver, Colorado                     

            June 23 - Washington, DC. 

            Two webinars are also scheduled for June 21 and June 22. Further details on meeting times, locations and instructions for the webinar will be released soon and updated at http://parkplanning.nps.gov/yell  under the “Winter Use Plan/EIS” link.

            When it comes to Yellowstone winter use, the Wyoming delegation has fought for years to increase snowmobile and snowcoach access, provide certainty for winter use policy, and keep the East Entrance of Yellowstone open. Public comments and mass attendance at public meetings has helped and will continue to help ensure the park can be enjoyed by the people, its original purpose.

"As for duplicity, I would say that diplomacy is not single tracked. We all follow many different tracks; sometimes, apparently, working against each other," a retired senior official from Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI) told me and my colleagues<</span>!> during a private gathering in Islamabad in July 2010 that was organized as part of The Century Foundation's International Task Force on Afghanistan. "Double games or triple games are part of the big game."

The ISI has long cultivated ties with militant groups as part of the country's national security strategy, in order to mitigate considerable gaps in conventional military capabilities with its principal adversary, India, and to check regional competition within Afghanistan. The United States and its international partners have been somewhat tolerant of this Pakistani game-playing. While it has long been known that Pakistan continues to support and harbor Afghan insurgents, American dependence on Pakistani supply routes, international fears about the nuclear-armed country's own stability, and its presumed counterterrorism cooperation with respect to al Qaeda, created a dynamic that has indulged official duplicity.The discovery that Osama bin Laden was residing within walking distance of Pakistan's military academy in Abbottabad has shaken the foundations of this unsustainable arrangement and generated widespread outrage regarding Pakistan's possible links with the most reviled of transnational jihadis. There will now be considerable congressional pressure to at least curtail or condition U.S. aid and military reimbursements to Pakistan. But rather than ceasing all counterterrorism cooperation or downgrading ties in the near term, the United States should now use its enhanced leverage with Pakistan to push forward an inclusive political process to end the fighting in Afghanistan -- a process that necessitates positive Pakistani involvement. The death of al Qaeda's leader has created additional momentum for those on all sides seeking a political resolution to the current conflict. And in the final analysis, such a process also offers Pakistan an opportunity to realize some of its strategic aims. It is high time for the White House to realize that recent U.S. and allied military efforts and tactical successes in Afghanistan have not shifted the overall strategic balance of the war. With a safe haven in neighboring Pakistan, and a corrupt Afghan government fuelling the expansion of the insurgency and unable to hold cleared territory, the sustainability of current military efforts remains untenable. Therefore, the Obama administration should seize on the success of its audacious military operation to kill bin Laden to push forward a political strategy of outreach to the Taliban. [[BREAK]] Such a political settlement will no doubt require distasteful compromises for all sides and its achievement is far from certain even if all practicable efforts are made. But bin Laden's death provides Taliban leaders -- who would have to sever their ties with al Qaeda in future negotiations -- with greater political cover. In discussions last July with insurgent field commanders and others with political connections to the major Afghan insurgent factions, many Afghan interlocutors made clear to me

their own willingness to eventually sever ties with al Qaeda. But they also emphasized that such a move could only be the result of negotiations, as opposed to its opening act. Several further argued that such a move at this stage, when the U.S. surge was reaching its peak, would be tantamount to a unilateral and partial disarmament.

As we

were told repeatedly, when faced with the military might of the United States, these fighters were willing to accept the assistance of any other parties that could amplify their military efforts, including al Qaeda. For many of these insurgents, their struggle was conceived in terms of Afghan national goals, and tactical cooperation was more about survival than ideological convergence. Alex Strick van Linschoten, a Kandahar-based researcher who has discussed the issue of al Qaeda at length with members of the Taliban, points out that any moves to sever ties at this juncture could "jeopardize links with other militant factions that provide material support and assistance to the Taliban, and could even incite violent retaliation against them."

But the issue of severing ties with al Qaeda will face internal resistance. Bin Laden's death improves the optics of any such move, and strengthens the ability of those insurgent leaders who favor a political approach to win over skeptics and rejectionists within their ranks. It also eliminates the key personal tie that cemented the relationship between al Qaeda and the Taliban and their allies in the Haqqani network, which in some cases go back to the insurgency against the Soviets. The opacity surrounding Pakistan's role is also likely to breed paranoia among the ranks of the Taliban, who will fear that the military operation was the result of a U.S.-Pakistani deal. This heightened sense of vulnerability to double cross by their Pakistani patrons could prove useful in encouraging political engagement. Of course, the Taliban's position is only one factor in the effort to reach a political settlement to end the Afghan war. Any viable political process will necessitate active and constructive Pakistani engagement. Pakistan's diminished international standing as a result of the bin Laden operation may partially remedy the issues that have long bedeviled U.S.-Pakistani relations, including the moral hazard that has driven Pakistani actions. While the exact connections, if any, between Pakistan's security establishment and bin Laden remain murky, the picture that has already emerged is deeply damaging to Pakistan's credibility -- at best, they appear oblivious and incompetent and, at worst, they have provided covert support to the most odious of transnational terrorists. While Pakistan has called repeatedly for political reconciliation and a political settlement to the conflict, its commitment to such a process continues to be an open question. Pakistan's security establishment has not yet signaled that it is willing to pressure its allies to abandon conflict in favor of a political path. While all of Pakistan's familiar options for subversion remain, the bin Laden episode has raised the stakes for this beleaguered state. The specter of bin Laden has created a possible pathway for international isolation and pariah status -- if the Pakistani security establishment is intent on continuing along its current course. Now would be the optimal moment to seek concrete steps from Pakistan. To begin with the focus should be on ensuring that Taliban leaders who seek to engage on a political level are afforded the freedom to do so without interference or threat. Instead of forsaking a relationship with Islamabad, which would bring it little strategic gain, Washington should instead pressure its chastened and embarrassed partner into making constructive contributions to an all-inclusive peace process.

Michael Wahid Hanna is a fellow and program officer at The Century Foundation.

The death of Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) chief Baitullah Mehsud in a U.S. drone strike in August of 2009 touched off a heated debate about the future of the militant outfit and its succession. Many believed Mehsud's death was a fatal blow to the TTP, and they have proven correct partially, if not fully. Soon after Mehsud's death, cracks emerged in the TTP's leadership, weakening the group's umbrella organization, which was once seen a mounting wave likely to engulf major parts of Pakistan.

Now that the United States has gotten rid of its Enemy No. 1 and founder of al-Qaeda after almost 10 years, a similar debate is raging about the future of the group that has spread its tentacles to different parts of the world and influenced countless individuals with its jihadist propaganda.

Osama bin Laden's death, in an audacious and stunning commando raid by U.S. SEALs in Pakistan's Abbottabad cantonment, is no doubt a hard blow to al-Qaeda. But it also carries adverse consequences for its TTP affiliate. The TTP's leadership is already underground, partly because of major military actions by Pakistani security forces in areas like Swat, Mohmand, and Waziristan, and partly because of the increasing number of drone strikes in the tribal areas over the past year. In a situation where the TTP was already in disarray, the killing of bin Laden, the hero of all militant groups and particularly their footsoldiers and new recruits, will prove disastrous for their morale.[[BREAK]]

Operations in Swat and South Waziristan have almost dismantled the organizational structure of the TTP, which has continuously attacked the Pakistani state, and whose leaders include Maulana Fazlullah and Hakimullah Mehsud. Both of them were, on one hand, a source of inspiration and courage for their fighters, but served as a symbol of dread for those opposed to their agendas.

The Taliban in Bajaur under the leadership of Maulvi Faqir Muhammad have already adopted a notable silence over the past year, keeping a distance from the TTP and other groups, while those fighters in neighboring Mohmand are already in hiding in the remote areas bordering eastern Afghanistan.

The Khyber-based Lashkar-e-Islam (LI) of Mangal Bagh, one of the feared militant outfits that operated just a few kilometers from Peshawar less than two years ago, has also retreated into the remote and mountainous Tirah Valley and engaged in a war with its staunch opponent, Ansar-ul Islam. Reports over recent weeks suggest that the locals from Zakhakhel tribe, once the host of LI, are now up in arms against the group and both sides are taking casualties on daily basis.

In spite of this chaos across the tribal areas, in the short run the TTP can unleash a campaign of attacks on soft targets to take their revenge for bin Laden's death, as well as to try to tell the world that they remain a serious threat. A similar bombing campaign from local Taliban fighters occurred in Peshawar and other parts of Pakistan following Pakistani military operations in Swat and South Waziristan in 2009.

In the longer run, however, Taliban footsoldiers are likely to loose faith in the group's power and come to believe that no place is safe for a terrorist, whatever his stature and position. The continuous failure of U.S. forces to locate and capture people like Osama bin Laden had been a source of courage and inspiration for those eager to join the ranks of the Taliban, and now that he's gone, some may be discouraged from joining the jihad.

Recently, the killing of Taliban godfather Colonel Imam by Hakimullah Mehsud's fighters, and continuous violations of the Kurram peace accord, which was negotiated by the Haqqani network, shows further divisions among the militant groups that operated under the umbrella of the TTP. The death of Colonel Imam, who was kidnapped and then held in captivity for months, highlighted growing divisions between Hakimullah Mehsud and the Haqqani network. By the same token, the Kurram peace accord was signed with the covert support of the Haqqani network to get the goodwill of the Shia Muslims living in upper Kurram close the Afghan border. However, local Taliban fighters have continued attacking the Shia, proving that they are not on the same page with the Haqqanis and even with their TTP leadership, which is drawing money from the Haqqanis and providing them local support.

The only groups under the Pakistani Taliban heading that are holding strong are those led by Hafiz Gul Bahadar and Maulvi Nazir in Waziristan, where Pakistani security forces are hesitating to launch an operation against them despite pressure from the U.S. Although these groups have suffered losses as a result of the drone strikes, their leadership structures are intact and their chiefs remain in close contact with the Haqqani network and al-Qaeda members.

However, the discovery of bin Laden so far inside Pakistan will further increase pressure from the U.S. on the Pakistani government to launch a serious military operation in North Waziristan, believed to be the hideout of Haqqani network. As the U.S. plans its Afghan withdrawal and NATO countries seem to be in a hurry to conclude the war, their pressure on Pakistan, particularly after bin Laden was killed so close to the Pakistani capital of Islamabad, is quite understandable. Therefore, any Taliban sympathizers in the Pakistani Army and security agencies will find themselves on slippery grounds in continuing to refuse to take decisive action against the three groups that have traditionally been considered ‘good' Taliban -- the Haqqani network, Hafiz Gul Bahadar, and Maulvi Nazir.

The talks about talks with the Afghan Taliban are also a source of concern for the TTP's leadership. Most of the Pakistani Taliban fighters consider their Afghan counterpart as a source of motivation and their fugitive chief Mullah Muhammad Omar as their leader. However, if the Afghan Taliban are actually considering talks with the Afghan government, the Pakistani Taliban will be left without an inspirational leader. 

Pakistan's religious parties, who used to avoid condemning Taliban violence in Pakistan, have also adopted a meaningful silence over bin Laden's death. No one is coming forward to criticize al-Qaeda, even for political point scoring, although several have organized protests against the U.S. raid in Abbottabad.

After years of not condemning Taliban attacks in Pakistan, the leadership of the Islamist parties may be rethinking their stances. Attacks on civilians and the leadership of those parties have provided enough food for thought for those parties to think that they are playing with fire, as demonstrated by two attacks on the pro-Taliban leader of the JUI-F, Maulana Fazlur Rehman. A Jamaat-e-Islami party rally was also attacked in Peshawar and several of its workers were killed and injured.

The JUI-F and JI's silence may be pragmatic. When I recently asked one JI leader why they don't oppose the Taliban and their violence in Pakistan, he told me, "We have no option but to stay silent. We are running schools, welfare organizations, and having our public meetings. Do you think we can continue all this if we come out in open against the Taliban?"

The JI's strident anti-Americanism is another issue, but this comment suggests Pakistan's Islamist politicians are making a covert compromise with the Taliban groups. Their leaders privately disagree with the agenda of the Pakistani Taliban, although they support the Afghan Taliban. The disenchantment of Pakistan's religious political parties with bin Laden and with the Pakistani Taliban is yet another blow to the TTP's morale.

Although the TTP and its allies are not likely to collapse immediately following the death of bin Laden, the Pakistani public and politicians' growing disenchantment with the TTP and its agenda, the organizational struggles of the various Taliban groups in the tribal areas, and increased pressure on Pakistan's security forces to go after militants in Waziristan suggests that the 'Talibanization' of Pakistan may, at last, be receding.

Daud Khattak is a Pashtun journalist currently working for the Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty's Pashto-language station Radio Mashaal.

In July 2010, Nextbigfuture had a Sander Olson interview of roboticist Dennis Hong. Dennis Hong's dream for 2020 is to see the CHARLIE H robot being used in millions of households as a robot helper.

Forbes has a recent feature on Dennis Hong and his humanoid robot Charli.

New robot wave using open source software and hardware

The new wave of robots work is taking place on open-source hardware and software so more innovators can play a role. IRobot designed AVA, a customizable robot with a tablet computer "head" and a wheeled-column body, to serve as a development platform for robotics, like Linux for computers.

AVA's "brain" consists of either a Google Android tablet or an iPad. Angle, who sees potential for home security and medical reminder apps, as well as downloadable personalities, says, "A huge community could create apps that add utility to AVA."

AVA will join PR2, a human-size robot that Silicon Valley company Willow Garage introduced in 2010. The dual-armed, wheeled PR2 is powered by ROS, an open-source robot operating system Willow Garage has distributed free since 2007. The closely held firm has donated 11 PR2s to institutions around the world and sold 5, and wants to encourage app development. One early program from UC, Berkeley taught the robot to fold socks and towels.

Willow Garage PR2 robot, iRobot AVA, Charli and other robots

Hong's lab in Virginia recently designed an 18-inch-tall humanoid that can be built in a few days with standard parts, including a 1.6 gigahertz Intel Atom processor, gyroscope and accelerometer for stabilization and 2-megapixel camera for object recognition. A ready-made version costs $12,000, a bargain compared with the fortunes typically spent on research robots. (Willow Garage's PR2 costs $280,000 to $400,000.)

Called DARwIn-OP--the OP is for Open Platform while the rest stands for Dynamic Anthropomorphic Robot with Intelligence--the robot represents the most comprehensive effort yet to coordinate robotics research among U.S. universities.

Willow garage's PR2 and the stealth-mode Heartland Robotics work were featured recently.



If you liked this article, please give it a quick review on ycombinator or StumbleUpon. Thanks

By a quarter to ten last Sunday night, word had gotten out that President Obama would address the country that evening. By the time Obama spoke nearly two hours later, the world was aware that Osama bin Laden had been killed. How did that happen? Researchers at the New York City company SocialFlow have just released their analysis of some 14.8 million public tweets from that evening. Their work that tracks how a single tweet from a 27-year-old aide to former U.S. Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld spread with amazing rapidity, to where the death of bin Laden became common knowledge before the president got a chance to open his mouth:

Keith was not first to speculate that the address is related to Bin-Laden, nor did he have a particularly influential presence on Twitter, with a following of 1,016 and a casual digital portrayal. But the right network effects came into play, and enabled his post to generate enough trust amongst his followers, their followers, and so on. ...

The rate at which Keith’s message spread was staggering. Within a minute, more than 80 people had already reposted the message, including the NYTimes reporter Brian Stelter [who had 54,000 followers on Twitter at the time]. Within two minutes, over 300 reactions to the original post were spreading through the network.

Their takeaways:

Authority, trust and persuasiveness play an important role in influencing others, but are only part of a complex set of dynamics that affect people’s perception. Connections are another important factor, along with timing and a dash of pure luck. But as humans, we are still incredibly irrational, and constantly make decisions based on our intuition, or whatever we feel like at that moment. 

Fascinating stuff. This whole situation provides another glimpse at how context, connections, and "a dash of pure luck" contribute to how information spreads in the Twitter age: in Pakistan, Sohaib Arthar tweeted about the Abbottabad raid in real-time, but the wider world didn't actually know about it until other tweeters went looking for witnesses.

read more

Michael Moore describes Bush's seven minute fail pretty accurately in the above video. You've probably heard and seen that Bush didn't show up for the Ground Zero memorial today even after Obama invited him:

The White House says Obama's trip will include a private meeting with family members of 9/11 victims, a meeting with first responders that will be open to some news coverage, and a wreath-laying at the 9/11 memorial. Obama invited former President George W. Bush to accompany him, but Bush declined.

"President Bush will not be in attendance on Thursday," The New York Times quoted his spokesman David Sherzer as saying. "He appreciated the invite, but has chosen in his post-presidency to remain largely out of the spotlight. He continues to celebrate with Americans this important victory in the war on terror."

Bush, whose presidency was defined by the al-Qaida-led Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States and the subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, has largely maintained a low public profile since leaving office.

It's not surprising that Bush wouldn't want to be there since he had a chance to get Bin Laden at Tora Bora, but didn't even though those actions contradicted his bullhorn speech.

Digby writes:

Yes. Actually it's quite easy to picture a petulant and jealous Junior Bush not wanting to be part of a ceremony that highlights his failure to achieve his most cherished desire.
--
Bush froze in the spotlight when told the United States was under attack and that 's the equivalent of deliberate decision making in a military operation. But hey, you can't blame them. When you have to rely on a second grader's interpretation of events you know you're reaching --- that and a bullhorn is all they've got left of their mighty, macho warrior president and it's got to hurt. They really care about that crap.

Fox News and the right-wing propaganda machine have gone to great lengths to try and rehabilitate Bush's image after those seven minutes. Now, the wingnuts are pouncing on a news report out by the New York Daily News' Thomas DeFrank: Little Boy George didn't go today because he had a hissy fit.

Little Green Footballs:

This, of course, is delicious red meat for people like Jim “Dim” Hoft (aka “Gateway Pundit”): Bush Wises Up… Won’t Be Prop For Obama’s Victory Lap | The Gateway Pundit

DERPBush wises up.
President Obama was wrong on waterboarding, renditions, the Iraq War, the Surge, Gitmo, military tribunals, and the Patriot Act. Now he wants to take full credit for getting Osama Bin Laden and wants to use George W. Bush as a prop.
Bush ain’t going for it.

Bush policies kept America safe and led us to Osama Bin Laden. (History.com)

The former president feels Obama is ignoring the Bush Administration’s role in the strike on the Osama Bin Laden compound. He won’t be a prop for Obama at Ground Zero today.

There’s just one teensy problem with this idiots’ narrative.

It’s completely false: Wife: Bush skips 9/11 NY event to keep low profile.

Laura Bush told The Associated Press on Thursday that she and her husband were out to dinner Sunday night when they received word that Obama wanted to speak with him. The former president went home to take the call informing him that U.S. military forces had killed Osama bin Laden in a raid of his compound in Pakistan, Laura Bush said.

The former first lady told the AP that her husband declined an invitation to attend Thursday’s event in New York because “that’s for President Obama to do at this point.”

She said she and her husband both felt great pride for military and intelligence personnel after hearing the news.

“It was risky and it was dangerous for our members of the military,” Laura Bush said at a Dallas elementary school where she announced grants from her foundation for school libraries.

I guess they don't believe the former First Lady.

Los Angeles Times

Health Buzz: Coffee, Sex Increase Aneurysm Risk U.S. News & World Report Having sex or drinking coffee could rupture a brain aneurysm, new research suggests. When people with aneurysms—or weak spots in blood vessels in their brains—are under stress, those spots are liable to rip open, causing a stroke. ... Could blowing your nose lead to a stroke?Daily Mail Sex, coffee increase stroke riskTimes of India 8 Stroke Triggers for Those With Untreated AneurysmWebMD Consumer Affairs -Los Angeles Times -Healthcare Digital (press release) all 175 news articles »

The Methanol Institute supports the introduction of the Open Fuel Standard Act of 2011 (H.R. 1687) in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Paw Prints is our daily look at the happenings for the UConn Huskies football, men's basketball and women's basketball teams as well as some of the other sports. We will do our best to bring you the links from all of the media that covers the Huskies on a daily basis. As always, links can be found by clicking on the read more button below.

Thank you for stopping by and making SOX & Dawgs your home for UConn Huskies news.

To open the links up in a new tab or window, use Control+click

UConn Men's Basketball links

Coombs-McDaniel ... To Be Continued [David Borges - New Haven Register]

UConn Women's Basketball links

Video: Caroline Doty - Rise and Fire Part II [SOX & Dawgs]

Moriah Jefferson "can't wait" to get to UConn [Jim Fuller - New Haven Register]

Plenty of UConn connections at U.S. Under-19 trials [Jim Fuller - New Haven Register]

Moriah Jefferson Verbally Commits To UConn [John Altavilla - Hartford Courant]

Geno Auriemma Talks About The Proposed Rule Changes [John Altavilla - Hartford Courant]

Geno Auriemma Talks About USA Basketball [John Altavilla - Hartford Courant]

Jefferson Gives UConn Incredible 1-2 Punch In Class of 2012 [Rich Elliott - CT Post]

UConn Football links

Handicapping the Big East race [Brian Bennett - ESPN.com]

Masuk-Monroe QB Casey Cochran: A Recruiting Update [Desmond Conner - Hartford Courant]

DC also answered a question in his mailbag [Desmond Conner - Hartford Courant]

Casey Cochran Still Searching For The Perfect College [Hartford Courant]

Other UConn related links

Softball. StrikeOut Cancer Game Set For Saturday Against Notre Dame [UConnHuskies.com]

Baseball. No. 20 UConn Baseball to Host USF in BIG EAST Series [UConnHuskies.com]

Last week, the Department of Health and Human Services announced its intention to bar veteran CEO Howard Solomon from the operations of his employer, Forest Laboratories, Inc. If Forest chooses not to fire Mr. Solomon it will lose its ability to sell its pharmaceuticals to Medicare, Medicaid, and the Veterans Administration. The demand came weeks after Forest and HHS settled allegations that the drug maker had improperly marketed its antidepressants Celexa and Lexapro.

Two weeks ago, Shell Oil Company abandoned efforts to drill in the Arctic Ocean after spending five years and $4.4 billion, largely on leases to the federal government. The EPA’s Environmental Appeals Board decided to withhold the air permits Shell needs to continue. Meanwhile, the U.S. Treasury’s Export-Import Bank subsidizes drilling by Shell competitor Petrobras, in Brazil.

Last month, the National Labor Relations Board sued to keep Boeing from building its new 787 Dreamliner in right-to-work states, which could cost Boeing its $2 billion investment and South Carolinians more than 1,000 jobs.

It is events like these that place the Obama administration’s draft executive order on political disclosure in a disquieting light. As has been reported, the order would require corporations seeking federal contracts to report the political donations of its executives, and include, for the first time, donations to trade associations and advocacy groups. It would exempt unions and grant recipients, and almost certainly chill corporate speakers protected just last year by the Supreme Court in Citizens United.

Even if the draft order is only a trial balloon designed to slow donations to opponents like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce or Crossroads GPS, Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D., Md.) has — after failing to pass his DISCLOSE Act in Congress — sued the Federal Election Commission in a last-ditch effort to broaden the reach of disclosure in time for the 2012 campaign. Donors to Democratic groups competing with Crossroads, like the newly minted Priorities USA, would also have to disclose under Van Hollen’s proposal. But donors to such groups might conclude they have less to fear in the current regulatory environment.

The roots of the issue are deeper than some may imagine.

In U.S. v. Carolene Products (1938), the Supreme Court assured Americans that its decision to remove constitutional protection for economic liberties to make way for New Deal programs would not lead to economic deprivations because open and robust “political processes . . . can ordinarily be expected to bring about repeal of undesirable legislation.”

Thirty-eight years later, in Buckley v. Valeo, the Court dampened political processes by upholding campaign-finance restrictions, which included disclosure for candidate contributions to prevent quid pro quo corruption. Disclosure for advertising that independently advocates the election or defeat of candidates, which the Court held cannot result in quid pro quo, was nonetheless upheld to further “informational interests.” The informational interest allows voters to place “candidate[s] in the political spectrum more precisely than is often possible solely on the basis of party labels and campaign speeches.”

These disclosure restrictions were thought to be so benign that Buckley’s appellants didn’t challenge them.

But socialists challenged them in 1982 (Brown v. Socialist Workers), and the Court agreed that disclosure cannot apply to organizations or individuals that historically have been “the object of harassment by government officials or private parties.” Against the backdrop of a Reagan-era economic expansion, the Socialist Workers exemption is rightly seen as an accommodation for dissidents.

The Court now allows groups “that have no history upon which to draw” an opportunity to make a similar showing. But there is a problem today with the Socialist Workers exemption and an elephant in the room where the burdens and benefits of political disclosure are hotly debated. What is to be done when the chilled donor is no dissident but rather is in the mainstream of American society?

Target Brands, Inc. was targeted for boycotts by MoveOn.org over donations Target made to a political organization. The donations have stopped. Yet no district court will find that a multinational like Target should qualify for an exemption under Socialist Workers.

CEOs aware of the treatment of Shell, Boeing, or Forest cannot claim successfully that the prospect of finding themselves on the short end of regulatory processes the Supreme Court approved last century constitutes “threats, harassment or intimidation” warranting an exemption under Socialist Workers. Yet the facts seem otherwise. Sen. Charles Schumer (D., N.Y.), co-sponsor of the DISCLOSE Act, has said that the deterrent effect of campaign disclosure should not be underestimated.

If businessmen and women are chilled from speaking in the 2012 elections, the Court’s Carolene compromise is already undone, and the promise of political checks as adequate substitutes for constitutional checks rings hollow indeed.

There is no chance the Court will soon revisit its New Deal rulings or reinstate protections against economic deprivations of the kind suffered by Forest, Shell, or Boeing. The answer, then, is for it to revisit disclosure; particularly the legitimacy and scope of the “informational interest.”

Today, only Justice Clarence Thomas would strike down disclosure requirements because they enable “elected officials to implement political strategies specifically calculated to . . . prevent the lawful, peaceful exercise of First Amendment rights.” Other Justices must take notice of a quickly shifting landscape. When American capitalists need the protection of Socialist Workers it’s time the Court revisited its precedents.

— Stephen M. Hoersting is a campaign finance attorney and co-founder of the Center for Competitive Politics.

Here's the English translation of Al Qaida's statement confirming the death of Osama bin Laden. It says it will release Osama's final taped statement made one week before he was killed.

"The sheikh (OBL) didn’t leave this world before taking part in sharing the joy with his Muslim Umma (nation) regarding its revolutions when the nation has risen in the face of injustice and the tyrants and may God have mercy on him, the sheikh recorded an audio message one week before his killing that we will release soon, God willing and his audio message included a congratulation greeting, advices and a guidance.

Aside from the usual threats, the group had a warning about what would happen if bin Laden's body was mistreated and demanded that the other bodies at the compound be turned over to the families of the deceased: [More...]

Moreover, we warn the Americans of any injustice to be made to the corpse of Sheikh Osama, God's mercy be upon him or that he will be mistreated in any despicable manner and this warning includes the mistreatment of any member of the sheikh's honorable family whether they are dead or alive and that the bodies must be handed over to the families because any inappropriate treatment will open the doors of double evil and you will only be blaming yourselves for your own deeds. We call upon all Muslims to do their duty in enforcing this right.”

The group also reminds America that while it killed bin Laden, it didn't kill al Qaeda:

Even when the Americans managed to kill Osama, they managed to do ONLY that by disgrace and betrayal. Men and heroes only should be confronted in the battlefields but at the end, that’s God’s fate. Still we ask, will the Americans be able thru their media outlets, their agents, their instruments, soldiers, intelligence services and their might be able to kill what Sheikh Osama lived for and was killed for? How far! How impossible! Sheikh Osama didn’t build an organization that will vanish with his death or fades away with his departure.

On a related note, Pakistan officials say their intelligence shows Bin Laden split with al-Zawahri six years ago, and al-Zawahri has the bigger following. The Wall St. Journal describes the official as saying bin Laden had been marginalized:

bin Laden had been sidelined because he no longer had the funds to support al Qaeda operations and that his popularity in the network was slipping

The U.S. says it has no such information and is skeptical. The U.S. seems to continually revert to a pyramid type structure when describing al Qaida, with one person at the top. It seems more likely that for many years since 9/11, Al Qaida has been a bunch of loosely affiliated, geographically diverse and independent groups. While they share a belief system, their aspirational targets likely are different. It sounds like we're about to spend a ton of money going after al-Zawahri, which in the long run, won't have any more impact in eliminating al Qaida than did killing Osama.

Update: Britain seems to think the lead replacement for bin Laden is cleric Anwar al Awlaki.

Niles North's Rosen Wins National Chess Championship

Rupert Murdoch's baby unveils its own data tip line, SafeHouse, but will it attract whistle-blowers? And can it fix security issues?

The Wall Street Journal quietly launched a WikiLeaks competitor yesterday, SafeHouse, a data dump and tip site for government and corporate wrongdoing. The attention-capturing power of WikiLeaks has often compelled reluctant partnerships with legacy media outlets. Founder Julian Assange's personal life and insistence on selectively handing out evidence to multiple outlets puts publishers in the awkward position of negotiating with a liable upstart muscling in on their territory.

SafeHouse will surely be the first of many WikiLeaks alternatives attempting to cut out the anarchistic middleman. Ultimatley though, data dump sites will have to attract the leakers themselves, but poor shield laws, insufficient security, and editorial bias may convince whistle-blowers to stand by the original Wikileaks.

SafeHouse

SafeHouse (or what will surely be known to some as WSJileaks) bills itself as a secure document and database tipline, fully admitting that disclosed data is "the key to modern journalism."WikiLeaks has had a huge amount of impact on the journalistic landscape," said WSJ Managing Editor, Kevin Delaney, to Forbes, "They’ve been a watershed."

First and foremost, SafeHouse wants leakers to feel that there's no breadcrumb trail back to their doorstep. Emails contain traceable information, and given the U.S.'s aggressive search for Assange, government whistle-blowers can expect the full investigative powers of the federal government to hunt them down.

Thus, rather than an email attachment, files are encrypted and information is kept hidden from "third-party" partners, which is most likely other media institutions, analytics firms, and advertisers.

Additionally, uploaders can secure files with the WSJ's public Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) encryption key, a security standard that has so far eluded federal authorities hoping to break it. Finally, for the uber-paranoid, SafeHouse recommends traffic-masking software, such as Tor, which has been used by the likes of Chinese citizen journalists to disguise their location from trackers.

Problems and Solutions

Ironically, security expert and Tor developer, Jacob Appelbaum, lashed out at SafeHouse over Twitter hours after the launch, blasting the WSJ for a laundry list of amateurish security flaws and questionable tattle-telling fine print. Applebaum said:

"I’m sure they’ll fix this in good time, but to give you an example, I thought about leaking them all this information through their leaking interface, but I couldn’t use their interface with Tor. And I’m a Tor developer."

Even worse, the fine print leaves open the very real possibility of revealing sources, as the WSJ says, "We reserve the right to disclose any information about you to law enforcement authorities." In response to criticism, spokesperson Ashley Hutton offered a PR-rish statement that looked like it had been run through their legal mill more than once. After reaffirming their committment to sources, it said, in part:

"...Because there is no way to predict the breadth of information that might be submitted through SafeHouse, the Terms of Use reserve certain rights in order to provide flexibility to react to extraordinary circumstances...

Fast Company reached out to The Wall Street Journal for clairification on both security and legal matters, and received immediate notification that we would get a response, but are still waiting (we imagine their legal and technical teams are prepping a fuller rebuttle for later today and will update this post if and when that happens).

In the end, the WSJ is likely to get the security aspect fixed, since encryption might be as much for the safety of WSJ editors as it is the leaker. In 2005, federal investigators successful cracked New York Times journalist Judith Miller after nearly three months in prison for refusing to divulge her source related to the Vice President's aid, "Scooter" Libby. The Obama administration-supported detention (and suspected torturing) of alleged WikiLeaker Bradley Manning would mean that changes in political party aren't any indication of friendlier whistle-blower treatment. in other words, WSJ reporters have no interest in warming the beds at Gitmo for their sources.

Still, SafeHouse is only one leak site, and uncertainty over security measures necessary to dodge the government watchtower might spook potential sources into going with the old online stalwart. Leakers are often not prodigy hackers: Manning allegedly used a CD-RW and a Lady Gaga diversion story to download diplomatic cables, which were apparently as secure as an open cookie jar.

In other words, what the Wall Street Journal is missing is why leak to SafeHouse?

Diversification

Media outlets have differed dramatically in both their interpretation and release of classified information. As such, Wikileaks has played a clever game of releasing information to several outlets at a time, fully knowing that competition for traffic rewards a race toward more transparency. The Wall Street Journal, especially then, would be a curious choice given its more conservative stance on government transparency. The Journal has refused WikiLeaks cables in the past, and has been the home of critical op-eds condemning Julian Assange as an "enemy" of the U.S. (including another one yesterday).

The concern that editors may self-censor information may be a weakness of newspaper-based leak sites in general. For anyone who has risked Gitmo-style torturous conditions to steal incriminating documents, why not submit them to an organization that releases to multiple publications?

Two potentially attractive features of SafeHouse are 1. A guaranteed spotlight for less-than-juicy stories and 2. A prudent choice for data related to life-endangering military operations. The public appetite for fraud stories is limited, meaning that there will likely be a parallel market for whistle-blowers competing to cut through the WikiLeaks noise. For leaked documents of shady pharmaceutical dealings or unscrupulous bankers, a megaphone like The Wall Street Journal might be willing to negotiate an exclusive for promoted coverage.

Second, past leakers have been concerned with the inadvertent casualties of exposure. A Wall Street Journal op-ed reports that Pentagon Papers source Daniel Ellsberg deliberately withheld diplomatic information because, as he said, "I didn't want to get in the way of the diplomacy."

In this regard, the WSJ's reticence towards transparency might be a selling point for those wishing to minimize collateral damage.

The market for both leak databases and leakers is just beginning to play out, and with this technology a new chapter in journalism begins.

Follow Greg Ferenstein on Twitter. Also, follow Fast Company on Twitter.

[Image: Flickr user aturkus]

Read More: WikiLeaks, Twitter Records Case Heads Back To Court

At 21 years old, Henry Cejudo became the youngest American to win a gold medal in Olympic wrestling, when he swept through the 55kg freestyle field at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. When he returned home, Cejudo began to immerse himself in boxing training, winning tournaments in Arizona and training with Freddie Roach. Before long, Bellator approached him with an offer to join their Season Three bantamweight tournament. “I was close enough to signing with Bellator that they faxed the papers over and I was ready to sign them,” Cejudo said. “I thought about it for a day and during that time I got a call from USA wrestling about me coming back. I had a decision to make, and I think I just see myself with another gold medal and maybe doing MMA afterward." Cejudo now plans to compete at the 2012 Games in London. His comeback began yesterday evening at the "USA vs. Russia"-themed Beat the Streets 2011 Gala in New York City's Times Square, where he competed in wrestling for the first time since Beijing. Cejudo faced Junior World bronze medalist Rasul Mashezov and won 2-0, 4-3. The American team beat the Russians 5-2 overall, aided by wins from 2010 U.S. Open champion Jordan Burroughs and 2009 World bronze medalist Tervel Dlagnev.

Farmers' markets appear to be opening in warming parts of the country to strong crowds and highly-positive press. Last year, 6,132 farmers' markets were open nationwide, a 16 percent increase over the year before according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. What do you think is behind the popularity of farmers’ markets?

Mayor Rob Ford has a lot of time on his hands. That is, at least according to his schedule. Through a freedom of information request, CBC News obtained Ford's most recent calendar that shows limited activity and even some days which are completely open. His one and only public event this week was at Variety Village on Thursday. His calendar in February and March look pretty much the same: blank, with a few phone conferences or a meeting here and there, but no details provided. It's a sharp contrast to his November-January calendar that showed a heavy-duty itinerary with as many as a dozen appointments per day. So, I guess the bigger question is: where's the real calendar at?

This seems like a no-brainer, but looks like Ontario teachers have to be told to unfriend their students on Facebook. The recommendation comes from the Ontario College of Teachers after responding to queries about the recent advisory on the use of social media in the classroom. In April, the college issued a guide that offered obvious advice like not friending students on Facebook, emailing them at person accounts or (gross!) texting them.

Looks like there are Sluts all over the place. What started as a grassroots organization in response to a thoughtless remark from a Toronto police officer has now grown international, as a series of SlutWalks are popping up all over the U.S. From Boston to Chicago to Seattle, women are taking to the streets to protest shaming women for being sexual and for the treatment of sexual assault victims. Siobhan Connors, 20, of Lynn, Mass., a Boston organizer said, "It's to bring awareness to the shame and degradation women still face for expressing their sexuality ... essentially for behaving in a healthy and sexual way."

So that massage parlour story was all for nothing--for more reasons than one. The Ontario Provincial Police have announced there are no criminal charges being laid in the leak of Toronto police documents concerning NDP Leader Jack Layton after an investigation was conducted by Detective Inspector Mike Bickerton. However, a police spokesman did the investigation uncovered a number of police notebooks that were in the possession of a former Toronto officer, which were returned to the force.

IN BRIEF:

• Iggy's a U of T prof now
• TTC wants to add private-sector members to the board ASAP
• This time the Rays beat the Jays

Photo by Love's Decibel in the blogTO Flickr pool

U.S. authorities will open more commercial vehicle inspection booths at the busy World Trade International Bridge at Laredo, partly to decrease wait times and also to step up drug detection efforts. The Associated Press reports that 3,000 18-wheel trucks cross over at that point into the U.S. daily, many coming from Mexico's industrial heartland in Monterrey. Because of the commercial traffic congestion, customs agents can only provide full screening for drugs on a small percentage of the trucks crossing the...

In celebration of the Diversity in YA Fiction Tour, enter to win a copy of two, randomly selected books by participating authors!

Join the authors this month in San Francisco, Austin, Chicago, Cambridge and New York. See schedule and details!

To enter the giveaway, comment here or email me (scroll and click envelope) and type "Diversity" in the subject line. Deadline: midnight CST May 27. Note: author-sponsored; U.S. entries only.

Cynsational Giveaway Reminder

Enter to win a signed copy of The Owl Keeper by Christine Brodien-Jones (Delacorte, 2010). First prize: a hardcover copy. Second and third prize: paperback copies. To enter the giveaway, comment at this link or email me (scroll and click envelope) and type "Owl Keeper" in the subject line. Deadline: midnight CST May 27. Note: Author sponsored; U.S./Canada entries only. See also Christine on Writing Scary But Not Too Scary for Tweens.

More News & Giveaways

An Address and a Map Discovering Your Genius as a Writer by Tim Wynne-Jones from The Writers' League of Texas. Peek: "...I’m talking about the genius that each of us possesses to some degree: a natural ability or capacity or quality of mind; the special endowments which fit each of us for our work."

Children's Choice Book Awards Announced (PDF) from The Children’s Book Council (CBC) in association with Every Child A Reader, and the CBC Foundation. Rick Riordan was named author of the year, and David Wiesner was named illustrator of the year. See the complete list of winners.

JanePeddicord.com Space Blog: Where Kids Question the Cosmos. Peek: "SpaceBlog is place for kids to ask questions, to exchange ideas, and always to discover more about space. Of course, educators, parents, and space enthusiasts of all ages are welcome to join in, too!" Learn more about Jane Ann Peddicord.

Author Interview: Tim Tingle by Marie Penny at The Hub from YALSA. Peek: "My mentor, the Choctaw tribal storyteller Charley Jones says, 'tell the stories', but make sure the origin is acknowledged. The Choctaw tribe is very open, you don’t have to be Choctaw to tell the story, but you must respect the tribal origins." Source: American Indians in Children's Literature.

Lee B. Hopkins Poetry Award Teaching Toolbox: teacher guides and book trailers for the LBH award books.

The Interminable Agency Clause by Victoria Strauss from Writer Beware. Peek: "...language inserted into an author-agency agreement whereby the agency claims the right to remain the agent of record not just for the duration of any contracts it negotiates, but for the life of copyright." See also On Agency Agreements by Jennifer Laughran from Jennifer Represents...

Spaghetti Agents by Nathan Bransford. Peek: "They sign up a bunch of writers even when they're unsure about a project, they throw the manuscripts at publishers, and they see what sticks." See also Nathan on Separating Confidence from Self-Doubt.

Book Talking and Preparing for Focus Meeting by Little, Brown editor Alvina Ling from Blue Rose Girls. Peek: "....because I only have between 1 and 2 minutes to present each title, the presentation needs to be really tight. I want to touch on the summary of the book...."

Castellucci Joins 'Los Angeles Review of Books' as YA and Children's Editor by Wendy Werris from Publishers Weekly. Peek: "'So few venues review YA and teen books regularly, and even then it’s usually bestsellers and known authors, so this is an opportunity to assign reviews to the quieter books and older titles,' Castellucci says."

From Publishers Marketplace: "Nikki Loftin’s debut novel The Sinister Sweetness of Splendid Academy, pitched as Coraline meets Hansel and Gretel, about a young girl whose seemingly delightful new school hides frightening secrets, to Laura Arnold at Razorbill, in a two-book deal, for publication in Summer 2012, by Suzie Townsend at Fineprint Literary Management (World)." Congratulations, Nikki!

Twitter Tutorial: The Long Version by Lynne Kelly from Will Write for Cake. Peek: "It's not okay to pitch your novel or query an agent or editor via Twitter, but following them is a great way to find out what's going on in the publishing industry and with their own work...."

Attention New Yorkers: anticipated budget cuts in NYC would effectively shut down many libraries, reduce hours and staff. Please stop by your local library or click to your local library website to sign a petition to save the libraries. See Queens Library, Brooklyn Public Library, and New York Public Library.

Pay-It-Forward ARC Giveaway Contest from Dawn Metcalf. Enter to win advanced reader copies of Dreamland Social Club by Tara Altebrando and Luminous by Dawn Metcalf (both Dutton, 2011). Deadline: May 7. See more information.

Career Planning: Who, Me? by Kristi Holl from Writer's First Aid. Peek: "...making a writing budget–the nuts and bolts of figuring out how much income you need, where it’s going to come from (all possible sources,) and what to do to get it. You’ll want to study this too." Note: Kristi references Chip MacGregor's excellent post Strategic Planning for Writers, but her pep talk/insights/summary are worth considering, too.

Author Advances: How Much You'll Get and When by Author/Agent Mandy Hubbard. Peek: "If you sell a book to one of the big six publishers, and it's a single book deal, and it's something deemed more quiet or literary, you may see $7,500-$10,000. if it has a bigger commercial hook, but still seems a little risky, you may get $15,000." Note: keep in mind that authors also make money from royalties, sub rights sales, public speaking, etc.

Career Insurance: Five Ways to Sell Your Next Book Before Its Written by Roni Loren from Fiction Groupie. Note: emphasis on series writing. Peek: "Unless you're writing the next blockbuster of the century, one book does not a career make. One book is just the gun going off at the starter gate." Source: QueryTracker.netBlog.

2011 Jane Addams Children's Book Awards from Mitali Perkins. The younger children's category winner is Emma’s Poem: The Voice of the Statue of Liberty by Linda Glaser, illustrated by Claire A. Nivola (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), and the older children's category winner is A Long Walk to Water: Based on a True Story by Linda Sue Park (Clarion). See honor books. Note: "Since 1953, the Jane Addams Children's Book Award honors books published in the U.S. during the previous year that engage children in thinking about peace, justice, world community, and/or equality of the sexes and all races. The books also must meet conventional standards of literary and artistic excellence."

From Publishers Marketplace: "Brian Yansky's Fighting Alien Nation, the sequel to Alien Invasion and Other Inconveniences, which continues the story of the survivors of an alien invasion, again to Candlewick, with Kaylan Adair to edit, by Sara Crowe at Harvey Klinger (world English). Congratulations, Brian!

For Writers: Race and Science Fiction and Fantasy by Mary Anne Mohanraj from Whatever. Peek: "...it’s easy to be paralyzed by that fear, to retreat back to only writing characters who are just like you, or so vague that they can’t possibly be mistaken for anyone real. But again — that makes for bad fiction. If you’re going to write well, you have to get past those fears." See also Your Process of Creating Characters Across Culture or Class from Mitali Perkins from Mitali's Fire Escape.

Point of View in Picture Books in Celebration of National Picture Book Writing Week from Paula Yoo from Write Like You Mean It. Peek: "Look at picture books that are written from different points of view. Compare a picture book written in first person versus third person limited. What are the differences?"

"Birthing a Book: Revelations about the Publishing Process," the transcript of a chat with Bonny Becker from the Institute of Children's Literature.

I Live in the Middle of Nowhere. How Can I Promote My Book? by Kristina Springer from Author2Author. Peek: "...it's hard to get a book faced out at the book store for more than a couple of months. So what can I do?"

Hunger Mountain Critique Auction

Hunger Mountain Critique Auction: Bid for a chance to win critiques from authors, illustrators, and agents from picture books to YA and beyond. See details on:

• 50-page YA manuscript critique with author Holly Cupala;
• illustrator's portfolio critique with Julian Hector;
• picture book critique with agent Jill Corcoran;
• full childrens/YA manuscript critique with agent Elena Mechlin; 50-page middle grade/YA manuscript critique with author Sara Zarr;
• picture book/poetry for children critique with Janet Wong;
• 30-page middle grade/YA critique with agent Joan Slattery;
• newly listed 50-page middle grade critique with agent Erin Murphy;
• 50-page middle grade/YA critique with agent Ammi-Joan Paquette;
• children's/middle grade/Y​A critique with agent Emily Van Beek;
• YA novel (20-page) or poem/story critique with author G. Neri;
• 50-page children's literature critique with author Sara Pennypacker.

Note: Hunger Mountain is the Vermont College of Fine Arts Journal of the Arts, featuring an in-depth focus on children's-YA literature.

Cynsational Screening Room

Check out the book trailer for Bats at the Ballgame by Brian Lies (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010).



Edit Letter Fun: Butcher or Coddler? from lynnekelly2000.



More Personally

This week I turned in my revision of my upcoming YA Gothic fantasy novel, which will be the next fully prose addition to the Tantalize series.

To the left, we see Bashi in the guet room, helping to guard the manuscript as I read through it, tweaking text.

To the right, we see Leo, lounging on Greg's copy of the draft in the parlor. Greg, the kitties, and I read the manuscript out loud to catch typos, missing words, and other minor issues. I'm especially include to skip right over two-letter words like "to," "of," "on," and "so."

See also Official Writer Cat Bios.

I'm pleased to announce that actress Kim Mai Guest will be reading as the character Quincie P. Morris for the audio edition of Blessed for Listening Library/Random House.

Kim Mai also performed as Quincie in the audio production of Tantalize (Listening Library, 2008).

Reminder: all blurb requests must come from editors or agents. Never authors. No exceptions.

Tantalize Reviewed by Anna from Troublingly Good Teen Lit. Peek: "This book could help teens who find themselves with more responsibility than they can handle, or whose parents/guardians are absent. It could also help teens who feel they may have a drinking problem."

Holler Loudly Reviewed by Becca Huttman from South Sound Book Review Council. Peek: "This is a cute story that is just fun. It has lots of action, adventure and fun illustrations."

Holler Loudly Reviewed by GAHome2Mom from Loving Heart Designs. Peek: "...a wonderfully humorous book to share with any young child."

Check out the Holler Loudly Teacher Guides by Shannon Morgan for PreK, Kindergarten, Grade 1 and Grade 2!

Personal Links of the Week:

• The Beginning: Or As Nike Advertises: Just Do It from Bethany Hegedus
• Possibly the Best Thing About My Job from Jennifer Ziegler
• The Right Word from Brian Yansky
• Look for the "No" to Find the "Yes" by Lindsey Lane from The Meandering Lane
• Interesting Stats on Librarians by Naomi Bates from YA Books and More
• Look for Susan Salzman Raab's latest "To Market" column, "Social Media: Time Well Spent - and Time Consuming" in the May/June 2011 SCBWI Bulletin.
• Cynthia Leitich Smith at Wikipedia

Cynsational Events

Diversity in YA Fiction: Austin Tour Stop 7:30 p.m. May 9 at BookPeople. Featuring authors With authors Bethany Hegedus, Malinda Lo, Guadalupe Garcia McCall, Cindy Pon, Dia Reeves, and Jo Whittemore, and moderated by Varian Johnson.

Chris Barton will be signing Can I See Your ID? True Stories of False Identities, illustrated by Paul Hoppe (Dial, 2011) at 7 p.m. May 14 at BookPeople in Austin. See discussion guide. See also Chris on Unbridled Silliness and Carefully Researched Truth-telling.

The Chills and Thrills Book Tour will be stopping at 2 p.m. May 15 at BookPeople. Turn out for authors Mari Mancusi, Tera Lynn Childs, Sophie Jordan, Jordan Dane, Lara Chapman, Jennifer Archer, and Tracy Deebs.

The First Annual BooksmART Festival will be from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. June 11 as part of Arts & Letters Live from the Dallas Museum of Art. Peek: "Come spend the day with authors, illustrators, musicians and actors, and enjoy talks, workshops, gallery tours, and entertainment, designed to appeal to every member of the family and every age group." Featured children's-YA book creators include Rick Riordan, Norton Juster, Laurie Halse Anderson, David Wiesner, Jerry Pinkney, Gene Luen Yang, Cynthia Leitich Smith, Duncan Tonatiuh, Antonio Sacre, Joe McDermott, Jan Bozarth, and Ann Marie Newman.

Authors Jennifer Ziegler and Cynthia Leitich Smith will speak to YA readers at 2 p.m. June 18 at Bee Cave Public Library in Bee Cave, Texas. Mark your calendars for book talk and pizza!

Austin Bat Cave Offers YA Writing Workshop with Margo Rabb from May 31 to July 5. See more information.

Coney Island will open this summer with four new attractions including The Soarin’ Eagle, the first new coaster to built in New York City since the historic Cyclone in 1927. The new rides are part of the Coney Island Revitilization Plan.  [Brooklyn Nomad] The U.S. State Department lifted its travel warning to Egypt last week,…

Rally Today to Stop the Breakup of a Marriage

• Josh Vandiver wasn't able to sponsor a green card for his husband Henry Velandia, a citizen of Venezuela, even though they were married in Connecticut, a marriage-equality state. They live in central Jersey. Should Henry be deported? What about other couples in that situation? DOMA is damaging families - rally today 11am.
  
• Daily Kos: Ask the Obama Administration to Save this Marriage.

Christie & the Court, Christie & the Law

• NJ attorney general faces questions on Christie's threat to defy Supreme Court over school funding.
  
• Christie's latest target was just doing his job. (Charlie Stile)
  
• Christie administration has misinterpreted a ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court. (Guest Op-Ed)
  
• Gov Chris Christie should show the Supreme Court some respect. (Guest Op-Ed)
  
• An all-white Supreme Court?

Trentonia

• Christie's 'tool kit' stalls in Legislature.
  
• How do you protect children from camera creeps and stay constitutional and sensible?
  
• Assembly Judiciary advances bill to extend domestic violence law to pets - to save people.
  
• AG's report: Teen decal hasn't attracted predators.
  
• Jobless bill advances.
  
• Assembly panel likes June presidential primary.

Obama at Ground Zero

• Obama pays respect to the fallen of 9/11.
  
• Congressman Rothman makes speech at wreath laying.

Carl Lewis back on ballot

• Thanks to the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals.
  
• Constitutionality of NJ's 4-year residency requirement is also back in question.

Jun Choi announces for Congress

• NJ-7.

Did the NJ GOP congressional delegation sleep through the BP Gulf oil spill?

• Vote on offshore drilling splits along party lines.

Trenton Trouble

• Paul Sigmund fired, then un-fired.
  
• In Deputy's Arrest, on Drug and Assault Charges, Another Crisis for Trenton Mayor.
  
• Mayor Tony Mack's administration suffers another setback with Sigmund arrest. (Times of Trenton editorial)
  
• Paul Sigmund is still suspended.

Schools

• Christie isn't letting go of the state control of Newark schools any time soon. No, not while there's a national spotlight.
  
• Charter schools are the research & development arm of public ed, a charter official tells a business group in AC.
  
• Paterson school district reworks grant bid after dispute with teachers union and maybe the grant writers.

Jerseynomics

• AC's gambling industry not recovering as fast as other gambling meccas are.
  
• Christie administration is expected to unveil long-term source of funding for state parks.

"American Dream"

• What kind of American Dream is this?
  
• And why the hell isn't the legislature getting any answers on the specifics of NJ's new financial tangle with the new Xanadu American Dream developers.

Happy Friday to all you 11W fans out there and a good morning to those of you reading this version of Skull Session as part of your morning routine. It's time to cap off another great week in the world, and cure the hangovers that Cinco de Mayo dealt you.

Memorial Day is just three weekends away and with no football and basketball on the dockett, the last weekend in May is all I have to look forward to at this point. Sure baseball is great and the U.S. Open is just around the corner, but there is nothing like the sweet taste of barbecue on your lips when you fire up that grill, open your backyard pool, and soak in the first really good weather of the year.

Speaking of barbecue, if you didn't know, Eat Too Brutus (the second version) will be taking place this fall on October 29 when the Buckeyes host the Badgers. Not only will you get to see OSU get some revenge on our buzzcut enemies to the northwest, but you'll also get the chance to shmooze it up with this guy, this guy, and especially this guy, as well as enjoy some great food and refreshments all the while. More details are sure to come soon, but if you are ready to book your trip back to the 614 for this fall, we suggest you keep the Wisconsin game in mind.

Already Dissing the Buckeyes. Si.com has released their early 2012 NFL mock draft, and the only Buckeye to crack the first round is Mike Adams , going to the New York Giants. It's also pretty interesting that in another column by a different writer featuring the top 40 prospects for next year's draft class, that Mike Brewster is the only Buckeye included. Before you get all huffy and puffy, make sure to take a look at their early 2011 mock draft and see Ryan Mallett going first overall, Da'Quan Bowers going second, and Robert Quinn going third. Oh, did I mention, none of those players were actually chosen in the first round of this year's draft? And they call these guys experts?

Not the Only Ones in Trouble. Between the Tat Five, Tresselgate, and now Dorian Bell's career going up in smoke (pun intended), the Buckeyes have been in the news for all the wrong reasons lately. It's good to know that the world isn't only focused on bashing your team, and we can sure thank Boise State and Miami for that this week. The Broncos, as you surely know right now, were hit with a variety of violations and accusations of a lack of institutional control across their athletic department. The Broncos' football squad will face some sanctions due to the "minor violations", and even if they aren't severe enough to keep OSU out of the mainstream media permanently, it's nice to see someone else in hot water. On another note, our friends to the southeast got some negative attention this week, when The U's Jeff Brown was arrested for alleged sexual assault after supposedly forcing sex upon an intoxicated female. I'd sure like to read all the Miami fans' comments about Tressel from last week after an incident like this. They don't call it "Thug U" for no reason.

We Need a Minor Leagues. An editorial to the Plain Dealer suggests that there should be a minor league system for football and basketball. While I'm not sure the effectiveness would be the same as it is for baseball, I couldn't agree more. There are plenty of collegiate athletes that deserve the opportunity to develop on their own timelines in preparing to compete at the next level (cough Kosta Koufos cough, cough Byron Mullens cough), while still making professional money to support their families who are in need. I think both the NFL and NBA could benefit from such a system, as could all the college athletes who "go pro in something other than sports". Or they could just change the NBA early entry rules. You choose.

Hearing Whispers. We often hear "insider" news around these parts, but at times it's not always sure how reliable the source is. Well, today, we have two pieces of news for you from pretty trusted sources that we'd like to share with you. First, regarding Brionte Dunn "re-opening" his commitment, that is very real. While Dunn is still committed to OSU, there is danger of him going elsewhere (see: Michigan) if the NCAA hammer comes down on the Buckeyes and there is a bowl ban. We are hearing from our sources that if the Bucks are eligibile for post-season play, that Dunn should stick to his word, but if there are USC-type punishments on hand, expect Dunn to take a very serious look up north. The second piece of news we have to you is regarding the OSU quarterback battle. We spoke to two players this week and when asked about who they thought would start the first game of the year, they both said either Braxton Miller or Kenny Guiton. That's good news for those of you on TeamAnyoneButBauserman, but we surely have a long way to go before Tressel and Fickell determine who their guy will be heading into the 2011 sea

Big Ten Bits. Here are some Big Ten recruiting thoughts. Doug Worthington is one who is in full support of Jim Tressel. The Cedar Rapids Gazette ranks the B1G stadiums<</span>!>. PSU may have some unoticeable uniform changes. Indiana's new strength coach is doing wonders for the Hoosiers. Some recruiting nuggets from the state of Michigan. Wisconsin is #23 in Athlon's top 25 countdown for 2011.

Stocks rallied at the open Friday as investors cheered the news that the U.S. economy added 244,000 jobs in April, much better than expected.

Telaprevir SVR & African-Americans, Latinos & Advanced Fibrosis -
Reported by Jules Levin

62% of African Americans/Blacks achieved SVR with telaprevir compared to 25% of African Americans/Blacks who were treated with pegylated-interferon and ribavirin alone. Additionally, 62% of people with advanced liver fibrosis or cirrhosis (scarring of the liver) achieved SVR with telaprevir compared to 33% who were treated with pegylated-interferon and ribavirin alone. Old studies of peg/rbv in African-Americans yielded SVR rates of 5-26%.

African-Americans treatment-naïve: 61% had undetectable viral load at week 4 (RVR) and 46% at weeks 4 and 12 (eRVR)- 72% with RVR achieved SVR & 85% with eRVR achieved SVR. Similar for Latinos...

Hepatitis Awareness Month --- May 2011 Weekly
May 6, 2011 / 60(17);537

This month marks the 16th anniversary of Hepatitis Awareness Month in the United States. Viral hepatitis, particularly infection with hepatitis B virus (HBV) or hepatitis C virus (HCV), is a major cause of morbidity and mortality. This issue of MMWR includes a report that focuses on a recent trend in HCV infection.

The report shows an increase in cases of HCV infection during 2002--2009 among adolescents and young adults aged 15--24 years in Massachusetts and highlights the fundamental role of surveillance in identifying emerging patterns of transmission and developing appropriate public health response. The Massachusetts cases were reported from all areas of the state, primarily among non-Hispanic whites. Injection drug use (IDU) was the most common risk factor for HCV transmission, and the increase in case reports suggests an epidemic of HCV infection related to IDU in this age group in Massachusetts.

In 2010, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) of the National Academies of Sciences issued a report on viral hepatitis outlining recommendations for the prevention and control of HBV and HCV infection, including improvement in public health surveillance for viral hepatitis and viral hepatitis screening linked with prevention and care (1). In response to the IOM report, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is developing a comprehensive viral hepatitis action plan that will set forth strategies to improve viral hepatitis prevention, care, and treatment in the United States. Additional information regarding viral hepatitis is available from CDC at http://www.cdc.gov/hepatitis

Most patients with NASH who develop hepatocellular carcinoma are men

A study in the most recent issue of Clinical Gastroenterology & Hepatology investigates characteristics of patients with NASH who develop hepatocellular carcinoma.

Nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) can progress to hepatocellular carcinoma. Dr Kohichiroh Yasui and colleagues characterized the clinical features of NASH patients with hepatocellular carcinoma. In a cross-sectional multicenter study in Japan, the team examined 87 patients with histologically proven NASH who developed hepatocellular carcinoma. The clinical data were collected at the time hepatocellular carcinoma was diagnosed. Obesity, diabetes, dyslipidemia, and hypertension were present in 62%, 59%, 28%, and 55% of patients, respectively. In nontumor liver tissues, the degree of fibrosis was stage 1 in 11% of patients, stage 2 in 17%, stage 3 in 21%, and stage 4 in 51%. The research team observed that the prevalence of cirrhosis was significantly lower among male patients compared with female patients. Dr Yasui's team concluded, "Most patients with NASH who develop hepatocellular carcinoma are men." "The patients have high rates of obesity, diabetes, and hypertension." "Male patients appear to develop hepatocellular carcinoma at a less advanced stage of liver fibrosis than female patients." Clin Gastroenterol Hepatol 2011: 9(5): 428-33 06 May 2011 Composite prognostic model for hepatocellular carcinoma recurrence A study in May's issue of Gastroenterology combines clinical, pathology, and gene expression data to predict recurrence of hepatocellular carcinoma. In approximately 70% of patients with hepatocellular carcinoma treated by resection or ablation, disease recurs within 5 years. Although gene expression signatures have been associated with outcome, there is no method to predict recurrence based on combined clinical, pathology, and genomic data. Dr Augusto Villanueva and colleagues from Spain evaluated gene expression signatures associated with outcome in a large cohort of patients with early stage, single-nodule hepatocellular carcinoma and heterogeneity of signatures within tumor tissues. The research team assessed 287 hepatocellular carcinoma patients undergoing resection and tested genome-wide expression platforms using tumor and adjacent nontumor, cirrhotic tissue. The team evaluated gene expression signatures with reported prognostic ability generated from tumor or cirrhotic tissue in 18 and 4 reports, respectively. In 15 additional patients, the team profiled samples from the center and periphery of the tumor, to determine stability of signatures. The researchers found that gene expression signatures that were associated with aggressive hepatocellular carcinoma were clustered, as well as those associated with tumors of progenitor cell origin and those from nontumor, adjacent, cirrhotic tissues. The team observed that the tumor-associated signature G3-proliferation, and an adjacent poor-survival signature were independent predictors of hepatocellular carcinoma recurrence, along with satellites. Samples from different sites in the same tumor nodule were reproducibly classified. Dr Villanueva's team concluded, "We developed a composite prognostic model for hepatocellular carcinoma recurrence, based on gene expression patterns in tumor and adjacent tissues." "These signatures predict early and overall recurrence in patients with hepatocellular carcinoma, and complement findings from clinical and pathology analyses." Gastroenterol 2011: 140(5): 1501-1512 05 May 2011

Show and Shines to support liver society

Two years and nine months: that's how long Karen Stacey has been on the waiting list for a liver transplant.

Despite the obvious stress experienced as well as impact on her day-to-day health, Stacey, 50, has not only stayed patient, she's stayed positive, dedicating herself to helping others facing a similar diagnosis with a liver disease. From family members to her community, Stacey has always been active in helping others. In 2008, she took her community activism to the next level by founding the Happy Liver Society, a non-profit providing advocacy and support services to liver disease patients. "I've always been that person that looks after people . . . It just is a comfortable role for me," she says.

Two new clinical trials registries established

1. The Cuban Public Registry of Clinical Trials / Registro Público Cubano de Ensayos Clínicos (RPCEC). This is the first Primary Registry to include trials in both Spanish and English. Spanish speakers might be interested in watching a video of the event held to make the announcement by the Ministry of Health in Havana, Cuba on 5th April 2011. Go to http://youtu.be/STeI9F-lnM0

2. The Brazilian Clinical Trials Registry / Registro Brasileiro de Ensaios Clinicos (REBEC) will focus on trials recruiting in Brazil. Announced on 12th April by the Brazilian Ministry of Health, it is the first Primary Registry in the Latin American region to include trials registered in Portuguese, and also allows registration in Spanish and English. Other Portuguese-speaking countries including Angola, Cabo Verde, Guiné-Bissau, Moçambique, Portugal, São Tomé e Príncipe and Timor-Leste are also encouraged to use the registry. Prospective registration of clinical trials is a legal requirement in Brazil (http://www.anvisa.gov.br/eng/index.htm).

REBEC is the first registry to use the open-source clinical trial registration software developed by Bireme (http://reddes.bvsalud.org/projects/clinical-trials/wiki) in partnership with the Department of Science and Technology/MoH and FIOCRUZ/MoH, called "Open Trials".


Imaging For Full-Body MRIs Significantly Improved By New Algorithm
A new study reveals an improved algorithm that can dramatically improve how radiologists capture and interpret full-body MRIs, particularly in the abdominal region. Motion artifacts in MRIs, such as patient movement, often...
,
Dramatic Shift In Understanding Of Personalized Medicine Suggested By New Research

Researchers at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, in collaboration with researchers at Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine, have made a critical discovery that may lead scientists to abandon the use of broad conventional ethnic labels - African-American, Hispanic, and Caucasian - to estimate a patient's genetic risk for disease. This first-of-its kind study conducted with diverse patients receiving care at a single urban academic medical center, marks an important step in the clinical application of personalized medicine.

The data are published online in the peer-reviewed journal PLoS ONE.

The Mount Sinai Biobank, a program of the Charles R. Bronfman Institute for Personalized Medicine, enrolls consented patients representing the diverse communities surrounding The Mount Sinai Medical Center, who confidentially provide DNA and plasma samples to aid in genomic and personalized medicine research. Researchers used state-of-the-art genomic technology to determine the genetic make-up, or genotype, of nearly 1,000 local Biobank participants who self-identified as European American, African-American, or Hispanic. They found that there was a continuum in ancestral genetic heritage at the individual level of African-American and Hispanic patients receiving care at Mount Sinai - meaning considerable fractions of their genome came from mixed European or African ancestry, respectively - and with it genetic variants that indicate risk for developing disease.

"Our data indicate that historical population labels may not be helpful in predicting disease risk or guiding how a patient will respond to certain medications," said Erwin Bottinger, MD, Director of the Bronfman Institute, and the Irene and Dr. Arthur M. Fishberg Professor of Medicine. "Rather, a spectrum of mixed ancestry is emerging in the largest U.S. minority groups. These findings further validate the importance of considering the unique genotype of the individual patient rather than grouping patients by self-reported ethnicity."

To date, genomic studies have overwhelmingly focused on populations with European ancestry, causing concerns about the applicability of their findings to determine disease risk and responsiveness to therapies for non-European, and in particular, mixed genetic backgrounds receiving care at urban medical centers.

"Our data indicate how important it is to evaluate patient populations at a local level," said Dr. Bottinger. "Now that we can determine the genotypic breakdown of our patients, we can begin to develop tests and tailor therapies for the diverse community we serve, allowing us to provide highly effective, personalized care."

On the basis of their findings, researchers at the Bronfman Institute are evaluating the clinical use potential of hundreds of genetic markers for major diseases, such as heart disease, kidney disease, liver disease, and diabetes, and various drug responses, in all Biobank samples. The goal is to identify those genetic markers that may be useful to predict disease risk in local people with mixed genetic backgrounds. The project will be completed with all 20,000 Biobank samples by the end of 2011.

"We anticipate the results, for the first time, will lead us to select the right genetic markers, and allow us to bring personalized genomic medicine to patients in the diverse Mount Sinai community who are being treated for diabetes and heart, kidney, and liver diseases, among other conditions," says Dr. Bottinger.

Also, Dr. Bottinger and his team at the Charles R. Bronfman Institute for Personalized Medicine are able to help guide other medical centers around the country in replicating their study. Additionally, they are continuing to broaden the number of consented donors in the Mount Sinai Biobank in an effort to uncover more genetic markers of disease and connections between self-identified population groups.

This study was supported by The Andrea and Charles Bronfman Philanthropies, Inc.

Source:
Mount Sinai Press Office
The Mount Sinai Hospital / Mount Sinai School of Medicine


Type 2 Diabetes Patients on Medication Report High Rates of Hypoglycemia

Click on chart for more premarket data. By CNNMoney staffMay 6, 2011: 7:09 AM ET NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — U.S. investors await the monthly jobs report Friday, with stock futures indicating a higher open after the report’s release. Dow Jones industrial … Continue reading →

Terre Haute, IN -- An up-close look at the Terre Haute International Airport will be available on May 21, 2011, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. during an airport open house. Many types of aircraft will be on display, and visitors will have the chance to drop a “bomb” on a target to benefit the fight against leukemia.  Also, an authentic World War II B-25 bomber will be on the field, offering the chance to have a World War II aircrew experience.  Admission and parking are free. 

“Drop a Bomb on Cancer” will provide an opportunity to fly in a real airplane with a fully certified flight instructor and drop a “bomb” on a target, for a tax-deductible donation of $20.  After a preflight briefing, participants will board a “bomber” and taxi to the departure end of their assigned runway.  Then they will take off, make a bomb run, and drop a “bomb” toward a ground target. Accuracy prizes will be awarded for first, second and third places.  All funds collected go to the Tyler Genneken Foundation to support the fight against Leukemia. 

A second special event planned is the chance to experience an authentic World War II B-25 Mitchell Bomber.  The Missouri Wing of the Commemorative Air Force will  bring their B-25 “Show Me” to Terre Haute for the day.  “Visitors will have a chance to get up close and personal with the aircraft made famous by the Doolittle Raid during WWII,” said B-25 pilot, Jordan Brown.  “That attack changed the course of World War II, and provided the first big morale booster for the U.S. fight in the Pacific.”

For a tax-deductible sponsorship of $395, visitors can support this historic part of American aviation, while getting a once-in-a-lifetime WWII bomber flight crew experience.  For more information on the B-25 opportunity, call Nicole Brown at 812-878-RIDE (7433) or e-mail her at Nicole@jnmetalproducts.com

Also, many other types of aircraft will be on display, including trainers, private aircraft, warbirds, and experimental aircraft built by people right here in Terre Haute.  Many of the pilots will be available to talk about their aircraft.  Food and drinks will be available for a modest cost, and Louise’s Café will be open as well.

For more information about the open house, contact

Contact:  Ted Green
Phone number:  (812) 877-7600
Email address: Tgreen@huf.com
Website:  www.huf.com    Look for links to the Open House

Reposted from the magnificent Iran Press Watch

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Thursday, May 5, 2011
Contact: Ginous Alford | O: 202-833-8990 USBahaiMedia@usbnc.org

BELIEF BEHIND BARS: LAWMAKERS, PERFORMERS TO DRUM UP SUPPORT AT CAPITOL HILL RECEPTION FOR IRAN’S SEVEN IMPRISONED BAHA’I LEADERS

Remarks from special guests:
U.S. Senator Mark Kirk
U.S. Rep. Michael Grimm
Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Kathleen Fitzpatrick
Iraj Kamalabadi, brother of imprisoned Baha’i in Iran
CSI Miami star Eva LaRue

Musical performances:
Grammy-award winner KC Porter with Badi and Momo Loudiyi

When: Thursday, May 12, 2011, 5:30 p.m. EST
Where: 902 Hart Senate Office Building WATCH LIVE! www.livestream.com/senkirklivestream
Facebook: www.facebook.com/BahaiUS
Twitter: @BahaiUS

WASHINGTON—Concern in the U.S. government is growing as the incarceration of the seven members of the Iranian Baha’i community’s former acting leadership group moves into its fourth year. The five men continue to be held in Gohardasht Prison under close surveillance, while the two women were transferred early Tuesday morning to a warehouse-like detention center where more than 400 female prisoners share just two bathrooms.

Meanwhile, the Baha’is of the United States – in upholding their faith’s teachings of justice, unity and equality for which their co-religionists in Iran are persecuted – invite all supporters of human rights to a reception marking the third anniversary of the unlawful incarceration of the seven “Yaran-i-Iran” (Friends in Iran).

The reception aims to foster stronger ties of friendship between the people of the U.S. and Iran, through song and words of supports from special guests including: Grammy-award winning musician KC Porter; U.S. Senator Mark Kirk (IL); U.S. Representative Michael Grimm (NY); Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights Kathleen Fitzpatrick; Iranian-American engineer Iraj Kamalabadi, brother of imprisoned Iranian Baha’i leader Mrs. Fariba Kamalabadi; and CSI Miami star Eva LaRue.

Director of the U.S. Baha’i Office of External Affairs in Washington, Anthony Vance, will host the reception, the latest in a series of events on Capitol Hill to raise awareness among U.S. lawmakers and human rights groups about the continued persecution of the Baha’is in Iran.

“Our efforts to scrutinize and oppose human rights violations against the Baha’is of Iran and all the Iranian people will never cease or dissipate,” Vance said.

Iranian-American Iraj Kamalabadi, whose sister Fariba is one of the seven imprisoned Baha’i leaders, will make his third trip in three months to Washington on behalf of his younger sibling to deliver the closing remarks in the reception program.

“My sister has told me to tell the leaders of the world that if there is something that could be done, now is the time to do it,” he said.

Kamalabadi attended Senator Kirk’s May 4th press conference introducing legislation on human right in Iran.

“As Americans,” Sen. Kirk said in a press release following the introduction of his new bill, “we should speak directly to the people of Iran struggling for freedom and democracy and let them know we stand squarely by their side.”

Senator Kirk will open the program with remarks and the event will be webcast live on his LiveStream account. Following him in the program are Grimm, Fitzpatrick, LaRue and Kamalabadi, and a performance by Porter of a song he wrote for the imprisoned Baha’i leaders.

LaRue and Porter are Baha’i performance artists based in Southern California. As a woman and mother of a nine-year-old daughter, LaRue was moved by the courageous spirit of Fariba Kamalabadi and Mahvash Sabet, whose separation from their children is entering the fourth year and who continue to endure further deteriorating conditions of their incarceration.

On April 28, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) released its 2011 Annual Report. (http://iran.bahai.us/files/2011/05/USCIRF-Annual-Report-2011.pdf) The report describes – beginning on page 78 – several cases of the “severe” persecution the Baha’i community in Iran faced from April 2010 to March 2011. Iran is one of 14 countries USCIRF recommends that the Secretary of State name “countries of particular concern” or CPCs.

In early March, Kirk introduced S.Res.80 condemning the Iranian government for its state-sponsored persecution of Iran’s 300,000 Baha’is and its continued violation of the International Covenants on Human Rights. The bill (and H.Res.134 in the House) calls for sanctioning Iranian government officials and other individuals directly responsible for human rights violations in Iran, including against the Baha’i community. (http://iran.bahai.us/2011/03/02/s-res-80-h-res-134/)

—

See PDF format of this press release here: Media Advis 5-12-2011 Washington Reception Iran imprisoned Bahais

Download invitation from here: http://iran.bahai.us/2011/05/05/may-12-reception-invitation/

Independents take independent steps to defend Idaho open primaries New York, NY—Independents have taken an appeal from the decision of U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill ruling Idaho’s open primary system unconstitutional. In August of 2008, a group of 11 independent Idaho voters and two organizations representing independents—the American Independent Movement of Idaho founded by Mitch Campbell [...]