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Thursday, May 31, 2012
SlickFlick App Lets You Tell Stories With Your Photos, Signs Getty Deal
Ethanol Scheme Bids to Clean Up Cooking
CLEAN STOVE: This ethanol-burning stove will cut down on the soot from charcoal burning that otherwise blackens homes and lungs. Image: Courtesy of Novozymes
Showcasing more than fifty of the most provocative, original, and significant online essays from 2011, The Best Science Writing Online 2012 will change the way...
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A farmer in Mozambique grows peas, beans and cassava in rotation?enough to feed the family with a little to spare. The farmer then sells that excess to CleanStar Mozambique, which dries and packages the produce for sale in the capital, Maputo. But the company also takes the surplus cassava, a starch-filled root and local food staple, and sends it to an ethanol fermentation plant built by ICM, a U.S. ethanol company, that employs enzymes produced by Denmark-based Novozymes. The ethanol produced is then sold in reusable plastic bottles to people in Maputo who own one of the 3,000 or so ethanol-burning clean cookstoves sold by CleanStar. When the fuel runs out, more can be purchased at an incipient network of CleanStar shops.
"We want to show that there is this idea of a bio-based society," says chemical engineer Thomas Nagy, executive vice president for stakeholder relations at Novozymes, which helped start and fund the scheme. "This is not a philanthropic project."
Novozymes and its corporate partners hope to create a bio-based, sustainable economy in Mozambique. Such an economy could point the way to reducing the two million annual deaths worldwide that result from breathing in smoky indoor air caused by burning charcoal. Currently, charcoal is the fuel of choice in much of the world and a nearly $10-billion market across sub-Saharan Africa. That is the market this ethanol-burning cookstove?and bio-based economy?aims to disrupt.
"Ethanol burns very clean," Nagy notes. The CleanStar venture opened its first ethanol production plant on May 17 in Dondo, capable of brewing two million liters of fuel per year. "Charcoal might be cheaper but it has less energy content per kilo[gram]."
The problem in this case is: replacing cheap charcoal, which farmers make by cutting down and burning trees, requires dependence on a much more complex, new and unproved system. "People use charcoal because it is cheap and easy," notes a prominent development expert who declined to be identified because of relationships with various clean cookstove donors and providers. "Ethanol is neither."
Food and fuel
The first step in this new process will be convincing farmers to halt charcoal production and slash-and-burn agriculture in favor of a new rotation system. Mozambican farmers currently grow corn and cassava, among other crops. But under the new system, they would grow nitrogen-fixing beans and peas along with staple or cash crops such as cassava, ground nuts, sorghum and soybeans in rotation in fields ringed by trees newly-planted to prevent erosion. "We have enrolled between 500 and 600 farmers today," Nagy says, and the project aims for at least 3,000 by next year. The CleanStar venture also provides each farmer with fertilizer and pesticides as well as technical assistance.
As a result of the new rotation system and improved soil fertility, farm family nutrition improves (44 percent of Mozambican children are stunted due to malnutrition and disease) and income can more than quadruple, according to Nagy. Selling the excess to city dwellers will improve their nutrition as well?and cut down on food imports. The excess cassava, also known as tapioca when dried to a powder, will be turned into a fuel to vie with charcoal and, in a bid to ensure that the staple crop does not end up being diverted from hungry stomachs to stoves, CleanStar will pay less than the crop's price as food.
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Y Combinator?s Harj Taggar On Bad Pitches, Learning To Code, And The Power Of Hacker News [TCTV]
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Ambassador McFaul, driver of US-Russia 'reset,' becomes his own obstacle
Mike McFaul, the earnest and plain-spoken Russia hand from the Obama White House who became US ambassador to Moscow, has been?up to his neck in controversy?since he took up his duties in January.
But Mr. McFaul attracted a new level of ire this week, with the Russian Foreign Ministry taking to the relatively new medium of Twitter?and also issuing an old-fashioned official statement?to angrily assail Mr. McFaul for his "unprofessionalism" and his penchant for spreading "blatant falsehoods through the mediasphere."
Many experts express bafflement at the unprecedented targeting of McFaul with highly personal official criticism, which is getting to be a regular and embarrassing distraction from his job of keeping the troubled US-Russia "reset" of relations?on track.
Some suggest newly inaugurated President Vladimir Putin would prefer to deal with Mitt Romney, whose attitude toward Russia is frankly hostile, and has licensed the Russian establishment to go after McFaul, who is not merely US ambassador but also a member of Mr. Obama's inner circle and a key architect of the "reset." In this view, the Kremlin is fed up with deadlock over missile defense, Syria, and other issues, and has decided to turn its foreign policy focus eastward?toward the former Soviet central Asian countries and China.
RELATED ? Vladimir Putin 101: A quiz about Russia's president.?
Mr. Putin, under pressure from the biggest wave of street protests since the collapse of the Soviet Union, may also find it easier to crack down on the opposition if they can be explicitly linked to an ill-intentioned Western adversary.?
Others argue that no high politics are necessarily involved, and that McFaul's open and unguarded way of speaking, as well as his extraordinarily active public style, has ruffled the old-school diplomats in Russia's Foreign Ministry, who can't resist teaching him some manners.?
"He's not your typical ambassador. It's his straightforward way of expressing himself, his openness, how public he is, that makes him different," says Masha Lipman, editor of the Moscow Carnegie Center's Pro et Contra journal. "It makes waves."?
'Still learning' how to be a diplomatThe trigger for the latest blizzard of official outrage was an upbeat, routine slideshow presentation about the course of the "reset"?that?McFaul gave to Russian students at the prestigious Higher School of Economics on May 25. It's mostly a summary of the progress the US and Russia have made: signing the new START treaty,?cooperating in Afghanistan, boosting trade and investment, and improving dialogue about contentious issues like Iran and Syria.?
But in his asides to the students, McFaul made a few controversial remarks. The one that ignited the most fury at the foreign ministry was the suggestion that in early 2009 the Kremlin had "put a big bribe on the table" to get authorities in Kyrgyzstan to cancel the US lease on Manas airbase, a vital link in the resupply chain to embattled NATO forces in Afghanistan. That's an undeniably colorful way to describe how then-Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev decided to close Manas after receiving a huge aid package?from the Kremlin that included?a $150 million gift.
The foreign ministry Tweeted that it was "utterly shocked" by the claim, adding in its lengthy statement that "Mr. McFaul knows better what kind of bribe, and to whom, Washington gave," to get Manas back.?
McFaul himself subsequently took to Twitter to dial back some of his remarks. "Still learning the craft of speaking more diplomatically," he Tweeted. On his blog?today, McFaul insisted that he was surprised by the reaction to his presentation, since it was mainly about how much relations between Russia and the US have improved in recent years.
"Prime Minister Medvedev said recently in Seoul that the last three years of the US-Russia relationship have been the best period in US-Russia relations in history," McFaul wrote. "We agree, and I am proud of the personal role that I have played in improving the bilateral relationship between our two countries."?
State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland backed up McFaul in a briefing yesterday. "He was making the point that with regard to Kyrgyzstan and the importance of the Manas transit center, that we are very transparent," she said. "We ask for the same information and the same support from Russia. So it's no longer this sort of secret competition that you had in the Soviet era. ?
"As one of the architects of the president's reset policy, [McFaul is] in a position not only to really understand the benefits, but also to try to continue to advance them. So from that perspective we considered him an extremely strong ambassador," she added.?
A sign of the timesSome analysts suggest there may be more going on here than just a free-speaking ambassador who's having a bit of trouble finding his diplomatic voice and is irritating the old professionals.?
"Criticism of McFaul is part of the general pattern of anti-Americanism that came to life during the last parliamentary and presidential election campaigns" in Russia, says Viktor Kremeniuk, deputy director of the official Institute of USA-Canada Studies in Moscow.
"McFaul would have been the perfect ambassador during the presidency of Dmitry Medvedev, who positioned himself as more liberal and democratic. But it took time after McFaul was nominated for him to be approved and arrive in Moscow. By that time the wind had changed and was blowing in the opposite direction. So he's become a hostage of this new situation."?
McFaul, a former Stanford professor and expert on democratization, arrived in Moscow just as massive anti-Kremlin protests were gathering steam. One of his first acts on the job was to meet with Russian opposition leaders, a routine diplomatic function, but one that triggered a storm of indignation in Russia's official media and led to McFaul being shadowed and harassed by activists of the pro-Kremlin Nashi movement wherever he went. At one point, McFaul even complained that his e-mail and phone accounts were being hacked into by Nashi activists posing as journalists.?
"McFaul's background as a democracy specialist arguably made the Kremlin suspicious of him from the outset," says Ms. Lipman. "His background, which should have served him well, had the effect of strengthening those irrational fears that the US was somehow behind the [opposition] demos.?
"He's made a few mistakes, but he's a straight talker and an open person. It's clear this is how he intends to be, and how his government wants him to be," she adds.?
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Tuesday, May 29, 2012
NO WORLD ORDER
The New World Order has ruled earth, destroying about 89% of the human population. Their leader: The Anti-Christ. A few words from those who live in the new earth: Welcome to Hell.
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Forum for completely Out of Character (OOC) discussion, based around whatever is happening In Character (IC). Discuss plans, storylines, and events; Recruit for your roleplaying game, or find a GM for your playergroup.This is the auto-generated OOC topic for the roleplay "NO WORLD ORDER"
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TheDarkLord - Member for 0 years
We shall start when we have about 3 players excluding myself
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TheDarkLord - Member for 0 years
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The Palestinian Nakba: The Resolve of Memory | Ramzy Baroud ...
Ramzy Baroud -- World News Trust
May 15, 2012 -- Many Palestinians remember and reference al-Nakba, also known as the Catastrophe, on May 15 every year.
The event marks the expulsion of nearly a million Palestinians, while their villages were destroyed. The destruction of Palestine in 1947-48 ushered in the birth of Israel. Older generations relay the harsh and oppressive memory of their collective experience to younger Palestinians, many of whom live their own Nakbas today.
In covering al-Nakba, sympathetic Arab and other media play sad music and show black and white footage of displaced, frightened refugees. They rightly emphasize the concept of Sumud, steadfastness, as they show Palestinian of all ages holding unto the rusty keys of their homes and insisting on their right of return.
Other, less sympathetic media discuss al-Nakba, if at all, as a side note -- a nuisance in the Israeli narrative of a nation's supposedly miraculous birth and its progression to an idyllic oasis of democracy. What such reductionist representations often fail to show is that while al-Nakba started, it never truly finished.
Those who underwent the pain, harm and loss of al-Nakba are yet to receive the justice that was promised to them by the international community. UN Resolution 194 states that ?the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date? (Article 11). Those who wrought this injustice are also yet to achieve their ultimate objectives in Palestine. After all, Israel doesn?t have defined boundaries by accident.
David Ben Gurion, first Prime Minister of Israel, once prophesized that ?the old (refugees) will die and the young will forget.? He spoke with the harshness of a conqueror. Ben Gurion carried out his war plans to the furthest extent possible. Every region in Palestine that was meant to be taken was captured, its people were expelled or massacred in their homes and villages. Ben Guiron "cleansed" the land, but he failed to cleanse Israel?s past. Memory persists.
Ben Gurion referenced my own family?s village -- Beit Daras -- which witnessed three battles and a massacre. In an entry in his diaries on May 12, 1948, he wrote: ?Beit Daras was mortared. Fifty Arabs (were killed). The (villages of) Bashit and Sawafir were occupied. There is mass exodus from nearby areas (neighbors in Majdal). We sustained five dead and 15 wounded. ? (War Diaries, 1947-1949).
More than fifty people were killed in Beit Daras that day. An old Gaza woman, Um Mohammed -- who I discussed in my last book, My Father was a Freedom Fighter -- refers to what is likely the same event:
?The town was under bombardment, and it was surrounded from all directions. There was no way out. The armed men (the Beit Daras fighters) said they were going to check on the road to Isdud, to see if it was open. They moved forward and shot few shots to see if someone would return fire. No one did. But they (the Zionist forces) were hiding and waiting to ambush the people. The armed men returned and told the people to evacuate the women and children. The people went out (including) those who were gathered at my huge house, the family house. There were mostly children and kids in the house. The Jewish (soldiers) let the people get out, and then they whipped them with bombs and machine guns. More people fell than those who were able to run. My sister and I ... started running through the fields; we?d fall and get up. My sister and I escaped together holding each other?s hands. The people who took the main road were either killed or injured. The firing was falling on the people like sand. The bombs from one side and the machine guns from the other.?
Ben Gurion would not necessarily doubt Um Mohammed?s account. He candidly stated: ?Let us not ignore the truth among ourselves ... politically we are the aggressors and they defend themselves.... The country is theirs, because they inhabit it, whereas we want to come here and settle down, and in their view we want to take away from them their country? (as quoted in Chomsky's Fateful Triangle, pp. 91-2).
It is precisely for this reason that neither the old nor the young have forgotten. Every day is another manifestation of the same protracted al-Nakba that has lasted 64 years now. Young people's hardships today are inextricably linked to the violent and horrific uprooting decades ago.
Al-Nakba has also remained an ongoing project through generations of Israeli Zionists. When Ben Gurion died in 1973, current Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was in his mid-twenties. He was then serving his last year in the Israeli army, and today he rules Israel with a coalition that includes almost three quarters of the Israeli parliament.
Like most Israeli leaders, he continues to contribute to the very discourse by which Palestine was conquered. He speaks of peace, while his soldiers and armed settlers take over Palestinian homes and farms. He makes repeated offers to Palestinians for "unconditional" talks, as he repeats his violent rejection of every Palestinian aspiration. His lobby in Washington is much stronger than ever before. He reigns supreme, as he continues to fulfill the "vision" of early Zionists.
Old keys and deeds of stolen lands attest to the intergenerational experience that is Al-Nakba. Today Palestinians continue to be herded behind military checkpoints. They are denied the right to proper medical care, and their ancient olive trees are ruthlessly bulldozed.
What Israel has not been able to control, however, is the resolve of Palestinians. The prison, the checkpoint and the gun reside in our collective memory in a way that cannot be held captive, controlled, or shot.
In fact, al-Nakba is not a specific date or an estimation of time, but the entirety of those 64 years and counting. The event must not be assigned to the shelves of history, not as long as refugees are still refugees and settlers continue to rob Palestinian land.
As long as Netanyahu speaks the language of Ben Gurion, other "catastrophic" episodes will follow. And as long as Palestinians hold on to their keys and deeds, the old may die but the young will never forget.
***
RamzyBaroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is an internationally-syndicated columnist and the editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His latest book is My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza's Untold Story (Pluto Press, London).
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Monday, May 28, 2012
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