An Unlikely Power Duo Emerges in the Global Fight Against Climate Change

But until now they have never joined forces on a project with global reach that could advance both of their legacies. They are taking on an issue ? climate change ? that may well shape the world?s economic and social future for decades to come.

Mr. Bloomberg?s billions of dollars and Mr. Clinton?s billions of friends are a potent combination, but can this unlikely power coupling make an impact in stemming rising seas or cooling the planet?

?This is enough to choke a horse, one of the two or three biggest challenges in the world,? Mr. Clinton said in an unusual joint telephone interview last week with Mr. Bloomberg. ?But if we can prove that this is good economics, good public health and fights the most calamitous consequences of climate change, then we will have done a world of good.?

Mr. Clinton and Mr. Bloomberg are men of considerable accomplishment and healthy self-regard. So, naturally, questions arose last month when they announced the merging of their climate-change initiatives into a single global effort focused on the world?s largest cities.

Who will be in charge and how will they share a stage, beginning this week when they appear together at a climate conference in São Paulo, Brazil?

?I have always thought that we should have a relationship based alphabetically on our last names,? Mr. Bloomberg said.

?I have a partnership with George W. Bush on Haiti, and I had a partnership with his dad on Katrina,? Mr. Clinton said. ?So you know, I don?t care who gets the credit.?

It was six years ago when Mr. Clinton, working with Ken Livingstone, the leftist and then-mayor of London, drew together officials from 40 of the world?s largest cities, from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to Yokohama, Japan, to share ideas for reducing carbon emissions and dealing with the inevitable impacts of a changing climate. The effort was ambitious but chronically underfinanced, with an annual budget of less than $500,000.

The group met periodically to discuss climate mitigation efforts like switching to LED streetlights, retrofitting public buildings and generating energy from landfills. The William J. Clinton Foundation provided technical assistance and financing for discrete projects, but the group of cities, known as the C40, lacked a steady financing stream, a database of emissions and mitigation programs, and a professional staff.

Enter Mr. Bloomberg, who campaigned for and won the chairmanship of the group last year. He pledged $6 million a year of his foundation money for each of the next three years to bolster the C40 and essentially muscled aside the Clinton staff members working on the project. Mr. Clinton, never one to reject a gift horse, happily acceded.

?I really don?t care how you characterize it,? Mr. Clinton said. ?The fact that he made a multiyear commitment coincident with his leadership means that we will be able to go in and help cities who are in trouble financially and can?t do these projects.?

An adviser to Mr. Clinton, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to elaborate more candidly on Mr. Clinton?s remark, was a bit less diplomatic about Mr. Bloomberg?s approach. ?He came to us,? the adviser said. ?What are we going to do, fight him? They have the money; the golden rule applies.? As in, he who has the gold, rules.

The Clinton-Bloomberg partnership comes at a tough time for those fighting climate change. Congress has made it clear that it is not going to enact a national program to address global warming any time soon and the 194-nation United Nations process has made little progress toward a binding international treaty.

Donors who have provided financing for climate programs are frustrated and fatigued, and many advocacy groups are turning their attention to issues on which they can have tangible impact. Organizations are consolidating and learning to make do with less.

Mr. Bloomberg refers to this as a ?maturing? approach to activist philanthropy. ?It?s not so much people getting bored with the whole thing or walking away,? he said. ?It?s that if you?re going to live through the tough times, this type of efficiency makes sense.?

Powered By WizardRSS.com | Full Text RSS Feed | Amazon Plugin | Settlement Statement | WordPress Tutorials

Source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=94a17832cc5d5f76c78f878f99742b3b

seattle public schools worldstarhiphop the game season 4 episode 1 freddie mitchell simon chipmunk lebron james twitter jimmer fredette thomas tew rum issaquah school district the game tv show

The Witcher 2 patch 1.1 removes DRM, boosts framerate

CD Projekt has released the first patch for The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings today, delivering new content and fixing game-breaking performance issues. According to various user reports, the DRM mechanism that ships with retail versions of the game drastically reduces frame rates and loading times. One user quoted by TorrentFreak claims the SecuROM-riddled copy of Witcher 2 takes 32 seconds longer to launch, 8 seconds longer to save, and runs nearly twice as slow.

That only occurs in physical copies of the game sold through stores such as Amazon. Digital copies sold through Steam version rely on Steamworks while GOG's version is completely DRM-free -- and such is the case for retail copies with today's update. By removing the copy protection, patch 1.1 reportedly improves the game's framerate by up to 30%. It also contains the first free DLC called "Troll Trouble," adds an inverted mouse option and more. The full release notes are below.

CD Projekt's Adam Badowski said DRM schemes mostly hurt paying customers. "Our approach to countering piracy is to incorporate superior value in the legal version. This means it has to be superior in every respect: less troublesome to use and install, with full support, and with access to additional content and services," he said. The developer was primarily concerned about preventing The Witcher 2 from being pirated before its release, so the DRM has already served its purpose.

Although the company may have a relaxed DRM policy, it doesn't plan to let pirates off scot-free. CD Projekt declared war against illegal file-sharers last November, collaborating with legal and tech firms to employ the "pay or else" tactics popularized by the US Copyright Group and small-time filmmakers. People caught downloading The Witcher 2 illegally might receive a letter demanding a settlement fee or run the risk of being sued, according to CD Projekt co-founder Marcin Iwinski.

Powered By WizardRSS.com | Full Text RSS Feed | Amazon Plugin | Settlement Statement | WordPress Tutorials

Source: http://www.techspot.com/news/43989-the-witcher-2-patch-11-removes-drm-boosts-framerate.html

worldstarhiphop the game season 4 episode 1 freddie mitchell simon chipmunk lebron james twitter jimmer fredette thomas tew rum issaquah school district the game tv show lasso of truth

Blog - Facts 'n' Effects

Senate Gadfly Who Isn?t Shy About Buzzing

In the first six months of his tenure, he has designed his own budget (something, point of fact, that Senate Democrats have not accomplished), flirted with running for president and tormented Obama administration officials at a hearing over the fact that his toilets, hampered by federal water-use regulations, do not function properly.

This week, Mr. Paul?s parliamentary maneuvers nearly caused the Patriot Act to expire, and forced hundreds of colleagues in both chambers of Congress to reconsider their travel plans before a holiday weekend so he could fight for amendments to that bill.

In so doing, Mr. Paul, a Republican, managed to enrage Senator Harry Reid, the Democratic majority leader, who suggested on the floor of the Senate that Mr. Paul might not mind if terrorists get armed to the teeth. Nor did he thrill Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican minority leader and fellow Kentuckian, when he urged supporters to contact Mr. McConnell?s office with a message to get out of Mr. Paul?s way.

A senatorial peacock with a rust-colored crown, Mr. Paul stands out as someone who, at least for now, seems to be here less to make laws than points. His libertarian-leaning amendments ? one would have made it harder for counterterrorism investigators to obtain firearms records and another would have relieved banks from their duty to report suspicious transactions ? failed by wide margins, even among Republicans.

In the legislative spirit of his father ? and who knows, potential rival one day for the White House ? Representative Ron Paul of Texas, sometimes it?s more about the eggs than the omelets.

?I think there are victories and then there are symbolic victories,? Mr. Paul said in an interview Thursday. ?And I think we had a symbolic victory here in the sense that we did get to talk about some of the constitutional principles of search and seizure and the Fourth Amendment.?

His role in the Senate, he said, is to ?draw attention to some important questions that get shuffled aside,? he said, specifically constitutional questions that are of central importance to his libertarian base. ?There aren?t many other people that seem to be asking? his sorts of questions.

Mr. Paul appears to be modeling his style somewhat on people like Senator Jim DeMint, Republican of South Carolina, who once forced a Friday night procedural vote on an AIDS bill then failed to show up for it, or Senator Tom Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma, who also often stymies legislation and insists on debating his own doomed amendments.

?I love his courage,? said Mr. Coburn, with the sort of alacrity reserved for parents who just saw their child get his first base hit. ?I made a lot of mistakes as I was learning. I like what he is trying to do.?

The people of Kentucky were not bait-and-switched by Mr. Paul, who decided to run for the Senate in 2009 when Senator Jim Bunning ? himself a thorn in the side of the Senate, though far more cantankerously so ? decided to retire. Mr. Paul made no secret of his antitax zeal, his dislike of government intervention and his willingness to stand alone.

In his first remarks to the chamber once elected, Mr. Paul suggested that he would not be backing down from many of his passionately held views. ?Is compromise the noble position?? he said, not rhetorically.

Mr. Paul largely votes with his party, but stood with more Democrats than Republicans in his opposition to the Patriot Act; he was alone in voting against a bill that would penalize people for aiming laser pointers at airplanes.

This week, by threatening to hold up voting on the Patriot Act, Mr. Paul managed to get his amendments to the floor even though one of his Democratic counterparts failed in his attempt to do the same, and in spite of the fact that Mr. Reid and Mr. McConnell opposed them.

?At first we were fighting one leadership then the other,? Mr. Paul said, ?I don?t think it came easy. I?m kind of worn out.?

In the end his firearms amendment, which was not supported by the National Rifle Association, got a mere 10 votes; his bank-related one got only four.

Mr. Paul?s impassioned floor speeches about civil liberties, and his gumption with his amendments, have won him fans.

?I think he?s done a really good job of being bold,? said Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who did not support either amendment. ?Obviously he is passionate about this, and nobody holds this against him because he is so sincere.?

Mr. McConnell voted for his budget plan, which also failed by a wide margin, because he said he had worked hard on it and ?deserved my support.?

Some feel less charmed. Last March, during a Senate committee hearing, Mr. Paul ripped into Kathleen Hogan, deputy assistant secretary for energy efficiency at the Energy Department, saying that the department?s ?busybody nature? had led to all sorts of ills, including poorly functioning low-flow toilets.

Senator Claire McCaskill, Democrat of Missouri, when asked if Mr. Paul had made his mark, said, ?Yes he has. He has shown that.? (Pause). ?He has stood out.? (Longer pause). ?How do I say this? Let?s just leave it at yes!?

Powered By WizardRSS.com | Full Text RSS Feed | Amazon Plugin | Settlement Statement | WordPress Tutorials

Source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=1d596b7573c37c39b07908a2b0b35312

nyc school closings scelestious stephanie seymour and son david nelson the chipmunks seattle public schools worldstarhiphop the game season 4 episode 1 freddie mitchell simon chipmunk

Gaming 26 - The Showman's Bag

Gaming 26 - The Showman's Bag

Posted on 13th May 2011 at 12:17 by Podcast with 16 comments

This week Paul and Joe were joined by plughead.net founder and former PC Zone writer David Brown. First up on the agenda was the continuing PSN outage, and how the continuing lack of service is starting to affect games developers.

We also attempted to talk about the Witcher 2, but somehow we ended up on the topic of DLC and, unsurprisingly, Mass Effect 2. Joe also got a chance to talk about his experiences with Star Wars: The Old Republic, and why he thought the game deserved the savaging that he gave it.

Finally, we also got a chance to put a few of your questions to David who discussed everything from the future of print publishing to the pressure that games publishers and developers put on members of the games press.


As always, we've also set up our weekly competition too, the lucky winner of which will walk away with a Roccat Vire Gaming Headset. The headset weighs only 15g and comes complete with a carry bag and rubberised ergonomic earplugs.

As ever, the bit-tech hardware podcast features music by Brad Sucks, and was recorded on Shure microphones. You can download the podcast direct, listen in-browser or subscribe through iTunes using the links below. Also, be sure to let us know your thoughts about the discussion in the forums.

Powered By WizardRSS.com | Full Text RSS Feed | Amazon Plugin | Settlement Statement | WordPress Tutorials

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/bit-tech/blog/~3/CS56049O0vo/

freddie mitchell simon chipmunk lebron james twitter jimmer fredette thomas tew rum issaquah school district the game tv show lasso of truth terrence j most popular thanksgiving side dish

A Blood Test for Depression

Doctors may soon have a more objective way to diagnose and treat depression: a blood test that provides a score between one and nine, with higher scores correlating with an increased probability of a patient having major depressive disorder.

Developed by Ridge Diagnostics, based in San Diego, the test measures changes in 10 biomarkers in the blood and feeds the results into an algorithm that assesses four different body systems to compute the final score.

While advanced blood tests and imaging scans can reveal many diseases at their earliest stages, diagnosing neuropsychiatric disorders typically requires an expert to assess how many subjective symptoms a patient exhibits. As a result, many patients are misdiagnosed or never diagnosed. In 2005, Harvard researchers published a study that indicated that more than 20 million people in the United States suffer from mood disorders, but only about 50 percent have been diagnosed and are being treated.

Doctors have been searching for an objective, biological test for depression "ever since the beginning of clinical psychiatry, 50 or 60 years ago," says George Papakostas, an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and director of Treatment-Resistant Depression Studies at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Scientists have tried various approaches, including genetic tests, tests that measure hormone stress responses, or brain imaging. They've measured possible imbalances in neurotransmitters such as serotonin, norepinephrine, and dopamine, and even measured vocal cues. "There are some signals," Papakostas says."The problem thus far is that if you looked at a single element, a single marker or disease area, the signal was weak."

Powered By WizardRSS.com | Full Text RSS Feed | Amazon Plugin | Settlement Statement | WordPress Tutorials

Source: http://feeds.technologyreview.com/click.phdo?i=98cafa62679ecd4fdca649e9ce907437

lasso of truth terrence j most popular thanksgiving side dish the game bet lights out nyc school closings scelestious stephanie seymour and son david nelson the chipmunks

A Blood Test for Depression

Doctors may soon have a more objective way to diagnose and treat depression: a blood test that provides a score between one and nine, with higher scores correlating with an increased probability of a patient having major depressive disorder.

Developed by Ridge Diagnostics, based in San Diego, the test measures changes in 10 biomarkers in the blood and feeds the results into an algorithm that assesses four different body systems to compute the final score.

While advanced blood tests and imaging scans can reveal many diseases at their earliest stages, diagnosing neuropsychiatric disorders typically requires an expert to assess how many subjective symptoms a patient exhibits. As a result, many patients are misdiagnosed or never diagnosed. In 2005, Harvard researchers published a study that indicated that more than 20 million people in the United States suffer from mood disorders, but only about 50 percent have been diagnosed and are being treated.

Doctors have been searching for an objective, biological test for depression "ever since the beginning of clinical psychiatry, 50 or 60 years ago," says George Papakostas, an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and director of Treatment-Resistant Depression Studies at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Scientists have tried various approaches, including genetic tests, tests that measure hormone stress responses, or brain imaging. They've measured possible imbalances in neurotransmitters such as serotonin, norepinephrine, and dopamine, and even measured vocal cues. "There are some signals," Papakostas says."The problem thus far is that if you looked at a single element, a single marker or disease area, the signal was weak."

Powered By WizardRSS.com | Full Text RSS Feed | Amazon Plugin | Settlement Statement | WordPress Tutorials

Source: http://feeds.technologyreview.com/click.phdo?i=98cafa62679ecd4fdca649e9ce907437

seattle public schools worldstarhiphop the game season 4 episode 1 freddie mitchell simon chipmunk lebron james twitter jimmer fredette thomas tew rum issaquah school district the game tv show

Attention devs: From June 3rd, your apps might no longer work with Facebook!

A couple of hours ago, Facebook announced a fairly heavy breaking change to its Graph API, that has the potential to kill Facebook integration for many websites and mobile apps.

The Graph API has become the primary means for third party sites and services, to access data on Facebook. For example, if you visit http://graph.facebook.com/bomega/feed you get a nice JSON representation of everything our very own Boris has posted to his News Feed.

Under the hood, many apps and Facebook SDKs grab your data by sending these sort of requests to Facebook?s Graph API.

Starting June 3rd, the above demoed easy access will no longer work.

Instead, developers have to add an access token to the call, making it potentially more secure. However, getting an access token requires the two step authentication that you may have seen a number of times when services asked for permission to post on your behalf.

As this severely alters the current interaction flow, chances are, many apps will need an upgrade over the next couple of weeks.

Given the potential impact, it?s a little bit odd to see this as almost a one-liner buried down somewhere on Facebook?s developer site.

Powered By WizardRSS.com | Full Text RSS Feed | Amazon Plugin | Settlement Statement | WordPress Tutorials

Source: http://thenextweb.com/dd/2011/05/28/breaking-change-facebook-graph-api/

scelestious stephanie seymour and son david nelson the chipmunks seattle public schools worldstarhiphop the game season 4 episode 1 freddie mitchell simon chipmunk lebron james twitter

Texas Governor Hints at G.O.P. Run for White House

Asked at a bill signing if he would think about a presidential run after Memorial Day, Mr. Perry, a staunch conservative and a Tea Party favorite, said without a hint of irony: ?Yes, sir. I?m going to think about it.? Then a couple of beats later, he smiled and added, ?But I think about a lot of things.?

For more than two years, Mr. Perry has insisted he has no interest in going to Washington, even as he has been raising his national profile and laying the groundwork for a possible campaign with strong support from the right wing of the Republican Party.

He embraced the Tea Party movement early on when others dismissed it. As the chairman of the Republican Governors Association, he has championed states? rights, bashed President Obama and written a book asserting that the federal government had overstepped its bounds on nearly every issue.

At home, he made it a priority to pass several bills this session appealing to conservatives, among them an anti-abortion bill requiring women who are considering abortions to have sonograms and a measure aimed at preventing cities from becoming sanctuaries for illegal immigrants.

Facing a huge budget shortfall this year, he also took a hard line against raising taxes or tapping the state?s flush reserves. Instead he pushed an austere budget through the Legislature that cuts $15 billion in spending, mostly from schools and health care.

This has endeared him to conservative pundits, some of whom have hinted they would like to draft him to run. Rush Limbaugh has praised him and floated his name recently as a great candidate.

Mr. Perry was coy this week on the Fox News Channel when he told an interviewer that he was tempted to run ?but this is something I don?t want to do.? Then he expressed the hope that the Republicans would come up with a candidate to unite the party.

Yet on Friday, with a few offhand words, Mr. Perry joined a list of Republican leaders who are testing the waters for 2012.

Mike Toomey, a longtime friend of Mr. Perry?s who was his chief of staff in 2004, said the governor had been encouraged to enter the race by several business leaders and Republican donors, in Texas and on the national level. But he has not sent signals to his friends and close advisers that he wants to run, nor has he formed a committee to explore the idea, Mr. Toomey said.

After Mr. Perry opened the door to a run at the news conference, his aides tried to play down the importance of what he had said, saying he still has no intention of entering the fray. ?He said he?s thinking about it, but nothing has changed,? said his spokesman, Mark Miner.

Powered By WizardRSS.com | Full Text RSS Feed | Amazon Plugin | Settlement Statement | WordPress Tutorials

Source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=3574d51a9f872873953d9af6663804be

the chipmunks seattle public schools worldstarhiphop the game season 4 episode 1 freddie mitchell simon chipmunk lebron james twitter jimmer fredette thomas tew rum issaquah school district

A Gas Power Plant to Make Renewables More Practical

General Electric announced on Thursday that it's designed a gas-fired combined-cycle power plant that can start up rapidly. The goal is to help electricity grids adapt to the variability of renewable energy.

With a small but growing proportion of electricity in Europe being supplied by wind and solar power, grid operators need new ways to deal with fluctuations in supply. The supply from solar drops dramatically at night, while wind installations only provide power when the wind is blowing. GE's new plant can ramp up electricity generation at a rate of more than 50 megawatts a minute?twice the rate of current industry benchmarks. The plant can start from scratch in less than 30 minutes.

GE is testing a pilot plant at its facility in Greenville, South Carolina, but the plant won't come into operation any earlier than 2015.

The plant will have a base load fuel efficiency of 61 percent, higher than other gas combined-cycle power plants. A base load power plant is one that's dedicated to providing a continuous supply of energy. Nuclear and coal plants commonly provide base load power. Such plants offer relatively cheap energy, but they can take hours or days to start up, which isn't fast enough to meet fluctuations in supply from renewables.

GE's 510-megawatt plant design is the result of a $500 million investment by the company. It features new, more efficient gas and steam turbines, as well as a new integrated electronic control system.

Paul Browning, vice president of GE Thermal Products, said at Thursday's announcement that the plant uses nickel-based super alloys, which are used in aircraft engines, because they can withstand the high temperatures inside the plant. The new turbines can ramp up quickly, much as a jet engine can ramp up quickly to provide thrust for takeoff.

GE estimates that the new technology could save some power utilities $2.6 million a year under typical operating conditions. The company also says the plants could cut annual carbon-dioxide emissions by more than 12,700 metric tons, with an annual fuel savings of 6.4 million cubic meters of natural gas.

The new plant has a power frequency of 50 hertz, meaning it can be built in Europe and many other parts of the world, but not in North America. GE says it will announce a 60 hertz version for the U.S. market at a later date.

Jim Watson, director of the energy group at Sussex University, says he's impressed by the enhanced flexibility of the plant. "This is just the kind of plant we need," he says. "It's not a low-carbon technology, but it could be part of a low-carbon system."

Powered By WizardRSS.com | Full Text RSS Feed | Amazon Plugin | Settlement Statement | WordPress Tutorials

Source: http://feeds.technologyreview.com/click.phdo?i=5f78a21aba1fb384e09c60be1e3f22f8

jimmer fredette thomas tew rum issaquah school district the game tv show lasso of truth terrence j most popular thanksgiving side dish the game bet lights out nyc school closings