Australia's leading climate change scientists are being targeted by a vicious, unrelenting email campaign that has resulted in police investigations of death threats.
The Australian National University has confirmed it moved several high-profile climate scientists, economists and policy researchers into more secure buildings, following explicit threats to their personal safety.
Scientists at universities in NSW and Queensland have told of being moved to high security buildings, where their names do not appear on staff directory lists or on their office door.
A radically new approach to the design of batteries, developed by researchers at MIT, could provide a lightweight and inexpensive alternative to existing batteries for electric vehicles and the power grid. The technology could even make “refueling” such batteries as quick and easy as pumping gas into a conventional car.
Months after Bank of America (BAC) wrongly foreclosed on a house Warren and Maureen Nyerges had already paid for, they were still fighting to get reimbursed for the court battle.
So on Friday, their attorney showed up at a branch office in Naples with a moving truck and sheriff's deputies who had a judge's permission to seize the furniture if necessary. An hour later, the bank had written a check for $5,772.88.
Scores of protected golden eagles have been dying each year after colliding with the blades of about 5,000 wind turbines along the ridgelines of the Bay Area's Altamont Pass Wind Resource Area, raising troubling questions about the state's push for alternative power sources.
It's been a dreary week for economic news: slow job creation, falling home prices, lagging auto and consumer sales, and a sell-off in stocks. So it seems like a good moment to check in with one of Wall Street's leading perma-optimists, BlackRock Chief Equity Strategist Bob Doll, to see if he's still bullish on America.
The sheer inefficiency of today’s habits of electrical generation, distribution, and use is rarely recognized. Behind those wall sockets lies what is very probably the world’s largest single system of infrastructure, an immense network linking huge power plants and end users via a crazy spiderweb of transmission lines covering whole continents.
What if "green" cars made pollution worse, not better? What if they increased greenhouse gas emissions instead of decreasing them? Preposterous, you say? Well, consider what's happened in Sweden.
By Donal on Sat, 06/04/2011 - 10:42pm | Technology
I like to promote cycling, but The Infrastructurist notes that in many cities it isn't even safe to walk next to the roads much less to bike in traffic:
By Donal on Sat, 06/04/2011 - 10:06pm | Social Justice
The Truth About Cars carries this story of a pair of local police officers beating up an old man on a bogus-sounding speeding charge, but there's more info in the source decision, a PDF.
The match looks even in the first few games as both players hold serve twice. Francesca is relying on the serve to get ahead in rallies. If Schiavone doesn't keep her opponent moving or hits anything short, Li puts it away with a powerful, flat forehand to a corner. In case we were wondering, McEnroe observes that Li has more power.
2-2 15-40 - break points for Li. Schiavone saves one with a big serve that Li returns long. But Li converts with a deep return and a big, flat forehand to the corner.
The Great Stagnation runs through three centuries' worth of what Cowen calls the "low-hanging fruit" of economic growth: free land, technological breakthroughs, and smart kids waiting to be educated. For developed economies, he argues, none of these remains to be plucked. Yet America, Europe, and Japan have built political and social institutions on the assumption of endless growth. Cowen summarizes the financial crisis in eight words: "We thought we were richer than we were."
Not too long ago, tennis folk complained that there was no depth in the women's game. While a top male player could be upset by a journeyman having a good day of serving, the women's finals of most big tournaments usually featured Chris Evert vs Martina Navratilova, and later, Steffi Graf vs Monica Seles or Gabriela Sabatini or Arantxa Sanchez-Vicario, and later, the Williams sisters.
By Donal on Wed, 06/01/2011 - 2:37pm | World Affairs
As Air France pilots fought for control, the doomed A330 dropped 38,000 feet, rolling left to right, its engines flat out but its wings unable to grab enough air to keep flying.
Aviation industry sources told Reuters that this action went against the normal procedures which call for the nose to be lowered in response to an alert that the plane was about to lose lift or, in technical parlance, 'stall'.
"A stall is the moment at which a plane stops flying and starts falling," ... "why did the pilot flying (the aircraft) appear to continue to pull the nose up[?]"
It isn't too hard to see that the world economy is stalling. Belarus has devalued their currency, Greece is near default, Spain has massive unemployment, Pakistan can barely keep the lights on, third world countries can't even afford food and water. In the US jobs aren't really coming back, housing isn't really coming back, car sales aren't really coming back, and the Wall Street Journal lets an oped writer call it stagflation instead of whatever new sort of -flation it is. But we continue to try to pull the nose up. We continue tax cuts to the rich, the financial sector creates more commodity bubbles, even with food, the Fed issues ever more debt, we're mired in expensive resource wars but the media assures us that business will continue as usual if we keep believing.
