Wilbur Peck: May 2011

Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Fact Sheet: U.S.-Poland Cooperation on Clean Energy

Release Time:

For Immediate Release

President Obama and Prime Minister Tusk welcomed new momentum in the two countries' cooperation on energy and climate security, especially in view of Poland’s forthcoming European Union presidency. They welcomed intensified cooperation between our governments and private sectors in the development of unconventional sources of energy, including shale gas, renewable energy sources like wind and biomass, clean coal technologies, and civil nuclear power capability in Poland.

The leaders reaffirmed the importance of combating global climate change, which both leaders agree is essential to our energy security. They discussed the importance of implementing the key provisions of the Cancun agreements this year and noted the opportunities to work together toward this end in bilateral and multilateral fora, including through the Major Economies Forum. Poland’s EU presidency provides an excellent opportunity to strengthen the transatlantic energy dialogue and cooperation, including within the framework of the EU-U.S. Energy Council.

The two leaders agreed to hold a high-level session of the U.S.-Poland Strategic Dialogue on clean and secure energy cooperation, aimed at enhancing energy security, building research and development cooperation on energy technologies, and expanding U.S. investments, exports, and participation in technology tenders in Poland. Warsaw's September 2011 International Framework for Nuclear Energy Cooperation (IFNEC) Ministerial, the next U.S.-EU Energy Council meeting, the upcoming meeting of the Global Methane Initiative’s Steering Committee, and the fall meeting of the U.S.-Polish Business Roundtable provide further opportunities to advance common the United States and Poland’s joint energy and energy security interests.

Increasing Energy Security, Exports, Investment, and R&D

The U.S. -Polish Strategic Dialogue and bilateral meetings build common approaches to European energy security and complement the energy security cooperation pursued in the framework of the U.S.-EU Energy Council.
The U.S.-Poland Economic & Commercial Dialogue (ECD) promotes bilateral trade and investment, including in the energy sector. The May 2011 Energy Roundtable in Warsaw sought to strengthen commercial activity in the energy sector, including on shale gas, clean coal technologies, energy efficiency, renewable energy, and nuclear power.
The U.S.-EU Energy Council Technology Research Development & Deployment Working Group seeks to accelerate research on clean energy technologies.

Promoting the Sustainable, Efficient and Environmentally Safe Development of Shale Gas in Poland

Poland and the United States continue ongoing dialogue on regulatory, institutional, technological and environmental aspects of shale gas development; exchange of best practices and know-how should help build the shale gas sector in a sustainable and environmentally responsible manner to benefit both Poland and Europe;
Poland continues to be a leader in the U.S. Global Shale Gas Initiative, and Polish shale gas regulators visited the United States in 2011 through a U.S. Government supported program. The U.S. Embassy in Warsaw and Polish Foreign Ministry co-hosted shale gas conferences with broad international participation in Warsaw in April 2010 and May 2011.

Supporting the Development of a Safe and Secure Nuclear Industry in Poland

The July 2010 ‘Joint Declaration Concerning Industrial and Commercial Cooperation in the Nuclear Energy Sector', facilitates civil nuclear cooperation as Poland builds civil nuclear capacity. The September 2010 Arrangement for Technical Exchange between the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and Poland's National Atomic Energy Agency affirms shared commitments to nuclear safety and information sharing.
The U.S. and Poland participate in the International Framework for Nuclear Energy Cooperation (IFNEC). IFNEC is a forum devoted to peaceful nuclear energy that is efficient and meets the highest standards of safety, security and non-proliferation.

Developing Cleaner Sources of Energy in the United States and Poland

In a 2008 memorandum, the U.S. National Energy Technology Laboratory and Poland’s Central Mining Institute and its Institute for Chemical Processing of Coal agreed to cooperate on research, development, and demonstration of coal-based technologies.
A 2011 memorandum on ‘Cooperation on Clean & Efficient Energy’ expands scientific, technical, and policy cooperation.
United States and Poland participate in the Carbon Sequestration Leadership Forum (CSLF), an international climate change initiative focused on improved cost-effective technologies to separate and capture carbon dioxide. Poland recently added a large project in Belchatow to the CSLF’s list of collaborative R&D projects.
United States and Poland participate in the Global Methane Initiative (GMI), an international public-private program that advances cost effective, near-term methane recovery and use as a clean energy source in four sectors: agriculture, coal mines, landfills, and oil and gas systems. It has funded numerous projects in Poland.

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Hayden Panettiere & Mark Sanchez: Hot New Couple?

Fueling rumors about a possible new romance, Hayden Panettiere was spotted grabbing a bite to eat with NFL star Mark Sanchez over the weekend (May 30).

According to RumorFix, the former "Heroes" star spent part of her Memorial Day with the 24-year-old New York Jets quarterback at the In-N-Out Burger in Laguna Hills, California.

The twosome walked into the popular fast food joint with another couple, as one eyewitness told, "They seemed very close and very happy," adding that after the football stud footed the bill, "They walked out of the fast food restaurant," all the while "Mark was flashing a huge smile."

Panettiere split from her boxer beau Wladimir Klitschko earlier this month, while Sanchez has previously been smitten with Jamie Lynn Sigler.

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Sioux Falls and Omaha

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Well, we capped off the Dakotas/Nebraska tour with a lecture at Augustana College in Sioux Falls (thanks to the Sioux Falls Jazz and Blues Society) on Thursday and a terrific town hall that evening; then a meetup at the amazing Durham museum in Omaha last night (with a relaxing drive across the plains in between). We sure lucked out on the weather this trip. Not a flake of snow.

Sioux Falls - thanks to Jeremy and the crew at the Museum for Visual Materials for being such a great host and for spreading the news locally. And what a turnout - around 250 people showed up for a very lively conversation - first time we've had more people show up than actually RSVPd. I learned something: classical music helps plants grow faster than rock music... That's apparently been scientifically proven. Go figure.

Omaha - what a beautiful city. Pops up out of nowhere. So much interesting architecture. Spent some time touring the city with a local friend (thanks Susie). Met a number of budding college entrepreneurs. My sense is that the music industry is going to see a huge influx of DIY entrants eager to enter an industry that has become much more accessible to the new participant. Should be great for innovation. Sorry we had to move from the Pizza Shoppe Collective - just had way too big an audience by the time the date rolled around.

A hearty thanks to all the local journalists who showed up and helped spread the word about the events. Appreciate your many supportive articles before and after the visit.

Some really interesting suggestions/requests from the two meetings:

A "put that song to sleep" feature that would get successively longer rather than starting at a month.

Voice commands on smartphone apps (interesting idea for in-car use).

Feature parity across all smartphones. Smartphone users clearly want a full-featured version on all phones. I continue to be amazed by how many people are now using smartphones as their primary way to listen.

More and more people are asking about being able to integrate their personal collection with Pandora. Perhaps allowing some on-demand listening through that (tricky from a licensing perspective).

Ability to buy Pandora One on a month to month basis.

Access to an open API for developers so they can start inventing new apps with data from the Music Genome Project. There's a steady drumbeat for this. Again, tricky from a licensing standpoint given all the constraints on the copyrighted material we stream.

Back home to Oakland, with many, many fond memories.

Tim (Founder)

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Memorial Day Founded on the Souls of Black Folk

Often lost in all of the Memorial Day barbecuing, parading and flag-waving is not just the day's true meaning - remembering fallen American soldiers- but the day's true origins.

The first ever Memorial Day was celebrated on May 1, 1865 in Charleston, South Carolina by former African-American slaves. They called their celebration Decoration Day, and it was in honor of some 250 or so Union Soldiers who died in an encampment on the site of an old horseracing track.

This bit of history has largely been lost, tucked away in the dusty recesses of Southern archives, forgotten, perhaps with intention, by those in the late 18th Century who sought to control the historical narrative and the meaning of the Civil War.

While oral histories passed down through black families in Charleston of a glorious day in 1865 when more than 10,000 blacks marched and sang and prayed over the graves of the Union soldiers buried there, the story had remained the stuff of hushed legend until David Blight, a historian at Yale University, stumbled upon it in the late 1990s while doing research for a book he was writing.

He was parsing through a "hopelessly disorganized" trove of material at the Houghton Library at Harvard University when he made a fascinating discovery inside a box of papers. It was a folder labeled "First Decoration Day," and when he cracked it open a piece of cardboard-like paper slid out.

On it was a handwritten narrative, probably written by a Civil War veteran, describing in detail what happened that day at the racetrack.

"When I read it I could hardly believe my eyes," said Blight, the author of several books, including 'Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory.'

The more research he did the more detail he uncovered and a clear picture emerged of what is likely (though several other states have laid claim) the very first celebration of scale of the war's dead.

The end of the Civil War had just come, leaving behind a trail of death and destruction from North to South. About 620,000 soldiers from both sides of the Mason Dixon were killed. And of the 180,000 or so black soldiers that fought for the Union military, roughly 20 percent of them were killed. Southern cities like Charleston lay in rubble.

President Abraham Lincoln had been assassinated in April of 1865. Gen. Robert E. Lee, commander of the Confederate troops, had surrendered in the first week of May. The country, particularly the South, was in ruins, soaked in the blood let by war. The slaves had been freed. The North and South were just beginning a long and arduous road to healing, if such a notion could have been imagined at the time.

This was the backdrop of what happened that day in May some 146 years ago. It was a Monday morning on the grounds of an old racecourse in Charleston, which at one time was a gem of the city's gentry, its socialites and its wealthy, according to Blight and various histories.

But in the waning last year of the war the course's grounds had been turned into a prison camp and a burial ground for hundreds of Union soldiers who died there. For weeks after the war officially ended, former slaves, about 25 in all, did the dirty work of burying those dead soldiers.

Thousands upon thousands of former slaves, black school children and soldiers came together to honor those that died there. They sang 'John Brown's Body,' according to accounts. The black grave-diggers, according to Blight, built a fence around the cemetery and constructed an archway, which read "Martyrs of the Racetrack," or something close to it.

But how could such a huge event involving 10,000 people, 10,000 black people in the Deep South, be forgotten?

"It is, on the surface, hard to believe an event including ten thousand people could get lost," Blight said. "It got lost because the people in control of public memory by the mid to late 1870s were not the people who wanted to remember this."

In 1876, 11 years after the Civil War ended, with the white Southern elite tearing away at Reconstruction, a white-supremacist Democrat, Wade Hampton, became governor. They called him the "redeemer Governor," Blight said. "Redeeming white supremacy and control."

The era of the "lost cause" began then, and the powers started to define their version of the war, and by the 1880s and 1890s, there would be no recollection of the event in the official public memory in Charleston.

Since Blight's discovery about a dozen or so years ago, Charleston, which like so many other American cities is fraught with lingering racial divisions, has embraced the history. Last year some 200 black re-enactors, the mayor and other city officials, as well as various historians including Blight, marched across the site of the racetrack, ironically named after Wade Hampton, and placed a memorial plaque at the site.

"To the extent that it matter who was first," Blight said, "this particular event has a right to claim that distinction."

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Don Lemon on Being Gay, Black & Twitter Feed Crush Fodder

Filed under: Interviews

In the two-plus weeks since Don Lemon announced he is gay in tandem with the release of his new memoir, 'Transparent,' the CNN anchor has received both kudos and criticism.

The praise is geared toward the courage it took to openly embrace his homosexuality as a public figure. The criticism lies mainly with the language Lemon used in his announcement. Lemon told the 'New York Times', where the news of his announcement first broke: "It's quite different for an African-American male...It's about the worst thing you can be in black culture. You're taught you have to be a man; you have to be masculine. In the black community they think you can pray the gay away." Lemon also mentioned black women specifically, expressing his concern "that black women will say the same things [about me being gay] as they do about how black men should be dating black women."

We spoke to Lemon recently about those comments and his perspective on homosexuality in the black community, how life has changed since becoming an openly gay public figure and the women who still have a crush on him.

Jozen Cummings: How long did you know you were gay before you came out so publicly?
DL: I say in the book, I've always known I was gay. I think the exact quote in the book is, "Since I was knee high to a duck I've always known I was gay." I had crushes on boys - it wasn't in a sexual way, because kids aren't that way, they don't really know, they just know they have a crush on someone. I don't remember the first person I came out to, but I didn't come out to my mom until I was 30 years old.

JC: Did you ever get a sense others knew before you said anything?
DL: I didn't assume people knew or didn't know, but it's not something I ran around talking about. My colleagues at work who were closest to me or who I happened to have some sort of personal relationship with outside of work - they knew and we discussed it.

JC: How has life changed for you since you came out?
DL: Well, personally, it's been overwhelming. For a second there, it was like, 'Whoa, what's going on with my life?' Professionally, I'm not quite sure because it's only been a week and two days. You'll have to ask me in a year or three years or five years or 10 years, what actually happens. In some odd way [it has] turned out the exact opposite of what I thought. I thought I was doing something people ultimately would think I shouldn't be doing.

JC: In what ways did you think this was going to be a detriment?
DL: Anyone who has been in my position and who's gay and who's thought of coming out and either done it or not done it, has actually thought it was going to be detrimental to their career. That's why they haven't done it. Think about how many people you have out in broadcasting, in professional sports, in acting - people are worried about it. It's how our culture has been sort of groomed. And I have to say this, because I'm talking to you, aren't you a black journalist?

JC: Yes.
DL: So quite honestly, Jozen, there are people who are mad at me and say, "Oh you're throwing black people under the bus." No I'm not, I'm black, I live in the world as a black man, and I know how our culture thinks about homosexuality. You think about those things too as a black man, like, what are black people going to say about me, am I going to have the support from my base, which is black people, and if they turn their backs on me or they get upset with me, then what the heck am I going to do?

JC: Isn't it fair to say it's not just black people who have issues with homosexuality? When you came out, a lot of people read your remarks about the negative reactions anticipated from black women as somewhat of an attack.

DL: Black women are saying the same thing about me as they are saying about black men dating white women, I stand by that. All you have to do is read the blogs or go listen to the radio shows I've been on. When I've been on black radio shows [the subject of black women] inevitably comes up every single time. When I sit on white radio shows or have been interviewed by journalists who are not of color, it never comes up. So I know it's something that we need to talk about. I am a black person! Let's not forget that, and I know what it's like to be a black person, I know what our issues are. I'm not throwing anyone under the bus. I know white people have issues with homosexuality as well, but when you're looking at people who are out in the community and making a difference when it comes to gay issues, it's usually white people and white men - wealthy white men - who are on the forefront of that.

JC: But others have been supportive, have they not?
DL: I've been overwhelmingly surprised by the positive support in the African American community. People have come through and been amazing. I am grateful for that.

JC: Black women?
DL: You know what's funny? Women are like, "I don't care if you're gay, I still want to marry you. I can still fantasize, because I wasn't in a relationship with you before, so I'm going to keep my fantasy going." You should read my feed on Twitter or Facebook. I think women get it. People appreciate honesty and that's what I'm walking in.

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Simon Hoggart's week: A tweet in store ? Mrs Farnsbarns and the milkman

Privacy is not just an issue for the rich and famous ? anyone's indiscretions can be round the world in seconds

?The argument about injunctions and tweeting has, so far, been largely about the rights of the rich and famous. For them, there is virtually no privacy left. The Telegraph uses a cheap trick to trap Vince Cable, and the Press Complaints Commission, for once, gives them a gentle tap on the knuckles. Andy Gray of Sky and that other bloke exchange some private male banter and away they go.

It's not just people you've heard of. There's nothing to stop anyone tweeting that they've just seen the milkman going into Mrs Farnsbarns at number 29 and he hasn't come out for half an hour ? That could be instantly in Anchorage or Adelaide, or more likely among the tweeter's followers, perhaps a selection of interested people in the neighbourhood. "Just seen Jim Figgis buy a case of Prosecco and 24 cans of Special Brew. Party time! Are you invited?"

"Went past the Pettigrews' house, overheard blazing row. Calm down, dears!"

Or, "overheard Martin Arbogast say he fancies Penny Trusslove. Should this man still be a teacher?" This kind of trivia will be instant public property.

This kind of micro-intrusion can be round the world in seconds, and right now there is nothing whatever to stop it.

?What is this obsessive desire to keep in touch? The other day we were travelling down from York, and got into a spat-ette with a young woman with a London accent parked in one of our reserved seats on a packed train.

"Ar ca' move, she's in my sea'?" she said, as if we were to blame for another woman nicking her reservation. Anyhow we sorted that out, but were punished.

She spent the entire two hours on the phone engaged in conversation of limitless triviality: is a Burger King better than a Big Mac?

What some bloke had said to a friend of hers. Where was a good place for cheap make-up?

We were praying for her battery to run out, but it didn't. Even in the brief intervals when she wasn't talking, her hands were caressing the phone until she thought of someone else whom she could apprise of the hot news about her favourite alcopop.

What causes this neurotic madness?

?It's been a busy week, and lots of fun. I found myself imaging how Piers Morgan might write it up in his diary. He knows around a thousand times more famous people than I do, so it might be a bit of a stretch. All events did take place.

"Monday: to Dinner by Heston Blumenthal for lunch. Heston is an old mucker ? well, I've seen him on TV more times than I can count ? but sadly he couldn't be with us on the day. Apparently he's studying what happens when you put a Yorkshire pudding in the hadron collider at Cern in Geneva. But I know he'd have welcomed us with all his charm ? the old scallywag! Brilliant scoff, by the way, top table, and the staff could not have been more gracious to us.

"Wednesday: Barack Obama dropped by to give a speech to parliament in Westminster Hall. Barack and I go way back ? I once stood quite close to him before he gave a speech in Philadelphia ? and you can bet there would have been plenty of man hugs if we'd met! But I could see that the world and his wife wanted a big hello, so I stood back and let them catch some of the guy's fabled charm, the old rascal!

"Evening: launch of Steve Bell's new exhibition at the Cartoon Museum in Little Russell St, London. Steve and I have been oppos for years (actually I do know him, quite well) and the old rogue gave a big shout-out to Michael White and me! Way to go, Steve! We're sharing a platform at the Cheltenham literary festival in October, and I dread to think how many beverages will be sunk after that gig!"

?A fortnight ago I mentioned Harold Macmillan's reply to the news that Ed Muskie had pulled out of the presidential race after crying when his wife was accused of drunkenness. Asked what he would do if the same was said of his wife, Lady Dorothy, Macmillan replied: "I would say, 'you should have seen her mother.' "

Rob Shepherd of the BBC tells me that he actually said it to the British ambassador in Vienna, who had snapped at him during a late session when his excellency was desperate for bed, and Macmillan wanted to yarn on into the night.

Julia Langdon recalls another remark he made to Lord Carrington, who had told him about an American congressman who had murdered a woman with whom he was involved, and put the body in his boot, or trunk. Some of her nightie was left sticking out, so the police stopped and arrested him.

"Could have happened to any of us," said Macmillan.

?A fine crop of mad labels today. Birdie Johnson bought a compass to help him on his hiking trips. The label warns: "Always wear protection when using hand tools."

Paul McEvoy got a Frisbee for his children, marked "choking hazard". His kids make a lot of noise, he says, but none of them have mouths that big.

Helen Kay went to the butcher's stall at Reading market, and found they had a sense of humour. There was squirrel for sale, marked "may contain nuts". Catherine Packer bought a slow cooker at Robert Dyas, which came with a set of recipes, including one instruction, "add baby aborigines". She assumes they mean aubergines.

Robert Treggiden bought a car alarm for �19.99, marked "car not included", which is bonkers enough, but surely the ultimate example of neurotic lawyering is the message on a DVD of the Just William children's televison series: "PG. Contains outrageous behaviour that could be copied." David Walter says: "As far as I can tell, this is not meant as a joke."

Simon Hoggart

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What To Do with All That Clutter: Sell It, Swap It, Give It Away

This post is from staff writer Sierra Black. Sierra writes about frugality, sustainable living, and raising children at Childwild.com. This Saturday (May 14th) is Give Your Stuff Away Day, a worldwide celebration of getting rid of clutter. People all over the world will be gathering up their unwanted possessions and taking them to the curb, [...]

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Was The Hangover taking the mick out of Mike Tyson's tattoo?

His tattooist is suing the producers and it's going to be a headache for Warner Bros

Chancer of the week is Mike Tyson's tattooist, who is suing the producers of The Hangover II, in which a character wakes sporting an inking similar to that encircling the former heavyweight champion's left eye. Not only has this S Victor Whitmill accused Warner Bros of "reckless copyright infringement", he has actually attempted to injunct the movie's release.

That demand has been unsuccessful, but it seems the rest of the suit will be rather more of a headache for the studio, with the Missouri-based tattooist's lawyers fuming: "Mr Whitmill has never been asked for permission for, and has never consented to, the use, reproduction or creation of a derivative work based on his original tattoo."

The case hinges on whether or not the movie references to the tattoo could be regarded as a parody, as opposed to mere reproduction ? and the judge thinks Whitmill has a likelihood of succeeding.

This seems like excellent news for the legal system ? which is, after all, one of things that separates us from the animals. Frankly, Lost in Showbiz had always assumed Whitmill's design for Tyson to be a parody of those sported in cheery 1994 romcom Once Were Warriors, so it looks forward to a whole army of Maoris at a loose end launching a class action against him once he has pocketed his winnings. This could run and run.

Marina Hyde

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Leimert Park Stop At The Crenshaw/LAX Line: Approved, But Not Funded

Filed under: News

From The Huffington Post:

Officials and community members agree: Leimert Park should get a metro stop on the planned Crenshaw/LAX line. The neighborhood, a historic symbol and vibrant scene of the African-American community in Los Angeles, won approval for a station from Metro Board officials last Thursday. But it was only a job half-done, reports the 'LA Times.'

While $1.7 billion is set aside for the Crenshaw/LAX line, funding was never explicitly set aside for the Leimert Park stop, and the Metro Board community meeting didn't change anything in that regard. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, who were present at the meeting, expressed cautious support to the LA Times.

Villaraigosa called for a "a fiscally responsible proposal" that adheres to the set budget, while Yaroslavsky said, "The only question was, and remains, how to pay for it." The Leimert Park metro stop and the necessary tunnel under Park Mesa Heights would cost an additional $131 million and $269 million, respectively.

In a HuffPost blog published before the meeting, LA County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas (and the campaign's main proponent), said wrly: "It turns out an agency with a $4.15 billion annual budget and $40 billion available over the next 30 years through Measure R, the 2008 transit funding ballot measure has a little bit of financial wiggle room."

His collaborative research with the Metro planning staff revealed that the abandoned "Red Line Project" frees up $251 million for Leimert Park's use, as well as a $1.4 billion pot of money for low-priority projects that could be transferred for other means. Still, his findings weren't enough for the Metro Board to commit financial support to the project everyone agrees should be implemented.

Read more here.

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Andr�s Schiff ? review

Wigmore Hall, London

It would do Andr�s Schiff an injustice to say that the best thing about this piano recital was the encore. But it was in many ways the most remarkable thing. At the end of an already demanding programme of major sets of variations by five different composers, culminating in Beethoven's incomparable Diabelli set, and with many of the audience already out of the door, Schiff sat once more at the keyboard and played, get this, the entire arietta and variations last movement of Beethoven's final piano sonata in C minor, Op 111.

Not since Sviatoslav Richter played the even longer final movement of the Hammerklavier sonata as an encore in the Festival Hall decades ago have I heard the like. Yet there was nothing distasteful or self-advertising about Schiff's choice, let alone his execution. The logic of his ambitious afterthought was, in fact, compelling, given that the arietta so closely resembles the harmonies of Diabelli's little waltz and that the Op 111 variations are on a pinnacle, even by Beethoven's standards.

The first half of Schiff's slightly schoolmasterly programme had begun with Mozart's insouciant Variations K500, gone up a gear with a formidable account of Mendelssohn's virtuosic Variations s�rieuses, taken a cantabile turn into Haydn's restrained F minor Andante and variations (beautifully judged by Schiff), before ending with the austere, almost heartbreaking melancholy of Schumann's last composition, his E flat variations. After the interval came the Diabelli Variations, given an uneven account that came together best in the later and more meditative variations. Finally, that encore, played with the directness and at the tempo Beethoven prescribes, and which too few observe. Not a perverse choice, but an almost perfect one.

Rating: 4/5

Martin Kettle

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The Best of Get Rich Slowly: May 2011

For years, readers have complained that there are too many stories at GRS. “There’s no need to post more than once a day,” my wife tells me, echoing the feedback I receive from folks like you. So, I’ve gradually been reducing the number of posts at the site: I published 62 articles in January 2008, [...]

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Ask the Readers: What Is My Financial Obligation to My Family?

Last Friday’s question about the moral implications of spending prompted a great discussion, as well as a few personal messages. One of those e-mails was from Dave, who wrote with his own ethical dilemma. Instead of looking at the world at large, Dave wants to know how to handle a financial dilemma closer to home: [...]

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Theming in Personal Finance: Do Dave Ramsey and Larry Burkett Work Without Jesus?

A few days ago, I met an employee of a local Christian talk radio station. We had a nice conversation about a variety of things, ranging from the programming on the station he manages, people we both knew, and so on. At the end of the conversation, this person gave me a pamphlet describing a [...]

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Was The Hangover taking the mick out of Mike Tyson's tattoo?

His tattooist is suing the producers and it's going to be a headache for Warner Bros

The case hinges on whether or not the movie references to the tattoo could be regarded as a parody, as opposed to mere reproduction ? and the judge thinks Whitmill has a likelihood of succeeding.

Marina Hyde

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2011 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

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Fact Sheet: U.S.-Poland Cooperation on Clean Energy

Release Time:

For Immediate Release

Increasing Energy Security, Exports, Investment, and R&D

The U.S. -Polish Strategic Dialogue and bilateral meetings build common approaches to European energy security and complement the energy security cooperation pursued in the framework of the U.S.-EU Energy Council.
The U.S.-Poland Economic & Commercial Dialogue (ECD) promotes bilateral trade and investment, including in the energy sector. The May 2011 Energy Roundtable in Warsaw sought to strengthen commercial activity in the energy sector, including on shale gas, clean coal technologies, energy efficiency, renewable energy, and nuclear power.
The U.S.-EU Energy Council Technology Research Development & Deployment Working Group seeks to accelerate research on clean energy technologies.

Promoting the Sustainable, Efficient and Environmentally Safe Development of Shale Gas in Poland

Poland and the United States continue ongoing dialogue on regulatory, institutional, technological and environmental aspects of shale gas development; exchange of best practices and know-how should help build the shale gas sector in a sustainable and environmentally responsible manner to benefit both Poland and Europe;
Poland continues to be a leader in the U.S. Global Shale Gas Initiative, and Polish shale gas regulators visited the United States in 2011 through a U.S. Government supported program. The U.S. Embassy in Warsaw and Polish Foreign Ministry co-hosted shale gas conferences with broad international participation in Warsaw in April 2010 and May 2011.

Supporting the Development of a Safe and Secure Nuclear Industry in Poland

The July 2010 ‘Joint Declaration Concerning Industrial and Commercial Cooperation in the Nuclear Energy Sector', facilitates civil nuclear cooperation as Poland builds civil nuclear capacity. The September 2010 Arrangement for Technical Exchange between the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and Poland's National Atomic Energy Agency affirms shared commitments to nuclear safety and information sharing.
The U.S. and Poland participate in the International Framework for Nuclear Energy Cooperation (IFNEC). IFNEC is a forum devoted to peaceful nuclear energy that is efficient and meets the highest standards of safety, security and non-proliferation.

Developing Cleaner Sources of Energy in the United States and Poland

In a 2008 memorandum, the U.S. National Energy Technology Laboratory and Poland’s Central Mining Institute and its Institute for Chemical Processing of Coal agreed to cooperate on research, development, and demonstration of coal-based technologies.
A 2011 memorandum on ‘Cooperation on Clean & Efficient Energy’ expands scientific, technical, and policy cooperation.
United States and Poland participate in the Carbon Sequestration Leadership Forum (CSLF), an international climate change initiative focused on improved cost-effective technologies to separate and capture carbon dioxide. Poland recently added a large project in Belchatow to the CSLF’s list of collaborative R&D projects.
United States and Poland participate in the Global Methane Initiative (GMI), an international public-private program that advances cost effective, near-term methane recovery and use as a clean energy source in four sectors: agriculture, coal mines, landfills, and oil and gas systems. It has funded numerous projects in Poland.

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White House Patriot Act Extension: Obama Puts The Screws To Congress

Filed under: News

From the Huffington Post:

The abrupt decision by Senate leadership on Thursday to reconsider their opposition to a controversial Patriot Act amendment came as a bit of a surprise to Congress followers.

But a likely explanation for the reversal began to emerge hours later.

With the national security law set to expire at midnight on Thursday, the Obama administration has applied intense pressure to congressional lawmakers to finalize an extension without any lapse. The pressure, apparently, has caused Senate leadership to bend to lawmakers critical of the bill and streamline the procedures needed to get the law passed.

On Wednesday, James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence, wrote a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) warning about potential national security hiccups should the Patriot Act not be extended before its expiration. In his message, Clapper detailed the operational procedures that would be disadvantaged as well as to note the heightened threat that exists following Osama bin Laden's death.

Hoboken Town Hall

Spent a great evening on Thursday with a couple hundred Pandora listeners in the lovely downtown of Hoboken - our first (and long, long overdue) New Jersey get together. It was actually my first time across the river from Manhattan.

A very engaging audience with lots of questions and input showed up at the W Hotel (the swankiest space we've ever been in) on a balmy fall evening. There were many questions about how to use the thumbs up and down to shape playlists. It's clear that the answer is different for different people.

A number of questions about greater optimization for the phone. The amount of mobile usage on Pandora just continues to grow. We're adding more users on mobile phones than we are on PCs these days.

Heard a great testimony from a 70 year old listener who had stations setup on Pandora for each of his decades. He was discovering all sorts of great bluegrass music from when he was young. Rattled off a bunch of names of artists he had never heard of. Loved that.

Thanks to everyone who took the time to come out, and for the many follow up emails we've received since the evening. We also had a number of new Pandora employees in attendance from our office in New York. It was particularly fun for them to see Pandora listeners in action. Thanks for getting them fired up!

Tim (Founder)

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Chart of the Day: The Death of Small Businesses

Like me, you've probably been hearing for years that small businesses are the engine of job creation in the United States. But that's an outdated view. The number of new startup businesses has declined sharply since the beginning of the recession, while the number of jobs created by startup businesses has been declining for over a decade. As this chart from the BLS shows, the number of jobs created by new businesses peaked in 2000, began declining at the start of the Bush administration, and has been plummeting ever since:

The number of new establishments for the year ending in March 2010 was lower than any other year since the series began....The number of jobs created by establishments less than 1 year old has decreased from 4.1 million in 1994, when this series began, to 2.5 million in 2010. This trend combined with that of fewer new establishments overall indicates that the number of new jobs in each new establishment is declining.

....The number of jobs created from establishment births peaked in the late 1990s and has experienced an overall decline since then. The decrease in birth-related employment during the latest recession is the largest in the history of the series, followed closely by the period of “jobless recovery” after the 2001 recession.

Since the recession began in 2008, the biggest net generator of jobs has been neither small businesses nor large businesses. It's been medium-sized businesses.

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Thumbs-up to you!

Jason DeRulo stops by to get a plaque to commemorate our 10 Billionth Thumb.

Just over a week ago, on Sunday, April 24th at 4:46pm, "Ridin' Solo" by Jason DeRulo received Pandora's 10 billionth thumb. 10 BILLION...wow!

Of the many milestones we've hit over the past 6 years, this is perhaps the one that makes us most proud. We created Pandora to bring personalization to radio, to allow each individual to determine the sound of their stations, and to make it as simple and intuitive as possible. There is no greater evidence for us of meeting that objective than the ongoing engagement you have all shown in your use of the thumbs.

Not a day goes by that we don't work to improve how the Music Genome Project works. And there is no greater impact on the project's development than the contribution you are all making, one thumb at a time, to our understanding of how to build great playlists. Our team -- musicians, mathematicians, statisticians, radio programmers, software engineers, music lovers and more -- absorbs the feedback from you daily, looking for new insights and adjustments that your contributions reveal.

What started as an improbable effort by a group of musicians, around a dining room table, is now a massive project, involving tens of millions of avid music fans. Little by little we are all collectively creating a music discovery engine that might just deliver on the grand promise of the web -- a completely personalized listening experience for every user, and an effective outlet for tens of thousands of deserving artists. We now have over 800,000 songs in our collection, and over 95% of them play in a given month.

All of us are humbled by the continued engagement you have shown with Pandora, not only with your thumbs, but also your general advice, suggestions, and critiques...by the thousands. We listen intently. And it is all adding up.

We will continue to work every day to get better, as this task has no end. And that's what makes this so much fun.

Thanks again for being a part of this.

Tim (Founder)

P.S. That 10 billionth thumb was, indeed, a thumb-up. ?

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"Idol" Champ Scotty McCreery Goes to Disney World!

Reaping the rewards of his big "American Idol" triumph, Scotty McCreery took a ride with Mickey Mouse through Disney's Hollywood Studios in Lake Buena Vista, Florida on Monday afternoon (May 30).

The newly crowned "Idol" champ was honored with a parade at the Disney theme park while also performing his new song "I Love You This Big" during the sunshine state visit.

Having flown in from press duties in Atlanta, the clearly excited 17-year-old tweeted, "watching the fireworks at Disney! #beautiful"

On Wednesday, McCreery was crowned the new "American Idol" on the season finale - which was viewed by an estimated 29.3 million people.

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Justin Bieber's perfume ad: seduction by a child is wrong

Listen up Bieber. You seem to be under the delusion that teenage girls want to meet you. They don't. They just want to obsess over you

OH MY GIDDY AUNT. The advert for Justin Bieber's perfume. Discuss.

Eduardo, by email

To be fair, Eduardo (and aunt of Eduardo), perfume adverts are not exactly known for that elusive quality we in the business refer to as "the relaxed sphincter factor". This is when something is so unembarrassing that one can relax one's sphincter. Clever that, huh? A really, like, smart linguist must have come up with that one. A cunning one, even. OK, step away, folks, nothing to see here.

Some of us are still recovering from Ewan McGregor's unforgivable plug for Davidoff Somethingorother ("I find myself in an exhilarating journey" ? presumably a journey straight to the bank). Even worse was the Chanel sheckel taken by McGregor's former singing mate, Nicole Kidman. It is a proven medical fact that just the memory of Kidman braying, "I'm a dancer! I love to dance!" still causes the innards of all sentient human beings to curl.

Meanwhile, the contributions to the world of olfactory cinema from Sean John/Diddy/Daddy/Swagg/whatever-his-stupid-name-is-this-week are so extraordinary they require their own genre, as Hitchcock's films do, or those of David Lynch, but in a perhaps less positive way.

Predictably, the Biebmeister's contribution to the artform is in keeping with the tradition. It features Dree "yes, the great granddaughter of" Hemingway (truly, Ernest, all of your efforts to achieve immortal artistic credibility were not in vain). If I can grasp the semiotics and subtextual messages in this nigh-on Bu�uelian artwork, Justin appears to be suggesting that if you spritz on this offering from the duty free bargain bin he will magically appear in your room, take you into the cover illustration of a 70s prog-rock band's album, reveal he is wearing some very misjudged purple high-top trainers, and depart.

Leaving aside the distracting thought that there is something very wrong about advertising a perfume with the promise of seduction by a child, and then leaving aside the depressing thought that such concerns are a sign of how old I am as I did not have such qualms when I was snogging posters of a barely pubescent Jordan Knight several decades ago, let us focus on the message that Bieber is sending here.

He is making the basic mistake that all celebrities make, namely that it is their fans' dearest wish to meet them. It is understandable that they believe this, and that even their fans believe this, but speaking as one who fell passionately in love with many young men she'd never met when she was between the ages of 13 and 16, I can say with authority that this is not really the case. What teenage and tweenage fans really want is to talk about the object of their desires with fellow fans, obsessively and even fanatically. The object himself is actually irrelevant. He is merely the vessel into which young girls pour all their emotions and desire ? not for the boy himself, exactly ? but for being part of a community, whether it's a school clique or a Justin Bieber (or Jordan Knight) fan club.

So my advice to Bieber is this: if he really wants to sell his whiffy plonk, promise it can freeze time for everyone but those who wear the perfume. Thus, all Bieber fans can talk for hours on the internet with other obsessives and not have to worry about boring things such as going to school and writing a thank-you note to grandma.

I recently made a trip to London and met some interesting people. But I was left wondering one thing: what the bejeezus does the Queen keep in that handbag that she's never without?

Michelle O, by telepathy

Michelle, can I say, just as you were welcomed to London, I welcome you to this page. And before we continue, I'd like to add that, if comparisons must be drawn, contrary to what may have been written in other inferior papers, you were better dressed than Kate Middleton. But I guess that's because I like women to look happy, original and cool and other lady journalists prefer them to look like Cheryl Cole.

Anyway, through the same telepathy that told me you were pondering this question, I can reveal the contents of the Queen's bag: iPhone (Queeny can't go for more than a minute without checking Twitter), box of Smints (for Philip), hand sanitiser (necessity of the job), spare tiara (just in case), photo of William (the rest of them can go to hell) and a fly swatter (in case that dreadful Nicholas Witchell tries to get too close.)

So just the basics, really.

Hadley Freeman

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F-ire festival ? review

Kings Place, London

The closing concert of the F-ire collective's annual Rhythmic Frontiers festival was given by Django Bates's trio. And, even if Bates was operating in his most jazz-specific mode by reworking Charlie Parker's 60-year-old music, and F-ire ordinarily has a sweeping world-music remit, in which contemporary rhythmic experiments are about the only unifying element, it felt an appropriate choice. Bates's originality and dynamism ? notably as part of the charismatic 80s collective Loose Tubes - was an acknowledged early inspiration for F- ire. The closing night took in a workshop for founder Barak Schmool's Royal Academy students, Bates's Beloved Bird Trio, and world-music guitarist Jonny Phillips's Oriole, playing the cinematic sonic-travelogue from the group's upcoming Every New Day album.

The F-ire philosophy was at the core of Phillips's show. An evolving relationship between Schmool on congas and Bosco de Oliveira on drums furnished absorbing contrasts: with the lyrical and softly propulsive sound of the leader's acoustic guitar; with a texture-rich lineup including the imaginative cellist Ben Davis and powerful tenor saxist Idris Rahman. Glowering Spanish harmonies, rhythmically devious sambas and broad-horizon ruminations characterised Phillips's atmospherically songlike music, and its periodic jazz diversions sharpened the edges.

The edges, of course, were more audible throughout Bates's gig, with his fellow Anglo-Danes ? bassist Petter Eldh and drummer Peter Bruun ? unleashing a restless undercurrent of deft countermelody, fast-shuffling grooves, free-time and explosive accents under the leader's radically bent Parker themes and flying improvisations. He breezily Latinised Scrapple from the Apple, turned Billie's Bounce into an alternation of surges and pauses, and gave Ah-Leu-Cha a zen-like calm ? but rhythmically, Bates's trio is right in F-ire's ballpark. A majestic, and very restrained, ballad rendition of Iain Ballamy's This World, however, almost stole the show.

Rating: 4/5

John Fordham

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Retromania: Pop Culture's Addiction to its Own Past by Simon Reynolds ? review

Does it matter that pop music is stuck in the same old groove?

Like many people of a certain age, the first thing I did upon going to university was to blow my entire student grant on records. Sixties French chansonni�res, 30s Greek rembetika, seven-inch singles on the Glasgow-based Postcard label: this kind of music, John Peel's radio show aside, was hard to hear or find in the late 1980s. Only after I'd lugged back my newfound treasures to my room did I remember: there was no turntable to play them on. For the next few months, I stroked the records' sleeves, studied their liner notes, sniffed the vinyl. When I finally got round to listening to them, they were mostly underwhelming, but it didn't matter: my relationship to the music, one full of yearning and conjecture, already felt very rich.

These days, as Simon Reynolds describes in Retromania, things are very different. Pop music, even though sales of vinyl and cassettes are going up, is less likely to exist in material form. There's no need to dream about what a particular Velvet Underground bootleg or Frankie Wilson's famously rare northern soul stomper "Do I Love You (Indeed I Do)" or 20s field recordings of Inuit might sound like: they're available at the click of a mouse. The deleted, the obscure, the exotic: archaeological layers of musical history are constantly being rediscovered, circulated and filtered into records being released today.

For Reynolds, the past is calcifying contemporary music. More than that, it threatens to disable the possibility of new or futuristic music being created. Retromania describes a pop ecology festering with reissues of late-70s German synth-wave, 28-CD box sets of Sun Ra club residencies, bands such as the Sex Pistols and the New York Dolls reforming, Sonic Youth playing shows in which they perform old albums in their entirety. Drawing a comparison with the fashion industry's tendency to recast old or secondhand clothes as "vintage", he bristles against those hipsters who create micro-genres such as Welsh Rare Beat or West African psychedelia, as much as he bemoans those rock museums full of cheesy cutouts of Dizzee Rascal.

What distinguishes "retromania" from other ways of assessing or using the past? After all, forms of nostalgia or arcadianism ? the Victorian revival of Gothic, say ? have arisen, sometimes very productively, throughout history. Reynolds argues that retro revives a past that is barely the past (all those I Love the 1990s-style shows), and does so, using video- and internet-enhanced documentation, with a forensic precision that precludes creative distortion and the art that comes from misremembering.

The retro sensibility, he adds, isn't animated by the modernist anger or subversion found in the work of collagist John Heartfield or the productions of Public Enemy's Hank Shocklee, but a general mood of eclectic irony. Put this way, Reynolds seems to be describing the kinds of bricolage and hyper-referentiality of postmodernism. But he's also narrating the trickle-down effect, philosophically as much as technologically, of the remix culture of the late 1980s, when cheap samplers allowed artists to treat the whole history of recorded music as a free zone for resource extraction.

The title of Reynolds's last book, about post punk, was Rip It Up and Start Again. That's what he wants pop music to do; not to think of its past in terms of repertoire or standards, but as a series of chokes and shackles from which, in existential fashion, it must perpetually break free. Though far from being a Luddite, he worries about websites such as YouTube that clog the present with too many yesterdays: "History must have a dustbin, or history will be a dustbin, a gigantic, sprawling garbage heap."

And yet, as Reynolds himself points out, one style of music never entirely supplants another: in 1968, a year in which Jimi Hendrix, Van Morrison and Frank Zappa released important new records, Bill Haley and his Comets were still able to pack out the Royal Albert Hall. Are revivals necessarily bad? Without 2 Tone's ska revival, the Specials' "Ghost Town" or the Beat's "Mirror in the Bathroom" may never have existed. And what of listening to the listeners? Sceptics may dismiss the likes of the Strokes as punk pastiche, but anyone who heard them for the first time at a club in early 2001 will recall how startlingly fresh they sounded then.

Reynolds's mapping of today's pop environment is often witty; his account of the way in which so many artists position themselves as curators is spot-on, as is his description of internet users ? himself included ? gorging on illegal downloads. His prose, casually neologistic and making deft use of sci-fi tropes, is bracingly sharp. As a work of contemporary historiography, a thick description of the transformations in our relationship to time ? as well as to place ? Retromania deserves to be very widely read.

However, Reynolds's belief that pop music needs to be less doting towards the past reminds me of the economist Joseph Schumpeter, who saw creative destruction as the linchpin of modern capitalism. Pop's appeal doesn't just lie in its ability to shock and surprise; it can also be a source of safety and succour, especially when life ? life under capitalism ? feels concussive, brutalising. For listeners, not embracing the Next Big Thing may be a kind of resistance; for music writers, not being able to champion artists solely in neophiliac terms would force them to develop more sophisticated critical lexicons.

Retromania is a book about the poverty of abundance. At malls, on mobile-phone ads, in the background as we work at our computers: pop, usually in the form of anorexically thin MP3 sound, is everywhere these days. Perhaps that ubiquity puts a brake on its ability to astound or shape-shift. Perhaps the process of circulating and accessing music has become more exciting than the practice of listening to it. And perhaps pop's status as a futurist genre has been supplanted by the giddying, immersive realm of video games.

Reynolds says he still believes that "the future is out there for pop", but where is "out there"? The east? The global south? It may very well be that the spirit of innovation and insurgency Retromania craves is to be found in the favelas, shanty towns and sprawling metropolises of the developing world.

Sukhdev Sandhu is the author of London Calling: How Black and Asian Writers Imagined a City (Harper)

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Monday, May 30, 2011

Reader Mailbag: Bizarre Weather

What’s inside? Here are the questions answered in today’s reader mailbag, boiled down to five word summaries. Click on the number to jump straight down to the question. 1. Unplugging the microwave? 2. Morality and employment 3. Loan modification versus refinancing 4. Saving for vehicle replacement 5. Living expenses and college debt 6. Unequal chess [...]

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President Obama Signs Oklahoma Disaster Declaration

Release Time:

For Immediate Release

The President today declared a major disaster exists in the State of Oklahoma and ordered Federal aid to supplement State and local recovery efforts in the area struck by severe storms and flooding during the period of April 21-28, 2011.

Federal funding is available to State and eligible local governments and certain private nonprofit organizations on a cost-sharing basis for emergency work and the repair or replacement of facilities damaged by the severe storms and flooding in the counties of Adair, Cherokee, Delaware, Haskell, Le Flore, McIntosh, Muskogee, Okmulgee, Pittsburg, and Sequoyah.

Federal funding is also available on a cost-sharing basis for hazard mitigation measures statewide.

W. Craig Fugate, Administrator, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), Department of Homeland Security, named William J. Doran III as the Federal Coordinating Officer for Federal recovery operations in the affected area.

FEMA said additional designations may be made at a later date if requested by the State and warranted by the results of further damage assessments.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: FEMA (202) 646-3272.

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Remarks by President Obama and President Nicolas Sarkozy of France After Bilateral Meeting

Release Time:

For Immediate Release

Location:

Hotel Royal Barriere

Deauville, France

9:30 A.M. CEST

PRESIDENT SARKOZY: (As translated.) Ladies and gentlemen, we just had a bilateral with the President of the United States, Barack Obama. And there’s been major convergence of views on major international issues.

And I told President Obama how much -- how sensitive we were to his words in his speech on the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians. It was clear-sighted and bold, what he had to say on the subject.

We completely agreed amongst ourselves on what lessons we draw from the Arab revolutions, the Arab Springs; likewise, on Libya, where we have the same analysis. Mr. Qaddafi must leave and Libyans are entitled to a democratic future.

And I also wish to thank President Obama for his contribution to the smooth running of this G8 meeting and his involvement to ensure that this multilateral world of ours is run smoothly.

All of France is happy to welcome you, sir, and in particular, the people of Normandy that have certainly not forgotten all that they and we owe the Americans. For all of us French men and women, and particularly for the people of Normandy, when the President of the United States is standing on this ground, it is particularly significant, because, sadly, there are many young Americans who gave their lives for us, who rest on Normandy soil. And I think it’s very important to send this message back with you home. As time passes, we have not forgotten the sacrifices you made.

So it’s always very special when the President of the United States comes to this particular part of France.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Well, it is wonderful to be back in Normandy. The last time I was here was at the invitation of the President as we were commemorating the landing at Normandy.

I want to thank President Sarkozy, I want to thank the people of Deauville and the people of France, for the terrific hospitality that they’ve shown us over these last few days. And I want to thank President Sarkozy for the leadership that he’s shown on the world stage over the last several years.

France is our oldest ally and continues to be one of our closest allies. And as President Sarkozy indicated, we had an enormous convergence of approaches and views on the challenges that we face around the world. We agreed that the changes that are taking place in the Middle East and North Africa make the pursuit of peace between Israelis and Palestinians more urgent, not less. And we agreed to coordinate closely in encouraging the parties to sit down around the negotiating table and to resolve this issue in a way that creates a Palestinian state that is sovereign and an Israeli state that is secure, the two states living side by side in peace.

We agreed that we have made progress on our Libya campaign, but that meeting the U.N. mandate of civilian protection cannot be accomplished when Qaddafi remains in Libya directing his forces in acts of aggression against the Libyan people. And we are joined in resolve to finish the job.

We discussed the enormous opportunities as well as challenges that are presented by the Arab Spring, and shortly we’ll be discussing in depth how we can fully support countries like Egypt and Tunisia, not only as they transition to democracy but also ensuring that that democratic transition is accompanied by economic growth, which can provide more opportunities for all the people, particularly the young people in the region.

And we also discussed a wide range of issues, from Afghanistan to Iran to the world economy, in which the interests of the United States and the interests of France are closely joined.

So the state of our alliance is strong. I am grateful for the leadership that President Sarkozy has shown. And I very much appreciate the productive way in which he’s organized the G8. I’m confident that as a consequence, we’ll be able to continue to make progress in the coming months on the issues that matter most to the French people and to the American people.

Thank you.

END
9:38 A.M. CEST

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