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Archive for June 2013

And Yahoo Goes Birther…

Seriously, Yahoo? The profound question is whether the author of this afternoon’s ‘The Ticket’ blog post on Yahoo is a conspiracy theorist or just ignorant. I vote both.

Here’s the link. And in case they come to their senses and delete or correct it, a screen shot from my phone (Update: they came to their senses and corrected it. Too bad screen shots live forever.)

photo yahoo_zps03a8d53f.jpg

Will Global Warming Affect Crop Yields?

A recent study raised the question of whether global warming trends will affect crops during their reproductive time and hence the yields of four major food sources for the world. They are maize (corn), rice, wheat, and soy. The study by Stanford’s Sharon Gourdji states that “Crop breeders need to think carefully about how to incorporate heat tolerance, particularly during the flowering period, into wheat, maize and rice.” She succinctly presents the issue and the potential impacts in this short video.

videolink

The warming climate affects crop production in several ways. Photosynthesis is speeded up due to higher temperatures and CO2 levels. Rainfall patterns are changed leading to changes in farming due to reduced or enhanced precipitation. Gourdji’s teammate David Lobell and others showed that crop production growth worldwide has been negatively impacted by these climate changes in the last 30 years.

I want to see more about this study.

The Daily F Bomb, Friday 6/21/13

It is now officially summer. You are hereby commanded to kick back and enjoy yourselves. Leave any negativity at the door and bask in a little lighthearted silliness for a while. It will do your heart mind and body good. Bathing suits optional.

Interrogatories

What about yourself would you like your friends to remember you for when you are gone?

What would you prefer that they forget?

If you had your own country that you were ruler of, what would it be like?

What nicknames did your friends/not friends give you in school?

The Twitter Emitter

Celebrating the Critters of Summer

Tonight will mark the Summer Solstice. Astronomically, it looks like this:

The Summer Solstice occurs exactly when the Earth’s axial tilt is most inclined towards the sun at its maximum of 23° 26′. The seasonal significance of the Summer Solstice is in the reversal of the gradual shortening of nights and lengthening of days. That will occur on June 21st at 5:04 UTC (1:04am Eastern, 12:04am Central, 11:04pm June 20th Mountain and 10:04pm June 20th Pacific Time).

Tomorrow the sunrise (near where I live) will be 5:15am and sunset will be 8:29pm … 15 hours and 14 minutes of sunlight. On Winter Solstice, 6 loooong months ago, sunrise was at 7:15am and sunset was at 4:22pm, barely 9 hours of sunlight.

That is all the sciencey stuff. Of course, we know that there is more to it than that.  

New Horizons Update: Pluto and Beyond

The New Horizons Mission to Pluto

What is the atmosphere of Pluto made of, and how does it behave? What does the surface of Pluto look like? What causes those colors? Are there interesting and unique geological features? How do particles in the solar wind interact with Pluto’s atmosphere? These are but some of the questions NASA scientists hope to answer during the coming flyby in 2015.

On January 19, 2006, NASA launched the New Horizons spacecraft for a dramatic flight past icy dwarf planet Pluto and its moons two years from now in July 2015. After a 10 year and more than 3 billion mile journey, New Horizons will reveal information about worlds on the edge of the solar system. Plans for the mission include flybys of one or two Kuiper Belt Objects. These icy bodies are found orbiting the Sun in a zone beyond the orbit of Pluto. They range from about 25 to 55 miles (40 to 90 kilometers) in diameter.

The objects in the Kuiper Belt are presumed to be remnants from the formation of the solar system about 4.6 billion years ago. The Kuiper Belt probably contains hundreds of thousands of icy bodies larger than 100 km (62 miles) across and a trillion or more comets. Some of these pass near Earth. One will pass very near the Sun in late 2013. It is hoped that it will give us an exceptional show.

I would like to know more.

Thursday’s Supreme Court Watch and Open News Thread



Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS)

Today more decisions on the merit cases argued in the October 2012 term will be announced starting at 10am Eastern.

SCOTUS Blog for liveblog starting at approximately 9:00am Eastern.  

The 14 remaining cases in PDF format: Cases Remaining for October Term 2012.

Here is the summary of the cases many of us are watching closely:

Fisher v. University of Texas 11-345 CA5 Oct 10, 2012

Whether this Court’s decisions interpreting the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, including Grutter v. Bollinger, permit the University of Texas at Austin’s use of race in undergraduate admissions decisions. (Kagan, J., recused)

Hollingsworth v. Perry 12-144 CA9 Mar 26, 2013

(1) Whether the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment prohibits the State of California from defining marriage as the union of a man and a woman; and (2) whether petitioners have standing under Article III, §2 of the Constitution in this case.

Shelby County v. Holder 12-96 CADC Feb 27, 2013

Whether Congress’ decision in 2006 to reauthorize Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act under the pre-existing coverage formula of Section 4(b) of the Voting Rights Act exceeded its authority under the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments and thus violated the Tenth Amendment and Article IV of the United States Constitution.

United States v. Windsor 12-307 CA2 Mar 27, 2013

(1) Whether Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) violates the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection of the laws as applied to persons of the same sex who are legally married under the laws of their State; (2) whether the Executive Branch’s agreement with the court below that DOMA is unconstitutional deprives this Court of jurisdiction to decide this case; and (3) whether the Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group of the United States House of Representatives has Article III standing in this case.

The Snowden Leaks: Source Protection and Regulatory Capture of the Press

First off: Moose I miss You. My long absences are only explained by manic writing sessions covering lots of breaking news (and a new novel). But I’m hoping, as so well displayed by Shaun in previous post, to have a sensible discussion about the NSA leaks without it reverting to the usual Rox/Sux Obama debate, or framing intelligence services as all good, or all bad.

I’ve published a piece today in The New Republic which (going beyond the personalities of either Manning or Snowden or their interlocutors Assange and Greenwald) tries to look at the role of whistleblowing and the press in the modern age.

More below the flip

The Daily F Bomb, Thursday 6/20/13

Interrogatories

What’s better, milkshakes, or ice cream sodas?

What do you think was in the 18 1/2 minutes that were erased from the Watergate tapes?

Would you rather live 100 years in the past or 100 years in the future?

The Twitter Emitter

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