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Monday, February 11, 2013

Former Florida GOP Chair Jim Greer pleads Guilty

ORLANDO ? Ousted former Florida GOP chairman Jim Greer this morning abruptly ended what was expected to be a painful unpeeling of state party secrets by entering a surprise guilty plea to five criminal charges.

greer Greer, 50, of Oviedo, was facing a possible 75 years in prison for fraud, money laundering and theft. Now he faces a possible maximum sentence of 35 years.

The deal he cut did not include an agreement on his sentence, which could include a mix of prison time and probation. That?s to be decided at a March 27 hearing.

Technorati Tags: Chair, Chairman, Florida, Florida Republicans, GOP, guilty, Jim Greer, money laundering, plea, pleads, Republican, RPOF

Post Published: 11 February 2013
Author: politisite
Found in section: Politics

Tags: Chair, Chairman, Florida, Florida Republicans, GOP, guilty, Jim Greer, money laundering, plea, pleads, Republican, RPOF

Source: http://www.politisite.com/2013/02/11/former-florida-gop-chair-jim-greer-pleads-guilty/

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Over the Antarctic, the Smallest Ozone Hole In a Decade

X is bad? Fine. Accurately prove how they are bad, in a way that is relatively easy to proof in a repeatable way. Gimme alternatives that are viable (ie can be realistically implemented in a reasonable manner), that are economic (preferably cheaper, but no more than 5-10% more expensive) that are effective (preferably better, but no more than 5-10% less effiicient).

While I'm in agreement with this view, I'm also aware of how much messier the AGW situation is than the CFC situation was. Anything beyond "anthropogenic gases are probably adding about 0.2% (1.6 W/m**2) to the Earth's heat budget at the surface" is extremely model dependent, and models are just not that good at predicting the detailed response of such a complex system.

I am a computational physicist, and it is very clear after digging in to climate models a bit that climate models are not written by computational physicists, who typically have dealt with much simpler systems in much better controlled (and experimentally accessible) situations, which gives us a very healthy awareness of how inadequate our simulations are at capturing anything but the gross features of reality.

If a computational model of a radiation detector comes within 10% of reality you're generally doing pretty well, and radiation detectors of various kinds are about as simple as you can get in terms of physics.

So anyone who claims that climate models are adequate or even particularly useful as guides to policy response is likely not tightly coupled to reality. We don't really know what areas are likely to be affected by what kind of events. Even apparently simple things like an increase in hurricane force winds, or possibly an increase in the number of hurricanes, are hotly debated. No one, to the best of my knowledge, predicted ocean acidification as a likely outcome of increasing levels of atmospheric CO2, but this is likely going to be one of the more significant impacts. And so on.

As such, it behooves us to pursue a number of policies that won't address any specific threat, but which will a) reduce human greenhouse gas emissions and b) increase our ability to respond the climate-driven humanitarian disasters. In the former category would be nuclear power development and other green power sources, and in the latter things like increased funds put aside for international relief via existing organizations.

These positive actions have zero political support, however: people who are beating the drums regarding AGW policy are almost uniformly putting it in terms of controls and limits and restrictions on other people, which we know from far too much history never ends well, and certainly never solves the problem it was supposedly intended to address.

Source: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotScience/~3/GEkNsmEhiJc/story01.htm

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Sunday, February 10, 2013

Cow smuggling ... it's how Bangladesh gets its beef

Beef is a delicacy in Bangladesh, but Hindu-majority India refuses to sell their sacred cows. The demand is so high, however, that a dangerous $920 million cow smuggling trade has popped up. ?

By Shaikh Azizur Rahman,?Contributor / January 26, 2013

An Indian Hindu man stands with a cow as he waits for alms at Sangam, the confluence of the holy rivers Ganges and Yamuna and mythical Saraswati at the Maha Kumbh Mela in Allahabad, India, last week. Cows are everywhere in India, but the cow is considered holy in the Hindu-majority country. There are 26 breeds of cow in India. The hump, long ears, and bushy tail distinguish the Indian cow.

Kevin Frayer/AP

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In Muslim?majority Bangladesh beef is in high demand.?

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Police: 3 wounded in shooting on Bourbon Street

NEW ORLEANS (AP) ? Three people were shot Saturday night on very crowded Bourbon Street as revelers were partying during Mardi Gras, police said.

Two males and a female were wounded just before 9:30 p.m. local time, New Orleans police spokesman Frank B. Robertson said. One person was in critical condition and the other two were in stable condition. He did not release their ages.

Robertson said detectives were working vigorously to identify a suspect and determine a motive. He did not have any other details.

The streets were crawling with bar-hopping partiers taking in the last weekend before Fat Tuesday. The iconic French Quarter street is home to strip clubs and watering holes, and people toss beads from second-floor balconies. The street gets so jam-packed officers have to control the crowds on horseback.

"We don't know what happened but they shut down the entire block for an hour," Peter Manabani, an employee at the Rat's Hole bar, said as loud music thumped in the background. He said the block later reopened.

Patrick Clay, 21, an LSU student, told The Times-Picayune he was standing on the corner of Bourbon Street when suddenly he saw a crowd running and heard people screaming that there was a shooting.

"Everyone immediately started running and the cops immediately started running towards where people were running from," Clay said. "I was with a group of about seven people and at that point we all just kind of grasped hands and made our way through the crowd as soon as possible."

Parades were rolling all day Saturday but none on Bourbon Street because the streets are too narrow. One of the biggest Mardi Gras parades, the Krewe of Endymion, rolled down Canal Street and just skirted Bourbon Street a few hours before the shooting. Typically, once the parades end, partygoers head to the French Quarter.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/police-3-wounded-shooting-bourbon-street-053450599.html

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Tim Loughton MP: Here's some legislation on the family we can all ...

Tim Loughton is the Member of Parliament for East Worthing and Shoreham, and was Parliamentary Under Secretary for Children and Families from 2010 until 2012. Follow?Tim on Twitter.

Inevitably, this week?s headlines have been dominated by the controversial vote over gay marriage the media?s delight at being able to trot out the usual hackneyed clich?s about Tory Party splits. That conveniently ignores the fact that this was a free vote on a conscience issue and inevitably Conservative MPs, and indeed those from other parties, will have differing views and will be accountable to their own constituents.

Lost in the melee of last Tuesday was the Children & Families Bill unwisely published on the same day.? I say unwisely because it contains some really good legislation about improving support for getting more children adopted, shared parental leave and crucially shared parenting. And I narcissistically say good stuff because it reflects the culmination of issues I believe in passionately and had been working on for years as Children?s Minister and previously in Opposition.

The groundbreaking clauses on shared parenting confirm that the Government is to press ahead with changes long discussed by my party which will add a ?presumption of shared parenting? to the Children Act 1989. This delivers on a manifesto commitment Conservatives first made in 2005 and I tried to carry through with amendments to the Children & Adoption Bill in Opposition in 2006 only to be frustrated by? the then Labour Government.

Many commentators have lazily referred to the proposed changes in terms of ?father?s legal rights.? It is important to stress though that this is not about parent?s rights, neither mother?s nor father?s. It is about children?s rights and expectations and the responsibilities of both parents to their child.

All sensible people acknowledges that children do best when they have the fullest possible involvement with both parents either when in a happy family home or after a parental split. Studies show such children are 40% less likely to suffer mental health problems, less likely to become teenage pregnancy statistics and they achieve better at school too. This will not be the same for every child and it in no way takes away from the fantastic job that many single parents of either gender do whether they are single parents by choice or not. But these are the facts.

In over 90% of cases the resident parent after a split will be the mother. Some fathers will walk away from responsibilities to their children by choice and need to be pursued. In the case of a few it may not be safe to remain involved, but for too many their fervent attempts to remain actively involved during childhood can be frustrated by a former partner after an acrimonious split. The children become pawns between warring parents, the court room the combat arena, the taxpayer funds much of the conflict and everyone loses, not least the children caught in the middle. At its worst over a quarter of decent parents are completely frozen out and lose contact with their children within a few years.

Around 90% of separating couples are able to make arrangements for their children without recourse to the courts though contact arrangements will often still be problematic. But we need to make sure that fewer of the 10% who do resort to legal resolution often in very acrimonious and long drawn out proceedings, do so in the future. I want to see a large metaphorical warning sign outside of every family court which says that if you think you can use the court to play winner takes all, to exclude a non-resident parent out of a relationship with his or her kids altogether, then don?t even think about it unless there is a welfare threat to the children which can be clearly demonstrated. Because the presumption is that both parents will be required and expected to play their full role as parents just as when you had the children in the first place.

That is what a presumption of shared parenting enshrined in law is intended to do ? keep more warring parents out of court and persuade more of them to act like adults in the interests of their children earlier on. It should also be seen in the context of other ?beefed-up? upstream measures such as hard to reject mediation, less access to one sided legal aid and better enforcement measures when contract arrangements are willingly and often regularly breached. When you learn that last year there were only 53 enforcement orders and hardly ever will a judge resort to the nuclear option of transferring residency away from a parent serially frustrating contact, then it is clear how so many dads feel the system is against them.

Of course there will be opponents to such measures as attested by other less balanced headlines talking about divorced parents rights putting ?victims of violence at risk.? There are good reasons to keep some separating parents out of the picture on safety grounds and that is why the proposals being put forward now are still completely subject to the ?paramountcy principle of the welfare of the child.? That will not stop some of the regular suspects crying wolf despite the fact that I brought all sides on this argument round the table in the Department for Education when formulating the basis of the consultation which reported last year.

Opposition may be particularly vociferous in the Lords where can be felt the influence of a number of retired senior judges who? invariably resent anything that treads on the patently buckled toes of their profession?s autonomy in the court room without having to be ?tainted? by reading what goes on in Hansard. They also need to justify the huge variations in the way often neighbouring courts deal with contact arrangements and their breach and not least the amount of time cases drag on leaving children and non-resident parents drifting farther apart by default.

Others will point to the Australian experience of shared parenting which went wrong because it dealt in terms of an ill defined ?meaningful relationship? between parent and child and soon got bogged down in the minefield of equality of time which resulted in more litigation not less. But as I have stressed this Government?s shared parenting proposals are about keeping more parents out of court in the first place rather than fast tracking them into it.

The working and parenting practices of families who toil hard enough to stay together have changed greatly over recent decades. Fathers are, and want to be, more involved. The undeniable benefits of shared parenting for children even after a split haven?t changed. It is time the law caught up with that, so let?s not miss this opportunity at long last by wallowing too long in the fall out of the gay marriage debate when there is other important work to be done for the sake of our children.

Source: http://conservativehome.blogs.com/platform/2013/02/from-timloughton.html

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Twitter searches to finally include tweets older than one week

Rosa Golijan , NBC News ? ? ? 4 hrs.

Twitter has developed a way to bring up tweets older than a week in searches, potentially putting an end to a common frustration among users.

Up until now, searches conducted on the Twitter website (or through Twitter apps) brought up only recent tweets, making it difficult for users to discover anything that was posted more than a week ago. But on Thursday, Paul Burstein, a Twitter engineer working on the service's search infrastructure, explained in a post on the official Twitter blog that changes to searchs will be rolled out "over the coming days."

Burstein adds that search results will still only "represent a fairly small percentage of total tweets ever sent," but that Twitter will be "steadily increasing this percentage over time." (Perhaps one day we'll be able to search every tweet ever posted? One can only hope.)

The move to expand the search feature follows the announcement of a tool allowing users to download their full Twitter archive. Access to this tool began gradually rolling out at the end of 2012.

Want more tech news or interesting links? You'll get plenty of both if you keep up with Rosa Golijan, the writer of this post, by following her on Twitter, subscribing to her Facebook posts, or circling her on Google+.

Source: http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/technolog/twitter-searches-finally-include-tweets-older-one-week-1B8302018

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