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Thursday, March 7, 2013
Wednesday, March 6, 2013
The Tyee ? The Big Shift Last Time: From Horse Dung to Car Smog
Lessons from an earlier energy transition. Third in a series.
Final horse drawn tram in New York City, 1917. Image: Brown Brothers.
"You know horses are smarter than people.?You never heard of a horse going broke betting on people."?-- Will Rogers
Before city dwellers complained about cars, smog, congestion and the loss of public space, they railed against stinking, fly-ridden horse crap.
In fact, the rise and fall of the horse makes very clear the difficult and troubling character of energy transitions.
The horse, one of the most remarkable prime movers on the planet, pretty much ruled 19th century urban life and rural culture in both Europe and North America.
Then along came the combustion engine. But it took the automobile and tractor nearly 50 years to dislodge the horse from farms, public transport and wagon delivery systems throughout North America.
Contrary to public perception, the transition was not smooth or inevitable. Nor was it exclusively beneficial. "There were winners and losers," says Ann Norton Greene, a U.S. historian at the University of Pennsylvania, whose remarkable book, Horses At Work, offers a fascinating portrait of how messy energy transitions can be.
"You can't change the conditions of a system without damaging a lot of people, business, practices and habits that go with it," says Greene. "People lose not from some fault of their own, but because they are in the wrong place in history."
Although the automobile certainly eliminated piles of manure and dead animals that clogged some 19th century city streets, it introduced a whole new set of global carbon complications.
It also helped to sever the city from rural life. Last but not least, it locked many urban dwellers into a new tyranny: own a cheap mobile energy slave or drop dead.
Rise of King Horse
Curiously, it took coal and the steam engine to make the horse king of the road. Until the 19th century, the equine tribe remained largely a status animal that signified wealth.
The well-to-do could afford horses, and used them for personal transportation, but most people just walked. The poor harnessed the sturdy and practical ox to a wagon for longer travels. But most 19th century cities were no wider than two miles and highly walkable.
But with the industrial revolution, the horse acquired a new status as a "living machine." It was self-contained, self-directed and strong, says Greene.
And it soon pulled coal-fired machines such as railways. Moreover, the horse could move people and goods wherever heavy steam locomotives could not. And horses could master terrible roads, a bane of the 19th century.
Unlike the inefficient steam engine, which took a long time to warm up, the horse was also a highly effective user of energy. In terms of energy inputs (five acres of hay and grain per horse) and outputs (traction) the horse achieved an efficiency of 15 to 20 per cent or more than triple that of a coal-fired machine.
Robert Thurston, a U.S. steam engine expert, opined in 1894, no less, that horses are not only "self-feeding, self-controlling, self-maintaining and self-reproducing, but they are far more economical in the energy they are able to develop from a given weight of fuel material, than any other existing form of motor."
And so as industrialists built more railroads, canals, ferries and ports, they employed more "living machines" to collect and distribute both factory workers and cheap goods. The horse (and all the small businesses that supported the animal from farriers to buggy whip makers) became the backbone of 19th century life.
Expanding at full gallop
Given the animal's significant role in the industrial revolution, horse populations grew exponentially. North Americans employed four million horses in 1840 for agricultural work and travel. By 1900 they were harnessing more than 24 million (a six-fold increase) to plow fields, as well as pull street trolleys, drays, brewery wagons, city vehicles, omnibuses and carriages.
Large imported working breeds such as Percherons, Belgians, Shires and Clydesdales soon provided for nearly one-third of the continent's energy needs. For every three people there trod one working horse in the U.S. (There are now 1.3 people for every car in the U.S.)
By 1890 New Yorkers took an average of 297 horse-car rides per person a year. (Today, they hail an average of 100 cab rides.)
Urban herds grew so dense, writes Greene, that "a Boston banker was likely to encounter more horses than would a cowboy or rancher in Colorado."
An 1872 influenza epidemic highlighted the economy's growing dependence on the horse as a prime mover in daily life.
After the Great Epizootic sickened horses in Toronto and northeastern cities throughout the U.S., newspapers declared, "business requiring the assistance of the equine tribe has received a severe shock."
Funerals were postponed and fires went unattended. Even commuters dreamed about "steam dummies" being used to pull streetcars.
The horse had become, as one magazine put it, "wheels in our great social machine, the stoppage of which means widespread injury to all classes and conditions of persons, injury to commerce, to agriculture, to trade, to social life."
A back end problem
But as horses industrialized cities and mechanized agriculture (they pulled all sorts of mowing, harvesting and plowing machines) their scale (along with rising immigrant populations) created a variety of social challenges.
An urban workhorse dumped between 20 and 50 pounds of manure a day on the street along with a gallon of piss.
"Add 500 horses per square mile and then do the math," says Greene. "Some cities had good systems to truck out the manure while others dumped it in rivers."
Tonnes of manure pounded and pulverized into dust attracted rodents and flies. By one wild government estimate, 95 per cent of all disease-carrying flies bred in horse dung. Dead horses often clogged city streets and teamsters on tight schedules added menace to public thoroughfares.
Faced with massive influxes of immigrants, political unrest and factory pollution, the professional class of North America's industrial cities concluded that public spaces had become anarchic. A new breed of urban reformer now championed a thorough sanitizing of city streets with new technologies.
"The Progressives were an interesting crew and were policy wonks and technocrats," notes Greene. "Like modern Americans they wanted to fix things and they thought that a quick fix could be found in technology."
Unlike oil and electricity (largely invisible sources of power with distant rural footprints), horsepower gave citizens a fair sense of the direct costs of energy consumption.
With its flies and smells and muscle, "the horse was in your face and it began to make people feel uncomfortable and that was a factor in getting rid of it."
And so urban reformers and public health officials disparaged the horse and saluted the automobile along with the electric trolley. Most predicted that cars would clean up streets roads, reduce congestion and restore order to city streets, if not "advance civilization."
Dreaming of a 'Horseless Age'
Horseless Age, an indispensible magazine for car makers and car buyers alike at the turn of the century, promised that the removal of the horse from cities would not only reduce noise and clatter but save money. It, too, would conserve pleasure time for "the horse is not so manageable as a mechanical vehicle."
Car propaganda also portrayed the horse as "untamable beast" and author of "frightful accidents." At the same time motor enthusiasts railed against regulations, speed limits and licensing requirement for new fangled jalopies.
In the end the removal of the horse from urban life and later the farm became a protracted drama that took more than 50 years. It also required the messy adoption of three fossil-fuel technologies.
Steam engines replaced the horse for long-distance haulage; coal-fired electricity made the horse redundant for public transit and the combustion engine eradicated the horse as a prime mover of individuals and most goods.
The transition, however, did not end the chaos in industrial cities but merely complicated and magnified the movement of people and stuff.
Cars didn't clean up cities but replaced stationary piles of dung with invisible clouds of pollution that moved with the wind.
The automobile also allowed the rich and middle class to abandon public transit as well as street contact with the working poor and immigrants.
But the car's exponential growth quickly exacerbated old urban issues from congestion to traffic fatalities. (Car crashes remain the leading cause of death for people ages 10 to 24 around the world.)
The automobile also accelerated oil spending, expanded road infrastructure and played a major role in fouling the atmosphere with greenhouse gas emissions.
To this day the combustion engine, which still employs one out of six U.S. citizens, accounts for nearly a quarter of all climate destabilizing pollution.
Slowed to a trot
Ironically, it didn't take long for millions of cheap cars to clog urban thoroughfares so completely that they moved as slowly as horses.
Congested urban cities such as Vancouver even ran advertisements as early as 1959 asking, "Should we back to the horse and buggy days?"
"Don't laugh," added the poster. Real tests show that "the average speed at which traffic moves through congested areas is less than it was during the horse and buggy days."
The horse to car transition was "gradual, complicated and troubling," concludes Greene. It also offered unpredictable consequences.
At the peak of horse usage few city dwellers actually owned a "living machine" or private carriage due to their expense. The horse not only represented a highly decentralized system for moving people but also encouraged citizens to use public transport.
Nor did it hog public space. Because of its dependence on hay and oats, the horse also connected cities to rural areas and acted as a check on urban sprawl.
In contrast, the automobile constructed and delivered a vastly different energy system. Powered by cheap oil "it afforded unlimited mobility and discouraged public transportation and public space," adds Greene. It made walking, the most democratic and efficient form of mobility, a lower class activity. Moreover, the horseless carriage severed urban ties to rural areas and killed the city as an organic place.
Car centralizer
The automobile also replaced a fairly diverse transport system with a highly centralized one dominated by big carmakers and Big Oil companies. This concentration, in turn, fed the growth of big government to help build roads to accommodate more cars.
The transition had other powerful impacts. It extinguished scores of businesses and professions from carriage makers to teamsters. It drove down the price of grain so dramatically that the U.S. Bureau of Census tagged the horse to car transition as "one of the main contributing factors" to the Great Depression.
It also removed a physical measurement of energy (horsepower) from common speech. Only car buffs bandied the term to compare the might of internal combustion engines that stood in for hundreds of horses.
Both cheap oil and electricity separated the sources of energy (dirty coal mines and oil wells) from their urban consumption. In so doing they created the illusion that energy now appeared magically on the streets, says Greene.
The transition was also shaped by choices as opposed to needs. "It was driven by cheap oil and the combustion engine... We didn't need to get rid of horses the way we now need to get rid of internal combustion cars."
Lessons from the end of the horse era
In the end the demise of horse power and the ascent of the automobile ably illustrated two characteristics of energy transitions: they don't always solve problems and rarely perform as advertised.
"Americans wanted bountiful energy and abundant consumer products without having to deal with the moral, social, political, or environmental implications of their choices," writes Greene.
One hundred years later, North Americans still hang onto their stubborn beliefs that there is a quick technological fix to every energy conundrum, says Greene.
"Everyone wants to believe that somehow there is a painless way to consume more energy that costs nothing with no consequences."
Next Wednesday, Andrew Nikiforuk's series The Big Shift explores whether the Soviet collapse was caused by an oil shock. Find the whole series to date here. ![[Tyee]](http://thetyee.cachefly.net/ui/img/ico_fishie.png){kind=small}
Award-winning journalist Andrew Nikiforuk has been writing about the energy industry for two decades and is a contributing editor to The Tyee. Find his previous Tyee articles?here.
This series was produced by Tyee Solutions Society in collaboration with Tides Canada Initiatives Society (TCI). Funding was provided by Fossil Fuel Development Mitigation Fund of Tides Canada Foundation. All funders sign releases guaranteeing TSS full editorial autonomy. TSS funders and TCI neither influence nor endorse the particular content of TSS' reporting.
Source: http://thetyee.ca/News/2013/03/06/Horse-Dung-Big-Shift/
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Microsoft to Allow Office 2013 License Transfers to New PCs
Microsoft has reversed course and will allow Office 2013 users to transfer their licenses to another PC in the event that their computer dies or they buy a new machine.
Initially, Microsoft said that an Office 2013 license would only be transferable if the PC on which it was installed died while under warranty. Complaints from customers, however, prompted Redmond to change that policy.
The change is effective immediately and applies to Office Home and Student 2013, Office Home and Business 2013, Office Professional 2013, and the standalone Office 2013 applications.
Customers, however, can only transfer their Office 2013 license once every 90 days (except in the event of hardware failure).
"At Microsoft, we strive to make Office the very best product to help busy people and families get things done," Jevon Fark with the Microsoft Office team wrote in a blog post. "A key ingredient in our formula for success is listening to our customers, and we're grateful for the feedback behind this change in Office licensing."
As ZDNet pointed out, Microsoft tried to limit transfers with Windows Vista back in 2006, but complaints prompted it to drop the idea.
The subscription-based Office 365, meanwhile, is accessible on up to five devices. For more, see 10 Things You Need to Know About Office 365, as well as PCMag's full review of Microsoft Office 365 Home Premium.
Source: http://feeds.ziffdavis.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/breakingnews/~3/CR1u9lzKVQM/0,2817,2416288,00.asp
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TomTom partners with Fiat and Toyota to deliver in-dash navigation and traffic reports
If you're a GPS company, one way to keep the smartphone feature creep at bay is to strike deals with car manufacturers, and bake your wares into their vehicles. TomTom has done particularly good securing these partnerships and Fiat is just the latest company to sign on the dotted line. Its navigation software will be built into the Uconnect Radio Nav systems found in the 500L series from the Italian car marker. It will eventually roll out to other vehicles and Fiat brands, but there was no timeline given. TomTom also inked a deal with Toyota's European arm to put TomTom HD Traffic in any vehicle packing a Touch&GO in-dash device. For more, check out the PR after the break.
Filed under: Transportation
Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/YWutdW-woFg/
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Stress hormone foreshadows postpartum depression in new mothers
Tuesday, March 5, 2013
Women who receive strong social support from their families during pregnancy appear to be protected from sharp increases in a particular stress hormone, making them less likely to develop postpartum depression, according to a new study published in Clinical Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
"Now we have some clue as to how support might 'get under the skin' in pregnancy, dampening down a mother's stress hormone, and thereby helping to reduce her risk for postpartum depression," said Jennifer Hahn-Holbrook, a UCLA National Institute of Mental Health postdoctoral scholar in psychology and fellow at UCLA's Institute of Society and Genetics, and lead author of the research.
The scientists recruited 210 pregnant women of different ethnicities and socioeconomic backgrounds, surveying them three times during pregnancy ? at 19, 29, and 37 weeks ? and eight weeks after giving birth. The women were asked in interviews about how much support they received from their families and from the father of the child, and about their symptoms of depression. In addition, blood samples from each participant were analyzed to assess levels of placental corticotropin-releasing hormone (pCRH), a stress hormone released from the placenta.
After taking factors such as age, education, and income into account, Hahn-Holbrook and her colleagues discovered that pregnant women who reported the greatest support from their families seemed to have relatively lower levels of depressive symptoms. They also had the least dramatic increases in pCRH and the lowest absolute levels of pCRH in the third trimester of pregnancy.
Additional analyses revealed that pCRH levels in the third trimester fully explained the relationship between family support in pregnancy and postpartum depression symptoms.
These results are consistent with the conclusion that social support protects against abnormal pCRH increases and that lower pCRH levels in turn reduce risk of postpartum depression.
"Our results, and those of other scientists, suggest that low or absent support is a significant risk factor for postpartum depression, and that strong support is a protective factor," Hahn-Holbrook said.
Previous research has found that levels of pCRH typically increase during the third trimester of pregnancy. Women who exhibit the most dramatic increases in pCRH seem to show the most severe postpartum depression. Research has also shown that social support can dampen biological stress responses in women who are not pregnant. In the new study, Hahn-Holbrook and colleagues integrated these two strands of research, examining the interplay between a psychological factor, social support, and a biological factor, pCRH, in predicting postpartum depression.
"We investigated perceived support ? the extent to which a mother felt she could count on her family and the baby's father should she need them," said Chris Dunkel Schetter, UCLA professor of psychology and co-author of the study. Social support, she added, entails many things, including help with "tasks or material assistance," but also emotional support in the form of acceptance, listening and making someone feel cared for and valued.
"Emotional support seems to be the most powerful form of support that you can provide to someone, but it is difficult to do right," Dunkel Schetter said.
While pregnant women who felt strong support from their families and from the child's father had fewer depressive symptoms, there was no relationship between support from the father and levels of pCRH. Although father support was not as strong of a protective factor as family support in this study, "there is no doubt that fathers are a critical part of a healthy pregnancy," Hahn-Holbrook said. It could be that support from the father influences pCRH levels earlier in pregnancy, or father support may act by a different biological or behavioral pathway altogether, Hahn Holbrook said.
"Mothers with support from fathers may be more likely to practice healthy behaviors, which has been shown to contribute both to healthier babies, better birth outcomes, and lower postpartum disturbance," Dunkel Schetter added.
The study's results suggest that the timing of support interventions is especially important.
"Because levels of pCRH in the last trimester contributed to postpartum depression, early social support interventions might protect against both elevated pCRH and depressive symptoms," Dunkel Schetter said. "Too many interventions in the past have been mounted too late in pregnancy," she added.
More research should be conducted to determine when, what, and how to provide the optimal support to mothers during pregnancy, according to Dunkel Schetter. Her laboratory is conducting further research in this area.
Sharp increases in pCRH over the course of pregnancy are associated with preterm births, defined as births earlier than 37 weeks of gestation. It is possible that social support or other stress reduction methods provided early in pregnancy could provide health benefits, and ultimately for the baby as well.
"Even better, would be to support and educate women before pregnancy to maximize healthy pregnancies" Dunkel Schetter noted.
###
Association for Psychological Science: http://www.psychologicalscience.org
Thanks to Association for Psychological Science for this article.
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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/127132/Stress_hormone_foreshadows_postpartum_depression_in_new_mothers
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Brody Jenner Joins Cast Of ?Keeping Up With The Kardashians?
Brody Jenner Joins Cast Of “Keeping Up With The Kardashians”
The E! network reveals that Bruce Jenner’s 29-year-old son Brody Jenner will appear on season eight of the popular reality show. Brody has appeared on the reality show previously but will now actually be a part of cast. “Keeping Up With the Kardashians” follows the adult Kardashian children, their half-sisters Kylie and Kendall Jenner, and ...
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Source: http://stupidcelebrities.net/2013/03/brody-jenner-joins-cast-of-keeping-up-with-the-kardashians/
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Tuesday, March 5, 2013
Vatican still waiting for 5 cardinals for conclave
FILE -- In this file photo taken on April 18, 2005 and released by the Vatican paper L'Osservatore Romano, Master of Liturgical Celebrations Archbishop Piero Marini closes the door of the Sistine Chapel at the Vatican, after proclaiming the "extra omnes", which is the Latin order for all those not taking part in the conclave to leave the chapel. Ritual words, uttered in Latin, open and close the secret selection process of the new pope. It starts with "Extra omnes" _ or "Everyone out" _ expelling everyone but voting cardinals from the Sistine Chapel where conclave balloting takes place. It ends with "Accepto" _ "I accept" _ the solemn word the victorious cardinal utters to confirm the judgment of peers who have given him the two-thirds majority needed to elect a pope. (AP Photo/Osservatore Romano, ho)
FILE -- In this file photo taken on April 18, 2005 and released by the Vatican paper L'Osservatore Romano, Master of Liturgical Celebrations Archbishop Piero Marini closes the door of the Sistine Chapel at the Vatican, after proclaiming the "extra omnes", which is the Latin order for all those not taking part in the conclave to leave the chapel. Ritual words, uttered in Latin, open and close the secret selection process of the new pope. It starts with "Extra omnes" _ or "Everyone out" _ expelling everyone but voting cardinals from the Sistine Chapel where conclave balloting takes place. It ends with "Accepto" _ "I accept" _ the solemn word the victorious cardinal utters to confirm the judgment of peers who have given him the two-thirds majority needed to elect a pope. (AP Photo/Osservatore Romano, ho)
FILE -- This picture released by the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano, Friday, April 15, 2005, shows two stoves set up in the Sistine Chapel where the upcoming Vatican conclave will be held. Ritual words, uttered in Latin, open and close the secret selection process of the new pope. It starts with "Extra omnes" _ or "Everyone out" _ expelling everyone but voting cardinals from the Sistine Chapel where conclave balloting takes place. It ends with "Accepto" _ "I accept" _ the solemn word the victorious cardinal utters to confirm the judgment of peers who have given him the two-thirds majority needed to elect a pope. (AP Photo/L'Osservatore Romano)
Tourists walk in the square as the sun sets behind the statues on top of the Bernini colonnade in St. Peter Square, at the Vatican, Monday, March 4, 2013. Cardinals from around the world have gathered inside the Vatican for their first round of meetings before the conclave to elect the next pope, amid scandals inside and out of the Vatican and the continued reverberations of Benedict XVI's decision to retire. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)
The sun sets behind the statues on top of the Bernini colonnade in St. Peter Square, at the Vatican, Monday, March 4, 2013. Cardinals from around the world have gathered inside the Vatican for their first round of meetings before the conclave to elect the next pope, amid scandals inside and out of the Vatican and the continued reverberations of Benedict XVI's decision to retire. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)
VATICAN CITY (AP) ? The Sistine Chapel closed to visitors on Tuesday and construction work got under way to prepare it for the conclave, where cardinals from around the world will gather to elect the new pope after Benedict XVI's resignation last month.
The Vatican said that it was waiting for five more cardinals to arrive before setting the date for the election.
Michelangelo's frescoed masterpiece closed at 1 p.m. to visitors, one of the first visible signs that the election was nearing. Construction work involves installing a false floor to cover the anti-bugging devices and even it out, as well as installing the stove where the ballots will be burned.
A total of 110 of the 115 voting-age cardinals attended the second day of preparatory meetings Tuesday to organize the conclave, discuss the problems of the church and get to know one another, the Vatican said.
Those still making their way to Rome included: Egyptian Patriarch Antonios Naguib, and Cardinals Karl Lehmann of Germany, Jean-Baptiste Pham of Vietnam, Kazimierz Nycz of Poland and John Tong Hon of Hong Kong, the Vatican said.
Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi said they were expected in the coming days and that there was no concern about the delay; some had important meetings of bishops to attend to, he noted.
During the second day of pre-conclave meetings, cardinals asked for information about the management of the Vatican bureaucracy ? and managers responded ? after cardinals said they wanted to get to the bottom of allegations of corruption and cronyism in the Holy See's governance.
Lombardi refused to say who responded and whether the questions referred to the leaks of Vatican documents, which exposed evidence of turf battles and political intrigue.
Also Tuesday, cardinals signed off on a telegram sent to Benedict XVI thanking him for his "brilliant" ministry and his "untiring work in the vineyard of the Lord."
And the Vatican showed off the urns into which the cardinals will place their ballots, the same silver and bronze flying-saucer-like urns used in the 2005 conclave that elected Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger pope.
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Google Avoids Link Tax But Ambiguous New - DeonDesigns.ca
In August of last year, a number of German lawmakers were pressing proposed??ancillary copyright? legislation that would have required Google and others that indexed or aggregated news to pay for links or excerpts from those news items.
The proposed law was?championed?by German magazine and newspaper publishers who, like their counterparts in the US, are seeing declining readership and ad sales.
The law did pass in the German?parliament, but Bloomberg reports that a compromise reached earlier this week stayed in. That compromise will allow Google (and others) ?to display ?single words or very small text excerpts? referring to publishers? websites at no cost. For content exceeding these limits, publishers retain the ?exclusive right of use,? according to the bill.
However, there also apparently remains ambiguity?about exactly how much can be excerpted without a content license (see the postscript below). In the US, the ?fair use? doctrine under the First Amendment would prohibit any similar proposal from becoming law.
In France, Google also recently?avoided a ?link tax? by agreeing to create a ?60 million ?Digital Publishing Innovation Fund? to ?help stimulate innovation and increase revenues for French publishers.?
For a great deal more background, see our previous stories below:
Postscript: The following statement was released earlier today by?the?European Publishers Council:
EUROPE?S PUBLISHERS WELCOME NEW GERMAN LAW TO FORCE CONTENT?AGGREGATORS AND SEARCH ENGINES TO RECOGNISE COPYRIGHT
The European Publishers Council (EPC) welcomes today?s decision by the German Bundestag to approve an ancillary copyright for news publishers in law that means that search engines and other aggregators who commercialise publishers? content will no longer be able to do so without permission. The ?Leistungsschutzrecht,? as it is know in German, will pave the way for commercial negotiations between the parties on the price for the commercial use of publishers? content.
EPC Chairman and CEO of Impresa in Portugal, Francisco Pinto Balsem?o, said: ?The EPC welcomes this important vote in the German Bundestag today which recognises clearly in copyright law both the value and the cost of investment in professional journalistic content.?
The new law will only apply to those companies who exploit commercially third party content such as content aggregators and search engines. The proposed provision signifies no change at all to possible uses by other users, or for consumers, bloggers or companies and associations who may use links or cite passages of published content.
News publishers can now demand that search engines and other providers of such services that aggregate their content, refrain from unauthorised forms of usage. These companies will need licences for such usage in the future.
The EPC believes that this law will help establish a market for aggregator content. New innovative business models can now be built based on legally licensed content.
Meanwhile the EPC is actively working on creating the technical infrastructure that will facilitate the communication of online digital rights. Its project, the Linked Content Coalition, has devised a new Rights Reference Model (RRM), due to be published for comment over the next few weeks. The RRM brings together for the first time all the different licensing models and languages for all kinds of content: text, images, video, music, for example. This project seeks to solve the problem and address the criticism that it is often difficult to work out how to use online content legally ? for individuals, businesses and for automated tools.
EPC?s Executive Director, Angela Mills Wade said: ?With the right legal conditions and the technical tools provided by the Linked Content Coalition, it will be easy to access and use content legally. This will mean that publishers will have the incentive to continue to populate the internet with high-quality, authoritative, diverse content and to support new, innovative business models for online content.?
Commentary from Greg: It?s clear that the publishers are putting their ?spin? on the legislation that was passed and that they will push for content licenses for other than ?de minimis? usage of newspaper and magazine content by Google and others.
If concrete rules around how much content can be show for free cannot be negotiated between the parties, it?s a safe bet that Google and others will be sued by German publishers under the new law.?Then the battle will shift to the courts, which will be forced to interpret the precise scope of the ?very small text?excerpts? that are exempt from the new law.
Related Topics: Google: Critics | Google: Legal | Google: News | Google: Outside US | Legal: Copyright | Legal: Crawling Indexing | Top News
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Monday, March 4, 2013
Brian Formo: Stoker, and The Last Stand Nuke American Pie
This year marks the English language debut of three exciting, distinctly different South Korean filmmakers: Bong Joon-ho (The Host, Mother), Park Chan-wook (Oldboy, Lady Vengeance) and Kim Jee-woon (A Tale of Two Sisters, I Saw the Devil).
Kim's debut The Last Stand has already come and gone, fizzling at the box office despite the pumped up return of Arnold Schwarzenegger, the last action hero. For me, The Last Stand was a fantastic action film that didn't find an audience (although programmers probably thought that the audience wouldn't need to be found, as this was Schwarzenegger's first top-lined film since 2003's Terminator: Rise of the Machines).
Although primarily known primarily for A Tale of Two Sisters and I Saw the Devil if you'd seen Kim's 2005 film, A Bittersweet Life, the machine gun American blasts of The Last Stand would make the film even more enjoyable; A Bittersweet Life is a comedic, violent revenge tale. It's comedic, at least to Western audiences, because most of the film concerns the protagonist's repeated attempts to find a handgun (which are outlawed in South Korea) to enact his revenge. For his English language debut Kim has machine guns, explosions, a disgraced former LAPD officer who's now a sleepy small town sheriff (Schwarzenegger) and Johnny Knoxville's shed of weapons, because, y'know, he's an American.
If more of us watched foreign films that weren't nominated for an Oscar, Kim's Last Stand might've already been elevated to a deserved status as a satire of America's need to awaken and honor their inner-manhood; much like Paul Verhoeven's American films of the '80s and '90s, an outsider's love of our film genres adds to the social critique -- it isn't mean-spirited, it's just bigger.
Park is known for brutal revenge films. Hell, he made a trilogy of revenge, with his most acclaimed, Oldboy, preceding Lady Vengeance and Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance.
For his first Western film, Park has ditched the underground crime world in favor of a dark dollhouse tale. Going into the film, certain write-ups about the script (by Wentworth Miller, the lead actor of the TV series Prison Break) made me think that the third act reveal would be that the mysterious uncle (Matthew Goode) was actually a vampire (this leap in assumption was perhaps aided by the ominous logline, current vampire en-voguness and, ahem, the name Bram Stoker). While it is nefarious and is structured and shot like some sort of ghost story, Stoker really is a girl's coming of age tale -- coming of age through witnessing violence.
As I originally thought that the plot was headed somewhere else, I won't reveal the major story points other than that India Stoker (Mia Wasikowska) is the daughter of Nicole Kidman (restrained, but sexual), whose father has just died in an accident, and an uncle (Goode) that she and her mother never knew existed, shows up at the funeral and stays with them for far too long.
Wasikowska previously starred in the period pieces Jane Eyre, Lawless, Albert Nobbs and the fantasy Alice in Wonderland. In Stoker she dresses in Victorian attire, and is sucked into a dirtier rabbit hole, this one closer to Jan Svankmajer's Alice than Tim Burton's Wonderland; although she's mourning in the first half of the film, witnessing her mother's attraction to her uncle awakens a dormant defiance.
Like Kim did with The Last Stand, Park is taking a standard set-up (here a young woman's coming of age) and hyper-stylizing it and flipping it on its ear. Narration at the beginning sets this up with Wasikowska proclaiming, "to become an adult is to become free"; generally the coming of age film will show childhood as the only time of freedom, in Stoker adulthood is achieved through violently leaving behind childhood.
Stoker hits the coming of age tropes that we're used to: a proper virginal girl, who plays piano, who isn't understood at school, who gazes into her reflection and dresses differently than her peers, is disturbed by her mother's sexuality and potentially her own; but Park uses ornate decorations, dresses, draperies and music to seemingly place the family inside no time that we're living in, no place that we're living in and no world that we know.
There are certain absurdities that you either welcome as part of this world or you don't, such as a well-to-do family having family members buried in their massive estate underneath closely placed boulders representing either testicles or the balls of dung (indeed we do see beetles roll up perfectly constructed dung in one shot). I happily chuckled at the leaps in narrative, as they are applied without explanation, that's just the way it is and I appreciated the audacity; it's simple while still being outlandish, and it's mainstream while still being bizarre. For all its grand strokes (and this is very showy), Stoker is made better by the prolonged moments (such as when India spins around on a merry-go-round in the woods attempting to instigate a sexual encounter with a boy from school and she turns her head each time the wheel passes him to continue to speak to him, and thus looking like a flip-flopping wacko who doesn't know what she wants).
There are a lot of tricks that Park uses, and just when it seems to be too much, there's a scene in which it works beautifully. For instance, India tells us from the start of the film that she hears things much more distinctly than others; this seems to be an excuse for a sound installation for the rest of the film, as every secret discussion overheard is heightened, every blade of grass hums and egg shells crack like thunder. But when India hears Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazelwood's duet, "Summer Wine," she tries to find which room they're in, and as the volume changes with each open and closed door, we know she'll discover a sight she doesn't want to see; the volume of the song dropping in and out works beautifully and although not in the forefront, the lyrics subversively tell the story: a new man comes into town, he thinks he's got a plan, but he's outdone by a woman. Pay close attention and you'll notice that Park-chan mostly just uses Hazelwood's verses in the duet when the doors open. Sinatra, the woman, is muted in the foreground -- until she acts.
Films like The Last Stand, and Stoker are a litmus test of international filmmakers; they are their first American films, and they use standard genre stories: the disgraced sheriff in a big time standoff in a small town, and a young woman who comes of age amongst grownup sexuality and brutality. Each filmmaker has taken their opportunity to pump up the story with invigorating camerawork and subversive deconstructions of popular genres. In Stoker the local bar in town is called Rockets, the bad boy rides a motorcycle, the good girl wears puritan clothes and the only hotel in town that isn't the Biltmore has one level and an operating phone booth. If it these things feel too archaic and familiar, then you don't believe that American pie is better when nuked.
The final South Korean filmmaker of 2013's hat trick is the one I am most looking forward to, Snowpiercer by Joon-ho Bong, a filmmaker who has already tackled a different genre with each of his movies: the procedural (Memories of Murder), the monster movie (The Host) and the family drama (Mother). Snowpiercer is a post-apocalyptic train ride with the only survivors on Earth. Snowpiercer is Bong's English language debut. If the third film is just as delectable as the first two from 2013, all three English language debuts from these South Korean filmmakers could be jockeying for end of the year notices.
?
Follow Brian Formo on Twitter: www.twitter.com/BrianEmilFormo
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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brian-formo/stoker-nicole-kidman_b_2788276.html
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Sunday, March 3, 2013
LAX ghost town a home to memories and rare butterflies
The remains of what was once one of Los Angeles' most coveted neighborhoods can be seen behind a fence topped with barbed wire.
Weeds sprout through cracks along streets lined with majestic palms. Retaining walls and foundations of custom homes peek through the brush. Rusty utility lines that have wiggled their way above ground bake in the sun like scattered bones.
Two throttled-up passenger jets simultaneously take off from LAX and soar overhead, the thundering cacophony a reminder of why the community of Surfridge was forced to disappear.
PHOTOS: Surfridge
Developed in the 1920s and 1930s, Surfridge was an isolated playground of the wealthy, among the last communities built on miles of sand dunes that once dominated the coast. Hollywood elites built homes here that commanded views from Palos Verdes to Malibu.
The small airfield to the east that opened in 1928 was a good place to see an air show. It would take nearly two decades for it to become the city's primary airport.
Today, Surfridge is a Los Angeles curiosity ? a modern ghost town inhabited by a rare butterfly.
The El Segundo blue butterfly was near extinction when the last of Surfridge's 800 homes were removed in the early 1970s, the victim of an expanding Los Angeles International Airport.
In the decades since, the federally protected endangered species has made a comeback due to the establishment of a 200-acre butterfly preserve managed by the city. Nonnative plants were removed and native buckwheat ? where the butterflies feed and lay their eggs ? was reintroduced.
Now, more than 125,000 butterflies take flight each summer, unfazed by the constant thunder of jets overhead.
LAX may have wiped Surfridge off the map, but the airport has turned out to be a perfect neighbor for a growing community of butterflies.
"It's a remarkable recovery," said Richard Arnold, an entomologist who has worked as a consultant at the preserve. "But you've got to realize that insects have a remarkable reproductive capacity if their natural food source is there."
Soon there will be more. The California Coastal Commission recently approved a $3-million plan to restore portions of 48 acres at the northern end of the old subdivision. The project is part of a settlement of a lawsuit between LAX and surrounding cities over the airport's expansion plans.
Some streets, curbs, sidewalks, home foundations and utilities visible to neighboring homeowners will be removed. Six acres will be reseeded with native plants ? sagebrush and goldenbush, primrose, poppies and salt grass among them ? that will return this sliver of dunes back to where it was a century ago.
"They wanted us to fix what they consider to be an eyesore," airport spokeswoman Nancy Suey Castles said.
The story of Surfridge is a parable for a century's worth of urban growth destruction.
"It was paradise when I was a kid," said Duke Dukesherer, a business executive and amateur historian who has written about the area. "Everybody who sees it now asks the same question: What the hell happened here?"
A development company held a contest in 1925 to name its newest neighborhood, awarding $1,000 to a Los Angeles man who submitted "Surfridge."
"The outstanding name was (chosen) due to its brevity, euphony, ease of pronunciation?" The Times reported. "But above all because it most satisfactorily tells the story of this new wonder city."
Prospective buyers picked up brochures in downtown Los Angeles and drove to the coast, where salesmen worked out of tents. Lots went for $50 down and $20 a month for three years.
Home exteriors were required to be brick, stone or stucco ? no frame structures allowed. And no one "not entirely that of the Caucasian race," according to the development's deed restrictions "except such as are in the employ of the resident owners."
The onset of the Great Depression nearly torpedoed the project, but by the early 1930s, the wealthy gobbled up lots and built large homes. They were followed by an expanding upper middle class.
As commercial aviation surged after World War II, there were more and more planes overhead, a burgeoning industry in a city that was growing at a breakneck pace.
But it was the Jet Age that killed Surfridge.
"If you lived in Surfridge prior to the late 1950s, you had to raise your voice a bit when having a conversation," Dukesherer said. "After the jets came, you had to literally stop talking when they took off."
The 1960s brought complaints, anger, lawsuits, condemnation, holdouts and, finally, capitulation.
Today, except for the crumbling concrete, Surfridge exists solely in memory and faded snapshots. The views are still great and people park their vehicles on the road above Dockweiler State Beach to savor them, read a book or take a nap.
It's a strange place to seek relaxation. The screech and roar overhead invades the senses like blowing sand.
But wait long enough and there is a lull in air traffic and respite from the racket. The ocean below can finally be heard. Thoughts turn to a time when this was all dunes and the blue butterfly didn't need any help.
And then, just as suddenly, a 747 shatters the silence.
mike.anton@latimes.com
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Pistorius bought, collected guns in Olympic year
In this photo taken Tuesday, Feb 26, 2012, participants take part in target practice at a shooting range in Krugersdorp, South Africa. In the light of the bail hearing for athlete Oscar Pistorius last week it came to light how police stumbled and fumbled through investigations. Police investigator Hilton Botha possibly contaminated the crime scene and faced attempted murder charges himself, placing even more strain on the credibility of the police. In recruiting personal the police have in a large way neglected the the quality of the personal recruited. It is in this lack of trust that guns thrive. (AP Photo/Cobus Bodenstein)
In this photo taken Tuesday, Feb 26, 2012, participants take part in target practice at a shooting range in Krugersdorp, South Africa. In the light of the bail hearing for athlete Oscar Pistorius last week it came to light how police stumbled and fumbled through investigations. Police investigator Hilton Botha possibly contaminated the crime scene and faced attempted murder charges himself, placing even more strain on the credibility of the police. In recruiting personal the police have in a large way neglected the the quality of the personal recruited. It is in this lack of trust that guns thrive. (AP Photo/Cobus Bodenstein)
FILE - In this frame grab from CCTV footage leaked to M-Net's Carte Blanche program which viewed Sunday Feb 24, 2013, shows Reeva Steenkamp entering the secured access to the Silverwoods housing estate, home of Olympian athlete Oscar Pistorius, some hours before she was shot and killed at Pistorius' home. Even if Pistorius is acquitted of murder, firearms and legal experts in South Africa believe that, by his own account, the star violated basic gun-handling regulations by shooting into a closed door without knowing who was behind it, exposing himself to the lesser but still serious charge of culpable homicide. (AP Photo/M-Net Carte Blanche, File)
FILE - In this Friday Feb. 22, 2013 file photo Olympic athlete, Oscar Pistorius, is watched by a policeman while in the dock during his bail hearing in Pretoria, South Africa, charged with the shooting death of his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp. During the hearing last week it was heard how police stumbled and fumbled through the bail hearing and how investigator, Hilton Botha, possibly contaminated the crime scene and faced attempted murder charges himself. (AP Photo, File)
FILE - In this Feb. 22, 2013 file photo, Olympic athlete Oscar Pistorius arrives for a bail hearing in the shooting death of his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp. Pistorius' representatives on Wednesday, Feb. 27, 2013 named the substance found in his bedroom after the shooting death of his girlfriend as Testis compositum, and say it is an herbal remedy used "in aid of muscle recovery." South African police say they found needles in Pistorius' bedroom along with the substance, which they initially named as testosterone. Prosecutors later withdrew that statement identifying the substance and said it had been sent for laboratory tests. (AP Photo, File)
A sculpture by Carl Fredrik Reutersward, titled "knotted gun" which is a symbol designed to protest against global violence and senseless killings, in Cape Town, South Africa, Tuesday, Feb. 26, 2013. Attorney Martin Hood who specializes in firearm law said Licensed gun owners are allowed to use lethal force only if they believe thay are facing an immediate, serious and direct attack, or threat of attack, that could either be deadly or cause grievous injury. (AP Photo/Schalk van Zuydam)
JOHANNESBURG (AP) ? In his Olympic year, Oscar Pistorius steadily became an avid firearms collector, joining a gun-collecting club and purchasing a collection of firearms that included a .500 Magnum pistol dubbed by its manufacturer as "the most powerful production revolver in the world" and a civilian version of a military assault rifle.
At the end of 2012, in the first blush of his romance with Reeva Steenkamp, the model he later shot and killed, Pistorius got deeper into his hobby. It was known that Pistorius liked guns but only now, from Associated Press interviews with other collectors, is it becoming clear the extent to which he became a dedicated firearms aficionado in the 12 months before he shot Steenkamp.
The track star not only applied for licenses to own more guns, but actually bought them, too, according to John Beare, vice chairman of the Lowveld Firearm Collectors Association which accepted Pistorius as a paid-up member last April. He and Pistorius were introduced at a Johannesburg hotel in January 2012, and it was there that Beare first explained to the athlete and some of his friends how to become certified collectors.
Had he not become a collector, Pistorius would under South African law have been limited to a maximum of four firearms for self-defense, of which only two could have been handguns, according to Johannesburg attorney Martin Hood, who specializes in firearms law.
Carvel Webb, chairman of the National Arms and Ammunition Collectors Confederation of South Africa, an umbrella group for the country's 2,000 approved private collectors including Pistorius, said that in the wake of Steenkamp's killing his group will now verify that Pistorius fulfilled the necessary requirements to be accepted as a collector and a decision in January to let him start collecting semi-automatic rifles.
"We will review all of those just to see if we are happy with it," Webb said.
Pistorius made no secret of his passion for firearms. Reporters who visited him at home in Pretoria, the capital, saw the pistol he kept by his bed and was licensed to own. He practiced at firing ranges both in South Africa and in Europe where he trained for the London Games. But apparently less well-known was his involvement with gun collectors to start building a firearms collection.
Beare said he twice observed Pistorius shoot at firing ranges and also at a clay pigeon shoot, but saw nothing to suggest he could be a menace with a gun.
"His safety was good," Beare told the AP. "He wouldn't do anything irrational with a firearm, because then I would have nailed him immediately."
Pistorius says he mistook his girlfriend Steenkamp for a home intruder and shot her while she was in his bathroom toilet, firing through the closed door. Pistorius' license for the 9 mm pistol was issued on Sept. 10, 2010, according to the South African Police Service's National Firearms Center. It was registered for self-defense
Prosecutors have charged Pistorius with premeditated murder for killing Steenkamp with three of four shots fired in the early hours of Feb. 14.
"I had no reason to believe that there was anything wrong, that he could have a dark side, that there could be something wrong," said Beare.
However, Roberto Siriu, president of the Tolmezzo shooting range in northeast Italy, said Pistorius did not seem to him to be well-trained with firearms.
"No, I don't think so. He didn't give me that impression," Siriu told the AP.
Pistorius shot at Tolmezzo during breaks from athletic training in the nearby town of Gemona. In November 2011, Pistorius posted a photo of himself firing a rifle at Tolmezzo, with the words: "Had a 96% headshot over 300m from 50shots! Bam!"
Last June, seven weeks before he made history by running at the London Games, Pistorius tweeted that he was going back to Tolmezzo to shoot vintage rifles, adding: "Amped to the max! Yeaaah boi!!"
Gun collecting is regulated by South Africa's stringent Firearms Control Act. Pistorius had to explain to his collecting association, both in writing and in interviews, what types of firearms he wanted to collect and why.
Beare said he and two other association members interviewed Pistorius in June or July 2012, shortly before he became the first double-amputee Olympic runner.
"He was still budding (as a collector) at that stage. He had done his research on it and he was interested in American firearms," Beare said.
The association certified Pistorius as a beginner collector, Beare said. Pistorius bought two Smith & Wesson revolvers and three shotguns and sent photos of the firearms and their serial numbers to the association, as required, Beare said.
But Pistorius couldn't take actual physical possession of his firearms because he didn't have police-issued licenses for them. So the weapons were kept for safekeeping by a gun dealer, Beare said. At firing ranges, Pistorius used other people's guns, he added.
Pistorius eventually applied for the licenses in January, according to the National Firearms Center. It listed his weapons as:
?A Smith & Wesson model 500. With a caliber of .500 Magnum, it is called "the most powerful production revolver in the world" by its manufacturer in Springfield, Massachusetts. "A hunting handgun for any game animal walking," the company's website says. Pistorius was "quite fascinated" with that particular weapon, Beare said.
?A Smith & Wesson .38-caliber revolver.
?Three shotguns: A Mossberg, a Maverick and a Winchester, all American makes.
?A Vektor .223-caliber rifle.
The current status of those applications is unclear. Firearms Center officials said after Pistorius killed Steenkamp that the six license applications were sent back to a Johannesburg police station to be refilled, but the reason for that wasn't given.
For civilian collectors, the Vektor is the closest they can get to the R-series assault rifles used by South Africa's military. For civilian use, the rifle is modified to make it only semi-automatic. Because it is classed as a restricted weapon in South Africa, Pistorius had to upgrade his status from a beginner to a more serious collector.
As part of that upgrading process, Pistorius was interviewed again by his collectors' club this January, Beare said. It accepted the runner's explanation that he wanted to collect weapons linked to South African military history, Beare said. He said that entitled Pistorius to start collecting not just South African firearms but also Russian-made guns that guerrilla groups have used over the years to fight South African forces.
Pistorius bought the Vektor around December, and sent the serial number and a photo to the association, Beare added.
Collecting firearms can be expensive. Vektors sell for US$1,100 to US$1,500 on South African gun-resale websites. Pistorius' athletic success and sponsorships have made him wealthy. Beare said he understood that Pistorius was planning to build on his collection over time.
"You start small and then you start growing," he said.
Some have questioned why Pistorius felt he needed such a variety of weapons and whether the association should have certified him.
Andre Pretorius, president of the Professional Firearm Trainers Council, a regulatory body for South African firearms instructors, said he struggles to see how pistols, shotguns and a semi-automatic rifle could be regarded as a coherent collection.
"The makes differ, the models differ and generally a collection needs to have a theme," said Pretorius. "I don't see there's a theme here."
But Webb, of the collectors' confederation, disagreed.
"There was a logic," Webb told the AP. "He's got three approved areas of interest."
___
AP Sports Writer Andrew Dampf in Rome contributed to this report.
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Saturday, March 2, 2013
Kremlin says Putin, Obama seek "new initiatives" on Syria
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Vladimir Putin and Barack Obama have told their foreign ministers to keep in close touch and seek "new initiatives" to end Syria's civil war, the Kremlin said after a telephone conversation between the two leaders.
The Kremlin said Putin and Obama also pledged to seek to avoid steps that would harm Russian-U.S. relations, which have been strained by differences over Syria and other issues including Putin's treatment of opponents since he began a new term as president last May.
The phone call took place three days after Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and new U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry discussed the Syrian crisis at a meeting in Berlin but signaled no breakthrough.
"The presidents have instructed (Lavrov and Kerry) to continue active contacts focused on working out possible new initiatives aimed at a political settlement of the crisis (in Syria)," the Kremlin said in a statement.
Senior U.S. and Russian diplomats have met repeatedly in recent months, along with U.N. Syria envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, with little sign of progress toward a solution to the nearly two-year-old conflict that has killed more than 70,000 people.
They have long been at odds over the fate of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The United States says he must go but Russia says his exit from power must not be a precondition for a negotiated settlement.
Russia's Foreign Ministry said earlier on Friday that decisions made at a "Friends of Syria" meeting in Rome, after which Kerry pledged increased non-lethal U.S. aid for Syrian rebels, would embolden Assad's foes seeking his overthrow.
Brahimi emphasized on Thursday that Washington and Moscow should play a leading role in seeking a solution, saying: "If Russia and the United States reached a real agreement, it would be easy for an international decision to be taken."
Russia says it is not propping up Assad and has publicly distanced itself from him, but has lent him crucial support by blocking, with China, three U.N. Security Council resolutions aimed to push him out or press him to end the bloodshed.
On Thursday, Putin cautiously welcomed a suggestion from French leader Francois Hollande that dialogue on Syria be broadened to bring in parties that could act as negotiators between Assad and opposition rebels.
Assad's government has shown increased willingness to hold talks with the opposition. Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem said in Moscow on Monday that the government would even speak to armed rebels.
The Kremlin said the telephone call was initiated by Obama, and the statement sounded an upbeat note on Russian-U.S. ties.
"The leaders of both countries are united in their desire to avoid any steps that could negatively reflect on bilateral relations," it said.
Already strained by what Kremlin critics say is a crackdown on dissent, ties worsened after Obama signed a law in December aimed at punishing suspected Russian human rights abusers by barring them from the United States and freezing their assets there.
Putin responded with a law imposing similar measures and banning the adoption of Russian children by Americans.
(Reporting By Alissa de Carbonnel; Editing by Steve Gutterman and Rosalind Russell)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/kremlin-says-putin-obama-seek-initiatives-syria-195226161.html
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