50 months to avoid climate disaster, from The Guardian

50 months to avoid climate disaster – and a change is in the air | Andrew Simms | Environment | guardian.co.uk: "Monday 1 October marks the halfway point in a 100-month countdown to a game of climate roulette.

On a very conservative estimate, 50 months from now, the dice become loaded against us in terms of keeping under a 2C temperature rise. This level matters because beyond it an environmental "domino effect" is likely to operate. In a volatile and unpredictable dynamic, things like melting ice, and the release of carbon from the planet's surface are set to feed off each other, accelerating and reinforcing the warming effect.

The time frame follows an estimate of risk of rising greenhouse gas concentrations from the world's leading authority on climate change, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), that passed a certain point, it will no longer be "likely" that we stay the right side of the line. Some consider even a 2C rise too much, but it is the limit that the EU and others have signed up to."

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Local Choices, Global Effects

FDI in retail: Why 30% local rule is 100% trouble for MNCs - The Economic Times: "But shouldn't these people be over the moon? The government has after all granted their wish and a long-pending one at that. Companies such as Wal-Mart Stores Inc, the world's biggest retailer, have long been lobbying to enter India.

Yet, it is obvious why retailers are not ecstatic. The government's welcome mat to multinational supermarkets is riddled with riders. Under the new rules, foreign multi-brand retailers must invest at least $100 million and half that amount must be ploughed into back-end infrastructure in rural areas.

That's not all. State governments will decide if they want foreign players and stores will be permitted only in cities of at least 1 million people. Retailers must also source 30% of the value of goods purchased from small- and mid-sized domestic suppliers."

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High flying Chinese, low flying west

China's economic slowdown has yet to thin the wallets of globetrotting shoppers - The Economic Times: "Rich Chinese tourists paying $40,000 to hunt elk in Utah or booking the entire first-class cabin for a family flight to France show, China's economic slowdown has yet to thin the wallets or dull the appetites of its deep-pocketed elite.

China's "Golden Week" holiday, a popular time for overseas travel, starts on Saturday. This year it coincides with the Mid-Autumn Festival to create a rare eight-day break, and visitors to Europe will not be there to get a taste of austere living.

Helen Shen, a travel planner in Shanghai, said a private business owner had booked the whole first-class section of a Lufthansa jet to fly his family of four to Paris this month.

Shen is one of many luxury travel organisers who still see the money rolling in from executives and members of the "fu er dai" - the second generation of wealthy families - despite China's economic uncertainty"

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Sustainability - saving money by doing good?

How luxury hotel chain Hilton is the fighting the sustainability battle - The Economic Times: "Rebel American singer-songwriter Pete Seeger can rest easy now with his evergreen 'Where have all the flowers gone' . Guests at Delhi's Hilton Janakpuri are now greeted by miniature plants in their rooms instead of flowers. Executive housekeeper Shiv claims that only the lobby areas have flowers while real plants adorn guest rooms: "The flowers wither away in a day or two but the plants are here to stay. So our housekeeping staff waters the plants every day and we've so far saved about 50% of what we've had to pay for flowers, by switching over."

Down south, Hilton Chennai is on power drive with wind energy fuelling its electricity needs. "With wind alone, we save about 10% of our electricity costs," says Roger Brantsma, General Manager, Hilton Chennai, who has recently started using water from the hotel's sewage treatment plant for landscaping and gardening. "That offsets cost by 25% if we had to buy water from the open market." "

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F & V - better ugly than nothing

'Ugly' fruit and veg make the grade on UK supermarket shelves | Environment | guardian.co.uk: "Knobbly carrots, wonky spuds, bent courgettes and discoloured cauliflowers will return to supermarket shelves after one of the worst growing seasons farmers have experienced in decades.

The driest March in 59 years, followed by the wettest June and autumn storms and flooding have reduced British fruit and vegetable harvests by more than 25% and left supermarkets unable to source their regular shaped, blemish-free produce.

On Thursday, Sainsbury's relaxed its rules on the cosmetic appearance of fresh produce and allowed fruit and vegetables that would normally be ploughed back into fields to be sold in its 1,012 stores.

"We've taken the decision to radically change our approach to buying British fruit and vegetables as a result of this year's unseasonal weather. This may mean a bit more mud on peas or strawberries that are a little smaller than usual, but our customers understand and love the idea," said Judith Batchelar, director of Sainsbury's food."

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Melting our future away, the Arctic Way

The Arctic ice cap is melting - and with it goes our future - The Irish Times - Thu, Sep 27, 2012: "THE TRUTH, as Winston Churchill put it, is incontrovertible. “Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is.” Scrape away the layers of denial, obfuscation and spin that cloud climate change and one unvarnished truth emerges: the Arctic ice cap is dying – and, with it, humanity’s best hopes for a prosperous, predictable future.

In the most dramatic reconfiguration of the map of the world since the end of the last Ice Age, the Arctic ice cap is now committed to accelerated collapse.

In 2007, the intergovernmental panel on climate change warned that, unless emissions were drastically curbed globally, the Arctic ocean could be clear of summer sea ice towards the end of this century.

In 2007, the intergovernmental panel on climate change warned that, unless emissions were drastically curbed globally, the Arctic ocean could be clear of summer sea ice towards the end of this century.

They were hopelessly optimistic. On September 16th last, Arctic sea ice hit its lowest level ever recorded, at 3.41 million sq km, barely half the 1979-2000 average. The area of sea ice lost is 41 times larger than the island of Ireland. While the drop in sea ice extent is alarming, the 72 per cent decline in its volume is worse. Not only is ice cover shrinking, the surviving ice is thinning precipitously.

Prof Peter Wadhams of the Polar Ocean Physics Group described the September 2012 figures as a “global disaster”. He now projects the destruction of Arctic summer sea ice by 2015-16 – more than half a century ahead of the IPCC’s projections. “The final collapse towards that state is now happening and will probably be complete by those dates,” he added.

It is difficult to overstate the magnitude of what is now unfolding in the Arctic region. The Arctic ice cap used to cover 2 per cent of the Earth’s surface, and the ice albedo effect meant vast amounts of solar energy were bounced back into space from the bright white ice mass.

Losing this ice, and replacing it with dark open ocean, creates a dramatic tipping point in planetary energy balance.

“The extra radiation that’s absorbed is, from our calculations, the equivalent of about 20 years of additional CO2 being added by man,” Prof Wadhams said.

With global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions already spiralling far beyond the levels that scientists have warned present grave risks to humanity, the injection of a massive new source of additional energy into Earth systems could hardly have come at a worse time.

The northern hemisphere is experiencing sharp foretastes of future climate destabilisation driven by the Arctic meltdown.

The jet stream, which operates between the cold Arctic and the warmer mid-latitudes, dominates much of our weather, and it is weakening and becoming more erratic as Arctic ice melt accelerates and the region warms. The severe cold snaps that brought Ireland to a shivering halt in 2010 and 2011, as well as this summer’s relentless rainfall, are probably connected to Arctic ice cover loss. Jet stream weakness is leading to what are known as blocking events – episodes of extreme weather, be they droughts, freezes or flooding, persisting for unusually long periods. The Russian heatwave of 2010 and the extreme US drought this summer are two more related events.

“We’re in uncharted territory,” says James Overland of the University of Washington. The weakening jet stream means “wild temperature swings and greater numbers of extreme events”. The last time the Arctic is believed to have been ice-free is during the Eemian period, about 125,000 years ago, when global sea levels were between four and six metres higher than today. However, current atmospheric CO2 levels are already far higher than during the Eemian; indeed, you would have to go back several million years to find any era in the Earth’s history to match today’s levels of this powerful heat-trapping “greenhouse gas”.

Lags in the system mean that we have so far experienced only the very mildest of the effects of the ever-growing heat imbalance in our climate system. In July, another stark regional landmark was recorded. In the course of just four days, surface ice melt spread from 40 to 97 per cent of Greenland.

“This was so extraordinary that at first I questioned the result: was this real or was it due to a data error?” said Son Nghiem of Nasa.

Meanwhile, between 2003 and 2008 more than 2,000 billion tonnes of land ice from Greenland, Antarctica and Alaska have melted.

As the Arctic summer ice pack is floating, its melt does not directly raise sea levels, but as it spirals towards final destruction, all bets are off as to the stability of the adjacent massive land-based Greenland ice pack. There is enough frozen water locked up here to raise global sea levels by six to seven metres over time.

One person’s global catastrophe is another’s commercial opportunity. Governments and energy companies, notably Shell, are busy jostling to be in position to loot the oil and minerals hidden beneath the region’s fast-disappearing ice. This is akin to setting your house on fire to keep yourself warm.

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Taxing time for UK High Earners

High earners targeted in UK drive to increase tax income - The Irish Times - Wed, Sep 26, 2012: "HIGHER EARNERS in the United Kingdom are to face higher taxes, while additional tax officials are to target people with offshore bank accounts in Liechtenstein and other tax havens as part of an effort to find £16 billion in savings and taxes in coming years, a senior British minister has said.

However, the threshold to be used to identify higher earners remains unclear, following contradictory signals at yesterday’s Liberal Democrats annual conference in Brighton. The average British salary is about £24,000 a year – anyone earning more than £50,000 a year is included in the top 10 per cent.

On being questioned, Lib Dem leader and deputy prime minister Nick Clegg said he was not focused “on the whole 10 per cent”, while chief secretary to the treasury Danny Alexander announced that a special Revenue and Customs unit would target those with more than £1 million in assets."

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Benched and Pressed- the Indian IT Bigg

Idle staff in US, Europe to drag profits of Indian software companies like TCS, Infosys and Wipro - The Economic Times: "BANGALORE: The rising number of idle workers in the US and Europe for Indian software companies could drag profitability lower. This will add to troubles already caused by an uncertain business environment, where clients are delaying decisions around technology projects.

The so-called 'bench' consisting of engineers who are not working on any active projects has increased by at least seven percentage points at TCS, InfosysBSE -0.02 % and Wipro, analysts said. Industry executives and analysts are of the view that the swelling bench could shave off up to 150 basis points from operating margins in the coming quarters.

Onsite utilisation rates, or the proportion of engineers in client locations assigned to billable projects, have fallen to below 90 per cent from 97 per cent at the beginning of the year. A senior industry executive, who works closely with large IT companies, said that up to 18 per cent of onsite staff are sitting idle at some firms."

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Senate passes Senile bill: votes for anti-quality of life

Senate passes bill to shield US airlines from EU carbon-emissions law | Environment | guardian.co.uk: "The US Senate unanimously passed a bill on Saturday that would shield US airlines from paying for their carbon emissions on European flights, pressuring the European Union to back down from applying its emissions law to foreign carriers.

Since January, the European Commission has been enforcing its law to make all airlines take part in its Emissions Trading Scheme, which aims to combat global warming.

The Senate approved the bill shortly after midnight, as it scrambled to complete business to recess ahead of the 6 November congressional and presidential elections."

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(Ethics) Flushed down the toilet - luxury hotels report stealing of toilet seats

TV, toilet seat top list of items stolen from hotels - The Economic Times: "MELBOURNE: Televisions, curtains and even toilet seats have featured in the list of items hotel guests nicked from their rooms, according to a new survey.

A survey of 500 hotels around the world by a website found that nothing is safe in a hotel from such culprits, not even the floor - with hotel guests taking such a shine to the carpet of one Las Vegas hotel that they cut it out completely and took it with them.

A guest at a five-star Dubai hotel liked the mini-bar options so much he/she decided to take the entire fridge along with a sofa, News.com.au reported.

Another at a Berlin hotel stole the rain shower heads, hydro massage shower units, taps, interior plumbing, sink and toilet seats! A luxury Istanbul hotel reported that a guest emptied the entire room of its fittings and furniture, except for the bed, desk and TV. "

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An Interesting look at the young

A lost generation? Not us - The Irish Times - Sat, Sep 22, 2012:
"UNPAID WORK EXPERIENCE

“I had a bad experience of it. I ended up getting nothing out of it, aside from the experience, which was great, to be fair. But as a result I’m skewed against the notion of working for free. A lot of companies are taking advantage of it.”Seán Keane

PERCEPTIONS OF YOUNG PEOPLE

“I think young people get a raw deal . . . they’re often tarred with the same brush: everyone’s a vandal, a troublemaker or nothing but trouble. But there’s lots of work done by young people in communities, out helping other people.” Jamie Leahy

“The media highlights trouble more than the good things they do. You never see articles on the positive things involving young people, such as [the mental health campaigns] Think Big and Headstrong.” Stu Clancy"

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Sustainable energy - The Irish Times - Sat, Sep 22, 2012

Sustainable energy - The Irish Times - Sat, Sep 22, 2012: "Global warming, EU carbon emission penalties, distrust of nuclear power and finite oil and gas reserves have all contributed to a surge in alternative energy investments across Europe. Solar and wind power have received most attention, but the capacity of the ocean to supply electricity is also under development, as is biomass. Here in Ireland, the main focus has been on the development of wind power, driven to a considerable degree by British interest.

A memorandum of understanding between the two governments, signed earlier this year, brought a flurry of activity. Element Power, a US energy group, announced its intention to build 40 wind farms in the midlands and generate 3,000 megawatts for transmission to Britain by dedicated underwater cables. Mainstream Renewable Power announced plans to generate 5,000 megawatts, also in the midlands. Both would come on stream in five years and both, crucially, are seeking fast-track, strategic planning status."

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Not working, not breaking a sweat, yet making a cool $13.696 million in Adjusted Gross Income

Romney Paid 14.1% U.S. Tax Rate on $13.7 Million in Income - Bloomberg: "Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney paid $1.9 million in taxes on $13.7 million of income in 2011 for a 14.1 percent rate, according to tax returns he released today.

Romney and his wife, Ann, make most of their income from investing an estimated $250 million fortune, and much of that income is taxed at a top rate of 15 percent, rather than the top rate of 35 percent for wages. In 2011, Romney reported no income from wages, $6.8 million from capital gains and $3 million from taxable interest."

The Romneys donated more than 29 percent of their income to charity, including more than $1.1 million in cash to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

The investment tax breaks could have kept Romney’s tax rate below 13 percent, which last month he said was at least what he had paid over the past decade. To stay above that level for 2011, Romney didn’t claim all of the deductions for charitable contributions that he could, according to a blog post by Brad Malt, a partner at Ropes & Gray LLP in Boston who manages Romney’s investments.

“He has been clear that no American need pay more than he or she owes under the law,” Michele Davis, a campaign spokeswoman, said in a statement. “At the same time, he was in the unique position of having made a commitment to the public that his tax rate would be above 13%. He directed his preparers to ensure that he is consistent with that statement.”

One in 17,000

Romney, 65, is a former Massachusetts governor and co- founder of Bain Capital LLC, the Boston-based private equity firm. His returns, which include three trusts, reflect the wealth and income profile of a small fraction of U.S. taxpayers with investments around the world. In 2009, according to the Internal Revenue Service, about 1 in 17,000 households reported adjusted gross income exceeding $10 million.

CHilling news

Fast pace of Arctic ice melt a sign of 'planetary emergency' - The Irish Times - Fri, Sep 21, 2012: "THE DRASTIC melting of Arctic sea ice has finally ended for the year but not before demolishing the previous record – and setting off new warnings about the rapid pace of change in the region.

The apparent low point for 2012 was reached on Sunday, according to the US National Snow and Ice Data Center, which said that sea ice that day covered about 1.32 million square miles, or 24 per cent, of the surface of the Arctic Ocean. The previous low, set in 2007, was 29 per cent."

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Women, Power, and Peace

Who creates harmony the world over? Women. Who signs peace deals? Men | Global development | The Guardian: "Around the world, women make peace in their homes and communities on a daily basis. But when it comes to negotiating and signing peace deals on a national or international level they are almost universally shut out, according to a report that calls for a more balanced approach to resolving conflict.

A 2000 UN security council resolution that called for equal participation for women in "the maintenance and promotion of sustainable peace" has been almost totally ignored, not least by the UN itself, says the report. There have been no female chief mediators in UN-brokered peace talks and fewer than 10% of police officers and 2% of the soldiers sent on UN peacekeeping missions have been women."

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Face-off or Face-book

No Facebook at work can be a deal-breaker in jobs: Study - The Economic Times: "MELBOURNE: Almost 20 per cent employees admitted they would reject a job offer if they did not have reasonable access to social media sites such as Facebook.

A survey of 870 employers and employees from recruitment company Hays found that 19.7 per cent workers would not take up a job offer where access to social media was limited.

About half of those surveyed already accessed social media at work, with 13.3 per cent accessing it daily and 36.4 per cent checking occasionally, the AAP news agency reported. "

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The Hindu : Health / Medicine & Research : High-fat diet raises risk of breast cancer: study

The Hindu : Health / Medicine & Research : High-fat diet raises risk of breast cancer: study: "Researchers from the University of California at Davis found that a diet linked to obesity and harmful metabolic changes stimulated early breast growth and led to abnormal tissues in the breast that may produce breast cancer.

Scientists fed newly weaned mice a diet containing a fatty acid called 10,12 CLA which can trigger metabolic syndrome, a condition linked to obesity, diabetes and heart disease, the Daily Mail reported. The fatty acid is present in hydrogenated fats, widely used in the manufacture of biscuits, cakes and processed foods.

Giving female mice the 10,12 CLA stimulated growth of their mammary ducts. This was despite the young animals lacking the hormone oestrogen, believed to be vital to female reproductive development.

In some animals, the altered diet also resulted in the kind of abnormal cell growth that can lead to breast cancer."

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The Dependants- according to Romney

Mitt Romney under fire after comments caught on video | World news | guardian.co.uk: "Mitt Romney was caught up in a fresh and damaging secret video controversy on Monday night, only hours after his campaign team tacitly admitted it was struggling and was going to have revise its campaign strategy.

The video, showing Romney at a closed-doors fundraising event, captures him dismissing 47% of the nation as government-dependent. "My job is not to worry about those people," he says.

He adds: "I'll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives."

The release of the video, on the liberal Mother Jones website, came at an awkward moment for the Romney campaign amid reports of internal strife and bickering among his campaign managers."

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SUVIndians

Why you should think before buying an SUV - The Economic Times: "It may be too much of a good thing. The SUV craze back home is a bit like Indians gorging on fried chicken and sugared water even as the developed world is looking for healthier alternatives. Big, fuel-guzzling and arguably less safe (than sedans) mean machines are catching the imagination of affluent Indians at a time when relatively more fuel-efficient smaller cars and greener alternative like electrics and gas-electric hybrids are being spotted on roads in the Western world.
You can't blame Indians — who are just beginning to wean themselves off a diet of mediocre UVs — for falling for the bewitching looks of these chrome-dripping machines with macho grilles and muscular shoulder lines. This writer, too, has in the past clocked thousands of kilometres on highways, expressways and country roads on the majestic elevated perch of a multi-utility vehicle that roared as much as it purred depending on the terrain underfoot"

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Alzheimer's could be the most catastrophic impact of junk food | George Monbiot | Comment is free | The Guardian

Alzheimer's could be the most catastrophic impact of junk food | George Monbiot | Comment is free | The Guardian: "When you raise the subject of over-eating and obesity, you often see people at their worst. The comment threads discussing these issues reveal a legion of bullies who appear to delight in other people's problems.

When alcoholism and drug addiction are discussed, the tone tends to be sympathetic. When obesity is discussed, the conversation is dominated by mockery and blame, though the evidence suggests that it may be driven by similar forms of addiction.

I suspect that much of this mockery is a coded form of snobbery: the strong association between poor diets and poverty allows people to use this issue as a cipher for something else they want to say, which is less socially acceptable."

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Cold News regarding the Arctic Sea Ice Level

Arctic sea ice shrinks to smallest extent ever recorded | Environment | guardian.co.uk: "Sea ice in the Arctic has shrunk to its smallest extent ever recorded, smashing the previous record minimum and prompting warnings of accelerated climate change.

Satellite images show that the rapid summer melt has reduced the area of frozen sea to less than 3.5 million square kilometres this week – less than half the area typically occupied four decades ago.

Arctic sea ice cover has been shrinking since the 1970s when it averaged around 8m sq km a year, but such a dramatic collapse in ice cover in one year is highly unusual.

A record low in 2007 of 4.17m sq km was broken on 27 August 2012; further melting has since amounted to more than 500,000 sq km.

The record, which is based on a five-day average, is expected to be officially declared in the next few days by the National Snow and Ice Data Centre in Colorado. The NSIDC's data shows the sea ice extent is bumping along the bottom, with a new low of 3.421m sq km on Tuesday, which rose very slightly to 3.429m sq km on Wednesday and 3.45m sq km on Thursday."

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Cooking up Tips for a good College Passage

Cheap and cheerful way through college - The Irish Times - Tue, Sep 11, 2012: "WHEN PRICEWATCH were a lad, students were skint. No one drove cars or ate in restaurants or went on holidays or darkened the doors of ridiculously over-priced clothes shops staffed by ridiculously beautiful people or drank cocktails unless they were made with the dregs of the drinks cabinet of a parent who had gone away and foolishly left their wayward children to their own devices.

Times were, in short, lean but students got by – and had a right old wheeze – on pretty much nothing.

Many of the Celtic Tiger’s cubs on the other hand, were spoiled rotten and lived it up at their parents’ expense, while others waltzed in to well-paid part-time jobs where they worked for their play money. It is all changed now, jobs are harder to come by and the parental purse strings are tighter than then have been since the early 1990s. So how can the students of today make ends meet? It’s not hard."

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Power-ful story that lights up a village

Indian blackout held no fear for small hamlet where the power stayed on | World news | guardian.co.uk: "At the end of July, India experienced the worst blackout in modern history. At least 20 states lost power in three huge grid failures covering an area home to more than 700 million people.

In one tiny village in very rural Rajasthan, the lights stayed on. Buttermilk machines churned, televisions blared and fans whirred, providing respite from the drenching humidity of the post-monsoon heat.

"We were sitting in the dark in our head office in Jaipur waiting for the power to come back on and yet in Khareda, where very recently they had no power at all, there was an unbroken supply of electricity," said Yashraj Khaitan, one of two 22-year-olds who made it happen.

Khaitan, who is Indian, with Jacob Dickinson, who was born in San Diego, has a big plan: to bring cheap, sustainable electricity to at least one million Indians within five years through their start-up, Gram Power."

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Basic Greek- easy to follow, hard to understand

Primary Greek tax evaders are the professional classes | World news | The Guardian: "There is one good reason for Greece to stay in the euro: to combat corruption. It is a sad fact that the country is riddled with it and needs outside pressure and support to sort things out. Athens is not the only place in Europe wrestling with corruption, but we'll come to that later.

Even if Greece and its prime minister, Antonis Samaras, could overcome the huge loss of pride and reap some of the economic benefits of quitting the single currency, they would still be left with a corrupt economy, much of which strengthens the power of unions and trade associations.

City economists tend to ignore the problem when they assess the pros and cons of euro membership. They have arrived at the collective opinion that leaving the eurozone is the best, if not the only, option for Athens. Central to the argument is that an independent drachma would immediately be devalued, making Greek exports more competitive and at a stroke wiping out many, if not all, of the country's debts."

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Student Loans: squeezed for life

Student Loans: Debt for Life - Businessweek:... "If student loans are good debt, how do you account for the reaction of Christina Mills, 30, of Minneapolis, when she found out her payment on college and law school loans would be $1,400 a month? “I just went into the car and started sobbing,” says Mills, who works for a nonprofit. “It was more than my paycheck at the time.” Medical student Thomas Smith, 25, of Hamilton, N.J., is $310,000 in debt and is struggling to make ends meet even before beginning to repay his loans. “I don’t even know what I eat,” he says. “I just go to the supermarket and buy the cheapest thing I can and buy as much of it as I can.” "
Then there’s Michael DiPietro, 25, of Brooklyn, who accumulated about $100,000 in debt while getting a bachelor’s degree in fashion, sculpture, and performance, and spent the next two years waiting tables. He has since landed a fundraising job in the arts but still has no idea how he will pay back all that money. “I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s an obsolete idea that a college education is like your golden ticket,” DiPietro says. “It’s an idea that an older generation holds on to.”...

Transfer of wealth via stadium financing by governments

In Stadium Building Spree, U.S. Taxpayers Lose $4 Billion - Bloomberg: "That’s because the 80,000-seat Cowboys Stadium was built partly using tax-free borrowing by the City of Arlington. The resulting subsidy comes out of the pockets of every American taxpayer, including Giants fans. The money doesn’t go directly to the Cowboys’ billionaire owner Jerry Jones. Rather, it lowers the cost of financing, giving his team the highest revenue in the NFL and making it the league’s most-valuable franchise.
“It’s part of the corruption of the federal tax system,” said James Runzheimer, 67, an Arlington lawyer who led opponents of public borrowing for the structure known locally as “Jerry’s World.” “It’s use of government funds to subsidize activity that the private sector can finance on its own.”"

....

Arlington’s ownership of the stadium amounts to another subsidy for Jones. The Cowboys don’t have to pay property taxes on an asset appraised at $904.5 million. That saves Jones about $17 million a year at the current property-tax rate. Arlington’s levies on real estate, accounting for 37 percent of the city’s revenue, were expected to rise 2.3 percent to $74.5 million this fiscal year, the city said in a report.

Soon after voters backed the bond issue, Arlington acquired 73 acres (30 hectares) near the Rangers’ ballpark, Six Flags and the Tom Landry Freeway, connecting Dallas and Fort Worth and named for the Cowboys’ first coach. To make way for what the Cowboys call the “world’s largest domed structure,” Arlington demolished 162 properties, including 51 businesses, 927 apartments and 105 houses, according to the city.

Meatless in Bangalore?

McDonald’s to beef up in India with meatless menu - BostonHerald.com: "NEW YORK — McDonald’s Corp., the fast food chain that brought the hamburger to the world, is opening what may be its first vegetarian-only restaurants.

The world’s biggest hamburger chain said Tuesday that the locations in India will serve only vegetarian food because of customer preferences in the region. The company could not immediately say when the restaurants would open or how many there would be.

A 2006 poll found that about 40 percent of Indians do not eat meat, and McDonald’s is eager to tap that 500-million-strong market."

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Crops and Climate

Drought in India Devastates Crops and Farmers - NYTimes.com: "Studies using 130 years of data show big changes in rainfall in recent decades, said B. N. Goswami, director of the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, a government-backed research organization. Climate models suggest that while overall rainfall should increase in the coming decades, the region can expect longer dry spells and more intense downpours — forces that would seem to cancel each other out but in fact pose new threats.

“Heavy rains are normally short duration, and therefore the water runs off,” said Dr. Goswami, who added that more research was needed to fully understand the impact of climate change on monsoons. “Weak rains are important for recharging groundwater.”

India is more vulnerable to disruption from drought than countries like the United States. While agriculture accounts for just 15 percent of India’s economy, half of its 1.2 billion people work on farms, and many of its poorest citizens already cannot afford enough food after price increases of 10 percent or more in the last couple of years."

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Climate change comments, from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

Perception of climate change: "“Climate dice,” describing the chance of unusually warm or cool seasons, have become more and more “loaded” in the past 30 y, coincident with rapid global warming. The distribution of seasonal mean temperature anomalies has shifted toward higher temperatures and the range of anomalies has increased. An important change is the emergence of a category of summertime extremely hot outliers, more than three standard deviations (3σ) warmer than the climatology of the 1951–1980 base period. This hot extreme, which covered much less than 1% of Earth’s surface during the base period, now typically covers about 10% of the land area. It follows that we can state, with a high degree of confidence, that extreme anomalies such as those in Texas and Oklahoma in 2011 and Moscow in 2010 were a consequence of global warming because their likelihood in the absence of global warming was exceedingly small. We discuss practical implications of this substantial, growing, climate change."

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Localization, the Global Way

Retailers put Irish goods centre stage - The Irish Times - Tue, Aug 28, 2012: "LIDL, THE German discounter, and Tesco, the third largest retailer chain in the world, have been wrapping themselves in the tricolour in recent weeks and urging consumers to keep the local economy going by going through their doors.

Throughout August, many members of Tesco’s Clubcard scheme have been getting an interesting brochure along with their vouchers which highlights many of the Irish foods the State’s largest supermarket has on its shelves.

It repeatedly reminds shoppers of its commitment to buying locally produced foods. The high quality of “Irish produced” is referred to over and over again, and a quick flick through its pages would have you believe that Irish produce is the best in the world.

Mind you, if you lived in the UK, you would get quite a different impression. Tesco there is running an almost identical promotion as part of a campaign which is dubbed “Love British Food”."

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It takes a dedicated Frenchman to study Telugu, while the natives focus on all things American, including the language

The Hindu : Life & Style : Maîtriser mana Telugu: "Frenchman Daniel Negers can stun many a person with his fluent Telugu and far-reaching knowledge of the language

It’s odd to hear a Frenchman belt out padyalu, Jana Padalu and Geetalu. All right, the song, ‘Endaro Mahanubhavulu’ is rendered with a quaint French accent, but the words are all there.

An expert in Telugu from INALCO (National Institute of Oriental Languages and Civilization, Paris), social anthropologist Daniel Negers leaves more than a few faces agape as he delivers a public lecture about his research on Telugu and how he mastered the language.

As he confuses pracheena for parachikam and then immediately corrects himself, you wonder why he has undertaken the difficult struggle to master the language. He points to his forehead and says, “It’s fate, I cannot explain it. Telugu is a beautiful language. With its deerghalu and sandhis, it is seductively complex.”"

Daniel came to India as a tourist way back in the 70s and then returned with his wife in 1983 after completing his M. A. to study ‘Burrakatha’ traditions in Peddapuram near Tuni. “My tryst with the language started out as an academic endeavour to understand the language better. I never imagined this — my life has become the language now,” he smiles.

Was learning the intricacies of Telugu difficult? Yes, says Daniel adding that even after 29 years of studying the language, he still hasn’t mastered it. “Telugu has no similarity to French and everything I learnt came from books and audio tapes.” Daniel points out that the linguistic differences between French and Telugu made the learning an excruciatingly challenging task: “I still face a problem in speaking properly and pronouncing those sounds which don’t exist in my mother tongue.”

Daniel realises that many young Telugu people have lost an interest in speaking the language today. He asserts that this is because the country underwent a serious change in the early 90s, when economic liberalisation ushered in a certain cultural attitudes.

He laments the growing fascination for America and things American and the growing desire to get ahead. “People are so caught up with modern subjects such as engineering and medicine that there is no time to go back and learn their own traditions,” he says.

Currently teaching Telugu to students in France, Daniel hopes to establish a national diploma course in the Telugu language by 2014. While it might have been his interest in folk culture that drew him initially towards the language, it’s the beauty and structure of Telugu that has retained his interest.

Keywords: Frenchman Daniel Neger

Shop around, students- it will solve your problems

Obama, GOP duel over rising college expenses - Yahoo! Finance: "Romney would eliminate duplicative federal college financial aid programs, direct Pell grants to "students that need them most" and put the program on a sustainable long-term path, the document said. It provides few details.
He would put private lenders back in the business of issuing federally backed student loans, let companies compile data about lending and colleges for consumers and help families save for higher education. The paper says little about how.
Campaigning in March, Romney was asked by a voter what he would do to make college more affordable. Romney replied that while it might be popular for him to answer that he would provide students with government money, "what I'm going to tell you is shop around.""

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When lying becomes part of the DNA- the 3 Rs (Ryan, Romney and Republicans) are not what the wise ones recommended

The Republicans have lied so much that it has become part of their DNA. Even when Ryan talks about his marathon he lies about his time, and then asserts that fact-checkers are not relevant to his campaign. It is not fact checkers, but facts that are irrelevant to this particular group of crooked politicians.

Paul Ryan exaggerates his marathon-running prowess - chicagotribune.com: "Runners commenting on the Runner’s World online bulletin board gave a mixed verdict: “The Romney campaign has already stated  ‘We’re not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact-checkers,’” said one. “Anyone who believes Ryan without documented proof should have their voting privileges revoked.”"

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