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Source: http://video.msnbc.msn.com/cnbc/50646550/
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Thursday, January 31, 2013
Prehistoric humans not wiped out by comet, says researchers
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Public release date: 30-Jan-2013[ | E-mail |
Share ] Contact: Tanya Gubbay
tanya.gubbay@rhul.ac.uk
Royal Holloway, University of London
Comet explosions did not end the prehistoric human culture, known as Clovis, in North America 13,000 years ago, according to research published in the journal Geophysical Monograph Series.
Researchers from Royal Holloway university, together with Sandia National Laboratories and 13 other universities across the United States and Europe, have found evidence which rebuts the belief that a large impact or airburst caused a significant and abrupt change to the Earth's climate and terminated the Clovis culture. They argue that other explanations must be found for the apparent disappearance.
Clovis is the name archaeologists have given to the earliest well-established human culture in the North American continent. It is named after the town in New Mexico, where distinct stone tools were found in the 1920s and 1930s.
Researchers argue that no appropriately sized impact craters from that time period have been discovered, and no shocked material or any other features of impact have been found in sediments. They also found that samples presented in support of the impact hypothesis were contaminated with modern material and that no physics model can support the theory.
"The theory has reached zombie status," said Professor Andrew Scott from the Department of Earth Sciences at Royal Holloway. "Whenever we are able to show flaws and think it is dead, it reappears with new, equally unsatisfactory, arguments.
"Hopefully new versions of the theory will be more carefully examined before they are published".
###
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Public release date: 30-Jan-2013[ | E-mail |
Share ] Contact: Tanya Gubbay
tanya.gubbay@rhul.ac.uk
Royal Holloway, University of London
Comet explosions did not end the prehistoric human culture, known as Clovis, in North America 13,000 years ago, according to research published in the journal Geophysical Monograph Series.
Researchers from Royal Holloway university, together with Sandia National Laboratories and 13 other universities across the United States and Europe, have found evidence which rebuts the belief that a large impact or airburst caused a significant and abrupt change to the Earth's climate and terminated the Clovis culture. They argue that other explanations must be found for the apparent disappearance.
Clovis is the name archaeologists have given to the earliest well-established human culture in the North American continent. It is named after the town in New Mexico, where distinct stone tools were found in the 1920s and 1930s.
Researchers argue that no appropriately sized impact craters from that time period have been discovered, and no shocked material or any other features of impact have been found in sediments. They also found that samples presented in support of the impact hypothesis were contaminated with modern material and that no physics model can support the theory.
"The theory has reached zombie status," said Professor Andrew Scott from the Department of Earth Sciences at Royal Holloway. "Whenever we are able to show flaws and think it is dead, it reappears with new, equally unsatisfactory, arguments.
"Hopefully new versions of the theory will be more carefully examined before they are published".
###
[ | E-mail | Share ] ?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-01/rhuo-phn013013.php
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House Cats Kill 25 Billion Small Animals Every Year | Geekosystem
Now that we live in a society whose cultural output is dominated by videos of kittens, people?s gut reaction to cats is largely ?Aaaawwwww.? That makes it easy to forget that every cat on Earth is a nearly perfect machine built for the sole purpose of murdering small animals. Every now and again, we get a reminder of the fact, and the latest one is an estimate published in the journal Nature Communications this week suggesting that domestic cats in the United States are responsible for the deaths of 3.7 billion birds and ?more than 20 billion small mammals every year. Doing that math, it appears that literally every second your beloved pet is not in you lap, it is snuffing out tiny lives with mind-boggling efficiency.
The math breaks down like this. Previous studies and observations have found that domestic outside cats kill between 30 and 47 birds and as many as 299 small mammals ? mice, voles, and other Redwall denizens, mostly ? per cat every year. Multiply that by about 84 million domestic pet cats, many of whom come and go mostly as they please, and as many as 80 million more stray and feral cats, and you?ll reach the unpleasant conclusion that every well groomed front yard and neighborhood park you see is more or less a feline grocery store ? and butcher?s shop. According to the paper, domestic cats:
??are likely the single greatest source of anthropogenic mortality for US birds and mammals.?
You read that right. According to this estimate, creating the domesticating the cat is, by one metric, the most lethal thing mankind has ever done to the planet. And we get up to some stuff, folks. Just roll that one around in your head.
If that number seems on the high side, you?re not alone. The study?s conclusions represent ?a much higher estimate than previous numbers quoted for the impact of domestic cats on small animal mortality. Still, it doesn?t even take into account the number of lizards, frogs and other species killed by cats, meaning the real number of deaths doled out by house cats could be even higher. If it helps to salve your conscience, though, most of the deaths are not caused by house pets, but feral animals. The study also comes at a time of renewed debate on the problem of feral cats, sparked by a controversial cat-culling program proposed in New Zealand recently.
Still, the news is pretty troubling for conservationists, many of whom have been worried about the impact of outdoor cats and ferals for years, especially in areas where small species that cats prey on are making small comebacks ? the piping plover on New York?s Long Island, for example, which is struggling to return to its native range as it becomes prey for the significant cat populations that have moved in.
(via PhysOrg)
Source: http://www.geekosystem.com/cats-kill-by-the-billions/
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Six years later, RIM still won't acknowledge the iPhone - Verge Forums
When asked about the company's recent struggles RIM's European managing director dodges the question over and over and over and over and over again, refusing to identify any impact that Apple's iPhone had on BlackBerry.
The video of Stephen Bates' interview on the BBC's 'One Breakfast' can be found here, available to UK residents. In case you can't view either of those here's a bad quality version on YouTube.
Source: http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/30/3931942/six-years-later-rim-still-wont-acknowledge-the-iphone
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Wednesday, January 30, 2013
Adams Family Home Dedication | Evergreen Habitat for Humanity ...
- January 28, 2013
?
As anyone who has bought a home?and lived in Clark County for any length of time knows, this is a great area to raise a family. Christi Adams certainly agrees. On Sunday, December 30th, 2012?at 1:00 pm, Christi and her two children Cheyenne and Brendon, found out what it was like? for the first time?to call a home their own. Christi told Habitat, ?I would love to allow my children to be children while they can be. I would love for them to be able to ride their bikes outside, play in a yard and enjoy where they live.? For Cheyenne and Brendon, that dream became a reality on that sunny Sunday afternoon.??Little Cheyenne and Brendon have watched over the last six months as their home went from being an empty lot to a beautiful 1200 square foot, three bedroom, two bathroom home. With Thrivent Financial as the sponsor, and over 4,000 hours in volunteer labor, Christi, Cheyenne and Brendon, rang in the New Year in their long awaited home.? Evergreen Habitat?celebrated with Thrivent Financial,?the house sponsor, as keys were presented to the 25th Habitat?family.???
?Keeping her family under one consistent roof has been a struggle for Christi who at one point was homeless from losing a job five years ago. She dug deep, got back on her feet and continued to work hard to provide a safe affordable place for her family. Christi has put in close to 400 sweat equity hours not only on her home but on other Habitat homes as well. Owning her own home was a dream that seemed out of reach to Christi until the day she applied with Evergreen Habitat for Humanity. When asked what she was thankful for, Christi simply said this, ?Without Habitat, we would have no hope of owning a home. We?re fortunate to live in a place where this program exists. We?re grateful to everyone.?
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Police push for background checks on gun purchases
WASHINGTON (AP) ? Law enforcement leaders who met with President Barack Obama are urging him to improve the mental health system and strengthen background checks, but did not unify on more controversial gun control measures.
Leaders of the Major County Sheriffs' Association said they told the president Monday to focus on the mental health system.
Philadelphia Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey says there was broad agreement on the need to require stronger background checks for gun purchases. Ramsey is president of the Major Cities Chiefs Association, which backs an assault weapons ban.
The message reflects the political reality in Congress that the assault weapons ban Obama is pushing is likely to have a hard time winning broad support. But the president may have more hope for getting universal background checks.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/police-push-background-checks-gun-purchases-023655912--politics.html
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Get Better Gas Mileage and Fuel Economy with These DIY Car Care Tips
Why spend more at the gas pump when you can easily spend less? The team at The Family Handyman shares this list of DIY tricks for a noticeable difference in your fuel costs. The savings are based on driving 20,000 miles per year, in a car that gets 20 mpg, with gasoline priced at $3.75 a gallon.
Save $900 by Keeping Your Tires at the Right Pressure
Surveys show that 60 percent of the vehicles on the road have tires that are underinflated by at least 30 percent. That's at least 9 psi below the manufacturer's recommended pressure. That can cost you almost 7 percent in wasted fuel ($245 per year, or 24? per gallon). Plus, low air pressure causes premature tire wear, and that can cost almost $300 over the life of the tires. For best results, check your tire's air pressure with a digital pressure gauge (about $10 at any auto parts store) and fill to the recommended pressure shown on the decal inside the driver's door or on the driver's door pillar.
Change Spark Plugs Before They're Due
If your 100,000-mile spark plugs have 80,000 miles on them, they're 80 percent worn. Misfires and incomplete combustion occur more frequently during that last 20,000 miles, costing you almost $562.50 in wasted fuel. You have to replace your spark plugs anyway, so do it early and pocket the savings. Even if you have to replace the plugs one extra time over the life of your car, you'll still come out way ahead. And don't automatically assume your plugs are good for 100,000 miles. Many four-cylinder engines require new spark plugs at either 30,000 or 60,000-mile intervals.
Save $350 by Changing Your Air Filter Early and Often
Your engine sucks in 14 million gallons of air through the filter every year. On older vehicles (pre-1999) a dirty air filter increases fuel usage by almost 10 percent ($350 per year, or 35? per gallon). On newer vehicles, the computer is smart enough to detect the lower airflow, and it cuts back on fuel. So your engine will lack power and pick-up. Check the filter when you change your oil and replace it at least once a year, or more if you drive in dirty, dusty conditions.
Save $177.50 by Keeping Your Car Aligned
If your tires are bowed out of alignment by just .017 in., it's the equivalent of dragging your tire sideways for 102 miles for every 20,000 you drive. That'll cost you $187.50 a year in wasted gas. It will wear your tires faster, costing you $70 more a year.
Here's an easy way to check your alignment without taking your car in to the shop. Buy a tread depth gauge ($2) and measure the tread depth on both edges of each tire (rear tires too). If one side of the tire is worn more than the other, your car needs to be aligned. An alignment costs about $80, so you'll still save $177.50 the first year alone.
Lead Foot = Lead Wallet
Hard acceleration in stop-and-go driving costs you 20 percent in gas mileage. If you live your life in rush hour traffic and like to put the pedal to the metal, spend all your extra time at the next stoplight figuring out how you could have spent the $750 a year you're wasting (70? per gallon).
Replace a Broken or Missing Spoiler
The plastic air dam (aka "spoiler") that's broken or missing wasn't just for a sporty look. If your car had an air dam, driving without it or with a damaged one can reduce your gas mileage. The air dam literally "dams off" airflow to the undercarriage of your car, forcing the air up and over the hood. That helps your car cut through the air with less drag. It also increases airflow to the A/C condenser and radiator, reducing the load on your car's electrical system. Contact a junkyard or visit certifit.com to get a replacement air dam.
Speed Kills Your Gas Mileage and Your Wallet
Yes, you've heard it before, but how about some real world numbers to drive the point home? Aerodynamic drag is a minor concern in city driving, but it really kills your gas mileage at speeds over 55 mph. In fact, increasing your speed to 65 increases drag by 36 percent! If you do a lot of highway driving, getting to your destination a few minutes early could cost you an extra $500 to $600 a year. Keep it closer to 55 mph and use your cruise control. It will pay off.
Replace Your Oxygen Sensor Before the Light Goes On
Oxygen sensors monitor the efficiency of combustion by tracking the amount of oxygen remaining in the exhaust. But they degrade over time and that can cost you up to 15 percent in gas mileage. When they fail, the computer lights up your "service engine soon" light, forcing you to incur an $80 diagnostic fee. On pre-1996 vehicles, replace your oxygen sensor every 60,000 miles to keep your mileage at its peak. On 1996 and newer vehicles, replace the sensors every 100,000 miles. Oxygen sensors cost about $60 each. Some vehicles have as many as four, but the sensors installed behind the catalytic converter rarely fail.
Save Money on Gas: Tips for Better Gas Mileage & Fuel Economy | The Family Handyman
The Family Handyman is the DIYers best friend, offering a variety of print and digital resources for do-it-yourself homeowners. Our forte is accurate and complete how-to instructions for improving homes, yards and vehicles. We publish The Family Handyman magazine, the oldest and largest publication for DIYers, and a variety of newsstand publications in addition to this web site. The Family Handyman is part of the Reader's Digest Association family of brands, including Taste of Home, Birds & Blooms, and of course Reader's Digest.
Image remixed from Maxx Studio and olavs (Shutterstock).
Want to see your work on Lifehacker? Email Tessa.
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Could an earlier lunchtime help you lose weight?
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Dieters who ate early lunches tended to lose more weight than those who had their midday meal on the later side, in a new Spanish study.
The finding doesn't prove bumping up your lunch hour will help you shed those extra pounds. But it's possible eating times play a role in how the body regulates its weight, researchers said.
"We should now seriously start to consider the timing of food - not just what we eat, but also when we eat," said study co-author Frank Scheer, from Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston.
His team's research included 420 people attending nutrition clinics in southeast Spain. Along with going to regular group therapy sessions with nutrition and exercise counseling, dieters measured, weighed and recorded their food and reported on their daily physical activity.
Study participants were on a Mediterranean diet, in which about 40 percent of each day's calories are consumed at lunch. About half of people said they ate lunch before 3:00 p.m. and half after.
Over 20 weeks of counseling, early and late lunchers ate a similar amount of food, based on their food journals, and burned a similar amount of calories through daily activities.
However, early eaters lost an average of 22 pounds - just over 11 percent of their starting weight - and late eaters dropped 17 pounds, or nine percent of their initial weight.
What time dieters ate breakfast or dinner wasn't linked to their ultimate weight loss, according to findings published Tuesday in the International Journal of Obesity.
One limitation of the study is that the researchers didn't assign people randomly to eat early or late - so it's possible there were other underlying differences between dieters with different mealtimes. Certain gene variants that have been linked to obesity were more common in late lunchers, for example.
OVERDOING IT AT DINNER?
Dr. Yunsheng Ma, a nutrition researcher from the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester, said people who eat later may have extra food in their stomach when they go to sleep - which could mean more of it isn't burned and ends up being stored as fat.
"One of the other aspects to this is, what we know is glucose tolerance for example - how well you can deal with sugar in your food - your body is better able to cope with that in the morning than in the evening," Scheer told Reuters Health.
How often people eat during the day and whether they bring food from home or eat out may also contribute to weight loss, added Ma, who wasn't involved in the new research.
He said any implications of late eating could be exacerbated among Americans.
"The pattern of consumption of meals is very different in the U.S.," and problematic, Ma told Reuters Health. Many people skip breakfast or lunch - then end up overdoing it on calories at dinner.
Scheer said in the U.S., where dinner is typically the biggest meal, researchers would expect people who eat later dinners to have more trouble losing weight based on his team's findings.
Regardless of exact meal times, Ma said it's important for people to spread their calories out throughout the day.
"Have a good breakfast and a good lunch, and at dinner, people should eat lightly," he advised.
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/aCKLXR International Journal of Obesity, online January 29, 2013.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/could-earlier-lunchtime-help-lose-weight-220713491.html
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Tuesday, January 29, 2013
Chastened Congress takes on immigration, seeks Rubio's mojo
WASHINGTON (AP) ? A bipartisan group of leading senators has reached agreement on the principles for a sweeping overhaul of the nation's immigration laws, including a path to citizenship for the 11 million illegal immigrants already in this country.
The deal, to be announced at a news conference Monday, also covers border security, non-citizen or "guest" workers and employer verification of immigration status.
Although thorny details remain to be negotiated and success is far from certain, the development heralds the start of what could be the most significant effort in years toward overhauling the nation's inefficient patchwork of immigration laws.
President Barack Obama also is committed to enacting comprehensive immigration legislation and will travel to Nevada on Tuesday to lay out his vision, which is expected to overlap in important ways with the Senate effort.
Passage of legislation by the full Democratic-controlled Senate is far from assured, but the tallest hurdle could come in the House, which is dominated by conservative Republicans who've shown little interest in immigration reform.
Still, with some Republicans chastened by the November elections which demonstrated the importance of Latino voters and their increasing commitment to Democrats, some in the GOP say this time will be different.
"What's changed, honestly, is that there is a new, I think, appreciation on both sides of the aisle ? including maybe more importantly on the Republican side of the aisle ? that we have to enact a comprehensive immigration reform bill," Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said Sunday on ABC's "This Week."
"I think the time is right," McCain said.
Besides McCain, the senators expected to endorse the new principles Monday are Democrats Charles Schumer of New York, Dick Durbin of Illinois, Robert Menendez of New Jersey and Michael Bennet of Colorado; and Republicans Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Marco Rubio of Florida and Jeff Flake of Arizona.
Several of these lawmakers have worked for years on the issue. McCain collaborated with the late Democratic Sen. Edward M. Kennedy on comprehensive immigration legislation pushed by then-President George W. Bush in 2007, only to see it collapse in the Senate when it couldn't get enough GOP support.
The group claims a notable newcomer in Rubio, a potential 2016 presidential candidate whose conservative bona fides may help smooth the way for support among conservatives wary of anything that smacks of amnesty. In an opinion piece published Sunday in the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Rubio wrote that the existing system amounts to "de facto amnesty," and he called for "commonsense reform."
According to documents obtained by The Associated Press, the senators will call for accomplishing four goals:
?Creating a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants already here, contingent upon securing the border and better tracking of people here on visas.
?Reforming the legal immigration system, including awarding green cards to immigrants who obtain advanced degrees in science, math, technology or engineering from an American university.
?Creating an effective employment verification system to ensure that employers do not hire illegal immigrants in the future, including requiring prospective workers to verify legal status and identity through a non-forgeable electronic system.
?Allowing more low-skill workers into the country and allowing employers to hire immigrants if they can demonstrate they couldn't recruit a U.S. citizen; and establishing an agricultural worker program.
The principles being released Monday are outlined on just over four pages, leaving plenty of details left to fill in. What the senators do call for is similar to Obama's goals and some past efforts by Democrats and Republicans, since there's wide agreement in identifying problems with the current immigration system. The most difficult disagreement is likely to arise over how to accomplish the path to citizenship.
In order to satisfy the concerns of Rubio and other Republicans, the senators are calling for the completion of steps on border security and oversight of those here on visas before taking major steps forward on the path to citizenship.
Even then, those here illegally would have to pass background checks and pay fines and taxes in order to qualify for a "probationary legal status" that would allow them to live and work here ? but not qualify for federal benefits ? before being able to apply for permanent residency, a critical step toward citizenship. Once they are allowed to apply they would do so behind everyone else already in line for a green card within the current immigration system.
That could be a highly cumbersome process, but how to make it more workable is being left to future negotiations. The senators envision a more streamlined process toward citizenship for immigrants brought here as children, and for agricultural workers.
The American Civil Liberties Union said in a statement that the framework agreed on by the senators could provide important protections for illegal immigrants who are exploited by employers and live in "constant fear" over their immigration status.
But the ACLU took issue with the proposal to require employers to use an electronic employment-verification system, calling it "a thinly disguised national ID requirement" that would undermine employees' privacy and lead to discrimination against those "who look or sound 'foreign.'"
The debate will play out at the start of Obama's second term, as he aims to spend the political capital afforded him by his re-election victory on an issue that has eluded past presidents and stymied him during his first term despite his promises to the Latino community to act.
"As the president has made clear for some time, immigration reform is an important priority and he is pleased that progress is being made with bipartisan support," a White House spokesman, Clark Stevens, said in a statement. "At the same time, he will not be satisfied until there is meaningful reform and he will continue to urge Congress to act until that is achieved."
For Republicans, the November elections were a stark schooling on the importance of Latino voters, who voted for Obama over Republican Mitt Romney 71 percent to 27 percent, helping ensure Obama's victory. That led some Republican leaders to conclude that supporting immigration reform with a path to citizenship has become a political imperative.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/senators-reach-agreement-immigration-reform-085239296--politics.html
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Mysteries of spider silk strength unraveled
Jan. 27, 2013 ? Scientists at ASU are celebrating their recent success on the path to understanding what makes the fiber that spiders spin -- weight for weight -- at least five times as strong as piano wire. They have found a way to obtain a wide variety of elastic properties of the silk of several intact spiders' webs using a sophisticated but non-invasive laser light scattering technique.
"Spider silk has a unique combination of mechanical strength and elasticity that make it one of the toughest materials we know," said Professor Jeffery Yarger of ASU's Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, and lead researcher of the study. "This work represents the most complete understanding we have of the underlying mechanical properties of spider silks."
Spider silk is an exceptional biological polymer, related to collagen (the stuff of skin and bones) but much more complex in its structure. The ASU team of chemists is studying its molecular structure in an effort to produce materials ranging from bulletproof vests to artificial tendons.
The extensive array of elastic and mechanical properties of spider silks in situ, obtained by the ASU team, is the first of its kind and will greatly facilitate future modeling efforts aimed at understanding the interplay of the mechanical properties and the molecular structure of silk used to produce spider webs.
The team published their results in a recent issue of Nature materials and their paper is titled "Non-invasive determination of the complete elastic moduli of spider silks."
"This information should help provide a blueprint for structural engineering of an abundant array of bio-inspired materials, such as precise materials engineering of synthetic fibers to create stronger, stretchier, and more elastic materials," explained Yarger.
Other members of Yarger's team, in ASU's College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, included Kristie Koski, at the time a postdoctoral researcher and currently a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University, and ASU undergraduate students Paul Akhenblit and Keri McKiernan.
The Brillouin light scattering technique used an extremely low power laser, less than 3.5 milliwatts, which is significantly less than the average laser pointer. Recording what happened to this laser beam as it passed through the intact spider webs enabled the researchers to spatially map the elastic stiffnesses of each web without deforming or disrupting it. This non-invasive, non-contact measurement produced findings showing variations among discrete fibers, junctions and glue spots.
Four different types of spider's webs were studied. They included Nephila clavipes (pictured), A. aurantia ("gilded silver face"-common to the contiguous United States), L. Hesperus the western black widow and P. viridans the green lynx spider, the only spider included that does not build a web for catching prey but has major silk elastic properties similar to those of the other species studied.
The group also investigated one of the most studied aspects of orb-weaving dragline spider silk, namely supercontraction, a property unique to silk. Spider silk takes up water when exposed to high humidity. Absorbed water leads to shrinkage in an unrestrained fiber up to 50 percent shrinkage with 100 percent humidity in N. clavipes silk.
Their results are consistent with the hypothesis that supercontraction helps the spider tailor the properties of the silk during spinning. This type of behavior, specifically adjusting mechanical properties by simply adjusting water content, is inspirational from a bio-inspired mechanical structure perspective.
"This study is unique in that we can extract all the elastic properties of spider silk that cannot and have not been measured with conventional testing," concluded Yarger.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Arizona State University.
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Journal Reference:
- Kristie J. Koski, Paul Akhenblit, Keri McKiernan, Jeffery L. Yarger. Non-invasive determination of the complete elastic moduli of spider silks. Nature Materials, 2013; DOI: 10.1038/nmat3549
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
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Smartphone pioneer RIM looks to put recent hardships behind it with BB10
TORONTO, Cananda - Once a leader but now derided as a laggard, BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion hopes to regain the confidence of cynical smartphone users this week as the curtain is lifted on its much-anticipated new smartphones.
The stakes are high for the unveiling, which many observers say will determine whether RIM survives to see the launch of another BlackBerry smartphone.
It has been a steep decline for RIM, which less than five years ago was the most valuable company in Canada, above Royal Bank (TSX:RY). Affectionately called the "CrackBerry" maker, the mobile communications pioneer was Canada's crowning achievement of the technology sector.
Back in 1984, the year RIM was founded, it was practically unimaginable that a tiny startup based in Waterloo, Ont. would help change the way we communicate, but for fresh engineering graduates Mike Lazaridis and Douglas Fregin that was always the plan.
"Like so many of these guys Lazaridis was a Star Trek lunatic," said Alastair Sweeny, author of "BlackBerry Planet."
"He says it's almost like telepathy ? humans have a yearning to communicate."
The beginnings were humble for the two founders, with the majority of their time dedicated to Budgie, an LED sign business that was contracted by General Motors to communicate messages to workers on its assembly lines. Despite early interest, the project was a sales flop and RIM's owners decided to sell the business and look at other ventures.
One of those projects put RIM squarely in the eyes of Hollywood. The DigiSync film reader caught on with movie editors because its synching technology shaved hours off the time it took to turn miles of film into useable content in post-production. While the technology went on to win RIM both an Emmy and a technical achievement from the Academy Awards, it was never a top priority for RIM's founders.
"Lazaridis was always into security," said Sweeny. "He realized that corporations needed secure communications because of industrial espionage, because of hacking."
Throughout the late 1980s, RIM was working alongside other industry players to develop technology that would eventually be used in pagers and wireless payment processing systems. By the start of the 1990s, the wheels were turning on the communication systems that would become the foundation of the BlackBerry.
An agreement with Ericcson's Mobitex wireless network allowed RIM to create pagers that operated as a two-way communicators, a revolutionary concept for data transfer.
Turning the idea into a marketable product was a bigger challenge. The world had yet to become accustomed to the Internet age and most people hadn't heard of email, nevermind used it. While the project was a bust with its first partner Cantel, RIM forged ahead.
The technology captured the attention and imaginations of an industry, and perhaps most importantly Jim Balsillie, an energetic Harvard graduate who, at the age of 33, invested $250,000 of his own money into the company by re-mortgaging his house.
In 1996, RIM launched its first sales success, a clamshell wireless handheld device called the RIM 900 Interactive Pager. It was a two-way communicator that also had the ability to send faxes, as well as link to the Internet and email.
But Lazaridis discovered that the email feature, which he believed was one of the strongest qualities of the device, wasn't being used by most customers. So he hired Lexicon Branding, based in California, to find a way to draw more attention to its keyboard, the main feature that differentiated it from other pagers.
Branding executives pondered the device, focusing mainly on its appearance, and when one of them pointed out the little keypad looked like similar to the seeds of a strawberry, the conversation zeroed in on the names of fruits and vegetables. Eventually, the group settled on "BlackBerry" because it was both punchy and remained true to the device's original black casing.
The company listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange in 1997, raising more than $115 million, and debuted the first BlackBerry the following year.
From there it seemed the sky was the limit.
Suddenly the BlackBerry was everywhere in the technology community, thrust into the spotlight by the enthusiastic co-CEO Balsillie who touted the device on Wall Street and handed it out for free at select technology conferences. Balsillie knew how to build buzz and proudly tapped away on the BlackBerry whenever he appeared before the media.
A demand had been created, and subscribers to the BlackBerry services continued to grow in leaps and bounds. In 1999, RIM listed on the Nasdaq, raising another US$250 million.
The success grabbed the attention of Virginia-based NTP Inc. which filed a lawsuit claiming that RIM's network infringed on its patents. While NTP won the case, and the courts ordered RIM to pay US$23.1 million, the battle continued in appeals courts for years before a settlement was reached for a much heftier $612.5 million.
Outside the courtrooms the BlackBerry was a massive success, garnering headlines when its enterprise network remained intact after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11 when other wireless phone systems broke down.
The BlackBerry's reputation was growing at a steady clip, helped by the introduction of cellphone service in 2002 on what had been a text-only device. Within two years, BlackBerry reached more than 1 million subscribers.
The smartphone was in demand at corporate offices around the world, and soon the more casual consumer began to take notice, helping to boost its subscribers to nine million by 2007. RIM also secured a distribution deal in China, driving its stock to a level that made it the most valuable Canadian company.
But amid all of the success a storm of competition was brewing in the tech industry.
In June 2007, Apple unleashed the first iPhone touchscreen device onto the U.S. market, garnering widespread praise from critics and consumers, but hardly rattling its competitors.
Microsoft's chief executive Steve Ballmer famously dismissed the touchscreen device that year, saying "there's no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share."
Whether it was a strategic decision or simply coincidence, Apple kept its iPhone far away from the Canadian marketplace for nearly a year, choosing to launch in six other countries first.
The lower profile with Canadian consumers also seemed to minimize the concern from RIM's executives, who publicly downplayed the influence of the iPhone in an already crowded mobile phone market.
"They just missed it," said Carl Howe, vice-president of consumer research at Yankee Group.
"They missed the idea that you could create a really good experience without having a keyboard. They gave Apple a two-year head start."
By the time the iPhone hit Canadian shelves, RIM was facing scrutiny from analysts who worried that the growing number competitors, which now also included Google's Android system, would devour marketshare.
RIM went on the defensive in 2008, releasing a combination keypad and touchscreen device it called the Storm, but the phone was swept up in a flurry of other BlackBerry releases that year. Much of the marketing clout was put behind the debut of a high-end BlackBerry Bold, which wasn't a touchscreen.
"A lot of tech companies have their heads in the sand," said Howe of the co-CEOs.
"It's not that they're stupid, and I think that's an important point. People who get hit by 'innovator's dilemma' are not stupid ... I think when you create something from scratch and turn it into a multi-billion dollar business you're very reluctant to say 'I'm now going to throw away everything I've learned and do something different.' "
At the height of its hype, the BlackBerry device was splashed across television shows and movies, while then-presidential candidate Barack Obama proclaimed he was a BlackBerry faithful during his campaign.
As competition heated up with Apple, investors became concerned that RIM's co-CEOs, in particular Balsillie, were distracted by the possibilities that success brought them, rather than focused on revamping the BlackBerry for a new era.
In 2009, Balsillie launched his third, and most aggressive, attempt to buy an National Hockey League team, with hopes that he could convince the NHL to move the Phoenix Coyotes to Hamilton. The battle dragged on for months before Balsillie abandoned his dream once again.
Back in Waterloo a storm was brewing as technical problems began to wreak havoc on the company's network infrastructure.
There were two network outages in less than a year that left BlackBerry users temporarily without their services. Some industry observers suggested the company could buckle under its own success. BlackBerry sales were soaring, even with the technical problems, with subscriber growth up 70 per cent to 36 million by the end of 2009. RIM's leaders reassured users that the outages were a fluke and wouldn't be a reoccurring problem.
Despite the setbacks, the BlackBerry image appeared to emerge unscathed. In April 2010 it cracked the Top Five mobile phone carriers worldwide and soon afterwards Queen Elizabeth made a visit to RIM's headquarters in Waterloo.
Behind the scenes there was unrest among the company's board of directors as the leaders clashed over where the BlackBerry brand should go next. Rumours swirled around the industry that trouble was afoot.
Fanfare eventually gave way to the realities of competition, with the first major blow coming from the failed launch of the PlayBook, RIM's answer to Apple's iPad. In September 2010, the co-CEOs showcased the new product for the public but waited another six months before unleashing it to stores.
By then it was too late, the tablet market had already been cornered by Apple and reviews of the PlayBook harshly criticized its lack of connectivity to popular BlackBerry functions like email and instant messenger.
Within months the foundation of RIM started to crumble as it repeatedly missed its own revenue and earnings targets. In June 2011, the company slashed 11 per cent of its workforce, or 2,000 jobs, to keep its cost in line.
A stark reminder of its fragility came in October 2011 when a worldwide four-day outage left BlackBerry users again without the use of the device they had come to rely on. The smartphones wouldn't connect to the Internet, email or its messaging services.
The anger from its loyal users was heard loud and clear, and Lazaridis emerged from days of silence to apologize and tell users the company had let them down.
In an earnings call several weeks later, Lazaridis urged investor "patience and confidence" as the executives tried to improve performance. Both he and Balsillie, two of the company's biggest shareholders, reduced their salaries to $1.
Again, it was a decision made too late ? the outage had cost RIM more than $50 million in revenue and tarnished its reputation. In December 2011, the company reported that profits tumbled more than 70 per cent, affected by a big charge from sales discounts it was forced make on PlayBook tablets.
Perhaps an even bigger blow to RIM's reputation was the delay of its next-generation BlackBerrys, pushing the planned release into 2012. The phones ? which were delayed again throughout last year and will be unveiled this Wednesday ? were seen as the company's best hope to maintain market share against Apple and Android devices.
The company stock had tumbled from its lofty height of $137.41 on the Toronto Stock Exchange in mid-2008 to $14.80 at the end of 2011.
RIM, once a symbol of Canadian success and innovation, had become awash in its own troubles. Apple's iPhone had cornered the rapidly developing apps market while RIM sat on the sidelines with developers.
Sweeny recalls visiting a group of developers, who he considered BlackBerry fanatics, while doing research for his book in 2008.
"They were writing great games and programs for the BlackBerry and they couldn't get the latest hardware from RIM to test them on," he said.
"I called them a couple years later and they weren't writing for BlackBerry at all. They were writing programs for Apple and starting to write for Android."
From an outsider's perspective, it's often suggested that the co-CEOs lost control of their empire, but some industry watchers say that RIM saw the troubles several years earlier.
"In this market you can't admit that you're behind," said Tim Long, an analyst at BMO Capital Markets.
"You have to put on the face because once you start to lose momentum that can shift the buying patterns."
Numerous acquisitions were made by RIM throughout 2010 and 2011 to beef up its stable of technology, Long said. That included Ottawa-based QNX Software Systems, whose technology became the basis of the new operating system, and Astonishing Tribe, the Swedish company that helped develop an early user interface of the Android operating system.
But the acquisitions came too late, and by late 2011 some investors were calling for its leaders to resign.
Bowing to pressure, Balsillie and Lazaridis stepped down from their co-CEO positions in January 2012, pocketing a combined $12 million in the process. The duo were replaced by Thorsten Heins, RIM's former chief operating officer, and hardly two months later Balsillie had left the company entirely.
Almost immediately, Heins launched a major revamp of RIM's operations, hiring several new executives with experience at other major tech companies. The approach was a last-ditch effort to revive the company, but it has also thrown the BlackBerry maker into the most uncertain period in its history.
With nearly $2 billion in its coffers Heins had options, but the clock was ticking to get a new smartphone on the market.
"Nobody is delusional here," Rick Costanzo, the company's new executive vice-president of global sales, said last summer.
"We get it. That's why we're building BlackBerry 10 and man are we committed."
A new chapter in RIM's history begins this week as the BlackBerry 10 smartphones and operating system are showcased to the world.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/smartphone-pioneer-rim-looks-put-recent-hardships-behind-171635399.html
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Monday, January 28, 2013
Changes needed to save resources
27 January 2013
Last updated at 20:01 ET
Governments need to spark a lightweight revolution in the way things are made so the world can keep up with the demand for resources, say scientists.
They say homes will have to be built with less cement; cars with less steel; and gadgets with less plastic.
And it will need to be done in a way that radically cuts emissions from producing the materials, they add.
These are among the conclusions presented in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A.
Several papers in the journal tackle the dual problem created by the increased demand for goods as people grow richer and population increase, coupled with the threat of climate change.
One paper warns that unless demand for materials from UK primary industry is reduced, Britain will need the equivalent of a four-fold increase in nuclear power or a 40-fold increase in wind power to meet its target of a 80% reduction in carbon emissions by 2050 from pre-industrial levels.
The paper, by UK government chief energy scientist Prof David MacKay, says readers can draw their own conclusions as to whether it is feasible to generate this amount of clean energy.
'Little incentive'
Another author, Julian Allwood, from Cambridge University, has been studying the five most energy-intensive sectors: steel, aluminium, cement, plastics and paper.
He says these already use energy more efficiently than other sectors because their energy costs are high - so there is a finite amount they can improve.
The answer is for society to demand less of the materials in the first place, he says.
?We can use much less cement in buildings than we do at the moment,? he told BBC News.
?The thing is that it takes more time to design buildings with less cement, and it takes more effort for builders. Labour is expensive and cement ? relatively ? is cheap, so there?s little incentive to change."
Dr Allwood added that the same thing could be said of car manufacturing.
?Engineers are constantly improving engine efficiency but these improvements are being swallowed up because people want to drive bigger cars with more acceleration.
"That is something that governments could do something about if they wanted to.?
One idea would be to set standards so cars could not accelerate so fast, or that the mass of cars didn't increase.
One tenth of the world?s carbon emissions are produced by the steel industry.
Dr Allwood says that in order to meet CO2 targets, demand for new steel in the UK alone must be reduced to 30% of current levels.
The trick, he says, is to harness material efficiency so people can enjoy goods that are equivalent or almost equivalent.
A paper by Walter Stahel at the Product-Life Institute, Geneva, calls for "sustainable taxation" on resource-hungry goods to help the shift towards a "circular" economy where goods are-used and recycled.
He says this will create regional jobs, increase resource security, reduce consumption of non-renewable resources, increase material efficiency and prevent carbon emissions and industrial waste - all on a big scale.
Several papers have recently warned of the coming resource crunch. The UK independent think tank Chatham House said economies would be increasingly disrupted by often faraway disruptions in supply chains, and a report for the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries warned that some pensions might be wiped out by shortages of resources, water and energy.
The papers also examine the use of energy and emissions from heavy industry.
The studies warn that even if radical solutions are found to reduce emissions from this sector, governments will still need to tackle housing and transport if they are to make the cuts deemed necessary by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to have a good chance of staving off serious climate change.
Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21203336#sa-ns_mchannel=rss&ns_source=PublicRSS20-sa
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Engineers 'evolve' super-efficient solar cell
18 hrs.
Scientists are using principles of natural selection to evolve a more efficient solar cell.
Engineers at Northwestern University wrote a computer program that "mates" design elements and assesses the fitness of their "offspring" to come up with the most efficient possible organic solar cell. Organic solar cells are made with the so-called organic elements ? carbon, oxygen and nitrogen ? and are cheaper to make, lighter and more flexible than the traditional silicon cells available in solar panels today.
Organic cells aren't as efficient at turning the sun's energy into electricity as silicon cells, however. Many research groups are working to improve organic solar cells' efficiency. If they work well, such cells could go into? electricity-producing windows ?or clothes.
In their work, the Northwestern researchers focused on the top layer of an organic solar cell, called the scattering layer, which traps photons from sunlight. They wanted a scattering layer that would hold photos for a greater amount of time.
"We wanted to determine the geometry for the scattering layer that would give us optimal performance," Cheng Sun, a mechanical engineer and one of the creators of the new organic solar cell,? said in a statement. "But with so many possibilities, it's difficult to know where to start, so we looked to laws of natural selection to guide us."
Sun and his colleagues' program simulated more than 20 generations of matings to come up with their final design. The program also mimicked the biological processes of mutation and an exchange of traits called crossing over.
The resulting design traps photons for three times as long as the Yablonovitch Limit, which describes how long a photon is likely to stay in a semiconducting material. Researchers have only been able to reach and break the Yablonovitch Limit in the last few years.?
The engineers? published their work ?Jan. 3 in the journal Scientific Reports.
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Hate Crimes: A Rape Every Minute, a Thousand Corpses Every Y ...
 Kit B. (308) | Sunday January 27, 2013, 9:15 am (Image Credit: bling cheese) Here in the United States, where there is a reported rape every 6.2 minutes, and one in five women will be raped in her lifetime, the rape and gruesome murder of a young woman on a bus in New Delhi on December 16th was treated as an exceptional incident. The story of the alleged rape of an unconscious teenager by members of the Steubenville High School football team was still unfolding, and gang rapes aren?t that unusual here either. Take your pick: some of the 20 men who gang-raped an 11-year-old in Cleveland, Texas, were sentenced in November, while the instigator of the gang rape of a 16-year-old in Richmond, California, was sentenced in October, and four men who gang-raped a 15-year-old near New Orleans were sentenced in April, though the six men who gang-raped a 14-year-old in Chicago last fall are still at large. Not that I actually went out looking for incidents: they?re everywhere in the news, though no one adds them up and indicates that there might actually be a pattern. There is, however, a pattern of violence against women that?s broad and deep and horrific and incessantly overlooked. Occasionally, a case involving a celebrity or lurid details in a particular case get a lot of attention in the media, but such cases are treated as anomalies, while the abundance of incidental news items about violence against women in this country, in other countries, on every continent including Antarctica, constitute a kind of background wallpaper for the news. If you?d rather talk about bus rapes than gang rapes, there?s the rape of a developmentally disabled woman on a Los Angeles bus in November and the kidnapping of an autistic 16-year-old on the regional transit train system in Oakland, California -- she was raped repeatedly by her abductor over two days this winter -- and there was a gang rape of multiple women on a bus in Mexico City recently, too. While I was writing this, I read that another female bus-rider was kidnapped in India and gang-raped all night by the bus driver and five of his friends who must have thought what happened in New Delhi was awesome. We have an abundance of rape and violence against women in this country and on this Earth, though it?s almost never treated as a civil rights or human rights issue, or a crisis, or even a pattern. Violence doesn?t have a race, a class, a religion, or a nationality, but it does have a gender. Here I want to say one thing: though virtually all the perpetrators of such crimes are men, that doesn?t mean all men are violent. Most are not. In addition, men obviously also suffer violence, largely at the hands of other men, and every violent death, every assault is terrible. But the subject here is the pandemic of violence by men against women, both intimate violence and stranger violence. What We Don?t Talk About When We Don?t Talk About Gender There?s so much of it. We could talk about the assault and rape of a 73-year-old in Manhattan?s Central Park last September, or the recent rape of a four-year-old and an 83-year-old in Louisiana, or the New York City policeman who was arrested in October for what appeared to be serious plans to kidnap, rape, cook, and eat a woman, any woman, because the hate wasn?t personal (though maybe it was for the San Diego man who actually killed and cooked his wife in November and the man from New Orleans who killed, dismembered, and cooked his girlfriend in 2005). Those are all exceptional crimes, but we could also talk about quotidian assaults, because though a rape is reported only every 6.2 minutes in this country, the estimated total is perhaps five times as high. Which means that there may be very nearly a rape a minute in the U.S. It all adds up to tens of millions of rape victims. We could talk about high-school- and college-athlete rapes, or campus rapes, to which university authorities have been appallingly uninterested in responding in many cases, including that high school in Steubenville, Notre Dame University, Amherst College, and many others. We could talk about the escalating pandemic of rape, sexual assault, and sexual harassment in the U.S. military, where Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta estimated that there were 19,000 sexual assaults on fellow soldiers in 2010 alone and that the great majority of assailants got away with it, though four-star general Jeffrey Sinclair was indicted in September for ?a slew of sex crimes against women.? Never mind workplace violence, let?s go home. So many men murder their partners and former partners that we have well over 1,000 homicides of that kind a year -- meaning that every three years the death toll tops 9/11?s casualties, though no one declares a war on this particular terror. (Another way to put it: the more than 11,766 corpses from domestic-violence homicides since 9/11 exceed the number of deaths of victims on that day and all American soldiers killed in the ?war on terror.?) If we talked about crimes like these and why they are so common, we?d have to talk about what kinds of profound change this society, or this nation, or nearly every nation needs. If we talked about it, we?d be talking about masculinity, or male roles, or maybe patriarchy, and we don?t talk much about that. Instead, we hear that American men commit murder-suicides -- at the rate of about 12 a week -- because the economy is bad, though they also do it when the economy is good; or that those men in India murdered the bus-rider because the poor resent the rich, while other rapes in India are explained by how the rich exploit the poor; and then there are those ever-popular explanations: mental problems and intoxicants -- and for jocks, head injuries. The latest spin is that lead exposure was responsible for a lot of our violence, except that both genders are exposed and one commits most of the violence. The pandemic of violence always gets explained as anything but gender, anything but what would seem to be the broadest explanatory pattern of all. Someone wrote a piece about how white men seem to be the ones who commit mass murders in the U.S. and the (mostly hostile) commenters only seemed to notice the white part. It?s rare that anyone says what this medical study does, even if in the driest way possible: ?Being male has been identified as a risk factor for violent criminal behavior in several studies, as have exposure to tobacco smoke before birth, having antisocial parents, and belonging to a poor family.? Still, the pattern is plain as day. We could talk about this as a global problem, looking at the epidemic of assault, harassment, and rape of women in Cairo?s Tahrir Square that has taken away the freedom they celebrated during the Arab Spring -- and led some men there to form defense teams to help counter it -- or the persecution of women in public and private in India from ?Eve-teasing? tobride-burning, or ?honor killings? in South Asia and the Middle East, or the way that South Africa has become a global rape capital, with an estimated600,000 rapes last year, or how rape has been used as a tactic and ?weapon? of war in Mali, Sudan, and the Congo, as it was in the former Yugoslavia, or the pervasiveness of rape and harassment in Mexico and the femicide in Juarez, or the denial of basic rights for women in Saudi Arabia and the myriad sexual assaults on immigrant domestic workers there, or the way that the Dominique Strauss-Kahn case in the United States revealed what impunity he and others had in France, and it?s only for lack of space I?m leaving out Britain and Canada and Italy (with its ex-prime minister known for his orgies with the underaged), Argentina and Australia and so many other countries. Who Has the Right to Kill You? But maybe you?re tired of statistics, so let?s just talk about a single incident that happened in my city a couple of weeks ago, one of many local incidents in which men assaulted women that made the local papers this month: ?A woman was stabbed after she rebuffed a man's sexual advances while she walked in San Francisco's Tenderloin neighborhood late Monday night, a police spokesman said today. The 33-year-old victim was walking down the street when a stranger approached her and propositioned her, police spokesman Officer Albie Esparza said. When she rejected him, the man became very upset and slashed the victim in the face and stabbed her in the arm, Esparza said.? The man, in other words, framed the situation as one in which his chosen victim had no rights and liberties, while he had the right to control and punish her. This should remind us that violence is first of all authoritarian. It begins with this premise: I have the right to control you. Murder is the extreme version of that authoritarianism, where the murderer asserts he has the right to decide whether you live or die, the ultimate means of controlling someone. This may be true even if you are ?obedient,? because the desire to control comes out of a rage that obedience can?t assuage. Whatever fears, whatever sense of vulnerability may underlie such behavior, it also comes out of entitlement, the entitlement to inflict suffering and even death on other people. It breeds misery in the perpetrator and the victims. As for that incident in my city, similar things happen all the time. Many versions of it happened to me when I was younger, sometimes involving death threats and often involving torrents of obscenities: a man approaches a woman with both desire and the furious expectation that the desire will likely be rebuffed. The fury and desire come in a package, all twisted together into something that always threatens to turn eros into thanatos, love into death, sometimes literally. It?s a system of control. It?s why so many intimate-partner murders are of women who dared to break up with those partners. As a result, it imprisons a lot of women, and though you could say that the attacker on January 7th, or a brutal would-be-rapist near my own neighborhood on January 5th, or another rapist here on January 12th, or the San Franciscan who on January 6th set his girlfriend on fire for refusing to do his laundry, or the guy who was just sentenced to 370 years for some particularly violent rapes in San Francisco in late 2011, were marginal characters, rich, famous, and privileged guys do it, too. The Japanese vice-consul in San Francisco was charged with 12 felony counts of spousal abuse and assault with a deadly weapon last September, the same month that, in the same town, the ex-girlfriend of Mason Mayer (brother of Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer) testified in court: "He ripped out my earrings, tore my eyelashes off, while spitting in my face and telling me how unlovable I am? I was on the ground in the fetal position, and when I tried to move, he squeezed both knees tighter into my sides to restrain me and slapped me." According to the newspaper, she also testified that ?Mayer slammed her head onto the floor repeatedly and pulled out clumps of her hair, telling her that the only way she was leaving the apartment alive was if he drove her to theGolden Gate Bridge ?where you can jump off or I will push you off.?" Mason Mayer got probation. This summer, an estranged husband violated his wife?s restraining order against him, shooting her -- and six other women -- at her spa job in suburban Milwaukee, but since there were only four corpses the crime was largely overlooked in the media in a year with so many more spectacular mass murders in this country (and we still haven?t really talked about the fact that, of 62 mass shootings in the U.S. in three decades, only one was by a woman, because when you say lone gunman, everyone talks about loners and guns but not about men -- and by the way, nearly two thirds of all women killed by guns are killed by their partner or ex-partner). What?s love got to do with it, asked Tina Turner, whose ex-husband Ike once said, ?Yeah I hit her, but I didn't hit her more than the average guy beats his wife.? A woman is beaten every nine seconds in this country. Just to be clear: not nine minutes, but nine seconds. It?s the number-one cause of injury to American women; of the two million injured annually, more than half a millionof those injuries require medical attention while about 145,000 require overnight hospitalizations, according to the Center for Disease Control, and you don?t want to know about the dentistry needed afterwards. Spouses are also the leading cause of death for pregnant women in the U.S. ?Women worldwide ages 15 through 44 are more likely to die or be maimed because of male violence than because of cancer, malaria, war and traffic accidents combined,? writes Nicholas D. Kristof, one of the few prominent figures to address the issue regularly. The Chasm Between Our Worlds Rape and other acts of violence, up to and including murder, as well as threats of violence, constitute the barrage some men lay down as they attempt to control some women, and fear of that violence limits most women in ways they?ve gotten so used to they hardly notice -- and we hardly address. There are exceptions: last summer someone wrote to me to describe a college class in which the students were asked what they do to stay safe from rape. The young women described the intricate ways they stayed alert, limited their access to the world, took precautions, and essentially thought about rape all the time (while the young men in the class, he added, gaped in astonishment). The chasm between their worlds had briefly and suddenly become visible. Mostly, however, we don?t talk about it -- though a graphic has been circulating on the Internet called Ten Top Tips to End Rape, the kind of thing young women get often enough, but this one had a subversive twist. It offered advice like this: ?Carry a whistle! If you are worried you might assault someone ?by accident? you can hand it to the person you are with, so they can call for help.? While funny, the piece points out something terrible: the usual guidelines in such situations put the full burden of prevention on potential victims, treating the violence as a given. You explain to me why colleges spend more time telling women how to survive predators than telling the other half of their students not to be predators. Threats of sexual assault now seem to take place online regularly. In late 2011, British columnist Laurie Penny wrote, ?An opinion, it seems, is the short skirt of the Internet. Having one and flaunting it is somehow asking an amorphous mass of almost-entirely male keyboard-bashers to tell you how they'd like to rape, kill, and urinate on you. This week, after a particularly ugly slew of threats, I decided to make just a few of those messages public on Twitter, and the response I received was overwhelming. Many could not believe the hate I received, and many more began to share their own stories of harassment, intimidation, and abuse.? Women in the online gaming community have been harassed, threatened, and driven out. Anita Sarkeesian, a feminist media critic who documented such incidents, received support for her work, but also, in the words of a journalist, ?another wave of really aggressive, you know, violent personal threats, her accounts attempted to be hacked. And one man in Ontario took the step of making an online video game where you could punch Anita's image on the screen. And if you punched it multiple times, bruises and cuts would appear on her image.? The difference between these online gamers and the Taliban men who, last October, tried to murder 14-year-old Malala Yousafzai for speaking out about the right of Pakistani women to education is one of degree. Both are trying to silence and punish women for claiming voice, power, and the right to participate. Welcome to Manistan. The Party for the Protection of the Rights of Rapists It?s not just public, or private, or online either. It?s also embedded in our political system, and our legal system, which before feminists fought for us didn?t recognize most domestic violence, or sexual harassment and stalking, or date rape, or acquaintance rape, or marital rape, and in cases of rape still often tries the victim rather than the rapist, as though only perfect maidens could be assaulted -- or believed. As we learned in the 2012 election campaign, it?s also embedded in the minds and mouths of our politicians. Remember that spate of crazy pro-rape thingsRepublican men said last summer and fall, starting with Todd Akin's notorious claim that a woman has ways of preventing pregnancy in cases of rape, a statement he made in order to deny women control over their own bodies. After that, of course, Senate candidate Richard Mourdock claimed that rape pregnancies were ?a gift from God,? and just this month, another Republican politician piped up to defend Akin?s comment. Happily the five publicly pro-rape Republicans in the 2012 campaign all losttheir election bids. (Stephen Colbert tried to warn them that women had gotten the vote in 1920.) But it?s not just a matter of the garbage they say (and the price they now pay). Earlier this month, congressional Republicans refused to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act, because they objected to the protection it gave immigrants, transgendered women, and Native American women. (Speaking of epidemics, one of three Native American women will be raped, and on the reservations 88% of those rapes are by non-Native men who know tribal governments can?t prosecute them.) And they?re out to gut reproductive rights -- birth control as well as abortion, as they?ve pretty effectively done in many states over the last dozen years. What?s meant by ?reproductive rights,? of course, is the right of women to control their own bodies. Didn?t I mention earlier that violence against women is a control issue? And though rapes are often investigated lackadaisically -- there is a backlog of about 400,000 untested rape kits in this country-- rapists who impregnate their victims have parental rights in 31 states. Oh, and former vice-presidential candidate and current congressman Paul Ryan (R-Manistan) is reintroducing a bill that would give states the right to ban abortions and might even conceivably allow a rapist to sue his victim for having one. All the Things That Aren?t to Blame Of course, women are capable of all sorts of major unpleasantness, and there are violent crimes by women, but the so-called war of the sexes is extraordinarily lopsided when it comes to actual violence. Unlike the last (male) head of the International Monetary Fund, the current (female) head is not going to assault an employee at a luxury hotel; top-ranking female officers in the U.S. military, unlike their male counterparts, are not accused of any sexual assaults; and young female athletes, unlike those male football players in Steubenville, aren?t likely to urinate on unconscious boys, let alone violate them and boast about it in YouTube videos and Twitter feeds. No female bus riders in India have ganged up to sexually assault a man so badly he dies of his injuries, nor are marauding packs of women terrorizing men in Cairo?s Tahrir Square, and there?s just no maternal equivalent to the11% of rapes that are by fathers or stepfathers. Of the people in prison in the U.S., 93.5% are not women, and though quite a lot of them should not be there in the first place, maybe some of them should because of violence, until we think of a better way to deal with it, and them. No major female pop star has blown the head off a young man she took home with her, as did Phil Spector. (He is now part of that 93.5% for the shotgun slaying of Lana Clarkson, apparently for refusing his advances.) No female action-movie star has been charged with domestic violence, because Angelina Jolie just isn?t doing what Mel Gibson and Steve McQueen did, and there aren?t any celebrated female movie directors who gave a 13-year-old drugs before sexually assaulting that child, while she kept saying ?no,? as did Roman Polanski. In Memory of Jyoti Singh Pandey What?s the matter with manhood? There?s something about how masculinity is imagined, about what?s praised and encouraged, about the way violence is passed on to boys that needs to be addressed. There are lovely and wonderful men out there, and one of the things that?s encouraging in this round of the war against women is how many men I?ve seen who get it, who think it?s their issue too, who stand up for us and with us in everyday life, online and in the marches from New Delhi to San Francisco this winter. Increasingly men are becoming good allies -- and there always have been some. Kindness and gentleness never had a gender, and neither did empathy. Domestic violence statistics are down significantly from earlier decades (even though they?re still shockingly high), and a lot of men are at work crafting new ideas and ideals about masculinity and power. Gay men have been good allies of mine for almost four decades. (Apparently same-sex marriage horrifies conservatives because it?s marriage between equals with no inevitable roles.) Women?s liberation has often been portrayed as a movement intent on encroaching upon or taking power and privilege away from men, as though in some dismal zero-sum game, only one gender at a time could be free and powerful. But we are free together or slaves together. There are other things I?d rather write about, but this affects everything else. The lives of half of humanity are still dogged by, drained by, and sometimes ended by this pervasive variety of violence. Think of how much more time and energy we would have to focus on other things that matter if we weren?t so busy surviving. Look at it this way: one of the best journalists I know is afraid to walk home at night in our neighborhood. Should she stop working late? How many women have had to stop doing their work, or been stopped from doing it, for similar reasons? One of the most exciting new political movements on Earth is the Native Canadian indigenous rights movement, with feminist and environmental overtones, called Idle No More. On December 27th, shortly after the movement took off, a Native woman was kidnapped, raped, beaten, and left for dead in Thunder Bay, Ontario, by men whose remarks framed the crime as retaliation against Idle No More. Afterward, she walked four hours through the bitter cold and survived to tell her tale. Her assailants, who have threatened to do it again, are still at large. The New Delhi rape and murder of Jyoti Singh Pandey, the 23-year-old who was studying physiotherapy so that she could better herself while helping others, and the assault on her male companion (who survived) seem to have triggered the reaction that we have needed for 100, or 1,000, or 5,000 years. May she be to women -- and men -- worldwide what Emmett Till, murdered by white supremacists in 1955, was to African-Americans and the then-nascent U.S. civil rights movement. We have far more than 87,000 rapes in this country every year, but each of them is invariably portrayed as an isolated incident. We have dots so close they?re splatters melting into a stain, but hardly anyone connects them, or names that stain. In India they did. They said that this is a civil rights issue, it?s a human rights issue, it?s everyone?s problem, it?s not isolated, and it?s never going to be acceptable again. It has to change. It?s your job to change it, and mine, and ours.
By: Rebecca Solnit | alternet | Your report has been submitted to Customer Service. Thank you. There was a problem submitting your report. Please try again later. ? |
| Kit B. (308) | Sunday January 27, 2013, 9:16 am Yes, the article is a bit long - but it also is a good and important read. Your report has been submitted to Customer Service. Thank you. There was a problem submitting your report. Please try again later. ? |
 Angelika Roll (83) | Sunday January 27, 2013, 10:34 am Standing ovations to Ms Rebeca ! she hit just about every point that came to my mind while even starting to read: And she is right: In my view it IS the uprising of a furious, revenge seeking patriarchy trying to defeat by all means the forthcoming matriarchy, trying to stop it from the root. If you take into consideration the right wing political war on women -glad she also addressed that!- , particularly the absurd views of abortion after rape, to me that means their agenda wants to create an even more vilolent society in the generations to come and to make sure patriarchy remains in power. That just cannot be allowed! Your report has been submitted to Customer Service. Thank you. There was a problem submitting your report. Please try again later. ? |
| Kit B. (308) | Sunday January 27, 2013, 10:58 am It is allowed and, today it seems we as a society favor the Rapist over the victim. Each time a rape is re-classified as some form of sexual assault we ignore the nature of the act. Each time a jury finds a reason to release a rapist, even with DNA, we redefine the meaning of violence. Should any politician feel the need to speak of "legitimate" rape, let him hear from the roar of the crowd a loud "NO". Women worked too hard for too many years to have Rape clearly defined as crime of violence, now in many states it is redefined, and the victims are held accountable.
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| Angelika Roll (83) | Sunday January 27, 2013, 11:03 am Time to take to the strees again, rise up and revolte! Urge your new female senators to DO something about this! Your report has been submitted to Customer Service. Thank you. There was a problem submitting your report. Please try again later. ? |
 Dave C. (122) | Sunday January 27, 2013, 12:00 pm unfortunately I am not surprised....very very very sad.....and angering Your report has been submitted to Customer Service. Thank you. There was a problem submitting your report. Please try again later. ? |
 jo M. (2) | Sunday January 27, 2013, 12:00 pm While the author rightly points out the amount of violence committed against women, she is a typical hypocrite when she supports abortion and the brutal violence millions of women commit when they have their own children murdered. Your report has been submitted to Customer Service. Thank you. There was a problem submitting your report. Please try again later. ? |
| Kit B. (308) | Sunday January 27, 2013, 12:18 pm That's one irrelevant opinion. It is not murder, though you and those who think that their ideas should be forced on everyone, it is still NOT murder. I do resent those who would force others to do and think just as they do. If you decide it is wrong for you than don't have an abortion and keep your nose out of others women's vaginas. Your report has been submitted to Customer Service. Thank you. There was a problem submitting your report. Please try again later. ? |
| Angelika Roll (83) | Sunday January 27, 2013, 12:44 pm well said Kit! What hypocricy is all about we have seen more than enough during recent GOP campaign! Your report has been submitted to Customer Service. Thank you. There was a problem submitting your report. Please try again later. ? |
| Angelika Roll (83) | Sunday January 27, 2013, 12:49 pm joM- I and I guess all others here as well, will not wish real brutal violence upon you, but you obviously have no idea what that is in reality. Your report has been submitted to Customer Service. Thank you. There was a problem submitting your report. Please try again later. ? |
| Kit B. (308) | Sunday January 27, 2013, 1:38 pm Those who demand others live within their personal morality, are always a boil on the butt of society. Your report has been submitted to Customer Service. Thank you. There was a problem submitting your report. Please try again later. ? |
 Carrie B. (219) | Sunday January 27, 2013, 1:39 pm This all makes me so sad and even more angry! No one LIKES abortion ~ it is simply a matter of rights and choice! I agree with Kit ~ abortion is NOT murder and to say it is and to call those who have an abortion murders, is unjust, unkind. and just plain wrong! Your report has been submitted to Customer Service. Thank you. There was a problem submitting your report. Please try again later. ? |
| Kit B. (308) | Sunday January 27, 2013, 1:43 pm Correct, Carrie. The crime of abuse by society is committed against victim, after the attack. Your report has been submitted to Customer Service. Thank you. There was a problem submitting your report. Please try again later. ? |
 Dana H. (229) | Sunday January 27, 2013, 2:28 pm TY Kit for this article, it's really an important issue and subject. Your report has been submitted to Customer Service. Thank you. There was a problem submitting your report. Please try again later. ? |
 Rose NoFWDSPLZ (212) | Sunday January 27, 2013, 3:09 pm I agree Carrie, thanks Kit Your report has been submitted to Customer Service. Thank you. There was a problem submitting your report. Please try again later. ? |
 J.L. A. (85) | Sunday January 27, 2013, 3:35 pm Through my tears I say enough is enough and it is indeed time to take back the streets and our homes (isn't that date for marching coming soon?) Your report has been submitted to Customer Service. Thank you. There was a problem submitting your report. Please try again later. ? |
| Kit B. (308) | Sunday January 27, 2013, 3:51 pm Two day ago J L , but I have a hunch there will be more, many more. Your report has been submitted to Customer Service. Thank you. There was a problem submitting your report. Please try again later. ? |
 Robert B. (52) | Sunday January 27, 2013, 3:58 pm Shame on you jo M. ! YOU are the REAL hypocrite!. How dare you equate personal pro choice with violence against women! These are 2 separate issues. It's disgusting when right wingers always have to push their political agendas! SHAME!!!!!! Your report has been submitted to Customer Service. Thank you. There was a problem submitting your report. Please try again later. ? |
 Yvonne White (215) | Sunday January 27, 2013, 4:04 pm If politicians keep up this war on women, we may be forced to vigilante justice.. then they WILL be sorry!:( Your report has been submitted to Customer Service. Thank you. There was a problem submitting your report. Please try again later. ? |
 Lin Penrose (89) | Sunday January 27, 2013, 4:22 pm Thanks Kit for this important article. I would send a Star to you and Angelika Roll, but can't. Would send a Star to the author also. She covers many details and facts, statistics about rape: control/rage/predator/prey and more. The complexities of social structures such as humans are immense. Rape is not just a physical violent act, it is, and can be mental as well. Example, joM's comment may be one. Also known as indoctrination or mind-washing. We all are vulnerable to that type of rape within our social and cultural structures. Perhaps at one time as we evolved, sexual rape or indiscriminate reproduction by males was important for species survival , genetic health and unconsciously accepted. Although genetic need doesn't directly address the other types of sex that have appeared in our present social structures. Of course, unless there was a written or illustrated account of them several thousands of years ago and there are some, we truly don't know. One important aspect of most males is conclusive, sex and possibly violence, in many forms, is primary to the needs of their lives, right in line with food, water and shelter - not in that order. As for females, I can only speak for myself. The rest of you can come to your own conclusions in careful reviewing of our collective past, and your present. Your report has been submitted to Customer Service. Thank you. There was a problem submitting your report. Please try again later. ? |
 Diane K. (58) | Sunday January 27, 2013, 4:29 pm There should be a course in self defense at high school, or middle school, in case there are situations that the kids need to defend themselves. Unfortunately, if there is a gang, it may be a bit more difficult to use force, unless Police arrive at the scene. Your report has been submitted to Customer Service. Thank you. There was a problem submitting your report. Please try again later. ? |
| paula eaton (12) | Sunday January 27, 2013, 4:43 pm The number of rapes is hard to imagine. No woman takes abortion lightly, it is a tough decision she will remember for the rest of her life, same as rembering the rape. Your report has been submitted to Customer Service. Thank you. There was a problem submitting your report. Please try again later. ? |
 Shelly Peterson (214) | Sunday January 27, 2013, 5:08 pm thankyou for this post and for Carrie's earlier ones..............2 1/2 weeks ago, ..I was sexually assaulted (again)..I am 56 years old..I have no tolerance for lies & deceipt...i was not raped, this time..just groped,... my boobs....as I said, "NO!!!!!STOP IT!!!!!!!!!!!"(As it was a co-worker,..after hours..I was at the corner store, (I walk or take a bus, no car since I left Mike)..his son was visting from California, they had been across the street at the bar for hours, "drunk", Ray insisted and grabbed my 'purchases " out of my hands, insisting he was "buying"..he was so drunk..and after quietly saying no, thankyou" the clerk said, just let him and his son agreed and was apogolising every which way was possable,,which I reassured him, " I know!!..your Dad is this way..I will pay him the $$ on monday, at work, which he said , "he won't remember".." I said , I know, but I will give him the receipt anyway and the money and remind him..(drunk , blackout)......AAAAUUUURRRGGGHHH!!!!!!!! Ray, when sober, is an intreagal part of the business, as NO ONE, there has the knowledge or talents that he has....and is a huge part of the business..lives for free above the shop, and we are "all to shut-up, kiss butt,ignore, go with it"...because of the econo crash 2 years ago, THEY are damn lucky to have him (when he actually does the job!)..when he screws up...things are screwed, because none of us know how to "fix-it"...and right now it is 65% of the company income................ In order for me to get home, I had to walk by my work...I was invited upstairs to join both Ray & his son for a beer..okay! Dillion is here from California (Ray should behave!)..I have computer questions for Dillion, as this is his business social conversation and..I would be safe around Ray , when he is drunk (serious sexual problems , socially with women , across the street at the restaurant and here in the work place....NO! ..is a "challenge to him, to do what he attempted, you said NO!, and he flaunts, how he can anyway!!!...and the next day, he says he has no idea what you are talking about!!!!!!!!!!!!!!...blackout????or.."convienant" pretend blackout....I believe the latter, after discerning his personality profile...but I am not a "paid" professional in this field...just years of research.........and experience...I was and am a fellow employee..a woman of integrity..not interested in this particular Man as a boyfriend , in ANYWAY, SHAPE OR FORM!! (HE DISGUSTS ME, THE WAY HE TREATS AND THINKS OF ALL WOMEN)..and I treat him with common curtisay, only for the busines, NOW!!!!!....and I can't say anything....or I will lose my job!!!!!!!!!!! Your report has been submitted to Customer Service. Thank you. There was a problem submitting your report. Please try again later. ? |
 Ness . (192) | Sunday January 27, 2013, 5:16 pm Brilliant article Rebecca, Thank you Kit for posting!!! This article should be presented to school's ( high school ), and other education departments and discussed in depth with staff and their students, and yes as a woman and mother of a teen and younger, self defense classes should be mandatory in the school system. Angelika and Kit: WELL SAID!!! Your report has been submitted to Customer Service. Thank you. There was a problem submitting your report. Please try again later. ? |
| Ness . (192) | Sunday January 27, 2013, 5:22 pm You cannot currently send a star to Carrie because you have done so within the last week. Your report has been submitted to Customer Service. Thank you. There was a problem submitting your report. Please try again later. ? |
 marie tc (145) | Sunday January 27, 2013, 5:32 pm Excellent article and great comments except for Jo M Who has given her the right to judge Thanks for posting Kit Your report has been submitted to Customer Service. Thank you. There was a problem submitting your report. Please try again later. ? |
| Ana Passos (1) | Sunday January 27, 2013, 5:37 pm thanks Your report has been submitted to Customer Service. Thank you. There was a problem submitting your report. Please try again later. ? |
| Shelly Peterson (214) | Sunday January 27, 2013, 6:00 pm I am so glad you brought up the issue of self-defence...when Ray, reached over and grabbed my boobs,...I fought him off!! ....( making myself just do so without hurting HIM!!..as I could have, wanted too..but I didnot want to go to jail, for assault on him, if I hurt him while defending myself!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)...welcome to Washington state, our cops..and their 'whatever day it is" interpretation of the law"..and whom they are and whom they actually work for.................and I used to date a Cop and he taught me self-defenance!!!......and I had to tell Ray 3 times..STOP Source: http://www.care2.com/news/member/451276626/3521530 powerball winner Zig Ziglar lunar eclipse alabama football florida lotto dancing with the stars sean taylor
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