This just might be one of the most incredible musical experiments I’ve ever seen. My utmost respect goes not only to the musicians but to the engineers/producers/videographers who put this together – it’s an amazing feat of technical savvy and know-how (and done for all the right reasons).

From their site (playingforchange.com):

The Inspiration

Playing for Change is a multimedia movement created to inspire, connect, and bring peace to the world through music. The idea for this project arose from a common belief that music has the power to break down boundaries and overcome distances between people. No matter whether people come from different geographic, political, economic, spiritual or ideological backgrounds, music has the universal power to transcend and unite us as one human race. And with this truth firmly fixed in our minds, we set out to share it with the world.

The Production

We built a mobile recording studio, equipped with all the same equipment used in the best studios, and traveled to wherever the music took us. As technology changed, our power demands were downsized from golf cart batteries to car batteries, and finally to laptops. Similarly, the quality with which we were able to film and document the project was gradually upgraded from a variety of formats-- each the best we could attain at the time—finally to full HD.

One thing that never changed throughout the process was our commitment to create an environment for the musicians in which they could create freely and that placed no barriers between them and those who would eventually experience their music. By leading with that energy and intent everywhere we traveled, we were freely given access to musicians and locations that are usually inaccessible. In this respect, the inspiration that originally set us on this path became a co-creator of the project along with us!

It is being reported that a ship carrying food and medical supplies to Gaza has been captured by Israeli forces and its crew and passengers taken into custody. Among the aid-workers are former congresswoman and presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney, and Nobel Prize winner (as well as one of the founders of the Nobel Women’s Initiative) Mairead Maguire.

 According to a BBC report, Ms. McKinney said: "This is an outrageous violation of international law against us. Our boat was not in Israeli waters, and we were on a human rights mission to the Gaza Strip. President Obama just told Israel to let in humanitarian and reconstruction supplies, and that's exactly what we tried to do. We're asking the international community to demand our release so we can resume our journey." 

The Israeli military claimed the boat was trying to enter Gaza illegally.

The BBC report also noted: On Monday, a report by the International Committee of the Red Cross described the 1.5 million Palestinians living in Gaza as people "trapped in despair", unable to rebuild their lives after Israel's offensive.

Donors have pledged $4.5 billion for reconstruction and rehabilitation in Gaza following the 22-day offensive which left more than 50,000 homes, 800 industrial properties and 200 schools damaged or destroyed, as well as 39 mosques and two churches. 

 The official press release from Freegaza.org claimed that the ship was forcibly dragged from international waters into Israeli territory to facilitate the capture of the ship and its crew and passengers. 

 The press release also stated:  Just before being kidnapped by Israel, Huwaida Arraf, Free Gaza Movement chairperson and delegation co-coordinator on this voyage, stated that: "No one could possibly believe that our small boat constitutes any sort of threat to Israel. We carry medical and reconstruction supplies, and children's toys. Our passengers include a Nobel peace prize laureate and a former U.S. congressperson. Our boat was searched and received a security clearance by Cypriot Port Authorities before we departed, and at no time did we ever approach Israeli waters." Arraf continued, "Israel's deliberate and premeditated attack on our unarmed boat is a clear violation of international law and we demand our immediate and unconditional release."

As of this writing, the Israeli military has not denied the claim that they forced the ship into Israeli waters.

Reprinted from CNET news:

 

E-mails indicate EPA suppressed report skeptical of global warming

by Declan McCullagh

The Environmental Protection Agency may have suppressed an internal report that was skeptical of claims about global warming, including whether carbon dioxide must be strictly regulated by the federal government, according to a series of newly disclosed e-mail messages.

Less than two weeks before the agency formally submitted its pro-regulation recommendation to the White House, an EPA center director quashed a 98-page report that warned against making hasty "decisions based on a scientific hypothesis that does not appear to explain most of the available data."

The EPA official, Al McGartland, said in an e-mail message (PDF) to a staff researcher on March 17: "The administrator and the administration has decided to move forward...and your comments do not help the legal or policy case for this decision."

The e-mail correspondence raises questions about political interference in what was supposed to be an independent review process inside a federal agency--and echoes criticisms of the EPA under the Bush administration, which was accused of suppressing a pro-climate change document.

Alan Carlin, the primary author of the 98-page EPA report, said in a telephone interview on Friday that his boss, McGartland, was being pressured himself. "It was his view that he either lost his job or he got me working on something else," Carlin said. "That was obviously coming from higher levels."

E-mail messages released this week show that Carlin was ordered not to "have any direct communication" with anyone outside his small group at EPA on the topic of climate change, and was informed that his report would not be shared with the agency group working on the topic.

"I was told for probably the first time in I don't know how many years exactly what I was to work on," said Carlin, a 38-year veteran of the EPA. "And it was not to work on climate change." One e-mail orders him to update a grants database instead.

For its part, the EPA sent an e-mailed statement saying: "Claims that this individual's opinions were not considered or studied are entirely false. This Administration and this EPA Administrator are fully committed to openness, transparency, and science-based decision making. These principles were reflected throughout the development of the proposed endangerment finding, a process in which a broad array of voices were heard and an inter-agency review was conducted." (The endangerment finding is the EPA's decision that carbon dioxide endangers the public health and welfare.)

Carlin has an undergraduate degree in physics from CalTech and a PhD in economics from MIT. His Web site lists papers about the environment and public policy dating back to 1964, spanning topics from pollution control to environmentally-responsible energy pricing.

After reviewing the scientific literature that the EPA is relying on, Carlin said, he concluded that it was at least three years out of date and did not reflect the latest research. "My personal view is that there is not currently any reason to regulate (carbon dioxide)," he said. "There may be in the future. But global temperatures are roughly where they were in the mid-20th century. They're not going up, and if anything they're going down."

Carlin's report listed a number of recent developments he said the EPA did not consider, including that global temperatures have declined for 11 years; that new research predicts Atlantic hurricanes will be unaffected; that there's "little evidence" that Greenland is shedding ice at expected levels; and that solar radiation has the largest single effect on the earth's temperature.

If there is a need for the government to lower planetary temperatures, Carlin believes, other mechanisms would be cheaper and more effective than regulation of carbon dioxide. One paper he wrote says managing sea level rise or reducing solar radiation reaching the earth would be more cost-effective alternatives.

The EPA's possible suppression of Carlin's report, which lists the EPA's John Davidson as a co-author, could endanger any carbon dioxide regulations if they are eventually challenged in court.

"The big question is: there is this general rule that when an agency puts something out for public evidence and comment, it's supposed to have the evidence supporting it and the evidence the other way," said Sam Kazman, general counsel of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington, D.C., that has been skeptical of new laws or regulations relating to global warming.

Kazman's group obtained the documents--both CEI and Carlin say he was not the source--and released the e-mails on Tuesday and the report on Friday. As a result of the disclosure, CEI has asked the EPA to reopen the comment period on the greenhouse gas regulatory proceeding, which ended on Tuesday.

The EPA also said in its statement: "The individual in question is not a scientist and was not part of the working group dealing with this issue. Nevertheless, the document he submitted was reviewed by his peers and agency scientists, and information from that report was submitted by his manager to those responsible for developing the proposed endangerment finding. In fact, some ideas from that document are included and addressed in the endangerment finding."

That appears to conflict with an e-mail from McGartland in March, who said to Carlin: "I decided not to forward your comments... I can see only one impact of your comments given where we are in the process, and that would be a very negative impact on our office." He also wrote to Carlin: "Please do not have any direct communication with anyone outside of (our group) on endangerment. There should be no meetings, e-mails, written statements, phone calls, etc."

One reason why the process might have been highly charged politically is the unusual speed of the regulatory process. Lisa Jackson, the new EPA administrator, had said that she wanted her agency to reach a decision about regulating carbon dioxide under the Clean Air Act by April 2--the second anniversary of a related U.S. Supreme Court decision.

"All this goes back to a decision at a higher level that this was very urgent to get out, if possible, yesterday," Carlin said. "In the case of an ordinary regulation, these things normally take a year or two. In this case, it was a few weeks to get it out for public comment." (Carlin said that he and other EPA staff members who were asked to respond to a draft only had four and a half days to do so.)

In the last few days, Republicans have begun to raise questions about the report and e-mail messages, but it was insufficient to derail the so-called cap and trade bill from being approved by the U.S. House of Representatives.

Rep. Joe Barton, the senior Republican on the Energy and Commerce committee, invoked Carlin's report in a floor speech during the debate on Friday. "The science is not there to back it up," Barton said. "An EPA report that has been suppressed...raises grave doubts about the endangerment finding. If you don't have an endangerment finding, you don't need this bill. We don't need this bill. And for some reason, the EPA saw fit not to include that in its decision."

"I'm sure it was very inconvenient for the EPA to consider a study that contradicted the findings it wanted to reach," Rep. James Sensenbrenner, the senior Republican on the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, said in a statement. "But the EPA is supposed to reach its findings based on evidence, not on political goals. The repression of this important study casts doubts on the EPA's finding, and frankly, on other analysis the EPA has conducted on climate issues."

The revelations could prove embarrassing to Jackson, the EPA administrator, who said in January: "I will ensure the EPA's efforts to address the environmental crises of today are rooted in three fundamental values: science-based policies and programs, adherence to the rule of law, and overwhelming transparency." Similarly, President Barack Obama claimed that "the days of science taking a back seat to ideology are over... To undermine scientific integrity is to undermine our democracy. It is contrary to our way of life."

"All this talk from the president and (EPA administrator) Lisa Jackson about integrity, transparency, and increased EPA protection for whistleblowers--you've got a bouquet of ironies here," said Kazman, the CEI attorney.

So…Congress has done it again – screwed the American people in the interest of monetary gain, that is. And the TV news was just a tad busy talking about Michael Jackson to worry about reporting one of the most sweeping acts in Congressional history.

Friday night they passed the “American Clean Energy and Security Act”, an almost 1500 page bill which was, for the most part, unread by the members of Congress by the time it came to a vote. Much like the Patriot Act, the bill was rushed into Congress for a vote, with over 300 pages added last minute so as to discourage a thorough review and debate on its faults and merits. That alone should set off warning bells in everyone’s heads.

The act is a sprawling mess, and I have only scratched the surface of it so far (which is more than I can say for our representatives).  But what I have read give me more than enough pause for thought and makes me wonder if those who voted in favor actually have the best interests of the country in mind…or if lining their pockets and partisanship power are their paramount concerns.

The part of the Act that simply floors me is the whole idea of a “Cap and Trade” system. Everyone (businesses and eventually individuals) are going to be allotted a certain amount of ‘carbon allowances’ which will determine the amount of a ‘carbon footprint’ one is allowed to have. If you go over that amount then you will have to purchase more of these allowance (or “carbon credits”) from an institution that trades these credits.

On the surface, this sounds like it could be reasonable. But, in effect, all that is being done is the creation a new mechanism for wealthy investors to make even more money ( a pseudo-stock market, if you will). Instead of trading stocks and bonds, now there will be trading in carbon credits. All of this trade-floor money is going to go into the pockets of investors and in no way will help the environment.

And instead of big business spending money on ways to pollute less, they are given opportunity to simply purchase allowances in order to continue their normal operations, much in the way that government imposed fines and fees have been dealt with by said businesses (which will allow smaller business, who cannot afford these credits, to be eventually digested by larger companies and thus taking competition out of a business strategy). 

One can certainly argue that the whole package is a positive and that the trading of carbon credits is simply a means to an end (and one would loose that argument buy the fact that no one read the act before passage…and very few have attempted it afterwards. I’m working my way through it….are you?). But why not make it simple, effective and enforceable (and not selectively enforceable, like so many other laws and acts passed in the interest of lining pockets)? How about this, for example: the “Three Strikes Act” – Any big business that pollutes the environment too much (an number to be determined by scientific consensus) get a warning to clean up their act by a certain percentage a year over, say, ten years. Every year their progress is monitored, and they have three chances to fail. If they get three strikes during the ten year term all of their US government contracts are canceled and they are not allowed to bid for another three years.  An addendum to this act would be to not levy any government fines during this ten years (after all, it’s not about generating revenue for the government; it’s about protecting the environment, right?)

How much would you like to wager that the amount of environmental pollutants would drop CONSIDERABILITY in that ten year time? And, without the need to generate wealth and complicated (non-transparent) schemes.

And I would like to drive home a point one more time: this bill was pushed through and voted on before anyone had a chance to read it BY DESIGN. To my Republican Friends: Bush did the same thing with the Patriot Act (among others) and you said nothing – which makes him just as bad (and NOT because Limbaugh and Hannity said so…use your OWN heads). To My Democrat Friends: You jumped up and down when Bush did this, and now you say nothing – but it obvious for this (among other reasons) that the current Administration and Congress are just as shady as the last. To both (as well as my independent friends ): anyone who tried to get this bill (or any other bill) passed without review should be voted out of office ASAP, no exceptions.

Let’s get our country back…it’s been in the wrong hands for far too long.

An opinion peice from Campagin for Liberty website:

The "American Clean Energy and Security" Rip-Off
By Peter Orvetti
Published 06/29/09

On Friday evening, the House of Representatives passed the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES), a well-intentioned but misbegotten Frankenstein monster of a bill intended to combat climate change. Republicans Mary Bono Mack, Mike Castle, Mark Kirk, Frank LoBiondo, John McHugh, Dave Reichert, and Chris Smith joined 211 Democrats to put the bill over the top 219-212. Showing the profiles in courage typical to elected politicians, about three dozen Democrats hung back during the roll call until passage was certain, waiting until they could safely vote no without riling their party's leaders.

As its sponsors struggled to make it palatable to representatives from energy-producing states, the bill swelled from 942 pages to just over 1,200, leaving undecided members little time to digest the new material. This brings to mind Rep. John Conyers's admission to Michael Moore that members of Congress "don't really read most of the bills" they vote for, because it would "slow down the legislative process."

Two weeks after his election as president, Barack Obama said, "Few challenges facing America and the world are more urgent than combating climate change. The science is beyond dispute and the facts are clear." Shortly thereafter, more than 100 scientists signed a newspaper advertisement responding, "With all due respect Mr. President, that is not true." The scientists, from places as varied and esteemed as Los Alamos National Laboratory, the American Physical Society, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Princeton University, and the University of Pennsylvania, said the "case for alarm regarding climate change is grossly overstated."

But even many who are not skeptical about global warming found things to dislike in ACES. Rep. Dennis Kucinich, who voted against it, said, "It won't address the problem. In fact, it might make the problem worse." Kucinich faulted the bill's "Enron-style accounting methods" and allocation of $60 billion for Carbon Capture and Sequestration, "a single technology which may or may not work." Kucinich faulted the corporate welfare embedded in the bill, saying that the "trillion dollar carbon derivatives market will help Wall Street investors," with any benefits "passed through coal companies and other large corporations, on whom we will rely to pass on the savings."

"I take climate change seriously," libertarian economist Megan McArdle wrote last week. But she said the projections for ACES's "effect on global warming are entirely negligible," and any hope that U.S. passage of the bill will "persuade China and India to get on board" is "entirely wishful thinking on the part of American environmentalists. China is not going to let its citizens languish in subsistence farming because 30 years from now, some computer models say there will be some not-well-specified bad effects from high temperatures. Nor is India."

Indeed, United Nations data suggest that ACES will reduce global warming by 0.07 of a degree Fahrenheit by 2050. In exchange, the U.S. risks sparking a trade war with those two massive economic powers when their own near-certain failure to act results in U.S. sanctions. While the Congressional Budget Office says ACES will drive up the average family's energy bill by about $175 per year by 2020, that does not take into account the larger economic cost.

A Center for Data Analysis study concludes ACES will hurt the gross domestic product by $9.4 trillion by 2035 and cost the average family $1,241 per year. That's because, as the Wall Street Journal put it last week, "the whole point of cap and trade is to hike the price of electricity and gas so that Americans will use less. These higher prices will show up not just in electricity bills or at the gas station but in every manufactured good, from food to cars." A British analysis finds the average family there is paying nearly $1,300 a year for carbon-cutting programs that were introduced just a few years ago.

As Obama himself said during his run for the Democratic presidential nomination, "Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket. Businesses would have to retrofit their operations. That will cost money. They will pass that cost onto consumers." Meanwhile, reductions in consumer spending will necessarily mean a decline in production which could eliminate more than 1.1 million jobs.

This is an awful lot to pay for legislation that will not reduce global warming and will not encourage other major economic powers to become more environmentally conscious. Maybe next time, Congress should read the bill before voting on it.


Copyright © 2009 Peter Orvetti

 

From the Tampa Tribune

TV pitchman Billy Mays found dead in Tampa home TBO.com staff

Nationally known TV ad pitchman Billy Mays, 50, was found dead this morning in his Tampa home, the Tampa Police Department reported.

Mays was found unresponsive by his wife and the Tampa Fire Rescue pronounced him dead at 7:45 a.m., the report said.

There were no signs of forced entry to the residence and no foul play is suspected, police said.

The Medical Examiner's Office is expected to complete the autopsy by Monday afternoon.

"Although Billy lived a public life, we don't anticipate making any public statements over the next couple of days," Mays' wife Deborah said in a statement the police released.

"Our family asks that you respect our privacy during these difficult times."

Mays rose to for promoting OxyClean, Orange Glo, Kaboom and other household products like the Mighty Putty glue.

In April, he launched a new reality series, "Pitchmen," on the Discovery Channel to show viewers new gadgets such as the Impact Gel shoe insert; the Tool Band-it, a magnetized armband that holds tools while you work; and the Soft Buns portable seat cushion.

Mays was on U.S. Airways Flight 1241 when it blew its front tires as it landed Saturday, forcing the airport to shut down the busy north-south runway, according to authorities.

Here's something you don't see every day.

Here's the story of an amazing historical find from AP:

Prehistoric flute in Germany is oldest known
Associated Press Writer Patrick Mcgroarty

 BERLIN – A bird-bone flute unearthed in a German cave was carved some 35,000 years ago and is the oldest handcrafted musical instrument yet discovered, archaeologists say, offering the latest evidence that early modern humans in Europe had established a complex and creative culture.

A team led by University of Tuebingen archaeologist Nicholas Conard assembled the flute from 12 pieces of griffon vulture bone scattered in a small plot of the Hohle Fels cave in southern Germany.

Together, the pieces comprise a 8.6-inch (22-centimeter) instrument with five holes and a notched end. Conard said the flute was 35,000 years old.

"It's unambiguously the oldest instrument in the world," Conard told The Associated Press this week. His findings were published online Wednesday by the journal Nature.

Other archaeologists agreed with Conard's assessment.

April Nowell, a Paleolithic archaeologist at the University of Victoria in Canada, said the flute predates previously discovered instruments "but the dates are not so much older that it's surprising or controversial." Nowell was not involved in Conard's research.

The Hohle Fels flute is more complete and appears slightly older than bone and ivory fragments from seven other flutes recovered in southern German caves and documented by Conard and his colleagues in recent years.

Another flute excavated in Austria is believed to be 19,000 years old, and a group of 22 flutes found in the French Pyrenees mountains has been dated at up to 30,000 years ago.

Conard's team excavated the flute in September 2008, the same month they recovered six ivory fragments from the Hohle Fels cave that form a female figurine they believe is the oldest known sculpture of the human form.

Together, the flute and the figure — found in the same layer of sediment — suggest that modern humans had established an advanced culture in Europe 35,000 years ago, said Wil Roebroeks, an archaeologist at Leiden University in the Netherlands who didn't participate in Conard's study.

Roebroeks said it's difficult to say how cognitively and socially advanced these people were. But the physical trappings of their lives — including musical instruments, personal decorations and figurative art — match the objects we associate with modern human behavior, Roebroeks said.

"It shows that from the moment that modern humans enter Europe ... it is as modern in terms of material culture as it can get," Roebroeks told The AP. He agreed with Conard's assertion that the flute appears to be the earliest known musical instrument in the world.

Neanderthals also lived in Europe around the time the flute and sculpture were made, and frequented the Hohle Fels cave. Both Conard and Roebroeks believe, however, that layered deposits left by both species over thousands of years suggest the artifacts were crafted by early modern humans.

"The material record is so completely different from what happened in these hundreds of thousands of years before with the Neanderthals," Roebroeks said. "I would put my money on modern humans having created and played these flutes."

In 1995, archaeologist Ivan Turk excavated a bear bone artifact from a cave in Slovenia, known as the Divje Babe flute, that he has dated at around 43,000 years ago and suggested was made by Neanderthals.

But other archaeologists, including Nowell, have challenged that theory, suggesting instead that the twin holes on the 4.3-inch-long (11-centimeter-long) bone were made by a carnivore's bite.

Turk did not respond to an e-mail seeking comment.

Nowell said other researchers have hypothesized that early humans may have used spear points as wind chimes and that markings on some cave stalactites suggest they were used as percussive instruments. But there is no proof, she said, and the Hohle Fels flute is much more credible because it's the oldest specimen from an established style of bone and ivory flutes in Europe. "There's a distinction between sporadic appearances and the true development of, in this case, a musical culture," Nowell said. "The importance of something like this flute is it shows a well-established technique and tradition." Conard said it's likely that early modern humans — and perhaps Neanderthals, too — were making music longer than 35,000 years ago. But he added the Hohle Fels flute and the others found across Europe strengthen evidence that modern humans in Europe were establishing cultural behavior similar to our own.



 

A recent story from the AP states that the FTC is going to institute new guidelines to monitor Bloggers who receive any compensation for reviews of products or services on their blogs.

Excerpts from the AP story:

"New guidelines, expected to be approved late this summer with possible modifications, would clarify that the agency can go after bloggers — as well as the companies that compensate them — for any false claims or failure to disclose conflicts of interest.

It would be the first time the FTC tries to patrol systematically what bloggers say and do online. The common practice of posting a graphical ad or a link to an online retailer — and getting commissions for any sales from it — would be enough to trigger oversight

If the guidelines are approved, bloggers would have to back up claims and disclose if they're being compensated — the FTC doesn't currently plan to specify how. The FTC could order violators to stop and pay restitution to customers, and it could ask the Justice Department to sue for civil penalties.

Any type of blog could be scrutinized, not just ones that specialize in reviews.

So parents keeping blogs to update family members on their child's first steps technically would fall under the FTC guidelines, though they likely would have little to worry about unless they accept payments or free products and write about them.

But they would need to think twice if, for instance, they praise parenting books they've just read and include links to buy them at a retailer like Amazon.com Inc."

 Now, while I understand that there may be some concern about someone posting a positive review about a product simply because they were compensated for it, it seems to me that this is nothing more than a power grab and a blatant attempt to bring the internet under the control of the government.

Considering how many blogs and sites there are on the net, how could the FTC even hope to begin to enforce such an edict? Looking back at the recent track record of the FTC (Bernie Madoff and his cronies got away with WHAT for HOW LONG?), it’s pretty obvious that their favorite method of enforcement is the selective kind.

The nauseating thing to me is that, after the guidelines are brought into effect, if someone whom I have no connection to whatsoever decides they like my music and writes a review with a link back to my site, they can conceivably be investigated by the FTC. Even if they can prove that they have received no compensation from me, think of the chilling effect that will have on the free exchange of opinion. One can be come VERY hesitant to share one’s views with the threat of an “Official Government Investigation” hanging over one’s head.

In the last few years, control of the internet has seemingly become a focal point for many governments across the planet (not just in Iran, as the latest TV news reports would indicate), which reminds me of the attempts of the European powers (led by the Holy See) to control the effect of the Guttenberg press all those years ago. I can only hope that the same result of that kind of elitist attempt at control of ideas occurs in our modern day and age.