Visual Source: Newseum
NY Times:
It would be hugely costly — for this country’s credibility, for the future of NATO and for the people of Libya — if Congress were to force President Obama to abandon military operations over Libya. However, Mr. Obama cannot evade his responsibility, under the War Powers Act, to seek Congressional approval to continue the operation.
Former president Jimmy Carter:
IN an extraordinary new initiative announced earlier this month, the Global Commission on Drug Policy has made some courageous and profoundly important recommendations in a report on how to bring more effective control over the illicit drug trade. The commission includes the former presidents or prime ministers of five countries, a former secretary general of the United Nations, human rights leaders, and business and government leaders, including Richard Branson, George P. Shultz and Paul A. Volcker.The report describes the total failure of the present global antidrug effort, and in particular America’s “war on drugs,” which was declared 40 years ago today. It notes that the global consumption of opiates has increased 34.5 percent, cocaine 27 percent and cannabis 8.5 percent from 1998 to 2008. Its primary recommendations are to substitute treatment for imprisonment for people who use drugs but do no harm to others, and to concentrate more coordinated international effort on combating violent criminal organizations rather than nonviolent, low-level offenders.
These recommendations are compatible with United States drug policy from three decades ago. In a message to Congress in 1977, I said the country should decriminalize the possession of less than an ounce of marijuana, with a full program of treatment for addicts. I also cautioned against filling our prisons with young people who were no threat to society, and summarized by saying: “Penalties against possession of a drug should not be more damaging to an individual than the use of the drug itself.”
L.A. Times:
Like Arizona's SB 1070, Alabama's cruel new law will almost certainly face legal challenges because it encroaches on the federal government's lone authority to regulate immigration. And it will certainly invite scrutiny from the Department of Justice, which last month warned public school districts that it won't tolerate any attempt to get around Plyler vs. Doe, the 1982 Supreme Court decision that made it illegal for states to deny any child a public education regardless of his or her immigration status.The law seems particularly bizarre because illegal immigrants are estimated to account for just over 2% of the population in Alabama. But that should serve as a warning to Washington that the issue of immigration is now a nationwide concern, no longer limited to the West and Southwest. President Obama and Congress have failed to tackle comprehensive immigration reform, a difficult issue that continues to divide voters. But ignoring it won't make the problem disappear. Instead, it will continue to push more states to pass draconian measures that put children in the crossfire of a political battle. And that is unacceptable.
Reed Hunt and Thomas Mann:
Not surprisingly, neither Congress nor state governments believe they can afford to spend money on infrastructure. The parties are sharply divided on the efficacy of any new public spending, but even Democrats are wary of proposing investments in the face of the nation’s huge deficits and increasing debt. Moreover, since such infrastructure projects typically provide such small returns on capital, they are not suited to most private-sector investors.Meanwhile, American businesses have more than a trillion dollars sitting in bank accounts in other countries. They do not want to transfer the money back to the United States because the second the cash hits our shores, the Internal Revenue Service will tax the gains — as much as 35 percent of profits.
Just to avoid the IRS, some CEOs are willing to spend their overseas profits on buying overseas companies or making overseas investments at prices that are too high. [...]
But putting these problems together could produce a common solution.
Why doesn’t Congress let firms bring back their overseas profits without taxation — if, and only if, they put the money into an infrastructure bank for a certain period? This bank would then issue low-interest, long-term loans for projects that in flusher times would be funded by municipalities or utilities. [...]
Private-sector infrastructure initiatives across the range of transportation, communication and energy needs (examples include high-speed rail in the Northeast Corridor, energy-sector generation and building efficiency), some operating under public-private partnerships, could be launched expeditiously to generate jobs and investments critical to our economic recovery and long-term growth.
Michael Scherer:
In private, Romney’s aides say he is a very funny guy, who loves to tell jokes. In public, Romney tends to be a very hokey guy, who loves telling jokes. Dana Milbank, the Washington press corps’ resident funny man, recently wrote an entire story about Romney telling jokes in New Hampshire. He called the story, “A day of awkwardness with Mitt Romney.”Among the zingers:
1. “I saw the young man over there with eggs Benedict, with hollandaise sauce. And I was going to suggest to you that you serve your eggs with hollandaise sauce in hubcaps. Because there’s no plates like chrome for the hollandaise.”
2. “Oh, this is the Hooters equivalent.” (When he noticed no guy waitresses at a diner.)
3. “Okay, so what do you do about mosquito control? . . . This has been a mosquito-infested year with all the moisture. They flew away with my dog.”
He also pretended to have his butt pinched by someone who was taking a picture with him. Then he said, “Oh my goodness gracious!. . . . Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.”
These sort of jokes are cute, in their way, the sort of earnest, simple, joyful humor that you would expect from Ward Cleaver. But the modern media culture is far more Richard Pryor than Henny Youngman, more Stephen Colbert than Bob Hope. Sometimes the discordance between Romney’s good-natured, earnest delivery and his environment is so striking that one can’t help but cringe.
Android Fund Launches
With the new Android Fund, Tapjoy is offering to port the apps for the developers, test them and even offer "free marketing credits" for those who use the program. These credits can be used for new user acquisition through Tapjoy's ad network. Mobile analytics will also be provided.
However, Tapjoy's new direction with regard to Android doesn't mean the company has given up on iOS, spokesperson Matt McAllister told AllThingsD:
"We are definitely turning more of our attention to Android from a sales and product perspective, but we still view iOS as very strategically important. Of course, without PPI it presents a challenge, but we’ve been adding lots of high-value, exclusive brand CPA offers like from Netflix, Gamefly, etc., and those actually seem to be working well. So yes, we’re still on iOS and believe it or not making good money there."
After the Apple ban, Tapjoy released survey results from over 496 iOS developers, which found that nearly half of developers reported an increase in user complaints because of their inability to earn in-game currency by installing or engaging with other apps. With two-thirds of respondents reporting that at least 20% of their revenue came through the PPI (pay-per-install) model, the new Android offering may end up being a no-brainer for developers who rely on this type of monetization for their apps.
To be considered for the Android Fund, mobile game developers can sign up here: https://www.tapjoy.com/androidfund/apply.
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Peter Risdon Says:
May 16, 2011 at 2:40 pm | Reply
The paragraph you quoted from ends with this sentence:
“According to the best-sited stations, the diurnal temperature range in the lower 48 states has no century-scale trend.”
That was a surprise given the tenor of this post: “… maybe this is the end to questions as to whether surface temperature increases actually exist.”
Did you mean that we can now say the answer to that is that surface temperature increases do not exist? Or that, pace Keenan in the WSJ, the data do not contain statistically significant trends?
andyrussell Says:
May 16, 2011 at 2:58 pm | Reply
I don’t think diurnal temperature range is very important. Do you?
What’s more, the “century-scale” bit covers some interesting detail. Before Fall et al., it seems that the only work on diurnal temperature range showed a negative trend from the mid-century to 1980s-ish. What Fall et al. found was that this has increased again since the 1980s. So there’s no “century-scale trend”.
But that tells you very little about mean surface temperature trends.
Mark Says:
May 17, 2011 at 10:45 pm
I have heard it claimed that the reduction in diurnal temperature range over the past few decades provides evidence that GHG increases are responsible for the warming. In that sense, some people think diurnal temperature range is important.
Incidentally, I don’t think Fall et al. were the first to find that DTR has increased since the 1980s. I read a paper that said much the same thing a few years ago.
Sorry for the lack of references to back up these statements. I’m a little too busy at the moment to chase them up.
andyrussell Says:
May 18, 2011 at 8:43 am
Ok, so I’m probably not giving DTR as much significance as it deserves.
My point is that I don’t really care about DTR. I don’t think I know anyone who has a particular interest in DTR. If this paper had been published by anyone else I wouldn’t have looked at it. It’s not very interesting. It’s just another paper on climate observations that fits in with the “consensus view of climate change” or however you want to put it. That’s useful, but not to me or most people.
If, however, the paper had shown what Watts has been saying it would show for quite a while now (i.e. that the postitive temperature trend in the surface station record in the US was an artefact of poor station siting) then that would have been very interesting. To me and to many other people.
But it didn’t.
Ben Says:
May 16, 2011 at 4:49 pm | Reply
So Peter… If the diurnal high and the diurnal low both rise by 1°C, you think this means there has been no warming? After-all, the diurnal range hasn’t changed! Others might draw a different conclusion.
Peter Risdon Says:
May 17, 2011 at 8:26 am | Reply
I understand diurnal range has significance, and the relationship between day and night time temperature ranges is important, especially with regard to the period 1950 to 1980 when the effect of man-made global warming, it has been argued, was masked by a cooling but revealed by the changes in the relationship between these ranges.
I further understand that this argument is based on the idea that human pollution caused this daytime cooling, that it affected the range of day time temperatures as well as the difference between night time temperatures which continued to show warming, and daytime ones that didn’t. This makes day time temperature range significant: if this is right it would be expected to show a variation that correlates with human activity.
But this isn’t my field; I’m just reading what I can in an attempt to understand as much as possible about an important issue and, for me at least, that means reading Watts and reading this blog. Just searching out stuff you’re already disposed to accept isn’t good enough. My comment was prompted by what struck me as a somewhat partial quotation and exasperation: I’m with Feynman when he said you should point out the problems with a theory, not just the things that support it.
[It's not really a "partial quotation" is it? That sentence you are interested in is stuck on the end of the abstract as a new paragraph and isn't really related to the 2 sentences I quote and which are related to the subject of this post. I'm not really interested in DTR and I doubt Watts was either. - AR]
At least Watts invites people with different views to post on his blog and has been at the forefront of attempts to cross the ideological divide, not least with Judith Curry.
Ben, of course you’re right. Andy, a century is an arbitrary scale, of course.
I’d still be interested in your take on statistical significance.
JMurphy Says:
May 17, 2011 at 12:05 pm | Reply
In what way has Watts atempted to cross “the ideological divide” ?
Ben Says:
May 17, 2011 at 3:16 pm | Reply
Peter, I encourage a critical (i.e. thoughtful) reading of Anthony’s blog but my god do you really think he’s “at the forefront of attempts to cross the ideological divide”? Anthony has done more to harden denialist thought than anyone, with the possible exception Marc Morano.
The “different views” he solicits are unthreatening fig-leaves.
andyrussell Says:
May 17, 2011 at 3:24 pm | Reply
I’ve got no problem with most of what Keenan says, although he’s not the first/only person to be saying these things. There’s a JoC paper from 2010 and it was one of the useful points to come out of the UEA email enquiries (i.e. working more with stats people). Not sure where the funding was supposed to come from for these new people though!
I suppose the bigger problem comes down to climate science covering so much stuff – you can’t just look at problems from a stats/dynamics/modelling/chemistry/radiation/whatever perspective for too long before a) not getting very far or b) needing to doing something you’ve not done before.