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Wednesday, June 26, 2013
CubeSats Spurring Satellite Revolution
You do realize that the Earth gets hit every day by stuff that would destroy your car's paint job (and perhaps the garage it was in) - if there wasn't something [wikipedia.org] in the way.
To reach Earth's surface, a vehicle would have to dissipate several tens of millions of joules of energy per kilogram of the vehicle. And it will, by heating up the atmosphere and vaporizing the vehicle. If the cubesat isn't designed for reentry, then most of the vehicle will probably be vaporized long before it reaches the Earth's surface. Even if somehow, it were made of unobtainium, that could withstand the heat of reentry intact, it'd still slow down to terminal velocity in the lower atmosphere. That might mess up someone's car, but it's not nuclear bomb-scale "duck and cover".
Source: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdotScience/~3/u92eMG6TGSw/story01.htm
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Tuesday, June 25, 2013
Tracy Flick Has Nothing on Stuyvesant's Elite NYC Student Government Scandal
It's not easy being a Stuy kid. In recent years, students at Stuyvesant High School, the crown jewel of New York City's Specialized High Schools, have grabbed national attention for cheating on tests with their cell phones, recording?racist rap videos, and organizing an event called "Slutty Wednesday" to protest the school's dress code. The latest controversy to befall one of the nation's most elite public schools is a bit less flashy than organized cheating, however. On Monday?The New York Times?investigated the recent election ?? and subsequent disqualification ? of Stuyvesant junior?Jack Cahn, who in early June won a school-wide race for President of the school's Student Union but was stripped of the title on June 11 by the school's Board of Elections. Comprising 19 of his peers, the Board accused Cahn of attaching too many campaign posters to a specific board and, more egregiously, "slandering" another student running against him in a private Facebook message. In response, Cahn's twin brother, David, uploaded a petition to reverse the decision to Change.org, where it has collected 356 signatures. "[It is] not Bush v. Gore,"?the?Times notes.
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No, it is not.?Geoff Decker at GothamSchools, which first reported Cahn's ouster, noted on June 14: "The saga is decidedly low stakes. ... Many seemed only vaguely aware of the controversy and two teachers said they hadn?t heard about it at all." Discussing Cahn's predicament, a Stuyvesant sophomore told the?Times: "It's very melodramatic and unnecessary. I?m surprised so many people even care." Indeed, there aren't a?lot of lessons to draw from student government drama that cannot be gathered elsewhere and far more easily. Remember?Election?and Tracy Flick's antics? Teenagers have overestimated their own importance since the beginning of recorded history.
RELATED: What Makes The New York Times Tick in 2011
And yet Stuyvesant High School, which accepts just 3 percent of applicants?based on notoriously rigorous standardized testing, presents a special case. Along with public peers like Hunter College High School (which administers its own test) and the upcoming Brooklyn Latin School, Stuyvesant serves to counterweigh New York's infamous collection of pricey private schools ? anchored, on either side of Central Park, by Trinity and Dalton ? and the city's massive public school bureaucracy. This unique status makes Stuyvesant an ideal target for tongue-wagging trend pieces, like the aforementioned "Slutty Wednesday" episode,?a 2006 New York feature about the evolving sexual mores of Stuyvesant's female students (sample passage: "The Stuyvesant cuddle puddle is emblematic of the changing landscape of high-school sexuality across the country"), and, more recently, a serious look at the school's racial makeup. Being free, well-funded, and very hard to get into, Stuyvesant is one of those rare places where young people can freely grapple with ambition and intellect without being weighed down by questions of money and privilege. "Make Stuy your #1 choice. It will change your life," the school's official marketing materials read. (Stuyvesant alumni seem to agree.)
RELATED: Jill Abramson's Day-One Challenges
At the same time, Monday's?Times investigation isn't really a trend story. There is no discernable trend here. (Besides, perhaps, teenage intransigence, plus the ever-amusing theatrics of political campaigns.) Instead, we have politics in its purest form: unproductive tantrums, imagined persecutions, sudden shifts of power. In the summer before New York chooses its next mayor, perhaps this city needs to be reminded that the democratic process, for all of its stated ideals, revolves around flawed human beings.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/tracy-flick-nothing-stuyvesants-elite-nyc-student-government-190702599.html
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Taliban attack presidential palace in Afghanistan
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) ? Suicide attackers blew up a car bomb and battled security forces outside Afghanistan's presidential palace Tuesday after infiltrating one of the most secure areas of the capital. The army said the attackers were killed but knew of no other deaths.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack that came as reporters were gathering for a news event on Afghan youth at which President Hamid Karzai was expected to talk about ongoing efforts to open peace talks with the militant group.
The palace is in a large fortified area of downtown Kabul that also includes the U.S. Embassy and the headquarters for the NATO-led coalition forces and where access is heavily restricted. It houses Karzai's residence but it was not immediately clear whether the president was in the building at the time and his spokesman did not answer his phone.
Gunfire started around 6:30 a.m. inside a heavily guarded area near the east gate leading to the palace, next to the Afghan Ministry of Defense and the former Ariana Hotel, which former U.S. intelligence officials have confirmed is used by the CIA.
A car bomb then exploded trying to enter the area. About 20 journalists took cover behind a religious shrine, pulling a schoolboy off the street who had been caught in the open on his way to school.
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid claimed responsibility, saying in a text message the militants had "brought death to the enemy" with a suicide attack. He later suggested in an emailed statement that all three buildings had been targeted, saying the attack came "near the Ariana Hotel, the important CIA base, and also the presidential palace and Ministry of Defense."
Smoke could be seen coming from the area of the hotel, but there was no immediate indication any of the buildings were hit in the attack.
Mujahid claimed the attackers had inflicted "heavy casualties," but Afghanistan's Kabul division army commander Gen. Kadam Shah Shahim said he knew of no deaths among security forces or civilians.
He said his forces killed all of the attackers, three or four men who had jumped out of a car and opened fire.
Police had no immediate comment.
Lt. Col. Frank Hoelzner, a spokesman for the NATO coalition, said he had no immediate information but that the headquarters had not been affected by the attack. The U.S. Embassy was not immediately available for comment.
The Taliban have indicated they are willing to open peace talks with the U.S. and the Afghanistan government and just last week opened an office in Qatar for possible negotiations.
But at the same time they have not renounced violence and attacks have continued across Afghanistan.
_____
Associated Press writers David Rising and Amir Shah contributed to this report
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/taliban-attack-presidential-palace-afghanistan-030026459.html
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Friday, January 4, 2013
Army major pleads guilty to accepting gratuities
WASHINGTON (AP) ? A U.S. Army major has pleaded guilty to accepting thousands of dollars in gratuities from contractors while in Iraq.
Federal attorneys said 40-year-old Ulysses S. Hicks of Sumter, S.C., pleaded guilty in federal court Thursday to conspiracy to accept illegal gratuities.
Court documents say Hicks was a U.S. Army captain serving as a pay agent for money used to buy miscellaneous items and supplies from local vendors.
Authorities said that from about March 2007 to October 2008, Hicks and a co-conspirator sought, received and accepted illegal gratuities for helping Iraqi contractors get U.S. government contracts.
Hicks faces up to five years in prison, a $250,000 fine and as much as three years of supervised release. He's agreed to pay $65,409 plus interest in restitution to the United States.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/army-major-pleads-guilty-accepting-gratuities-204344906.html
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Thursday, January 3, 2013
Arts News Headlines - Yahoo! News
Source: http://rss.news.yahoo.com/rss/arts
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Sunday, December 9, 2012
Gay marriage reaches Supreme Court: Justices to review Prop 8., DOMA
The two cases being taken up by the Supreme Court involve a challenge to California?s Prop. 8 ban on gay marriage and a suit from New York City testing the federal Defense of Marriage Act.
In this 2008 photo, a couple holds hands as they look for a quiet spot to hold their wedding at City Hall in San Francisco. The US Supreme Court decided Friday to hear the appeal of a ruling that struck down Proposition 8, the state?s measure that banned same sex marriages.
Marcio Jose Sanchez/AP
EnlargeThe US Supreme Court announced Friday that it will take up two potential landmark gay rights cases, one testing California?s Proposition 8 ban on same-sex marriage and the other examining the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).
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At issue is whether the measures unconstitutionally discriminate against gay and lesbian couples.
The action positions the high court at the center of a heated debate over same-sex marriage in America.
It comes roughly a month after voters in three states ? Maryland, Washington, and Maine ? agreed to authorize marriages without regard to sexual orientation. That brings to nine the number of states plus the District of Columbia that allow same-sex marriages in the US.
In contrast, 37 states have either passed constitutional amendments or enacted state statutes upholding the traditional definition of marriage as a union between one man and one woman.
The appeals likely will be set for oral argument in March or April, with decisions by late June.
At issue in the California Prop. 8 case is whether the state-wide referendum in 2008 banning same-sex marriage violated the equal protection rights of gay and lesbian couples seeking to marry.
The appeal ? by supporters of Prop. 8 ? asks the justices to overturn decisions by a federal judge and a federal appeals court panel striking down the state-wide ballot initiative.
The ballot campaign was launched to reverse a 4-3 decision by the California Supreme Court earlier that year that the state?s constitution required recognition of same-sex marriages.
The referendum took that question directly to California voters. They decided 52 percent to 48 percent to overturn the court ruling and amend the state constitution to explicitly define marriage in California as a union of one man and one woman.
The appeals court panel ruled 2-to-1 that Prop. 8 was unconstitutional because it used a campaign of animosity against homosexuals to rescind a constitutional right that had already been granted. The ballot initiative violated the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment, the appeals court said.
The appeal in the DOMA case, meanwhile, asks the high court to examine whether the 1996 statute is a form of unlawful discrimination against same-sex couples whose marriages were recognized as legal by their home states.
The measure received bipartisan support, passing 342 to 67 in the House of Representatives and 85 to 14 in the Senate, and was signed into law by then President Bill Clinton.
It determined that federal spousal benefits would be distributed based on Congress?s definition of marriage ? one man and one woman. Prior to that, the federal government had followed each state?s determination of who was legally married.
The legislation was passed in reaction to a state court ruling in Hawaii that suggested it might recognize a right to same-sex marriage.
DOMA defines marriage for purposes of federal benefits as a union of one man and one woman. It means that under federal law heterosexual married couples are eligible to receive some 1,100 spousal benefits that are not available to same-sex married couples. These benefits include a waiver from the estate tax, collection of Social Security survivor benefits, filing a joint tax return, and inclusion in a federal employee health-care plan, among others.
Specifically, the court said it will decide the DOMA issue via a case involving an elderly woman in New York City who is challenging a decision by the government to deny her a spousal waiver from the federal estate tax.?
Edie Windsor and Thea Spyer spent 42 years together in New York City. They first met in 1963 and got engaged to each other in 1967 ? a time when there was no recognition of same-sex marriage.
Ten years later in 1977, Ms. Spyer was diagnosed with multiple scleroris, a condition that eventually left her a paraplegic requiring 24-hour care.
In 2007, when doctors concluded that Spyer did not have much longer to live, Windsor and Spyer traveled to Canada to fulfill a shared lifelong dream. They got married.
Two years later, when Spyer passed away, Windsor sought to settle the couple?s estate. New York State recognized the marriage as valid, but under DOMA the federal government did not.
That meant that Windsor would not be entitled to claim the standard marital exemption from the federal inheritance tax. Even though she and Spyer had dedicated their lives to each other and obtained a legal marriage recognized as valid by their home state, their marriage remained invalid in the eyes of the federal government.
Windsor was forced to pay a $363,000 assessment. Had Spyer been a man, that assessment would have been $0.
Windsor sued, claiming DOMA violated her right to equal protection. A federal judge and a federal appeals court panel both agreed, ruling that DOMA violates the constitutional mandate that the government treat all citizens equally and fairly.
Windsor?s DOMA case was selected among eight appeals challenging the federal marriage law. The court took no action on the other pending appeals.
The accepted cases are Hollingsworth v. Perry (12-144) and US v. Windsor (12-307).
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