Welcome! "What's Happenin'?" is a casual community diary (a daily series, 8:30 AM Eastern on weekdays, 10 AM on weekends and holidays) where we hang out and talk about the goings on here and everywhere.
We chat about our lives, our health, our families, our social circles, our pets, etc. We welcome links to your writings here on dkos or elsewhere, posts of pictures, music, etc.
Just about anything goes, but attacks and pie fights are not welcome here. This is a community diary and a friendly, peaceful, supportive place for people to interact.
Everyone who wants to join in peaceful interaction is very welcome here.
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Good Morning!
Longwood Gardens, February, 2012, Photo credit: joanneleon
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday's
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with a passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints, --- I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life! --- and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning
News
Whistleblower: BP Oil Platform Faces 'Present and Imminent Danger'
Whistleblower claims about BP's Atlantis filed this week argue against Bureau of Ocean Energy Management's claims platform is safe
A whistleblower who has a standing lawsuit against BP has argued this week that the company's Atlantis Project, located 150 miles south of New Orleans in the Gulf of Mexico, faces "present and imminent danger."
The whistleblower, Kenneth Abbott, is a former BP contractor on the Atlantis. His lawsuit says that BP failed to keep required records of the safety systems for the Atlantis.
Wikileaks' Assange to Run for Australian Senate Seat
Wikileaks made the announcement on Twitter yesterday. It Tweeted shortly after that the group would be fielding a candidate to run against Prime Minister Julia Gillard in her home seat.
Bank of America: Too Crooked to Fail
The bank has defrauded everyone from investors and insurers to homeowners and the unemployed. So why does the government keep bailing it out?
By Matt Taibbi
At least Bank of America got its name right. The ultimate Too Big to Fail bank really is America, a hypergluttonous ward of the state whose limitless fraud and criminal conspiracies we'll all be paying for until the end of time. Did you hear about the plot to rig global interest rates? The $137 million fine for bilking needy schools and cities? The ingenious plan to suck multiple fees out of the unemployment checks of jobless workers? Take your eyes off them for 10 seconds and guaranteed, they'll be into some shit again: This bank is like the world's worst-behaved teenager, taking your car and running over kittens and fire hydrants on the way to Vegas for the weekend, maxing out your credit cards in the three days you spend at your aunt's funeral. They're out of control, yet they'll never do time or go out of business, because the government remains creepily committed to their survival, like overindulgent parents who refuse to believe their 40-year-old live-at-home son could possibly be responsible for those dead hookers in the backyard.
Tom Morello's Occupy SXSW Shut Down by Cops
When Tom Morello took the stage at the Swan Dive in Austin on Friday night, he chose to convert what otherwise would've been just another SXSW-only showcase into a true Occupy gathering – an event which he described as "Occupy SXSW," and which he organized in conjunction with Occupy Austin. Morello informed the crowd – which primarily consisted of SXSW badge holders – that, just outside the bar, a "people's stage" had been erected to broadcast the show on the street for Occupy protestors and the general public at large.
[ ... ]
As last call came around, Morello instructed the audience as to what would happen next: "I'm the pied piper of folk rock," he said. "I'm going to walk outside ... follow my guitar." [ ... ] "I've heard the police are going to pull the plug any minute," he said. "That doesn't matter to me." When the police did, in fact, shut down the PA system, Morello stood in the center of the crowd and addressed them using the Occupy "mic check"
Police Powers in New York
Attorney General Eric Holder is rightly reviewing the constitutionally suspect surveillance practices that the New York City Police Department has employed against law-abiding Muslims. The Justice Department should also review other practices — chief among them, stop-and-frisk — that have virtually eliminated the presumption of innocence and that treat citizens, and even entire communities, as suspect even after they are proved innocent.
Wow, The Village Voice?
Where Pimps Peddle Their Goods
Backpage accounts for about 70 percent of prostitution advertising among five Web sites that carry such ads in the United States, earning more than $22 million annually from prostitution ads, according to AIM Group, a media research and consulting company. It is now the premier Web site for human trafficking in the United States, according to the National Association of Attorneys General. And it’s not a fly-by-night operation. Backpage is owned by Village Voice Media, which also owns the estimable Village Voice newspaper.
Attorneys general from 48 states have written a joint letter to Village Voice Media, pleading with it to get out of the flesh trade. An online petition at Change.org has gathered 94,000 signatures asking Village Voice Media to stop taking prostitution advertising. Instead, the company has used The Village Voice to mock its critics. Alissa thought about using her real name for this article but decided not to for fear that Village Voice would retaliate.
Why We'll Miss Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury and Climate Warrior
This morning, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, the spiritual head of the Anglican Church, announced that he is stepping down.
This is not normally the kind of news that would be of much interest to Rolling Stone readers. But Williams is an extraordinary man, a rare example of a powerful religious leader willing to speak out with courage and authority on controversial issues, like homosexuality and the role of women in the church. Back in 2009, on the eve of the Copenhagen climate summit, he also gave the single best and most thoughtful argument for why we need to take action on climate change that I've ever read.
Go see the photos. Other worldly.
Northern Lights Paint Sky Over Arctic Volcano
“After the first night I wasn’t happy with the composition. On the second day, I said to myself, ‘Right get a spot, get set up, get a composition.’ Then I could fiddle with the exposures to get the Northern Lights and the eruption; two very different light sources,” he says.
[ ... ]
Although the low and sharp “bark” of Eyjafjallajökull could still be heard, when Appleton awoke the next morning all he could see was white. It was a storm that would last into the next day.
“I tried going outside once,” says Appleton. “You’d walk three steps from the hut and get knocked down by an 80-mph gust. Underfoot it was sheet ice so you’d get pushed along the surface and have to dig your nails in.”
What happens if your nose starts start itching while you're flying these things?
Robotic Aircraft Controlled by Human Hand Gestures
Aircraft carrier crews already use a set of hand gestures and body positions to guide pilots around the deck. But with an increase in unmanned planes, what if the crew could use those same gestures to guide robotic aircraft?
A team of researchers at MIT — Computer Science student Yale Song, his advisor Randall Davis and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory researcher David Demirdjian — set out to answer that question.
Get rid of the Facebook Timeline.
Hide Facebook Timeline with a Chrome extension
After initially feeling confused and complaining about Facebook's Timeline interface, I now must admit that I like the cover-photo design and am starting to get used to the two-column layout. But if you reject Facebook's latest overhaul and use Chrome, there's an extension that will return you to the old look.
Google to Penalize Over-SEO'd Sites
The never-ending chicken-and-egg issue of gaining ground in Google results is about to take another abrupt turn. According to Google's Matt Cutts, the company is working on a new set of tweaks to the fabled "GoogleBot" that will penalize sites that over-optimize for prime Google results.
Search Engine Land's Barry Schwartz reports that Cutts let the impending tweaks slip out while speaking at a panel at this year's South by Southwest conference in Austin, Texas. The goal, said Cutts, is to "level the playing field" between sites that focus on excessive optimization to achieve strong Google results versus sites that hit Google naturally through strong, relevant content.
Oh, sorry we wrecked and dismantled your company, but... And meanwhile, getting extradicted for copyright infringement... seems a bit harsh, no? I guess in a world where corporations are people, it might make more sense.
Procedural Error Might Restore Seized Assets to Megaupload's Kim Dotcom
Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom might have had a bit of bad luck this past January when teams of police — including two helicopters — raided the home of the beleaguered and barricaded CEO, seizing millions of dollars and more than $5 million in luxury cars from Dotcom's $30 million estate.
But due to a procedural error on the part of New Zealand authorities, Dotcom now has a chance to get all of his stuff back as he awaits word on whether he'll be extradited to the U.S. to face charges of copyright infringement.
Network Hardware Giant Cisco Eyes Software Network Revolution
On Friday, the New York Times reported that three of Cisco’s top engineers are exploring a switch designed specifically for data centers that use software-defined networking, which involves moving many traditional networking tasks off of expensive hardware and into software.
[ ... ]
Essentially, OpenFlow separates networking into one plane that handles data and another that controls its movement. This is the way cellular networks have worked for years, but it was revolution in the data center networking business. The control plane could be run on standard servers, and then the data center plane could be run by fairly ordinary high-speed networking chips — rather than lots of fancy new hardware.
Not so fast, neutrinos. CERN says light's speedier still
Physics laws appear to be holding up fine with a second experiment showing CERN's neutrinos traveling more sedately than in last year's surprising finding.
[ ... ]
"The evidence is beginning to point towards the OPERA result being an artifact of the measurement," said CERN Research Director Sergio Bertolucci in a statement today. However, to be rigorous about the matter, the laboratories plan to rerun the experiment in May and cross-check it with data involving cosmic ray particles.
Have I told you lately that I hate Comcast. People hate Comcast so much that they had to change their name to XFinity. What kind of name is XFinity anyway?
Comcast: Of course we'll fix our billing mistake... for just $25
According to a customer, Comcast double-billed folks who paid via e-bill. When the company realized its mistake, it then charged those same people to reverse the charge.Comcast: Of course we'll fix our billing mistake... for just $25
According to a customer, Comcast double-billed folks who paid via e-bill. When the company realized its mistake, it then charged those same people to reverse the charge.
Gunboats, Super-Torpedoes, Sea-Bots: U.S. Navy Launches Huge Iran Surge
Sending more aircraft carriers to the waters near Iran, it turns out, was just the start. Yes, the U.S. currently has more seapower aimed at Iran in the Persian Gulf than in the fleets of most countries on Earth, Iran included. But that was just the Navy cracking its knuckles.
In the next few months, the Navy will double its minesweeper craft stationed in Bahrain, near Iran, from four to eight. Those ships will be crucial if Iran takes the drastic step of mining the Strait of Hormuz, one of the global energy supply’s most crucial waterways. Four more MH-53 “Sea Stallion” helicopters, another minesweeping tool, are also getting ready for Bahrain, to give the U.S. Fifth Fleet early warning for any strait mining.
[ ... ]
Add up the aircraft carriers, the Gatling-packing patrol craft, the Orions, the Sea Stallions and the minesweepers, and Greenert still isn’t finished with the surge. Then come the new, advanced torpedoes that can compensate for the “turpidity [and] particulate” drags of the Gulf waters. And the drone subs — or, as Greenert put it, “some underwater unmanned neutralization autonomous units” to help hunt mines. And every Navy ship that sails through the strait will come equipped with new, modular “infrared and electro-optical” visibility systems that clarify the foggy Gulf even at night. Extra spare parts and contractor crews will sustain the surge.
And if all that wasn’t enough, Greenert disclosed that he and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta will soon ask themselves if the Navy needs to rotate more aircraft carriers to the Gulf. That decision, so important that it’s Panetta’s to make, will come “in the next few months.”
In China, millions make themselves at home in caves
His progression made sense as he strove to improve his life. But there's a twist: The 46-year-old Ren plans to move back to a cave when he retires.
"It's cool in the summer and warm in the winter. It's quiet and safe," said Ren, a ruddy-faced man with salt-and-pepper hair who moved to the Shaanxi provincial capital, Xian, in his 20s. "When I get old, I'd like to go back to my roots."
More than 30 million Chinese people live in caves, many of them in Shaanxi province where the Loess plateau, with its distinctive cliffs of yellow, porous soil, makes digging easy and cave dwelling a reasonable option.
Each of the province's caves, yaodong, in Chinese, typically has a long vaulted room dug into the side of a mountain with a semicircular entrance covered with rice paper or colorful quilts. People hang decorations on the walls, often a portrait of Mao Tse-tung or a photograph of a movie star torn out of a glossy magazine.
Gaddafi aide's arrest could shed light on Libyan secrets
Abdullah Senussi may have information that could cause embarrassment to Britain and other countries
Abdullah Senussi was considered to be Muammar Gaddafi's most trusted aide, his "right-hand man, the executioner," as the international criminal court (ICC) prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo has put it.
Senussi's arrest in Mauritania after months on the run is a blow not only to the remnants of the Gaddafi regime. Libya's former head of military intelligence would have been privy to its most sensitive secrets – information that could yet cause embarrassment to Britain and other countries.
[ ... ]
Although widely loathed and feared as a thug who personally beat and abused prisoners, Senussi doubled as something of a spin doctor after Gaddafi abandoned terrorism and WMD programmes in 2003. He reached out to influential western academics in 2006 in an attempt to rebrand Gaddafi's image and promote "the new Libya".