Statesman Journal
AP: Role-playing games help clients heal mental health
Hanna Russell can have a hard time finding the courage to speak her mind. Her mother, Paja, said Hanna began attending therapy in part to address the effects of years of bullying.
"They all told me to shut up," the 11-year-old said. "That happened a lot."
But in her seat at the table during one of Richard Stubbs' group therapy sessions, Hanna usually can find her voice. There's nothing like your teammate threatening to behead the troll whose help you need to advance to get you to speak up.
Stubbs, a licensed therapist, said that is just the kind of outcome he seeks by way of his tabletop game therapy sessions. The groups are designed to use aspects of role-playing games to challenge anxiety, oppositional defiant disorders and other struggles that kids bring from their own lives into the room.
80 percent of Oregon now in drought, highest since 2015
It’s shaping up to be a hot, dry and smoky summer in Oregon.
Eighty-percent of Oregon is now in moderate drought, the most since the historically dry 2015 season, according to a new report from the U.S. Drought Monitor.
Even the Oregon Coast, one of the wettest places in the United States, has been moved into drought.
“We haven't seen any substantial rain in the valley since early June, and river flows in some Oregon Coast drainages are at or below 2015 levels,” said Kathie Dello, Associate Director of the Oregon Climate Change Research Institute at Oregon States University.
All campfires and open flames are now banned at Oregon's state parks, including those at the coast. The ban took effect at 10 a.m. Thursday in response to Oregon Gov. Kate Brown’s declaration of a fire emergency…
The ban is meant to avoid any accidental fires on parks property that would further tax limited firefighting resources, officials said.
The Guardian
Accused spy Maria Butina met with Russia's former US ambassador
The woman charged with spying for Moscow in the US met previously with the former Russian ambassador to Washington whose contacts with Trump advisers have raised concerns among investigators.
Photographs of Maria Butina with Sergey Kislyak were among the files taken from Butina’s electronic devices by FBI agents, according to prosecutors. The date of the photographs was not specified.
Erik Kenerson, the assistant US attorney, has cited Butina’s encounter with Kislyak as proof that she was in touch with diplomatic or consular officials and must be detained while awaiting trial.
Barnier welcomes Raab by stressing urgency of Irish border deadline
The EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, has welcomed Dominic Raab to Brussels with a thinly veiled critique of Theresa May’s Chequers plan and a 13-week deadline in which to solve the problem of the Irish border.
Appearing with Barnier for the first time in the Belgian capital, the new Brexit secretary, clutching a copy of the UK’s recently published Brexit white paper, called for more “vim, vigour and energy” in the troubled negotiations.
The former Foreign Office lawyer told reporters he was “looking forward to intensifying, heating up, the negotiations”, after stepping into the role following the resignation of David Davis over the paper, which sets out how the UK is in effect seeking to stay in the single market for goods by following a raft of EU laws.
Huge Egyptian sarcophagus found to contain three mummies
Egyptian archeologists have opened a 30-tonne black granite sarcophagus to find three decomposed mummies after sewage water apparently leaked inside.
“The sarcophagus has been opened, but we have not been hit by a curse,” said Mostafa Waziry, the head of Egypt’s Supreme Council for Antiquities, in response to news reports warning of maledictions hidden inside the tomb in the port city of Alexandria.
Waziry, accompanied by a team of specialists in mummification and restoration, instead found three mummies and a red liquid he identified as sewage water, believed to have entered the sarcophagus through a crack on its right side, causing the decomposition of the mummies.
StarTribune
U.S. Rep. Jason Lewis made disparaging comments about women on radio show
U.S. Rep. Jason Lewis repeatedly made disparaging comments about women during his time as a talk radio provocateur, according to a new report from CNN that includes audio of Lewis musing aloud about no longer being able to call a woman a “slut.’’
The audio also includes a take about whether women are “guided by more emotion than reason.”
“Does a woman now have the right to behave — and I know there’s a double standard between the way men chase women and running and running around — you know, I’m not going to get there, but you know what I’m talking about. But it used to be that women were held to a little bit of a higher standard,” said Lewis, while filling in for Rush Limbaugh. “We required modesty from women. Now, are we beyond those days where a woman can behave as a slut, but you can’t call her a slut?”
Lewis, a first-term Republican who represents Minnesota’s Second District, is in a tough re-election fight with Angie Craig, a former health care executive whom he defeated in 2016 by 1.8 percentage points.
Trump administration extends temporary legal status for hundreds of Somalis
The Trump administration said it will extend temporary legal protections for Somalis who live in the United States, saving hundreds of people from the prospect of deportation back to the war-ravaged country.
U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen on Thursday announced an 18-month extension of temporary legal status for approximately 500 Somalis who now live and work in the United States, citing the ongoing armed conflict and "extraordinary and temporary conditions" in the country.
The decision to extend the designation saves many Somali families — including some who have lived and worked here for nearly three decades — from having to make an agonizing decision over whether to stay and risk deportation. Those who chose to stay would live in constant fear and anxiety over being deported back to a country where chronic armed conflict and a devastating drought have led to mass displacement, and where large swaths of the nation are controlled by the Somali Islamic terror group al-Shabab.
AP: Trump aims to end automatic protections for some species
The Trump administration on Thursday proposed ending automatic protections for threatened animals and plants and limiting habitat safeguards meant to shield recovering species from harm. […]
The proposals drew immediate condemnation from Democrats and some wildlife advocates.
Critics said the moves would speed extinctions in the name of furthering its anti-environment agenda. Species currently under consideration for protections are considered especially at risk, including the North American wolverine and the monarch butterfly, they said.
"It essentially turns every listing of a species into a negotiation," said Noah Greenwald with the Center for Biological Diversity. "They could decide that building in a species' habitat or logging in trees where birds nest doesn't constitute harm."
Houston Chronicle
'They lived a hard life': New details emerge about remains found at Fort Bend ISD construction site
As Fort Bend ISD Superintendent Charles Dupre visited a construction site where dozens of unmarked graves were found near Sugar Land, he thought about the lives of the people buried there.
Archaeologists have determined that the remains found so far are of African-Americans, all but one of whom was male. The bodies have muscular builds and appear to have completed a lot of heavy labor from a young age. They range in age from teenagers to 70, and it is believed that they were part of the state's notorious convict-leasing system from the decades after the Civil War.
"It tugs at the heart honestly because these are people and they lived a life," Dupre observed under a blazing hot sun. "They lived a hard life and we know that about them."
WaPo: More than half of white evangelicals say America's declining white population is a negative thing
Few demographic groups consistently poll more conservatively than white evangelicals. On multiple issues, the most pro-Republican Party demographic group takes some of the most conservative positions on abortion, same-sex marriage and immigration.
But another topic where white evangelicals have repeatedly expressed their conservative views is diversity. And a recent poll is the latest reminder that large numbers of white evangelicals don't view America's increased ethnic and racial diversification as a positive thing.
More than half - 52 percent - of white evangelical Protestants say a majority of the U.S. population being nonwhite will be a negative development, according to the Public Religion Research Institute and the Atlantic.
Texas breaks power use record as heat wave roasts state
With temperatures reaching into the 100s and a booming population trying to stay cool, Texas hit a new record for electricity consumption on Wednesday.
Power use hit 72,192 megawatts on Wednesday afternoon, edging past the August 2016 record use of 71,110 megawatts, according to figures from Texas’ grid operator.
“As Texans across the state are well aware, it’s extremely hot this week and for the foreseeable future,” said Theresa Gage, spokeswoman for the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the grid operator for much of the state. “Electricity providers and ERCOT are working around the clock to ensure they have air conditioning to see them through this.”
Deutsche Welle
Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg slammed by Germany over Holocaust comments
Germany's Foreign Minister Heiko Maas has criticized Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg for saying that while he finds Holocaust deniers abhorrent, they should still be allowed to post their beliefs on Facebook.
Maas said in a tweet that "Nobody should defend anyone who denies the Holocaust. On the contrary, worldwide, everything must be done to protect Jewish life." […]
Zuckerberg made the comments during a recent interview with tech website Recode. He said that while Facebook was dedicated to stopping the spread of fake news, certain beliefs that were sincerely held would not be taken down.
Sweden rushes firefighting aircraft to tackle fast-spreading wildfires
Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven on Thursday visited an area of the Nordic country worst hit by dozens of wildfires, as firefighters struggled to douse the flames brought on by an extreme heat wave.
"The situation we find ourselves in is extraordinary," Lofven said, adding that the country needed to better orient itself to extreme weather. […]
In recent days, meteorologists in Sweden have warned of extremely hot temperatures gripping the country, noting that it was unusual for a heat wave to last this long.
Temperatures in the city of Uppsala, north of Stockholm, reportedly reached over 33 degrees Celsius (90 degrees Fahrenheit) this week. It was the hottest temperature recorded there since 1947.
Spain drops extradition requests for Carles Puigdemont, other Catalan separatists
A Spanish Supreme Court judge dropped international and European arrest warrants on Thursday for former Catalan regional president Carles Puigdemont and five other separatist leaders who fled abroad.
Last week, a German court approved Puigdemont's extradition, but ruled that he couldn't be sent back to Spain on rebellion charges, only for misuse of public funds.
In a decision published Thursday, Spanish Judge Pablo Llarena revoked the arrest warrants against the six Catalan leaders and declined to extradite Puigdemont on charges of misusing public funds. However, Llarena criticized the German court's decision, saying it showed "a lack of commitment" in pursuing the fugitives.
The Washington Post
Democrats seize on failure of judicial pick to demand all of Supreme Court nominee’s documents
The forced withdrawal Thursday of a Trump judicial nominee over his college writings inflamed the battle over Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, with Democrats escalating their demands to see all of his past documents, even though that could top 1 million pages.
The failure of Ryan Bounds’s nomination to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit was a major blow to the Trump administration and Senate Republicans, whose ambition to remake the federal judiciary had been proceeding at a rapid clip. Bounds would have been the 24th of… Trump’s picks to be confirmed to the powerful appellate courts.
But Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), the Senate’s lone African American Republican, rebelled against Bounds’s nomination, privately raising concerns about the attorney’s writings while a student at Stanford University that disparaged multiculturalism and groups concerned with racial issues. Although Bounds secured all the Republican votes in the Senate Judiciary Committee, multiple GOP officials said other Republicans were prepared to vote against him after Scott had expressed his objections.
Obama says ‘men have been getting on my nerves lately,’ urges women to enter political fray
Men in positions of power are dropping the ball, according to former president Barack Obama, who thinks perhaps a way to fix that is to get more women at the table.
Democrats, in particular, have high hopes for the impact women could make in the fall's midterm elections. But the former president spoke about the importance of having more women in leadership positions globally, particularly in Africa. […]
When a woman asked Obama how to get more involved in politics, the former president expressed support for increasing the number of female politicians. He said:
Women in particular . . . I want you to get more involved. Because men have been getting on my nerves lately.
I mean, every day I read the newspaper and I just think like, ‘Brothers, what’s wrong with you guys? What’s wrong with us?’ I mean, we’re violent, we’re bullying. You know, just not handling our business. So I think empowering more women on the continent — that right away is going to lead to some better policies.
Drilling in Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to get fast review
The Interior Department has commissioned an expedited environmental review of the impact of leasing part of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for oil and gas drilling, according to a document released under the Freedom of Information Act.
The nearly $1.7 million contract that Interior signed April 8 with Colorado-based Environmental Management and Planning Solutions, obtained by the liberal think tank Center for American Progress, shows how rapidly the Trump administration is moving ahead with its plans to open up the refuge’s coastal plain to energy exploration.
It outlines a schedule ending with a lease sale notice to be issued next summer. That gives the firm three months to complete a scoping report, which will set the terms of how federal officials will gauge the impact of energy development in the refuge. The report must reflect the input of local tribes and the hundreds of thousands of public comments that have been submitted.
Los Angeles Times
Jodie Whittaker meets the Comic-Con masses as 'Doctor Who' enters a new era
Picture a doctor. Who do you see?
The question is part of a 2016 study designed by Harvard researchers to uncover unconscious gender bias, and now that idea will again be put to the test as the venerable British sci-fi series “Doctor Who” will, for the first time in 55 years, see its lead character portrayed by a woman, Jodie Whittaker. […]
Before Whittaker’s casting, the show had managed to cycle through a dozen doctors before finally, in the age of inclusion riders and #TimesUp, allowing for a shift to female perspective with No. 13. But when asked whether she would bring a “woman’s touch” to the Doctor, Whittaker demurred.
“I have never approached a role thinking of it as ‘how would a woman play this role?’ because I just am one. And I don’t know if a guy has ever gone, ‘How would a guy do this scene?’” she said during a press conference before the show’s Thursday morning panel in Hall H at Comic-Con in San Diego. “But the best thing about the Doctor is I’m not playing either [gender]. I’m an alien, so there’s really no rules.”
The Brady Bunch house is for sale. Its broker expects an 'avalanche' — of lookers, at least
Here’s the story of a lovely family home, which just hit the market in Studio City for $1.885 million.
The Brady Bunch house, a Traditional-style residence near the Colfax Meadows neighborhood, was used for outdoor representations of the beloved television family’s abode. That included the show’s opening and closing scenes as well as numerous interludes to denote the time of day. Interior scenes for “The Brady Bunch” were filmed in studio.
Violet and George McCallister bought the two-bedroom, three-bathroom house in 1973 for $61,000, records show. The series ran from September 1969 to March 1974 before moving into reruns in syndication.
Immigration agencies share vague plans to reunite migrant parents and children
A week before a court-ordered deadline for the Trump administration to reunite more than 2,500 migrant children and parents separated at the border, immigration officials had few answers for Congress on Wednesday on what is next for the families, in the latest confusing chapter of the family separations saga.
Appearing before the House Judiciary Committee, senior officials from the Border Patrol, the Department of Homeland Security and Health and Human Services said they could not say how many migrant families will be detained — or released — once they are united.
They similarly could not provide policies on how often parents are permitted to speak with their children held in custody elsewhere, or information on how many families have been charged transportation costs to be reunited.
The Toronto Star
Canada will retaliate against any U.S. auto tariffs, Trudeau government tells Trump administration
The Canadian government promised Thursday to hit the U.S. with “proportional” retaliatory tariffs if… Donald Trump follows through on his threat to impose tariffs on automobiles and auto parts made in Canada.
Kirsten Hillman, Canada’s deputy ambassador to the U.S., delivered the threat from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at a Washington hearing called by the Trump administration as part of its investigation into whether foreign auto imports are damaging U.S. national security.
Take trade pitch to the American people, premiers told
It’s time for provincial leaders to reach out to everyday Americans to stress the importance of trade between the two countries, Canada’s ambassador to the U.S. said at the premiers’ annual summer conference.
David MacNaughton met with 13 provincial and territorial leaders in New Brunswick Thursday morning, as the premiers talked about the economy, reducing interprovincial trade barriers as well as the issue of tariffs imposed by the American government under… Donald Trump.
MacNaughton told reporters that he’s seen “unprecedented” federal, provincial and public-private business cooperation to combat trade troubles with the U.S.
Reuters
Trump criticizes Federal Reserve interest rate policy despite strong economy
Donald Trump on Thursday criticized Federal Reserve policy even though most economists believe the highest inflation in seven years and lowest unemployment in 40 years justify recent interest rate rises and a strong U.S. dollar.
Trump said he was concerned about the potential impact on the U.S. economy and American corporate competitiveness from rising rates and a stronger dollar.
“I’m not thrilled,” he said in an interview on CNBC television. “Because we go up and every time you go up they want to raise rates again ... I am not happy about it. But at the same time I’m letting them do what they feel is best.”
“I don’t like all of this work that we’re putting into the economy and then I see rates going up,” he said.
Days after Helsinki summit, Russia shows off Putin's 'super weapons'
Russia on Thursday broadcast a series of videos showing the testing and operation of a new generation of nuclear and conventional weapons, days after Vladimir Putin and… Donald Trump discussed how to avoid an arms race.
President Putin announced an array of new nuclear weapons in March in one of his most bellicose speeches in years, saying they could hit almost any point in the world and evade a U.S.-built missile shield…
On Thursday, the Russian Defence Ministry aired Hollywood-style footage of many of the new weapons Putin unveiled in March being tested or in action.
Britain has identified Russians suspected of Skripal nerve attack: news agency
British police have identified several Russians who they believe were behind the nerve agent attack on former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter, the British news agency, Press Association, said on Thursday, citing a source close to the investigation.
A police spokesman declined to comment on the report. Security Minister Ben Wallace was dismissive, saying it belonged to the “ill informed and wild speculation folder”. […]
After analyzing closed-circuit television, police think several Russians were involved in the attack on the Skripals, who spent weeks in hospital before being spirited to a secret location, the Press Association report said.
The Economist
In China, a rare public spat between officials as debt pressures build
Like other countries, China has bureaucratic infighting. But it does better than most at keeping tussles hidden from outside view, especially under Xi Jinping, a president who brooks no dissent. So it has been highly unusual to see a spat between the central bank and finance ministry spill into the open. It reveals cracks in the government’s façade of unity as a campaign to control debt exacts a toll on the economy.
The disagreement started on July 13th when Xu Zhong, head of the central bank’s research department, spoke at a forum in Beijing. Officially, China is committed to a “proactive fiscal policy”, meaning that the government will spend to prop up growth. But Mr Xu argued that the finance ministry was not delivering what it had promised, thus making deleveraging more painful.
Google is fined €4.3bn in the biggest-ever antitrust penalty
“THE making of a big tech reckoning,” blared one typical headline earlier this year. “The case for breaking up Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google,” touted another. Based on media coverage alone it might seem as if the tech titans are in trouble. Add in the news, on July 18th, of a record €4.3bn fine for Google by the European Commission and that impression is strengthened. But if you look hard at where the regulatory rubber is actually hitting the road, the techlash seems much less brutal. Notwithstanding this week’s fine—which amounts to just over $5bn and is the biggest antitrust penalty ever—the online giants are nowhere near being reined in.
To be sure, the mood has changed. In America a survey for Axios, a news website, found that between October and March the favourability ratings of Facebook, Amazon and Google had fallen by 28%, 13% and 12%, respectively. Republicans such as Ted Cruz, a senator, now employ anti-tech rhetoric. Last month the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced that it will, starting in September, hold hearings on “competition and consumer protection in the 21st century”.
Bloomberg
A China Borrower’s $11 Billion Debt Mountain Comes Crashing Down
China this month recorded one of its biggest corporate-debt defaults yet, with the downfall of a coal miner that had ridden the country’s wave of credit until policy makers changed the game with their deleveraging campaign.
For investors in Wintime Energy Co., it’s been far from a winning time now that the company from northern Shanxi province is proving incapable of rolling over debt that quadrupled in less than five years. How the borrower ran up a 72.2 billion yuan ($10.8 billion) tab that it now can’t make good on illustrates why this year will be China’s worst yet for corporate defaults. And with a potential lifeline from state-owned banks unveiled Wednesday, it could also emerge as an example of China’s unwillingness to allow unbridled corporate failures.
Ars Technica
The 5,000% price hike that made Martin Shkreli infamous is no longer paying off
Martin Shkreli’s former pharmaceutical company lost more than $1 million in the first quarter of 2018 amid waning sales of the drug made famous by Shkreli’s more than 5,000-percent price increase. That’s according to financial documents recently reviewed by Stat.
Vyera Pharmaceuticals, formerly known as Turing Pharmaceuticals, had brazenly maintained Shkreli’s despised price hike of the drug Daraprim, which treats relatively rare parasitic infections that often strike babies and HIV/AIDS patients. As founder and CEO of Turing, Shkreli bought the rights to the cheap, off-patent drug and—without any generic competitors—abruptly raised its price from $13.50 a pill to $750 a pill in the fall of 2015.
The move was wildly unpopular (to say the least) and attracted intense public scrutiny to the country’s quickly escalating drug costs. But it was a lucrative decision for Turing and later Vyera—at least until recently.
“Fingerprint” of humanity’s climate impact seen in the seasons
One reason climate scientists have been able to confidently determine that humans are responsible for modern warming is that they have more than just weather records to work with. There are many places where a human cause can be identified if you know how to dust for fingerprints. For example, while the lower atmosphere warms, the stratosphere is actually cooling. That’s what you expect when greenhouse gases—rather than the Sun—are behind the warming.
A new study led by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s Ben Santer looked for fingerprints in a new place: the seasonal cycle of temperatures. The ideal tool for analyzing this is the global temperature record produced by satellites, which began their watch in 1979. That means they don’t go back nearly as far as weather-station records, but the dataset is now long enough to be useful for studies like this.
FCC votes against Sinclair/Tribune merger, likely dooming deal
The Federal Communications Commission has voted unanimously against approving Sinclair Broadcast Group's acquisition of Tribune Media Company, likely dooming the merger.
Technically, the commission adopted a Hearing Designation Order that refers the merger to an administrative law judge. Mergers usually don't survive that legal process. Besides referring the merger to a judge, the FCC's other options included denying the merger outright, approving the merger, or approving it with conditions. The unanimous vote to refer the merger to a judge was finalized on Wednesday evening.
Rooftop solar could save utilities $100 to $120 per installed kilowatt
When you install rooftop solar panels, the electricity you create cuts into the amount of electricity the utility must provide to meet your needs. Add up the reduced demand of all the homes with solar panels, and you've got a pretty sizable amount of electricity that's no longer needed.
Researchers from Carnegie Mellon and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) quantified that reduced demand and found that solar panels installed between 2013 and 2015 in California saved utilities from having to purchase between $650 million and $730 million dollars' worth of electricity. Those avoided purchases create slack in demand, pushing wholesale prices lower.
Lower wholesale prices "should ultimately reduce consumers’ costs through lower retail rates," the researchers write (although whether and how those savings get passed on to retail customers is not discussed in the paper).
Buzzfeed News
Guns, God, And Trump: How An Accused Russian Agent Wooed US Conservatives
It’s hard to tell how much of the story 29-year-old Russian graduate student Maria Butina told Americans about herself for years is real.
What is clear is that in Butina, the Russian government either found or created an irresistible persona for US conservatives. The story she repeated over years of speeches and interviews — of a scrappy girl from Siberia fighting for gun rights in Russia — was carefully calibrated to show a passion for self-defense, a yearning for America’s easy access to guns, and a hint of criticism of Russia’s own laws.
On Sunday, she was arrested by FBI agents and jailed, accused of being an unregistered foreign agent tasked with influencing US foreign policy toward Russia and directed by a senior Russian government official. On Wednesday, a federal district judge ordered her held without bond as a flight risk after prosecutors detailed her links to Russian intelligence agents.
The EPA Was Too Slow To Respond To Flint’s Water Crisis, Says A Scathing New Report
The EPA and the Michigan environmental agency bungled their response to the Flint water emergency in 2015, prolonging residents' exposure to lead, according to a new report by the EPA’s internal watchdog, the Office of Inspector General.
The report concludes a two-year probe of the EPA’s response to the lead crisis in Flint. Investigators found that the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality did not follow certain stipulations of the federal Lead and Copper Rule, written to protect against lead exposure in drinking water. The report also stated that the EPA Region 5 office, which oversees operations in Michigan, did not use its authority under the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) to intervene when early complaints and reports of high lead levels surfaced.
"Flint drinking water contamination continued, in part, because the public health protection authorities of the SDWA were not used effectively," the report stated.
The Government Lost Control At A Former Nuclear Weapons Plant. Now 42 Workers Are Paying The Price.
As November turned to December, rumors spread through the western corner of the former nuclear weapons plant in eastern Washington. Bo-J and his anxious coworkers at the old Hanford plant would talk on lunch breaks about radioactive particles showing up on gear, and newly roped-off areas of contamination.
“There was talk, not real clarification,” Bo-J told BuzzFeed News. “Next thing you know — boom! — a stop-work.”
On Dec. 13, 2017, after the gear on half a dozen employees had tested “hot,” labor unions refused to keep working, and demolition ground to a halt. It was the beginning of one of the worst contamination events at Hanford, a sprawling site that once produced the plutonium for the bomb dropped on Nagasaki and whose cleanup will take most of this century.
The company running this project, a government contractor called CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation Company, quickly agreed to the union demands, and work resumed. But just one day later, hot particles were found outside of the fenced-off demolition site — an ominous sign that the radioactivity had not been contained.
Packt>Hub
Apollo 11 source code: A small step for a woman, and a huge leap for ‘software engineering’
Yesterday, reddit saw an explosion of discussion around the original Apollo 11 Guidance Computer (AGC) source code. The code in its entirety was uploaded on GitHub two years ago, thanks to former NASA intern, Chris Garry. And again it seems to have undergone significant updates this week looking at the timestamps on all the files in the repo.
This is a project that will always hold a special place for all software professionals around the world. This is the project that made ‘software engineering’ a real discipline.
AGC was a digital computer produced for the Apollo program, installed on board the Apollo 11 Command Module (CM) and Lunar Module (LM). The AGC code is also referred to as ‘COLOSSUS 2A’ and was written in AGC assembly language and stored on rope memory. […]
The AGC code was brought to life by Margaret Hamilton, director of software engineering for the project. In a male-dominated world of tech and engineering of that time, Margaret was an exception. She led a team credited with developing the software for Apollo and Skylab, keeping her head high even through backlash. “People used to say to me, ‘How can you leave your daughter? How can you do this?” She went on to become the founder and CEO of Hamilton Technologies, Inc. and was also awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2016.