Welcome to the Overnight News Digest (OND) for Tuesday, May 10, 2011.
OND is a regular
community feature on Daily Kos, consisting of news stories from around the world, sometimes coupled with a daily theme, original research or commentary. Editors of OND impart their own presentation styles and content choices, typically publishing near 12:00AM Eastern Time.
Creation and early water-bearing of the OND concept came from our very own Magnifico - proper respect is due.
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This diary is named for its "Hump Point" video: I Know What I Like (In Your Wardrobe) by Genesis
Please feel free to browse and add your own links, content or thoughts in the Comments section.
Any timestamps shown are relative to each publication.
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Top News |
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Drug Regulators Are Protecting Profits Over Patients, Warn Researchers
By (ScienceDaily)
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Medicines regulators are protecting drug company profits rather than the lives and welfare of patients by withholding unpublished trial data, argue researchers on the British Medical Journal website.
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Selective reporting can have disastrous consequences. For example, Rofecoxib (Vioxx) has probably caused about 100,000 unnecessary heart attacks in the USA alone, while anti-arrhythmic drugs have probably caused the premature death of about 50,000 Americans each year in the 1980s.
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But the EMA refused access, arguing that this would undermine commercial interests and that there was no overriding public interest in disclosure. They also cited the administrative burden involved and the worthlessness of the data after they had edited them.
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"There is something fundamentally wrong with our priorities in healthcare if commercial success depends on withholding data that are important for rational decision making by doctors and patients," say Gøtzsche and Jørgensen.
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Iran's first nuclear plant now online
By (UPI)
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Iran's controversial first nuclear power station has come online, operating at a low level, the Russian company that built it for Iran said.
"This is one of the final stages in the physical launch of the reactor," Vladislav Bochkov, a spokesman for the Russian company Atomstroyexport, said.
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The reactor has been at the center of controversy as Israel and other nations have voiced concerns the reactor could by used by Iran as part of an effort to develop nuclear weapons.
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Presbyterian leaders OK gay clergy
By Duke Helfand
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Leaders of the Presbyterian Church (USA) overturned a long-standing ban on the ordination of gays and lesbians Friday, providing yet the latest example of a religious denomination struggling with how, and whether, to incorporate homosexuality into church life.
At the same time, the church's national governing body, meeting in San Jose, refused to alter its definition of marriage, calling it a "covenant between a woman and a man." The actions by the General Assembly came the week after same-sex marriage became legal in California. They also follow the decision of a gathering of Methodists from Southern California and Hawaii, who went against their national church by voting to support same-sex couples who marry and the pastors who welcome them.
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The General Assembly voted in favor of the ordination measure 54% to 46%, but its decision must still be approved by a majority of the nation's 173 regional presbyteries over the next year. Several prominent church leaders predicted it would fail.
Even so, gay rights advocates applauded the Presbyterians' decision to amend their constitution, saying the step would end discrimination that has long kept gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgender people from church service.
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PA official: Palestinian unity government to be formed in 10 days
By (Haaretz Service)
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In an interview with Ma'an news agency, Fatah leader Nabil Shaath said that although the prime minister of a future interim unity government has yet to be announced, current PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad is still in the running for the position.
Fayyad has taken unprecedented steps in recent months toward Palestinian statehood, recently presenting proposal in Brussels delineating a three-year aid plan that would allow for the establishment of a Palestinian state in the foreseeable future.
Palestinian leaders plan to ask the United Nations General Assembly in September to recognize a Palestinian state in all the lands Israel occupied in 1967. Fayyad has made it clear that in the event that Israel and the Palestinians do not reach a negotiated settlement, a Palestinian state will be declared unilaterally.
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Bin Laden sons protest to US over 'arbitrary killing'
By (BBC)
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A statement given to the New York Times newspaper said the family wanted to know why the al-Qaeda leader had not been captured alive.
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The statement printed by the New York Times was attributed to Bin Laden's fourth son, Omar Bin Laden, who has repeatedly distanced himself from his father's ideology.
The statement said that in absence of a body or photographic evidence, the family were not convinced he was dead.
But if he was dead, it said, they were questioning "why an unarmed man was not arrested and tried in a court of law so that truth is revealed to the people of the world".
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International |
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More than 1,100 rapes daily in DRCongo: study
By (AFP)
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More than 1,100 women are raped every day in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), making sexual violence against women 26 times more common than previously thought, a study concluded Tuesday.
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"Even these new, much higher figures still represent a conservative estimate of the true prevalence of sexual violence because of chronic underreporting due to stigma, shame, perceived impunity, and exclusion of younger and older age groups as well as men," she said.
. . .
Commenting on the study, Michael VanRooyen, director of the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, said that "rape in the DRC has metastasized amid a climate of impunity, and has emerged as one of the great human crises of our time."
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Hillary Clinton: China crackdown 'a fool's errand'
By (BBC)
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US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has criticised China's crackdown on dissent as "a fool's errand", saying Beijing is trying to halt history.
In an interview with The Atlantic, Mrs Clinton also called the nation's human rights record "deplorable".
She defended US dealings with Beijing, saying: "We live in the real world."
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Uganda gay death penalty rejected by Pastor Ssempa
By (BBC)
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A backer of Uganda's Anti-Homosexuality Bill has told a parliamentary committee he does not support the proposal of the death penalty for some homosexual acts.
But Pastor Martin Ssempa urged MPs to pass the legislation, which tightens laws against homosexuality.
The bill's proponents and opponents have been making their case during two days of public committee hearings.
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USA Politics, Economy, Major Events |
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Behind the Commodities Crash
By Kevin Drum
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A few days ago I read that high-frequency trading in stocks had died down recently, apparently because the stock market has been a little too stable lately. "Hmmm," I thought as I read this. "If they're dropping out of equities, I wonder what the supercomputers are up to now?"
The answer, it turns out, is commodities, and Reuters reports that algorithmic trading is likely responsible for a big part of the rout in commodity prices over the last couple of weeks . . .
It would be nice if Wall Street were using the Fed's cheap money to invest in real-world goods and services. But apparently the real world just isn't ready for any investment yet, and the private sector has boatloads of cash on its hands anyway. So instead the money gets shoveled into whatever financial markets are the most volatile, since those are the markets that promise the highest short-term rewards. This doesn't actually benefit anyone other than Wall Street traders, but that's the world we live in these days.
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'Sanctuary cities' bill passes in Texas House
By Dave Montgomery
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After hours of emotional debate, the Republican-led Texas House voted 100-47 on Monday night to give preliminary approval to legislation that would ban so-called sanctuary cities that critics contend are havens for illegal immigrants.
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Republicans used their two-thirds majority to cut off debate by calling the "previous question," blocking consideration of pending amendments. Democrats objected that the action set a dangerous precedent and stifled dissent.
The bill has drawn has drawn strong opposition from Hispanics as well as law enforcement groups. who say it will impose an added burden to already overworked police departments.
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Mobile phone emergency alert system to launch in US
By (BBC)
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A new mobile telephone emergency alert system will be launched in New York City and Washington DC by the end of the year, US officials have said.
The system will allow the federal government and local authorities to reach people on their mobile phones to warn them of imminent danger.
Messages from the US president or information about missing children would also be sent through the system.
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said there would be no charge to users.
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Thin Skinned Billionaires 0, Activists 1
By John Cole
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It has been a busy couple of weeks for the Koch brothers. Whether they are whining about the New Yorker attempting to have them punished for writing about them, bitching about Obama nailing bin Laden, or their various day to day nefarious activities, they have had their hands full and their mouthpieces have been busy defending their honor. Here is something else they no longer need to worry about:
A lawsuit against a group of anonymous environmentalists who created a satirical press release claiming that Koch Industries would help fight climate change was dismissed Monday by U.S. District Court Judge Dale A. Kimball.
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Sorry, libertarian wankers. The rest of us still have the constitutional protections that you Galtian douchebags pretend to cherish.
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Welcome to the "Hump Point" of this OND.
News can be sobering and engrossing - at this point in the diary, an offering of brief escapism:
Random notes related to this video:
. . . Gabriel's flamboyant and theatrical stage presence, which involved numerous and elaborate costumes and surreal spoken song introductions, made the band a popular live act. . .
Selling England by the Pound was released in November 1973 and was well received by critics and fans.[12] Gabriel insisted on the title, a reference to a current Labour Party slogan, in an effort to counter the impression that Genesis was becoming too US-oriented.[13] Selling England by the Pound features Collins's second lead vocal performance to date in "More Fool Me." The album also contains "Firth of Fifth" and "I Know What I Like (In Your Wardrobe)"; these songs became part of their live repertoire, with the latter becoming their first charting single, reaching #17 on the UK singles charts.
During this period Hackett became an early user of the electric guitar "tapping" technique, which was later popularised by Eddie Van Halen, as well as "sweep-picking", which was popularised in the 1980s by Yngwie Malmsteen. . .
Back to what's happening:
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Environment and Greening |
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Hardwood Forests Not Regenerating as Deer Eat Maple Saplings, Michigan Study Shows
By (ScienceDaily)
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Since the 1950s, sustainability in northern hardwood forests was achieved by chopping down trees in small clumps to naturally make room for new ones to spring up. Early experiments with single-tree and group selection logging found that desirable species like sugar maples did a great job of regenerating in the sunny, rain-drenched harvest gaps -- theoretically eliminating the need to replant.
But something has changed.
In a sweeping study of a huge swath of Michigan's Upper Peninsula, Michigan State University researchers document that in many places, the sugar maple saplings that should be thriving following harvesting are instead ending up as a deer buffet. This means the hardwood forests are not regenerating.
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Chile approves $7bn hydroelectric dam in Patagonian wilderness
By (AP via Guardian UK)
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Monday's vote – 11 in favour and one abstention – could prove to be pivotal for the future of Chile, which has a booming economy, vast mineral wealth and a determination to join the elite group of first-world nations.
With its energy-intensive mining industry clamoring for more power and living standards improving, some analysts say Chile must triple its capacity in just 15 years, despite having no domestic oil or natural gas. Chile imports 97% of its fossil fuels and depends largely on hydropower for electricity, creating a crisis when droughts drain reservoirs or faraway disputes affect energy imports.
Supporters say the economic benefits of the dam project justify carving roads through the heart of Chile's remaining wilderness and running 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometres) of transmission lines to power the capital, Santiago.
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But people in the sparsely populated area are divided. Only three dozen families would be relocated, but the dams would drown 14,000 acres (5,700 hectares), require carving clear-cuts through forests, and eliminate whitewater rapids and waterfalls that attract ecotourism. They also would destroy habitat for the endangered Southern Huemul deer: Fewer than 1,000 of the diminutive animals, a national symbol, are believed to exist.
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A battle for the Earth’s last remaining frontier
By Philip Radford
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There are clear signs that a new Arctic oil rush has begun. Earlier this month, Shell submitted plans to the U.S. government for new drilling in the icy waters off Alaska's north coast, and now a Scottish company has won permission to take a similar gamble near Greenland. Tomorrow, Hillary Clinton will fly to the picturesque town of Nuuk in Greenland to discuss how spill response equipment might work in one of the world's most extreme and beautiful environments. I can save her the trip -- it won't.
Here are some facts. Over the next few years, a handful of powerful oil companies will tow rigs beyond the Arctic Circle to drill for a few short months before the winter sea ice closes in. They'll rely on untested equipment and wildly ambitious response plans in the event of a blowout or other major accident. When October comes, the sea ice will close in and leave the area completely isolated until the following summer.
Think about that for a moment. This means that if a blowout happened in the fall, oil could gush out underneath the ice from Halloween through Thanksgiving, all the way to Memorial Day or, depending on the oil spill and the ice, the Fourth of July or longer. Wildlife like bowhead whales, polar bears, seals, and walrusese would have to fend for themselves as the world looks on helplessly and the oil companies make their excuses. We tried. We took precautions. It's a big ocean. The Arctic will recover. Sound familiar?
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Science and Health |
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Vitamin D lack and pneumonia up death risk
By (UPI)
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Adult patients lacking in vitamin D were more likely than others to die soon after being hospitalized with pneumonia, researchers in New Zealand say.
Researchers at Waikato Hospital, the University of Waikato and the University of Otago measured vitamin D in the blood samples of 112 adult patients admitted with community-acquired pneumonia during the winter at the only acute-care hospital in Hamilton, New Zealand.
The researchers found vitamin D deficiency was associated with higher mortality within the first 30 days after hospital admission for pneumonia. The association between vitamin D deficiency was not explained by patient age, sex, co-morbidities, the severity of the systemic inflammatory response or other known prognostic factors.
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Stroke? There's an app for that
By (UPI)
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Canadian doctors in Alberta are using iPhones and new software to diagnose and prescribe treatment for stroke victims in rural areas, a radiologist said.
The application was designed by Calgary Scientific Inc. and is called ResolutionMD Mobile, the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. reported.
The software transmits three-dimensional images of the patient's brain from CT scans to neurologists and radiologists who direct treatment in the critical minutes after a stroke, radiology Professor Ross Mitchell told the broadcaster.
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First Full Face Transplant Performed in the U.S.
By Tiffany Kaiser
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. . .
Dallas Wiens, 26, was injured in November 2008 while volunteering at his church. While painting the church, his head came too close to the high-voltage power line above, and electrical burns caused him to lose nearly his entire face. He was in a medically induced coma for 90 days following the accident, where doctors performed several surgeries on Wiens.
Wiens survived the burns and was able to leave the intensive care unit, but needed to regularly seek treatment from Dr. Jeffrey Janis of Parkland Hospital and the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas.
. . .
In mid-March, Wiens underwent a 15-hour full face transplant, marking the first ever full face transplant in the U.S. He received a donor nasal structure, nose, lips, forehead and facial skin as well as muscles and nerves for movement and feeling. His face did not look the same as it once did, and it did not resemble the donor either due to the shape of Wiens' skull and the addition of skin, fat and muscle, but Wiens was happy to have facial features and certain senses again.
"When I woke up, and I was able to feel I had features again -- eyes and a nose and a mouth -- I even said out loud that this could not be medically possible," said Wiens. "But here I am today."
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Meditation is an emotional rollercoaster
By Ed Halliwell
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About four days into my first meditation retreat, I started crying. Not little droplets of tears, but great, big, uncontrolled sobs – it felt like I was throwing up wave after wave of stale sadness. I'd expected the long days of sitting to be boring, annoying, physically demanding and (with a bit of luck) illuminating, so to find myself repeatedly breaking down into a noisy heap of grief came as a shock. These spontaneous outbursts of wailing continued throughout the month-long programme – it says much for the teachers' equanimity that they didn't chuck me out.
So when would-be practitioners ask about the benefits of meditation, I tend not to give a straight answer. Will it help you be less stressed? Reduce your pain? Make you think more clearly? Stop you from eating too much? Well, maybe it will help with all of those things, but there's no guarantee, and even if it does, you might find there are other effects too, like finding yourself questioning your career and relationships, or feeling increasingly unwilling to fit in with whatever herd you usually hang out with. You might discover that meditation opens you up to powerful surges of rage, disappointment, doubt, yearning or regret that you didn't know existed. Of course, none of these things are certain either, but they do happen. Most of them have to me, at some point over the last 10 years.
. . .
As anyone who's actually sat down to practise knows, this is a consumer fantasy. Mindfulness has a great many benefits, but they tend to come as a by-product of getting up close to unpleasant experiences like pain, turmoil, and "negative" thought patterns. Striving to avoid unwanted aspects of ourselves and our lives creates stress – by facing them openly in meditation, we give ourselves a chance to relate to suffering more skilfully, with confidence and compassion.
This means we have to experience and befriend our sadness, anger, physical pain and so on. When we omit to mention this, and fixate only the "positive" results of meditation, we risk passing on a partial description of the path, which involves being present to every aspect of life – what Jon Kabat-Zinn calls, after Zorba the Greek, "Full Catastrophe Living".
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Technology |
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Preventing Customers from Getting Stressed Out
By Kristina Grifantini
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The restaurant chain Boston Market had a problem: it couldn't figure out why people weren't returning even though they said they liked the food. When customers were surveyed, they themselves couldn't articulate why they didn't come back.
Then Boston Market hired Shopper Sciences, a consulting company that tried to answer the question a different way. In addition to asking dozens of customers for their opinions, it also asked them to wear a portable stress sensor while they ate. The wrist sensors, which are made by a startup called Affectiva, detect galvanic skin response—how conductive, or "clammy," the skin is. This measurement usually correlates with levels of physiological arousal, either positive excitement or negative stress.
Shopper Sciences found that diners were stressed out by eating at Boston Market. "The old Boston Market served food out of metal trays, and you were expected to eat chicken with a plastic fork," says John Ross, CEO of Shopper Sciences. "The collective gestalt was terrible." Ross says the findings helped inspire a redesign at the chain, which now offers food on real plates, with metal knives, forks, and spoons. "It's the same food quality and price point," he says, "but now it's being delivered in a new way."
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Skype's purchase by Microsoft signals strong spell for dotcom sales
By Dominic Rushe
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Little more than a decade after the dotcom bubble burst, the internet business is once again partying like it is 1999. The frenzy of deal-making in Silicon Valley, which is turning social media entrepreneurs into multibillionaires, moved up another notch when Microsoft splashed out $8.5bn for the loss-making internet telephone service Skype.
Tuesday's buy is a record for the software giant and takes the total value of worldwide tech-related deals so far this year to $85.5bn (£52bn) – the strongest spell since the months before the dotcom bubble burst on 10 March 2000.
Analysts said the deal would give Microsoft a boost in its increasingly bitter battle with Apple and Google. Skype boasts about 170 million users every month and is adding 600,000 a day. But most calls are free and the service has struggled to make a profit. Last year it lost $7m.
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A Super Powerful Wind Turbine That’s Taller Than the Washington Monument
By Max Behrman
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Wind blows. And if there's energy (and money) to be made from this fact of life, we may as well take advantage of it, right? That's what Vestas is doing—and they're using the V164-7.0 MW, a massive, 614-foot wind turbine, to do it.
My brain pretty much explodes when I try to comprehend how big this thing is. Its rotor, spanning a diameter of 540 feet, can fit the infield and outfield of Yankee Stadium within it. Twice. Come again?
The power it supplies is as impressive as its specs. After the first V164 prototype is built in late-2012, it's expected to pump out 30,000 megawatt hours annually. In other words, in that year it could power 2,787 homes . . .
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Cultural |
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How bad ideas keep rebounding into public discourse: the rebound effect and its refutation
By David Goldstein
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Every few years, a new report emerges that tries to resurrect an old hypothesis: that energy efficiency policy somehow results in consumers using more energy instead of less. This hypothesis was introduced in the 19th century by economist William Stanley Jevons, who argued that increases in the energy efficiency throughout a nation would lead to increases in coal consumption, rather than decreases.
Recent articles have attempted to revive these claims, also known as the "rebound effect" -- restating that energy efficiency tends to encourage more energy use, not less, and that if a consumer's immediate goal is to tackle climate change, then it seems risky to count on reaching it by improving efficiency. Assuming rebound effects eat up most of the energy savings, such claims then argue that efficiency cannot be a good policy to reduce energy consumption or combat climate change.
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As you'll read in the report, our analysis found that energy efficiency policies are not only the fastest way to reduce energy use but continue to be most the effective solution to combat climate change. The objections raised by rebound enthusiasts about efficiency policy and its effectiveness are inconsistent and so vague that they cannot be proven (or disproven). The data that is available about rebound theory indeed shows that its predictions are refuted. What we know is certain: Energy efficiency continues to offer us a strategy that allows people to enjoy a higher standard of living, with increased energy services, while decreasing energy consumption and combating climate change.
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Did Tupperware parties change the lives of women?
By Jon Kelly
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Tupperware is planning on relaunching in the UK five decades after its first British sales party. But did the brand propel suburban women into the world of entrepreneurship or reinforce stereotypes?
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But according to Alison Clarke, professor of design history and theory at the University of Applied Arts, Vienna, and author of Tupperware: The Promise of Plastic in 1950s America, the parties were revolutionary in that they offered an alternative model for commercial success based around female co-operation rather than aggressive competition.
"The actual networks of Tupperware parties were about women helping other women and enabling them," Prof Clarke says. "It wasn't discussed as work - it was an extension of socialising.
"It was the antithesis of male corporate culture. It was the opposite of Mad Men."
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OND Calendar!