ogo
First Huygens picture
Posted: January 14, 2005
This is the first picture from Huygens released by ESA. It was taken at an altitude of 16 km as Huygens made its descent. Credit: ESA/NASA TV
posted by eric at 1:40 PM
End California gerrymandering (DKos)
by kos
Fri Jan 14th, 2005 at 10:39:50 PST
I'll just steal from Matt:
GERRYMANDERING IN CALIFORNIA. Last week, Kevin Drum said that even though gerrymandering is terrible, California Democrats should oppose Arnold Schwarzenegger's plan to end it in order to preserve partisan advantage. Today, Peter Beinart says Democrats should support it in order to set off a national wave of redistricting reform. Today, Kevin says maybe, but he thinks it's a risky bet because there may well be no reformist wave.I think Kevin's premise is off base. The California congressional delegation is 40 percent Republican. That's about what George W. Bush got statewide in 2000 and only a bit below what he won in 2004. The Democratic legislature simply hasn't implemented a highly partisan gerrymander in the Golden State. Instead, they've implement a risk-averse incumbent protection plan that makes it almost impossible for any CA Democrats to lose their seats, but also almost impossible for the Democrats to pick up any new ones. That's nice if you're a member of Congress, but not so nice if you care about liberal politics. A non-partisan redistricting in California might lead the GOP to pick up some seats, but it holds out an equal chance of handing more seats to the Democrats. Since the Democrats are in the minority in Congress as a whole, that's a good bet for liberals to take even if the anti-gerrymandering cause doesn't go nationwide. And, of course, it really would lay the groundwork for a broader reform agenda aimed against the ethical cesspool the GOP has made of Washington.
Non-partisan redistricting -- depending on who does the redistricting (in other words, not a Governor-appointed commission) -- would force some of our incumbents into difficult reelections. Good -- that's the essence of democracy, not 70% Democratic districts.
And on the flip side, it would give Democrats the ability to pick up seats in a state with lots and lots of seats. Worst case? We lose some seats. But given the state of the House, being down by 15 or being down by 20 has little practical consequence.
And best case scenario? The move spurs a nationwide effort to eliminate gerrymandering, a move that would ultimately benefit Democrats (just look at Texas, Florida, Illinois and Pennsylvania).
posted by eric at 11:18 AM
McFarling's sin? He saved seed from one harvest and replanted it the following season, a revered and ancient agricultural practice.
"My daddy saved seed. I saved seed," said McFarling, 62, who still grows soy on the 5,000 acre family farm in Shannon, Miss. and is fighting the agribusiness giant in court.
Saving Monsanto's seeds, genetically engineered to kill bugs and resist weed sprays, violates provisions of the company's contracts with farmers.
Since 1997, Monsanto has filed similar lawsuits 90 times in 25 states against 147 farmers and 39 agriculture companies, according to a report issued Thursday by The Center for Food Safety, a biotechnology foe.
In a similar case a year ago, Tennessee farmer Kem Ralph was sued by Monsanto and sentenced to eight months in prison after he was caught lying about a truckload of cotton seed he hid for a friend.
Ralph's prison term is believed to be the first criminal prosecution linked to Monsanto's crackdown. Ralph has also been ordered to pay Monsanto more than $1.7 million.
The company itself says it annually investigates about 500 "tips" that farmers are illegally using its seeds and settles many of those cases before a lawsuit is filed.
In this way, Monsanto is attempting to protect its business from pirates in much the same way the entertainment industry does when it sues underground digital distributors exploiting music, movies and video games.
In the process, it has turned farmer on farmer and sent private investigators into small towns to ask prying questions of friends and business acquaintances.
Monsanto's licensing contracts and litigation tactics are coming under increased scrutiny as more of the planet's farmland comes under genetically engineered cultivation.
Some 200 million acres of the world's farms grew biotech crops last year, an increase of 20 percent from 2003, according to a separate report released Wednesday.
Many of the farmers Monsanto has sued say, as McFarling claims, that they didn't read the company's technology agreement close enough. Others say they never received an agreement in the first place.
The company counters that it sues only the most egregious violations and is protecting the 300,000 law-abiding U.S. farmers who annually pay a premium for its technology. Soy farmers, for instance, pay a "technology fee" of about $6.50 an acre each year.
Some 85 percent of the nation's soy crop is genetically engineered to resist Monsanto's herbicide Roundup, a trait many farmers say makes it easier to weed their fields and ultimately cheaper to grow their crops.
"It's a very efficient and cost-effective way to raise soybeans and that's why the market has embraced it," said Ron Heck, who grows 900 acres of genetically engineered soybeans in Perry, Iowa.
Heck, who is also chairman of the American Soybean Association, said he doesn't mind buying new seed each year and appreciates Monsanto's crackdown on competitors who don't pay for their seed.
"You can save seed if you want to use the old technology," Heck said.
The company said the licensing agreement protects its more than 600 biotech-related patents and ensures a return on its research and development expenses, which amount to more than $400 million annually.
"We have to balance our obligations and our responsibilities to our customers, to our employees and to our shareholders," said Scott Baucum, Monsanto's chief intellectual property protector.
Still, Monsanto's investigative tactics are sewing seeds of fear and mistrust in some farming communities, company critics say.
Monsanto encourages farmers to call a company hot line with piracy tips, and private investigators in its employ act on leads with visits to the associates of suspect farmers.
Baucum acknowledged that the company walks a fine line when it sues farmers.
"It is very uncomfortable for us," Baucum said. "They are our customers and they are important to us."
The Center for Food Safety established its own hot line Thursday where farmers getting sued can receive aid. It also said it hopes to convene a meeting among defense lawyers to develop legal strategies to fight Monsanto.
The company said it has gone to trial five times and has never lost a legal fight against an accused pirate. The U.S. Supreme Court in 1980 allowed for the patenting of genetically engineered life forms and extended the same protections to altered plants in 2001. Earlier this year, a Washington D.C. federal appeals court specifically upheld Monsanto's license.
"It's sad. It's sickening. I'm disillusioned," said Rodney Nelson, a North Dakota farmer who settled a Monsanto suit in 2001 that he said was unfairly filed. "We have a heck of an uphill battle that I don't think can be won."
AP-ES-01-13-05 2347EST
posted by eric at 11:05 AM
|  | ||
|
|
What the Green Bank radio telescope has detected is only a ‘carrier’ signal. It indicates that the back cover of Huygens must have been ejected, the main parachute must have been deployed and that the probe has begun to transmit, in other words, the probe is ‘alive’. This, however, still does not mean that any data have been acquired, nor that they have been received by Cassini. The carrier signal is sent continuously throughout the descent and as such does not contain any scientific data. It is similar to the tone signal heard in a telephone handset once the latter is picked up.
Only after having received the data packets at ESOC will it be possible to say with certainty whether data were properly acquired. The first data set from Cassini will reach ESOC in the afternoon. Additional downlinks will follow throughout the evening and night for redundancy.
Further analysis of the signals will be conducted using other three independent data acquisition systems at the Green Bank Telescope. In addition to the GBT, sixteen other radio telescopes in Australia, China, Japan and the USA are involved in tracking the Huygens probe.
The ultimate goal of the tracking experiment is to reconstruct the probe's descent trajectory with an unprecedented accuracy of the order of one kilometre. The measurements will be conducted using Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) and Doppler tracking techniques. This would enable studies of the dynamics of Titan's atmosphere, which is considered to be a 'frozen' copy of that of the early Earth.
The VLBI component of the tracking experiment is coordinated by the Joint Institute for VLBI in Europe (JIVE) and ESA; the Doppler measurements are conducted by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory
posted by eric at 11:03 AM
CORONA, Califonia (AP) -- Rainwater building up behind a Riverside County dam prompted authorities to order more than 800 homes evacuated as a precaution early Friday.
A police spokesman said he believed there was a small leak in the Prado Dam, but a spokesman for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which operates and oversees the dam, disputed that.
"We're releasing water," said Fred-Otto Egeler, spokesman for the Los Angeles district of the Corps of Engineers. "It's being retained behind the dam and we're making normal releases at this moment.
posted by eric at 11:01 AM
