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Submission + - Leaked Heartland Institute Memo Authenticity Questioned (theatlantic.com)

Submitted by
sithkhan
sithkhan writes: "After the explosive leak of the Heartland Institute documents on Thursday, the documents were looked over by a reporter for The Atlantic. Seems all the leaked documents are similar and consistent, with the exception of one: that damning memo.
FTFA:
" 1. All of the documents are high-quality PDFs generated from original electronic files . . . except for the "Climate Strategy" memo. (Hereinafter, "the memo"). That appears to have been printed out and scanned, though it may also have been faxed.
Either way, why? After they wrote up their Top Secret Here's All the Bad Stuff We're Gonna Do This Year memo, did the author hand it to his secretary and say "Now scan this in for the Board"? Or did he fax it across the hall to his buddy?
This seems a strange and ponderous way to go about it--especially since the other documents illustrate that the Heartland Institute has fully mastered the Print to PDF command.
It is, however, exactly what I would do if I were trying to make sure that the document had no potentially incriminating metadata in the pdf."

There's much more to read and consider at the link.

The author gives two caveats, which are somewhat at odds with one another."
NASA

White House Wants Devastating Cuts To NASA's Mars Exploration 422

Posted by Unknown Lamer from the carl-sagan-grave-spin-powerful-enough-to-drive-generator dept.
The Bad Astronomer writes "The White House released its proposed NASA budget for FY13, and while much of it remains the same from last year, one particular program got devastating news: Mars exploration got a crippling $226 million cut, more than 38% of its budget. This means killing two future missions outright and threatening others. The reasons for this are complex, including huge cost overruns on James Webb Space Telescope and the Curiosity Mars rover, but it also points to a political lack of valuing science in America." A followup to news from before the budget was released, this has details on the actual proposed cuts and re-allocations.

Comment Re:Hmm (Score 1) 857

by sithkhan (#38916431) Attached to: How the GOP (and the Tea Party) Helped Kill SOPA
Can you explain why the shareholders of Chrysler were bypassed in favor of the UAW, who just coincidentally are thick as thieves with SEIU? "The central issue is that the funds feel Chrysler's post-bankruptcy remuneration plans have unfairly cost the funds a great deal of value by putting unsecured debtors such as the UAW ahead of the funds' claims. They are fighting the bankruptcy by alleging that the government's TARP disbursal to Chrysler was unconstitutional and that the subsequent events amount to a covert reorganization, not Chapter 11." Yeah, no union favoring there .... Obamacare: Just curious - does your insurance company force you through legislation to buy their product? Simply because you breathe? Or has the federal government done such a thing? GM: As of January, 2012, the US government's Troubled Asset Relief Program had about $25 billion invested in GM. Break even for the government was figured at $53.98 v. the then-current share price of about $25.

Comment Re:Hmm (Score 1) 857

by sithkhan (#38916247) Attached to: How the GOP (and the Tea Party) Helped Kill SOPA
Just curious - does your insurance company force you through legislation to buy their product? If so, can you tell me their name, so I can avoid them and their products? If they do not, then can you see the issue with government mandated health care? Thanks.
Math

The Data Crunching Prowess of Barack Obama 334

Posted by samzenpus from the mobilizer-in-chief dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "Micah Sifry, co-founder of the Personal Democracy Forum, writes that Barack Obama may be struggling in the polls and even losing support among his core boosters, but when it comes to the modern mechanics of identifying, connecting with and mobilizing voters, as well as the challenge of integrating voter information with the complex internal workings of a national campaign, Obama's data analysis team is way ahead of the Republican pack. Alone among the major candidates running for president, the Obama campaign not only has a Facebook page with 23 million 'likes' (roughly 10 times the total of all the Republicans running), it has a Facebook app that is scooping up all kinds of juicy facts about his supporters and inside the Obama operation, his staff members are using a powerful social networking tool called NationalField, which enables everyone to share what they are working on. 'The holy grail of data analysis is data harmonization, or master data management,' says Alex Lundry, a Republican data-mining expert at TargetPoint Consulting. 'To have political talking to finance and finance talking to field, and data is flowing back and forth and informing the actions of each other — it sounds easy, but it's incredibly hard to implement.' Sifry writes that if the 2012 election comes down to a battle of inches, where a few percentage points change in turnout in a few key states making all the difference, we may come to see Obama's investment in predictive modelers and data scientists as the key to victory."

Comment Re:Come on. (Score 2) 90

by sithkhan (#37532150) Attached to: OnStar Reverses ToS Changes
You may be correct on the Chinese fire sale. However, your assertion that the taxpayers of the United States are going to see all that money recouped is patently false at this time. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703916004576271382418887092.html http://www.autoblog.com/2011/04/21/report-fed-mulling-summer-sale-of-gm-stock-would-take-big-loss/ The stock owned by the government needed to be sold at $50/share to break even. But what's 11 billion dollars when you want to raise government spending by another 1.6 trillion? A rounding error, to be sure.

Comment Response to TFS (Score 1) 403

by sithkhan (#37055982) Attached to: UK To Shut Down Social Networks?
"So far I haven't heard anyone blame the Rock 'n Roll music, but if social networks aren't a good enough culprit, you could also try blaming video games." Love the snide tag there, Taco. While the discussion of turning off the social media is one that is disturbing, do you think they are considering this in response to some hooligans who are staying out late, smoking a cigarette or three? Perhaps you missed the chavs and chavettes stating that this was about showing the rich and the police that this was a demonstration that they could do what they wanted. As you seem to imply that this plan is a poor one, can you suggest a better plan? Here's mine - arm all shop owners with shot guns.

Comment Re:Bad. (Score 1) 932

by sithkhan (#36039592) Attached to: Draft Proposal Would Create Agency To Tax Cars By the Mile
Was the Stimulus Program not mean for "Shovel-ready" projects? Such as road improvement, bridge refurbishment, and other "necessary infrastructure" projects? Question: How much have state and local taxes risen on gasoline since the early 80's? Question: If the Federal Gas tax goes into a trust fund, and said trust fund is completely exhausted, does that mean that there have been no tax collections to cause said depletion? If not, then what other factors have affected the highway improvement costs? How have environmental sustainability studies, indigenous species reports, and unionized labor costs affected this fund's disbursements? Question: If construction is the primary driver of the unemployment figure (and I sincerely doubt that), then why have four years of non-construction not created a higher unemployment number? Question: Who was in charge of the Senate, House of Representatives, and Executive Branch up until 2010? Could you say that there would be some culpability by those parties in not passing that all-important SAFETEA legislation? Question: Those environmental studies - how effective are they? Question: How much does a petroleum company make off off a gallon of gasoline? 2-4 cents. Question: What is the combined amount of taxes on a gallon of gasoline, on average? 45-55 cents. Question: Is another 17 cent increase going to make things better, if as you point out, the current fund is tapped out, and unable to start work in a timely fashion?
Earth

Boeing 747 Recycled Into a Private Residence 239

Posted by CmdrTaco from the would-you-like-to-see-my-cockpit dept.
Ponca City writes "Nicholas Jackson writes in the Atlantic about a woman who requested only curvilinear/feminine shapes for her new home and has purchased an entire Boeing 747-200. They transported it by helicopter to her 55-acre property in the remote hills of Malibu and after deconstructing it, had all 4,500,000 pieces put back together to form a main house and six ancillary structures including a meditation pavilion, an animal barn, and an art studio building. 'The scale of a 747 aircraft is enormous — over 230 feet long, 195 feet wide and 63 feet tall with over 17,000 cubic feet of cargo area alone and represents a tremendous amount of material for a very economical price of less than $50,000,' writes Architect David Hertz. 'In researching airplane wings and superimposing different airplane wing types on the site to scale, the wing of a 747, at over 2,500 sq. ft., became an ideal configuration to maximize the views and provide a self supporting roof with minimal additional structural support needed.' Called the 'Wing House,' as a structure and engineering achievement, the aircraft encloses an enormous amount of space using the least amount of materials in a very resourceful and efficient manner, and the recycling of the 4.5 million parts of this 'big aluminum can' is seen as an extreme example of sustainable reuse and appropriation. Interestingly enough, the architects had to register the roof of the house with the FAA so pilots flying overhead would not mistake it as a downed aircraft."
Earth

Debunking a Climate-Change Skeptic 807

Posted by kdawson from the so-many-notes-mister-mozart dept.
DJRumpy writes "The Danish political scientist Bjørn Lomborg won fame and fans by arguing that many of the alarms sounded by environmental activists and scientists — that species are going extinct at a dangerous rate, that forests are disappearing, that climate change could be catastrophic — are bogus. A big reason Lomborg was taken seriously is that both of his books, The Skeptical Environmentalist (in 2001) and Cool It (in 2007), have extensive references, giving a seemingly authoritative source for every one of his controversial assertions. So in a display of altruistic masochism that we should all be grateful for (just as we're grateful that some people are willing to be dairy farmers), author Howard Friel has checked every single citation in Cool It. The result is The Lomborg Deception, which is being published by Yale University Press next month. It reveals that Lomborg's work is 'a mirage,' writes biologist Thomas Lovejoy in the foreword. '[I]t is a house of cards. Friel has used real scholarship to reveal the flimsy nature' of Lomborg's work."

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