It sounds like this transformer had its center tap grounded and was the path to ground on one side of a ground loop as the geomagnetic field moved under pressure from a CME, inducing a common-mode current in the long-distance power line. A gas pipeline in an area of poor ground conductivity in Russia was also destroyed, it is said, resulting in 500 deaths.

One can protect against this phenomenon by use of common-mode breakers and perhaps even overheat breakers. The system will not stay up but nor will it be destroyed. This is a high-current rather than high-voltage phenomenon and thus the various methods used to dissipate lightning currents might not be effective.

In March 1989 much of Quebec lost power for the same thing.

They lost power because the common-mode breakers tripped, not because their system was actually damaged.

I think the Russia Mafia would pay 10 times that at least

This story was not accepted for publication by Slashdot, and I am submitting it to another venue for consideration. - Bruce

It is stupid to think destroying lab stocks removes the 'problem'.

The 'problem' is not these stocks but undiscovered natural reservoirs of diseases.

Destroying the stock reduces capability of the biomedical community to respond to fresh out breaks.

Interesting, lets read the link then:

Ok, that sounds damning, but lets read till the end for the buried lede:

So the rockets went to people most likely hostile to Hamas. Now maybe the UN could have done better disposing of the bombs themselves, but a UN bomb disposal mission in Gaza sounds like something that could also go really wrong. Remember the role of the UN isn't to fight for Israel, in that case they're just trying to provide humanitarian aid.

When the spooks treat the entire public as the enemy is probably the the time to recognise the spooks are the enemy of civil society.

There's not some mythic unattainable "truth" surrounded by complete lies.

Every statement is a mixture of truth and lies, the goal of decent people it to not only call out the lies in every statement, but to still recognize that an imperfect statement can still contain a great deal of truth.

Right now Russia is telling egregious lies. The proper action isn't to stand back and act like it's fine because everybody lies, it's to drag them out and discredit them so that they have a reason to start telling the truth.

And when someone else lies you should drag them out and discredit them, but to brush off misdeeds as something that's normal is how Russia became the joke it is today.

No it doesn't.

The evidence points to Russian special forces and regular army being responsible for the annexation of Crimea.

In the war in Eastern Ukraine the evidence points to Russian paramilitary organizations operating with the backing of the Russian government and some level of direction. But there's no evidence of actual Russian soldiers in East Ukraine. To be honest they'd be dumb to send any. There's more than enough Cossacks and Chechen militias they can direct over unofficially. No point in sending over official soldiers who could be killed, identified, and drag Putin into an actual war he doesn't want.

Putin still bears full culpability for every death that's occurred, but he's keeping official Russian soldiers out of it.

Honestly I'm not entirely sure what to call them, but terrorists isn't it (though the Ukrainian government has called them that all along).

Generally I call them rebels or separatists, but that doesn't really apply. To be a rebel or a separatist it's implied that you're fighting your own government, but in this case many, if not most, are Russian citizens motivated by a combination of nationalism, adventurism, and wealth. Guerrillas maybe? What do you call a paramilitary organization that invades another country to try to steal some of its territory?

I think it's more likely that more people are becoming obese because of exactly one factor: age. They are living artificially prolonged lifetimes due to access to adequate food and to medicine. It's easier to get fat when you are 50 than when you are 30 because of the natural changes in your metabolism.

:-)

You make it sound like starving people are getting fat too.

If they are becoming obese, the particular individual has a surplus of caloric intake, if only for this year or month. This is not to say that they have proper nutrition. So I am not at all clear that the fact that there is obesity in the third world is confounding evidence.

For most of the existence of mankind and indeed all of mankind's progenitors, having too much food was a rare problem and being hungry all of the time was a fact of life. We are not necessarily well-evolved to handle it. So, no surprise that we eat to repletion and are still hungry. You don't really have any reason to look at it as an illness caused by anything other than too much food.

Martin,

The last time I had a professional video produced, I paid $5000 for a one-minute commercial, and those were rock-bottom prices from hungry people who wanted it for their own portfolio. I doubt I could get that today. $8000 for the entire conference is really volunteer work on Gary's part.

Someone's got to pay for it. One alternative would be to get a corporate sponsor and give them a keynote, which is what so many conferences do, but that would be abandoning our editorial independence. Having Gary fund his own operation through Kickstarter without burdening the conference is what we're doing. We're really lucky we could get that.