The phone book. There's perhaps no more outmoded, unnecessary, downright wasteful collection of printed information in the known universe. But Doghouse Diaries has a few suggestions that might make them useful after all.
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Canada's envoy to Tehran at the time of the Islamic revolution and the US hostage crisis, says Argo disappointed him and that he's worried about where Iran's nuclear program might lead.
Former Canadian Ambassador to Iran Ken Taylor and his wife Pat, pose for photographers at the premiere of the film Argo in Washington, Oct. 2012. Taylor, who protected Americans at great personal risk during the Iran hostage crisis of 1979, has achieved some name recognition in the US since the 2012 movie 'Argo' swept theaters and the Academy Awards.
Cliff Owen/AP/File
EnlargeFormer Canadian Ambassador Ken Taylor is neither the James Bond lookalike he hoped might portray him in the Hollywood blockbuster "Argo" nor is he quite the Austin Powers double he says might have been a more accurate choice.
Skip to next paragraph Ariel ZirulnickMiddle East Editor
Ariel Zirulnick is the Monitor's Middle East editor, overseeing regional coverage both for CSMonitor.com and the weekly magazine. She is also a contributor to the international desk's terrorism and security blog.?
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But he's achieved some name recognition in the US since the 2012 movie swept theaters and the Academy Awards, and he has plenty to say about Iran in 1979 and the country it has become since.?
Mr. Taylor was Canada's ambassador to Tehran in 1979 when the US embassy there was stormed and dozens of Americans were taken hostage. Six Americans escaped and spent months holed up with him, waiting for their extraction.
Those months are the premise of the Ben Affleck-directed movie, which Taylor mildly says took ?a bit of poetic license.?
Speaking before a gathering of the New England Canada Business Council in Boston yesterday, Taylor, who now lives in New York, joked that after friends saw "Argo" at the 2012 Toronto Film Festival, they called him and said, ?I thought Canada was involved.?
According to Taylor, he replied, ?That?s odd, So did I.?
As the tense months of being trapped inside the embassy wore on, Taylor tried to reassure the Americans that they would be home by Thanksgiving, then Christmas, then the Super Bowl. He warned the US that ?they?re going to wonder if Washington forgot about them.?
Taylor revealed little about the actual operation that got the six men and women safely back to the United States. But, he joked, at least the movie showed that he ?opened the front door of the embassy with great dexterity.?
When Taylor arrived in Tehran in 1977, ?the country was booming.?
There were rumors that Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi ? more commonly referred to as simply ?the Shah? ? was preparing to buy Pan American Airways. It did not seem like the ?stalwart of the West? was going anywhere.
For all the blame heaped on the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) for not predicting the Islamic Revolution, almost nobody saw it coming, he said. Afterward, the Ayatollah?s secular advisers told Taylor that even they didn?t expect the Shah?s government to fall like it did. ?
Revolutionary fervor did not sweep up the whole country the way it seemed to be portrayed in "Argo." And Taylor said a great disappointment for him was the way the movie portrayed Iranians, some of whom became ?marvelous friends? with him during his posting in Tehran.
?The movie was too heavy handed,? he said. ?It gave no idea that there is another side to the Iranian character. Everybody isn?t on the street. Everybody isn?t part of the revolution.?
He is on board with the growing chorus of voices in Washington urging the Obama administration to ease up on its sanctions-heavy approach to negotiations with Iran although he acknowledges that Iran needs to give ground too.
Sometimes sanctions work, he says, citing South Africa during the apartheid era, but ?sometimes they strengthen resolve.?
When asked his opinion of whether Tehran has nuclear weapon ambitions, he cautions that ?Iran is an opaque society,? and there?s too little information to guess.
?I think they?ve got some military use in the back of their mind,? he says. ?But they don?t want to destroy themselves ? Maybe they are working at capabilities, but not necessarily producing [a nuclear weapon].?
That the military option for halting Iran?s nuclear development is ?on the table? worries Taylor, who points to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as cautionary for anyone considering going to war with Iran.
"A bombing mission would be a fatal error. It would solve nothing,? he says. ?It would postpone [Iran?s nuclear program] for two to three years,? but nothing more, because Iran?s nuclear facilities are too dispersed.
He says, ?I wake up every morning hoping [the military option] is still on the table? ? instead of being used.
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A next-generation material first earmarked for use in electronics has proven itself a capable clean-up agent for polluted waters.
Boron nitride, or "white graphene", is similar to its namesake: sheets of atoms laid out like a chain-link fence.
A report in Nature Communications shows the material can preferentially absorb organic pollutants such as industrial chemicals or engine oil.
However, it is easier to clean and re-use than other such "nanomaterials".
The family of these materials includes much-touted, carbon-based members such as graphene and nanotubes, and are notable in part for their surface area-to-weight ratio.
That allows them to absorb an incredible amount for their size, making them attractive for the clean-up of pollutants.
The new work suggests that a preparation of boron nitride could outperform many nanomaterials and more traditional approaches.
A team from the Institute for Frontier Materials at Deakin University in Australia and the Pierre and Marie Curie University in France started by making porous boron nitride "nanosheets" - wavy, single-atom layers of the material with holes in them.
These porous sheets, which together form a coarse white powder, vastly outperformed sheets that did not have the pores, and commercially available chunks of boron nitride that is not made up of the tiny sheets.
The porous version exhibited high "selective absorption" - preferentially picking up organic pollutants and dyes out of water.
The powder absorbed up to 33 times its own weight in the chemical ethylene glycol and 29 times its own weight of engine oil. Even still, the saturated powder floats on water.
The absorbed pollutants could then be driven out of the nooks and crannies of the material by heating it in a commercial furnace, or by simply igniting it - a trick that other, more established materials could only survive a few times before becoming completely clogged up.
"All these features make these porous nanosheets suitable for a wide range of applications in water purification and treatment," the authors wrote.
Francesco Stellacci of EPFL in Switzerland called the work "an excellent paper in a booming field".
"The data reported are indeed excellent and impressive," he told BBC News. "The key question is if this is the material that at the end will be used for remediation."
Prof Stellacci said that a market for such materials does not yet exist, and boron nitride's striking powers of absorption may or may not be enough to establish it as a leading contender, even among nanomaterials.
"I think that at the end it will not be performance that will determine the final material used, but more costs and scalability. I really hope that one of these materials, and maybe this one, will make it."
Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-22351056#sa-ns_mchannel=rss&ns_source=PublicRSS20-sa
Google Now is, perhaps, one of the more compelling reasons to opt for an Android device over iOS. But, Mountain View is smart enough to realize that its big push to deliver information pre-emptively would be severely hampered if it was isolated to one platform. So, here we are, almost a year after Now debuted with the launch of Jelly Bean, and the (mis)labeled Siri competitor has finally landed on Apple's mobile OS. Obviously, to truly come to grips with a product like this, you'd need days or weeks to truly judge it, but we're familiar enough with the Android version to feel comfortable passing along our initial impressions. So head on after the break to see whether or not Google was able to replicate its virtual assistant magic on iOS.
Filed under: Software, Mobile, Apple, Google
Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/2MsIyT7febc/
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Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is now sitting in a 10-by-10-foot cell at Federal Medical Center Devens in Ayer, Mass. about 40 miles west of Boston. There, he awaits the next steps in the US government?s case against him ? first, a probable cause hearing scheduled for May 30.
Before Mr. Tsarnaev got to this point, there was debate among some lawmakers about whether Tsarnaev should be tried as an enemy combatant in a military tribunal or whether he should be tried as a civilian in the federal court system. The arguments from those who pushed for a military trial were at best misplaced. As a US citizen, Tsarnaev could not have been tried in a military tribunal. Those arguments also ignored the institutional safeguards that already exist in our federal court system to protect classified information, as well as the impressive track record of the Justice Department in prosecuting terrorism since September 11, 2001.
As the nearly 1,000 terrorism trials over the last decade indicate, the federal court system is well equipped to handle the complexities of terrorism cases. And it is well equipped to administer justice in the case of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. In fact, as global counterterrorism efforts have shifted to the legal arena across countries as diverse as Britain and Russia, Tsarnaev?s trial can show Americans the benefits of approaching terrorism as the serious international criminal threat that it is, rather than as part of the so-called global ?war on terror.?
OPINION: How to protect Americans from anti-terrorism data sharing
Europe has increasingly combated terrorism through the criminal justice system, significantly expanding laws for arresting, trying, and detaining terrorism suspects. The Tsarnaev trial may therefore help to harmonize US counterterrorism efforts with those of our closest international counterterrorism partners, while also allowing America to more effectively participate in the global counterterrorism conversation.
The US Justice Department has proven both remarkably efficient and effective at putting terrorism on trial. As research by NYU?s Law and Security Center shows, the Department of Justice has averaged about 30 terrorism indictments a year since 2001. (The exception to this statistic is from 2009-2010 when, on the heels of increased law enforcement sting operations and a renewed focus on extremists associated with the terrorist group Al-Shabaab, rates nearly doubled.)
Most of those trials have proceeded without the use of classified evidence, and over half have involved American citizens. Like Tsarnaev, 60 percent of these American defendants had no direct affiliation with a terrorist organization.
In choosing to charge Tsarnaev with using a ?weapon of mass destruction,? the surviving Boston Marathon bombing suspect falls under an infrequently used, but widely interpreted terrorism statute. Just 25 of all domestic terrorism cases since 2001 have involved a WMD charge. Yet the penalty has been leveled at an infamous group of confirmed and would-be terrorists, including September 11?s ?20th hijacker,? Zacarias Moussaoui, shoe bomber Richard Reid, and Najibullah Zazi, the individual who plotted to plant bombs in the New York City subway system.
Almost all terrorism trials since 2001, whether of domestic or international defendants, have also ended in convictions. In fact, with a conviction rate of nearly 90 percent, it is almost certain that if Tsarnaev?s case continues to the jury stage, he will be found guilty. That it will reach that point, however, is itself not guaranteed: Some two-thirds of all terrorism cases have ended in guilty plea agreements. While this is lower than the overall percentage of federal cases that end in plea agreements, coupled with the strong case against him, it suggests that the Tsarnaev trial may at least be very short.
The more interesting question in this case is what will become of Tsarnaev after his trial is completed, and what his story might mean for US counterterrorism efforts going forward. Much of the conversation since Tsarnaev was formally charged has questioned whether he will get the death penalty if he is convicted.
Given that America has executed just one convicted terrorist in the last two decades ? Timothy McVeigh for the Oklahoma City bombings in 1995 ? it is not likely. Indeed, my own research has shown that more than half of all convicted terrorists are sitting in federal prisons in the United States (at last count, there were 400 in total), serving an average sentence of at least 14 years.
Those serving time for the most egregious terrorism crimes are in for life. Among them is the ?Blind Sheikh,? Omar Abdel Rahman, who was charged with ?seditious conspiracy? after an investigation of the 1993 World Trade Center bombings.
Convicted terrorists in US federal prisons have only severely restricted access to outsiders and outside information, and their activities inside prison walls are under heavy surveillance. They are also barred from significant contact with the general prison population, usually segregated from other inmates and confined to single cell blocks with single guards.
This correctional approach to extremism ? one that relies on the criminal justice system ? echoes trends across a number of other countries, including Britain, France, Italy, and Russia, and has helped the US to gain and share valuable intelligence about terrorism. Prison officers regularly report and exchange information with global partners about the activities of these inmates.
Indeed, it was such shared information ? gathered from phone calls and letters intercepted by guards ? that alerted authorities to a fatwa the ?Blind Sheikh? issued when he was first incarcerated that called on Al Qaeda to attack the US. It was also prison intelligence that linked the 2004 Madrid train bombings to a group of Al Qaeda members detained in Spanish jails after September 11. And it is prison intelligence that has in more recent years warned about the growing convergence between terrorist networks and transnational organized crime.
Moreover, both international and federal level law enforcement keeps tabs on inmates with past terrorist ties after they are released ? just as these agencies do with other types of violent criminals such as pedophiles or organized crime leaders.
The fact that probation officers with the Bureau of Prisons track formerly convicted terrorists for lengthy periods, and that they are watched closely by INTERPOL (the International Criminal Police Organization) and the FBI, appears to have been an effective deterrent to further radicalization, as these inmates have rarely re-offended. This is an important contrast to Guant?namo, where a full quarter of those who have been released from incarceration there have subsequently gone on to commit or are suspected of committing further terrorist crimes.
The outcome of the Tsarnaev trial, therefore, has broader implications for counterterrorism here at home and overseas. Until the marathon, America had arguably not had a major terrorist attack on US soil since September 11. This is a testament to the proactive, preventative work of international, federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies ? work that has often gone unrecognized amid the race to assign blame for perceived failures and concerns over counterterrorism methods and resources.
The more important future challenge is how best to streamline the increased use of America's criminal justice system to counter terrorism with the efforts that have been developing simultaneously across the globe.
ANOTHER VIEW: After Boston bombings: Beware Russia-US cooperation on counter-terrorism
This coming summer, five high-profile terrorism suspects extradited from Britain will stand trial here in New York City for their role in the bombings of two US embassies in Africa in 1998 and for conspiring with individuals in Seattle to set up terrorist training camps inside the US. Together with the Tsarnaev trial, these cases should prompt a renewed look at counterterrorism efforts across the entire US criminal justice system to ensure that they are aligned with global trends, goals, and strategies.
Melanie Getreuer is a PhD candidate in political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she is writing a dissertation about the global use of criminal justice systems to counter terrorism. She lives and works in New York City.
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Source: http://news.yahoo.com/why-civilian-courts-best-terror-trials-especially-boston-162657255.html
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Over the course of the last year, my husband has lost nearly 60 pounds! I am so proud of the effort he has made to transform his healthy, body and spirit!? The only problem?? He has no clothes to dress his new physique!? One of the places he loves to shop is Sears (mainly because he loves the hardware section).? So, if I won a $100 Sears gift card, I would definitely take him shopping to reward all of his hard work.
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Here are the items my hubby picked that caught his eye.? We simply pressed the ?want it? button and he now has a wish list ready!? In 5 minutes or less you?ll be entered to win $100 from Sears.? Score!? Want additional entries? ? Share the Sweeps with your friends on Facebook & Twitter, too!
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