It’s not the breed. It’s the behavior.

The answer is simple — they’ve learned from experience. Here’s what the town of North Beach, in Calvert County, paid taxpayer dollars to find out: There is, as Councilman Ken Wilcox stated, “no practical way to prove whether the dog that attacked is in fact a ‘pit bull.’ ” Wilcox is correct, despite the popular perception. Visual identification is highly subjective and inaccurate; DNA testing is costly and usually unhelpful. There simply is no consensus among experts about what is and isn’t a pit bull. But that doesn’t mean we’re unable to use the law to protect our communities from dangerous animals. North Beach officials have concluded that investigating the actions of animals is a much better use of their resources and a more effective method of protecting the public than is engaging in a fruitless effort to determine a particular dog’s breed. If only that lesson would be heeded in Prince George’s County, whose ban on pit bulls has proved just as problematic as North Beach’s. It has not reduced the number of pit bulls that arrive at the county shelter each year, a strong indicator of how many are still out in the community. It has resulted in hundreds of thousands of dollars annually in enforcement, kenneling and other costs. And it has had little effect on public safety. Commonplace behavior-based dog control laws — targeting at-large, dangerous, potentially dangerous and nuisance animals — are all that we need, so long as animal-control bodies have the resources to enforce them aggresively. In Baltimore in the 1970s, dog bites numbered around 6,500 a year. When the city enacted strong behavior-based animal-control laws, bites declined. A lot. Today, there are 90 percent fewer bites recorded in Baltimore than 40 years ago. Similar trends can be noted in New York and other large U.S. cities. Prince George’s, too, has behavior-based animal-control laws that cover just about any transgression a dog can commit, no matter the breed or what the dog looks like. The Prince George’s County Council should follow North Beach’s lead and eschew its breed ban for stronger enforcement of behavior-based animal control. The money it saves can be used to hire more teachers, firefighters or even animal-control officers. The writer is president of the Maryland Dog Federation. In 2002 and 2003, she served on a task force convened to study the effect of Prince George’s County’s pit bull ban.


Running With the Kenyans: Passion, Adventure, and the Secrets of the Fastest People on Earth by Adharanand Finn

he’s distraught to see Kenyans striding comfortably in the footwear he’s been struggling to do without. The family rents a house in Iten, which lies in an area that is arguably the geographic center of long-distance running. They hire a guard, although almost everybody is kind to the Muzungus (whites). Home-grown and visiting running stars are thick on the ground. Even Joan Benoit is there with her son, Anders. She won the gold medal for the first Olympic women’s marathon in 1984. Caught in the first boom of adult-onset running fanatics during the late 1970s, I ran 60 marathons before I stopped counting. I still run at least one a year and wanted to visit the Rift Valley in the same way some Catholics want to visit the Vatican. My trip was led by John Manners, a man who could — and should — write a book about Kenyan runners. A transplanted baseball fan, John came to Kenya with his anthropologist father when he was 12 years old and saw the promise of the country’s world dominance in running, before the world had any idea. He’s one of many whom Finn interviews in his quest for secrets. The children who run to school here are fast, Finn learns, because if they’re late they’ll be caned. So toughness is one secret. Another is elevation — running in thin air increases the blood’s ability to absorb oxygen. The doughy dish ugali, made of cornmeal, may not figure in Kenyans’ running success, but there may be something in how little of anything they have to eat. They are hungry, but also hungry to win, and running is one of a very few ways to earn cash in a country without much. Rest is another secret. Lornah Kipligat, who has held several world records and operates a training center in Iten, is famous for sleeping 16 hours a day. Finn and his newfound African friends all run the Lewa marathon, which is held in a wildlife reserve. Helicopters are used to distract the lions. He’s not as fast as he had hoped, but we mustn’t judge his transformation until he returns to the developed world and finishes the New York Marathon. How did he do? Well, that’s my secret. bookworld@washpost.com Benjamin Cheever RUNNING WITH THE KENYANS Passion, Adventure, and the Secrets of the Fastest People on Earth By Adharanand Finn Ballantine. 265 pp. $26


Realtors urge Congress to keep tax breaks for homeowners

to TransUnion, was 826, indicating minimal risk of default. Yet the bank “told me it could not make the loan because, even though I have sufficient [liquid] assets and a high credit score,” his monthly Social Security payments, bank deposits, checking accounts and 401(k) plan “were not enough.” How common is Eberle’s experience? Conversations with mortgage lenders and analysts suggest it is happening more frequently, thanks to some large banks that are ratcheting up their underwriting standards so tightly that the old joke — they’ll only lend to people who don’t really need the money — is beginning to resemble reality for some borrowers. Eberle said he was willing to pull out funds from his checking and banking deposits and set them aside to make up any perceived monthly income shortfalls. “I was willing to do whatever it took,” he said. But the bank still said no. Mortgage market experts, such as Dennis C. Smith, co-owner of Stratis Financial in Huntington Beach, Calif., are not surprised at Eberle’s experience. Smith had a recent client — a physician with $2.5 million in bank accounts who was seeking a $350,000 loan — who was rejected by one lender because the deposits, which were proceeds from an inheritance, had been in his account for just eight months. That was too short a period to satisfy the bank’s pristine and unyielding standard. Part of the problem, according to Smith, appears to be overcorrections by some banks to the lax underwriting that characterized the years leading up to the housing bust — especially see-no-evil practices such as “stated income,” where the loan officer accepted the monthly income number provided by the applicant with no verification. But another factor, said Bruce Calabrese, president and co-founder of Equitable Mortgage in Columbus, Ohio, is that some loan officers aren’t aware of techniques available for qualifying retirees who are asset-rich but income-deficient. For example, Calabrese’s firm employs “annuitization” procedures acceptable to Fannie Mae to help borrowers over 591 / 2 qualify on income tests using their IRA and other retirement account balances. “We take 70 percent of the total value of the funds and then spread them out over 360 months if the loan is a 30-year fixed and 180 months if the loan is a 15-year fixed. We also gross up their Social Security by [a factor of] 1.25 . . . . So if they get $1,000


SpaceX’s Dragon capsule docks with international space station

did both this week and made it look easy. “It’s been a remarkable ride,” Michael Suffredini, NASA’s space station manager, said shortly after Dragon’s docking. After a two-hour delay to fix a balky laser range finder on Dragon, two station astronauts — American Don Pettit and Dutchman Andre Kuipers — lassoed the capsule with a giant robotic arm at 9:56 a.m. “Looks like we’ve got us a dragon by the tail,” Pettit quipped from 250 miles above Australia. Cheers erupted in two mission control rooms — at NASA in Houston and SpaceX headquarters near Los Angeles. Video feeds showed the casually dressed SpaceX team high-fiving and hugging. Elon Musk, the company’s usually voluble founder, later said he had no words for the “moment of elation.” Two hours later, the station astronauts snuggled Dragon into a docking port. Mission nearly complete. “In my 20 years with NASA, rarely did things go that smoothly,” said Michael Lopez-Alegria, a former space station commander and president of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, an industry group. “And they never go that smoothly the very first time.” He added, “I’m not sure I would’ve put money on it two weeks ago.” He had reason to worry. Conceived in 2006 as a space shuttle replacement, NASA’s commercial spaceflight program is three years behind schedule. The SpaceX mission was repeatedly delayed since last year, most recently Saturday, when the Falcon 9 rocket’s engines fired and then squelched on the launchpad because of a bad valve. But on Tuesday, the rocket finally soared atop an arc of orange. It was the second SpaceX mission for the Dragon capsule. In December 2010, a Dragon orbited the Earth and splashed down off the California coast. On Friday, Musk sat in front of that first, scorched Dragon as SpaceX workers chanted his name, shouting, “We love Elon!” For weeks, the Internet millionaire had been scaling back expectations, saying this was a test flight, a shake-down mission. But at a post-docking news briefing, Musk beamed and repeated his ambition to fly people to Mars and beyond. “This was a crucial step,” he said, toward spreading humanity to other planets. “The chance of that just went up dramatically.” While more circumspect, NASA and White House officials also heralded the day. Presidential science adviser John P. Holdren, in a statement, called the moment “an achievement of historic scientific and technological significance” and “a key milepost in


BSO’s Ninth Symphony not perfect, but it still stirs the blood

It’s been less than three years since the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra performed Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony at Strathmore, but here it was again, on Saturday evening. In 2009, the orchestra’s frequent guest conductor, Gunter Herbig, led a restrained but highly cultured reading, with a particularly outstanding contribution from the Baltimore Choral Arts Society. Under the baton of Peter Oundjian, Saturday’s performance was more vigorous, if less nuanced. The program, which paired the Ninth with Anton Bruckner’s “Te Deum,” again showcased the remarkable Baltimore chorus, led by Tom Hall. Rather than sitting together by section, singers of different voice types are placed randomly throughout the chorus. While this presents real challenges to a conductor, who needs to communicate with particular sections at key moments, it makes each singer feel more individually responsible for delivering his or her part accurately. It also improves blend. The voices rang out with resplendent confidence, and the sopranos had no apparent difficulty reaching the cruel and challenging high B’s in the piece. The chorus’s performance was the best part of the concert. Oundjian is a world-class musician and, of course, the BSO knows the piece well, but the orchestra was a little strait-laced. There was an unfortunate wrong note in the brass at the opening of the finale, and in loud spots the texture became generally opaque. Kudos to the woodwinds, though, for alert, colorful playing in the scherzo. Of the vocal soloists, soprano Joyce El-Khoury was the most centered and reliable. Bass Morris Robinson had clarion power but a slightly metallic color. Tenor Nicholas Phan, a last minute fill-in, seemed to be working the hardest but did not project a steady musical line. All that said, the thunderous power of this unique masterpiece never fails to stir the blood, and the ovation was loud, long and well deserved. Battey is a freelance writer.


Memorial Day

protect the “ ‘warrior’ myth.” Perhaps; the fog of war often extends far beyond the battlefield. In any event, the film, “Let There Be Light,” has just been made available in a restored version with a much-improved soundtrack and can now be seen for what it is: not a tribute to film-making or freedom of expression but a memorial. “These are the casualties of the spirit, the troubled in mind, men who are damaged emotionally,” says the narrator (the director’s father, Walter Huston), men who “in the fulfillment of their duties as soldiers were forced beyond the limits of human endurance.” Some no doubt recovered fully, others not at all. The truth is, as we are being reminded every day by this century’s conflicts, that the mental anguish of war can be as murderous as flying steel and high explosives. Its victims are personally memorialized in faces on film long after they are gone (as most of them are by now). Not just the the faces in this film — somber, confused, hopeful or hardened — but the bearded, helmeted unshaven faces staring vacantly past the camera into some far distance. How many of them made it all the way back? Memorial Day was, in its beginnings, a popular observance that developed spontaneously after the Civil War, when families began the custom of decorating the graves of their Union and Confederate dead on one particular day or another in springtime. These were people who could have had no illusions about the glories of war or the greatness of any Cause — not after approximately 620,000 dead and who knows how many more physically maimed, disabled or “casualties of the spirit.” Memorial Day was not then, and is not today, about victories won, national glory or the greatness of the armed forces. It is essentially the fulfillment of a personal obligation to remember — to say of someone we knew, or loved or whose name we read on a plaque or whose troubled face we see in a long-ago documentary film: You lost all, or nearly all, before your time had come, but you shall not be forgotten. More on this debate: John Nagl: Does military service still matter for the presidency? Photo gallery: Honoring the Vietnam War’s fallen Bruce Hill (letter): Start a new Memorial Day tradition Andy Smith: Memorial Day a time for prayers of remembrance from all faiths


Program recruits older vets for employment training

Cheryl Blackburn, an Army veteran, had previously held jobs in customer service and as a security contractor, but is also unemployed. She recently signed up for the Veteran Retraining Assistance Program. (U.S. Department of Labor) For Cheryl Blackburn, an Army veteran who lost her job as a leasing consultant in March, the search for new employment has been frustrating. “I wanted to get back in government, but everybody said you needed a degree,” said Blackburn, a D.C. resident who once worked as a security consultant for the State Department. “I had the experience, but I needed the degree.” Blackburn, 51, of Southeast, is one of the first veterans in the country to sign up for a new program offered jointly by the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Labor Department aimed at retraining up to 99,000 older veterans for high-demand jobs. The program, known as the Veteran Retraining Assistance Program (VRAP), targets unemployed veterans between the ages of 35 and 60. The program is a key part of the VOW to Hire Heroes Act passed by Congress and signed by President Obama late last year. Blackburn hopes to use the program to earn a degree in finance at the University of the District of Columbia or Northern Virginia Community College. Julius Ware II, formerly an Army sergeant, had once run his own electrical company and had held a job in public works for a Maryland town but is currently unemployed. Ware recently signed up for the Veteran Retraining Assistance Program. (U.S. Department of Labor) “This important tool will help those who served our country receive the education and training they need to find meaningful employment in a high-demand field,” Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric K. Shinseki said upon the program’s May 15 launch. Much of the focus on reducing veterans’ unemployment has been on Iraq-Afghanistan-era service members, who face the highest levels of joblessness. A report released Thursday by Congress’s Joint Economic Committee said that unemployment among veterans ages 18 to 24 was more than 30 percent in 2011, nearly double that of non-veterans and significantly higher than that of veterans from other eras. By contrast, the unemployment rate of veterans ages 35 to 44 was 7.2 percent in 2011, and 7.6 percent for those 45 to 54. Nonetheless, nearly two-thirds of all unemployed veterans are over 35, noted Rep. Jeff Miller (R-Fla.), chairman of the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee. In


Edens reveals vendors for Union Market

With the opening of Union Market a week away, developer Edens has released the lineup of vendors for the District’s new gourmet marketplace. Twelve local and regional culinarians, peddling everything from oysters to cheese, will operate the first stands in the indoor bazaar at 1309 5th St. NE. Area food trucks D.C. Empanadas and TaKorean will each have a booth, as will gelato shop Dolecezza, Peregrine Espresso and Oh Pickles! Dairy lovers can get their fill from Chambersburg, Pa.-based Trickling Springs Creamery and Carolyn Stromberg’s Righteous Cheese. Red Apron Butchery will supply charcuterie, while Lyon Bakery serves up handcrafted loaves of bread. Rappahannock River Oysters Edens tapped chef Richard Brandenburg, a ThinkFoodGroup alumnus, to devise a culinary strategy for the market. Inspired by San Francisco’s Ferry Building, which houses a rotating roster of vendors and restaurants, Union Market will in time contain 40 vendors, a third of which will be permanent, Edens president Jodi McLean said. “There is this preconception outside of D.C. that we don’t have a food culture,” she said, during an interview at the International Council of Shopping Centers’ convention in Las Vegas last week. “We have this opportunity to really expose to the world what a great food culture is developing in D.C., so the retailers going in [the market] are exceptional people.” Commonly known as the Capital City Market, the site on which Union Market is being built was once part of a wholesale and retail district for poultry and produce. The old market, opened in the 1920s, remained operational, in one form or another, until Edens began renovations. The South Carolina-based developer, which is behind the Mosaic District in Merrifield, entered a joint venture with J Street to purchase the site in 2007. The partnership controls six parcels along 5th and 6th streets NE between Florida and New York avenues. The entire site is being re-branded the Union Market District as a nod to the historic name for the area. The marketplace is the first phase of a redevelopment that is to eventually include housing and a hotel. McLean said Edens is renovating a nearby 26,000-square-foot warehouse to serve as a wholesale distribution and food production center. “We want to establish Union Market as a place of quality, authenticity to it’s roots, and attract a much broader community,” she said. “This project can really help transition D.C. from being a great city to a


Medical students learned on the bodies, and now honor the donors

clotting the internal structures. She held it under running water at a nearby sink. She was focused on her task, but she also realized she was holding a human heart in her hands. “It’s unreal,” she said. “It’s hard to imagine.” Finding the anatomical structure can be frustrating because every body is different. When Table 13 was looking for a nerve that controls the primary muscle used in breathing — it looks like a yellowish-white flat shoelace — one student used her iPhone, protected in a zippered plastic baggie, to consult an interactive electronic guide. But discovery is exciting. “You almost gasp,” said John Nolan, 23, a first-year student who was also one of nine teaching assistants for the class. “You have that ‘aha’ moment, and everything starts to click. This artery is leading to here, which gives blood to this part, and you can follow it the whole way.” Discoveries inevitably lead to more questions. “I’m curious to know how she lived to 102,” said Bridget Kaufman, 23, bending over the chest cavity of her table’s cadaver. The heart was in good condition. Her lungs “were really clean,” she said. No cancer. Had the woman been rich and led a pampered life, Kaufman wondered, “or did she live so long because of genetics?” Harder for students to process were the moments when they see glimpses of nail polish, feel a strand of hair, and especially, touch fingers and hands. Mark Real, 22, became momentarily unnerved when his hand accidently slipped into a handshake with the table’s cadaver, a 94-year-old woman. “It felt very familiar,” he said. “I stepped back for a second. I had to compose myself.” His tablemate, Mark Mariorenzi, 24, had a similar experience when he touched her hair. “That’s when you realize that it’s not an objective lab like we’re used to in biochemistry,” he said. “You get flooded with emotions, of your own mortality, of loss and sorrow.” Rules for donations Medical schools don’t pay for body donations. Georgetown’s medical school gets about 225 requests a year from people who want to donate. Some restrictions apply — no autopsies, no major surgeries, no bodies weighing more than 200 pounds. Also excluded are those outside a 50-mile radius from Georgetown, unless the family can pay for transportation. Bodies are typically used 18 to 24 months after donation. Most donors choose to remain anonymous. All remains are


Why Army women are demanding the right to fight — and die — in combat

are expendable. And women are willing to accept greater risks to reap the greater opportunities that come with those risks, she said. In the past 10 years, about 283,000 women have been deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq. More than 800 have been injured and 139 have been killed, according to an April report by the Congressional Research Service. There are about 250,000 jobs in the U.S. military that remain closed to women. Haring encountered those locked doors as soon as she graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 1984. “I couldn’t go into Ranger School,” she said. “I wanted to test myself, I was all gung-ho Army, but I couldn’t do that.” Instead, she became a platoon leader, commander, executive officer and bridge commander. She is now a joint concept officer for the Joint and Coalition Warfighting Center in Suffolk, Va. Her options, her lawsuit declares, “were limited to support positions with no possibility to compete within the combat arms.” Funny thing is, though women such as Haring don’t get to go to the fabled Ranger School and train with the elite, they are nevertheless fighting and dying alongside the Rangers. And that’s one of the key points in the lawsuit. Take the story of 1st Lt. Ashley White, a 24-year-old from Ohio. She was embedded with an Army Ranger unit in Kandahar province in Afghanistan when she and two Rangers were killed by a roadside bomb, Haring told me. White was with the unit because she could do things — such as frisk women in burqas — that men couldn’t. “Women like her do this all the time,” Haring explained. The Army is going around the no-combat rule by attaching women to these units. It’s a bogus way to do it. “They go into these units with a lack of training, and they are at greater risk without that training,” Haring said. So, yes, women are unofficially in combat, through the back door and without the training they need. That’s one of Haring’s biggest concerns. “I’ve also been reading some studies on group intelligence,” she said. And in all the studies, a group of mixed genders always showed superior intelligence to single-sex groups. Women add a different perspective, a different way of thinking and analyzing. “I can’t tell you how many times I have walked into a meeting and I’m the only woman in the room,”


Obama salutes troops on Memorial Day, calls for war only when ‘absolutely necessary’

Afghanistan. Obama has also emphasized how he has increased funds for the Department of Veterans Affairs, implemented the post-Sept. 11 G.I. Bill and launched job programs for returning troops. On Monday, Obama’s speeches honoring the nation’s war dead touched on those actions and praised veterans for their contributions. At Arlington cemetery’s Tomb of the Unknowns, amid solemn performances of the national anthem and “Taps,” the president recognized both the first and the final casualties of the war in Iraq, alluding to his own stewardship of a conflict that he had promised in 2008 to end. He also pledged Monday to go to war only with a “clear mission,” with the support of the nation and when “absolutely necessary.” At the Vietnam memorial ceremony, which actor Tom Selleck presided over as master of ceremonies, Obama delivered a lengthy speech in which he addressed some of that war’s most painful legacies. He described the treatment of returning Vietnam veterans as a “national shame, a disgrace that should have never happened.” He promised to do “everything in our power” to continue the effort to find those still missing in action and to provide the necessary benefits to disabled veterans, those afflicted by the effects of Agent Orange and post-traumatic stress syndrome, and those struggling to find jobs. He celebrated the valor of Vietnam veterans and credited them for the nation’s appreciation of those who have served in more recent conflicts. “Because of you, because our Vietnam veterans led the charge, the Post-9/11 G.I. Bill is helping hundreds of thousands of today’s veterans go to college and pursue their dreams,” Obama said. “Because of you, because you didn’t let us forget, at our airports, our returning troops get off the airplane and you are there to shake their hands. Because of you, across America, communities have welcomed home our forces from Iraq. And when our troops return from Afghanistan, America will give this entire 9/11 generation the welcome home they deserve. That happened in part because of you.” If the polls don’t show Obama making inroads among veterans, his efforts to court this constituency at the very least are pushing Romney to pay attention to a voting group that Republicans historically have been able to count on for support. In San Diego, Romney did not appear to be taking veterans’ backing for granted, however. He spoke about visiting Afghanistan and Iraq while he was


Supercomputer will help researchers map climate change down to the local level

An advance guard of 18-wheelers is scheduled to roll into a business park in Cheyenne, Wyo., this week to unload components of a supercomputer called Yellowstone. This 1.5-quadrillion-calculations-per-second crystal ball will model future climate and forecast extreme weather. “It’s a big deal,” said climate scientist Linda Mearns of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo. Yellowstone will help researchers calculate climate change on a regional, rather than continental, scale. With a better grasp of how warming may affect local water resources, endangered species and extreme winds, local and state governments will be able to plan more effectively. Marika Holland, chief scientist for NCAR’s Community Earth System Modeling Project, said the new supercomputer is “close to a game-changer. We’ve had incremental improvements in our computational resources over time, but . . . Yellowstone is a whole new scale, and there are things that we will be able to explore that just were not possible before.” As climate models become more complex and detailed, limited computing power bottlenecks the research. Broad-brush models use less power, but they often cannot consider details that drive local climate, such as complex coastlines or the mountain ranges and valleys that affect rainfall. Researchers refer to this as a problem of “model resolution.” “If you have an old digital camera that doesn’t have as many megapixels as a new one, you want to get that [new] camera because it takes sharper pictures, and you can store a lot more pictures on it,” said Richard Loft, a director in the computing lab at NCAR. “It’s the same thing with Yellowstone. We’ve increased our ability to generate more-detailed pictures of the climate system, so we get a sharper, crisper view of things.” Seven-square-mile ‘pixels’ Yellowstone will be able to generate climate projections for seven-square-mile “pixels,” instead of the 60-square-mile units typically in use now. “We’ve already had the model resolution to confirm the warming of the planet but not to talk about the winners and losers at the regional scale,” Loft said. The new computer will cost about $30 million; it will be operated by NCAR, which is funded by the National Science Foundation. And just like your own computer, it is likely to be obsolete and ready for replacement by a faster model in about four years. Yellowstone and its successors will allow modelers to provide a more reliable range of possible answers for local climate


Russia warns of retaliation over U.S. Magnitsky bill

cannot stop the Magnitsky bill and will have to deal with the anger of the Russian leadership. If Ushakov’s remarks were designed to encourage a presidential veto of the bill, they are unlikely to succeed, given the difficulty the White House would face in killing a human rights measure. It could come out of committee as early as next month, according to a congressional official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. Sergei Magnitsky was a lawyer arrested and charged with the fraud who died in jail in 2009, possibly from a beating.The ”Magnitsky” bill in Congress would place sanctions on Russian officials connected to human rights abuses. (Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP) Sergei Magnitsky was a lawyer who accused tax officials of orchestrating a $230 million fraud against the government. He was arrested and charged with the fraud himself and died in jail in 2009, possibly from a beating. Cardin’s bill has infuriated top Russian officials, most of whom apparently keep their sizable personal fortunes in dollar bank accounts. “It hits them where it hurts,” Cardin said. It is designed to replace the 1974 Jackson-Vanik amendment, which was aimed at forcing the Soviet Union to allow freer emigration of Jews and other religious minorities. Ushakov said Wednesday that Russia would prefer to live with the anti-Soviet Jackson-Vanik measure than to have it replaced by the anti-Russian Magnitsky bill. Angela Stent, a professor of Russian studies at Georgetown University, said at a recent forum that Cardin’s bill is a feel-good measure that might have unexpected, and unwelcome, consequences. Cardin called the State Department’s decision last summer to deny visas to Russians connected to Magnitsky’s death — without publishing their names — a good start. “But we need a list because we need to shame,” he said. “Unless you list names, you don’t get the response you need.” On Friday, U.S. Ambassador Michael McFaul said in a speech to university students in Moscow that he drew up the as-yet unpublished roster of affected officials and that it includes some who are associated not with the Magnitsky case but with other violations. That speech brought a torrent of critical tweets from the Russian Foreign Ministry. The complaints weren’t strictly about the Magnitsky list, but they revived a publicity campaign against McFaul that had died down since March. “Utterly shocked,” one tweet said. “Ambassadors’ job, as we understand it,


Iran acknowledges that Flame virus has infected computers nationwide

Speaking on Israel’s Army Radio, Moshe Yaalon, the vice prime minister and minister for strategic affairs, said the virus was “apparently” state sponsored. “Whoever sees the Iranian threat as a significant threat — and it’s not only Israel, it’s the whole Western world, led by the United States — it’s certainly reasonable that he uses all means at his disposal, including these, to harm the Iranian nuclear system,” Yaalon said. He added, “Israel is blessed with being a country rich in high-tech, and from that perspective, these achievements we take pride in, both in the civilian sector and defense sector, open up very many opportunities.” White House spokesman Jay Carney declined to comment, as did a spokesman for the CIA; officials at the Defense Department referred questions to the Department of Homeland Security. A spokesman for the DHS said the department has been made aware of the malware and is working with other U.S. agencies to analyze its potential impact on the United States. Security researchers say Flame is capable to logging keyboard strokes, activating microphones to record conversations and taking screen shots. Experts have cautioned that it is far too early to draw conclusions about who might have created the virus and why. “There’s a lot of guessing going on out there, and I don’t think a lot of it is based on facts,” said Jody Westby, chief executive of Global Cyber Risk, a consulting firm. Iran was among several countries that about a week ago reported the infection to a U.N. agency responsible for communications technology, the International Telecommunication Union, said Mohd Amin, head of the ITU’s global cyber-center, which analyzes and shares data on cyber-threats. The ITU asked the Russian-based Kaspersky Lab, which provides software to clients around the world, to investigate. Kaspersky checked its database and found samples of the virus in countries across the Middle East. Iran had the highest number of infections, followed by Israel and the Palestinian territories, then Sudan, Syria and Lebanon, according to the firm, whose database is limited to infections reported by its clients. Kaspersky also has detected a few infections in Europe and the United States, but it is unclear whether those reflect people in the Middle East accessing the Internet through U.S. and European servers to circumvent Web filters, said Kaspersky Lab senior researcher Roel Schouwenberg. Special correspondent Joel Greenberg in Jerusalem contributed to this report. More national


Helping veterans find work in a tight job market

SANDY, UT - NOVEMBER 4: Margarita Angelo (R) of Zions Bank talks to Veteran Robert Ryan (L) who is looking for a job at the "Hiring Our Heroes" job fair November 4, 2011 at the South Towne Expo Center in Sandy, Utah. The job fair which had over 100 employers, was for veterans and current active duty military looking for jobs and was sponsored by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Monster’s Military.com is the official online partner of the program. (Photo by George Frey/Getty Images) (George Frey/GETTY IMAGES) Military veterans face a major communications gap when looking for jobs in the civilian world. That’s what a survey from Monster.com, one of the world’s leading job sites, found when it took a deeper look at how veterans fare in the job market once they leave military service. On Wednesday, Monster released the Veterans Talent Index, a report based on surveys of veterans looking for work and of the employers who are seeking to hire them. This is the second index the company has done; Monster plans to revisit the project every six months or so. “We created the VTI to shine a light on the problems that vets are having in finding jobs,” said Steve Cooker, Monster’s executive vice president and head of global government solutions. Veterans’ confidence in being able to find a job is dropping, the study found, as they face a tough job market. The unemployment rate is particularly high for 18- to 24-year-old veterans, said Jeff Quinn, Monster Worldwide’s vice president of global insights. They are finding it tough to compete for scarce jobs against peers who have not served in the military but instead have a few years of additional education or work experience under their belts. Cooker said the problem will only get larger as government budget cuts prompt more people look for jobs outside of the military. But those moving into civilian life also find it difficult to talk convincingly about how their military skills can translate to other fields of work. : Jobs jackpot: 20 occupations expected to grow the most through 2020: Here’s a look at the wide-ranging occupations expected to have “the most job growth” between 2010 and 2020, according to the Bureau Labor of Statistics. T.L. “T” McCreary, president of the Monster-affiliated Military.com and a retired rear admiral, said that it’s often difficult for a veteran to get out of


In test for Europe, Ireland votes on fiscal treaty

national vote — making this country of 4.5 million the only euro-zone member forced to put the treaty to the test at the ballot box. The most recent opinion polls show Thursday’s vote is up for grabs, with 39 percent in favor, 30 percent against and 31 percent undecided or inclined to stay home. A rejection by Irish voters would not kill the treaty, which needs only 12 of the 17 nations that share the euro to ratify it in order for it to take effect. But a no vote in Ireland could deal the treaty a symbolically powerful blow, fueling even more opposition in countries such as France, where Hollande has insisted that it must be renegotiated to put more emphasis on growth. If the Irish do say no, a treaty provision would cut the country off from future bailouts, setting up a potential showdown with the E.U. late next year, by which time many analysts believe Ireland will require a second financial lifeline. Nationalists’ advantage Nevertheless, in a country with a history of rejecting E.U. treaties, the Irish referendum has become an easy springboard for nationalists — who, as they have in Greece, are successfully tapping into the anti-austerity sentiment. Inside a standing-room-only meeting hall in downtown Dublin this week, Gerry Adams — head of Sinn Fein, long seen as the political wing of the Irish Republican Army — held court as the man of the hour. With Sinn Fein the only major party to oppose the treaty here, Adams has surged in voter surveys to the point where he is now the most popular politician in Ireland. At 37 percent, his approval ratings best even those of Kenny. And even if Irish voters approve the treaty, political analysts say, one side effect of the referendum could be a new era of strength for Sinn Fein. After a stirring performance by an Irish folk singer, Adams offered up a speech that seemed to associate the “bureaucrats in Brussels” with Ireland’s former British occupiers. “We need to seize the moment,” he said to thunderous applause. “If something is bad for your country, you need to say ‘no’ to it.” More world news coverage: - British high court denies Assange appeal of extradition to Sweden - In Greece, church’s tangled ties with government raise questions - In Yemen, U.S. airstrikes breed anger - Read more headlines from around the world


Recruiting veterans for government service

veterans and the hiring organizations were getting their needs met.” Kennedy also led the effort to create the Feds Hire Vets website to provide a single-point for employment information for veterans, their families, human resources staff and hiring managers; launched a government-wide marketing campaign on the value of hiring veterans; conducted veterans employment symposiums for HR professionals and hiring managers; and created web-based training modules on veterans appointing authorities and veterans preference. The overall strategy has been pro-active and involved innovative programs. For example, a Vets to Feds Career Development Program was created that has facilitated the hiring and placement of student veterans in agencies where they are trained for entry-level contracting positions, and get full salaries and benefits at the same time. The OPM group is also working on a pilot program with the Departments of Labor and Veterans Affairs to help formerly homeless veterans match their skills and interests to federal job opportunities. Additionally, they began a new initiative to match unemployed veterans in the medical and nursing fields with jobs at the Departments of Health and Human Services, Veterans Affairs, and the Food and Drug Administration. The team also has made great strides inside OPM, where 39.6 percent (262) of the individuals hired in fiscal 2011 were veterans. OPM opened a Veterans Employment Program Office at its headquarters outfitted with assistive technology and staffed to help veterans, including those with disabilities, who are seeking federal employment at OPM or elsewhere in the government. Kennedy said veterans have given a great deal to the nation through their service and sacrifice, and have a lot to offer government agencies based on their training and technical and leadership skills. In carrying out the presidential executive order, Kennedy said his goal has been to create a “value proposition” that involves assisting those who have served our country and providing government agencies with qualified employees. “We are putting highly-skilled and deserving veterans back to work, which makes a difference in their lives and the lives of their families, while helping the United States government meet its important challenges,” said Kennedy. “That’s a win-win situation. It is what gets me up and going every day.” This article was jointly prepared by the Partnership for Public Service, a group seeking to enhance the performance of the federal government, and washingtonpost.com. Go to http://washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/fedpage/players/ to read about other federal workers who are making a difference.


Prince George’s County Animal Watch

Prince George’s County The following cases were received recently by the Prince George’s County Department of Environmental Resources Animal Management Group. Call 301-780-7200 for directions to the county animal shelter, hours of operation and adoption and licensing procedures. The shelter’s Web site is www.princegeorgescountymd.gov/der/amg. Dog struck by car: Kitten on side of building: Sick kitty: Snake on the move: Howling pup: Forestville vaccination clinic Sunday: — Compiled by Jillian S. Sowah


Christoph Eschenbach and National Symphony Orchestra are having fun

Fund), this piece was short. And like many short works by eager young composers, it was so overfreighted with ideas and so eager to make its point that it sometimes got a little tedious. Stylistically, the piece follows the polymathic, exuberant, slightly slick model that’s become a kind of default for young American orchestral composers striving to show proficiency on the one hand and a wide range of influences on the other — in this case from John Adams to jazz to cartoons (my companion likened its helter-skelter progress to a Disney chase). Its strongest moment came toward the end, when the textures thinned out and a quartet of principal strings, backed up by winds, allowed some air to come in for the first time since the plucked pizzicato of the opening was answered by the humid lowering of brass. Still, it’s a good sign when a young artist’s best moment is in the slow part, which is usually harder to pull off. And there’s no question that Shepherd is a composer worth watching and hearing, even if this particular piece might not be the one that you want to hear over and over again. The night also marked some transitions for the orchestra, honoring the impending retirement of three musicians who, together, have chalked up 119 years of service: the principal flutist, Toshiko Kohno; the cellist David Howard; and the principal percussionist, F. Anthony Ames, who joined the orchestra in 1968. With the impending departure of the principal horn player, Martin Hackleman, who is leaving to take a teaching position at the University of Missouri, this means changes of three principal positions, which will give Eschenbach a chance to put his stamp even more on this orchestra. Eschenbach’s musical stamp is constantly shifting. In the third movement of the Beethoven, he opened with a refreshing, rousing account of the presto; switched to a second section that sounded downright lugubrious; brought back the original theme in a much lighter, more delicate vein; and then belabored the contrast between the two until one was almost sick of it. There’s no question he has a lot to say, and no question that he’s utterly in the moment. And there’s no question that the musicians sound as though they’re going right along with him. That, at the very least, is something to work with. The program repeats Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m.


Ireland voters strongly approve European fiscal treaty

investors and cut off any chance of future E.U. bailouts. “We need stability, we need our spending to be under control for once, and the E.U. will be watching how the money is spent,” she said. “Ireland has hugely benefited by being a part of the E.U.; we wouldn’t have motorways or other things if it weren’t for them. The point now is, enough with the waste, and I think the treaty will be a good thing.” Under Irish law, the ceding of fresh powers to the European Union requires a referendum, making Ireland the only nation in the 17-country euro zone to hold a vote on the treaty. Most of the other signer nations require only parliamentary approval for ratification. There were fears across Europe that the Irish would reject the treaty in the referendum, something voters here have done twice on previous regional pacts. But an Irish rejection would not have killed the pact, which only needs 12 of the 17 nations that share the euro in order to come into effect. But it would have dealt it a symbolic blow, potentially complicating its ratification in other nations. Thus far, only four nations — Greece, Portugal, Slovenia and Cyprus — have fully ratified it. A yes vote in Dublin, observers say, could offer the treaty a boost of momentum at a time when even German Chancellor Angela Merkel is having a tough time securing its passage through the German Parliament. France’s new president, Francois Hollande, is also calling for its renegotiation to add new pledges aimed at boosting growth. Although many Dubliners professed little interest in — or comprehension of — the complicated treaty, others were bitterly divided over it. Many saw it as a proxy vote on the current government, which is facing deep resentment for a host of higher taxes and benefit cuts made at the behest of E.U. officials. At a polling station near Glasnevin Cemetery, the resting place of fallen heroes from the 1916 uprising against British rule, voter Barry Oglesby said he felt uncomfortable with the notion of surrendering too much power to Brussels, the E.U. administrative capital. “I know we have to claw our way back and make sacrifices, but we should be determining our own fate,” said Oglesby, a 34-year-old personal trainer. “We shouldn’t limit ourselves to what they say we are allowed to do.” A good segment of the Irish


Butterfly gardens are a fun family project

A Monarch Butterfly lands on a plant. It’s easy to create a garden that will draw the beautiful creatures to your back yard. (Mike Staugaitis/AP) For a warm-weather project that can get your family working and learning together — and also help some beautiful insects — try a backyard butterfly garden. With a little planning, you can create a welcoming habitat for butterflies through the warm-weather months, says Rick Mikula, author of “The Family Butterfly Book.” The biggest problem facing butterflies is that where they like to live is being destroyed, Mikula says. Even if your garden offers just a few butterfly-friendly blooms in pots, it can help the insects’ population — and improve the look of your living space. “Any offering for butterflies in a garden, no matter how small, is like chicken soup for a cold,” he says. “It can’t hurt.” Simple flowers such as varieties of echinacea, daisies, asters and even some violets can serve as butterfly-friendly snacking spots. “Even one or two plants like that are going to be great because when the butterflies are moving, there’s a place for them to stop,” says Mikula, who lives in Pennsylvania. But if you really want to have butterflies in your garden, there are some things you’ll have to get used to — like caterpillars. Caterpillars, which are butterflies’ offspring, like to eat plants. They may eat the herbs and vegetables that you’ve planted with the hope that they would one day be your dinner. Plant extra to feed the caterpillars, and remember you’ll be rewarded when caterpillars turn into butterflies. Also, stop using pesticides on vegetable gardens or lawns. There are other things that a butterfly garden should include, including rocks for butterflies to sun themselves on. Before you laugh, it’s true. Butterflies like to sunbathe, so putting a flat rock near flowers will give them a place to rest after a meal. While butterflies can get most of the moisture they need from feeding, many like to gather around puddles and wet places. You can offer a “puddling station” by creating a damp area of ground covered with sand. Beyond the “sheer joy” you get when finding a butterfly in your garden, Mikula says, butterfly gardening also can teach families about the life cycle of insects, and about caring for plants and their environment. The best part, he says, is that you will be doing the


Federal courts evolve on same-sex marriage

LIKE PRESIDENT OBAMA, federal courts have been evolving on same-sex marriage. In 1972, the Supreme Court summarily dismissed a challenge to a Minnesota law defining marriage as the union between a man and a woman, rejecting the notion that the Constitution’s equal protection clause guaranteed the right of same-sex couples to marry. Citing that standing precedent, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit found that it could not proclaim such a right in 2012. Instead, the court issued Thursday a more limited but nevertheless important ruling in the long fight for same-sex marriage equality. The Boston court overturned the most noxious part of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) — which denies federal benefits to same-sex couples, regardless of whether gay marriage is allowed in their home states. The ruling redresses the grievous injustice of prohibiting benefits to the 100,000 same-sex couples now legally married. What’s more, it gives voters in Maryland more confidence that, should they approve of gay marriage in November, federal courts will guarantee same-sex couples’ access to everything from the ability to file taxes jointly to Social Security survivor benefits. In writing for the court, Judge Michael Boudin said that Congress did not have sufficient rationale for DOMA. The act faces a slightly higher bar for constitutionality than other laws since it targets a minority group and puts pressure on states in a policy area typically reserved for them. Against that standard, the justifications for DOMA fail. Denying marriage benefits to gay men and lesbians does nothing to encourage or defend traditional, heterosexual marriage, for example. And it does nothing to promote child-rearing in “stable” heterosexual households, since gay men can still adopt in most states and lesbians can still bear children. Still, Judge Boudin went out of his way not to condemn all of the law’s supporters, including President Bill Clinton, who signed DOMA in 1996 and has since called for its repeal. “Traditions are the glue that holds society together,” the judge wrote. “The desire to retain them is strong and can be honestly held.” He also suggested that the ruling could not be used as the basis for overturning state bans on same-sex marriage. To gay activists weary after decades of effort to attain basic rights, the First Circuit’s decision will no doubt feel too cautious. We share their frustration that so many states continue to deny so many Americans a


“An Eonomist Gets Lunch: New Rules for Everyday Foodies” by Tyler Cowen

Economist Tyler Cowen calls himself an “everyday foodie,” and his new book, “An Economist Gets Lunch,” is aimed at people like him. So it seems reasonable to ask: What is an everyday foodie? A single mom on food stamps who shops at the farmers market? A locavore who cooks nourishing meals for less than $5? It’s impossible to say, because throughout this distractingly discursive book, Cowen never defines the term. At first, he hints that he’s addressing eaters of a lower income bracket. “I also view wise eating as a way to limit inequality,” he writes, noting that in the United States the wealthy often eat better than the middle class. “It doesn’t have to be this way and I’m explaining how, even on a modest income, you can eat and enjoy some of the tastiest food in the world.” As if to emphasize his solidarity with those on “modest incomes,” he shows how he disdains fancy restaurants and celebrates agribusiness and the cheap food that it produces. But it soon becomes clear that Cowen thinks a modest income should be able to finance trips to Dar es Salaam and Switzerland, meals at Michelin-starred restaurants in Europe, and a taste for the finest foie gras. This is the everyday of the 1 percent. Cowen, an economics professor at George Mason University, frames his book as a manifesto — “I hope these pages will show that becoming a better consumer of food can literally revolutionize the world,” he states at the outset. But “An Economist Gets Lunch” doesn’t deliver. Written in an informal, almost flippant tone, it reads like a culinary guide for amateurs crossed with a contrarian, anti-environmentalist, pro-genetic-modified-organism rant. Sandwiched inexplicably between is a long digression on the history and culture of barbecue. Cowen’s advice for would-be food revolutionaries is as stale as a loaf of weeks-old Wonder bread. Any traveler worth her salt knows that the best food is where the locals eat, but while he was traveling in Nicaragua, this came to Cowen as a revelation. He cautions readers not to eat from a Chinese buffet and then says, “Chinese food that has been sitting is often Chinese food that has become soggy.”And does it really take an economist to figure out why restaurants with “wonderful views or innovative decor” have a high drink mark-up? ‘An Economist Gets Lunch: New Rules for Everyday Foodies’ by Tyler Cowen


For Mexico’s middle class, drug war deepens trust deficit

their co-workers and classmates, while 31 percent reported “little” or “none.” Among the 34 nations of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a group that includes most of the world’s biggest economies, Mexico ranked near the bottom in citizens who “express high levels of trust in others,” according to surveys in 2008, the most recent year for which data are available. Since then, Mexico’s drug war has only made matters worse. A movement quickly fades As the place that has given rise to Mexico’s most important anti-crime citizens movement, Cuernavaca is as good a place as any to gauge Mexico’s shortfall in social trust. It is an old, well-established university town with a reputation for good weather, where many Mexico City residents keep a second home and visiting Americans once flocked to language schools. That was before “La Ciudad de la Eterna Primavera” (The City of the Eternal Spring) became “La Ciudad de la Eterna Balacera” (The City of the Eternal Gunfight), as local gallows humor has it. In December 2009, hundreds of Mexican marines in helicopters and armored vehicles swooped into the city and killed cartel kingpin Arturo Beltran Leyva in a wild shootout that the government hailed as a major victory. Known as “the Beard” and “the Boss of Bosses,” Beltran Leyva ran his criminal empire from a gleaming white condo tower just up the street from where Alfredo and Lilia Hoyos live. “People here say they used to see him shopping in the grocery store,” Lilia Hoyos said. Beltran Leyva’s demise shattered his trafficking organization into smaller factions that are now at war with one another, and the violence has the entire city on edge. But the crime wave has also produced a citizen movement led by local poet and activist Javier Sicilia, whose 24-year-old son was killed in March 2011 along with a group of friends. “Estamos Hasta la Madre!” (We’ve had enough!) became the anti-crime movement’s rallying cry. More than 40,000 Mexicans gathered in Cuernavaca in April 2011 to protest the violence and the government’s largely ineffective response. Sicilia’s movement traveled the country by caravan, winning headlines and drawing huge crowds. Foreign governments and human rights organizations heaped awards on the brokenhearted, crusading father as he marched his supporters to Mexico City last year and held a face-to-face “dialogue” challenging Mexican President Felipe Calderon on national television. It was a movement that relied heavily


Gunther Herbig leads BSO in intimate chamber performance

It’s unusual to hear a seasoned, symphonic traditionalist such as conductor Gunther Herbig leading a Mozart performance on the intimate scale one would expect from certain early-music practitioners. But at the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s concert at Strathmore Hall on Thursday, Mozart’s thrice-familiar Symphony No. 40 received an unfamiliar degree of chamber-like grace. Employing an ensemble of players numbering about half of the BSO’s full strength, Herbig drew string-playing that was hushed and diaphanous (with vibrato present but sparing), gave the winds character-rich prominence in the balance, tapered attacks and phrase endings with great suppleness, and ensured that even the biggest climaxes retained a sense of classical scope. Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 3 received similar treatment, with subtlety of phrasing and a notable expertise on Herbig’s part at teasing out and artfully blending inner voices. Piano soloist Jonathan Biss was clearly of the same mind when it came to dynamics and early-19th-century proportion. Biss’s reading was the antithesis of a barnstorming approach, with a scrupulous grading of touch and sound. Even so, his virtuosity was arrestingly evident in his crisp articulation throughout the piece — indeed, every note in each of the runs up and down the keyboard was as clearly heard as it would have been on a fortepiano, with no loss of finesse or continuity of line. Schubert’s Symphony No. 6 made for an uncommonly brief and lightweight second half. But, once again, Herbig’s lithe and supple conducting paid dividends, bringing out the grace and wit in this lovely, too-seldom-performed gem. Banno is a freelance writer.


Army charges Bales with steroid use

war. It is the first time that military officials have indicated steroids might have played a role in the killings. The Army has not disclosed an alleged motive for the murders. Bales’s attorneys are contesting the evidence and have not acknowledged any wrongdoing on his part. Some U.S. officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, had previously suggested that alcohol might have been a factor, saying that there was evidence Bales had been drinking before the slayings. The court documents released Friday said he drank sometime between Nov. 1 and March 10 but did not give details. U.S. troops are prohibited from drinking in Afghanistan to avoid offending its conservative Muslim population. Emma Scanlan, a civilian attorney from Seattle who is part of Bales’s defense team, played down the steroid and alcohol charges. She said that, despite the official prohibitions against both substances, it was common for soldiers to use steroids and to drink on remote outposts like the one where Bales was deployed. “The access to alcohol and other substances appears to be fairly widespread,” she said. Scanlan said Army investigators on Friday delivered to the defense team 5,000 pages of evidence and other material to support the charges against Bales. She said she was still reviewing the material. In its new filings, the Army dropped one murder count against Bales. He is now accused of killing 16 Afghan villagers — nine females and seven males. Prosecutors had previously charged him with killing an additional female. Army officials did not explain the discrepancy Friday. Military officials have given conflicting accounts in the past of how many died in the massacre. The Army has not publicly identified the victims. Their names were redacted from the charge sheets released Friday. Military officials have accused Bales of leaving his small combat outpost without warning and walking to two nearby villages, where he allegedly gunned down his victims while they slept and burned many of the bodies afterward. The Army has said he returned to his base and turned himself in without giving an explanation for his actions. Bales is a member of a unit from the 3rd Stryker Brigade Team, 2nd Infantry Division, from Joint Base Lewis-McChord, near Tacoma, Wash. Pending trial, he is being held at the military prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kan. He could face the death penalty. He joined the Army in 2001 and served three tours in Iraq.


Campus debit cards can carry downsides

I like debit cards. They are better in many ways than credit cards, but you can still quickly get into trouble if you’re not careful. Now comes word that college students get debit cards through their school’s partnerships with financial companies and are paying numerous fees as a result. Sometimes these fees eat into their financial aid. Consumer advocates have long criticized the amount of fees associated with debit cards. Most recently, a report by the U.S. Public Interest Research Group Education Fund found that hundreds of colleges have partnerships with financial companies to put a student’s financial aid on debit or prepaid cards that carry hefty fees. Under some of these deals, official student photo ID cards can double as debit cards. U.S. PIRG said it has found almost 900 card partnerships between colleges and banks or other financial companies. Many of the schools have experienced major cutbacks in state funding, so the deals bring in needed funds. It can also help the school reduce the cost of distributing financial aid to students by outsourcing that service. But the arrangements aren’t always in the best interest of students, said Rich Williams, co-author of the report and higher-education advocate for U.S. PIRG. “Campus debit cards are wolves in sheep’s clothing,” Williams said. “Students think they can access their dollars freely, but instead their aid is being eaten up in fees.” Let’s look at some of the fees highlighted by the report: ●One bank charges a $28 overdraft fee for each day an account is overdrawn, for up to 14 days. ●Students using prepaid debit cards can be charged for reloading or depositing money on the cards at ATMs. At one school, the reload fee is $4.95. ●One company charges students 50 cents if they swipe a card with a MasterCard logo, choose the debit option and enter their personal identification number. They don’t get charged the fee if they use the credit option and sign the receipt. This type of fee has been particularly controversial. Students at Portland State University and Southern Oregon University protested the fee and had it removed. ●Under one deal, a student debit cardholder can be charged a $10 fee if another person tries to load money onto the student’s card electronically but the transaction is canceled because the other person’s bank account has insufficient funds. ●Students can be assessed a fee when they check their


Drug policy: No longer a political third rail

Jill Harris is managing director of strategic initiatives for Drug Policy Action, the political arm of the Drug Policy Alliance. Two candidates ran for Congress in El Paso, a city that shares a border with Ciudad Juarez in Mexico. El Paso’s Mexican counterpart is the murder capital of the world: More than 10,000 people have died there since Mexican President Felipe Calderon militarized the drug war in 2006. One candidate, a former city councilman and first-time congressional candidate, supports marijuana legalization and health-centered alternatives to the war on drugs. The other, a respected eight-term incumbent endorsed by Presidents Obama and Bill Clinton, opposes legalizing marijuana and is against any serious solution to the drug war. The incumbent ran ads against the newcomer decrying his support of marijuana legalization and promising to keep drugs out of the hands of El Paso’s children. The newcomer, labeled “pro-pot,” “soft on crime” and lacking the “character” for the office, was likely to go down in flames. Except it didn’t work out like that. On Tuesday, challenger Beto O’Rourke defeated incumbent Silvestre Reyes in the Democratic Party primary, garnering more than 50 percent of the vote in a multi-candidate race to avoid a runoff. O’Rourke is all but certain to be the next U.S. representative from the safely Democratic 16th District. O’Rourke joins Oregon’s Ellen Rosenblum, who last month upset the establishment favorite for state attorney general in a Democratic primary that hinged on drug policy reform and was widely viewed as a referendum on medical marijuana. A former state appeals court judge, Rosenblum does not have a Republican opponent in the general election. Rosenblum strongly supported legal access by patients to medical marijuana, while her opponent Dwight Holton, a former federal prosecutor who had conducted raids on medical marijuana providers, sharply criticized Oregon’s law, referring to it as a “train wreck.” Holton also tried to use Rosenblum’s stand against her, accusing her of trying to buy the attorney general’s office with money from drug legalizers. In the fall of 2010, Los Angeles District Attorney Steve Cooley, who opposed California’s medical marijuana law and vowed to shut down dispensaries, was defeated by a razor-thin margin in a race for state attorney general by Kamala Harris, who supports legalized marijuana for patients. Many observers speculated that voters’ overwhelming support for medical marijuana may have been the deciding factor. These three races represent a sea change in


Olympics 2012: As colleges struggle to support non-revenue sports, the United States’s Olympic future is threatened

For 17 days this summer, much of the nation will set aside its economic angst and election-year acrimony to rally behind the U.S. Olympians competing at the 2012 London Games. But come fall, many of the sports in which these athletes compete — swimming, wrestling and gymnastics, among them — will be fighting for survival on college campuses around the country. Olympic sports This retreat from higher education’s traditional model of offering a broad array of sports stands to undercut the nation’s Olympic prospects in the future. “It remains to be seen what the long-term impact of the situation is,” says Mike Moyer, executive director of the National Wrestling Coaches Association. “But it’s safe to say — whether it’s wrestling or any other Olympic sport — that it’s not a good thing for our farm system, if you will, to be eroding.” Over the past 30 years, college wrestling has lost 45 percent of its Division I teams — down from 146 in 1981-82 to 80 in 2010-11, according to figures compiled by the NCAA. Men’s gymnastics has been hit even harder, with just 16 Division I teams remaining from the 59 that existed in 1981-82. That’s a drop of nearly 73 percent. “It’s dying fast, and I hate it,” says Jonathan Horton, 26, who won five NCAA titles at Oklahoma before going on to win the silver medal on the high bar at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. “I hate to see it go. . . . Going to Oklahoma and doing college gymnastics was one of the best things I ever did. Knowing that [college gymnastics] is on a downward slope is tough.” The shifting priorities of college athletic departments are a particular concern to the U.S. Olympic Committee, according to Alan Ashley, the USOC’s chief of sport performance. While most nations rely on government funding to train prospective Olympians, the USOC receives no federal money for that purpose. As a result, it has traditionally turned to colleges and universities as a feeder system for many of the sports in which the country has excelled internationally — with the notable exception of snowboarding, BMX and sports of a similar X-Games-inspired ilk. “It definitely is a concern because it’s an important part of our system,” Ashley says. “Without government funding, we need to have those sustaining pipelines.” It’s not only the USOC that looks to college sports for its talent.


Former Beijing mayor changes long-standing account of Tiananmen crackdown

“Party center” officials. “I couldn’t not read it,” he said. Chen’s efforts to distance himself from his earlier hard-line stance highlights how — more than two decades after a massacre that has been scrubbed from public discourse inside China — the 1989 bloodshed continues to haunt the ruling party. The gulf between public rhetoric and private reality also adds to pressure on the party to “rehabilitate” a student-led protest movement that is still officially classified as a “counterrevolutionary rebellion.” The Tiananmen protests, which spread to scores of cities across China, were animated largely by public rage at official corruption and unaccountability, ills that have since only grown worse. “The Tiananmen matter has never been forgotten, particularly by the government,” said Bao Pu, the Hong Kong-based publisher of “Conversations With Chen Xitong.” Bao’s father, a senior official at the time of the crackdown, was jailed after the massacre and, though now back at home, remains under constant surveillance by security forces. The party “does not let people talk about Tiananmen but can never forget what happened because it is living with the consequences,” the publisher said. “The crackdown fundamentally altered the relationship between leaders and the people. It created deep mistrust.” As has become an annual custom, security at Tiananmen Square has been stepped up ahead of Monday’s anniversary, with uniformed and plainclothes police keeping a watchful eye on the mostly Chinese tourists visiting the area. China’s leaders are also jittery because of a spate of self-immolations by Tibetans in the past nine months, and security police on Tiananmen Square keep fire extinguishers at the ready. Deviating from script The Communist Party has gone to extraordinary lengths to erase memories of 1989 and of its leader at the time, Zhao Ziyang, who was purged as general secretary for refusing to support the use of military force. Zhao lived under house arrest until his death in 2005 and had been systematically excised from official accounts of the economic reforms he led for a decade, paving the way for China’s emergence in 2010 as the world’s second-biggest economy. In a deviation from that script, Chen, in the interviews, referred to Zhao repeatedly, praising his contributions to China’s reform drive. But he disputed assertions made by Zhao in posthumously published memoirs that Beijing city officials presented misleading reports about the 1989 protests to Deng Xiaoping, distorting the students’ demands and prodding China’s then-paramount leader


Code wars

surge of cyber theft, espionage and hacking. Fresh evidence of the sophistication of this arms race was contained in an article Friday in the New York Times about President Obama’s involvement in overseeing the creation and spreading of a computer worm aimed at destroying Iran’s nuclear enrichment centrifuges and stopping its drive for an atomic bomb. Also, The Post revealed last week a new research effort in the Pentagon to develop technologies for the cyber battlefield. And The Post’s Robert O’Harrow Jr., in two articles this weekend, probed the highly complex world of cyber security and digital sabotage. Certainly, a cyber operation that incapacitates Iran’s centrifuges is preferable to a conventional military strike that could threaten a wider war. Such was the thinking behind the operation against Iran, code-named Olympic Games, in which Israel reportedly cooperated with the United States. The story so far suggests a stealthy computer worm, named Stuxnet, that caused Iran’s nuclear enrichment equipment to malfunction. It evokes joystick entertainment, not smoldering ruins. But there are also large unknowns and significant perils in the age of cyber conflict. The battlefield is asymmetric; the size and power of the United States do not necessarily deliver an advantage. According to the Times, the worm directed at Iran later escaped into the digital universe, where it spread around the world, exposing the code. Today, hackers, terrorists and crooks can attempt to be cyber powers — and it will be hard to distinguish among them. Should a cyber strike be made on a nuclear power plant or a stock exchange in the United States, it may trigger chaos, disruption and financial loss, but the attacker might remain hidden for a long time. The concept of deterrence rests on the certainty of retaliation, but that certainty may not exist against a determined and elusive cyber foe, so deterrence may not work at all in cyberspace. The offensive cyber arms race makes it even more urgent to think about defenses. The United States is still seriously vulnerable, as are other nations. We have deeply embedded network technology in every facet of our economy and our lives, and it has been under constant assault in recent years. So far, the attacks have been largely aimed at theft, disruption and spying, but it will get worse. We live in a mammoth glass house and ought to be mindful of the dangers when we throw stones.


CoStar: Washington’s tech market No. 1 in jobs, revenue

The term “high-tech market” can be a confusing catchall reference for any region with a reasonably large concentration of relatively new and innovative, high-growth industries. In other words, a variety of computer, science, engineering and mathematically intensive industries can fall under the umbrella of tech. By almost any definition, however, Washington certainly qualifies as one of the top tech markets in the United States based on the concentration of tech industries compared with the top U.S. metropolitan areas, as well as the overall contribution to employment, revenue and wages made by tech amount to it being a primary driver of the local economy. In fact, it may come as something of a surprise that Washington has the largest total number of people employed in high-tech industries as well as the most revenue generated from tech companies of any other U.S. market (unless you combine San Francisco, San Jose and the East Bay into one giant megalopolis). To better account for the diversity of tech elements in these major markets, our analysis includes a mix of both manufacturing and traditional office-using industries that constitute the tech industries found in these markets. In Austin, for example, the tech portion of its economy is made up of a collection of companies engaged in the production of semiconductors and other electronic components as well as computer systems design firms. In Portland, the tech market is almost entirely focused on the production of semiconductors. And Washington, it is driven primarily by computer systems design as well as by scientific research and design services. As with other economic and demographic factors that help to spur growth within a local economy, expansion of these industries doesn’t always translate neatly or obviously into commercial real estate demand. Simply having a large concentration of high-growth industries isn’t enough to ensure that the market’s economy will outperform others. For example, despite having shrunk a bit as a share of the local economy over the past 30 years, the tech sector in Boston is expected to contribute more in terms of forecast job and revenue growth than Seattle’s tech scene. Yet when it comes to aggregate office and warehouse demand over the next five years, Seattle bests Boston for expected growth, according to our projections. It’s important to keep in mind that major factors such as population growth, the strength and composition of other industries, geography, the diversity and quality of


Commentary: Crowdfunding can provide new financing option for minority firms

In April, President Obama signed the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act. A provision in the law establishing crowdfunding as a mechanism to spur start-ups has the potential to significantly help minority firms. Large financial institutions, which are supposed to take small deposits from a large number of savers and use those funds to make fair and honest loans to individuals and small businesses, sometimes are not doing so. One only need look at Wells Fargo to see that credit decisions by large financial institutions are not always made in a racially or gender neutral manner. In 2011, a jury in Los Angeles found, according to the court document, that “the bank consistently and knowingly discriminated against borrowers in minority neighborhoods, resulting in these borrowers paying more for their loans than borrowers in nonminority areas.” Small-business owners often use the equity in their house as a source of start-up capital. Between 2002 and 2007, according to the Census Bureau, the number of minority firms jumped by 45.6 percent — twice the overall rate of U.S. businesses. Still, they lag nonminorities in just about every category. While minorities in 2010 comprised 35 percent of the nation’s population, they represented 15 percent of business owners, according to American Express Open. Minority-owned firms in general, according to the Small Business Administration, generate less revenue than their white counterparts. For instance, black-owned businesses earn 43 cents for every dollar earned by white firms, according to the SBA. Moreover, a study conducted by the Commerce Department concluded that women- and minority-owned firms “experience higher loan denial probabilities and pay higher interest rates than white-owned businesses even after controlling for differences in credit-worthiness, and other factors.” The failure rate of minority businesses is higher than that of nonminority firms, according to the Commerce Department’s Minority Business Development Agency, partly because of lack of capital. But crowdfunding can potentially level the playing field, opening new sources of business capital and revenue for women- and minority-owned firms. Crowdfunding works this way: An entrepreneur with an idea for a company or product posts the details of the idea or product on a Web site such as Kickstarter. The posting includes information on the amount of money needed, benefits to those who contribute to the project and information on the developers. The crowdfunding provisions of the JOBS Act allow start-up and other companies to sell up to $1 million in equity,


Prince William County news in brief

Occoquan council to meet as Venus crosses the sun The Occoquan Town Council’s regular meeting Tuesday will be outdoors in conjunction with the transit of Venus, weather permitting. Mayor Earnest W. Porta Jr. will have a telescope with a solar filter available on the Vulcan Materials property, 10000 Ox Rd., Lorton, for the public to see Venus cross the face of the sun. Although the entire transit will not be visible, the transit should begin about 6 p.m. The council meeting will begin at 7 p.m. For information, visit www.occoquan.org and www.transitofvenus.org. Special Olympic’s torch to travel through county The Special Olympics torch run will travel through Prince William County om Thursday on the way to Richmond for the opening of the Special Olympics Games at 7 p.m. Friday. The torch will be lighted in Arlington County and carried by police officers down Route 1. The torch is expected to reach Prince William about 2 p.m. It will be passed from an officer to an athlete at Cardinal Drive and Route 1. Summa cum laude grads to be honored Monday More than 400 summa cum laude graduates of Prince William County high schools will be honored at a reception and ceremony at 7 p.m. Monday at the Hylton Performing Arts Center. School Board members, Superintendent Steven L. Walts and his staff members and high school administrators will be among officials at the event. Summa cum laude graduates have a grade-point average of 4 or higher. — Compiled by Sarah Lane and Mari-Jane Williams


NASA gets two military spy telescopes for astronomy

of at outer space, “you could see a dime sitting on top of the Washington Monument.” The spy telescopes have a feature that civilian space telescopes lack: a maneuverable secondary mirror that makes it possible to obtain more-focused images, said David Spergel, a Princeton University astrophysicist and a co-chair of the National Academies of Science committee on astronomy and astrophysics. The new telescopes are “actually better than the Hubble. They’re the same size, but the optical design is such that you can put a broader set of instruments on the back,” he said. Spergel is among the scientists who in 2010 produced the “decadal survey,” which listed the top priorities in astronomy. At the top of the list was a new space telescope that could be used to look for extrasolar planets and to study “dark energy,” the mysterious cosmic force that seems to be causing the universe to expand at an accelerating rate. NASA has a plan for such a telescope, called the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST). But the program has effectively been put on hold because of the dismal state of the space agency’s science budget. The Webb has gobbled up money that might have gone to other projects. It’s a jumbo telescope designed to orbit 1 million miles from Earth, where it would observe the mid-infrared portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. With that capability, it could gather light from the farthest reaches of the universe. But it’s not scheduled to launch until 2018, more than four years past the original launch target, and its projected cost is nearing $9 billion. WFIRST was envisioned as a much less expensive telescope with a relatively modest light-collecting mirror, just 1.5 meters (4.9 feet). One of the new NRO telescopes, with a bigger mirror, would give WFIRST an upgrade in capability. But everything comes down to money. No money for a mission “NASA does not have in its current budget the funding necessary to develop a space telescope mission using these new telescopes,” Hertz, the astrophysics director, said in a conference call. He said that, using plausible budgets, 2024 would be the earliest date to launch one of the two telescopes unless the agency received additional funding from Congress. “Any dates earlier, like 2019 or 2020, is if money is no object,” Hertz said. And that is the projection for just one of the telescopes. The other seems destined to


As Venus crosses the sun, a rare treat for skywatchers

site disagreed by up to a minute. Still, in one of the first examples of international scientific cooperation, Marschall said, the observations were eventually collected and sent to a scientist in Paris who made an estimate of the distance between Earth and the sun that was, all things considered, not far off — about 100 million miles (the actual distance is 93 million miles), much more than the scientists of the time had believed. Space was, indeed, vast. A century later, the transits of 1874 and 1882 saw the United States catch expeditionary fever. Congress allocated $200,000, a princely sum at the time, and tapped Simon Newcomb of the U.S. Naval Observatory to head the venture. Typical for government then as now, Newcomb went way over budget, spending close to $500,000. The public got excited, too, and John Philip Sousa wrote the “Transit of Venus March.” (You can listen to a recording by searching the Library of Congress Web site, www.loc.gov) But soon scientific interest began to wane. Other methods had been developed to measure the solar system. By 1884, it was clear that the major impetus for future expeditions to see the transit would be adventure, and to see something rare. That remains true today, as it was with the last transit, in 2004. Pesnell from NASA is taking a team to Fairbanks, Alaska, where the entire transit will be visible, and various adventure companies are sending tourists to remote Pacific islands. And while the puzzle of the black drop, or smudge, has been solved — it’s an anomaly of telescope optics and the Earth’s atmosphere — other scientific questions remain, said Pasachoff. On Tuesday, sensitive telescopes should glimpse Venus’s outer atmosphere as sunlight passes through it. And measuring how much light Venus blocks will help astronomers calibrate space telescopes now searching distant stars for transiting planets. For the rest of us, the event should inspire awe, Marschall said. “What’s impressive is this sort of clockwork nature of it, the notion that the universe is moving around very precisely and silently and taking no account of us.” A few viewers may even think of Jeremiah Horrocks, who was ecstactic upon seeing the 1639 transit. He wrote, “Contemplate, I repeat, this most extraordinary phenomenon, never in our time to be seen again! The planet Venus, drawn from her seclusion, modestly delineating on the Sun, without disguise . . . .”


Stone Bridge All-Met Murielle Tiernan thrives while battling cystic fibrosis

Stone Bridge girls’ soccer forward Murielle Tiernan is battling cystic fibrosis. Tiernan, a junior and All-Met, has committed to Virgina Tech. (John McDonnell/THE WASHINGTON POST) At first, it was almost a joke to the Tiernan family. Their six-month-old baby girl Murielle was a seemingly healthy 20 pounds with rosy cheeks and a mound of hair. Yet, every time her mother kissed her on the forehead or cheek, she tasted salty. Just before friends came over, Kathy bathed Murielle, fearful that they would think she hadn’t been washed. One night, however, a science teacher friend of Ed Tiernan, a social studies teacher at Herndon High, suggested there may be more to it. Kathy Tiernan took her daughter to the doctor. She learned that salty skin was a symptom of cystic fibrosis, a chronic disease caused by a defective gene that builds a thick, sticky mucus that can clog the lungs and pancreas. Murielle was tested for it. “The kids that were going in were sickly, small,” Kathy said. “Murielle is just sitting up, six months old, ready to run. But she failed the sweat test and came back positive and, of course, changed our lives.” Seventeen years later, Murielle is an elite soccer player, an All-Met whose size, ability and style of play would never suggest a disease that can affect her breathing. The 5-foot-10 junior forward and Virginia Tech recruit is a dangerous blend of speed and strength, a gifted goal scorer and passer who has notched 51 goals, 42 assists and a 50-6-5 record in nearly three full seasons at Stone Bridge. She also helped the Bulldogs win the 2010 Virginia AAA state title. None who watch her terrorize opponents on the soccer field would ever know that, twice a day, Murielle uses a nebulizer, a machine that delivers medicine to her lungs, and that she lies on her mother’s lap so that she can pound her chest and back for 20 minutes every morning to loosen the mucus in her lungs. Few see the rings of salt that collect around her eyes after she plays, especially after games on warm days, a byproduct of so much lost fluid. “If you look at her, you wouldn’t think she has that type of ailment,” Stone Bridge Coach Joan Windows said. “She is so strong and so powerful.” Warning signs The first time others at her high school saw anything amiss


They came to see Venus move across the sun, and some of them did

from a telescope in Hawaii were beamed to a big screen. Museum educator Agustin Baldioli said that 770 people had come in. It was standing-room only. A cheer went up when a bright orb popped onto the screen. A black dot — a beauty mark on the face of the sun — sat inside the disk. D.C. resident Jeff Villa, 29, tossed his arm around his fiancee, Lundy Khoy, 31. He held out his camera and snapped a couple’s photo, backdropped by an enormous bright sun and a tiny dark Venus. “This is a once-in-a-lifetime event,” said Villa, an amateur astronomer, “and she’s once-in-a-lifetime, too.” Then someone yelled, “It’s got a ways to go!” The transit of Venus is not an event for the easily distracted. It takes seven hours for our sister planet to finish her lazy crossing. At the U.S. Naval Observatory in Northwest Washington, a small crowd lingered until the sun sank beneath the trees. They came to watch through a famous instrument: the five-inch Alvan Clark Transit of Venus telescope, which saw the previous three transits: in 1874 in Vladivostok, Siberia; in 1882 in San Antonio; and in 2004 at the Naval Observatory. Geoff Chester, public-affairs officer for the observatory, said he believed that it is the only telescope to witness four transits of Venus. Through a gap in the clouds, Chester saw the black dot. “It lasted about five seconds,” he said. “I am happy.” By 7:15 p.m., the crowd on the museum steps had thinned. The clouds were low and unyielding. But then, the patient were rewarded. A crack opened. Beams shone through. “Oh, yes!” shouted Ramon Miro of Rockville, a member of the National Capital Astronomers club. He had hauled his six-inch telescope downtown. “Yes!” shouted Miro. “Quickly! Top center! Top center!” The knot surrounding Miro’s shiny red telescope squeezed in. Sofya Leonova, 26, of the District pressed her eye to the eyepiece. “The dot was bigger than I expected,” she said. “It’s glorious to see something so wonderful.” Then the clouds swallowed the sun again. Back in the museum, Venus slid toward the sun’s interior on the big screen, in no hurry at all. An older gentleman hobbled past a father bottle-feeding an infant. He leaned on his cane and said, “Maybe that baby will see the next one.” Only 105 years to go. Staff writer Jason Samenow contributed to this report.


Agriculture officials use stingless wasps to battle Prince George’s beetle problem

In the battle against an invasive tree-killing insect native to eastern Asia, state and federal agriculture officials have decided to use a strategy that lets nature do most of the work. The emerald ash borer is a species of beetle that feeds on — and eventually kills — ash trees, which are prominently used in landscaping as well as stormwater and erosion control. After years of failed attempts to eradicate or at least lessen the effect of the pests by destroying infected trees, officials with the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Maryland Department of Agriculture in Cheltenham are trying to cut off the problem where it starts: with insect eggs. To do so, they have enlisted the help of another east-Asian insect: “stingless wasps,” which are smaller than fruit flies and lay their own eggs as parasites in ash borer eggs, eventually killing the host. Although the tiny wasps are not a native species, officials said they are confident they will not become invasive. Officials deployed the first set of wasp eggs onto infected trees May 30. The emerald ash borer beetles are particularly aggressive compared with native wood-boring insects, laying 70 to 100 eggs each, eating through the interior of a tree as larvae and then feasting on its leaves as adults, they said. Ash borers are widespread despite earlier eradication efforts, which involved the destruction of 27 square miles of trees in Prince George’s County, where the region was first infested in 2003 via a tree nursery shipment from Michigan. Since 2003, there have been reports of infestations in Charles, Howard, Anne Arundel, Washington and Garrett counties. Officials said the program costs about $300,000 each year. Prior eradication efforts had cost as much as $1 million a year. Charles Pickett, an agricultural inspector at MDA, said that not only do officials anticipate the eggs being more effective in stopping ash borers, but they hope they will be more capable of surviving and producing an enduring population to fight the invasive insect down to a manageable level. “Each wasp can produce 62 eggs,” Pickett said. “We just want to get it to an equilibrium to control the borers so they’re not killing everything. We have native redheaded and clear-winged ash borers, which have always been here, but they only affect trees, they don’t kill them.” Jian Duan, a research entomologist at the USDA and lead scientist in the


Dreams of Ray Bradbury: Predictions that came true

analyses that have spawned books on the effects of technology overload, such as Sherry Turkle’s “Alone Together,” Bradbury outlined how he feared that televisions would change the world. In this passage, he compares a neighborhood of television-watchers to a tomb: He “would see the cottages and homes with their dark windows, and it was not unequal to walking through a graveyard where only the faintest glimmers of firefly light appeared in flickers behind he windows. Sudden gray phantoms seemed to manifest upon inner room walls where a curtain was still undrawn against the night, or there were whisperings and murmurs where a window in a tomblike building was still open.” ●“The Pedestrian” also features a self-driving — and self-thinking — car, which arrests and commits the protagonist to a mental hospital. While far less advanced and much less sinister, self-driving cars are on U.S. roads as part of a Google project. As of last month, Google’s cars, which are clearly marked, can legally drive on Nevada’s roads and highways as long as two people are in the vehicle during the tests. ●The idea of electronic surveillance also popped up in Bradbury’s work way before closed-circuit television became a fixture in cities around the world. He was early in warning people about how surveillance could be abused — worries that echo today. ●Bradbury’s criticism of the coverage of live media events in “Fahrenheit 451” is fodder for media critics’ columns today. Bradbury disparaged constant, sensationalized news. ●Bradbury also envisioned automated banking machines in the novel. The machines bear a striking similarity to ATMs and provide 24-hour financial information to users. ●In “I Sing the Body Electric!” and other stories, Bradbury explored artificial intelligence and the philosophical implications of advancements in AI that could perhaps produce thinking, feeling machines. ●Books Bradbury once said that e-books “smell like burned fuel,” but he allowed his classic to be published digitally because it wouldn’t be possible to have a new contract without e-book rights. ●Finally, Bradbury made an imprint on the future. In his story “Sound of Thunder,” he portrayed how changing one small thing in history could have larger, unpredictable effects on what was to come. A man on a safari to the past steps on a butterfly, and the insect’s death drastically changes the future. After the story was published, its turning point entered the modern lexicon, referred to as the “butterfly effect.”


Slack budgeting at Defense

Global Positioning System to guide it to targets out of the normal artillery shell range, hitting armored vehicles or reinforced bunkers. The Army requested $110.3 million to procure these shells in fiscal 2013 but more recently told the committee there was a scheduling delay. So the panel cut $55 million from the request. An additional $14.3 million was picked up out of the Army’s overall fiscal 2013 request of $1.7 billion from ammunition for the Spider network program. Spider is part of the Army’s new anti-personnel land-mine program. Unlike traditional land mines, a Spider can be recovered and redeployed and even deactivates itself after a set time. But the Pentagon’s director of operational test and evaluation “expressed concerns” about the system, and so the committee cut all but $3.1 million from the original Army request of $17.4 million. There are scores of other examples to be found in the committee report. The panel cut $30 million from an airborne and maritime fixed radio program because it was unlikely that the equipment would be ready for integration into Army helicopters before 2014. You may ask what happens to these reductions — $30 million here, $55 million there. Most often the funds go to programs that committee members like and the Pentagon does not. The panel, as proposed by Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and others, added $91 million to keep open plants working on the M1A2 Abrams tank program, a production line that the Pentagon wanted to close. One plant is in Lima, Ohio. Congress has pet projects, illustrated by the $100 million the panel added to the $98.5 million requested by the administration for three U.S.-Israeli cooperative missile defense programs. It’s a step the House had already taken. Also, the panel authorized an additional $210 million for Israel’s Iron Dome short-range rocket defense system in anticipation of an administration request for such funding. The $310 million that the Senate committee added is on top of $3.1 billion in military assistance annually provided Israel in other legislation. While other departments and agencies have to be listened to when they complain about budget pressures, it’s hard after reading the fine print in this committee report to show much sympathy to moans from the Pentagon. For previous Fine Print columns, go to washingtonpost.com/fedpage. Read more national security news: Congress vows to stop leaks of secrets U.S. strike killed al-Qaeda’s No. 2 leader Remains of