No way to run a war

attack the areas of toughest fighting with the encroaching opposition rebels. This sector is the place where Free Syrian Army groups have penetrated most deeply into Damascus. A merciless war is being waged here. . . . In the second half of April, gas attacks became almost a strange kind of routine in Jobar. On the front lines, the rebels of the Free Syrian Army got used to keeping their gas masks beside them. They held regular eye-washing sessions and had syringes ready with a special serum. The aim of the attacks seemed to be essentially tactical at this stage – an attempt to destabilize rebel units in areas where government soldiers have been unable to dislodge them, and at the same time a test. If Syrian army forces could dare to use chemical weapons in their own capital without setting off a serious international reaction, would that not be an invitation to pursue the experiment a bit further? So far, cases of the use of gas have not be isolated. The only opthamologist in the region, who was trained abroad, sees patients in a small hospital in Sabha which he prefers not to identify. He said he had seen 150 people affected by gas in the space of two weeks. Near the zones most exposed to gas, he has organized a system of showers so that rebel fighters exposed to chemical products can wash and change clothes to avoid contaminating health workers at clinics. Saving the lives of soldiers with the most serious respiratory problems requires carrying them through a long maze of buildings with pierced walls, across trenches and through tunnels dug to avoid enemy snipers, to reach an improvised ambulance parked in a small, inconspicuous space. They must then be driven on a high-speed chase through streets under bullet and shell fire in order to reach a hospital at the front before the fighters die of suffocation. This report came in May. And still characters like Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) blame the victims, suggesting the rebels may have been the ones to use chemical weapons. While nothing coming from Paul should be shocking, this is truly repugnant. (This is not the first time Rand Paul has argued on behalf of Assad.) Assad’s reported conduct should be recognized as causing routine mass atrocities, for which there is no effective “warning.” We do not take — at least we


Another Red Line mess

Crews pulled what appeared to be a train involved in Friday's Metro derailment along the Red Line tracks through the Rhode Island station, while passengers tried to board shuttle buses. Well, look on the bright side: No one was hurt, and if you’re going to shut down a portion of the busiest Metro line for the morning rush, the Friday before Labor Day is a good time to do it. But the early-Friday derailment of a non-passenger train on the Red Line near the Rhode Island Avenue station is the latest ugly incident for Metro on this stretch of track. Service will be out for at least several hours, and shuttle buses have been deployed to bridge the gap. In other news: Don’t expect living-wage decision for “several days,” Mayor Vincent Gray says (WTOP, WRC-TV) AFL-CIO president Rich Trumka: “He ought to sign the bill — plain and simple. … It’s a great piece of legislation.” (WaTimes) Analysis: D.C.’s film incentives have been a waste (WAMU-FM) Eleanor Holmes Norton was not pleased by the March on Washington anniversary security lines (WJLA-TV) Can rock promoter Seth Hurwitz save the Lincoln Theatre? (Post) Green-paint splasher is undergoing psychiatric evaluation (Post) Health clinics for low-income city residents are peeved at MedStar’s move onto their turf (WBJ) Marion Barry is “disturbed” by dirt-bike enforcement (Post) Halfway house Hope Village gets questionable reviews (Post) Youth Court, long on financial life support, finally expires (Atlantic) Ted Leonsis is really into this Olympics thing (Sports Bog) DC 2024 honchos met with Fairfax County board chairman, but not D.C. mayor (State of NoVa) Apply now for a job at the Marriott Marquis (Capital Business) Tommy Wells is doing a Reddit AMA next week (r/washingtondc) Speed camera whistleblower is now suing (Loose Lips) Should cyclists be allowed on the closed portion of E Street NW? (GGW) Woman stabbed near Brookland Metro station (Post) Adams Morgan clubgoer badly hurt after being pushed down stairs (WJLA-TV) City agency launches immigrant rights campaign (City Desk) Eisenhower Memorial latest in trend of boring park-y monuments (GGW) Albrecht Muth’s lawyers say video link to hospital bed won’t cut it for murder trial (Patch) Rather than cut public defenders, feds cut back on CJA attorney fees to handle sequestration (Legal Times) At upper Northwest intersection, six of 21 cars come to full halt at stop sign (WTOP) D.C. is the No. 1 city for 20-somethings


Empty house, big questions

Got back last night from dropping the youngest at college. Still processing this transition. Still pondering. Not ready to discuss it at length. Obviously, I’ll need to buy a motorcycle, or some such major purchase that can be plausibly explained as the only possible salve for my pain. Or perhaps I can now get a charismatic animal companion — not just a dog, but something more along the lines of a horse, or a buffalo. I hear that pigs are actually very intelligent, and so that’s an option. My problem, however, is that I’ve never been good at leveraging such moments for personal gain. I’m going to wind up with nothing more than a new putter. Or maybe a gift card to the car wash. Anyway…there’s more to discuss there, but as I said before, I’m not quite ready to uncurl myself and get up off the floor and share my feelings. The whole “it’s over” thing is very hard to think about without losing control of all the muscles in the face and blubbering pathetically. Meanwhile this week we celebrated the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, my friend Barton Gellman and numerous colleagues have a whopper of a story on the Black Budget, we’re about to go to war, maybe, in Syria. So a typically quiet news week in late August! I need to get up to speed on Syria, and figure out who, precisely, is favoring a limited air strike, and who is opposed, and who wants a more muscular military intervention, and who wants to land Marines on the beaches (Syria has beaches, right??) and roll to Damascus, and how any of these various policies would square with international law, long-term U.S. national security interests, and long-term Middle East peace prospects. Show me the ways this could turn out well. Question: If the U.N. Security Council won’t act, and Britain won’t join us in a coalition, on what grounds would the U.S. be striking Syria? Self-defense? Explain. (to be continued…)


Labor Day weekend is our last chance for summer fun. Sniff.

Though the official end of summer doesn't arrive for weeks, Labor Day serves as the mournful marker that pool parties, water park outings and picnics in the garden are about to slide off your social calendar. This weekend, take advantage of several popular summer events set to pack it in for the season. The Jazz in the Garden Friday soirees bring out hundreds of picnickers for a night of music amid sculptures by Claes Oldenburg and Joan Miro. The free concerts that began Memorial Day weekend end Friday with a blowout featuring violinist Bruno Nasta and the U.S. Navy Commodores Jazz Ensemble, Friday from 5 to 8:30 p.m. at the National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden. View Photo Gallery — The D.C. summer bucket list: How many of our 20 pursuits to accomplish before Labor Day did you actually check off? A cooler-than-usual summer has knocked visits to the pool from the top of our priority list. If you were hoping to splash at all this summer, this holiday weekend provides your last chance. Several pools closed as schools reopened, and the remainder of the area's outdoor pools and spraygrounds will close Monday; check your county's parks and recreation Web site for hours. One welcome exception: The District's East Potomac Park pool isn't scheduled to close until Oct. 13. Also shuttering in coming weeks is a seasonal rooftop bar that became a social-scene staple this summer. DNV, on the rooftop of the Donovan House Hotel near Logan Circle, opened Memorial Day weekend with innovative offerings including a Pimm's Cup on tap. Guests get use of the pool and roof during the day, but after 5 p.m. on weekdays and 7 p.m. on weekends, it's wide open to revelers. The rooftop lounge closes for the season Monday (barring bad weather, of course). Update: DNV says it will keep the lounge open till the weather becomes too cool to stay open. Some concert schedules were abbreviated this year as national parks faced automatic spending cuts, but one big event remains at Carter Barron Amphitheatre. The DC Blues Festival, in its 25th year, serves as the final outdoor concert of the season at the Northwest Washington venue. Gates open at noon Saturday. The National Building Museum's duo of nine-hole mini-golf courses are indoor, architect-created, high-design playgrounds with local themes, glowing lights and plenty of interactive elements. The second summer of this cool, kid-friendly


Ensemble, Friday from 5 to 8:30 p.m. at the National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden. View Photo Gallery — The D.C. summer bucket list: How many of our 20 pursuits to accomplish before Labor Day did you actually check off? A cooler-than-usual summer has knocked visits to the pool from the top of our priority list. If you were hoping to splash at all this summer, this holiday weekend provides your last chance. Several pools closed as schools reopened, and the remainder of the area's outdoor pools and spraygrounds will close Monday; check your county's parks and recreation Web site for hours. One welcome exception: The District's East Potomac Park pool isn't scheduled to close until Oct. 13. Also shuttering in coming weeks is a seasonal rooftop bar that became a social-scene staple this summer. DNV, on the rooftop of the Donovan House Hotel near Logan Circle, opened Memorial Day weekend with innovative offerings including a Pimm's Cup on tap. Guests get use of the pool and roof during the day, but after 5 p.m. on weekdays and 7 p.m. on weekends, it's wide open to revelers. The rooftop lounge closes for the season Monday (barring bad weather, of course). Update: DNV says it will keep the lounge open till the weather becomes too cool to stay open. Some concert schedules were abbreviated this year as national parks faced automatic spending cuts, but one big event remains at Carter Barron Amphitheatre. The DC Blues Festival, in its 25th year, serves as the final outdoor concert of the season at the Northwest Washington venue. Gates open at noon Saturday. The National Building Museum's duo of nine-hole mini-golf courses are indoor, architect-created, high-design playgrounds with local themes, glowing lights and plenty of interactive elements. The second summer of this cool, kid-friendly event ($5 per course per person) closes with Monday's rounds. Open during museum hours at National Building Museum. Fans of the Hill Country Backyard Barbecue pop-ups at the Building Museum get an extension. The free outdoor parties, which feel like a honky-tonk version of Jazz in the Garden thanks to a hay bales, conclude Sept. 14 with a day-long bash featuring plenty of Shiner, barbecue and a performance by Brooklyn-born fuzz rockers Crushed Out. Until then, music continues at the barbecues Thursdays through Saturdays from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. Follow Lavanya Ramanathan on Twitter at @lalamasala and on Instagram at lavanyarama.


Don’t fear Big Beer: Consolidation can keep prices steady over time, study says

terms of who owns them: In June, Anheuser-Busch Inbev merged with Grupo Modelo to give it some 46 percent of the U.S. market. The new super-brewery owns seemingly indie brands from Goose Island to Shock Top, along with the omnipresent Bud. The fear with consolidation, of course, is that prices will increase as a company starts to monopolize a given market. But a new study out from the National Bureau of Economic Research suggests that the efficiencies from broader production and distribution networks offset the incentive to raise prices. Which probably means: Don't worry too much about price gouging, at least over the long term. To look at the effects of beer market consolidation, researchers Orley Ashenfelter of Princeton, Matthew Weinberg of Drexel and Daniel Hosken of the Federal Trade Commission studied retail scanner data following the 2008 merger of Miller and Coors, which at the time were the second- and third-largest companies in the industry. The merger was allowed because of efficiencies expected to arise from producing more Coors products in Miller plants, which would allow the company to save on shipping costs. And indeed, they found the rationale was justified — eventually. "The eﬀect of the increase in concentration on pricing was nearly exactly oﬀset by eﬃciencies created by the merger," the authors write. "The merger reduced the average distance between a local market and a Coors brewery by 364 miles, and our estimates imply that, all else equal, this reduced the average price of all lager style beers by approximately 2 percent." The price decreases caused by shipping efficiencies did factor in over time, with the merger raising prices in the short term. So if beer prices seem higher after a merger, know that they'll most likely start to level off as larger beer companies get their production and distribution sorted out. (Longer term, factors like increasing commodity prices tend to make it more expensive anyway.) Of course, not all combinations are the same. In the case of Anheuser-Busch Inbev-Grupo Modelo, the Justice Department required divestments that would preserve competition in the U.S., and company executives see the move as part of a strategy to increase sales internationally anyway. Also, there are other potentially negative effects of beer mergers, like variety in taste and the viability of small brewers. But in general, it appears that greater consolidation in itself needn't mean your Labor Day drinking costs more.


Free and Easy: Labor Day Parade, ‘Canstruction’ and Petworth’s Fashion Night Out

on the Kennedy Center's Millennium Stage. 6 p.m. Kennedy Center, Millennium Stage, 2700 F St. NW. 2020-467-4600. www.kennedy-center.org. WEDNESDAY Head to the National Building Museum to check out the Washington Architectural Foundation's Canstruction 2013 competition. Local architecture and construction teams build structures out of canned goods. The theme for this year's competition is the National Mall. Cast your vote for your fave and donate canned goods to the Capital Area Food Bank. 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. National Building Museum, 401 F St. NW. 202-272-2448. go.nbm.org. THURSDAY Watch Rafer Roberts work on the spring 2014 edition of "Magic Bullet," a local, semi-annual comics newspaper presented by DC Conspiracy, a collaborative group of local comic writers, editors, artists, fans and creators. Guests can also make their own comic and leave it to be displayed at the gallery. 6:30 p.m. Artisphere, 1101 Wilson Blvd., Arlington, VA. 703-875-1100. www.artisphere.com. FRIDAY Willow Fashion and Fia's Fabulous Finds host a "Fashion Night Out" complete with a fashion show and a preview of new fall fashions from local boutiques. After the fashion show, there will be a "swag bag" giveaway at Fia's and a 10 percent off sale at Fia's Fabulous Finds and Willow Fashion. There will also be an on-site, professional stylist to help guests rework their wardrobes for fall. 7 p.m. Fia's Fabulous Finds, 806 Upshur St. NW. 202-492-8278. www.fiasfabulousfinds.com. Registration required. SATURDAY A day of events geared toward helping you go green. Learn how to get the most out of your Community Support Agriculture (CSA) boxes in the 5 a Day CSA cooking class. Sit in on panel discussions on energy efficiency, renewable energy, recycling, gardening and water. There will also be venders selling food and green products, as well as face painting courtesy of the Wilson High School Art Club. D.C. locals who register in advance can enter to win a year's supply of free Honest Tea. 10 a.m. University of the District of Columbia, Dennard Plaza, 4200 Connecticut Ave. NW. 202-274-5000. www.udc.edu. Registration required. SUNDAY Score some free stuff at DC Home Buzz's Freecycle Fete, "a garage sale for everything is free." Part of Adams Morgan Day, Freecycle Fest gives neighbors an opportunity to get rid of the junk that's been clogging up their closets and bargain seekers a chance to find treasure in their neighbor's trash. 3 p.m. Adams Morgan, 18th Street NW, between Florida Ave and Columbia Road. www.dchomebuzz.com.


Town Square | Historic Chevy Chase home has child’s space in mind

The home is listed with real estate agents Ellen Morrell, Linda Rogers and Matthew McCormick with Washington Fine Properties at www.wfp.com. Embassy of Georgia mansion listed for $4.9M (Henry Schuldinger) For more than 100 years, the building housing the Embassy of Georgia at 2209 Massachusetts Ave. NW has been a fixture in Embassy Row. Now the owner of the 9,000-square-foot mansion, which has leased the structure to Georgia since 2007, is selling the property for $4.9 million. The five-floor mansion features mahogany banisters, ornate plaster ceilings, multiple fireplaces, three skylights and ceiling heights ranging from 9 to 12 feet. While the building clearly functions as an embassy, the 23 rooms and six bathrooms could be converted into a personal residence. The building, previously leased to the United Arab Emirates and the Ukraine, also comes with three off-street parking spaces. DelShah Capital The Republic of Georgia is leasing the property through January 2016 with a provision that either the landlord or the tenant can terminate the lease with six months notice. The property is listed by Henry Schuldinger with the Greysteel Company. For more information visit www.greysteel.com. Shortages worsen in some D.C. neighborhoods Despite recent reports from multiple listing service MRIS that the overall supply of houses for sale in the Washington region is improving, shortages are worsening in several D.C. neighborhoods. In July, the inventory of listings in the District dropped by 26 percent compared to July 2012, according to Long & Foster. Buyers looking in Logan Circle and Dupont Circle had an even tougher time finding a home, with inventory down by 56 percent compared to July 2012. Two other neighborhoods with dramatically lower inventory in July were Southwest and the Waterfront (down 49 percent) and Spring Valley and Wesley Heights (down 41 percent). Sellers fared best in Penn Quarter and Shaw, where the median sales price was by 38 percent compared to last year. Realty firm introduces agent-branded apps All of Keller Williams Realty‘s 88,000 agents have their own personal app. The company, the largest real estate franchise in the United States, is providing a unique URL and text code to share with consumers. The free app, available to both consumers and agents, is available for Apple and Android devices. The app will be individually branded with agent’s name and contact information and include advanced capabilities for capturing leads when consumers search for homes. Consumers will be able


A beverage resolution

Autumn officially begins in a few weeks, and “meteorological fall” began Sept. 1, but here on my back porch I can tell you that it’s very likely to begin sometime later today or tonight. There’s a change in the weather. The lenticular clouds, forming a patchy, ribbed ceiling at roughly 20,000 feet (estimating that by sighting my extended thumb with one eye), suggest cold air coming in at altitude. With seasonal change comes, as always, hope for renewal, recalibration, and reinvention. For example, I’m thinking of shocking the world and becoming someone who is known for the extent to which he is a knowledgable and enthusiastic consumer of beer. You scoff. You say: Dude, you’re a wine drinker. And I’m telling you that I’m full of surprises. Trust me, I’m a lot more enigmatic than you think, and that includes my beverage preferences. I know some would argue that vowing to drink more beer is an example of being excessively aspirational. You caution: Don’t set your goals too high, or you’ll be sorely disappointed. We all know how our major resolutions usually turn out. But remember the famous saying: A man’s reach cannot exceed his grasp, or maybe it’s that a man’s grasp cannot exceed his reach. Either way, it’s profound and unforgettable, and what I’m envisioning right now, hovering there at the very end of my reach and/or grasp, and then settling into the palm as neatly as a hot dog into a bun, is a brewski. Up until now, on this eve of my personal transformation, I’ve liked beer fine, and have been known to enjoy a malted refreshment like any other person. But I could never claim, honestly, to be a beer aficionado. I like microbrews, but I also like macrobrews. I haven’t even developed a fully formed position on the issue of bottles versus cans. Instinctively I think I like the cans, because it reminds me of my childhood, and the litter along the highways and stream beds. Discarded beer cans are the way we southerners tell the rest of the world that there are good times to be had, right here on this muddy river bank where the mullet are jumpin’. (“Gone fishin’” is, of course, a euphemism for “Gone drinkin’ a whole mess o’ beer.”) When they invented the cans where the mountains turn blue if the beer is sufficiently cold, that got my


NASA’s sending something to the moon. Will you be able to see the launch?

Will you be able to see it? (NASA Wallops Flight Facility) It's still just over a month until real space week. (Yes, that's a thing. It's Oct. 4-10.) But The Switch is having a mini-space week starting now as we gear up to cover the the launch of the Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) on Friday. LADEE is an unmanned orbital probe that will take a look at the Moon's super thin atmosphere (or "exosphere") and test out some new technology like broadband Internet space lasers during its 100-day mission. Weather permitting, it'll launch Sept. 6 at 11:27 p.m. EDT from the NASA Wallops Island Flight Facility on the Virginia shore. The Switch will be onsite for the launch and keep you updated, but if you're on the East Coast, you might be able to see it just by looking up. In fact, if it's a clear night, D.C. residents should even be able to see it over some of the city's most famous sites, as shown below: (Orbital Sciences Corp./Carlos Niederstrasser) (Orbital Sciences Corp./Carlos Niederstrasser) (Orbital Sciences Corp./Carlos Niederstrasser) For more some other projected view spots, check out NASA's LADEE launch visibility page. More stories: NASA's mission improbable: A space agency with a proud past faces a rocky road ahead.


RedRocks pizzeria to open Wednesday on H Street NE

(Bill OLeary/The Washington Post) RedRocks The three-story restaurant is a 6,800-square-foot space with three bars and a rooftop patio with a retractable roof, in a building that has been vacant since the 1968 riots. Favorites from the Columbia Heights RedRocks menu are sticking around, but there have been some additions: homemade squid ink and spinach pastas, grilled tenderloin and suckling pig, among others. If you're around for lunch, RedRocks promises a fast-casual experience, with pizzas ready in two minutes flat. At the bar, you'll find 20 draft lines for local beers, cider, prosecco and wine. They're keeping the bottomless bloody marys and mimosas for brunch, too. For the opening this week, expect drink specials and giveaways every night, and a DJ spinning dance music on Friday and Saturday. RedRocks also has two Virginia locations in Old Town and Arlington.


U.S. gays face challenges serving abroad, plus more items that caught our attention

A few items that caught our attention on Tuesday: Austin Watkins, left, with husband Joseph Marcey, is a civilian defense worker deployed in Japan. Marcey lives in Washington. (Courtesy of Austin Watkins) U.S. gays face challenges serving abroad Possible action against Syria reignites budget concerns Federal agencies struggle to launch insider-threat programs Feds pay millions for border-agent housing in Arizona Budget cuts hit low-income students harder than wealthy ones TSP tanks in August Ex-State Department employee pleads guilty to $53 million fraud To connect with Josh Hicks, follow his Twitter feed or e-mail josh.hicks@washpost.com. For more federal news, visit The Federal Eye, The Fed Page and Post Politics.


Diana Nyad, the latest of many older athletes competing after their “prime”

Diana Nyad is escorted by kayakers as she swims towards the completion of her 111-mile trek from Cuba to the Florida Keys. (REUTERS/Andy Newman/Florida Keys News Bureau) When 64-year-old Diana Nyad stepped onto the beach in Key West on Monday, she became the first person to swim the 110 miles from Cuba to Florida without a shark cage. She also joined a very exclusive, enviable club: Athletes who achieve amazing physical feats long after the retirement age for their sports. Fauja Singh, nicknamed the “Turbaned Tornado” by his fans, began running marathons at age 89 and completed nine before retiring in February at age 101. Fifty-four-year-old Jeannie Longo, the “grandmother of cycling,” finished fourth in the 2008 Olympics road time trial — far ahead of several cyclists who weren’t even born when she competed in her first Olympics in 1984. Team sports have their own aging stars, as well: Yankees pitcher Mariano Rivera will turn 44 on Nov. 29, golfer Jack Nicklaus won his last major tournament at the age of 46, and hall-of-famer George Blanda didn’t retire from football until he was a month shy of his 49th birthday. Martina Navratilova, who won her 59th Grand Slam with a doubles title only two months before turning 50, serves as a “fitness ambassador” for AARP. Amazingly, these mature athletes are no longer the outliers they used to be. According to data parsed by the Boston Globe, more older athletes compete in basketball, hockey, football and baseball than 30 years ago. In 1982, there were four players older than 35 in the NHL, and 14 in the NFL. Now there are 56 and 40, respectively. Swimmer Diana Nyad is just the latest American to make a mark in the second half of life. Here are a few other late bloomers. View Photo Gallery —Swimmer Diana Nyad is just the latest American to make a mark in the second half of life. Here are a few other late bloomers. What’s their secret? It’s actually not all that secretive, statistics and sports medicine suggest. Extreme athletes like 101-year-old Singh and 96-year-old Artin Elmayan, the world’s oldest ranked tennis player, probably benefit from good genes. But aside from that, good nutrition and training go pretty far: Orthopedic surgeon and sports researcher Vonda Wright told the Washington Post in 2011 that “how we age is 30 percent genetics and 70 percent under our direct control.”


NASA launch could be the first step towards an interplanetary Internet

mission has a couple of objectives. First was to demonstrate a low cost approach. Second was to study the pristine state of the Moon and it’s exosphere and determine if there are things like dust storms. A third objective was added later; one of our big problems with any space mission is communications. Today we use radio with these giant radio dishes in the deep space network, some of which are hundreds of feet across, and that’s expensive and limited. Lasers, because they’re a much tighter beam than a radio beam, offer an exciting new way to get a lot more data down. That technology has advanced considerably so we added a laser communications test. It’ll be our first test of if we can communicated with high data rates from deep space. Those are really the three objectives of the LADEE mission. Would it be accurate to describe that last test as laser broadband internet from space? Absolutely. I think that laser broadband internet from space is a very good description of it. As times go on we expect that we may eventually be able to get something you might call an interplanetary internet and this will be the first step in demonstrating we can do that. This will give us close to a gigabit per second from the Moon which is pretty impressive – that’s more connectivity than most companies. The idea is that we will eventually have an interplanetary internet. The same technology looks like we can eventually use it from mars. Of course, you wouldn't get that same data rate from mars, at least initially. But very much so, a solar system wide broadband is our ultimate objective. Going back to the modular nature of the LADEE mission, are there are other ways NASA is thinking about using that approach on future missions? Yes, we've got a number of missions on the drawing board, although we haven’t really decided on the specifics. But as we look at especially reduced budgets, we’re looking at ways to do lower cost missions, we’re looking at standardizing interfaces and we’re looking at approaches like a modular bus – which is much like your desktop. If you want to add more memory, you just add another slot. We’re trying to do the same thing with a spacecraft so if you look at the spacecraft it looks like a sort of stack of


Now selling insecure devices can get you in hot water with regulators

The FTC building. (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post) The Federal Trade Commission has settled a case against the manufacturer of a child monitoring device for opening its customers' homes to snooping from hackers all over the Internet. The enforcement action represented the agency's first crackdown on Internet-connected consumer devices. The company, TRENDnet, manufactured a camera called SecurView that consumers used for security, baby monitoring and other purposes. But the FTC said the company failed to secure the product, allowing a hacker to gain access to private video feeds from 700 customers' homes. According to the FTC, these video feeds "displayed private areas of users’ homes and allowed the unauthorized surveillance of infants sleeping in their cribs, young children playing, and adults engaging in typical daily activities." On Wednesday, TRENDnet agreed to settle the case. The settlement requires TRENDnet to notify users of the security problem, help users secure their devices, and submit to independent security audits every two years for the next two decades. The agreement is significant because it's the first time the security of an Internet-connected consumer product has been the subject of an FTC enforcement action. A growing number of consumer products, from thermostats to refrigerators, are being connected to the Internet, a trend sometimes described as "the Internet of things." If these devices are poorly designed, they can open users up to mischief from hackers anywhere in the world. “The Internet of Things holds great promise for innovative consumer products and services," said FTC Chairwoman Edith Ramirez. "But consumer privacy and security must remain a priority as companies develop more devices that connect to the Internet.” If companies don't make security a priority, the could get some unwelcome scrutiny from the agency.


The Switchboard: Five tech policy posts you need to read today

(Mark Wilson / Getty) Selling insecure devices can get you in trouble with regulators. Microsoft awarded $14.5 million in Motorola patent licensing suit. Court orders retrial in Google Maps-related murder case. Mapping the Bitcoin economy could reveal users' identities. President Obama raises possibility of new legislation to curb NSA powers.


Name that panda: What should the National Zoo call the female cub?

The National Zoo announced Thursday morning that the newborn baby giant panda is a girl, fathered by Tian Tian — effectively replacing “Who’s your daddy?” with “What’s her name?” as the panda question du jour. It didn’t take long before panda fans on Twitter began offering their their suggestions. Read them below, then suggest your own by leaving a comment or tweeting @postlocal. She's already called Butterstick II, yo RT @postlocal What should the @NationalZoo call the female cub http://t.co/Wkwjye3NAH @postlocal Wu Zetian, after the first empress of China. /@NationalZoo @washingtonpost Precious. RT @postlocal: Name that panda: What should the @NationalZoo call the female cub? http://t.co/GjB93HJw4g http://t.co/CwADuhy5R6 Eleanor would be a good name. RT @AP: BREAKING: National Zoo reveals 2-week-old giant panda cub is female, father is panda at DC zoo.


Putting innovation on track: The millennials’ train to somewhere

The Trains Project was a cross-country journey and an awakening of ideas for 24 millennials. (Esha Chhabra) In August, I rode with 24 “millennials” for 10 days across the United States in vintage 1950s trains with limited WiFi and cellphone coverage. And it was bliss. We were encapsulated in beautifully preserved Pullman and California Zephyr cars — a world from a bygone era. It was the classiest, most inventive use of technology to drive social change in recent times. And I learned that millennials are as folksy as they are futuristic, fascinated with old-school technologies and small-town America as much as Bay Area disruption and innovation. This was more than a sightseeing journey (though we did gawk at the amazing scenery through the glass-encased dining car). Patrick Dowd, a D.C. native and Georgetown graduate, concocted the Millennial Trains Project to drive social change. He picked trains — vintage cars, in particular — because of their ability to transport, to create a “third space,” as he likes to say. Lost in a different world, between cities, we built a unique community. The idea for MTP stemmed from a similar voyage through India that Dowd joined as a Fulbright fellow. While he wanted to bring the concept of the cross-country Jagriti Yatra to the United States, he was keen on developing an environment that would allow for new ideas, collaboration and innovation. “It should be comfortable enough that your mind can wander, think — in peace.” For me, it certainly was. MTP is hard to define. It’s not a tech incubator. Nor is it a platform for start-ups to pitch ideas, or to refine business plans. It’s not a straightforward conference. It’s a mish-mash of traveling, soul searching, innovation, mentorship and impromptu song-and-dance. And that’s its selling point. The millennials aboard pursued projects that were not always in sync with their professional lives. These were passion projects — learning, for the sake of learning. A novel idea in today’s time. Cameron Hardesty reintroduced poetry to public spaces, like the Red Rocks of Denver. In Salt Lake City, Travis Korte realized that Ancestry.com had pioneered “big data” before it became a buzzword. Matthew Stepp connected with the country’s many energy innovators; now, he’s developing a State Energy Innovation Tracker to map out all the innovators he met across America. Lakshmi Gopalakrishnan connected with relegated South Asian immigrants to understand their daily challenge to


Toast Oktoberfest at Dacha, Shaw’s new beer garden

on draft, primarily German and Belgian but with a few Americans tossed in. This former used car lot is an attractive space with gravel underfoot and flowers lining the fence; it'll get even better looking in a few weeks when a mural of Elizabeth Taylor fills the side of the building overlooking the bar. There are currently four picnic tables for seating, with more on the way, but even then, most of the room will be devoted to standing. Beers flow from taps on the side of a truck, but the selection is very good, including five different brews from Bavaria's Weihenstephan, including Oktoberfest and the very refreshing pilsner. (As of last night, Dacha is apparently the only place in D.C. with the pils on draft.) Beers come in the classic half-liter glasses or, if you're really thirsty, a one-liter boot. I got the pilsner in a boot last night, and it was quite a conversation starter. Just remember to watch out for the air bubbles that come out of the toe when you drink down to the bottom. Half-liters are $7, boots are $14. Another cool beer touch: Fruh, a crisp kolsch from Cologne, can be ordered by the tray. For $30, you get 11 traditional 0.2 liter (6.7 ounce) glasses on a special metal tray that are perfect for sharing with a group. There's no kitchen on site, so Dacha will rely on food trucks during Oktoberfest parties. That will change in a few months: While Dacha is closed for a Garden District-style winter break, the owners will construct a small kitchen and permanent bar. Because it's an outdoor bar in a neighborhood, last call will be at 10:30 during the week and 11:30 on the weekends. Doors open at 4 p.m. during the week and at noon on Saturday and Sunday. Also, because it's outdoors, there's no indoor plumbing: Four portable toilets are the only restroom facilities. That's a small price to pay for a refreshing German beer in the open air. Dacha's only seating option: A row of shaded picnic tables. More tables will arrive soon, but most of the beer garden will be open for standing room. (Photo by Fritz Hahn/The Washington Post) Dacha's bar is a temporary one, built around a beer truck with a dozen taps. A full bar, kitchen and indoor seating will be constructed over the winter. (Fritz Hahn/The Washington Post)


The best sentences we read today

-- "Tian Tian, who was born in captivity in China, is a hefty 264 pounds but has been a relatively ineffective breeder with poor natural technique, zoo experts have said." -- "Secretary of State John Kerry's public assertions that moderate Syrian opposition groups are growing in influence appear to be at odds with estimates by U.S. and European intelligence sources and nongovernmental experts, who say Islamic extremists remain by far the fiercest and best-organized rebel elements." --- "By the afternoon of the next day, participants in the discussions noticed the coffee table was gone." --- "However, Whole Foods co-CEO Walter Robb had almost no answers for how the company — known for its organic and expensive fare — would follow through with the promise to make the store more affordable, leaving residents and experts skeptical."


U.S., China strike new climate agreement at G-20 summit

substances decades ago. The move, announced at the Group of 20 summit in St. Petersburg, is significant because it provides a clear path for curbing a major contributor to global warming in the near term as world leaders grapple with the more challenging task of cutting carbon dioxide in the coming decades. President Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping said they would work to phase out hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) -- a class of chemicals commonly used in refrigerators and air conditioners -- through the Montreal Protocol even as they tried to make progress through the annual climate talks held by the United Nations. The U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change has yet to produce a broad, binding global warming accord that many scientists say would be needed to limit the world’s growing carbon output. Durwood Zaelke, president of the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development, a Washington-based nonprofit, called HFCs “the biggest climate prize available to the world in the next few years.” In an e-mail, Zaelke estimated that the accord could cut the equivalent of 100 billion tons of carbon dioxide by 2050 and would avoid up to nearly 1 degree Fahrenheit in global warming. "This high-level agreement during the G-20 in St. Petersburg shows how effective climate policy can be when it's done at the leader level," he wrote. The new effort builds on the accord Obama and Xi first struck on HFCs in June, when they said for the first time they would work together to persuade other countries to cut the pollutants. Brazil and India have resisted deep cuts in the past. In announcing his climate action plan in June, Obama said he would pursue this sort of international action even as he worked to cut greenhouse gas emissions at home. “We reiterate our firm commitment to work together and with other countries to agree on a multilateral solution,” the two leaders said in a joint statement. The Montreal Protocol succeeded in phasing out nearly 100 chemicals, but an unintended consequence was that it spurred the production of HFCs, which are short-lived and do not damage the ozone but are hundreds to tens of thousands of times more potent greenhouse gases than carbon dioxide. In addition to being used as refrigerants, they are used in insulating foams, solvents and aerosol products. Left unabated, HFC emissions could grow to nearly 20 percent of carbon dioxide emissions by 2050.


The Switchboard: Five tech policy stories you need to read today

(btckeychain / Flickr) US and UK spy agencies defeat privacy and security on the Internet. Sudden spike of Tor users likely caused by one “massive” botnet. Shuster: Driverless car ride 'impressive.' Who’s backing the ACLU’s lawsuit against the NSA? High-profile conservatives. How we got busted buying drugs on Silk Road's black market.


Kim Dotcom is still wanted by the FBI. But that isn’t slowing him down.

the same calculation they made to get to their valuation, Mega is already worth over $100 million, and hopefully by the time we list the company we will double the amount of users we have right now. So that's what I'm doing. I'm creating value, I'm creating something new that's valuable to investors and to future shareholders . . . in order to fight my case. I started again from zero when they took everything away, and I had to make a decision. I could either do nothing about it and fight it with good will, or I could launch a new business and sell some of the shares to fund my battle. And I think I picked the right route. Earlier this summer you said that if New Zealand approved a bill giving more surveillance powers to law enforcement, you'd move Mega to Iceland. Now that the bill has passed, how far into the process are you? We've opened the company in Iceland, and already we've registered the domain mega.is and our secure encrypted e-mail service is currently under development, as well as a Skype-type application where you can do video calls and video conferences, but you do it in the browser, on our Web site. Speaking of encryption, what do you make of reports that the NSA routinely cracks that sort of thing? What does that mean for your new services? Well, the way they do it is really by backdooring applications and services; they are not really cracking encryption itself. So you need to understand that they have this massive budget to try and infiltrate all kinds of services that offer encryption opportunities and encryption services, and they then backdoor the service providers of the software. So your service would be protected because you're not working with the government? They can, of course, attempt to hack into our servers. They can, of course, try to fake SSL certificates. But we have watchdogs in place, little programs that scan for these kinds of changes, and we would identify if there was such an attack and then immediately shut down our services automatically until we can clarify what the problem is. If it is an attack, we can then not reactivate the service until we have found the issue and resolved it. How many people have signed up so far? The last number I had was a few weeks


These NASA superfans won a chance to watch a rocket take off for the moon

also impressed at the level of collaboration she's hearing about from NASA employees, because that's one of the things Alix tries to teach her students. Speaking of her students, they love watching the videos from astronauts on the ISS about everyday life in space. Some of her students even sent along questions for her to ask, including how to build a rocket to win their local Science Olympiad competition or why the moon can't support plant life. Constance Rodenbarger in front of the rocket that will carry LADEE aloft. (Andrea Peterson/The Washington Post) Constance Rodenbarger, fine arts student from Bloomington, Ind. Constance Rodenbarger loves space. She was born a few weeks after the first space shuttle launch and has been dreaming about being an astronaut since she was 3 years old. Rodenbarger is now a fine arts student who incorporates science into her art, including a recent piece that was an iron pour based on her reading of a technical report from the 1970s, NASA SP-313 "Space For Mankind's Benefit" which talks about the social and political benefits of the space program. She believes there's a real appreciation for diversity in the science community, including at NASA Social. "There are so many different kinds of people here, and I'm very much a different kind of person," she laughs, noting how she's seen people tweeting things about that girl with purple hair on NASA TV. "In my past, being the girl with the purple hair has been kind of a liability to me, but here today nobody cares — we're just all here for the moon." Nick Hlavacek in front of a LADEE replica (Andrea Peterson/The Washington Post) Nick Hlavacek, computer programmer from Charlotte, N.C. Nick Hlavacek has a degree in space physics, but doesn't currently work in the field. The LADEE launch is his second NASA Social event, his first one was a year and a half ago watching the SpaceX Falcon 9 dragon capsule launch. For him, going to NASA Social events has been a way to reconnect with something he cares about, and share what he learns. "It's interesting for people like me who have always been inspired by NASA but don't have any other way to connect with it," Hlavacek says. "It gives us a chance to interact and talk to people, then to share that with my social network, who at least get that experience second-hand."


A beer that’s NSFW? Atlas Brew Works taps its third beer tonight

Atlas Brew Works' Rowdy (left) and District Common were tapped at Iron Horse Tap Room on Thursday, Sept. 5. (Fritz Hahn/The Washington Post) Atlas Brew Works, Washington's fourth production brewery, has spent the last four nights tapping its first two beers, Rowdy and District Common, at different bars around the city. For this weekend's events -- ChurchKey tonight, Smith Commons tomorrow, the Black Squirrel and Libertine on Sunday -- the brewery is adding a third beer called NSFW to the mix. The brewers won't say what style it is, or share much about it, other than describing it as "big, black, and delicious." (The rumor is that it's a 10 percent double black IPA, if you believe what you read on the beer-tracking site Untappd.) If you see Atlas beers on elsewhere, they're worth trying. Rowdy, a peppery rye ale, was my favorite. It's a full bodied and filling beer that has an almost-chewy body, thanks to the richness of the grain, with a touch of citrus sweetness and a crisp finish.There are plenty of hops, but not an overwhelming amount; just enough to balance the spiciness of the rye. I will warn you that I'm not kidding about how filling this beer was: After a pint and a half, I felt like I'd eaten dinner. But it's a complex, delicious beer that I look forward to seeing around D.C. District Common is a California Common-style ale, and the golden-colored beer seems like it would be perfect for hot summer days: a little bready with some honey sweetness and orange peel flavor. Not the most substantial of beers, in contrast to the Rowdy, but definitely a crowd pleaser.


The feds pay for 60 percent of Tor’s development. Can users trust it?

This week, we learned that the NSA had managed to circumvent much of the encryption that secures online financial transactions and other activities we take for granted on the Internet. How? By inserting backdoors into the very commercial software designed to keep sensitive medical records, bank files and other information private. The NSA's sustained attempt to get around encryption calls into question many of the technologies people have come to rely on to avoid surveillance. One indispensable tool is Tor, the anonymizing service that takes a user's Internet traffic and spits it out from some other place on the Web so that its origin is obscured. So far there's no hard evidence that the government has compromised the anonymity of Tor traffic. But some on a Tor-related e-mail list recently pointed out that a substantial chunk of the Tor Project's 2012 operating budget came from the Department of Defense, which houses the NSA. (The Tor Project) Last year, DoD funding accounted for more than 40 percent of the Tor Project's $2 million budget. Other major donors include the U.S. State Department, which has an interest in promoting Internet freedom globally, and the National Science Foundation. Add up all those sources, and the government covers 60 percent of the costs of Tor's development. Tor Executive Director Andrew Lewman wrote in an e-mail to users that just because the project accepts federal funding does not mean it collaborated with the NSA to unmask people's online identities. "The parts of the U.S. and Swedish governments that fund us through contracts want to see strong privacy and anonymity exist on the Internet in the future," Lewman wrote. "Don't assume that 'the government' is one coherent entity with one mindset." And Roger Dingledine, a founder of the Tor Project, says that the Defense Department money is much more like a research grant than a procurement contract. "They aren't 'buying products' from us," Dingledine tells me. "They're funding general research and development on better anonymity, better performance and scalability and better blocking-resistance. Everything we do we publish in the open." Dingledine acknowledges that "bad guys" could conceivably introduce vulnerabilities into Tor's open-source code. But one of the major advantages of open-source software is that the product can be inspected by anyone for defects, which raises its security somewhat. There'd only be a problem if the NSA were somehow able to insert malicious code that nobody recognized.


I’m going to watch a rocket take off tonight. Here’s how you can, too.

Look at how obsessed I am! (Miriam Kramer/THE WASHINGTON POST) So, you may have noticed I'm sort of obsessed with NASA's Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) launch. And with good reason, what with the broadband Internet space lasers. Well, it's happening tonight! At 11:27 p.m. EDT, if all goes according to plan. And experts on site have given the weather a 95 percent likelihood of allowing the launch to be a go. If you're in D.C., you should be able to see it over the horizon. And we've already helpfully shown you where it should appear over some local monuments. In fact, a lot of the East Coast should be able to see it. But if you're in a different part of the country or want a closer look, NASA TV will be broadcasting the launch, with live coverage starting at 9:30 p.m. EDT. And just in case that site crashes, it's mirrored on UStream. Live streaming video by Ustream


Observe NASA’s LADEE launch tonight at 11:27 p.m.

into orbit. Washington and Baltimore should start seeing the rocket at about 40 seconds after launch. This NASA and Orbital chart plots the “first sighting” for East Coast locations. The initial flight path of LADEE will be over the Atlantic Ocean, where it will drop its first three stages. You might notice that its trajectory arches and it will appear to drop back toward Earth. Don’t worry. You’ll be experiencing an optical illusion, as the rocket follows the natural roundness of our own planet’s curvature. From Washington, you will first spot the rocket in the south-southeast and it will move toward the east. Imagine standing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and facing southeast. That puts the Washington Monument on your left. In this graphic, produced at Orbital by Carlos Niederstrasser, you can find your orientation. (Please note: For clarity purposes, the graphic is in daylight. The launch will be in the dark of night.) This YouTube video from SpaceVidsNet provides an animated explanation of the launch and what happens during the mission’s initial stages. Inaugural Minotaur V Rocket Scheduled to Launch NASA's LADEE Spacecraft from Wallops The speeding rocket – barring any clouds – should be visible from eastern North Carolina, Richmond, Va., Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, Hartford, Conn., and Boston. It will be harder to see from eastern West Virginia, Pittsburgh, Binghamton, N.Y., Syracuse, N.Y., Montpelier, Vt., Bangor, Maine and Presque Isle, Maine. But what if your neighbor’s huge tree blocks your view or you have to work late? Thanks to social media and the connected world, you have options: – Tonight, 9:30 p.m.: Live internet coverage begins on NASA TV. – Tonight, 9:30 – 11:35 p.m.: Pre-launch webcast featuring NASA experts discussing the mission on NASA EDGE. – Tonight, 10:30 p.m. – 1 a.m.:Live from New York City’s Times Square, watch from the Toshiba Vision screen, just underneath the famous New Year’s Eve ball. – Virginia’s Eastern Shore: NASA, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and local officials have organized viewing areas at Robert Reed Park, Main Street, Chincoteague, Va., or Beach Road, Chincoteague. Large televisions will show the launch. More information here. – Saturday, 1 a.m. (approx.): Post-launch news conference on NASA TV. – Tweeters will be tweeting on Twitter all day. Join the conversation: #NASALADEE Overview of the LADEE mission, from NASA: ScienceCasts: NASA Mission Seeks Lunar Air The official NASA LADEE Web site.


Everything you need to know about LADEE, the thing NASA just sent to the moon

A close up of the Minotaur V rocket carrying LADEE the day before the launch. (Andrea Peterson/THE WASHINGTON POST) All week I've been talking about NASA's latest rocket launch: the Lunar Atmospheric Dust and Environment Explorer or LADEE. And it finally happened. Here's what you need to know. What is it? LADEE is a robotic orbital mission that is going to circle the moon. It's the first spacecraft designed and built by NASA's Ames Research Center and the first spacecraft to use a modular body. It's 7.7 feet high, 4.74 feet deep and wide, and powered by a bunch of solar cells mounted on the body. It was launched by U.S. Air Force Minotaur V rocket provided by Orbital Science Corp. The first three stages of the rocket are actually refurbished solid rocket motors from Peacekeeper intercontinental ballistic missiles. It's carrying four different scientific instruments, three to measures things about the lunar exosphere -- that's an atmosphere that is so thin that the molecules don't bounce off of each other -- and one laser communication test project. The first three are the Lunar Dust Experiment (LDEX), a Neutral Mass Spectrometer (NMS), and an Ultraviolet and Visible Spectrometer (UVS) while the latter is called the Lunar Laser Communications Demonstration (LLCD) and might be the first step towards space Internet! And why are we sending it? Because sending stuff to the moon is super cool. And modular spacecrafts could be a more cost efficient way for us to explore space. NASA Ames Director S. Pete Worden compares it to the way you can swap out pieces in a desktop computer. OK, but why these specific instruments There are some ongoing mysteries about the lunar atmosphere that weren't answered by the Apollo missions. Firstly, there was this weird glow across the horizon described by astronauts, that some scientists hypothesize is dust. But the moon's exosphere shouldn't have enough molecules bouncing around to hold up dust. Rick Elphic, the LADEE project scientist, says it would be an "exotic new phenomenon" if it is dust. So LDEX is device that is going to scoop up bits of whatever dust LADEE might fly past while in orbit around the moon and measure it. The NMS will do sort of the same thing, only with gases in the lunar atmosphere. We know argon and helium are there from previous missions, but this will also help look for


other things -- like water if it's there. The UVS has a dual purpose -- it can look for emission lines from gas in the atmosphere and for light scattered by dust in the atmosphere. Elphic sees these tests as an opportunity to address two mysteries: "What is the atmosphere made of?" And "does the dust behave this way?" On that latter point, he's confident they "have the instrumentation to answer that question once and for all." All three of these tests in combination will help scientists get a better grasp on how exospheres work. That's important because exospheres are actually pretty common, and if we continue exploring the universe humans will run into them in other places -- from Mercury to objects on the very farthest fringes of our the galaxy. Didn't you say something about space Internet earlier? Yeah, that's important too! That's the LLCD. It should be able to send 622 megabits per second to the ground from the moon. That's like sending 100 compressed HD channels at once. Matching ground sites should be able to send 20 megabits per second up to the moon. Right now, spacecrafts use radio waves to communicate with the Earth. But radio waves are really spread out, and the telescopes that pick them up are huge -- like 100 yards in diameter. Lasers are much more concentrated you can use a series of much smaller optical telescopes to pick up the laser signal. And the data transfer rates for lasers communication should be way faster. Radio communication is "like having dial-up, and we're bringing broadband to space," explains Don Cornwall, the LLCD mission manager. So how did the launch go? Awesome! Here's NASA's video: LADEE Launches! The whole launch was about a 20-minute process that started at 11:27pm ET Friday. The Minotaur V rocket launched LADEE in a five-stage process. The first three stages of the Minotaur V rocket lasted a little longer than 200 seconds, then were jettisoned off into the Atlantic Ocean. The fourth stage was a Star 48BV engine that burned for around 85 seconds, inserting LADEE into a low Earth orbit. The fifth stage lasted another 60 or so seconds. Around five minutes after the fifth stage burnout, the payload separated. That's when the spacecraft activation and checkout occurred, approximately 23 minutes after launch. What happens next? Well, now LADEE is up in space! Which is great,


NASA’s LADEE moon launch lights up the night

Before its trip to our lunar neighbor, it put on quite a show across the northeast United States. As Blaine Friedlander detailed yesterday, “LADEE — or the Lunar Atmosphere Dust Environment Explorer — will orbit Earth then cruise to the moon, where it will gather data on the lunar atmosphere and to see whether dust is lofted into moon’s sky.” Conditions were perfect for a launch. Clear skies, cool temps and great visibility. Kevin Ambrose and I met up at the Marine Corps Memorial after discussing a few options, and we were instantly greeted by no lights on the memorial. After some last minute scrambling, we each decided on different spots close by. Rocket trail over Washington as seen from near the base of the Netherlands Carillon. (Kevin Ambrose, CWG) Close-up of the stage break during the launch. (Kevin Ambrose, CWG) In addition to our shots, we gathered some photos of the launch from around the Mid-Atlantic, via social media (Twitter and Facebook). It was truly an amazing sight for many along the East Coast. LADEE Ready for Launch http://t.co/nDRfIP8jpp #LADEE has launched! http://t.co/50Q2nsDLYn Rocket over Faifax, Va. by Paulo Ordoveza via Flickr LADEE launch over Bloomingdale, D.C. by Charlie Loyd via Flickr #LADEE looked beautiful, riding into the night on a Minotaur V rocket, from 150 miles west of @NASA_Wallops: http://t.co/y8wqvIXNAe Launch seen from Point Lookout State Park in Md., Andrew Albosta via Flickr. INCREDIBLE PHOTO: As seen from the top of Rockefeller Center in NYC - the @NASA's #LADEE launching (@LaunchPhoto) http://t.co/tq4XixgUSR Kathi Overton from Arlington Virginia, via Facebook Check out the plume of smoke left by the Minotaur rocket carrying #LADEE as seen from Esperance, NY http://t.co/w9rAWKfyyf LADEE heads to space over the Capitol. CWG reader Bill Anderson via e-mail. And probably one of the most visually stunning shots of the launch, from the LADEE Flickr group set up by NASA: Buddy Secor, Assateague Island, MD via Flickr VIDEOS LADEE Launches! LADEE launch from Wallops The LADEE Rocket over the NYC Skyline Sept 6th LADEE Rocket Launch, as seen from Alexandria, VA LADEE will take about 30 days to reach the moon, before entering a 30-day lunar orbit phase. After that, the scientific operations phase is expected to last about 100 days. Find out more about LADEE on the NASA web site, and check out the handy infographic with some key details.


Here’s exactly what it’s like to cover a rocket launch

reason the WiFi isn't working is due to the sheer number of iPads being used by NASA Social participants. At one point the person leading NASA Social does the Dr. Evil "lasers" air quotes thing. NASA Social participants Kim Alix, Constance Rodenbarger, and Nick Hlavacek (Andrea Peterson/THE WASHINGTON POST) 12:30 p.m.: I get lunch with Constance Rodenbarger, the purple-haired NASA Social participant at a local Sonic Drive-In. We have a good, long chat about space and her obsession with it. Constance has wanted to be an astronaut since she was a toddler, but now is aiming to do archival work at the Air and Space museum after she finishes a Fine Arts degree. Back at the Visitor Center, the WiFi is functional, but then it cuts out just as I am about to file a non-NASA story for The Switch. John Grunfeld's fabulous tie. (NASA TV) 3 p.m.: A briefing about what will happen with LADEE begins. It features a series of fabulous ties. Associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate John Grunfeld's tie has cartoon spacecraft on it, while NASA Ames Research Director S. Pete Worden's tie features psychedelic purple swirls. The science briefing follows after a short break where I get in some interviews with NASA social participants. 4:45 p.m.: The NASA Social people leave to view the launch pad, so the Internet is finally working again and I can file the non-NASA story I was working on about how suing Google over your sex party tape isn't a great way to stop people from knowing about your sex party tape. We head to the launch pad about 15 minutes later. I take a bunch of pictures of the Minotaur V rocket that will be carrying LADEE to space from the launch pad. The press group then discovers that the NASA Social people were allowed to bring their phones off the bus, presumably in airplane mode. The press was explicitly denied that privilege, being told some signals from phones might interfere with the rocket. ("Are you telling me I can still flummox this thing with something I bought at RadioShack?") Me standing in front of a rocket. (Miriam Kramer/Washington Post) 6:30 p.m.: The press bus gets back to the Visitor Center and I hightail it for to Assateague Island State Park, where you can camp on a beach with wild ponies. Once at my seaside oasis, I set


Drought and Syria: manmade climate change or just climate?

were reduced to “extreme poverty.” The domestic Syrian refugees immediately found that they had to compete not only with one another for scarce food, water and jobs, but also with the already existing foreign refugee population. Syria already was a refuge for quarter of a million Palestinians and about a hundred thousand people who had fled the war and occupation of Iraq. Formerly prosperous farmers were lucky to get jobs as hawkers or street sweepers. And in the desperation of the times, hostilities erupted among groups that were competing just to survive. Some commentators are making the leap that manmade climate change is the culprit for the devastating dry spell. That argument is a little simplistic as climate data show extreme droughts have impacted the region every decade or two since the late 1950s. Here’s a chart from a drought study conducted by Syrian researchers M. Skaf and S. Mathbout, published in 2010. Chart shows number of weather stations with dry, severely dry, and extremely dry conditions in Syria 1958-2008. (Options Méditerranéennes) In other words: drought happens in Syria and the Middle East. Related: The most recent drought, however, happened in a warmer atmosphere with higher greenhouse gas concentrations. When it’s warmer, the evaporation of water speeds up, allowing the ground to heat up faster, which then evaporates more water in a vicious cycle which continues until meaningful rain stops it. The Skaf and Mathbout study finds an increase in the number of dry days in Syria during the rainy season between 1958 and 2008 (technical note: the trend towards more dryness did not occur steadily but in step changes or “regime shifts” mostly in the last 15-25 years). You can, thus, make the case climate change played a role in intensifying the Syrian drought. A 2011 NOAA study did exactly that for the broader Mediterranean region. “The magnitude and frequency of the drying that has occurred is too great to be explained by natural variability alone,” said NOAA’s Martin Hoerling, author of the 2011 study. “This is not encouraging news for a region that already experiences water stress, because it implies natural variability alone is unlikely to return the region’s climate to normal.” The future outlook for drought in the Middle East is grim. “For every degree Fahrenheit of warming, the length of periods with no rain will increase globally by 2.6 percent,” writes NASA, describing a recent modeling


An attempt to escape perpetual failure on climate change at the G20

variety of contentious questions involved in world climate discussions. U.N. forums have been fractious, with national interest, global politics and concerns about reputation pulling the big players in various directions. That’s why one bit of news from the G20 conference that just wrapped up in St. Petersburg, Russia, is encouraging. Outside of the cumbersome U.N. process, the United States and China, the world’s two largest greenhouse emitters, announced steps to “phase down” the use of hyrofluorocarbons (HFCs), potent greenhouse gases used in refrigerators, air conditioning units and other things. They agreed to use the machinery of Montreal Protocol — a preexisting international system that has successfully cut pollutants that harm the ozone layer — to do it. And the full G20 — which includes Brazil and India — issued a statement supporting the plan to roll back HFCs. These nations have to fill in specifics. But if they arrest the global expansion of HFC use, the White House says that unified action could prevent the equivalent of 90 gigatons of carbon dioxide entering the atmosphere by 2050. That, The Post’s Steve Mufson points out, is about two years’ worth of the world’s current output. On its own, that won’t do nearly enough. But this sort of agreement — among a few, big countries responsible for nearly all of the emissions that matter — represents another approach, outside the U.N. process, to achieving meaningful global action on climate change. The central problem doesn’t disappear with fewer players in the room. Yet, so far, it has been easier for Chinese leaders in particular to make climate-change commitments after huddling with President Obama to hash them out. This may be because such agreements require some level of mutual sacrifice and, therefore, trust that the other parties are serious. Americans are wary of moving before the Chinese do, and vice versa. The HFC announcement was also easier because it is a discrete issue that the G20 can address in isolation. It hasn’t been clear that this strategy would work any better than the U.N. process. But, at the least, this sort of effort keeps climate change in world leaders’ minds. At best, meanwhile, the big emitters could see to a range of problems, pressure others to join in, and lead the way to a global treaty consisting of a bundle of smaller agreements already struck among themselves and various countries. That’s worth trying for.


Syria resolution is no sure thing in the Senate. Here’s why.

most) of them will oppose it -- just that it's no cinch that 16 of the 27 undecided Democrats will eventually come around. And don't forget, if fewer than 17 Senate Republicans are on board, Democrats will need even more of these members. If just 12 total Republicans support it (a more likely scenario than 17 GOP supporters), Democrats would need to secure 21 of the 27 undecided Democratic votes. And none of the above brings into account the power of... 3. The filibuster. Passing the Syria use-of-force resolution is about getting to 51 senators, but it's also about making sure that 41 senators don't join forces to prevent it from coming to a final vote. Given that some of the opponents will be Democrats, it seems less likely that they would band together with Republicans -- who won't have the power to filibuster by themselves -- and oppose bringing the resolution to a vote. But military force is a very powerful issue, and it's not inconceivable that some of these Democrats who feel strongly about the matter or are concerned about the political price of opposing a filibuster could potentially be brought on board. All of these scenarios -- we must emphasize -- are highly subjective and speculative. It's still relatively early, and much will come into focus in the days ahead. But given the thrust of this debate and of public opinion -- which is more than two-to-one against military action in Syria -- we really shouldn't assume this resolution passes in either chamber at this point. Fixbits: It's Election Day in New York and Colorado! Here's what you need to know. A New York Times/CBS News poll shows widespread opposition to military intervention in Syria. Former secretary of state Hillary Clinton is on the same page as Obama when it comes to Syria. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) will be busy when he returns to Iowa next month. He'll go to a state party fundraiser, a pheasant hunt and a fundraiser for Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa). Rep. Mark Sanford (R-S.C.) won an exemption to take his fiancee on an all-expenses trip to Israel. Howard Dean will co-host a fundraiser for Georgia Democratic Senate candidate Michelle Nunn. The DCCC added nine names to its program on the top recruits. Seven are women. Must-reads: "Obama administration’s message on Syria is muddled" "Obama’s push for Syria action runs into growing opposition"


Tensions run high at Osteria Elisir after GM and chef de cuisine quit for positions at Sax

giving Elisir a full three weeks' heads-up. Plus, Fusano said during a phone interview, he and Suozzo agreed to work at Elisir on their days off at Sax until the chef/owner was able to find and train their replacements. Instead, Fusano and Suozzo abruptly stopped working at Elisir this weekend. The reasons they left vary, depending on who tells the story: Fargione says the couple refused to show up for Saturday's service after he and Elisir co-owner Julia Saah edited the staff schedules that Fusano and Suozzo had submitted (though Fargione says both did make attempts to come back and work their final days). Fusano says tensions on Saturday became so intense — and, in some ways, so personal — that he and his wife thought it better not to work that night and instead come back on Monday. Both sides describe an escalating war of words via e-mail between Suozzo and Saah about schedules and payroll checks, a conversation that left both women angry on Saturday. Later in the weekend, Fusano says, Suozzo texted Fargione, saying that she would come in Monday to take care of the details for some upcoming private events but that she needed access to her Elisir e-mail. Apparently, the password to the general manager's e-mail account was changed at some point after the argument between Suozzo and Saah. Fargione responded to Suozzo, writing, "that would not be necessary. We will handle things from now on. Stay home. Please send your keys with Michael tomorrow. No hard feelings. It's just business," according to Fusano, who says he was reading from the text. Fargione confirms that he sent the message to Suozzo. Elisir's policy is "if you walk out of your job, you stay out," Fargione says. "I would never take them back." Except Fargione says he was willing to make an exception when Fusano called and said he would come back and work his last weeks. Fargione says he made the exception partly because he thinks Fusano was initially being loyal to his wife and partly because Fargione needs his chef de cuisine during September. Fargione says he is contractually obligated to take part in a gastronomic bike tour in Puglia, Italy, from Sept. 13-23. But when Fusano arrived for work on Monday, he changed his mind. The chef de cuisine quit either because Fargione refused to hand over Suozzo's final two checks without Fusano


(Photo by miheco) Google must stand trial for Wi-Fi data grab, appeals court rules. After voting against it, Darrell Issa wants another chance to defund the NSA. AT agrees to modify network to make roaming easier. Declassified court documents highlight NSA violations in data collection for surveillance. Net Neutrality is on trial in Washington. Here’s what you need to know.


Payday loans suck up billions in fees in states where they’re unregulated

without providing borrowers with access to new credit,” a report released Tuesday by the nonprofit, nonpartisan Center for Responsible Lending report said. In other words, that’s $2.6 billion that just goes to the payday lending industry. More than half the states — 29 — still have no substantive restrictions on payday loans, according to the report. Twenty-one states and Washington, D.C. have significant limits or never allowed the practice to begin with. And, of those, 16 have interest-rate caps that eliminate what the CRL calls the “payday lending debt trap.” “The trend at the state level has been moving the market away” from payday loans, says Diane Standaert, senior legislative counsel with the CRL, although many states have yet to restrict the practice. Washington state, however, does have a set of regulations on such small loans that went into effect in 2010. The number of payday borrowers in the state dropped by 43 percent between 2009 and 2011, CRL found. The number of payday stores fell from 603 before the law passed to 256 afterward, and borrowers paid $136 million, or 75 percent, less in annual payday loan fees. In 2009, the average payday borrower was in debt for 155 days. By 2011, that number fell by nearly a third to 105. The Washington law limited the size and number of payday loans individuals could take out. Outside of federal restrictions, one of the best things states can do is put in place a cap — of 36 percent — on the annual rate charged by payday lenders, the report suggested. But limiting interest on payday loans isn’t enough, says Signe-Mary McKernan, an economist and senior fellow with the Urban Institute, a nonpartisan think tank. High-risk borrowers still need access to loans, she says, so states should encourage mainstream alternatives. A few years ago, for example, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. sought to do just that with its Small-Dollar Loan Pilot Program. State and local policymakers can also encourage low-income families to save, she says, “so that they’re less reliant on these products to start.” New York City, for example, is testing out the “Save USA” program, in which the city offers low-income families matching funds for keeping part of their tax refunds in a savings account for a period of time. While states and cities explore ways to crack down, though, more and more lenders are reportedly moving online.


Another long line for veterans

A few items that caught our attention Wednesday: (Ted Richardson/For The Washington Post) – Matthew Goldberg, a retired Army special forces soldier who fought the VA for disability compensation. Veterans face another type of backlog Five ways to get your federal conference approved Surge in whistleblower cases means challenges for Office of Special Counsel NSA broke privacy rules for 3 years, documents say U.S. officials identify extremist groups in Benghazi attack Push for federal data transparency gaining momentum To connect with Josh Hicks, follow his Twitter feed or e-mail josh.hicks@washpost.com. For more federal news, visit The Federal Eye, The Fed Page and Post Politics.


Summer 2013 weather extremes tied to extraordinarily unusual polar jet stream

to do with extreme weather events? Almost invariably extreme summer weather of late is discussed in context of anomalies (differences from average) in the polar jet. The anomalies are commonly attributed directly or indirectly to global warming (aka climate change) as manifest in warming occurring faster in the Arctic than latitudes further south (Arctic amplification). Temperatures, therefore, decrease less rapidly than the climatological norm, and the zonal component of the winds at jet levels adjust by weakening relative to “normal”. The response generally speaking is for atmospheric waves to amplify in their meridional (N-S) extent and lead to more frequent occurrences of unusually high amplitude ridges (and/or blocking highs) and troughs (and/or cut-off lows) along with the respective weather associated with these systems. In combination with slowing progression of weather systems, this translates to enhancing prospects for persistent spells of extreme heat, and extended periods of unusually cool and/or wet conditions. As illustrated in the figures above, the N-S differential heating adjustments in the zonal wind component are considerably more complex with regard to details in the spatial and temporal variability within as well as between regimes. In particular, note variability in details over time and latitude in the blue areas where zonal winds are least strong and thus favorable for high amplitude circulations and possible extreme weather. Nevertheless, as mentioned earlier, it is possible to discern the principle unique expression of each regime. By way of example, this figure displays those for R2 and R3. The distinct differences between the two regimes are abundantly clear (the 500mb height anomalies are closely related to the low level temperatures.) Note especially the dramatic transition from relatively cool conditions to extreme warmth over Alaska (influence of high amplitude ridge), the cooling trough in R3 over the Northeast U.S., and dominantly warm (R2) to dominantly cool (R3) over extreme northern Europe. The figures below exemplify regional differences corresponding to heavy rainfall events (precipitable water – total atmospheric water content above location – is used as an approximation for relative differences in precipitation). The transition form R2 to R3 brings in flooding rains to Western Europe. Especially interesting for the U.S. are alternating regions of dominantly dry and dominantly wet conditions in the sequence of regimes transitions over the course of the entire summer, shown below. Finally, there is no basis at this time (if ever) to determine whether the transitions to and from


8 things to do in the D.C. area on the weekend of Sept. 12-15

The weekend’s best in nightlife, music and art. For even more, check out Nightlife Agenda. Andy Warhol’s “SilverClouds” on exhibit at Artisphere. (credit: Brandon Pass Friday: Saturday: Saturday Saturday: Saturday: Saturday: Sunday-Sept. 27: Sunday:


Wyoming legislators want higher beer tax

Mmm, beer. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky) When businessman Arte Moreno bought the Anaheim Angels in 2003, he had a sure-fire way to win over fans: He lowered beer prices. And even today, he’s hugely popular among Angels fans. If lowering beer prices is a way to boost your approval rating, what happens when you raise beer prices? Members of the Wyoming legislature may be on track to find out. Members of the House and Senate revenue committees will hold a hearing in Buffalo, a small town north of Casper at the intersection of Interstates 90 and 25, to debate a proposal that would increase the state beer tax. The added revenue would be used to fund substance abuse treatment, under a proposal advanced by state Sen. Ray Peterson (R). At the hearing, state officials will report on how much it costs to collect the higher taxes. There’s some question as to whether the costs of collecting the tax would be greater than the actual additional revenue a higher tax would generate. But they’re sure not collecting much revenue at the moment. Wyoming taxes beer at a rate of just two cents per gallon, the lowest beer tax in the nation. That’s a rate far below Texas, Colorado, California, New York and other top beer-producing states, according to data compiled by the Tax Foundation. Wyoming hasn’t raised its beer tax since 1935, back when two cents would have led to a notable increase in the price of the average beer. If the tax were adjusted for inflation, it would stand at 34 cents per gallon today — though no one is proposing it rise that high. Instead, the legislature wants a tax increase that would amount to less than a penny per 12-ounce longneck. Maybe after the hearing, legislators can head down the street for a pint. Buffalo is home to Clear Creek Brewery, one of Wyoming’s 15 breweries, according to the Beer Institute [pdf]. Beer Taxes by State, 2013:


FAA: Air traffic controllers responsible for 7 ‘catastrophic’ errors

Southwest Airlines jets are seen at Baltimore Washington International Airport. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak, file) U.S. air traffic controllers made 41 “high risk” mistakes last year, including seven that could have ended in catastrophe, the Federal Aviation Administration said Thursday. That error count was listed in an FAA report that said the overall number of reported mistakes by controllers had been vastly under counted for years. Largely through the use of a new electronic monitoring system, the agency determined that there were 4,394 errors made by controllers who handled 132 million flights in fiscal 2012. The FAA said 1,271 of those mistakes were serious enough to warrant thorough review. That overall number is more than twice the 1,895 mistakes reported the year before and in 2010, and more than three times the 1,271 counted in 2009. Critics have long said that the FAA error statistics were far below the reality, and the FAA acknowledged as much in presenting the fresh data Thursday. In a briefing by top agency officials, who spoke on the condition that they not be identified by name, the FAA said full deployment of an electronic surveillance by January 2012 and policy changes that encourage controllers to report their own errors lead to the upsurge. They said that the 41 worst mistakes – including the seven listed as potentially “catastrophic” – fell into five categories which the agency was in the midst of addressing. The basic role of controllers is to keep planes at a safe distance from on another – in most circumstances, when below cruising altitude, three miles distant or 1,000 feet of altitude apart. When they are allowed to stray too close, the degree of risk varies depending on the circumstances. The FAA said the five areas in which the 41 high risk controller mistakes were made included: Turning airplanes for their final runway approach, planes coming too close when landing on parallel runways, maneuvers when planes were told to abort their final approach, guidance of pilots who don’t hold to their designated altitudes and coordination between controllers as they pass responsibility for an airplane from one controller to another. “Out of 132 million flights handled, 41 gave us reason for concerns and we are working to address those issues,” a senior FAA official said. He said that “in past years we have reported [mistakes] to the best of our ability.” The agency’s data collection


Voyager 1 just left the solar system using less computing power than your iPhone

Voyager under construction in the 1970s. (NASA) Voyager I just became the first man-made object to reach interstellar space -- and it’s running on technology that’s decades older, slower and less complex than whatever you’re using to read this page. Launched in 1977, the Voyager’s computing power was impressive for its time. The spacecraft was designed to run most of its operations itself, since the billions of miles separating it and Earth make communication laggy. To accomplish that, Voyager has three interconnected computer systems: one to control the craft’s flight and altitude, another to control its instruments, and a third to manage the first two. The computers can process about 8,000 instructions per second -- a fraction of the capability of your smartphone, which handles upwards of 14 billion each second. With memory measured in kilobytes, they can hold only hold a few thousand words worth of text. Since Voyager’s original mission involved documenting Jupiter and Saturn, it also has a range of scientific instruments and several cameras on board, including a narrow-angle television camera. NASA shut off the cameras in the early '90s to conserve the craft’s dwindling power supply, and they couldn’t turn them back on if they wanted to. The camera is so antiquated, NASA says, that the agency no longer has the software or computers needed to analyze its images. So instead, Voyager focuses on measuring things like magnetic fields, plasma waves and cosmic rays. As for that data, it gets stored on an 8-track digital tape recorder and played back every six months. Voyager transmits information back to Earth using a 23-watt signal. For comparison, my college radio station broadcast on a 20-watt signal and couldn’t be heard even a few blocks off campus. It is, per NPR, about eight times stronger than the average cellphone. Undoubtedly the greatest piece of technology on-board the Voyager, however, is a legendary disc known as "The Golden Record” -- quite literally a gold phonograph record packaged with a cartridge and needle and loaded with everything aliens might need to know about Earth. That includes 115 images of humans, animals and airports, spoken greetings in languages from Akkadian to Chinese, a message from President Carter and an “eclectic 90-minute selection of music.” Scientists also printed iconographic instructions on the record to clue extraterrestrials in to how they work. Of course, as Carl Sagan pointed out at the time, Voyager


Team America no longer wants to be the World’s Police

We've written repeatedly in this space over the past two weeks about how much Americans (and Congress) don't want to get involved in what's going on in Syria. This much is clear. But Americans' hesitation isn't really about Syria; it's more about their increasingly non-interventionist attitude toward foreign policy. (Craig Ruttle/Associated Press) Case in point: opposition to military action in Syria tracks very closely to overall opposition to foreign intervention. Take two new polls. A newly released CBS News/New York Times poll asked people whether they felt the United States should "take the leading role ... in trying to solve international conflicts." A CNN/Opinion Research poll, meanwhile, asked: "As a general rule, do you think the United States should be ready and willing to use military force around the world, or the United States should be very reluctant to use military force?" In each case, just 34 percent of Americans said they wanted a more involved foreign policy, while more than six in 10 Americans wanted to be more non-interventionist. The CBS/NYT poll also asked whether the United States should seek to remove dictators where it can. Americans opposed this resoundingly, 72-15. Now, it's logical that Americans would be more opposed to military action than they were a decade ago, given the experiences of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. And that is indeed the case. What's more interesting is that, in each of these polls, opposition to military action is also higher than it has been in more recent years -- even at the height of the unpopularity of the Iraq and Afghanistan efforts. As recently as 2011, the CNN poll showed 46 percent of Americans saying the United States should be "ready and willing" to use military force; now it's 34 percent. And the 72 percent who opposed overthrowing dictators in the CBS/NYT poll was slightly higher than it was in 2011, 2008 and 2007, and much higher than it was in 2003. In other words, even as the United States withdraws from overseas conflicts, Americans appear to be getting more non-interventionist, not less. President Obama, who is undoubtedly aware of these numbers, sought to address this issue during Tuesday's speech. Obama assured that the United States wouldn't be acting as the "world's policeman" in Syria. "Terrible things happen across the globe, and it is beyond our means to right every wrong," he said. "But when, with modest


How Ray Dolby revolutionized the way we hear sound

Honoree Ray Dolby, who stopped that tape hiss, died Thursday at age 80. (Ryan Miller/Invision via AP) Ray Dolby, the man who revolutionized the way we hear sounds, died Thursday at age 80. Dolby invented the Dolby noise-reduction system and digital surround-sound, and to understand the man’s impact, you have to know a bit about audio engineering. You’ll recall that, in the olden days, sounds were once recorded on these quaint things called audio cassettes. A cassette is essentially just a plastic casing with some magnetic tape inside; when the cassette plays, the tape moves past an electromagnet in your boombox and produces an electromagnetic pulse that signals the speakers. That’s a pretty ingenious and complex process, but it has one big drawback: The magnetic particles on the tape create a hissing noise that can drown out the actual sound, particularly during quiet passages and on high frequencies. In the MP3 digital era, that problem’s unheard of. But in the 1950s and '60s, listeners literally could not hear any recorded sound without an undercurrent of hiss in the background. Ray Dolby’s noise-reduction systems changed all that. First released in the late '60s, “Dolby B” used a two-step process to cut down on audio cassette hiss: It boosted soft passages during the recording stage, and then lowered them back to normal levels on playback. Because lowering the soft passage levels also lowered the noise levels, listeners got less hiss. How Dolby noise reduction works (Dolby Laboratories) Of course, this is all very technical and jargony, but it’s had a huge impact on the entertainment industry. Sound engineers and consumer tech companies incorporated Dolby’s technology into their recording processes and products. (You’ve probably spotted the “Dolby” logo on CD and DVD players, among many other things) Movies, beginning with 1971’s “A Clockwork Orange,” used Dolby’s system to produce crisper audio in theaters. Ray Dolby went on to found Dolby Laboratories, now a billion-dollar business that, incidentally, brought us digital surround-sound in movie theaters and at home. The Los Angeles Times reports that more than 7.4 billion consumer products use Dolby technologies. It’s also a fixture at movie theaters, where the Dolby Digital logo will show up before or after the film screens. Dolby Digital - HD Surround Sound Test Fittingly, the Kodak Theatre — where the Oscars are held — was renamed the Dolby Theatre last year. But Hollywood sound engineers aren’t


Trader Joes Pirate Joes Lawsuit

In this July 26, 2013 photo, grocery bags filled with Trader Joe's products purchased in the U.S. the night before wait to be stocked on shelves at Pirate Joe's market in Vancouver, B.C. Mike Hallatt opened the shop, which resells Trader Joe's products, in 2012 and is now being sued by California-based Trader Joe's. Hallatt makes frequent trips to the United States to stock up on product during shopping sprees at Trader Joe's despite having his photo posted at most locations in Washington state. (AP Photo/San Francisco Chronicle, Paul Chinn)


Why Verizon and AT&T are more innovative than ‘the left’ thinks

where there are so many overlapping patents that no one knows who owns what. Is that something that concerns you? I couldn't agree with you more. We'll be doing a conference in mid-October about patent issues. I think you're exactly right. In my consulting role at a law firm called Howrey and Simon, I was exposed to a case where an industrial, process-control firm, Schneider Automation, had a patent portfolio and it decided it wanted to go after our client, Rockwell Automation. So they gave their portfolio to the worst of the trolls and said: "Don't sue Rockwell, but their customers. That will raise the cost of using our competitors' products." That's unconscionable. And it was very difficult for the patent holder in that case to even get into court. So that's one symptom of a broken patent system. It's clear that a lot of bad patents have been issued. Bringing some order to this very chaotic and very litigious market is important. How will you approach the issue of cybersecurity? I recently republished a November 2001 article arguing that if the government were to maintain and collect indefinitely large amounts of information, the implications for privacy could be monstrous. I said we should give some thought to how to restrict or restrain or constrain that. Now we have it. And we're doing it. I worry that terrorism is not the only evil in the world. If we have a capacity to deter wrongdoers, I'm not sure why we wouldn't extend it to human trafficking. I worry about the potential over time for the ability to surveil, retain and analyze eventually to the point of omniscience. I think that's something that ought to give people pause and concern. That sort of issue is interesting, how the U.S. goes about continuing to create a strategy that is effective in securing [not just] the Internet infrastructure, but the entire ecosystem -- what's the right balance between defense on the one hand and offense on the other. In the Wyndham case [in which the FTC filed a complaint against the Wyndham Hotel chain after its allegedly lax security practices led to the disclosure of customers' credit card numbers], we've got the police giving tickets to people who didn't put sufficiently strong bars on their Windows. Maybe we should spend more time going after criminals. AEI's Center for Internet, Communications and Technology Policy Correction:


Pandas may actually be good for something

Pandas have been subject to no shortage of criticism of late. For their challenged abilities at reproducing and the sheer cost of keeping them alive with an adequate bamboo supply, one writer calls them "the world's most useless creatures." David Plotz describes them as "nature's couch potato," with their entire lives spent "eating bamboo and sleeping." Well, panda haters, watch out. Pandas are about to do something, and it's not just eating bamboo. And it's possible it might be prove to be of economic value? A team of scientists have begun studying whether certain microbes in panda feces might be the key to a more efficient way to produce biofuels. And it all has to do with panda's dietary decisions: All bamboo, all the time. Here, let a new article in the Economist explain: Most of the nutrients found in bamboo are locked away in tough substances known as cellulose and lignin. Liberating those nutrients is an energy-intensive process that involves high temperatures and extreme pressures when carried out in a laboratory or by an industrial process. Indeed, it is the cost of doing so that makes producing biofuel out of cellulose- and lignin-rich materials, like discarded corn (maize) cobs and husks, less financially viable than generating biofuel directly from more readily digestible corn kernels. The kernels, however, can be used to feed people whereas the cobs and husks cannot. So a process that is able efficiently to turn what is a waste product into fuel could have great potential. Given their diet, Dr Brown [a researcher at Mississippi State University] knew that giant pandas had to have legions of microbes in their gut that were strong enough to break cellulose and lignin down. If it was possible to identify those microbes and find the enzymes within them they might be used to improve biofuel production. So, Dr Brown and her colleagues got to work analysing piles of panda faeces for the presence of RNA strands belonging to the microbes. Don't let the haters get you down (KAREN BLEIER - AFP/GETTY IMAGES) Working with researchers at the University of Wisconsin, Brown has been studying the feces of two pandas at the Memphis Zoo, Ya Ya and Li Li. So far her team has "identified bacteria that break down lignocellulose into simple sugars, which can be fermented into bioethanol," according to a press release from the American Chemical Society. "They also