Bluejacket’s opening day beer list: tradition meets experimentation

Co. in Massachusetts, create their beers. He, in fact, forwarded an e-mail thread between the two as they deliberated over the details of a barleywine. It was a nerd-o-rama of beer-making abbreviations and percentages, but the bottom line was this: The exchange demonstrated a smooth, sometimes playful collaboration between the brewing partners. "Megan and I begin by determining what style we are looking for. This often begins with me taking a look at our brews in tank and seeing what holes we have on our list upcoming," Engert wrote me. "Then I will typically start thinking about beers I love and why I love them, which can then lead to ideas about how we can craft our very own unique brews ... or I'll look around for collaborators from our kitchens, and further afield, or Megan and/or I will start chatting with possible brewing partners from among our friends in the beer business." "Once we get a solid idea of what style and flavor profile we are going for, Megan hits the books and crafts a first draft of a recipe," Engert continues. "I take a look, and from my own ideas and research, begin to ask questions about the ingredients we are using and why, the techniques we are employing and why, and I look to check that the flavor notes we have decided we want will be generated from the recipe at hand. I will typically suggest a few new malts or hops or a new yeast strain, and Megan will come back with a second draft that incorporates the ideas we have had after considering the first draft. This one typically sticks, and she sets upon milling in for the brew." Sometimes, Engert noted, the beer, post-fermentation, will require a few additional "tweaks" to reach the intended flavor profile. Those tweaks, he added, are proprietary, but they could include added spices or fruits "to get the flavor intensity desired." The opening day list, created after months and months of collaboration, is "a cadre of delicious beers that showcase seasonality, culinary inspiration, historic interpretation and an overarching desire to make it new," Engert e-mailed. "This list showcases a wide expanse of styles, ranging from intensely flavored to subtly nuanced." The beer director expected that he and Parisi will change out three or four beers a month, but "as we build up an inventory of kegs/styles that can be


Welcome to the hellabyte era, as in a helluva lot of data

big data degree programs. Consulting firms such as McKinsey are pitching big data as the next big innovation trend. Top executives from Silicon Valley constantly tell us how much data we are producing each day and each hour. This inevitably sets us up for disappointment. Amidst all the claims that big data will help us find the magic needle in an ever-larger haystack, there’s the risk that we’ll eventually start to become frustrated when all of this big data, well, doesn’t seem to produce much of anything — except calls for more spending on higher and higher storage capacity and faster and faster computing ability to make sense of it all. When big data doesn’t pan out the way the marketers and bloggers tell us it will, we’ll then start to talk about the “big data myths.” At which time, someone will start talking about “big data lies,” which will then set off a spirited search for new trendy ideas in Silicon Valley. What we have to keep in mind is that we’ll never have enough data. We can supersize our data. We can order our data in tall, venti and grande and it just won’t matter. After all, the same type of thinking about big data has happened before. During the Enlightenment, when people such as Isaac Newton were beginning to develop highly accurate laws for how the physical universe operates. For the first time in history, mankind felt it was within its grasp to understand everything. Suddenly, fields such as biology and physics and chemistry seemed capable of unlocking all of life’s secrets. A new theory – “scientific determinism” – even became trendy, suggesting that all of the mysterious activities of the universe could be finally understood once we knew all the precise mechanical laws that controlled the universe. All we needed was enough computing power, and we could predict everything from the weather to the future. While the Enlightenment was one of the greatest periods in innovative thinking, we haven’t found a way to unlock the mysteries of the universe. Isaac Newton’s precise mechanical laws of classical physics? They’ve been supplanted by Einstein’s theories of quantum physics. At each level, there’s a new abstraction, a new complexity that now makes technology an integral part of humanity’s eternal quest for meaning. But that shouldn’t stop us from trying. If anything, we should embrace the exponential proliferation of data


Shutdown tales of the unexpected

National Park Service personnel remove the barricades from the World War II Memorial as the government reopens Thursday. (Astrid Riecken/The Washington Post) The impacts of the 16-day government shutdown went well beyond the much-publicized work stoppages and furloughs for federal employees and contractors. The Federal Eye this week offered readers an opportunity to share their experiences with unexpected effects, inspired by a diabetes foundation that said it canceled a fundraising ride in Death Valley, Calif., because the national park there was closed. Below are a few examples of what we heard from our survey respondents: Michigan realtor Kimberly Webb estimated that some 80 percent of potential buyers backed out of their searches for new homes “the minute there were discussions on TV of a government shutdown.” “The only buyers who continued to look were those purchasing with cash or looking for very inexpensive homes — under $50,000,” Webb added. “[Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.)] created a secondary real estate shutdown. Many buyers fear we will go through another financial crisis in a few months.” Joyce Cohen, a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania, said she could not access source documents that she needed for a paper in her public health class. Those files, including surgeon general’s reports, “disappeared from the Internet,” she said. “The paper’s due date did not change, so my evidential arguments had to be tweaked in places where I had not taken good notes on the government documents I had previously read,” Cohen added. Timothy Reyburn of Maryland said he was disappointed not to see the Marine Corps’ precision drill squad that normally performs at the annual Toys for Tots motorcycle ride at Fort Meade. “The Marine drill team missed an event they had been doing yearly for nearly 50 years in a row,” he said. Many federal workers and contractors mentioned to us during the shutdown that they had reached out to their creditors, notifying them that they may be late with payments due to not having paychecks during the closure. In an interesting twist, one bank actually reached out to federal employees first. This is from California resident Mariama Meyers: “I got an email from Chase Bank quite unexpectedly. I saw the email in my inbox and initially cringed (what do they want now?). But when I read it, I was pleasantly surprised. It was a heartfelt letter from Chase informing me — and others


PM Update: Freeze warning again tonight; X-class flares hurled from sun

- Temperature Map - Temperatures: Latest D.C. area temperature map. See interactive map on our Weather Wall. It was a cold, and in spots frozen, start to the day. We didn’t really warm up all that much either as highs only reached the 50s. Especially noticeable, considering the blustery winds. Freeze warnings go up again at midnight across the entire area, as that plant-massacring chill refuses to abate just yet. Through Tonight: The weekend: See Camden Walker’s forecast through the beginning of next week. And if you haven’t already, join us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter The first of today’s X-class flares is seen on the sun earlier (left side). It peaked minutes after this image was taken. See full animation. (Spaceweather.com) Solar eruption: Given where the flares went off, it’s unlikely to have profound impacts on Earth’s magnetic field, but this is the most active the sun has been since May, and heightened solar activity could persist in the coming period. Here’s a cool video of the event from NASA.


Running the Marine Corps Marathon? 5 tips from ‘On Background’

a good night’s sleep two days before a race to prepare yourself for race day jitters the night before. Brooke Curran has participated in a marathon on every continent, in all 50 U.S. states and in the five marathon majors. She shares three best practices for first-time runners with Nia-Malika Henderson. @NiaWaPo My 1st piece of advice would be to pick a race like a 5K and sign up w time to train - nothing like a race for motivation #postback 2. How do you fall in love with running? “Run by feel,” said Curran, who doesn’t run with a stopwatch. “You just gradually build up — listen to your body and listen to your breath.” From a heavy smoker to running a marathon on every continent, Brooke Curran wasn't always the avid runner she is today. She gives Nia-Malika Henderson advice on how to get started. @NiaWaPo Running with a partner helps. Thinking of a euphoric training run can put me back into the frame of mind. #postback 3. Following the Boston Marathon bombing, the spirit of the race, as well as security, will be elevated. Marine Corps Marathon race director Rick Nealis said there will be eight hours of helicopter coverage this year to provide a live feed of what’s happening on the ground. “When you have 30,000 runners, it is a participatory sport. Every runner I think realizes the importance we have to our sport to look around and have those extra eyes — and they’re empowered and expected if they see something wrong to speak up.” Six months after the attack at the Boston Marathon, Marine Corps Marathon race director Rick Nealis speaks with Nia-Malika Henderson about enhanced security at the start and finish in D.C., aerial coverage—and the roles of every participant and spectator in taking ownership in the event. 4. The past years have seen a boom in popularity for marathons. “On Background” guests offered some historical reasons why: Nealis said two factors attracted more attention towards marathons in the ’90s: Oprah and charities. Actress, talk-show host, philanthropist—and marathoner. Oprah Winfrey’s Marine Corps run in 1994 had an impact on many, and to race director Rick Nealis, perfectly embodied what makes this race “the people’s marathon.” @NiaWaPo I think it's b/c running is accessible 1st or last there's something life changing about crossing a finish line #postback 5. Running is a mental exercise as


D.C. area forecast: Cool start to the week, but warming up toward Halloween

- Today’s Daily Digit - A somewhat subjective rating of the day’s weather, on a scale of 1 to 10. - 8 Chilly start, but a sunny and seasonable fall afternoon on tap. - Express Forecast - Today: Mostly sunny and pleasantly mild. Highs: Low-to-mid 60s. - Tonight: Partly to mostly cloudy, milder. Lows: Low-to-mid 40s. - Tomorrow: Partly sunny a.m., mostly sunny p.m. Highs: Near 60 to Low 60s. FORECAST IN DETAIL - Temperature Map - Temperatures: Latest D.C. area temperature map. See interactive map on our Weather Wall. Sublime fall weather starts the week and, for those who like it a little warmer, Wednesday and especially Halloween are set to deliver. Our weather will have a few kinks, though, including clouds on Wednesday and Thursday, and an impending cold front toward Halloween night. Thursday’s forecast, while warm, will have to be watched closely over the next few days, as trick-or-treaters may have to dodge raindrops. Today (Monday): Tonight: For related traffic news, check out Dr. Gridlock. Keep reading for the forecast through the weekend… Fall color on Burke Lake, VA. (ShawnDeez Photography via Flickr) Tomorrow (Tuesday): Tomorrow night: A LOOK AHEAD Wednesday Halloween, otherwise known as Thursday, begins partly-to-mostly cloudy with slightly milder morning temperatures in the upper 40s to low 50s. The storm system will have moved into the northern Midwest, and its trailing cold front will rapidly approach the region during the day. Highs reach near 70 to the low 70s (and perhaps a few mid-70s across the far southern suburbs) with help from a southerly breeze. Frontal timing will determine if early evening trick-or-treat plans are a wash; the way it looks now, the northern and western ‘burbs could see showers start by sunset. Rain does appear to increase in coverage and intensity area-wide as the evening wears on. We’ll keep out fingers crossed for a slower solution. Confidence: Medium


Patent law is so broken that casinos, supermarkets, and realtors are demanding change

program, which provides an expedited process for challenging patents at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO). That's significant because expansion of the CBM program has drawn the ire of some patent-rich software companies, including Microsoft, IBM, and Adobe. Opponents of expanding the CBM program argue that procedural reforms, such as allowing technology vendors to intervene on behalf of their customers and forcing defeated patent plaintiffs to pay defendants' legal bills, will be sufficient to bring the patent litigation crisis under control. And they worry that the defendant-friendly provisions of the CBM program will make it too difficult for the owners of legitimate patents to enforce their rights. But Monday's letter, whose more than two dozen signers include groups representing advertising agencies, publicly-owned power plants, real estate agents, hotels, and retailers, argues that these process-oriented reforms aren't sufficient to solve the patent troll problem. "Companies need an effective alternative for challenging validity [of patents] outside of the courtroom," the letter argues. The CBM program "gives threatened companies a substantially less expensive way to challenge low quality patents. Other programs for challenging patent validity at the PTO do not allow the PTO to consider whether the patent is abstract, vague, or too broad," which are common problems with patents used by trolls, the letter argues. Industry groups that signed the letter say they were motivated to do so by a dramatic increase in the frequency of frivolous patent lawsuits. "We are now seeing [real estate] brokers receive demand letters for use of common technologies like scanner-copiers and website alert technologies," says Gary Thomas, president of the National Association of Realtors. "I'm a food lawyer," says Erik Lieberman of the Food Marketing Institute, which represents grocery wholesalers as well as supermarkets. "Members bring us issues that impact them. A couple years ago they start coming to me saying 'look this entity we've never heard of is sending us a demand letter asking us for $300,000 or $500,000 claiming we're violating their patent.'" Lieberman says many of the patents covered common technologies like the store locator function on a grocery store's website or the use of QR codes in advertisements. Lieberman said that patent threats have now cost some of his larger clients millions of dollars in legal fees and staff time. And the burden can be especially serious for smaller supermarket chains that don't have anyone on staff with experience handling patent


Man dressed as RGIII runs Marine Corps Marathon while juggling footballs

via @nbcmatt Last year, someone ran the Marine Corps Marathon dressed as RGIII. Well, this guy sees your RGIII getup and raises you three juggled footballs. I’m not sure when this guy crossed the finish line, but if it took him less than 18 hours, I’m impressed. #MarineCorpsMarathon juggling 26.2 http://t.co/7GAbV03p4K Yes that is a guy running #MCM2013 dressed as @RGIII and juggling footballs http://t.co/SU8igs66N6 What a show off. Juggling footballs and running a marathon! #MCM2013 @nbcwashington http://t.co/tJRyP5EoRp


Superstorm Sandy: Unraveling the mystery of a meteorological oddity

Visible Satellite view of a this very unconventional hurricane-turned-Nor’easter, poised to devastate the Northeastern U.S. (NOAA) Known as “Frankenstorm” for its proximity to Halloween 2012, “noreastercane” and just plain Superstorm Sandy, this meteorological oddball became the second costliest tropical cyclone ever to strike the U.S. The storm followed an unprecedented track, pushing westward across the New Jersey coast, delivering shock and awe from its enormous size and powerful weather impacts spanning 24 states. In this article, we examine the science behind the superstorm, including its very unconventional evolution, results of supercomputer simulations, and a recap of the storm’s diverse and far-reaching impacts. How a Hurricane Morphed Into a Very Dangerous, Hybrid Storm Sandy can ultimately be traced to an African easterly wave, a pressure disturbance embedded in the benign trade winds. This wave intensified into a tropical depression on Oct. 22, 2012. Over the next two days, the depression became Tropical Storm Sandy (winds > 39 mph), then Hurricane Sandy (winds > 74 mph). These changes took place in the Caribbean, south of Cuba. The hurricane attained strong Category 2 status just before crossing Cuba, late on Oct. 24. The extensive mountains along Cuba’s backbone knocked the wind from Sandy’s proverbial sails, weakening it to Category 1. However, once north of Cuba, the tropical system rebounded, but in a very unconventional manner. The tropical vortex combined forces with an upper atmospheric trough (area of low pressure) originating over the mid-latitudes. This interaction ventilated air from within Sandy’s core, dropping the surface pressure. Cold air in the trough wrapped around the system, enhancing the temperature gradient across the storm. The storm received a boost from this interaction and began expanding. Mid-latitude cyclones derive their sustenance from upper-level troughs, and the interaction marked the transition of purely-tropical Sandy into a large, hybrid type of storm. Essentially, the trough kept Sandy’s engine going in the midst of wind shear (twisting winds that try to tear storms apart) and declining ocean temperatures. Shown in this composite of Sandy’s structure are: (1) storm track; (2) surface wind speed; (3) frontal boundaries; (4) jet stream features including direction of airflow (white arrows). Note how Sandy becomes embedded in a large East Coast trough in the jet stream. (Tom Rabenhorst, UMBC) The figure illustrates two snaphots in the lifecycle of Sandy: The purely tropical cyclone south of Cuba, and the massive hybrid cyclone in the North Atlantic


Should we use geoengineering to cool the Earth? An interview with David Keith.

2011 for a position at Harvard's School of Engineering and Sciences, talked with me this week about his new book. Brad Plumer: So, what is the basic case for geoengineering? David Keith: I would prefer if we mainly talked about the ideas that are called "solar radiation management," or "solar geoengineering," which involve cooling the earth by reflecting away some sunlight. All of these ideas are scientifically quite similar; they're all risky; they all act very fast; and they're all cheap. There's another set of ideas around geoengineering the carbon cycle [i.e., figuring out ways to take carbon out of the atmosphere]. I'm not saying this approach is better or worse, but it's completely different and it doesn't have the same acute challenges of governance. BP: Okay. So, reflecting sunlight to cool the planet -- why should we consider this? DK: These technologies appear to provide a pathway by which we could substantially reduce climate risks over the next half-century. That means reducing the risks of sea-level rise, reducing the risks of stress for the crops of people in the poorest and hottest parts of the world. This would be complementary to emissions reductions. Nothing changes the fact that in the long run, the only way to manage carbon risk is to stop emitting carbon-dioxide. But, similarly, nothing we know about cutting carbon-dioxide emissions says that's going to help us deal with the risk of CO2 that's already in the atmosphere, or deal with climate risks in the very short term. So you can look at cutting emissions as a long-term solution and geoengineering as more of a short-term solution. BP: There are all sorts of ways we could reflect sunlight to cool the planet. Volcanoes do this by putting sulfate particles in the atmosphere. What are the most realistic options here? DK: The other idea that's probably most prominent is that we could add fine sea salt spray to certain kinds of marine clouds and make them a little whiter. Often people get caught up in scientific reporting about all the different methods here. But they're all kind of similar. The hard questions aren't technical but rather about how to manage the risk, about who makes the decisions to use these technologies. BP: Let's talk about those risks. What are the biggest ones? Climate scientist David Keith DK: The bigger risks have to do with misuse. People often talk


Wilson Bridge Half Marathon rescheduled for Nov. 10

The runners will cross the Wilson Bridge via the pedestrian/bike path on the north side. (Robert Thomson/The Washington Post) The fourth annual Woodrow Wilson Bridge Half Marathon, a victim of the federal shutdown on its originally scheduled date, has been reset for Sunday, Nov. 10. While the run climaxes with the crossing of its namesake span, all the bridge’s travel lanes will be open. However, there are road closings along the rest of the course. The northbound lanes of the George Washington Parkway will be closed between Belle Haven Boulevard and Church Street, at the Alexandria City line, from 6 to 9:30 a.m. All traffic will use the southbound side, following single lanes at reduced speeds. The runners start at Mount Vernon, go north on the parkway, cross the Wilson Bridge on the path and end up at National Harbor in Prince George’s County. See a course map in pdf on the half marathon’s Web site. The bridge path will be closed from 7 to 10 a.m. to everyone but the runners. The express lanes of National Harbor Boulevard, the main entryway to National Harbor, will be closed to traffic from 6:30 to 10:30 a.m. For those who just want to view the event, organizers recommend the National Harbor side of the Wilson Bridge, where people will be able to see the runners coming down off the bridge and entering National Harbor. The pedestrian/bike pathway that the runners will use is on the north side, toward D.C. It crosses over the travel lanes of the Capital Beltway before reaching National Harbor. On the Virginia side, there are viewpoints all along the George Washington Parkway south of the bridge, but keep in mind that spectators won’t be able to cross over the Wilson Bridge to the finish area via the pedestrian/bike path till the event is over. The half marathon was originally scheduled for Oct. 6, but organizers had to reschedule in the face of the federal shutdown because much of the route is along national park land.


Readers have chosen their favorite D.C. coffee shop. And the winner is …

... Georgetown's Baked & Wired. Washington has seen dozens of new coffee shops open in the past five years, but it's the spunky, high-on-life stalwart of Thomas Jefferson Street NW -- where you've been able to pair your espresso with a cupcake for more than 10 years -- that rallied to the top of a very divided reader poll. Inside our winner, Baked & Wired, where the baked goods rival the coffee. (Photo by Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post) Read: Baked & Wired's 10 percent of the tally hardly seems like a landslide because the 2,000-plus votes were largely split among the 30 contenders picked by the editors. This year, we experimented by splitting up locations of chainlets such as Peregrine Espresso to see whether readers preferred one location over another. (They did.) But Baked & Wired came out on top, with the Coffee Bar, Tryst, 2012 winner Blind Dog Cafe and Northside Social rounding out the top five. Next time you're looking for a place to plop down with your laptop and a cortado? Check out our full list of the city's best coffee shops below. A guide to getting caffeinated in a town teeming with stylish cafes, excellent espressos and pour-overs and inventive coffee house fare. View Photo Gallery —A guide to getting caffeinated in a town teeming with stylish cafes, excellent espressos, pour-overs and inventive coffeehouse fare.


Syria’s unimaginable afflictions

Paul (R-Ky.),who seemed to believe we should stay out of Syria in large part because Bashar al-Assad was “good” for Christians, we wonder if they understand our inertness has permitted hellish conditions to fester that threaten children of all faiths. I am compelled to recall former deputy national security adviser Elliott Abrams’ insight that President Obama declared himself to be a “citizen of the world,” but can’t be moved to do anything on its behalf even if doing something would also benefit America’s long-term security interests. Abrams wrote: So does “global citizenship” instead mean people-to-people assistance, avoiding politics and military action to aid the millions facing poverty and disease? Such an approach might well justify engagement with certain regimes we would otherwise seek to isolate, and in any event it would show deep solidarity with fellow human beings whatever their religion, nationality, or politics. But the Obama administration has shown no interest in such an approach. Its maligned predecessor developed vast programs to stop the spread of malaria and AIDS. PEPFAR (President’s Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief) had spent $18 billion by the time George W. Bush left office, and even in the view of Bush skeptics has saved millions of lives. By contrast, Obama largely ignored Africa during this first term, leading to news stories with terms like “unmistakable sense of disappointment,” “widespread cynicism on the continent,” and “positively neglectful.” If “global citizenship” requires assisting people who are poor or sick, the key post for advancing it in Africa is that of assistant administrator for Africa at the Agency for International Development. Obama left that post vacant for more than three years. Bush put America on the side of people in Africa suffering from AIDS. Under Obama polio is back. Did Obama intend for children in Syria to get polio? Of course not. But then all it takes for evil — and preventable disease — to triumph is for good men to do nothing, right? In words spoken at the Holocaust Museum in 2012: We must tell our children about how this evil was allowed to happen — because so many people succumbed to their darkest instincts, and because so many others stood silent. . . . You understand that change comes from the bottom up, from the grassroots. You understand — to quote the task force convened by this museum — “preventing genocide is an achievable goal.” It


D.C. area forecast: Warm evening a treat, gusty winds are tricky

- Today’s Daily Digit - A somewhat subjective rating of the day’s weather, on a scale of 1 to 10. - 7 Warmer temps are nice but would prefer less wind. With minimal showers risks, a more than tolerable cloudy day. - Express Forecast - Today: Cloudy, windy, brief morning shower possible. Highs: 70-74. - Tonight: Showers likely after midnight, breezy. Lows: 56-60. - Tomorrow: Showers, possible t’storm, ending midday. Highs: 69-75. FORECAST IN DETAIL Radar lightning: The ghosts and goblins should stay dry but the fairy princesses’ hair is likely to be frazzled as strong southerly winds kick in. Who knows where all those blow up characters in people’s lawns are going to end up? The best chance for showers and even a rumble of thunder waits until Friday morning when the cold front shoulders through. Rain amounts should stay on the light side and they are gone in time for a mostly dry and sunny weekend. For those of you planning NOT to take advantage of that extra hour of sleep on Sunday morning, catch the partial solar eclipse at sunrise! Bundle up though, colder temps will be back. Today (Halloween): Tonight: For related traffic news, check out Dr. Gridlock. Keep reading for the forecast through the weekend… Tomorrow (Friday): Tomorrow night: A LOOK AHEAD Saturday Sunday Monday


How the world’s populations are changing, in one map

they're not having enough babies, and that can cause huge problems. A note on the data: The researchers estimate current population growth by averaging the annual change in each country's population, per year, between 2010 and 2015. Those latter few years are obviously projections, but with the rare exception for a major war or natural disaster, such short-term projections are considered reliable. The numbers include births and deaths, as well as migration -- an important point we'll touch on later. Here are a few noteworthy trends from the data. (1) The big story is sub-Saharan Africa Almost all of the countries growing more than 2 percent per year are in Africa. There are a few reasons for that. Birth rates there tend to be very high. People are living much longer as health standards improve. And the continent is becoming more stable and more peaceful, meaning that there are fewer wars, famines and natural disasters. All of these trends are happening at once and are poised to completely transform Africa. This chart, from a different U.N. agency's population projections, show that Africa's growth is expected to outpace the rest of the world's for the next century, more than quadrupling in size: Africa's amazing growth (2) Continued rapid growth in the Middle East The Arab Middle East has been experiencing a very significant youth bulge over the last few years, meaning that an unusually large share of the population is young people. That's been problematic because when large numbers of young people hit working age at the same time, the Middle Eastern economies aren't able to provide enough jobs. Combine that with the region's stale authoritarian regimes and it's a recipe for political turmoil. That's considered a major factor in the unrest since 2011. With populations there still growing quickly, those trends could continue for some time, if Arab governments are able to get it together. The highest growth rates in the Middle East -- indeed, in the world -- are actually in the Middle Eastern countries that have seen the most stability during the Arab Spring. The absolute highest growth rate, by far, is in Oman, with 7.9 percent growth annually. That's just staggeringly high; there's no telling what it could mean for the country. Super-rich Qatar has a growth rate of 5.9 percent, also extremely high, though it's likely the tiny Gulf state can use its tremendous oil and


Gene Sperling: Fukushima and wage stagnation sure have helped U.S. manufacturing

At today's Commerce Department-orchestrated investment shindig, National Economic Council Director Gene Sperling laid out his understanding of why manufacturing is starting to come back to the United States (or at least, why they think it's a trend). It started in 2011, Sperling explained, when consulting firms started noticing trends that led them to advise their clients to consider investing more in the United States. Along with the natural gas bonanza, two factors helped change the equation. (The clip starts at 26:00). One: Wage stagnation. "When you look in the future for the next 10 years, which is where you should be considering for a location decision, the wage productivity factor now has turned around and will favor the United States." That's sure true. In what's often considered to be something of a curse for the American worker and the economy writ large, since fewer people can do the jobs of many and most don't have enough income to generate demand, wages and productivity have been separating for decades: (Economic Policy Institute) And two: The nuclear disaster at Fukushima. "There's also a greater realization of the more hidden or uncertain costs with having an overly diffuse and remote supply chain," Sperling said. "Perhaps that was spurred by the disaster in Japan." Also true. The electricity outages that resulted from the reactor explosions threw a wrench into manufacturing networks all over the world, creating a huge headache for companies that source globally. Having your manufacturing close to your end market is one way to take risk out of the process. "The U.S. may be the most competitive for location of jobs as it's been in two to three decades," Sperling said. "This is a moment of opportunity. If you have a positive trend, you want to put more wind at its back." In other words: Japan's pain was our gain, and low wages have an upside. Hopefully.


No auto supplies allowed

discount jewelers or secondhand stores. Blood banks are banned, too.” Also banned: fish and tackle shops, public laundromats, auto supply shops and “establishments that primarily provide dental care on credit.” In other news: A few tough questions for Vincent Gray to answer before he seeks reelection (Post editorial) David Zipper, Gray administration’s point man on economy diversification, leaves for tech incubator (Capital Business, WBJ, Housing Complex) Halloween at D.C. General, “the crown jewel of the city’s shameful housing calamity” (Post column) Which in located in the hub of a “leading-edge knowledge economy” (Atlantic) No-more-“Redskins” resolution set for Tuesday council vote (DofD, AP, WAMU-FM) Washington Monument lights will be turned off Monday; scaffolding will start to come down (Post, Post gallery) Albrecht Muth murder trial will happen with or without Albrecht Muth, who remains fasting (Homicide Watch) Green-paint vandal ruled incompetent to stand trial (AP) “Peace House” occupants are being evicted (Post) City lawyers push back on Paul Zukerberg’s legal claim seeking to maintain AG election (WaTimes) Overdue adjustment to living-wage rate could leave home health aides behind (DofD, WAMU-FM) Will streetcar service mean no more delivery trucks on H Street NE? (Housing Complex) A third credit-card processor is locked in disputes with cabbies (WAMU-FM) CCNV task force gets to work amid mostly unfounded fears the property will be turned into luxury condos (WJLA-TV) Jeff DeWitt “appears to be a good fit at this time in the city’s history,” says Jonetta (Post column) Some folks balk at $1.3 million “wings” for New York Avenue bridge (WJLA-TV) Developers are beginning to realize there’s an affordable housing shortage (Capital Business) Hyatt Place hotel inked for city-owned site in Southwest (WBJ) TANF benefits will get a D.C. resident to 26 percent of the federal poverty level (Poverty & Policy) Build the north-south streetcar all the way to Silver Spring (GGW) Feelings still running high over Florida Avenue site, but neighbors may get their grocery after all (GGW) A gentrified Halloween in D.C. (National Journal) If you dressed up as “Executive A,” you won (Loose Lips) Cop accused of child sex abuse hears his accuser testify against him (WTTG-TV) Watch some videos, solve some crimes (Post) Robert Wilkins is in no immediate danger of getting promoted to the D.C. Circuit (Legal Times) Ron Moten answers questions like, “Would you wear this ‘Don’t Be a Bama’ T-shirt?” (Arts Desk) RG3 needs to grow up (Post column)


Big beer would really like young guys to get jobs

The Budweiser bath. (Bob Levey/Getty Images) Ever wonder whether guys drink more when they're employed or unemployed? We may have some evidence for the former, courtesy of yesterday's earnings report from the world's largest booze purveyor. Anheuser-Busch InBev, the global beer giant that owns everything from Bud to Boddington's — and is still in the process of absorbing Grupo Modelo — had a bit of a bum quarter. While revenues increased, driven by strong sales in places like China, volumes are down in the United States: For the year to date, sales to retailers are down 2.2 percent and sales to wholesalers down 2.8 percent. The U.S. is still the company's core market, so that's not a great sign. There were a few reasons for the decline: A price increase kicked in, and there's a longer-term trend away from beer toward wine and spirits: Beer, falling out of style. (Gallup) But the other thing A-B Inbev is worried about? "Labor participation and unemployment rates among young adult males remain a concern," the release frets. The unemployment rate for males ages 20 to 24 has ticked back up to 14.8 percent in recent months, and that for guys ages 25 to 35 is still high, at 7.8 percent. Young guys out of work might have extra time on their hands, but rent comes before beer. Nevertheless, the company is still leaning on its standby — Bud Light — to deliver growth. "We think this brand, given its size and stature, can do even more in terms of connecting and bonding with the new young adult males and do even more in terms of executing and activating its properties, like the NFL, and that's our commitment," said CEO Carlos Alves de Brito, on yesterday's earnings call.


Catch a partial solar eclipse Sunday at sunrise

NASA animation of Nov. 3 eclipse (NASA) Throw on your fall jacket, pour yourself hot coffee and go outside Sunday morning Nov. 3, because in the eastern U.S. (including Washington, D.C.), a partial solar eclipse will be underway at sunrise. But first, be on time and remember to reset your clocks an hour back officially at 2 a.m. Sunday morning. Even with the promise of an extra hour to sleep, celestial mechanics marches on: For Washington, D.C., about 47 percent of sun will be blocked by the moon at sunrise – which is 6:38 a.m. Eastern Standard Time. The moon will move off the sun’s disc by 7:10 a.m., according to Geoff Chester, an astronomer at the U.S. Naval Observatory. Link: Morning sky gazers will need a clear view of the east-southeastern horizon – unencumbered by buildings, trees or hills. Do not look directly at the sun with your naked eye and do not look at the sun with unfiltered or poorly filtered binoculars or a telescope, or you will become permanently blind. You can view the eclipse with a “pinhole camera” – which is a pinhole a few millimeters in diameter punched in paper or cardboard, held up so the sun’s image gets projected onto another piece of paper. (Do not look at the sun directly through the pinhole.) Link This partial eclipse – the part seen along the East Coast as well as northern South America, southern Europe, the Middle East and sections Africa – is actually an annular/total eclipse or a hybrid eclipse in other places. The eclipse is annular where the moon aligns with the sun, but the lunar disc doesn’t completely hide the sun. Think annular as a ring of fire and think total as the diamond ring. Left: Similar to the eclipse view on the East Coast on Sunday morning, a partial eclipse taken from the Hinode spacecraft four years ago. (NASA/JAXA/SAO) Center: An annular eclipse, taken by the Hinode spacecraft. (NASA/JAXA/SAO) Right: Total eclipse from Nov. 2012 taken by the Hinode spacecraft (NASA/JAXA/SAO) A small area about 600 miles east of Jacksonville, Florida will be along the path of the annular eclipse. The total eclipse will pass through the tropical Atlantic and across south central Africa. The path of the “hybrid” eclipse (Michael Zeiler, @EclipseMaps) Solar and lunar eclipses – like gathering at Thanksgiving – belong to families. And these eclipse families


First look: Zeke’s Coffee opens Northeast roasting shop and ‘lab’ Saturday

District coffee roasters Vigilante Coffee and Qualia will soon be in good company: Baltimore's Zeke's Coffee is set to open this weekend at 2300 Rhode Island Ave. NE in a storefront where it will sell beans fresh out of the roaster. Photo gallery: Zeke's will serve cups of coffee and pour-overs from any of the 25-plus varieties on its shelves. The menu is lo-fi (sorry, no espresso machines here yet) and prices are too: $1.50 for a 12-ounce cup and $2.50 for a 16-ounce cup. The storefront, which will have some seating for customers, opens Saturday with A public event from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. John Kepner, owner of the D.C. location of Zeke's Coffee, demonstrates a pour-over method of brewing the roaster's popular "hippie" blend. (Photo by Lavanya Ramanathan/The Washington Post) Zeke's is all about the roast, explains John Kepner, whose family members run the roaster's locations in Baltimore and Pittsburgh, each as independent operators. He sees the 1,400-square-foot space, he says, "like D.C. Brau. We're a production facility, but you can come in and have a tasting." You'll also be able to get a whiff of the roasting process, which will take place in the back with a 12-pound roaster. A staple at farmers markets, Zeke's was doing enough business in the area that the drive down Interstate 95 was becoming a drag. Kepner, the D.C. shop's owner, says it was the local business development group, Friends of Rhode Island Avenue NE, that convinced him to open in the area a few miles east of Bloomingdale, in a neighborhood known as Woodridge. After the opening Saturday, November hours will be Wednesday-Friday from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. and weekends from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. See more photos below: Zeke's Coffee in its distinctive bags. The green, raw coffee beans arrive at the NE Washington roaster from all over the world, and will be roasted on-site. Beans roasted will sold after a typical two-day resting period. (Photo by Lavanya Ramanathan/The Washington Post) (Photo by Lavanya Ramanathan/The Washington Post)


Obama asks federal agencies to ‘prepare’ for climate change. Here’s what that means.

Climate scientists tend to agree that even if humans stopped burning fossil fuels today, we'd still see some further warming and climate change from all the carbon dioxide we've already loaded into the atmosphere. We'll need to adapt regardless — it's just a question of how much. A rare "king tide" in Washington D.C., which the EPA describes as a harbinger of what sea-level rise might look like. The White House underscored that point on Friday when it issued a new executive order directing federal agencies to help states and communities prepare for the effects of climate change, including sea-level rise, storms, and droughts. The Obama administration is still focused on cutting U.S. greenhouse gases — the official goal is to get carbon-dioxide emissions down 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020. That's why regulators have set stricter fuel-economy standards for cars and light trucks — reaching 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025 — and are planning carbon rules for coal- and gas-fired power plants. But those cuts — even if paired with cuts by China, India, and other countries — can't halt climate change entirely. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), for instance, estimates that global sea levels are likely to rise 1 to 2 feet by 2100 even if the world radically constrains its fossil-fuel use. (The IPCC estimates that sea levels could rise 2 to 3 feet or more if emissions go unchecked.) To that end, there are a few key aspects of the White House memo: 1) Federal infrastructure spending will have to take climate into account. So, for example, federal disaster-relief programs that help coastal communities rebuild after a storm or flood will have to take into account the possibility that the next storm or flood could be even worse. Likewise, roads and bridges built with federal money will have to be planned with changing climate conditions — such as future sea-level rise — in mind. 2) Water- and land- management will get revamped. For example, agencies will have to "evaluate how to better promote natural storm barriers such as dunes and wetlands" and figure out "how to protect the carbon sequestration benefits of forests and lands to help reduce the carbon pollution that causes climate change." (The EPA has already released its plans to this effect.) 3) The federal government will try to provide better data on what climate impacts are actually coming.


A cautionary tale for politicians: Al Gore and the ‘invention’ of the Internet

quality of life in our country and in our world. And what I’ve seen during that experience is an emerging future that’s very exciting about which I’m very optimistic and toward which I want to lead. As you can see, the critical sentence just fell amid a bunch of boring verbiage, like a diamond in the rough: “During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet.” He does not say he “invented” the Internet, but he does say something about “creating” it, in the kind of awkward phrasing Gore was known for. But because the sentence was surrounded by a lot of unrelated political blather, it was largely unnoticed. CNN certainly did not highlight it in its coverage of the interview. Then a writer for Wired, Declan McCullagh, spotted Gore’s statement and poked fun at it, under headline, “No Credit Where It’s Due.” He noted that the technical basis for the Internet, specifically the Internet working protocols, existed long before Gore entered Congress. Preliminary discussions of how the ARPANET [Advanced Research Projects Agency Network] would be designed began in 1967, and a request for proposals went out the following year. In 1969, the Defense Department commissioned the ARPANET. Gore was 21-years-old at the time. He wasn’t even done with law school at Vanderbilt University. It would be eight more years before Gore would be elected to the US House of Representatives as a freshman Democrat with scant experience in passing legislation, let alone ambitious proposals. By that time, file copying — via the UUCP protocol — was beginning. Email was flourishing. The culture of the Internet was starting to develop through the Jargon File and the SF-Lovers mailing list. But to be fair to Gore, his statement referenced what he had done in Congress. The Internet was the commercialization of the work done at DOD, and by most accounts, Gore’s efforts had some impact. He was the prime sponsor of the 1991 High-Performance Computing and Communications Act, generally known as the Gore bill, which allocated $600 million for high-performance computing. Gore, who waged a two-year battle to get the bill passed, popularized the term “the Information Superhighway.” The Gore legislation helped fund the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, where the Mosaic Web browser was first developed by a team of programmers that included Netscape founder Marc Andreessen. While it is sometimes difficult to


Sunrise solar eclipse: one stunning time-lapse, five golden images

Streaks of clouds made viewing Sunday morning’s partial solar eclipse challenging, but photographers around the region still managed to capture fantastic views. Up first, check out this incredible time-lapse of the eclipse from Alexandria by Steve Ellington. Sunrise Partial Eclipse “That’s spectacular,” writes Phil Plait on the Bad Astronomy blog. “I’ve seen quite a few partial eclipses, but never like that!” Here are five of the best photos submitted to us via Facebook and Flickr. The eclipse from Gainesville, Va. (Jed Kane via Facebook) Eclipse from Point Lookout state park in Maryland (Rob Wanenchak via Flickr) Two views of the eclipse from North Bethesda. (Rachel Sanderoff via Facebook) (Jim Knapp via Facebook) Eclipse from Norfolk, Va. (John Mitchell via Flickr) Thank you for all of the submissions! Related links: Eclipse Over New York City Did We Miss The Partial Solar Eclipse In Virginia Beach? This Morning’s Solar Eclipse: a Post-Mortem Eclipse photos from Ocean City, New Jersey


Washington could be the first state to require labels on GMOs. Here are the stakes.

engineered to be pest-resistant can allow farmers to use fewer chemical pesticides. Insecticide use in U.S. corn fields has fallen significantly since 1996 as genetically modified Bt corn has become more prevalent (see chart). But there are also some legitimate concerns. For instance, farmers planting herbicide-resistant GM crops tend to use a limited range of herbicides on their fields, which can give rise to herbicide-resistant "superweeds." There's also the risk that genetically engineered traits could escape into nature — as apparently occurred back in May, when a never-approved strain of GM wheat made its way to an Oregon field. That said, there are environmental risks with conventional crops too—those "superweeds," for instance, can also appear on non-GM crop sites. On balance, the National Research Council found genetically modified crops to have fewer adverse effects. So what would Washington's law actually do? The bill sets out a detailed definition of "genetically modified," but note that there may be some gray areas here. Many biotech companies are now experimenting with new techniques (pdf), such as engineering specific proteins, that do not meet the traditional definition of "genetically modified." It's unclear how those might be affected by Washington's law. What have past GM-labeling laws accomplished? One possible reason for the small impact is that labeling laws could make GM-free foods more expensive to produce — after all, retailers and manufacturers have to provide extensive documentation to prove food is not genetically modified. So, according to a paper (pdf) by the International Food Policy Research Institute, mandatory labeling laws might not affect the supply of non-GM foods much. Some proponents of GM labeling would prefer the label go here, not out front. (bigstock) So what's the best argument against GM labeling laws? What can they hurt? Washington's law differs from other labeling laws by requiring that the label be placed on the front of the packaging, rather than in back with all the other ingredient information. "The front-of-package mandate in I-522 isn’t a reasonable attempt to inform consumers," writes science writer Ramez Naan. "It goes above and beyond that, to place a burden on GM foods that isn’t placed on tremendously more dangerous ingredients [like sugar or certain fats]." Some scientists have raised related concerns: Back when California was considering a labeling law (which eventually failed), U.C. Berkeley's David Zilberman worried that labeling laws might "create a stigma effect" that will hinder future research


Movember, Nanowrimo, marathons — November, please, calm down

but the rest of the month is mutating and bursting at the seams. This is the month of violent Black Friday stampedes in which people are sometimes killed, all to buy half-price blenders. This is the month when Guy Fawkes lost it, or perhaps didn’t, depending on your opinion of the Stuart monarchy. Wikipedia informs me that not only is this National Novel Writing Month, it is also National Blog Posting Month (NaBloPoMo), National Pomegranate Month in the United States, International Drum Month, Sweet Potato Awareness Month, No Shave November, Movember and National Pulmonary Hypertension Awareness Month. Awareness of all those first ones inevitably leads you to the last one, as the blood starts surging in your ears. I haven’t seen this many bizarre resolutions since the seven endings of “Return of the King.” My newsfeed is filled with them. “Yeah!” everyone says. “Couldn’t run a marathon in April. Way too temperate! It’s NOVEMBER all the way! Mm, feel that brisk autumn air! I’m going to go learn how to can things and buy those little disposable flossing doodads that you see in stores but never in commercials, but someone must use them, surely!” I don’t know if they actually say this. I have never experienced the urge to run a marathon in any kind of weather. Whenever a friend announces that he or she is doing so, I feel betrayed, but grudgingly impressed, like I imagine James Bond feels at the end of 50 percent of his relationships. Look, I love a good mustache. I love a good mustache as much as I hate a playoff beard. I like having novels at hand to read. Last year I tried writing one myself during Nanowrimo, which turned out to obey the law that The More People You Tell About A Project, The Less Likely It Is To Come To Fruition, because the effort of telling people about it so exhausts you that you stagger home each evening unable to get any work done, the same thing that stymied my efforts to find and tip a cow. And marathons — well, I feel about marathon runners the way Will Rogers felt about heroes. “We can’t all be heroes,” he said, “because someone has to sit on the curb and clap as they go by.” It’s just odd that all of it seems to spring on us at once. You fall asleep


The best sentences we read today

-- "Roughly one in every five sunlike stars is orbited by a potentially habitable, Earth-size planet, meaning that the universe has abundant real estate that could be congenial to life." -- "A recent survey of marine plastic debris found something surprising: Nearly 99% of it was missing." -- "A Museum of Science Fiction could become a reality in D.C. within the next few years." -- "“By the mid-’60s, recorded music was much more like painting than it was like traditional music. When you went into the studio, you could put a sound down, then you could squeeze it around, spread it all around the canvas." -- "The former Homestake Gold Mine in Lead, S.D., has a hallowed place in the history of physics as a spot where nothing happens."


6 more variables that determine if we’re likely to discover an alien civilization

according to an analysis of observations by NASA’s Kepler space telescope. Our Milky Way galaxy alone could harbor billions of rocky worlds where water might be liquid at the surface, according to the report, which was published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and discussed at a news conference in California. If the estimate is correct, the nearest ocean planet might be just 12 light-years away, which, though extremely distant for all practical purposes (such as sending a robotic space probe), is just around the corner in our galactic neighborhood. “When you look up at the stars in the night sky, how many of them have a planet like the Earth?” asked Erik Petigura, a graduate student at the University of California at Berkeley and the lead author of the paper. “We’re able to start answering this question.” The best estimate is 22 percent of stars like our own, with an error margin of plus or minus eight percentage points. “Earth-sized planets having the temperature of a cup of tea are common around sunlike stars,” said planet hunter Geoff Marcy, a Berkeley astronomer and a co-author of the study. He said the finding “represents one great leap toward the possibility of life, including intelligent life, in the universe.” Kepler The telescope’s original mission was to obtain an estimate of the percentage of stars with potentially habitable planets, and this latest analysis comes close to meeting that goal. This is still an extrapolation of data and is not the same thing as taking a careful census of these Earth-size planets directly, said Sara Seager, an astrophysicist at MIT who was not directly involved in the new analysis. “Earth-size” doesn’t necessarily mean “Earth-like,” Seager noted. But she said this result will boost efforts to build telescopes that could obtain direct imagery of one of these extremely distant worlds. “Earth-sized planets are not rare, so we’ll know we’ll have stuff to look at,” Seager said. “It’s reassuring for us.” Jill Tarter, a pioneer in “SETI,” the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, said in an e-mail: “We haven’t yet found Earth 2.0, but these statistics suggest that it should be forthcoming, and soon. When we can point to Earth 2.0 in the sky, it will seem completely natural to ask ‘Does anybody live there?’ and ‘Can we go there?’ I think Earth 2.0 will concretize SETI as nothing else has.” ”


Rose’s Luxury, Barcelona Wine Bar plus more new and notable restaurants

Thanks to the breakneck pace of restaurant openings in Washington, making dinner plans can be an exhausting proposition. Is everyone still doing date night at Le Diplomate, or is it time to cancel your reservation to brave the sea of beautiful people (and that dreaded no reservation policy) at Barcelona Wine Bar? Should you grab your usual sandwich from Taylor, or get experimental at Duke's Grocery? And is Rose's Luxury really as awesome as all the Instagram photos suggest? Keep up with the latest openings in our updated guide to the area's new and notable restaurants, with reviews and early takes from Tom Sietsema . Looking for the newest and hottest restaurants and bars of 2013? Look no further. Find out what’s new in your neighborhood, then click on the boldface names to read reviews, make reservations and plan your trip. View Photo Gallery —Looking for the newest and hottest restaurants and bars of 2013? Look no further. Find out what’s new in your neighborhood, then click on the boldface names to read reviews, make reservations and plan your trip.


Peaceful protest is much more effective than violence for toppling dictators

The success of nonviolent civil resistance: Erica Chenoweth at TEDxBoulder Political scientist Erica Chenoweth used to believe, as many do, that violence is the most reliable way to get rid of a dictator. History is filled, after all, with coups, rebellions and civil wars. She didn't take public protests or other forms of peaceful resistance very seriously; how could they possible upend a powerful, authoritarian regime? Then, as Chenoweth recounts in a Ted Talk posted online Monday, she put together some data and was surprised by what she found. "I collected data on all major nonviolent and violent campaigns for the overthrow of a government or a territorial liberation since 1900," she says -- hundreds of cases. "The data blew me away." Here's her chart, which pretty clearly suggests that nonviolent movements are much likelier to work: (Erica Chenoweth/YouTube) And that trend is actually "increasing over time," Chenoweth adds. "Nonviolent campaigns are becoming increasingly successful." Below is a chart of the successful campaigns from 1940 to 2006. (Erica Chenoweth/YouTube) The data actually show a big rise in violent successes in the 1970s and '80s, perhaps a product of both decolonization -- the departure of European powers from sub-Saharan Africa was followed by a number of violent conflicts over power -- and the Cold War, in which U.S. and Soviet backing might have helped push rebel movements toward success. But that trend has been reversed significantly since the end of the Cold War, with nonviolent successes way up. "Researchers used to say that no government could survive if just 5 percent of the population rose up against it," Chenoweth says. "Our data shows the number may be lower than that. No single campaign in that period failed after they'd achieved the active and sustained participation of just 3.5 percent of the population." She adds, "But get this: every single campaign that exceeded that 3.5 percent point was a nonviolent one. The nonviolent campaigns were on average four times larger than the average violent campaigns." Of course, 3.5 percent is a lot of people. In, for example, Iran, it amounts to 2.7 million people. In China, it's 47 million people. Still, it does happen. It's not clear exactly how many Egyptians protested in the February 2011 uprising that led to President Hosni Mubarak's downfall, but meeting the 2.9 million threshold doesn't sound unlikely. Chenoweth focuses a lot of her talk on the


How the world is failing at its climate goals, in one giant chart

depends on how stringent forthcoming carbon limits on coal and natural-gas plants will be. A few wind turbines aren't going to cut it. (Ken James / Bloomberg) Now look at the line in the big chart above marked "Case 4." This is a scenario in which the world's nations actually follow through on their most ambitious pledges and obey strict greenhouse-gas accounting rules — in other words, no cheating with gimmicky offsets. Even then, the world wouldn't be on pace to meet its 2°C target by 2020. The difference between meeting the 2°C goal and the world's actual policies is known as the "emissions gap." As the gap gets bigger each year, the U.N. report notes, the task of meeting that 2°C target gets harder and more expensive. "Failure to invest today in best available technologies and options not only represents a lost opportunity to reduce emissions," the report argues, "it also curtails our ability to reduce them in the near future as high energy use and emission patterns are locked-in for several decades." Could the world still meet the 2°C goal? Some examples: Vehicle fuel-economy standards could get ratcheted up. Energy-efficiency codes for buildings could get strengthened. Regulators could focus on cutting "short-lived" greenhouse gases like methane. Lower-carbon energy sources like wind or solar or nuclear could get scaled up. (The United States has reined in emissions by swapping out coal for cleaner natural gas.) Developing nations could cut back the $480 billion in subsidies for fossil-fuel consumption handed out each year. There's also a new section in this year's UNEP emissions report exploring agricultural practices that could reduce emissions between now and 2020. That includes expanding the use of no-till farming (which churns up less carbon from soils) to improved water management in rice production (which would cut methane emissions). The study, drafted by 44 groups of scientists around the world, argues that most of these near-term technologies are readily available and capable of being scaled up quickly. But, for now, the world is far from taking full advantage of them. Note also that the report is mainly laying out a road map to cut emissions between now and 2020. But to stay below 2°C, global greenhouse-gas emissions would have to keep falling in the decades thereafter. That could prove even more difficult — especially since the world isn't even on track to meet its short-term targets. Related:


Terry McAuliffe won, but why was the Virginia race so close? Here are 6 reasons.

Democrat Terry McAuliffe’s win over Republican Ken Cuccinelli in the Virginia governor’s race was predicted by virtually all public polls. But the narrowness of that victory was, largely, missed by polls. So, why was it so close, and what did the polls miss? The network exit poll depicted how Virginia’s electorate on Tuesday was friendlier to Cuccinelli than most pre-election surveys. Cuccinelli performed better among Republicans and independents than expected, kept the race relatively close among women voters and performed well enough in the central and western parts of the state. (Be sure to check out the Post's interactive graphic showing how Virginia groups voted) Beyond those top-line findings, the political climate in Virginia may not have been as bad as things appeared in late October. Voters in the governor’s election did not blame Republicans much more than President Obama for the government shutdown, nor did they sour on GOP incumbent Gov. Robert McDonnell, both factors that figured to hurt Cuccinelli’s chances. Here are some of the big reasons Cuccinelli avoided the big losses portended by polls. * Republicans avoided sole shutdown blame The federal government shutdown from October 1 to 17 may not have had quite so much sting for Cuccinelli at the end of the day. Virginia voters doled out nearly as much blame to Obama (45 percent) as they did to the Republicans in Congress (48 percent), according to the exit polls. In the October Washington Post-Abt-SRBI poll, blame went more strongly to Republicans -- by a 21 percent margin over Obama. Just about a third of voters said they were affected by the shutdown in the exit poll, and they favored McAuliffe by 56 percent to 37 percent for Cuccinelli. But the bulk of people affected by the shutdown live in the D.C. suburbs or the Tidewater area, regions that reliably vote Democratic and may not have voted differently absent the shutdown. The toxic environment for Republicans in the wake of the partial government shutdown opens the possibility that poll respondents were reluctant to voice support for Cuccinelli in surveys for fear of being seen as supporting a party under intense public criticism. * Republicans came home Our exit poll preview highlighted how Cuccinelli faced open criticism from fellow Republicans during the campaign, and polls showed him winning less support among fellow partisans than McAuliffe did among Democrats -- with Libertarian Robert Sarvis the beneficiary of


How to stay grounded as a federal leader

Leadership expert Bob Rosen is the author of the new book “Grounded: How Leaders Stay Rooted in an Uncertain World.” He is also the founder of Healthy Companies International, which provides leadership coaching to top executives. Rosen spoke with Tom Fox, a guest writer for On Leadership and vice president for leadership and innovation at the nonprofit Partnership for Public Service. Fox also heads up their Center for Government Leadership. Q. You have outlined six dimensions that are vital to leadership. What are they? (courtesy of Michael Stuart, Stuart Photography) A. Q. How can leaders maintain focus on these attributes? A. Q. Are there specific techniques a leader should follow to reach the goals you described? A. Q. What can a leader do to help build healthy and productive teams? A. Q. How can senior federal leaders develop their staff when there isn't a lot of money to spend on training and development? A. Q. Given the recent federal government shutdown, we’ve been hearing from a lot of leaders and employees about the need to re-recruit and re-engage the workforce. Do you have any advice on this issue? A. Q. Are there any final thoughts you have about being a healthy and effective federal manager? A. Read also: How to overcome workplace misunderstandings Keeping federal workers engaged Like On Leadership? Follow us on Facebook and Twitter.


Big corporate spending pays off in Washington’s genetically modified food fight

The Washington measure would have required all genetically modified foods, such as the rice pictured here, to be labeled as such. (International Rice Research Institute/AFP) A roughly $30 million food fight in Washington state came to an end Tuesday as voters there declined to require labels on genetically modified food. The measure was defeated in a 55 percent to 45 percent vote, with support edging out opposition in only three of the state’s 39 counties. The expensive battle was fueled mostly by a small set of giant corporate interests, with virtually all of the money raised in opposition coming from out of state. Just two campaigns opposed the measure, Initiative 522, fueled by more than $20.1 million in spending, according to official disclosure records. Just $600 came from in-state contributions. Proponents spent about $7 million, with at least $1.6 million coming from in-state contributions. I-522 would have required labels on GMO food and seeds sold within the state, with exceptions for a handful of categories including alcoholic beverages and certified organic foods. The label would have had to include the phrase “genetically engineered” or “produced with genetic engineering.” Proponents touted the need for transparency in food sales, arguing that companies already label such foods in 64 countries that require it. Opponents complained that, due to the exclusions, the measure would fail to achieve its own goals and that the cost of enforcement would place additional burdens on taxpayers. Five corporations together contributed more than $14 million to fight the measure. Monsanto, a biotechnology company that creates genetically modified seeds among many other things, contributed $5.4 million. Dupont, a multinational science company operating in a number of markets including GMO seeds, contributed $3.9 million. Dozens of large food companies contributed through the D.C.-based Grocery Manufacturers Association, including: PepsiCo, which contributed $2.4 million, and Nestle and Coca-Cola, each of which contributed $1.5 million. Fewer than 50 individuals and businesses contributed money in opposition to I-522. The campaign in favor of labeling received donations from roughly 5,500 unique individuals and businesses, including $2.2 million from the environmentally conscious manufacturer Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soaps. Former Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman goes On Background to discuss the environmental, health and regulatory impact of genetically modified foods.


A stunning map of depression rates around the world

rate. That may help explain the unusually low rate in Iraq, for example, where public health services are poor. Taboos against mental health disorders may also drive down diagnosis rates, for example in East Asia, artificially lowering the study's measure of clinical depression's prevalence in that region. The paper further cautions that reliable depression surveys don’t even exist for some low-income countries -- a common issue with global studies -- forcing the researchers to come up with their own estimates based on statistical regression models. Still, the researchers’ findings have real ramifications for the world -- and are often surprising. More than 5 percent of the population suffers from depression in the Middle East, North Africa, sub-Saharan Africa, Eastern Europe and the Caribbean. Meanwhile, depression is reportedly lowest in East Asia, followed by Australia/New Zealand and Southeast Asia. This chart shows how each region of the world is affected by depression; the orange line indicates the number of years spent living with clinical depression per every 100,000 people. Depression burden in regions around the world, as measured by years living with disability, in 1990 (left) and 2010 (right). The region abbreviations, from top, are sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), Oceania (Oc), North America high-income (Nam-HI), North Africa/Middle East (Nafr-ME), Latin America (LA), Europe (Eur), the Caribbean (Caribb), Australasia (Aus), Asia (A/As) and Asian Pacific high-income (AP-HI). (Ferrari et al.) The most depressed country is Afghanistan, where more than one in five people suffer from the disorder. The least depressed is Japan, with a diagnosed rate of less than 2.5 percent. The researchers also quantified the national “burden” of depression using a metric called DALY -- disability-adjusted life years, or the number of healthy years a person loses because of depression or a depression-related premature death. Predictably, depression burdens for the most part follow depression rates. The burden is highest in Afghanistan and in Middle Eastern and North African countries, as well as in Eritrea, Rwanda, Botswana, Gabon, Croatia, the Netherlands (!) and Honduras. It’s lowest in Asia’s most prosperous economies, including Japan. See some patterns here? The researchers did, too. While they can’t conclusively explain why depression is so much more prevalent and damaging in some countries than in others, they have a few theories. Those include conflict, which pushes depression rates up, and the presence of other serious epidemics, which makes depression less of a social burden relative to other public


Dark matter: What we know and why you should care

we are looking for dark matter in the sky as well. Check out what they’re doing aboard the International Space Station. The LUX detector is shown in its final installation stages. (Photo courtesy of C.H. Faham) By any chance, does the Higgs boson have anything to do with dark matter? In a way, yes. Both the Higgs boson and dark matter are about searching for the interactions of particles at the subatomic level and the quest to understand the fundamental structure of the universe. For any of our theories in modern physics to make sense – such as how different forces in the universe like gravity behave — we have to understand how these particles interact with each other. What’s been done lately with dark matter? The most recent experiment to date was the Large Underground Xenon (LUX) dark matter experiment at the Sanford Underground Research Facility in South Dakota that featured giant tanks of super-chilled liquid xenon about one mile below ground. How did that work out? The LUX experiment hasn’t found anything What’s the best candidate so far for dark matter? One candidate is a class of particles named WIMPs, for “weakly interacting massive particles.” Researchers theorize that when these WIMPs hit the nucleus of a xenon atom head-on, the impact will cause a flash of light that can be detected by sensors. So, maybe they’re not so wimpy after all. Sounds pretty easy. We just wait until we detect a few flashes of light deep underground? Not so fast. As Yale’s Meg Urry points out, “The chances of this happening are exceedingly small — about 1 in 10 trillion. It’s like trying to see someone’s nose twitch in a stadium full of crazy football fans.” Gotcha. But assuming we do detect that twitching nose, what do we do when we find this dark matter? Well, we might be talking about handing out a Nobel Prize in physics. After all, two of the guys who led the epic quest for the Higgs boson received a Nobel Prize this October. The water tank where LUX is housed. (Photo courtesy of C.H. Faham) How could I learn more? There’s a “Dark Universe” show at the Hayden Planetarium in New York that will blow your mind. The show is less than 30 minutes, but you’ll walk away questioning your own insignificant role in the universe. How is possible that the trillions


Michael White’s Osteria Morini nears Navy Yard debut, with Nicoletta to follow

When Osteria Morini opens near the Navy Yard in about three weeks, another star out-of-town chef will have planted his flag in D.C. Osteria Morini is an import from New York chef Michael White, who has nine restaurant brands (and two other Morini locations in New York and New Jersey) under his name. Before Thanksgiving, Capitol Riverfront eaters will be sopping up pasta sauce and tucking into plates of grilled meats, all with a waterfront view. White's Altamarea Group has been eyeing D.C. for several years, tracking the rise of the city's food culture. "I was looking at the market and seeing a very positive momentum influx of young professionals coming into D.C. -- much as we have seen in New York," said Ahmass Fakahany, Altamarea's CEO and co-owner with White. "We got feedback that our type of Italian would be very right for D.C. and very welcome." Polpettine, a dish that is expected to be on Osteria Morini's D.C. menu. (Courtesy of Osteria Morini) Their type of Italian? It's from the Emilia-Romagna region at the top of the boot, including Bologna and Modena. While the menu won't be identical to the New York and New Jersey locations, Fakahany says there will be many dishes in common, particularly on the list of homemade pastas, from cappelletti to garganelli. In late spring, the group will open Nicoletta, based on the New York restaurant of the same name, in a seasonal stall along the Riverwalk Trail. While its New York counterpart serves sandwiches and other entrees, the D.C. Nicoletta will serve only pizza because of space restrictions in the stall. The D.C. openings are part of a huge expansion push for the Altamarea Group, whose revenues increased dramatically over a short period of time -- from $3 million in 2008 to $50 million in 2011 -- according to Du Jour. Morini will be the fifth restaurant that the group has opened this year. In the New York Times's lukewarm 2010 review of the SoHo Morini, critic Sam Sifton cautioned the restaurant against expanding too quickly. Fakahany isn't worried. "We have cultivated a number of world-class chefs under Michael [White]. The chef that we hired for D.C. has been in waiting for seven to eight months," said Fakahany, of Matt Adler, who has been training at Morini's other locations. "This is not an opening chef. He is deep in the game." Osteria Morini,


Can Whole Foods ever be cheap?

Whole Foods Market, historically, has not competed on price. That's been a successful strategy, because its educated, affluent shoppers assume that quality must just come at a premium. They're willing to shell out significantly more for pesticide-free pears and artisanal cheese than they might at the Kroger or Safeway down the road. The price isn't simply a function of the cost of goods, though. Whole Foods' profit margins have been significantly fatter than the supermarket industry's notoriously slim one for years now, at some 3.8 percent to the average of 0.7 percent, to investors' delight: The stock trades at about twice the price of its rivals. Some of that comes from a product mix that skews more toward prepared foods, which command higher prices, but it also benefits from a squishy perception cushion that prevents customers from comparison shopping quite as ruthlessly. How much are those apples really worth? (Richard Drew/AP) "I think that the conditioning, right or wrong, may be that organic product costs more than genetically modified product," says Joe Feldman, a grocery analyst at Telsey Advisory Group. "So, buying the natural oat-bran cereals, people may just assume this is a natural organic product, and I'll pay a little more for that." That perception game has stopped working, though. And Whole Foods is trying to figure out if it can catch up. Other grocers, especially in the urban markets that Whole Foods has started to saturate -- even convenience stores! -- are getting on the local and natural bandwagon. Economies of scale are bringing down the cost of organics, which might lead consumers to adjust their expectations about how much they should pay. And yet, Whole Foods continues to go head to head with other grocers: As a case in point, it just announced plans to open in Northeast Washington, blocks away from a brand-new Giant and not much farther from a high-end Wal-Mart. For a while now, Whole Foods has been trying to strategically lower prices to match surrounding competitors -- "price investments," in industry jargon -- that lower profits in certain stores. It's also opening new stores in low-income parts of Detroit and New Orleans, with fewer staff, more frozen and packaged food, and a new message: This stuff doesn't have to cost quite as much. Profit margins continued to do well for a while, as the company found ways to economize by reducing "shrinkage," or


Can Whole Foods ever be cheap?

saturate -- even convenience stores! -- are getting on the local and natural bandwagon. Economies of scale are bringing down the cost of organics, which might lead consumers to adjust their expectations about how much they should pay. And yet, Whole Foods continues to go head to head with other grocers: As a case in point, it just announced plans to open in Northeast Washington, blocks away from a brand-new Giant and not much farther from a high-end Wal-Mart. For a while now, Whole Foods has been trying to strategically lower prices to match surrounding competitors -- "price investments," in industry jargon -- that lower profits in certain stores. It's also opening new stores in low-income parts of Detroit and New Orleans, with fewer staff, more frozen and packaged food, and a new message: This stuff doesn't have to cost quite as much. Profit margins continued to do well for a while, as the company found ways to economize by reducing "shrinkage," or spoiled food. But the strategy is finally taking a toll on sales growth, which slowed over the past quarter, even as the company added stores at a quick clip. On the company's earnings call Wednesday, analysts wanted to know why lower prices hadn't led to more sales, as they're supposed to; executives chalked it up to a challenging macroeconomic environment and cannibalization from new Whole Foods outlets that have opened close to each other. Long term, Whole Foods thinks it can bend the cost curve through growth. Thus far, it's managed to have a nationwide footprint with only 367 stores by sourcing locally, rather than having the massive centralized distribution centers that feed regional supermarkets such as Kroger and Fred Meyer. It aims to get to 1,000 stores, and adding more in certain markets -- like it's doing in the District and Boston -- would allow it to achieve the same efficiencies as its competitors on nonperishable stuff. And competition is only growing. Natural and gourmet foods retailers Sprouts and Fairway went public this year, giving them the capital to go national. Even Wegmans is experimenting with smaller, urban-format stores. At this point, the fact that Whole Foods has gotten away with sky-high margins for so long may be working in its favor. If it has to make less money to retain customers, well, it's only a recognition that it's in the same business as everybody else.


Shutdown cost $2 billion in lost federal employee productivity, White House says

National Park Service personnel remove the barricades from the World war II Memorial as the government reopens. (Astrid Riecken/The Washington Post). October’s 16-day partial shutdown of the federal government cost taxpayers about $2 billion in lost productivity from 850,000 furloughed employees, the White House budget office said Thursday in a report aimed at showing the economic toll of the gridlock in Congress. Three weeks after the government reopened, “We believe it was important to have in one place the articulated impact of the shutdown,” Sylvia Mathews Burwell, head of the Office of Management and Budget, said in a conference call with reporters. She described a cascade of “negative ramifications on a number of fronts” from closing the government Oct.1, from $500 million in lost local spending by visitors to closed national parks to $1.9 billion in delayed deliveries of 156 aircraft when the Federal Aviation Administration could not register them. The Obama administration has said the shutdown and uncertainty over raising the government’s borrowing cap will curb fourth-quarter economic growth by 0.3 to 0.6 percentage points. The budget office estimated in 1996 that the two shutdowns in late 1995 and early 1996, which lasted 26 days total, cost the government $1.4 billion, or roughly $2.1 billion in today’s dollars. The analysis released Thursday was requested by Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.), who called the report “proof-positive that shutdown, slamdown politics is the wrong way to govern our country.” “This manufactured crisis damaged the economy, cost us jobs and hurt middle class families,” Mikulski, chairwoman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said in a statement. “We now have the facts to prove it.” Republicans, however, said the White House was using the dire claims of the shutdown’s cost to deflect the public’s attention from the issue that forced the showdown between the GOP and Democrats on Capitol Hill. “We would have preferred to avoid the shutdown and any economic impact,” said Brendan Buck, spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner. “But this report is little more than a transparent attempt to change the subject from the epic and growing failures of Obamacare.”


Shutdown furloughs will warp jobs report and economic picture

The monthly jobs reports from the Bureau of Labor Statistics normally serve as a gauge of U.S. economic health, but the 16-day government shutdown last month will skew that picture when October’s numbers are released Friday. The shutdown forced hundreds of thousands of federal employees and contractors out of work while Congress and the White House worked on a deal to fund federal operations, which means temporary impacts that could create a mirage of worsening conditions. Regardless of where the numbers stand on Friday, they won’t provide an accurate picture of the economy, since at least part of the data will be distorted by workers who had to stay home during the shutdown but soon returned to their jobs. Economists will have to wait for December or January — when jobs reports for the post-shutdown months are released — to see a true gauge of U.S. economic strength. (Saul Loeb/AFP-Getty) – A jobs sign on the U.S. Chamber of Commerce building in D.C. With the jobs data being warped by shutdown furloughs for the next month or two, the Federal Reserve may not have all the information it needs to determine whether its safe to pull back on its economic-stimulus efforts, which involve buying $85 billion worth of bonds every month in hopes of lowering interest rates and encouraging activity. How exactly will furloughs affect the jobs numbers? That depends on which aspect of the report we’re talking about, since the figures come from two separate surveys. MORE: How will shutdown furloughs affect the October jobs numbers? In brief, the unemployment data will reflect federal-worker furloughs, while the employment numbers will not. Here’s how that works: The unemployment figures come from a survey of households that counts individuals as unemployed if they were furloughed during the reference week, which is Oct. 6-12 in this case. Federal employees employees are due to receive retroactive compensation for the shutdown period, but they will still be counted as jobless. Employment numbers are different. They come from the employer survey, which classifies individuals as employed if they are paid or will eventually be compensated for any pay period that includes Oct. 12. Outside of the BLS, a few other sources of reliable economic information can offer clues to the strength of the economy. One is the Federal Reserve Board, which said in a statement last week that the labor market has improved, but that


Uninsured Americans are ignoring HealthCare.gov — for now

Only about one in five uninsured adults has attempted to log on to the embattled HealthCare.gov Web site, according to a new poll from Gallup. The poll shows 18 percent say they have logged on or tried to log on in order to review their options. Among the 67 percent of uninsured people who say they plan to obtain insurance through an exchange -- a quarter of uninsured people say they will simply pay the penalty and others aren't sure what they'll do -- about the same number say they have actually tried to access HealthCare.gov: 22 percent. The numbers could be taken as either a plus or a minus for an administration that is still trying to fix the Web site. On the plus side, the vast majority of those who plan to obtain insurance through the exchanges haven't been subject to the myriad problems on the Web site. On the minus side, it suggests traffic on the Web site is set to increase -- traffic that could further test the Web site's readiness -- as the deadline for obtaining insurance nears. Americans must obtain insurance by March 31 in order to avoid paying a penalty under the individual mandate. But there is also expected to be a rush of people trying to obtain insurance before New Year's Day, due to their old plans expiring. Other polling has shown Americans know little about the exchanges and that what they do know is that the exchanges are not working well, which could discourage people from trying to use them Just 12 percent Americans in an October CBS News poll said, from what they had heard, the insurance exchanges were working well; 49 percent said they were not working well and 38 percent said they didn't know enough. An NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll around the same time showed 59 percent said they had heard "a lot" about problems people have had using the federal health exchange Web site. A majority of uninsured Americans in an October Kaiser Family Foundation poll said they don’t have enough information to understand how the law will impact their own family (55 percent). That was down from 67 percent in September, but represents a knowledge deficit they will need to overcome to get covered. A growing number of uninsured Americans say they have seen ads providing information on how to get insurance coverage, but this


Out of excuses, time for an agenda

It is amusing to see the right wing try to spin the loss by their tea party darling Ken Cuccinelli ll in the Virginia governor’s race. Unfortunately, the loser is not cooperating with the finger-pointing: Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), second from left, had interesting things to say about immigration reform.<br />(Bill O’Leary/The Washington Post) Chris LaCivita, Ken Cuccinelli’s chief political strategist during the recently ended gubernatorial campaign, says the federal-government shutdown crippled the Virginia Republican’s campaign more than any other factor. “It moved the disaster of Obamacare away from our narrative,” he says, in an interview with National Review Online. “It sucked the oxygen out of the room. Instead of talking about Obamacare, we were talking about the shutdown.” In mid-October, LaCivita says, the campaign was startled by how the shutdown affected their momentum. Their internal poll numbers dipped and several of the Virginia attorney general’s donors, especially conservative groups aligned with Cuccinelli, “suddenly became gun-shy.” “It was this perfect storm of events that hurt us,” LaCivita says. “We had been preparing to use the October 1 start of Obamacare as the center of our strategy, and then it was just taken off the table. Once the shutdown ended, we worked hard to maximize what we could.” Oops. Oh well, what does he know — he was just running the campaign, right? Well, maybe next time the Virginia GOP will run a primary-tested gubernatorial candidate who doesn’t scare off a chunk of the electorate and doesn’t have to battle for air time with a national right-wing escapade. Hey, that might work. There will be endless arguments over who did the most damage, but it might behoove the Republicans to move on. They know what drove their poll numbers into the basement and angered the country: the shutdown. They know what is driving Democrats to distraction and the president’s poll numbers into George W. Bush territory: Obamacare. They no doubt have figured out that an unflinching focus on the harm being done by Obamacare inures to their benefit and puts the Dems on defense for as long as the problems persist. Being in the minority in the Senate and out of the White House, the GOP naturally has a problem with clarity and priorities. Without the bully pulpit and the singular focus an executive can bring, they are unsurprisingly all over the map. There is Obamacare opposition. There is the dangerous


Can the fed worker giving program make a post-shutdown comeback?

Hundreds of federal workers on Thursday attended a kickoff event for the Combined Federal Campaign at the National Institutes of Health, providing a boost for a charitable giving program that has suffered declining contributions in recent years. The government shutdown put a temporary damper on the campaign, which allows federal workers to donate money to their favorite charities. The 16-day closure kept civil servants from receiving pay and forced many agencies to cancel fundraising events. (Courtesy of Combined Federal Contribution) Now those employees are receiving back pay, and some of their agencies are rescheduling their CFC events. More than 400 people and 30 charities attended the event on Thursday at the National Institutes of Health, according to agency spokeswoman Shuly Babitz. The CFC, created by President John F. Kennedy in 1961, normally begins Sept. 1 and lasts through Dec. 15. The Office of Personnel Management extended the deadline to Jan. 15 for this cycle as a result of the shutdown. The program has brought in more than $7 billion to charities during its history, making it one of the world’s largest workplace giving programs. Contributions toward the CFC have declined OPM proposed new guidelines for the program in April based on recommendations from a special commission. The proposals could affect a wide range of CFC policies, including from how the government admits charities to when and how federal employees can make contributions. Some of the recommendations are controversial. During a July hearing to discuss improving the numbers, leaders of several charitable organizations said the OPM proposals would further reduce giving. Follow Josh Hicks on Twitter, Facebook or Google+. Connect by e-mail at josh.hicks@washpost.com. Visit The Federal Eye, The Fed Page and Post Politics for more federal news.


Brewing a revolution

Nearly a century ago, Prohibition dried up the local brewing scene, and by the time suds were legal again, the beer landscape was mainly dominated by national brands and imports. (Hi, Miller and Coors!) But the same locovore movement that’s driving restaurants and farmers markets is now extending to beer-making: The District now boasts six breweries and neighboring states have dozens more. In fact, DC Brau, first of the new hoppy powers in 2009, recently reported an increase in production of 195 percent from 2011 to 2012. “There’s an explosion of interest in craft beer,” says Jeremy Meyers, co-owner of Manassas, Va.’s just-more-than-a-year-old BadWolf Brewing Company. “It started out on the West Coast and it’s finally moving east.” The latest opening, Navy Yard’s much-hyped Blue Jacket, means the capital’s intoxication with beer isn’t slowing down soon. The best way to enjoy the new beers? Head to one of these new and notable local breweries where you can enjoy a pint and see what the buzz is all about, either by touring the facilities, sampling the suds or both. Atlas Brew Works BadWolf Brewing Company Bluejacket Brewery/The Arsenal


The unemployment rate for recent veterans is incredibly high

in no particular order: 1) Similarly, a 2011 Pew survey found that 44 percent of veterans who served since 9/11 were having trouble adjusting to civilian life. That was particularly true for those who suffered serious injury or endured an emotionally traumatic experience during their service. 2) It's worth observing that veterans who served in the Reserve or the National Guard had a lower unemployment rate (around 7.2 percent) than those in the rest of the armed forces — possibly because they have more opportunities to pick up civilian work experience. 3) George Frey/GETTY IMAGES - Margarita Angelo of Zions Bank talks to veteran Robert Ryan, who is looking for a job at the "Hiring Our Heroes" job fair on November 4, 2011 at the South Towne Expo Center in Sandy, Utah. But even with all those programs, there are still hurdles. One example: A report (pdf) from the White House earlier this year noted that many states and localities have complex licensing requirements that can hinder military veterans from easily applying their skills to civilian jobs. So, for instance, the 10,000 military health-care workers or 10,000 military truck drivers who left the armed services last year often have to pass new tests and go through a fresh set of licensing hurdles in order to get a job as a civilian EMT or truck driver — even if they already have the required skills. The good news, the report said, is that many states have recently begun enacting laws to remove these obstacles. For instance, 34 states have now adopted rules to waive "behind the wheel" tests for, say, veterans who were driving trucks in the armed services. But these sorts of exemptions tend to be patchwork, and they're still far from universal. "Despite having valuable military experience, veterans frequently find it difficult to obtain formal private sector recognition of their military training, experiences, and skill sets through civilian certification and licensure," the report said. "This also makes it difficult for the private sector to capitalize on the resources and time spent training and educating service members." The report argues that these problems need to be addressed soon, since the number of veterans is expected to rise sharply in the coming years: "Each year the military separates between 240,000 and 360,000 service members, and as we draw down from the war in Afghanistan, the military is expected to separate a


The government needs to get serious about recruiting tech talent. Here’s how.

can go as high as $200,000. Almost two-thirds of students graduate with education debt, with the average amount being nearly $30,000 for private universities. With the compensation imbalance between the private and public sector, our government will never be able to recruit the number of developers needed to support a 21st century digital government based on salaries alone. A more creative approach is needed. Three years ago, the Office of Management and Budget’s 25-point plan to reform government IT recommended addressing weaknesses within the existing technology career track and building a pipeline of excellent technology talent. The Presidential Innovation Fellows program is an excellent first step at bringing more agile digital methodologies into government. But a team of fellows parachuting temporarily into government agencies will not fix our problem. We need a permanent, sustained influx of developers into the government. Let’s sell the noble aspects of public service, while also making it a logically attractive career choice. Take the military, for example. When a young man or woman enters the United States Military, Naval, Air Force or Coast Guard academy, he or she does so with full knowledge that there is a requirement to serve five years on active duty and three years in the reserve. In exchange for this commitment, they will receive a tuition-free, world-class education. Similarly, the ROTC provides university scholarships at colleges with an equivalent service commitment. Why can't the federal government apply this same model to software developers and engineers? A college education in return for a guaranteed job sounds like a terrific deal for a graduate (and his or her parents). The cost of university tuition grows at four times the rate of the consumer price index, pushing it further out of reach for middle-class families. Let’s acknowledge that much of our government’s ability to provide quality public service rests on the shoulders of technology talent. Let’s demonstrate an employee value proposition equal to, or greater than, what entices developers to work in Silicon Valley. Our investment in educating the next generation of civil servants will pay dividends that are orders of magnitude greater than the cost outlay. Tom Cochran is chief technology officer at Atlantic Media, publisher of the Atlantic, Quartz, National Journal and Government Executive. Prior to that, he was at the White House as director of New Media Technologies. You can follow him on Twitter or connect with him on LinkedIn.