How NASA might discover whether alien life lies beneath icy Europa

lobbied for more than 15 years for this mission, as Wired reported. “This budget basically fills in the missing piece that will enable this mission to go forward.” This image, released Tuesday, Nov. 12, 1996, by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., shows two views of Jupiter’s ice-covered moon, Europa. (NASA/AP) Discovered four centuries ago by Galileo, Europa is one of Jupiter’s many moons. It’s about 485 million miles from the sun and about the size of our own moon. Europa is covered in an icy shell. Beneath that shell, scientists believe there is subsurface ocean larger than any on Earth. This composite of three images of the Minos Linea region on Jupiter’s moon Europa was taken by cameras aboard NASA’s Galileo Spacecraft and released October 18. (Handout via Reuters) Jupiter and Europa, center, in 1979. (AP Photo/Jet Propulsion Laboratory, NASA) “Jupiter is so strong that it provides enough friction energy to keep water liquid — even as the water on the surface hits incredibly low temperatures and freezes,” The Washington Post’s Rachel Feltman wrote. “It’s possible that a salty ocean is able to interact with the rock of the sea floor, which could provide the kind of chemical energy that begets life.” Europa as viewed from NASA’s Galileo spacecraft. Visible are plains of bright ice, cracks that run to the horizon and dark patches that likely contain both ice and dirt. (NASA) Scientists have dreamed of a mission to Europa for a long time, but sending a robotic probe would require one that could withstand Jupiter’s harsh radiation. “What we’ve been looking at is a multiple flyby mission,” Bob Pappalardo, the mission’s project scientist, told Wired. This image, released Nov. 12, 1996, by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., shows Jupiter’s ice-covered moon, Europa. (AP Photo/Jet Propulsion Lab) If the budget is approved by Congress, the mission could launch by the mid-2020s, Wired reported, and wouldn’t get to the moon until 2030. “If we were to discover some kind of microbe on Mars, or something alive in the oceans of Europa, it would change the world,” scientist Bill Nye told The Post. “It would change human history. Everyone in the world would feel differently about what it meant to be alive.” NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory astrobiologist Kevin Hand explains the significance of evidence suggesting a saltwater ocean exists beneath the surface of one of Jupiter's moons, Europa.


READ IN: Big Hitter, The Lama Edition

and Carly Fiorina. (National Journal) Update on our survey of candidates' past drug use: Walker says he never smoked marijuana. "The wildest thing I did in college was have a beer." (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel) -- Arkansas: The state House passed a measure Thursday ending Medicaid expansion through a private option by the end of 2016. The measure would create a task force that would recommend a replacement for the private option, a compromise carved out by then-Gov. Mike Beebe (D) and legislative Republicans in 2013. Gov. Asa Hutchinson (R) asked legislators to keep the program around through next year to buy time to find a replacement. (Arkansas Democrat-Gazette) -- Nevada: This week in crazy legislatures: Las Vegas police are investigating a Nevada political consultant for an alleged attempted extortion plot against Assemblyman Chris Edwards. Detectives searched consultant Tony Dane's home in Front Royal, Va., as part of an extortion investigation after Edwards was approached about changing his vote for Assembly speaker in December. Edwards reported the extortion attempt to police. Detectives have also interviewed at least three others in connection with the case. (Las Vegas Review-Journal) -- California: Former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa (D) is close to settling on a team to run his race for retiring Sen. Barbara Boxer's (D) seat, and signs suggest he's going to declare his candidacy within two weeks, one of his close friends says. Former Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez (D) said Villaraigosa's enthusiasm for the race has grown in the four weeks since Boxer quit. (Los Angeles Times) He better get a move on. Attorney General Kamala Harris (D) has a pretty big head start. -- Michigan: Gov. Rick Snyder (R) was admitted to St. Joseph's Mercy Hospital in Ann Arbor on Thursday with a blood clot in his leg, the result of a recent Achilles injury. Physicians told Snyder to limit his travel, but he still plans to give a budget address in Lansing on Feb. 1. Snyder tore his right Achilles while jogging last month. (MLive) -- Indiana: A state representative has proposed allowing the dead to vote. Well, kind of: Rep. Matt Pierce's measure would allow an absentee vote to count if someone dies before Election Day. The state Election Division said that might violate a constitutional requirement that a voter live in a precinct for 30 days before an election. (Indianapolis Star) Sooo many morbid jokes to make. Like:


Rick Perry’s claim that he boosted the Texas vaccination rate by nearly 50 percent

Former Texas governor Rick Perry talks with PostTV about his 2016 strategy, the ongoing controversy over vaccinations, and what he thinks the U.S. needs to do in the fight against the Islamic State. “Our vaccination rate in Texas [in 2000] was 65 percent. When I left two weeks ago, it was 95 percent.” — Former Texas governor Rick Perry (R), in an interview with The Washington Post and the Texas Tribune, Feb. 5, 2015 This was an impressive boast made by the former governor and 2016 presidential aspirant — that during his term as governor from 2000 to 2015, he managed to boost the vaccination rate by nearly 50 percent. Our antennae went up. Is this even remotely possible? The Facts A quick search on the Web site of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which lists annual vaccination rates for every state, found little basis for Perry’s assertion. So we asked Perry spokesman Travis Considine for the evidence. He quickly provided two documents. One was a 2008 news release from the Texas Health Department, stating the immunization rate for children under age 3 was 65 percent in 2002 and had climbed to 77.3 percent in 2007. The other was 2014 CDC news release showing the vaccination rate for kindergartners in Texas was over 97 percent. In other words, he was selling apples and oranges. There’s a huge difference between counting the rate for those under 36 months and counting the rate for children going into kindergarten. This was quickly discovered by digging into the CDC document and finding the data for Texas children between the ages of 19 and 35 months. “You are absolutely right about that,” said Anna C. Dragsbaek, president of The Immunization Partnership, a Texas-based nonprofit that aims to eradicate vaccine-preventable diseases. “Kindergarten immunization rates are not what the CDC or what public health experts look at. It’s the younger kids who really need the shots.” The comparisons are slightly complicated by the fact that since 2000, the recommended menu of shots has increased. The gold standard in 2000 was “4:3:1:3:3,” which means 4+ doses of pertussis-containing vaccine; 3+ doses of polio vaccine; 1+ dose(s) measles-containing vaccine; 3+ doses of Hib vaccine and 3+ doses of hepatitis B vaccine. But in 2013 (the most recent year with data), the recommended schedule is “4:3:1:4:3:1:4.” That translates to 4+ doses of pertussis-containing vaccine; 3+ doses of polio


The Pentagon’s electromagnetic ‘rail gun’ makes its public debut

The railgun, a futuristic electromagnetic weapon that can fire a projectile at seven times the speed of sound, made its public debut at the the U.S. Navy's Science and Technology Expo. First it mounted a laser aboard a ship in the Persian Gulf. Now the Navy has publicly unveiled another futuristic weapon: the electromagnetic “rail gun.” In development for years, the weapon would be able to fire a projectile at Mach 7, or seven times the speed of sound, hitting targets 110 miles away. (By comparison, a Hellfire missile travels a little over Mach 1.) Instead of gunpowder as a propellant, it uses electromagnetic pulses, and the projectiles hit with such overwhelming force that they don’t need to be armed with explosives. The impact from traveling at such amazing speeds is enough, thank you very much. Lasers sizzle rather than go boom, as some have said. The rail gun definitely has one heck of a boom. The gun made its debut at the Navy’s Future Force Science and Technology Expo at the Washington Convention Center this week. One top Navy official recently likened the impact to “a freight train going through the wall at a hundred miles an hour.” The lack of gunpowder and explosive warheads eliminates some significant safety hazards for Navy crews, officials say. By the way, here’s video of that laser: The Navy is unveiling a laser weapons capability that can be used aboard ships at sea. [RELATED: With photos and video, Navy shows how its new laser gun works at sea]


ChurchKey will tap a keg of Hopslam at 4 p.m. Monday.

Keep an eye out for the green Hopslam tap at local beer bars. (Courtesy of Bell's Brewing) Fans of hoppy IPAs have more choices than ever these days: There's the outstanding On the Wings of Armageddon from locals DC Brau; Troeg's juicy Nugget Nectar, which just made its debut in Washington this week; and the latest edition of Stone's Enjoy By IPA, with its delicious blend of 11 hop varieties. But there's one IPA that everyone is on the lookout for: Hopslam, the potent, heavily hopped limited-release double IPA from Bell's. The mix of Simcoe hops and Michigan honey has made the rare brew a cult favorite, leading to a rush on any liquor store that receives a few cases every January or February. It's been known to sell for more than $20 per six-pack, and can go for much more, depending on the scrupulousness of the shop owner. It's basically the Pappy Van Winkle of the beer world. For a few weeks now, readers have been writing and tweeting to ask when D.C.'s annual allocation will arrive at bars. We finally have an answer: ChurchKey will tap its first keg at 4 p.m. Monday. (The price is TBD, as the bar has yet to receive that information.) At some point in the near future, beer director Greg Engert says in an e-mail, "ChurchKey will, for the 6th straight year, tap the one-and-only DC-MD-VA cask of HopSlam as well." We'll update this post as we hear about more bars hosting Hopslam tappings and events. ChurchKey, 1337 14th St. NW. www.churchkeydc.com. Friday Update The "official D.C. release" of Hopslam will also be celebrated Monday at Town Hall in Glover Park. "It's pretty informal," says managing partner Paul Holder. "We'll have a couple of kegs on hand, and people can come by and taste it." Holder says the beer will start flowing in the upstairs bar at 5:30. Town Hall, 2340 Wisconsin Ave. NW. www.townhalldc.com. Monday Update: The Rustico in Ballston has a pretty insane list of IPAs on tap right now, including Troegs Nugget Nectar, Victory Dirtwolf, Stone's Enjoy By: 2.14.15, Avery IPA and Sweetwater Hop Hash. It's going to get better on Tuesday at 5 p.m., when the bar taps its first keg of Hopslam. Rustico, 4075 Wilson Blvd., Arlington. 571-384-1820. www.rusticorestaurant.com. Some beer drinkers, wary of the Hopslam hype, claim that Troegs Nugget Nectar is a superior hoppy brew.


Pondering solutions to global warming in snowy Cambridge

Everyone needs a mission. I hope it doesn’t come off as immodest when I say that my professional mission in life is to save the world from superstition, madness and despair. It’s a heavy burden. There are times when, overcome with a sense of humility, I tell myself, “Although you are clearly the best person for this job, possibly you need help, the way Batman needed Robin.” But did Batman really need Robin? And aren’t “sidekicks” culturally obsolescent? Does anyone even use the word “sidekick” anymore? Do YOU have a sidekick? I didn’t think so. That job got outsourced to your 500 Facebook friends. If Samuel Johnson were alive today he wouldn’t have a Boswell, he’d just have lots of Twitter followers. I’m not complaining, just observing — impartially and oracularly. Anyway, all this is just throat-clearing to get to a programming note: I’ve been on the road a lot, and am currently in snowy Cambridge, Mass., where the snowbanks come up to your chest and the little hole in the bottom of my left shoe is not making me happy. I visited a cobbler and he said it would cost $150 to fix. But these are $60 shoes. I’m stymied. And supposedly amid this shoe crisis I’m supposed to find time to file stories? When not kvetching, I’ve been doing lots of interviews about the Future. I’m tapping into the expertise and wisdom of the engineers of our increasingly designed, managed, reconfigured world. There are multiple overlapping revolutions, cascading “ologies.” One of the first things I’m going to file will deal with the idea of geoengineering. I’m learning new terms, such as solar radiation management (SRM). Also known as albedo modification. It means turning the blue sky white. It’s in case carbon dioxide mitigation doesn’t work; you turn down the dimmer switch. Let me note that some of the ideas you hear around here are not, on their face, good ideas. That’s my job, to tweeze the good from the bad. So I gotta go back to work on that.


CIA job interview leads to criminal investigation of Green Beret

Lt. Gen. John F. Mulholland, Jr., right, awards the Silver Star to Capt. Mathew L. Golsteyn in January 2011. (The Fayetteville Observer/James Robinson) A Green Beret officer who was stripped of a prestigious valor award and dropped from the Special Forces fell out of favor with Army officials after the CIA shared information it gathered about him while he was going through screening for a potential job, according to officials familiar with the case. Maj. Mathew L. Golsteyn was investigated by the Army Criminal Investigation Command for an undisclosed violation of the U.S. military’s rules of engagement in 2010 that resulted in the death of a known enemy fighter and bombmaker in Helmand province, Afghanistan, according to the officials. The Army closed a lengthy investigation last summer without charging Golsteyn with any crime, but Army Secretary John McHugh revoked a Silver Star that Golsteyn had been awarded for heroism on Feb. 20, 2010, during the iconic Battle of Marja. The Army also took away Golsteyn’s Special Forces tab, a qualification that goes to any soldier who completes Special Forces training, and reassigned him to the conventional Army as an infantry officer, several officials said. He is in the process of determining his future with the Army, said his lawyer, Phil Stackhouse. [READ: Army revokes Silver Star for Green Beret officer, citing investigation] It’s an uncommon fall for a commander who led a 3rd Special Forces Group team in combat. Golsteyn received the Silver Star in 2011 for braving enemy fire numerous times as a captain on a day in which his team came under attack while hunting an enemy sniper team that had opened fire on their patrol base, according to an Army summary of action. Army officials later approved an upgrade to the Distinguished Service Cross — considered one level down from the Medal of Honor in honoring combat heroism — but ultimately decided Golsteyn deserved neither. Neither the Army nor Stackhouse have been willing to elaborate on the allegations he faced, and Golsteyn declined to be interviewed through his lawyer. But three sources with knowledge of the investigation told The Washington Post that the Army began probing Golsteyn’s actions after he interviewed for a job with the CIA. Todd Ebitz, a spokesman for the agency, declined to comment. Capt. Mathew L. Golsteyn is congratulated by fellow soldiers following the Valor Awards Ceremony for 3rd Special Forces Group at


D.C. area forecast: Increasingly warmer this weekend, then back to winter next week

TODAY’S DAILY DIGIT 7/10: EXPRESS FORECAST Today: FORECAST IN DETAIL Satellite loop shows movement of clouds over past two hours. Refresh page to update. A break in the continually wintry temperature regime we’ve seen in recent times is here. It may not be too long lived, but it’s well timed for the weekend. We might even dance with 60 tomorrow. Just don’t get used to it, the still active pattern helps send another storm system by on Monday and it’s set to drag a new round of wintry air in for much of the work week. Today (Saturday): Tonight: For related traffic news, check out Dr. Gridlock. Keep reading for the forecast through the weekend… Tomorrow (Sunday): Tomorrow night: The moon rises behind the Capitol on Friday. (Kevin Wolf via Flickr) A LOOK AHEAD Monday All good things must come to an end, and on Tuesday we’re reminded it’s still winter. Northerly winds are likely to gust as the storm system pulls away to the northeast. Small chance it still ends as light snow into early morning. Despite a good deal of sun, temperatures struggle to get past the upper 30s and lower 40s. Colder than normal at this point in the year, but not too bad, and easier to deal with than what might be coming late week. Confidence: Medium SNOW POTENTIAL INDEX 1/10 (→):


Germany is battling a measles outbreak that is 10 times worse than the one in the U.S.

too low," Anette Siedler, the director of Germany's renowned Robert Koch Institute, was quoted as saying by German media. But according to the World Health Organization, Germany already has one of the world's highest immunization rates among 1-year-olds with 97 percent -- compared to the United States with 91 percent. So where do all the new cases come from? German experts say that one third of all vaccinated German children either lack a sufficient immunization (which usually requires a second dose), or are vaccinated too late. How could the recent outbreak spread so quickly? In fact, most of those who caught the virus were adults -- whereas official statistics only take into account children. Similar patterns have been observed in California, where the majority of those who caught the virus were adults as well. Particularly those born between 1970 and 1990 might have missed vaccination doses, due to a lack of stringent recommendations by public health officials at that time. What is worrisome is that the course of the disease is particularly serious for adults, although children are usually more likely to get infected. The reasons for the lack of vaccinations in Germany are similar to the ones that are often mentioned in the United States: In both countries, measles seemed to have been "eliminated," and subsequently people started to "relax" about immunization. Contrary to developing countries, where the terrifying repercussions of measles outbreaks are still too visible to ignore, many in the United States or Germany have never been confronted with the disease. This makes them more susceptible for the ongoing debates about the safety of vaccinations that have prevented some parents from becoming vaccinated or ensuring that their children receive the necessary doses. What is different in Germany is that the cases have so far been limited to Berlin and Brandenburg, which is the state that surrounds Germany's capital. Why the 1990s Yugoslav civil war might be to blame Journalists survey the damage at the destroyed hospital building in Belgrade Thursday, May 20, 1999. (AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda) Local authorities in Germany first noticed a surge in infections last October among asylum seekers from Serbia as well as Bosnia and Herzegovina. One potential reason for the increase in cases could be the fact that the Yugoslav civil war in the 1990s interrupted vaccination programs in the areas from where the refugees have now fled. Overall, nearly all of those


How big food brands are boosting profits by targeting the poor

Sometimes there's only the illusion of cheapness at dollar stores. (Tony Gutierrez/AP Photo) Just because something is cheap doesn't mean it's a good deal. Several of America's largest food manufacturers have been shifting their retail strategy, selling less of their packaged foods in traditional grocery stores and more of those foods in dollar and discount stores, according to a recent Reuters story. Kraft, which sells Velveeta sauce, has turned its attention to the cheaper retailers. So too have General Mills and Campbell's Soup. "We're in the business of feeding all American families, and that's where consumers are going," Tom Lopez, vice president of growth channels at Kraft, told Reuters on Thursday. That's mostly true. Packaged food sales have been lagging at supermarkets—sales of packaged food were flat last year, largely because of a trend in which Americans are opting for fresher alternatives at the grocery store. Dollar stores have been the rare exception—food sales at discount stores have greatly outpaced their higher priced counterparts, prompting chains like Dollar General to add more room for food products. General Mills' sales at discount stores rose by nearly 10 percent last year. But there's a reason why large food companies are selling more of their packaged foods to America's poor: they have figured out a way to do it at a much higher profit margin. In order to offer the facade of affordability, manufacturers like Kraft are selling food in smaller packages. These granola bars, sauces, cereals, and prepared meals look like they cost less, but actually are far more expensive on a per ounce basis, according to Reuters. Shrinking package sizes allows Kraft to reach higher profit margins on products, though it won't sell as many as it would in a larger store. For instance, a 12-ounce package of Velveeta Shells & Cheese cost $2.50 at the a Dollar Tree store in New York City. Meanwhile, a 2.4 ounce cup cost $1.25. That's 21 cents an ounce versus 52 cents an ounce. There are caveats, of course. Charging less per ounce for bulkier packages is nothing new: entire business models—say, Costco's—are predicated on that strategy. Packaging is often a significant contributor to price, making it difficult if not impossible to change size and price on a similar scale. Bulk sellers make up for smaller profit margins by selling more product. So long as the people you're selling to are actively deciding whether


Review: Montrose Trio makes rewarding area debut

The Montrose Trio, a new ensemble of experienced musicians that includes two members of the now-defunct Tokyo Quartet, made an impressive debut at the Wolf Trap Barns on Friday night: “absolutely top-notch music making,” writes Robert Battey. Left to right: Jon Kimura Parker, Clive Greensmith, and Martin Beaver. (Photo: Jerry Zolynksy) Below: Robert Battey’s review of a promising debut by three established and first-rate performers. By Robert Battey Forming and maintaining any chamber music group is fraught with difficulties. As Bernard Greenhouse, cellist of the iconic Beaux Arts Trio, once said of his group, “We have all of the disadvantages of a marriage with none of the advantages.” Piano trios come and go at a higher rate than other groups, partly because — unlike a string quartet — good musicians can throw a program together competently on two or three rehearsals. So my enthusiasm for the Montrose Trio, an exceptionally fine newcomer on the scene who made their area debut last Friday at the Barns at Wolf Trap, is tempered with wariness; what if they love us and leave us? Canadian violinist Martin Beaver and British cellist Clive Greensmith played together for eleven years in the world-famous Tokyo Quartet, which disbanded in 2013. Both now teach at the Colburn Conservatory in Los Angeles, and they have teamed up with the Canadian pianist Jon Kimura Parker (based in Houston), who’s had a distinguished career as soloist and chamber musician. Their performance delivered absolutely top-notch music-making, as fine as one could ever expect to hear. In works of Beethoven, Turina, and Tchaikovsky, the group made a forceful statement, with loads of personality and nearly perfect technical finish. Parker is a virtuoso, but he completely understands the balance problems inherent in the medium, and never once did his sound cover the strings, even with the lid of the piano fully raised. There were times in the Beethoven (Op. 1 No. 1) when the line was perhaps even a little too dry – the piano not singing the way it once did for the Beaux Arts’ Menahem Pressler – but the musical clarity and detail made up for it. In the third variation from the Tchaikovsky Trio, his virtuosity was thrilling; he not only mastered the careening arpeggios, but “played” with them, creating imaginative little musical gestures. The two string players displayed similar mastery, and operated on the highest possible musical level; gorgeous sound


How one city that’s vulnerable to climate change is fighting back

are being populated with pockets of soil, grass and other kinds of lawn vegetation. While a sudden downpour can easily overwhelm sewers, computer simulations showed that dirt and ground plants are able to filter pollutants and absorb significant amounts of water to minimize the runoff and assist in the sanitation process. A view of the new sloping walkways and seats being built in St Kjeld, top, and a rendering of how they will look. (Tredjenatur.dk) Along the main square, sidewalks and other pedestrian spaces will be raised to form slopes and winding walkways as a way of diverting rainwater onto the streets and toward the harbor. Roadways will also run lower while entrances to basements are positioned higher to prevent water from seeping into homes and buildings. The trick, Thomsen says, is to integrate all these safeguards in a manner that’s so aesthetically pleasing, nobody would notice their primary function. A rendering of the giant artificial cloud that will be built in St. Kjeld. (Tredjenatur.dk) During periods of sweltering heat, residents and visitors can find some relief underneath a large “artificial cloud” ring that gently sprays a continuous cooling mist throughout the day. A planning blueprint for the Klimakvarteret project in Copenhagen. (Tredjenatur.dk) Looking ahead, city officials and planners have mapped out the areas of St. Kjeld where similar landscaping techniques can be applied to form a cohesive self-sustaining system. The project is slated for completion by 2017 with total costs estimated to be in the ballpark of $7 million. A proposal would integrate plants into building infrastructure. (Tredjenatur.dk) Thomsen says his firm has proposed to apply the principle of “greening” urban spaces to adjoining buildings as well. Besides possibly having a pivotal role in neutralizing climate-induced threats, the approach comes with other notable benefits, such as cleaner, more breathable air and lower levels of stress. A reimagined Enghaveparken in Copenhagen is a normal park, left, that doubles as an emergency reservoir, right. (Tredjenatur.dk) Another project Thomsen’s group has in the works is the redevelopment of Enghaveparken, a park located a little bit south of St. Kjeld. The plan, he says, is to erect barriers that double as seats around the central recreation area. In the rare instance where a monster storm passes through, the park would function as a temporary reservoir, collecting as much as eight million gallons that would later drain out safely at a more gradual rate.


Does the Obama administration really understand how economic sanctions work?

Targeted economic sanctions remain an effective tool for imposing costs on those irresponsible actors whose military aggression, illicit proliferation, or unprovoked violence threaten both international rules and norms and the peace they were designed to preserve. We will pursue multilateral sanctions, including through the U.N., whenever possible, but will act alone, if necessary. Our sanctions will continue to be carefully designed and tailored to achieve clear aims while minimizing any unintended consequences for other economic actors, the global economy, and civilian populations. In many cases, our use of targeted sanctions and other coercive measures are meant not only to uphold international norms, but to deter severe threats to stability and order at the regional level. We are not allowing the transgressors to define our regional strategies on the basis of the immediate threats they present. Rather, we are advancing a longer-term affirmative agenda in each of the regions, which prioritizes reinvigorating alliances with long-standing friends, making investments in new partnerships with emerging democratic powers with whom our interests are increasingly aligned, and continuing to support the development of capable, inclusive regional institutions to help enforce common international rules. There’s a lot to unpack there, but make no mistake, the 2015 NSS is giving pride of place to sanctions in a way that I’ve never seen before in a U.S. national security strategy. This is consistent with his clear and present aversion to using military force in places where he doesn’t think the cost-benefit analysis justifies it. The question, however, is whether the 2015 NSS is right about what sanctions can do. And the answer here is decidedly mixed. Are targeted sanctions “an effective tool for imposing costs” on actors resisting U.S. foreign policy preferences? Sure. They clearly brought Iran to the negotiating table and have pushed Russia’s already tottering economy toward further contraction. One can also argue that the administration has embraced the idea that official sanctions have the added benefit of scaring away private sector actors from targeted economies. But — and this is important — sanctions really can’t force adversaries into making strategically significant concessions. On their own, the most powerful sanctions in the world will not force Russia out of Ukraine or cause Iran to completely abandon its nuclear program. They can force some concessions, to be sure, but in these cases, the expectations of future conflict will make Russia and Iran dig in their heels. So


NASA gives us an amazing look at the ‘dark’ side of the moon

NASA provided a unique view of the moon from the side that can't be seen from the Earth and explained how the images were captured. Thanks to NASA, we now know what the solar system looks like, centered on a view of the moon's far side. The computer-generated time-lapse gives two views of the lunar cycle from the side of the moon we never see from Earth. Although it doesn't appear to spin from Earth's perspective, the moon does rotate, once about every 27 days. That's also approximately the same amount of time it takes the moon to orbit the Earth, once. The phenomenon is called synchronous rotation. In all, about 59 percent of the moon is visible from Earth over the course of an orbit. We never ever see 41 percent of the moon - the side that many call "dark." But the "dark" side of the moon has always, from its perspective, gotten plenty of light. When Earth sees a waning crescent, the far side is nearing fullness. And it's light in another sense, too: The "dark" side has few of the distinctive dark spots that mark the Earth-facing side of the moon. Those spots are called maria, from the Latin word for sea, because early astronomers mistakenly thought they were lunar seas (they're actually volcanic plains). The smooth and dark maria cover 17 percent of the surface of the moon. Almost all of them are visible from Earth. Humans first got a look at the far side of the moon in 1959, thanks to the Soviet Union's Luna 3 spacecraft. The images were grainy, but still showed a surface very different from what the moon showed Earth: (NASA) NASA now has tens of thousands of images of the moon all the way around, which can be used to make much more detailed projections, like this one: (NASA/GSFC/Arizona State University) The mystery of the "dark" side's lighter surface has long been a difficult question for scientists. Although the going theory has been that the maria were the result of a huge asteroid impact, recent research suggests that the dark surface of the Earth-side moon is the result of ancient magma flooding. MORE READING: The Hubble spotted this smiley face in space Hubble catches a rare three-moon-parade in front of Jupiter Now we have an even better view of Ceres and its mysterious white spot Over nine years after


The Hubble spotted this smiley face in space

In the centre of this image, taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, is the galaxy cluster SDSS J1038+4849 — and it seems to be smiling. (NASA & ESA, acknowledgement to Judy Schmidt) Pictures of space get a lot of smiles around here, but it's pretty rare for one of them to smile back at us. This adorable image -- in which the galaxy cluster SDSS J1038+4849 seems to be smiling at the camera -- comes courtesy of the Hubble Space Telescope. It was spotted by Judy Schmidt, who submitted a version of the image to the Hubble's Hidden Treasures image processing competition, where anyone can sift through the Hubble's massive data pools to highlight hitherto ignored sights from the stars. Our tendency to find faces in inanimate objects is due to a neurological phenomenon called pareidolia. The cause isn't totally clear, but it's probably an evolutionary quirk: Humans are adapted to be really, really good at recognizing human faces as other humans, even when they're new to us or the lighting isn't great. It could be that our brains jump the gun a little and find pseudo facial features where we know there aren't any, leading us to have the unsettling-but-amusing sense that our electric sockets are gaping at us. In this case, the cosmic "face" is actually caused by a neat galactic phenomenon as well: gravitational lensing. Large galaxy clusters sometimes produce such a strong gravitational pull that they warp the time and space around them. This can be a great thing for scientists on Earth, because that warping can act as a natural "lens" and magnify faraway objects behind the clusters, making them more visible to space telescopes. But the magnification also warps the objects. The ring that makes up the "face" is called an Einstein Ring, and it's produced by a very particular view of one such warped galactic cluster. Another line of warping forms a lopsided smile. Inside the ring, two bright galaxies are perfectly positioned as eyes, completing the illusion. Read more: Hubble catches a rare three-moon-parade in front of Jupiter NASA gives us an amazing look at the ‘dark’ side of the moon Infrared images of space allow new views, reveal hidden stars Why did NASA fire rockets at the Northern Lights?


SpaceX forced to scrub launch, next attempt now scheduled for Tuesday evening

Elon Musk announces SpaceX's new seven-seat Dragon V2 spacecraft in May. <br />(Robyn Beck/Agence France-Presse via Getty Images) Elon Musk's SpaceX was forced to scrub a planned launch Sunday evening in which it was to attempt to land the first stage of a rocket onto a platform floating in the Atlantic Ocean. In a tweet, Musk said that an Air Force radar went down, forcing the cancellation, and that the company will try again. The company initially planned to try again Monday evening, but officials pushed the launch to Tuesday at 6:05 p.m. citing potential weather problems. The launch was the company's second attempt to land a rocket booster -- an event that, if successful, could be a significant step toward making space travel far more affordable. Last month, on the first attempt to land on the floating platform, which Musk calls an “autonomous spaceport droneship,” essentially a modified barge that is 300 feet long by 170 feet wide, the rocket crashed and exploded into a spectacular fireball. The delay would give SpaceX an opportunity to fix a first-stage video transmitter, Musk said, which had been having problems leading up to the launch. Although most of the attention has been on the daring attempt to land the rocket, the primary mission is to launch a satellite into space that would monitor space weather. The attempt Monday would occur at 6:07 p.m. if all systems are go. Prob good though. Will give us time to replace 1st stage video transmitter (not needed for launch, but nice to have). Air Force tracking radar went down. Launch postponed to same time tomorrow. This story has been updated


The complicated history of a D.C. block smeared by Rep. Schock’s former adviser

The 1400 block of W Street NW. (Perry Stein/The Washington Post) On this balmy Sunday afternoon, couples walked their dogs, a man assisted an elderly woman carrying her groceries to her apartment, and joggers briskly made their way along the sidewalk of the 1400 block of W Street NW — a narrow one-way street filled with colorful rowhouses and small apartment buildings. This block and its residents had unknowingly made the political equivalent of tabloid headlines last week. This was the block where Republican Rep. Aaron Schock’s former communications director, Benjamin Cole, lived when he wrote racist screeds on social media about his neighbors. Cole, 38, resigned from his post last week after news media outlets unearthed offensive and racist comments he wrote on his personal social media accounts over the past few years condemning his neighbors as “black miscreants” and “zoo animals.” “So apparently the closing of the National Zoo has forced the animals to conduct their mating ritual on my street. #gentrifytoday Pt. 1,” he wrote in an October 2013 Facebook post while the zoo was closed during the federal government shutdown. But, despite Cole’s hashtag pleas in 2013, gentrification had already long taken hold in his neighborhood — and residents whom Cole wrote unthinkable things about are presumably the same people who beat the odds and held on to their homes as their block saw an influx of wealthy residents and rapidly increasing property values. As the District’s repeated trope goes, the 14th Street NW corridor in 2015 is almost unrecognizable — in aesthetics and property values — from how it appeared a decade or two ago. The building on the southeast edge of the block where Cole lives, according to public records, exemplifies the textbook definition of gentrification: Developers purchased the building, bought out lower-income residents who had long lived there and built luxury condos. The building is now called the Hamilton on W. Before it was a boutique condo building with the tagline “Urban lifestyles start here,” the city condemned the complex for unlivable conditions and, in 2000, the landlord sold the building to the residents for $1 as part of a plea bargain. The residents tried to renovate the building and stave off developers’ offers, but they ultimately sold the building for $2.5 million, or $114,000 per household, in 2003. That was not enough money for those residents to stay in the neighborhood, so


— and residents whom Cole wrote unthinkable things about are presumably the same people who beat the odds and held on to their homes as their block saw an influx of wealthy residents and rapidly increasing property values. As the District’s repeated trope goes, the 14th Street NW corridor in 2015 is almost unrecognizable — in aesthetics and property values — from how it appeared a decade or two ago. The building on the southeast edge of the block where Cole lives, according to public records, exemplifies the textbook definition of gentrification: Developers purchased the building, bought out lower-income residents who had long lived there and built luxury condos. The building is now called the Hamilton on W. Before it was a boutique condo building with the tagline “Urban lifestyles start here,” the city condemned the complex for unlivable conditions and, in 2000, the landlord sold the building to the residents for $1 as part of a plea bargain. The residents tried to renovate the building and stave off developers’ offers, but they ultimately sold the building for $2.5 million, or $114,000 per household, in 2003. That was not enough money for those residents to stay in the neighborhood, so most left. In 2013, a unit in that building, according to city property records, sold for $469,000. The block, however, has a more interesting and complicated history. In 2005, The Washington Post’s Debbi Wilgoren wrote how some of the block’s longtime residents were able to hold on to their homes amid rising costs and about the subsequent tensions between the new and old residents that resulted. Capital Manor, a multi-building cooperative on that block, was converted into low-income apartments through federal tax subsidies in the 1970s. Those tax benefits eventually expired, and the owners of Capital Manor put it on the market in 2001 and signed a contract to sell it for $3.4 million. Those who lived in the building, most of them low-income black and Hispanic residents, were able to scrounge up enough money — $1,500 each — to make down payments on their homes and stop the sale. (D.C. law allows current tenants of a building to match purchase offers of their homes.) The headline of The Post article about the sale was “The Purchase Of a Lifetime,” and this purchase allowed for the make-up of the block today: recently arrived affluent residents in rowhouses and luxury condos


Some possible explanations for the smiley face spotted in space by Hubble

Hi there! (NASA & ESA, acknowledgement to Judy Schmidt) It’s out there. Spotted by Hubble, Galaxy Cluster SDSS J1038+4849 (“SDSS” to its friends) appears to be smiling — as Judy Schmidt noticed, sifting through the data. Apparently, it is due to gravitational lensing, a phenomenon that can warp space and time around objects with sufficient gravitational pull. This warped view creates both the Einstein Ring of the “face” outline and the curve of the mouth. So says science, anyway. Some other explanations: — Universe has finally figured out emoticons. Next step, emoji. Where’s a galaxy cluster that looks like that dancing woman in a red dress? — A giant-scale Comedian has been murdered and the Universe wants us to begin investigating. — It Sees Us. — This is the only part of the universe that noticed it was having its picture taken. — Universe was trying to type a colon and a parenthesis.


The monarch massacre: Nearly a billion butterflies have vanished

complete. Afterward, young monarchs about the quarter of the weight of a dime, that know nothing about the flight pattern through the United States, not to mention Mexico, fly back, resting, birthing and dining on milkweed. Only about 30 million remain. The extinction of certain butterfly species is not unheard of. The blueberry-colored Xerces blue disappeared from San Francisco years ago, and recently Fish and Wildlife announced that two subspecies — the rockland skipper and Zestos in South Florida — haven’t been seen since 2004 and are probably extinct. On top of that, pesticide use has also caused a collapse of other pollinators — wasps, beetles and especially honeybees. Fish and Wildlife is reviewing a petition filed by the Center for Biological Diversity to list monarch butterflies as an endangered species that requires special protection to survive. The agency is studying whether that’s necessary and also trying to do more to help restore the population. The agency is providing $2 million for on the ground conservation projects. As part of an agreement, the federation will help raise awareness about the need for milkweed, provide seeds to anyone willing to plant it and to plant the seeds in open space — roadsides, parks, forests and patio flower boxes, to name a few places. Another $1.2 million will go to the foundation as seed money to generate a larger fundraising match from private organizations. Yosemite National Park offers protection to the milkweed plant, which is important to the survival of the "charismatic" monarch butterfly. Fish and Wildlife will chip in to plant milkweed seeds in refuges and other areas it controls to create 200,000 acres of habitat along the Interstate 35 corridor from Texas to Minnesota, where 50 percent of monarchs migrate. Fish and Wildlife will encourage other federal and state agencies to do the same on public lands and is working with the governments of Mexico and Canada to help restore the iconic butterfly. The monarch butterfly’s round trip to and from Mexico takes it past a killing field of agriculture. But farmers aren’t entirely to blame for the insect’s decline, said Dan Ashe, director of Fish and Wildlife. “We’ve all been responsible. We are the consumers of agricultural products. I eat corn. American farmers are not the enemy. Can they be part of the solution? Yes,” Ashe said. “It’s not about this wonderful, mystical creature,” Ashe said. “It’s about us.”


Darwin’s children liked to draw and thank goodness for that

loose notes in the museum’s database are jottings from Darwin’s projects with his kids — he often had them collect plants for him to study — and thoughts that came to him while sitting in his garden. In one of Kohn’s favorites, Darwin wrote that he wept with relief when he finally witnessed a “humblebee” pollinate a snapdragon after waiting 1,000 hours. “You just feel this joy that he experienced by watching nature,” Kohn said. “The tangibleness is overwhelming.” Left: front, Right: back. (Courtesy of Cambridge University Library) In their artwork, the Darwin children seem to have inherited their father’s love of nature and eye for detail. The DMP database contains a richly colored painting of birds and a butterfly, illustrations of various types of soldiers, watercolors of animals both exotic and mundane. George, Francis and Horace Darwin, whose signatures appear on the doodles, all grew up to be scientists of some kind: George became a geophysicist, Francis got a medical degree and worked in his father’s lab and Horace founded the Cambridge Scientific Instrument Company, which produces lab equipment. But unlike their father, these kids were not pure naturalists. They turned ordinary produce into a battalion of galloping vegetables and fruit, wrote stories about the “fairies of the mountain” and drew up coats of arms. All told, there are more than 100 items from Darwin’s children listed on the DMP site. They may be the database’s most colorful entries, but Kohn’s eye is drawn to Darwin’s writing. “We’re really interested in the intellectual development of Darwin, how his way of explaining things changed, how his approach to scientific problems develops over time,” he said. “And you can see it all right there in the manuscripts when you compare them to the published version.” Left: front, Right: back. (Courtesy of Cambridge University Library) Darwin’s notes also document how his home life became fodder for his scientific research. After the publication of “On the Origin of Species” in 1859, his theory of natural selection as the mechanism for evolution became the subject of intense debate. To resolve it, Darwin looked to his backyard. He wound up writing six books on botany to document how flower species co-evolved alongside insects to become highly specialized. Conceived and researched in the fields around his home, the books tapped into Victorian enthusiasm for gardening — and finally popularized his theory. For Kohn, who has been


Main Street Morning: Nacho cheese and Slurpees

You’ll be amazed how many of these millenials are drinking. (TIM SLOAN/AFP/Getty Images) Welcome to Main Street Morning, The Washington Post’s daily collection of news affecting entrepreneurs, start-ups and small businesses, with a special focus on policy and government. Here’s what’s affecting my small business, my clients and other entrepreneurs today. Washington • • The White House is expected to unveil its new cyber data-sharing unit today. • A Senate panel this morning approved Obama’s nominee for Secretary of Defense. • • The Economy • • • • • Retail • • • • • • Management • • Healthcare • Online • • • • • Entrepreneurs • • Technology • • • • Around the Country • • • • • Around the World • • • • Gene Marks owns the Marks Group, a Bala Cynwyd, Pa., consulting firm that helps clients with customer relationship management. Follow Gene Marks and On Small Business on Twitter. News we should know about? Email us here.


Elite science panel calls on U.S. to study climate modification

X-rays stream off the sun showing observations from NASA’s Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR, overlaid on a picture taken by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory. (AFP/NASA/JPL-Caltech) The first thing to understand about geoengineering — intentional modification of the climate system to counter the effects of global warming — is that we shouldn’t even be having a conversation about geoengineering. Just convening that conversation — which has gained a new megaphone, thanks to a report just released by an expert panel assembled by the National Research Council of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences — in a sense means that we’ve failed to reduce carbon dioxide emissions enough to prevent the risk of dangerous climate change. And thus, we’ve also failed to take geoengineering off the table. The committee was chaired by Marcia McNutt, the editor-in-chief of Science and formerly the director of the U.S. Geological Survey, who said in a released statement, “That scientists are even considering technological interventions should be a wake-up call that we need to do more now to reduce emissions, which is the most effective, least risky way to combat climate change.” The National Research Council recommends — very reluctantly, and only for purposes of increasing our knowledge — government-sponsored research into so-called albedo modification, sometimes also called solar radiation management (a term the committee preferred not to use). “Albedo” is a scientific term that refers to reflectivity — in this context, how much the Earth bounces light away and back to space. Thus albedo modification means altering reflectivity of the planet, for instance by injecting large volumes of sulfate particles into the middle atmosphere, so as to deflect sunlight away before it gets to us here at the surface, and thereby induce a global cooling. In effect, this would be like installing an artificial thermostat to turn down the Earth’s dangerously rising temperature — last year was the hottest on record — by banishing some of the energy streaming to us from the sun. We know that it would work, researchers say, because we know that large volcanic eruptions cool down the planet by physically similar means. Tens of millions of tons of sulfate aerosol, for instance, could offset a doubling of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. But there would be unknown knock-on effects, ranging from changing global precipitation patterns to ozone depletion. And they would be unevenly distributed across the world, the panel noted,


What research tells us about how Brian Williams should respond

(AP Photo/Matt Sayles, File) When Dan Ariely first heard the Brian Williams news — that the popular anchor had apologized for misstatements about a personal experience during the Iraq War — his first thought was about the irony. Ariely, a behavioral economist and Duke professor, had just wrapped up making a documentary on the topic of dishonesty. In part of the film, he features the story of Marilee Jones, the dean of admissions at MIT who admitted to misrepresenting her academic degrees. That section included footage of none other than Brian Williams reporting on Jones' story. "We finished the movie two days before this broke, and we couldn't decide if we should add something to the movie, or just enjoy the irony," Ariely said in an interview. Of course, Ariely has given much more thought to why people lie than to that cutting-room decision. His 2013 book The Honest Truth About Dishonesty explored why everyone does it, what subjects people fib about the most and how we lie even to ourselves. He's also thought plenty about what may have led Williams to make the claims he did — and how he should respond now. We asked Ariely for his take on those points, and he highlighted something he's found in his research on dishonesty: People often cheat and lie to help other people. "We call this altruistic cheating," Ariely said. "In all kinds of cases, people actually take tremendous risk for themselves for the benefit of some other goal." While we don't know exactly what motivated Williams, the anchor did say in his on-air apology last week that the most recent time he made the claim — in tribute to a retired soldier who provided ground security on the day in question — was "a bungled attempt by me to thank one special veteran and, by extension, our brave military men and women, veterans everywhere, those who have served while I did not." Could the effort to highlight the work of service members have played a role in why Williams inflated his claims? Ariely thinks it could have. "Look, the guy doesn't need to grandiose himself. His career is going incredibly well. I think the way he was trying to do it was to basically use himself to make this story more interesting, more powerful." Still, Ariely speculated there's likely more to it than just that. Much research has examined


Geoengineering and the folly of playing God with the planet

some areas, and bring floods to others. Our climate models cannot, with reliability, predict the manifestation of regional precipitation changes induced by altering the composition of the atmosphere. Applying this type of geoengineering plan would require the global community to effectively sign-up for unpredictable climate changes that could benefit some areas at the expense of others. It’s akin to seeking global agreement on the mechanics of playing God with the planet – establishing a world government to set and control a thermostat for Earth, and amicably living with whatever consequences. Not to mention injecting particles into the atmosphere would not remove the carbon pollution that can persist in the air for decades to centuries with consequences beyond warming, including the acidification of the oceans. It’s such a scientifically and politically thorny idea that voices on both sides of the climate change debate have passionately expressed opposition to it. “[T]he geoengineering options most often discussed, like putting sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere or orbiting tinfoil strips — these are simply nuts,” Al Gore – one of the most fervent advocates for climate action – told the Post’s Ezra Klein in 2013. “We shouldn’t waste a lot of time talking about them. Some people will anyway, but they’re just crazy.” “Geoengineering schemes seem like really bad ideas full of nasty consequences (unintentional and otherwise),” writes Chip Knappenberger, who pens frequent columns for the Cato Institute about how the threat of climate change is exaggerated. The best way to confront climate change is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the root cause of the problem, and better understand and cope with the climate changes we are dealt. We need not introduce new ways to alter our climate and further tinker with our one and only livable planet. If we can’t reduce our greenhouse gas emissions to sufficiently slow climate change, we may even have another way out. The National Academy of Sciences also issued a companion report that discusses “climate interventions” that would directly remove carbon from the atmosphere. To me, those are much more promising than other particle-injecting geoengineering schemes. Advocates for particle-injecting geoengineering say it is wise to research it in case climate change accelerates so much, we need to employ it to fend off a planetary catastrophe. I’m not against expending a limited amount of effort to better understand its risks and opportunities but am unconvinced it will ever be a


Even as marijuana use rises, arrests are falling

There's been a general principle guiding drug policy for years: drug laws are enforced in tandem with the drug's use. But recent enforcement of marijuana laws has not followed that principle. The federal government’s National Survey on Drug Use and Health reports that in the aggregate Americans used marijuana on over 3.5 billion days in 2013, a rise of 57 percent since 2007. But over that same period, the FBI Uniform Crime Report recorded that marijuana possession arrests fell 21 percent to 609,000. The net effect of these two trends is a 50 percent drop in marijuana enforcement intensity, from roughly one arrest for every 2,900 days of use in 2007 to about one arrest for every 5,800 days of use in 2013. The average twice a week marijuana user could thus today reasonably expect to be arrested less than once per half-century. Recreational marijuana wasn’t legalized anywhere in the U.S. until 2012, so why did marijuana enforcement begin waning well before that? Internationally respected marijuana policy expert Dr. Beau Kilmer of the RAND Corporation attributes it to multiple factors, including “the increasing legal protections offered by medical marijuana laws and the decriminalization of possession in California." Kilmer also points out that the soaring number of days Americans use marijuana is only partially accounted for by more people using the drug: “The number of people who self-reported using marijuana for the first time increased from about 2 million in 2007 to 2.6 million in 2011 and then fell back slightly to 2.4 million in 2013. What's really driving the change in use days is the large increase in the number of daily/near-daily marijuana users.” The marijuana using population is thus evolving to include a higher proportion of people who use the drug on a regular basis. In the coming years, this group will face a higher risk of negative health consequences as a result of their heavy, regular drug use, but will face a lower risk of legal consequences as the risk of arrest continues to fall. Keith Humphreys is a Professor of Psychiatry and Mental Health Policy Director at Stanford University. Follow him on Twitter @KeithNHumphreys


The most disturbing authoritarian regime in the world

the rest of the world is doing fine. That said, as Slate’s Joshua Keating pointed out last year, what would be troubling is if the authoritarian political model suddenly started appealing to democratic publics: The worrying countries to watch in terms of global trends toward or away from democracy are not China or Russia — for the time being, at least, those seem to be lost causes — but places like Thailand, where thousands of residents of Bangkok have taken to the streets demanding that the country’s electoral system be replaced with an unelected people’s council. Or Egypt, where many ostensible “ liberals” this year supported a military coup against the country’s elected government. And here we get to the nub of things. From a small “d” democratic perspective, the most dangerous authoritarians are not from Russia or China. China is powerful but does not proselytize its political model as the best way. Russia proselytizes a bit more but the sheen has worn off its authoritarian engine. The authoritarian regime that presents the most severe challenge to the West comes from a country that Kagan did not name in his essay: Egypt. This is not because Sissi is palling around with other authoritarians (see the charming photo above). Rather, it’s that he thinks his authoritarianism serves a higher purpose, and an awful lot of Westerners agree with him. To see what I mean, read Der Spiegel’s hard-hitting, excellent interview of Sissi from earlier this week. The reporters pull no punches, and Sissi doesn’t either: SPIEGEL: Sissi: SPIEGEL: Sissi offers an unusual definition of human rights, but that’s not the most disturbing part of this interview. This is: Sissi: The reason Sissi’s raison d’etat is so disturbing is not just that it resonates with Egyptians, but that it resonates with Westerners. Many in Europe and the United States see authoritarian rulers like Sissi as the only effective bulwark against Islamic extremism. Since Sept. 11, 2001, the United States has fumbled formula after formula for political reform in the Middle East, with none of them working out very well. The Arab Spring has curdled everywhere outside of Tunisia. No one has any bright ideas about how to make democratic progress in the Middle East anymore. So what scares me about Sissi isn’t his appeal for external political legitimacy — all rulers seek that. It’s that in Sissi’s case, his appeal will succeed.


The Instagram account affecting our view of climate change, 640 px at a time

The devastation of the Earth is documented in 640 px x 640 px squares that magnify the effects of weather, rising sea levels, oil drilling and gas burning across five continents. Rim Fire in California, 2013. (David Butow/Everyday Climate Change) Soya farmers and cattle ranchers start the clearance of the soil using fire during the dry season. This activity produces giants forest fires in native áreas. Consequently it generates irreparable damage in the rain forest, biodiversity loss and tons of CO2 emissions in the atmosphere. (Rodrigo Baleia/Everydayclimatechange) Juan Butrón stands at the place where the Colorado River ends in the desert of Baja California, miles away from its historic rendezvous with the Sea of Cortez. Though this state of the river in Mexico is due to decisions about how the water has long been divided between the seven U.S. states and Mexico, drought conditions and increased climate volatility are further threatening the Colorado’s already over-allocated capacity. Up to 40 million people in the Southwestern United States and Northwestern Mexico depend directly on the Colorado River for their water, but the allocation of that water is based on a compact nearly a century old, which was itself based on rudimentary, incomplete data and wishful thinking. (John Trotter/Everydaycimatechange) Methane flaring from a well pad turns the night sky a yellow orange in a small rural township in northeastern Pa. (Nina Berman/Everydayclimatechange) In the Ogoniland village of Kpean, an oil wellhead that had been leaking for weeks has turned into a raging inferno. The local youths keep watch, waiting for Shell to come and put the fire out. This is an environmental disaster for the local people, as it affects their crops, their water and air. (Ed Kashi/Everydayclimatechange) Dead yak carcasses lie along a road in Yushu (Tibetan autonomous) prefecture, Qinghai province, China. (Katharina Hesse/Everydayclimatechange) Many hectares of forest are lost each year due to the uncontrolled fires started by local communities with the aim of increasing agricultural fields, poaching and production of charcoal, Mozambique. (Carlos Litulo/Everydayclimatechange) A shepherd from the Hui minority breaks firewood outside a shack on barren grasslands in central China’s Ningxia province, January 2015. (Katharina Hesse/Everydayclimatechange) Coal is the primary energy source fueling China’s economic rise but this seemingly endless stream of heavy dump trucks filled with coal on a Gobi Desert highway is far from the big urban electricity consumers on the east coast. Inner Mongolia, China. (James


Main Street Morning: A beer fight in Congress

15 women blames his former job as a bouncer for the size of his brood. Marketing - Some ads for bathroom products are flush with potty humor. Start-Up - Why most start-ups fail and how a red-hot start-up raised $330 million and then went bust? - Maybe your start-up just needs a shorter name. Cash Flow - A small farmer explains why he can’t make a living. Finance - Apple is raising $1 billion in debt at insanely low rates, even though it has over $140 billion in offshore cash. Travel - An entrepreneur who hates to fly explains how he deals with it. - Air New Zealand has its reasons for not offering Wi-Fi. Entrepreneurs - A former Baltimore Ravens wide receiver is building athletic headphones in North Texas. - A Shark Tank star shares his advice with students and participates in a national contest that is searching for a passionate entrepreneur. - An entrepreneur finds a niche in a crowded local yoga market. - How dodging a pollock mess led to success for this seafood entrepreneur. - Jay Z takes on Spotify with a $56 million purchase of another music streaming service. Customer Service - 77 percent of people will not download a retail app rated lower than 3 stars. - A taxi driver lets a drunk teen who fell asleep in his cab crash at his house. - A tech reviewer has some sound advice for hardware makers: “I love hardware and I love connected devices. But the mainstream consumer isn’t going to love anything that they have to spend hours troubleshooting.” Online - Small business owners are divided on the effectiveness of Google My Business. - Facebook takes on Craigslist by adding tools to help sell to a group. - This is the edge that small businesses have in e-commerce. - Twitter’s CEO targets online abuse. Technology - A provider of cloud-based platform solutions to help small and medium-sized businesses succeed online launches a free mobile application that delivers daily insights and actionable tips to help small business owners succeed both online and offline. Opportunities - Injuries from sex toys surged after the publication of Fifty Shades of Grey. - There is a revolution happening in what it means to be a small business. - Where Home Depot’s hiring this spring. - This is what micro-brewers, dog groomers and online publishers have in common. Retail -


Bao Bao takes an impressively lazy tumble down a hill

It’s unclear if this is typical panda behavior or just an admirable showing of laziness, but D.C.’s celeb panda, Bao Bao, took a rather epic tumble down a hill at the National Zoo. A zoo visitor captured the panda over the weekend “getting crazy” after her bamboo lunch. On Twitter today, the National Zoo dubbed this the “#BaoBao tumble.” Pander haters and lovers alike, enjoy.


For the first time ever, a multistar system is caught during its earliest days

makes one solar system have one star while another has two or three. Catching one in the process of forming will help answer those questions. A close-up on the region forming the stars. (B. Saxton/NRAO/AUI/NSF) Eight hundred light years away, a young protostar shares a cloud of gas with three cold, dense gas balls — each dense enough to form a star of its own. Based on the system's conditions, the researchers believe that the dense balls will collapse into stars of their own in just 40,000 years or so. "It could form a quadruple system," said first author Jaime Pineda, now working at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics. Star systems with more than three stars quickly grow unstable, he said, so a four-star system isn't likely to last for very long, "but at the very least it's going to be a binary." The new system is especially interesting because of its spacing, Pineda said. Artist impression of the results. Left panel shows the star and three dense gas condensations system. Right panel shows the system after the stars are formed out of the condensations. (B. Saxton/NRAO/AUI/NSF) "These potential stars aren't very close to each other. They're separated by several thousand times the distance between the Sun and the Earth," he said. It's generally assumed that binary systems have to form close together and then can later spread out across large distances. "But it seems that actually you don't need to do all that," Pineda said. "You can form them at very large distances from each other from the very beginning." Forty thousand years may be an extremely short time on a cosmic scale, but it's too long for us to hope to watch the birth in action. Pineda is still eager to get a closer look. This system had been observed before, he said, but only the high-resolution views of the most advanced modern telescopes gave them the images they needed to detect the three would-be stars. "We'd like to observe it at an even higher resolution," he said. And then, of course, there's the task of turning those high-powered telescopes elsewhere in the hope of finding similar new formations. "We'll be targeting more regions that show dense and cold gas like this one," Pineda said. "We have to find out if this method of multiple star formation is common, or if it's really just an oddball."


SpaceX launches satellite but calls off attempt to land rocket on platform in Atlantic

The DSCOVR satellite is expected to send back images of the Earth and detect warnings of emissions from the sun. Elon Musk’s SpaceX successfully launched a research satellite into space Wednesday but called off a dramatic attempt to land the first stage of an unmanned rocket on a platform floating in the Atlantic Ocean because of extreme weather that caused massive waves. In a statement, the company said that the "drone ship," as it calls the floating platform, "was designed to operate in all but the most extreme weather." But with waves "three stories high crashing over the decks," the attempt was not possible. A NOAA buoy near the suspected @SpaceX ASDS location has been reporting wave heights > 25 feet since Tue. evening. http://t.co/FpI74Za8FQ Targeting 6:03pm ET today for #DSCOVR launch, but extreme weather preventing 1st stage recovery; soft landing only: http://t.co/32eIv4FS90 Typically, rocket boosters are used once, burning up or crashing into the ocean after liftoff. But Musk, the billionaire founder of PayPal and Tesla, has been working on creating reusable rockets that act like airplanes — fly, land, then fly again. If SpaceX, his California-based company, can repeatedly land rockets and reuse them, it would mark a significant step toward making spaceflight much more affordable. Last month, on the first attempt to land on the drone ship, essentially a modified barge that’s 300 feet long by 170 feet wide, the rocket crashed and exploded into a spectacular fireball. But even hitting the barge from such a distance and at such a great speed was viewed as a tremendous success. While much of the attention was focused on SpaceX’s daring landing attempt, its cancellation Wednesday did not affect the Falcon 9 rocket’s launch three hours later, the third try in four days. The primary mission was to send a NOAA satellite to deep space, about 1 million miles from Earth. The satellite, known as the Deep Space Climate Observatory, or DSCOVR, would be stationed at a neutral gravity point between the sun and Earth, where it would monitor “space weather,” the solar winds that eruptions on the sun can blast directly toward Earth. It will take DCCOVR about 110 days to reach its destination in space. Like a buoy at sea designed to detect tsunamis, the satellite could provide early warning of significant space storms. “Space weather has demonstrated the potential to disrupt virtually every major public infrastructure


Inside the battle for Washington’s biggest real estate prize: the Hoover Building

The J. Edgar Hoover Building on Pennsylvania Ave. Until now, the public tug-of-war over the FBI and its headquarters has been over where the agency will relocate. Will it go to Prince George’s County, giving an economic boost to either Greenbelt or Landover? Or to Springfield, creating a new federal enclave of 11,000 employees? On Tuesday, the opening bell rang on a related competition, this one for a half-a-billion-dollar prize: the J. Edgar Hoover Building on Pennsylvania Avenue. The property beneath aging building– nearly 6.7 acres in the booming Penn Quarter neighborhood — represents one of the most valuable development opportunities ever to become available in downtown Washington. There is a wide spectrum of estimates about how much the Hoover Building may be worth, in part because the property has not yet been re-zoned for buildings to replace it. The D.C. government assesses the complex at $652 million. P Strapped for construction money to build new projects, the General Services Administration, which manages real estate for the federal government, proposed trading away the Hoover Building to pay for most or all of a suburban headquarters for the FBI. The GSA has not chosen a site yet, but told interested developers that it hoped to build the new headquarters on one of three properties, in Greenbelt, Landover or Springfield. It asked interested firms to make an offer. Citing procurement rules, GSA officials say they would not disclose which companies submitted bids by the Tuesday deadline. But according to developers, investors, architects and general contractors that have joined teams bidding for the work, the competition likely includes about a half dozen teams and will be a largely homegrown affair, with some of Washington’s biggest name firms in real estate lining up to take their best shot at the Hoover Building prize. Members of six development teams confirmed their submissions. One is led by Theodore D. Lerner, owner of the Washington Nationals and founder of Lerner Enterprises, which built much of Tysons Corner. Lerner partnered with Silverstein Properties, of New York, the main private developer behind the newly rebuilt World Trade Center complex. Ted Lerner, owner of the Nationals and Lerner Enterprises. (Photo by John McDonnell/The Washington Post) The bid gives Lerner two potential stakes in the FBI headquarters decision. It could be named developer of the new headquarters, giving the company control of the Hoover Building in return. It also owns one


Barking at the Sun

Chapter Million in the Anything But a Price on Carbon series. The people who said there was no evidence of warming have now pretty much had to concede that yes there is. Hence the recent shift to ‘climate changes all the time’, which of course neglects to discuss RATES of change, or consequences. When pressed, they say that whatever the consequences, they won’t be bad, just… because. All sung to the refrain that it’s “arrogant” to think that humans can affect something so big as the climate. Until! Until when? Until it isn’t! When cornered that human-induced climate change might actually produce results that poll badly, out come the geoengineers! NOW all of a sudden it’s EASY to affect the climate! They actually have been around for decades, starting with a guy who could turn the planetary thermostat up and down with precision using nothing more than a boatload of iron filings. But still they come, and still they are reckless. Reckless in that they are unable to factor in the law of unintended consequences. The idea that our massive, disastrous climate experiment can be handled by throwing in MORE variables betrays the carelessness at the heart of climate policy opponents and their apologists. The only principle they hold dear is “no inconvenience to me.” That is: Anything But a Price on Carbon. Anything else, the planet included, is up for grabs, and lively, disingenuous discussion. And, of course more blind, ever-higher-stakes experimentation.


The gray wolf spotted near the Grand Canyon this fall has already been killed by a hunter

(Photo via Center for Biological Diversity) Late last year, a gray wolf was seen near the north rim of the Grand Canyon. This type of sighting hadn't happened for decades, so we wrote about it, obviously. People seemed fairly jazzed about the find, because it wasn't a thing that happens every day. "We're pretty excited about it," Michael Robinson, a conservation advocate with the Center for Biological Diversity, told The Washington Post. But in late December, a northern gray wolf was fatally shot by a hunter in Utah. Wildlife officials said the shooting was an accident; the hunter thought the wolf was a coyote. And now, tests have confirmed that the wolf shot by the hunter was the same one caught prowling near the Grand Canyon in the fall, officials said in a news release Wednesday. (Kathy Davidoff/Courtesy of the Center for Biological Diversity) "Echo came to a heartbreaking end, but her odyssey through forest and desert shows that excellent habitat still remains for wolves in the American West," Michael Robinson, a conservation advocate with the Center for Biological Diversity, said in the release, which stated that Echo got its name after "a contest of hundreds of schoolchildren around the world." [Related: One of North America’s rarest mammals spotted in Yosemite for first time in nearly 100 years] When Echo first made news a few months ago, Live Science detailed the history of gray wolves in the United States. According to that Live Science report: By the mid-20th century, the only places gray wolves could be found below the Canadian border were a sliver of land in northern Minnesota and Michigan's Isle Royale. The species was then protected under the Endangered Species Act in the 1970s. Conservation efforts and reintroduction programs helped gray wolves return to parts of their range. There are now more than 5,000 gray wolves in the continental United States, primarily in the western Great Lakes states of Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin, and the northern Rocky Mountain states of Idaho, Montana and Wyoming, as well as eastern Oregon and Washington. [Related: Fanged deer pops up in Afghanistan, 60 years after its last appearance] Echo was a 3-year old female wolf, according to the Center for Biological Diversity news release. She was given a radio collar after she was previously caught in Wyoming, the center stated. It also noted that she had "traveled at least 750 miles seeking


France may finally allow more shops to open on Sunday

A shopper holds a Galeries Lafayette department store branded shopping bag in Paris, on Wednesday, Feb. 4, 2015. (Marlene Awaad/Bloomberg) Baker Stéphane Cazenave is said to produce France's best baguettes. However, according to French law, he can only produce those baguettes six days a week. Cazenave had ignored that rule because demand for his baguettes was so high that he was able to employ 22 people seven days a week. Instead of being applauded, Cazenave now faces a lawsuit. "People see me like a thug just because I asked to work," he told France Television. "Working shouldn't be a crime in France." It might seem strange to Americans, but French businesses are often closed on Sundays in most parts of the country and are only allowed to open five times a year that day. Despite the French tradition of separating religion and state, labor unions and Catholic lobbies have so far succeeded in defending Sunday as a sacred 'day of rest' for the entire country. This, however, could change. To many French, the current debate about allowing more businesses to open on Sundays is of a fundamental nature: Should the country become more commercial and capitalistic? French economy minister Emmanuel Macron leaves the Elysee presidential palace following the weekly cabinet meeting at the Elysee presidential palace, on Feb. 4, 2015 in Paris. (Martin Bureau/AFP via Getty Images) French President François Hollande believes so. He shocked many when he recently announced he would pursue a law known under the name of France's economy minister Emmanuel Macron. The initiative aims to liberalize the country's bureaucratic economy. For Hollande, a lot is at stake: Having so far been unable to decrease unemployment and boost growth, his popularity has sunk dramatically. The law -- pursued by a leftist Socialist Party government -- is supposed to end a variety of monopolies and allow more competition, but its most contentious proposal is to allow stores and businesses to open more often. According to the draft, they could soon operate on 12 instead of five Sundays a year. Cities could decide on their own whether they would implement the rule, and there are exceptions in areas, such as in Paris. One of the 2012 election promises of Hollande had been to keep Sunday a day of rest. Hence, breaking with this promise has been interpreted by some in France as a sign of governmental despair with an


Lonely Japanese men protest the ‘blood-soaked conspiracy’ of Valentine’s Day

Japanese chocolatier Miya Fujimoto, of sweet shop Etienne, displays animal-shaped chocolates at the Takashimaya department store's "Amour du Chocolat" event for St. Valentine's Day in Tokyo. (YOSHIKAZU TSUNO/AFP/Getty Images) For those who are unattached, Valentine's Day serves as a gaudy, cringe-worthy reminder of their bachelor status. But for some jilted men in Japan, it's a call to radical action. On Saturday, a group whose full name literally translates as the Revolutionary Alliance of Men whom Women Find Unattractive, plans to march in Tokyo's busy Shibuya district against the cynical evils of the romantic holiday. They will wield bullhorns and banners, and shout slogans against the "passion-based capitalism" that fuels the holiday in Japan and elsewhere, according to the Tokyo Reporter. "The blood-soaked conspiracy of Valentine’s Day, driven by the oppressive chocolate capitalists, has arrived once again," declared the group, known by its Japanese acronym Kakuhido, on its Web site. The group has been in existence since 2006, when its founder, Katsuhiro Furusawa, was reportedly dumped and then found solace in a copy of Karl Marx's "Communist Manifesto." Furusawa realized, details the Spoon and Tamago blog, "that being unpopular with girls is a class issue." Kakuhido's views seem to involve a blend of Marxist vitriol, cyber nerdiness and outright misogyny. It has staged protests in the past, inveighing against the supposed manipulative powers of Japanese housewives; on Christmas Eve, Kakuhido members marched, demanding couples "self-criticize." They have also branded public flirting "terrorism." In their Web forums, they routinely complain about those who find "fulfillment" in their offline lives. Valentine's Day is indeed big business in Japan, as the Guardian reports, explaining Kakuhido's anger toward "chocolate capitalists": Valentine’s Day in Japan is not so much an opportunity to make declarations of love as a payday for the country’s chocolate industry. Women are traditionally expected to buy giri choko, literally obligation chocolates, for male colleagues and the men closest to their hearts. Men are supposed to reciprocate a month later on White Day, an event dreamed up by confectioners in the early 80s to boost sales. And as extreme as Kakuhido may be, its stance does reflect wider problems in Japanese society. The country's birth rate fell to a record low in 2014, in part a consequence of rising numbers of single people in the country. In 2011, a study found that 61 percent of Japanese males between age 18 and 34 were


The polio vaccine killed my father. But that’s not a reason to oppose vaccines.

enough to exempt your family from the known public good of vaccinations. [RELATED: Everything you need to know about measles] The trial that followed my father’s death framed vaccination as an individual choice. The more complicated questions about what level of risk we should accept for the sake of public health, and what acknowledgement or compensation we might expect if we become victims of that risk, were never raised. Rather, the trial focused on informed consent. My parents hadn’t been told of the chance of getting contact polio. Would my mother have declined the vaccine had she known about the risk, the prosecution asked. My mother couldn’t say for sure. She had no way to know whether one in 5 million would have seemed relevant to her life. The famous medical scientist Jonas Salk testified in her support, arguing that unlike his version of the polio vaccine, which contains an inactive form of the virus, the oral polio vaccine developed by Albert Sabin was too dangerous to be used widely. The Salk vaccine has since replaced the Sabin vaccine in the United States. Still, my mother lost the case. The trial, as much as my father’s actual illness and death, eroded the little trust that she had in medical systems. I grew up with holistic medicines and very few vaccinations. When I contracted measles at age 3, while we were traveling in Northern India, I was treated by a traditional Tibetan healer. Aside from visits to the dentist, a few cases of strep throat, and one deep gash that required stitches, I never saw conventional doctors. I was generally a healthy kid who had the sort of “natural” childhood that many anti-vaccine people advocate. At age 25, though, I contracted mumps from an unknown source. Luckily I noticed the symptoms early and was diagnosed quickly. I didn’t leave the house for a week and, as far as I know, no one else was harmed by my infection. But it would have been easy to disregard the strange swelling of my lower jaw and to continue moving normally through the world. I worked then in a building along with someone who was HIV-positive, and I shared space with friends, coworkers and strangers who may have had invisible vulnerabilities. Like some of the families connected with the Disneyland measles outbreak, I went from perceiving myself as being a victim to being a


Minnesota Orchestra to play in Cuba in May

for an orchestra that only a year ago was emerging from the longest lockout in American orchestral history, with serious questions about its future. It is all the more fitting since the Minnesota Orchestra’s first-ever international performances were in Cuba in 1929 and 1930. The program will include Beethoven’s Third, which the orchestra played in Havana on its first trip there. The orchestra will also perform Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy with the Cuban National Choir. Osmo Vanska, the music director of the Minnesota Orchestra, rehearses with the group last year. The orchestra has just announced that it will perform in Cuba in May. (Photo by Jenn Ackerman for The Washington Post) The tour is being arranged by Classical Movements, the Alexandria-based concert tour agency and presenter which has made something of a specialty of Cuban travel over the last 18 years, bringing ensembles to and from the country despite the travel restrictions that necessitated special permission through the U.S. Treasury Department. (Classical Movements is presenting the Cuban chorus Camerata Vocale Sine Nomine in Washington, DC on February 21st.) Obama’s announcement in January triggered a veritable horse race among orchestras eager to be the first to take advantage of the newly relaxed travel regulations. In January, while announcing the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s 2015-16 season, Riccardo Muti, the orchestra’s music director, made it clear that he wanted Chicago to be the first orchestra to play in Cuba during this new era. Neither orchestra would be the first professional American orchestra to play under the Castro regime: the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra made a two-day trip to Cuba in 1999. The New York Philharmonic went quite far into the planning stages of two separate Cuba trips, in 2009 and 2011, neither of which was able to be realized. Minnesota brought the whole trip together at lightning speed. Neeta Helms, the president of Classical Movements, says that they were initially approached about the idea only 24 days before the announcement. The orchestra’s President and CEO, Kevin Smith, said in a press statement, “We are honored to have received this invitation from the Cuban Ministry of Culture. In the orchestral world, the logistics of scheduling frequently make it challenging to move quickly, but our musicians have embraced the possibility of giving these performances with great flexibility on a short time scale and offered to postpone a vacation week in order to take advantage of an incredible opportunity.”


U.S. forces, Afghan troops arrest Taliban militants wanted for school massacre

A Pakistani army soldier looks at a classroom at the Army Public School and Degree College in Peshawar, Pakistan, on Dec. 17, 2014. Taliban gunmen killed 145 people at the school, many of them children, the day before. (Max Becherer/Polaris for The Washington Post ) Less than two months ago, U.S. troops ended their combat mission in Afghanistan with great fanfare. On Thursday came fresh signs that at least some of the 12,500 coalition troops remaining in Afghanistan remain very much part of the fight. At a news conference on the outskirts of the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, the chief spokesman for the Pakistani military announced that six Taliban militants were arrested recently during a joint mission by NATO and Afghan troops in eastern Afghanistan. The militants were wanted for organizing the December massacre at a school in Peshawar in northwestern Pakistan. The news of the arrests is the latest sign of the growing cooperation between Pakistan and Afghanistan in working to combat the threat posed by Islamist militants on both sides of the border. It also demonstrates that U.S. forces remain directly involved in risky missions in Afghanistan. A coalition spokesman in Kabul confirmed that some foreign troops accompanied the Afghan army on a mission in Nangahar province in eastern Afghanistan on Feb. 3-4. The spokesman said the operation was part of the coalition’s continued “advise and assist role” in supporting the Afghan army. “All coalition military operations are conducted in accordance with the law of war, rules of engagement and pertinent international agreements,” said the spokesman, referring all additional questions to the Afghan army. It was not immediately clear whether Pakistani Taliban militants were killed or wounded during the raid. But the United States also considers the Pakistani Taliban to be a threat, one reason that the tempo of drone strikes in Pakistan increased in the weeks after the school massacre. A security agreement between the United States and Afghanistan authorizes “U.S. military operations to defeat al-Qaeda and its affiliates,” as well as “combined military exercises” between coalition and Afghan troops. Whenever possible, however, Afghan troops are expected to lead those operations, the agreement states. Such involvement may serve as a blueprint for future American military operations in Iraq. On Wednesday, The Washington Post reported that President Obama will ask Congress for authorization for the use of military force to help Iraqi forces battle Islamic State militants. The authorization


Expert analysis on U.S., Russia and arming Ukraine

to Ukraine for 2015, and the same in 2016 and 2017. These Beltway power brokers assume that Putin will recalculate and wind down the war once he sees that the United States is serious about backing Ukraine. But the arrival of American arms and advisors in Ukraine won’t weaken Putin politically. Arming Ukraine…probably would prompt Putin to scale up the war. Then there’s the Plan B problem. There’s a basic axiom in war: Don’t take a big step (or even a small one) without having thought hard, and planned for, what you will do if it doesn’t have the intended effect. Endangering USA won’t stop Putin Supporting the democratically elected Ukrainian government with funding and advice is good policy. But supplying Kiev with lethal weaponry would endanger U.S. national security interests, while having little chance of stopping Vladimir Putin. Ukraine lacks a reliable professional military organization, and Washington could not control how or where American weapons would be used on the ground. The plan to send weapons to Ukraine assumes that if Putin faces a strengthened foe, he will be forced to negotiate. But if suffocating sanctions have not accomplished that, why assume weapons will? Putin controls the Russian media, and his KGB connections allow him to credibly threaten any opponent with public humiliation or arrest. He is in no danger of being deposed. Rather than prompting him to negotiate, sending U.S. and NATO weapons to Ukraine would give him an excuse to declare that Russian forces must go into Ukraine to defend Russia from American attack. It is not in America’s interests to risk direct confrontation with nuclear-armed Russia, in non-NATO territory that Russia claims as its sphere of interest. Military assistance to Ukraine should be part of broader strategy Washington should seriously contemplate military assistance as part of a broader strategy for ending the conflict in Ukraine. The main argument against military assistance to Ukraine is that it is more likely to encourage than discourage Russia from escalating the conflict. This concern is valid, but could be mitigated by providing only the kind of equipment that would bolster Ukraine’s defenses and enable it to halt the further military advances of the Russia-backed separatists. It is clear that the Ukrainian army, weak as it may be, is going to fight tooth and nail for every town it holds. A way to stop this misery from spreading is to secure


VIDEO: What experts in defense, aerospace and infrastructure are saying about public-private partnerships

the world’s largest cloud-based predictive analytics software company. Previously, he worked as a corporate strategy consultant and developed PC-based pattern recognition software for AT&T Laboratories. Jim is the author of several software patents, as well as the 2012 book Uncontrolled, which advocated the extensive application of trial-and-error learning and was widely reviewed in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and other national publications. He is a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, and helped to found the Brookings Institution Project for Experimental Innovation in Policy. He has served on the boards of numerous for-profit and non-profit organizations. Craig R. McKinley Craig R. McKinley came to NIA on Jan. 1, 2015 from the Air Force Association. Previously, McKinley spent 38 years in the Air Force, retiring as a four-star general in November 2012. His last assignment was as the chief of the National Guard Bureau, where he also served as a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In this capacity, he was a military adviser to the president, the secretary of defense and the National Security Council. Anesa “Nes” Parker Anesa “Nes” Parker is a former GovLab fellow and Manager in the Federal Strategy Practice of Deloitte Consulting LLP. During her consulting tenure, Nes has led engagements for government, philanthropic and nonprofit clients related to innovation and strategy. Her area of interest is diversity as a strategy – from expanding women leadership in the workforce to immigration policy to prize competitions. She is also especially passionate about issues that overwhelming impact women and girls such as ending modern day slavery. Alan R. Shaffer Alan Shaffer is responsible for formulating, planning, and reviewing the DoD Research, Development, Test, and Evaluation (RDT&E) programs, plans, strategy, priorities, and execution in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering. Previously, Shaffer served a 24-year United States Air Force career with assignments in weather, intelligence, acquisition oversight and programming. Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Tex.) Congressman Mac Thornberry, R-Tex., serves as chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. He was first elected to the House in 1994 and has served on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, as well as the Budget Committee, Resources Committee and the Select Committee on Homeland Security. In 2011, he was was also chair of the Task Force on Cybersecurity. Agenda subject to change. Biographies are provided by speakers and edited only for clarity and length.


7 odd inventions that we’ve come to love

(Christopher Lance/Flickr) Whether a toilet looks acceptable or not depends on what part of the world you’re staring down at it from. I’m talking, of course, about bidets. For the most part, they’re nearly indistinguishable from any other standard toilet except for a small upward facing nozzle beneath the seat where water shoots out. Long popular in Japan, it allows users to soak and rinse on top of wiping — a notion that’s generally considered strange in America and hence the technology largely unheard of here. Over there, however, it’s simply cleaner. That’s not to say though that whenever ideas don’t quite suit certain people’s sensibilities, they can’t catch on. For instance, when the late Steve Jobs was asked why he wasn’t very high on opinions gleaned from focus groups, he famously replied, ”A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.” There is, after all, no patented formula for what or who we take to. And just as people sometimes fall for the unlikeliest partners, history has shown that people’s love for certain ideas, no matter how crazy, are no exception. Here are six other recent examples of inventions that have gotten a lot of buzz, despite being just plain strange: neurowear "necomimi" concept movie （脳波で動く猫耳） The Necomimi: Robotic cat ears that expose our honest emotions With shades of cosplay, manga and gadgetry all assembled into one, the Necomimi manages to combine everything that’s eccentrically Japanese into a wearable that’s not only cute, but fairly cutting edge. The headset is essentially a pair of brain-controlled cat ears that allows users to express four types of emotional states: relaxed, mild interest, strong interest and focus. This is made possible by a built-in sensor that detects these states using electroencephalography (EEG), a system that reads and translates emotions based on brainwave patterns. The ears then in turn move accordingly. And yes, they’ve actually been shown to work. My friend, tech journalist Boonsri Dickinson, tested the device for CNET when they first came out back in 2011 and while intrigued, felt wearing such a gadget made her more transparent than she’s normally comfortable with. Still, as she mentioned, it’s a kind of technology that can be useful for athletes to determine the optimal state for performance. The Necomimi can be purchased for $49 through maker Neurosky’s Web site. (Studio Banana Things) The ostrich pillow: Now