[unable to retrieve full-text content]Thomas Friedman, New York Times
Eventually this shutdown crisis will end. And eventually the two parties will make another stab at a deal on taxes, investments and entitlements. But there’s one outcome from such negotiations that I can absolutely guarantee: Seniors, Wall Street and unions will all have their say and their interests protected. So the most likely result will be more tinkering around the edges, as our politicians run for the hills the minute someone accuses them of “fixing the deficit on the backs of the elderly” or creating “death panels” to sensibly allocate end-of-life health care. Could this time...Source: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/2013/10/16/kicking_the_can_down_the_road_317939.html
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Wednesday, October 16, 2013
Power outage shuts down 'South Park' production
NEW YORK (AP) — Nothing much interferes with "South Park" lampooning its targets.
But Comedy Central says an ill-timed power outage shut the show down Tuesday night, preventing completion of this week's scheduled episode.
Comedy Central said Wednesday that all the computers at South Park Studios were down for hours, from animation to editing to sound. The planned episode, "Goth Kids 3: Dawn of the Posers," couldn't be finished.
A repeat, "Scott Tenorman Must Die," was scheduled Wednesday night instead.
"South Park" co-creator Trey Parker says he regrets missing an air date but acknowledges. But he says after years of tempting fate by delivering the show on a last-minute basis, "I guess it was bound to happen."
"Goth Kids 3" is now scheduled for next week.
"South Park" airs Wednesdays at 10 p.m. Eastern.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/power-outage-shuts-down-south-park-production-210528796.html
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Union 'encouraged' in San Francisco transit strike talks
By Laila Kearney
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Negotiators hoping to avert a potentially crippling commuter rail strike in the traffic-clogged San Francisco Bay Area were set to return to the bargaining table on Wednesday to try to reach a deal.
Unions agreed late on Tuesday to put off striking for the third day in a row, as talks with management wore on late into the night without a deal on a new contract, ensuring that trains would run as usual on Wednesday.
At the request of a federal mediator overseeing the talks, the sides planned to resume negotiations at 10 a.m. local time, according to a spokeswoman for the largest of two unions representing more than 2,000 Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) drivers and staff.
"We are encouraged by the progress we've achieved, and at the request of the federal mediators we will continue to bargain," the spokeswoman for the Service Employees International Union, Cecille Isidro, said. BART workers are also represented by the Amalgamated Transit Union.
A strike would affect about 400,000 passengers from San Francisco and surrounding areas who rely on the rail system every day and would instead be forced onto buses and other already busy commuter routes.
Adding to the pressure, a union representing workers at the Alameda-Contra Costa Transit Agency, which operates buses in many of the same communities served by BART, notified its management on Monday it could call a strike as soon as Thursday.
The BART drivers and staff have been working without a contract since June 30, and their unions have repeatedly said they were prepared to walk off the job if no deal were reached.
Two midnight deadlines for a strike have already come and gone since Sunday with no agreement.
Management has offered a 12 percent pay raise over four years for workers, and said they make an average of $79,000 plus benefits. The unions peg the average worker salary at $64,000.
They also point out that San Francisco and nearby Oakland are among the 10 most expensive U.S. cities. Because the management offer also includes a demand that employees pay a portion of their medical and retirement benefit costs, some of the 12 percent offered in raises would be immediately swallowed up by those contributions.
The unions had initially asked for a three-year contract, with a 3.75 percent raise in each of the first two years and a 4 percent raise in the last year.
BART spokesman Rick Rice has said the transit system wanted workers to contribute to pensions, starting at 1 percent in the first year and growing to 4 percent in the fourth. The agency also wanted a cap on healthcare costs, he said.
Bay Area commuters had a taste of the havoc a transit strike could bring in July, when BART employees walked off the job after their contract first expired. A strike was again threatened in August before Democratic Governor Jerry Brown intervened to seek a 60-day cooling-off period, now expired.
(Writing by Sharon Bernstein; Editing by Cynthia Johnston and Prudence Crowther)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/san-francisco-transit-strike-averted-again-talks-wear-083329743--finance.html
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These Rorschach Ink Tests Could Replace the Good Old CAPTCHA
The CAPTCHA is a wonderful thing, but it's not without its failings. And as hackers get better and better at cracking them, a team of CMU engineers are proposing an alternative: Inkblot tests.
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The 2014 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame nominees
Gene Simmons of Kiss performs live on stage, for a one-off Independence Day show as a fundraiser for the Help for Heroes charity, at The Kentish Town Forum on July 4, 2012 in London, England. Kiss was... more Gene Simmons of Kiss performs live on stage, for a one-off Independence Day show as a fundraiser for the Help for Heroes charity, at The Kentish Town Forum on July 4, 2012 in London, England. Kiss was just nomonated to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. (Photo by Jim Dyson/Getty Images) less
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/lightbox/the-2014-rock-and-roll-hall-of-fame-nominees-slideshow/
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Source: http://news.yahoo.com/lightbox/the-2014-rock-and-roll-hall-of-fame-nominees-slideshow/
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Tuesday, October 15, 2013
Among The Shutdown Victims: The White House Kitchen Garden
Basil, tomatoes, peppers and lettuces grow in garden beds on the South Lawn of the White House. According to the site Obama Foodorama, the government shutdown has had a dramatic effect on the garden.
Eddie Gehman Kohan/ObamaFoodorama.com
Basil, tomatoes, peppers and lettuces grow in garden beds on the South Lawn of the White House. According to the site Obama Foodorama, the government shutdown has had a dramatic effect on the garden.
Eddie Gehman Kohan/ObamaFoodorama.com
The government shutdown has forced a lot of hard-working people into idleness. That includes most of the staff that tends the famed White House kitchen garden, according to Obama Foodorama.
On Friday, the site reported that only a skeleton crew of National Park Service gardeners remained on duty — permitted to water and remove trash, but not to weed and harvest the more than 30 kinds of vegetables growing there.
This loss of okra, tomatoes and sweet potatoes is more symbolic than anything else — the president and his family are not going to starve for lack of their fall harvest, of course.
But it's another, less obvious effect of the government shutdown on food production. And given all of the hard work that the first lady and her team have put into maintaining the garden, it's a tragedy to see tomatoes rotting on her vines.
More serious, of course, is the severe pressure the shutdown is putting on critical government food assistance programs like WIC, which feeds pregnant women and mothers of young children, and food stamps and the people who rely on them for basic nutrition.
And as we enter Week 3 of the shutdown, other food producers are speaking up about how their livelihoods are being threatened by the absence of critical U.S. Department of Agriculture programs and services.
As Morning Edition's David Green reported Tuesday, Alaskan crabbers and their boats are stuck at the port because they can't get the permits they need to fish. Federal workers who issue those permits are off the job because of the government shutdown.
And according to the American Farmland Trust, farmers are struggling to plan for the future without access to crucial information, such as crop reports from the National Agriculture Statistics Service and other federal resources. "Farmers have to make important business decisions based on educated guesses rather than hard data," the group notes.
The federal government also subsidizes growers of some crops, like corn, when yields are low. And that means another group in limbo are the farmers who aren't sure when they'll be getting their subsidy checks this year. Montana Farmers Union President Alan Merrill told a local news service that farm loans, disaster assistance and conservation program payments all have been put on hold.
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