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Posts Tagged ‘politics’

Which town will be the first to say YIMBY?

A city or town volunteering to serve as the nation’s nuke dump is a better alternative than having the government pick a place, according to a federal commission. A “consent-based” approach would reduce costs and inevitable delays stemming from a not-in-my-backyard fight, Bloomberg reports.

Nuclear power plants generate several types of radioactive waste, which all has to go somewhere. In some cases, spent fuel rods and waste byproducts are stored at nuclear power plants; in other cases, they’re sent elsewhere for safe storage. Lawmakers have been wrangling over the location of a nuclear waste site for years, with the main proposed site located at Yucca Mountain, Nev., about 100 miles north of Las Vegas. Nevada lawmakers — notably Sen. Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader — have vehemently opposed the plan.

In 2010, President Obama cancelled plans to build a waste storage site at Yucca Mountain. South Carolina, the S.C. county Aiken County, and Washington state are among those storing nuclear waste on an interim basis, and those governments sued the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to force a decision on Yucca Mountain.

All of this is to say the fight is far from over, which is a problem if the U.S. does intend to reinvigorate the nuclear industry. The disaster at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear facility is only further evidence that planning is a necessity.

With the right incentives, some community in the continental U.S. might be willing to step up, however. Apparently a facility in Carlsbad, N.M., has accepted and disposed of defense-related nuclear waste for 10 years, and the community could perhaps be persuaded to support an energy-related disposal site, too, according to Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M.

It would probably be easier for everyone if such a community just volunteered to store the waste, according to the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future. Any takers?

[Bloomberg News]

The new company, Americans Elect, is about to submit 1.6 million signatures required to get on the 2012 California presidential ballot, the beginning salvo of a 50-state effort. The company plans to host an open nominating process to build a viable third party ticket in every state. Thomas Friedman at the New York Times explains their strategy, and how they could remake the future of voting.

It would work by recruiting delegates — anyone with an interest in national government, regardless of ideology — who would then fill out a questionnaire about political priorities. Then Americans Elect’s algorithms will match delegates with people who share similar interests. Then can then organize and discuss priorities, drafting a candidate who represents their views. Each candidate must present a video platform explaining his or her positions, and after a three-round tournament in April 2012, the candidate pool will be reduced to six. Then each of the six finalists will have to pick a running mate.

Americans Elect is requiring each potential ticket to include one member of each existing party, so a Democrat would have to run with a Republican or independent, and a Republican with a Democrat or independent — a very Jack Lemmon/James Garner plotline that seems to undermine the idea of a third party. But it's an interesting idea, and it seems like a viable way to use the Internet to democratize the democratic process.

Friedman is quite excited about this idea, predicting that Americans Elect will do for our current gridlocked duopoly “what Amazon.com did to books, what the blogosphere did to newspapers, what the iPod did to music, what drugstore.com did to pharmacies.” (He does not include "what pets.com did for pet stores.)

This seems a tad optimistic given the state of national politics, but hey, the Internet can solve lots of other problems, so why not this?

In June, an online national nominating convention will choose a final candidate, who would then be on the ballot under the Americans Elect party in all 50 states.

Sorry, Stephen Colbert and the Super Pac — the rules say any nominee must be “considered someone of similar stature to our previous presidents.” (Although one could argue Colbert is more serious than some of them.)

[New York Times]

To be clear, there are many more steps in the budget process before this is final — lawmakers are working on next year’s budget despite a stalemate between the White House and Republican leadership, so a lot could change in the next couple weeks. And odds are decent that at least some lawmakers will fight to preserve this enormous technological marvel (and the jobs associated with its construction). But this is not good news for astronomy, to put it mildly.

The House Appropriations Committee released its 2012 Commerce, Justice and Science funding bill today, ahead of a scheduled committee markup Thursday. The bill provides $50.2 billion overall for the nation’s projects in those three areas, which is $7.4 billion less than President Obama’s budget request. NASA’s budget is slashed by $1.6 billion, which is $1.9 billion less than Obama wanted. About $1 billion of that comes from the end of the shuttle program, and NASA Science funding is cut by $431 million from last year.

“The bill also terminates funding for the James Webb Space Telescope, which is billions of dollars over budget and plagued by poor management,” an Appropriations Committee press release says flatly.

While management problems are a little more subjective, the telescope is indeed massively over budget, as we’ve told you before. In November, a congressional panel described the telescope as “NASA’s Hurricane Katrina,” because of its destructive toll on other agency projects. That review found the telescope’s price tag had mushroomed to $6.5 billion and that it would not be ready until at least 2015. Then, just last week, the watchdog site NASA Watch obtained a memo from Goddard Space Flight Center describing that it may not launch until after 2018 — even that is “unfeasible,” the report said.

But that earlier report, last November, also pointed out a key fact: “The funds invested to date have not been wasted.” The JWST has enabled several engineering feats, from brand-new metal compounds to a huge space umbrella that will shield it from the sun. The umbrella will unfurl in space along with an enormous 18-piece primary mirror made of material that is supposed to warp in frigid temperatures. Astronomers say the JWST will provide unprecedented imagery of the deepest corners of the cosmos.

This bombshell is not the only piece of bad news for the scientific community. The National Science Foundation is also losing funding, set to receive $907 million less than Obama requested as part of his campaign to “Win the Future.” The NSF will get a modest $43 million for core research, Politico reports. Aside from that, NOAA is down $1 billion. The Environmental Protection Agency is down $1.5 billion, about 18 percent.

Pentagon spending would grow by $17 billion in 2012, on the other hand.

Again, this is all far from over, and plenty of fiscal feuding remains before we can write the JWST’s obituary. But with a budget debate raging in Washington — and, many economists say, the specter of a new economic crisis looming — future space telescopes could be a low priority.

[via The Hill]

A new Advanced Manufacturing Partnership will bring together six universities, including CMU and MIT, and 11 manufacturing firms, including Ford Motor Co. and Northrop Grumman, to develop new technologies. A National Robotics Initiative and a Materials Genome Initiative will spur new, rapid advances in fields from medicine to consumer gadgets, Obama said.

“We are inventors, we are makers, and we are doers,” Obama said. “If we want a robust, growing economy, we want a robust manufacturing sector.”

Obama toured CMU’s Robotics Institute, where researchers are working on projects like autonomous flying car technology. He also met with a local robotics firm that produces robots that can explore water and sewer pipes, capturing video for municipal workers and transmitting information to a central city database.

“They can enhance the productivity of these workers by three- or four-fold. Potentially this can save cities millions in infrastructure costs,” Obama said.

He also approved of CMU’s robotics research.

“One of my jobs as commander-in-chief is to keep an eye on robots. I’m pleased to report that the robots you manufacture here seem peaceful, at least for now,” he said.

He reminded the crowd that the current generation has been “pounded by wave after wave of profound economic change.” Technology has revolutionized workplaces, increasing efficiency and allowing for fewer employees. Places like Pittsburgh, which once employed thousands of steel workers, are being forced to evolve to meet 21st century demands. Carnegie Mellon University is at the center of that evolution, he said — it was founded as a trade school for steel workers and has become a world-class research university, creating hundreds of new spinoff companies and more than 9,000 jobs in the past decade.

Obama also checked out the Flypmode, the first crowdsourced military vehicle, designed through DARPA’s XC2V challenge and hosted by Arizona firm Local Motors. The car was based on Local Motors’ Rally Fighter chassis, a muscular monster with 33-inch tires and 20 inches of suspension travel. The Flypmode was designed and built in just under six months.

Obama said Local Motors’ CEO, Jay Rogers, understood the value of a rapid-prototype vehicle for combat — he’s an ex-Marine who lost some friends in combat. Local Motors solicited designs on its website and chose a design by Victor Garcia, completing the design and construction ahead of schedule.

“Not only could this change the way the government uses your tax dollars — think about it, instead of having a 10-year lead time to develop a piece of equipment, if we were able to collapse the pace of which that manufacturing takes place, that would save taxpayers billions of dollars,” he said, “but it also could get technology out to the theater faster, which could save lives.”

Rapid-built prototypes could also trickle through to the private sector more quickly, too, he said.

“It’s good for American companies, it’s good for jobs, it’s good for taxpayers, and it might save some lives in places like Afghanistan for our soldiers,” he said. “That’s what this is all about.”

Obama’s half-billion investment includes $300 million for national security industries and $100 million for research and training to develop advanced materials more quickly and more cheaply, according to the AP. Some of the $500 million would come from existing allocations to government agencies, but other funds are in Obama's 2012 budget request, so they still must be approved by Congress.

While praising future technologies, Obama kept the message firmly about jobs: “As futuristic, and let’s face it, as cool as some of this stuff is ... this partnership is about new cutting-edge ideas to create new jobs, spark new breakthroughs and reinvigorate American manufacturing today,” he said. “Winning the future begins with getting our economy moving right now.”

But he did have one message of encouragement for innovators: “The United States of America has your back.”

The Australian National University in Canberra, along with universities in Queensland and New South Wales, are tightening security for scientists who study climate change, the Guardian newspaper reports. Scientists are being moved to high-security buildings in which their names do not appear on staff directories or office doors.

Researchers have received a reported stream of emails threatening violence, sexual assault and even attacks on their children, according to the Canberra Times. ANU’s vice chancellor said some researchers have been threatened with assault if they were spotted in the street.

The recipient of one such threat co-authored a recently published report for Australia’s Climate Commission. The report calls for “urgent action to avoid sea level rises of a meter or more over the course of the next century,” the Guardian says.

Another scientist reportedly received threats of violence against her children after her picture appeared in a newspaper story about a community tree planting day, which was promoted as a way to mitigate climate change, the Canberra Times says.

Other climate researchers are deleting social media profiles and switching to unlisted numbers, according to the Guardian. The Australian Federal Police is apparently aware of the issue but has not received any formal complaints.

All this comes as Australian political leaders wrangle over a proposed carbon tax, set to be introduced July 1, 2012. Australian actress Cate Blanchett appeared in recent advertisements supporting the tax, electrifying the national debate. But Australians across the political spectrum condemned the recent threats.

To be sure, healthy skepticism is crucial in any scientific field — it drives new questions that can strengthen or shatter a new finding or theory. There’s a line between healthy, informed skepticism and outright denial, however. But for the sake of argument, let’s set even that aside. It should be universally abhorred when scientists are being threatened with actual physical violence simply because some people do not agree with their findings, or even their chosen profession. There's no place for that in a civilized debate.

Let’s all hope this ends where it began, in the minds of an unhinged few.

[Guardian]

That, of course, is where things get complicated. Taking comfort in technology's potential powers to fix what ails the nation is a common SotU trope. George W. Bush, on script, did it with global warming. And President Obama has internalized it as a core belief of his presidency. It's inevitable: In the last decade alone, we've seen more and more of what constitutes success for a state directly shaped by the pace of innovation. Energy, finance, medicine, culture—there's nothing that intensive technological development hasn't transformed. This has always been the case, really--bigger bombs and smarter people have historically been effective benchmarks for the state of a nation. But never before has technology woven itself so deeply (and so quickly!) into literally everything we do.

The challenge for our presidents, then, is no longer about selling us on this idea. It's about taking that as a starting point and actually getting things done.

"What we can do -- what America does better than anyone else -- is spark the creativity and imagination of our people," Obama said last night. Aside from a more abstract sense of our can-do attitude, our indefatigable American spirit, there are other, more tangible sparks. Regulation, government spending, crisis--these are the things that have historically driven surges of innovation. And words like "regulation," "government spending" and "crisis" are not exactly welcome in our current political dialog.

First, let's talk about regulation. To see how smart, considered regulation can drive innovation, you don't have to look very hard:

This figure, published by the Pew Center on Global Climate Change in December 2004, shows a standardized comparison of fuel efficiency regulations around the world. It remains a sad chart, one that illustrates directly how a lack of regulation can stunt innovation toward absolutely critical technology. We can talk and dream all we want, applying plenty of American gumption, about how great the day will be when our cars don't burn so much expensive gasoline, emit less greenhouse gas, or maybe even forsake fossil energy altogether. But a firm nudge, perhaps uncomfortable at first, is often what it takes to get behemoths like our auto companies into action. It's clearly worked elsewhere around the world.

Encouragingly, regulation wasn't omitted from Obama's speech entirely. "When we find rules that put an unnecessary burden on businesses, we will fix them," he said to applause. "But I will not hesitate to create or enforce common-sense safeguards to protect the American people." Even with its context here in consumer protection, it's nice to hear the word "rules" spoken at least. We need more.

The other two sparks--government spending and crisis--often appear in close proximity. One of the leading sound bites of the night was our current "Sputnik moment," referring of course to the great national wake-up following the Soviet Union's early lead in the space race, which kickstarted our own space program, along with a general push for better math and science education.

As Fred Kaplan over at Slate points out as well today, our response to Sputnik was fueled above all by massive amounts of government spending. NASA did not yet exist, keep in mind, when Sputnik sent down its first beeps from orbit. That we put a man on the moon just 12 years later remains one of the most amazing things our country has ever done, but the reasons for our haste went beyond pure scientific curiosity. The space race was also an arms race, and when total nuclear annihilation at the hands of a single, powerful enemy is a possible outcome, money tends to more easily flow to high-tech sectors. That threat is what gave us the microprocessor, NASA and the Internet.

Summoning similar innovation in the midst of a financial crisis (and with regulation and spending being such unpopular words) is, of course, where the challenge lies. What's encouraging is that the first step--selling everyone on the idea--seems to be complete. We can stand together now, knowing that the solution to so many of our current problems lies in our ability to innovate. Now, hopefully, the real fun begins.

Mapmakers have more power than ever. But who are the mapmakers?

The commander cited Google Maps, which had erroneously depicted a stretch of the border in Nicaragua’s favor by as much as 1.7 miles. Google quickly moved to amend the faulty border data and sportingly apologized.

The incident raises some interesting issues concerning the future of mapmaking that, thus far, our brave new digital world hasn’t yet been forced to confront. Whereas cartography – particularly the act (or the art) of drawing political lines on geographical charts – used to be the purview of nations and international bodies, commercial entities like Google, Bing, Mapquest, and other digital services are the principal mapmakers of the 21st century.

Orbiting GeoEye satellites and camera-equipped Google sedans are the Magellans of the digital age, dispatched to explore and catalog -- and most importantly make public -- unprecedented amounts of geographical data via the Web. If anyone wants to locate anything – be it a coffee house, a post office, or an international boundary – users log into Google or Bing, not the U.N. or the U.S. Geological Survey. But these commercial maps are compiled from a variety of sources and often blend government-derived mapping data with user-generated content. As such, they are subject to conflicting information, differences of political opinion and – as the Nicaraguan incident shows – outright error.

“With a lot of these web-based tools, the need for formal training in cartography is going away, and that’s both a good thing and a bad thing,” says Dr. Brian Tomaszewski, an assistant professor in the Department of Information Sciences & Technologies at the Rochester Institute of Technology. It’s good because it creates rich, centralized data compilations that users constantly update. But before that can happen, someone like Google has to build the underlying map, and there’s no single source or authority for global map data to draw from. That leaves companies in the unenviable position of trying to pick and choose the best data and massage it to fit a single geographical template.

In the case of Nicaragua, it turns out that data was simply incorrect. A post on Google’s “Lat Long Blog” explained the error: “Yesterday we became aware of a dispute that referenced the border between Costa Rica and Nicaragua as depicted on Google Maps. This morning, after a discussion with the data supplier for this particular border (the U.S. Department of State), we determined that there was indeed an error in the compilation of the source data, by up to 2.7 kilometers.”

Viewed on Google Maps, however, an incorrect border looks like any other border, and if the U.S. State Department (and, more importantly, Google) says the border is in one place, who is Costa Rica to say it’s not? In strict cartographic sense, the treaty that originally established the border is the final word. But no one locates a border by reading a 150-year-old treaty; people find borders by looking at maps, and in the 21st century people consult maps by opening their Web browsers.

“We look at the computer and say ‘how can it be wrong, it’s on the computer,’” says Dr. Frank Galgano, professor and chairman of Villanova University’s Geography and the Environment Department. It’s to the computer that the world increasingly turns to find just about everything, lending digital mapmakers incredible power to shape users’ geospatial perceptions.

What’s largely missing is the healthy skepticism that users apply to other piecemeal compendia of information like Wikipedia, Galgano says. Google knows its maps contain errors; it says so in the user agreement (you read that closely, didn’t you?). For those people searching for the nearest Starbucks in Lower Manhattan these errors are largely negligible. But for an American hiking near the Iranian border, they can lead to miscalculations with serious consequences.

“People are forgetting to use common sense and critical thinking,” Tomaszewski says. “Google Maps isn’t an official mapping agency like a government. They buy or acquire data and then assemble it into a map. It’s almost frightening to think that militaries or governments might rely on Google as the final word on boundaries or borders between nations.”

But there are a variety of reasons why a government or military might do so, not least of which is the lack of anything better. In the United States, the USGS maintains an extensive collection of publicly available map data accurate down to about 130 feet. Many other nations treat their official maps as state secrets. Still others don’t have the resources to produce accurate maps at all. That makes commercial, publicly available maps like Google’s very attractive, if not any more authoritative.

Why Nicaragua chose to use a Google Map to justify military actions along a tense border is something for the geopolicy wonks to debate. Regardless, the incident embodies the changing nature and impact of cartography in a rapidly digitizing environment where data – often conflicting – is abundant and clearly defined rules are scarce. After all, borders are nothing more than imaginary lines enforced by mutual agreement. Cartography is inexact enough already, and the blurring line between “official” cartography and commercial maps rich in content but low in complexity further compounds that lack of concreteness.

That’s not to say commercial maps don’t carry tremendous value. Their accessibility has revolutionized the way people use maps, particularly as they pertain to commerce. The economic importance of being “on the map” may not be outwardly apparent, but consider the case of Sunrise, Fla.; the community of 90,000 has inexplicably disappeared from Google Maps three times since August of last year. During these “blackouts,” local businesses reported flattening commerce as new customers couldn’t locate them. Online orders ground to a halt for some businesses. After all, how would anyone find a florist or automotive shop that’s not searchable? When Sunrise disappeared from Google Maps, it might as well have disappeared completely.

So what makes a real map in the 21st century? Some would argue that the musty old analog maps tucked into national archives around the world are still the real deal, invested with the authority of governments. But if asked which is more important to their everyday lives, the citizens of Sunrise, Fla., might argue that commercial maps, regardless of inaccuracies or oversimplifications, represent a far greater social and economic utility. To the average person, commercial maps like those compiled by Google, Bing, or Yahoo have become at least as equally important as their “official” counterparts.

The important thing is maintaining a line between the two, and therein lies the problem in a world where data of all kinds is migrating ever more rapidly to the Web and pooling there, waiting for someone to make sense of it.

UTD’s Dr. Dean likens mapmaking’s shift to the commercial, digital realm to the blossoming of user-generated travel sites across the Web. When planning a trip, a user might seek information from established third party reviewers, like magazines or established ratings agencies. But he or she might also troll the Web for social data and customer reviews written by other travelers. Both kinds of data are valuable, he says, but a smart traveler would absorb and use them differently.

“It’s all part of becoming a knowledgeable consumer of maps. The idea that if it’s on a map it’s got to be true is misguided,” Dean says, noting that this is actually a very old problem rather than a new one. As with any data, misuse can lead to debacle, and such mishaps can range in severity from missing an exit on the interstate to interstate warfare. “Someone tried to look at a boundary on Google Maps as if it were a real definitive border and it nearly caused an armed conflict,” Dean says. “That’s as serious as it gets.”