Certain breast cancer treatments appear to raise the risk for hip fractures among middle-aged women.
Continue reading …Leave Egypt alone, pleads Simon Jenkins ( Comment , 2 February). We should not only avoid any military aid/intervention, however; we should also stop preaching. Twenty-five years ago, the good news was from Russia. Unfortunately, the forces of reform quickly split into two, and the debate descended into a clash between two Nobel laureates, Gorbachev and Sakharov – a battle which, from the longer-term perspective, both lost. Why, then, this confrontation? To a large extent, it was because, both in London and Washington, we blundered, we gave the wrong advice. So the Russians chose to use our western interpretation of democracy. It was thus all win-or-lose in a single-preference electoral system; and win-or-lose again in an even more Orwellian decision-making process: the simple, for-or-against, majority vote. So back to Egypt. Many observers fear a takeover by one or other extremist group. The danger, therefore, is that, we might blunder again, and that Cairo might adopt an adversarial democratic structure which would allow for such an outcome. The wiser approach would be for the Egyptians to ignore any majoritarian model and to opt, instead, for a government of national unity. Decisions could then be based not on the majority’s more preferred policy from a choice of two options but, from a much wider selection, on the most popular option of every member in parliament. In a modern, plural society, concepts like majority rule and minority veto should really be obsolescent. Peter Emerson Director, The de Borda Institute Egypt Hosni Mubarak Foreign policy guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …BMW and PSA Peugeot Citroen partner for future hybrid tech, put that Great War thing behind them
February 3, 2011 No Comment
The last century saw no shortage of disputes between the French and the Germans, but in this century everything’s going to be totally cool. BMW and PSA Peugeot Citro
Continue reading …Heritage Foundation to Darrell Issa: Dump Health Care, Financial and Environmental Regulations
February 2, 2011 No CommentDarrell Issa recently decided to outsource his oversight duties to think tanks, industry organizations and lobbyists. He has requested their input into what they hate about government oversight and promises to have a report soon. In the meantime, CREW has done a great job of rounding up responses sent to him. Really, he should have just written to the Heritage Foundation and Cato Institute, because they cover all the bases. To be concise, they want all EPA regulatory responsibility ended, a complete rollback of patient rights under the PPACA (including a reinstatement of the right to exclude for pre-existing conditions), a complete rollback of Wall Street regulation, an end to credit card regulatory reforms, and more. Really, I could have written their letter in one page, instead of ten. It would go like this: Dear Rep. Issa, Thank you for the opportunity to submit ideas on what government policies hinder job creation. No doubt there are specific policies we could look at more carefully, but suffice it to say that all legislation passed in the last two years should be repealed. Then maybe our largest donors would consider hiring employees again, for substandard wages and without any health coverage or other benefits. We could do this and pay them just enough to stimulate the economy so that our Wall Street friends can recapture what we spend in the form of another market crash. Sincerely, Heritage Foundation I’ve embedded their actual 10-page response below. Heritage Foundation Letter to Chairman Issa – January 11, 2011
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One of the oldest pieces of American folklore draws thousands to Punxsutawney, Pa. to praise the groundhog. The AP’s Lee Powell gets the forecast. (Feb. 2)
Continue reading …President Obama’s goal of getting 1 million plug-in electric vehicles on America’s roads by 2015 is all but certain to fail, concludes a new report done in conjunction with the auto industry. Despite decent debuts from the Chevy Volt and Nissan Leaf, major manufacturers won’t be producing the volume of…
Continue reading …How bit.ly data shows the unrest in Egypt – and the internet shutdown | Strata conference 2011
February 2, 2011 No Comment
bit.ly data scientist Hilary Mason explains how the unrest in Egypt – and the shutdown of the country’s internet – are reflected in the site’s statistics The unrest in Egypt – and the shutdown in the country’s internet activity – is reflected instantly in our data from the country. You can see what happened here at the end of January: The first graph shows clicks from Egypt on bit.ly links. It’s a simple line plot with each point indicating cumulative clicks per hour, and you can see the precipitous drop-off – from around 20,000 per hour to almost zero – when the majority of Egyptian ISPs shut down and a smaller drop-off just before February 1st when Noor, the last operating ISP, shut down. Finally, we see that connections have been restored and in the last few hours traffic has returned to almost normal levels. The second graph show clicks from anywhere in the world on URLs that contain content related to Egypt. It’s in UTC and not normalised by timezone, which shows that people around the world have consistently been interested in the topic over the last week. Interestingly, these results are reflected too in Arbor’s statistics from Egypt which measured activity across 80 networks . More data Data journalism and data visualisations from the Guardian World government data • Search the world’s government data with our gateway Development and aid data • Search the world’s global development data with our gateway Can you do something with this data? • Flickr Please post your visualisations and mash-ups on our Flickr group • Contact us at data@guardian.co.uk • Get the A-Z of data • More at the Datastore directory • Follow us on Twitter Egypt Internet guardian.co.uk
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Journalists captured the riveting scene as thousands of supporters and opponents of President Hosni Mubarak battled in Cairo’s main square Wednesday. (Feb. 2)
Continue reading …Android 3.0 ‘Honeycomb’ can encrypt all your data, needs a full hour’s charge
February 2, 2011 No Comment
Diving through the Motorola Xoom’s sweet, sweet blend of Android 3.0 , we found an interesting perk — there’s an “Encrypt Tablet” option buried in the settings page, intended to secure all your personal data with a password or PIN. While a handy Google rep couldn’t tell us which cryptographic standards the OS uses, he did tell us the feature is part of Honeycomb as a whole, not a Motorola exclusive, so we’re sure to see the option in other business-minded Android slates to come. Oh, and Google asks that all you sysadmins stay tuned, as the company’s whipped up an API that lets you enforce policy restrictions upon your peons as far as encryption is concerned. Just make sure they remember to keep the tablet charged. See a close-up after the break. Continue reading Android 3.0 ‘Honeycomb’ can encrypt all your data, needs a full hour’s charge Android 3.0 ‘Honeycomb’ can encrypt all your data, needs a full hour’s charge originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 02 Feb 2011 18:31:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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CAPTION: Actor Ryan O’Neal, longtime companion of Farrah Fawcett, donates her iconic red bathing suit to the Smithsonian on what would have been Fawcett’s 64th birthday. (Feb. 2)
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