Split (1)

train · 2.59M rows

text stringlengths 9 78.2k
There are reports of rain in the southern parts of the las Vegas valley. Here is the latest from Chief Meteorologist Bryan Scofield.
There is a Severe Thunderstorm Warning in effect for northwestern Arizona and central Clark County until 1:30 p.m. The storm could bring heavy rain and hail to the area.
The storm is currently moving into the Boulder City area.
Can culture shifts, open architecture prod defense acquisition reform?
Deloitte's Elizabeth McGrath, the Defense Department's former deputy chief management officer, was among the witnesses at a June 24 House Armed Services Committee hearing.
Improving and streamlining defense acquisition is a perennial topic of congressional hearings. But reform doesn't mean the same thing to everyone. The occasionally conflicting demands of legislators, as well as cultural factors inside the Department of Defense, may be what make acquisition reform such a tough nut to cr...
At a June 24 hearing of the House Armed Services Committee, a panel of former Defense officials and policy experts heard from members who were worried that acquisition was too bogged down in red tape, too slow, too expensive, too friendly to longtime incumbent contractors and inimical to small business participation, b...
"I believe the causes for our discontent with the performance of the acquisition system do not lie in the laws and regulation," said retired Navy Vice-Admiral David Venlet. "It's underlying decisions that are made that try to respond for the years of acquisition reform pressures. ... do this faster, do this cheaper. Th...
Elizabeth McGrath, the recently retired former deputy chief management officer at DOD, and a leader in enterprise-wide IT acquisition policy, said her tenure taught her that rapid prototyping and revision, strong program management, and contract flexibility to account for changes in requirements that occur in an agile ...
But having a strategy and executing it are two different things.
McGrath, who is now with Deloitte Consulting LLP, noted that, culturally, the department is still in the midst of a generational shift, from maintaining a staff of dedicated coders to grooming program managers with expertise in acquiring and implementing commercial off-off-the-shelf products for use in DOD business sys...
"The workforce needs to be trained on how do you acquire and configure commercial capabilities as opposed to what we do today in the acquisition process. The training isn't focused, I don't think, enough on how to enable a better implementation," McGrath said.
The latest iteration of the DoD Directive 5000, the acquisitions bible used in defense procurement, embeds new guidance that differentiates the acquisition of commercial IT products for business use from procurement of weapons systems. McGrath said that earlier efforts to create a separate rulebook for IT "confused peo...
Software for weapons, ships, aircraft, and other complex hardware systems poses a separate problem, said Ronald O'Rourke, a naval specialist at the Congressional Research Service. The Navy is trying to contain costs and problems of interoperability by "moving to more open architecture approaches to the integration of s...
Data transparency is another area for possible reform, said Christopher Lamb of the National Defense University. Currently analytic resources are concentrated in the individual services. "They own the data, the models, and the trained personnel for evaluating tradeoffs," Lamb said. They are fierce defenders of their ow...
There are moves inside the DOD and in Congress to make changes to military procurement, with Frank Kendall, undersecretary of Defense for acquisition, technology and logistics, leading efforts at the Pentagon, and Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Texas), vice chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, exploring options in t...
"This is something we've done over and over. But I'm confident that this time it's going to be perfect," joked committee Chairman Buck McKeon (R-Calif.).
Defense minister says he made decision so he could oversee developments in the South.
Ahead of an additional Israeli response to Wednesday's bomb attack along the border with the Gaza Strip, Defense Minister Ehud Barak on Wednesday cancelled a planned visit to Washington, where he was scheduled to meet Defense Secretary Robert Gates. Barak said he canceled his trip so he could monitor the developments i...
The war in the construction industry opened up new fronts today, Wednesday.
Protests on construction sites across Britain turned into mass stay-aways.
For the second time this week groups of construction workers have united with electricians to walk off the job.
At the Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station in Nottinghamshire, electricians, scaffolders and welders all stayed out of work.
More than 200 electricians picketed both gates at SSI steel works (formerly Corus), in Redcar on Teeside with the scaffolders and electricians refusing to work.
A student delegation from Teesside University unfurled a banner with “students and workers unite and fight” on it.
One electrician spoke of the solidarity they have received from students while another spoke about the importance of unity between public and private sector workers.
There was a short meeting that concluded in electricians blocking the Redcar entrance of the site with traffic backed up around the roundabout.
Workers also stayed off the job at the Pembroke power station in Wales. At Ferrybridge power station in West Yorkshire scaffolders, welders and electricians all refused to work.
In Saltend workers on one project protested and in Liverpool 20 workers from the John Moores University site refused to work and joined the protest there.
In London, up to 200 workers protested at the Farringdon Crossrail construction site.
The contractor, Crown House, says it wants to replace teams of electricians with teams made up of only one electrician and eight semi-skilled workers—who will earn a third less.
Two Unite union stewards were recently elected on the site—but management refused to recognise them. After today’s protest they agreed to recognise one of the stewards.
At the site the main delivery gate had mysteriously been locked with what one worker called a “rank and file” padlock so preventing lorries getting in or out.
This produced a flurry of activity from management. But electricians from the site refused to go into work—despite a company photographer trying to photograph protesters.
Other grades that went into work remained in the canteen and refused to work.
On the picket line workers held an impromptu meeting and discussed where to take the campaign. Many were keen on taking the protests to the offices of the companies and to those of the clients.
An official strike ballot of Balfour Beatty electricians is underway and the result is due on 30 November. A number of speakers spoke about how that should be the spark to walking off sites and joining the public sector strikes that day.
The electricians are campaigning to stop building bosses tearing up their national JIB agreement and cutting wages by up to 35 percent.
The contractors attacking the agreement are Bailey Building Services, Balfour Beatty Engineering Services, Tommy Clarke, Crown House Technologies, SES and Spie Matthew Hall.
In reality, agencies are already recruiting the new grade of “installers” in preparation for the introduction of the new contracts.
Members of the Ucatt construction workers’ union have voted overwhelmingly to join the 30 November public sector strikes.
Building workers in local government, NHS, the prison service and the civil service voted by a margin of more than four to one in favour of strikes. In total 83 percent voted to strike on a 27 percent turnout.
It was an exciting morning at Legoland Florida Resort as officials held a media event to unveil Heartlake City, the latest themed section. Heartlake City is based on the Lego Friends line of products, which have storylin es based on a group of young women, Mia, Emma, Stephanie, Olivia and Andrea.
Legoland Florida does an excellent job of incorporating local children into its media events, and Thursday was no exception. The park collaborated with The Wright Step School of Dance Winter Haven, headed by Amy Wright. The school brought a large group of kids, mostly girls, who performed a choreographed dance during t...
Heartlake City introduces what is likely to be one of the most popular photo opportunities in the park, a pink bench near the entrance surrounded by life-sized figures of the five Lego Friends.
The Chelsea High boys basketball team improved to 4-0 in the Commonwealth Athletic Conference with a 68-53 triumph over Greater Lowell Tuesday evening.
The Red Devils led all the way, grabbing a 16-4 lead after one period and never allowing Greater Lowell to bring the margin under double figures. Chelsea featured a balanced scoring attack as Sammy Mojica led the Red Devils in the scoring column with 16 points, followed by Jordan Virella with 14, Joseph Rivera with 12,...
Chelsea head coach Jay Seigal also utilized a pressing defense that kept Greater Lowell off balance and resulted in a large number of turnovers. “We’re at our best when our defense creates offensive opportunities and we can maintain an up-tempo pace,” said Seigal.
The victory snapped a three game losing streak for Chelsea, all of which came against non league rivals. The Red Devils lost both games in their Christmas tournament last week, falling to Masconomet in the preliminary round, 50-38, and then to Triton in the consolation game, 59-57.
The latter contest saw Chelsea almost pull off a miraculous comeback victory as the Red Devils overcame a 14 point deficit with 2:35 to play and knotted matters at 57-57 with 19 seconds on the clock.
Chelsea played excellent defense as Triton tried for a final shot. The game seemed to be headed into overtime, but Triton caught a break when a loose ball was picked up by one if its players, who then threw up a shot at the buzzer which went through the hoop to win the game.
Mojica pumped in 23 points, including 13 in the final frame, as he and Virella led the charge in the final minutes that almost led to a victory.
Chelsea held a 28-17 lead midway through the second quarter and had some chances to expand the lead, but couldn’t get the ball to fall. Peabody then rallied for a nine point run before the half to make it a 28-26 affair at the intermission. The teams played nip and tuck through the third frame until Peabody pulled away...
Crespo hit for 17 points and Rivera popped in 16 against the Tanners, the Red Devils’ former Greater Boston League rival which now is in the Northeastern Conference.
Seigal and crew now will take on two of their toughest CAC foes when they travel to Greater Lawrence Friday and then journey to Lynn Tech Tuesday.
New Study Shows A Grave Lack Of Gender Diversity In The Music Industry Among other findings, more than 90 percent of Grammy nominees in the past six years have been men.
Lorde, seen here at the 2014 Grammy Awards, is the only woman nominated in this year's album of the year category.
Ahead of Sunday night's 60th Grammy Awards ceremony, a new study published by University of Southern California's Annenberg Inclusion Initiative finds that more than 90 percent of Grammy nominees in the past six years have been male. Stacey Smith, co-author of the study — titled Inclusion in the Recording Studio? -- sa...
"When it comes to songwriters, only 12 percent are female, and perhaps most egregiously, only 2 percent of 651 producers were women," Smith says. "And only two of those producers were women of color."
The study wasn't only about the Grammys: Researchers also looked at the 600 most popular songs since 2012. The evidence suggests a heavily male-dominated industry overall — and when you consider that the music industry tends to favor the songwriters with a pedigree for churning out hits, that pool becomes even more sha...
"There are nine male songwriters that are setting the agenda for popular culture across a fifth of the most popular songs over the last six years," Smith says. "Nine men! I think consumers should know this, and I think there should be concern that such a narrow slice of humanity is responsible for and driving our ideas...
Heba Kadry is a mastering engineer based in Brooklyn. She says she doesn't believe the Grammys are the best indication of what's actually going on in the music industry right now, and that some advances in diversity have been made — but that even so, she is a still a minority in her field and faces uphill battles in ge...
"Any time you're in a room with a bunch of people who are considering hiring you, there is this immediate assumption, like, 'Who do you manage?' or 'Whose girlfriend are you?' ... They don't think of you as potentially a person who knows what they're doing," Kadry says. "And so you feel like you kind of have to prove y...
Kadry says that the major labels, the hitmakers, rarely go outside their comfort zones in her experience — but sometimes their hands can be forced.
"They usually go for their rolodex of the same dudes," she says. "I think when the artist has enough clout to be like, 'You know what? No. I want to work with this person,' then can the tides really change."
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is widely regarded in the media as the ultimate authority on climate change. Created by two divisions of the United Nations, and recipient of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, its pronouncements are received as if they come down from Mount Olympus or Mount Sinai. The commo...
Clearly, the IPCC does not speak as one voice when leading scientists on its panel contradict its official position. The solution to this apparent riddle lies in the structure of the IPCC itself. What the media report are the policymakers’ summaries, not the far lengthier reports prepared by scientists. The policymaker...
The policymakers’ summaries are presented as the “consensus” of 2,500 scientists who have contributed input to the IPCC’s scientific reports. “Consensus” does NOT mean that all of the scientists endorse the policymakers’ summaries. In fact, some of the 2,500 scientists have resigned in protest against those summaries. ...
To better understand the “consensus” presented in the policymakers’ summaries, it is helpful to be aware of the structure of the IPCC. Those who compose the summaries are given considerable latitude to modify the scientific reports. Page four of Appendix A to the Principles Governing IPCC Work states: “Changes (other t...
To its credit, the IPCC debunks many of the alarmist exaggerations of radical greens. However, its scientific authority remains irreparably compromised by political tampering. When a U.S. State Department official writes to the co-chair of the IPCC that “it is essential that … chapter authors be prevailed upon to modif...
The sponsors of the IPCC, the United Nations, and liberal American politicians all share the goal of reducing Americans’ wealth by capping our consumption of energy with a binding international climate change treaty. They are willing to resort to scientific fraud to further their goal. In the words of Al Gore’s ally, f...
The declassified images are a treasure trove for scientists who study the empires of antiquity.
Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1966 film Blow-Up features a wayward London fashion photographer called Thomas who unwittingly documents a murder. Hidden in the blurred background of one of his most recent photographs is a detail so obscured by shadows and foliage that, at first, Thomas does not even see it. Only after he rep...
It was revealed earlier this month that declassified U.S. spy satellite photographs taken above the Antarctic have inadvertently also documented how that continent has been affected by climate change. In this case, deep in the archives of national intelligence agencies are satellite photos half a century old in which s...
A group of researchers, led by Shujie Wang at the University of Cincinnati, explained that classified photographs taken by the CIA’s ARGON satellite platform in the early 1960s have, upon reevaluation, added decades’ worth of visual evidence through which glaciologists can track the melting of Antarctica’s ice sheets. ...
While Wang’s work focuses specifically on precursor evidence for the 2002 collapse of the Larsen B ice shelf, the larger takeaway of her team’s approach is that it can be remarkably easy to overlook unusual data sets simply because of their original context. How can you find something if you don’t even know you’re supp...
Archaeologist Jesse Casana describes arriving at this realization in his own field by using the metaphor of turning swords into ploughshares—that is, transforming what is essentially a weapon of the Cold War into a tool of civilian research. Casana spoke to me about the CORONA satellite program, in particular. The CORO...
Archaeologists were amongst the first to pounce.
Casana described the CORONA imagery with undisguised enthusiasm. “CORONA is an amazing tool for archaeological discovery, in general,” he said—but the engineering feats that made the photographs possible in the first place are equally awe-inspiring. The satellites’ camera systems, for example, relied on special, high-d...
As Casana pointed out, the declassification order came after heavy lobbying from Robert McCormick Adams, an archaeologist and, at the time, Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. Adams knew the historical value of these photographs, but he also knew that, in the 1990s, with the Soviet Union no longer in existence, t...
Casana is director of the CORONA Atlas Project, an attempt to methodically and systematically identify all sites of archaeological interest in the backgrounds of these images. Archaeologists are poring over each image, looking for anomalous landscape features, such as unusual lines or odd patterns. The numbers so far h...
Mining this resource for its archaeological riches is, however, a time-consuming affair. In theory, archaeologists could follow the lead of firms such as Orbital Insight and program a machine-vision algorithm to help identify unknown historic sites in these photos. Analyzing hundreds, if not thousands, of photographs a...
Casana is not alone in his approach, hoping to rediscover a lost ancient past by way of the sky. Articles about remote sensing appear regularly in academic publications, and, in 2013, Springer published two hefty compilations exploring Archaeology from Historical Aerial and Satellite Archives and Mapping Archaeological...
“The kinds of features that survive for us to find, however, are often the products of very powerful, centralized governments from the earliest empires,” he explained. “They built large walled cities; they excavated elaborate irrigation systems that ran dozens of kilometers; they built roads.” The traces left by minor ...
While the CORONA images are undeniably valuable, they will not necessarily reveal subtle landscape effects on the remote edges of these once-great empires. Like Thomas in Blow-Up, archaeologists can pore over endless archives of photographs, zooming in to ever-more extreme levels of resolution to find traces of walls, ...
Could it be the students who attend HBCUs today have no business in college at all? I suspect most of these students should not have graduated high school.
The racists who run: Princeton, Harvard, Stanford, Yale, Dartmouth, et. al., can fix this gap. How? Admit fewer black students. I suspect 85-90% of the blacks at these colleges would not have been admitted if they were white. When the Sheila Jackson Lees, Michelle and Barack Obamas and their like no longer fill the Ivy...
Elite colleges admission procedures are racist. We know this because they damage the HBCUs.
Home » dvd buzz » question of the day: What’s up with this apparently but nonsensically homophobic DVD cover?
question of the day: What’s up with this apparently but nonsensically homophobic DVD cover?
Is it me, or is there something a little hinky in the difference between these two DVD covers for the same movie?
On the left is the Region 2 DVD cover art for Make the Yuletide Gay. On the right is the Region 1 DVD cover art for the same film.
Now, actually, I don’t think the homophobia explanation makes sense: This title was never going to be showing up on the shelves of Wal-Mart where it might scare the locals, and it should in fact be designed to appeal to gays and gay-friendlies on sites like Amazon, where the DVD cover is the first thing you notice. But...
What’s up with this apparently but nonsensically homophobic DVD cover?
One of the most interesting and challenging problems in physics is understanding strongly correlated many-body systems, where strong interactions can yield many remarkable phenomena such as superfluidity in 4He, high-temperature superconductivity, etc. In order to attack these problems, we often need to reduce the comp...
Xu, Jie, "Magnetic Order and Dimensional Crossover in Optical Lattices with Repulsive Interaction" (2013). Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects. Paper 1539623610.
NEW YORK (ForexNewsNow) – “A statesman of value must have two essential qualities: cautiousness and imprudence,” Ruggiero Bonghi once said.
This quote is perfect for the current predicament US Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke presently finds himself in since he decided to postpone any quantitative easing (QE3) for now. The problem is that the Harvard graduate seems to only trust prudence, and it could come back to haunt the US economy in a few months.
“Who will believe that commitment to cut spending can survive a lengthy stagnation with high prolonged unemployment and social dissatisfaction?” she asked.
According to both Bernanke and Lagarde, the ball is in Washington’s hands. In other words, it is the fiscal policy of the United States which is at stake here. Is Barack Obama too cautious or are the Republicans in Congress preventing him from being too imprudent?

Subsets and Splits

No community queries yet

The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.