Thursday, January 24, 2013

Congress charts new collision course over deficit

WASHINGTON (AP) ? The nation's sharp disagreements over taxes and spending are on a re-routed collision course, as Senate Democrats launch a plan that includes new taxes and House Republicans vow to speed up their plan to balance the federal budget with spending cuts alone.

The Republicans' new approach would require even deeper cuts in social programs than they pushed last year. Liberals denounced those earlier plans as severe and unfair, and they say the new version would be worse.

The new commitments by House and Senate members stem from the ongoing dispute over raising the federal debt ceiling. The House voted Wednesday to postpone any showdown over the borrowing limit for three months. The Democratic-led Senate plans to endorse the idea, which the White House also supports.

That means the next big budget clash will occur in March. That's when major, across-the-board spending cuts ? both parties dislike them ? are scheduled to begin unless they are replaced by a different deficit-cutting technique.

It's possible that both parties will continue to find ways to postpone and minimize tough decisions on taming the deficit. But the new House and Senate endeavors could make such dodges more difficult. Voters, meanwhile, may get a clearer picture of the unpleasant choices they face.

"The American people will have a chance to compare the two approaches," said Rep. Trent Franks, R-Ariz., who wants deep spending cuts and no new taxes. The only way to shrink the government, he said, "is to choke the monster."

House Republicans now vow to balance the budget in 10 years without tax hikes. They say the methods might include reducing future benefits for Medicare, and possibly Social Security, for people now in their late 50s, rather than those 55 and younger.

The search for savings must "move over into entitlement spending" more so than before, said Rep. John Fleming, R-La.

Balancing the budget in 10 years without tax increases would require deep spending cuts, causing many analysts to view them as politically near-impossible. Such an effort would require cuts "that are a complete nonstarter for anybody ? probably even including House Republicans themselves," said Michael Ettlinger, an economist at the Democratic-leaning Center for American Progress.

But House conservatives say aiming for that goal is important. They demanded this week that GOP leaders agree to balance the budget in 10 years as the conservatives' price for supporting the three-month extension of federal borrowing powers.

House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi called the new Republican goal "Ryan on steroids." She was referring to earlier Republican budgets drafted by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, the party's 2012 vice presidential nominee.

Ryan's earlier plans would have changed Medicare into a voucher-like program with limited government contributions to health care for seniors. His plans, endorsed by most House Republicans, also would have given states full responsibility for running Medicaid ? the health care program for the poor ? with a reduced federal contribution.

Even with those changes, Ryan's 2011 and 2012 plans would not have balanced the federal budget for decades.

As part of the deal putting off the debt limit showdown, the Democratic-run Senate made concessions of its own: It agreed to debate and pass a budget for the first time in three years. That exercise will force senators to commit themselves to politically distasteful spending cuts and tax increases that they previously had avoided.

Democrats, including President Barack Obama, say new tax revenues must be part of any eventual bipartisan budget accord.

"As we go forward to reduce the deficit, we need growth and job creation, we need spending cuts, we need revenue," Pelosi said during Wednesday's House debate.

Democrats say new limits on tax breaks that mostly go to high-income households could generate billions of dollars in revenue.

But Republican leaders, noting that Democrats achieved a 10-year, $600 billion revenue hike as part of the "fiscal cliff" compromise earlier this month, say further tax hikes are off the table.

The Republicans' "no new taxes" mantra has clashed many times with Democrats' vows to protect government programs. The result, for years, has been deficit spending.

The latest House and Senate decisions will merely heighten that debate.

Democratic senators, no longer able to sidestep budget details, are certain to renew their push for tax increases to accompany further spending cuts. And House Republicans have made their deficit-reduction goals harder to achieve by promising to balance the budget in 10 years instead of, say, 30.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/congress-charts-collision-course-over-deficit-080207606--finance.html

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NTSB: 787 probe far from complete

1 hr.

U.S. safety regulators are nowhere near finishing an investigation into a battery fire on the Boeing Co 787 Dreamliner, a top official said on Thursday, raising the prospect of a prolonged grounding for the plane.?

Deborah Hersman, chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, made clear that investigators have found a series of "symptoms" in the battery damaged in a Jan.?7 fire in Boston, but not the underlying cause of the problem.?

"We are early in our investigation, we have a lot of activities to undertake," Hersman told a news conference.?

"This is an unprecedented event. We are very concerned. We do not expect to see fire events on board aircraft. This is a very serious air safety concern."?

She rebuffed multiple questions on how long the investigation would take, making clear it could be weeks or more. She also would not say when the 787 would fly again, which is in the hands of the Federal Aviation Administration.?

Boeing and its regulators have said they do not know when the 787 will fly again. It has been grounded worldwide since a plane by All Nippon Airways made an emergency landing in Japan on Jan. 16 after a battery incident, which Hersman said may or may not have been a fire.?

That emergency landing came after a fire occurred on a Japan Airlines Co Ltd 787 on the tarmac in Boston.?

Boeing was not immediately available to comment on the latest NTSB statement. France's Thales, which makes the 787 battery system, declined to comment.?

The NTSB and its Japanese equivalent are working together on their probes, though Hersman again insisted the work was still in the early stages.?

"It is really very hard to tell at this point how long this investigation will take. We have all hands on deck," Hersman said. "We're working as hard as we can to identify what the failure mode is here and what corrective actions need to be taken."?

Series of delays
The 787 program was already years behind schedule before last week's grounding, which means Boeing cannot deliver newly manufactured planes to customers.?

That means customers like United Continental Holdings Inc.?may have to wait even longer for planes on order. The company's United Airlines already flies six Dreamliners.?

"History teaches us that all new aircraft types have issues and the 787 is no different," United Continental Chairman and Chief Executive Jeff Smisek said during the carrier's earnings conference call. "We continue to have confidence in the aircraft and in Boeing's ability to fix the issues, just as they have done on every other new aircraft model they've produced."?

Smisek said Thursday the carrier still expects to take delivery of two more 787s in the second half of the year.?

Boeing has already delivered 50 of the 787s. Around half have been in operation in Japan, but airlines in India, South America, Poland, Qatar and Ethiopia are also flying the planes, as is U.S. carrier United.?

The grounding of the Dreamliner, an advanced carbon-composite plane with a list price of $207 million, has already forced hundreds of flight cancellations worldwide.?

Competition from Airbus
The head of Boeing's European rival Airbus said it would study the 787 Dreamliner design review and make any changes to its future A350 jetliner that may be needed as a result of the U.S. findings.?

"We believe so far we have a robust design, however we will draw the lessons from the 787," Airbus Chief Executive Fabrice Bregier told Reuters Television at the World Economic Forum in Davos.?

"We will look at the recommendations and guidelines of the FAA and if by chance we need to change it we have plenty of time because this aircraft, the 350, will be delivered to our first customers not before the second half of 2014 ? so it is not a challenge and it is not a burden for us."?

Billed as Europe's response to the Dreamliner, the A350 is due to enter service next year using lithium-ion batteries but without the same reliance on electrical systems as the 787, something Airbus says will put less burden on the batteries.?

However, Airbus has so far declined to comment on how it would tackle a battery fire if one did break out on board.?

Additional reporting by Karen Jacobs in Atlanta, Tim Hepher in Paris and Axel Threlfall in Davos.

Copyright 2013 Thomson Reuters.

Source: http://www.nbcnews.com/business/ntsb-787-probe-far-complete-1C8104258

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Explorers Reflect On 125 Years Of National Geographic

Copyright ? 2013 National Public Radio. For personal, noncommercial use only. See Terms of Use. For other uses, prior permission required.

NEAL CONAN, HOST:

This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan in Washington. Back in 1999, I went along with Robert Ballard on a radio expedition to the Black Sea, where he hoped to find evidence that what's now a vast inland ocean was once a small freshwater lake. A controversial theory holds that thousands of years ago, the waters of the Mediterranean Sea suddenly burst through in a flood that may have inspired the story of Noah.

Ballard had identified what looked like an ancient beach hundreds of feet below the surface and lowered an oyster dredge to haul up a sample of the bottom. As it happened, the great underwater archaeologist George Bass was also aboard that day, and Ballard told him he hoped to find round rocks, absolute evidence there used to be a beach down there.

When the dredge hauled up a cubic foot of muck, Ballard stuck his arm in elbow-deep and hauled out...

ROBERT BALLARD: Round, round.

(LAUGHTER)

CONAN: Ballard turns and flips the stone to George Bass.

GEORGE BASS: Congratulations. That's very nice, very nice.

BALLARD: The most beautiful beach pebbles.

BASS: It was incredible. I mean, he just reached in, and I couldn't believe it. It was a rounded pebble, and he just tossed it over to me. There it was.

BALLARD: It was fun to tell him in advance what we're going to find.

CONAN: You heard that moment of discovery in an NPR National Geographic radio expedition and read about it in National Geographic magazine. This month, National Geographic celebrates its 125th birthday. So tell us: what one story, what one issue have you kept to read and reread? 800-989-8255. Email talk@npr.org. You can join the conversation on our website, too. Go to npr.org. Click on TALK OF THE NATION.

Later in the program, the stories of Seneca Falls, Selma and Stonewall, but first, 125 years of National Geographic. And we begin with National Geographic explorer-in-residence Robert Ballard. He joins us from a studio at Yale University in New Haven, not too far from his Institute for Exploration in Mystic, Connecticut. Hey, Bob.

BALLARD: Good morning, or is it afternoon? It's afternoon now.

CONAN: I think it's afternoon here on the East Coast, anyway. That was just one day in the Black Sea. What else have you found there?

BALLARD: Well, it got even better. Last year, you know, remember that thought that we would find the perfectly preserved shipwreck? And we did, we found an amazingly well-preserved shipwreck with its mast up and rigging. Well, last year we found a shipwreck from the time of the Classical period, and it had human remains.

CONAN: My goodness, that's preserved down in water where there's no oxygen so no wood borers to eat the timbers.

BALLARD: Or eat the people. I mean, this is a skeleton of a sailor that sank, you know, 500 years before the birth of Christ. I mean, that's quite amazing.

CONAN: And so these shipwrecks, you theorized, would be there, turned out to be there, and we're learning things we never knew.

BALLARD: Exactly, and, you know, there's - the deep sea is the largest museum in the world. I mean, it has more history in it than all the museums of the world combined. But unfortunately there's no guard on the door. That's our biggest trouble.

(LAUGHTER)

CONAN: Well, and there's a stiff entry fee, too.

BALLARD: Yes, well, but, you know, the damage being done by the trawlers is really quite sad. We've been documenting - one of my students actually did his Ph.D. on how much of ancient history has been destroyed by the fishing trawlers. They're not doing it on purpose, but they're down there after the fish, but in so doing just go over and destroy the ancient shipwrecks.

CONAN: And these have been waters that have trawled for literally thousands of years.

BALLARD: Yes, but more, you know, deeper recently. They're getting deeper and deeper, and that's the problem. They're down now to 500 meters. So it's sad to think how much history has been destroyed by these trawlers - a lot.

CONAN: You grew up, of course all of us did, with National Geographic. Is there some issue that you keep and reread?

BALLARD: Absolutely, Beebe's books on creatures of the deep scattering layer. When I first saw those as a kid, they scared the living bejeeniors(ph) out of me, and these things look like saber-toothed tigers in the wrappings of a fish, and the only thing that saved me was when I read they were two inches. I'm so glad they weren't bigger. I would never have gone into the ocean.

(LAUGHTER)

CONAN: Beebe went, descended into the depths in a giant cannonball with a window on it.

BALLARD: Yeah, a Bathysphere. It was lowered on a cable, I mean, and he saw these amazing creatures of the deep scattering layer and then took pictures of them but also sketched them and published them in National Geographic. And those are the issues that I remember the most.

CONAN: And interestingly the similar kind of construction, not too different, well, that was Alvin, the submarine that you used.

BALLARD: Well, actually it had a ball like that, but it was on a cable. I mean, this was a wrecking ball. I mean, I wouldn't do that. It was crazy. And he went down in a wrecking ball. And in fact the pressure pushed the cable down inside the pressure hull, and they - back then, this is in the '20s and '30s, they didn't have the technology for camera systems. So he literally shined - he had two portholes.

He shined a light out of one of them and photographed with a camera with the other one. It was a hoot.

CONAN: We're talking with Robert Ballard, who among his many other honors is a explorer-in-residence at the National Geographic. We want to hear what issue of the Geographic you've kept all these years, 800-989-8255. Email talk@npr.org. Russ is on the line with us from Boone in North Carolina.

RUSS: Hi there.

CONAN: Hi, go ahead.

RUSS: Yeah, I was blessed to have a gift from my grandmother. She sent me, every year for my birthday, National Geographic magazine. And the one that I find most interesting was 1981, December, and that was on the ocean. And it talked about even then, back in 1981, there were only two billion people on the planet, and they were talking about how they felt that it could support energy, and they were looking ahead to the ocean to support us energywise, foodwise.

But they were also talking about the United Nations prediction that by the year 2100, the swarms will reach the staggering figure of 11 billion. And so I find that, I find it, you know, sad really that by, you know, 2013 most of our oceans are becoming depleted. But it's still I find it's interesting that we know more about the moon than we do about the ocean.

BALLARD: Well, you must have been born in December because that was the December issue, wasn't it, 1981? And in that issue, if you still have it, I published a piece of artwork that was sort of the vision of the future in underwater exploration of telepresence, and it took us all these years, but that vision published in the December 1981 issue of the magazine that you have is now coming online at our Inner Space Center, so cool.

RUSS: Very nice. Very nice.

CONAN: Russ, thanks very much for the call.

RUSS: Thank you very much.

CONAN: Joining us here...

BALLARD: I didn't set that up, Neal, I want you to know.

(LAUGHTER)

CONAN: I know, when you (unintelligible). Terry Garcia is with us here in Studio 3A, executive vice president for Mission Programs for the National Geographic Society. Other than seeding our telephone lines with serendipitous callers, he's in charge of, well, looking at some of these missions that National Geographic funds. And what's your criterion?

TERRY GARCIA: Oh, I have the pleasure of seeing all of them. It's an unusual job. You know, we've - over the years I've learned that you never say no; never reject anything out of hand...

CONAN: Oh, I have this project...

GARCIA: You know, and I will listen to you. And I get a lot of strange ideas and proposals that come my way, but you never know. And the reason I say that is that - and Bob is an example of this, his work is an example. We are just beginning to explore. We believe, I believe that the 21st century is going to be the greatest age of exploration in the history of mankind.

And we're embarking upon an exciting new era in exploration, and a lot of that is due to technology, to new technology that's, you know, opening doors that have been closed to us in the past and giving us insight into sometimes the unknown, but sometimes it gives us the ability to see things that we've been watching, we've been looking at for centuries, but you have a different outlook or a different take on it.

CONAN: Bob, you told me once a story, speaking of technology, of going down in Alvin with a couple of scientists, and you were in charge of the dive and after hours descending to the ocean depths, you turned around and said, well, here we are, and the scientists weren't looking at the portholes, they weren't looking at the windows, they weren't using those lights, they were looking at their computer screens.

BALLARD: Exactly, in fact that was Holger Jannasch, when we returned with biologists for the first time in 1979 to the hydrothermal vents we'd discovered in the Galapagos Islands, which rewrote the biology books, rewrote our thoughts about the origin of life on our planet and elsewhere in the universe.

And we had brought our - the first digital camera had been developed by RCA in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and we had this little camera on the front. And we landed amongst these giant tubeworms, and I turned my back to the window because I was operating the camera from a rack, and all of a sudden Holger Jannasch was on my shoulder.

And I said: What are you doing? He said: Well, I'm looking at the TV monitor. And I said: Well, why are you doing that? He says: Better than out the window. I can see better. And I went: Wait a minute, we went to all this trouble to get down here, and you're going to look at a TV monitor.

And that's what triggered that article in the December 1981 issue, the realization that you could bring your spirit to the bottom, but you could leave your body behind.

CONAN: Terry Garcia?

GARCIA: And this technology is allowing us to do things not just underwater but above it. For example, we have a project that we've been working on for about five years now, where we're using the science of genetics to understand the migratory history of the human race, how we as a species came to populate this planet after that great diaspora out of Africa.

So it's opening up windows there. We use CT scanning to understand, you know, the health and possibly the death of King Tut. So it's opening up a whole array of opportunities to answer questions that we've had for centuries.

CONAN: Let's get Steve...

BALLARD: Now they're looking for Genghis Khan, too, with technology.

CONAN: They found Richard III, but that's...

(LAUGHTER)

CONAN: Steven(ph) is on the line with us from Sunnyvale, California.

STEVEN: Hi.

CONAN: Which issue of the Geographic do you keep?

STEVEN: Well, for me it was the 1972 issue, and it featured a story called "Happy Birthday Otto Lilienthal." It was about the first hang gliding competition that had ever happened in the United States. And it was a pivotal experience for me because both myself and everyone I know who hang glides from that generation saw that issue, and that's what inspired them and motivated them to get into the sport.

CONAN: Otto Lilienthal of course the experimenter and glider who, among other people, inspired the Wright Brothers.

STEVEN: Yes, and so this was in the '70s, and this was the first - it was sort of an informally organized meet, and the author in the article took a flight on a bamboo and plastic hang glider, and there were beautiful pictures. And as an 11-year-old kid, and when I saw this I just had to go hang gliding, and I've been hang gliding for 30-some years, ever since I saw that article.

CONAN: Thanks very much for the call, Steven, and maybe you'd order a back issue to keep that one from getting too dog-eared.

STEVEN: OK, yeah, I probably will, thanks.

CONAN: Tell us, what's the one story from an issue of National Geographic you turn back to over and over again? 800-989-8255. Email us, talk@npr.org. You can let us know on Twitter, as well. We're @totn. We'll have more in a minute. I'm Neal Conan. Stay with us. It's the TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

CONAN: This is TALK OF THE NATION from NPR News. I'm Neal Conan. In some households, a collection of National Geographics was kind of like a row of encyclopedias, an essential reference, a source of information for grade-school reports on whales or geology, an inspiration for dreams in the time between classes.

These days, it's rare to turn to an actual physical encyclopedia. Indeed, the Encyclopedia Britannica released its final print edition last year, though you can still buy sets of the World Book Encyclopedia. But those stacks of NatGeos, with their golden spines, arresting photography and stories of discovery still beckon.

So call, tell us: What's the one story or issue of the magazine you've held onto to read again and again? 800-989-8255. Email us, talk@npr.org. And you can join the conversation on our website. Go npr.org. Click on TALK OF THE NATION. Our guests - Robert Ballard, explorer-in-residence; and Terry Garcia, executive vice president for Mission Programs - are here to mark 125 years of the National Geographic Society. Let's go to Jeanie(ph), Jeanie on the line with us from Medford in Oregon.

JEANIE: Hi, I remember in the past whenever I had to move, my friends would offer to help. And they'd go: Wait, you're not still lugging around that 100 pounds of National Geographics, are you?

(LAUGHTER)

JEANIE: My favorite of all time was called "Alone Across the Outback," May 1978, the woman and her camels that went all the way to the Indian Ocean. And I also loved "Battle of Midway" and "The Blues Highway."

CONAN: The "Battle of Midway," Bob, you had something to do with that.

BALLARD: Yeah, we did that one. That was hunting down the Yorktown. That was a tough one.

CONAN: A long expedition. It was a childhood dream of mine to eventually get someday to Midway Island, which I'd read so much about as a kid, and the battle there, of course. And to actually be along with Bob in the hunt for the USS Yorktown was quite an honor. Jeanie, thanks very much for the call.

JEANIE: You're right. Thank you.

CONAN: Here's a - this is a tweet, actually, that we have from Joe in Janesville. He says: I have a mental image preserved of the National Geographic story from the late 1950s to early 1960s of Death Valley. I made two trips covering all the highlights from the magazine piece.

Joining us now is Sarah Parcak, she's an associate professor of archaeology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham one of the National Geographic's emerging explorers. Good of you to be with us today.

SARAH PARCAK: Thank you for having me.

CONAN: And you use satellite imagery. Well, people will understand that. But then the next part they may have a hard time understanding - as an archaeologist.

PARCAK: That's right. You know, when you think about the scale of human populations all over the world and the fact that there's so much here, you know, really the only way to be able to visualize that is to pull back in space. And that not only gives us this incredible perspective of height, but it allows us to see in different parts of the light spectrum and allows us to see things that we literally have been walking over on the ground for many, many years.

It allows us to see hidden temples and tombs and pyramids and even entire settlements.

CONAN: Wait a minute, pyramids?

PARCAK: Pyramids, yes. There are so many previously unknown sites and structures all over the world. And I think most importantly what satellites help to show us is we've actually only found a fraction of a percent of ancient settlements and sites all over the world.

So what Terry was saying earlier about the 21st century being the greatest exploration, the greatest period of time for discovery, it's true for archaeology. It's the most exciting time in history to be an archaeologist.

CONAN: And what Bob Ballard says about the ocean floor, we haven't even begun to touch it. Well, obviously we've explored much more of the Earth's surface, the earthen part of it. But you're saying we didn't know what we were seeing.

PARCAK: That's right. I mean, all over the world, we're finding out that, you know, whether it's Egypt or Syria or Central America, what satellites are showing is that there are hundreds, if not thousands, of previously unknown settlements all over the world, and what archaeology does it helps us to understand this common humanity that we have.

And by understanding that, you know, it really gives us a great sense of purpose and helps us understand why we're here.

CONAN: Can you give us a for instance of something you spotted from space and then were able to confirm?

PARCAK: Sure, well, in Egypt I do survey work on the ground. That's really the most important part of using satellite images. You know, it helps us to find potential locations for sites, and then we get to go there on the ground and confirm what we've seen.

And one particular instance is I was able to do remote sensing work and do a big survey project in Middle Egypt, and I was able to find about 70 previously unknown sites. And what that helps to do is to confirm the methodology I was using and helped me to realize that there were actually thousands of unknown sites all over Egypt.

So we used similar techniques and actually mapped all of Egypt and found over 3,000 potential sites all over Egypt that weren't known previously.

CONAN: Terry Garcia, what did you...?

GARCIA: Yeah, you know, another good example is the work that Albert Lin has been doing in Mongolia, where he's using satellite imagery and actually enlisting the public in the search for Genghis Khan's tomb. And so what he has done is to take high-resolution satellite imagery, chop it up, put it out to the public and say, look, we're looking for these anomalies. Help us find the tomb.

And so there - this technology is being used all around the world now by explorers, by archaeologists, anthropologists and others.

CONAN: Bob Ballard, we have also used satellite technology to create maps of the underwater world.

BALLARD: Yeah, actually you can get a rough idea of the main features beneath the sea from synthetic aperture radar in outer space, and you're able to actually - when water moves over a mountain, it actually rises slightly. When it goes over a trench, it goes down slightly. And we're actually able to sort out the normal wave patterns and actually see that reflection of topography.

But it's sort of like taking a wet blanket and putting it over a dinner table. you know where the candelabra might be, but you don't know what's underneath it. So it gives you a first-order look. And we use it all the time to then home in on places that look really exciting. So yes, that's been a very important guide to first-order figuring out what's down there.

CONAN: Let's get another caller in, go to Scott, Scott with us from Jacksonville.

SCOTT: Hi, how are you doing? My comment was just about an issue I kept. My father was a professor at Arizona State. He specialized in conservation biology. And I kept an issue, I actually have one, that the Japanese National Geographic crew was sent into an area in Mexico, Cuatro Cienegas. And NASA had given ASU a grant to understand and study isolated ecosystems.

And there was a hot spring in a valley there, and these springs, some of them were hot, but the thing was that these springs were isolated, and it kept the local flora and fauna in a very arid region, but these springs were right there, and he would study the systems. And it's just an issue I kept to remember him, so...

CONAN: So your father was in the issue?

SCOTT: Yes he was, he was.

CONAN: And was that one of the Japanese magazines?

SCOTT: No, it ran in the U.S. one, as well. I have an English copy. But the crew that went down with us was Japanese, and it was interesting that they sent a Japanese crew down to study and do underwater shots with us.

CONAN: All right, Scott, thank you very much.

SCOTT: Thank you.

CONAN: Terry?

GARCIA: You know, we've touched on this now a couple of times, but I think I should point out to your listeners that National Geographic has made more than 10,000 grants. So oftentimes people think of us as a magazine, or they may think of us as a television broadcaster, but really our heart is in exploration. That was the original intent of the founders, to fill in those blank spaces in the map, and then to communicate what we found to a broad public.

So it's important to keep that in mind, that we're still making those grants. In fact, we've decided to up the ante and increase that grant enterprise and support field research around the world and go way beyond just 10,000 grants.

CONAN: I was interested to read, in fact, that a couple of early members of the board quit in disgust upon the publication of photographs in the magazine. They said it was becoming a mere picture book.

GARCIA: Well, you know, it was quite scandalous, and Alexander Graham Bell, who was one of the first presidents - in fact he was the second president - he said, pictures and plenty of them, and instructed the editor, Gilbert Grosvenor, then to publish photographs. And it was scandalous. Several trustees threatened to resign, and fortunately he stuck to his guns, and it's the National Geographic we have today.

CONAN: Here's an email, this is from Nancy: One photo a day, a famous photographer set himself a task he would take only one photo a day. The photographer was Jim Brandenburg, and the issue was published November 1997. And he took one photograph a day for 90 days.

Let's see if we can get Patrick on the line, Patrick with us from St. Louis.

PATRICK: Hi, how are you doing? My father has had a wall filled with National Geographics that went back to the '20s and predating those, I'm sure. And I used many of those for school activities and projects. One of those was on the moon and on Mars, and I'm reminded of these old issues that he had that had fold-out maps and were beautiful.

And Mr. Garcia, I want to say thank you very much for all that you do and all the National Geographic does. And, Mr. Bob Ballard, you are a hero to child explorers everywhere. Thank you.

GARCIA: Our pleasure.

BALLARD: Thank you.

CONAN: Patrick, thanks very much for the call. And Bob, not just the activities that most people will know about, but you do a lot of work with kids.

BALLARD: Oh, very much so, with Geographic as well, our JASON Project, over 11 million children. And actually, it's just about to take off. We're going to establish what's called the Exploration Room. We've got other ships now coming into our Inner Space Center, and we hope to launch in June an amazing program for kids where we have ships at sea every day.

CONAN: Sarah Parcak, we wanted to go back to you in Alabama, there. What is the one issue of National Geographic you've kept all these years?

PARCAK: Well, I'd say anything with Egypt in it. That's...

CONAN: That's a lot of issues.

PARCAK: Yeah, it's quite a few issues. It's what I would look forward to. And, in fact, I credit - it's both Indiana Jones and National Geographic that inspired me to be an Egyptologist. I would just wait every month by my parents' mailbox and just hope that that month, something about Egypt would appear, and I would just devour it and read it again and again. So I credit National Geographic with inspiring me to do what I do.

CONAN: And how much more work do you have to do with your satellite imagery? I assume there's lots of Earth left to be pored over.

PARCAK: Oh, I mean, I have enough for a thousand lifetimes, which is why it's critical that we train future generations. I have funding now from the National Science Foundation to help set up a training program in Egypt for young Egyptians to help train them in the use of these new technologies.

And it's absolutely critical, you know, to train young men and women not just to find sites, but also to protect sites, especially in the wake of the Arab Spring. There's been significant site-looting in Egypt and elsewhere across the Middle East. So it's an amazing tool, and we have to train future generations not only to be able to find sites, but to protect them for future generations.

CONAN: Here's an email we have from Shelly in Maryland: We've moved 12 times - Marine Corps - and have carried our boxes of Nat Geo along for each. Many were saved from my grandfather from the 1930s. My favorites are the original space-race issues, and the issue about sailing the Nile before the Aswan Dam was finished. Love the mag. Thank you very much.

We're talking about the 125th anniversary of National Geographic. Terry Garcia, vice president for Mission Programs of the National Geographic Society. With us also, Bob Ballard, ocean explorer and explorer-in-residence at the National Geographic, and Sarah Parcak, a associate professor of archaeology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and she's joining us from there. You're listening to TALK OF THE NATION, from NPR News.

And let's see if we can go to Jennifer, Jennifer with us from Indianapolis.

JENNIFER: Hi. A couple of years ago, there was a fabulous issue where they descended into a volcanic crater on Papua, New Guinea. And there apparently was an isolated breeding population there, and they discovered several hitherto unknown species, including some mammals that apparently just walked right up to the photographers and weren't afraid of them at all. So maybe you can tell us more about it. I haven't read it in a while. I'm going to go home to reread it right now, but it was just amazing.

CONAN: I'm not sure that we can give you an answer on that particular story, but is there any count on the numbers of new and unknown creatures that have been uncovered by Geographic explorers over the years?

GARCIA: No. I don't know that there's a count. But I can tell you, almost every time we send a biologist into the field, we find something new.

CONAN: Thanks very much for the call, Jennifer. Sorry we couldn't help...

JENNIFER: Thank you.

CONAN: ...more with that. Here's an email from Arum(ph): My Nat Geo story is in the mid-'80s issue about Australia, maybe 1986, in the middle of America's fascination with Aus. It was fuel for my dreams of the land down under. In '06, I fulfilled my dream and spent a month in Australia. So glad I went. So glad I lived my dream.

And let's go now to Heather, and Heather's on the line with us from Honolulu.

HEATHER: Hi. This is about an issue that I wish I had kept, but it's been burned into my memory since I was a little kid. It was the late '70s, and we received an issue about whales. And growing up in Hawaii, we had always - we could see whales, but I had no idea what they sounded like.

And included in this issue was a very thin vinyl record, a 45, that you could tear out and put on the old-school record player. And I would sit and listen to it over and over, mesmerized by the sound of what those huge creatures - what they sounded like.

CONAN: The songs of the humpbacked whale.

HEATHER: Incredible. And I just - it's just - I have a four-year-old daughter now, and we live in Hawaii still, and I - you know, we talk about whales. And I had to go online, unfortunately - I was so sad to not have this record - so that I can play for her what the sounds were. But, yeah, it was - it's incredible.

CONAN: Bob Ballard, we think of the underwater world as silent. As we just heard, obviously, it's not and, obviously, that's not the only sound.

BALLARD: Oh, no. There's a tremendous amount of noise, so to speak, but beautiful noise. And the whales learned long ago that there's a particular layer in the ocean called the sound channel. It's about a thousand meters down. We discovered it in the '50s, but the whales discovered it, like, millions of years ago, and they can make sounds that will travel great distances in the sound channel. So, no, there's a lot of noise going on down there, but you just have to listen.

(LAUGHTER)

CONAN: Terry Garcia?

GARCIA: Well, I wanted to bring up another point. You know, I've had the pleasure of having hundreds of photographers and explorers come through my office over the years, and they've all stopped on their way into the field as they were going out to search for the truth, whatever that truth might be.

And I can tell you that almost without exception, when they return, they return as individuals who are committed to conserving what we're losing. Because what they're seeing out there as we send these people into the field is that the natural, cultural and historical resources that we've highlighted in the magazine and that we've highlighted on our television programs over the years are disappearing. They're starting to slip away from us. And one thing that we believe is that exploration can do more than just explore, just answer those unknown questions, but it can inspire. And it can inspire people to care. It can inspire them to act. And we have a number of examples of where that's happened, which I'll tell you about in a moment.

CONAN: Heather, well, you know, you won't - but Heather...

(LAUGHTER)

CONAN: ...we have - you have a kindred soul, Anne in Burlington, Washington: Most memorable, sitting, as a middle-schooler, listening to the whale sounds on a little plastic record included in my magazine. Don't know what year it was, early '70s. I think they printed 10 million copies of that particular record. But thank you very much for the call and for the - refreshing our recollection.

HEATHER: Thank you.

CONAN: Here's another emailer, this from Maria in Tucson: My mother told me she was in an issue of the magazine before I was born. It was about Cape Cod, where she spent summers with her family. I found the magazine in the stack at a thrift shop in Seattle, and there she was: a wide-faced teenager singing by the firelight on the beach. I think it was a 1962 issue. But at the moment, I can't find it. I think she may spend the rest of the day looking for it. But Terry Garcia, thank you very much...

GARCIA: My pleasure.

CONAN: ...for your time today. And our thanks, as well, to Sarah Parcak at the University of Alabama, Birmingham. Good to speak with you.

PARCAK: Thanks very much.

CONAN: And, Bob, hope to see you soon.

BALLARD: Well, come with us to sea again.

CONAN: I'd love to. In yesterday's inaugural address, President Obama drew a line from Seneca Falls through Selma to Stonewall. We'll hear those stories of those places next, on NPR News.

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Source: http://www.npr.org/2013/01/22/169993042/explorers-reflect-on-125-years-of-national-geographic?ft=1&f=1007

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The Daily Roundup for 01.22.2013

DNP The Daily RoundUp

You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours -- all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.

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Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/16LOdIbS7ug/

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Wednesday, January 23, 2013

Internet and Businesses Online: Affiliate Revenue Article Category ...

What Is Affiliate marketing?

A lot of optimistic things have been written about making money online from affiliate marketing. What is affiliate marketing all about? Fundamentally, it is an online practice where affiliates bring business to a company by promoting their products and services, and the company, in return, gives commissions to the affiliate as compensation. The concept is equally beneficial for affiliates and associated companies as both the parties get the scope to expand their profits without having made massive investments. Young internet marketers, expert bloggers and SEO experts have earned gigantic money by being affiliates to prestigious firms, websites and companies.

What are the positives of affiliate marketing?

The first and foremost benefit of this concept is the reduced cost of expenditure for parent companies. Most other forms of marketing involve direct payment to the advertising company, irrespective of the results derived out of a campaign. However, the payment made to affiliates is based on the numbers to visits paid to a particular website. This helps companies save at least a few portions of the advertising cost. As for the affiliates, this is the simplest way to make money online. There are no extra costs involved, except the cost of buying a website. In case, one opts for a blog to promote products, even the cost of hosting and website designing are diminished. As for consumers, they can find products more easily via the promoting sites. Search engines rank affiliate marketing sites positively because these sites have original content.

What is affiliate marketing used for?

Affiliate marketing concept can be applied to almost any kind of product and service. Bloggers and web marketers have used this concept extensively for generating commissions. One might wonder why this particular concept works positively for bloggers. When it comes to blogs, regular readers are often habituated to their blogger?s writing style and have trust for the kind of products and services he promotes and advertises on his site. Hence, whenever a prominent blogger talks about a product on his blog, his readers are sure to visit the link. This particular idea works for affiliates of small and large businesses, websites, and manufacturers alike.

The selection of right niche and products:

The product selection is of prime importance for affiliates as it determines the success rate as well as the incomes earned. While selecting a company, one must check the popularity and demand of the product along with the commission rates offered. Some companies offer a commission rate of 60-80%, while there are others who are low on the margins. After a product is selected, affiliates must study the company and product details for writing meaningful content. Some affiliate marketers have content writers hired especially for the purpose. Having quality reviews and content on a blog or website helps in getting better rankings in search engines and thus, draws more traffic to a website. One can also opt for social marketing and promotion of content, so that maximum readers in a niche can be approached and persuaded for visiting links published on a blog.

Source: http://www.affiliatemarketingtipsblog.net/uncategorized/internet-and-businesses-online-affiliate-revenue-article-category

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WHAT RISING GRADUATION RATES TELL US | assailedteacher

Which world is closer to the one the new graduates are inheriting?

Which world is closer to the one the new graduates are inheriting?

So the news has been flooded with headlines about how national graduation rates from public schools are up to a level not seen in nearly 40 years:

More than 3.1 million high school students received their diplomas in spring 2010, with 78.2 percent finishing in four years, the?National Center for Education Statistics?(NCES) reported Tuesday. The rate is a 2.7-percentage-point increase over the previous year, and those two rates are the highest since the 75 percent rate in 1975 and 1976.

This is not the cause for celebration that the media is making it out to be. If we look at the cheating scandals in D.C. and Atlanta we see the greasy underbelly of the motor driving these graduation rates.

Public schools have been bludgeoned into accepting so-called ?accountability? programs that have held teachers responsible for tests scores and pass rates. We drill and kill for exams that seem to get just a tad easier every year. We overlook behavior issues and shoddy scholarship as a shortcut to getting kids to pass. Our jobs as teachers have increasingly involved getting students to fill in the correct bubbles in a certain 3-hour span, the rest of the education process be damned.

This isn?t due to anything we have done as teachers. Our educational leaders, from the Secretary of Education on down, have done everything in their power to put this system into place. With their myopic interpretation of what counts for ?achievement?, they have reduced the learning process to a series of numbers and the teaching profession to a series of steps to color within these numbers. So now we focus on the ?data? instead of the child; the ?value? we ?add? instead of what our communities teach our children to value.

Of course we would have high graduation rates in this type of environment. We have become adept at manipulating numbers because our jobs depend on it. The Secretary of Education, the governors, mayors, chancellors, superintendents and principals all need the numbers to go up. The testing companies and data-collection companies need to show that the numbers are going up. All of these entities require the numbers to go up in order to justify their influence. They have been in control of America?s education systems for so long that the numbers better have gone up by now.

The fix was in ever since the appearance of this thing called ?education reform?. They came to us and said schools were not doing our jobs. They said they were taking over the schools and running them like businesses. They expected results and they were going to get them. It was foreordained that graduation rates would reach such high levels. They made all of us conspirators in their game of reform. The teachers were taken into a shotgun marriage that tied the survival of the educational leaders to the survival of teachers.

?If these test scores don?t rise, we won?t be around long. But we will make sure that you also will not be around long.? This was the Faustian bargain with which reformers presented teachers. Stand up against the system by not teaching to the test or by exercising your union rights and you go down. Play the game and get the numbers up and we will feature you as one of our success stories, as one of the ?good ones?. Everyone wins. Teachers get to keep their jobs. Reformers get to say that their policies work.

And what type of graduates do we have? We have graduates who have been trained to bubble in answers. We have graduates that need an increasing amount of remedial classes once they get to college. This is exactly the type of graduate one ?would expect from a school system run on the business model: ?one-dimensional, unskilled and mass produced. They are light plastic cogs to be used in a giant machine, easily tossed aside and replaced when they get used up.

And what type of world are our graduates entering? One with proliferating low-wage jobs touted as ?job recovery?. One where food stamp rolls, college debt and poverty are rising. This isn?t the bright open future baby-boomers saw on the horizon. Today?s graduates are inheriting a world of diminishing limits. The future is dark and small.

What more can we expect? We have concentrated on getting ?achievement? as measured in ?data? so much higher because the schools weren?t preparing children for ?the future?. In the process, we have neglected to prepare a future for our children to inherit. The ones who would create the future for our children took over the school system and prepared them for exactly the type of future they had in store.

Blank graduates for a blank future.

Education reform is not about improving schools. It is about hollowing out the schools because the future will be hollow. These new graduation statistics are just the results of that.

So no need to be happy. It is the low tide of education reform leaving behind the effluvia they created.

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Source: http://theassailedteacher.com/2013/01/22/what-rising-graduation-rates-tell-us/

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Tuesday, January 22, 2013

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Source: http://thorntonburl3210.typepad.com/blog/2013/01/blues-fox-backpack-student-bags-shoulder-canvas-leisure-travel.html

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