#FlGov Scott and Cabinet to vote on no-bid deal to renew sugar leases

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Scott and Cabinet to vote on no-bid deal to renew sugar leases

Gov. Rick Scott and the Florida Cabinet will be asked on Wednesday to agree to a no-bid contract to allow two major agriculture companies to farm on Everglades land for another 30 years, a deal that would include pouring tons of phosphorous-laden fertilizer onto the site the state is spending billions to clean-up.

The request from Florida Crystals and A. Duda and Sons is supported by the state Department of Environmental Protection Secretary Herschel Vinyard and South Florida Water Management District officials. But environmentalists aren’t happy.  Download 012313_BOT-Attachment-4

“The State of Florida is putting 13,952 acres of state land off the table as a possible solution to future problems,’’ said Charles Lee, director of advocacy for Audubon of Florida at a meeting of the Cabinet aides last week. “It is passing up an opportunity.”  Download Lee letter on EAA Lease Extensionsf

Environmentalists have agreed to allow Florida Crystals to continue sugar farming 7,862 acres in the Everglades Agricultural Area because they believe the company is “holding the state hostage” and won’t allow a crucial next step to go forward in the Everglades clean-up plan if they don’t get the deal. 

But environmentalists strongly oppose the Duda deal, which would allow that company to continue to grow vegetables on 6,089 acres of land and pump 339 tons of fertilizer each year into the Everglades, exacerbating the clean-up problem the state is spending billions to fix. They want the state to require Duda to reduce its phosphorous run-off in exchange for the favorable no-bid contract. Full story here. 

According to emails obtained by the Miami Herald/Tampa Bay Times Tallahassee bureau, Tracy Peters of the Division of State Lands initially suggested that Florida Crystals reduce its pollution levels in exchange for the lease extension. But the attorney for the company, Silvia Morell Alderman of Akerman Senterfitt, responded that such requirements “would be deal breakers” because the company has been improving its phosphorous levels for 17 years.

Peters then backed off and, on several occasions, asked Alderman’s permission to make other minor changes to the proposal, the emails show.  Download Glades emails

 

 

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Posted by Mary Ellen Klas at 12:45 PM on Tuesday, Jan. 22 in Cabinet, Rick Scott | Permalink

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when companies like Akerman Senterfit represent companies interests that are adverse to the people of Flortida and the Environment they not only do damage to our great State but to their own reputation.
Even 5th graders know that Phosphorous levels from the EAA are too high and damaging the quality of water and flora and fauna of the Everglades.

When Company's like Duda, Florida Crystals, and Akerman Senterfit feel obliged to be an enemy of the state in their pursuit of dollars they deserve the ultimate punishment by Floridians, a boycott of their products and services.

Florida needs to go on a diet and the first thing we need to cut out is Florida Sugar and dirty dealing Attorneys.

Posted by: Save the Glades | January 22, 2013 at 01:25 PM

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Must be great to live in a no contest state...

Another School Shooting Reported as President Obama Prepares to Unveil Gun Control Proposals

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The beat goes on....the beat goes on. "What we have here is a failure to communicate

Amazing Map Is Made Up Of Everyone in the U.S. and Canada

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Now this is a great use of Census data, funny how you can still pick out the major metro areas with no lines drawn...

Really Hip 90-Year-Old Figures He Has Every Right To Torrent Glenn Miller's 'In The Mood'

CORAL GABLES, FL—Noting that he had already purchased the song for his wind-up Victrola seven decades ago, extremely hip 90-year-old Emmet McInerny insisted Monday that he had every right to download a recording of Glenn Miller’s “In The Mood” for free using a BitTorrent client. “Hell, the Miller estate’s gotten enough money out of me,” the tech-savvy nonagenarian stated as the download bar for the 1939 big-band staple passed 70 percent. “And I sure as hell don’t feel like lining the pockets of the bigwigs at RCA. I know it’s not their fault I lost my old 78 of the song when I moved houses back in 1965, but fuck it.” Since he was online anyway, McInerny then proceeded to torrent "Mairzy Doats" by the Merry Macs.

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Every Tech Journalist's Worst Nightmare

This is a constant fear for many tech writers — their jobs, more than many other in media, require them to cover companies they either work for, or which their employers are entangled with. Nearly every tech publication has conflicts of interest to wrestle with — including BuzzFeed, a startup which shares investors with many other tech and media companies. Upon news of our latest funding round, a BuzzFeed politics reporter asked me if it felt strange to cover tech at what many consider a tech company. The answer, of course, is a "yes — but." (For the record: FWD has never been asked to cover, or not cover, any of these companies.)

While some publications deal with conflicts of interest head on — TechCrunch openly acknowledges them, for example, while the New York Times charges its media writers with writing about themselves — most are rarely confronted with a scenario like this, and certainly not in public.

If you're a tech reporter, CES has an uncanny knack for not making you feel very good about your job. It's a noisy place with confoundingly little valuable information to be had; it will unfailingly exacerbate any anxieties you have about your role in the way products are promoted and sold. It can make you feel, in short, like a slightly mutated PR person, allowed to choose his clients and speak more freely but still performing essentially the same role: making money for tech companies.

This confirms that fear, at least for CNET's reporters — that there is a profound difference in product journalism and actual journalism, to the point that the former might not even be in the same genus as the latter. Good service writing, unglamorous as it may be, demands integrity too. Your authority as someone telling people what to buy is determined first and foremost by your motivations.

CNET has a roster of stellar writers and reporters who do great journalism every single day, and this isn't their fault. But it gives critics of the tech media a leg to stand on, and will be felt deeply — in the gut — across the tech media.

The sense of empathy among my peers will be strong and queasy. As it should be.

H/t to Seth Porges.

via buzzfeed.com

Biden’s Gun Violence Event Interrupted By News Of Another School Shooting

via thinkprogress.org.feedsportal.com

This is what the fuss is all about, idiots.

Kids with guns: Almost 20 years later, Art Spiegelman’s New Yorker cover seems oddly prescient

 
As the “arm the teachers” rhetoric surrounding the Newtown shootings refuses to go away, I remembered this old New Yorker cover by Maus author and illustrator, Art Spiegelman.

For a guy whose opus was about his father’s experience during the Holocaust, he managed to outdo himself in disturbing imagery with this one. And yet it doesn’t seem that far from what’s being suggested in 2013…

via dangerousminds.net

Captain Kirk Tweets the Space Station

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To Boldly go where no man has gone before...

Telcos lobby North Carolina to community Internet illegal, then abandon the state to second-worst Internet in the country

Check out this website I found at feeds.boingboing.net

6 Things the NRA Didn't Blame For Mass Shootings

In this morning's National Rifle Association (NRA) press conference, Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre found a lot of things to blame for the Sandy Hook Elementary School tragedy, much rehashed from the NRA's past responses to mass shootings. Video games, the absence of armed policemen in schools, and pure evil made the list, as did Hurricane Sandy.

Here's what LaPierre didn't blame:

THE .223 BUSHMASTER SEMI-AUTOMATIC ASSAULT RIFLE

The weapon used by Adam Lanza when he massacred 26 children and adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, according to the medical examiner (December, 2012). 

 

THE AR-15 ASSAULT RIFLE

One of the weapons used by James Holmes at a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado that killed and injured a total of 70 people (July, 2012).

 

.40-CALIBER GLOCK

The weapon used by Jeffrey Weise, who murdered 9 people and wounded 5 others on the Red Lake Indian Reservation in Minnesota (March, 2005).

 

GLOCK 19 SEMI-AUTOMATIC PISTOL

One of the weapons used by Seung-Hui Cho, who injured and killed 56 people at the Virginia Tech Campus (April, 2007).

 

AK-47

The weapon used by former Caltrans employee Arturo Reyes Torres who opened fire at a maintenance yard, killed 5 and injuring 2.

 

INTRATEC TEC-9 PISTOL

One of the weapons used by Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, who opened fire in Columbine High School, injuring and killing 39 (April, 1999).

Photos courtesy of Academy Sports and Outdoors, Wikimedia Commons, Wikimedia Commons, Info4Guns, Deadliest Warrior, Arms List

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Newtown Alumni Fund for the Sandy Hook and Newtown Communities

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Watch The World Not End All Day With This Live Stream From The International Space Station

If the world breaks open or shudders to a halt today, the folks on the International Space Station will be the first to know about it. Or, you know, the second. The first to know about it will be the folks who are suddenly swallowed whole by a raging Earth or thrown from the planet’s surface into the frigid, uncaring void of space, but they’re probably not going to be much for reporting back on what’s happening, what with all the screaming and crying and begging for mercy. Sissies. Anyway, if you find yourself needing reassurance that the world is not in fact ending, look no further than the ISS’s eye in the sky live stream, embedded below for your convenience. The feed will give you an astronaut’s eye view of all life on Earth… moving on uninterrupted in pretty much the way it does every day. Hey, don’t look at us — we said it was reassuring, not exciting.

Broadcasting live with Ustream

The live stream from the ISS isn’t perfect — depending on what’s happening on the ISS itself, where the station is in its orbit, and what kind of contact it has with the planet’s surface, the ISS Earth cam may stop showing the Earth and begin showing the inside of the station. The feed may even just go dark. If this happens, don’t worry — it is not a sign of the end times. Probably.

Don’t worry if your view from the feed camera is limited, though — if a serpent made of flame or a legion of demons emerges from the world’s dark places to shatter our peaceful existence, the folks at the ISS will no doubt mention it at some point. Those tend to be the sorts of things that dominate conversation around the water cooler.

(via International Space Station, image courtesy of NASA)

Relevant to your interests

• Here are some things that will end today
• NASA is pretty cocky that it won’t end, what with this video from the future they released
• Even the Russian government has declared no apocalypse

via geekosystem.com

For all of those still worried, NASA's got you covered...

There’s a New Form of Magnetism, New State of Matter Thanks to MIT

We all learned in elementary school that the three states of matter are solid, liquid, and gas. Then if you took science classes in high school you probably learned plasma was a state of matter too. For most people, it stops there, but there are actually a lot more states matter can get itself into, and science just went and found a new one. MIT researchers have discovered a new state of matter, complete with its own unique form of magnetism. We can’t wait to see what the Insane Clown Posse has to say about this.

The new state of matter is known as a quantum spin liquid (QSL) and it’s been believed to be possible since 1987, but hasn’t been proven until now. The researchers at MIT spent months growing a small sample of a crystal known as herbertsmithite, a mineral named after mineralogist Herbert Smith, to test the hypothesis that it was a QSL. Turns out, it is. They published their findings in a paper titled Fractionalized Excitations in the Spin-Liquid State of a Kagome-Lattice Antiferromagnet. If you’re in a band, and that isn’t the name of your next album then you’re doing it wrong.

When most people think of magnets, what they’re thinking of are examples of ferromagnetism. All the electrons in ferromagnets have the same charge and are aligned in the same direction. It’s what causes the north/south poles of magnets. Antiferromagnets have electrons that face opposite directions, and basically cancel out the magnetic charge of the object. Herbestsmithite, or ZnCu₃(OD)₆Cl₂ if you want to get technical about it, is a kagome-lattice antiferromagnet.

The new type of magnetism found in QSLs like herbertsmithite is unique because the electrons fluctuate direction. The strong interaction between the electrons prevents them from being locked into place. So, while the state of the crystal is solid, the state of its magnetic field is in flux.

Besides giving you a new state of matter to throw around the next time someone tells you there are only four, QSLs could potentially lead to new forms of magnetic data storage, communications, and superconductors that can operate at higher temperatures.

(via ExtremeTech, image via sparr0)

Relevant to your interests

• Voyager 1 has found a magnetic highway in space
• Magnetic pulses to the brain can make you less optimistic
• There is a proposed space-time crystal clock

via geekosystem.com

Creators of Zork to accept Pioneer Award at DICE Summit, hide WIRED interview behind new text adventure

If you've ever been eaten by a grue, you can blame Dave Lebing, Marc Blank and and a small team of their friends -- Zork, and the notoriously frustrating text adventure game genre that followed is all their fault. The games were challenging, but they were also the most complex narratives told through video games at the time, and their creators are finally getting their dues. Early next year, Blank and Lebing are slated to receive the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences' Pioneer Award at the DICE Summit. The name implies the details: the award honors those who helped pioneer the gaming industry with their early work, ultimately paving the way for the titles and hardware we enjoy today. How influential was the title? Too young for nostalgic reminisces of "interactive fiction?" Head on over to Wired for a lesson in history -- it's hidden its entire interview with Dave Lebling behind a text adventure of its own design.

via engadget.com

Oh the endless hours I spent in the great underground empire Well deserved award. Congrats to all

It's official: Florida passes the millionth concealed weapons permit milestone

« Florida Republicans still mum on a response to Newtown shooting | Main | Atwater wants Scott to appoint inspector general at Citizens immediately »

It's official: Florida passes the millionth concealed weapons permit milestone

TALLAHASSEE -- Florida officials don't know when, but sometime in the last 24 hours someone received the 1 millionth concealed weapons permit in Florida -- making it the first state to reach that mileston.

"We have 1,000,645 concealed licenses as of this morning," said Amanda Bevis, a spokeswoman for Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam, who oversees the permit program. "Yesterday, we had 999,932, so we crossed the milestone at some point yesterday."

Putnam held a news conference last week -- two days before the Newtown, Conn. shooting -- that touted the milestone. While Putnam at the news conferernce said he wasn't celebrating the 1 million mark, the press release was titled: Firearm License Program is One Million Strong.

Posted by Michael Van Sickler at 4:09 PM on Wednesday, Dec. 19 | Permalink

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Ohh I feel much safer now...

Report: Data Caps Help Carriers Rake In Huge Profits

In case you weren’t quite certain why wireline and wireless carriers were capping your data, it’s not about bandwidth. Instead, they are able to charge a premium for faster speeds and more data, thereby raking in profits over and above what they’ve gotten in the past. In short, write Hibah Hussain, Danielle Kehl, Benjamin Lennett, and Patrick Lucey of the New America Foundation:

Internet service and mobile providers appear to be one of the few industries that seek to discourage their customers from consuming more of their product. The reason for this counterintuitive business model is that in the noncompetitive US marketplace, it is highly profitable.”

The paper itself goes into the history of bandwidth caps and isn’t saying much we didn’t already know. Basically the false scarcity imposed by service providers helps them maintain high profits while blaming data hogs. As data usage went up, however, the cost of providing that data went down.

This combination of caps and higher prices also applies to services like text messaging. Even though “the cost a carrier incurs by transmitting an SMS message has not increased in recent years,”carriers have continued raising prices and imposing limits.[8]As with data caps, the prices charged to consumers do not correspond with the costs for carriers.

ISPs often claim that caps are necessary to curb “excessive use” and only affect a small fraction of users. Although some providers are reexamining their data caps policies, many of the limits imposed several years ago have largely remained static, even as typical household bandwidth consumption has substantially increased. In 2008, Comcast reported that its median residential broadband user consumed 2.5 GB of data monthly.[9]In 2012, Comcast reports that this number has quadrupled to a median monthly usage of 8-10 GB per consumer.[10]Other sources report even higher usage numbers. According to the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) Measuring Broadband America report, the median cable broadband user in the United States consumed about 28 GB a month in mid-2012.[11]As new Internet applications and devices continue to be created, yesterdays so called “bandwidth hogs” are today’s typical users.

We all know the carriers will come back with the old “But infrastructure costs money!” argument but considering the slow roll-out of FiOS and related high-speed data services, they’re clearly sitting on their cash hoard until enough of us complain. As the authors note, “Data caps encourage a climate of scarcity in an increasingly data-driven world.” And scarcity makes money.

via Ars

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HELLO #ATT ?

#ATT unlimited data, NOT

So if you thought you had unlimited access using ATT cell service, think again...I received notice today that I exceeded their 3GB data limit for the month and my connections would be throttled from now on, I was told, "Sir, you have unlimited access, its just the connection speed that will be slowed down."
   I'm grandfathered in on the unlimited Data plan from the original iPhone offerings from years ago, of course I can upgrade to the $30/month data package which is also limited to 3GB.  I'm not a happy camper at the moment...Guess I can go back to 14.4?

After Newtown Massacre, Video Games Legislation Beats Gun Control Bills To Congress

via thinkprogress.org.feedsportal.com

And this is what happens when Faux News starts a campaign.

Utah Elementary School Student Brings Gun To School ‘For Protection’ Post-Sandy Hook

(Image via The Brady Campaign)

A sixth-grader in Kearns, Utah brought an unloaded handgun to his elementary school on Monday, reportedly at the urging of his parents.

According to the local Fox affiliate, the 11 year-old told his fellow students he was encouraged by his parents to bring the gun to school “for protection” following the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut on Friday. Police are currently determining what role the parents had in the student’s actions, but the school acted quickly to disarm the boy after learning he had the firearm on school grounds:

The boy reportedly pulled the gun, a .22-caliber pistol, out of his backpack during recess Monday morning.

“At recess, he pointed a gun to my head and said he was going to kill me,” said Isabel Rios, one of the boy’s fellow 6th grade students.

Granite School District officials say students didn’t notify teachers about the weapon until 3 p.m.

Far-right advocates of looser gun restrictions have been advocating since Friday for more guns in schools to prevent tragedies like the one that occurred in Newtown. Among the proposals being floated are allowing teachers to bring guns to class in Oklahoma and arming teachers with assault rifles. These suggestions come despite a renewed support from the public to put stricter gun control laws into place.

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This is what's going to start
I don't feel any safer do you????

End of Mission: GRAIL Spacecraft Impact a Mountain on the Moon

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A job well done, thank you #NASA