As we began our journey, I wrote about the threats we face as Antarctica's glaciers melt and the world's oceans rise. Yet beyond the physical impacts that rising seas pose to coastlines, glaciers are important for many other reasons. We need them in order to preserve one of the basic necessities of life: clean drinking water.

Let's take a step back. As the global population tops 7 billion, nearly 800 million people do not have access to clean and safe drinking water. The climate crisis could make this problem worse.

As sea levels rise, saltwater can contaminate sources of freshwater near coastal cities and towns. When too much saltwater seeps into lakes, rivers or the soil, the water becomes undrinkable and unusable for agriculture.

Nearly 635 million people - one out of every 10 people in the world today - live in low-lying coastal areas that are susceptible to inundation and disruption of the water supply.

Saltwater intrusion has already affected the Shandong Province in China, and water resources on the Caribbean Islands. In the United States, the water supplies of both San Francisco and New York City could be compromised as sea levels rise and the salty oceans intrude on the drinking water.

But the impact of melting glaciers does not end with rising seas. Glaciers also make up the primary water supply in several mountainous parts of the world. In the Andes, shrinking glaciers could impact the water supply for millions of people. The Bolivian cities of La Paz and El Alto depend on glaciers for about a third of their water supply.

From the ice melting in Antarctica, to rising sea levels flooding Bangladesh, to the prospect of a compromised drinking water supply in New York City, the world's glaciers tie together our greatest challenges of the 21st century. This is a problem that binds all of us together, wherever we live. That's why it's incumbent upon all of us to solve the climate crisis.

Cross Posted at the Climate Reality Blog

If you use the iPod app on your iOS device as much as I do, then you’re going to love the new jailbreak tweak: MusicBanners. The tweak, made by popular developer Ryan Petrich, brings your music to iOS 5′s notification system.

So what does it do? Essentially, MusicBanners sends you a notification every time a new track comes up on your iPod app. This means that you receive a notification with the track’s name, album and cover art after every song change…(...)
Read the rest of MusicBanners: Get Notified of iPod Track Changes and More

"MusicBanners: Get Notified of iPod Track Changes and More" is an article by iDownloadBlog.com.
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The point is to understand how things become relevant. Without a sense of purpose given, and, absent teleological range, scope or aim, it seems the individual is at a loss for meaning. I think the loss does not necessarily signal a lack; it is just a change of perspective. It is not anymore about the subject or the object, self or other, earth or heaven; it is now about the nature of the relation between them. It is recognizing how the nature of relation itself makes things relevant -- engaging itself with concern. I propose that all meaning and relevance is time-related: the structure of time provides a system for understanding meaning and how it works.

Several conditions need to be obtained in order to provide a preliminary model for the experience of time. I will focus on how the model works with respect to the interrelation of these conditions. First, how in the present I am given to the experience of a unified manifold. Second, how I am also already able to access to the past. Third, how the future always enables this relation to already having been by providing the initial unity of time itself.

The interaction between present, past and future is dynamic. I will clarify the choices I make for the language being used in order to avoid thinking about time like an extra dimension of space, or a static series of cinematic frames. Instead of using the words "present," "past" and "future," the three temporal phases will be referred to in the way they are experienced. The focus will be less on taking them apart than how they are taken together and interrelated. It is the experienced synthesis of their relation that is important to this inquiry.

Given how this series started with a homonymously titled song, its haunting melody will serve as an empirical example against which to test how meaning is time-related. To introduce the phenomenological method of listening to music, the experience will shortly be raised from burlesque to opera. I am reminded of the fantastic example Sean D. Kelly provides at the beginning of The Puzzle of Temporal Experience [1]:

There you are at the opera house. The soprano has just hit her high note -- a glass-shattering high C that fills the hall -- and she holds it. She holds it. She holds it. She holds it. She holds it. She holds the note for such a long time that after a while a funny thing happens: you no longer seem only to hear it, the note as it is currently sounding, that glass-shattering high C that is loud and high and pure. In addition, you also seem to hear something more. It is difficult to express precisely what this extra feature is. One is tempted to say, however, that the note now sounds like it has been going on for a very long time. Perhaps it even sounds like a note that has been going on for too long. In any event, what you hear no longer seems to be limited to the pitch, timbre, loudness, and other strictly audible qualities of the note. You seem in addition to experience, even to hear, something about its temporal extent.

For the purposes of this inquiry, the tune to "Is that all there is?" will be modified slightly. For simplicity, the melody will be taken as comprised of pure notes, played one at a time. In this manner I will not be taking into account the harmonics of chords, fundamentals, partials, or otherwise. That would be unnecessarily complicated.

A pure note in the time-domain is essentially a sound wave of a particular frequency. The frequency is a measure of how many oscillations occur per second. This makes sound interesting because it can be understood as the pure expression of difference over time -- the rate of changing time itself. Although the waves propagate in space, sound need not be understood in spatial terms throughout this exercise. Doppler shifts and changes in amplitude by distance do not apply.

Before I can even catch the melody, just hearing a pure note is difficult to explain. The soprano's high C example will help. If we zoom in on the perception of the sustained note, from a scale of several seconds to a small fraction thereof, then we can address the simple experience of hearing a distinct and simple note, albeit shortly. The point is that, objectively, when I hear a particular note, at any moment in time, I always hear more than is being presented to me at that instant. A single moment in the phase of an oscillation is not enough to render sound.  

On the other side of the spectrum, at approximately 20 cycles (20 Hz) bass becomes audible. Anything below that is infrasonic with respect to how the human nervous system is calibrated. Infrasonically, waves are felt more like changes in pressure caused by pulses of air displacement. On a biological level, if the displacement is fast enough, then the sound waves will make parts of our auditory system resonate and we get to hear sound. Anything above 20,000 cycles and the wavelength is too short to resonate with even the smallest hairs in our ears The period of a cycle at 20 Hz is 1/20, or 0.05 seconds. The period of a cycle at 20 KHz is 0.05ms, or, it only takes 1/20,000 seconds for it to complete an oscillation. Given this granularity, it does not seem impossible to model the experience of sound perceived during relatively short intervals.

If I sampled a pure wave of 20 Hz at a rate of 20 KHz, it would take 1000 samples to complete just one cycle. Technically, if I only listened to a 20 Hz signal for 0.04 seconds, it would not be possible to hear the cycle because at least 0.05 seconds are required to complete an oscillation at that frequency. The full oscillation has an angular displacement of 360 degrees that can be separated into two equal yet opposite arcs of 180 degrees. The amplitude or pressure change of the first half is reversed to obtain the second, producing one full cycle. To our knowledge, this translates into something like one of those little ear-hairs vibrating left and right. The point is that this pure 20 Hz signal can only be perceived as such if the full cycle is translated into displacement occurring back and forth.  At any moment in the cycle, I also have to access the previous moment in order to render the experience of a pure note.

The value of the current state is given, however, how is the previous state being accessed?   This question is not trivial. If the problem does not appear at least somewhat difficult, I would suggest re-reading "The Puzzle of Temporal Experience." The next entry will provide a description of the synthesis occurring in the mode of being present, emphasizing its interrelation with the past and future.

______________________________________

[1] The Puzzle of Temporal Experience by Sean D. Kelly can be found in several publications, or directly on the web from UC Berkeley and Harvard University.

Well, why is that? Is it because he raised taxes, created a new cabinet-level department (the Department of Veterans Affairs), oversaw exploding national deficits, increased the number of federal employees by over 60,000, did not actively speak against gay rights and famously worked with Democrats like Tip O'Neil to accomplish actual legislation (such as drastically increasing entitlements under Social Security)?

No. Of course not. It's because, by most accounts, Reagan was a genuinely warm human being. And that's not what Republicans want this year. It's not the politics. It's the approach. And today's Republicans want someone who will defeat the enemy, more than they want to achieve their legislative objectives. The Republican Party of today, like Itchy and Scratchy attest to in their ear worm theme song, want to "fight and fight and fight and fight and fight." This impulse is so strong among Republicans that it now trumps one of their formerly favorite prerequisites: "family values" -- that is, anti-gay, anti-abortion, anti-feminist and, well, anti- all things hippie.

You may recall that the so-called "Moral Majority" began influencing Republican politics in the late 1970s by, well, evangelizing a conservative moral philosophy. By the election of George W. Bush in 2000, the broader Christian Conservative/Born-Again Christian/Evangelical Christian movement had solidified "family values" into a full-blown political litmus test right up there with gun control and almost as effective as Grover Norquist's insistence that GOP candidates pledge never to raise taxes. No abortion, no gay rights. Fight the idea of evolution. Support putting religion in our schools. The list goes on.

Forget the investment bankers and the neocons. Karl Rove and Bush 43 unleashed on the nation a power of, well, almost biblical proportions. And one that they rode to unparalleled electoral success. It seems that the "Christian Right's" influence has steadily grown since the Reagan-era. No Republican candidate who has serious aspirations for national office can ignore their strength.

But in all the buzz about Newt Gingrich's meteoric rise to the top echelon of the Republican field, something unprecedented and wholly unexpected happened: The Christian right cracked.

After Mitt Romney appeared to have won the Iowa caucuses (subsequently corrected by the GOP well after the fact), the self-appointed leaders of the Christian Right desperately wanted to unify behind one candidate, so the social conservative vote would not be split. Such a split, they feared, would enable Mitt Romney to walk away with the nomination.

And so, on a weekend event culminating on Saturday January 14th, Republican evangelicals got together near Bleiblerville, Texas, at the ranch of H. Paul Pressler, a Houston attorney and retired judge. The goal was simple: agree on one socially conservative candidate that everyone would put their weight behind so Mitt Romney could be stopped. Finding one candidate to support, they hoped, would mean that that candidate could raise the funds necessary to compete effectively, and whose short-term electoral success would then engender more success in subsequent bouts. Who were these self-appointed Evangelical insiders? Family Research Council President Tony Perkins, Focus on the Family founder James Dobson, National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference president Rev. Samuel Rodriguez and former presidential candidate Gary Bauer, to name a few.

It took three ballots. And on that third try, they got their man, former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum, who emerged victorious with 84 out of 114 votes cast, defeating the former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich (Texas Governor Rick Perry having been eliminated in a previous round).

Let's look at the strength of the Christian social-conservative base in the first two primaries states after the Evangelicals anointed Santorum. In South Carolina, the very first primary in the South, 65% of those voting in the Republican primary in 2012 self-identified as either Born-Again or Evangelical Christians (up from 60% in 2008). And in Florida, the first large-state primary this election cycle, 47% so self-identified (39% in 2008). That's fertile ground for these Christian political leaders to sow their brand of politics. And Rick Santorum is a Catholic who vehemently opposes abortion and gay rights. He seems to be accepted as one of their own by the Evangelical Right. He certainly was in Iowa.

It's hard to look at the results of South Carolina and Florida and not conclude the Christian Right movement itself lost. At first blush it certainly appeared that the Evangelicals/Born-Agains got their wish: Romney was stopped cold in South Carolina. But their man Santorum lost (and lost big) to Gingrich in South Carolina (by 23 points). And he lost by an even greater margin (a full 33 points) to Romney in Florida.

In fact, exit polls in South Carolina and Florida show that Santorum lost to Gingrich and Romney in almost every category (including race, gender, education) and by more than 2-to-1 among those identifying themselves as either Born-Again or Evangelical Christians (21% to 44% in SC; 18% to 37% in FL) and even bigger among Catholics (15% to 37% in SC; 10% to 56% in FL).

Let's reflect upon that. The Catholic candidate that was endorsed by the Evangelical elites as a "values firewall" bombed in states with sizable Evangelical/Born-Again populations. If not Santorum, then who picked up all of those evangelical votes? Why Mitt Romney, of course. He improved among Evangelicals/Born-Agains from 22% in South Carolina (one point higher than Santorum!) to 38% in Florida (barely eking out Gingrich's 37%). That's right; Gingrich and Romney split the Evangelical/Born-Again vote in Florida.

In short, the Evangelicals wanted to show their modern social conservative litmus test was still operative. What they got instead in Newt Gingrich was something rather more Old Testament. Forget the social conservative line, the Republican voters in South Carolina wanted red meat, someone who could fight -- not necessarily for exactly what they believe in, but fight against Obama and all that they say (however inaccurately) the Democrats stand for. And in Florida, almost a third of Republican voters still enjoy their meat rare. Gingrich is still very much alive with 32% of the vote.

What's the real moral of South Carolina and Florida? The full-attack, take-no-prisoners, Rush-Limbaugh wing of the Republican Party can take the Evangelical and social conservative wing any day. With its hands tied behind its back.

For the rest of us, the good news is that the so-called values candidates may finally have peaked. Or at least the Christian Right elite's ability to select the value candidate has vanished. But the bad news is that Itchy and Scratchy may be here for the foreseeable future.

We'll also establish a Financial Crimes Unit of highly trained investigators to crack down on large-scale fraud... financial firms violate major anti-fraud laws because there's no real penalty for being a repeat offender... So pass legislation that makes the penalties for fraud count.

And tonight, I'm asking my Attorney General to create a special unit of federal prosecutors and leading state attorney general to expand our investigations into the abusive lending and packaging of risky mortgages that led to the housing crisis.

Now, how could you be against that? In his speech, and indeed as has been true for his entire career, Mr. Obama deserves an A for rhetoric. But what grade does he deserve for action? Alas, he flunks.

It has now been three and a half years since the financial crisis of September 2008. Only a few months after that crisis -- three years ago now -- President Obama took office. At the time, he had an overwhelming popular mandate and huge majorities in both houses of Congress. The nation was in crisis, with unemployment growing nearly half a percent per month. The Bush Administration's policies (and the financial sector that those policies had allowed to run wild) were utterly discredited. If ever real change is possible in Washington DC, this was that time.

In that situation, and over the intervening three years, what did President Obama do? Well, we got a stimulus package, and then a year later a watered-down, absurdly complicated new law that addressed everything except the most important issues. And that's about it. Consider the record:

President Obama's personnel appointments were heavily weighted towards those who had sat by and done nothing as the housing bubble grew (Tim Geithner, Ben Bernanke), former officials who had made major contributions to causing it (Larry Summers), senior lobbyists for the worst of the banks (Mark Patterson, Tom Donilon), a former board member of AIG (Richard Holbrooke), and literally dozens of former executives of banks and hedge funds that had played major roles in causing the crisis. The new chair of the SEC, Mary Shapiro, was the former head of the investment banking industry's self-regulation body, which brought not a single enforcement action related to the bubble. Her new director of enforcement, Robert Khuzami, was formerly general counsel for Deutsche Bank, which profited by helping John Paulson create securities so that he could profit by betting that they would fail.

We got the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, deliberately crippled through its tiny budget (less than $10 million for its entire operation, beginning to end), limited subpoena power, and publication date conveniently just after the 2010 midterm elections. Even so, the FCIC actually did a pretty decent job, and demonstrated that the housing bubble had involved pervasive fraud on the part of the banks.

Moreover, there followed a huge wave of private lawsuits. The banks fought them hard, and have tried extremely hard to prevent depositions and testimony from becoming public. But many plaintiffs persisted, and there has now accumulated a massive record of extraordinarily repulsive, and clearly illegal, behavior. In a book that I have just finished, and which will be published in May, grimly entitled Predator Nation, I go through what is known in considerable detail, and make the case for large-scale prosecutions and asset forfeitures.

This information is already public. So what has happened as a result?

Well, the SEC has filed some civil fraud cases -- not many, and not big. Thus far, every single one has been settled with a minor fine, with neither individuals nor banks required to admit guilt. Criminal prosecutions of banks? Zero. Criminal prosecutions of senior financial executives related to the bubble? Zero. RICO cases, such as were used against Michael Milken and are routinely used against drug dealers and other organized criminals to seize their assets and forfeit their ill-gotten gains? Zero. Sarbanes-Oxley prosecutions, based on CEOs' certification of obviously fraudulent financial statements? Zero. In Mr. Obama's three years in office, not a single U.S. bank or senior financial executive has been convicted of any crime (or even prosecuted), or had their assets confiscated.

But now, it's re-election time, and Occupy Wall Street has shown simmering anger among the population. So we create a task force. (There was another one before, too, but never mind.) A week later, several bankers are arrested. They're low level patsies, who worked for a Swiss bank, and who didn't create or sell the toxic stuff; they just traded it afterwards. And the task force? Its initial personnel: a whopping 15 people in the Justice Department, and ten -- count them, ten -- FBI agents. Eventually, Justice says, the task force will have an awesome 55 people. Goldman Sachs has 32,000 employees, there are several thousand financial industry lobbyists, the FBI has a total of 14,000 agents -- but hey, I'm sure that those ten agents are the very best.

So yes, it's absurd, and rather disgusting. But it must also be said that President Obama is not alone in prostrating himself before the financial sector. Congress is no better, and neither are Obama's likely opponents in the presidential race. Newt Gingrich screamed about government interference while he was being paid $1.6 million by Freddie Mac's chief lobbyist for "conservative outreach." In Mitt Romney, we have someone who thinks it's perfectly OK to have a tax rate of 14 percent on over $20 million per year in unearned income, and who wants to increase taxes on the poor while reducing them further for the wealthy. Unfortunately, the power of financial sector money has by now produced a pervasive, bipartisan systemic disease in American politics, of which the president's recent speech is merely one example among many.

Folks who believe that Siri’s initial interface window takes up way more space than it needs will be happy to hear about this new jailbreak tweak.

TinyAssistant, from developer Ron Melkhior, is a new utility that shrinks Siri’s interface window down to the size of your iOS app switcher…(...)
Read the rest of Shrink Siri’s Interface Window With TinyAssistant

"Shrink Siri’s Interface Window With TinyAssistant" is an article by iDownloadBlog.com.
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Even with Apple’s notoriously strict approval process, misleading applications constantly make their way into the App Store. We’ve covered a number of these titles on iDB — most recently Craft-Build Terrain, a fake MineCraft game.

These fraudulent applications have been making some serious waves in the developer community over the last few weeks. Developers believe these apps give their titles, and the App Store in general, a bad name. And Apple has responded…(...)
Read the rest of Apple Pulls Several Misleading Applications From the App Store

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Who cares, right? It's yet another marketing ploy to make us buy more stuff that we don't really need.

It's truly overrated. Mass retail merchandisers move from one holiday to the next... Over the next few days, you'll find men stalking Victoria's Secret mannequins. Women will be painting their nails red and getting "vajazzled" for the occasion, hoping for a sparkly new jewellery piece.

Did you know that roughly 180 million Valentine's Day cards will be exchanged in the U.S. alone, making V-Day the second-most popular greeting card-giving occasion? Chocolates and long-stem red roses are also typical (boring) choices.

That's what you say now... but when February 14 actually rolls around, you may end up yearning for a little romance and attention from your partner.

How can you enjoy some romance without playing into the marketing ploy?

Simple.

There are tons of ways to show your love and affection, without blowing your budget.

Sparking some romance can be simple with some simple, savvy tips:

1. Stay home.
Seriously, don't even bother going on Valentine's Day. Restaurants will be packed, service will likely be horrible. Put the kids early to bed and have a lovely date night at home. Set the mood with some dinner and drinks by candlelight. Whether you make a quick pasta dinner or order in, home is always comfy and cozy when the lights are dim and the glasses are full.

2. Go out... the following night.
If you must go out, you know that babysitters can be quite expensive to hire for a night out on the town. Instead of hiring a nanny or babysitter to watch the kids, why not swap services with your family, friends or neighbours? You can alternate date nights without having to spend a ton of cash. You wouldn't want to go out on V-day night anyway!

3. Let's get physical
If you do want to go out on V-day because what would your neighbours think?!, skip the packed restaurants and do something different and fun -- go bowling or skating. Find a rollerskating rink and remember what it was like to moonlight in seventh grade.

4. Coffee and a book
If you're not the type to get active on a date (I don't mean that kind of active), grab your loved one and head to the bookstore. Grab a couple of lattes and some biscotti, find a corner in the romance section and read each other some poetry. Find a steamy romance novel or Kama Sutra book and take it home with you to read together in bed.

5. Picnic by the fire
Plan a romantic picnic in the middle of your living room floor. Lay out a blanket, feed your partner some cheese and grapes and share a bottle of wine. Don't forget to turn on the fireplace and play some soft, sensual music... as long as it's not Michael Bolton.

6. Be cheap and be proud
Married couples don't need to worry about looking "cheap." Hey, having kids is expensive! Search the net for group-buying coupon companies that offer some great deals on entertainment experiences. You can find yourself saving up to half price on museums, wine tastings, restaurants and more. Your partner doesn't need to know.

7. Make it a family affair
Well the kids are home and no one can babysit. May as well just enjoy the evening as a family! Make a pizza together, bake some cookies, watch a family movie (you know grown-ups love Tangled, too) or play some video games, board games or dancing games like Just Dance.

8. Snuggle up on the couch
Instead of heading into a packed theatre for movie night, rent some DVDs. Whether he likes it or not, he will just have to watch The Notebook on Valentine's Day. Sorry guys! Make your own popcorn, buy some candy, dim the lights and make sure to turn your cell phones off!

The trick to a successful Valentine's Day is not about the gifts, chocolates and flowers; it's about having fun. Chances are you'll enjoy spending time with your loved one whatever you do!

Facebook, USA Today’s Super Bowl Ad Meter - Involver is powering Facebook and USA Today’s Super Bowl Ad Meter on Facebook.com/sports and other pages. The app allows users to see, rate and share Super Bowl ads before, during and after the game via web or mobile.

Most users get big social return from Facebook – A study from the Pew Research Internet Project found that most users receive more social feedback than they put into the platform. This is due to the fact that there’s a small percentage of power users that is extremely active in liking, commenting and providing other social feedback on the site.

Bday Gift Finder uses data to find gifts – Bday’s Bday Gift Finder is an app that allows users to find the right gifts for friends by utilizing user data to settle on the most appropriate gift card. The app analyzes Likes and the sentiment attached to those Likes. Bday recently received $2 million in Series A funding.

Facebook, USA Today’s Super Bowl Ad Meter - Involver is powering Facebook and USA Today’s Super Bowl Ad Meter on Facebook.com/sports and other pages. The app allows users to see, rate and share Super Bowl ads before, during and after the game via web or mobile.

Most users get big social return from Facebook – A study from the Pew Research Internet Project found that most users receive more social feedback than they put into the platform. This is due to the fact that there’s a small percentage of power users that is extremely active in liking, commenting and providing other social feedback on the site.

Bday Gift Finder uses data to find gifts – Bday’s Bday Gift Finder is an app that allows users to find the right gifts for friends by utilizing user data to settle on the most appropriate gift card. The app analyzes Likes and the sentiment attached to those Likes. Bday recently received $2 million in Series A funding.