NPR Story

­ So, Would You Eat A Panda? by Barbara J. King October 18, 2012 9:36 AM Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images A Chinese scientist recently suggested that prehistoric humans ate pandas. The evidence, based on cut marks on panda bones, strikes me as thin, but the report led me to a thought experiment. How would people in the modern world react if the some population or subculture today made panda-foraging a goal? I imagine most of us would be horrified, and not only because the panda is an endangered species. The panda has become a symbol of cuteness, an animal we love to love. Although some pretty neat research is underway seeking a genetic substrate for certain taste preferences, anthropologists know that what people choose to eat and what we find out of the question to eat is a deeply cultural matter. What we consume is bound up in a specific time and place with family, tradition, and ethnic identity in complicated ways. Many of us can probably remember a time when, traveling far from home, we felt incredulous at what foods people around us were eating with nonchalance — or with lip-smacking enthusiasm. Years ago, newly arrived in Gabon, West Africa, and about to study captive chimpanzees, I dined at a small rural restaurant. Selecting chicken from the menu, I was urged to try another dish: monkey. I couldn't imagine eating a monkey! I was after all, devoting my professional life to observing monkeys and apes, whom I knew to be thinking and feeling creatures. When my chicken and French fries arrived, I discovered coarse black hairs nestled among the food. Part of the monkey had slipped onto my plate after all. I picked out and discarded the monkey hairs. But I ate the chicken without a second thought. These days, I couldn't eat that chicken any more than I could eat the monkey. Although not in ways as complex as primates, chickens do, science tells us, think and feel. I still very occasionally eat fish. And I seem to have a harder and harder time understanding how any of us draw the line about what we will and won't eat. In the same way that panda-eating wouldn't be acceptable to most of us in this country, there was outrage expressed when a Colorado restaurant put lion on the menu for a special event. The lion was soon enough removed from the menu, but other exotic species such as kangaroo and water buffalo were not. So what is it about lions and pandas — and cats and dogs? What keeps these animals off our dining tables, when we readily consume, say, pigs and chickens? And we don't just eat pigs and chickens, we rhapsodize about eating them. In last Sunday's Food magazine of The New York Times, Mario Batali wrote blissfully about the odd foods he encountered on a visit to Tokyo, ranging from pork uterus to chicken kneecaps, using words like "exciting" and "heavenly." Of course, I'm generalizing. Millions of vegetarians and vegans don't eat chicken kneecaps, or any other part of chickens, turkeys, pigs, lambs or cows. I don't either. People in that category hope, for the animals' sake and for the sake of human health, that people lucky enough to have an economic choice in the matter will eat less of these creatures or none at all. So are we non-meat-eaters bucking cultural tradition, and forging a new identity based on what we don't eat instead of what we do eat? We're not just non-panda-eaters, like everyone else. In this country, at least, we are still an anomaly, and an evolutionary anomaly at that. In the Homo lineage, according to new research by anthropologist Henry Bunn on our hominid ancestors from Olduvai, Tanzania, we've been big-game hunters for longer than I'd ever thought: about 2 million years. We've been eating meat for longer than that, via scavenging or taking small game opportunistically. Our evolutionary history, though, cannot explain what each of us finds delectable or disgusting today. And it shouldn't, and doesn't, define our dietary choices, either. http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2012/10/18/162959912/so-would-you-eat-a-panda You can keep up with more of what Barbara is thinking on Twitter: @bjkingape

NPR Story; The Computers Behind The Cloud

The Computers Behind The Cloud Categories: The Industry 08:26 am October 17, 2012

by Jordan G. Teicher October 17, 2012 Listen to the Story Morning Edition   Enlarge Connie Zhou/Google Google's data center in Council Bluffs, Iowa, houses servers in over 115,000 square feet of space. Connie Zhou/Google Google's data center in Council Bluffs, Iowa, houses servers in over 115,000 square feet of space. Behind the ephemeral "cloud" of cloud computing, the network we use for everything from checking our email to streamlining our health care system, there lies a very tangible and very big computer infrastructure. But besides a glimpse at some of the hardware in 2009, there has been little information about Google's data centers, the warehoused collections of servers that have given the company the foundation for its vast Internet operations. Today, the company is throwing open the gates to the world — digitally, of course. It has released a site featuring photos of facilities from Belgium to Finland to Iowa and launched a guided Street View tour of one in Lenoir, N.C. Enlarge Connie Zhou/Google A rare look behind the server aisle in Mayes County, Okla. Hundreds of fans funnel hot air from the server racks into a cooling unit to be recirculated. This is the first time Google has opened the doors of its data centers to outsiders. Connie Zhou/Google A rare look behind the server aisle in Mayes County, Okla. Hundreds of fans funnel hot air from the server racks into a cooling unit to be recirculated. This is the first time Google has opened the doors of its data centers to outsiders. It's the same facility the company revealed in an exclusive tour to Wired senior writer Steven Levy, whose story on Google's infrastructure appears in the magazine's November issue. In an interview with Morning Edition's Steve Inskeep, Levy described going where no Google outsider has gone before: "What strikes you immediately is the scale of things. The room is so huge you can almost see the curvature of Earth on the end. And wall to wall are racks and racks and racks of servers with blinking blue lights and each one is many, many times more powerful and with more capacity than my laptop. And you're in the throbbing heart of the Internet. You really feel it." Google has a lot of servers — Levy reports 49,923 in Lenoir alone. The total worldwide number eludes even Google's executives, but there have been at least 1 million cumulatively, according to a plaque Levy found on the premises. Google is not the only company with massive computer networks. In 2006, Microsoft built a giant data center on 75 acres of bean fields in Quincy, Wash. Yahoo and Dell, among other companies, have also set up data centers in Quincy. But Google's data center technology is unique, Levy says, which is partly responsible for the company's success — and a cause for the secrecy surrounding it. "One technique that Google really pioneered was keeping things hotter than has been traditionally expected in a data center," Levy says. "In old data centers, you would put on a sweater before you went in there. Google felt that you could run the general facility somewhat warmer than even normal room temperature. When I walked into Lenoir I think it was 77 degrees." The trick to keeping the heat under control, Levy writes, is a "hot aisle," a space that harnesses hot air from the servers into water-filled coils, sends it out of the building to cool, and then circulates it back inside. This is a dramatic departure from traditional centers, which use large amounts of energy on air conditioning. Levy says that the specific technology varies from center to center and that Google has considered the local resources and geography in each design. That doesn't necessarily mean, however, that the centers don't have an environmental cost. "There's no way around it. These things burn a lot of energy, and a lot of the energy in a data center is done to cool it down so the computers don't melt. Data centers in general consume 1.5 percent roughly of all the world's electricity," Levy says. Google's servers have been getting progressively faster and cheaper, and even now the company has plans to completely change the basics of the system in places like Lenoir. But the specifics of those changes will remain secret — at least for now. "Google may be dedicated to providing access to all the world's data, but some information it's still keeping to itself," Levy writes.

Tax Tips for 2012

 
12 Tempting Tax Tips to Save You Money for 2012

By Kay Bell | Bankrate.com – Wed, Jan 4, 2012 12:38 PM EST
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In recent years, as Congress crafted new laws such as housing bills, health care reform or extended tax provisions such as the Bush-era tax cuts, lawmakers were careful to make sure that no major taxes took effect in 2012.
Why? Because it's a presidential election year. No candidate wants to explain to voters heading to the polls why they are facing added taxes.
But there are still many tax considerations in the coming year. Here are 12 tax tips, reminders and planning tools for 2012.

Remember Roth IRA conversion taxes
Anyone, regardless of income, can convert a traditional individual retirement account to a Roth IRA. But when that option first became available in 2010, a special feature that year allowed individuals who converted to a Roth IRA to spread the taxes due on converted amounts equally over the 2011 and 2012 tax years. That means your first Roth conversion tax bill will be included on your 2011 return filed in 2012. Make sure you have that cash on hand, and plan now for the 2012 conversion bill.

Claim your American Opportunity
The American Opportunity Tax Credit was a centerpiece of the 2009 stimulus bill. The new education tax break expanded the existing Hope Credit, providing a credit of up to $2,500 of the cost of qualified tuition and related expenses, and up to $1,000 of the credit could come back to the taxpayer as a refund.
The American Opportunity Credit was originally supposed to end in 2010, but it was extended through 2012. However, this could be the credit's last year. Congress is looking for ways to cut the federal deficit, and allowing tax breaks to expire is an easy way to save some dollars. If you have eligible education expenses, be sure to claim the American Opportunity Credit while you can.

Note health care info on W-2
When you get your 2011 W-2, you might notice some new information on the form. Box 12 is where employers will report the cost of your workplace's group health insurance coverage. This amount is both the amount the business pays as well as the premiums paid via payroll deductions by the workers.
Don't freak out. The amount, which will be designated by the code DD, is not taxable income. It's informational only, designed to help Uncle Sam confirm taxpayers have coverage. Under the health care reform law, the Affordable Care Act, the data will help to enforce the eventual individual coverage if it survives a Supreme Court hearing as well as the so-called Cadillac tax on more expensive workplace insurance plans.
However, if you don't see anything in Box 12, don't freak out about that either. The IRS ruled that reporting 2011 health care data is optional for employers.

Pay attention to Form 1099-K
If you get a Form 1099-K in 2012, don't toss it. The new form records payments received in 2011 by credit card or through third-party networks such as PayPal. This added income reporting mechanism was created as part of the Housing Assistance Tax Act of 2008 and is finally taking effect for the 2011 tax year because of concerns that some small businesses do not report all of their income. Previously, the Internal Revenue Service had to take taxpayers' word that all income was reported because the agency didn't have access to credit card or online payment details. The 1099-K changes that.

Be ready for basis reporting
Beginning with the 2011 tax year, brokers must report an asset's basis, the value that is used to determine profit when you sell, to the IRS. That amount will show up on the 1099 forms you receive in 2012 for 2011 stock transactions. Additional basis reporting will be phased in, in 2012 and 2013. You might have heard of this new requirement when your investment managers asked which type of basis reporting you preferred they use. Generally, brokers must report the sale of securities on a first-in, first-out basis unless the customer specifically identifies which securities are to be sold.

Accelerate income
Most tax experts will tell you to pay no tax before its time. However, impending income tax rate changes might make 2012 the exception to that traditional tax adage. The top ordinary income tax bracket in 2012 is 35 percent of annual taxable income. If Congress doesn't act, the highest tax rate will go to 39.6 percent in 2013. So, if you're in the top tax bracket, you might want to accelerate income into 2012 and pay taxes at the lower rate.

Cash in winning stocks
Along with higher ordinary income tax rates, there's a possibility of higher tax rates on investment income. Through 2012, the top federal capital gains tax rate is 15 percent for most taxpayers, and no tax is due from investors in the 10 percent and 15 percent tax brackets. These lower rates apply to assets held for more than a year. If you believe capital gains taxes might go up, 2012 could be a good year to lock in profits on long-term investments.

Plan for the added Medicare tax
Higher-income earners always have a few more tax considerations, and that's true in 2012. In 2013, a new 3.8 percent Medicare tax is slated for collection on profits from the sale of investment property.
This includes capital gains, dividends, interest payments and, for those who own rental property, net rental income. The tax will apply to individuals with a gross income of $200,000 or more or married couples filing jointly with a combined gross income of $250,000 or more. If you're in the targeted income brackets, talk with your tax and investment advisers about steps you can take this year to prepare for the new tax.

Assess AMT danger
The alternative minimum tax, or AMT, is a continual tax trap for millions of middle-income taxpayers. This parallel tax system was created in 1969 to ensure wealthier taxpayers pay a minimum amount of taxes, primarily by disallowing several common deductions that are claimed under the regular tax system.
But because the AMT is not indexed for inflation, Congress must increase the income levels affected by the alternative tax.
It's possible that tax reform in 2012 could eliminate the AMT, a longtime goal of many lawmakers. But just in case that doesn't happen and you fear you might end up paying the alternative tax, talk with your tax adviser about ways you can limit your AMT exposure.

Give gifts
Giving to charity can help reduce an annual tax bill, but if you have a large estate, gifts also are important estate tax tools. Thanks to the resurrection of the estate tax in 2011, the unified gift tax also returned. This means you can give away $5 million during your lifetime without having to pay the 35 percent gift tax.
There's also an annual amount to note in giving away your estate's assets while you're still around to get thanks. In 2012, you can give up to $13,000 each to as many individuals as you wish without any tax costs to you or your gift recipients.

Evaluate estate tax implications
Speaking of the estate tax, the inevitable meeting of death and taxes will be a hot topic in 2012. If Congress takes no action, the current $5 million estate exclusion will fall to $1 million, and the tax on estates larger than that will be 55 percent on Jan. 1, 2013. If your estate will be larger than $1 million, talk with an estate tax adviser in 2012 about options to reduce any possible larger federal tax bite.

Hire a registered tax pro
The IRS is continuing its efforts to regulate tax preparers. The process began with the registration of return preparers and the issuance of a personal Preparer Tax Identification Number, or PTIN, to each. The IRS is ramping up its effort to hold tax preparers accountable and weed out unscrupulous tax pros, with proposals to fingerprint preparers and, in 2013, require them to pass competency exams. If you hire a tax pro, ask about his or her IRS registration status, along with your usual inquiries to verify the preparer's ability to meet your tax needs.

Boston Globe: 'Cleveland '95: A Football Life' is superb

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'Cleveland '95: A Football Life' is superb
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Posted by Chad Finn, Globe Staff
 
October 3, 2012 11:03 AM

By Chad Finn, Boston.com Columnist

The reminder is probably unnecessary and even unwelcome, but it's relevant to this discussion since it is one that has come around for the Patriots and their fans a couple of times in the past half-decade or so:

No matter how talented a football team you have, it is extremely difficult to win a Super Bowl. (Let alone three, or four, or five ...) An unfortunate bounce here, a receiver catching the ball by clamping it to his helmet there, and the confetti that was supposed to rain down on your head is falling on the other, victorious side.

That disclaimer aside, I can tell you this: After watching a screening of "Cleveland '95: A Football Life,'' the latest installment of NFL Films' extraordinary documentary series that premieres on the NFL Network at 8 p.m. Wednesday, I'm almost certain the Browns under coach Bill Belichick would have won at least one Super Bowl and probably more had everything remained in place during his time there.

Of course, you know it played out differently, a story of greed, desperation, and abandonment so ugly that it became instant sports legend. Nothing remained in place other than a jilted, devastated fan base. Word of debt-ridden owner Art Modell's heartless plan to move Cleveland's cherished Browns to Baltimore leaked out during the 1995 season, Belichick's doomed final year among his five as the franchise's head coach.

The result over the rest of the promising season -- Sports Illustrated had picked the Browns to go to the Super Bowl -- was escalating chaos fueled by fan anger, resulting in a toxic lame-duck situation unprecedented in professional sports. It was hopeless.

"I felt bad for the team and the players and the coaches who were working so hard with less than no support,'' Belichick says. "The owner was nowhere to be found. He was in Baltimore. You kind of felt like you were on a deserted island, fending for yourself."

As you might have guessed, this film isn't exactly a warm eulogy for the recently deceased Modell. Nor should it be. He fled the city before taking his team with him, unaccountable to the end. Belichick, as we are reminded with some downright eerie final-game footage, was left behind as a victim of the misguided wrath, receiving death threats and being hanged in effigy in the stadium parking lot. Jim Schwartz, the current Lions coach who was on Belichick's remarkably talented staff at the time, remembers his work being interrupted multiple times a day by bomb threats.

The team collapsed under the weight of it all, and during the final home game, on Dec. 17, 1995, the stadium was in effect torn apart around them, with fans bringing hammers and saws into the ancient venue to take a memento with them. What they didn't want was discarded onto the field during the game.

"I personally never felt threatened,'' Belichick recalls. "But it certainly was not like a normal home game.''

Ozzie Newsome, the legendary Browns tight end and current Ravens general manager who was breaking into coaching on Belichick's staff, summed up the hopelessness of it all: "It's hard enough to win with no distractions in this league. When you have a distraction like that, you've got no chance. No chance.''

Seventeen years after the Browns' departure, it's still impossible not to sympathize with Cleveland, which was awarded an expansion team, retained its name and records, but hasn't made any meaningful history since. But for a Patriots fan, there is another truth in the subtext: All of the great things that have happened here since Belichick's arrival in 2000 never would have been had Modell not moved the Browns and scapegoated his coach.

The Patriots were blessed because of Cleveland's loss. Belichick had a plan there that was aborted by factors beyond his control. In New England, he proved he had the right ideas.

The film, flawlessly executed with that familiar, irresistible NFL Films formula of gorgeous video, miked-up personnel, and candid interviews, leaves little doubt that great things were on the verge of happening in Cleveland. The behind-the-scenes footage of Belichick's early days as head coach are the closest a Patriots fan will ever come to seeing the Patriots on "Hard Knocks.''

In one early scene, Mike Lombardi, the Browns' player personnel director under Belichick who is now a respected analyst on the NFL Network, talks about his boss's attention to detail, specifically how he wanted a writeup of every single opposing player --"not how I would write it up, how he wanted it written up.''

The film then cuts to footage of Belichick (who apparently favored Mizuno shirts and hideous pastel-highlighted sweaters in those days) and Lombardi sitting in an office, presumably in 1991, going over the personnel of that week's opponent.

"Before we get into the X's and O's,'' Belichick tells him, "we're going through each player. Strengths, weaknesses, overall physical abilities, what his history is, speed, you know, all that [expletive]."

Lombardi offers an eager medley of criticism on a couple of players. "I'm not sure this guy's got enough arm strength left to play,'' he says of one.

"OK, so that's a typical report right there,'' said Belichick, his eyes smiling. "Everybody on their team stinks, nobody has any athletic ability, so unless the coaches [expletive] this game up, there's no way we could lose."

In retrospect, it's surprising that while building his program, it took Belichick until his fourth season to have a winning record. His coaching and personnel staffs were stacked with future stars, with nine future NFL head coaches or GMs and three successful college coaches on his staff.

"What was Bill looking for in people?" recalled Newsome. "Bill was looking for Bill. And he found a lot of little Bills.''

Alabama coach Nick Saban was his defensive coordinator for four years. Iowa coach Kirk Ferentz was plucked from the University of Maine to oversee the offensive line. Schwartz, Newsome, Tom Dimitroff, Eric Mangini, and Scott Pioli were among the self-proclaimed "slappies'' who got their first break from Belichick, much the way Belichick had been given a break by Colts coach Ted Marchibroda in 1975. (Included is some outstanding footage of a very young Belichick lurking on the Colts sideline, holding a clipboard and various colored pens.)

Among the film's most mesmerizing scenes is one in a coaches room in which the respect and trust between Belichick and his staff is evident. Saban -- skinny, bespectacled, and apparently willing then to make eye contact with other human beings -- laments to Belichick about how that week's opponent had beaten them in a previous meeting:

Saban: "I mean, if we don't play our [expletives] off, they'll beat us."

Belichick: "Oh, I agree.We've got to do everything we can to get our team to the highest level we can this week. Pull out all the [expletive] stops, no matter what they are."

Saban: "And I'll tell you what. We may not have had a very good plan, but we had [expletive] preparation the last time we played these guys."

Belichick: "No question."

His coaches were permitted such candor if they had his respect, so they strove desperately to earn it. Newsome, who has been an outstanding general manager in Baltimore, said the lessons he learned from Belichick were applied during his first draft with the Ravens in 1996.

Modell wanted running back Lawrence Phillips in the first round, a troubled, talented player who fit a need. But Newsome remembered Belichick's first rule of draft day: Always stick to your board and take the best player. He chose the player tops on his board, UCLA tackle Jonathan Ogden, with the fourth pick, then at No. 26 selected Miami linebacker Ray Lewis. Combined, they made 24 Pro Bowls -- Lewis could make another one or two on reputation -- and they will be reunited in Canton someday.

Newsome and so many others on that staff learned their lessons well. It's less certain that Modell ever did. When "Cleveland '95: A Football Life'' is complete, his legacy is more complicated than before. Stealing the Browns from Cleveland still stands as his cruelest move. But his dumbest? Not taking Belichick with him.

http://www.boston.com/sports/touching_all_the_bases/2012/10/cleveland_95_bill_belichick.html