n2doc
n2doc's JournalRevealed: nearly all new diesel cars exceed official pollution limits
Damian Carrington, Gwyn Topham and Peter Walker
Saturday 23 April 2016 02.00 EDT
Ninety-seven percent of all modern diesel cars emit more toxic nitrogen oxide (NOx) pollution on the road than the official limit, according to the most comprehensive set of data yet published, with a quarter producing at least six times more than the limit.
Surprisingly, the tiny number of models that did not exceed the standard were mostly Volkswagens, the carmaker whose cheating of diesel emissions tests which emerged last year sparked the scandal. Experts said the new results show that clean diesel cars can be made but that virtually all manufacturers have failed to do so.
The new data, from testing industry leader Emissions Analytics (EA), follows the publication this week by the Department for Transport of emissions results for 37 vehicles, all of which emitted more NOx on the road than the official limit. But the new data covers more than 250 vehicles in more stringently standardised road conditions. EA found that just one of 201 Euro 5 diesels, the EU standard from 2009, did not exceed the limit, while only seven of 62 Euro 6 diesels, the stricter standard since 2014, did so.
Diesel cars must meet an official EU limit for NOx but are only tested in a laboratory under fixed conditions. All vehicles sold pass this regulation but, when taken out on to real roads, almost all emit far more pollution. There is no suggestion that any of the cars tested broke the law on emissions limits or used any cheat devices.
more
http://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/apr/23/diesel-cars-pollution-limits-nox-emissions
TROLLGATE: Hillary Shill Just Spilled The Beans On Trollgate…And It’s Getting Weirder
this was posted on Reddit. The original post has been deleted, but luckily it’s been screen capped so that we can see a unique portrait into the Hillary Paid Troll Scandal:
First, my background. I am [redacted] … and first became involved in politics during the 2008 presidential race. I worked as a volunteer for Hillary during the Democratic primary and then for the Democratic Party in the general election. I was not heavily involved in the 2012 election cycle (employment issues – volunteering doesn’t pay the rent), and I wasn’t really planning on getting involved in this cycle until I was contacted by a friend from college around six months ago about working on Hillary’s campaign.
I was skeptical at first (especially after my experience as an unpaid volunteer in 2008), but I eventually came around. The work time and payment was flexible, and I figured that I could bring in a little extra money writing about things I supported anyways. After some consideration, I emailed my resume to the campaign manager he had named, and within a week, I was in play. I don’t want to get bogged down on this subject, but I was involved with PPP (pay per post) on forums and in the comments section of (mostly-liberal) news and blog sites. Spending my time on weekends and evenings, I brought in roughly an extra $100 or so a week, which was a nice cushion for me.
At first, the work was fun and mostly unsupervised. I posted mostly positive things about Hillary and didn’t engage in much negativity. Around the middle of July, however, I received notification that the team would be focusing not on pro-Hillary forum management, but on “mitigation” (the term our team leader used) for a Vermont senator named Bernie Sanders. I’d been out of college for several years and hadn’t heard much about Sanders, and so I decided to do some research to get a feel for him.
more
http://marshallreport.com/2016/04/24/trollgate-hillary-shill-just-spilled-the-beans-on-trollgate-and-its-getting-weirder/
Winners of the Sony world photography awards 2016
Documenting everything from eagle hunters to failed boxers and Afghan refugees, 230,103 entries from 186 countries were whittled down to these winners of the world’s largest photography competition
L’Iris D’Or Photographer of the Year – Asghar Khamesh
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Professional Contemporary Issues First Place. Fire of Hatred. Shirin Mohamadi, an 18-year-old Tehran resident who had been attacked with acid for saying no to her suitor on the first day of New Year 2012.
http://time.com/4299522/sony-world-photography-awards-winners-revealed/
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Professional Campaign First Place. TransBrasil. Transgender people in Brazil who express their gender identities in many different ways. Some use their dress, behavior and mannerisms to live as the gender that feels right for them. Others take hormones and may have surgery to change their body, and some identify just as transgender.
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Professional People First Place. Eagle Hunters of Western China. Chinese Kazakh eagle hunters ride with their eagles during the competition.
more (much much more!)
http://worldphoto.org/shortlist/professional-competition-winners-2016-sony-world-photography-awards/
http://time.com/4299522/sony-world-photography-awards-winners-revealed/
Winners of the 2016 Audubon Photography Awards
Grand Prize Winner Bonnie Block
Bald Eagle and Great Blue Heron, Seabeck, WA. Photo: Bonnie Block/Audubon Photography Awards
Professional Winner Dick Dickinson
Osprey, Siesta Key, Sarasota, FL. Photo: Dick Dickinson/Audubon Photography Awards
Amateur Winner Steve Torna
Eared Grebes, Yellowstone Lake, Yellowstone, NP, Wyoming. Photo: Steve Torna/Audubon Photography Awards
more
https://www.audubon.org/magazine/may-june-2016/the-2016-audubon-photography-awards-winners
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/all-birds-are-winners-audubon-photo-contest-earth-day
An Amateur vs. ISIS: A Car Salesman Investigates and Ends Up in Prison
WYOMING, Del. — By his own account, Toby Lopez was a supremely ordinary guy. He sold Toyotas and lived with his mother in a tidy rancher here with a cherry tree out front. He was proud that he could connect with customers — anyone from a Superior Court judge to, as he put it, “Redneck Bill from down on the farm.” What passed for excitement was the time his young niece won a beauty contest and he chauffeured her in a red Corvette in a local parade.
Then a high school friend was killed in Afghanistan, and the Islamic State began beheading American journalists. Horrified, Mr. Lopez heard on CNN one day in the fall of 2014 that the Islamic State was active on Twitter, and he went online to see what he could find. “I was intrigued,” said Mr. Lopez, 42. “What could they possibly be saying on Twitter?”
What followed was a radical break from his humdrum life. He was pulled into the murky world of Internet jihadists, sparring with them from his office at the car dealership and late into the night at home. Before long, he was talking for hours on Skype with a man who claimed — falsely, as it would turn out — to be a top ISIS military commander, trying to negotiate the release of hostages. Mr. Lopez contacted the F.B.I. and began a testy relationship with counterterrorism agents who came to believe he might pose a danger. In the end, he landed in federal prison, where he was held for nearly 14 months without trial.
The story of one man’s deepening obsession with a terrorist group is a reminder of how the Internet provides easy portals to distant, sometimes dangerous worlds. It shows the complications for law enforcement agents who confront an overeager amateur encroaching on their turf.
But it also underscores how lost a person can feel inside the criminal justice system. Deprived of his freedom, his sanity in question, Mr. Lopez found himself without a legal advocate he trusted or access to evidence he believed could free him.
more
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/24/us/an-amateur-vs-isis-a-car-salesman-investigates-and-ends-up-in-prison.html
Kafka's America....
Police: Teenage car racers hit and kill respected war veteran
TACOMA, Wash. (KOMO) -- A Vietnam and Iraq War veteran from Spanaway died Thursday following a crash with two cars that police say were street racing.
Rollin Gray, 61, died at St. Joseph's Hospital in Tacoma on Thursday after being taken there following the Tuesday night accident.
Pierce County sheriff's deputies say Gray was traveling eastbound on 182st East in Spanaway when two cars came over the horizon at a high rate of speed in the opposite direction.
Witnesses told investigators they saw and heard both vehicles racing on 182nd St. E. The 18-year-old driver then cut in front of the 16-year-old driver, causing him to lose control and cross into oncoming traffic. The Stratus struck the motorcycle being ridden by Gray. The driver of the Acura left the area and was later contacted by deputies.
more
http://komonews.com/news/local/police-teenage-car-racers-hit-and-kill-respected-war-veteran
RIP. 
Facing red tape online, marijuana companies are inventing a totally new breed of advertising
What do you do when the advertising world shuts you out? You slip through the backdoor.
That’s what marijuana companies are doing to circumvent strict pot-ad bans by companies such as Google and Facebook. Ad exchanges, marketplaces where digital ad space is traded in bulk, also tend to steer clear from anything cannabis-related.
Earlier this week, a company named Bang Holdings launched a service that will use social media personalities to market weed-related products. Mantis, another company specializing in pot advertising, places online marijuana ads through its own network of cannabis-friendly publications and other tech tools.
Pot may be legal in some form or another in almost half of US jurisdictions, but the industry is having trouble shaking off its shady roots. The federal government has provided some guidance on how state rules should interface with federal law, but the Obama administration has said little about advertising aside from clarifying that it’s illegal to do so through the mail.
more
http://qz.com/668154/facing-red-tape-online-marijuana-companies-are-inventing-a-totally-new-breed-of-advertising/
“Nothing much has changed”: 5,000 years of war, illustrated
As a teenager growing up in the Bronx in the 1940s, design legend Seymour Chwast was struck by an 1918 essay by leftist intellectual Randolph Bourne called War is the Health of the State, a polemic against World War I. The essay, which Chwast says “showed that nations need wars to keep the economy going,” made an indelible impact on his life. “There must be another way to solve economic problems,” he recalls thinking at the time.
Chwast would go on to co-found Push Pin Studios with Edward Sorel, and Milton Glaser (designer of the I ? NY logo), which made a name for itself with its influential branding and commercial work in the 1960s and 1970s. But over the course of nearly 70 years, the Bronx-born graphic designer also used his drawing pen to wrestle with the theme of armed combat. In the process, Chwast, now 84, created a stockpile of anti-war posters, illustrations, infographics and even a handmade book that he self-published when he was 21—all rendered with characteristic wit in his expressive illustration style.
On April 26, Chwast will launch a Kickstarter campaign to raise $94,000 to print a new book on the subject, titled Seymour Chwast at War with War: An Illustrated Timeline of 5,000 Years of Conquests, Invasions, and Terrorist Attacks.
Anchored by 35 new pen-and-ink drawings and woodcuts, Chwast packs his lifelong interest in political conflicts into one continuous historical timeline, capturing five millennia of bloody combat, starting from 3300 BC. “The reason for a timeline was for me to show that through the years, nothing much has changed,” he explains. “You have the British fighting the French, fighting the Russians…then the countries change… Ultimately, these wars mean nothing but a way for kings and presidents to gain more power for themselves and sacrifice the troops.”
more
http://qz.com/664800/nothing-much-has-changed-5000-years-of-war-illustrated/
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