Google Glass wearers were treated to some new features with this month's XE10 update, but what's hiding under the hood might be even more promising. Android Police posted their APK teardown earlier today, and their findings are nothing if not intriguing. Among the features that may be on the horizon ...On Dec. 23, 1973, cars formed a double line at a gas station in New York City. The Arab oil embargo caused gas shortages nationwide and shaped U.S. foreign policy to this day.
On Dec. 23, 1973, cars formed a double line at a gas station in New York City. The Arab oil embargo caused gas shortages nationwide and shaped U.S. foreign policy to this day.
Forty years ago this week, the U.S. was hit by an oil shock that reverberates until this day.
Arab oil producers cut off exports to the U.S. to protest American military support for Israel in its 1973 war with Egypt and Syria. This brought soaring gas prices and long lines at filling stations, and it contributed to a major economic downturn in the U.S.
The embargo made the U.S. feel heavily dependent on Middle Eastern oil, which in turn led the U.S. to focus on instability in that region, which has since included multiple wars and other U.S. military interventions.
"The oil crisis set off an upheaval in global politics and the world economy. It also challenged America's position in the world, polarized its politics at home and shook the country's confidence," author and oil analyst Daniel Yergin wrote in an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal.
While these concerns linger, the world energy market has changed dramatically over the past four decades. U.S. energy production is rising. Less than 10 percent of U.S. oil comes from the Middle East. Global prices are relatively stable.
All this has spurred debate about whether the U.S. is too focused on the Middle East and its oil when it does not appear to pose much of an economic threat to America. We won't try to answer that question today, but we did want to point out things that were very different back in the fall of 1973:
Leon Mill spray-paints a sign outside his Phillips 66 station in Perkasie, Pa., in 1973 to let his customers know he's out of gas. An oil crisis was the culprit, squeezing U.S. businesses and consumers who were forced to line up for hours at gas stations.
Leon Mill spray-paints a sign outside his Phillips 66 station in Perkasie, Pa., in 1973 to let his customers know he's out of gas. An oil crisis was the culprit, squeezing U.S. businesses and consumers who were forced to line up for hours at gas stations.
Saudi Arabia was a leading proponent of the 1973 embargo. For many Americans, Saudi Arabia was the symbol of the wealthy Arab monarchies that were inflicting so much pain on the U.S. Yet today, Saudi Arabia is one of the closest U.S. allies in the region and is currently pumping oil at high levels to keep world markets stable and offset lower production in places like Iraq, Iran and Nigeria.
Iran and the U.S. were allies. Under the shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Iran kept on producing and exporting throughout the six-month embargo that lasted until March 1974. After the shah was overthrown in 1979, the U.S. and Iran became sworn rivals, a confrontation that has lasted more than three decades. Iran is now the target of Western sanctions that took effect last year and have cut the Islamic Republic's oil exports by half, from 2.5 million barrels a day to around 1.2 million.
In response to the oil shock, Congress passed fuel economy standards. That 1975 measure required automakers to raise mileage from 13.5 miles per gallon to 27 mpg. Last year, the standards were again doubled, and vehicles must average 54 mpg by 2025. As a result, Americans are driving more without increasing the amount of gas they are using.
Soaring oil prices remade the global energy industry. As oil prices skyrocketed in the 1970s, producers were willing to travel to more remote and difficult places to drill, including Alaska, the North Sea, the Gulf of Mexico and the Canadian oil sands. World oil production today is 50 percent higher than it was in 1973. Also, the crisis prompted efforts to find and develop other power sources, from natural gas to wind to solar.
The U.S. is less dependent on the Middle East today. In the years that followed the 1973 embargo, a cutoff of Middle Eastern oil was regarded as a grave national threat.
Here's President Jimmy Carter in his 1980 State of the Union address:
"An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America. Such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force."
In reality, Middle Eastern oil has never been a huge part of the overall U.S. supply. Imports from the Middle East never accounted for more than 15 percent of the U.S. oil supply and now they account for only about 9 percent.
The U.S. now imports more oil from Canada than anywhere else. Saudi Arabia is the only Middle Eastern nation among the top five nations sending oil to America.
By limiting supply, OPEC was able to cause oil price spikes in the 1970s and '80s. But it has much less power today, and a number of top producers, such as Saudi Arabia, work to stabilize prices rather than disrupt the market.
"For the last four decades, Washington's energy policy has been based on the faulty conclusion that the country could solve all its energy woes by reducing its reliance on Middle Eastern oil," Gal Luft and Anne Korin write in Foreign Affairs.
"The crux of the United States' energy vulnerability was its inability to keep the price of oil under control, given the Arab oil kingdoms' stranglehold on the global petroleum supply," the authors write.
So the oil industry is a very different place. But not everything has changed:
The Israelis and the Arabs are still feuding. The 1973 Middle East war was essentially a draw, and Israel and Egypt then made peace before the decade was over. Israel also has a peace treaty with Jordan, but it is still at odds with its other immediate neighbors, the Palestinians, Lebanon and Syria. And Israel considers its biggest threat to be Iran, arguing that Tehran is trying to develop nuclear weapons, which Iran denies.
The average American adult spends at least 8 hours a day in front of a screen. Computers are becoming increasingly relevant to both working and home life and Americans now rely on processors for a number of essential tasks. So it makes sense that being able to program computers is an important skill, possibly the most important of the 21st century.
“[Writing code] is the new literacy. In this century if you want to have the power to change the world, writing code is the most practical thing you can do,” says Alexis Ohanian, co-founder of reddit and author of the new book Without Their Permission. He also invests in and advises over seventy tech startups and hosts a show, Small Empires, which explores the startup community.
Source: KPCB
Internet entrepreneurship, says Ohanian, is an increasingly viable career path for young Americans. “I want to take 'entrepreneur' off of a pedestal because we are all being entrepreneurial in the work that we do. It means having an idea and executing it, and the Internet is now enabling people to have this entrepreneurial lifestyle and impact at a much bigger scale. If you wanted to change the world in the industrial revolution you had to open a factory, in the internet revolution you need only open your laptop.”
Source: RealScience.US
Related: The One Skill Every American Needs to Learn
What does Ohanian have to say about the NSA spying scandal and the commodification of the Internet? Watch the video above to find out.
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Source: http://www.philly.com/r?19=961&43=166721&44=227871971&32=3796&7=195342&40=http://www.philly.com/inquirer/front_page/20131016_Booker__Lonegan_focus_now_on_turning_out_backers.html(Reuters) - The owner of the boat where the accused Boston Marathon bomber was found hiding told the Boston Globe that he is "not crazy" and never would have searched had he thought the accused bomber was hiding there.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the accused bomber, took cover in a boat parked in David Henneberry's backyard in Watertown, Massachusetts, after an overnight gun battle with police that followed the killing of a university police officer and left Tsarnaev's older brother, Tamerlan, dead. He was found at the end of a day-long lockdown of most of the Boston area four days after the blasts.
Like most area residents, 66-year-old Henneberry and his wife, Beth, had spent April 19 hiding out in their home as heavily armed police conducted a door-to-door search for the surviving suspect. Only after a shelter-in-place order was lifted did Henneberry walk out into his backyard to investigate what had moved some of the plastic covering his boat.
"If I had seen blood out there, I wouldn't have investigated it," he told the Globe in an interview published on Wednesday. "I'm not crazy."
Henneberry could not be reached for immediate comment.
Tsarnaev, now 20, suffered multiple gunshot sounds, including one that fractured his skull, in his gun battle with police and later arrest, according to court papers. Prosecutors said he had scrawled notes inside the boat, which the FBI has seized as evidence, including one that read: "we Muslims are one body, you hurt one you hurt us all."
He has pleaded not guilty to all charges linked to the four deaths and the wounding of 260 people when twin homemade pressure-cooker bombs exploded at the marathon's crowded finish line.
(Reporting by Scott Malone; Editing by Gerald E. McCormick)
Staying busy outside of her music career, Nicki Minaj launched her clothing collection at Kmart in Los Angeles on Tuesday (October 15).
Arriving in a pink Lamborghini, the "Starships" rapper wore a cleavage-baring blue jacket, black leggings, and white heels as she posed with her fashion line on the pink carpet.
Sharing a photograph of herself arriving in style, the 30-year-old hip-hop star tweeted, "Pulled up to Kmart like this for my press day earlier. Thanks for making it pink @exoticeurocars."
In addition to fashion and music, Nicki will soon try her hand at acting, appearing on the big screen in "The Other Woman" this spring.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama will meet in the Oval Office at 3:15 p.m. ET (1915 GMT) on Tuesday with Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic leader in the House of Representatives, and other House Democratic leaders, the White House said in a statement.
The meeting comes as Congress struggles to reach a deal to lift the debt ceiling by a Thursday deadline.
The White House rejected a new House Republican proposal on Tuesday morning and has said it prefers a proposal from Democrats and Republicans in Senate.
(Reporting by Roberta Rampton and Steve Holland; editing by Christopher Wilson)
