Floridians want more naked Germans to visit

 

Pandabare, a nudist community in western Florida, United States, has won an advertising grant to tempt German nudists to try stripping off stateside.

According to the Reuters news agency, Pandabare were awarded $3,800 in tax money by the Pasco County commission to get Germans to holiday in one of the organization's 16 resorts, campgrounds and clubs in the county north of Tampa.

The ads, to be placed in European magazines, will promote Pasco's reputation as the nudist capital of the US.

"The idea is to create a 'Euro-bird' season in July and August which are our worst two months of the year," said Eric Keaton, public communications manager for the Pasco County tourist agency.

Keaton claims nudism was an important part of the local economy.

The primary target market for the ad campaign will be Germany which, according to Pandabare's application document, is "a large and lucrative market whose millions of nudists are among the world's most prolific travellers."

Keaton said the advertisements, set to launch in 2012, are still in the conceptual stage, but he promised, "They are very clean, and somewhat funny."

 

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World Time Changing? Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) May Eliminate "Leap Seconds" In 2012

The way we keep time is imperfect, and it's causing plenty of problems for modern society.

But what scientists at the International Bureau of Weights and Measures in Paris, France (BIPM) have been considering eliminating next month could fundamentally change the way we tell time, and most people don't even know it exists. They plan on deciding whether or not to eliminate "leap seconds" from Coordinated Universal Time (UTC).

Most people are aware of leap years, which add an extra day (tacked on to the end of February) every four years in order to adjust for the extra partial day in Earth's yearly rotation around the sun. But leap seconds serve a much less predictable purpose: adding a second to the clock in an unpredictable pattern to account for slight, unpredictable changes in the Earth's rotation on its axis, caused by things like the gradual slowing of Earth's rotation caused by the friction of ocean tides or the gravitational pull of the moon.

Simply put, every now and then we have to stop the clock for a second, so the Earth's rotation can catch up to our measurement of time.

According to a press release from BIPM, government representatives at the World Radio Conference of the International Telecommunication Union in Geneva, Switzerland will decide whether or not these adjustments are to continue when they convene in January 2012. While many might think this ruins our fundamental perception of time (or, perhaps, that it could diverge real astronomical time from our atomic measurement of time), scientists say the effect would likely be minimal.

In an interview with New Scientist, Felicitas Arias BIPM's "time director" explained that the difference between astronomical time and the unadjusted atomic time scale would be about half an hour in 600 years, so adjustments wouldn't be made in the near future:

It was agreed some years ago that we should not think of any kind of adjustment in the near future, the next 100 or 200 years. In about the year 2600 we will have a half-hour divergence. However, we don't know how time-keeping will be then, or how technology will be. So we cannot rule for the next six or seven generations.

In 100 years we will only see a 1-minute divergence, however, due to time zones, many already see up to half an hour in divergence from astronomical time.

While the change seems simple enough, it has major implications for technology, namely GPS systems that rely on precise timing to coordinate locations, BIPM discussed in a more recent release. By abolishing these pesky little differences (which occur about once every 1.5 years) greater safety can be ensured without sudden, unexpected stops in time.

Currently, BIPM calculates UTC based on an average of measurements from 400 atomic clocks around the world and UTC never differs from the time defined by the rotation of the Earth (UT1) by more than .9 seconds due to "leap seconds."

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The Calendar Revolution Begins in Three Days

January 1, 2012 is the target date for the first use of a new calendar devised by a Johns Hopkins astrophysicist, Richard Conn Henry, and Hopkins economist, Steven H. Hanke. Its signal innovation: Year to year, dates would fall on the same day of the week. Beginning in 2012, in other words, Christmas and New Year’s Day would forever fall on  Sunday — and your birthday would henceforth be associated with one specific day.

The goal is for the calendar to be in universal use by 2017.

“Our plan offers a stable calendar that is absolutely identical from year to year and which allows the permanent, rational planning of annual activities, from school to work holidays,” Henry said in a statement. The calendar would accomplish this by means of a 364-day year — augmented every five or six years with an extra week tacked on at the end. Otherwise, the rhythm of months would be more regular than what we’re used to: January and February have 30 days, March 31; and that pattern (30 days/30/31) would repeat itself throughout the year.

Convenience aside — “Think about how much time and effort are expended each year in redesigning the calendar of every single organization in the world,” Henry said — the calendar would also make many financial calculations simpler. All sorts of such calculations involving mortgages, bonds, “swaps,” and the like currently have to take into account the existing irregular month lengths, and there’s often a “rip-off factor,” the scholars say.

That Christmas would always fall on a Sunday “will be pleasing to Christians,” Henry writes on a website devoted to the project, “but will also be pleasing to companies who currently lose up to two weeks of work to the Christmas/New Year’s annual mess.”

One advantage their plan has over previous reform calendars is that it doesn’t deal with the issue of keeping the year in sync with the seasons by adding partial weeks, creating weeks without a Sabbath. In contrast, the so called Hanke-Henry Permanent Calendar “Fully Respects the Fourth Commandment of the Bible.”

2017 is the target for the worldwide implementation of the calendar. Skeptical they can meet that target? The final entry in the project’s FAQ (go here and scroll down) is “Well, I still say you are going to fail.” To which Henry responds:

Oh yes? I vividly remember phoning my elderly mother, in my native Canada, some years before she died: and with astonishment hearing her quite casually say, “it was very hot today, 30 degrees.” What this shows is that a nice conservative old lady was able to totally adapt to an alien idea, the Celsius temperature scale. We are all adaptable! … It CAN be done, folks, and the decision is YOURS, not mine. Each of you.

Come to think of it, maybe our collective acceptance of the Celsius scale is not the precise point to stress. That quibble aside, are you onboard?

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RIP 2011

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China’s Parallel Online Universe

To the casual eye, China’s social media landscape might look diverse and lively. But the social media clones are careful to follow Communist Party censorship.

As the showdown escalated between Chinese security forces and residents of Wukan, where villagers revolted against the Chinese Communist Party, you didn’t find as much discussion of the incident in Chinese social media as you might expect. And it wasn’t only because the internet was shut off in the town.

It was also a result of China’s development of a set of “social media clones” that ably mimic the functions of the most popular, internationally recognized social media applications, such as Facebook and Twitter. The replicas, however, come with a major catch: they systematically comply with the Chinese Communist Party’s strict censorship requirements.

This innovative approach embraces, rather than resists, technological advances. It satisfies the growing demand of hundreds of millions of Chinese citizens for social media tools, reducing incentives for them to circumvent the “Great Firewall,” while still enabling the Communist Party to control what they say to each other on matters of political consequence.

Here’s how this critical piece of China’s modern censorship mosaic works.

First, the big transnational social media players – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube – are blocked in China. This clears the playing field for homegrown firms, such as Renren, which provides Facebook-type functions, Youku.com, a YouTube-like video sharing service, and Sina Weibo, a Twitter-like microblogging service.

These services are then required to have automated or manual monitoring and censorship mechanisms in place to quickly identify and delete user-generated postings or disable accounts that run afoul of the Communist Party’s ever-changing censorship red lines. It’s a daily reality for Chinese bloggers, academics, activists, and even ordinary users to discover a posting deleted, their account locked, or their “friends” unable to view what they have just shared.

The case of Sina Weibo, which boasts some 250 million registered users, is instructive. Launched in 2009, it’s similar to Twitter in that it allows users to post 140-character “tweets” and gather followers. Since coming on the scene, the company has enjoyed explosive growth and the service’s millions of users have become an important audience for a diverse range of interests.

But in the same way this microblogging service can enable commerce, entertainment and personal communication, it’s also increasingly used to share information and commentary unwelcome to the ruling Communist Party. To keep pace, Sina Weibo reportedly employs some 700 people to perform around the clock monitoring of millions of tweets.

Despite Sina Weibo’s vast user base, it represents just a small corner of China’s parallel social media universe. Instead of MSN messenger, there’s QQ, which downloads automated keyword filtering upon installation. Instead of Wikipedia, there is Baidu’s Baike. Instead of Blogspot, every major web portal has its own blogging service.

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China’s Cyber Command

Chinese analysts and officials like to point out that it was the United States that first set up Cyber Command and thus, in their view, militarized cyberspace. Yet Chinese military thinkers are clearly thinking about what type of organizations and institutions they will need to conduct offensive cyber operations and to defend their own networks against attacks. An interesting piece in China Defense Daily lays out some of the characteristics necessary for “a highly effective command system for cyber war mobilization.”

-- Military and civilian networks are interconnected, and the resources needed for cyber war permeate society; military units, social organizations, and even individuals “will all possibly become combat forces during a cyber war.”

-- Given this diffusion of resources, there is a need for a cyber war mobilization command system with a “vertical command hierarchy” that reaches into all of society.

-- Each of the branches of the military should have its own command division, manage necessary resources, cultivate forces, and organize training and drills. Once a war breaks out, there needs to be a “coordinated strategic level” command structure that mobilizes resources and launches combat operations.

-- There must be specialized troops within industrial sectors, with especially strong ties to the information industries.

-- Need to enlarge specialized cyber troops, recruiting computer network experts. The People’s Liberation Army should also reach out to all segments of society and create cyber reserves and people’s militias.

-- Offense and defense in cyber war have distinct characteristics, and they change frequently. Offensive technologies include computer viruses, EMP bombs, microwave bombs, and computer and microchip backdoors.  For defense, there are network scanners, network wiretapping devices, password breaking devices, electromagnetic detectors and firewalls, and anti-virus software.

-- Because the technological requirements of these weapons are very high, there must be extensive R&D programs into new offensive weapons as well as the defensive and offensive capabilities of the potential adversary.

This is a very “whole of society” approach, one that seems to fundamentally grasp that power in cyberspace is multi-faceted and spread throughout society. And while we assume that Chinese policymakers can simply mobilize these social forces to bolster state power, is that actually the case? And if it’s true now, might that change?

These types of articles (and perhaps blog posts like this one?) can be expected to feed into the growing security dilemma between the United States and China. Chinese analysts see Cyber Command and Cyber Storm exercises as directed against them. Though the tone of the article is exploratory – and the author, Huang Chunping, appears to be an aerospace and nuclear expert, not a cyber specialist – the take-home for many readers will be that all Chinese citizens are potential cyber warriors. Dampening a security dilemma is not easy. Dialogue and confidence-building measures can help, but these are only at the preliminary stages right now. Hopefully they will pick up in 2012, otherwise the lack of trust between Washington and Beijing looks only likely to grow.

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Rare Earths: China's Export Quota Drops 27 Percent

China announced a cut Tuesday in its rare earths export quota as it tries to shore up sagging prices for the exotic metals used in mobile phones and other high-tech goods.

China accounts for 97 percent of rare earth output and its 2009 decision to curb exports while it builds up an industry to create products made with them alarmed foreign companies that depend on Chinese supplies.

In its latest quota, the Commerce Ministry said exporters will be allowed to sell 10,546 tons of rare earths in the first half of 2012. That is a 27 percent reduction from the quota for the first half of 2011.

China's export restrictions have strained relations with the United States the European Union, Japan and other governments that have called on Beijing to remove its curbs and make its intentions clear.

Despite production and expor curbs, rare earths prices in China have tumbled as U.S. and European economic woes dent demand for its exports. The government ordered its biggest producer to suspend output for a month in October to shore up prices.

But the restrictions have made rare earths much mor expensive abroad, giving Chinese makers of products that use them a price advantage and foreign manufacturers an incentive to shift operations to China.

In a sign of unusually weak demand, the Commerce Ministry said actual Chinese exports of rare earths in 2011 totaled 14,750 tons for the first 11 months of 2011 – the equivalent of just 49 percent of the total annual quota.

In another possible move to tighten control over exports, the ministry's announcement Tuesday said only 11 companies will be allowed to sell abroad. That is down from 26 companies given licences for the first half of 2011.

Rare earths are 17 elements including cerium, dysprosium and lanthanum that are used in manufacturing flat-screen TVs, batteries for electric cars and wind turbines. They also used in some high-tech weapons.

The United States, Canada and Australia also have rare earths but stopped mining them in the 1990s as lower-cost Chinese ores flooded the market.

Surging demand has prompted ccompanies in Canada, California, India, Malaysia, Russia and other other countries to develop rare earths mines, some of which are expected to start producing by 2015.

Prices in China have fallen sharply since August, declining by 45 percent for neodymium oxide, by 33 percent for terbium oxide and by 31 percent for lanthanum oxide, according to Lynas Corp., an Australian rare earths producer.

Its figures showed an equally striking gap between prices in China and abroad, with lanthanum oxide costing triple the Chinese level on global markets, neodymium more than twice as much and terbium oxide near twice as much.

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