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Microsoft announced the recent promotions of 14 executives, seven to senior vice president positions and seven others to corporate vice president.
Among the senior vice president promotions are Satya Nadella, senior vice president of Search, Portals and Advertising, and Bill Veghte, senior vice president of Online Services and the Windows Business Group. Both will be working with Brian McAndrews, senior vice president of Microsoft's Advertiser and Publisher Solutions Group and former CEO of aQuantive.
According to the press release, the trio will be tasked with outlining the "business strategy, sales, marketing and engineering efforts for Windows Live, Search and MSN." That job is currently the responsibility of Steve Berkowitz, senior vice president of Microsoft's Online Business Group, who announced that he's leaving the company in August 2008. Berkowitz has headed the Online Business Group since 2006; prior to that, he was head of InterActiveCorp. A Microsoft spokesperson said through e-mail that Berkowitz decided to leave and pursue new opportunities just as the company begins to "re-align the businesses."
Nadella, Veghte and McAndrews will report to Kevin Johnson, president of Platforms and Services.
While unrelated, the reorganization does come on the heels of Microsoft's bid to buy Yahoo for $44.6 billion.
Among other notable promotions listed on the press release:
For a complete list, read Microsoft's press release here.
About the Author
Michael Domingo has held several positions at 1105 Media, and is currently the editor in chief of Visual Studio Magazine.
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The New York Times' Edward Wong connects several of the year's major stories so far, including the Southern Weekly anti-censorship protests and cases of severe air and water pollution in Beijing and elsewhere. Each of them, he argues, shows signs of dissatisfaction with "Wizard-of-Oz-style" government and a growing appetite for a political voice among China's elites and middle class.
A widening discontent was evident this month in the anticensorship street protests in the southern city of Guangzhou and in the online outrage that exploded over an extraordinary surge in air pollution in the north. Anger has also reached a boil over fears concerning hazardous tap water and over a factory spill of 39 tons of a toxic chemical in Shanxi Province that has led to panic in nearby cities.
For years, many China observers have asserted that the party's authoritarian system endures because ordinary Chinese buy into a grand bargain: the party guarantees economic growth, and in exchange the people do not question the way the party rules. Now, many whose lives improved under the boom are reneging on their end of the deal, and in ways more vocal than ever before. Their ranks include billionaires and students, movie stars and homemakers.
Few are advocating an overthrow of the party. Many just want the system to provide a more secure life. But in doing so, they are demanding something that challenges the very nature of the party-controlled state: transparency.


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In the roll call of 1960s garage band heroes, the Chocolate Watchband reside at the very top. Their notoriety derives from the handful of singles and LPs that they made, balanced between the Watchband's own intense Anglophilic blueswailing, and mysterioso studio trickery on the half of producer Ed Cobb. Their best-known cut is probably 'Let's Talk About Girls', which appeared on the seminal 1972 garage band sampler "Nuggets,", but the Chocolate Watchband have many more such gems within their vintage catalogue, all of which is available to you in fully remastered sound on Big Beat Records.
The original Chocolate Watchband was formed in the autumn of 1965 at Foothill College on the San Francisco peninsula, with a six-man line-up that featured guitarist Mark Loomis and drummer Gary Andrijasevich. Playing the R&B and folk rock of the day, the outfit did some recording, but outside of their unusual name, made little impression beyond local gigs in the San Jose area. The draft and the departure of key personnel rent the group asunder late in the year, but Loomis determined to reassemble the band with a new line-up, including rhythm guitarist Sean Tolby, bass player Bill Flores and on lead vocals, San Jose State student David Aguilar.
Though it had been Loomis' group up until this point, Aguilar was the spark that moved the Watchband to the top of the class. Within weeks of this line-up getting together, they took San Jose by storm, blasting their way to the top of the local circuit with a scintillating, mesmerizing set of Americanized Stones, Yardbirds and Animals covers. Aguilar in particular was a master of dynamics, and the singer directed his mod-togged combo through sets that made the new Watchband the talk of the local circuit. In the summer of 1966 the group signed with manager Ron Roupe, whose connections included Ed Cobb of Green Grass Productions, then riding high in the chart with the Standells. In quick succession Cobb inked the Watchband and ushered them to Los Angeles to record.
Technically, the first release was 'Blues Theme,' a pseudonymous instrumental cover credited to The Hogs, but the Watchband's debut proper was the Cobb-penned 'Sweet Young Thing', perfectly suited to the group's arrogant punk stance. It was released in December 1966 on Tower Records' R&B imprint Uptown, an unusual choice of label which meant that the group was subsequently perceived by some agents as a black act. The single's flip was an atmospheric reading of Dylan's perennial 'It's All Over Now, Baby Blue'.
Moving into 1967, the Chocolate Watchband was constantly at work, either at the plethora of teen hotspots and psychedelic ballrooms in the Bay Area, or at clubs and ballrooms up and down the California coast, leaving a trail of ardent fans and wrecked cloakrooms in their wake. They continued to record with Cobb, and made a remarkable and unforgettable appearance in the classic teen rampage flick Riot On Sunset Strip. The upbeat, undeniably commercial 'Misty Lane' became the next single, coupled with an orchestrated ballad, 'She Weaves A Tender Trap', a choice the group openly questioned, and only recorded under duress. It was a harbinger of things to come.
Another exploitation movie, The Love-Ins provided the third Watchband single, 'Are You Gonna Be There (At The Love-In)', written and recorded in just one day in order to make the filming schedule. The freaky flip, 'No Way Out' was an equally off-the-cuff recording, evolving from a studio warm-up jam. Both sides of the single – this time on the Tower label proper - captured the Chocolate Watchband at the peak of their powers. Sadly, it was also to prove this line-up's swansong, for shortly after the release of the single in June 1967, Aguilar, Loomis and Andrijasevich all suddenly quit the group, principally over musical direction. Flores and Tolby were left the lurch with a month's worth of bookings, but the pair quickly assembled an interim Watchband, with personnel that included Tim Abbott on guitar. However, this line-up was to struggle through only until the end of 1967.
That September, shortly after the Loomis/Aguilar line-up had imploded, Tower Records had released the debut Chocolate Watchband album, "No Way Out", following it swiftly in February 1968 with another long-player attributed to the combo, "The Inner Mystique". The label had given both albums pop-art sleeves with little identification of the band or its members, while the contents of each mixed bona fide outtakes from the band's sessions for Green Grass, with trippy instrumentals and overdubbed tracks, many of which did not feature the band at all. Most worryingly, in several places Aguilar's original lead vocals had been replaced by those of a faceless sessioneer.
The group's members were outraged, but despite, or perhaps because of, these disingenuous releases, interest in the Chocolate Watchband remained strong, prompting Green Grass to approach Tolby and Flores in the autumn of 1968 and induce them to reform the band for a third album. Loomis, Andrijasevich and erstwhile members Ned Torney and Danny Phay returned to the fold. The mostly original "One Step Beyond", was the brief and somewhat diffuse result, with nary a trace of the Watchband of old. Some desultory tours followed in its wake, with Tolby the only visible original member of the group, and in 1970 the band finally split for good. In the late 1990s, the band reunited and have since intermittently returned to both the studio and the stage, thrilling fans both old and new.
Their live power brought them notoriety back in the day, but it was the band's mysterious catalogue that spurred the growth of a posthumous cult reputation for the Chocolate Watchband as psychedelic punks par excellence. By the 1980s the group's catalogue was getting regularly reissued and, with a degree of irony, the records were venerated as much for the duplicitous instrumentals and studio fill, as for the authentic snarl of David Aguilar. Big Beat is proud to be foremost amongst the champions of the Watchband, beginning with our original Best Of, "Forty Four", followed by repackages of the band's three vintage albums, and finally and most definitively with the "Melts In Your Brain . . . Not On Your Wrist" anthology. This double disc set not only contains their complete studio recordings, but also features demos, backing tracks and for the first time, Aguilar's reclaimed vocals for 'Let's Talk About Girls' and other tracks, along with detailed notes that explain which cuts are real Watchband and which are the fake.
For full details see releases/products below.


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Iraq F-16s: Lockheed will deliver the first of 36 fighter jets to Iraq this week
Lockheed Martin Corp this week will deliver the first of 36 F-16 fighter jets to Iraq, marking what Baghdad's envoy to the United States called a "new chapter" in his country's ability to defend its vast borders with Iran and other neighbors.
Iraqi Ambassador Lukman Faily will travel to Lockheed's Fort Worth, Texas, plant on Thursday for a ceremony at which Lockheed and the US government will formally deliver the first F-16 to Iraq.
A group of three or four new jets will be ferried to Iraq before the end of the year.
"Iraq is a large country with over 3,600 km of borders, and we need to protect them," Faily told Reuters in a telephone interview. "We as a country didn't have that capability before."
Iraq has had no real air force since the US-led invasion in 2003 that eventually toppled Saddam Hussein.
Baghdad has also signed military contracts with Russia and the Czech Republic, among others, and has said it will not be able to fully defend its airspace until 2020.
Iraq also plans to buy Boeing Co Apache helicopters and other weapons from the US government as it assumes responsibility for its own defense and counterterrorism efforts.
Faily said the US government appreciated the urgency and scale of the challenge that Iraqi is facing given continued and mounting strife with insurgents.
"They know that the sooner and the wider capabilities they provide us, the more ability we will have to reduce the vicious cycle of killing where the terrorists are attacking our people," he said.
Faily said Iraq was completing work on the air base in Balad where the new jets will be housed. He said some Iraqi pilots had already been trained to fly the new planes, and more were in training now.
Iraq ordered a first batch of 18 F-16s in 2011 for $3 billion, followed by a second order of 18 jets in October 2012.
Lockheed is building the F-16s for Iraq under a contract from the Pentagon that also includes mission equipment and a support package provided by Lockheed and other companies.
Lockheed said the Iraqi order would keep the F-16 production line running through late 2017, but it continues to bid for new orders in hopes of continuing production through 2020. The company has built more than 4,540 F-16 aircraft to date.
(Reporting by Andrea Shalal, editing by G Crosse)


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Cardinal Sin? NFL Star Hit with Paternity Suit!
A former Raiderette cheerleader says Arizona Cardinals wide receiver Larry Fitzgerald, Jr. is the father of her unborn child -- and she's filed suit!
According to the court documents obtained by TMZ, Angela Nazario claims she and Fitzgerald had a sexual relationship which resulted in Nazario's pregnancy. She says she is due in January. While Fitzgerald cops to hooking up with Nazario, he is asking that a DNA paternity test be taken after the child is born. Eddie Murphy, is that you?
Nazario is seeking child support from Fitzgerald, which he says he'll provide, if he's determined to be the father. A source close to Nazario says he has asked her to "hide" out in a small Arizona town, and asked her to have an abortion. Fitzgerald also allegedly tried to bribe her with offers of houses and cars, and when she declined, he told her "I don't need this all over the news like Matt Leinart." Oops.
Calls to Fitzgerald's attorney were not immediately returned.


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Welcome to Elust #58 –
The only place where the smartest and hottest sex bloggers are featured under one roof every month. Whether you're looking for sex journalism, erotic writing, relationship advice or kinky discussions it'll be here at Elust. Want to be included in Elust #59? Start with the rules, come back June 1st to submit something and subscribe to the RSS feed for updates!
~ This Month's Top Three Posts ~
Do NOT take my rapeplay fantasy away from me!
~ Featured Post (Molly's Picks) ~
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Thoughts & Advice on Kink & Fetish
Orgasm Denial Games and Ideas
What is "Normal," Anyway?
Abject Submission 3: Only the Gift
Is All BDSM Sexual? #KinkySex
A new Dom asked me for advice
Let's Talk Sex Stigma
What I want
On Being Submissive
Dildos in Wonderland – Fantasy Sex Toys
Sex News,Opinion, Interviews, Politics & Humor
My sexual Assaults
Risky Business
What is feminist porn?
Butt Plug Weekend (Humor)
The Shaming of Slut Shaming
Do Bisexuals Need To Be More Upfront?
Why I Don't Support CatalystCon
Erotic Non-Fiction
The 'Good' Girl vs The Whore – Marriage
Well Laid
The sheer poetry of pegging a homophobe
The Missouri Misery's Maiden Voyage
On the Edge (Touch Your Cock for Me)
Parking On A Dirt Road
Masturbation: The Big Finish
The four-day orgasm
Dear lover
Writing About Writing
Imagining Disabled Characters in Erotica
Simple Needs – a Lusty Limerick
Thoughts & Advice on Sex & Relationships
On Happiness and Risk
Sex addiction – a primer
More Than Bend Over Boyfriend Toys
Erotic Fiction
X marks the spot
Chain Links and the Rail Marshall
The Devil and the Golden Ring
A lonely day in Paradise
Mine Is Bigger Than Yours
Rub It Harder
Face Splash – Part 1
Stray Kat


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In Memoriam pays tribute to those who have left this world, and the songs they left us to remember them by.
Michael Hutchence was born to be a frontman. With hair and shirtlessness that would make Jim Morrison proud, and a singing style that could be both passionate and cool in equal measures, Hutchence helped the songs of INXS stand out; they're clearly from the '80s, but timeless in a way that most hits of the decade can't claim.
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France's Former First Lady Carla Bruni Backs Gay Marriage
by Thomas Adamson, Associated Press
PARIS (AP)—France's former first lady Carla Bruni says she disagrees with her conservative husband Nicolas Sarkozy and supports a plan to allow gay marriage and adoption.
In an interview with the French edition of Vogue for its December issue, the 44-year-old singer and supermodel said: "I'm rather in favor because I have a lot of friends—men and women—who are in this situation and I see nothing unstable or perverse in families with gay parents."
France's Socialists are pushing a bill that could see gay marriage legalized early next year. Though surveys have found that the majority of French people favor gay marriage, there has been a vocal backlash from religious leaders, voters in rural areas and ex-President Sarkozy's own UMP party.
"My husband is opposed for reasons linked to his political vocation, because he sees people as groups of thousands rather than people we know personally," she told the magazine, which featured a 20-page photo spread of her decked out in designer clothes, harking back to her supermodel days.
Bruni, no stranger to speaking her mind, also called feminism outdated—a view seemingly at odds with her image as an independent woman who forged careers in both fashion and music before settling down with Sarkozy.
"There's no need to be feminist in my generation," she said.
It's not the first time Bruni has sparked controversy on the subject. Last month, Bruni said her successor, Valerie Trierweiler, should marry her partner, President Francois Hollande, and ditch her career as a journalist.
In an interview with the French edition of Elle magazine, she dished out advice to Trierweiler, saying: "I think it is simpler to be the legitimate wife of the head of state rather than being his partner."
She added, "For my part, I felt a real easing of the general concern about me when I married Nicolas."


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Two Books Offer Dueling Peace Roadmaps as Obama Prepares for Trip to Middle East
As President Obama prepares for his first presidential visit to Israel and the West Bank, he can choose from two books, both just out, to read on the plane ride over. Each is produced by veteran presidential advisors on the Middle East. But each offers a starkly different perspective.
One book, a product of five scholars and former administration officials and six years of research, documents the failure of U.S. peacemaking and scolds all recent administrations for lack of focus in bringing Israel and its Palestinian adversaries closer to resolving their long conflict. The other, by one of former President George W. Bush's top Middle East advisers, warns precisely against doing too much and overemphasizing the conflict's importance.
With speculation rife over the possibility that Obama may invest political capital once again in the stymied Middle East peace process, which book resonates more with him could matter a lot.
The White House itself has gone to great lengths to make clear that Obama will not present a new peace initiative during his visit, which will begin on March 20. Indeed, many observers consider the prospects of getting the sides to restart negotiations less likely than ever. But Middle East watchers are debating whether staying on the sidelines is a valid option for this administration, and if not, just how much involvement is too much.
"If we're serious about being real friends of Israel, it means we have to be serious about peace," said Daniel Kurtzer, a former ambassador to Israel and Egypt and co-author of "The Peace Puzzle: America's Quest for Arab-Israeli Peace 1989-2011." "It is time to give this our best shot."
But Elliott Abrams, President Bush's deputy national security adviser in charge of the Middle East, said he does not know of anyone who thinks there's a chance for a peace agreement in the near future. Abrams, whose book "Tested by Zion" details the Bush administration's approach to the Middle East, argued against the notion that time is running out. "The window is always closing. How long have we been hearing this? Twenty years?" he asked rhetorically. The two-state solution to the conflict is not about to become impossible, he said, "because there is no better idea."
Kurtzer's "The Peace Puzzle," which opposes Abrams' lack of urgency, is the result of a research project sponsored by the U.S. Institute of Peace that tries to draw lessons from more than two decades of American peacemaking attempts in the region. It paints a gloomy picture of missed opportunities and lack of sustained U.S. efforts, which led to what the authors describe as a decline in American diplomatic power.
Decrying the lack of persistence and focus, the book's authors state that they are "left to ponder whether that kind of American leadership and diplomatic wisdom can be recaptured."
Abrams, who has produced a memoir of his years on Bush's national security team, offers a different account, one that is more skeptical about America's need or ability to take on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a top priority.
The USIP's research group consisted of Kurtzer, who served in Middle East-related positions from the Reagan administration through the administration of George W. Bush; William Quandt, a former Middle East adviser for Presidents Nixon and Carter; Scott Lasensky, a researcher currently with the Obama administration, and scholars Steven Spiegel of the University of California, Los Angeles and Shibley Telhami from the University of Maryland, College Park.
In the analysis by these scholars and policymakers, efforts to broker peace by Presidents George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama left much to be desired. George W. Bush's administration is described as having been "at war with itself" over policy as differences surfaced between Secretary of State Colin Powell and his successor Condoleezza Rice on one hand, and the neo-conservative voices within the administration, including Abrams, on the other. Bush's efforts to promote Israeli-Palestinian peace are described in the book as "a saga of missed opportunities and inadequate preconceptions that left the prospect for peace far weaker when Bush left office."
Abrams calls this claim "ludicrous." In an interview with the Forward, he argued that Bush's tenure brought important advances to the nation's Middle East policy. He cited in particular Bush's identification of Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat as an obstacle to peace; Bush's later introduction of the concept of reforming the Palestinian Authority, and his clear statement of support for Palestinian statehood. "It is very convenient for people who don't like Bush to say he was simply not interested in the peace process," Abrams said in an interview.
The USIP research group does note some of the achievements reached during the Bush years, and criticizes Obama for not following up on them. Obama, they say, did not try to build on the Annapolis process, an attempt to restart talks based on a November 2007 international conference hosted by Bush. He instead chose a new approach that put an Israeli freeze on Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank front and center.
Abrams, a staunch critic of Obama, believes that fixing the settlement freeze issue should be the president's main task in his upcoming visit to Jerusalem. According to Abrams, it was Obama's demand that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu freeze Jewish settlement activity that caused the Palestinians to insist on this point before agreeing to resume negotiations. Beyond the issue of settlements, Abrams argues that Obama should "convey to the Israelis that he really understands emotionally and intellectually how Israelis feel," though he added that even if successful, Obama will only convince part of the Israeli public.
Members of the USIP group, though not discussing the president's upcoming trip in their book, call for Obama to take steps that will reassert America's role in leading Israelis and Palestinians toward peace.
William Quandt suggested that based on the group's research, it is important for the president to make sure he is pursuing Middle East peace because he believes it is a crucial U.S. national security interest. "If our attitude is that we cannot want peace more than the parties, it will not work," he said. Another lesson Quandt put forth was the need to act quickly instead of waiting for the last months in office, when presidential political power wanes.
According to Kurtzer, while the United States cannot impose an agreement, it can use its diplomatic strength and make clear to both sides that the president is putting his weight behind the issue. "The parties have a way of knowing when America is not serious," he said. The research found that special envoys, for example, were rarely useful in pushing the sides closer. Progress has come only in cases in which the president and secretary of state showed they care personally, he said. The appointment of John Kerry to run the State Department and his reported interest in the Arab-Israeli conflict could move the U.S. closer to taking the kind of role authors of the USIP report discussed.
The researchers did not agree among themselves regarding the usefulness of "daylight" between Israeli and American positions. Critics of Obama point to his own admission early on in his first term about the need to create some daylight between Washington and Jerusalem in order to maintain an evenhanded appearance and to be able to pressure both sides. For Abrams, Bush's "no daylight" policy was not only an important show of support to the government of then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon at the time, it also allowed the administration some leverage on Israel when needed.
One point agreed on by all is that Obama will face greater political obstacles on the domestic front than his predecessors did if he pushes for a peace process that will require pressure on Israel. Republican criticism has grown fiercer and Congress has become less willing to accommodate disagreements with Israel. The research group's book wonders "whether congressional and public support for Israel has limited administration options and thus changed the very nature of the American role in the peace process."
"The Republican Party," said Spiegel, "switched membership and leadership" since the days of George H. W. Bush and now holds the view that "Israel can do no wrong," a view that he sees as "not helping Israel."
Contact Nathan Guttman at [email protected] or follow on Twitter @nathanguttman


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NASA Awards Bigelow Aerospace $17.8M to Add New Module to ISS
February 20, 2013
Bigelow Aerospace will deliver a new addition to the International Space Station (ISS) through a $17.8 million contract with NASA, officials from both organizations said in a recent press conference.
NASA and ISS international partners will use the addition -- called the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module, or BEAM -- mainly as a technology demonstration to see how a space module made of non-metallic material instead of aluminum will handle radiation and thermal transmissions in space, said Lori Garver, NASA's deputy administrator.
NASA and its ISS international partners also want to familiarize astronauts living in space for long periods of time with BEAM and explore technologies and alternative space habitats for future long-term space missions, she said. NASA's Advanced Exploration Systems (AES) Program is sponsoring the deal.
NASA has posted a video animation of BEAM on its website.
BEAM, which is cylindrical, weighs about 3,000 pounds and is about 13 feet long and 10.5 feet wide. It is scheduled to launch on a SpaceX commercial rocket on May 2015 and berth with the ISS Tranquility node thereafter using the station's robotic arm. The expandable module will be connected to the ISS for a period of two years, during which time astronauts can go in and out of the module from other nodes of the station. After two years it will be jettisoned from the ISS and burn up upon re-entry into the earth's atmosphere, Garver said.
Specifically, BEAM is comprised of a series of structures, including a "scuffcoat" internal membrane with an air barrier structure inside, said Bigelow's founder and president Robert Bigelow.
Additionally, the module has "multiple layers of material that provide debris protection and radiation protection," he said during the press conference. The company's interest in developing a module that would mitigate thermal influences was not as high given that the structure will reside on the "shady side of the station," he added.
The move to use BEAM is not only a technologically experimental one for NASA, but also one of the agency's first grand gestures since it began working with private-sector partners as part of a commercial space program, according to Garver. "It's our first commercial real estate in space, if you will," she said.
NASA, which has experienced budget problems in the last few years, is teaming with commercial space partners like Bigelow and Boeing to continue its exploration of space beyond low-earth orbit. By teaming with these partners, the agency hopes to engage in experimentation that will allow humans to live in space for longer periods of time, as well as establish a space station on the moon, among other endeavors.
When President Obama took office, the space station was meant to de-orbit by 2015, Garver said. However, NASA and its partners will now use the space station through 2020 with help from commercial space partners. "For us the space station has been a stepping stone to going farther," she said. "We always knew there would be a time when NASA wasn't footing the whole bill." The partnership with Bigelow is a part of this sharing of expenses.
Bigelow Aerospace, based in Las Vegas, is a company created by Bigelow -- an entrepreneur as well as a space-exploration and paranormal enthusiast -- and his wife Victoria Lacas Alexander. So far, the pair have invested $250 million of their own money in the company and plan to invest at least that much more to reach its goals for space exploration, Bigelow said.
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Lack of definitive presurgical pathological diagnosis is associated with inadequate surgical margins in breast-conserving surgery.
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While Germany Is Headed for 80% Renewable Energy, We're Getting Left in the Dust
Reprinted from Alternet
By Tara Lohan
Osha Gray Davidson discusses his new book "Clean Break," about the keys to Germany's success with renewables and why the U.S. is getting its butt kicked.
When you think of places with great potential for solar energy, what comes to mind? Maybe the American Southwest, perhaps the Middle East. What probably doesn't come to mind is Germany — and yet Germany is leading a global revolution in renewable energy, with solar playing a key part.
In the U.S., we now get 6 percent of our energy from renewables, which is exactly where Germany was in 2000. And then it passed the Renewable Energy Act and jumpstarted a movement known as Energiewende. Twelve years later, Germany gets over 25 percent of its energy from renewables and it is surpassing all of its benchmarks to be 80 percent renewable-powered by 2050.
In his new book, Clean Break: The Story of Germany's Energy Transformation and What Americans Can Learn From It, Osha Gray Davidson explains how Germany made such a significant leap. Here are some shocking numbers he breaks down in the book:
25 percent of Germany's electricity now comes from solar, wind and biomass. A third of the world's installed solar capacity is found in Germany, a nation that gets roughly the same amount of sunlight as Alaska. A whopping 65 percent of the country's total renewable power capacity is now owned by individuals, cooperatives and communities, leaving Germany's once all-powerful utilities with just a sliver (6.5 percent) of this burgeoning sector.
AlterNet interviewed Davidson about his new book, and got his take on whether or not the U.S. can catch up to the green energy revolution.
Tara Lohan: You went to Germany interested in its clean energy revolution. Despite the research you'd done, were you surprised by what you found there?
Osha Gray Davidson: No matter how much I read about it beforehand, it couldn't prepare me for what I saw. I write in the book about traveling by train from Hamburg in the north down to Freiburg in the very south. It was something like a five-hour train ride but there wasn't more than 15 minutes that went by without seeing either wind turbines on the hills or farm fields or solar panels on roofs of houses, barns, anything that had a south-facing roof. Even knowing how much energy they get — now it is 26 percent — from renewables, it doesn't prepare you for what's it's like to live or visit a society that is moving in a big way to renewable energy.
TL: Does hitting their goal of 80 percent renewable power by 2050 seem realistic?
OGD: The reason it does seem realistic to me is they started out in the year 2000 with 6 percent renewable power and they've had a series of targets and so far they've been surpassing the targets. In the year 2020 their target was 30 percent, they are so far along now that they've moved that target to 35 percent. Everyone I've talked to there across the political spectrum says that 35 percent renewable energy by 2030 is completely doable.
When you look at how much money they're putting into this and how it's designed, and it's not universal support, but there is overwhelming support for this transformation throughout Germany. Knowing all that, yes, I can see them getting to 80 percent by 2050.
TL: What has been the key to their success so far?
OGD: A couple of things. One, they made a decision to do this and I think when a government and a population make a decision to do something and it's widespread that changes a whole lot because it's always a matter of political will, not technological will, that makes the difference. The support is key and the way that they got that support is they designed policies that would give everybody — all residents of Germany — a way to have skin in the game. Sixty-five percent of all renewable energy in Germany is owned by individuals and cooperatives and groups of small investors.
Germany gets unfairly tarred as doing this as a command-and-control program — the energy transformation — according to its critics, mostly in the United States, say it's a socialist program, and nothing could be further from the truth. It is incredibly market-based, far more than our energy policies, to the extent that we actually have any.
Everybody in Germany has a chance to participate; they can become a utility essentially. If you want to put solar panels on your roof, or if you're a renter and want to get together with a group of friends and invest in solar panels or a windmill or a windfarm or chuches … I saw many churches in Germany covered in solar panels and found out they've lowered their electricity bills by a huge extent by taking part in this. Giving everyone the financial incentive in making this work is really key.
TL: It seems like such a big transformation in 12 years to go from big power corporations to so much smaller, more distributed, community-run energy sources.
OGD: Yeah and that is key, that it's distributed rather than centralized. It's disappointing in the United States that we don't really have that conversation at all. It's just assumed here that energy, whether it's fossil fuel, nuclear or renewable, is going to be produced by a large utility.
In Germany, the large utilities — the Big Four, they're called — they have about 6 percent renewable energy capacity. But that is by design. When the Renewable Energy Act was written and then passed in 2000, one of the keys was understanding that you have to give everybody an incentive. Even though Germans, to a greater extent than Americans, know that global warming is a huge problem and that it needs to be solved, that isn't enough to make an energy transformation.
A lot of people here who understand it and know that climate change is a problem can't really do much about it because even if they put solar panels up — what is that going to do — it's one tiny piece of something. In Germany they know that they're plugging into a much larger movement that is going to have an effect and beside from that, you do get a financial benefit; you earn money by putting solar panels on the roof.
To install a similar sized array on a rooftop in Germany costs half as much as it does in the States even though the hardware costs are all the same. It's the process of putting it up that's much cheaper — the soft costs. And then you earn money. As opposed to here, where the best you can do with net metering is lower your utility bill to zero. But there, beyond that, you can actually make some coin off of it. Anybody can.
TL: It must help if you're making investments of tens of thousands of dollars that the overall political will is there and it's not going to shift every time there is an election.
OGD: Exactly. And that's another part of the policy design from the Renewable Energy Act that you're guaranteed a certain price for the power you produce for 20 years. So businesses, including individuals, know exactly how long it will take them to recoup the costs and start earning money on it — and how much they'll make for the next 20 years. A lot of small businesses are doing this because there is policy certainty. In the U.S. we've just seen here with the Wind Production Tax Credit, the fact that it's going to expire here on December 31st unless Congress extends it, wind manufacturers have already laid off several hundred people in the United States because of that policy uncertainty.
TL: Do you think it's possible in the United States, considering the strength of our energy lobby, to move toward more sources of distributed power?
OGD: I do, and it's because when you talk to people in Germany and read about the history of this you realize the problems were not the same but were equivalent — people said "you're crazy, you're not going to achieve any of these goals." But this was really a bottom-up movement that forced politicians to get behind it, politicians from across the spectrum. So the center-right governing party now, Angel Merkel's party, they are for the Energiewende. They are not doing it very effectively, they're mismanaging it. But it's fascinating, I just got used to in the United States if you see someone who has solar or wind you generally know politically where they're going to be on the spectrum in the United States. In Germany you have absolutely no idea from someone's involvement in renewable energy, where they are on the political spectrum.
TL: And they are making all these leaps with renewable energy while at the same time shutting down their nuclear facilities.
OGD: The whole anti-nuclear aspect is a big one in Germany because like Japan, they lived through a nuclear crisis with Chernobyl in 1986. In Germany there are still parts where you can't harvest mushrooms because of the radioactive contamination from Chernobyl.
It was a big deal in Germany. The kids had to stay inside for days at a time and they didn't know what was going to happen. As it turned out, the radioactivity was less in Germany than it was in some of the Scandinavian countries because of the wind patterns. And German farmers remember having to destroy a lot of crops because of contamination. So for them, moving to renewables made sense just as farmers wanting to protect their land and their crops and their way of life.
TL: What was the pushback in Germany when decisions were made to shut down the nuclear plants?
OGD: A little after 2000 there was an amendment to the Renewable Energy Act that was worked out in agreement with the nuclear power plant owners to phase out nuclear. It was going to be done in an orderly way that they could count on as these plants aged they would have to shut them down anyway. They were part of that — they weren't just forced out until the Merkel government came in. This is what I mean by the mismanagement of it.
Her government extended the licenses of nuclear plants and there were huge demonstrations throughout Germany against that and then six months or so later was when Fukushima happened and lo and behold Angela Merkel turned anti-nuclear. So she went from extending the licenses and abrogating that plan they had with nuclear power companies to then all of a sudden essentially closing them down.
That's caused a lot of problems in Germany and I think the critics of closing them down immediately have a really good point that she took offline low-carbon energy producers that were going to be phased out anyway.
TL: I'm wondering about the kinds of infrastructure that needs to be built or upgraded when you're talking about generating energy from renewables. You wrote in the book about how they need $25 billion more for new power lines — where does that money come from? Who's footing the bill?
OGD: Well, that's the question. They're still debating that and there is no easy answer. I certainly don't want to give the impression that this transition is an easy one and a cost-free one — it's just that not doing anything is far costlier. As several people there have pointed out, everyone is going to move to a renewable energy economy eventually, because they're dependent on non-renewable fuels. Germany has a headstart by doing it early, but there are costs related to doing it early. Germans were paying more to install solar panels at the very beginning before the price got cut by mass production.
But Germany is way ahead in other ways including their export economy, and not just the solar panels which have been a problem in trying to keep up with China on that now. China's manufacturing plants that make solar panels — those were bought from Germany — the plants themselves, all of that technology came from Germany. So they're still reaping rewards.
And the extra cost that they're paying, you have to look at where it is going and mostly it is to citizens of Germany — it's creating jobs, over 300,000 jobs in renewable energy there. So the costs were higher but the money stayed within Germany and stayed within small towns. It's being spent wisely and it's helping the German economy. It's not just a cost, it's also a benefit.
TL: What did you think of their use of biomass? I know that can be a mixed bag when it comes to environmental impacts.
OGD: Yes, and there is debate on it in Germany. It is like most other forms of energy in that you can do it wrong or you can do it right. One big objection is using corn — growing corn, a food crop, and then burning it, using it for energy production. It drives up food costs and it's probably not a good use of land. So that's one example of using biomass in an unsustainable fashion.
But I saw some biomass projects that were using sustainably harvested wood from woodlots and just trimmings. I watched them trimming trees on the side of the road and the wood chips would be taken by this farmer to a community heating unit in this tiny town in the Black Forest, St. Peter, where they have this community heating project using sustainably harvested wood chips to heat over 200 houses and businesses and they're cutting back on C02 emissions because it's replacing oil burning furnaces. And it's a cooperative, so all of the people who live there — the 200 homes — not only is the heat cheaper but they get any financial returns.
So biomass can be done in a sustainable way or it can not be.
TL: Was it frustrating at all for you to see all this progress in Germany and to think about where the conversation is at right now in the U.S. — where we barely speak about climate change and if we do we still have people insisting that we debate its existence?
OGD: I went back and forth on this when I was in Germany. I'd see all of this stuff — in Hamburg, the public transportation system, the whole built environment, which is a big part of the energy change. Ninety-nine percent of residents in Hamburg live within 300 meters of public transport. Germans own cars to a far lesser extent because they have such a great transportation system. The built environment is created for mass transportation and bikes and walking.
And yes, I was alternately frustrated that we didn't have that and hopeful because I saw what was possible. In the States a lot of the discussion is about theory — what can we get — but it doesn't have to be a theoretical conversation and that was what I took away from Germany. They are actually doing it and I do think that if they can do that then yes, we can do that here.
The main driver in Germany was citizens' groups who wanted out of nuclear power, that was one of the very first issues. Ursula Sladek was a school teacher and her husband was a village doctor when Chernobyl blew and all the radioactive fallout fell on their area, they were in one of the most heavily contaminated areas. Ursula didn't want to be part of a nuclear society anymore and went to the utility which was a monopoly back then and said "we don't want you to use nuclear anymore" — she had gotten a group of friends and neighbors together. And the utility said, "ha, we don't care what you want."
From that, Ursula and this group in town now run the largest green cooperative in Germany and they have 180,000 households and business members of their little company in this tiny town in the Black Forest.
I always ask "What lessons can Americans learn?" And the overwhelming theme was, "just start doing it, that's what we did." And Ursula is such a great example of that. It took them 10 years in this David and Goliath battle with their utility. As she's pointed out, "we didn't shut down a single nuke plant, and that was all we were trying to do. But we've helped start a renewable energy revolution."
When I asked her about what we Americans could learn, she didn't answer at first and she looked around at this office she was in, the headquarters with solar panels on the roof and she said, "This is something that is very American isn't it? You Americans are people who say we can do it — we can do it ourselves."
She in fact was inspired by Jimmy Carter, a lot of the people who started the Energiewende in Germany, including Hans-Josef Fell who was the main author of the Renewable Energy Act, he was inspired by Jimmy Carter and the renewable energy revolution that he tried to start here in the U.S. by putting solar panels on the roof of the White House and funding solar projects throughout the country and wind projects. Fell said he looked around and saw pictures of all of that and wondered why they couldn't have that in Germany. And now the situation is simply reversed.
We did start down that road, and when Reagan came in a decision was made to scuttle that and to go back to dependence on fossil fuels.
I think that if Americans now take a look at Germany and see what they've done and start doing that now here, yes, I think we can get to where Germany is and in fact the National Renewable Energy Laboratories in Colorado, the main government technology center for renewable energies, came out with a report this past year that said by the year 2050 the U.S. could be getting 80 percent of our power from renewables; by coincidence, that's exactly what Germany's goal is.
We obviously have the resources to do it. So I think it's a matter of political will and also empowerment. A lot of Americans feel there is nothing they can do because of all these big companies — well, I don't have much patience for that. The Germans could have said the same thing, but they rolled up their sleeves and started taking action at a local level and eventually that forced political leaders to respond.
So, we shouldn't whine about it — we should get busy and do it.
Osha Gray Davidson's new book Clean Break: The Story of Germany's Energy Transformation and What Americans Can Learn From It (InsideClimate News, 2012), is available as an e-book here.
Tara Lohan is a senior editor at AlterNet and editor of the new book Water Matters: Why We Need to Act Now to Save Our Most Critical Resource. You can follow her on Twitter @TaraLohan.


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Try Symbolab's practice!
What is practice?
Practice is an interactive component of Symbolab. In practice, subjects are broken down into topics. The topics are categorized under difficulty. Select the topic, which you need practice in, work out the first problem, and enter in the solution. If you need help solving the problem, click "Hint". Each hint will show you a step to solving the problem. Use a hint when your answer is wrong or try the problem again. It is recommended that you get five problems solved correctly, before continuing on to the next topic.
After you finished all the topics in the section, take a quiz to test your skills! Answer 10 questions without hints and see if you are ready for a more advanced topic. At the end of the quiz you will get your results.
Why should I use practice?
Practice is a great resource that helps you better understand math topics. You are given problems that will cover all different types of problems under the topic. If you get stuck along the way, you have hints that will take you through the problem step by step. There is no better way to excel at math than to study hard and practice, practice, practice. It's a great way to review before a test. Practice won't be free for long, so make sure you register for it now!
Everyone has to ability to learn math. Practice is a free way to take advantage of your ability and learn! Math doesn't have to be scary. Practice, practice, practice and the easier it will become.
Until next time,


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Canalith repositioning procedure
The canalith repositioning procedure can help relieve benign paroxysmal positional vertigo (BPPV), a condition in which you have brief, but intense, episodes of dizziness that occur when you move your head. Vertigo usually comes from a problem with the part of the inner ear responsible for balance (vestibular labyrinth). BPPV occurs when tiny particles called otoconia in one part of your inner ear break loose and fall into the canals of your inner ear.The canalith repositioning procedure can move the otoconia to a part of your ear where they won't cause dizziness. Performed in your doctor's office and at home, the canalith repositioning procedure consists of several simple head maneuvers. The procedure is quite effective, relieving vertigo in 80 percent or more of individuals after one or two treatments. However, the problem may recur.