Growing up Geek: Natali Morris

Welcome to Growing Up Geek, an ongoing feature where we take a look back at our youth and tell stories of growing up to be the nerds that we are. Today, we have CNBC technology contributor, Natali Morris.

These days I spend more of my time raising geeks than growing up as one. I gave birth to my daughter just seven weeks ago, so there is little time to geek out, but the force is still there. Temporarily dormant. I am a TV journalist who specializes in geek, as a technology contributor to CNBC. I got an early start in television. I was Miss Fremont 1984. Maybe you recognize me from the parade float with Sylvester and Tweety Bird? No? Odd.

That's me on the left with my younger sister on the children's show Romper Room in 1984. Question: When we talk about my geeky childhood, do we mean that I had special geeky talents? Because I'm not sure I was a geek as much as I was a nerd. I was a rule follower. An overachiever. I always got the best grades in my science classes, had my term papers written weeks in advance, and always kept my textbooks covered with brown bag paper the way school policy required. I also had braces and headgear. And bangs. So what do you think? Geek or nerd? Or idiot?

Actually no, I didn't always follow the rules. I used to cheat on the Nintendo Power Pad by pounding on the pressure sensors with my hands instead of my feet when I was feeling lazy. I used the code to get 30 extra lives on Contra. Although is it really cheating if it is built into the game? But I digress.

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This US summer is 'what global warming looks like'

WASHINGTON (AP) ? If you want a glimpse of some of the worst of global warming, scientists suggest taking a look at U.S. weather in recent weeks.

Horrendous wildfires. Oppressive heat waves. Devastating droughts. Flooding from giant deluges. And a powerful freak wind storm called a derecho.

These are the kinds of extremes climate scientists have predicted will come with climate change, although it's far too early to say that is the cause. Nor will they say global warming is the reason 3,215 daily high temperature records were set in the month of June.

Scientifically linking individual weather events to climate change takes intensive study, complicated mathematics, computer models and lots of time. Sometimes it isn't caused by global warming. Weather is always variable; freak things happen.

And this weather has been local. Europe, Asia and Africa aren't having similar disasters now, although they've had their own extreme events in recent years.

But since at least 1988, climate scientists have warned that climate change would bring, in general, increased heat waves, more droughts, more sudden downpours, more widespread wildfires and worsening storms. In the United States, those extremes are happening here and now.

So far this year, more than 2.1 million acres have burned in wildfires, more than 113 million people in the U.S. were in areas under extreme heat advisories last Friday, two-thirds of the country is experiencing drought, and earlier in June, deluges flooded Minnesota and Florida.

"This is what global warming looks like at the regional or personal level," said Jonathan Overpeck, professor of geosciences and atmospheric sciences at the University of Arizona. "The extra heat increases the odds of worse heat waves, droughts, storms and wildfire. This is certainly what I and many other climate scientists have been warning about."

Kevin Trenberth, head of climate analysis at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in fire-charred Colorado, said these are the very record-breaking conditions he has said would happen, but many people wouldn't listen. So it's I told-you-so time, he said.

As recently as March, a special report an extreme events and disasters by the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned of "unprecedented extreme weather and climate events." Its lead author, Chris Field of the Carnegie Institution and Stanford University, said Monday, "It's really dramatic how many of the patterns that we've talked about as the expression of the extremes are hitting the U.S. right now."

"What we're seeing really is a window into what global warming really looks like," said Princeton University geosciences and international affairs professor Michael Oppenheimer. "It looks like heat. It looks like fires. It looks like this kind of environmental disasters."

Oppenheimer said that on Thursday. That was before the East Coast was hit with triple-digit temperatures and before a derecho ? an unusually strong, long-lived and large straight-line wind storm ? blew through Chicago to Washington. The storm and its aftermath killed more than 20 people and left millions without electricity. Experts say it had energy readings five times that of normal thunderstorms.

Fueled by the record high heat, this was one of the most powerful of this type of storm in the region in recent history, said research meteorologist Harold Brooks of the National Severe Storm Laboratory in Norman, Okla. Scientists expect "non-tornadic wind events" like this one and other thunderstorms to increase with climate change because of the heat and instability, he said.

Such patterns haven't happened only in the past week or two. The spring and winter in the U.S. were the warmest on record and among the least snowy, setting the stage for the weather extremes to come, scientists say.

Since Jan. 1, the United States has set more than 40,000 hot temperature records, but fewer than 6,000 cold temperature records, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Through most of last century, the U.S. used to set cold and hot records evenly, but in the first decade of this century America set two hot records for every cold one, said Jerry Meehl, a climate extreme expert at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. This year the ratio is about 7 hot to 1 cold. Some computer models say that ratio will hit 20-to-1 by midcentury, Meehl said.

"In the future you would expect larger, longer more intense heat waves and we've seen that in the last few summers," NOAA Climate Monitoring chief Derek Arndt said.

The 100-degree heat, drought, early snowpack melt and beetles waking from hibernation early to strip trees all combined to set the stage for the current unusual spread of wildfires in the West, said University of Montana ecosystems professor Steven Running, an expert on wildfires.

While at least 15 climate scientists told The Associated Press that this long hot U.S. summer is consistent with what is to be expected in global warming, history is full of such extremes, said John Christy at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. He's a global warming skeptic who says, "The guilty party in my view is Mother Nature."

But the vast majority of mainstream climate scientists, such as Meehl, disagree: "This is what global warming is like, and we'll see more of this as we go into the future."

___

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report on extreme weather:

http://ipcc-wg2.gov/SREX/

U.S. weather records set:

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/extremes/records/

___

Seth Borenstein can be followed at http://twitter.com/borenbears

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/us-summer-global-warming-looks-064915370.html

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Apple's MobileMe closes, as does Kodak Gallery

14 hrs.

Suzanne Choney

If you?use Apple's MobileMe or the Kodak Gallery, it's moving time for you. Apple announced a year ago it would shutter MobileMe June 30, 2012, with users likely choosing Apple's iCloud as their new home.

Kodak, which filed for bankruptcy, sold its online photo site, Kodak Gallery, to Shutterfly. The gallery?shuts down sometime today, and Shutterfly is in the process of transferring an estimated 5 billion photos from Kodak's site to its own.

Victor Cho, Kodak Gallery general manager, said in an online posting that Shutterfly will email customers about the status of their photos throughout the transfer process, which will be "secure and smooth, but will take some time."

While photos will move to Shutterfly, projects, such as Photo Books and Calendars, will not be moved over, and users need to "complete and purchase any projects" before noon July 2, he said.?

If you have questions, Kodak has a Q-and-A FAQ page here.

Jeffrey Weber, a Shutterfly spokesoman, told the Los Angeles Times that the company expects to have the very last files moved over by November, although the photos will remain on Kodak's servers for awhile.?

Meanwhile, with the shutdown of MobileMe, users do not have access to their old?galleries.?But, Apple says, "for a limited time, you can still save copies of all photos and movies published to your gallery."

If you have a Mac, the company says, "it is likely that most of your gallery photos are already in iPhoto. If not, you can sync your gallery photos to your iPhoto library. You can also download your photos and movies directly from the Web."

You can get more answers to questions about the MobileMe transition here.

In addition to the services shown in Apple's chart, the company says iCloud includes these as well:

iTunes in the Cloud, Photo Stream, Documents in the Cloud, Automatic?downloads and purchase history for apps and books; backup and restore; and Find My Friends.

If you haven't had a chance to take stock of what you have and where it is, the sooner the better no matter whether you are using MobileMe or Kodak Gallery, as the clock is ticking.?

Check out Technolog, Gadgetbox, Digital Life and In-Game on Facebook,?and on Twitter, follow Suzanne Choney.

Source: http://www.technolog.msnbc.msn.com/technology/technolog/apples-mobileme-closes-does-kodak-gallery-858286

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PETA Rips Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen Over $17K Fur Backpacks

PETA is ripping fashion designer duo Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen for using animal pelts to create their latest backpack, which retails for around $17,000.

That's not a typo.

“What the Olsens lack in creativity, they try to make up for with shock value,” the animal rights group said in a statement regarding the pricey accessory.

PETA protesters (seen here in 2008) have gone after the Olsen Twins for years.

The backpack is a patchwork design made of various animal furs, a fact that has PETA livid with the twosome to the point of bitter name-calling.

"If it looks like a troll and acts like a troll, it's probably a Trollsen Twin - or somebody wearing one of their new totes," the group continues.

PETA calls on consumers not to purchase the products "which are made from the fur and skins of innocent animals" or anything by the Olsens.

Ashley Olsen and Mary Kate Olsen, who jointly run The Row, captured the Womenswear Designer of the Year honors at the CFDA Fashion Awards in June.

They should probably be on the lookout for paint can assaults.

[Photo: WENN.com]

Source: http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2012/07/peta-rips-mary-kate-and-ashley-olsen-over-17k-fur-backpacks/

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Islamists destroy door of ancient Timbuktu mosque

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In Syria, At Least 85 Killed By Car Bombing At Funeral

The Los Angeles Times:

At least 85 people were killed when a car bomb exploded during a funeral procession Saturday evening in the Syrian town of Zamalka, activists and human rights groups said.

Read the whole story at The Los Angeles Times

Contribute to this Story:

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/01/in-syria-car-bombing-funeral_n_1640741.html

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World powers agree Syria deal, US eyes post-Assad regime

World powers on Saturday agreed a plan for a transition in Syria that could include current regime members, but the West did not see any role for President Bashar al-Assad in a new unity government.

Russia and China insisted that Syrians must decide how the transition should be carried out rather than allow others to dictate their fate, as the two powers signed up to the final agreement that did not make any explicit call for Assad to cede power.

The deal came despite initial pessimism from participants about the prospects of the Geneva talks amid deep divisions between the West and China and Russia on how to end the violence that claimed at least 53 lives on Saturday.

Rights monitors said most victims were civilians and hundreds more were trapped in Douma as regime forces stormed the town in Damascus province.

While international envoy Kofi Annan did not name names and said it was up to the Syrians to decide who they wanted in a unity government, he added: "I would doubt that Syrians... would select people with blood on their hands to lead them."

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made it clear that Washington did not see a role for Assad in the transition.

"Assad will still have to go. He will never pass the mutual consent test," she said.

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius took the same stance, saying, "It's clear that Assad must stand down".

"No one can imagine for a moment that Assad will feature in the (new) government, any more than anyone thinks it possible for him to establish a neutral environment" required by the agreement, he said, adding that the transition government "will exclude murderers."

British Foreign Minister William Hague admitted that the deal was a "compromise agreement" as Russia played up the fact that it had convinced other world powers that it would be "unacceptable" to exclude any party from the transition process.

A long-time Syria ally, Russia is loathe to cast Assad aside, even as relations between Moscow and Damascus have cooled.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said: "How exactly the work on a transition to a new stage is conducted will be decided by the Syrians themselves."

"There are no demands to exclude from this process any one group. This aspect had been present in many of our partners' proposals. We have convinced them that this is unacceptable," Lavrov said.

Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi also stressed that "outsiders cannot make decisions for the Syrian people."

As divisions threatened to scupper talks earlier Saturday, Annan warned at the opening of the meeting that history would not look favourably on leaders who failed to chart a strategy to end the bloodshed in Syria.

A failure to unite also raised the spectre that the conflict that has claimed 15,800 lives over 16 months in the strategic Middle East country could spill over to the region and expose the world to fresh threats, said the former UN chief.

"History is a sombre judge -- and it will judge us all harshly if we prove incapable of taking the right path today," Annan told the five permanent Security Council members -- the United States, Russia, Britain, China and France -- as well as regional powers Qatar, Turkey, Kuwait and Iraq.

Meanwhile fighting in Syria has only intensified in recent weeks as both government and opposition forces have received more weapons from their foreign backers.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights warned of a "catastrophic humanitarian situation" in besieged Douma, which "has been subjected to a fierce military campaign since June 21."

Violence has killed "scores and wounded hundreds" there since regime forces escalated attacks on the outlying suburb of Damascus, the group said.

"More than 100 families remain in the town, unable to flee and forced to take refuge in shelters," it said.

An explosion also rocked the Qaboon district of Damascus on Saturday and another blast hit the country's second city Aleppo in the north. A further blast hit an oil pipeline in a rebel-held area of the eastern province of Deir Ezzor.

The latest violence came a day after 73 people were killed nationwide, among them 23 regime troops.

While the violence rages there is also mounting concern about the destabilising impact it has on the region, in particular Jordan and Lebanon.

And the Turkish-Syrian border remains a potential flashpoint.

Turkey has sent tanks, troops and missile batteries toward the frontier, after Syria shot down a Turkish jet just over a week ago.

Meanwhile the head of the rebels' Free Syrian Army told AFP that 2,500 Syrian soldiers were "massing 15 kilometres (10 miles) or slightly more from the Turkish border" on Friday.

Egypt's President Mohamed Morsi -- elected after a revolution that overthrew strongman Hosni Mubarak -- on Saturday called for an end to bloodshed in Syria, in his inaugural address.

"We support the Syrian people. We want the bloodshed to stop," he said.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/us-russia-still-odds-over-syria-eve-talks-021156229.html

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