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Daily Archives: January 23, 2019

Most Americans accept that climate change is real and worrying

The Verge: “Most Americans are worried about climate change, and many think the government should fight it, according to the results of two independent polls released this week. The surveys suggest that Americans are finally warming to the scientific consensus about climate change: that it’s real, it’s happening now, and that we are causing it — but the big question is whether that will be enough to spark real political change.

One of the surveys, called Climate Change in the American Mind, comes out of a collaboration between Yale and George Mason University. It probes how a random sample of more than 1,100 people feel about global warming — such as whether they’re worried about it, for example, and whom they think it will harm. The other survey, conducted by researchers at the University of Chicago and The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, asked roughly 1,200 people questions like whether they’d be willing to pay to fight climate change. Both surveys aimed to be nationally representative.

The results line up where the two surveys overlap: both report that around 70 percent of Americans agree climate change is real. The Climate Change in the American Mind survey finds that 69 percent of Americans say they’re “somewhat worried” about global warming. That’s the finding that stands out for Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication and one of the survey’s co-investigators: it’s seven percentage points higher than when people were asked the same question back in March. “We’ve never seen a shift like that before,” he told The Verge in an interview…”

Blockchain and the Law: A Critical Evaluation

Quintais, João and Bodó, Balázs and Giannopoulou, Alexandra and Ferrari, Valeria, Blockchain and the Law: A Critical Evaluation (January 17, 2019). Pedro Quintais, B. Bodó, A. Giannopoulou, & A. Ferrari (2019). Blockchain and the Law: A Critical Evaluation. Stanford Journal of Blockchain Law & Policy (2)1; Amsterdam Law School Research Paper No. 2019-03; Institute for… Continue Reading

2019 National Intelligence Strategy of the United States

“This National Intelligence Strategy (NIS) provides the Intelligence Community (IC) with strategic direction from the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) for the next four years. It supports the national security priorities outlined in the National Security Strategy as well as other national strategies. In executing the NIS, all IC activities must be responsive to national… Continue Reading

Watch the Doomsday Clock announcement January 24 at 10 a.m. Eastern time

“The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists will host a live international news conference at 10 a.m. EST/1500 GMT on Thursday, January 24, 2019, to announce the 2019 time of the Doomsday Clock. The news conference will take place at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. Watch the announcement live on clock.thebulletin.org, on our Facebook page, or on Twitter.  … Continue Reading

Shutdown of the Federal Government: Causes, Processes, and Effects

EveryCRSReport.com – Shutdown of the Federal Government: Causes, Processes, and Effects, December 2018: “When federal agencies and programs lack funding after the expiration of full-year or interim appropriations, the agencies and programs experience a funding gap. If funding does not resume in time to continue government operations, then, under the Antideficiency Act, an agency must… Continue Reading

Unpaid Federal Workers Owe $438 Million in Mortgage and Rent Payments This Month

Zillow Research: Federal employees who are not being paid during the shutdown and own their homes make about $249 million in monthly mortgage payments. Those who rent pay about $189 million for housing each month, according to a recent HotPads analysis. About 3,900 mortgage originations are processed each business day for loans backed directly by… Continue Reading

GW-Stanford Study Recommends Nuclear Waste Program “Reset”

“The U.S. must start from scratch with a new nuclear waste management and disposal strategy – a Stanford-led panel and recommends that the United States “reset” its nuclear waste program by moving responsibility for commercially generated, used nuclear fuel away from the federal government and into the hands of an independent, not-for-profit, utility-owned and funded nuclear waste management organization. The… Continue Reading

Earliest fragments of English reveal how interconnected Europe has been for centuries

BBC: “The interconnectedness of Europe has a long history, as we’re reminded when we explore the roots of the English language – roots that stretch back to the 5th Century. Anglo-Saxon England “was connected to the world beyond its shores through a lively exchange of books, goods, ideas,” argues the Medieval historian Mary Wellesley, describing… Continue Reading