Quo Vadis

Sunday, July 03, 2011

lowest-paid staffers take home White House Salaries : the lowest paid is $41,000 (only two people) and 110 people take home salaries of up to $50,000

White House salaries slide up - Yahoo! News

The 2011 White House salary report is out, and it shows that 141 people are paid more than $100,000 a year in President Barack Obama’s White House. Another 201 people on the staff of 454 are paid more than between $100,000 and $50,000.

That’s a jump from the last year of President George W. Bush’s tenure, when 130 people were paid more than $100,000, and 137 people were paid between $50,000 and $100,000.

The pay is good, especially when those staffers help govern a country with a stalled economy, at least 9.1 percent unemployment, extreme deficit spending and a debt of at least $14 trillion.

But it is far less than what most of the employees graduate to when they move to a civil-service job – complete with a bump-up for local cost-of-living – or to a lobbying firm on K Street. (Uncle Sam shelling out big bucks for government jobs, GOP says time to cut)

Also, their salaries are relatively small compared to the influence they have on federal spending and on citizens’ lives. If Obama’s 2010 budget was divided equally among his 454 White House staffers, they’d have $7,832,788,550 each to spend. That’s $7.8 billion per staffer, from the first employee on the list, Adam Abrams, all the way down to No. 454, Mark Zuckerman.

Neither Obama nor Vice-President Joe Biden are part of the payroll.

The salaries range from $172,200 all the way down to a bizarre $0 a year, the salary of three White House employees. Not counting the president, 21 people share the title of top earner, among them: White House Press Secretary Jay Carney, advisors John Brennan, David Plouffe, and Valerie Jarrett speechwriter Jon Favreau, and the president’s chief of staff, Bill Daley.

In Bush’s 2008 White House salary report, the lowest-paid of 447 staffers struggled home with S33,400 per year. There were two of them, but there was also another 100 people paid less than $40,000, out of total payroll of $33,193,021.

Obama’s White House is more generous with the taxpayer’s money. Not counting three unpaid employees, no-one in Obama’s house is paid less than $40,000. The two lowest-paid staffers take home $41,000, and 110 people take home salaries of up to $50,000.

Read more stories from The Daily Caller

Dominique Strauss-Kahn (DSK) and Nicolas Sarkozy

Dominique Strauss-Kahn's return could be a threat to Nicolas Sarkozy | World news | guardian.co.uk

Former favourite to win 2012 presidential election may return to France more popular than ever if cleared of all charges

Dominique Strauss-Kahn may return to France as favourite to win the 2012 presidential elections if he is cleared of sexual assault charges in New York. Photograph: Jessica Rinaldi/AFP/Getty Images

French Socialists were in chaos as key figures speculated whether Dominique Strauss-Kahn could return to challenge Nicolas Sarkozy in the presidential race next year, throwing the party into another round of instability and internal ego-clashes.
Strauss-Kahn was the clear favourite to win the 2012 presidential election before he was arrested for allegedly attempting to rape a New York hotel maid in May. He is no longer under house arrest, but still faces seven charges ranging from attempted rape to sexual assault. If he is cleared or charges are dropped, supporters such as former culture minister Jack Lang suggested he could return to France more popular than ever before.
Strauss-Kahn's possible return has thrown the Socialist party's primary race into disarray. The party had presumed his presidential hopes were dead and opened its selection process for another candidate last week. Candidates must declare by 13 July for an October vote, but Strauss-Kahn's next hearing is scheduled for 18 July.
Current front-runner François Hollande was the first to declare this weekend that he had "no problem" with pushing back the declaration date until the end of August, allowing Strauss-Kahn to return from New York if charges were dropped quickly. But the party's interim leader, Harlem Désir, snapped back that there didn't seem to be "any reason" to move the deadline. The row has weakened Martine Aubry, who declared her presidential bid last week, but had a pact with Strauss-Kahn and could be pressured to stand aside for him.
All depends on whether the prosecution maintains its case and goes to trial or quickly drops charges against Strauss-Kahn, and if so how the French public and opinion polls perceive him.
Even while the charges still stand, some French supporters presented him as an innocent victim, hero and martyr. Left-wing philosopher Bernard-Henry Lévy spoke of a noble man who had been the victim of a "spiral of horror and calumny". He told Le Parisien that Strauss-Kahn had been "lynched" by the "friends of minorities" in the US. He said that because the victim was "poor and immigrant" she had been presumed innocent, and because Strauss-Kahn was "powerful" he had been presumed guilty.
Sylvie Pierre-Brossolette, political editor of the weekly Le Point, felt "anything is possible". A returning Strauss-Kahn might be seen by the French as "hero" mistreated or "humiliated" by the American justice system. Much would depend on whether French left voters still saw him as a "saviour" against Sarkozy, she wrote.
But while many Socialists felt DSK could return triumphant if totally cleared, others worried about the stain the case would leave on French politics and the damage done by revelations about his private life and his attitude to women. Since his arrest, a French taboo has been broken and Strauss-Kahn's behaviour towards women, deemed "libertine" by his friends, has been raked over. Socialist Anne Mansouret, who said she regretted dissuading her daughter, journalist Tristane Banon, from pressing charges over an alleged sexual assault in 2002, had said Strauss-Kahn had a "problem" with women which could be seen as a sickness.
Strauss-Kahn seemed not to be worried about his political image on Friday night when he went out for a $100 bowl of pasta with friends, casting aside the controversy in France that he should tone down his image of "champagne socialism".
Socialist MP Marisol Touraine, a key DSK ally, said she hoped for Strauss-Kahn's "rehabilitation" but warned that he would not be able to return to a "status quo" in France as if nothing had happened. Gérard Collomb, the mayor of Lyon and Strauss-Kahn supporter, warned that Strauss-Kahn should first "rebuild himself" before a possible return to the presidential race, warning that no one emerged from such a case "unscathed".
Pollsters cautioned that Strauss-Kahn's return would be shaped by whether the American justice system cleared him or whether charges were dropped, leaving doubts. Pascal Perrineau, of Paris's Institute of Political Science, said that if Strauss-Kahn was cleared of all suspicion, his return to France could still be complicated.
"If a strong doubt persists over his behaviour, and even if that behaviour isn't as criminal as was once suggested, a return [to politics] seems really very difficult," he told Reuters.
Gerald Bronner, a sociologist at Strasbourg university, said: "This case has allowed another image of Strauss-Kahn to be put forward in French public opinion. The public wasn't informed of the slightly libertine side of his personal life."
Jean Veil, Strauss-Kahn's French lawyer, said: "He will speak once he's in France and cleared of all suspicion."

Clink these links to find more about DSK's case ..
Strauss-Kahn and the hotel maid turns into a PR battle

Dominique Strauss-Kahn case: how it imploded

Dominique Strauss-Kahn freed as case details aired outside court room

Dominique Strauss-Kahn: so much for us to learn

Dominique Strauss-Kahn case: profile of the alleged victim

Dominique Strauss-Kahn 'thunderbolt' changes stakes in French president race

Strauss-Kahn's letter from prosecutors

Dominique Strauss-Kahn: The human stain

Dominique Strauss-Kahn case: how it imploded

Dominique Strauss-Kahn freed

Strauss-Kahn in court – blog

Strauss-Kahn sex assault case 'close to collapse'

Timeline: Strauss-Kahn case

Government sues Apollo 14 astronaut over lunar camera

- Yahoo! News

The U.S. government has sued a former NASA astronaut to recover a camera used to explore the moon's surface during the 1971 Apollo 14 mission after seeing it slated for sale in a New York auction.

The lawsuit, filed in Miami federal court on Wednesday, accuses Edgar Mitchell of illegally possessing the camera and attempting to sell it for profit.

In March, NASA learned that the British auction house Bonhams was planning to sell the camera at an upcoming Space History Sale, according to the suit.

The item was labeled "Movie Camera from the Lunar Surface" and billed as one of two cameras from the Apollo 14's lunar module Antares. The lot description said the item came "directly from the collection" of pilot Edgar Mitchell and had a pre-sale estimate of $60,000 to $80,000, the suit said.

Mitchell was a lunar module pilot on Apollo 14, which launched its nine-day mission in 1971 under the command of Alan Shepard. The sixth person to walk on the moon, Mitchell is now retired and runs a website selling his autographed picture.

He has made headlines in the past for his stated belief in the existence of extraterrestrial life.

"All equipment and property used during NASA operations remains the property of NASA unless explicitly released or transferred to another party," the government suit said, adding NASA had no record of the camera being given to Mitchell.

Pi is wrong!

Mathematicians Want to Say Goodbye to Pi - Yahoo! News

"I know it will be called blasphemy by some, but I believe that pi is wrong."

That's the opening line of a watershed essay written in 2001 by mathematician Bob Palais of the University of Utah. In "Pi is Wrong!" Palais argued that, for thousands of years, humans have been focusing their attention and adulation on the wrong mathematical constant.

Two times pi, not pi itself, is the truly sacred number of the circle, Palais contended. We should be celebrating and symbolizing the value that is equal to approximately 6.28 — the ratio of a circle's circumference to its radius — and not to the 3.14'ish ratio of its circumference to its diameter (a largely irrelevant property in geometry).

Last year, Palais' followers gave the new constant, 2pi, a name: tau. Since then, the tau movement has steadily grown, with its members hoping to replace pi as it appears in textbooks and calculators with tau, the true idol of math. Yesterday — 6/28 — they even celebrated Tau Day in math events worldwide.

But is pi really "wrong"? And if it is, why is tau better?

The mathematicians aren't saying that pi has been wrongly calculated. Its value is still approximately 3.14, as it always was. Rather they argue that 3.14 isn't the value that matters most when it comes to circles. Palais originally argued that pi should be changed to equal 6.28 while others prefer giving that number a new name altogether.

Kevin Houston, a mathematician at the University of Leeds in the U.K. who has made a YouTube video to explain all the advantages of tau over pi, said the most compelling argument for tau is that it is a much more natural number to use in the fields of math involving circles, like geometry, trigonometry and even advanced calculus.

"When measuring angles, mathematicians don't use degrees, they use radians," Houston enthusiastically told Life's Little Mysteries, a sister site to LiveScience. "There are 2pi radians in a circle. This means one quarter of a circle corresponds to half of pi. That is, one quarter corresponds to a half. That's crazy. Similarly, three quarters of a circle is three halves of pi. Three quarters corresponds to three halves!" [A Real Pie Chart: America's Favorite Pies]

"Let's now use tau," he continued. "One quarter of a circle is one quarter of tau. One quarter corresponds to one quarter! Isn't that sensible and easy to remember? Similarly, three quarters of a circle is three quarters of tau." Making tau equal to the full angular turn through a circle, he said, is "so easy and would prevent math, physics and engineering students from making silly errors."

A better teaching tool

Aside from preventing errors, as Palais put it in his article, "The opportunity to impress students with a beautiful and natural simplification has turned into an absurd exercise in memorization and dogma."

Indeed, other tau advocates have said they've noticed a significant improvement in the ability of students to learn math, especially geometry and trigonometry where factors of 2pi show up the most, when the students learn with tau rather than pi.

Though 2pi appears much more often in calculations than does pi by itself (in fact, mathematicians often accidentally drop or ad that extra factor of 2 in their calculations), "there is no need for pi to be eradicated," Houston said. "You might say I'm not anti-pi, I'm pro-tau. Hence, anyone could use pi when they had a calculation involving half of tau."

Tau, the 19th letter of the Greek alphabet, was chosen independently as the symbol for 2pi by Michael Hartl, physicist and mathematician and author of "The Tau Manifesto," and Peter Harremoës, a Danish information theorist. In an email, Houston explained their choice: "It looks a bit like pi and is the Greek 't,' so fits well with the idea of turn. (Since tau is used in angles you can talk about one quarter turn and so on.)"

Pi is too ingrained in our culture and our math to succumb to tau overnight, but the movement pushes ever onward. "Change will be incremental," Houston said.

This article was provided by Life's Little Mysteries, a sister site to LiveScience. Follow us on Twitter @llmysteries, then join us on Facebook. Follow Natalie Wolchover on Twitter @nattyover.

Saturday, July 02, 2011

Snaptu: 8 Fascinating Facts You Probably Don't Know About Famous Authors (PHOTOS, VIDEO))

Curiosity about great novelists has inspired me to read dozens of author biographies. I got hooked by the odd things I could discover in those books and on the web about the writers I love. I turned my obsession into this slideshow in which I…

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