Not Just for Profit: Apple CEO Suggests That Climate Change Deniers Should Take Their Money Out of Apple Stock

I don’t usually post political pieces to this blog but it’s more legal than political, anyhow, and it’s a really good article about technology, corporate citizenship, and sustainability.

JONATHAN TURLEY

Submitted by Elaine Magliaro, Weekend Contributor

The National Center for Public Policy Research (NCPPR), a “self-described” conservative think tank based in Washington, D.C., happens to be a shareholder in Apple. NCPPR has not been happy with Apple’s environmental initiatives. According to Chris Taylor (Mashable), Apple has made great improvements “in its use of renewable energy” since Tim Cook took over as CEO. Taylor said, “More than three-quarters of the company’s facilities worldwide, including all of its data centers and its Cupertino HQ, now run on solar, wind, geothermal or hydro power, up from about a quarter under Jobs.” Just last year, Cook hired former EPA head Lisa Jackson “to lead the company’s sustainability efforts.”

In a written statement prior to Apple’s recent annual shareholder meeting, NCPPR’s general counsel Justin Danhof said, “We object to increased government control over company products and operations, and likewise mandatory environmental…

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Have you backed up your data?

The following is from FEMA. Don’t think for a minute that this is only a business concern. Do you do online banking? Pay bills online? How about e-mailing your attorney? Don’t put yourself at risk – invest in a backup drive and consider an online backup system like Carbonite, as well.

Back It Up

Businesses create and manage a large amount of data and electronic information. Some of that data is essential to daily operations and business survival. Vital information can be lost due to hacking, human error or hardware failure resulting in significant business disruption. Would you know what to do if your information technology stopped working? This is when having a plan for data backup and recovery will come in handy. To develop your data backup plan, you should:

• Identify what data to backup;
• Implement hardware and software procedures;
• Schedule and conduct backups; and
• Periodically check data to ensure it has been accurately backed up.

Data backup and recovery is an integral part of the business continuity plan for IT disaster preparedness. Data on network servers, wireless devices, laptop and desktop computers should be backed up along with hard copy records and other information. Tapes, cartridges and large capacity USB drives with integrated data backup software are effective means for business backup.

Taking steps to secure your business’ vital information is also a great way to support the America’s PrepareAthon! campaign to increase community resilience in times of disaster.  Follow @PrepareAthon on Twitter for all things disaster preparedness!

 

How Facebook reveals your friends list even when it’s set to private

Please don’t let this stop you from maintaining your privacy settings. If this is a bug, they should fix it.

Emergency Planning Webinars for Schools and Houses of Worship

Also from FEMA:

The U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Safe and Healthy Students and Federal partners are pleased to announce a series of upcoming webinars designed to provide an in-depth review of the “A Closer Look” section of the Obama Administration’s recently released Guide for Developing High-Quality School Emergency Operations Plans and Guide for Developing High-Quality Emergency Operations Plans for Institutions of Higher Education.

The next available webinars in this series will focus on preparing for, responding to and recovering from an active shooter situation and on implementing Psychological First Aid in school and postsecondary settings.  To register for the upcoming webinars, click here.

Access the PowerPoint slides and review the 90 minute overview presentation from the recent webinar, Guide for Developing High-Quality Emergency Operations Plan for Houses of Worship, held July 25, 2013.  This webinar was presented by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Center for Faith-based & Neighborhood Partnerships, Federal Emergency Management Agency, in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Education and the Readiness and Emergency Management for Schools Technical Assistance Center.

New Release of the VOST Workbook

I’ve upgraded the VOST Workbook to version 4.0. The bug fix in the formula that I had you fix in the last version is now taken care of but I hope you got a grand little spreadsheet formula lesson by following my instructions.

The big addition to the workbook comes at the suggestion of  Jeff Phillips, who liked my general availability calendar that I use for my team but requested that it be included in the workbook.

The worksheet lets you  track team member availability for anticipated length of deployment and can be adjusted by each member for his/her own time zone to fill in that availability. It also lets the team lead look at any given day to see where gaps might exist in coverage.

After importing the calendar into the deployment workbook, I personally prefer to have this calendar in a separate workbook, altogether. If you would like the calendar provided as a separate product, leave a comment and if people want it, I’ll upload it to Google docs, too.

The reference link on the VOST page of this site has been updated to point at the new template version and the link on the cover sheet of the new version has a link to the updated User Guide.

Here are the links to each, separately, however, for your convenience. As is stated on the VOST page, these are set to read-only. Please make a copy for your own use:

• VOST Workbook Template 4.0
• VOST Workbook Template 4.0 User Guide

New FEMA Tools for Disaster Preparedness

From FEMA:

FEMA has released several new tools you can use for disaster preparedness.

The FEMA smartphone app has been updated with a new feature called Disaster Reporter available for Android users. The Disaster Reporter lets users share disaster-related information for events occurring within the United States, allowing citizens, first responders and others to view and contribute information on a publicly accessible map.

Don’t have the FEMA App? Download it for Android, iPhone or Blackberry today!

The 2013 National Preparedness Month toolkit is also now available. It includes suggestions for events and tools and resources to support outreach efforts on a community level.

Stuff in the news 7/23/2013 – New Mexico

Ghost Ranch, Abiqui, NM – Image by M. Reddy-Hjelmfelt http://theredelm.com/

• The pending horse slaughter business now has an added obstacle of disposing of its wastewater. While they seem to have a workaround for that, there’s a lawsuit file that starts Aug 3rd, 2 days before their set to open. Bill Richardson and Robert Redford are purportedly signing onto the suit. Wastewater hurdle for proposed slaughter plant
• Hepatitis A Outbreak Linked to Townsend Farms Berries Now at 151 Sick – including 9 in New Mexico
• In a filing yesterday with the New Mexico Supreme Court, state Attorney General Gary King asked the 5-justice court to end the state’s ban on marriage equality, arguing that it violates the new Mexico Constitution. Read more
• (Dallas/Santa Fe – July 23, 2013) EPA is awarding $350,000 to the New Mexico Environment Department for supplemental brownfields funding. The money goes to a revolving loan fund to help the state fund shovel-ready projects to redevelop contaminated sites. Read more
• This is fun! Great to see tech skills development in students here… A Beginning Robotics Camp for students ages 10 and older will be held in Las Vegas Aug. 6-8. The camp is hosted by the New Mexico Engineering Resource Network, New Mexico State University, College of Engineering. – See more at: http://newscenter.nmsu.edu/9597/beginning-robotics-camp-offered-in-las-vegas/#sthash.Irb37fd1.dpuf
• And, speaking of tech in New Mexico, The University of New Mexico Hospital and Albuquerque-based telemedicine provider Net Medical Xpress have launched a telemedicine effort that will allow UNM doctors to help treat stroke and head trauma patients remotely in 25 rural New Mexico hospitals. Read more
• This is sad – I used to enjoy wandering through Peacecraft on Nob Hill in Albuquerque. Apparently it’s closed and, worse yet, its closure is affecting artisan women in New Mexico. If you’re hooked into the fair trade community and can give them business leads, please do so.

VOST Workbook Template Quickfix for Total Effort Hours

NOTE: This post is now obsolete, as I have released Version 4.0 of the Workbook and the formula has been corrected in that version.

Jeff Phillips noticed on a recent deployment that, somehow, the hours were not calculating properly in the total FTE box. I’m not sure why it doesn’t work that way anymore but I managed to fix it on the fly.

I will be releasing a new version this week, as I have added a staff availability calendar to the template. In the meantime, though, Caz Milligan used the workbook template for EQNZ last night and had the same problem, so here is the updated formula for the Check In/Out sheet, cell H3. Copy this formula, paste into cell H3, and hit Enter/Return on your keyboard and that should fix it. If not, please leave a comment and I’ll see what’s going on:

=(sum(E6:E199))*24

Stuff in the news 7/20/2013 – Technology

• Pew Internet have released a study that determined specific pros and cons of using digital technology in a classroom environment. According to the survey, the majority of middle school and high school educators believe that digital tools increase student collaboration with applications such as Google Docs, and help them share their work through social media platforms…. Read more
• I’m picturing Radar O’Reilly as a cyborg here…  The Cognitive Desktop: From Siri’s Creators, A Predictive Digital Personal Assistant
• Just in case you want to really mitigate your Sharknado risk: SAMS wetsuits make surfers look less tasty
• National Geographic has a fascinating piece up now about how forensic linguistics led to revealing J.K. Rowling as the actual author of The Cuckoo’s Calling. OK, so it’s not TIME magazine publishing about natural language processing but still great to see it being discussed mainstream. read about it here
• Drones – use them only for good.
• Did you sign a petition to stop phone record surveillance? Oh, well. Secret court renews controversial NSA phone data harvest program (Denver Post). John Perry wrote today in IEET that he likens this practice to piracy: “…there’s a way the NSA debate is like the piracy debate. The problem with a file sharer isn’t that he or she copied, but that the copy was done without permission. The NSA can be characterized as doing the same thing: copying data without permission. In both cases, a fundamental quality of digital technology — frictionless, nonrivalrous copying — enables the behavior. In both cases, the authority to grant permission is the key issue.”
• And, to close out today’s SITN for Tech, two interesting things on mapping. The first is a project in London, ON, to map social good endeavors. The mapathon (next Thursday, the 25th) is open to the public.
• The second is a new Coursera online class that actually started on the 17th (for 5 weeks), so you’ll have to play a bit of catch up for credit, I think:  Maps and the Geospatial Revolution The short description reads, “Learn how advances in geospatial technology and analytical methods have changed how we do everything, and discover how to make maps and analyze geographic patterns using the latest tools.” Hat tip Robert Dunne for the course link.

Stuff in the news 6/30/2013 – Wildfires

• In Oregon… Bringing back good old days of logging difficult

“…the U.S. Bureau of Land Management is working on a kinder and gentler approach. Though some people are calling it “Whopper Junior,” the BLM pointedly is not. In a preliminary planning document released this month, the BLM’s state director, Jerome E. Perez, said the new approach will be based on what the public wants, science, the law and on the goals of healthy forests, not board feet of timber.”

• In Colorado…  Oil and gas companies, safety officials discuss presence of active wells in fire danger red zones. More on the South Fork area here:  Burn-ready: Parched Western Slope is combustible and here: Red Cross Disaster Update: Colorado Wildfire Response
• And it looks like it won’t be getting better in the West for a while: “National Weather Service meteorologist John Dumas said cooling Pacific Ocean winds haven’t been pushing far enough inland to offer many Southern Californians overnight relief.” Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2013-06-blistering-sears-western.html#jCp
• Across the US, the US Forest Service is awarding grants for wood fuel reduction initiatives. The intent of the Woody Biomass Utilization Grant program is to reduce woody biomass, while improving the economy at the same time.  Forest Service grants help design biofuel energy projects

• Outside the US, in Singapore, the country known for pretty much clean everything, is suffering e new image problem, due to smog from recent wildfires: Singapore’s clean image sullied by Indonesian smog