Green Flash

This is a beta release. The library may be changed significantly. Comments are welcome. Facts * Enables piping infinite streams through shell pipelines in Python * Represents a shell command as an ordinary function Iterable -> Iterable * Allows mixing shell commands and Python functions in a single pipeline * Uses standard interprocessing modules subprocess, threading * Allows doing things marked as red warning boxes at the subprocess help page * 0.2 KLOC, tests included - Green Flash

Before he became Pope Pius, Cardinal Pacelli drafted the papal encyclical condemning Nazi racism and had it read from every pulpit. The Vatican used its assets to ransom Jews from the Nazis, ran an elaborate escape route and hid Jewish families in Castel Gondolfo. All this is confirmed by Jewish experts such as the B’rith’s Joseph Lichten. The World Jewish Congress donated a great deal of money to the Vatican in gratitude and in 1945 Rabbi Herzog of Jerusalem thanked Pope Pius “for his lifesaving efforts on behalf of the Jews during the occupation of Italy.” When the Pope died in 1958 Golda Meir, then Israeli Foreign Minister, delivered a eulogy at the United Nations praising the man for his work on behalf of her people. - Green Flash

Why does It’s a Wonderful Life now only air twice during the holidays — and only on NBC? Growing up in the 1980s, I saw It’s a Wonderful Life several times each year. It was a staple of hundreds of networks. It was on the Family Channel, on the local independent TV station, and on innumerable other venues. The great mystery revolves around our nation’s copyright laws, established in the copyright clause of the Constitution. Article 1, Section 8, Clause 8 explains the purpose of the copyright power given to Congress: To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries. The Copyright Clause recognizes two basic facts. First, there is the concept that many people who have pirated the latest music and movies, as well as those who complain about pharmaceutical companies making big profits off new discoveries, ignore. If you want new music and advances in science, pe - Green Flash

After what seemed like an endless parade of media stories highlighting the early “lottery winners” in the App Store, the inevitable backlash is now in motion. People are now starting to see the App Store as more of a game of craps than a gold rush. While craps is probably closer to the truth, you can significantly swing your chances with some smart plays based on knowledge of the system, and a dollop of brute force. - Green Flash

"Best films of the decade" is such a grand concept it seems to place an undue amount of gravity on the process: this ten-spot had better be weighty indeed, right? A certain heaviosity required, no? But great movies are about lightness, too, so I feel fine about including films that wonderfully balanced dark and light, seriousness and humor, gravity and lift. Here are ten best of the decade 2000-2009, until somebody asks me again tomorrow. - Green Flash

The White House released an Executive Order "Amending Executive Order 12425." It grants INTERPOL (International Criminal Police Organization) a new level of full diplomatic immunity afforded to foreign embassies and select other "International Organizations" as set forth in the United States International Organizations Immunities Act of 1945. By removing language from President Reagan's 1983 Executive Order 12425, this international law enforcement body now operates - now operates - on American soil beyond the reach of our own top law enforcement arm, the FBI, and is immune from Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) requests - Green Flash

Actually, since Speth was then serving as the chairman of Carter's Presidential Council on Environmental Quality, it's likely that Speth had a hand in the president's final decision. It’s also worth noting that Carter stopped the development of the nuclear fuel recycling program, which meant that thousands of tons of highly radioactive waste had to be stored rather than reused. Thus began the decades-long quest to find a long term (i.e, thousands of years) nuclear waste repository. More recently, President Barack Obama cut funding for the development of the Yucca Mountain storage facility in Nevada. There are no alternatives currently being considered. - Green Flash

Men who look upon themselves as born to reign, and others to obey, soon grow insolent; selected from the rest of mankind their minds are early poisoned by importance; and the world they act in differs so materially from the world at large, that they have but little opportunity of knowing its true interests, and when they succeed to the government are frequently the most ignorant and unfit of any throughout the dominions. - Green Flash

Copenhagen was a disaster. That much is agreed. But the truth about what actually happened is in danger of being lost amid the spin and inevitable mutual recriminations. The truth is this: China wrecked the talks, intentionally humiliated Barack Obama, and insisted on an awful "deal" so western leaders would walk away carrying the blame. How do I know this? Because I was in the room and saw it happen. China's strategy was simple: block the open negotiations for two weeks, and then ensure that the closed-door deal made it look as if the west had failed the world's poor once again. And sure enough, the aid agencies, civil society movements and environmental groups all took the bait. The failure was "the inevitable result of rich countries refusing adequately and fairly to shoulder their overwhelming responsibility", said Christian Aid. "Rich countries have bullied developing nations," fumed Friends of the Earth International. - Green Flash

If you program for fun or profit, chances are that you know C, C++, Java, PHP, Perl, Python or Ruby. These programming languages are all widely known, and, to a different degree, used in commercial applications. At least some of them can safely be considered mainstream, even if that word has become so overused and misused that has almost lost its original meaning, if it ever had one. - Green Flash

In the last post I beat you to death about ditching your business plan but failed to provide an alternative. Okay okay, "Planning == Bad," but the supposed benefits of planning are still important: designing for profitability, understanding your customers and competitors, focusing your attention, deciding what's worth doing next, changing directions, and ensuring the founders agree on important issues. - Green Flash

. The research arm of US armed forces, DARPA, has long been interested in extending that golden window of opportunity to five or six hours, enough time to medevac someone from a remote location to a hospital. Earlier in December, DARPA announced that the Texas A&M Institute for Preclinical Studies (TIPS) would be receiving $9.9 million in funding to determine if previously successful suspended animation programs for rodents could work with pigs. According to Wired, the 15 person team lead by Dr. Matthew Miller hopes to have positive results in just 18 months. That sort of quick paced research could soon pave the way to preserve trauma victims the world over as they make their way to help. - Green Flash

Google Analytics is a powerful web analytics solution used by thousands of web sites. Like most Google products it’s free for most users. Earlier I had toyed with the idea of adding a small UIWebView to each screen in an iPhone app to make use of Google Analytics. Since that would have been a kludge, I was happy to see that Google has introduced a native iPhone library that interfaces with Google Analytics. - Green Flash

Mission: Second Sight ® Medical Products, Inc., located in Sylmar, California, was founded in 1998 to create a retinal prosthesis to provide sight to patients blinded from outer retinal degenerations, such as Retinitis Pigmentosa. Through dedication and innovation, Second Sight's mission is to develop, manufacture and market implantable visual prosthetics to enable blind individuals to achieve greater independence. Device: The device consists of a tiny camera and transmitter mounted in eyeglasses, an implanted receiver, and an electrode-studded array that is secured to the retina with a microtack the width of a human hair. A wireless microprocessor and battery pack worn on the belt powers the entire device - Green Flash

Mrs. Feinstein heads the Senate subcommittee that oversees the budget of the Interior Department, giving her substantial clout over that agency, which manages the government’s landholdings. Her intervention in the Mojave means it will be more difficult for California utilities to achieve a goal, set by the state, of obtaining a third of their electricity from renewable sources by 2020; projects in the monument area could have supplied a substantial portion of that power. “This is arguably the best solar land in the world, and Senator Feinstein shouldn’t be allowed to take this land off the table without a proper and scientific environmental review,” said Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the environmentalist and a partner with a venture capital firm that invested in a solar developer called BrightSource Energy. In September, BrightSource canceled a large project in the monument area. - Green Flash

The user review URL shown here returns the first page of the most recent (sortOrdering=2) reviews. You can retrieve those reviews directly from the Terminal command-line. To talk to iTunes from curl, spoof the user agent to pretend to be iTunes and set your store front to one of the legal values. Here, I set the store by passing it as a header field using curl's -H switch. - Green Flash

The EPA didn't condescend to discuss the substance of its outside critics' comments. To insiders Carlin and Davidson, the response amounted to, "Shut up, if you know what's good for you." Carlin and Davidson wanted to submit their analysis as part of the EPA's public comment process in March. Their boss, Al McGartland, head of the NCEE, said no, telling Carlin and Davidson by email "please do not have any direct communication with anyone outside NCEE on endangerment. There should be no meetings, emails, written statements, phone calls, etc." A few days later McGartland told Carlin that he would not submit Carlin's analysis to the EPA public comment process: "The time for such discussion of fundamental issues has passed for this round. The administrator and the administration has decided to move forward on endangerment, and your comments do not help the legal or policy case for this decision. .  .  . and that would be a very negative impact on our office." - Green Flash

Ben Santer of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory complained that the Royal Meteorological Society (RMS) was now requiring authors to provide actual copies of the actual data that was used in published papers. He wrote to Phil Jones on March 19, 2009, that "If the RMS is going to require authors to make ALL data available—raw data PLUS results from all intermediate calculations—I will not submit any further papers to RMS journals." Messrs. Jones and Santer were Ph.D. students of Mr. Wigley. Mr. Santer is the same fellow who, in an email to Phil Jones on Oct. 9, 2009, wrote that he was "very tempted" to "beat the crap" out of me at a The result of all this is that our refereed literature has been inestimably damaged, and reputations have been trashed. Mr. Wigley repeatedly tells news reporters not to listen to "skeptics" because they didn't publish enough in the peer-reviewed literature—even as he and his friends sought to make it difficult or impossible to do so. - Green Flash