no-calorie beverages are declining

The goal is ambitious. The challenges are real.

smaller-portion sizes

The problem is that diet sodas aren't necessarily an improvement. Studies on the effect of diet soft drinks are mixed, but many suggest — surprisingly — that they are no better for reducing obesity than sugary drinks and are, in some ways, worse.

The new campaign will allow them to argue they are good corporate citizens, even as they continue to fight these battles.

The move is, first and foremost, a public relations gesture.

Then, for no reason I could discern, the birds stopped and lifted off, with the sound a single wingbeat – silence and then a rush of air with a dampened pop, as though an enormous thick quilt snapped once in the wind.

there were thousands of starlings in the bare oaks lining the road

I hold with the beauty; or rather, I am held by the beauty, without forgetting the poison.

If you were quiet, if your hands were empty, if you moved slowly, you could leave the car and steal to within a few paces of a grazing deer, close enough to see the delicate lips, the twitching nostrils, the glossy, fathomless eyes.

I learned to recognize buckeyes and beeches, sugar maples and shagbark hickories, wild cherries, walnuts, and dozens of other trees while tramping through the Ohio woods with my father.

These hands have never done hard physical work, but they are not plump, or soft, or damp and cool. Nor are their nails too carefully clipped or too carefully buffed and polished. They are firm, solid, masculine hands, and other men feel good about shaking them. They have a kind of brotherly warmth and when they pinch the selvage of the drapery fabric and work it just a little between thumb and finger they do it with power and confidence.

since I entered my fifties I have begun to see my father's hands out at the ends of my arms.

More and more frequently since I entered my fifties I have begun to see my father's hands out at the ends of my arms.

Mymotherremembersthecounter’slongpolishedseep,itsshiningface.Shetwirledonthestools.Dreamyfans.Widesummerafternoons.Clinkofnickelsinanybody’shand.Hesoldmilkshakes,cherrycokes,oldfashionedsandwiches.Whatdidanoldfashionedsandwichlooklike?Darkwoodenshelves.Silverspigotsonchocolatedispensers.

hetwirledonthestools.Dreamyfans.Widesummerafternoons.Clinkofnickelsinanybody’shand

remembersthecounter’slongpolishedseep,itsshiningface.

Why did Carol Bartz, with such an excellent track record as C.E.O. of Autodesk, fail as C.E.O at Yahoo!? It is because she was an outsider? Was it a strategic issue? A personality issue? Maybe a timing issue? Or: maybe, Carol Bartz’s failure had nothing to do with Carol Bartz. Maybe Yahoo! was a just a company being blown sideways in a tech tornado where display ads were cratering and Google was killing everybody else in search. Bartz’s successors didn’t have a very good time either. Yahoo! was at one point the world’s most popular web destination, with a market cap of more than $110 billion. Last year, it was sold, to Verizon, for four-and-a-half billion dollars. Maybe we should be cautious about ascribing too much blame, or credit, to a given C.E.O. There are a lot of factors to consider in any firm’s success or failure. And, as we’ve learned today, there’s a huge variance in the backgrounds and styles and skills of different C.E.O.’s. There seems to be no secret sauce whatsoever. Unless maybe it’s luck? That said, we also learned that when it’s time to pick a C.E.O., the numbers do seem to suggest that the best bet is a stable and experienced insider.

Welch spent his whole 40-year career with G.E., the last 20 as its C.E.O.

You may recognize that voice.

Of the C.E.O.’s we’ve been interviewing, four of them got an M.B.A. from an elite school. Two have law degrees; one has a Ph.D. On the other end of the spectrum — one is a college dropout and one is a high-school dropout.

We’ve been spending our time lately interviewing the C.E.O.’s of companies like Microsoft and PepsiCo and Facebook. You’d think there’d be some sort of a template for what makes a successful C.E.O., some set of common characteristics. But, as Nicholas Bloom and others have told us, the data tell a different story. It’s very hard to pin down just what produces, or predicts, or even indicates a good C.E.O. So today on Freakonomics Radio, in the absence of great statistical evidence, we’ll go the anthropological route and ask the question: how do you become a C.E.O.? We’ll track our C.E.O.’s from their beginnings through their ascensions — including how they almost didn’t make it.

BLOOM: You look at the data, and there’s 10 different recipes for success.

Town of Greece ruling, her assessment was on target. Two of the three judges found no constitutional problem with a board of commissioners in North Carolina whose five members personally rise to recite explicitly Christian prayers at their bi-monthly meetings. Somehow, elected officials asking citizens to join them in prayers recognising the Virgin Birth and identifying a life of devotion to Jesus Christ as the “only...way to salvation” is to be taken as something other than a government act “respecting an establishment of religion”. The plaintiffs in this case are likely to ask the entire Fourth Circuit bench to hear the case again. Win or lose, the issue is likely to land at the Supreme Court. With an eight-member court split 4-4 on the question, the eventual ninth justice is likely to determine whether the latest hole in the wall separating church from state will be mended—or enlarged.

“THE wall between state and church”, Justice Hugo Black wrote in Everson v Board of Education, a case from 1947, “must be kept high and impregnable”. Justice Black was quoting a line Thomas Jefferson used in 1802 to reassure a group of Baptists that, as president, he would protect the religious liberty of minority sects. The well-pedigreed wall metaphor (Jefferson had borrowed it from Roger Williams, a 17th-century Puritan theologian) is centuries old, but it is becoming less and less apt as a description of the unique relationship between America’s religions and its state institutions.

Marsh v Chambers ruling in 1983, constitutional. But in 2014, the Supreme Court significantly narrowed the scope of the establishment clause in Town of Greece v Galloway, a case asking whether a town board may open its monthly meetings with sectarian prayers delivered by local clergy. By a 5-4 vote, the court decided that the tradition passed constitutional muster. As long as the prayers do not “denigrate” attendees, threaten them with “damnation” or attempt to “proselytise” the audience, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote, no harm is done. What of the evidence that the plaintiffs (Jewish and atheist residents of the town) saw themselves treated as “second-class citizens” and felt coerced to join in the supplications? Occasional slights “do not despoil a practice that on the whole reflects and embraces our tradition”, Justice Kennedy maintained.

American courts have resisted putting the brakes on purely ceremonial religious references in government contexts. “In God We Trust” is staying put; nor will the judiciary admonish presidents for asking God to bless America.

the Supreme Court has issued a gaggle of rulings on the meaning of the First Amendment’s “establishment clause”.

Unlike private schools, public school districts are bound by the Constitution, which forces them into a delicate balance.

Board members and school administrators are required to allow personal acts of religious faith but to simultaneously avoid any appearance that religion (or any particular religion) enjoys special status.

The Lemon test 

While the music originates from church, the choir is learning principles of performance, vocal control, and other artistic concepts by participating. The words of faith are viewed as secondary.

Wrong: Teaching sacred documents with devotion or as singular truth. It crosses the line when a teacher or school district portrays one religion or religion in general as the preferred belief.

The Court in its 1981 decision Thomas v. Review Board further expressed its reluctance to protect philosophical values. The Indiana Supreme Court had ruled that a decision by a Jehovah’s Witness to quit his job after he was transferred to a weapons-making facility was a “personal philosophical choice rather than a religious choice” and did not “rise to the level of a first amendment claim.”

the Court stated that the establishment clause prevents government from aiding “those religions based on a belief in the existence of God as against those religions founded on different beliefs.” In a footnote, the Court clarified that this principle extended to “religions in this country which do not teach what would generally be considered a belief in the existence of God … Buddhism, Taoism, Ethical Culture, Secular Humanism and others.”

Welsh v. United States represented another conscientious-objector case under the same statute. The Court in this 1970 decision went one step further and essentially merged religion with deeply and sincerely held moral and ethical beliefs. The Court suggested individuals could be denied exemption only if “those beliefs are not deeply held and those whose objection to war does not rest at all upon moral, ethical, or religious principle but instead rests solely upon consideration of policy, pragmatism, or expediency.”

“[o]nly beliefs rooted in religion are given special protection to the exercise of religion.” The Court found the worker’s actions to be motivated by his religious beliefs.

Has the U.S. Supreme Court defined “religion?”

We sat down, closed the door. And we got into a discussion of, he wanted me to know where he was coming from. And so he reached around off of his bookshelf and pulled a Bible off his bookshelf. And he said, I believe everything in this Bible. Do you believe everything in this Bible?

I’m not greedy. I have love, blue skies, rainbows and Hallmark cards, and that has to be enough. It has to be enough, but it’s everything in the world and everything in the world is plenty for me. It seems just rude to beg the invisible for more. Just the love of my family that raised me and the family I’m raising now is enough that I don’t need heaven. I won the huge genetic lottery and I get joy every day.

a nuclear explosion set off in anger

I will see things as inconceivable to me today as a moon shot was to my grandfather when he was 16, or the Internet to my father when he was 16.

a horrible worldwide depression

I don’t travel in circles where people say, “I have faith, I believe this in my heart and nothing you can say or do can shake my faith.”

Believing there is no God means the suffering I’ve seen in my family, and indeed all the suffering in the world, isn’t caused by an omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent force that isn’t bothered to help or is just testing us, but rather something we all may be able to help others with in the future

I believe that there is no God.

Kick the can. Unfair to the can.

Dodgeball is one of the few times in life when you get to letout your aggressions

The Weak Shall Inherit the Gym

Tag. Referring to any child as it is demeaning and hurtful.Instead of the child hollering, "You're it!" we recommend,"You're special!"Red Rover. Inappropriate labeling of children as animals. Also,the use of the word red evokes Communist undertones.Sardines. Unfairly leaves one child alone at the end as theloser--a term psychologists have deemed unacceptable.Hide-and-seek. No child need hide or be sought. The modern childruns free in search of himself.Baseball. Involves wrong-headed notions of stealing, errors andgruesome hit-and-run. Players should always be safe, never out.Hopscotch. Sounds vaguely alcoholic, not to mention demeaning toour friends of Scottish ancestry.Marbles. Winning others' marbles is overly capitalistic.Marco Polo. Mocks the blind.Capture the flag. Mimics war.Kick the can. Unfair to the can.

Personally, Iwish all these people would go suck their Birkenstocks.

The Water Cycle and Climate Change

In parts of the Northern Hemisphere, an earlier arrival of spring-like conditions is leading to earlier peaks in snowmelt and resulting river flows. As a consequence, seasons with the highest water demand, typically summer and fall, are being impacted by a reduced availability of fresh water.

The Water Cycle and Climate Change

The Colorado River system is a major source of water supply for the Southwest. It supplies water for 33 million people in the cities of Los Angeles, Phoenix, Las Vegas, and Denver. Recent droughts, reductions in winter precipitation and snow pack, and warmer, drier springs have caused water supplies in Colorado River reservoirs to decrease. Expected climate change impacts on Colorado River water supply include: Increased year-to-year changes in water storage in reservoirs are possible, even under current conditions. Decreased hydropower. For every 1% decrease in streamflow in the Colorado River Basin, there is a 3% decrease in hydroelectric power generation for the region. Reductions in river discharge and runoff from snowmelt. Annual snowmelt runoff could also shift to earlier in the spring.

Changes in the amount of rain falling during storms provide evidence that the water cycle is already changing. Over the past 50 years, the amount of rain falling during very heavy precipitation events has increased for most of the United States.  This trend has been greatest in the Northeast, Midwest, and upper Great Plains, where the amount of rain falling during the most intense 1% of storms has increased more than 30%.[1]  Warming winter temperatures cause more precipitation to fall as rain rather than snow. Furthermore, rising temperatures cause snow to begin melting earlier in the year. This alters the timing of streamflow in rivers that have their sources in mountainous areas.[1]

The water cycle (shown in the following figure) is a delicate balance of precipitation, evaporation, and all of the steps in between. Warmer temperatures increase the rate of evaporation of water into the atmosphere, in effect increasing the atmosphere's capacity to "hold" water.[1] Increased evaporation may dry out some areas and fall as excess precipitation on other areas.

Click the image to view a larger version. Water resources are important to both society and ecosystems. We depend on a reliable, clean supply of drinking water to sustain our health. We also need water for agriculture, energy production, navigation, recreation, and manufacturing.

Water plays a basic role in the climate system through the hydrologic cycle, but water is intimately related to climate in other ways as well. It is obvious, from a water resource perspective, how the climate of a region to a large extent determines the water supply in that region based on the precipitation available and on the evaporation loss. Perhaps less obvious is the role of water in climate. Large water bodies, such as the oceans and the Great Lakes, have a moderating effect on the local climate because they act as a large source and sink for heat. Regions near these water bodies generally have milder winters and cooler summers than would be the case if the nearby water body did not exist.The evaporation of water into the atmosphere requires an enormous amount of energy, which ultimately comes from the sun. The sun's heat is trapped in the earth's atmosphere by greenhouse gases, the most plentiful of which by far is water vapour. When water vapour in the atmosphere condenses to precipitation, this energy is released into the atmosphere. Fresh water can mediate climate change to some degree because it is stored on the landscape as lakes, snow covers, glaciers, wetlands and rivers, and is a store of latent energy. Thus water acts as an energy transfer and storage medium for the climate system.The water cycle is also a key process upon which other cycles operate. For example one needs to properly understand the water cycle in order to address many of the chemical cycles in the atmosphere.

Heating of the ocean water by the sun is the key process that keeps the hydrologic cycle in motion. Water evaporates, then falls as precipitation in the form of rain, hail, snow, sleet, drizzle or fog. On its way to Earth some precipitation may evaporate or, when it falls over land, be intercepted by vegetation before reaching the ground. The cycle continues in three different ways:Evaporation/transpiration – On average, as much as 40 percent of precipitation in Canada is evaporated or transpired.Percolation into the ground – Water moves downward through cracks and pores in soil and rocks to the water table. Water can move back up by capillary action or it can move vertically or horizontally under the earth's surface until it re-enters a surface water system.Surface runoff – Water runs overland into nearby streams and lakes; the steeper the land and the less porous the soil, the greater the runoff. Overland flow is particularly visible in urban areas. Rivers join each other and eventually form one major river that carries all of the sub-basins' runoff into the ocean.Although the hydrologic cycle balances what goes up with what comes down, one phase of the cycle is "frozen" in the colder regions during the winter season. During the Canadian winter, for example, most of the precipitation is simply stored as snow or ice on the ground. Later, during the spring melt, huge quantities of water are released quickly, which results in heavy spring runoff and flooding.

The Hydrologic CycleIn this Section:IntroductionEvaporationTranspirationCondensationPrecipitationRunoffPercolationGroundwaterWater tableThe Sun-Powered CycleThe Water-Climate RelationshipIntroductionFrom the beginning of time when water first appeared, it has been constant in quantity and continuously in motion. Little has been added or lost over the years. The same water molecules have been transferred time and time again from the oceans and the land surface into the atmosphere by evaporation, dropped on the land as precipitation, and transferred back to the sea by rivers and groundwater. This endless circulation is known as the "hydrologic cycle".The illustration shows the hydrologic cycle in which water leaves the atmosphere and falls to earth as precipitation where it enters surface waters or percolates into the water table and groundwater and eventually is taken back into the atmosphere by transpiration and evaporation to begin the cycle again.EvaporationAs water is heated by the sun, surface molecules become sufficiently energized to break free of the attractive force binding them together, and then evaporate and rise as invisible vapour in the atmosphere.TranspirationWater vapour is also emitted from plant leaves by a process called transpiration. Every day an actively growing plant transpires 5 to 10 times as much water as it can hold at once.CondensationAs water vapour rises, it cools and eventually condenses, usually on tiny particles of dust in the air. When it condenses it becomes a liquid again or turns directly into a solid (ice, hail or snow). These water particles then collect and form clouds.PrecipitationPrecipitation in the form of rain, snow and hail comes from clouds. Clouds move around the world, propelled by air currents. For instance, when they rise over mountain ranges, they cool, becoming so saturated with water that water begins to fall as rain, snow or hail, depending on the temperature of the surrounding air.RunoffExcessive rain or snowmelt can produce overland flow to creeks and ditches. Runoff is visible flow of water in rivers, creeks and lakes as the water stored in the basin drains out.PercolationSome of the precipitation and snow melt moves downwards, percolates or infiltrates through cracks, joints and pores in soil and rocks until it reaches the water table where it becomes groundwater.GroundwaterSubterranean water is held in cracks and pore spaces. Depending on the geology, the groundwater can flow to support streams. It can also be tapped by wells. Some groundwater is very old and may have been there for thousands of years.

From the beginning of time when water first appeared, it has been constant in quantity and continuously in motion. Little has been added or lost over the years. The same water molecules have been transferred time and time again from the oceans and the land surface into the atmosphere by evaporation, dropped on the land as precipitation, and transferred back to the sea by rivers and groundwater. This endless circulation is known as the "hydrologic cycle".

Notice how of the world's total water supply of about 332.5 million cubic miles of water, over 96 percent is saline. And, of the total freshwater, over 68 percent is locked up in ice and glaciers. Another 30 percent of freshwater is in the ground. Fresh surface-water sources, such as rivers and lakes, only constitute about 22,300 cubic miles (93,100 cubic kilometers), which is about 1/150th of one percent of total water. Yet, rivers and lakes are the sources of most of the water people use everyday.

For a detailed explanation of where Earth's water is, look at the data table below. Notice how of the world's total water supply of about 333 million cubic miles (1,386 million cubic kilometers) of water, over 96 percent is saline. And, of the total freshwater, over 68 percent is locked up in ice and glaciers. Another 30 percent of freshwater is in the ground. Thus, rivers and lakes that supply surface water for human uses only constitute about 22,300 cubic miles (93,100 cubic kilometers), which is about 0.007 percent of total water, yet rivers are the source of most of the water people use.

Oceans, Seas, & Bays321,000,0001,338,000,000--96.5 Ice caps, Glaciers, & Permanent Snow5,773,00024,064,00068.71.74 Groundwater5,614,00023,400,000--1.69     Fresh2,526,00010,530,00030.1  0.76     Saline3,088,00012,870,000--  0.93 Soil Moisture3,95916,5000.050.001 Ground Ice & Permafrost71,970300,0000.860.022 Lakes42,320176,400--0.013     Fresh21,83091,0000.260.007     Saline20,49085,400--0.006 Atmosphere3,09512,9000.040.001 Swamp Water2,75211,4700.030.0008 Rivers5092,1200.0060.0002 Biological Water269

Earth's water is always in movement, and the natural water cycle, also known as the hydrologic cycle, describes the continuous movement of water on, above, and below the surface of the Earth. Water is always changing states between liquid, vapor, and ice, with these processes happening in the blink of an eye and over millions of years.

The Google Wonder Wheel

Forums-only search

Wonder Wheel

How many times have you searched for a term and had the search engine return something totally unexpected?

Water is essential to life on Earth. In its three phases (liquid, gaseous, and frozen), water ties together the major parts of the Earth/climate system — air, clouds, ocean, lakes, vegetation, snowpack, and glaciersoffsite link. It influences the intensity of climate variability and change. It is the key part of extreme events such as drought and floods. Its abundance and timely delivery are critical for meeting the needs of society and ecosystems. Human uses of Earth's water include drinking water, industrial application, irrigated agriculture, hydropower, waste disposal, and recreation. It is important that water sources for these uses, and for ecosystem health, are protected. In many areas water supplies are being stressed because of population growth, pollution, and development. These stresses have been made worse by climate variations and changes that affect the hydrologic cycle.

The paths and influences of water through Earth’s ecosystems are extremely complex and are not completely understood. In fact, the water cycle is one of 6 Grand Science Challenges identified in NOAA’s 20 year plan. As part of this plan NOAA is striving to "Improve understanding of the water cycle at global to local scales to improve our ability to forecast weather, climate, water resources and ecosystem health."