1. Followups

Bird’s Eye: In a week when it became clear that Keystone wouldn’t even supply jobs, there was some light at the end of the pipeline, as Obama effectively killed the it (at least as an election issue.) Malcolm Gladwell explores the particular genius of Steve Jobs, and reviews Isaacson’s bio en route. A simple map of the countries who voted for or against Palestinian admission to UNESCO is very revealing: click and look. And two revelations about Fukushima, one expected, one revelatory. Expected: they lied about how much radiation was released; it was twice as much as they said. News: At least one of the plants was already emitting radiation after the earthquake, but before the tsunami hit.

*  Keystone Rejected. We Won. You Won. 

A few minutes ago the President sent the pipeline back to the State Department for a thorough re-review, which most analysts are saying will effectively kill the project. The president explicitly noted climate change, along with the pipeline route, as one of the factors that a new review would need to assess. There’s no way, with an honest review, that a pipeline that helps speed the tapping of the world’s second-largest pool of carbon can pass environmental muster. And he has made clear that the environmental assessment won’t be carried out by cronies of the pipeline company — that it will be an expert and independent assessment. 

* THE TWEAKER: The real genius of Steve Jobs.by Malcolm Gladwell, The New Yorker

Not long after Steve Jobs got married, in 1991, he moved with his wife to a nineteen-thirties, Cotswolds-style house in old Palo Alto. Jobs always found it difficult to furnish the places where he lived. His previous house had only a mattress, a table, and chairs. He needed things to be perfect, and it took time to figure out what perfect was. This time, he had a wife and family in tow, but it made little difference. “We spoke about furniture in theory for eight years,” his wife, Laurene Powell, tells Walter Isaacson, in “Steve Jobs,” Isaacson’s enthralling new biography of the Apple founder. “We spent a lot of time asking ourselves, ‘What is the purpose of a sofa?’ ”

It was the choice of a washing machine, however, that proved most vexing. European washing machines, Jobs discovered, used less detergent and less water than their American counterparts, and were easier on the clothes. But they took twice as long to complete a washing cycle. What should the family do? As Jobs explained, “We spent some time in our family talking about what’s the trade-off we want to make. We ended up talking a lot about design, but also about the values of our family. Did we care most about getting our wash done in an hour versus an hour and a half? Or did we care most about our clothes feeling really soft and lasting longer? Did we care about using a quarter of the water? We spent about two weeks talking about this every night at the dinner table.”

*Interesting infographic on the recent UNESCO vote Mondoweiss

red state blue state: who voted for and against Palestine at UNESCO

* Fukushima Released ‘Twice As Much’ Radioactive Material As First Thought  The Guardian

(Editor’s note: Gee, the plant owners lied. Who would have expected that?)

The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant may have released twice as much radiation into the atmosphere as previously estimated, according to a study that contradicts official explanations of the accident. In a report published online by the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, experts from Europe and the US estimated that the quantity of the radioactive isotope caesium-137 released at the height of the crisis was equivalent to 42% of that from Chernobyl. Significantly, the report says the plant, 150 miles north of Tokyo, may have started releasing radiation between being hit by a magnitude-9 earthquake on 11 March and the arrival of a tsunami about 45 minutes later.