John McCain Saddleback Civil Forum August 16, 2008 VIDEO

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) at Saddleback Civil Forum FULL STREAMING VIDEO (running time 51:36) Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) at the Saddleback Civil Forum FULL STREAMING VIDEO (running time 44:04) VIDEO Artist / Source: C-SPAN. Copyright 2008 National Cable Satellite Corporation.

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FULL TEXT TRANSCRIPT: ONLINE NEWSROOM: Rick Warren Broadcast Transcript Service: Saddleback Civil Forum on the Presidency: transcripts provided by www.RickWarreNews.com

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CERTIFIED FINAL TRANSCRIPT in PDF Format The Saddleback Civil Forum on the Presidency

Showdown at Saddleback By William Kristol, New York Times August 18, 2008 Article Excerpt.

While normal people were out having fun Saturday night, I was home in front of the TV. But I wasn't enjoying the Olympics. Your diligent columnist was dutifully watching Barack Obama and John McCain answer the Rev. Rick Warren's questions at Saddleback Church. Virtue is sometimes rewarded. The event was worth watching -- and for me yielded three conclusions.

First, Rick Warren should moderate one of the fall presidential debates.

Warren's queries were simple but probing. He was fair to both candidates, his manner was relaxed but serious, and he neither went for "gotcha" questions nor pulled his punches. And his procedure of asking virtually identical questions to each candidate during his turn on stage paid off. It allowed us to see the two giving revealingly different answers to the same question.

So, I say, with all due respect to Jim Lehrer, Tom Brokaw and Bob Schieffer -- the somewhat nondiverse group selected by the debates commission as the three presidential debate moderators -- one of them should step aside for Warren.

Second, it was McCain's night. Click here to read the entire article.

Saddleback: Straight Talk Express Meets the Great Conversationalist. By David Davenport, San Francisco Chronicle. August 18, 2008, Article Excerpts:

Lake Forest, Orange County -- When President Bill Clinton played his saxophone on the late-night "Arsenio Hall Show" in 1992, it was obvious that presidential campaigns had changed. That evolution continued Saturday night when presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain made their first joint appearance of the 2008 campaign. This time, it was not in a televised debate moderated by reporters in a university auditorium, but at an evangelical church conducted over a cup of coffee with its pastor.

The Saddleback Civil Forum on the Presidency, moderated by mega-church pastor and best-selling author Rick Warren, turned out to be more interesting and politically important than one might have expected, as the presumptive nominees discussed heartland issues of leadership, worldview, domestic policy and America's place in the world. Going in, the significance of the event seemed to be its church setting and audience of 2,200 church members, and the increasingly important evangelical Christian voter. From what I saw there, it was that and more. Click here to read the entire article.

Tags: John McCain and Saddleback Civil Forum

NCAR installs 76-teraflop supercomputer for critical research on climate change, severe weather

Caption: Tom Bettge, Credit: Photo by Carlye Calvin, UCAR. Usage Restrictions: *News media reproduction to illustrate this story and nonprofit use permitted with proper attribution as provided above and acceptance of UCAR's terms of use.

BOULDER--The National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) has taken delivery of a new IBM supercomputer that will advance research into severe weather and the future of Earth's climate. The supercomputer, known as a Power 575 Hydro-Cluster, is the first in a highly energy-efficient class of machines to be shipped anywhere in the world. Scientists at NCAR and across the country will use the new system to accelerate research into climate change, including future patterns of precipitation and drought around the world,

changes to agriculture and growing seasons, and the complex influence of global warming on hurricanes. Researchers also will use it to improve weather forecasting models so society can better anticipate where and when dangerous storms may strike.

Named "bluefire," the new supercomputer has a peak speed of more than 76 teraflops (76 trillion floating-point operations per second). When fully operational, it is expected to rank among the 25 most powerful supercomputers in the world and will more than triple NCAR's sustained computing capacity.

"Bluefire is on the leading edge of high-performance computing technology," says Tom Bettge, director of operations and services for NCAR's Computational and Information Systems Laboratory. "Increasingly fast machines are vital to research into such areas as climate change and the formation of hurricanes and other severe storms. Scientists will be able to conduct breakthrough calculations, study vital problems at much higher resolution and complexity, and get results more quickly than before."

Researchers will rely on bluefire to generate the climate simulations necessary for the next report on global warming by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which conducts detailed assessments under the auspices of the United Nations. The IPCC was a recipient of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.

"NCAR has a well-deserved reputation for excellence in deploying supercomputing resources to address really difficult challenges," says Dave Turek, vice president of deep computing at IBM. "Bluefire will substantially expand the organization's ability to investigate climate change, severe weather events, and other important subjects."

-----Bluefire by the numbers-----

Bluefire is the second phase of a system called the Integrated Computing Environment for Scientific Simulation (ICESS) at NCAR. After undergoing acceptance testing, it will begin full-scale operations in August. Bluefire, which replaces three supercomputers with an aggregate peak speed of 20 teraflops, will provide supercomputing support for researchers at NCAR and other organizations through 2011.

Caption: Bluefire. Credit: Photo by Carlye Calvin, ©UCAR. Usage Restrictions: *News media reproduction to illustrate this story and nonprofit use permitted with proper attribution as provided above and acceptance of UCAR's terms of use.

An IBM Power 575 supercomputer, bluefire houses the new POWER6 microprocessor, which has a clock speed of 4.7 gigahertz. The system consists of 4,064 processors, 12 terabytes of memory, and 150 terabytes of FAStT DS4800 disk storage.

Bluefire relies on a unique, water-based cooling system that is 33 percent more energy efficient than traditional air-cooled systems. Heat is removed from the electronics by water-chilled copper plates mounted in direct contact with each POWER6 microprocessor chip. As a result of this water-cooled system and POWER6 efficiencies, bluefire is three times more energy efficient per rack than its predecessor.

"We're especially pleased that bluefire provides dramatically increased performance with much greater energy efficiency," Bettge says. ###

The University Corporation for Atmospheric Research manages the National Center for Atmospheric Research under primary sponsorship by the National Science Foundation (NSF). Opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this document are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation, NASA, or other funding agencies.

Contact: David Hosansky hosansky@ucar.edu 303-497-8611, Rachael Drummond rachaeld@ucar.edu 303-497-8604. WEB: National Center for Atmospheric Research/University Corporation for Atmospheric Research

Additional contacts:

• Tom Bettge, NCAR Computational and Information Systems Laboratory 303-497-1371 bettge@ucar.edu
• Marijke Unger, NCAR Computational and Information Systems Laboratory 303-497-1285 marijke@ucar.edu
• John Buscemi, IBM Public Relations 203-252-9377 jbuscemi@us.ibm.com

On the Web:

• About bluefire: cisl.ucar.edu/computers/bluefire
• Resources for journalists: ucar.edu/news/journalists