August 2011
this ain't livin': A Day Trip to Mytilene →
He slumped himself down at the roadside with the rest of us and stared moodily at the sacks in the back while we waited for someone else to come along, which of course no one did, because any self-respecting person was deep in the cool of the indoors, sleeping off the heat of the day and waiting for the sun to retreat enough to make the outdoors bearable again. We could see houses scattered here...
Your Longshot Contributors, Issue Two
longshotmag:
Forty-eight hours ago we gave you guys an assignment, twenty-four hours ago you turned in your stories, and today we made a magazine. Despite the fact that we’ve only spent a collective 6 days streamlining this process, it seems to get easier every time. That’s thanks in large part to the amazing turnout of NYC’s media mavens — but even more thanks to all of you. Though it seemed...
July 2011
Rebecca Bowe at San Francisco Bay Guardian: Ethics... →
Five mayoral candidates — board President David Chiu, City Attorney Dennis Herrera, state Sen. Leland Yee, former Supervisor Michela Alioto-Pier, and businesswoman Joanna Rees — have teamed up to encourage the San Francisco Ethics Commission to investigate whether Progress for All has run afoul of local election laws, rallying behind an effort spearheaded by Democratic County Central...
James Hanning and Matt Chorley at The Independent:... →
Senior lawyers at royal solicitors Harbottle & Lewis are “furious” at the way they have been blamed by Rupert Murdoch and others in the wake of the phone-hacking scandal, The Independent on Sunday has learned. They will meet the Metropolitan Police to explain their position “in the next few days”.
Rupert Murdoch, the chairman of News Corporation, said the prominent...
James Gallagher at BBC News: 'Super antibody'... →
It has already been suggested that some people who had swine flu may develop ‘super immunity’ to other infections.
Scientists from the Medical Research Council’s National Institute for Medical Research at Mill Hill and colleagues in Switzerland looked at more than 100,000 samples of immune cells from patients who had flu or a flu vaccine.
They isolated an antibody - called...
I slept for 12 hours last night
And had an extremely long and complicated dream about getting lost in the woods. I think we all know what that means.
Right?
Right?!
Patrik Jonsson at Christian Science Monitor:... →
Funded with at least $20 million, the majority from large, mostly unnamed donors, Americans Elect is vying to become the most serious third-party insurgency since industrialist H. Ross Perot nearly upended the 1992 presidential campaign.
And they’re doing it in a decidedly 21st century way by creating an “open source” virtual primary in which the public is invited, via the...
this ain't livin': Death, Dying, and Grief in Pop... →
The handling of grief in society intrigues me. It’s a topic I’ve written about before because I find so much of the handling of grief puzzling. Not the way people react to death, but the way the people around them react to their reactions. As though there is a normalised response to loss, as though grief is something that only expresses in one way, or can be neatly compartmentalised. If you have...
Jake Kennon at Grist: Hung out to dry: Why... →
Elizabeth Morris and her family bought their house in Seattle’s High Point neighborhood for a reason. “High Point is the city of Seattle’s premier ‘green community,’ having been touted internationally as such, as well as [for] mixing Seattle Housing Authority [SHA] rental properties and private home ownership,” she explained. It’s a compact, walkable,...
Jean Merl and Michael Mishak at Los Angeles Times:... →
In a historic first, a citizens commission set new boundaries for California’s congressional and legislative districts, reshaping the political landscape into more competitive terrain that could transform the state’s usual dynamic of rancor and gridlock. The new maps, which are intended to govern elections for most of the next decade, would force several entrenched partisan legislators...
BBC News: US economy: GDP growth much weaker than... →
The Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis makes annual revisions to its GDP estimates every July, incorporating more complete and detailed data.
It now says that the US recession of 2007-2009 was more severe than previously reported, with the economy shrinking by 5.1% over that period, rather than 4.1%.
Jennifer Miller at Washington Post: Jewish bikers... →
On a Friday morning in May, Betsy Ahrens, 64, rode through the streets of Virginia Beach on a friend’s bright red Honda Gold Wing motorcycle. Ahrens was just one of 250 bikers to travel through the city by police escort that day, and pedestrians gawked, slack-jawed, at the processional. Drivers halted at intersections, aiming their cellphone cameras. A few people waved at Betsy, but tentatively,...
Todd Essig at Forbes: The Wealth-Depression Link:... →
But there weren’t any headlines trumpeting how poverty may cause suffering and perhaps early death. The article’s reception shows that we tend to ignore data about the suffering poverty brings, just like we step over the homeless man on the sidewalk or fail to fund programs to help a hungry or under-educated child needing some help. Wealth probably doesn’t increase depression, but it does make...
Aaron Blake at Washington Post: Obama won’t find... →
This week, though, White House press secretary Jay Carney finally discarded that idea as not an option. But as a debt deal looked more elusive heading into the weekend, talk about what Obama can do without a deal will only continue. Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), for one, says Obama should give the 14th Amendment a good, hard look.
Despite the White House weighing in this week against it, actually...
M. Brock Fenton at Science: The World Through a... →
Most bats use echoes of sounds they produce to locate objects in their path. Echoes from the leaves of some plants are potential distractions (clutter) for echolocating bats as they search for flying insect prey. However, in other situations, echoes from specialized leaves are beacons that guide bats to flowers bearing nectar and pollen. Two reports in this issue—by Simon et al. (1) on page 631...
this ain't livin': Promises, Promises: Job... →
At the same time the government is promoting job training and is encouraging people to return to school, it is yanking the funds schools need to support their students. Many schools were already struggling to provide adequate student services even before, and now, with an influx of new students, some are strained to the breaking point. Especially in practical skills training programmes, capacity...
Jason Cassidy at Chico News and Review: Digging... →
My mom and my birth father, “Hank,” were just two kids at the end of 1968—17 and 20, respectively—together briefly when he came home from Vietnam, then quickly going their separate ways before I was born.
I’ve naturally been curious about looking for Hank many times before, and I’d usually satisfy my curiosity by staying up late for a night searching his name on Google. I’d wonder to myself if...
The Economist: Drones and the man →
To improve accountability, control of armed drones flying over Pakistan and Yemen should be transferred from the CIA to the armed forces (which operate them in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya). The CIA can use drones to spy, but when it comes to warfare, it is less accountable than the military chain of command, less used to applying the rules of war and less inclined to pay compensation to the...
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Internet, these kittens are supercute →
Here is the thing, though, which is that Andrea keeps threatening to fly to California with a crate full of kittens and dump them in my living room. So I really need you to adopt them so that doesn’t happen, because I Don’t Do Kittens.
Anne Marshall at LEO Weekly: Torn →
The document announces that the case, while approved one year earlier, has been reopened due to the emergence of adverse information. Kharel’s index finger glides under the three most important words in the four-page letter: “suspicion of fraud.”
“I had to lie to them,” she says, referring to her final interview with the Department of Homeland Security. “I did not want to.”
Kharel recounts the...
Reposting because some people may not have seen it
I’m doing a story on predatory lending practices targeted at veterans; if you’re a veteran who’s been targeted, whether or not you accepted a loan, I’d really like to talk to you, and am happy to do so off the record if you have privacy concerns. You can email me: sesmithwrites[@]gmail[.]com.
If you aren’t a vet but you know people who would be interested, please...
this ain't livin': Hungering For Better Policy →
We should be able to get food, balanced food with good nutritional value that is also culturally appropriate, into the hands of people who need it. We have the mechanisms in place to distribute food efficiently and rapidly, to provide outreach and education, and we don’t. The fact that, even after declaring ‘wars’ on poverty and hunger, we still experience hunger, is a sign of how little the...
John Sullivan, Cameron Hickey and ProPublica at... →
The Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan has thrust the NRC’s role as industry overseer squarely in the spotlight, but another critical player in U.S. nuclear safety is the NRC’s Office of the Inspector General, an independent agency that serves as watchdog to the watchdog.
Now, Mulley and one other former OIG employee have come forth with allegations that the inspector...
Attention, veterans! And friends of veterans!
I’m working on a story on predatory lending targeted at vets, and I would really like to talk to you if you’d be willing to share your experiences. Please email me (meloukhia@gmail), and feel free to pass this on to your networks.
Jocelyn Kaiser at Science: Gene May Explain... →
So recently, Biesecker’s team turned to a strategy in which researchers use next-generation DNA sequencing to inexpensively decode all the genome’s protein-coding DNA, known as the “exome.” They sequenced the exomes of abnormal and normal tissues from seven Proteus patients’ bodies and compared them with healthy people’s exomes to ferret out the culprit gene.
...
Aileen Paguio at Socialist Worker: Where is the... →
THESE ELECTIONS are the culmination of efforts by organized labor to mobilize voters angry about Republican Gov. Scott Walker’s law that eliminates meaningful bargaining rights for workers employed by state and local governments. And while Democratic operatives like Tate now shrug off labor’s agenda, union members were key to gathering the petitions needed to trigger the recall...
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'So, when are you going to get another one?'
Very, VERY high on my personal list of things not to say to people who have just lost pets. (For extra bonus points, say it while you are visiting someone with a dying pet and said pet is sitting on that person’s lap for a morphine injection.)
Peter Cunningham and Win Vitkowsky at Hartford... →
When consultancy Edcomm Group fired its president and co-founder Linda Eagle last June, it took more than just her job. According to a federal complaint against Edcomm and six of its officers (including Joseph Mellaci of Connecticut), Eagle alleges that her former employer also stole her reputation, her privacy and her identity — all in the form of her LinkedIn profile. When she was fired, Eagle...
this ain't livin': Just Go Plant A Tree →
Simply throwing money, or trees, at a problem is not enough when you don’t get to the roots of the problem and explore why it happens in the first place. Yes, tree planting initiatives can be a good thing, and I am certainly not advocating that we leave clearcut hillsides bare to seep their topsoil into the watershed and turn into barren wastelands. There is absolutely a time and a place for...
Argh talking to ATT makes me want to scream
Lauren Keiper at Scientific American: U.S. cities... →
Rising sea waters may threaten U.S. coastal cities later this century, while the Midwest and East Coast are at high risk for intense storms, and the West could see compromised water supplies.
These are among the expected water-related effects of climate change on 12 cities across the nation over the remainder of the century, according to a study released on Tuesday by the Natural Resources...
5 tags
“Considerations about accessibility and accessible spaces should be on the...”
– me, in ‘Accessibility Is So Much More Than Ramps,’ a post which seems particularly relevant today, the 21st anniversary of the ADA.
Oliver Wright at The Independent: DPP was warned... →
In a letter released yesterday, the former Attorney General Lord Goldsmith revealed: “The Director [of Public Prosecutions] and I were aware that the particular cases referred to were not isolated examples.” Lord Goldsmith said protocol prevented him from speaking to the police, but this did not apply to the Crown Prosecution Service, which Lord Macdonald led at the time, and whose...
There is some serious spider/fly drama going on in...
this ain't livin': Problem Dogs or Problem... →
Blaming aggressive behaviour on dogs themselves is missing the point when the fault lies with the handler. Dogs are the victims of their handlers in these cases and should be treated as such; not as criminals for doing what they were trained to do and what they are constantly told to do, but as casualties. Many of these supposedly irredeemable aggressive dogs are actually capable of repatterning...
Juan Cole at AlterNet: What Norway's Terrorist Has... →
Breivik’s thinking is not new under the sun. Protestant Nativists of the “Native American” and later “Know-Nothing” (i.e. secret society) movement in the 1830s through 1850s in the United States felt exactly the same way about Catholic immigrants to the US. America wouldn’t be America if this went on. Their values were inherently incompatible with the Constitution. Their loyalties were to an...
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Miriam Jordan at Wall Street Journal:... →
The median net worth of white households is 20 times greater than that of black households and 18 times greater than that of Hispanic households, according to an analysis of newly available 2009 government data by the Pew Research Center, an independent think tank.
The disparities are the greatest since the government began tracking such data a quarter-century ago, with the gulf separating...
Mark Steel at Socialist Worker: The heads keep on... →
But these are complicated questions because News International is a complex company. The company has paid thousands in legal fees, but the owners have no idea who made the payments. My guess is it was one of the cleaners.
And the most ridiculous plot line in this story altogether is that the bumbling, pathetic, forgetful fool—who sat there unable to answer any questions about his own...
