September 2011
Global Comment: Inspector Lewis returns to Oxford... →
This theme of uneasy marriage between ancient and modern is reflective of Masterpiece Mystery! itself, which after 40 years on the air still retains vestiges of the delightful titles originally developed by Edward Gorey. Masterpiece runs the risk of becoming stodgy and outdated for viewers, with its cozy British mysteries and nostalgic reminders of eras long gone in series like Upstairs,...
August 2011
Kate Messner: After Irene: A small-town Adirondack... →
Would you like to help, too? Here’s how we can rebuild the children’s collection of a small Adirondack library…
1. Send a donation. Checks may be made payable to the Wells Memorial Library.
2. Send a new, hardcover children’s book. Picture books are needed most. They were all destroyed except the five waiting to be re-shelved and those that were signed out to homes that didn’t get flooded.
...
this ain't livin': Pitting Old and Young Against... →
This is often positioned as the fault of older adults. If all those old fogeys would just retire already, plenty of jobs would open up. Promotions would begin again. People could start to build careers and develop experience. The unemployment rate for younger adults would drop and more opportunities would become available. Which means, of course, that younger people should resent older adults...
Breast Cancer Marketing has a Pink Problem →
A newly published paper in the Journal of Marketing Research suggests that the current approach to raising awareness of breast cancer hurts more than helps. Stefano Puntoni and his colleagues found that when women were exposed to gender cues, like the color pink, they were less likely than women who had not been primed with a gender cue to think that they might someday get breast cancer and to...
Patrick Barkham at The Guardian: Dale Farm... →
An emergency injunction is being sought against the eviction notice to more than 80 families living on the outskirts of Basildon to allow applications to be considered for smaller sites on brownfield land owned by the government, one of which is within sight of Dale Farm.
The high court will decide on Wednesday whether to issue a 28-day injunction against the eviction notice issued by Basildon...
Sam Lister at The Independent: Disabled people... →
Around nine out of 10 disabled people fear they will be left without enough money for food or transport under a shake-up of the benefit system, according to a report out today.
Plans to axe the disability living allowance (DLA) and replace it with a personal independence payment (PIP) will mean most recipients are reassessed.
A survey carried out by the charity Papworth Trust found 86% of...
Mark Memmot at NPR: When It's Your Time, Would You... →
All that’s left, according to the Times: “A murky but sterile liquid” and bone residue (plus metal if the deceased had something like a replacement joint). The bones “are pulverized into a white powder” and can then be put in an urn.
Tissue digesters in the news! Or am I the only person who knows what a tissue digester is because I’m the only person weird...
Bob Norberg at the Press Democrat: Cycling an... →
“My mobility is rather impaired. I can’t walk well, but I can do better on the bicycle than on my feet,” Navar said. “It is the best way to get around.”
Lowden and Navar are part of a very select group of cyclists: blind riders on the back end of tandem bicycles, “stokers” who must have unbending trust in, and work in unison with, their “captains.”
Usual adversity!supercrip! narratives,...
Michael Levi at Grist: Why do green jobs pay... →
The Brookings authors report that most clean-economy jobs aren’t the stereotypical ones in wind energy or home insulation retrofits. The biggest clean-economy sectors are waste management and treatment, mass transit, and conservation (working mainly for the U.S. government), which together account for nearly 40 percent of clean-economy jobs. (Wind, if you’re interested, accounts for...
Manoj Jain at Washington Post: Intensive care... →
Over the past year, the ICU at my hospital has been field-testing a more open approach. We are not the first to do so. Geisinger Medical Center in Danville, Pa., went to an open ICU policy nearly a decade ago, found it extremely disruptive and soon reverted to only 30 minutes of visiting six times a day. On a second attempt, however, Geisinger developed an extensive communication program for...
this ain't livin': Environmentalists Are Only Out... →
This was about the point where I started to tune into the conversation, because my ears tend to prick at the word ‘environmentalist’ said in a very specific and spiteful tone that leads me by reflex to check for a spit puddle on the ground. Do tell, I said, leaning out my window, and the driver obligingly told, blissfully unaware of the increasingly frozen expressions on our faces as he informed...
The Independent: Vanessa Redgrave warns over... →
Actress and human rights campaigner Vanessa Redgrave has said “lives will be ruined” if the planned eviction of travellers from the UK’s largest illegal site goes ahead.
Actress and human rights campaigner Vanessa Redgrave has said “lives will be ruined” if the planned eviction of travellers from the UK’s largest illegal site goes ahead.
Ms Redgrave took time...
Tiger Beatdown: The Madman In the Woods: Mental... →
They said he was crazy, the madman in the woods, and this morning the big regional paper prints a story; lo and behold, Aaron’s father says he was denied access to mental health services. He ‘refused to seek help,’ that term always said with a sneer about crazy people. His family asked for assistance but law enforcement here aren’t trained to deal with that kind of thing so he fell through the...
The Guardian: Comment is free America: Killing in... →
As California approaches a presidential election cycle that numerous marijuana advocates have suggested may contain another attempt at legalisation on the ballot after the failure of Proposition 19 in 2010, northern California may be facing a legalisation crossroads as the backlash from infuriated citizens collides with legalisation proponents. Rhetoric will undoubtedly run high on both sides,...
Robert Reich at Guernica: This Labor Day We Need... →
Labor Day is traditionally a time for picnics and parades. But this year is no picnic for American workers, and a protest march would be more appropriate than a parade.
Not only are 25 million unemployed or underemployed, but American companies continue to cut wages and benefits. The median wage is still dropping, adjusted for inflation. High unemployment has given employers extra bargaining...
Oliver Wright at The Independent: 'Pro-life' MPs... →
Anti-abortion campaigners are pressing ahead with a controversial amendment to the Government’s new health bill designed to cut the number of pregnancies which are terminated each year in the UK.
The Conservative MP Nadine Dorries, who is proposing the amendment, said yesterday she would not be “bought off” by the promise of a Government consultation on whether or not to offer independent...
this ain't livin': Charitable Appeals and the... →
Charity, you see, is for the deserving poor. The selected recipients chosen for profiles are carefully cultivated by charities and the organisations that do the profiles; a journalist who approaches a charity for a story will get a list of carefully vetted clients to interview, and the charity will exercise extreme caution when it selects people. Thus, a journalist talking about the food bank...
Bitch Magazine: We're All Mad Here: Pharmaceutical... →
Advertising is as much a part of pop culture as deliberately created works of art. Here in the United States, one of the most lasting contributions to perceptions of mental illness in society has come courtesy of the pharmaceutical industry, which spends an estimated $2.5 billion annually on reaching the public through advertising. Most people who have televisions or magazine subscriptions in...
Reposting from Google Plus for those not on that service:
Fort Bragg city hall has the flag at half mast for Jere Melo. To say that downtown is tense right now may be an understatement. There are clots of people everywhere in nervous conversation, inside city hall is like a mortuary. People are nervous and on edge; every gun rack is full and I’m hearing rumours of people forming vigilante...
Julie Johnson and Glenda Anderson at Press... →
Melo, a former two-term mayor who was serving his 15th year on the City Council, devoted much of his life to helping Fort Bragg, raising funds and political will to build firehouses and a first-class high school football stadium, city officials said Sunday.
“He was always the first one there, and the last one to go,” said Fort Bragg Mayor Dave Turner. “No one put in as much as Jere did, and I...
Ann Gibbons at Science: Who Were the Denisovans? →
Several fossils belonging to a previously unknown type of archaic human were found last summer in a remote cave in the Altai Mountains of Siberia. The discovery team called them the Denisovans after the cave. In July, a select group of human origins researchers attended a remarkable symposium at an archaeological camp near Denisova Cave. Their goal was to try to solve the mystery of the identity...
BBC News: Mobile firm on rural net crusade →
Mobile operator Three is giving away 3G broadband to rural areas struggling to get fixed line services.
Initially it plans to give 11 communities in the UK free dongles and access for a year.
It claims the initiative is part of its commitment to government, which wants to ensure isolated communities have decent broadband services.
But some experts think it has more to do with a desire to lobby...
Sarah Hines at Socialist Worker: An indigenous... →
MORE THAN 500 indigenous Bolivians are on the march from the eastern city of Trinidad towards the capital city of La Paz—a distance of more than 300 miles—to protest the construction of an interstate highway that would cut TIPNIS, a protected park and indigenous territory that belongs to the Yuracaré, Moxeño and Chimán peoples, in half.
The indigenous peoples of TIPNIS, the...
Emily Kugan and Kunal Dutta at The Independent:... →
The prison population in England and Wales reached a record high for the third consecutive week last Friday as the courts continue to jail hundreds of people involved in the riots. The total number of prisoners hit 86,821, after a further 167 people were jailed. The population is now only 1,500 short of the usable operational capacity. Scotland Yard has warned its investigations are “far...
this ain't livin': Knowledge Is Power and Power... →
Knowledge is power and wealthy people have access to considerable financial power in the form of their personal knowledge and the knowledge for hire they can readily access because of their wealth. Power also tends to consolidate power, which means there is an active incentive to accumulate more, to grow wealth, to increase power and control. To limit access to information that might be beneficial...
NY Press: The Life Span of an Alternative Weekly →
Alex Wild at Scientific American: Interview:... →
Q. Do you ever revisit photos to give them a more thorough edit than was possible in the heat of reporting a weather event?
That’s a great question. Not as often as I’d like. The weather has become so active it’s all I can do just to cover it. One of the things on project board list is to go back and look at captions on a variety of stock photos.
I strive, and the people who work with me...
David A. Fahrenthold at Washington Post: American... →
This summer, liberal groups have tried to do to Republicans what was done to them two years ago. They have targeted GOP town halls to demand higher taxes on the rich and on corporations, and to push for new jobs in infrastructure and clean energy. Already, there are similar results: Freshman Rep. Lou Barletta (R-Pa.), who blasted his opponent for not holding town halls last year, has suspended...
Things that annoy me: The way the gas company...
They bill on a net 21 day basis, which would be fine. Really. Except:
1. It’s net 21 from the day the invoice was printed, which is usually the same day the delivery person comes out to your house.
Which would be fine, really, except:
2. The invoices apparently sit around the office for two weeks before they mail them out. So by the time it hits my mailbox, I have five days left.
...
this ain't livin': Debunking Mythologies About... →
The persistent social attitude that the danger in relationships with mentally ill people comes from the person with mental illness makes it very difficult to deconstruct and combat this particular link between violence and mental illness. This framing makes it easy to dismiss violence against mentally ill people as an isolated outlier, rather than evidence of a systemic social problem, because...
Ira P. Robbins: Lessons from Hurricane Katrina:... →
Hurricane Katrina was one of the worst natural disasters ever to strike the United States, in terms of casualties, suffering, and financial cost. Often overlooked among Katrina’s victims are the 8,000 inmates who were incarcerated at Orleans Parish Prison (OPP) when Katrina struck. Despite a mandatory evacuation of New Orleans, these men and women, some of whom had been held on charges as...
Jerome Taylor at The Independent: Convicted... →
Conditions inside young offenders’ institutions are deteriorating in the wake of the riots as the prison population reaches a new high and courts continued to remand large numbers of young people behind bars.
Relatives and solicitors acting on behalf of teenagers inside juvenile prisons have told The Independent of worsening conditions, with attacks on suspected rioters, overcrowding in...
Global Comment: Review: Esi Edugyan’s Half Blood... →
This is also a story about who tells stories, both directly and indirectly. The history of Germans of African descent is not widely covered in English language literature, nor is the complex racial rubric once used by the Nazis to determine which people with dark skin were the most important targets for incarceration and forcible sterilisation. Edugyan challenges readers to ask why these stories...
Lisa Rab at Broward-Palm Beach New Times: In the... →
But now that Charles and David are alternately reviled and admired for their Tea Party ties, “Wild Bill” Koch has been cast in a peculiar new role: the good brother. He donates tens of thousands of dollars to mainstream Republican candidates such as John McCain and Mitt Romney but doesn’t publicize his opposition to President Barack Obama. Rather than funding Tea Party groups,...
Dr. Stuart Jeanne Bramhall at Guernica: Did... →
According to geologists, it isn’t the fracking itself that is linked to earthquakes, but the re-injection of waste salt water (as much as 3 million gallons per well) deep into rock beds.
Braxton County West Virginia (160 miles from Mineral) has experienced a rash of freak earthquakes (eight in 2010) since fracking operations started there several years ago. According to geologists fracking also...
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“But how about the notion that “Wall Street is our Main Street,” which was voiced...”
– Attacks on NY AG Standing Up for Main Street Show Wall Street’s Control Over Our Elites | | AlterNet
Attacks on the one person standing up for working families show exactly what’s wrong with our political system. (via alternet-working)
this ain't livin': Privatising Water, Creating... →
My socially conscious grocery store has racks and racks of bottled water, including products with exotic labeling and claims intended to seduce buyers. I occasionally drop them notes asking why they continue to sell a product associated with documented harms, and have yet to receive a response. I suspect my notes are written off, rather than taken seriously for what they are, or that the store...
The Economist: Harper and the void →
STATE funerals are a rare honour in Canada, usually restricted to former prime ministers, governors-general and prominent cabinet ministers. Yet on August 27th Jack Layton, leader of the opposition New Democratic Party (NDP), who died of cancer on August 22nd at the age of 61, will be laid to rest in Toronto with all the pomp and solemn ceremony that official Canada can muster. The decision to...
