October 2011
If You Paid Overdraft Fees to Bank of America, you... →
A $410 million Settlement has been reached in a class action lawsuit about the order in which Bank of America, N.A. (“Bank of America”) posted debit card transactions to customer accounts, and the effect the posting order had on the number of overdraft fees the bank charged its account holders. Bank of America maintains there was nothing wrong about the posting process used.
Current and former...
September 2011
this ain't livin': Entertain Us Until We Discard... →
If we are going to create a celebrity culture around athletes, one that relishes in opportunities to see them play, to consume them as a commodity, we also need to create a corresponding support structure. The vast amounts of money athletes bring in for their teams should be plowed back into support resources for retired athletes, something some teams already do, but clearly not enough. There is...
Do you know what I hate? CAPTCHAS. That is what.
Anna Gorman at Los Angeles Times: A night in the... →
This is the county’s safety net hospital, the place where the ill come for medicine, the wounded come for help, and the dying come for miracles. As many as 550 patients a day pass through its emergency room, one of the busiest in the nation. They wait an average of four hours to see a doctor — and then longer for further evaluation, treatment or an open bed. The total wait from the time a...
Damian Carrington at The Guardian: Trial tests... →
It’s a grim list: genocide, crimes against humanity, crimes of aggression (such as unprovoked invasions) and war crimes. All are recognised by the UN as crimes against peace and prosecuted through theinternational criminal court.
But should the bosses of polluting companies and the leaders of environmentally-unfriendly states join those responsible for mass murder in the dock. They could...
Larry Greenemeir at Scientific American: Error and... →
Did scientists and public officials encourage residents of L’Aquila to let their guard down prior to a tragic April 2009 earthquakethat killed 309 people in that central Italian city? That is what an Italian court will consider Saturday as it resumes an unprecedented manslaughter trial of six Italian geophysicists and one former government official. The defendants were part of...
Cheryl Corley at NPR News: Chicago-Area Skunk... →
“We’ve seen a dramatic increase,” Bluett says. He adds that there was a 46 percent increase in the number of skunks from 2009 to 2010.
Companies licensed by the department to capture skunks snared 8,700 of them across the state last year, most in the Chicago area. Bluett isn’t certain why the numbers are up, but skunks in the Midwest are prone to rabies, and there...
XO Jane: Everybody Loves "Glee" (Except the... →
So, “Glee” is back. My Twitter timeline seems to be about evenly split between cries of rejoicing and people moaning about their love/hate relationship with the show. I have a confession to make, though, which is really not much of a confession of all to anyone who knows me: I have a hate relationship with “Glee.” I never thought I would be in the position of hatewatching...
Clive Stafford Smith at The Guardian: Comment is... →
Then, there were the 69 times during Manuel’s tenure when the execution chamber was used for real, from John Spenkellink in 1979 to Martin Grossman last year. He would watch a man leave the row for the last time, going to the “death watch cell”. Some were men he had known for decades. Willie Darden had suffered through seven warrants, walking that walk seven times, before they...
this ain't livin': If Pot's So Green, Why Does It... →
You don’t need armed defenders and guard dogs and booby traps if you can grow your crop legally. I don’t see corn plantations surrounded with razor wire, or wheat farmers posting people in the fields with shotguns. Because their crops are legal. They don’t need to defend them. Growing zucchini doesn’t pose a public health and safety risk. If marijuana were legal, many of these safety issues...
NPR: 'Retirement Heist': How Firms Trimmed... →
“The main narrative is that [companies] are struggling to pay both their pensions and these unexpectedly high health care costs for the retirees,” Schultz says. “What isn’t known is that companies were well-prepared for this phenomenon. The plans were in fact significantly overfunded. They had more than enough to pay every dime for every person currently employed and...
Global Comment: The Intriguing World of Boardwalk... →
Arr mateys, here there be mild spoilers!
Boardwalk Empire is still sleek, meticulously crafted, and every bit as tasty as it was last season. We’re going in different directions as our characters fall under new shadows, including their own household demons. This is going to be a season about power, control, and retrenching, and I am looking forward to it immensely.
Scott Beale at Laughing Squid: Floppy Disk Dive... →
Made my morning, I am not gonna lie.
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Ben Popken at Consumerist: 680 lb Man Fired For... →
Ronald at one point weighed 680 lbs, a fact that never interfered with his ability to do his job. He received high marks in his performance reviews. Despite this, he was fired for his weight.
The Houston Chronicle reports the man worked in a materials handling job for a military manufacturer. The job required mostly computer and desk work, along with some moving of items on shelves that were...
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John Matson at Scientific American: NASA Figures... →
Now a column by Florida Today‘s John Kelly points out that the much-trumpeted efficiencies of private enterprise do indeed work for SpaceX. A NASA study (pdf), Kelly notes, found that the Falcon 9 would have cost much more had it been developed within the confines and culture of NASA.
Initial estimates using the NASA/Air Force Cost Model, or NAFCOM, found that NASA would have needed $4 billion...
Richard Gonzales at NPR News: California's New... →
Many local public safety officials are worried, however, about having to implement the plan by Oct. 1. They wonder whether they’ll get enough money from the state to do it.
“The program is funded for exactly nine months,” said Sacramento County Sheriff Scott Jones, one of the most outspoken skeptics. “What happens after nine months, we don’t know.”
In his...
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“In low-wage jobs, advances in biometrics are starting to manifest in products...”
– Biometrics at Pizza Hut and KFC? How Face Recognition and Digital Fingerprinting Are Creeping Into the U.S. Workplace | Civil Liberties | AlterNet
Biometrics used to “protect” bosses from “bad behavior” by low-wage workers, but who’s protecting the workers from exploitation?
(via alternet-working)
Fox News: Florida Executes Man Convicted of... →
A Florida man convicted of killing a police officer during a traffic stop 33 years ago has been executed at the Florida State Prison.
The governor’s office said Manuel Valle was pronounced dead at 7:14 p.m. Wednesday. He was the first Florida prisoner to be executed with a new mix of lethal drugs.
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Tiger Beatdown - The Monstrous Clitoris: two... →
redlightpolitics:
My latest at Tiger Beatdown, wherein I wrote the following sentence, which I believe sums up the contents of the post pretty well:
Here’s where I would insert a LOLClit saying “I’M IN UR PATRIARCHY CHALLENGING UR HETEROCISSEXISM”
this ain't livin': Politics and All Too Short... →
The President has been in office for less that a full term, at this point. Yet, somehow, magically, he is responsible for political and social situations that are the direct result of decades of complex maneuvering and events. Have people forgotten this? Has everyone forgotten that we had another President four years ago, that he held office for eight years? And we had another President before...
Dan Charles at NPR: Water, Water, Everywhere, But... →
In sub-Saharan Africa, where agricultural productivity is lowest and food shortages are most common, “huge volumes of rainwater are lost or never used,” says Alain Vidal, director of theChallenge Program on Water and Food, which commissioned the studies.
Small reservoirs could help. They catch rainfall and store it until it’s needed. Just as important: All farmers need access...
Sam Scott at Press Democrat: Memorial Hospital... →
Officials at Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital said Monday they’re nearing completion of an in-house investigation into the death of a discharged patient whose body was found on the edge of its campus.
Michael Torres, 49, was found dead near the southwestern corner of the hospital grounds about 8 a.m. last Tuesday, approximately 12 hours after he received care for undisclosed reasons.
...
Tom Feilden at BBC News: A fried egg by any other... →
Looking at this image - taken using the VISIR infrared camera on the VLT - it’s easy to see how IRAS 17163-3907, with its milky-white halo of dusty matter surrounding a yolky central star, acquired the name.
And the Fried Egg nebula is a monster. Shining some 500,000 times more brightly than the sun if it were placed at the centre of the solar system the Earth would lie deep within the...
Tiger Beatdown: No Service: Women in Combat and... →
Recommendations to lift the ban on gender-based restrictions to service haven’t been heeded in the United States, although there has been a policy softening that suggests it will happen eventually, despite claims that women aren’t ‘fit’ for combat. Some people argue that women are too physically or emotionally weak for combat roles, something clearly belied not only by the valour of women...
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Annie Scudder at TrèsSugar: Confessions of a... →
TS: OK, so how did you get into it? And is it fun? SA: It all started with one audition and the rest is history. I absolutely love shooting romance book covers; I get a little giddy every time because as a girl I used to play dress up for hours and now it’s my career. I love and look forward to it every time.
Matt Smith at SF Weekly: Ranger Noir: S.F. Park... →
Late this summer, following an extensive investigation, the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission authorized an internal report documenting the overtime allegations. The report showed evidence of discrimination against employees not in his inner circle and retaliation against complainants. It also affirmed that Santiago misled city officials on his San Francisco employment application...
N.C. Aizenman at Washington Post: Survey: Rising... →
“Without any real national discussion or debate, there’s a quiet revolution going on in what we call health insurance in this country,” said Drew Altman, president of the Kaiser Family Foundation, which conducted the annual survey of employers in conjunction with the Health Research & Educational Trust. “Health insurance is becoming less and less comprehensive. … And we expect that trend to...
this ain't livin': The Ghost Inventory →
But then, the ghost inventory. The homes waiting to enter the market, about to enter the market, held off the market in the hopes that it will improve. No one knows how large the ghost inventory is, because it is impossible to effectively count a negative. There’s no way to tell how many houses aren’t on the market, but could be. Which means that there is a massive shadow hanging over the...
Melissa Gaskill at Scientific American: Trace... →
Whitehead has previously shown that exposure to polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) can cause harmful gene expression changes in killifish, which are an important food source for many species, including economically important ones such as red snapper. Because PCBs and the polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) found in crude oil have similar biological effects, the researchers looked at their...
Alix Spiegel at NPR News: How Psychology Solved A... →
Still, in the course of their interrogations, about 70 Germans did come up with a location. But those locations, taken together, didn’t make much sense — the positions were spread out, smeared over hundreds of miles. One survivor even placed the sinking almost halfway to Antarctica.
So most Australians concluded that the Germans must be lying, their conflicting accounts part of a ploy to...
Michelle Chen at AlterNet: What Do Students Learn... →
Many might criticize the threat of a teachers’ strike as another way unionssupposedly play politics with children’s education. But the recent teacher labor battles show that lawmakers have already turned education into a political pawn, and teachers are left to shoulder the burden of stultifying standardized tests, crippling bureaucracy and virulent anti-union sentiment. Radical...
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Governor spares life of condemned killer →
kohenari:
Capital punishment’s mysterious wheel of life and death spins on, seemingly at random:
Gov. John Kasich commuted the death sentence today of Joseph Murphy of Marion, who was scheduled for execution Oct. 18.
It was the second time this year Kasich spared the life of a condemned killer.
In a statement, Kasich said the murder of Ruth Predmore was “heinous and disturbing” and Murphy...
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Jon Whiten at AAN: Long-Form Journalism: Was It... →
Whether you want more people to read your paper’s existing long-form stories, or you want to improve the way you create and craft narrative nonfiction, here are a few quick tips: Examine how your stories can be sent to e-readers. ”The Readability ‘Send to Kindle’ button is the main way to do this right now, but others may come along,” Mitchell says. Test, test,...
Steve Hendrix at Washington Post: At-home pet... →
But the rise of clinic-based animal care meant that the most common scene of a pet’s demise shifted to an office setting.
Now it’s shifting back, according to Kathleen Cooney, a Colorado veterinarian who works as a consultant to practitioners getting into the home-euthanasia business. On average, three vets a month sign up for the national service she runs, the In Home Pet Euthanasia...
