http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/04/11/3424247/climate-change-drying-out-southwest/
By Joe Romm on April 11, 2014
Two new studies confirm that warming-driven climate change is already drying the U.S. Southwest and other parts of the globe. More worrisome, nearly a third of the world’s land faces drying from rising greenhouse gases — including two of the world’s greatest agricultural centers, “the U.S. Great Plains and a swath of southeastern China.”
These studies add fuel to the growing bonfire of concerns about climate change and food security. As I wrote in the article on Dust-Bowlification I did for the journal Nature in 2011, “Feeding some 9 billion people by mid-century in the face of a rapidly worsening climate may well be the greatest challenge the human race has ever faced.”
The fact that global warming is already drying out large parts of the planet — and that it is on track to get much, much worse — is well understood by climate scientists.
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Published this month in the journal Climate Dynamics, the study estimates that 12 percent of land will be subject to drought by 2100 through rainfall changes alone; but the drying will spread to 30 percent of land if higher evaporation rates from the added energy and humidity in the atmosphere are considered. An increase in evaporative drying means that even regions expected to get more rain, including important wheat, corn and rice belts in the western United States and southeastern China, will be at risk of drought.
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We have been warned about this by leading climatologists for nearly a quarter of a century, now. The time to act was a long time ago, but now is infinitely better than later if you are at all concerned about how we are going to feed 9 billion people post-2050.
Monday, April 14, 2014
Antidepressant use in pregnancy linked to autism risk in boys
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/antidepressant-use-in-pregnancy-linked-to-autism-risk-in-boys/
By/ Serena Gordon April 14, 2014
Boys with autism were three times more likely to have been exposed to antidepressants known as SSRIs in the womb than typically developing children, according to new research.
The new study also found that boys whose mothers took SSRIs -- drugs including Celexa, Lexapro, Paxil, Prozac and Zoloft -- during pregnancy were also more likely to have developmental delays.
Results of the study were published online April 14 and in the May print issue of Pediatrics.
"We found prenatal SSRI exposure was almost three times as likely in boys with autism spectrum disorders relative to typical development, with the greatest risk when exposure is during the first trimester," said study co-author Li-Ching Lee, an associate scientist in the department of epidemiology at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, in Baltimore.
While the study found an association between prenatal use of SSRI antidepressants and autism risk in boys, it did not prove cause-and-effect.
The study authors were quick to point out that there are risks to both the mother and fetus from untreated depression.
-----
By/ Serena Gordon April 14, 2014
Boys with autism were three times more likely to have been exposed to antidepressants known as SSRIs in the womb than typically developing children, according to new research.
The new study also found that boys whose mothers took SSRIs -- drugs including Celexa, Lexapro, Paxil, Prozac and Zoloft -- during pregnancy were also more likely to have developmental delays.
Results of the study were published online April 14 and in the May print issue of Pediatrics.
"We found prenatal SSRI exposure was almost three times as likely in boys with autism spectrum disorders relative to typical development, with the greatest risk when exposure is during the first trimester," said study co-author Li-Ching Lee, an associate scientist in the department of epidemiology at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, in Baltimore.
While the study found an association between prenatal use of SSRI antidepressants and autism risk in boys, it did not prove cause-and-effect.
The study authors were quick to point out that there are risks to both the mother and fetus from untreated depression.
-----
Lunar eclipse tonight
Much of the U.S. will not be able to see it because of cloudy skies.http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/OH/OH2014.html
In 2014, there are two solar eclipses and two total lunar eclipses
The lunar eclipse tonight is the first of four consecutive total lunar eclipses in 2014 and 2015.
http://www.timeanddate.com/eclipse/total-lunar-eclipse.html
The term, Blood Moon, has recently become popular while referring to the total lunar eclipses of the tetrad that will occur in 2014 and 2015. This term has no technical or astronomical basis and it is unclear where such a description comes from.
One theory about why these eclipses are being called Blood Moon eclipses comes from the fact that the full Moon can sometimes appear bright coppery red during a total lunar eclipse.
http://www.timeanddate.com/eclipse/list.html
Where is the eclipse visible:
West in Europe, South/East Asia, Much of Australia, Much of Africa, Much of North America, Much of South America, Pacific, Atlantic, Indian Ocean, Antarctica
http://www.timeanddate.com/eclipse/lunar/2014-april-15
Shows various locations being able to see at least parts of the eclipse. Links show info for specific locations.
IPCC: Cost of Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change Super-Affordable if We Act Now
http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=2663
By: Dr. Jeff Masters, 7:10 PM GMT on April 13, 2014
Climate change is a huge threat to civilization if we do nothing more to reduce it, but the costs are very affordable if we start now, said the Nobel-prize winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) today, in the third installment of their once-every-seven-years report on the climate. Today's report on mitigation--how we can slow down climate change--was the most hopeful of the reports, since it found that the cost of keeping global warming under the "dangerous" level of 2°C will only reduce "consumption growth" of the global economy by 0.06% per year if we start immediately and act strongly. Since consumption growth is expected to increase between 1.6% and 3% per year in the coming decades, we’re talking about annual growth that is, for example, 2% rather than 2.06%. This is a small price to pay to greatly decrease the risks of increased hunger, thirst, disease, refugees, and war outlined in the IPCC's frightening Working Group 2 report on risks and adaptation released two weeks ago. Today's report was authored by 235 scientists from 58 countries, and was approved by the governments of every nation of the world who cared to send a representative to the week-long approval meeting in Berlin, Germany.
-----
Emissions of greenhouse gases are rising at a near-record pace. Greenhouse gas emissions grew 2.2% per year between 2000 - 2010, compared to a rate of 1.3% per year between 1979 - 2000. The increase was 3% per year between 2010 - 2011, and 1 - 2% from 2011 - 2012. About 76% of the greenhouse gases emitted were in the form of CO2, with 16% from methane. In 2010, ten countries accounted for about 70% of the world's CO2 emissions from fossil fuels and industrial processes. About half of the cumulative human-caused CO2 emissions between 1750 and 2010 have occurred in the last 40 years.
-----
Keeping Earth's temperature rise below 2°C will have additional co-benefits. For example:
1) Reducing air pollution. The World Health Organization reported that in 2012 about 7 million people died--one in eight of total global deaths--as a result of air pollution exposure.
2) Improving energy security, leading to less price volatility and fewer supply disruptions.
3) Environmental protection.
-----
Economic and population growth are the main drivers of greenhouse gas emissions. We've grown far more efficient at producing goods using less energy, meaning that the "energy intensity" of the global economy steadily declined from 2000 - 2010. However, increasing economic growth and population growth have outpaced the decline in energy intensity, resulting in higher greenhouse gas emissions. "Without additional efforts to reduce GHG emissions beyond those in place today, emissions growth is expected to persist driven by growth in global population and economic activities." If we take no additional measures to slow down human-caused climate change, the planet is expected to warm by about 4°C by 2100 compared to per-industrial levels. That's the same difference in temperature as between today's climate and the Ice Age.
-----
If your school, chamber of commerce, church, library, or community club needs a local expert on climate science to come speak, the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) and the United Nations Foundation can help out, thanks to a new effort called climatevoices.org. The organization has more than 160 volunteer experts from al 50 states in a database that is searchable by geographic location, expertise, and languages spoken. If you are have expertise in climate science and are interested in volunteering for this network, please go to climatevoices.org and create a profile. I have my own set of slides I use for such talks that anyone is welcome to borrow from, available at http://www.wunderground.com/hurricane/2013/climatetalk.ppt.
By: Dr. Jeff Masters, 7:10 PM GMT on April 13, 2014
Climate change is a huge threat to civilization if we do nothing more to reduce it, but the costs are very affordable if we start now, said the Nobel-prize winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) today, in the third installment of their once-every-seven-years report on the climate. Today's report on mitigation--how we can slow down climate change--was the most hopeful of the reports, since it found that the cost of keeping global warming under the "dangerous" level of 2°C will only reduce "consumption growth" of the global economy by 0.06% per year if we start immediately and act strongly. Since consumption growth is expected to increase between 1.6% and 3% per year in the coming decades, we’re talking about annual growth that is, for example, 2% rather than 2.06%. This is a small price to pay to greatly decrease the risks of increased hunger, thirst, disease, refugees, and war outlined in the IPCC's frightening Working Group 2 report on risks and adaptation released two weeks ago. Today's report was authored by 235 scientists from 58 countries, and was approved by the governments of every nation of the world who cared to send a representative to the week-long approval meeting in Berlin, Germany.
-----
Emissions of greenhouse gases are rising at a near-record pace. Greenhouse gas emissions grew 2.2% per year between 2000 - 2010, compared to a rate of 1.3% per year between 1979 - 2000. The increase was 3% per year between 2010 - 2011, and 1 - 2% from 2011 - 2012. About 76% of the greenhouse gases emitted were in the form of CO2, with 16% from methane. In 2010, ten countries accounted for about 70% of the world's CO2 emissions from fossil fuels and industrial processes. About half of the cumulative human-caused CO2 emissions between 1750 and 2010 have occurred in the last 40 years.
-----
Keeping Earth's temperature rise below 2°C will have additional co-benefits. For example:
1) Reducing air pollution. The World Health Organization reported that in 2012 about 7 million people died--one in eight of total global deaths--as a result of air pollution exposure.
2) Improving energy security, leading to less price volatility and fewer supply disruptions.
3) Environmental protection.
-----
Economic and population growth are the main drivers of greenhouse gas emissions. We've grown far more efficient at producing goods using less energy, meaning that the "energy intensity" of the global economy steadily declined from 2000 - 2010. However, increasing economic growth and population growth have outpaced the decline in energy intensity, resulting in higher greenhouse gas emissions. "Without additional efforts to reduce GHG emissions beyond those in place today, emissions growth is expected to persist driven by growth in global population and economic activities." If we take no additional measures to slow down human-caused climate change, the planet is expected to warm by about 4°C by 2100 compared to per-industrial levels. That's the same difference in temperature as between today's climate and the Ice Age.
-----
If your school, chamber of commerce, church, library, or community club needs a local expert on climate science to come speak, the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) and the United Nations Foundation can help out, thanks to a new effort called climatevoices.org. The organization has more than 160 volunteer experts from al 50 states in a database that is searchable by geographic location, expertise, and languages spoken. If you are have expertise in climate science and are interested in volunteering for this network, please go to climatevoices.org and create a profile. I have my own set of slides I use for such talks that anyone is welcome to borrow from, available at http://www.wunderground.com/hurricane/2013/climatetalk.ppt.
Sunday, April 13, 2014
Welcome To Shawnee, Oklahoma: The Worst City In America To Be Homeless
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2014/04/08/3418314/shawnee-homeless/
BY SCOTT KEYES ON APRIL 8, 2014
Gary Lynn Roy was too poor to live indoors. At night, even when it was cold, even when it snowed, he slept outside. He had no choice.
There are plenty of reasons why he was poor. He’d earn occasional pay as a builder, but construction jobs were too few. Nor did it help that he and his twin brother Larry used to drink heavily together.
-----
By late 2012, though, Gary seemed to be turning things around. He’d stopped drinking. He’d found a construction job. Things were looking up.
Then, while working on a roof one day, he fell. The impact broke both his legs. He couldn’t move without a walker, so construction work was out of the question. “Sleeping outside is hard enough, but then having a hard time getting around and being cold?” Blankenship told ThinkProgress. “He just had to be miserable.”
-----
Roy died, as so many homeless do, surrounded by homes. He may have even helped build some of them, knowing he himself couldn’t afford to be in one. Authorities discovered his body the next day, lying in the snow. He would have been 50 today. He’ll forever be 49.
-----
It didn’t have to be that way. Less than a mile from where Roy froze to death, there was supposed to be a brand new shelter for Shawnee’s homeless to come get a meal, supportive services, and a warm place to rest their heads, especially during the ravages of an Oklahoma winter. Blankenship’s non-profit had recently won a major grant — nearly half a million dollars — to upgrade its facilities into an overnight shelter that would serve the city’s homeless.
And yet the shelter was never built. A dozen blocks away from where Roy slept outside for the final time, there are still no beds. Standing between Roy and dozens of new shelter beds that night was one wealthy city commissioner and a city that has declared all-out war on its homeless residents.
------
But in January 2011, it looked as though the shelter situation was about to improve. Seven months before Branscum was killed and two years before Roy’s death, the Rescue Mission won a grant from the Affordable Housing Program, a private organization that funds affordable housing ventures across the country, for $450,000. The money was earmarked to convert the Rescue Mission from a faith-based food pantry and soup kitchen to a full-service shelter, complete with a commercial kitchen, bathrooms and showers, a day center, and enough beds for 23 men, 11 women, and three families.
Blankenship was ecstatic. The project would allow Shawnee to double its capacity to serve the city’s homeless population, and best of all, “it wouldn’t have cost the city a dime,” he told ThinkProgress. To this day, a news story about that grant is the very first thing visitors to Shawnee Rescue Mission’s website read.
All he needed before renovations could begin was a simple administrative tweak from the city commission to change the building’s zoning classification.
Commissioner James Harrod is a wealthy man. Not just wealthy for the Shawnee area, but wealthy for any area. Combing through city deeds and rental websites, ThinkProgress was able to identify at least 58 separate properties throughout Shawnee that he and/or his wife, Kaye Steele Harrod, own. Zillow, an online real estate database, estimates that the collective value of their real estate holdings is more than $3.5 million.
Like most homeowners, not to mention landlords, Harrod and his wife care a great deal about their property values. In fact, the couple once went so far as to sue the City Commission — which Harrod was serving on — in an attempt to block construction of a $4.5 million apartment complex that would serve some low-income residents because it was near some of their properties. The Commission had voted six to one to approve the project in 2003; Harrod cast the sole dissenting vote. Their lawsuit was eventually dismissed.
-----
The public was on the Rescue Mission’s side. Of the 19 citizens who voiced their opinions about the re-zoning request at the first hearing on September 5th, three-quarters of them spoke in favor, while just five testified against. This overwhelming public support for the Rescue Mission was also evident in letters written to the Planning Commission after it solicited more input from residents. More than 30 letters poured in, favoring the new shelter nearly two-to-one.
One letter from J.R. Kidney, a police officer in Pottawatomie County for nearly two decades, gave a first-hand account of the need for another shelter. “I have had to help many people over the years find shelter, whether it is for a victim of domestic abuse or a homeless family,” Kidney wrote. “There are times when we are unable to get people the help they need at the facilities that are currently in place. Many times we cannot use those facilities for reasons due to their rules, no room etc.” Others like Linda Holley pointed to the inadequate supply of family shelter units in town. “It is heartbreaking to see a family torn apart when their child has to be taken away because there are not enough places in our town for families such as this to be sheltered together.”
-----
Opponents of the plan, both citizens and officials, center their argument on two claims: first, that there was no need for a second shelter, and second, that the Rescue Mission shelter would hurt nearby property values and this was a cost that outweighed any benefits the project might bring.
Yet there is an inherent contradiction in making these claims simultaneously. Either there wasn’t demand for more shelter beds, in which case there would be little impact on the surrounding neighborhood, or there was demand for more shelter beds, in which case another shelter was necessary.
One of those claiming that no need for additional shelter existed was Harrod. When ThinkProgress asked him about Roy’s death and whether critics who say there aren’t enough shelter beds in Shawnee, especially in the wintertime, are right, he responded, “That’s not true,” claiming that Roy had willfully decided not to go to the Salvation Army because it had too many rules. Similarly, according to the Commission’s staff report, the Rescue Mission “has not provided any demonstration of need” that the Salvation Army can’t cover.
Most interested citizens disagreed with this conclusion, even Salvation Army volunteers. “There simply is too much need for one organization to cover all the problems of the needy and homeless in our area,” one Shawnee Salvation Army volunteer, Raymond H. Mullen, wrote.
-----
The other reason that residents gave for opposing the Rescue Mission proposal was its supposed effect on property values in the area. One of the primary people leading the charge was Kaye Steele Harrod. “Mrz Lizzies [Harrod’s home rental company] has invested $425,000 to $450,000 within 300 feet of the Mission and now property values have plummeted,” she wrote in a letter to the Commission, saying that tenants had recently moved out “due to their fears and not feeling safe and secure in their homes.” If the Commission were to approve the re-zoning request, she warned, “We would be promoting all homeless to come to Shawnee and receive free room and board.”
The staff report conceded that “a review of research papers and literature provides no information that homeless shelters decrease property values,” but it still argued that, “Based on letters from the public, the current limited operations at the facility (204 N. Louisa),” referring to the Rescue Mission’s food pantry and meal service, “appear to have had major impacts on the neighborhood.”
A review of research papers and literature provides no information that homeless shelters decrease property values.
But who wrote these letters? Of the 12 letters submitted to the Commission, five came from Kaye, Harrod’s daughter, or Harrod’s son-in-law. In other words, nearly half the opposition to the Rescue Mission came from relatives of Harrod.
-----
ThinkProgress identified four rental properties owned by Kaye that are within two blocks of the Rescue Mission and reviewed property records as well as tax assessments over the past five years to see whether their claim that property values have plummeted had any merit. Zillow estimates that the property values have actually increased an average of 7 percent in the past five years. In addition, the Pottawatomie County Tax Assessor’s office confirmed that the taxable value of each property was unchanged since 2009.
-----
Either way, the Harrod family’s letters achieved their intended effect. On October 10th, the Planning Commission unanimously rejected the Rescue Mission’s re-zoning application. When the matter came before the City Commission, which had the final say, on November 5th, Commissioner Harrod moved that the re-zoning request be denied and cast the first “no” vote. The Rescue Mission lost six to one. Without permission to re-zone the building, the group had no choice but to return the $450,000 grant. The shelter that seemed like a sure thing at the beginning of the year was now dead.
Harrod wasn’t done, though. Two weeks later, he requested that the Commission place a moratorium on the opening of any new homeless shelter in Shawnee. His daughter was one of the few who testified in favor. The motion passed five to one.
-----
BY SCOTT KEYES ON APRIL 8, 2014
Gary Lynn Roy was too poor to live indoors. At night, even when it was cold, even when it snowed, he slept outside. He had no choice.
There are plenty of reasons why he was poor. He’d earn occasional pay as a builder, but construction jobs were too few. Nor did it help that he and his twin brother Larry used to drink heavily together.
-----
By late 2012, though, Gary seemed to be turning things around. He’d stopped drinking. He’d found a construction job. Things were looking up.
Then, while working on a roof one day, he fell. The impact broke both his legs. He couldn’t move without a walker, so construction work was out of the question. “Sleeping outside is hard enough, but then having a hard time getting around and being cold?” Blankenship told ThinkProgress. “He just had to be miserable.”
-----
Roy died, as so many homeless do, surrounded by homes. He may have even helped build some of them, knowing he himself couldn’t afford to be in one. Authorities discovered his body the next day, lying in the snow. He would have been 50 today. He’ll forever be 49.
-----
It didn’t have to be that way. Less than a mile from where Roy froze to death, there was supposed to be a brand new shelter for Shawnee’s homeless to come get a meal, supportive services, and a warm place to rest their heads, especially during the ravages of an Oklahoma winter. Blankenship’s non-profit had recently won a major grant — nearly half a million dollars — to upgrade its facilities into an overnight shelter that would serve the city’s homeless.
And yet the shelter was never built. A dozen blocks away from where Roy slept outside for the final time, there are still no beds. Standing between Roy and dozens of new shelter beds that night was one wealthy city commissioner and a city that has declared all-out war on its homeless residents.
------
But in January 2011, it looked as though the shelter situation was about to improve. Seven months before Branscum was killed and two years before Roy’s death, the Rescue Mission won a grant from the Affordable Housing Program, a private organization that funds affordable housing ventures across the country, for $450,000. The money was earmarked to convert the Rescue Mission from a faith-based food pantry and soup kitchen to a full-service shelter, complete with a commercial kitchen, bathrooms and showers, a day center, and enough beds for 23 men, 11 women, and three families.
Blankenship was ecstatic. The project would allow Shawnee to double its capacity to serve the city’s homeless population, and best of all, “it wouldn’t have cost the city a dime,” he told ThinkProgress. To this day, a news story about that grant is the very first thing visitors to Shawnee Rescue Mission’s website read.
All he needed before renovations could begin was a simple administrative tweak from the city commission to change the building’s zoning classification.
Commissioner James Harrod is a wealthy man. Not just wealthy for the Shawnee area, but wealthy for any area. Combing through city deeds and rental websites, ThinkProgress was able to identify at least 58 separate properties throughout Shawnee that he and/or his wife, Kaye Steele Harrod, own. Zillow, an online real estate database, estimates that the collective value of their real estate holdings is more than $3.5 million.
Like most homeowners, not to mention landlords, Harrod and his wife care a great deal about their property values. In fact, the couple once went so far as to sue the City Commission — which Harrod was serving on — in an attempt to block construction of a $4.5 million apartment complex that would serve some low-income residents because it was near some of their properties. The Commission had voted six to one to approve the project in 2003; Harrod cast the sole dissenting vote. Their lawsuit was eventually dismissed.
-----
The public was on the Rescue Mission’s side. Of the 19 citizens who voiced their opinions about the re-zoning request at the first hearing on September 5th, three-quarters of them spoke in favor, while just five testified against. This overwhelming public support for the Rescue Mission was also evident in letters written to the Planning Commission after it solicited more input from residents. More than 30 letters poured in, favoring the new shelter nearly two-to-one.
One letter from J.R. Kidney, a police officer in Pottawatomie County for nearly two decades, gave a first-hand account of the need for another shelter. “I have had to help many people over the years find shelter, whether it is for a victim of domestic abuse or a homeless family,” Kidney wrote. “There are times when we are unable to get people the help they need at the facilities that are currently in place. Many times we cannot use those facilities for reasons due to their rules, no room etc.” Others like Linda Holley pointed to the inadequate supply of family shelter units in town. “It is heartbreaking to see a family torn apart when their child has to be taken away because there are not enough places in our town for families such as this to be sheltered together.”
-----
Opponents of the plan, both citizens and officials, center their argument on two claims: first, that there was no need for a second shelter, and second, that the Rescue Mission shelter would hurt nearby property values and this was a cost that outweighed any benefits the project might bring.
Yet there is an inherent contradiction in making these claims simultaneously. Either there wasn’t demand for more shelter beds, in which case there would be little impact on the surrounding neighborhood, or there was demand for more shelter beds, in which case another shelter was necessary.
One of those claiming that no need for additional shelter existed was Harrod. When ThinkProgress asked him about Roy’s death and whether critics who say there aren’t enough shelter beds in Shawnee, especially in the wintertime, are right, he responded, “That’s not true,” claiming that Roy had willfully decided not to go to the Salvation Army because it had too many rules. Similarly, according to the Commission’s staff report, the Rescue Mission “has not provided any demonstration of need” that the Salvation Army can’t cover.
Most interested citizens disagreed with this conclusion, even Salvation Army volunteers. “There simply is too much need for one organization to cover all the problems of the needy and homeless in our area,” one Shawnee Salvation Army volunteer, Raymond H. Mullen, wrote.
-----
The other reason that residents gave for opposing the Rescue Mission proposal was its supposed effect on property values in the area. One of the primary people leading the charge was Kaye Steele Harrod. “Mrz Lizzies [Harrod’s home rental company] has invested $425,000 to $450,000 within 300 feet of the Mission and now property values have plummeted,” she wrote in a letter to the Commission, saying that tenants had recently moved out “due to their fears and not feeling safe and secure in their homes.” If the Commission were to approve the re-zoning request, she warned, “We would be promoting all homeless to come to Shawnee and receive free room and board.”
The staff report conceded that “a review of research papers and literature provides no information that homeless shelters decrease property values,” but it still argued that, “Based on letters from the public, the current limited operations at the facility (204 N. Louisa),” referring to the Rescue Mission’s food pantry and meal service, “appear to have had major impacts on the neighborhood.”
A review of research papers and literature provides no information that homeless shelters decrease property values.
But who wrote these letters? Of the 12 letters submitted to the Commission, five came from Kaye, Harrod’s daughter, or Harrod’s son-in-law. In other words, nearly half the opposition to the Rescue Mission came from relatives of Harrod.
-----
ThinkProgress identified four rental properties owned by Kaye that are within two blocks of the Rescue Mission and reviewed property records as well as tax assessments over the past five years to see whether their claim that property values have plummeted had any merit. Zillow estimates that the property values have actually increased an average of 7 percent in the past five years. In addition, the Pottawatomie County Tax Assessor’s office confirmed that the taxable value of each property was unchanged since 2009.
-----
Either way, the Harrod family’s letters achieved their intended effect. On October 10th, the Planning Commission unanimously rejected the Rescue Mission’s re-zoning application. When the matter came before the City Commission, which had the final say, on November 5th, Commissioner Harrod moved that the re-zoning request be denied and cast the first “no” vote. The Rescue Mission lost six to one. Without permission to re-zone the building, the group had no choice but to return the $450,000 grant. The shelter that seemed like a sure thing at the beginning of the year was now dead.
Harrod wasn’t done, though. Two weeks later, he requested that the Commission place a moratorium on the opening of any new homeless shelter in Shawnee. His daughter was one of the few who testified in favor. The motion passed five to one.
-----
This Baby Has Whooping Cough, And Her Mother Wants More People To Get Their Vaccines
http://thinkprogress.org/health/2014/04/08/3424020/baby-whooping-cough-vaccines/
BY TARA CULP-RESSLER ON APRIL 8, 2014
One Toronto-area mother has taken to Facebook to warn people about the dangerous consequences of skipping out on their recommended vaccines. At the beginning of this month, Meghan Mcnutt-Anderson posted the above photo of her five-week-old daughter, Brielle, on the social media site. Brielle is in the hospital with whooping cough — a preventable disease that can be deadly in very small children.
“This is why you immunize your children!” Mcnutt-Anderson wrote in an angry post that has now been shared over 35,000 times. “We have spent the last 3 days in the hospital at her bedside holding her up and patting her back as she coughs. You see, every time she coughs she stops breathing, turns blue and goes limp. She has too much mucous and her airways are too small to cough it up and they become blocked and we have to manually help her pass it. We will likely be doing this to Brielle for the next 2 weeks at least.”
Babies like Brielle are too young to receive a whooping cough vaccine and are reliant on what’s called herd immunity. If infants come into contact with older individuals who haven’t been vaccinated, they can easily contract the highly contagious bacterial infection.
Over the past several years, North America has been experiencing a dramatic resurgence of whooping cough, a public health issue that’s been directly tied to an increasing number of parents failing to vaccinate their kids. States that allow parents to easily opt their kids out of their recommended shots, like California and Washington, have struggled the most with the spread of this preventable disease.
“If you are considering not immunizing your children, think first about the people you put at risk who CAN’T get the immunization,” Mcnutt-Anderson pointed out in her Facebook post. “If our story makes one parent choose to immunize their children that otherwise wouldn’t have, lives can be saved.”
Mcnutt-Anderson isn’t the only parent trying to spread this message. An Illinois mother whose three sons have a genetic immune system deficiency, and therefore can’t get vaccines themselves, recently published a blog post imploring other parents to help protect them from contracting preventable diseases. Her kids are entirely reliant on herd immunity, and just one unvaccinated classmate could pose a serious threat. “If you are a parent who is vaccine-hesitant or who has chosen not to vaccinate, my plea to you is this: My kids are my heart and soul, just as yours are to you, and I need your help to keep them healthy and safe. I would do the same for you,” she explained.
But it’s already too late for other families, some of whom are now turning their personal tragedies into public health lessons for the broader community. Another mother in Illinois, whose six-day-old infant died from whooping cough two years ago, is currently lobbying the Illinois Department of Health to spread more information about vaccination to prevent other children from dying. And a Massachusetts mother is telling the story of her 9-week-old son’s death to encourage other people to take whooping cough seriously.
In addition to whooping cough, other preventable diseases like measles are also currently making a comeback. The vaccine that prevents measles, mumps, and rubella has been plagued by controversy thanks to the widely debunked theory that it can increase some kids’ risk of autism. Celebrities like Jenny McCarthy and Kristin Cavallari continue to give air time to this dangerous conspiracy theory. Meanwhile, measles outbreaks are worsening across the country, and public health officials are imploring Americans to make sure they’ve gotten all their shots.
BY TARA CULP-RESSLER ON APRIL 8, 2014
One Toronto-area mother has taken to Facebook to warn people about the dangerous consequences of skipping out on their recommended vaccines. At the beginning of this month, Meghan Mcnutt-Anderson posted the above photo of her five-week-old daughter, Brielle, on the social media site. Brielle is in the hospital with whooping cough — a preventable disease that can be deadly in very small children.
“This is why you immunize your children!” Mcnutt-Anderson wrote in an angry post that has now been shared over 35,000 times. “We have spent the last 3 days in the hospital at her bedside holding her up and patting her back as she coughs. You see, every time she coughs she stops breathing, turns blue and goes limp. She has too much mucous and her airways are too small to cough it up and they become blocked and we have to manually help her pass it. We will likely be doing this to Brielle for the next 2 weeks at least.”
Babies like Brielle are too young to receive a whooping cough vaccine and are reliant on what’s called herd immunity. If infants come into contact with older individuals who haven’t been vaccinated, they can easily contract the highly contagious bacterial infection.
Over the past several years, North America has been experiencing a dramatic resurgence of whooping cough, a public health issue that’s been directly tied to an increasing number of parents failing to vaccinate their kids. States that allow parents to easily opt their kids out of their recommended shots, like California and Washington, have struggled the most with the spread of this preventable disease.
“If you are considering not immunizing your children, think first about the people you put at risk who CAN’T get the immunization,” Mcnutt-Anderson pointed out in her Facebook post. “If our story makes one parent choose to immunize their children that otherwise wouldn’t have, lives can be saved.”
Mcnutt-Anderson isn’t the only parent trying to spread this message. An Illinois mother whose three sons have a genetic immune system deficiency, and therefore can’t get vaccines themselves, recently published a blog post imploring other parents to help protect them from contracting preventable diseases. Her kids are entirely reliant on herd immunity, and just one unvaccinated classmate could pose a serious threat. “If you are a parent who is vaccine-hesitant or who has chosen not to vaccinate, my plea to you is this: My kids are my heart and soul, just as yours are to you, and I need your help to keep them healthy and safe. I would do the same for you,” she explained.
But it’s already too late for other families, some of whom are now turning their personal tragedies into public health lessons for the broader community. Another mother in Illinois, whose six-day-old infant died from whooping cough two years ago, is currently lobbying the Illinois Department of Health to spread more information about vaccination to prevent other children from dying. And a Massachusetts mother is telling the story of her 9-week-old son’s death to encourage other people to take whooping cough seriously.
In addition to whooping cough, other preventable diseases like measles are also currently making a comeback. The vaccine that prevents measles, mumps, and rubella has been plagued by controversy thanks to the widely debunked theory that it can increase some kids’ risk of autism. Celebrities like Jenny McCarthy and Kristin Cavallari continue to give air time to this dangerous conspiracy theory. Meanwhile, measles outbreaks are worsening across the country, and public health officials are imploring Americans to make sure they’ve gotten all their shots.
Voters are told to hold everything - yes, everything - at some polling places
How lucky Florida is to be run by Republicans. [sarcasm]http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/2014-04-09/news/sfl-voters-banned-from-using-restrooms-20140409_1_polling-places-dubin-voting-rights
April 9, 2014|By Anthony Man, Sun Sentinel
Broward and Palm Beach County voters can rest easy. Elections supervisors in the two counties say they won’t implement the restroom ban imposed by Miami-Dade County.
In the state’s most populous county, voters who need to go while waiting to vote aren’t allowed to do so.
The media office at the Miami-Dade County Elections Department didn’t respond to a request for information about the rule. But it’s detailed by county officials in email exchanges with a disability rights lawyer.
“It’s absolutely stunning,” said Marc Dubin director of advocacy for the Center for Independent Living of South Florida, which serves people with disabilities in Miami-Dade County. He’s a former senior trialattorney in the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, where he was responsible for ADA enforcement.
“It is a current policy of the Department of Elections. It’s in effect right now,” Dubin said.
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Miami-Dade County’s Elections Department implemented the restroom denial policy for everyone after advocates for the disabled sought to ensure that all polling place facilities were accessible to people with disabilities.
A Feb. 14, 2014 email from Assistant County Attorney Shanika Graves states that “the [Elections] the Department’s policy is not to permit access to restrooms at polling sites on election days. Restrooms are open to voters during early voting because early voting is held at public facilities. However, public and private facilities are used as polling sites on election days. Private facilities are governed by private landlords, not the County. This policy was implemented to avoid situations where accessible restrooms would be available to some, but not all voters.”
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In written testimony for the hearing, Dubin said the decision to close restrooms would “undoubtedly reduce the number of voters casting a vote on Election Day, and will significantly further reduce the ability of voters with mobility disabilities to participate in the electoral process…. How many voters, when learning that there is no restroom available, will simply choose not to vote?”
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Friday, April 11, 2014
Busy weekend
I'll be doing voter registration tomorrow afternoon, going to a music show in the eveing, so I might not be posting tomorrow.
Police Warn of Red Light Camera Scam
This is happening around the country.http://alpharetta.patch.com/groups/police-and-fire/p/alpharetta-police-warn-of-red-light-camera-scam
Posted by Bob Pepalis (Editor) , January 13, 2014
Alpharetta police officers are not calling North Fulton residents about red light camera citations, according to the Alpharetta Department of Public Safety. The calls are a scam and the department is issuing an alert to the general public.
Recently, a number of North Fulton residents have received telephone calls by persons identifying themselves as an Alpharetta police officer, according to George Gordon, spokesman for the department.
The person who takes the call is told to send monies to pay for a red light camera citation or they will be charged with contempt of court. Gordon said the caller often uses the name of a valid Alpharetta police officer.
"At no time, will an Alpharetta police officer or any other public safety employee contact a person by telephone requesting money. No Alpharetta police officer would physically go to a residence or meet with any person in an effort to collect money," Gordon said in the scam alert.
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UPDATE: Alpharetta Public Safety spokesman George Gordon said the scam has escalated to callers telling local residents warrants already have been taken out against them and the court clerk has sent them a certified letter. The scammers say the intended victims must immediately go to a store to put money on a card and then share the card number with them.
Is your waiter a contract worker?
http://www.tabnorthatlanta.com/DesktopModules/Satellite%20Site%20Administration/News%20Story/News-Story/00222/news-story-00000044.pdf
By Dan Chapman
Jan. 19, 2014
Last month, the U.S. Department of Labor sued a Chinese restaurant in Jonesboro seeking to recoup $2 million in back wages allegedly owed 84 waiters and kitchen staff.
The lawsuit says Shu Wang, the owner of the Hibachi Grill and Supreme Buffet, didn’t pay minimum wage or sufficient overtime to his mostly Chinese and Mexican employees.
Shu paid the workers as if they were independent contractors, not full-time employees. The distinction is critical: Employees are guaranteed a minimum wage, overtime and other workplace benefits. Contractors are not.
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The labor department estimates that up to 30 percent of employers misclassify workers, a lingering effect of the Great Recession and its economic funk.
Workers wrongfully pegged as independent contractors lose more than wages. They can miss out on unemployment insurance, health and pension benefits and family leave.
State and federal tax coffers also suffer. Misclassification cost the federal treasury $2.7 billion in unpaid taxes, according to a Government Accountability Office report issued in 2006, the latest federal study.
More than ever, squeezed employers are classifying workers as independent contractors, particularly in the construction, home care, trucking and janitorial industries. That shift, coupled with a trend toward more workers holding multiple temporary and outsourced jobs, has convinced some labor experts that misclassifying employees will become more common.
Legislators, in Washington and in numerous state capitols, are cracking down on the practice. State Sen. Steve Henson, a DeKalb Democrat, will co-sponsor a bill aimed at scofflaw employers.
“It’s so unfair to employers who are doing the right thing and paying the (right) wages and unemployment benefits, but are competing against people who are violating the law,” said Henson, the Senate minority leader.
Shu Wang, the grill’s owne
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John Jackson, a trucker running containers from the port of Savannah to nearby warehouses, spoke last month with a labor department investigator. Jackson’s company considers him an independent contractor, despite 50-hour work weeks without overtime or benefits.
Jackson, 56, makes $50 a haul, barely enough to get by and cover diesel and repairs for his 2004 Freightliner.
“I’m living paycheck to paycheck, and I should be doing better than that,” he said. “It’s just getting harder and harder to make a living driving a truck.”
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By Dan Chapman
Jan. 19, 2014
Last month, the U.S. Department of Labor sued a Chinese restaurant in Jonesboro seeking to recoup $2 million in back wages allegedly owed 84 waiters and kitchen staff.
The lawsuit says Shu Wang, the owner of the Hibachi Grill and Supreme Buffet, didn’t pay minimum wage or sufficient overtime to his mostly Chinese and Mexican employees.
Shu paid the workers as if they were independent contractors, not full-time employees. The distinction is critical: Employees are guaranteed a minimum wage, overtime and other workplace benefits. Contractors are not.
-----
The labor department estimates that up to 30 percent of employers misclassify workers, a lingering effect of the Great Recession and its economic funk.
Workers wrongfully pegged as independent contractors lose more than wages. They can miss out on unemployment insurance, health and pension benefits and family leave.
State and federal tax coffers also suffer. Misclassification cost the federal treasury $2.7 billion in unpaid taxes, according to a Government Accountability Office report issued in 2006, the latest federal study.
More than ever, squeezed employers are classifying workers as independent contractors, particularly in the construction, home care, trucking and janitorial industries. That shift, coupled with a trend toward more workers holding multiple temporary and outsourced jobs, has convinced some labor experts that misclassifying employees will become more common.
Legislators, in Washington and in numerous state capitols, are cracking down on the practice. State Sen. Steve Henson, a DeKalb Democrat, will co-sponsor a bill aimed at scofflaw employers.
“It’s so unfair to employers who are doing the right thing and paying the (right) wages and unemployment benefits, but are competing against people who are violating the law,” said Henson, the Senate minority leader.
Shu Wang, the grill’s owne
-----
John Jackson, a trucker running containers from the port of Savannah to nearby warehouses, spoke last month with a labor department investigator. Jackson’s company considers him an independent contractor, despite 50-hour work weeks without overtime or benefits.
Jackson, 56, makes $50 a haul, barely enough to get by and cover diesel and repairs for his 2004 Freightliner.
“I’m living paycheck to paycheck, and I should be doing better than that,” he said. “It’s just getting harder and harder to make a living driving a truck.”
-----
Warmer temperatures can lead warmer tempers, worsening global security
http://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2014/03/30/un-science-report-warming-worsens-security-woes
By SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science Writer
March 30, 2014
In an authoritative report due out Monday a United Nations climate panel for the first time is connecting hotter global temperatures to hotter global tempers. Top scientists are saying that climate change will complicate and worsen existing global security problems, such as civil wars, strife between nations and refugees.
They're not saying it will cause violence, but will be an added factor making things even more dangerous. Fights over resources, like water and energy, hunger and extreme weather will all go into the mix to destabilize the world a bit more, says the report by the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The summary of the report is being finalized this weekend by the panel in Yokohama.
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For the past seven years, research in social science has found more links between climate and conflict, study authors say, with the full report referencing hundreds of studies on climate change and conflict.
The U.S. Defense Department earlier this month in its once-every-four-years strategic review, called climate change a "threat multiplier" to go with poverty, political instability and social tensions worldwide. Warming will trigger new problems but also provide countries new opportunities for resources and shipping routes in places such as the melting Arctic, the Pentagon report says.
After the climate panel's 2007 report, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon wrote that along with other causes, the conflict in the Darfur region of western Sudan "began as an ecological crisis, arising at least in part from climate change. " While the IPCC report this year downplays global warming's role in that particular strife, saying other issues were far more influential, the report's drafts do add that there is "justifiable common concern" that climate change increases the risk of fighting in similar circumstances.
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The chapter on national security says there is "robust evidence" that "human security will be progressively threatened as climate changes." It says it can destabilize the world in multiple ways by making it harder for people to make a living, increasing mass migrations, and making it harder for countries to keep control of their populations.
The migration issue is big because as refugees flee storms and other climate problems, that adds to security issues, the report and scientists say
-----
By SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science Writer
March 30, 2014
In an authoritative report due out Monday a United Nations climate panel for the first time is connecting hotter global temperatures to hotter global tempers. Top scientists are saying that climate change will complicate and worsen existing global security problems, such as civil wars, strife between nations and refugees.
They're not saying it will cause violence, but will be an added factor making things even more dangerous. Fights over resources, like water and energy, hunger and extreme weather will all go into the mix to destabilize the world a bit more, says the report by the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The summary of the report is being finalized this weekend by the panel in Yokohama.
-----
For the past seven years, research in social science has found more links between climate and conflict, study authors say, with the full report referencing hundreds of studies on climate change and conflict.
The U.S. Defense Department earlier this month in its once-every-four-years strategic review, called climate change a "threat multiplier" to go with poverty, political instability and social tensions worldwide. Warming will trigger new problems but also provide countries new opportunities for resources and shipping routes in places such as the melting Arctic, the Pentagon report says.
After the climate panel's 2007 report, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon wrote that along with other causes, the conflict in the Darfur region of western Sudan "began as an ecological crisis, arising at least in part from climate change. " While the IPCC report this year downplays global warming's role in that particular strife, saying other issues were far more influential, the report's drafts do add that there is "justifiable common concern" that climate change increases the risk of fighting in similar circumstances.
-----
The chapter on national security says there is "robust evidence" that "human security will be progressively threatened as climate changes." It says it can destabilize the world in multiple ways by making it harder for people to make a living, increasing mass migrations, and making it harder for countries to keep control of their populations.
The migration issue is big because as refugees flee storms and other climate problems, that adds to security issues, the report and scientists say
-----
Betrayed military spouses often keep quiet for fear of losing benefits
A facet of the problem I haven't seen before.
April 02, 2014|By David Zucchino
Within the tight circle of Army spouses, Kris Johnson and Rebecca Sinclair became close friends as their ambitious husbands advanced rapidly in the officer corps.
Both women were ultimately betrayed by their philandering spouses. Both endured public humiliation as their high-ranking husbands were hauled before courts-martial amid salacious testimony about adultery and other sex-related military crimes.
And both women, along with their children, risked losing a lifetime of military benefits if their husbands were dismissed from the Army.
"You're advised to keep your mouth shut and let him retire because you could lose everything," said Johnson, whose now ex-husband, an Army colonel, pleaded guilty in 2012 to adultery, bigamy and other charges.
Rebecca Sinclair begged a military judge here March 16 not to strip her and her two young sons of military benefits after her husband, Brig. Gen. Jeffrey A. Sinclair, pleaded guilty to a long-running, coercive affair with a junior officer. The general was allowed to retire at a reduced rank, preserving up to $830,000 in benefits he and his family had earned for his 27 years of service.
Fear of losing benefits keeps many military wives from exposing sexual misconduct or other offenses committed by their husbands, say many of those familiar with the military criminal justice system. Johnson kept quiet about her husband, Col. James H. Johnson III, while he carried on an affair with an Iraqi woman while deployed to that country.
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People are dying because of Republican state's refusal to expand Medicaid
http://orlandoweekly.com/news/the-perils-of-florida-s-refusal-to-expand-medicaid-1.1665144
By Billy Manes
Published: April 9, 2014
Charlene Dill didn’t have to die.
On March 21, Dill was supposed to bring her three children over to the South Orlando home of her best friend, Kathleen Voss Woolrich. The two had cultivated a close friendship since 2008; they shared all the resources that they had, from debit-card PINs to transportation to baby-sitting and house keys. They helped one another out, forming a safety net where there wasn’t one already. They “hustled,” as Woolrich describes it, picking up short-term work, going out to any event they could get free tickets to, living the high life on the low-down, cleaning houses for friends to afford tampons and shampoo. They were the working poor, and they existed in the shadows of the economic recovery that has yet to reach many average people.
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Dill, who was estranged from her husband and raising three children aged 3, 7 and 9 by herself, had picked up yet another odd job. She was selling vacuums on a commission basis for Rainbow Vacuums. On that day, in order to make enough money to survive, she made two last-minute appointments. At one of those appointments, in Kissimmee, she collapsed and died on a stranger’s floor.
Dill’s death was not unpredictable, nor was it unpreventable. She had a documented heart condition for which she took medication. But she also happened to be one of the people who fall within the gap created by the 2012 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that allowed states to opt out of Medicaid expansion, which was a key part of the Affordable Care Act’s intention to make health care available to everyone. In the ensuing two years, 23 states have refused to expand Medicaid, including Florida, which rejected $51 billion from the federal government over the period of a decade to overhaul its Medicaid program to include people like Dill and Woolrich – people who work, but do not make enough money to qualify for the Affordable Care Act’s subsidies. They, like many, are victims of a political war – one that puts the lives and health of up to 17,000 U.S. residents and 2,000 Floridians annually in jeopardy, all in the name of rebelling against President Barack Obama’s health care plan.
Woolrich has spent the better part of 2014 canvassing for the Service Employees International Union and for Planned Parenthood in an effort to educate people about Medicaid expansion and to enroll residents of poor neighborhoods into the Affordable Care Act’s medical-care exchanges. During the course of her work, she saw women with tumors that had yet to be treated, many chronic conditions affecting people living in the gap, and sometimes she found herself having to be the bearer of bad news.
-----
By Billy Manes
Published: April 9, 2014
Charlene Dill didn’t have to die.
On March 21, Dill was supposed to bring her three children over to the South Orlando home of her best friend, Kathleen Voss Woolrich. The two had cultivated a close friendship since 2008; they shared all the resources that they had, from debit-card PINs to transportation to baby-sitting and house keys. They helped one another out, forming a safety net where there wasn’t one already. They “hustled,” as Woolrich describes it, picking up short-term work, going out to any event they could get free tickets to, living the high life on the low-down, cleaning houses for friends to afford tampons and shampoo. They were the working poor, and they existed in the shadows of the economic recovery that has yet to reach many average people.
-----
Dill, who was estranged from her husband and raising three children aged 3, 7 and 9 by herself, had picked up yet another odd job. She was selling vacuums on a commission basis for Rainbow Vacuums. On that day, in order to make enough money to survive, she made two last-minute appointments. At one of those appointments, in Kissimmee, she collapsed and died on a stranger’s floor.
Dill’s death was not unpredictable, nor was it unpreventable. She had a documented heart condition for which she took medication. But she also happened to be one of the people who fall within the gap created by the 2012 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that allowed states to opt out of Medicaid expansion, which was a key part of the Affordable Care Act’s intention to make health care available to everyone. In the ensuing two years, 23 states have refused to expand Medicaid, including Florida, which rejected $51 billion from the federal government over the period of a decade to overhaul its Medicaid program to include people like Dill and Woolrich – people who work, but do not make enough money to qualify for the Affordable Care Act’s subsidies. They, like many, are victims of a political war – one that puts the lives and health of up to 17,000 U.S. residents and 2,000 Floridians annually in jeopardy, all in the name of rebelling against President Barack Obama’s health care plan.
Woolrich has spent the better part of 2014 canvassing for the Service Employees International Union and for Planned Parenthood in an effort to educate people about Medicaid expansion and to enroll residents of poor neighborhoods into the Affordable Care Act’s medical-care exchanges. During the course of her work, she saw women with tumors that had yet to be treated, many chronic conditions affecting people living in the gap, and sometimes she found herself having to be the bearer of bad news.
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Wednesday, April 09, 2014
Artist Meager Royalty Statements
http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/permalink/2014/04/03/streamingstatements
Thursday, April 3, 2014
by Armen Chakmakian
The following comes from Armen Chakmakian, a Grammy-nominated composer, keyboardist, and recording artist.
There are tons of articles about music streaming sites like Pandora, Spotify, etc in relation to recording artists making money or not. Here’s a screen capture of my quarterly royalty statement. 14,227 performances of music (almost every track 100% owned by me) generated $4.20. Notice one performance of “Ceremonies” or “Distant Lands” streaming radio show like Hearts of Space that brings in 26 cents for the full writer’s share compared to 2,088 performances of “Gypsy Rain” on Spotify that brought in a total of 60 cents.
Someone’s making money, and in true fashion with the music industry, it’s not the artists. Business practices like this are one of the reasons I jumped ship and only write for television now.
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Thursday, April 3, 2014
by Armen Chakmakian
The following comes from Armen Chakmakian, a Grammy-nominated composer, keyboardist, and recording artist.
There are tons of articles about music streaming sites like Pandora, Spotify, etc in relation to recording artists making money or not. Here’s a screen capture of my quarterly royalty statement. 14,227 performances of music (almost every track 100% owned by me) generated $4.20. Notice one performance of “Ceremonies” or “Distant Lands” streaming radio show like Hearts of Space that brings in 26 cents for the full writer’s share compared to 2,088 performances of “Gypsy Rain” on Spotify that brought in a total of 60 cents.
Someone’s making money, and in true fashion with the music industry, it’s not the artists. Business practices like this are one of the reasons I jumped ship and only write for television now.
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Prisons are the ‘new asylums’ of the US
http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/prisons-are-the-new-asylums-the-us?cid=sm_facebook
By Meredith Clark
April 8, 2014
America’s prisons house ten times more people with mental illnesses than its hospitals, according to a new report.
The report, released Tuesday by the Treatment Advocacy Center, found that state prisons and county jails house approximately 356,268 people with mental illnesses, while state mental hospitals hold only 35,000. The disparity is also a nationwide problem – only six states have psychiatric hospitals with more people in them than a prisons or jail.
Prisons, according to the report, have become the nation’s “new asylums.” The number of beds available at hospitals for mental health patients has been dropping for decades. And as the population of incarcerated people has exploded, so has the number of people with serious problems. A 2012 report, also by TAC, found that state mental health agencies cut nearly 10% of their available beds between 2009 and 2012.
The report provided a breakdown of the number of mentally ill prisoners in each state’s correctional facilities, the laws governing treatment, and examples of how inmates are treated. Among others, they include a Mississippi prison designed for mentally ill inmates, overrun by rats, where “some prisoners capture the rats, put them on makeshift leashes, and sell them as pets to other inmates. There was also a case in which a schizophrenic man spent 13 of 15 of his years in prison in solitary confinement.
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By Meredith Clark
April 8, 2014
America’s prisons house ten times more people with mental illnesses than its hospitals, according to a new report.
The report, released Tuesday by the Treatment Advocacy Center, found that state prisons and county jails house approximately 356,268 people with mental illnesses, while state mental hospitals hold only 35,000. The disparity is also a nationwide problem – only six states have psychiatric hospitals with more people in them than a prisons or jail.
Prisons, according to the report, have become the nation’s “new asylums.” The number of beds available at hospitals for mental health patients has been dropping for decades. And as the population of incarcerated people has exploded, so has the number of people with serious problems. A 2012 report, also by TAC, found that state mental health agencies cut nearly 10% of their available beds between 2009 and 2012.
The report provided a breakdown of the number of mentally ill prisoners in each state’s correctional facilities, the laws governing treatment, and examples of how inmates are treated. Among others, they include a Mississippi prison designed for mentally ill inmates, overrun by rats, where “some prisoners capture the rats, put them on makeshift leashes, and sell them as pets to other inmates. There was also a case in which a schizophrenic man spent 13 of 15 of his years in prison in solitary confinement.
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Carbon Dioxide Levels Just Hit Their Highest Point In 800,000 Years
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/04/09/3424704/carbon-dioxide-highest-level/
By Kiley Kroh on April 9, 2014
The concentration of carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas that drives climate change, hit 402 parts per million this week — the highest level recorded in at least 800,000 years.
The recordings came from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association’s Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii, which marked another ominous milestone last May when the 400 ppm threshold was crossed for the first time in recorded history.
Carbon dioxide (CO2) levels spike every spring but this year the threshold was crossed in March, two months earlier than last year. In fact, it’s happening “at faster rates virtually every decade,” according to James Butler, Director of NOAA’s Global Monitoring Division, a trend that “is consistent with rising fossil fuel emissions.”
400 ppm was long considered a very serious measurement but it isn’t the end — it’s just a marker on the road to ever-increasing carbon pollution levels, Butler explained in an interview on NOAA’s website. “It is a milestone, marking the fact that humans have caused carbon dioxide concentrations to rise 120 ppm since pre-industrial times, with over 90 percent of that in the past century alone. We don’t know where the tipping points are.”
When asked if the 400 ppm will be reached even earlier next year, Butler responded simply, “Yes. Every year going forward for a long time.”
While atmospheric CO2 levels never approached 400 ppm in the 800,000 years of detailed records scientists have, there is evidence that the last time the Earth experienced such high concentrations was actually several million years ago. Writing about the 400 ppm recording last year, climatologist Peter Gleick pointed to UCLA research “that suggested we would have to go back at least 15 million years to find carbon dioxide levels approaching today’s levels” and another article in the journal Paleoceanography “on paleoclimatic records that suggest CO2 concentrations (at least in the Northern Hemisphere) may have been around 400 ppm between 2 and 4.6 million years ago.”
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“a single molecule of carbon dioxide can remain aloft for hundreds of years, which means that the effects of today’s industrial activities will be felt for the next several centuries, if not thousands of years.”
By Kiley Kroh on April 9, 2014
The concentration of carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas that drives climate change, hit 402 parts per million this week — the highest level recorded in at least 800,000 years.
The recordings came from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association’s Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii, which marked another ominous milestone last May when the 400 ppm threshold was crossed for the first time in recorded history.
Carbon dioxide (CO2) levels spike every spring but this year the threshold was crossed in March, two months earlier than last year. In fact, it’s happening “at faster rates virtually every decade,” according to James Butler, Director of NOAA’s Global Monitoring Division, a trend that “is consistent with rising fossil fuel emissions.”
400 ppm was long considered a very serious measurement but it isn’t the end — it’s just a marker on the road to ever-increasing carbon pollution levels, Butler explained in an interview on NOAA’s website. “It is a milestone, marking the fact that humans have caused carbon dioxide concentrations to rise 120 ppm since pre-industrial times, with over 90 percent of that in the past century alone. We don’t know where the tipping points are.”
When asked if the 400 ppm will be reached even earlier next year, Butler responded simply, “Yes. Every year going forward for a long time.”
While atmospheric CO2 levels never approached 400 ppm in the 800,000 years of detailed records scientists have, there is evidence that the last time the Earth experienced such high concentrations was actually several million years ago. Writing about the 400 ppm recording last year, climatologist Peter Gleick pointed to UCLA research “that suggested we would have to go back at least 15 million years to find carbon dioxide levels approaching today’s levels” and another article in the journal Paleoceanography “on paleoclimatic records that suggest CO2 concentrations (at least in the Northern Hemisphere) may have been around 400 ppm between 2 and 4.6 million years ago.”
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“a single molecule of carbon dioxide can remain aloft for hundreds of years, which means that the effects of today’s industrial activities will be felt for the next several centuries, if not thousands of years.”
Man cleared of NYC murder after 25 years in prison
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/man-cleared-of-nyc-murder-after-25-years-in-prison/
April 8, 2014
Jonathan Fleming, a man who spent almost a quarter-century behind bars for murder, was freed in New York City on Tuesday and cleared of a killing that happened when he was 1,100 miles away on a Disney World vacation.
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Defense attorneys and prosecutors asked a Brooklyn judge to dismiss Fleming's conviction in the 1989 shooting. A key eyewitness recanted, new witnesses have implicated someone else and a review by prosecutors turned up a hotel receipt putting Fleming in Florida hours before the killing, defense lawyers Anthony Mayol and Taylor Koss said.
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Fleming had plane tickets, videos and postcards from his trip, his lawyers said, but authorities suggested he could have been in New York at the actual time of the shooting, and a woman testified that she had seen him shoot Rush.
The eyewitness recanted her testimony soon after Fleming's 1990 conviction, saying she had lied so police would cut her loose for an unrelated arrest, but Fleming lost his appeals.
The defense asked the DA's office to review the case last year.
Defense investigators found previously untapped witnesses who implicated someone else as the gunman, the attorneys said, declining to give the witnesses' or potential suspect's names before prosecutors investigate them.
And prosecutors' review produced a hotel receipt that Fleming paid in Florida about five hours before the shooting - a document that police evidently had since they found it in Fleming's pocket while arresting him, Mayol and Koss said.
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The exoneration, first reported by the New York Daily News, comes amid scrutiny of Brooklyn prosecutors' process for reviewing questionable convictions.
District Attorney Kenneth Thompson took office in January. In February, his office agreed to dismiss the murder convictions of two men who had spent more than 20 years in prison for three killings, saying newly discovered evidence had raised substantial doubts about their guilt.
April 8, 2014
Jonathan Fleming, a man who spent almost a quarter-century behind bars for murder, was freed in New York City on Tuesday and cleared of a killing that happened when he was 1,100 miles away on a Disney World vacation.
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Defense attorneys and prosecutors asked a Brooklyn judge to dismiss Fleming's conviction in the 1989 shooting. A key eyewitness recanted, new witnesses have implicated someone else and a review by prosecutors turned up a hotel receipt putting Fleming in Florida hours before the killing, defense lawyers Anthony Mayol and Taylor Koss said.
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Fleming had plane tickets, videos and postcards from his trip, his lawyers said, but authorities suggested he could have been in New York at the actual time of the shooting, and a woman testified that she had seen him shoot Rush.
The eyewitness recanted her testimony soon after Fleming's 1990 conviction, saying she had lied so police would cut her loose for an unrelated arrest, but Fleming lost his appeals.
The defense asked the DA's office to review the case last year.
Defense investigators found previously untapped witnesses who implicated someone else as the gunman, the attorneys said, declining to give the witnesses' or potential suspect's names before prosecutors investigate them.
And prosecutors' review produced a hotel receipt that Fleming paid in Florida about five hours before the shooting - a document that police evidently had since they found it in Fleming's pocket while arresting him, Mayol and Koss said.
-----
The exoneration, first reported by the New York Daily News, comes amid scrutiny of Brooklyn prosecutors' process for reviewing questionable convictions.
District Attorney Kenneth Thompson took office in January. In February, his office agreed to dismiss the murder convictions of two men who had spent more than 20 years in prison for three killings, saying newly discovered evidence had raised substantial doubts about their guilt.
What You Need To Know About Heartbleed, the New Security Bug Scaring the Internet
See the link below for more info.http://news.msn.com/science-technology/what-you-need-to-know-about-heartbleed-the-new-security-bug-scaring-the-internet-1
By Abby Ohlheiser of The Wire
April 8, 2014
What should you know about Heartbleed, a recently uncovered security bug? The shortest version: Change all of your passwords, and avoid any site that is known to be vulnerable. That sounds a bit alarmist, we know, but now that internet and security experts know a little more about the security vulnerability, it's becoming more and more clear that Heartbleed is nothing to mess with.
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Monday, April 07, 2014
Siberia Is Already Experiencing Mid-Summer Temperatures And Major Wildfires
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/04/06/3423410/siberia-wildfires-summer-heat/
By Joanna M. Foster on April 6, 2014
Russia’s less than fearsome winter this year has drawn international attention. From the slushy snow at the Sochi games to December photos of grassy city parks in Siberia with locals posing in bikinis near ice-free rivers, Russia’s frozen mystique isn’t quite what it used to be.
And with a record-braking warm spring in parts of Siberia, experts are warning that 2014 could be an epic year for forest fires.
According to the Siberian Times, Natural Resources Minister Sergei Donskoi has warned that this year’s fire season could be one for the record books.
“The forest fire situation is tense in Russia this year,” Donskoi said at a conference chaired by Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. “Due to a shortage of precipitation the forest fire season has begun almost one and a half months ahead of the norm.”
Seventeen forest fires have already been reported across 2,000 hectares (for some perspective, that’s about 5,000 acres), and across Siberia last week century-old temperature records were shattered. In Siberia’s third largest city, Krasnoyarsk, it was 70ºF, and in Abakan, the capital city of Khakassia, it was a shocking 77ºF — temperatures typical of mid-summer for this area. Before this unusually balmy spring, the warmest temperatures these cities have seen since record keeping begin in 1014 were 60º and 65ºF respectively. That record was set back in 1938.
“It was the hottest April 1 on record for several western Siberian cities, including Novosibirsk, Tomsk, Kemerovo, Barnaul and Gorno-Altaysk,” Renad Yagudin, of the Novosibirsk meteorological service told the Siberian Times. “The average temperature in Russia increased 0.4 degrees every ten years. Overall, the temperature in the area is 6.5-16.2 degrees Fahrenheit (2-9 Celsius) higher than the record set in 1989.”
Siberian wildfires may seem like a very remote threat to most of the world, but what happens in this region has consequences on a global scale.
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By Joanna M. Foster on April 6, 2014
Russia’s less than fearsome winter this year has drawn international attention. From the slushy snow at the Sochi games to December photos of grassy city parks in Siberia with locals posing in bikinis near ice-free rivers, Russia’s frozen mystique isn’t quite what it used to be.
And with a record-braking warm spring in parts of Siberia, experts are warning that 2014 could be an epic year for forest fires.
According to the Siberian Times, Natural Resources Minister Sergei Donskoi has warned that this year’s fire season could be one for the record books.
“The forest fire situation is tense in Russia this year,” Donskoi said at a conference chaired by Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. “Due to a shortage of precipitation the forest fire season has begun almost one and a half months ahead of the norm.”
Seventeen forest fires have already been reported across 2,000 hectares (for some perspective, that’s about 5,000 acres), and across Siberia last week century-old temperature records were shattered. In Siberia’s third largest city, Krasnoyarsk, it was 70ºF, and in Abakan, the capital city of Khakassia, it was a shocking 77ºF — temperatures typical of mid-summer for this area. Before this unusually balmy spring, the warmest temperatures these cities have seen since record keeping begin in 1014 were 60º and 65ºF respectively. That record was set back in 1938.
“It was the hottest April 1 on record for several western Siberian cities, including Novosibirsk, Tomsk, Kemerovo, Barnaul and Gorno-Altaysk,” Renad Yagudin, of the Novosibirsk meteorological service told the Siberian Times. “The average temperature in Russia increased 0.4 degrees every ten years. Overall, the temperature in the area is 6.5-16.2 degrees Fahrenheit (2-9 Celsius) higher than the record set in 1989.”
Siberian wildfires may seem like a very remote threat to most of the world, but what happens in this region has consequences on a global scale.
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Left behind by Obamacare, and the state of Georgia
The Republican leaders of Georgia claim the state can't afford to expand Medicaid. The expansion would be almost totally paid for by the federal government. But Georgia can afford to use state tax money subsidize big business donors.http://www.myajc.com/news/news/left-behind-by-obamacare-and-the-state/nfRj8/?icmp=ajc_internallink_invitationbox_apr2013_ajcstub1
Obamacare provides money to states to expand Medicaid, which is run by the states. Each states has its own criteria for eligibility, and for the amount of aid available. It was assumed that states would take the money and expand Medicaid, so subsidies were not provided for very poor people who were expected to be covered by Medicaid. Unfortunately, several Republican states, including Georgia, have refused to expand Medicaid, leaving the poorest citizes w/o health coverage.
As expected from the AJC, the reporter puts the blame on President Obama, w/o giving the whole story.
By Misty Williams - The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
April 5, 2014
Karen LaBar is 41 and has never had a mammogram. She has high blood pressure but no doctor to attend to it. She works hard providing home health care to others but has no health care of her own.
And here’s the kicker: as President Barack Obama exults in the 7.1 million signups for his health plan, there will be no signup for LaBar. She’s too poor.
Statewide, more than 400,000 of Georgia’s poorest, most vulnerable citizens have been left behind by the health care law that was supposed to benefit them the most. Georgia chose not to expand Medicaid, as envisioned by the Affordable Care Act, creating a gap into which these hundreds of thousands fall. Those in the gap make too much money to qualify for Medicaid but too little to get federal tax credits to help buy coverage on the Health Insurance Marketplace.
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by CURTIS COMPTON
031914
Left behind in the new world of health care Anthony Jenkins, 32, sits alone and unemployed in the living room of his sparsely supplied apartment on Wednesday, March 19, 2014, in Atlanta. Jenkins can't hold a steady job because of a seizure disorder. His last employer had to let him go for liability reasons after he suffered his second seizure while on the job. He doesn't make enough money to qualify for federal subsidies through the Health Insurance Marketplace and is being allowed to live in his apartment temporarily pending qualification for disability payments.
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===============================================
Georgia Medicaid eligibility
https://dch.georgia.gov/applying-medicaid
You may be eligible for Medicaid if your income is low and you match one of the following descriptions:
• You think you are pregnant
• You are age 65 or older
• You have a disability
• You are a child or teenager
• You are legally blind
• You need nursing home care
[Note that an adult w/o a disability is not eligible for Medicaid in Georgia.]
===============================
The following link shows Georgia Medicaid eligibility and resource limits.
https://dch.georgia.gov/sites/dch.georgia.gov/files/2014%20Financial%20Limits%20Chart%20Revised%203314_0.pdf
eg., a medically needy single adult is not eligible if their income is more than $208 a month ($2,496 a year)!
Friday, April 04, 2014
Insomnia may significantly increase stroke risk
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-04/aha-ims033114.php
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 3-Apr-2014
Contact: Bridgette McNeill
American Heart Association
Insomnia may significantly increase stroke risk
American Heart Association Rapid Access Journal Report
The risk of stroke may be much higher in people with insomnia compared to those who don't have trouble sleeping, according to new research in the American Heart Association journal Stroke.
The risk also seems to be far greater when insomnia occurs as a young adult compared to those who are older, said researchers who reviewed the randomly-selected health records of more than 21,000 people with insomnia and 64,000 non-insomniacs in Taiwan.
They found:
• Insomnia raised the likelihood of subsequent hospitalization for stroke by 54 percent over four years.
• The incidence of stroke¬ was eight times higher among those diagnosed with insomnia between 18-34 years old. Beyond age 35, the risk continually decreased.
• Diabetes also appeared to increase the risk of stroke in insomniacs.
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The mechanism linking insomnia to stroke is not fully understood, but evidence shows that insomnia may alter cardiovascular health via systematic inflammation, impaired glucose tolerance, increased blood pressure or sympathetic hyperactivity. Some behavioral factors (e.g., physical activity, diet, alcohol use and smoking) and psychological factors like stress might affect the observed relationship.
The researchers said it's unclear if the findings also apply to people in other nations, but studies in other countries have also pointed to a relationship between insomnia and stroke.
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 3-Apr-2014
Contact: Bridgette McNeill
American Heart Association
Insomnia may significantly increase stroke risk
American Heart Association Rapid Access Journal Report
The risk of stroke may be much higher in people with insomnia compared to those who don't have trouble sleeping, according to new research in the American Heart Association journal Stroke.
The risk also seems to be far greater when insomnia occurs as a young adult compared to those who are older, said researchers who reviewed the randomly-selected health records of more than 21,000 people with insomnia and 64,000 non-insomniacs in Taiwan.
They found:
• Insomnia raised the likelihood of subsequent hospitalization for stroke by 54 percent over four years.
• The incidence of stroke¬ was eight times higher among those diagnosed with insomnia between 18-34 years old. Beyond age 35, the risk continually decreased.
• Diabetes also appeared to increase the risk of stroke in insomniacs.
------
The mechanism linking insomnia to stroke is not fully understood, but evidence shows that insomnia may alter cardiovascular health via systematic inflammation, impaired glucose tolerance, increased blood pressure or sympathetic hyperactivity. Some behavioral factors (e.g., physical activity, diet, alcohol use and smoking) and psychological factors like stress might affect the observed relationship.
The researchers said it's unclear if the findings also apply to people in other nations, but studies in other countries have also pointed to a relationship between insomnia and stroke.
London Fog Turns Deadly
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/04/03/3422410/dangerous-london-smog/
By Joanna M. Foster on April 3, 2014
Schools are keeping students indoors at recess and officials are warning
the elderly and those with lung and heart conditions against strenuous outdoor activity. While this might sound like a normal day in smog-choked Beijing, the warnings are for Londoners. This week, dust blowing in from the Sahara has mixed with industrial pollution originating in Europe and the U.K.’s own traffic fumes to create a thick, yellow smog shrouding southern England.
The U.K. Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) measures outdoor air pollution on a one-to-ten scale. Parts of north-west Norfolk hit level ten on Tuesday and London came in at a nine Thursday morning.
DEFRA calculates air quality based on the concentrations of five pollutants — ozone, nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide, PM2.5 and PM10
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Last month, air pollution in Paris became so serious that half of all vehicles were blocked from entering the city in a desperate attempt to help clear the air.
For comparison, Paris saw air quality index readings as high as 185. London is flirting with 100, while Beijing somewhat routinely breaks 300 and has seen levels even exceed 600.
These numbers refer to concentrations of fine particulate matter known as PM2.5. Measured in micrograms per cubic meter, the World Health Organization (WHO) considers a reading of 25 or less ideal for human health. Above 300 is considered hazardous.
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About 80 percent of deaths related to outdoor pollution are linked to heart disease and strokes, while 14 percent are due to lung or respiratory diseases, and 6 percent to cancer.
Perhaps as many as 30,000 premature deaths in the U.K. are linked to poor air quality. The BBC has reported that there has been a 14 percent jump in emergency calls in London related to breathing problems. Historically, London is no stranger to smog. The “Great Smog” of 1952 in London, which lasted just 4 days, is believed to have caused 4,000 deaths.
Conditions in London are expected to get better on Friday as winds move the pollutants out to sea.
By Joanna M. Foster on April 3, 2014
Schools are keeping students indoors at recess and officials are warning
the elderly and those with lung and heart conditions against strenuous outdoor activity. While this might sound like a normal day in smog-choked Beijing, the warnings are for Londoners. This week, dust blowing in from the Sahara has mixed with industrial pollution originating in Europe and the U.K.’s own traffic fumes to create a thick, yellow smog shrouding southern England.
The U.K. Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) measures outdoor air pollution on a one-to-ten scale. Parts of north-west Norfolk hit level ten on Tuesday and London came in at a nine Thursday morning.
DEFRA calculates air quality based on the concentrations of five pollutants — ozone, nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide, PM2.5 and PM10
-----
Last month, air pollution in Paris became so serious that half of all vehicles were blocked from entering the city in a desperate attempt to help clear the air.
For comparison, Paris saw air quality index readings as high as 185. London is flirting with 100, while Beijing somewhat routinely breaks 300 and has seen levels even exceed 600.
These numbers refer to concentrations of fine particulate matter known as PM2.5. Measured in micrograms per cubic meter, the World Health Organization (WHO) considers a reading of 25 or less ideal for human health. Above 300 is considered hazardous.
-----
About 80 percent of deaths related to outdoor pollution are linked to heart disease and strokes, while 14 percent are due to lung or respiratory diseases, and 6 percent to cancer.
Perhaps as many as 30,000 premature deaths in the U.K. are linked to poor air quality. The BBC has reported that there has been a 14 percent jump in emergency calls in London related to breathing problems. Historically, London is no stranger to smog. The “Great Smog” of 1952 in London, which lasted just 4 days, is believed to have caused 4,000 deaths.
Conditions in London are expected to get better on Friday as winds move the pollutants out to sea.
Climate change denialists are worse than GM
It is hypocritical to criticize GM for knowingly selling cars with defective ignitions when we have know for more than 20 years that global warming would cause problems, but have chosen to ignore it. The fossil fuel slime who have tried to manipulate public opinion to deny the problem are worse than those at GM who hid the ignition problem, because global warming is tremendously more destructive, It has already killed many more people than the faulty switch, and things are getting continually worse.
Bad dreams about climate disruption
I think the newest climate report, and the way it has been ignored by the MSM, is affecting my dreams. Tuesday night, I dreamed I had a house with big trees in the yard. Young men kept climbing up to the top and swinging out and dropping, grabbing hold of lower branches to stop them. I tried to get them to stop doing it, but they wouldn't.
Sticky Willy is edible
When I was working in my yard this morning, I pulled up a clump of some kind of plant that was sticky, like velcro. I put that clump on my compost pile, but I thought it smelled something like celery, so I decided to try to find out if it is edible. Searching for sticky plant, brought it up right away. It is edible and can be used to make teas which are supposed to be beneficial to health, so I have pulled up some more to cook with.
http://www.statesman.com/news/lifestyles/home-garden/sticky-weed-useful-but-annoying/nRrN4/
By Renee Studebaker
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Some gardeners call it the Velcro plant. Others know it as cleavers or sticky weed. My favorite common name for Galium aparine? Sticky Willy.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galium_aparine
Cleavers[1] (Galium aparine) are herbaceous annual plants of the family Rubiaceae, which are native to North America and Eurasia.
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Galium aparine is edible. The leaves and stems of the plant can be cooked as a leaf vegetable if gathered before the fruits appear. However, the numerous small hooks which cover the plant and give it its clinging nature can make it less palatable if eaten raw.[5][6] Geese thoroughly enjoy eating G. aparine, hence one of its other common names, "goosegrass".[7] Cleavers are in the same family as coffee. The fruits of cleavers have often been dried and roasted, and then used as a coffee substitute which contains less caffeine.[
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As a tea, the plant acts medicinally as a diuretic, lymphatic, and detoxifier.[6][12] As a lymphatic tonic, it is used in a wide range of problems involving the lymph system, such as swollen glands (e.g. tonsillitis).[13]
Poultices and washes made from cleavers were traditionally used to treat a variety of skin ailments, light wounds and burns.[14] As a pulp, it has been used to relieve poisonous bites and stings.[15] To make a poultice, the entire plant is used, and applied directly to the affected area.[16]
The asperuloside in cleavers acts as a mild sedative, and one study showed that cleaver extract lowers the blood pressure of dogs, without slowing their heart rate, or any other dangerous side effects. Ethnobotanist Dr. James A. Duke recommends a dosage of one ounce of dried leaves to a pint of water, 1 to 2 teaspoons of tincture, or 2 to 4 grams of the dried herb in a cup of boiling water, three times daily.[
Dioscorides reported that ancient Greek shepherds would use the barbed stems of cleavers to make a "rough sieve", which could be used to strain milk. Linnaeus later reported the same usage in Sweden—a tradition that is still practiced in modern times.[14][18]
In Europe, the dried, matted foliage of the plant was once used to stuff mattresses. Several of the bedstraws were used for this purpose, due to the fact that the clinging hairs cause the branches to stick together, which enables the mattress filling to maintain a uniform thickness.[6][19] The roots of cleavers can be used to make a permanent red dye.[
How to get very rich - kill & injure your customers
It was very immoral for GM to hide this problem.http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2014/04/02/223253/mccaskill-accuses-gm-chief-of.html?sp=/99/104/244/112/
But it is disgustingly hypocritical for Republican Congress persons to join in the criticm. Republicans have worked to eliminate regulation of business, and have cut back on funding to regulatory agencies. According to them, we don't need regulation because business won't make dangerous products because it would be bad for business. This hypothesis has been repeatedly shown to be false.
By Greg Gordon
April 2, 2014
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Presiding over a second day of congressional hearings into lethal failures of GM’s Chevrolet Cobalt and other models, McCaskill waved a company document that she said proves engineer Ray DeGiorgio perjured himself last year in a lawsuit filed by survivors of a Georgia nurse killed in a 2010 crash.
The newly disclosed document shows that despite his denials, DeGiorgio approved a new design for the ignition switch in 2006. The change apparently wasn’t reported to federal highway safety regulators, because the GM part number remained the same, an irregularity that Mary Barra, GM’s new CEO, called “unacceptable.”
-----
Problems with the defective part culminated in a series of recalls of more than 2.5 million cars since Feb. 7.
-----
GM, the one bailed out by taxpayers in 2009
-----
Republican Sen. Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, a lawyer, said the failure to issue a new part number “is not a matter of acceptability. This is criminal deception.”
-----
Before the redesign, a slight bump or putting too many keys on a key ring could produce enough force to turn off the ignition, disabling power steering, power brakes and air bag deployment. Even with the change, GM has notified owners of the affected Chevrolet Cobalts and HHRs, Saturn Ions and Skys and Pontiac G5s and Solstices that driving over bumpy roads or sudden jarring still could trigger the problem.
McCaskill opened the hearing by tracing the discovery of the defect to litigation after the death of Brooke Melton, a 29-year-old pediatric nurse who was driving near Atlanta to celebrate her birthday with her boyfriend on March, 10, 2010, when her 2005 Cobalt suddenly lost power.
The car “hydroplaned, crossed the center line and slammed into another vehicle at a speed of 58 miles per hour,” McCaskill said. “Her car ended up in a creek. The airbags never deployed.”
Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2014/04/02/223253/mccaskill-accuses-gm-chief-of.html?sp=/99/104/244/112/#storylink=cpy
SC mom to be sentenced in breast feeding death
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/south-carolina-mom-to-be-sentenced-in-breast-feeding-overdose-case/
April 4, 2014
Stephanie Greene, a South Carolina woman, faces 20 years to life when she is sentenced Friday in the death of her 6-week-old daughter.
Prosecutors say the infant died of an overdose of morphine delivered through her breast milk.
According to CBS affiliate WSPA, a Spartanburg County jury convicted Greene, 39, on Thursday of homicide by child abuse, involuntary manslaughter and unlawful conduct toward a child.
A pathologist testified that the infant had what could have been a lethal level of morphine for an adult in her system in November 2010. Prosecutors say Greene hid her pregnancy from her doctors and didn't tell them she was breast feeding so they would continue prescribing painkillers.
April 4, 2014
Stephanie Greene, a South Carolina woman, faces 20 years to life when she is sentenced Friday in the death of her 6-week-old daughter.
Prosecutors say the infant died of an overdose of morphine delivered through her breast milk.
According to CBS affiliate WSPA, a Spartanburg County jury convicted Greene, 39, on Thursday of homicide by child abuse, involuntary manslaughter and unlawful conduct toward a child.
A pathologist testified that the infant had what could have been a lethal level of morphine for an adult in her system in November 2010. Prosecutors say Greene hid her pregnancy from her doctors and didn't tell them she was breast feeding so they would continue prescribing painkillers.
Hussong Manufacturing and American Flame Recall Three Gas Fireplaces, Fireplace Inserts Due to Explosion Hazard
See the link below if you have an incident involving this product to report.http://www.cpsc.gov/en/Recalls/2014/Hussong-Manufacturing-and-American-Flame-Recall-Three-Gas-Fireplaces-and-Fireplace-Inserts/
Recall date: April 04, 2014
Consumers should stop using this product unless otherwise instructed. It is illegal to resell or attempt to resell a recalled consumer product.
Name of product:
Kozy Heat, Ambiance and Stellar Hearth gas fireplaces and fireplace inserts
Hazard:
The main control module can allow gas to be released and buildup in the burner area, posing an explosion hazard.
Consumer Contact:
Hussong Manufacturing at (800) 253-4904 between 7:30 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. CT Monday through Friday, or online at www.kozyheat.com, www.ambiencefireplace.com, or www.stellarhearth.com, then click on “Recall Information” for more information.
Thursday, April 03, 2014
South Sudan Urgently Needs Help to Stave Off Famine, U.N. Warns
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/04/world/africa/south-sudan-will-starve-without-help-un-warns.html?partner=MYWAY&ei=5065
By NICK CUMMING-BRUCEAPRIL 3, 2014
South Sudan needs $230 million in international aid in the next 60 days or it will face the worst starvation in Africa since the 1980s, when hundreds of thousands of people died in Ethiopia’s famine, the United Nations official coordinating humanitarian aid in South Sudan warned on Thursday.
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About 3.7 million people, close to one-third of the total population, are already at severe risk of starvation in South Sudan, a crisis now ranked by the United Nations on par with Syria’s, Mr. Lanzer said. He appealed for only the most essential needs, food, water, seeds and farming tools, to allow the South Sudanese to plant crops before the end of May, when rains bring the planting season to an end.
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His appeal echoed an alarm sounded by the heads of other United Nations humanitarian agencies, which estimate that 255,000 South Sudanese have fled to neighboring countries and that around 800,000 more have been driven from their homes by the violence that erupted in mid-December after President Salva Kiir said his former vice president, Riek Machar, had tried to overthrow the government.
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By NICK CUMMING-BRUCEAPRIL 3, 2014
South Sudan needs $230 million in international aid in the next 60 days or it will face the worst starvation in Africa since the 1980s, when hundreds of thousands of people died in Ethiopia’s famine, the United Nations official coordinating humanitarian aid in South Sudan warned on Thursday.
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About 3.7 million people, close to one-third of the total population, are already at severe risk of starvation in South Sudan, a crisis now ranked by the United Nations on par with Syria’s, Mr. Lanzer said. He appealed for only the most essential needs, food, water, seeds and farming tools, to allow the South Sudanese to plant crops before the end of May, when rains bring the planting season to an end.
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His appeal echoed an alarm sounded by the heads of other United Nations humanitarian agencies, which estimate that 255,000 South Sudanese have fled to neighboring countries and that around 800,000 more have been driven from their homes by the violence that erupted in mid-December after President Salva Kiir said his former vice president, Riek Machar, had tried to overthrow the government.
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Warden at Rikers Island Demoted After Inmate Dies in Overheated Cell
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/04/nyregion/warden-at-rikers-island-demoted-after-inmate-dies-in-overheated-cell.html?partner=MYWAY&ei=5065
By MICHAEL SCHWIRTZAPRIL 3, 2014
New York City’s Correction Department, facing an outcry over the death of a mentally ill inmate in an overheated cell at Rikers Island, announced on Thursday that it was demoting the warden in charge of the mental health unit and punishing two other employees.
The inmate, Jerome Murdough, died in February after being left unattended for hours as the temperature in his cell climbed above 100 degrees. The authorities blamed a faulty heating unit for the high temperatures and said a correction officer who should have been checking regularly on inmates failed to do so.
Mr. Murdough’s death has intensified concerns about the city’s ability to care for prisoners who are mentally ill, particularly at Rikers Island, where inmates with mental illness are frequently neglected and abused. Mr. Murdough, 56, a homeless veteran with a history of alcohol abuse, died only a week after arriving at Rikers. He had been arrested on Feb. 7 on a trespassing charge.
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Correction officers have struggled with an influx of mentally ill inmates, who now make up nearly 40 percent of the population at Rikers. Faced with erratic behavior typical of some mentally ill inmates, guards have been known to respond both aggressively and indifferently.
Last month, federal authorities charged a correction officer with violating the civil rights of an inmate, who died in his cell after pleading for medical help for hours, the first such prosecution in at least a decade.
On Thursday, Norman Seabrook, the president of the Correction Officers’ Benevolent Association, which represents nearly 9,000 uniformed guards, said his members needed more mental health training.
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By MICHAEL SCHWIRTZAPRIL 3, 2014
New York City’s Correction Department, facing an outcry over the death of a mentally ill inmate in an overheated cell at Rikers Island, announced on Thursday that it was demoting the warden in charge of the mental health unit and punishing two other employees.
The inmate, Jerome Murdough, died in February after being left unattended for hours as the temperature in his cell climbed above 100 degrees. The authorities blamed a faulty heating unit for the high temperatures and said a correction officer who should have been checking regularly on inmates failed to do so.
Mr. Murdough’s death has intensified concerns about the city’s ability to care for prisoners who are mentally ill, particularly at Rikers Island, where inmates with mental illness are frequently neglected and abused. Mr. Murdough, 56, a homeless veteran with a history of alcohol abuse, died only a week after arriving at Rikers. He had been arrested on Feb. 7 on a trespassing charge.
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Correction officers have struggled with an influx of mentally ill inmates, who now make up nearly 40 percent of the population at Rikers. Faced with erratic behavior typical of some mentally ill inmates, guards have been known to respond both aggressively and indifferently.
Last month, federal authorities charged a correction officer with violating the civil rights of an inmate, who died in his cell after pleading for medical help for hours, the first such prosecution in at least a decade.
On Thursday, Norman Seabrook, the president of the Correction Officers’ Benevolent Association, which represents nearly 9,000 uniformed guards, said his members needed more mental health training.
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Getting Honest About the One Percent
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/ten-miles-square/2014/04/getting_honest_about_the_one_p049722.php
By Daniel Luzer
April 3, 2014
There’s a problem with how we talk about wealth in America, and it’s probably skewing our understanding of economics and sociology.
So much of the rhetoric of inequality has to do with the distinction between the top one percent of Americans and everyone else, the 99 percent.
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The truth is that when we look into the numbers, things get a little more complicated. The definitions here are a little ambiguous, but depending on how we draw the line, the money looks like this: in 2009, the top one percent of taxpayers reported a minimum of $344,000 in annual household income. In terms of assets, one enters the one percent with about $1.5 million in asserts.
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An amazing chart from economist Amir Sufi, based on the work of Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, shows that when you look inside the 1 percent, you see clearly that most of them aren’t growing their share of wealth at all. In fact, the gain in wealth share is all about the top 0.1 percent of the country. While nine-tenths of the top percentile hasn’t seen much change at all since 1960, the 0.01 percent has essentially quadrupled its share of the country’s wealth in half a century.
----- [see link above for graph]
It turns out that wealth inequality isn’t about the 1 percent v. the 99 percent at all. It’s about the 0.1 percent v. the 99.9 percent (or, really, the 0.01 percent vs. the 99.99 percent, if you like). Long-story-short is that this group, comprised mostly of bankers and CEOs, is riding the stock market to pick up extraordinary investment income. And it’s this investment income, rather than ordinary earned income, that’s creating this extraordinary wealth gap.
Most of the one percent are suffering more or less the same fate as your average teacher or nurse or mechanic. Even as the country gets richer, most of this one percent has got about the same money as it always did. They really aren’t getting any richer either.
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Thompson: “Between 1992 and 2008, 3,672 different taxpayers appeared on the Fortunate 400 list. Just one percent of the Fortunate 400—four households—appeared on the list all 17 years. Now there’s your real 1 percent.”
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We have a wealth distribution worse than that of Czarist Russia.
By Daniel Luzer
April 3, 2014
There’s a problem with how we talk about wealth in America, and it’s probably skewing our understanding of economics and sociology.
So much of the rhetoric of inequality has to do with the distinction between the top one percent of Americans and everyone else, the 99 percent.
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The truth is that when we look into the numbers, things get a little more complicated. The definitions here are a little ambiguous, but depending on how we draw the line, the money looks like this: in 2009, the top one percent of taxpayers reported a minimum of $344,000 in annual household income. In terms of assets, one enters the one percent with about $1.5 million in asserts.
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An amazing chart from economist Amir Sufi, based on the work of Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, shows that when you look inside the 1 percent, you see clearly that most of them aren’t growing their share of wealth at all. In fact, the gain in wealth share is all about the top 0.1 percent of the country. While nine-tenths of the top percentile hasn’t seen much change at all since 1960, the 0.01 percent has essentially quadrupled its share of the country’s wealth in half a century.
----- [see link above for graph]
It turns out that wealth inequality isn’t about the 1 percent v. the 99 percent at all. It’s about the 0.1 percent v. the 99.9 percent (or, really, the 0.01 percent vs. the 99.99 percent, if you like). Long-story-short is that this group, comprised mostly of bankers and CEOs, is riding the stock market to pick up extraordinary investment income. And it’s this investment income, rather than ordinary earned income, that’s creating this extraordinary wealth gap.
Most of the one percent are suffering more or less the same fate as your average teacher or nurse or mechanic. Even as the country gets richer, most of this one percent has got about the same money as it always did. They really aren’t getting any richer either.
-----
Thompson: “Between 1992 and 2008, 3,672 different taxpayers appeared on the Fortunate 400 list. Just one percent of the Fortunate 400—four households—appeared on the list all 17 years. Now there’s your real 1 percent.”
-----
We have a wealth distribution worse than that of Czarist Russia.
Supreme Court strikes down aggregate campaign limits on individuals
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2014/04/02/223198/supreme-court-strikes-down-aggregate.html?sp=/99/200/365/
By Michael Doyle
McClatchy Washington Bureau
April 2, 2014
The Supreme Court on Wednesday further opened up the taps on political campaign spending, with a bombshell ruling that removes the long-standing limits on how much total money an individual can contribute to federal candidates.
In what amounts to a 5-4 ruling won by conservatives, the court declared the aggregate contribution limits imposed four decades ago violated the First Amendment’s free-speech protections. Though individual donations may still be limited, for now, the ruling means donors can spread their wealth across as many candidates and causes as they can find.
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Roberts’ 40-page opinion , joined by three other conservative justices, continues the court’s dismantling of congressional campaign finance reform efforts, including landmarks laws passed in 1974 and 2002, and its constitutional reasoning leaves remaining campaign restrictions at risk. Justice Clarence Thomas joined the conclusion, making an effective 5-4 majority, though he wrote a separate concurring opinion calling for the end of other campaign limits as well.
The court’s four Democratic appointees dissented.
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By Michael Doyle
McClatchy Washington Bureau
April 2, 2014
The Supreme Court on Wednesday further opened up the taps on political campaign spending, with a bombshell ruling that removes the long-standing limits on how much total money an individual can contribute to federal candidates.
In what amounts to a 5-4 ruling won by conservatives, the court declared the aggregate contribution limits imposed four decades ago violated the First Amendment’s free-speech protections. Though individual donations may still be limited, for now, the ruling means donors can spread their wealth across as many candidates and causes as they can find.
-----
Roberts’ 40-page opinion , joined by three other conservative justices, continues the court’s dismantling of congressional campaign finance reform efforts, including landmarks laws passed in 1974 and 2002, and its constitutional reasoning leaves remaining campaign restrictions at risk. Justice Clarence Thomas joined the conclusion, making an effective 5-4 majority, though he wrote a separate concurring opinion calling for the end of other campaign limits as well.
The court’s four Democratic appointees dissented.
-----
Arctic Sea Ice Cover Was Fifth-Smallest On Record This Year
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/04/03/3422694/fifth-lowest-arctic-sea-cover-peak/
By Joanna M. Foster on April 3, 2014
Just as much of the Northeast is beginning to emerge from one of the longest deep freezes in recent memory, in the Arctic, sea ice has finally reached its maximum extent for the year.
The National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado announced that on March 21, the total amount of ice cover for the Arctic peaked at 5.7 million square miles, or 282,000 square miles below the 1981-to-2010 average. This is the fifth-lowest winter ice cover extent since satellite records began in 1978. The lowest maximum extent recorded was in 2011 at 5.65 million square miles of ice cover.
In September 2012 after the summer melt season, less ice covered the Arctic than had ever been recorded before — a shocking 18 percent less, prompting observers to predict that the Arctic might see an ice-free summer long before the end of the century.
Ice cover in the Arctic varies considerably on a seasonal basis — growing in thickness and extent during the winter and shrinking in volume over the summer — as well as on a year-to-year basis. But Arctic sea ice extent has been trending downwards dramatically over the past four decades and the scientific consensus points squarely at human-caused climate change as the culprit.
In the latest IPCC report, the world’s leading climate scientists confirmed that Arctic summer sea ice was declining at rates much faster than predicted by most models.
This year’s relatively low maximum sea ice cover may have been affected by the overall milder winter experienced throughout the Arctic, as most of the coldest air moved south to Canada and the United States. In February, temperatures were 7.2° to 14.4°F above normal for much of the Arctic.
A recent study by the National Snow and Ice Data Center and NASA, researchers found that the length of the Arctic ice summer melt season has lengthened by an average of five days per decade from 1979-2010.
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The steady decline of sea ice has repercussions that extend far beyond the Arctic and the polar bears and Inuit who depend on the dwindling frozen habitat. While the melting of floating ice does not affect sea levels when it melts, sunlight that once would have bounced back into space from the bright, reflective surface is absorbed by the now much darker ocean water. This accelerates localized warming, melting permafrost which further exacerbates the cycle by releasing carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere. Localized warming also quickens the pace of melting for land-based ice sheets in Greenland. This causes sea levels to rise, threatening low-lying coastal communities around the world.
There is also evidence that suggests that warmer air in the Arctic can disrupt the jet stream leading to bizarre weather in North America and Europe.
By Joanna M. Foster on April 3, 2014
Just as much of the Northeast is beginning to emerge from one of the longest deep freezes in recent memory, in the Arctic, sea ice has finally reached its maximum extent for the year.
The National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado announced that on March 21, the total amount of ice cover for the Arctic peaked at 5.7 million square miles, or 282,000 square miles below the 1981-to-2010 average. This is the fifth-lowest winter ice cover extent since satellite records began in 1978. The lowest maximum extent recorded was in 2011 at 5.65 million square miles of ice cover.
In September 2012 after the summer melt season, less ice covered the Arctic than had ever been recorded before — a shocking 18 percent less, prompting observers to predict that the Arctic might see an ice-free summer long before the end of the century.
Ice cover in the Arctic varies considerably on a seasonal basis — growing in thickness and extent during the winter and shrinking in volume over the summer — as well as on a year-to-year basis. But Arctic sea ice extent has been trending downwards dramatically over the past four decades and the scientific consensus points squarely at human-caused climate change as the culprit.
In the latest IPCC report, the world’s leading climate scientists confirmed that Arctic summer sea ice was declining at rates much faster than predicted by most models.
This year’s relatively low maximum sea ice cover may have been affected by the overall milder winter experienced throughout the Arctic, as most of the coldest air moved south to Canada and the United States. In February, temperatures were 7.2° to 14.4°F above normal for much of the Arctic.
A recent study by the National Snow and Ice Data Center and NASA, researchers found that the length of the Arctic ice summer melt season has lengthened by an average of five days per decade from 1979-2010.
-----
The steady decline of sea ice has repercussions that extend far beyond the Arctic and the polar bears and Inuit who depend on the dwindling frozen habitat. While the melting of floating ice does not affect sea levels when it melts, sunlight that once would have bounced back into space from the bright, reflective surface is absorbed by the now much darker ocean water. This accelerates localized warming, melting permafrost which further exacerbates the cycle by releasing carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere. Localized warming also quickens the pace of melting for land-based ice sheets in Greenland. This causes sea levels to rise, threatening low-lying coastal communities around the world.
There is also evidence that suggests that warmer air in the Arctic can disrupt the jet stream leading to bizarre weather in North America and Europe.
Wednesday, April 02, 2014
Crib mattresses emit potentially harmful chemicals,
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-04/uota-cm040114.php
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 2-Apr-2014
Contact: Sandra Zaragoza
University of Texas at Austin
Crib mattresses emit potentially harmful chemicals, Cockrell School engineers find
In a first-of-its-kind study, a team of environmental engineers from the Cockrell School of Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin found that infants are exposed to high levels of chemical emissions from crib mattresses while they sleep.
Analyzing the foam padding in crib mattresses, the team found that the mattresses release significant amounts of volatile organic compounds (VOCs), potentially harmful chemicals also found in household items such as cleaners and scented sprays.
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The researchers found:
•New crib mattresses release about four times as many VOCs as old crib mattresses.
•Body heat increases emissions.
•Chemical emissions are strongest in the sleeping infant's immediate breathing zone.
The researchers concluded that, on average, mattresses emitted VOCs at a rate of 87.1 micrograms per square meter per hour, while older mattresses emitted VOCs at a rate of 22.1 micrograms per square meter per hour. Overall, Boor said crib mattresses release VOCs at rates comparable to other consumer products and indoor materials, including laminate flooring (20 to 35 micrograms per square meter per hour) and wall covering (51 micrograms per square meter per hour).
Boor became motivated to conduct the study after finding out that infants spend 50 to 60 percent of their day sleeping. Infants are considered highly susceptible to the adverse health effects of exposure to indoor air pollutants.
-----
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 2-Apr-2014
Contact: Sandra Zaragoza
University of Texas at Austin
Crib mattresses emit potentially harmful chemicals, Cockrell School engineers find
In a first-of-its-kind study, a team of environmental engineers from the Cockrell School of Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin found that infants are exposed to high levels of chemical emissions from crib mattresses while they sleep.
Analyzing the foam padding in crib mattresses, the team found that the mattresses release significant amounts of volatile organic compounds (VOCs), potentially harmful chemicals also found in household items such as cleaners and scented sprays.
-----
The researchers found:
•New crib mattresses release about four times as many VOCs as old crib mattresses.
•Body heat increases emissions.
•Chemical emissions are strongest in the sleeping infant's immediate breathing zone.
The researchers concluded that, on average, mattresses emitted VOCs at a rate of 87.1 micrograms per square meter per hour, while older mattresses emitted VOCs at a rate of 22.1 micrograms per square meter per hour. Overall, Boor said crib mattresses release VOCs at rates comparable to other consumer products and indoor materials, including laminate flooring (20 to 35 micrograms per square meter per hour) and wall covering (51 micrograms per square meter per hour).
Boor became motivated to conduct the study after finding out that infants spend 50 to 60 percent of their day sleeping. Infants are considered highly susceptible to the adverse health effects of exposure to indoor air pollutants.
-----
Positive, negative thinkers' brains revealed
Surely it's desirable to have at least part of the population who do not ignore potential problems.http://msutoday.msu.edu/news/2014/positive-negative-thinkers-brains-revealed/
Positive, negative thinkers' brains revealed
Published: April 2, 2014
Contact(s): Andy Henion Media Communications
Jason Moser Psychology
The ability to stay positive when times get tough – and, conversely, of being negative – may be hardwired in the brain, finds new research led by a Michigan State University psychologist.
The study, which appears in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology, is the first to provide biological evidence validating the idea that there are, in fact, positive and negative people in the world.
“It’s the first time we’ve been able to find a brain marker that really distinguishes negative thinkers from positive thinkers,” said Jason Moser, lead investigator and assistant professor of psychology.
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“The worriers actually showed a paradoxical backfiring effect in their brains when asked to decrease their negative emotions,” Moser said. “This suggests they have a really hard time putting a positive spin on difficult situations and actually make their negative emotions worse even when they are asked to think positively.” - See more at: http://msutoday.msu.edu/news/2014/positive-negative-thinkers-brains-revealed/#sthash.UDSBdQHJ.dpuf
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Coffee consumption reduces mortality risk from liver cirrhosis
I can't stand coffee. I wonder if green tea will do?http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-04/w-ccr040214.php
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 2-Apr-2014
Contact: Dawn Peters
Wiley
Coffee consumption reduces mortality risk from liver cirrhosis
Drinking tea, fruit juice or soft drinks not found to affect risk of cirrhosis death
New research reveals that consuming two or more cups of coffee each day reduces the risk of death from liver cirrhosis by 66%, specifically cirrhosis caused by non-viral hepatitis. Findings in Hepatology, a journal published by Wiley on behalf of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases, show that tea, fruit juice, and soft drink consumption are not linked to cirrhosis mortality risk. As with previous studies heavy alcohol use was found to increase risk of death from cirrhosis.
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"Prior evidence suggests that coffee may reduce liver damage in patients with chronic liver disease," said lead researcher, Dr. Woon-Puay Koh with Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School Singapore and the National University of Singapore. "Our study examined the effects of consuming coffee, alcohol, black tea, green tea, and soft drinks on risk of mortality from cirrhosis."
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Findings indicate that those who drank at least 20 g of ethanol daily had a greater risk of cirrhosis mortality compared to non-drinker. In contrast, coffee intake was associated with a lower risk of death from cirrhosis, specifically for non-viral hepatitis related cirrhosis. Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), a chronic liver disease related to the metabolic syndrome and more sedentary affluent lifestyle, likely predominates among the non-viral hepatitis related cirrhosis group. In fact, subjects who drank two or more cups per day had a 66% reduction in mortality risk, compared to non-daily coffee drinkers. However, coffee intake was not associated with viral hepatitis B related cirrhosis mortality.
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Global Flattening - updated 4/29/2014
The New Scientist (12 April 2014) Feedback column, which printed the original claim, reports that some people had written to say that the change would be very small. Charles Sawyer wrote that exhaled air contains about 45,000 ppm of CO2, and that "wind instruments would be impossible to play consistently in tune if the CO2 content had any significant effect on pitch."
I don't have time to research this, so I'm just presenting the counter claims. Whatever the case, it is not going to affect our lives. It may just be a cute joke.
Global Flattening
Whilst the possibility that increased levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide could give rise to global warming has been widely publicised, a concomitant phenomenon of interest to practicioners of early music, namely global flattening of pitch, has hardly received any attention. The pitch of a wind instrument is inversely proportional to its length and to the density of the gas it contains. In calculating the pitch of the many surviving wind instruments from earlier centuries it has hitherto always been assumed that the latter factor is a constant. Clearly however this is not the case: if we calculate the effect of the increase in carbon dioxide levels the change in pitch is by no means negligible. The atomic weight of nitrogen is 14, of oxygen 16 and carbon is 12 (ignoring trace amounts of carbon-14). Nitrogen and oxygen are divalent, so their molecular weights are 28 and 32 respectively. The resulting molecular weight of the mixture of nitrogen and oxygen in the ratio found in air is approximately 28.8. However the molecular weight of carbon dioxide is 44 and thus even small amounts of this compound make a significant contribution to the density of the resulting gas.
Calculation of the fall in pitch resulting from this over the period from 1700 to the present day is a problem too complex for these pages, but an article from the Journal of Theoretical and Applied Accoustics, published at the beginning of this month, suggests a figure of 5.5%. This means that the pitch of a baroque instrument which today is a=415 would at the time of construction actually have been A=438, i.e. almost exactly the modern concert pitch of A=440. Clearly the TVEMF committee should give serious consideration to standardising on modern tuninbg for all its events in future!
D. Arrowsmith
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22129601.100-feedback-going-down-the-tubes-with-co2.html
I don't have time to research this, so I'm just presenting the counter claims. Whatever the case, it is not going to affect our lives. It may just be a cute joke.
According to New Scientist (15 March 2014, p 56) David Fletcher in 1998 wrote the following in 1998http://www.tvemf.org/tamesis/humour/flattening.htm
Global Flattening
Whilst the possibility that increased levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide could give rise to global warming has been widely publicised, a concomitant phenomenon of interest to practicioners of early music, namely global flattening of pitch, has hardly received any attention. The pitch of a wind instrument is inversely proportional to its length and to the density of the gas it contains. In calculating the pitch of the many surviving wind instruments from earlier centuries it has hitherto always been assumed that the latter factor is a constant. Clearly however this is not the case: if we calculate the effect of the increase in carbon dioxide levels the change in pitch is by no means negligible. The atomic weight of nitrogen is 14, of oxygen 16 and carbon is 12 (ignoring trace amounts of carbon-14). Nitrogen and oxygen are divalent, so their molecular weights are 28 and 32 respectively. The resulting molecular weight of the mixture of nitrogen and oxygen in the ratio found in air is approximately 28.8. However the molecular weight of carbon dioxide is 44 and thus even small amounts of this compound make a significant contribution to the density of the resulting gas.
Calculation of the fall in pitch resulting from this over the period from 1700 to the present day is a problem too complex for these pages, but an article from the Journal of Theoretical and Applied Accoustics, published at the beginning of this month, suggests a figure of 5.5%. This means that the pitch of a baroque instrument which today is a=415 would at the time of construction actually have been A=438, i.e. almost exactly the modern concert pitch of A=440. Clearly the TVEMF committee should give serious consideration to standardising on modern tuninbg for all its events in future!
D. Arrowsmith
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22129601.100-feedback-going-down-the-tubes-with-co2.html
Are You Musical or Tone Deaf? Genes May Be Key
http://health.usnews.com/health-news/articles/2014/03/12/are-you-musical-or-tone-deaf-genes-may-be-key
WEDNESDAY, March 12, 2014 (HealthDay News) -- Inheriting certain inner-ear genes may make for top-notch musical chops.
A study by Finnish scientists suggests that the genes that influence the structure of auditory pathways -- the structures that form the inner ear -- may play a significant role in musical ability.
"It's very interesting that they identified genetic regions that may be associated with brain mechanisms involved in the abilities to perceive, appreciate and perhaps even perform music," said Robert Bilder, director of the Tennenbaum Center for the Biology of Creativity, at the University of California, Los Angeles.
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Bilder, who was not involved in the study, said other factors are involved in extraordinary creativity, including a high musical aptitude.
"In this study, they've really focused on auditory perception, and I think the ability to appreciate tone and rhythm and musical patterns is critically important. But there are so many other factors involved in exceptional levels of ability and achievement -- a range of personality factors and other cognitive factors that are almost certainly critical," Bilder said.
He says they're called "Big C" factors, such as personality characteristics like openness to new experiences. "People who have higher levels of creative achievement tend to have lower levels of agreeableness. They tend to be people who don't just accept the status quo," he said. Persistence, the desire to work and work until they get it right, is another quality of highly creative personalities.
Another expert pointed out other influences on musical ability.
"There are a lot of environmental factors that may come into play, too," said Dr. Jeffrey Borenstein, president and CEO of the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation, in New York City, such as being exposed to music as a child, or playing an instrument from an early age.
Borenstein said other genes are involved, too.
-----
WEDNESDAY, March 12, 2014 (HealthDay News) -- Inheriting certain inner-ear genes may make for top-notch musical chops.
A study by Finnish scientists suggests that the genes that influence the structure of auditory pathways -- the structures that form the inner ear -- may play a significant role in musical ability.
"It's very interesting that they identified genetic regions that may be associated with brain mechanisms involved in the abilities to perceive, appreciate and perhaps even perform music," said Robert Bilder, director of the Tennenbaum Center for the Biology of Creativity, at the University of California, Los Angeles.
-----
Bilder, who was not involved in the study, said other factors are involved in extraordinary creativity, including a high musical aptitude.
"In this study, they've really focused on auditory perception, and I think the ability to appreciate tone and rhythm and musical patterns is critically important. But there are so many other factors involved in exceptional levels of ability and achievement -- a range of personality factors and other cognitive factors that are almost certainly critical," Bilder said.
He says they're called "Big C" factors, such as personality characteristics like openness to new experiences. "People who have higher levels of creative achievement tend to have lower levels of agreeableness. They tend to be people who don't just accept the status quo," he said. Persistence, the desire to work and work until they get it right, is another quality of highly creative personalities.
Another expert pointed out other influences on musical ability.
"There are a lot of environmental factors that may come into play, too," said Dr. Jeffrey Borenstein, president and CEO of the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation, in New York City, such as being exposed to music as a child, or playing an instrument from an early age.
Borenstein said other genes are involved, too.
-----
Duck Feathers Speed Up Roach Reproduction
http://news.sciencemag.org/signal-noise/2014/04/duck-feathers-speed-roach-reproduction
April 2014
Touch is a powerful form of communication for humans, and it looks like it is for cockroaches, too. Researchers have found that female roaches grow and lay eggs faster if they are “touched” by other females and artificial antennae made from duck feathers. On the other hand, isolating the cockroaches seems to slow down the reproductive process. The lead entomologist of the study believes that the effect of touch on egg-laying, described in a paper to be published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, demonstrates the importance of social interaction for the insects.
April 2014
Touch is a powerful form of communication for humans, and it looks like it is for cockroaches, too. Researchers have found that female roaches grow and lay eggs faster if they are “touched” by other females and artificial antennae made from duck feathers. On the other hand, isolating the cockroaches seems to slow down the reproductive process. The lead entomologist of the study believes that the effect of touch on egg-laying, described in a paper to be published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, demonstrates the importance of social interaction for the insects.
Humans killed off Moas
http://news.sciencemag.org/biology/2014/03/why-did-new-zealands-moas-go-extinct
17 March 2014
For millions of years, nine species of large, flightless birds known as moas (Dinornithiformes) thrived in New Zealand. Then, about 600 years ago, they abruptly went extinct. Their die-off coincided with the arrival of the first humans on the islands in the late 13th century, and scientists have long wondered what role hunting by Homo sapiens played in the moas’ decline. Did we alone drive the giant birds over the brink, or were they already on their way out thanks to disease and volcanic eruptions? Now, a new genetic study of moa fossils points to humankind as the sole perpetrator of the birds’ extinction. The study adds to an ongoing debate about whether past peoples lived and hunted animals in a sustainable manner or were largely to blame for the extermination of numerous species.
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17 March 2014
For millions of years, nine species of large, flightless birds known as moas (Dinornithiformes) thrived in New Zealand. Then, about 600 years ago, they abruptly went extinct. Their die-off coincided with the arrival of the first humans on the islands in the late 13th century, and scientists have long wondered what role hunting by Homo sapiens played in the moas’ decline. Did we alone drive the giant birds over the brink, or were they already on their way out thanks to disease and volcanic eruptions? Now, a new genetic study of moa fossils points to humankind as the sole perpetrator of the birds’ extinction. The study adds to an ongoing debate about whether past peoples lived and hunted animals in a sustainable manner or were largely to blame for the extermination of numerous species.
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Tuesday, April 01, 2014
Older brains slow due to greater experience, rather than cognitive decline
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-01/w-obs012114.php
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 21-Jan-2014
Contact: Ben Norman
Wiley
Older brains slow due to greater experience, rather than cognitive decline
What happens to our cognitive abilities as we age? Traditionally it is thought that age leads to a steady deterioration of brain function, but new research in Topics in Cognitive Science argues that older brains may take longer to process ever increasing amounts of knowledge, and this has often been misidentified as declining capacity.
The study, led by Dr. Michael Ramscar of the University of Tuebingen, takes a critical look at the measures that are usually thought to show that our cognitive abilities decline across adulthood. Instead of finding evidence of decline, the team discovered that most standard cognitive measures are flawed, confusing increased knowledge for declining capacity.
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http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/01/140120090415.htm
------
The research shows that studies of the problems older people have with recalling names suffer from a similar blind spot: there is a far greater variety of given names today than there were two generations ago. This cultural shift toward greater name diversity means the number of different names anyone learns over their lifetime has increased dramatically. The work shows how this makes locating a name in memory far harder than it used to be. Even for computers.
Ramscar and his colleagues' work provides more than an explanation of why, in the light of all the extra information they have to process, we might expect older brains to seem slower and more forgetful than younger brains. Their work also shows how changes in test performance that have been taken as evidence for declining cognitive abilities in fact demonstrates older adults' greater mastery of the knowledge they have acquired.
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The Tübingen research conclude that we need different tests for the cognitive abilities of older people -- taking into account the nature and amount of information our brains process. "The brains of older people do not get weak," says Michael Ramscar. "On the contrary, they simply know more."
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 21-Jan-2014
Contact: Ben Norman
Wiley
Older brains slow due to greater experience, rather than cognitive decline
What happens to our cognitive abilities as we age? Traditionally it is thought that age leads to a steady deterioration of brain function, but new research in Topics in Cognitive Science argues that older brains may take longer to process ever increasing amounts of knowledge, and this has often been misidentified as declining capacity.
The study, led by Dr. Michael Ramscar of the University of Tuebingen, takes a critical look at the measures that are usually thought to show that our cognitive abilities decline across adulthood. Instead of finding evidence of decline, the team discovered that most standard cognitive measures are flawed, confusing increased knowledge for declining capacity.
-----
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/01/140120090415.htm
------
The research shows that studies of the problems older people have with recalling names suffer from a similar blind spot: there is a far greater variety of given names today than there were two generations ago. This cultural shift toward greater name diversity means the number of different names anyone learns over their lifetime has increased dramatically. The work shows how this makes locating a name in memory far harder than it used to be. Even for computers.
Ramscar and his colleagues' work provides more than an explanation of why, in the light of all the extra information they have to process, we might expect older brains to seem slower and more forgetful than younger brains. Their work also shows how changes in test performance that have been taken as evidence for declining cognitive abilities in fact demonstrates older adults' greater mastery of the knowledge they have acquired.
-----
The Tübingen research conclude that we need different tests for the cognitive abilities of older people -- taking into account the nature and amount of information our brains process. "The brains of older people do not get weak," says Michael Ramscar. "On the contrary, they simply know more."
Autism and intellectual disability incidence linked with environmental factors
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-03/uocm-aai031014.php
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 13-Mar-2014
Contact: Kevin Jiang
University of Chicago Medical Center
Autism and intellectual disability incidence linked with environmental factors
An analysis of 100 million US medical records reveals that autism and intellectual disability (ID) rates are correlated at the county level with incidence of genital malformations in newborn males, an indicator of possible congenital exposure to harmful environmental factors such as pesticides.
Autism rates—after adjustment for gender, ethnic, socioeconomic and geopolitical factors—jump by 283 percent for every one percent increase in frequency of malformations in a county. Intellectual disability rates increase 94 percent. Slight increases in autism and ID rates are also seen in wealthier and more urban counties.
The study, published by scientists from the University of Chicago March 13 in PLOS Computational Biology, confirms the dramatic effect of diagnostic standards. Incidence rates for Autism and ID on a per-person basis decrease by roughly 99 percent in states with stronger regulations on diagnosis of these disorders.
"Autism appears to be strongly correlated with rate of congenital malformations of the genitals in males across the country," said study author Andrey Rzhetsky, PhD, professor of genetic medicine and human genetics at the University of Chicago. "This gives an indicator of environmental load and the effect is surprisingly strong."
Although autism and intellectual disability have genetic components, environmental causes are thought to play a role.
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Male fetuses are particularly sensitive to toxins such as environmental lead, sex hormone analogs, medications and other synthetic molecules. Parental exposure to these toxins is thought explain a large portion of congenital reproductive malformations, such as micropenis, hypospadias (urethra on underside of the penis), undescended testicles and others.
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The team found that every one percent increase in malformations in a county was associated with a 283 percent increase in autism and 94 percent increase in ID in that same county. Almost all areas with higher rates of autism also had higher rates of ID, which the researchers believe corroborates the presence of environmental factors. In addition, they found that male children with autism are almost six times more likely to have congenital genital malformations. Female incidence was linked with increased malformation rates, but weakly so. A county-by-county map of autism and ID incidence above or below the predicted baseline for the entire US is included in the study.
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Rzhetsky acknowledges there are potential confounders to the study, for example ease of access to data could differ between counties or uneven genetic distribution, beyond the factors they controlled for, could have an effect. The team anticipates future studies could leverage data from the Environmental Protection Agency and other sources to identify links between specific environmental causes and increased rates of autism and ID.
"We interpret the results of this study as a strong environmental signal," Rzhetsky said. "For future genetic studies we may have to take into account where data were collected, because it's possible that you can get two identical kids in two different counties and one would have autism and the other would not."
PUBLIC RELEASE DATE: 13-Mar-2014
Contact: Kevin Jiang
University of Chicago Medical Center
Autism and intellectual disability incidence linked with environmental factors
An analysis of 100 million US medical records reveals that autism and intellectual disability (ID) rates are correlated at the county level with incidence of genital malformations in newborn males, an indicator of possible congenital exposure to harmful environmental factors such as pesticides.
Autism rates—after adjustment for gender, ethnic, socioeconomic and geopolitical factors—jump by 283 percent for every one percent increase in frequency of malformations in a county. Intellectual disability rates increase 94 percent. Slight increases in autism and ID rates are also seen in wealthier and more urban counties.
The study, published by scientists from the University of Chicago March 13 in PLOS Computational Biology, confirms the dramatic effect of diagnostic standards. Incidence rates for Autism and ID on a per-person basis decrease by roughly 99 percent in states with stronger regulations on diagnosis of these disorders.
"Autism appears to be strongly correlated with rate of congenital malformations of the genitals in males across the country," said study author Andrey Rzhetsky, PhD, professor of genetic medicine and human genetics at the University of Chicago. "This gives an indicator of environmental load and the effect is surprisingly strong."
Although autism and intellectual disability have genetic components, environmental causes are thought to play a role.
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Male fetuses are particularly sensitive to toxins such as environmental lead, sex hormone analogs, medications and other synthetic molecules. Parental exposure to these toxins is thought explain a large portion of congenital reproductive malformations, such as micropenis, hypospadias (urethra on underside of the penis), undescended testicles and others.
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The team found that every one percent increase in malformations in a county was associated with a 283 percent increase in autism and 94 percent increase in ID in that same county. Almost all areas with higher rates of autism also had higher rates of ID, which the researchers believe corroborates the presence of environmental factors. In addition, they found that male children with autism are almost six times more likely to have congenital genital malformations. Female incidence was linked with increased malformation rates, but weakly so. A county-by-county map of autism and ID incidence above or below the predicted baseline for the entire US is included in the study.
-----
Rzhetsky acknowledges there are potential confounders to the study, for example ease of access to data could differ between counties or uneven genetic distribution, beyond the factors they controlled for, could have an effect. The team anticipates future studies could leverage data from the Environmental Protection Agency and other sources to identify links between specific environmental causes and increased rates of autism and ID.
"We interpret the results of this study as a strong environmental signal," Rzhetsky said. "For future genetic studies we may have to take into account where data were collected, because it's possible that you can get two identical kids in two different counties and one would have autism and the other would not."
Half A Million People With College Degrees Are Working For Minimum Wage
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2014/03/31/3420987/college-degree-minimum-wage/
By Alan Pyke on March 31, 2014
Almost half a million college graduates are working minimum-wage jobs, according to new government statistics.
There were 260,000 Americans with bachelor’s degrees earning the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour or less in 2013, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ newest annual snapshot of minimum wage workers. Another 200,000 associate’s degree holders also worked for that wage.
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The glut of overqualified workers in minimum wage jobs is another piece of evidence against the common stereotype that such work is mostly done by teenagers who need to build a resume more than they need to earn an independent living. In fact, the vast majority of workers who would benefit from a minimum wage hike are adults who work to pay rent, cover hospital bills, and feed families. One in five American children has a parent in that group. Fast food workers — one of the largest subsets of minimum wage workers — are disproportionately black and female compared to the overall population.
By Alan Pyke on March 31, 2014
Almost half a million college graduates are working minimum-wage jobs, according to new government statistics.
There were 260,000 Americans with bachelor’s degrees earning the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour or less in 2013, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ newest annual snapshot of minimum wage workers. Another 200,000 associate’s degree holders also worked for that wage.
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The glut of overqualified workers in minimum wage jobs is another piece of evidence against the common stereotype that such work is mostly done by teenagers who need to build a resume more than they need to earn an independent living. In fact, the vast majority of workers who would benefit from a minimum wage hike are adults who work to pay rent, cover hospital bills, and feed families. One in five American children has a parent in that group. Fast food workers — one of the largest subsets of minimum wage workers — are disproportionately black and female compared to the overall population.
Rich Heir Rapes His 3 Year-Old Daughter, Gets No Jail Time Because He ‘Will Not Fare Well’ In Prison
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2014/03/31/3421132/rich-heir-rapes-his-3-year-old-daughter-gets-no-jail-time-because-he-will-not-fare-well-in-prison/
By Ian Millhiser on March 31, 2014
Robert H. Richards IV does not work. He doesn’t have to. The great-grandson of Irénée du Pont, the chemical magnate who provided much of the financial backing to a failed effort to defeat Franklin Delano Roosevelt during the 1930s, Richards lives off a trust fund in a 5,800 square foot mansion he bought for $1.8 million. When he is not staying in his mansion, he might be found in his beach home “in the exclusive North Shores neighborhood near Rehoboth Beach.”
Richards is also a child rapist.
In 2005, Richards started sexually abusing his three year-old daughter. The abuse ended two years later when the girl told her grandmother that she didn’t want “my daddy touching me anymore.” When Richards’ former wife confronted him this abuse, Richards admitted to doing so but claimed “it was an accident and he would never do it again.”
And yet, Robert Richards, who raped his own child and then told her not to tell anyone so that it could be “our little secret,” will likely not spend a day in prison. Although Richards was originally charged with two counts of second-degree rape of a child — counts that carry a mandatory 10 year prison term — the prosecutor offered him a plea bargain just days before the trial. Richards admitted in open court that he abused his daughter, and he plead to a single count of fourth-degree rape, a much less serious crime with no mandatory minimum.
Though the maximum sentence for fourth-degree rape is 15 years in prison, the prosecution recommended that Richards only receive probation. And Judge Jan Jurden largely agreed. Though she sentenced Richards to an eight-year prison term, she immediately suspended the term in favor of probation. Richards, Jurden wrote in her sentencing order, “will not fare well” if he is sentenced to prison.
By Ian Millhiser on March 31, 2014
Robert H. Richards IV does not work. He doesn’t have to. The great-grandson of Irénée du Pont, the chemical magnate who provided much of the financial backing to a failed effort to defeat Franklin Delano Roosevelt during the 1930s, Richards lives off a trust fund in a 5,800 square foot mansion he bought for $1.8 million. When he is not staying in his mansion, he might be found in his beach home “in the exclusive North Shores neighborhood near Rehoboth Beach.”
Richards is also a child rapist.
In 2005, Richards started sexually abusing his three year-old daughter. The abuse ended two years later when the girl told her grandmother that she didn’t want “my daddy touching me anymore.” When Richards’ former wife confronted him this abuse, Richards admitted to doing so but claimed “it was an accident and he would never do it again.”
And yet, Robert Richards, who raped his own child and then told her not to tell anyone so that it could be “our little secret,” will likely not spend a day in prison. Although Richards was originally charged with two counts of second-degree rape of a child — counts that carry a mandatory 10 year prison term — the prosecutor offered him a plea bargain just days before the trial. Richards admitted in open court that he abused his daughter, and he plead to a single count of fourth-degree rape, a much less serious crime with no mandatory minimum.
Though the maximum sentence for fourth-degree rape is 15 years in prison, the prosecution recommended that Richards only receive probation. And Judge Jan Jurden largely agreed. Though she sentenced Richards to an eight-year prison term, she immediately suspended the term in favor of probation. Richards, Jurden wrote in her sentencing order, “will not fare well” if he is sentenced to prison.
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