Tag Archives: park

Scientist who resisted censorship of climate report lost her job

Subscribe to The Beacon

This story was originally published by Reveal and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

For several years, climate change scientist Maria Caffrey led a trailblazing study outlining the risks of rising seas at national parks. After Friday, she’ll be out of a job.

Caffrey, who worked under a contract with the National Park Service, resisted efforts by federal officials to remove all references to human causes of climate change in her scientific report. After Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting reported the attempts at censorship, Democratic members of Congress called for an investigation, and last May, the park service released the report with all the references reinstated.

Caffrey’s contract expires on Friday. Park service officials told her last year that they would hire her for a new project. But they notified her today that no funding is available for the work.

Caffrey said she asked her supervisor at the park service, “Is this because of the climate change stuff?” She said he told her, “I don’t want to answer that.” Park service officials did not respond to questions from Reveal about why Caffrey wasn’t rehired. But spokesperson Jeremy Barnum said it was not because she spoke out against the editing of the climate report.

Caffrey’s career boom and bust exemplifies the difficult situation many scientists face as President Donald Trump’s administration tries to suppress research on topics that he doesn’t consider a priority. Columbia Law School’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law has reported 194 examples of the federal government censoring, hindering or sidelining climate change science since Trump was elected.

All federal scientists are vulnerable, but scientists like Caffrey who work under federal contracts face particular risk because they can be fired easily and their funding can be pulled, said Jeff Ruch, executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, which represents federal and state scientists in complaints against agencies.

In a January episode of Reveal, Caffrey spoke about the pressure she experienced during the editing of the parks report. She said supervisors at the park service yelled at her and threatened to kill the report or remove her name if she would not agree to the changes. Some told her they could lose their jobs or be transferred if she didn’t capitulate.

“It’s different kinds of bullying and pressure from different people,” Caffrey said. “If one person says one thing and then another person says another thing, after awhile it really starts to build up and it becomes an absolute mountain.”

The report projects the effects of sea level rise at 118 coastal parks in 2030, 2050 and 2100. It includes four scenarios of global greenhouse gases — which come mostly from the burning of fossil fuels — based on whether and how much people reduce greenhouse gases.

The research started under President Barack Obama’s administration, but then was held up for more than a year after Trump took office.

Reveal obtained 18 drafts of the report. In one draft, a park service official crossed out five uses of the word “anthropogenic,” the term for people’s impact on nature, along with three references to “human activities” causing climate change. Trump questions that humans are causing climate change, but climate scientists around the globe have concluded that greenhouse gases from human activities are causing the planet to warm.

As part of her research, Caffrey developed an idea for an interactive website to enable the public and park staff to visualize the threat rising seas pose to individual parks. She led the website project, but was removed from it in May, before it was completed and published in December.

“Essentially, I feel I’ve been shut out from my project. It certainly feels like there could be some retribution playing a role in this,” Caffrey said at the time.

Last spring, Caffrey accepted a temporary contract at the park service that was unrelated to climate change. She was paid $25,000 a year, about a third of the salary that she had earned for several years. Her supervisors at the park service’s water resources division tried to secure funding for a better position, paying $76,000 a year, to assess wetlands at national parks, according to Caffrey and park service emails. But they emailed her on Thursday that the funding isn’t available.

After the report was published, the Interior Department’s Inspector General and the park service’s scientific integrity officer closed their investigations into whether the agency violated its scientific integrity policies.

Congressional Democrats requested a broader investigation. Nancy DiPaolo, spokesperson for Interior’s Office of Inspector General, told Reveal that it has launched no new investigation.

Ruch said federal agencies’ scientific integrity policies have little teeth, and, while scientists’ careers often suffer when they stand up for research that doesn’t fit agencies’ priorities, the career staff that sideline it often thrive.

Caffrey, 37, doesn’t regret her decision to stand up for her science.

“I wouldn’t do anything different, but Jesus, this is stressful,” she said. She’s pulling her toddler out of day care and has set a goal of applying for a new job every day.

Caffrey’s career may have taken a hit, but her science is publicly available to show how much climate change threatens parks with permanent flooding and storm damage, and how reducing greenhouse gas emissions could reduce the damage.

“Maria is a smart, dedicated, and accomplished scientist. If these were normal times, she would continue to make valuable contributions within the park service and for the future of our globe,” said William Manley, a University of Colorado research scientist who worked with Caffrey on her sea level research for the park service. “We should all be grateful for her efforts.”

Read article here:

Scientist who resisted censorship of climate report lost her job

Posted in Accent, alo, Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Scientist who resisted censorship of climate report lost her job

National park officials were told climate change was ‘sensitive.’ So they removed it from a key planning report.

This story was originally published by Reveal and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Park officials scrubbed all mentions of climate change from a key planning document for a New England national park after they were warned to avoid “sensitive language that may raise eyebrows” with the Trump administration.

The superintendent of the New Bedford Whaling National Historical Park in Massachusetts had signed off a year ago on a 50-page document that outlines the park’s importance to American history and its future challenges. But then the National Park Service’s regional office sent an email in January suggesting edits: References to climate change and its increasing role in threats to the famous whaling port, such as flooding, were noted in the draft, then omitted from the final report, signed in June.

The draft and the emails were obtained by Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting in response to a Freedom of Information Act request.

The documents provide a rare peek behind the usually closed curtains of the Trump administration. They illustrate how President Donald Trump’s approach to climate change impacts the way that park managers research and plan for future threats to the nation’s historic and natural treasures.

The editing of the report reflects a pattern of the Trump administration sidelining research and censoring Interior Department documents that contain references to climate science.

The New Bedford Whaling National Historical Park, located on the shore of southeast Massachusetts, preserves the nation’s whaling history.New Bedford Whaling National Historical Park

Earlier this year, Reveal exposed an effort by park service managers to remove references to human-induced climate change in a scientific report about sea-level rise and storm surge at 118 national parks. The Guardian recently reported on the Trump administration’s efforts to stall funding for climate change research in the Interior Department by subjecting research projects to unprecedented political review by an appointee who has no scientific qualifications.

In a survey by the Union of Concerned Scientists, government scientists reported being asked to stop working on climate change and connecting their science to industry actions. These are just a few of the examples of science under siege compiled by Columbia University in its “silencing science” tracker.

The email suggesting changes in the New Bedford park report was sent in January by Amanda Jones, a community planner with the park service’s northeast region.

“You’ll see that anything to do with ‘climate change’ has been highlighted in these documents. In a nutshell, we’re being told that we can talk about climate change in terms of facts — if we have data to back our claim, that is OK. We should, however, avoid any speculative language — like what ‘may’ happen in the future,” she wrote to Meghan Kish, the New Bedford park’s superintendent.

Scientists say telling park managers to avoid references to “what may happen in the future” is worrisome.

Reveal

Steven Beissinger, a professor of conservation biology at University of California, Berkeley who reviewed the emails and edits in the New Bedford report, called it “irresponsible to future generations of Americans” for the park service to direct managers to ignore research on the future risks of rising sea levels, risks to endangered species, worsening wildfires, and other effects.

“We should have confidence in scientists’ projections and prepare for those kinds of scenarios,” Beissinger said. “We can hope they won’t happen, but we surely want to be prepared for them. We have to be looking at the future because places are going to be changing.”

A comparison of the draft and final documents shows all 16 references to “climate change” were removed.

Park service officials involved in editing the New Bedford report did not respond to repeated requests for interviews. But a park service spokesperson said parks are told to “address issues like climate change … using the best available scientific information.”

“Sound management requires that we rely on specific, measurable data when making management and planning decisions,” Jeremy Barnum, chief park service spokesperson, said in an email response to Reveal. “Climate change is one factor that affects park ecosystems, resources, and infrastructure.”

Barnum did not answer questions about the deletions from the New Bedford park report, which is known as a “foundation document.” But he said such documents are reviewed “to ensure that they are consistent with current policy and directives.”

The New Bedford park was created by Congress in 1996 to preserve 13 city blocks of a Massachusetts seaport that was home to the world’s largest whaling fleet in the 19th century. The park tells the broader history of American whaling.

Flooding from rising seas, increased snow melt and stormwater, larger storm surges and extreme heatwaves are among the threats from human-caused climate change to the park’s historic structures. A 1960s hurricane barrier that protects New Bedford is vulnerable to widespread failure in a 100-year storm if sea levels rise by 4 feet. A Category 3 hurricane could breach the barrier at current sea levels.

The original draft obtained by Reveal was dated Sepember 29, 2017, and signed by Kish. The final version, signed by Kish and Gay Vietzke, regional director of the park service’s northeast region, is dated June 2018. It is not yet available online, but the park sent Reveal a printed version of the 50-page booklet.

Among the sections highlighted for review and then deleted were references to climate change in charts outlining threats to New Bedford’s historic structures, port, and natural resources.

This sentence was removed: “Climate change and sea-level rise may increase the frequency of large storms and storm surge, rising groundwater tables, flooding, and extreme heat events, all of which havepotential to threaten structures.” In its place, the final document says: “Large storms and storm surge, rising groundwater tables, flooding, and extreme heat events all of have the potential to threaten structures.”

Also, in a section about research needs, the original draft called for a “climate change vulnerability assessment.” That’s missing from the final version, which instead calls for an “assessment of park resilience to weather extremes.”

In several places, the phrase “changing environmental conditions” is substituted for the deleted term “climate change.”

Also deleted is a mention of how development near the park “could impact character and ambiance of historic district.” Elsewhere, a reference to “gentrification” is replaced with “urban renewal.” Mentions of declining park service funding and the limited control that managers have over privately owned buildings in the park are also removed. The museum in the park, which contains ships, skeletons, and whaling artifacts, is privately owned.

Skeletons of sperm, humpback, right, and blue whales on display.New Bedford Whaling National Historical Park

The January email suggests that the edits are part of a broader review of foundation documents that Vietzke assigned a park service official named Ed Clark to conduct for the northeast region, which includes 83 national parks in 13 states.

“This late review came at Gay’s (Vietzke) request when she began her role as (regional director). Ed Clark was asked to review all foundation documents for sensitive language that may raise eyebrows especially with the current administration,” the email from Jones says. She wrote that the edits are “for your consideration, but not mandatory.”

Jonathan Jarvis, who headed the National Park Service under President Barack Obama, said that the direction to scrub the foundation documents must have originated from Trump administration officials, because he knows regional director Vietzke well.

“She would not be doing this of her own accord. This would have come down from on high, verbally,” he said.

Jarvis said career park service officials told him that their supervisors verbally directed them to make changes in a sea-level rise report so that they did not leave anything in writing.

Scientists say climate change already is affecting parks and that the threats will increase if people continue to release greenhouse gases, which come largely from burning fossil fuels.

Jarvis was director of the agency in 2012 when Hurricane Sandy brought devastation to the northeastern coast, including several national parks. The parks incorporated climate change projections into rebuilding efforts, including moving utilities out of the basements in the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, both of which were flooded by the storm.

“Without considering climate change, we would have put them back in the basement. That’s why it has to be in a planning document,” Jarvis said.

In many national parks, flowers are blooming sooner and birds are nesting earlier, temperatures and seas are rising, and glaciers are disappearing.

Mary Foley retired in 2015 after 24 years as the chief scientist for the park service’s northeast region. She said she was frustrated during the Bush administration because the park service lacked permission and funding to solicit key research about climate change. But she said the Trump administration’s policy of sidelining climate science is much more concerning. Now much of the science has been done, but the unwritten policy seems to be to order park managers to ignore it, she said.

“Managing a park is a difficult and expensive task,” Foley said. “It’s pretty shortsighted to ignore future climate change. If you are going to plan for construction of a visitor center you wouldn’t want to put it where sea-level rise is going to challenge that structure.”

But Foley and other former park service leaders said they hope that park managers will incorporate science into the planning for parks even if they scrub documents to please Trump’s team.

“Current managers are pretty knowledgeable of the implications of climate change. Whether or not that is written into formal documents, I don’t think that they will ignore it,” Foley said.

“The bottom line is, this is just paper,” Jarvis added. “You can’t erase in the superintendents’ minds the role of climate change. They’re going to do the right thing even if it’s not in the policy document.”

Original source:

National park officials were told climate change was ‘sensitive.’ So they removed it from a key planning report.

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, LG, Northeastern, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on National park officials were told climate change was ‘sensitive.’ So they removed it from a key planning report.

A Senator Just Asked Trump’s Supreme Court Nominee A Question That Is Going To Make The Internet Explode

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Jeff Flake’s son is about to be the most popular person on reddit.

Would you rather fight 1 horse-sized duck or 100 duck-sized horses? This is a famous internet question. Hard to answer! Who knows! Large duck would be quite hard to fight! But also 100 mini horses would not be a walk in the park either. In reality, man is a delicate thing. Our flesh is soft. If it weren’t for our opposable thumbs we’d have been eaten by venus flytraps long ago. What I’m saying is, no matter which answer you choose, you’re going to lose that fight, my friend. Real question is how do you want to die? Both sound bad! Being eaten by a horse-sized duck seems awful, but being attacked and devoured by little duck-sized velociraptors horses? Well, that doesn’t seem like the way I want to go out.

Anyway, I don’t know the answer. Stupid question. Stupid internet. But it is a famous question! Obama said he’d fight the horse-sized duck.

Sen. Flake asked Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch the question on behalf of his son (who must be dying right now).

Watch:

See original article:  

A Senator Just Asked Trump’s Supreme Court Nominee A Question That Is Going To Make The Internet Explode

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on A Senator Just Asked Trump’s Supreme Court Nominee A Question That Is Going To Make The Internet Explode

An obscure disaster-relief law was used to clear the Dakota Access camp.

The Ross Sea marine reserve, which covers 600,000 square miles of the Southern Ocean off coast of the Antarctic, will be protected from commercial fishing for the next 35 years. Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources, an international consortium of governments, approved it unanimously on Thursday.

At nearly twice the size of Texas, the area is home to over 10,000 species of flora and fauna, including penguins, seals, whales, seabirds, and fish.

But Ross Sea is also important for the valuable role it plays in research on the impact of climate change on marine ecosystems.

Secretary of State John Kerry celebrated the park as “one of the last unspoiled ocean wilderness areas on the planet,” and a sign of “further proof that the world is finally beginning to understand the urgency of the threats facing our planet.”

There are some environmentalists who say the designation doesn’t go far enough. World Wildlife Foundation’s Chris Johnson noted that the agreement must be made permanent.

Follow this link – 

An obscure disaster-relief law was used to clear the Dakota Access camp.

Posted in alo, Anchor, ATTRA, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Ringer, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on An obscure disaster-relief law was used to clear the Dakota Access camp.

Put down that polar bear pic and back away slowly.

The Ross Sea marine reserve, which covers 600,000 square miles of the Southern Ocean off coast of the Antarctic, will be protected from commercial fishing for the next 35 years. Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources, an international consortium of governments, approved it unanimously on Thursday.

At nearly twice the size of Texas, the area is home to over 10,000 species of flora and fauna, including penguins, seals, whales, seabirds, and fish.

But Ross Sea is also important for the valuable role it plays in research on the impact of climate change on marine ecosystems.

Secretary of State John Kerry celebrated the park as “one of the last unspoiled ocean wilderness areas on the planet,” and a sign of “further proof that the world is finally beginning to understand the urgency of the threats facing our planet.”

There are some environmentalists who say the designation doesn’t go far enough. World Wildlife Foundation’s Chris Johnson noted that the agreement must be made permanent.

View the original here – 

Put down that polar bear pic and back away slowly.

Posted in alo, Anchor, ATTRA, Everyone, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Ringer, solar, solar panels, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Put down that polar bear pic and back away slowly.

Monsters or Victims? Let the Viewer Decide.

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

In a trailer park outside St. Petersburg, Florida, where around 120 convicted sex offenders live and receive counseling, Tracy Hutchinson broke down on camera. Hutchinson, a convicted sex offender, had never told her story before, even in therapy. Now, she was revealing to Frida and Lasse Barkfors, a pair of Scandinavian filmmakers documenting the lives of the trailer park’s inhabitants, what her father had done to her: “We went down the hall to the bedroom, and he locked the door, and he said, ‘You know that you’re daddy’s girl, and I love you, and I just want to share this with you.”

Many years later, as an adult, Hutchinson sexually abused her son. He, in turn, abused a three-year-old child. Lasse, listening to her story from behind the camera, had tears in his eyes. Every few minutes, Frida gently asked a question. Otherwise, she just let Hutchinson talk.

“It was like a need in her almost, to tell her story, that no one had wanted to listen to before,” Frida says. “That we came in the park with an open mind and said that we just wanted to listen—was very unusual for them.”

The Barkfors’ documentary, Pervert Park, doesn’t flinch from the crimes of its subjects, but it refuses to define them solely by their offenses. The result is a provocative look at the lives of convicted sex offenders and the cycle of abuse—as well as at a counseling program that could offer a model for rehabilitation. (According to the film, less than 1 percent of the park’s residents have been convicted of another sex offense after completing the two-year program.)

“When we made the film, we were quite certain that no one wanted to see it,” Lasse says. That goes especially for American viewers, whom the pair expected to be particularly hostile to the notion of humanizing sex offenders. But Pervert Park will debut on PBS tonight (10 pm ET) after months collecting praise on the festival circuit. I caught up with the filmmakers to discuss how one tells such stories responsibly, and why it’s important that they be told.

Mother Jones: The idea for this film came from a newspaper article about Florida Justice Transitions. How did you pick it up from there?

Frida Barkfors: We started out believing we were going to make a film that was a little more anthropological about the place itself. We read this article about five years ago, and the park was described as this parallel society where the sex offenders didn’t want to reintegrate into society—and couldn’t. As soon as we got to the park, we realized that what’s stated in the article wasn’t really accurate. They did try really hard to reintegrate to society, and they had this housing program where they were trying to be contributing citizens.

MJ: What were your attitudes toward the sex offenders when you began?

Frida: We had completely bought into the mainstream media portrait and didn’t think there was much more to tell. Meeting the sex offenders was kind of a journey for us. In the beginning we were quite cautious. We wanted to stick together while we were shooting. But we got less and less scared, because we saw the people behind the crimes. It’s not like sex offenders are sex offenders only. The story’s much more complex. That provoked a lot of emotions and thought processes in us, and that’s what we wanted to share with the audience.

Lasse Barkfors: It’s also a very simple idea, in the end, to listen to someone who is seldom asked to speak. What happens if we see what they have to say? Is that useful for us?

MJ: You said you completely bought into the mainstream portrayal of sex offenders. And what would that be?

Frida: We see them as monsters controlled by their sexual lust, with a lack of morals. We see them as dangerous. But there’s a really fine line between the victim and the abuser, because there are so many abusers who are untreated victims. They were once these innocent victims. But they weren’t able to get treatment, so they acted out and became abusers themselves.

Lasse: Of course, the stories that always comes up in the media are the very harsh ones and the awful ones.

Frida: We see sex offenders as the worst of the worst. We talk mostly about these stories where they’re hiding in the bushes, waiting for a child to kidnap and molest and maybe even murder. But those incidents are extremely rare. We were trying to show the diversity of the sex offender label. From Patrick—who kidnapped a five-year-old girl in Mexico and raped her in the desert and left her there—to Jamie, who was looking for a 30-year-old sex worker and was caught in a sting when the prostitute wanted to include her 14-year-old daughter. It turned out to be a police officer. There are also stories of people in the park who have urinated in public and are now convicted sex offenders.

MJ: What are some of the biggest misconceptions about your work?

Frida: People say we made a film about pedophiles. In fact, there’s no pedophile featured in our film. Not even Patrick is a pedophile, because being a pedophile is a sexual orientation. Being a sex offender means you have abused someone sexually, but it doesn’t mean that you have a lust to be together with kids. There are many pedophiles who will never act out because they know the emotions they have, the lust they have, are wrong. Then there’s the combination of a pedophile and a sadist, and that’s really dangerous. Those are the cases we read about in the newspaper, and those are the cases that we base our laws on.

MJ: Compassion for sex offenders is central to the film. But relating to them, especially those convicted of really violent crimes, had to be a challenge. How did you accomplish that?

Frida: That’s the core question for us. How can we listen to these people without minimizing their crimes? What we realized is that you can actually have empathy for a person at the same time that you despise their crimes. We have this tendency to paint people in good colors and bad colors, but it’s more than that. These people need treatment. Some of them are still minimizing, and some of them are still excusing, and they’re not completely healed, but I feel that a lot of them are working on becoming better people. So it’s very complex.

MJ: Why did you not include the voices of the victims?

Frida: There are so many films that are made from the classical victim perspective. We wanted to give a voice to the people who are normally not heard. And there are victims in our film. You can be a victim and an abuser at the same time. I think we show very clearly—for instance, in the interview with Tracy—how it’s passed on throughout generations.

MJ: Still, I’m sure some viewers would feel that giving voice to the abusers silences the victims.

Frida: I was once like that, so I understand. I remember thinking, “I don’t want to listen to their story.” But we’re trying to help widen the debate. Making this film, we worked very closely with victim organizations, lawyers, and defenders of victims of sexual abuse, and also psychologists and therapists. They all say this is crucial for victims to heal, the abuser’s story being told. That was the purpose: We made the film because we thought that it was helpful for everyone.

Lasse: These people walk around with this their whole life without telling anyone, because it’s so shameful. I think a lot of them really need to talk about it in order to move on.

Frida: After a screening, people have come up to us and said, “I am a victim of sexual abuse, and thank you for making this film. I now understand my abuser much better than I used to.” They struggle with a lot of emotions, but if they can understand their abuser, it’s easier for them to heal.

MJ: I suppose it would help answer the question, “Why did this happen to me?”

Frida: Don’t get me wrong—the victims have no responsibility whatsoever. I completely understand why we as a society don’t want to talk about the offenders, because we think that we’re protecting the victims. But that’s counterproductive.

See original:

Monsters or Victims? Let the Viewer Decide.

Posted in Citizen, Everyone, FF, GE, LG, ONA, PUR, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Monsters or Victims? Let the Viewer Decide.

Here’s Why Oral Rape is Not Rape in Oklahoma

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

In Oklahoma, it’s legal to have oral sex with someone who’s completely unconscious, the state’s highest criminal court has ruled.

In a unanimous decision, the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals found that a teenage boy was not guilty of forcible sodomy after having oral sex with a teenage girl who was so intoxicated after a night of drinking that she had to be carried to his car. “Forcible Sodomy cannot occur where a victim is so intoxicated as to be completely unconscious at the time of the sexual act of oral copulation,” the judges ruled on March 24. The decision was reported by the Guardian on Wednesday.

Local prosecutors were shocked, saying the court’s ruling perpetuated victim-blaming and antiquated ideas about rape. Benjamin Fu, assistant district attorney in Tulsa County, described the decision as “insane,” “dangerous,” and “offensive.”

But some legal experts note that Oklahoma’s forcible sodomy law only prohibits oral sex with someone who’s unable to provide consent because of mental illness or mental disability, not because of intoxication or unconsciousness. Therefore, they say, the court’s ruling was appropriate. The state has a separate rape law that protects victims who are too drunk to consent, but only in cases of vaginal or anal penetration, not oral sex. “We will not, in order to justify prosecution of a person for an offense, enlarge a statute beyond the fair meaning of its language,” the appeals court wrote.

The incident occurred in 2014 after the two high school students had been drinking and smoking marijuana with friends at a Tulsa park. The boy, who was 17 years old at the time, gave the 16-year-old girl a ride home; blood tests later showed her blood-alcohol level was .341, indicative of severe alcohol poisoning, Oklahoma Watch reported, citing court records. She was unconscious when he dropped her off at her grandmother’s house and taken to the hospital, where she woke up in the middle of an examination for sexual assault. The boy’s DNA was detected around her mouth. He claimed she had consented to have oral sex, but she says she can’t remember anything after leaving the park, the Guardian reports.

Sexual battery might have been a more appropriate charge than rape or forcible sodomy, Shannon McMurray, an attorney for the defendant, told Oklahoma Watch. She added, however, that it would be difficult to show there had been no consent, since the girl could not recall what happened after leaving the park.

The court’s decision was an “unpublished opinion,” meaning it can’t be cited as legal precedent. But according to Fu, other defendants are asserting the same interpretation of Oklahoma law in a bid to avoid charges in similar cases.

“This is a call for the legislature to change the statute, which is entirely out of step with what other states have done in this area and what Oklahoma should do,” Michelle Anderson, the dean of the CUNY School of Law, told the Guardian. “It creates a huge loophole for sexual abuse that makes no sense.”

This article – 

Here’s Why Oral Rape is Not Rape in Oklahoma

Posted in Anchor, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Here’s Why Oral Rape is Not Rape in Oklahoma

New York Company Claims Trademark Rights to "Yosemite National Park"

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

A company in New York claims that it owns the trademark rights to “Yosemite National Park” and wants $50 million to give it up. This is not a joke. It’s actually happening. The Park Service isn’t yet giving in on this, but it is caving on a bunch of other names, including the Ahwahnee Hotel:

On March 1, the famed Ahwahnee — a name affixed to countless trail guides and family memories — will become the Majestic Yosemite Hotel. And Curry Village, a collection of cabins near the center of the park that has carried the same name since the 1800s, will become Half Dome Village, park spokesman Scott Gediman said Thursday.

….Also affected will be: Yosemite Lodge at the Falls, becoming Yosemite Valley Lodge. Wawona Hotel, becoming Big Trees Lodge. Badger Pass Ski Area, becoming Yosemite Ski & Snowboard Area.

Coming soon: Yellowstone National Park will be renamed Majestic Geysers Park. Redwood National Park will become Incredible Trees Park. And Everglades National Park will become Big Swampy Park.

Source article: 

New York Company Claims Trademark Rights to "Yosemite National Park"

Posted in Badger, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on New York Company Claims Trademark Rights to "Yosemite National Park"

Sochi’s "Pizzly Bear": Meet Halfpipe Freeskiing Star Maddie Bowman

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

In the lead up to the 2014 Winter Olympics, ski jumping has taken center stage—it’s the first year women will be allowed to compete, a milestone the New York Times Magazine recently explored at length. But let’s not forget another extreme sport premiering in Sochi this year. That would be women’s (and men’s) free skiing, which encompasses halfpipe (hair-raising tricks done off the edge of an icy, steep-walled half cylinder), slopestyle (jumping off rails and obstacles), and ski cross (in which four skiers barrel simultaneously through a downhill obstacle course).

Maddie Bowman, 19, is a rising star in this new Olympic realm, one that seems to scream skate park more than professional arena. A favorite in the halfpipe, Bowman cut her teeth on the steep terrain of North Lake Tahoe. Even though thousands of viewers will be watching the sport for the first time in February, Bowman doesn’t really care if they see her kind as a bunch of park rats: “I think we want people to see that side of us—just being kids goofing off. That’s what we do. That’s why we love what we do. That’s how we’ve gotten so far in skiing.”

Okay, but what does it take to rule the halfpipe? Here’s Bowman in her own words.

On her sport’s spirit animal: It’s like a polar bear-grizzly bear mix—a pizzly! As the ice is melting, the polar bears are migrating south into grizzly territory and they’re mating, and they have this baby that’s a hybrid. So two hybrid pizzlies could make a baby pizzly. It’s a new species, and it’s super badass.

On whether freeskiing is male-dominated: I don’t think we think about it that way. We love skiing with the guys; they’re our friends. I grew up always skiing with boys. We’re out there trying to do the same things and push ourselves. We’re definitely all in this together.

On breaking with traditions: I was a racer before, but it felt a little too serious—a little too strict. I just kind of fell in love with the whole idea of skiing around with your friends and having fun, trying new things, and being creative. It allowed for a lot more freedom.

On mastering a trick: The first time I ever did a “left nine,”—it’s two and a half spins, and I’m spinning down the wall, rotating to the left—I was so excited I completely forgot the rest of my run; I just sort of made it up.

On anxious parents: My parents are both ski race people, so when I first started switching over, they were a little resistant, but then they came and skied with us and realized we think about things before we jump off of stuff. They definitely get nervous. You can’t have my mom video a run at all because it’s so shaky—she always misses it!

On falling smart: Most skiers can think pretty quickly on our feet—or off our feet if we’re falling, and hopefully fall the right way. We like to push the limits and that’s what makes our sport fun—pushing those limits and getting that adrenaline going. Sometimes the limits push back. It’s always a rude awakening when that happens.

On those rude awakenings: Concussions are something everyone worries about. If I hit my head, I always make sure to get a new helmet and stuff like that. But you can’t be out there worrying about getting hurt, or else you’re more likely to get hurt.

Alternative paths: If I got hurt, knock on wood, I don’t know what I would do. Maybe I’d actually be a real college student.

Originally from: 

Sochi’s "Pizzly Bear": Meet Halfpipe Freeskiing Star Maddie Bowman

Posted in Citizen, eco-friendly, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Sochi’s "Pizzly Bear": Meet Halfpipe Freeskiing Star Maddie Bowman

Friday Cat Blogging – 13 December 2013

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Gizmodo tells us today that squirrels were first introduced into urban parks by Philadelphia in 1847. Everyone loved it and the idea soon spread:

Central Park led the way in the second wave of squirrels introduced into American cities….Feeding the squirrels became a past time during these years, and was eventually seen by naturalists and conservationists as a way to help humans learn how to better treat animals….So next time you see a squirrel in the park, drink it in. These little critters were put there for your entertainment. But perhaps more importantly, they were put there to remind us of how man and nature must get along, even if it takes a little effort.

The little critters are everywhere now. One in particular has taken up residence in my backyard for some reason. I don’t think there’s anything to eat there, so I’m not sure what’s going on. Is he burying acorns there or something? It would be a pretty good spot, I suppose, since Domino doesn’t go outside much anymore and wouldn’t know what to do with a squirrel if she saw one. Especially in the winter, she much prefers burrowing under a nice, warm quilt. Today’s sample is another double Irish chain design, twin-sized, machine pieced and machine quilted. It nursed me back to health earlier this week when I headed downstairs during a bout of insomnia, so perhaps it has wonderful medicinal qualities too. Who knows?

Visit link – 

Friday Cat Blogging – 13 December 2013

Posted in alo, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Friday Cat Blogging – 13 December 2013