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No, Fox News, coal miners do not “live longer, happier lives”

No, Fox News, coal miners do not “live longer, happier lives”

By on May 4, 2016Share

“Coal is a moral substance, where coal reaches, people live longer, happier lives,” is the kind of thing you might say if you have never actually met someone who lives in coal country.

That’s Greg Gutfield, a panelist on Fox News’ political talk show The Five, explaining his stance on Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s recent visit to coal communities in West Virginia. Gutfield, who has made it pretty clear that he thinks climate science is a scam, went on to explain that an anti-coal and anti-fracking position “reeks of white ocean privilege.”

But back to his first claim, which was highlighted by Media Matters for America: that people in coal communities have a longer lifespan than other Americans. Err, no — in fact, the proportion of coal miners who suffer from an advanced form of pneumoconiosis, also called black lung disease, has surged in recent years in Appalachia, according to research from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. One 2009 study found that the number of excess annual deaths was as high as 10,000 in some coal mining areas.

And as for the theory that coal is responsible for “happier lives” — again, no. A 2013 study found that people living in coal mining areas are at greater risk for depression, while another report noted that many mental health needs in Central Appalachian counties were going unmet. And guess what? The most heavily mined parts of Appalachia are also the parts with the worst socioeconomic conditions.

As for whether coal is a “moral substance” or not: Let’s just say that statement seems to rely on a pretty strange definition of the word “moral.”

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No, Fox News, coal miners do not “live longer, happier lives”

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Can These Sensors Scientifically Prove UFOs Exist?

Mother Jones

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A group of scientists and academics from around the world has launched a new effort called UFODATA, which stands for UFO Detection and Tracking, to apply some rigorous scientific research to the study of UFOs. This all-volunteer, nonprofit project that includes scientists from the United States, Italy, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and Chile intends to use scientific data and research methods to advance an issue that has largely been confined to the margins (at best) of the traditional scientific community.

“It’s abundantly clear that we’re not going to make progress in understanding whatever is causing the unknown UFO reports and sightings without getting the type of data we want to collect,” says Mark Rodeghier, scientific director and president of the J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies in Chicago, and now a UFODATA board member. “More witness testimony, where they fill out a form and tell you what they saw, is not going to help us solve the problem,” he says. The problem that Rodeghier is referring to is the frequent, inexplicable sightings of aerial phenomena.

The group of about 15 scientists, engineers, astronomers, professors, and a journalist intend to install a series of automated surveillance stations loaded with scientific research tools at various locations in known UFO hotspots such as those in the western United States and in Hessdalen, Norway. The stations will be used to photograph unidentified objects and analyze the light coming from them in order to learn more about the sources of energy powering them. People have done this sort of thing in the past, but never before in such a coordinated and scientifically rigorous way.

The sensors that the group hopes to build will include several high-resolution cameras fitted with spectrographic grating, which is a method for analyzing the type of light the camera is seeing, and the ways that energy might be affecting the atmosphere around the light source. Here is a video explaining the process. Other equipment includes a magnetometer, used to measure electromagnetic radiation, as well as a Geiger counter and a weather station.

“In this area of science (physics, astronomy, etc.) the best way to learn about something is to get its spectra,” Rodeghier says. He compares it to a rainbow, which is a “spectra” of the sun’s light. “You can see the elements it’s composed of, you can also tell things about its temperature and pressure. There are many, many things that you can learn from a spectra and associated data.”

These sensors aren’t cheap. Each one will cost between $10,000 and $20,000, the group says, which they’re hoping to raise through crowdfunding and other donations.

“UFODATA will rely on crowd funding to finance the stations, allowing the millions of people who take UFOs seriously to be involved in the effort, independent of the scientific establishment,” wrote Leslie Kean, an American journalist and the author of UFOs: Generals, Pilots and Government Officials Go on the Record. After covering the issue for years, she’s also now a board member for UFODATA. Kean announced the project on her Huffington Post blog earlier this week.

The all-volunteer group hopes to raise enough money to build one prototype station, test it, and prove the concept. Next year they plan to raise additional funds, Rodeghier says, after the project is better known and a more robust volunteer staff is in place.

Rodeghier says more reliable and scientific data will not only advance understanding of UFOs, but might also serve to persuade the public at large that this issue merits more serious examination. Nonetheless, the organizers appreciate thatthe UFO community and the UFO problem is something that is pretty much looked down upon by what I call the establishment,” Rodeghier says. “That includes scientists, big media, and politicians, Washington. All those people—and I’m speaking broadly because there’s always exceptions—think the UFO problem, they laugh at it, it’s to be ridiculed, and certainly shouldn’t be supported and funded. And so yes, this is part of an effort, is to say, ‘This problem is serious. It’s like any other scientific problem.'”

But even the new organization has had to grapple internally with the taboo of scientific discussion of UFOs. The initial UFODATA team includes four “silent advisors“—two full professors, an attorney, and an astronomer—who “are prepared to lend a hand, but because of the cultural stigma attached to UFOs—or because of a personal preference for anonymity—have chosen to keep their involvement private” according to the group’s website.

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Can These Sensors Scientifically Prove UFOs Exist?

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Friday Cat Blogging – 8 August 2014

Mother Jones

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Last week you could barely see Domino’s face, so this week we get a close-up. Here she is outside in the summer sun enjoying a chin smooch from Marian.

In other cat news, click here to read about Coco, the lovely Siamese Wi-Fi sniffing cat from Virginia. If I tried this with Domino, she would sniff out my Wi-Fi and….that’s about it. She doesn’t roam much, and these days even less than usual. I don’t think she’s ventured more than ten feet from a doorway in years.

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Friday Cat Blogging – 8 August 2014

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How the Royal Navy Helped the Late Peter O’Toole Become an Acting Legend

Mother Jones

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Peter O’Toole, the phenomenally talented Irish-English actor famous for his roles in such films as Lawrence of Arabia and Becket, died on Saturday at the age of 81. He was being treated at the Wellington Hospital in London after a long illness, according to his agent.

“My thoughts are with Peter O’Toole’s family and friends,” British Prime Minister David Cameron tweeted. “His performance in my favourite film, Lawrence of Arabia, was stunning.” President of Ireland Michael D. Higgins added: “Ireland, and the world, has lost one of the giants of film and theatre…I was privileged to know him as a friend since 1969…He was unsurpassed for the grace he brought to every performance on and off the stage.”

O’Toole leaves behind a towering legacy in theater and cinema. In his earlier days, he was also a notorious party boy who lost much of his sizeable Lawrence of Arabia paycheck in a two-night gambling spree with co-star Omar Sharif at casinos in Casablanca and Beirut. “I was happy to grab the hand of misfortune, dissipation, riotous living, and violence,” O’Toole told the Sunday Express in 1995.

His epic carousing, however, turned to cautionary tale when in the mid-1970s he was diagnosed with pancreatitis, and subsequently had chunks of intestinal tubing removed; he then gave up the bottle, having gone to the brink of death. He would later say of his unexpected recovery, “It proved inconvenient to a few people, but there you go.”

O’Toole earned eight Academy Award nominations without bagging a single win (a record), but was presented with an Honorary Oscar in 2003. In a way, O’Toole, a former journalist-in-training, owed his entire career in acting to a conversation he had with a skipper while serving in the Royal Navy. As he told NPR:

I served with men who’d been blown up in the Atlantic, who’d seen their friends drinking icy bubbles in oil and being machine gunned in the water. And I mentioned that I wasn’t particularly satisfied with what I was doing in civilian life, which was working for a newspaper. And the skipper said to me one night, have you any unanswered calls inside you that you don’t understand or can’t qualify? I said, well, yes, I do. I quite fancy myself either as a poet or an actor. He said, well, if you don’t at least give it a try, you’ll regret it for the rest of your life.

In honor of his passing, here are a few great clips of the actor when he wasn’t acting on stage or in a big movie: O’Toole’s classic entrance on Late Show with David Letterman:

O’Toole and Orson Welles debating Hamlet on the BBC in 1963:

…and, finally, O’Toole reciting the Spice Girls:

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How the Royal Navy Helped the Late Peter O’Toole Become an Acting Legend

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