Author Archives: km10madrid

CDC Reports Bafflingly Huge Obesity Decline Among 2-5 Year-Olds

by km10madrid Posted on February 26, 2014

Mother Jones

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This is pretty amazing:

New federal data published Tuesday show a 43 percent drop in obesity rates among children ages 2 to 5 during the past decade, providing another encouraging sign in the fight against one of the country’s leading public health problems, officials said.

….Researchers say that they don’t know the precise reasons behind the drop in obesity rates for children 2 to 5. But they noted that many child-care centers have started to improve nutrition and physical activity standards over the past few years. Ogden said that CDC data also show decreases in consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages among youth in recent years. Another possible factor might be improvement in breastfeeding rates in the United States, which helps fight obesity in breastfed children.

In fact, these results are so amazing that they’re hard to believe. This is a truly massive drop in a single decade for anything, let alone something as generally intractable as obesity. And it’s especially hard to believe because of this:

Overall, there was no significant change in high weight among infants and toddlers, obesity in 2- to 19-year-olds, or obesity in adults….There was a significant decrease in obesity among 2- to 5-year-old children.

That’s from the abstract of the study. I don’t have access to the full article in JAMA, but if I’m reading the abstract right, it means there was no change in obesity for infants age 0-2, no change for children age 6-19, and no change among adults. There was only a change in children age 2-5, and it was a huge one.

That’s just….inexplicable. In the past, about 8 percent of infants were overweight, and that increased to 14 percent among 2-5 year-olds. Now, there’s no obesity gain at all during those years. It’s 8 percent among infants and 8 percent among 2-5 year-olds. But obesity rates still increase to about 18 percent among older children. Whatever’s causing this drop in obesity rates is apparently affecting only 2-5 year-olds, but having no longer-term effect. It’s a stumper.

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CDC Reports Bafflingly Huge Obesity Decline Among 2-5 Year-Olds

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Solar Power Craze on Wall St. Propels Start-Up

by km10madrid Posted on January 3, 2014

green4us

The Crochet Answer Book – Edie Eckman

Wouldn’t it boost your confidence to have an experienced and confident crocheter on call, day and night, offering assistance when needed? Most of us aren’t fortunate enough to have that kind of aid, but now there is help available 24/7 with The Crochet Answer Book. Being a “good” crocheter is not about making perfectly stitched, elaborate […]

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Inside of a Dog – Alexandra Horowitz

The bestselling book that asks what dogs know and how they think, now in paperback. The answers will surprise and delight you as Alexandra Horowitz, a cognitive scientist, explains how dogs perceive their daily worlds, each other, and that other quirky animal, the human. Horowitz introduces the reader to dogs’ perceptual and cognitive abilities and then draw […]

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Codex: Tyranids (Enhanced Edition) – Games Workshop

From the cold darkness of the intergalactic void comes a race of ravenous aliens known as the Tyranids, a numberless horde of super-predators governed only by the instincts to hunt, kill and feed. Each Tyranid is a living weapon, perfectly adapted to its designated function, but each creature is no more than a single cell in a vast gestalt entity controlled […]

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Following Atticus – Tom Ryan

After a close friend died of cancer, middle-aged, overweight, acrophobic newspaperman Tom Ryan decided to pay tribute to her in a most unorthodox manner. Ryan and his friend, miniature schnauzer Atticus M. Finch, would attempt to climb all forty-eight of New Hampshire’s four thousand- foot peaks twice in one winter while raising money for charity. It wa […]

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Penny Saving Household Helper – Rebecca DiLiberto

This handy guide resurrects the fine art of frugal housekeeping with over 500 tips on saving money throughout the home and garden. Learn creative ways to cut back, pinch pennies, reduce, recycle, and re-use. Want to save on the grocery bill? Buy the whole chicken rather than individual cuts. Get more wear out of your wardrobe? Add a dash of salt to the washe […]

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The Knitting Answer Book – Margaret Radcliffe

Every avid knitter has faced this dilemma: deep into a project at midnight, just trying to finish one more row, and, then . . . oh no, a dropped stitch three rows back! Help! If only there was a 24-hour hotline to answer every question a knitter might encounter. Well, now there is, with The Knitting Answer Book . The expert authors, Margaret Radcliffe and Ed […]

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Warhammer 40,000: Kill Team (Interactive Edition) – Games Workshop

Not all battles in the 41st Millennium are massed engagements between lumbering armies and towering war machines. In the shadows of these epic conflicts, squads of elite soldiers clash – their missions no less vital, their foes no less deadly. Designated as Kill Teams by the Imperium, or by a myriad of different names for their alien and daemonic counterpart […]

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What the Dog Did – Emily Yoffe

Dave Barry meets The Secret Lives of Dogs in Emily Yoffe’s funny and insightful look at all things canine. Filled with adventures of heroic dogs, lovable and lazy dogs, malodorous dogs, phlegmatic and incontinent dogs, What the Dog Did delivers some of the most outlandish and certainly the funniest dog stories on record.

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How to Raise the Perfect Dog – Cesar Millan & Melissa Jo Peltier

From the bestselling author and star of National Geographic Channel’s Dog Whisperer , the only resource you’ll need for raising a happy, healthy dog. For the millions of people every year who consider bringing a puppy into their lives–as well as those who have already brought a dog home–Cesar Millan, the preeminent dog behavior expert, says, “Yes, […]

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Codex: Inquisition – Games Workshop

The Inquisition is the most powerful organisation within the Imperium. Bound by no Imperial law or authority, its agents – Inquisitors – operate in a highly secretive manner and answer only to themselves. Inquisitors use whatever means are necessary in order to safeguard the Imperium from heretics, mutants and aliens. It is not without good reason that Inqui […]

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Solar Power Craze on Wall St. Propels Start-Up

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California and Illinois release draft fracking rules, and California’s are better

by km10madrid Posted on November 19, 2013

California and Illinois release draft fracking rules, and California’s are better

By

Bureau of Labor Statistics

If poring over draft fracking regulations is your cup of tea, then we’ve got a big steaming teapot for you.

California and Illinois both proposed rules governing hydraulic fracturing on Friday, after their governors signed bills requiring them earlier this year. A quick read of the tea leaves suggests that frackers are going to continue plundering Illinois with little thought given to environmental impacts. Frackers operating in California, however, will need to abide by some tough new regulations – but not tough enough to mollify environmentalists, who continue to call for a fracking moratorium in the Golden State.

Let’s look at Illinois first. “The new rules will include requirements that oil and gas companies test water before, during and after drilling, and hold them liable if contamination is found after drilling begins,” the Associated Press reports. But that’s not good enough, greens say.

The Illinois Department of Natural Resources published a first draft of Illinois’ rules for high-volume oil and gas drilling on Friday, and environmental groups quickly criticized them as violating the spirit of regulations that industry, environmentalists and lawmakers crafted together.

The state’s hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” regulations were hailed as among the toughest in the nation when they were signed into law by Gov. Pat Quinn earlier this year. The DNR, which will enforce them, must adopt rules to reflect the law, and will seek public feedback until Jan. 3.

But the proposed rules appear to undercut some key protections in the law, said Ann Alexander, a senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council’s Midwest program, who participated in negotiations.

For example, the law requires that wastewater be kept in tanks, rather than open pits used in some other states, but allows emergency overflow into reserve pits. But the proposed rules do not specify how companies should calculate the size of the tanks they’ll need, and allows overflow to be removed seven days after fracking is completed, rather than seven days after it occurs — which Alexander called an “incentive for industry to try to make routine use of the dangerous open-air pits, under the guise of emergency use.”
Illinoisans can submit comments on the rules until Jan. 3.

Now let’s head to California. From the Los Angeles Times:

Hailed by state officials as the toughest in the nation, the draft regulations issued Friday would require those who conduct fracking to get state permits, test groundwater quality and notify neighbors before starting work. …

What’s needed now, [environmentalists] said, is a statewide ban on fracking and related techniques until scientists can provide firm assurances that the practice won’t cause harm.

“We want a timeout,” said Kathryn Phillips, state director of the Sierra Club. “At best, these regulations can be described as a mixed bag,” she said. “At worst, they provide another example of an agency’s continued deference to a regulated entity, even at the expense of public health and the environment.”

Nevertheless, even some opponents conceded that the proposed regulations were better than nothing.

“There are some good provisions from our very preliminary review,” said Bill Allayaud of the Environmental Working Group.

Californians have 60 days to comment on the proposed rules. The state will also be conducting a study of the environmental impacts of fracking, which could take up to 18 months to complete.


Source
Brown releases proposed rules for fracking, Los Angeles Times
First proposed Illinois oil, gas ‘fracking’ rules open for public comment, hearings scheduled, The Associated Press

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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California and Illinois release draft fracking rules, and California’s are better

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Ferrari Won’t Comment on Cameron Diaz Having Sex With Their Car in “The Counselor”

by km10madrid Posted on October 25, 2013

Mother Jones

In the weeks leading up to the Friday release of The Counselor, a collaboration between director Ridley Scott and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Cormac McCarthy, the most talked about scene in the whole movie was by far the one showcasing Cameron Diaz’ deviant car-sexing. “Cameron Diaz sizzles in X-rated dance on Ferrari,” the USA Today headline read. “Cameron Diaz humps a car in new film with Brad Pitt,” the UK tabloid The Sun announced over a year ago. “The Counselor Features the Year’s Most Outrageous Sex Scene,” IGN declared.

The film’s cast is a spread of A-list talent and sex appeal: Michael Fassbender, Penélope Cruz, Javier Bardem, and Brad Pitt. The film is a tense, wild morality play about a suave attorney’s (Fassbender) disastrous foray into drug trafficking. There are plenty of memorable moments in The Counselor, both gruesome and otherwise. But it will forever be remembered as the movie in which Diaz has some crazy sex with a Ferrari.

The scene takes place in the middle of a golf course at night, with the action occurring on top of a parked 2013 Ferrari California HS. Malkina (Diaz) tells her drug-dealing lover Reiner (Bardem, with hair modeled after producer Brian Grazer’s insane spikes) that she intends to “fuck his car” and proceeds to do exactly that while he looks on in confusion and terror. “It was too gynecological to be sexy—almost,” Reiner narrates.

In The Counselor‘s press notes, Diaz describes her character as being “compelled to take the power of every man, devour it, and then break down every woman.”

It’s not clear whether or not the famous Italian automotive company is pleased with the product placement. Ferrari’s press office did not respond to multiple requests for comment about what they thought of Diaz making savagely aberrant love to their vehicle. 20th Century Fox also did not respond to requests for comment on Diaz having all the sex with an expensive yellow car.

For the record, a Bentley also appears in the film. Diaz does not have sex with it.

Here’s an illuminating GIF of a key part of the Ferrari-nookie sequence, via BuzzFeed‘s Kate Aurthur:

Click here for local showtimes and tickets for The Counselor.

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Ferrari Won’t Comment on Cameron Diaz Having Sex With Their Car in “The Counselor”

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House Republicans Talk Big But Can’t Deliver Actual Spending Cuts

by km10madrid Posted on August 1, 2013

Mother Jones

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Brian Beutler has a entertaining little story today about the failure of House Republicans to pass an appropriations bill for the Departments of Transportation and Housing and Urban Development. Yes, I said entertaining. You have to be a lefty political junkie to see the entertainment value, but that’s what most of you are, right?

So then: as we all know, Paul Ryan produces a budget every year. It’s a conservative’s wet dream because it slashes domestic spending across the board but never says exactly where those spending cuts are going to come from. So the tea partiers can all fantasize about huge budget reductions without having to figure out which programs they actually want to cut:

But many close Congress watchers — and indeed many Congressional Democrats — have long suspected that their votes for Ryan’s budgets were a form of cheap talk. That Republicans would chicken out if it ever came time to fill in the blanks. Particularly the calls for deep but unspecified domestic discretionary spending cuts.

Today’s Transportation/HUD failure confirms that suspicion. Republicans don’t control government. But ahead of the deadline for funding it, their plan was to proceed as if the Ryan budget was binding, and pass spending bills to actualize it — to stake out a bargaining position with the Senate at the right-most end of the possible.

But they can’t do it. It turns out that when you draft bills enumerating all the specific cuts required to comply with the budget’s parameters, they don’t come anywhere close to having enough political support to pass. Even in the GOP House. Slash community development block grants by 50 percent, and you don’t just lose the Democrats, you lose a lot of Republicans who care about their districts. Combine that with nihilist defectors who won’t vote for any appropriations unless they force the President to sign an Obamacare repeal bill at a bonfire ceremony on the House floor, and suddenly you’re nowhere near 218.

The lunatic wing of the Republican Party has long held views that are impossible to reconcile. This is one of them: they think they can slash spending without affecting anything useful. But it turns out that even their fellow Republicans don’t agree. They simply can’t cut spending as much as they want to. In March they passed the Ryan budget, with all of its gaudy promises. In July, the first time they tried to pass a Ryan-approved appropriations bill with actual numbers attached, they failed. And they failed even though this was really nothing more than a symbolic vote in the first place. It was just a starting point for further negotiations.

So now what? The tea partiers are true believers who refuse to compromise, and even the GOP’s adults refuse to engage in a normal give-and-take with the Senate over FY14 spending. They’re stuck, with Democrats smirking in the background and suggesting that if they want to be a governing party, maybe they should try some actual governing. It’s hard to say what’s next.

Originally posted here: 

House Republicans Talk Big But Can’t Deliver Actual Spending Cuts

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The Vampire Squid Has Set Its Sights on Your Beer Can

by km10madrid Posted on July 21, 2013

Mother Jones

Many of us already view the financial industry as little more than a gigantic shakedown of the American public. But even so, there are still days when we can be dumbfounded by the sheer scale and gall of their machinations. Today is one of those days.

The New York Times reports that Goldman Sachs, apparently unhappy with the profits to be made solely in the financial markets, decided a few years ago to buy an aluminum storage business called Metro International. Their business strategy is to shuttle that aluminum around from one warehouse to another, something that’s earned Goldman $5 billion over the past three years. If you don’t understand how this is possible, well, it means you’re just not very smart:

Before Goldman bought Metro International three years ago, warehouse customers used to wait an average of six weeks for their purchases to be located, retrieved by forklift and delivered to factories. But now that Goldman owns the company, the wait has grown more than 20-fold — to more than 16 months, according to industry records.

Longer waits might be written off as an aggravation, but they also make aluminum more expensive nearly everywhere in the country because of the arcane formula used to determine the cost of the metal on the spot market. The delays are so acute that Coca-Cola and many other manufacturers avoid buying aluminum stored here. Nonetheless, they still pay the higher price.

….Interviews with several current and former Metro employees, as well as someone with direct knowledge of the company’s business plan, suggest the longer waiting times are part of the company’s strategy and help Goldman increase its profits from the warehouses….Because Metro International charges rent each day for the stored metal, the long queues caused by shifting aluminum among its facilities means larger profits for Goldman. And because storage cost is a major component of the “premium” added to the price of all aluminum sold on the spot market, the delays mean higher prices for nearly everyone, even though most of the metal never passes through one of Goldman’s warehouses.

Aluminum industry analysts say that the lengthy delays at Metro International since Goldman took over are a major reason the premium on all aluminum sold in the spot market has doubled since 2010. The result is an additional cost of about $2 for the 35 pounds of aluminum used to manufacture 1,000 beverage cans, investment analysts say, and about $12 for the 200 pounds of aluminum in the average American-made car.

Did you follow that? Some genius at Goldman apparently had a brainstorm after reading the detailed rules that determine the spot price of aluminum. They figured that if storage times could be artificially lengthened, prices would go up and Goldman could make a killing. So they bought an aluminum storage business with the explicit goal of making customers wait a longer time for their aluminum. And they made a killing.

The Times hastens to add that Goldman has done nothing illegal. Of course not. Why bother when “special exemptions” granted by the Federal Reserve and “relaxed regulations” approved by Congress allow you to make billions legally? But perhaps considering the industry’s track record, the Fed is thinking of reversing its rule that allows investment banks to buy nonfinancial commodities businesses? Don’t be silly:

All of this could come to an end if the Federal Reserve Board declines to extend the exemptions that allowed Goldman and Morgan Stanley to make major investments in nonfinancial businesses — although there are indications in Washington that the Fed will let the arrangement stand. Wall Street banks, meanwhile, have focused their attention on another commodity. After a sustained lobbying effort, the Securities and Exchange Commission late last year approved a plan that will allow JPMorgan Chase, Goldman and BlackRock to buy up to 80 percent of the copper available on the market.

I hope you don’t have any copper tubing or wiring in your house. If you do, you’re going to get badly screwed the next time you have to replace it. But don’t worry. It’s all for a good cause.

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The Vampire Squid Has Set Its Sights on Your Beer Can

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