Category Archives: Presto

Brave Testimony Helps Convict Costa Rican Slayers of a Turtle Conservationist

by Myrna Posted on April 1, 2016

A Spanish veterinarian who was attacked by thugs as they also murdered a turtle conservationist provided vital testimony at a Costa Rican trial. Continue at source:  Brave Testimony Helps Convict Costa Rican Slayers of a Turtle Conservationist ; ; ;

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Brave Testimony Helps Convict Costa Rican Slayers of a Turtle Conservationist

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The Podcast Where Icons Like Iggy Pop, U2, Björk, and Wilco Get to Totally Geek Out

by NicholHeavener Posted on March 26, 2016

Mother Jones

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The seeds of the popular podcast Song Exploder were sown in the mid-2000s, when Los Angeles musician Hrishikesh Hirway first sat down to remix other people’s songs and found himself spellbound by the nuances and complexities of the individual tracks within. “It felt like such a privileged listening experience,” he recalls.

About a decade later, in January 2014, Hirway launched the podcast—which, over two-plus years and 68 episodes, has earned him a devoted fan base and interviews with superstars such as U2, Björk, and the National. Each episode deconstructs a single song, mashing up musical elements with audio snippets of the creators geeking out on gear or talking about what drives them to make music. It’s an experience dense with sounds, ideas, and narrative momentum that culminates in the fully assembled song. But Song Exploder transcends mere music. “It’s about how you take an idea from nothing to something fully realized,” the host explains.

Hirway is familiar enough with the process. He began recording as a college junior, calling himself “The One AM Radio.” Since relocating from his Peabody, Massachusetts, hometown to LA in 2006, he’s written scores for several films. And in 2013, he co-founded the hip-hop group Moors with rapper-actor Keith Stanfield of Straight Outta Compton fame.

Hirway at home in Los Angeles. Courtesy Song Exploder

At first, Hirway recruited musician friends as his podcast subjects, but he soon began reaching outside his social circles: an email to an address he found online led to an interview with composer Jeff Beal, known for his work on House of Cards. Persistence and luck—and help from fans of the podcast—have kept the big names rolling in. Last fall, while struggling to reach Wilco, Hirway remembered that the son of bandleader Jeff Tweedy had recently followed the podcast on Twitter; the episode came together within days.

Much of the podcast’s appeal lies in Hirway’s uncanny ability to bypass journalistic awkwardness in favor of honest and intimate conversations about music and life. A single episode will introduce you to an artist, but listening religiously offers something more: a glimpse into the nature of creativity and the eccentric ways musicians cultivate it. In one arresting episode, multi-instrumentalist Nick Zammuto of the experimental duo the Books tells Hirway how he plucked the lyrics of “Smells Like Content” from educational TV shows and the facade of the Brooklyn Public Library. “People labor over lyrics a lot, but really they’re kind of all around us all the time,” Zammuto says.

In another episode, members of the noise band Health explain how a programming error—”the whole song glitches, basically”—ended up in the chorus of “Stonefist.” Again and again, Hirway’s listeners encounter artists who are learning to embrace accidents, imperfections, and curveballs that collaborators throw their way. Shared, too, is the artists’ palpable thrill in describing how some songs emerge seemingly of their own accord. “You sit back and go, ‘How did I do that?'” says Wilco’s Tweedy.

Ultimately, Hirway aims to provide an experience that even someone without a note of musical training can relate to. After all, “Creativity is not this opaque box, this laboratory that is only accessible to a chosen few…All you really need is an idea and the will to see it through.”

Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy talks music with Hirway during a taping. Courtesy of Song Exploder

Explain That Tune

Being asked to choose your favorite Song Exploder episode is like being asked to name your favorite child. But these five selections offer a good taste of what Hirway’s podcast has to offer:

The Books’ Nick Zammuto, “Smells Like Content“: If you thought there were limits to what constitutes music, Zammuto will prove you wrong. He describes his use of such humble materials as PVP pipe and vinyl records—not the music on the records, but the records themselves—in this seminal early episode.

Courtney Barnett, “Depreston“: Barnett had a big 2015. The Australian rocker’s debut album, Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit, received rave reviews, and Barnett was nominated for the “best new artist” Grammy. In this episode, Barnett breaks down the track “Depreston” with characteristic wit and insight.

MGMT, “Time to Pretend“: If you’ve left your fortress in the last eight years, you’ve undoubtedly heard this song. Written when the band members were still in college, “Time to Pretend,” an anthem to imaginary stardom, had the surprise effect of making its creators famous. In this episode, MGMT recounts the song’s evolution—and how it felt to perform in druid capes on David Letterman.

Natalia Lafourcade, “Hasta la Raíz“: While Song Exploder has featured plenty of famous artists, Hirway also sees it as a vehicle for introducing accomplished musicians to a broader public. Mexican singer-songwriter Natalia Lafourcade was the perfect candidate: She won four Latin Grammys last year and an American Grammy in February, but is still little-known north of the border.

Ramin Djawadi, Game of Thrones theme: If you could somehow conjure up the musical equivalent to the word “epic,” it might sound like this. Composer Ramin Djawadi describes how he crafted the signature theme to the hit HBO show Game of Thrones, and what it was like to see the melody become an internet phenomenon, interpreted by fans and musicians around the world.

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The Podcast Where Icons Like Iggy Pop, U2, Björk, and Wilco Get to Totally Geek Out

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The Horrible Chemicals That Make Your Winter Gear Waterproof

by JulianaGraziani Posted on February 13, 2016

Mother Jones

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Ever since our early ancestors left the fertile sauna of Africa and headed North, we humans have been searching for ways to fend off sleet and snow and rain and cold. The Inuit once relied on seal and whale intestines to get the job done. Nowadays, we rely on waterproof synthetics.

These modern fabrics represent a certain kind of progress, but they also have a worrisome downside. Some of the fluorocarbon chemicals used in their manufacture are dangerous for our health, and are so stable that their residues will persist in the environment, quite literally, until the next Ice Age. What’s more, there’s no guarantee that the industry’s latest alternatives, which are marketed as safer, are much of an improvement.

To make their fabrics repel water—causing it to bead up and fall away rather than penetrate the material—most manufacturers rely on perfluorocarbons (PFCs), the same chemicals used to make nonstick cookware and cupcake wrappers. Some PFCs escape into the atmosphere and into wastewater during production—and small amounts can turn up as residue on the clothing itself.

PFCs have been around since the 1950s, but we didn’t know a lot about their effects until the early 2000s, when scientists began releasing data on PFC toxicity and their persistence in the environment. A particularly troublesome PFC is perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA, a suspected human carcinogen that has been linked to cancer, kidney damage, and reproductive problems in rats. It may also pose human health risks if it accumulates in drinking water at levels as miniscule as 1 part per trillion—the equivalent of less than one teaspoon in 1,000 Olympic swimming pools’ worth of water. One study also associated elevated exposure to PFCs, including PFOA, with weakened immune responses in children.

The makers of PFCs have been the subject of several blockbuster exposés—PFOA most recently made headlines as the culprit poisoning residents of Parkersberg, West Virginia. These compounds have a very long biological half-life—specifically, it takes our bodies more than four years to flush out half of the PFCs currently residing in our tissues. As such, the US Environmental Protection Agency warns that “it can reasonably be anticipated that continued exposure could increase body burdens to levels that would result in adverse outcomes.”

Because PFOA and its precursors virtually never go away, they accumulate in nature and eventually find their way back to us. Researchers have found the chemical in remote parts of the Arctic, in soil and dust, in fish and meat, in human tissue, and in drinking water throughout the United States. (To find out if your county’s water has tested positive for the chemical, see this map).

In 2006, the EPA asked major chemical manufacturers, including DuPont and 3M, to set a goal of eliminating PFOA and its precursors from both emissions and products by January 31, 2015—their final reports are due by the end of this month. The European Union has also proposed restrictions on the substance. So problem solved, right? You no longer need to fret about the chemicals used to make your sweet new neon ski parka?

Well, not exactly. There are reasons to stay worried. For one, the EPA’s phaseout program was voluntary, and it includes no mandate that clothing manufacturers must also remove PFCs from their supply chains. (The EPA does say that it is working on a rule that would require clothing companies that import fabrics made with PFOA to subject themselves to the agency’s review). Greenpeace tested 40 pieces of outdoor clothing and gear it had purchased in late 2015, and reported that PFOA is “still widely present” in name-brand products, including items from the North Face, Patagonia, and Mammut.

Patagonia calls Greenpeace’s assessment “not accurate,” and says it has mostly phased out PFOA. Mammut says it has eliminated the chemical entirely—as does North Face, starting with its spring 2015 line. Some of the products Greenpeace tested may have been manufactured before phaseout efforts were complete.

Most of the sportswear manufacturers have replaced PFOA, which has an eight-carbon backbone, with six-carbon (C6) PFCs. Mammut, for example, says it is provisionally using a “responsible” and “PFOA-free” C6 chemistry, while Marmot, another outdoor clothing brand, argues that C6 “is the safest alternative for the environment.”

It’s true that these shorter PFCs don’t remain in our bodies as long as PFOA does. Still, “the C6 chemicals don’t seem to be the magic coating for your clothing that you’re looking for,” says Environmental Working Group senior scientist David Andrews. Like PFOA, the shorter compounds persist in the environment, which is one reason why Greenpeace, EWG, and plenty of other scientists around the globe don’t consider them safe alternatives. In addition, as Patagonia explains, “the shorter-chain structure also tends to perform less effectively in repellency tests.” Which means a larger quantity may be needed to achieve the same result.

Manufacturers in the United States are not required to test chemicals for safety before using them in products, and the health effects of the shorter-chain PFCs are as yet a mystery. But “the short-chain chemicals show a lot of the same characteristics as their longer predecessors,” EWG’s Andrews told me.

Indeed, as a class, PFCs raise all sorts of red flags. In 2014, 200 scientists from around the world signed the “Madrid Statement,” a document calling for more research on PFC toxicology and urging governments around the world to restrict their use for nonessential purposes. “We should probably have more oversight into this whole class of chemicals,” Andrews says. “It took decades to show how bad PFOA is.”

Outdoor clothing makers acknowledge these concerns—”it may be preferable to search for fluorocarbon-free water repellent as a long term solution,” notes Patagonia—but they insist their hands are tied. The North Face’s “chemical responsibility” web page, assures that the company hopes to phase out “fluorinated DWR” (that’s durable water repellent) by 2020, but notes that “short-chain DWR is currently the best available viable alternative.”

Several clothing companies say the durability of their products—made possible by PFC chemistry—is key to their environmental friendliness. As Patagonia’s spokesman put it: “Abandoning PFCs and moving to currently available alternatives would have an even greater negative impact on the environment because the lifespan of our gear would be greatly reduced, requiring replacement far more quickly, which of course carries significant costs—carbon emissions, water usage, waste output, bigger landfills, and more.” He added that the company is still committed to finding an alternative, and that it has partnered with a Swiss firm working at the “cutting edge of chemical treatments that don’t harm the planet.”

There is at least one safer option currently floating around. A company called Nikwax sells a PFC-free waterproofing product akin to the rubber in the soles of your shoes: You cover your jacket with the Nikwax gel, toss it in the wash, and presto—it’s coated with a network of elastic water-repellent molecules. The problem is that Nikwax is a direct-to-consumer product, meant to go on the jacket you’ve already bought. In that sense, it doesn’t help solve the PFC conundrum.

But that could change. In January, Páramo, a small British brand partnering with Nikwax, became the first company in the outdoor industry to completely eliminate PFCs from its manufacturing process. Italian climber David Bacci wore Páramo’s threads as he scaled the Patagonian peaks Fitz Roy and Cerro Torres, and wrote that clothing “worked perfectly” and kept him “dry and warm in extreme conditions.”

Nikwax North America president Rick Meade says he thinks the publicity around fluorinated chemicals will lead to some “dramatic shifts of interests to consumers in the next one to three years.” For now, until more clothing companies commit to ditching PFCs, your snow outfit will most likely be made with a PFOA cousin that’s coated in mystery.

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The Horrible Chemicals That Make Your Winter Gear Waterproof

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3 Troubling Ways the Charter School Boom Is Like the Subprime Mortgage Crisis

by MuhammadStillman Posted on January 16, 2016

Mother Jones

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Acting US Secretary of Education John King has called charter schools “good laboratories for innovation.” It’s that kind of language that’s helped the number of public charters jump from 1,542 in 1999 to 6,723 in 2014—when more than 1 million students sat on charter school waiting lists, including a whopping 163,000 in New York City alone.

But, as four researchers argue in a recent study in the University of Richmond Law Review, charter schools could be on the same path that led to the subprime mortgage crisis.

Preston Green III, an urban education professor at the University of Connecticut and one of the study’s authors, warns that the underregulated growth of these publicly financed, privately run institutions could result in a “bubble” in black, urban school districts. Many black parents, he argues, are unhappy with the state of traditional public education in their communities and view charter schools as a better alternative. As families see wait lists pile up, they may tolerate policies that allow more schools to open, even as they overlook the much-reported consequences of underregulated schools: poor academic performance, unequal discipline, financial fraud, and the exclusion of high-cost students, such as those with disabilities. It was such an issue that in 2014, the Department of Education released a letter reminding charter schools that if they receive federal funds, they must comply with the federal statutes disallowing discrimination on the basis of race, sex, or disability.

“It’s just a long-forming bubble,” Green says. “We are at ground zero for this.”

Just how similar are the charter school boom and the mortgage crisis? We broke down the report with Green to see.

More authorizers, more problems: Much like the banks that sold mortgages to a secondary market leading up to the housing crisis, charter authorizers—the institutions that determine whether to allow a charter to open—carry a similar decision-making power. Since school districts, which made up nearly 90 percent of authorizers in 2013 and green-light more than half the nation’s charter schools, tend to each oversee only five or fewer charters, proponents look to independent institutions to grant additional charters. Higher-education institutions make up the next largest share of authorizers, followed by nonprofits and state education agencies. If more states grant approval power to more authorizers, even more charter schools will result. (The Center for Education Reform notes that states with multiple authorizers have almost three and a half times more charter schools than states with only school district approval.)

But these independent authorizers, the paper argues, may be less likely to screen charters and ultimately assume less risk if they fail. Green notes that the school districts, not these other institutions, are responsible for figuring out what to do with students—the independent authorizers, he adds, “don’t have skin in the game.” A 2009 study from Stanford’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes found that, in states that allow different institutions to approve charters, academic performance for students appeared to wane. In those states, low-performing charter schools at risk of closing can find a new authorizer—”authorizer hopping”—to keep the school running and, researchers argue, to avoid accountability measures.

“Misalignment of incentives”: Just as the banks sold mortgages to Wall Street and hired servicers to collect payments and modify loans, charter schools enlist the help of education management organizations (EMOs) to run the schools’ day-to-day operations. While servicers raked in money from fees and foreclosed loans, management companies, many of which are for-profit, receive money from appointed charter board. These charter boards are supposed to ensure compliance, but, as the paper notes, the for-profit companies running the schools “have the incentive to increase their revenues or cut expenses in ways that may contradict the goals of charter school boards.”

Between 35 percent and 40 percent of charter schools are operated by EMOs, and one study found that these charters educate 45 percent of students. According to Green, charter school boards aren’t looking closely enough at these organizations and “are not well-equipped” to deal with them. Conflicts of interest may arise between the boards and the EMOs; for example, a Virginia-based operator named Imagine Schools recruited people to a Missouri school board and negotiated a lucrative deal on the school it managed. (Last January, a federal judge ordered Imagine to pay nearly $1 million to the school for what the judge called “self-dealing.”) For-profit management companies may also charge charters with exorbitant rents for space to house students and can choose to not take in students considered “too expensive,” such as students with disabilities.

Predatory practices hit charter schools, too: In the subprime mortgage world, lenders steered borrowers into risky loans and targeted homebuyers, particularly black and Hispanic borrowers, with excessive fees, bundled products, loan flipping, and forced arbitration. Green says charter schools have engaged in practices that take advantage of “vulnerable parents who lack the political power and financial resources to advocate for change in the existing system.” In Milwaukee, for example, some charter schools handed out gift cards to teens and parents who recommended the school to others, even though no public schools offered such financial incentives. (The city’s aldermen quashed the practice in 2014.)

Once kids have enrolled, though, overly punitive policies create a hostile environment for those seen as difficult. In Chicago, Noble Network of Charter Schools demanded students follow a strict discipline policy or face fines. (That school phased out the imposition after years of public pressure.) Green also points to another instance: At Success Academy, the prominent charter school network in New York City led by Eva Moskowitz, one Brooklyn principal created a “Got to Go” list of difficult students. (The New York Times reported last week that the principal took a leave of absence.) Success Academy has long faced accusations that it has filtered out underperforming and difficult students.

“Choice is a powerful motivator,” Green says. “I’m for choice, but I want the choices to be good. We need to be screening these schools much more carefully.”

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3 Troubling Ways the Charter School Boom Is Like the Subprime Mortgage Crisis

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Strike Two For Pair of New York Times Reporters

by EdmundoGutierre Posted on December 17, 2015

Mother Jones

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Today, FBI director James Comey said that the San Bernardino shooters never talked openly about violent jihadism on social media: “So far, in this investigation we have found no evidence of posting on social media by either of them at that period in time and thereafter reflecting their commitment to jihad or to martyrdom. I’ve seen some reporting on that, and that’s a garble.”

So where did this notion come from, anyway? The answer is a New York Times story on Sunday headlined “U.S. Visa Process Missed San Bernardino Wife’s Zealotry on Social Media.” It told us that Tashfeen Malik “talked openly” on social media about jihad and that, “Had the authorities found the posts years ago, they might have kept her out of the country.” The story was written by Matt Apuzzo, Michael Schmidt, and Julia Preston.

Do those names sound familiar? They should. The first two were also the authors of July’s epic fail claiming that Hillary Clinton was the target of a criminal probe over the mishandling of classified information in her private email system. In the end, virtually everything about the story turned out to be wrong. Clinton was not a target. The referral was not criminal. The emails in question had not been classified at the time Clinton saw them.

Assuming Comey is telling the truth, that’s two strikes. Schmidt and Apuzzo either have some bad sources somewhere, or else they have one really bad source somewhere. And coincidentally or not, their source(s) have provided them with two dramatic but untrue scoops that make prominent Democrats look either corrupt or incompetent. For the time being, Schmidt and Apuzzo should be considered on probation. That’s at least one big mistake too many.

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Strike Two For Pair of New York Times Reporters

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Obama Just Came Out Hard Against the Washington Football Team’s Racist Name

by Leon51tt8 Posted on July 2, 2015

Mother Jones

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In an irony that will surely be lost on team owner Dan Snyder, the Washington Redskins are being kicked off their land.

From the Washington Post:

Interior Secretary Sally Jewell told D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser this spring that the National Park Service, which owns the land beneath Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium, was unlikely to accommodate construction of a new stadium for the Redskins unless the team changes its name.

Jewell oversees both national park land and America’s trust and treaty relationships with Native American tribes.

Her decision not to extend the District’s lease of the RFK land badly hinders Bowser’s bid to return the Redskins to D.C.—and boosts efforts to lure the team across the Potomac to Northern Virginia.

Jewell, who has been an outspoken critic of the team’s controversial name, added that adjusting the federal lease on the property, which doesn’t expire for another 22 years, is “not likely to be a priority for the administration.” The team’s owner Dan Snyder, who has vowed to never change the team’s name, has long been interested in building a new stadium in the DC area.

There’s actually a great precedent for this. As we explained in 2013,

The showdown began in 1961, when John F. Kennedy’s interior secretary, Stewart Udall, who’d committed to ending segregation anywhere in his sphere of influence, declared his intent to break pro football’s last color bar…The call for integration was met with opposition, most notably from the team’s owner, George Preston Marshall, a laundromat magnate turned NFL bigwig who had held firm for years. Udall had one advantage over Marshall: The team’s new home field, DC Stadium (later renamed RFK Memorial), was federal property. With Kennedy’s approval, Udall gave Marshall a choice: He could let black players on his team, or take his all-white squad to someone else’s gridiron.”

Don’t worry, Washington fans: There’s always Virginia (or stay in Maryland).

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Obama Just Came Out Hard Against the Washington Football Team’s Racist Name

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No Wonder Teens Are Huffing Nicotine

by IvaHartigan Posted on April 18, 2015

Mother Jones

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You thought Big Tobacco was on the wane in the United States?

(Insert cartoon villain voice:) “Mwa-ha-ha-ha-haaaaa!”

Not. Friggin’. Likely. In fact, the domestic tobacco industry is on the rebound thanks to its heavy investment in smoking “alternatives”—a.k.a. e-cigarettes, a.k.a. nicotine-delivery devices marketed in a variety of kid-friendly flavors. (Marketing flavored tobacco cigarettes has been banned since 2009.)

Kevin had a post on Thursday about the soaring numbers of kids who’ve tried e-cigs. On Friday the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention officially announced the results of a new CDC study in the journal Nicotine and Tobacco Control.

From 2011 to 2013, the researchers reported, the number of middle- and high-school students using e-cigs tripled. In 2013, more than 250,000 kids who had never smoked tobacco reported using e-cigarettes, and 44 percent of those kids said they had “intentions” of trying regular cigarettes in the next year. (About 1 in 5 American adults currently smoke.) Not surprisingly, kids who had more exposure to tobacco advertising were more likely to say they intended to try smoking.

You’ll often hear vaping proponents argue that e-cigs help smokers kick the tobacco habit, thereby saving lives. And that may be true: Inhaling tobacco smoke, which still kills more than 400,000 Americans every year, is almost certainly more deadly than huffing nicotine vapors.

The one group you won’t hear the smoking cessation argument from is e-cig manufacturers. That, ironically, is because products intended to help people quit tobacco products are regulated far more strictly than the tobacco products themselves. The same goes for drug-delivery devices, which is why manufacturers fought very hard to make certain the FDA didn’t put e-cigarettes in that category.

Not that the agency didn’t try. The FDA initially sought to regulate e-cigs as drug-delivery devices, for what else could they be? But the manufacturers promptly sued, and were handed a huge win. Tobacco-friendly judges bought the industry’s argument that, under the 2009 Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act, any product that contains nicotine derived from tobacco and makes no therapeutic claims must be regulated as a tobacco product—which makes it, presto, not a drug delivery device.

Just think about how crazy this is: Nicotine is highly addictive. At low doses it’s a stimulant, at higher doses a serious poison. (The tobacco plant and other nightshades actually produce it as an insecticide, and it’s sold for that use, too, with a stringent warning label.) If nicotine were sold as medicine—which it can’t be because it has no medical value—you couldn’t just buy it at the corner store in a dozen alluring flavors. Yet because the manufacturers make no medical claims, they can do what they want. Never mind that the 2009 law was written before e-cigarettes were invented.

Ah, screw it. Just give me the Piña Colada.

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No Wonder Teens Are Huffing Nicotine

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Missouri Is About to Execute a Man Who’s Missing Part of His Brain

by CandelaAbendrot Posted on March 12, 2015

Mother Jones

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Cecil Clayton, 74, who had parts of his brain removed after an accident 40 years ago, is scheduled to be put to death on Tuesday. He was convicted of first-degree murder after killing a cop in 1996. Unless Missouri’s Supreme Court, a federal court, or Republican Gov. Jay Nixon accepts the evidence that Clayton is mentally unfit for capital punishment, his execution will proceed.

Missouri law states that a person cannot be executed if, as a result of mental disease or defect, he or she is unable to “understand the nature and purpose of the punishment about to be imposed upon him.” However, state law offers no mechanism for the defendant to set up a competency hearing after trial. The fact that Clayton was tried and sentenced before receiving an evaluation is complicating efforts to save him from the executioner, and creating what his lawyers call a “procedural mess.”

In 1972, Clayton was a sober, religious husband and father working at a sawmill in Purdy, Missouri. One day, a piece of wood flew from his blade, piercing his skull and entering his brain. Doctors eventually had to remove nearly one-fifth of his frontal lobe—the part of the brain that is crucial to decision making, mood, and impulse control. Clayton was completely transformed: His IQ dropped to 76, and he developed serious depression, hallucinations, confusion, paranoia, and thoughts of suicide. He relapsed into alcoholism, and his wife divorced him.

Clayton was officially diagnosed with chronic brain syndrome in 1983, which includes psychosis, paranoia, depression, schizophrenia, and decreased mental function. The severity of his condition rendered him unable to work. In 1979, a doctor said he was “just barely making it outside of an institution.” In 1984, another doctor found him to be “totally disabled” and the government placed him on disability benefits.

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Missouri Is About to Execute a Man Who’s Missing Part of His Brain

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Get It Done When You’re Depressed – John Preston, Psy.D., ABPP. & Julie Fast

by Myrna Posted on March 2, 2015

READ GREEN WITH E-BOOKS

Get It Done When You’re Depressed
John Preston, Psy.D., ABPP. & Julie Fast

Genre: Self-Improvement

Price: $1.99

Publish Date: January 2, 2008

Publisher: DK Publishing

Seller: Penguin Group (USA) Inc.


Shake the blues away. Everyone knows that depression can lead to guilt, sadness, frustration, and in the case of 15-20% of people with depression, suicide. Because we live in a culture that rewards (and often worships) productivity, when a depressed person can&apos;t meet the expectations of society, the depression becomes worse and a vicious cycle begins. The goal of Getting Things Done When You&apos;re Depressed is to break this cycle. Readers will learn: – How to prepare yourself mentally for working while depressed – How to structure your environment so you can work more easily – How to work with others – How to prevent depression

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Get It Done When You’re Depressed – John Preston, Psy.D., ABPP. & Julie Fast

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These Photos of World Lawmakers Pummeling Each Other Almost Make You Appreciate Congress

by JamePintogz Posted on February 26, 2015

Mother Jones

Twice last week, brawls broke out in Turkey’s parliament over a controversial bill that would give the police more power to crack down on protestors. Punches were thrown, kicks landed, a chair launched. One MP fell down a flight of stairs. It was like the golden early days of cage fighting when rules were laughed out of the arena and MMA fighters’ posses joined in the mayhem. But at least no shots were fired, unlike the time in 2013 that a Jordanian MP tried to come after a colleague with an AK-47. (No one was harmed.)

While American members of Congress haven’t had a serious dust-up in decades, full-contact debate is more common in other deliberative bodies. Here are some memorable recent bouts of parliamentary fisticuffs. (And for many more examples, check out parliamentfights.)

Turkish lawmakers throw punches over a security bill in February 2015.

AP

A presidential decree to call up military reserves leads to a fight in Ukraine’s parliament in July 2014.

Sergii Kharchenko/NurPhoto/ZUMA Wire

Armed police force out South African opposition MPs after they challenged President Zuma over corruption allegations in February 2015.

Rodger Bosch, Pool/AP

Opposition politicians hurl chairs and attack the speaker during a Constituent Assembly meeting in Kathmandu, Nepal, in January 2015.

Bikram Rai/AP

In September 2013, a Jordanian MP fired a shot from his Kalashnikov outside the parliamentary chamber. No one was hurt.

ODN/YouTube

Venezuelan MPs duke it out over an election dispute in May 2013.

A mass brawl erupts Taiwan’s legislature in July 2010, after the speaker rejects a proposal to a debate a trade pact with China.

Wally Santana/AP

In November 2011, South Korean Rep. Kim Seon-dong explodes a tear gas canister in an attempti to block the ratification of a free trade agreement with the United States.

Yonhap/AP

Bonus: Then-Toronto mayor Rob Ford knocks down Councillor Pam McConnell as he runs toward hecklers in November 2013.

The Canadian Press, Paola Loriggio/AP

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These Photos of World Lawmakers Pummeling Each Other Almost Make You Appreciate Congress

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