Category Archives: Stout

Trolls Attacked Ashley Judd for Tweeting About Sports. Now She’s Fighting Back.

Mother Jones

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

Actress Ashley Judd, a well known University of Kentucky basketball fan and alumnus of the Division 1 school, is striking back at Twitter users who launched a tirade of sexually violent tweets aimed at her while she attended a Wildcats game over the weekend.

The explicit messages, which include being called a cunt and suggestions that she “suck a dick,” were prompted by her Tweet saying the opposing team was “playing dirty.” Now Judd indicates that she hopes to pursue charges against her trolls.

“The amount of gender violence that I experience is absolutely extraordinary,” Judd said on the Today show Tuesday. “And a significant part of my day today will be spent filing police reports at home about gender violence that’s directed at me in social media.”

Judd’s harassment comes at a time when more women are speaking out against online abuse, whether via cyber-stalking and threats or movements such as #Gamergate. However, prosecuting such threats has proved notoriously difficult. Some members of Congress are asking the federal government to beef up enforcement of laws that already prohibit such threats of violence. From 2010-2013, federal prosecutors only investigated 10 cyber-stalking reports, despite 2.5 million cases of women being harassed online.

Former Major League pitcher Curt Schilling recently used an alternative strategy to punish the men who trolled his daughter on Twitter: He tracked down their identities and outed them. At least one man lost his job as a result; others were suspended from their college sports teams.

As for the uncomfortable kiss from ESPN’s Dick Vitale photographed during the same Wildcats game, Judd says they are friends, and that she’s “adored him” for 10 years.

Originally posted here:

Trolls Attacked Ashley Judd for Tweeting About Sports. Now She’s Fighting Back.

Posted in Anchor, Cyber, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, organic, PUR, Radius, Stout, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Trolls Attacked Ashley Judd for Tweeting About Sports. Now She’s Fighting Back.

John Coltrane for Experts

Mother Jones

The John Coltrane Quintet Featuring Eric Dolphy
So Many Things: The European Tour 1961
Acrobat

So many “things” indeed! This intriguing four-disc collection of concert performances from November 1961 features six different renditions of the standard “My Favorite Things, each running 20 to 29 minutes, along with more compact versions of “Blue Train,” “I Want to Talk About You.” and other Coltrane favorites. These previously bootlegged concerts were taken from radio broadcasts and suffer slightly from thin sound, but are more than listenable. If So Many Things isn’t for beginners, it’s great extra-credit listening: With multi-instrumentalist Eric Dolphy briefly in the lineup, Coltrane was pushing his tenor and soprano sax chops into new territory, leaving behind traditional melodies and song structures in a restless search for fresh ideas and approaches—a quest he would continue until his death in 1967. The harsher extremes of his final years are yet to be reached, and there’s a mesmerizing, meditative quality to the music throughout that’s dreamy, yet subtly urgent.

Read More: 

John Coltrane for Experts

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Stout, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on John Coltrane for Experts

We need to talk about your old basement TV

We need to talk about your old basement TV

By on 9 Feb 2015commentsShare

In the latest episode of “So You Think You’re Doing a Good Thing?” we discuss what to do with outdated yet still perfectly useful electronics. Spoiler: You’re going to feel guilty no matter what because that’s what it means to be environmentally conscious in a consumerist society.

The good news is our electronics have become more energy-efficient over time thanks to things like Energy Star standards. The bad news is our feel-good energy-efficient purchases are meaningless because we’re a bunch of packrats who keep old devices instead of actually replacing them.

At least that’s the takeaway from a new study out of the Rochester Institute of Technology on the purchasing habits and use of electronics in the average U.S. household between 1992 and 2007.

To set the stage, let’s recall what technology looked like during those 15 years. In 1992, we had desktop computers, box-set TVs, early cellphones and laptops. By 1997, we had digital cameras and camcorders. By 2002, we had MP3 players, smartphones, DVD players, and LCD TVs, and by 2007, we had tablets, e-readers, and plasma TVs.

(Requisite pause for nostalgia basking.)

OK. That’s enough.

In their study, published in Environmental Science & Technology, the Rochester crew compared a household’s collection of devices, or “product community,” to a community of organisms. Like organisms, our devices stick around for a certain period of time, consuming resources (electricity, fuel, plastic, glass, metal, etc.) and excreting waste (e-waste).

What the team found was that while individual devices in these communities consumed less energy over time, the communities themselves kept growing and consequently guzzling more and more energy. The average household had 13 devices in 2007, compared to only four in 1992, the reported.

“There are a lot of products in U.S. households that do the same thing, but we still own 20 of them,” Callie Babbitt, one of the study’s researchers, told Science.

Babbitt and her co-authors found that in 2007, the average U.S. household had three box-set television sets and a total “product community” with an energy impact equal to 30 percent of the annual fuel consumption of the average 2007 passenger vehicle.

They also found that over those 15 years, box-set TV and desktop computer use grew by 20 and 100 percent, respectively, so not only were we accumulating devices, but we were also using them more often.

Apparently, the evolution of technology isn’t quite as ruthless as the evolution of living organisms. The rise of plasma TVs, for example, didn’t drive the old box-sets to extinction, but rather into basements and bedrooms. It might feel wasteful to get rid of a perfectly good TV, but perhaps it’s better to donate or recycle it than to keep it around as a secondary set. See? I told you you’d feel bad no matter what.

Fortunately, the researchers do see a glimmer of hope in post-2007 technology. New multi-purpose devices like tablets and laptops that also act as TVs and MP3s could be the “invasive species” that totally wrecks current device ecosystems, they say, and in this environment, that would be a good thing.

Share

Please

enable JavaScript

to view the comments.

Find this article interesting?

Donate now to support our work.

Get stories like this in your inbox

AdvertisementAdvertisement

Continued – 

We need to talk about your old basement TV

Posted in Anchor, FF, GE, LAI, LG, Mop, ONA, organic, PUR, Stout, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on We need to talk about your old basement TV

What you should know about this week’s U.N. climate talks

The road to Paris

What you should know about this week’s U.N. climate talks

By on 9 Feb 2015commentsShare

There’s another U.N. climate confab this week in Geneva. Maybe you have some questions about it. Maybe they are the questions below. If they are, good, because we’ve answered them.

We just had a climate conference in December. Now we’re having another?

Yes we sure are. In December 2014, world leaders met in Lima and agreed on a rough outline of what a global climate deal should look. But there’s a long way to go before next December, when the leaders are supposed to meet up in Paris to sign that agreement. The ideas expressed in Lima — summed up in a 40-page document detailing “elements for a draft negotiating text” — have to be turned into an actual draft negotiating text, which countries with varying interests will then use to come up with a final agreement. There will be at least four major meetings to work on this document before the Paris meeting in December.

The last time the U.N. tried to hammer out a big agreement like this one — back in 2009, in Copenhagen — the effort more or less fell apart. Bitter rifts between developed and developing countries kept anything much from happening. Things look (slightly) more promising this time around, although the U.N. diplomats in charge aren’t encouraging us to set our hopes too high.

What will diplomats talk about at these meetings?

The agreement that leaders will sign next December will let each country set its own target for emission reductions. Ideally, the U.N. will review each of these targets ahead of time. The hope is that countries will submit their plans by March. The European Union is pushing major economies to at least get their plans in by June. But the actual deadline from the U.N. is Oct. 1 (and some countries may not even meet that).

That leaves a lot still to be worked out. How will the U.N. decide if a country’s target is ambitious enough? What will it do if key countries (like, perhaps, India) refuse to submit a target by the deadline? And because the agreement won’t be legally binding, what recourse will the U.N. have if countries don’t meet their targets? These are a few of the big questions.

Another is climate financing. Poorer countries will need a lot of money to green their developing energy economies, and rich countries have not been forthcoming. Diplomats are increasingly expecting a large part of those funds to come from the private sector. But companies and investors aren’t part of the negotiating process — diplomats will have to figure out the best way to facilitate the flow of money to poor countries, responsibly and with oversight, on their own.

How effective will the deal be? Will we stay within 2 degrees C?

The U.N. has used a number of targets for limiting climate change, but the most common one is to keep global warming under 2 degrees Celsius, a somewhat arbitrary temperature at which many scientists hope the worst effects can be avoided.

But the chances of staying below that target are looking increasingly slim, as continued research shows just how dramatically we would have to alter our economies to do so. Meanwhile, our economies continue to chug forward, changing very, very gradually.

In December, in Lima, U.N. chief climate diplomat Christiana Figueres said that a plan to hit the 2-degree target won’t come out of the current negotiating process leading up to Paris. “We already know, because we have a pretty good sense of what countries will be able to do in the short run, that the sum total of efforts [in Paris] will not be able to put us on the path for two degrees,” she said. “We are not going to get there with the Paris agreement … We will get there over time.”

And on a conference call with reporters last week, Figueres reiterated those thoughts. She said she backed eventually hitting carbon neutrality — that means no emissions by a set year, maybe 2050 or 2100. But she also said that a deal to do so wouldn’t be coming this year. “What we are doing this year — the role of Paris — is actually to set the pathway for an orderly planned transition over time to a low-carbon society,” she said.

So is there any point to this process?

That’s up for debate. Even U.N. officials aren’t enthusiastic, as 20 years of very slow-moving negotiations haven’t produced much so far. “We are also not convinced it’s the most effective and efficient way,” Figueres said last week. Eric Holthaus of Slate recently argued that “when it comes to the climate, the U.N. process is irreparably broken. If we at last write off the U.N. process, it may help the world finally make progress on climate by instead turning to local, tangible actions that could energize people and bring about real change.”

Maybe. But even if the U.N. process won’t keep us below 2 degrees, it could aim for a less-ambitious target, like 3 degrees. That’s worse than 2 but better than the 4, 5, 6 degrees of warming we could see if governments do nothing and allow climate change to keep intensifying.

Furthermore, there are many poor countries that see the U.N. process as their best hope to get developed nations, and big developing polluters like China, to pay attention to the threats they face. Throwing out the U.N. process throws out what is currently a key forum for those voices.

The U.S. and China, which together account for about 40 percent of the world’s emissions, have already sketched out their goals, and the European Union has outlined its aims and intends to formally submit its plan to the U.N. by March. Now it’s up to developing countries, from giants like India to small countries responsible for much less pollution, to make their own ambitious commitments. And they’re more likely to do that at the request of the U.N. than at the request of any specific country or world leader.

It would be nice if we had the revolution that some have called for, tossing out the broken diplomatic process entirely as citizens pressure their governments to take dramatic action. And we may have it, someday. But, for better or worse, today we have a few hundred diplomats in a room in Geneva.

Share

Please

enable JavaScript

to view the comments.

Find this article interesting?

Donate now to support our work.

Get stories like this in your inbox

AdvertisementAdvertisement

Continue reading here: 

What you should know about this week’s U.N. climate talks

Posted in Anchor, Citizen, FF, GE, Good Sense, Hagen, LAI, LG, Mop, ONA, organic, Stout, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on What you should know about this week’s U.N. climate talks

Bluesman Gary Clark Jr. Is the Guitar Hero for Our Time

Mother Jones

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

Gary Clark Jr.
Live
Warner Bros.

A guitar hero for the modern era, Gary Clark Jr. plays bluesy rock with a blistering urgency that makes the hoariest conventions feel brand new. For all his flashy expertise, the muscular solos and buzzing riffs never feel gratuitous, while Clark’s terse, tough singing nicely complements his fretwork. This 15-track, 97-minute feast is the perfect showcase for his brilliance, mixing versions of standards like “Three O’Clock Blues” (popularized by B.B. King) and “Catfish Blues” (also covered by Jimi Hendrix) with pungent originals, from sleek boogie (“Travis County”) to tender soul (“Please Come Home”), with lots of fireworks in between. While it’s tempting to view him as the next coming of Hendrix, especially in light of his take on Jimi’s “Third Stone from the Sun,” Clark is closer in spirit to Stevie Ray Vaughan: less an exotic, godlike genius than a gifted guardian of tradition who never fails to thrill.

View original post here – 

Bluesman Gary Clark Jr. Is the Guitar Hero for Our Time

Posted in Anchor, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Stout, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Bluesman Gary Clark Jr. Is the Guitar Hero for Our Time

Liam Bailey’s “Definitely Now” is Sneakily Addictive

Mother Jones

Liam Bailey
Definitely NOW
Flying Buddha/Sony Music

Liam Bailey’s smoky rasp of a voice would enhance any setting. On this sneakily addictive debut, the UK singer skillfully mixes slick modern pop, old-school soul, torch ballads, and a dash of reggae, creating a familiar yet fresh brew reminiscent of the great Amy Winehouse, an early champion of his. Where some young vocalists tend to emote excessively in an attempt to show off their skills, Bailey makes a virtue of understatement. He’s thoroughly engaging on uptempo numbers like “Villain” and “Fool Boy,” but especially effective on slower late-night tunes such as “Autumn Leaves” (not the pop standard) and “So, Down Cold.” Make it mellow, Liam.

Also read: Bailey spoke to photographer Jacob Blickenstaff about making the album and his split with Jimi Hendrix’s old label, Polydor.

Original article: 

Liam Bailey’s “Definitely Now” is Sneakily Addictive

Posted in Anchor, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Stout, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Liam Bailey’s “Definitely Now” is Sneakily Addictive

Happy 75th Ginger Baker! British Drummer Carried Beat for Cream

Mother Jones

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

If you’ve ever jammed to “Sunshine of Your Love” or “White Room” by Cream, spent time with the Blind Faith album, got down to Levitation by Hawkwind or listened to Public Image Limited’s classic Album, then tip your hat to Mr. Ginger Baker, who turns 75 on August 19th, 2014.

To celebrate, Here are a few killer photos of Baker playing with Cream on the Dutch television show Fanclub.

F. van Geelen/Fanclub/Dutch Institute for Sound and Vision

And a more recent photo of Mr. Baker:

Peter Edward ‘Ginger” Baker is an English drummer, best known for his work with Cream. He is also known for his numerous associations with New World music and the use of African influences and other diverse collaborations such as his work with the rock band Hawkwind. David Levene/eyevine/ZUMA Press

Oh, and Bill Clinton and Tipper Gore also share a birthday today. Whatta party!

Original article: 

Happy 75th Ginger Baker! British Drummer Carried Beat for Cream

Posted in Anchor, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Radius, Stout, Uncategorized, Venta, Vintage | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Happy 75th Ginger Baker! British Drummer Carried Beat for Cream

Hobby Lobby Funded Disgraced Fundamentalist Christian Leader Accused of Harassing Dozens of Women

Mother Jones

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

For a decade or so, Hobby Lobby and its owners, the Green family, have been generous benefactors of a Christian ministry that until recently was run by Bill Gothard, a controversial religious leader who has long promoted a strict and authoritarian version of Christianity. Gothard, a prominent champion of Christian home-schooling, has decried the evils of dating, rock music, and Cabbage Patch dolls; claimed public education teaches children “how to commit suicide” and undermines spirituality; contended that mental illness is merely “varying degrees of irresponsibility”; and urged wives to “submit to the leadership” of their husbands. Critics of Gothard have associated him with Christian Reconstructionism, an ultrafundamentalist movement that yearns for a theocracy, and accused him of running a cultlike organization. In March, he was pressured to resign from his ministry, the Institute in Basic Life Principles, after being accused by more than 30 women of sexual harassment and molestation—a charge Gothard denies.

More MoJo coverage of the Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby decision.


Hobby Lobby’s Hypocrisy: The Company’s Retirement Plan Invests in Contraception Manufacturers


The 8 Best Lines From Ginsburg’s Dissent


Why the Decision Is the New Bush v. Gore


How Obama Can Make Sure Hobby Lobby’s Female Employees Are Covered


Hobby Lobby Funded Disgraced Fundamentalist Christian Leader Accused of Harassing Dozens of Women

The Institute traces it origins to 1964, when Gothard designed a college seminar based on biblical principles to help teenagers. The ministry says it was established “for the purpose of introducing people to the Lord Jesus Christ” and to give individuals, families, businesses, and governments “clear instruction and training on how to find success by following God’s principles found in Scripture.” The group, which operates what it calls “training centers” across the United States and abroad, says more than 2.5 million people have attended its paid events, which have brought in tens of millions of dollars in revenue. Gothard and the Institute have drawn support from conservative politicians, including Mike Huckabee, Sarah Palin, and former Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue. The Duggar family, the stars of the reality show 19 Kids and Counting, have been high-profile advocates of Gothard’s home-schooling curriculum and seminars. (One of Gothard’s alleged victims has called on the Duggars to break with Gothard and the Institute.) Don Venoit, a conservative evangelical who has long been a critic of Gothard, contends that Gothard’s approach to Christian theology emphasizing obedience to authority creates a “culture of fear.” In 1984, Ronald Allen, now a professor of Bible exposition at Dallas Theological Seminary, observed that Gothard’s teachings were “a parody of patriarchalism” and “the basest form of male chauvinism I have ever heard in a Christian context.” He added, “Gothard has lost the biblical balance of the relationship between women and men as equals in relationship. His view is basically anti-woman.”

Continue Reading »

Link to article: 

Hobby Lobby Funded Disgraced Fundamentalist Christian Leader Accused of Harassing Dozens of Women

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, GE, LAI, Landmark, LG, ONA, PUR, Radius, Stout, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Hobby Lobby Funded Disgraced Fundamentalist Christian Leader Accused of Harassing Dozens of Women

Martin Scorsese Asked This Band If He Could Use Their Song When Leonardo DiCaprio Has Sex on Money

Mother Jones

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

Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street is the year’s best film—a towering achievement in humor and sprawling excess. The movie hits theaters on Christmas Day, and dramatizes the testosterone-soaked saga of Jordan Belfort, co-founder and chairman of Long Island brokerage house Stratton Oakmont, who went down for securities fraud and money laundering in the 1990s. The script—overflowing with orgies, Quaaludes, and scandal—is by Terence Winter (The Sopranos, Boardwalk Empire), and the film stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Jonah Hill, Matthew McConaughey, Margot Robbie, and Cristin Milioti.

The Wolf of Wall Street soundtrack is heavy on blues music, and includes some familiar names such as Elmore James, Howlin’ Wolf, and Bo Diddley. (Critics frequently note the quality of Scorsese’s soundtracks, from Mean Streets to The Departed, which often lean heavily on classic rock.) But one of the songs prominently featured in a couple of scenes in The Wolf of Wall Street is by a blues-rock duo you probably haven’t heard of: The band is the Los Angeles-based 7Horse, with Phil Leavitt on drums and lead vocals, and Joie Calio on guitar. (The two previously played together in the alt-rock group Dada, and have been playing together for two decades.)

The song is “Meth Lab Zoso Sticker“:

“Meth Lab Zoso Sticker” is also the first song heard in the film’s second trailer. It’s a catchy and exciting blues number. But how did Scorsese hear it?

Continue Reading »

Source – 

Martin Scorsese Asked This Band If He Could Use Their Song When Leonardo DiCaprio Has Sex on Money

Posted in Citizen, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Oster, Radius, Stout, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Martin Scorsese Asked This Band If He Could Use Their Song When Leonardo DiCaprio Has Sex on Money

Frackers might soon be allowed to float their wastewater down rivers

Frackers might soon be allowed to float their wastewater down rivers

Shutterstock

We told you the other day that frackers are drawing millions of gallons of water from rivers and streams to pump into their wells. Now the U.S. Coast Guard wants that water returned to the rivers — floating on barges and laced with radioactive contamination.

Wastewater is a huge problem for the fracking industry. It’s produced when the water that frackers pump into the ground returns to the surface — contaminated with fracking chemicals and also with toxic substances that naturally linger deep beneath the soil. Some of the wastewater is pumped back into the ground, but that can trigger earthquakes. Some of the wastewater is treated like sewage and then poured back into rivers and streams, but that pollutes waterways with the hitherto-subterranean radiation.

The industry wants to be allowed to ship its wastewater away from frack sites to be dumped, stored, or recycled in far-off locations, even in other states. And the Coast Guard is giving the public a month to comment on its proposal to allow this precarious practice to begin. From PublicSource, a news outlet in the heavily fracked state of Pennsylvania:

The Coast Guard began studying the issue nearly two years ago at the request of its Pittsburgh office, which had inquiries from companies transporting Marcellus Shale wastewater.

If the policy is approved, companies can ship the wastewater in bulk on barges on the nation’s 12,000 miles of waterways, a much cheaper mode than trucks or rail. …

Under the policy, companies would first have to test the wastewater at a state-certified laboratory and provide the data to the Coast Guard for review. The tests would determine levels of radioactivity, pH, bromides and other hazardous materials. …

However, “the identity of proprietary chemicals may be withheld from public release,” the policy states.

The proposed regulations [PDF], which were published last week, would cap each load’s level of radioactivity:

The Coast Guard is concerned that, over time, sediment and deposits with radioisotopes may accumulate on the inside of the barge tank surface and may pose a health risk to personnel entering the tank. The Coast Guard’s concern with respect to radioisotopes is to ensure that radiation exposure duration and levels are both kept as low as reasonably achievable, within the meaning of Nuclear Regulatory Commission regulations.

Environmentalists and scientists worry about the potential impacts if a barge sinks, runs aground, or tips over while laden with a stew of pollution. “If and when there’s a spill, that can’t be cleaned up,” said Benjamin Stout, a biology professor at Wheeling Jesuit University. “That means it’s going to be in the drinking-water supply of millions of people.”


Source
Proposed policy letter: Carriage of conditionally permitted shale gas extraction waste water in bulk, U.S. Coast Guard
U.S. Coast Guard publishes proposed policy on moving frack wastewater by barge, PublicSource

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.

Find this article interesting? Donate now to support our work.Read more: Business & Technology

,

Climate & Energy

Continued here: 

Frackers might soon be allowed to float their wastewater down rivers

Posted in Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, ONA, organic, Stout, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Frackers might soon be allowed to float their wastewater down rivers