Tag Archives: Rachel

The Sea Around Us – Rachel Carson

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The Sea Around Us
Rachel Carson

Genre: Nature

Price: $3.99

Publish Date: March 29, 2011

Publisher: Open Road Media

Seller: OpenRoad Integrated Media, LLC


National Book Award Winner and New York Times Bestseller: Explore earth’s most precious, mysterious resource—the ocean—with the author of Silent Spring .  With more than one million copies sold, Rachel Carson’s The Sea Around Us became a cultural phenomenon when first published in 1951 and cemented Carson’s status as the preeminent natural history writer of her time. Her inspiring, intimate writing plumbs the depths of an enigmatic world—a place of hidden lands, islands newly risen from the earth’s crust, fish that pour through the water, and the unyielding, epic battle for survival. Firmly based in the scientific discoveries of the time, The Sea Around Us masterfully presents Carson’s commitment to a healthy planet and a fully realized sense of wonder.  This ebook features an illustrated biography of Rachel Carson including rare photos and never-before-seen documents from the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University.  “[Carson has] a rare gift for transmuting scientific fact into lucid, lyrical language.” — Time  “Her book remains fresh, in part because of her ability to convey scientific insight in vivid poetic language—but, perhaps more important, because what she has to say is still so relevant today.” — Scientific American  “As stimulating as a breeze from the oceans about which she writes; an invigorating and exciting book.” — Boston Herald  Award-winning author Rachel Carson (1907–1964) was one of the greatest American natural history writers of the twentieth century. In addition to the environmental classic Silent Spring , her books include Under the Sea Wind , The Edge of the Sea, and The Sea Around Us , which has sold more than one million copies, been translated into twenty-eight languages, and won the National Book Award and John Burroughs Award.

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The Sea Around Us – Rachel Carson

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Why You Eat What You Eat: The Science Behind Our Relationship with Food – Rachel Herz PhD

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Why You Eat What You Eat: The Science Behind Our Relationship with Food

Rachel Herz PhD

Genre: Life Sciences

Price: $12.99

Publish Date: December 26, 2017

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Seller: W. W. Norton


An eye-opening exploration of the psychology of eating in today’s unprecedented North American pantry of abundance, access, and excess. In Why You Eat What You Eat, acclaimed neuroscientist Rachel Herz examines the sensory, psychological, neuroscientific, and physiological factors that influence our eating habits. Herz, who’s been praised for her “ability to cite and explain academic studies in a conversational manner” (Washington Post), uncovers the fascinating and surprising facts that influence food consumption—such as why bringing reusable bags to the grocery store encourages us to buy more treats, how our beliefs can affect how many calories we burn, why TV influences how much we eat, and how what we see and hear changes how food tastes—and reveals useful techniques for improving our experience of food, such as how aromas can help curb cravings and tips on how to resist repeated trips to the buffet table. Why You Eat What You Eat presents our relationship to food as a complicated recipe, whose ingredients—taste, personality, and emotions—combine to make eating a potent and pleasurable experience. Herz weaves curious findings and compelling facts into a narrative that tackles important questions, revealing how psychology, neurology, and physiology shape our relationship with food, and how food alters the relationship we have with ourselves and each other.

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Why You Eat What You Eat: The Science Behind Our Relationship with Food – Rachel Herz PhD

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Trump’s Tax Return Suggests He’s the Most Incompetent Billionaire in the Nation

Mother Jones

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Tonight’s exciting news: David Cay Johnston somehow got hold of the first page of Donald Trump’s 2005 federal tax return. He released it on the Rachel Maddow show tonight:

Here are Trump’s major sources of income:

Interest income: $9 million
Business income: $42 million
Capital gains: $32 million
Rental income: $67 million
Miscellaneous: $2 million
Total: $152 million

After a writeoff of $103 million, his adjusted gross income clocked in at $49 million. His taxable income came in at $31 million and his tax bill for this was $5 million. That’s a tax rate of about 3 percent. Ka-ching!

Sadly for Trump, the Alternative Minimum Tax kicked in, which meant he had to pay $38 million in taxes. I guess it’s no wonder that Trump doesn’t think very highly of the Alternative Minimum Tax.

Without more pages from his tax return, there’s a limit to what we can learn from this. Trump’s income of $150 million fits fairly well with the estimates I’ve seen. But I will add one thing.

Trump’s total investment income was $108 million, and Trump claims to be worth $5 billion or so, depending on what day you ask him. That means he earned a return on his assets of about 2 percent. In 2005! During the housing bubble! I’m no tax expert, and maybe he had hundreds of millions in capital gains that he didn’t realize that year. Who needs more than $150 million in income, after all? It still seems pretty low, though, and if Trump really did earn a return of only 2 percent he is, by long odds, the most incompetent billionaire in the country.

Alternatively, of course, Trump is actually worth about $1-2 billion and he earned something like a 5-10 percent return. Take your pick.

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Trump’s Tax Return Suggests He’s the Most Incompetent Billionaire in the Nation

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An Ex-Marine Killed Two People in Cold Blood. Should His PTSD Keep Him From Death Row?

Mother Jones

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At 12:44 p.m. on March 6, 2009, John Thuesen called 911. “120 Walcourt Loop,” he told the dispatcher, breathing hard. “Gunshot victims.”

The dispatcher in College Station, Texas, asked what had happened. “I got mad at my girlfriend and I shot her,” he said. “She has sucking chest wounds…”

He’d not only shot Rachel Joiner, 21, but also her older brother Travis. Thuesen had broken into the house after midnight, not sure what he’d do but wanting to see his estranged girlfriend. She was out with her ex-boyfriend, but when she returned later that morning, things “got out of hand.” Thuesen, a 25-year-old former Marine reservist, called 911 and almost immediately expressed remorse. When he was arrested, he repeatedly asked the police about the victims and tried to explain why he’d kept shooting Rachel and her brother: “I felt like I was in like a mode…like training or a game or something.”

The prosecution in the case gave it’s opening statement on May 10, 2010. With DNA evidence and no other suspects, it only took prosecutors three days to make their case. Over the next week, the defense team touched on the facts that Thuesen suffered from depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) from his service in Iraq, but pleaded for leniency in his sentence. None of that swayed the jury: On May 28, 2010, he was sentenced to death.

While on death row, Thuesen was given new lawyers, death penalty experts from the state’s Office of Capital and Forensic Writs. In Texas, there are often two trials, one to determine guilt or innocence and the second to determine sentencing. Lawyers argued in their 2012 petition to have both the death penalty and the conviction vacated, and for a new sentencing trial, arguing that if his lawyers had served him adequately, “John Thuesen would not be on death row today, awaiting an execution date.” In July 2015, Judge Travis Bryan III—the same judge who had presided over the criminal trial—agreed, and ruled that Thuesen’s lawyers hadn’t adequately explained the significance of his PTSD to jurors, and how it had factored into his actions on the day of the murders. Bryan also ruled that Thuesen’s PTSD wasn’t properly treated by the Veterans Health Administration. He recommended that Thuesen be granted a new punishment-phase trial. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals could rule on Bryan’s recommendation at any time.

John Thuesen shortly after his arrest in 2009 Brazos County Sheriff’s Office

The ruling on his case has implications for a question that has concerned the military, veterans’ groups, and death penalty experts: Should service-related PTSD exclude veterans from the death penalty? An answer to this question could affect some of the estimated 300 veterans who now sit on death rows across the country, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. But it’s unclear how many of them suffer from PTSD or traumatic brain injuries, given how uneven the screening for these disorders has been.

Experts are divided about whether veterans with PTSD who commit capital crimes deserve what is known as a “categorical exemption” or “exclusion.” Juveniles receive such treatment, as do those with mental disabilities. In 2009, Anthony Giardino, a lawyer and Iraq War veteran, argued in favor of this in the Fordham Law Review, writing that courts “should consider the more fundamental question of whether the government should be in the business of putting to death the volunteers they have trained, sent to war, and broken in the process” who likely would not be in that position “but for their military service.” In a Institute of Medicine study estimated that between 13 and 20 percent of the 2.6 million Americans who’d served in Iraq and Afghanistan showed at least some of the symptoms of PTSD.

Add to that the training these soldiers receive. “The current efficacy of military training means we are sending to war the most proficient and lethal killers in our nation’s history,” Joshua London, a veterans’ defense lawyer and advocate for reformed judicial treatment of veterans, wrote in a 2014 law journal article, “Why Are We Killing Veterans?” “Likewise, the warriors that return home to our communities are conditioned in a manner that makes them more dangerous, volatile, and amenable to violence than any previous generation of veterans.” If a soldier seems troubled, some psychiatrists have noted, often the preferred treatment option is to provide psychotropic drugs without additional follow-up. For some, especially when combined with other drugs or alcohol, this can result in difficulty with self-control. In April 2014, journalist Ann Jones documented dozens of killings by veterans since 2002.

During his trial, the jury was presented two stark versions of Thuesen. The first was of a cold-blooded murderer. The night before the murders, Thuesen went to see Rachel, but she told him to leave her alone. He broke into her house and lay in her bed, and after she got home he shot her, then Travis, three times each. But Thuesen was also presented as a deeply traumatized soldier who, one of his fellow Marines testified, was forced to fire a heavy machine gun into a car carrying several people and at least one child. Several experts agreed that Thuesen suffered from PTSD and had tried to seek treatment over the course of at least two years. Six months before the murders, Thuesen was suicidal and taken by the police to the VA Medical Center in Houston. He stayed just a few days while he detoxed from alcohol abuse, and he was given anti-depressants and referred to counseling sessions at his local VA clinic.

Tim Rojas, the Marine who’d served with Thuesen and testified about the time he shot up the car, finds himself somewhere in the middle. “People are going to say, ‘Well then, post-traumatic stress does not give you the license to shoot or kill,” he says. “I agree with that. Of course not. But in this case, does John deserve to be on death row? No. Absolutely not. Does he need to be accountable for his actions? Yes. But there’s no way, no way, he needs to lose his life. No way.”

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An Ex-Marine Killed Two People in Cold Blood. Should His PTSD Keep Him From Death Row?

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Film Review: "The Hand That Feeds"

Mother Jones

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The Hand That Feeds

JUBILEE FILMS

At the beginning of The Hand That Feeds, Mahoma López, an undocumented Mexican immigrant, counts out the $290 he’s just received for a 60-hour workweek in a deli on New York City’s ritzy Upper East Side. The film feels like a familiar tale of exploitation and wage theft, until López and his Hot & Crusty coworkers stand up and fight back. In this behind-the-scenes look at the ensuing labor dispute, directors Rachel Lears and Robin Blotnick lead us through the struggles and eventual triumph of López & Co. as they enlist the help of activists and, notably, a group of Occupy Wall Street-influenced twentysomethings. Despite the film’s narrow focus—which leaves out some much-needed context about the treatment of immigrants in the restaurant biz—it’s an inspiring tale.

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Film Review: "The Hand That Feeds"

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On a Farther Shore: The Life and Legacy of Rachel Carson, Author of Silent Spring

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