Tag Archives: robert

New York’s natural gas pipelines are leakier than your grandpa

by GrettaRupert Posted on September 10, 2015

New York’s natural gas pipelines are leakier than your grandpa

By Suzanne Jacobson 10 Sep 2015comments Share

Just like us, natural gas pipelines get a little farty with old age. Unlike us, they fart loads of climate change-inducing methane all over our city streets like silent Earth assassins. (Technically, we also fart methane, but according to this scientist and self-proclaimed “connoisseur of fart articles,” we don’t fart enough of it to do much damage.)

In a new study published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology Letters, researchers report that — surprise! — old pipes get leaky. And when those pipes are carrying natural gas, that means trouble. Here’s the scoop from Buzzfeed:

The new survey found 1,050 methane leaks in Manhattan, or about four leaks per mile. Two cities selected for comparison — Cincinnati, Ohio, and Durham, North Carolina — had about 90% fewer leaks per mile, the study found. Over the last decade, Cincinnati and Durham have replaced most of their old gas mains with new ones.

“Older iron pipes are corroded, they leak from the joints, they crack and they buckle,” Stanford University’s Robert Jackson, who led the street survey, told BuzzFeed News. “The good news is that some cities are already doing something and showing we can do something about these leaks.”

Fortunately, the New York utility company Con Edison has a $6.5 billion plan to replace 60 percent of its natural gas pipes by 2020, Buzzfeed reports, and is now doing 13 annual leak patrols, rather than one. Unfortunately, this problem isn’t unique to Manhattan. The researchers found that Boston and Washington, D.C., were also quite leaky. Twelve leaks in D.C. were so concentrated, in fact, that they posed explosion risks, according to Buzzfeed. Most of the other leaks just smelled like rotten eggs, which I guess is pretty good in comparison.

But if you don’t care about the smells, the mortal danger, or the fact that methane traps WAY more heat than CO2, then maybe this will get your attention:

“Everyone pays for these leaks. The utilities just jack up their rates to cover the losses so there is no incentive to fix them,” study co-author Robert Ackley of Gas Safety Inc. in Southborough, Massachusetts told BuzzFeed News. “They get away with a lot, in my opinion.”

Ackley, a libertarian, community-college drop-out from Boston, was the star of this 2013 article in Matter about the leaky pipe epidemic. It’s a fascinating read about a fascinating guy. Here’s a teaser:

Few people understand the streets of America’s cities the way Ackley does. He’s spent almost three decades documenting leaky gas pipelines and alerting utility companies to potential danger. Now he can read the street like a hunter reads animal tracks; some academics call him the “urban naturalist.”

As John Oliver pointed out so well earlier this year, infrastructure might be boring, but it’s insanely important to the health and wellbeing of this country. So perhaps we should treat it with the same care and respect that we treat our corroded and leaky elders — if not out of the goodness of our hearts, then because it’s the right thing to do, and if not because it’s the right thing to do, then because people will judge us if we don’t.

Source:

Experts Have Just Found Gas Leaking Out Of 1,000 Spots In New York City

, Buzzfeed.

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New York’s natural gas pipelines are leakier than your grandpa

Posted in Anchor, Everyone, FF, GE, LAI, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized | Tagged ackley, america, anchor, earth, Everyone, manhattan, massachusetts, north, robert, university | Comments Off

John Oliver Calls Out Televangelists Who Exploit Religion to Make Millions

by AngelitHigbee Posted on August 17, 2015

Mother Jones

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On Sunday, Last Week Tonight took on the shady world of televangelism, an industry that—unlike actual congregations doing real work to help others—is built on promises to “heal through faith” in exchange for hefty, tax-free donations. As John Oliver described, the business thrives on the premise that “wealth is a sign of God’s favor and donations will result in wealth coming back to you.”

The most vulnerable people are often targeted, while celebrity televangelists rake in millions.

To help expose the industry’s fraudulent doings, the show conducted a seven-month correspondence with leading celebrity televangelist Robert Tilton that revealed a disturbing set of tactics he employed to convince people to send money his way. Oliver even established his own satirical church to show just how easy it can be to scam worshipers. Welcome to Our Lady of Perpetual Exemption.

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John Oliver Calls Out Televangelists Who Exploit Religion to Make Millions

Posted in Anchor, FF, GE, Hipe, LAI, LG, ONA, oven, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged media, mixed media, Ona, radius, religion, robert, robert-tilton, tonight, took-on-the, transitional | Comments Off

How Jazzman Robert Glasper Won Over the Hip-Hop Heads

by RachellPollak Posted on June 29, 2015

Mother Jones

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Robert Glasper Jacob Blickenstaff

Pianist Robert Glasper is a leading figure in the contemporary jazz scene, but he has never been far from his diverse influences. And while he possesses a deep gift for invention and improvisation, his music often incorporates the chords and sequences fundamental to hip-hop, R&B, and modern gospel.

With his fourth album, Double Booked, Glasper introduced a new band, the Robert Glasper Experiment, that pivoted further from traditional jazz to explore elements of the latter genres. Two albums with the Experiment followed, Black Radio and Black Radio 2, featuring an impressive roster of guest vocalists—among others, Erykah Badu, Musiq Soulchild, Lalah Hathaway, and Yasin Bey. The albums netted Glasper two Grammys—one in 2013 for Best R&B album, the second this year for Best traditional R&B performance.

On his latest album, Covered, out earlier this month, Glasper features his original trio with bassist Vicente Archer and drummer Damion Reid. Recorded in front of a small audience at Capitol Studios, it reinterprets a wide variety of songs, including cuts from the Black Radio albums and alumni, as well as Joni Mitchell, John Legend, Jhené Aiko, Radiohead, and Kendrick Lamar—with the Victor Young standard “Stella By Starlight” for good measure. I caught up with Glasper as his trio kicked off a week-long run at the Village Vanguard, the famed New York City jazz venue. He is currently on tour.

Mother Jones: After two well-received Black Radio albums, you’re going back to piano trio format. What’s new this time around?

Robert Glasper: I’ve acquired a new audience. Around 2009, my audience started getting a lot more mainstream; younger people, R&B and hip-hop fans, mixed in with the jazz audience. Since those two albums, my audience has grown a lot bigger. I didn’t want to just go back to doing straight-up jazz standards or trio songs. We purposely did cover songs to make everyone happy. And it makes me happy too. The kind of “jazz way” is just doing another album the same way with different songs. But I like to wait until I have a nice concept. Now I have another avenue that I can go down, that I have to go down, because of the audience I’ve acquired.

MJ: Is there any common element to the songs on Covered?

RG: Nope.

MJ: Where do they come from then?

RG: I wanted to do a mix of old songs that I love and some new songs that I love to keep it modern. I’m pretty eclectic, so that’s why I was like, Joni Mitchell, Kendrick Lamar, Radiohead, Musiq Soulchild, Jhené Aiko—I love that! That’s literally what my iPod looks like.

MJ: In past interviews, you’ve talked about using personal honesty—about the music you like and who you are—to navigate between genres and move your career forward. Where does that come from?

RG: It came from my mother. She passed away in 2004. She was a singer, and literally, every day of the week she sang at a different club in a different genre of music: country, R&B clubs, jazz clubs, church on Sunday morning where she was the music director, pop hits, soft rock, she loved Broadway, Liza Minelli. I grew up listening to all this music, so it was never one thing for me. When my friends were listening to hip-hop or R&B, I was in the crib listening to Billy Joel and Michael Bolton, Luther Vandross, and Oscar Peterson. And she was always, “Yes, that’s who you are. It’s everything.” So I got that confidence to stick with that and not be ashamed of it from super early.

MJ: When you play a place like the Village Vanguard, which is a shrine to jazz, especially to jazz trios, do you find there’s still new territory to explore?

RG: What I’m doing now is kind of open territory. I don’t feel like it’s really been done the way that I’m doing it without it being smooth jazz. I think I’m walking a pretty fine line. There are a few specific things that I pay attention to that if you don’t, you’re gonna be in the smooth jazz lane.

MJ: Like what?

RG: When it came to the Experiment band, it was the amount of solos you take. Once I started getting mainstream people to my shows, I realized we were taking too many solos, and they were too long. I started gauging when people were going on their iPhones. So we narrowed it down. Over the course of the whole night Casey Benjamin and I might only take one, maybe another in the encore. But we’re improvising at the same time, we’re grooving, and peoples’ heads are nodding, so you leave full. It’s just enough soloing for the mainstream person to be enlightened by that, but it’s not beating them over the head.

A lot of times, jazz musicians try to educate people. What other genre does that? When Cannonball Adderley did shows, he said, “First 20 minutes we’ll jazz out, then the last hour it’s gonna be songs that people paid to see.” Which is why he was driving a Rolls-Royce and everybody else was driving whatever. Miles Davis, too. I asked Herbie Hancock a few days ago, “When I hear bootlegs of Miles Davis with the ’60s Quintet, I never hear like, “Pinocchio,” or “Fall,” or “Nefertiti,” or any of those dope songs that y’all recorded. Why not?” Herbie said, “Miles wanted to play songs that people knew.” Jazz was struggling back then, too. But people knew standards. So that’s why they were going to play “Autumn Leaves.”

MJ: Besides the trio and the Experiment, is there a third approach you have been considering?

RG: I’m gonna do a gospel record, Black Radio-style, kind of. I grew up in church. That’s how most young African-American musicians learn how to perform. You could be six years old and playing organ or drums in front of thousands or hundreds of people. You’re performing every week. People don’t think about it like that, but that’s what it is. You’re in charge of emotion, and bringing certain things to fruition, and bringing all the spirit in. And it’s a real thing. I was playing drums in church when I was six. Then I picked up the piano when I was 11 or 12. A lot of the mainstream R&B people or hip-hop or whatever, the whole urban world, are from the church. So this would be an album that everyone would love.

Robert Glasper back stage at the Village Vanguard Jacob Blickenstaff

MJ: Both in your trio and the Experiment, I hear a central element of repetition, similar to a sample or loop. Is there a feeling you get from that; is it something hypnotic?

RG: That’s exactly what it is. I think there’s beauty in repetition. And that’s part of my culture and African culture as well: repeated things, mantra. It’s spiritual, it’s meditation, it’s Buddhism, it’s praying, it’s all these things. It’s the repetitive thing that brings space. That’s one of the things I love secretly about hip-hop. Jazz doesn’t have that element. It changes every bar, nothing is ever the same. Most jazz musicians get off on making it different every time. But that approach is not as spiritual. Coltrane would stay on one chord, and you’d keep hearing that one sound, over and over. He would play all kinds of stuff over it, but you just hear this one chord.

MJ: As Coltrane got more advanced, his music became simpler.

RG: Exactly. It became more about spirituality versus how many chord changes you can play over. That’s one of the things that I think a lot of people like about hip-hop, but they don’t even realize. Normally hip-hop repeats every four bars—it’s a very small chunk. And it’s about the head nod. I almost feel like it’s like full circle when I play with my trio. A lot of the origins of hip-hop are the sampling of jazz records, especially jazz trios. So I think, “Let’s mimic the producer who is sampling the jazz trio.” You see people close their eyes, and it takes them to another place. I almost think of it like we’re supplying the house, and the listener can move their own furniture in. Whatever you’re going through, we’re the soundtrack to your thoughts, and we’ll just leave space for you to move your shit in. I think people leave my shows feeling good. Instead of hearing, “Oh, he’s good,” I’d rather hear, “Wow, you changed my feelings today, you made me feel different.”

MJ: What’s hard for you?

RG: The hard part is balancing. I have a family, a five-year-old son—you know, life. That is probably the hardest part. The music is not hard to me. What is hard also is getting the respect of the mainstream. I won two R&B Grammys. If I was a singer who won those Grammys, I’d be gracing all the magazine covers—all the urban magazine covers—something. I barely got asked to do an interview. When we won the first Grammy, and we went backstage to do all the interviews after you win, holding the award and talking, people were like looking at their sheets going, “So, do you guys…sing?” “No, we’re an instrumental band.” “Oh, umm…” You know, it’s confusing! But if you ask people they say, “Oh! I love the music, Oh! I love that album.” Okay, well, give me those same opportunities. I’m trying to break down that barrier. I want to get that kind of love.

This profile is part of In Close Contact, an independent documentary project on music, musicians, and creativity.

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How Jazzman Robert Glasper Won Over the Hip-Hop Heads

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The President of the Boy Scouts of America Just Endorsed Dropping the Ban on Gay Leaders

by FranceSchoenhei Posted on May 21, 2015

Mother Jones

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The president of Boy Scouts of America is calling for an end to the organization’s ban on gay leaders, saying the “status quo in our movement’s membership standards cannot be sustained.” Robert Gates, who was speaking at the group’s annual summit on Thursday, said the changes would not be made at the meeting, but indicated officials should look into revisions in the future.

In Gates’s remarks, the former defense secretary urged the organization to “deal with the world as it is, not as we might wish it be.” His address, sure to ruffle a few feathers, stopped short of supporting gay rights outright. Instead, Gates said that the policy shift was necessary to keep the organization nationally relevant.

“While our work won’t be done until we see a full end to their ban on gay adults once and for all, today’s announcement is a significant step in that direction,” Zach Wahls, director for Equality, said in response to Thursday’s announcement. “I’m proud to see Dr. Gates charting a course towards full equality in the BSA.”

In 2013, the Boy Scouts of America voted to allow openly gay scouts—gay leaders however were not included in the changes. Just yesterday, the Girls Scouts of America double downed on the group’s welcoming of transgender girls.

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The President of the Boy Scouts of America Just Endorsed Dropping the Ban on Gay Leaders

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8 Crazy Quotes In Support of Celebrating Robert E. Lee on MLK Day

by CortezSKMsqtt Posted on January 28, 2015

Mother Jones

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Arkansas, Mississippi, and Alabama are the only three states in the country that celebrate Robert E. Lee on the same day as the Martin Luther King Jr. federal holiday. Their reasoning for the combo celebration is that the two have birthdays just a few days apart—never mind the, uh, conflict of interest.

Today, Arkansas’ elected officials had the opportunity to pass a bill seeking to separate the two commemorations. By doing so, Arkansas would join Georgia, Florida, and Virginia, which honor Lee—but not on MLK Day.

But this morning, Arkansas representatives struck down the bill with a chorus of nays. Below are a few choice quotes from opponents of the bill explaining why:

1. “Everyone in this room owes Robert E. Lee a debt.”

2. “You’ve got MLK parades all over the nation, but no one celebrates Lee! Well, a lot of people do, a very large crowd.”

bill to separate recognition of MLK and Robert E Lee due up at 10am. Those opposed already here. #arleg #ARnews pic.twitter.com/bS7QRd4uZr

— David Goins (@dgoins)

January 28, 2015

3. “This bill is out to change our constitution.”

4. “It’s called American history.”

5. “I really wish we could all celebrate a non-separate, but equal holiday.”

6. “You wouldn’t celebrate Christmas in July!”

7. “Why are we doing this? We are chasing a non-problem.”

8. “Separate is not equal.”

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8 Crazy Quotes In Support of Celebrating Robert E. Lee on MLK Day

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Pandemonium Broke Out in Ferguson Last Night

by CortezDibble Posted on August 18, 2014

Mother Jones

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The peaceful protests in Ferguson, Missouri, descended into pandemonium on Sunday night just hours before the start of a curfew imposed by Gov. Jay Nixon. This morning, it remains unclear what stoked the chaos. Captain Ron Johnson of the Missouri Highway Patrol accused protesters of deliberately provoking the police with gunfire and Molotov cocktails. Protesters deny that anyone attacked the police.

What is clear is that Sunday night saw the greatest show of force since the start of the protests. The Missouri Highway Patrol, which replaced local police forces after those officers drew criticism for their aggressive stance toward demonstrators and journalists, fired rubber bullets into the crowd and marched in formation against protesters.

Photos and shaky video from the scene show tear gas and smoke streaming through disoriented crowds and police in riot gear lining up against citizens. Police ordered television news crews to turn off their lights, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and responded to a fire at a local store that appeared to have been set by looters. There are reports that violence broke out between civilians and that some civilians shot at police. Antonio French, a St. Louis alderman who has helped lead the protests, addressed those reports on Twitter:

These people are not protestors. This is something different and it has little to do with #JusticeForMikeBrown.

— Antonio French (@AntonioFrench)

August 18, 2014

The clash began at about 9 p.m. on West Florissant Avenue, a short walk from the spot where Michael Brown was slain by a police officer. Hours later, news broke that a preliminary autopsy of Brown revealed that the unarmed 18-year-old had been shot six times. Brown’s death, on August 9, inspired the protests after police withheld details about the shooting. The Department of Justice plans its own autopsy.

Demonstrators flee tear gas fired by police in Ferguson J.B. Forbes/AP

By about midnight last night, Ferguson’s streets were empty of protesters. Time‘s Alex Altman watched demonstrators return to the scene of the chaos just after dawn this morning and clean up broken bottles and empty shell casings. French posted a photo of the clean-up this morning:

#Ferguson pic.twitter.com/B8RzTZzr9N

— Antonio French (@AntonioFrench)

August 18, 2014

Nixon announced early Monday morning that he would deploy the state’s National Guard to take control of the town. Civil rights groups, including the NAACP and American Civil Liberties Union, have called on the governor to roll back the curfew. The groups say the curfew “suspends the constitutional right to assemble by punishing the misdeeds of the few through the theft of constitutionally protected rights of the many.”

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch posted video of last night’s confrontation:

Many photos show McDonald’s workers washing a protester’s eyes out with milk after the woman, Cassandra Roberts, was tear-gassed by police. “I just came down here to support my people,” Roberts told reporters. “What the hell is going on in this world?”

Cassandra Roberts gassed, helped by strangers in #Ferguson #MikeBrown pic.twitter.com/wfvVHN4KZ4

— Robert Cohen (@kodacohen)

August 18, 2014

Police continued their aggression toward journalists on the scene. Chris Hayes, the MSNBC host, tweeted:

If you walk about 100 feet from OK’ed press area you find yourself lit up by a spotlight and a squad of police on hair trigger.

— Christopher Hayes (@chrislhayes)

August 18, 2014

Robert Klemko, a journalist for Sports Illustrated, reported that he was told by Missouri Highway Patrol Captain Ron Johnson to “walk away or be arrested.” Klemko walked away—and was arrested:

When they cut cuffs off minutes later, I held onto it. Johnson tried to take it. I said “it’s a ferguson souvenir.” pic.twitter.com/89t6G49FId

— Robert Klemko (@RobertKlemko)

August 18, 2014

Video posted on YouTube reportedly shows police yelling at a member of Argus Radio, a volunteer-run music station that has been live streaming the protests, to “get the fuck out of here and keep that light off or you’re getting shelled with this.”

Pandemonium Broke Out in Ferguson Last Night

Posted in Anchor, Citizen, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta, Vintage | Tagged august, French, highway, king, Ona, Patrol, politics, radius, robert, roberts, vintage | Comments Off

Over Easy: An Egg King Gets Dethroned

by MerrillDeniehy Posted on June 6, 2014

Mother Jones

Remember the salmonella outbreak of 2010, the one that that sickened 2,000 people and led to the recall of more than a half-billion eggs?

A federal investigation has pulled the curtain back on the way the man at the center of the outbreak, Jack DeCoster, ran his massive egg empire. He and his son Peter DeCoster have pleaded guilty to the “distribution of adulterated eggs in interstate commerce, resulting in the 2010 outbreak, the US Department of Justice reports.

And that’s not all. One of DeCoster’s companies, Quality Egg, also copped to attempting to bribe a USDA inspector, not once but twice in 2010, to allow it to send out eggs that didn’t meet the agency’s quality standards; and also to falsifying expiration dates on egg cartons “with the intent to mislead state regulators and retail egg customers regarding the true age of the eggs,” between 2006 and 2010.

Even before these revelations, the episode had revealed gaps in how the US regulatory system handles massive livestock operations. DeCoster’s own company-run tests had found salmonella in its facilities before the outbreak, but it continued churning out eggs. Shortly before the outbreak, US Department of Agriculture inspectors had noted filthy conditions but didn’t act to halt them—they were there to inspect egg size, not cleanliness. The Food and Drug Administration, which does regulate food safety in large egg operations, filed a damning report on DeCoster’s facilities—but only after those half billion suspect eggs had been trucked out to supermarkets nationwide.

And though DeCoster ran no corporate empire along the lines of Tyson or Smithfield Foods, his egg fiefdom was quite large. My reporting at the time established that the companies he controlled accounted for more then 10 percent of US laying hens—more than any other egg producer.

DeCoster pere et fils face prison sentences of up to one year; fines of $100,000 each; and a “term of supervised release after any imprisonment for up to one year,” the DOJ reports.

Thus, presumably, ends an illustrious career at the heights of industrial-scale agriculture. Previous highlights include:

• In 2002, one of DeCoster’s companies paid a $1.5 million settlement after women at one of his Iowa plants “alleged they were subjected to sexual harassment (including rape), abuse, and retaliation” by supervisory workers.

• In 2000 he got himself declared a “habitual offender” of Iowa’s manure management laws by the state’s attorney general.

• In 1996, Robert Reich, then the US labor secretary, slapped a $3.6 million fine on DeCoster’s Maine egg operation for labor violations. Reich denounced the company as ”an agricultural sweatshop” where the workers are treated like ”animals.”

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Over Easy: An Egg King Gets Dethroned

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Conflicts of Interest Abound in State Supreme Courts

by Ha Zega Posted on December 5, 2013

Mother Jones

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A new investigation by the Center for Public Integrity reveals troubling conflicts of interest in state supreme courts nationwide. CPI combed through the financial disclosure forms of state supreme court justices in all 50 states and reviewed the states’ disclosure laws for judges. Their findings on both fronts are discouraging.

CPI discovered several instances of justices writing opinions that favored companies they had financial ties to. An Arkansas justice ruled in favor of a company that had been paying his wife a salary of as much as $12,499 for two years. A high court judge in California ruled in favor of Wells Fargo despite owning up to $1 million of the bank’s stock—even as a colleague who owned less stock recused himself. Other justices accepted perks from lawyers —from country club memberships to a $50,000 Italian vacation.

Uncovering such information is exceedingly difficult because most states’ disclosure laws for judges are pretty weak. While federal judges are required to recuse themselves from cases if they or a family member own even a single share of stock in a company involved, state laws are murky and inconsistent. CPI devised a system for grading the state standards for preventing these kinds of conflicts of interest: 43 got a D or lower.

Check out some of CPI’s finds below: Some recent examples of state supreme court justices weighing in on cases involving companies in which they or their spouses owned stock, and a list of the freebies thrown at top judges.