Tag Archives: station

Hungry polar bears trap Arctic researchers

by WalkerLetcher30 Posted on September 2, 2015

Hungry polar bears trap Arctic researchers

By on 2 Sep 2015commentsShare

Earlier this summer, we found out that some polar bears like to skip hibernation in order to snack all year like spoiled little divas (blame Coca Cola). So naturally, we took it upon ourselves to fire them from their role as humanity’s climate change mascot — could you imagine the PR nightmare we’d have on our hands if we had gluttons as the face of a sustainable future? Unfortunately, it looks like the polar bears are taking the news a little something like this:

According to the BBC, a group of polar bears has camped out next to a weather station in northern Russia and is preventing scientists at the station from leaving in order to do their work of taking daily ocean measurements. The scientists tried to scare the bears off with flair guns to no avail. The standoff has been going on for about a week now, and authorities are reportedly on their way with more protective gear.

Flairs don’t scare those bears.Victor Nikiforov/WWF Russia

Polar bears don’t usually attack humans, the BBC reports, but that’s mostly because they’re not around humans very much. As climate change brings the bears closer to civilization, attacks are becoming more common.

Listen — we get it, guys. You’re upset. But this is ridiculous. The BBC says you started fighting over some food, and now you’re not even afraid of flair guns. Frankly, we’re starting to worry about you. Pull yourselves together, and give us a call. Maybe we can work something out.

Source:

Polar bears halt Arctic research in north Russia

, BBC.

Share

Find this article interesting?

Donate now to support our work.

Please

enable JavaScript

to view the comments.

Get Grist in your inbox

View original article:

Hungry polar bears trap Arctic researchers

Posted in Anchor, FF, GE, LAI, ONA, Radius, solar, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Hungry polar bears trap Arctic researchers

That Time Neal Stephenson Blew Up the Moon

by TJJWileyuimnxfyo Posted on May 15, 2015

Mother Jones

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

Neal Stephenson’s latest novel, Seveneves, could have been titled Goodnight Moon, Forever—the latter blows up in the book’s very first sentence. It’s not long before a charismatic scientist (who vaguely resembles Neil deGrasse Tyson) realizes the catastrophic implications: Within two years, moon chunks will rain from the sky, obliterating everything on the Earth’s surface.

Courtesy of Harper Collins

Seveneves depicts humanity’s effort to get as many people as possible into space before that happens—and everything that follows in the next 5,000 years. Over 867 pages, Stephenson blends astrophysics, genetic engineering, robotics, psychology, and geopolitics into an epic narrative.

The novel’s vast scope won’t come as a surprise to Stephenson’s fans. He is perhaps best known for 1992’s Snow Crash, a virtual reality tale set both online and in an anarcho-capitalist future version of Los Angeles, where it follows the adventures of a sword-wielding hacker (Hiro Protagonist!) and a teenage skate courier. (It was Snow Crash that popularized the word “avatar.”) A subsequent book, The Diamond Age, revolved around the future of nanotechnology. Cryptonomicon, published in 1999, wove its way through the history of computers and cryptography, while the three-volume Baroque Cycle (written with a fountain pen) delved into the wars, intrigue, and technological innovations of 17th Century Europe.

Stephenson’s seeming ability to envision things yet to come in various realms has won him consulting jobs in addition to readers. In 2006, when he started cooking up the plot of Seveneves, he was working at Blue Origin, the Jeff Bezos-owned space company that launched a rocket this month. He currently holds the title of “chief futurist” for Magic Leap, a company that aims to create a virtual reality framework as convincing as the one in Snow Crash. I called Stephenson at his Seattle home base to talk about space junk, sci-fi tropes, and why it’s time we got over Blade Runner.

Mother Jones: If the moon really blew up, what would you do first?

Neal Stephenson: Well, since I’m geeky and I know lots of geeks, I would probably look for ways to make myself useful in some kind of technology effort. I can also see myself trying to tell stories that could be read by people in the distant future.

MJ: Where did the idea for Seveneves come from?

NS: I’d been reading some papers about space junk, which is just pieces of dead satellites and rocket boosters and so on that are permanently in orbit around the Earth. They pose a hazard, because the more pieces of junk are up there, the greater the chance that they’re gonna smack into a station with a person in it, or a valuable satellite. There’s kind of a doomsday scenario where a chain reaction occurs and so many pieces of debris get created that it becomes basically impossible to go into space. So I thought that was an interesting scenario. Then I came up with the idea of having the moon be the thing that would start the chain reaction, and just having it be a disaster on a much bigger scale.

MJ: Did the book require a lot of research?

NS: Embarrassingly, I knew an awful lot of it, because I have been just a hopeless space geek since before I could walk. It was almost a matter of forcibly not putting too much into the book. In the case of the International Space Station, you could easily gather vast amounts of information about how that thing works and what it’s like to live aboard it and how you eat, how you go to the bathroom, etc. I had to make a decision pretty early that I wasn’t gonna go there. I suspect if you were an astronaut who actually lived there, you’d feel like a lot was left out.

MJ: Do you think you might hear from them?

NS: By and large, I don’t think astronauts are complainers. In general, when knowledgeable people see things they know about depicted in fiction, they tend to be happy that somebody’s paying attention to what they do. It’s largely a matter of respect; you don’t want it to seem as though you just didn’t put out any effort.

MJ: What did you think about Blue Origin’s rocket launch?

NS: Building rockets and operating them is just ludicrously difficult. There’s a reason why the Soviet Union and the United States competed during the Cold War in the propaganda realm by launching rockets. You have to bring together so many different scientific and engineering disciplines and kinds of operational skill that it’s really only achievable by a very small number of organizations. You can intellectually know that, but you don’t fully know just how many things can go wrong until you see it up close. So anytime I see a Blue Origin or a SpaceX actually launch a rocket, even if there’s a glitch—both Blue Origin and SpaceX were not able to land their boosters as they had hoped, but even coming close would be an amazing achievement.

MJ: A few years ago, you wrote about “the general failure of our society to get big things done“—the idea that we’ve become too afraid of taking innovative risks. Do these companies and their projects alleviate your concern?

NS: Yeah, actually. I think that the stable of companies Elon Musk has put together is a clear counterexample to that. I’d like to see more of it. We’ve got big infrastructure problems. We’ve been kind of living off of our patrimony, you know? We’ve got the same set of railroads and interstates and power plants that was built by a previous generation, and if we’re gonna maintain a healthy economy that works for people, we need to get back into the habit of building things like that.

MJ: Should that be the government’s job?

NS: Some of them really can only be done by governments. Like, Elon Musk wants to build the Hyperloop between LA and San Francisco. You can’t get the right of way for something like that unless you’re working pretty closely with the government. It’s a vexed question in the United States now, because the idea of government has become kind of a political football.

MJ: Is the failure to get big things done something science fiction can address?

NS: I guess I’d turn it around and say that if you’re a science-fiction writer, that’s the only tool you’ve got. It may actually be useful—or useless. I think you can make an argument that there is a practical value in a more optimist kind of science fiction, and that’s sort of the basis for the Hieroglyph anthology we published last year. The argument there is that a lot of times people who want to build a new thing can sort of rally around visionary science fiction and say, “This expresses the vision of what we’re trying to build.”

MJ: What about pessimist science fiction? Snow Crash is often described as dystopian.

Neal Stephenson Bob Lee/Flickr

NS: Snow Crash obviously has dystopian aspects. That’s the thing that kind of pokes you in the eye when you read the book. I actually don’t think it’s quite as dystopian as people consider it. There’s a statement pretty early that the modern economy has kind of spread everything out into “a broad global layer of what a Pakistani bricklayer would consider prosperity.” So depending on where you’re coming from, that could be a good thing or a bad thing. The Pakistani bricklayer might actually think that’s a pretty good deal.

I think that there was a broad move in science fiction—and I personally became aware of it with the movie Alien—where the ship is kind of dingy and beat up. These are blue-collar people working for a company that is kind of sinister. It was very cool. It created a sense of realism and immediacy that was lacking in some of the old Star Trek-y kinds of science fiction, and it became the standard way of doing it. Certainly it made Star Trek seem sort of campy and naïve.

Also, if you’re making a movie, it’s just easier and cheaper to take an existing landscape and beat it up than it is to invent a new landscape. The classic example is the Statue of Liberty falling over and lying in the sand at the end of Planet of the Apes. That, from a just purely commercial standpoint, is enormous bang for the buck. It told a whole story about the fall of civilization with a very inexpensive special effect. Whereas when James Cameron did Avatar, he spent an enormous amount of money designing an alternate world from scratch. So the dystopian style has become the default just for economic reasons. But I sense that people are now getting tired of it, and kind of rolling their eyes every time another grim dystopian movie or TV show hits the media scene.

MJ: So why do these movies and shows keep coming?

NS: Within the world of people who write science fiction literature, everything I’m saying is kind of old hat. There’s a greater diversity of voices there. In other media it’s a different story. People are still hung up on Blade Runner as being the coolest look ever for a movie. And it was an amazingly cool movie, but it takes a while for new ideas and archetypes of cinematography to kind of make their way into the places where decisions get made.

MJ: You’ve tried various types of storytelling, from video games to interactive iPad novels. Why do you keep coming back to print?

NS: At the end of the day, I can just sit down and write a novel. I know how to do it, I know how to get it published. I don’t have to raise money and I don’t have to hire people. I don’t have to put together a spreadsheet explaining the revenue model. There are so many things, so many tasks like that that simply disappear when I just want to write a book. I’m interested in the problem of finding new ways to create media, but at the end of the day, if things aren’t coming together, I can always just say, “Fuck it,” throw up my hands, go into my office, and write.

View original post here: 

That Time Neal Stephenson Blew Up the Moon

Posted in Anchor, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Oster, PUR, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on That Time Neal Stephenson Blew Up the Moon

One Disease Hits Mostly People of Color. One Mostly Whites. Which One Gets Billions In Funding?

by ArlenLassiter82 Posted on May 4, 2015

Mother Jones

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

February 12, 2009, was supposed to be a big day for Carlton Haywood Jr.: The newly minted Johns Hopkins professor was set to travel from Baltimore to New York City to make a presentation at an important medical meeting. But the night before he left, a searing pain started to surge through his arms and soon spread to his legs. The next morning, when he boarded the train, his whole body felt like it was on fire. By the time he reached Penn Station, he could barely make it to the emergency room.

The pain was caused by Haywood’s sickle-cell disease, a genetic condition in which misshapen red blood cells build up in the blood vessels and cause infections, strokes, and excruciating episodes of pain. Having lived with sickle cell for 39 years and studied it as a bioethicist, Haywood knew the treatment he needed to stop the episode, so he requested a specific combination of medications. The hematologist, however, refused, implying that Haywood didn’t know what he was talking about. Haywood wound up missing the meeting—and was in the hospital for a week.

For the 100,000 Americans with sickle cell—it’s the most common life-shortening genetic disease in the United States—insults like that are routine. “We know what works best for us and what does not work so well for us,” Haywood says. “But doctors often don’t listen.” His research has found that when sickle-cell patients ask for medication—especially opioids to control their pain—they are routinely dismissed as pill seekers, even though they are no more likely to be addicted to painkillers than the general population. Sickle-cell patients in acute pain also face longer ER waits than other patients in acute pain.

So what’s unique about sickle-cell patients? Well, about 90 percent are African American. (The trait is thought to have originated in Africa as an adaptive response to malaria.) Many researchers believe that racial discrimination plays a major role in the care that sickle-cell patients get.

Consider, for comparison, the experience of people with another life-shortening genetic illness, cystic fibrosis, a respiratory and digestive condition. Like sickle cell, it gets worse with age, requires strict daily drug regimens, and often results in hospitalization. And like sickle cell, it dramatically shortens patients’ life spans—to a median of 37 years for cystic fibrosis, compared to 40 to 45 years for sickle-cell disease.

But here’s one key difference: Cystic fibrosis affects mostly Caucasians. And that, suspects John Strouse, a Johns Hopkins hematologist who has compared data about the two diseases, is one reason why funding for cystic fibrosis research, drug development, and patient advocacy dwarfs that for sickle-cell disease. In 2011, the most recent year for which his data is available, spending on cystic fibrosis totaled $254 million—nearly four times the $66 million that was spent on sickle cell, even though the latter affects three times as many people.

In part, that’s because cystic fibrosis’ primary dedicated charity—the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation—is far wealthier than the dozens of sickle-cell organizations combined. In 2011, the foundation spent $176 million on cystic fibrosis—compared to the $1.1 million spent by the Sickle Cell Disease Association of America, the largest of the advocacy groups.

Yet the disparity isn’t limited to these private funds. The National Institutes of Health spends nearly four times as much per patient on cystic fibrosis research as it does on sickle cell. From 2009 to 2011, researchers published twice as many papers on cystic fibrosis as they did on sickle cell.

“You have this kind of feedback loop,” Strouse says. The sickle-cell community has fewer wealthy, powerful advocates, so there’s less interest in research. “In order to draw attention to a disease, you need affluent people promoting it. And then, once the disease gets the attention, more people want to devote money to it”—which then leads to more research.

Case in point: In 2000, the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation invested in a pharmaceutical company that ended up developing a breakthrough treatment. When the foundation sold the rights to the drug royalties for $3.3 billion last November, it became the richest rare-disease advocacy group in history. Even though the new drug only works for a handful of patients, the windfall will support further pharmaceutical research that may one day lead to a cure for all. “We will convene the best minds in science and medicine to cure cystic fibrosis at its most fundamental level,” the head of the foundation wrote in a letter to supporters.

The deal, experts say, could set a precedent for other rare diseases. But if patients with big bucks bankroll research for their own conditions, Strouse wonders, then who will support the likes of sickle-cell disease? Poor parents, he notes, have fewer opportunities to be “out there raising awareness and buzz about your kid’s disease. You’re struggling just to get by, just to get your child to the doctor’s office while holding down your job.”

View original – 

One Disease Hits Mostly People of Color. One Mostly Whites. Which One Gets Billions In Funding?

Posted in Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, PUR, Radius, Ringer, Springer, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on One Disease Hits Mostly People of Color. One Mostly Whites. Which One Gets Billions In Funding?

What is a ‘sky river,’ and why is Miss Piggy flying in it?

by BDRWilliam Posted on February 18, 2015

What is a ‘sky river,’ and why is Miss Piggy flying in it?

By on 17 Feb 2015commentsShare

Earlier this month, Miss Piggy took an epic seven-hour trip on the Pineapple Express, reminding everyone that the she still knows how to party. A video documenting the experience shows Miss Piggy and her crew clearly flying high and soaking up the Northern California weather. There’s also this one dude who’s just devouring some snacks.

Of course, by “Miss Piggy,” I mean the decked-out government airplane built to fly through hurricanes, and by “Pineapple Express,” I mean the river of water vapor that flows over the Pacific Ocean and brings California about 40 percent of its annual precipitation. But you guys knew that, right?

Anyway, atmospheric rivers like the Pineapple Express are major players in the Earth’s water cycle. The big ones can transport up to 15 times the amount of water flowing through the mouth of the Mississippi River, and when they hit land, mountain ranges like those on the California coast push the vapor up higher into the atmosphere, where it condenses into rain and snow.

During the first week of February, for example, the Pineapple Express hit the West Coast and doused parts of Northern California for days. It wasn’t enough rain to end California’s drought, but it was enough to make going places suck for lots of people.

Understanding how these atmospheric rivers work is important for both short-term weather forecasting and climate modeling, which is why during this last Pineapple Express, scientists flew directly into the thick of it.

Miss Piggy is part of a fleet of planes known as “hurricane hunters” that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration uses to take data from inside hurricanes. Kermit and Gonzo are also part of the fleet (read about the collaboration between the NOAA and Jim Henson Productions here).

As a hurricane hunter, Miss Piggy is equipped to collect all kinds of weather data. Here’s a sample of the measurements she took during the Pineapple Express, from the LA Times:

Radar equipment mounted on the aircraft’s exterior measured precipitation and cloud thickness. Probes attached to the wings measured the number and size of liquid cloud droplets. Another of the plane’s radar devices measured the height of ocean waves.

Three other planes joined Miss Piggy on the sky river that day back in early February. Two collected data at higher altitudes, and one collected water droplet samples. There was also a ship taking measurements 230 miles off shore, and a satellite measuring surface winds. The International Space Station also got in on the action, measuring how dust particles (aka the nuclei at the center of vapor droplets) mix above the ocean. Scientists hope all the data will help them better understand how these rivers behave as they flow over land so places like Northern California can adequately prepare for them.

In a statement to the LA Times, Ryan Spackman, the lead researcher on board Miss Piggy, said the day’s mission was “an unprecedented interrogation of an atmospheric river event in landfall.”

Way to go, Miss Piggy. You still got it!

Source:
Scientists go high and low for data on drought-fighting ‘sky rivers’

, LA Times.

Share

Please

enable JavaScript

to view the comments.

Get stories like this in your inbox

AdvertisementAdvertisement

Read article here – 

What is a ‘sky river,’ and why is Miss Piggy flying in it?

Posted in Anchor, Anker, Brita, Everyone, FF, GE, LG, Mop, ONA, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on What is a ‘sky river,’ and why is Miss Piggy flying in it?

Pointergate: This Week’s Most Racist Local News Story

by BarbPearljuepvs Posted on November 7, 2014

Mother Jones

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

Minneapolis Mayor Betsy Hodges was recently participating in a neighborhood charity event aimed at boosting voter participation, when she stopped to pose in a photo with a volunteer named Navell Gordon. In said photo, Hodges and Navell point at each other.

Pretty typical stuff, and material for, at most, a quick news anecdote highlighting the mayor’s community involvement. But Navell happens to be a young black man, a fact that must have something to with what happened next: Newscasters at KSTP, the local ABC affiliate, took the innocuous photo and quickly warped it into an exclusive report accusing Hodges of “posing with a convicted felon while flashing a known gang sign” and thereby instigating violence in their fair city.

In the same report, KSTP goes on to admit there is zero evidence Navell actually belongs to a gang. But they’re certain he has “connections to gang members.”

“She’s putting cops at risk,” retired police officer Michael Quinn told the station. “The fact that they’re flashing gang signs at each other, showing solidarity with the gangs, she’s legitimizing what they’re doing. She’s legitimizing these people who are killing our children in Minneapolis.”

Here’s a tweet from the story’s reporter promoting the piece before it aired.

KTSP has so far stood by the report, but issued a statement claiming Minneapolis police fed the item to them.

The story is infuriating. But just to drive the point of how insanely racist KTSP’s report truly is, watch the video below in which Navell discusses his involvement with non-profits like Neighborhoods Organizing for Change and how he’s working to move on from his past.

“I made some mistakes in life,” he says, while footage appears of him and Hodges posing for the photo in question. “I can’t vote. I’m not ashamed to say that. But I’m working on fixing that right now so I can be able to vote for my next president.”

Next up for KTSP? Well, word surfaced today that Obama is likely to tap US Attorney Loretta Lynch as the nation’s next attorney general. Perhaps the station should stage a timely investigation into her gang affiliations, given this shocking photo:

AP/Seth Wenig

View the original here: 

Pointergate: This Week’s Most Racist Local News Story

Posted in Anchor, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, solar, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Pointergate: This Week’s Most Racist Local News Story

Here’s What Happens to Police Officers Who Shoot Unarmed Black Men

by CaridadSleeman Posted on August 20, 2014

Mother Jones

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

In the week since 18-year-old Michael Brown was shot and killed by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, initial autopsy findings, police reports, and eyewitness accounts have begun to provide some insights into the circumstances of his death. But plenty of questions remain unanswered, not the least of them: Where is Officer Darren Wilson, and what’s likely to happen to him?

Wilson, who was put on administrative leave after killing Brown, reportedly left home with his family a few days before his name was made public. A fundraising campaign launched on August 17 has already raised more than $10,000 to cover the financial needs of Wilson’s family, “including legal fees.” (The campaign has since increased its goal to $100,000.)

It remains to be seen whether Wilson will face criminal charges, but a limited review of similar killings by police suggests that the officers more often than not walk away without an indictment, and are very rarely convicted. Delores Jones-Brown, a law professor and director of the Center on Race, Crime, and Justice at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, looked at 21 publicized cases from 1994 through 2009 in which a police officer killed an unarmed black person. Of those, only seven cases resulted in an indictment—for criminally negligent homicide, obstruction of justice, conspiracy, or violation of civil rights—and only three officers were found guilty.

Let’s take a closer look at five specific cases in which an unarmed black man was killed by officers while allegedly fleeing or resisting in some fashion.

City: Memphis, Tennessee
Date: October 1974
Officers: Elton Hymon and Leslie Wright
Victim: Edward Garner
What happened: Officers Hymon and Wright were responding to a burglary call when Hymon spotted Garner, an unarmed 15-year-old, by a fence in the backyard of the home in question. After Hymon ordered Garner to halt, the teenager tried to climb the fence. In response, the officer shot him fatally in the head. A federal district court ruled that the shooting was justified under a Tennessee statute—the law said that once a police officer voices intent to arrest a suspect, “the officer may use all the necessary means to effect the arrest.” Garner’s father appealed, and the case ended up in the Supreme Court, which ruled the Tennessee statute unconstitutional and the killing unjustified. Justice Byron White wrote for the majority: “It is not better that all felony suspects die than that they escape. Where the suspect poses no immediate threat to the officer and no threat to others, the harm resulting from failing to apprehend him does not justify the use of deadly force to do so. It is no doubt unfortunate when a suspect who is in sight escapes, but the fact that the police arrive a little late or are a little slower afoot does not always justify killing the suspect. A police officer may not seize an unarmed, non-dangerous suspect by shooting him dead.” Despite the reversal, the officer who shot Hymon was never charged.

Iris and Ramon Baez, parents of Anthony Baez, address the media after the sentencing of former police officer Frank Livoti Lynsey Addario/AP

City: Bronx, New York
Date: December 1994
Officer: Francis X. Livoti
Victim: Anthony Baez
What happened: Officer Livoti choked to death 29-year-old Anthony Baez in a case that would later be featured in a PBS documentary titled Every Mother’s Son. After their football struck his patrol car, Livoti had ordered Baez and his brother to leave the area. When the brothers refused, Livoti attempted an arrest. After Baez allegedly resisted, the officer administered the choke hold that ended his life. Livoti, who had been accused of brutality 11 times over 11 years, was charged with criminally negligent homicide, but found not guilty during a state trial in October 1996. He was fired the following year, however, after a judge ruled his choke hold illegal. In June 1998, a federal jury sentenced him to 7.5 years in prison for violating Baez’s civil rights, and the Baez family received a $3 million settlement from the city later that year. In 2003, two more cops were fired for giving false testimony in Livoti’s defense.

Officers Richard Murphy, left, Kenneth Boss, center, and Edward McMellon listen to their attorneys speak to the media, Mar. 31, 1999. David Karp/AP

City: Bronx, New York
Date: February 1999
Officers: Sean Carroll, Edward McMellon, Kenneth Boss, Richard Murphy
Victim: Amadou Diallo
What happened: Amadou Diallo, an unarmed, 23-year-old immigrant from Guinea, was killed in the vestibule of his own building when four white police officers fired 41 shots, striking him 19 times. Diallo had just returned home from his job as a street vendor at 12:44 a.m. when he was confronted by the plainclothes officers. The officers later said he matched the description of a rape suspect, and that they mistakenly believed he was reaching for a gun. (He was pulling out his wallet.) Three of the officers had been involved in previous shootings, including one that led to the death of another black civilian in 1997. The four cops were acquitted of all charges, prompting citywide protests. They were not fired, either, but lost permission to carry a weapon—although one of the officers eventually had his carrying privilege restored. In 2004, Diallo’s family received a $3 million settlement from the city. His mother said her son had been saving to attend college and become a computer programmer. A foundation in Diallo’s name seeks to promote racial healing.

A candlelit vigil for Anthony Dwain Lee in front of the West Los Angeles police station, Oct 30, 2000 Kim D. Johnson/AP

City: Los Angeles, California
Date: October 2000
Officer: Tarriel Hopper
Victim: Anthony Dwain Lee
What happened: Lee, a 39-year-old black actor who had roles in the 1997 movie Liar Liar and the TV series ER, was attending a Halloween party when the LAPD showed up, responding to a noise complaint. According to police accounts, a group of officers were searching for the party’s host when they found Lee and two other men in a small room, engaged in what the police claimed looked like a drug deal. Lee, who was dressed as a devil, allegedly held up a toy pistol, whereupon Officer Hopper fired several times, wounding him fatally. The LAPD’s internal review board determined that the shooting was justified because Hopper had believed Lee’s pistol was real and feared for his life.

Johannes Mehserle, left, talks with his attorney Christopher Miller, Jan. 14, 2009. Cathleen Allison/AP

City: Oakland, California
Date: January 2009
Officer: Johannes Mehserle
Victim: Oscar Grant
What happened: Early on New Year’s Day, BART transit officers responding to reports of fighting on a train detained Oscar Grant, 22, and several other men on the platform at Fruitvale Station. In an incident captured on cell phone cameras, Officer Mehserle pulled out his gun and fatally shot Grant, who was face down on the platform at the time. Mehserle later testified that he thought he was reaching for his Taser while trying to put handcuffs on Grant, who resisted. A jury found Mehserle guilty of involuntary manslaughter and sentenced him to two years in jail. He was released after serving 11 months at the Los Angeles County Jail. The episode was turned into the acclaimed 2013 feature film, Fruitvale Station.

Read this article: 

Here’s What Happens to Police Officers Who Shoot Unarmed Black Men

Posted in Anchor, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta, Vintage | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Here’s What Happens to Police Officers Who Shoot Unarmed Black Men

We’re Still at War: Photo of the Day for May 21, 2014

by Quincey Stine Posted on May 21, 2014

Mother Jones

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

Marines with Aircraft Rescue and Fire Fighting (ARFF), Headquarters & Headquarters Squadron, Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort, conduct monthly fuel burn training aboard Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort, South Carolina, May 16, 2014. ARFF conducts monthly fuel burns to ensure all Marines are competent in their occupational specialty and able to be called upon at a moments notice. (U.S. Marine Corps photo by Cpl. Aneshea S. Yee/Released)

Link: 

We’re Still at War: Photo of the Day for May 21, 2014

Posted in Anchor, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on We’re Still at War: Photo of the Day for May 21, 2014

The Story Behind That Radio Station Heroically Playing Nelly’s "Hot in Herre" For Three Days Straight

by ElissaBarfield Posted on March 18, 2014

Mother Jones

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

Over the weekend, Latino Mix 105.7, a Univision-owned radio station in San Francisco, captured the hearts and lazy imagination of the internet. “There once was a film called Life is Beautiful about Nelly’s ‘Hot in Herre‘ being looped on a radio station for 24 straight hours and now that movie has come to life,” gushed Gawker. (Life is Beautiful is actually a movie about the Holocaust and the enduring love of family.) In the widely covered stunt, the station started playing “Hot in Herre” sic around 3 p.m. PST on Friday and then just… kept going. The song wasn’t taken off repeat until Monday evening, shortly after 5 p.m. PST. “San Francisco radio station Latino Mix FM 105.7 has been doing its best to torture Bay Area listeners,” the San Jose Mercury News reported on Monday.

“Hot in Herre” (click here for lyrics) was a smash-hit song for St. Louis rapper Nelly in 2002. It was described as “the perfect summer jam” by People. It’s a song so inextricably tied to the early Bush era that you can read about US Marines singing it as they moved into combat in Iraq. (This moment, from journalist Evan Wright’s book Generation Kill, was recreated in the HBO miniseries of the same name.) The song was featured in a 2012 Super Bowl ad starring Elton John as a tyrannical but violently overthrown king.

Continue Reading »

View the original here – 

The Story Behind That Radio Station Heroically Playing Nelly’s "Hot in Herre" For Three Days Straight

Posted in Anchor, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, organic, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The Story Behind That Radio Station Heroically Playing Nelly’s "Hot in Herre" For Three Days Straight

Monster wind farm planned in South Dakota

by Lou Bovee Posted on February 12, 2014

Monster wind farm planned in South Dakota

By

Travis S.

Well blow us over, Mount Rushmore State! Scores of landowners in South Dakota are banding together in an attempt to build a one-gigawatt wind farm, which would be spread over thousands of acres of farmland.

South Dakota is already a leader when it comes to harnessing wind energy. Nearly 500 large turbines spin over the state’s windswept landscapes, with a collective capacity of 784 megawatts of power. The Watertown Public Opinion reports on an attempt to more than double that capacity:

With over 80 landowners ready to dedicate nearly 20,000 acres to one of South Dakota’s largest wind projects, Dakota Power Community Wind is ready to begin the research phase of the operation.

“Our board has approved the purchase of [a meteorological] tower to kick off the research collection phase,” said Paul Shubeck, Dakota Power Community Wind board chairman. “We need to collect two to three years of data before construction can begin.” …

The 20,000 acres of farmland currently signed up for the project are sufficient to support a 300-megawatt windfarm, according to company officials. That would still be the largest single windfarm in South Dakota and would add nearly 50% to the state’s wind production.

Project leaders are now working to get more landowners on board. If built as envisioned, the sprawling wind farm would produce more than three times as much electricity as the natural gas–burning Deer Creek Station, which became the state’s most powerful fossil-fuel power plant when it began operating in 2012.


Source
Research phase to begin for Dakota Power Community Wind, Watertown Public Opinion

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

Read original article:

Monster wind farm planned in South Dakota

Posted in Anchor, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, organic, PUR, Uncategorized, wind energy | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Monster wind farm planned in South Dakota

It hasn’t rained this much in England since 1767, or maybe since ever

by Christopherd3o Posted on February 3, 2014

It hasn’t rained this much in England since 1767, or maybe since ever

By

Rob

There aren’t many things bleaker than a soggy English winter, and this winter has really provided something for the Brits to whinge about.

Nearly six inches of rain fell on southern and central England in January, triggering floods and producing the heaviest monthly drenching since record-keeping began at an Oxford University weather station in 1767. And the mid-winter deluges have continued into these first few days of February. 

Hitherto-unprecedented flooding such as this has been forecast to afflict the region as the climate changes.

The head of the country’s Environment Agency warns in an op-ed in The Telegraph that it can’t afford to protect both rural and urban areas from floods:

The south of England has had its wettest January since 1910. Roads have been impassable, train and plane travel disrupted and 250,000 homes have been without power.

Environment Agency staff have been working the whole time to help communities at risk. They’ve been running pumping stations, erecting defences, issuing warnings and clearing blockages from rivers — often in the most challenging conditions. …

Yes, agricultural land matters and we do whatever we can with what we have to make sure it is protected. Rules from successive governments give the highest priority to lives and homes; and I think most people would agree that this is the right approach.

But this involves tricky issues of policy and priority: town or country, front rooms or farmland?

Flood defences cost money; and how much should the taxpayer be prepared to spend on different places, communities and livelihoods — in Somerset, Lincolnshire, Yorkshire, or East Anglia? There’s no bottomless purse, and we need to make difficult but sensible choices about where and what we try to protect.

What role is climate change playing here? [Insert boilerplate statement about how hard it is to attribute individual weather events to global warming.] Still, these wet conditions in England are precisely those that have been forecast by climate models.

“The frequency and severity of the flooding seen over the past few months is likely to become more commonplace in the future due to climate change,” a flooding expert told The Guardian. “This means maintaining investment in flood defences in the longer term, but also making buildings and infrastructure more resistant, and being better prepared to actively respond to flooding.”


Source
Difficult choices, as the flood waters rise, The Telegraph
Heavy rain and wild weather forecast for southern England and Wales, The Guardian

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: Climate & Energy

Original link: 

It hasn’t rained this much in England since 1767, or maybe since ever

Posted in Anchor, FF, GE, LG, ONA, PUR, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on It hasn’t rained this much in England since 1767, or maybe since ever