Remember Agent Orange

The fortieth anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War has brought up many memories. In 2009 Marjorie Cohn participated in an international panel on the effect of Agent Orange on the Vietnamese people. That panel, while having a decidedly liberal bent, did do a comprehensive analysis which found that Agent Orange did:

 - direct damage to those exposed to dioxin, including cancers, skin disorders, liver damage, pulmonary and heart diseases, defects to reproductive capacity, and nervous disorders;
- indirect damage to the children of those exposed to dioxin, including severe physical deformities, mental and physical disabilities, diseases, and shortened life spans;
- damage to the land and forests, water supply, and communities of Vietnam, some of which may be permanent. This includes the extinction of animals that once inhabited the forests and jungles of Vietnam, disrupting communities that depended on them; and
- erosion and desertification that will change the environment, contributing to the warming of the planet and dislocation of crop and animal life. The damage to the environment of Vietnam is "ecocide."

Finally, a bill has been proposed in Congress to help the victims of Agent Orange. Rep. Barbara Lee (D-California) has introduced H.R. 2114, the Victims of Agent Orange Relief Act of 2015. If enacted, the bill would lead to the cleanup of dioxin and arsenic contamination still present in Vietnam. It would also provide assistance to the public health system in Vietnam directed at the 3 million Vietnamese affected by Agent Orange. It would extend assistance to the affected children of male US veterans who suffer the same set of birth defects covered for the children of female veterans. It would lead to research on the extent of Agent Orange-related diseases in the Vietnamese-American community, and provide them with assistance. Finally, it would lead to laboratory and epidemiological research on the effects of Agent Orange.

One View of the Baltimore Protests

The Nightly Show
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Comment on April 30, 1975 and more

The problem in Baltimore

Michael Fletcher, a reporter for the Washington Post, thinks the problem is - and has been for the more than the thirty years he has lived there as a black man - not simply black vs. white, but between the haves and have-nots. One fact bolstering his argument is the number of blacks in city government: the mayor, city council president, police chief, top prosecutor, and many other city leaders are black, as is half of Baltimore’s 3,000-person police force. Further, this black civic leadership extends back to Frederick Douglass.

He compares Freddie Gray's  neighborhood with the average Baltimore neighborhood.

Some more details about the Sandtown neighborhood: 

More than half of the neighborhood’s households earned less than $25,000 a year, according to a 2011 Baltimore Health Department report, and more than one in five adults were out of work — double the citywide average. One in five middle school students in the neighborhood missed more than 20 days of school, as did 45 percent of the neighborhood’s high schoolers. Domestic violence was 50 percent higher in Sandtown than the city average. And the neighborhood experienced murder at twice the citywide rate — which is no mean feat in Baltimore.

I think he has a strong argument.

She's only exercising for a little more than 1 and 1/2 minutes

More money down the drain in Aghanistan

There have been a number of reports that there is something wrong with our expenditures in Afghanistan. The latest report from the Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction (SIGAR) published found that"the Department of Defense could only provide financial information relating to the disbursement of funds for CERP projects totaling $890 million (40 percent) of the approximately $2.2 billion in obligated funds at that time," That is the Pentagon could not provide information as to how $1.3 billion was spent.

Another plea to fix our roads

This time it's from Barry Ritholz. Anyone in the East who has driven recently is well aware of the terrible condition of most of our roads. The solution is simple: raise the federal gasoline tax. It has been 18.4 cents a gallon since 1993. We have the third lowest gas tax in the world, only Kuwait and Saudi Arabia are less. And while we're at it the law should be changed to take inflation into account automatically, as most laws do.

If nothing is done very soon, the Highway Trust Fund will be bust by July.

What's wrong with the TPP

Joe Firestone lists 23 reasons why the TPP should not be passed. He summarizes the problems with the TPP as follows:

The governing functions of the TPP regime would not be exercised with the consent of the governed. The combination of the vague definition of “investment,” the ISDS criminogenic tribunals, and the elevation of the principle of “expectation of profits” above the principles of “public purpose,” “consent of the governed,” and “separation of powers,” is tantamount to the overthrow of democracy, preserving its form in national level elections, but emptying its elections of meaningful content in mandating change and conferring legitimacy on national authorities.

And, further, the ISDS tribunals if in operation, would not exercise just powers, but only illegitimate power derived from the TPP agreement itself, negotiated in secret, passed without benefit of open debate based on the secret text of the TPP, and intended to remain secret for years after the TPP is signed. That makes TPP decision making, performed without the consent of the governed, tyranny, and makes those who want to pass the TPP guilty of conspiracy to create tyrannical rule of the few over the people of the United States and other TPP member nations.

The Cost of Fashion

Working in Silicon Valley

A different view of the TPP

From the Sunday NY Times

What's happened to Firefox?

I've been a user of Firefox for a number of years and have been happy using it until recently. Earlier this year after a new release the program wouldn't load. So I switched to Chrome. In March I decided to try Firefox once more as it was a trifle bit easier to use than Chrome. In April I started to have problems opening some videos; the problem seemed to be with the Flash player. Earlier this week Firefox issued a new release. I could open the program but it wouldn't load my home page. Chrome and Explorer had the same problem.

Since the new version of Firefox was the only change in my environment, I decided to delete it and - lo and behold - Chrome and Explorer now work for me.
It looks like Mozilla's quality control has gone downhill.

Paying the penalty...or not

Meet Raoul

It's only $2.5 billion

That's the penalty to be paid by Deutsche Bank for currency manipulation and violations of United States sanctions against countries like Iran. This is the largest yet in this ongoing investigation into the interest rate scandal. It's been a long time coming, at least in England. The Financial Conduct Authority in London said that Deutsche Bank had taken two years to provide audio recordings requested by investigators, had accidentally destroyed evidence, and had claimed to have adequate controls over activities related to benchmark interest rates when it had no controls at all.

A Robot as President

John Feffer has a great and funny summary of our government, "The Case for a Robot-in-Charge. You really should read it. Here is an excerpt:

I was recently watching interviews with the various candidates for the 2016 presidential elections — and it occurred to me that some of them might not be able to pass the Turing test. It sounded as if they were just repeating their campaign talking points over and over. Even their jokes were stale. Of course, they all tried to sound human. But that’s what a capable programmer would build into sophisticated software. An astute listener would have flunked the candidates on the basis of their limited rhetorical and conceptual vocabulary.
 
Well, that gave me pause. If our candidates are barely distinguishable from robots, our reliance on what the techies call “wetware” seems dangerously outdated. Since our programmers’ capabilities have an inverse relationship to our politicians’ capabilities, this gap between the artificial intelligence of machines and the natural stupidity of politicians is only getting larger.

Women Programmers

There is a lot of talk about women "entering" the computer field. I find it somewhat humorous as women have been part of the computer world since the days of Charles Babbage, who some acknowledge as the father of computing. There is even a computer language named after his associate, Ada Lovelace. Admiral Grace Hopper has been acclaimed for much of her work with computers, including work leading to the COBOL language, one of the most popular languages of the middle to late 1900s. The Turing Award is equivalent to the Nobel Prize; it has been awarded to women.

When I was in the software business, women were considered the better programmers. I worked for some female managers and knew several who were division directors and presidents of companies. At Honeywell in the early 1960s the female programmers ranged in age from recent college graduates to women nearing retirement age. About 30-40% of the programmers I hired were women.

Yet, at some point near the end of the 20th century, the number of women in the business began to fade. Why I know not, although I've been thinking about this for a good while. The pay was good, there was little physical labor, the work was interesting and something that was changing the world.

The difficult birth of a nation

Serbia and Croatia are arguing about who owns a very small stretch of land on the west bank of the Danube river between the two countries. A Czech named Vit Jedlicka has also laid claim to the land and has declared it to be a nation, Free Republic of Liberland, with himself as president. However, another entrepreneur had previously claimed the land and called it Paraduin.

Jedlicka is more sophisticated than the Paraduin founder. He has a flag, a coat of arms, a motto and a constitution. Jedlicka claims to have a "Constitutional republic with elements of direct democracy" form of government. "The motto of Liberland is “To live and let live” because Liberland prides itself on personal and economic freedom of its people, which is guaranteed by the Constitution, which significantly limits the power of politicians so they could not interfere too much in the freedoms of the Liberland nation." 

You can apply to become a citizen, but you have to compete with 160,000 other people with the same desire. He is looking for people who:

• have respect for other people and respect the opinions of others, regardless of their race, ethnicity, orientation, or religion
• have respect for private ownership which is untouchable
• do not have communist, nazi or other extremist past
• were not punished for past criminal offences

You can sign up here.

Thanks to our Brooklyn correspondent.

Computer frustration reaches a peak

"It was glorious," he said. "Angels sung on high." The "he" is Lucas Finch who got so fed up with his computer he took it outside and shot it eight times. He just got fed up with "blue screen of death."

How many of us feel the same way some days?

Soap bubbles blown in freezing temperatures turn into stunning ice crystals.

These are from Hope Thurston Carter, a photographer from Michigan.

Courtesy of a Duncaster correspondent

Rolling Bombs

Expert Witnesses

I didn't pay much attention to the recent F.B.I. announcement that testimony by its forensic scientists about hair identification was scientifically indefensible. Then, I learned that the error rate in more than 250 cases reviewed was 96%. These errors resulted in 33 defendants  receiving the death penalty; nine of these 33 have been executed so far.

Eric S. Lander, co-chairman of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, has been involved with reviewing expert witness testimony for a number of years. He has a devastating op-ed in today's NY Times. The problem with experts is not only testing of hair. One fellow spent 30 years in prison based on ballistics evidence which proved to be faulty. Another case involved people being convicted of murder on the basis of their teeth marks which subsequently were proved to be tooth marks of insects and crawfish.

Lander cites a 2009 report by the National Research Council, which found that apart from DNA testing, no forensic method had been rigorously shown to consistently and reliably demonstrate a connection between evidence and a specific person.

Lander concludes:

No expert should be permitted to testify without showing three things: a public database of patterns from many representative samples; precise and objective criteria for declaring matches; and peer-reviewed published studies that validate the methods.

Good Rats

Traveling on the Mediterranean

It is not easy traveling on the Mediterranean in order to "move" to Italy. The International Organization for Migration keeps tabs on the number of people who die trying to leave their land for Italy. Here are some numbers:  

• 3,072: The number of migrants who died while attempting to cross the Mediterranean Sea between January and September 2014.
• More than 1,500: If this weekend’s death toll is confirmed, the number of migrants who have died attempting to make it from Libya to Italy in 2015. 
• 1,100: The number of migrants who have died trying to make it to Italy from Libya in the last week.
• Approximately 10,000: The number of migrants rescued by the Italian Navy and commercial ships between April 10 and 16.
• 21,191: The number of migrants who have arrived on Italy’s shores in 2015 as April 17.

Single Donor Super PACs continue growing

For the 2014 election super PACs controlled by one donor raised $113,000,000; in 2012 such organizations raised $33,000,000. In 2014 there were 59 single donor super PACs, in 2012 34. Many of these people I had never heard of: Thomas Steyer, Ronald Firman, Kenneth Davis, etc. Then there are the Michael Bloombergs and Sheldon Adelsons. More individuals are using their wealth to get their guys elected.

Patent Trolls

Oil in Ecuador

A sensible candidate with ideas?

Maybe Martin O'Malley, the governor of Maryland is such a person. Some excerpts from an interview of him by NPR:

• Hillary Clinton is inauthentic, not transparent and will have trouble connecting with younger voters. And Republican economic theory is "bullshit."
• "The bigger issue is, do we have the ability as a party to lead by our principles? Or are we going to conduct polls every time we try to determine where the middle is on any given day?"
• "I'm glad she's (Hillary) come around to those positions on the issue of marriage equality, which we passed in Maryland. I'm glad she's come around to the issue of drivers licenses for new American immigrants so that they can obey the rules of the road. This was something we did also in Maryland. So I'm glad she's come around to those positions."
• "I see — having spoken to younger people, people under 40 — where our country's headed, and it is not the sort of siloed and bureaucratic and ideological world of many of us baby boomers and our siblings. It is a more connected world, and it is a more collaborative and open and transparent world. That's the way I've always governed and that's the way that you have to govern in order to get things done today.
• "Our tax code's been turned into Swiss cheese. And, certainly, the concentrated wealth and accumulated power and the systematic deregulation of Wall Street has led to this situation where the economy isn't working for us. All of that is true. But it is not true that regulation holds poor people down or regulation keeps middle class from advancing"

A poem by W. S. Merwin

ONCE LATER

It is not until later

that you have to be young

it is one of the things

you meant to do later

but by then there is

someone else living there

with the shades rolled down
how could you have been young there

at that time
with all that was expected

then what happened to
the expectations

there is no sign of them there
a shadow passes across the window shade

what do they know in there
whoever they are

Spring comes to New York City

Is the World Bank doing its job?

The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists has been looking at the World Bank for awhile. Their report, “Evicted and abandoned: The World Bank’s broken promise to the poor,” was recently released and, as its title indicates, does not have a favorable opinion of the bank. Here are the report's key findings:

• Over the last decade, projects funded by the World Bank have physically or economically displaced an estimated 3.4 million people, forcing them from their homes, taking their land or damaging their livelihoods. 
• The World Bank has regularly failed to live up to its own policies for protecting people harmed by projects it finances. 
• The World Bank and its private-sector lending arm, the International Finance Corp., have financed governments and companies accused of human rights violations such as rape, murder and torture. In some cases the lenders have continued to bankroll these borrowers after evidence of abuses emerged. 
• Ethiopian authorities diverted millions of dollars from a World Bank-supported project to fund a violent campaign of mass evictions, according to former officials who carried out the forced resettlement program. 
• From 2009 to 2013, World Bank Group lenders pumped $50 billion into projects graded the highest risk for “irreversible or unprecedented” social or environmental impacts — more than twice as much as the previous five-year span.

Oil spilling for 11 years and still at it

Chapter 20

WikiLeaks has released another piece of the TPP. This is a chapter entitled "Advanced Investment". David Korten analyzed the chapter and summarized the points it makes:

• Favoring Local Ownership Is Prohibited
• Corporations Must Be Paid to Stop Polluting
• Three Lawyers Will Decide Who's Right in Secret Tribunals
• Speculative Money Must Remain Free
• Corporate Interests Come Before National Ones

Four Pinocchios

That's what Glenn Kessler awards to the Obama administration claim that the TPP [Trans-Pacific Partnership] will add 650,000 jobs and provide $77 billion a year in real income to our economy. Kessler writes a fact checking column for the Washington Post and 4 Pinocchios is the worst score possible. While the numbers sound big, they represent only 0.4% increases in jobs and revenues.

Will any of our Senators act on this information?

Some Citigroup history

Per Pam Martens of Wall Street on Parade:

December 11, 2008: SEC forces Citigroup and UBS to buy back $30 billion in auction rate securities that were improperly sold to investors through misleading information.
February 11, 2009: Citigroup agrees to settle lawsuit brought by WorldCom investors for $2.65 billion.
July 29, 2010: SEC settles with Citigroup for $75 million over its misleading statements to investors that it had reduced its exposure to subprime mortgages to $13 billion when in fact the exposure was over $50 billion.
October 19, 2011: SEC agrees to settle with Citigroup for $285 million over claims it misled investors in a $1 billion financial product.  Citigroup had selected approximately half the assets and was betting they would decline in value.
February 9, 2012: Citigroup agrees to pay $2.2 billion as its portion of the nationwide settlement of bank foreclosure fraud.
August 29, 2012: Citigroup agrees to settle a class action lawsuit for $590 million over claims it withheld from shareholders’ knowledge that it had far greater exposure to subprime debt than it was reporting.
July 1, 2013: Citigroup agrees to pay Fannie Mae $968 million for selling it toxic mortgage loans.
September 25, 2013: Citigroup agrees to pay Freddie Mac $395 million to settle claims it sold it toxic mortgages.
December 4, 2013: Citigroup admits to participating in the Yen Libor financial derivatives cartel to the European Commission and accepts a fine of $95 million.
July 14, 2014: The U.S. Department of Justice announces a $7 billion settlement with Citigroup for selling toxic mortgages to investors. Attorney General Eric Holder called the bank’s conduct “egregious,” adding, “As a result of their assurances that toxic financial products were sound, Citigroup was able to expand its market share and increase profits.”
November 2014: Citigroup pays more than $1 billion to settle civil allegations with regulators that it manipulated foreign currency markets. Other global banks settled at the same time.

Avoiding taxes

Companies have an obligation to keep costs low. Our corporations have looked to lowering their taxes, as well as other costs. One technique is inversion, where companies claim tax residence in a lower-tax jurisdiction. This was a popular technique until the Treasury took some steps to make the process more difficult. Still, 54 of the S&P 500 have their tax home overseas.

The latest tax-avoiding technique are master limited partnerships, which don’t pay the corporate income tax and instead pass on tax liability to their investors. Then you have REITs, which the Internal Revenue Service doesn’t treat as corporations. 

These techniques can either eliminate a company's US tax burden, or more commonly, lower it from 35% to 10%. The Congressional Budget Office predicted in January that these techniques, by eroding the tax base, would contribute to a drop in U.S. corporate receipts, from 2.3 percent of gross domestic product in 2016 to 1.8 percent in 2025. By then, receipts will be about 5 percent, or $27 billion a year, lower than they would be without the anticipated erosion, the CBO estimates.

Another view of income inequality

Different tax rates for different people

The managers of hedge funds, private equity funds and various other investment funds are different from you and me. Their pay is taxed at the capital gains tax rate rather than the tax rate applied to wage income. That can add up to a fairly significant sum as the ca[ital gains tax rate is 20%, while the tax on ordinary income for people in the high brackets is almost double that, at 39.6%. The difference is because their pay is supposedly commissions.

Did someone mention inequality?

Possibly it's Spring in Connecticut

The car window was open yesterday. The bedroom window was open last night. The patio doors will be open today. The temperature is over 60. The sun is bright.

What is wrong with US?

We really don't do well by many of our children. We have one of the highest relative child poverty rates in the developed world. As UNICEF reports, "[Children's] material well-being is highest in the Netherlands and in the four Nordic countries and lowest in Latvia, Lithuania, Romania and the United States." We rank near the bottom of the developed world in the percentage of 4-year-olds in early childhood education, which has been proven to be a good investment in a country's future.

And things are getting worse. In 2007 about 12 of every 100 kids were on food stamps. Today it's 20 of every 100. For every 2 homeless children in 2006, there are now 3 Over half of public school students are poor enough to qualify for lunch subsidies, and almost half of black children under the age of six are living in poverty.

Only two nations still refuse to ratify the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child: South Sudan and the United States.

Mark Leibovich has trouble understanding why the media makes so much of the various announcements of one's running for president. I have trouble understanding why we need to have such long presidential campaigns. If these candidates are so concerned about our country, why don't they spend the time trying to solve our many problems?

Fear in America

Water, water everywhere?

Drones in Yemen

The Open Society Foundation, a George Soros group, has just published a report severely questioning our use of drones in Yemen. It challenges Obama's statement that before any U.S. drone strike, “there must be near-certainty that no civilians will be killed or injured.” The report cites a drone strike that killed 12 people, including a pregnant woman and three children, and another in which the U.S. struck a house containing 19 people, including women and children.

The report also questions whether the U.S. is complying with international law. Further, the report raises questions about whether the United States is killing individuals when it is possible to capture them.

Income Inequality

Income Inequality Graph from Robert Reich’s Film, “Inequality for All”

Your anus is necessary

You can never leave a child alone

Would you believe it happened again? On Sunday the kids were 2 and 1/2 blocks from home when someone called the cops reporting them as playing alone.

“The police coerced our children into the back of a patrol car and kept them trapped there for three hours, without notifying us, before bringing them to the Crisis Center, and holding them there without dinner for another two and a half hours,” their mom, Danielle Meitiv, said to her Facebook friends. “We finally got home at 11 pm and the kids slept in our room because we were all exhausted and terrified.”

A pastime as a cop

You may have heard of the Oklahoma reserve sheriff's deputy who mistook his revolver for a taser and killed a suspect. It turns out that the sheriff's deputy is a 73-year-old insurance company executive, who is a member of the Tulsa County Reserve Deputy Program. Several members of this program including Bates are wealthy and have donated vehicles, weapons, and stun guns to the Sheriff’s Office. They are allowed to serve as police officers, although they are not compensated. They are classified as “advanced reserves,” meaning they “can do anything a full-time deputy can do”.

I find it quite bizarre that this program would allow sometime past retirement age to have an active role in arresting people.

An English Shepherd

Reality in DC

Climate is changing in the West

Most scientists agree that weather in the West is changing, particularly as regards the water supply. These changing weather patterns have shrunk snow packs, raised temperatures, spurred evaporation and reduced reservoirs to record lows. And it is unlikely things will get better soon. 

Rising temperatures are the reason. The federal Bureau of Reclamation, which manages much water in the West, reported in 2013 that average temperatures in the upper Rio Grande, in Colorado and New Mexico, rose almost 2.8 degrees during the 40 years ending in 2011 — and could rise an additional four to six degrees by 2100. The 40-year increase, twice the global average, was beyond anything seen in the last 11,300 years.

The deputy secretary of the interior, Michael Connor, recently said, “The challenge is systemic and persistent across the West. We need better infrastructure, better operation arrangements, better ways to share water and move water.”

Rivers in America

The longest rivers in the U.S. are out West. I have been on or even seen very few of them. Yet, I have the sense that our rivers are not as important commercially as those in Europe. I have been on a few rivers in Europe, most recently the Seine. Whether it was the Danube at 1,780 miles or the Seine at 482, there was significant commercial travel, the major item being river cruises. But, I've seen boats carrying 50 or more cars on the Seine, tons of coal, and a raft of other goods. I don't think I'd see the same level of commercial goods unless I was on the Mississippi, the Missouri or Columbia.

Also, the rivers in Europe seem to be integrated into the towns they go through. Most of the ports along the river are within a short walk of the center of town. In France, there was even a river boat that served as a chapel.

An important part of the Chinese army

Will the hawk capture the squirrel?

Policing our schools

Since the Columbine incident, many schools now have policemen on duty every day. And in some of these schools the policeman has become the school disciplinarian; teachers or principals seem to have dropped out of the picture. In these schools the typical school incidents have been referred to the courts. Kids as young as 4 have been referred to the courts. 

If you look at the rate of referrals to law enforcement agencies by the school policemen for one year, I think you'll be surprised. The national rate was six students for every 1,000 pupils, with 19 states surpassing that rate. Virginia led the list with 16 referrals for every 1,000 students, followed by Delaware with almost 15; Florida with more than 12. Massachusetts, Ohio, Nevada and Washington, D.C., reported the lowest rates of referrals, at two or fewer students per 1,000. These incidents can be as trivial as kicking a trash can, clenching a fist at a school cop who intervened in a school fight, a four-year old throwing blocks and kicking at teachers.

Many of the kids who wound up in court  were special-needs kids — kids with physical or learning disabilities. In most states, black and Latino kids were referred in percentages that were disproportionate to their enrollment numbers.

Paying for nothing

Okay, it's chicken feed when you compare it to the full federal budget of almost $4 trillion. But the GAO estimated that in 2004 the feds made $124.7 billion in improper payments. This was an increase of just about $19 billion from the prior year's estimate of $105.8 billion. 

It gets worse. The improper payments for fiscal year 2014, which were attributable to 124 programs spread among 22 agencies, represented 4.5% of program outlays in fiscal year 2014 compared to 4.0% reported in fiscal year 2013. 

About 65% of the improper payments were made by just three major programs: the Department of Health and Human Services' (HHS) Medicare Fee-for-Service and Medicaid programs, and the Department of the Treasury's Earned Income Tax Credit program.

Medicine marches on

The next goal is a head transplant. I am not kidding. Dr. Sergio Canavero, a renowned neurosurgeon and director of the Turin Advanced Neuromodulation Group in Turin, Italy, will try it on Valery Spiridonov, a Russian 30-year-old who has a rare muscle condition called Werdnig-Hoffmann disorder, a.k.a. spinal muscular atrophy, which causes one's muscles to waste away and has no known cure. May I introduce you to Mr. Spiridonov?

.

The operation will reportedly last up to 36 hours and cost an estimated $11 million. The entire procedure will require the assistance of around 150 doctors and nurses.

Spiridonov's new body will be taken from "a brain-dead but otherwise healthy donor," but Spiridonov's brain will be cooled down to between 50 and 60 degrees Fahrenheit to prolong the time brain cells can survive without oxygen. The spinal cord will be cut with a special scalpel that's especially sharp, and the head will be reconnected to the new body and spinal cord with "a special biological glue."

Once the operation is finished, Spiridonov will be put into a coma for around three to four weeks to prevent any movement, and his body will be given immunosuppressents so the body doesn't reject the new head.

"I'm very interested in technology, and anything progressive that might change people's lives for the better," Spiridonov told RT. "Doing this isn't only an excellent opportunity for me, but will also create a scientific basis for future generations, no matter what the actual outcome of the surgery is."

Courtesy of Business Insider

Living with manure

Factory farming of pigs results in the creation of manure lagoons which become filled with feces and urine, a lot of feces and urine. One lagoon captures 4.3 million gallons of feces, urine and flush water per year. Guess what? These lagoons stink. Plus, they fill up after a while. How are these lagoons emptied, you might ask. To empty a lagoon is simple: its foul-smelling sludge is sprayed on adjacent fields – creating a fine mist of feces, urine and water that blows onto the properties and homes of those near the lagoon. Look at this video for some idea of the nature and depth of the problem.



In North Carolina people have filed suit against the largest pork producer, Smithfield Foods, which has been bought by a Chinese company. They contend that their health and property values are being hurt by the manure lagoons and that the Chinese owners are making the situation worse by expanding pig farms to export more hams, bacon and loins to China, which has become the largest importer of U.S. agriculture. A comment on the growth in exports:



I'm not sure why but the lawyers for Smithfield have asked a federal judge to forbid people who live near these manure lagoons from mentioning the new Chinese owners – or the country of China or pork exports to China – in court.

Oliver and Snowden

Rapist's Rights

Keeping me safe

As more and more organizations want to make sure that my interactions with them over the internet are secure, the harder it gets to deal with many of these organizations unless you can "talk" with someone in the support area. I had thought that Google was an organization that welcomed "talk" with customers. I was mistaken.

I recently went on a cruise on the Seine. My first attempt to look at my e-mail was met by an interruption from Google that I was not communicating from my usual site. Something must be wrong and I should let them know that I was not a hacker. Doing so proved to be a real pain.

I went through the wringer trying to get Gmail to work. I reached the point where I needed to 'talk" with a customer support person. Guess what? There is no way to do so with any Google product and I have three of them. Eventually, I was able to look at my email. Case closed I thought.

I thought wrongly. When I tried to access Gmail at home, I could not presumably because I was using a computer different from the one of the ship. So, I went through another wringer. Finally, I was able to access Gmail.

I use three Google products: Gmail, Calendar and Blogger. It would be difficult to move to competitive products. But I have to research just how difficult a task it would be.

One thing I learned was never again to buy a 'family' of  products where there is only one entrance to all of the members.

Out for a walk

Courtesy of a Duncaster Correspondent