Toxic air and kids

Three billion kids breathe air and risk serious health effects including damage to their lungs, brain and other organs. A tenth of these kids are exposed to pollution levels more than six times higher than standards set by the World Health Organization. Children face much higher health risks from air pollution than adults. Children breathe twice as quickly, taking in more air in relation to their body weight, while their brains and immune systems are still developing and vulnerable. 600,000 children below the age of five across the world die each year from air pollution-related diseases.

John Dean on Emailgate

In today's NY Times John Dean destroys Trump's claim that Clinton's e-mail problem is "bigger than Watergate". First, Watergate has the name because of a bungled burglary of the Democratic National Committee offices. It eventually revealed "several abuses of presidential power by Nixon, which included other illegal break-ins and burglaries; illegal electronic surveillance; misuses of government agencies such as the IRS, CIA and FBI; the practice of making political opponents into enemies and using the instruments of government to attack them; and then employing perjury and obstruction of justice to cover it all up."

Dean thinks that Trump is much like Nixon except that Nixon was "a man of intelligence, with a strong understanding of government, a deep knowledge of the world and a heartfelt vision for lasting peace." Trump has not displayed any of these qualities.

Dean does not absolve Clinton of making mistakes but it's clear who he favors. 

Roads don't last long in Afghanistan

Since 2002, the United States, has spent approximately $2.8 billion building and maintaining Afghanistan’s road infrastructure, while working to implement more than $150 million in other road-related programs to improve the Afghan Ministry of Public Works’(MOPW) management of road construction and maintenance. Sigar (Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction) has just completed an audit of these efforts. The results are not good.

First, Sigar could not get enough information on one program (costing $366,000,000) to audit the program. The audit also found that some projects had the same identifying numbers. And in some projects they could not find out how much was spent on road-related activities. In August 2015, an MOPW official stated that 20 percent of the roads were destroyed and the remaining 80 percent continue to deteriorate. The official added that the Kabul to Kandahar highway is beyond repair and needs to be rebuilt. 54 percent of Afghanistan’s road infrastructure suffered from poor maintenance and required rehabilitation.

USAID did have a plan for the road maintenance operations, but was unsuccessful in establishing a sustainable road maintenance plan and program because: (1) performing capacity-building programs alongside the road maintenance programs caused a disincentive for the MOPW to improve its capacity, and (2) the MOPW was unwilling to reorganize itself in an effective manner to create a sustainable road maintenance program.

Pumpkins by NASA

NASA Engineers Show You How To Carve a Pumpkin by wired

Hacking the grid

Las Vegas is not alone

Opinions change

What are the odds

A step in the right direction

The Federal Communications Commission now requires Internet providers, such as Comcast and Verizon, to obtain their customers' explicit consent before using or sharing that behavioral data with third parties, such as marketing firms.

Also covered by that requirement are health data, financial information, Social Security numbers and the content of emails and other digital messages. The measure allows the FCC to impose the opt-in rule on other types of information in the future, but certain types of data, such as a customer's IP address and device identifier, are not subject to the opt-in requirement. The rules also force service providers to tell consumers clearly what data they collect and why, as well as to take steps to notify customers of data breaches.

What else can go wrong?

First it's climate change, which has been a leading cause of the significant decline in animals of all types - fish, birds, mammals, reptiles and amphibians. The World Wildlife Foundation (WWF) just published its 2016 Living Planet Report. It found a 58 percent overall decline in vertebrate populations from 1970 to 2012, the latest year with available data. If things go along this way, the world could lose more than two-thirds of wildlife by 2020. Of course, we humans have also had a large effect on the matter through habitat loss, overexploitation and pollution. 

More talent in America

A Miracle?

We have a lot of talent in America

Last night I saw Sondheim's "Sweeney Todd" at a local 'community' theater, the Connecticut Theater Company. There were no members of Actors Equity in the cast. They could not afford an orchestra. The theater had 181 seats. The cost per ticket was $25. Yet, it was almost as good a production as that I saw on Broadway years ago. Ditto for the production of Sondheim's "Company" at the Little Theater of Manchester which I saw a month or two ago.

Sondheim's plays are not simple to produce and perform. But these small, amateur companies did a very good job.

Congress, a proving ground for corporate board members

It looks that way as 64 one-time lawmakers who sat on boards in 2015 made an average of $357,182, twice what they earned when we paid their salaries. Since 1992, 44 percent of senators and 11 percent of representatives who’ve departed Capitol Hill have ended up in boardrooms. Do most board members work full time for the company? I don't think so.

Who does this remind you of?

Factoid from the Panama Papers

Africa is perceived as a minor player in the world financial arena. But, in fact, it is a net creditor to the rest of the world, with its net external assets vastly exceeding its debts. From 1969 to 2004, $420 billion was sent offshore. Yet the forty countries of Africa had debt of $227 million. However, “The subcontinent’s private external assets belong to a narrow, relatively wealthy stratum of its population, while public external debts are borne by the people through their governments.”

Vote Nobody 2016

More pictures here

Dad, Can I have a ride...

... asked Chelsea Wilson, a 24 year-old Florida woman. Her father drove her to the bank for a job interview. She went in and came out with $300 which, she said, the bank gave her as an advance on the job she had just been offered. Turns out she had stolen the money from the bank.

Here's your way to a fortune

Paying taxes

As we know, our tax structure is not ideal; it's far from it. All companies have an obligation to keep their costs as low as they can; and that includes taxes. But some companies can take advantage of loopholes in our system, loopholes which, in general, are the result of lobbying by the companies.

Here are some examples. Note that the percent is the sum of federal, state, local and foreign taxes. AT&T - 18%, General Electric - 18%, Coca-Cola, Apple and IBM - 17%, Alphabet (Google’s parent) - 16%, Amazon - 13%, Boeing - 8%, Facebook - 4%.

Inspectors General Ignored

That's what Senator Grassley and other senators claim in a report issued today. They say, "Agency inspectors general, who audit and investigate government waste, have made more than 15,000 recommendations that have been ignored across the federal government". These recommendations could have saved us $87 billion. The report is based on the responses of 72 inspectors general and said eight inspectors general are stymied by their agencies who refuse to give them the documents they request for audits or investigations.

The Atlantic is against Trump

For only the third time in its 100+ year history, The Atlantic has endorsed a candidate for President. It first endorsed Lincoln in 1860 and then Johnson in 1964. Now they are more against Trump than for Clinton. The magazine says "Donald Trump, on the other hand, has no record of public service and no qualifications for public office. His affect is that of an infomercial huckster; he traffics in conspiracy theories and racist invective; he is appallingly sexist; he is erratic, secretive, and xenophobic; he expresses admiration for authoritarian rulers, and evinces authoritarian tendencies himself. He is easily goaded, a poor quality for someone seeking control of America’s nuclear arsenal. He is an enemy of fact-based discourse; he is ignorant of, and indifferent to, the Constitution; he appears not to read."

Obituary for the Great Barrier Reef

Rowan Jacobsen has written a fairly comprehensive obit in OutsideOnline. The reef, a World Heritage Site, was the world’s largest living structure, and the only one visible from space. It was very diverse in the species it housed - fish, mollusk, coral, birds, whales, dolphins, turtles. It was called “the most impressive marine area in the world”.

It was killed by the warming of the water via climate changes and acidification of the reef due to the oceans absorbing more carbon from the atmosphere.

Walmart raises wages, trains workers more, offers better opportunities for advancement

And what happens? Profits increase! This may show the value of "Efficiency wages”, although it's too soon to make a definitive judgment. Efficiency wages happen when employers pay workers more than the going rate. Paying people more may result in more loyal, harder-working, more productive employees in return.

Will other companies try it?

The lesser of 4 evils

A Visit from a Shark

The Martha's Vineyard Fishing Derby

14 years and still not finished

A prosthetic arm that can feel.

It's hard to see but the right arm of Nathan Copeland, the student in the wheelchair, is a prosthesis. He was able to feel Obama's handshake. He owes it to brain surgery. The prosthetic arm delivers currents to the electrodes that stimulate his brain to create sensations of touch that feel as if they are coming from his own paralyzed hand.

Nuisance Abatement in NYC

In February I wrote about the city's use of temporary orders to force people out of their homes and businesses before the people had a chance to be heard in court. Mayor DeBlasio said the city was committed to granting fair hearings to any tenants or businesses targeted for enforcement. And, the NYPD promised a complete review of the program so that innocent people would not suffer consequences before seeing a judge.

Well, the words of the mayor and the police are not supported by deeds. The Daily News and ProPublica looked at 150 nuisance abatement cases filed over the past six months and found that police have sought scores of temporary closing orders as the first step in its actions — civil legal proceedings that target places police say are scenes of illegal activity. The orders can often render entire families homeless, and cause businesses to lose significant revenue, all before they’ve been able to appear before a judge. They also found that fewer than half of the people who were banned from homes or who gave up their leases in settlement for nuisance cases were convicted in the underlying criminal investigation.

What are you?

Analyzing Bob Dylan, Nobel Prize Winner

Restoring beaches

The United States Geological Survey asserts that more than half of beaches on the East and Gulf Coasts are eroding. We're doing a lot - and spending a lot of money - to prevent this by pumping sand onto them. As sea-level rise continues, and if storms intensify as predicted, the projects will require more sand, and more dollars. The real problem is that the federal government does this for beaches of all types, including engineered beaches — in which sand is added to beaches and dunes largely to protect coastal investment property. This means that even in places where there has been no property damage at all, taxpayers may still be on the hook for tens of millions of dollars to restore the beaches, which, in general, have been built to enhance the values of private property.

Hibiscus 10/12/2016

Love in the afternoon

At a family party in an Australian town tree snakes were making love in a broken down pool. The pool did have some water, lots of cracks in the wall and many small frogs and toads. All of which translate to a perfect love nest for tree snakes.

The Glass Toilet

It's not that the toilet itself is made of glass, the 'room' in which the toilet resides is. The walls, roof and floor are made entirely out of glass; the user is suspended above, and surrounded by, the trees of the park. The toilet doors are made of frosted glass which is not so great for privacy.

A better way of voting

Given the fact that we really have only two choices to vote for president, shouldn't we switch to ranked voting? This switch is especially needed this year when both candidates are the poorest we have ever had. Most of us like neither candidate but must vote for the lesser of two evils. How many of us will vote at all?

Ranked choice voting is used around the world - Australia, Ireland, London - and in ten US cities. It's even used for the Oscars.

Hair balls

Today is the day of weird things growing in the body. I just wrote about a tail growing on a kid's back. Now, it's a hair ball in a woman's stomach. This one is a case of the Rapunzel Syndrome. It is caused by people plucking and eating their own hair. Their once glorious locks build up in the digestive system where they can eventually have a devastating effect.

This woman developed sudden vomiting and constipation. Her stomach swelled and she was unable to keep down any food. Doctors originally thought it was anemia. But the surgery showed a 6inx4in ball of densely packed hair in the stomach and then another 1.5inx1in hairball in the small intestines. 

There have only been 88 other reported cases of Rapunzel syndrome. In some the hair snakes all the way through the digestive system from stomach to large intestines. Most cases are in childhood - with 40% of Rapunzels under the age of 10.

Growing a tail

When he was 14 years-old, an Indian boy began growing a tail. One theory is that he developed the tail in the womb as a result of a spinal deformity; eventually it started growing on his back. The tail was just removed four years from when it first appeared; it had grown almost eight inches. 

What's with the Philippines?

Last week the president said some nasty things about the Holocaust. This week the nominee for UN Ambassador made the news by tweeting "I believe that the Drug Menace is so big it needs a FINAL SOLUTION like the Nazis adopted. That I believe. NO REHAB".

Bankruptcies increasing

The Wooden Car

It really is wood and can be driven. It has an engine that can generate 650 horsepower. I couldn't drive it as it has a six-speed manual gearbox. The creator, Joe Harmon, an industrial designer and wood worker, spent five years making the car.

Wells Fargo is not alone

Controlling the police

In Chicago that is very difficult as I've shown many times. The latest is their creating a slush fund outside of the regular budget; the funds were kept in a secret bank account. Since 2009 the department has generated almost $72,000,000 and has not told a soul outside the department. They raised the money via civil asset forfeiture, which allows police to seize property including vehicles, cash, or real estate that they allege was used for a crime. Interestingly, the property owner does not have to be “arrested or convicted of a crime” for their property to be seized permanently and either kept or resold.

The police did share the money. They kept only $47,000,000; they gave the Cook County State’s Attorney’s office $18 million amd the State Police almost $7.2 million. 

Life is strange

He is 68 years-old, divorced twice, winner of millions in a lottery. He wants to get married once more and uses a web site specializing in matching old men with young women. He meets and marries a 24-year-old woman. This is the third marriage for both. 

Three months later they're looking through a family photo album. The wife's father who is also the man's son is pictured in the album. Ergo, the grandfather had married his granddaughter. They do not plan to divorce for as the bride says, "Every couple is different and special in their own ways. I feel our bond is so strong that even something like this is not enough to make us give up.”

Cows OD

A French farmer failed to secure the door of a barn. His 46 cows left the barn and went to a food store where their supply of food for the winter was kept. They ate the entire winter's food supply. It so happens that the food they ate was a type of high energy supplement which can be harmful if consumed in large quantities. Bingo! 22 cows died from over-eating. The remaining 24 animals can no longer produce milk.

Some questions for the candidates

From Andrew Bacevich:

• What is the present-day justification for maintaining the US nuclear “triad,” a strike force consisting of manned bombers and land-based ballistic missiles and submarine-launched ballistic missiles?
• Why is the Pentagon embarking upon a decades-long, trillion-dollar program to modernize that triad, fielding a new generation of bombers, missiles and submarines along with an arsenal of new warheads? Is that program necessary?
• How do advances in non-nuclear weaponry — for example, in the realm of cyberwarfare — affect theories of nuclear deterrence devised by the likes of Kahn and Wohlstetter during the 1950s and 1960s? Does the logic of those theories still pertain?
• What lessons should be drawn from America’s costly and disappointing post-9/11 wars and how should those lessons apply to future policy?

Water is not just water