Thursday, October 31, 2013
manessmorrison2@yahoo.com


News Clips For The Day

Judge orders surveillance images released in teen's gym death – CNN

Valdosta, Georgia (CNN) -- Surveillance images and other materials that could shed light on the January death of a Georgia teen found dead inside a rolled up high school gym mat must be released to the boy's parents, a Lowndes County judge ruled Wednesday.
"We are happy to hear we are one step closer to the truth," Kendrick Johnson's father, Kenneth Johnson said after the hearing.
A state medical examiner ruled Kendrick, a high school athlete, suffocated after getting stuck in the gym mat. His parents -- who believe he was murdered -- disputed the findings and won a court order to have their son's body exhumed for another autopsy.
The materials to be released by the judge -- photographs from inside the gym at Lowndes County High School, surveillance video from outside and investigative documents -- are unlikely to prove what happened to the boy, attorney Chevene King said.
None of the imagery is believed to show whatever happened that led to Kendrick's death, King said.
Gym mat death shocker: Body stuffed with newspaper
But the materials could cast doubt the official explanation and nudge officials towards reclassifying Kendrick's death to allow a new investigation into what happened, King said.
"Essentially, it shifts the focus from what the sheriff had offered to other theories that were not explored and that have I think begun to slowly creep to the surface," King said after the hearing.
Last week, a lawyer for Lowndes County High School told CNN that surveillance footage from the gym shows other teens were inside around the time Johnson died.
The school district and sheriff's office had refused to release some of the materials, citing state law that exempts the release of "education records of a minor child."
CNN filed a motion last week to join the family's lawsuit seeking investigative files related to the case, including the surveillance records. The motion was granted.
Kendrick's parents will be among those who will review the images.
You can't prepare yourself for it," he told reporters. "It's just something we have to do. We're fighting for Kendrick to the end."
Kendrick Johnson's parents want answers


Video released in mysterious death of Georgia teen Kendrick Johnson leaves questions unanswered – NBC, 1:00 PM

Surveillance video taken at a Georgia high school where a student was found dead, rolled up in a gym mat, was released on Wednesday — but it doesn't appear to show the fateful moment.
The release came after a judge ordered that the recordings be released, which the parents had requested in an effort to learn more about how their son, Kendrick Johnson, died.
One part of the the newly released footage shows Johnson walking into the gym and onto the basketball court where other people are playing. The publicly released video does not show Johnson's death or anything leading up to it. Hours of additional footage may came from cameras inside and outside the gym.
Southern Judicial Circuit Chief Judge Harry Altman made the ruling shortly after a meeting with the attorney for Johnson’s parents, Benjamin Crump, as well as representatives from the local sheriff’s office and the Lowndes County School District.
"This is not a home run, but it gets us on first base," Crump, a civil rights lawyer who had previously worked with Trayvon Martin's family, told WXIA after the meeting. 
The Johnson family, which has requested a coroner’s inquest into their son’s death, will have unrestricted access to view all of the video footage, according to the judge's ruling.
Asked Wednesday about watching his son's final moments on video, Kendrick's father, Kenneth Johnson, said: “It's just something we have to do. And so we're fighting for Kendrick ‘til the end.”
In advance of the video release Jacquelyn Johnson, Kendrick's mother, told NBC News they were determined to learn how their son died.
“We're not stopping until we get justice," she said.

FromCNN, October 13, 2013
(CNN) -- Georgia teen Kendrick Johnson, who was found dead in a rolled-up gym mat at his high school in January, died as the result of "unexplained, apparent non-accidental, blunt force trauma," according to a newly released, independent autopsy report.
The report, obtained exclusively Tuesday by CNN, directly contradicts the finding of an autopsy conducted by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation that determined that Johnson's death was the result of positional asphyxia. The Lowndes County Sheriff's Office determined that his death was accidental.


One baby step forward, at last, but why didn't they release all of the tapes? The body of a teenaged boy simply could not have slipped inside a rolled up mat. There wouldn't be enough space inside for that. A boy 17 years of age is almost grown. The body had to have been placed there and rolled up around him. This was no accident.

The Sheriff and the school have been trying to prevent a scandal, but by doing so they have created a bigger one. I can't wait to hear what else happens. That's my personal opinion, of course, but to me it seems obvious that this is a murder. It is also probable, unfortunately, that another teen killed him. Teens are big enough and aggressive enough to be dangerous. They aren't really “kids” anymore by the time they are in their teens, and sometimes one of their “bullying” episodes gets out of hand and results in injury or death.

The Sheriff was quoted in one story as saying that he and the school had withheld the tapes because they contained images of youths, as though youths can't be criminals. They failed to investigate this case properly, whatever their reasons. Hopefully they will now reopen the case and at least classify it as a murder. One CNN report, above, said that the second autopsy has shown blunt force trauma as the cause of death.



Shot in face, cop chased suspects 'because I am a mom' – NBC
Video: Police officer Ann Carrizales was shot twice, including once in the face, during a routine traffic stop, but instead of backing down and allowing her fellow cops to chase down the suspects, she chased them in her squad car for 20 miles until they were caught. NBC’s Janet Shamlian reports.
Texas police officer Ann Carrizales took two bullets at point-blank range — including one to the face — during an early morning traffic stop last Saturday. Yet she still went after the bad guys.
“It wasn’t an option for me to give up,” the 40-year-old former Marine and mother of two told NBC’s Janet Shamlian. “I had to stay in that fight because I am a mom and they shot me and they were absolutely not going to get away with that, because I will do everything I can to come home to my children every day.”
Carrizales pulled over a car in Stafford, Texas, just outside Houston, around 3 a.m. She said her instincts told her something was amiss as she walked up to the car with three men inside.
Within seconds, the front-seat passenger leaned over and started firing. 
Carrizales was hit twice: once in the cheek and once in the bulletproof vest that most likely saved her life. She fired back at the car as it sped off, shattering its rear window.  
Then, bleeding and in pain, she got into her squad car and gave chase. The pursuit lasted more than 20 miles.
“I knew that it was what I needed to do, to catch these guys,” she said. “You can’t shoot me and drive away: It’s not allowed.”
Officers from a neighboring police department helped apprehend the alleged gunman. Authorities continue to search for the two other suspects and plan to release video footage of the incident soon.
Carrizales, a former boxer who was named top cop by her colleagues last year, now wears a bandage on her cheek and neck. She is off the streets until she recovers, but she is adamant about returning.
“You need people like me out here to do this, and I’m so proud to do it and honored to do it,” she said.


This lady cop, I noticed, is not only a police officer, she is a former Marine and boxer. They picked on the wrong victim when they attacked her. I'm glad to see people stand up for themselves against the bad guys, especially when they are going against the odds. I'm sure she will get a promotion.




Tax delinquents by the thousands have security clearances, GAO finds – NBC

One government worker with a security clearance owed the Internal Revenue Service $2 million, according to the General Accounting Office.
Thousands of tax delinquents -- including one who owes $2 million to the IRS -- have sensitive security clearances, posing a risk that has gone undetected by federal agencies, congressional investigators will report Thursday.

A report by the General Accounting Office obtained by NBC News found that 8,400 U.S. officials and contractors with access to sensitive government secrets have racked up $8.5 million in delinquent tax debts.  
The report, due to be released Thursday morning at a Senate hearing, is the latest example of what members of Congress and investigators say are glaring weaknesses in the government’s system of vetting those receiving security clearances. 

“It is absurd to give federal employees and contractors who have already failed to follow the law access to our nation’s classified information,” said Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn, ranking Republican on the Senate Homeland Security Committee, who requested the GAO study. “Awarding security clearances to tax cheats puts the integrity of the federal work force, along with the confidential materials entrusted with them, at greater risk. 
Coburn, in a statement to NBC News, demanded that the administration take immediate steps to stop what he called the “egregious” practice of granting security clearances to tax delinquents.
A spokesman for Director of National Intelligence James Clapper declined comment, noting that the report had not yet been publicly released. But in written comments to the GAO, a Clapper aide noted that the intelligence office and the Office of Personnel Management were working with Treasury Department officials to develop a plan to check and more closely monitor government databases to identify tax delinquents with security clearances.
The GAO study did not examine members of the U.S. military or employees of U.S. intelligence agencies with clearances. Instead, it focused on a universe of 240,000 officials and contractors with clearances elsewhere in the government — such as the Homeland Security, State and Energy departments. It then took the Social Security numbers of those with clearances and plugged them into an Internal Revenue Service database of tax delinquents, yielding matches to about 4,800 individuals — about half of whom had top-secret clearances, the report says.
More than three-fourths of the tax delinquents amassed their debts only after receiving their clearances — an indication, congressional investigators said, that those with access to sensitive secrets were not being adequately monitored.
The report does not name any of the tax delinquents. But it cited several examples: One of the delinquents with a clearance owed $2 million in back taxes, the report states. Another federal contractor with a top-secret clearance didn’t file federal tax returns for several years and was granted a “conditional clearance” despite concerns among background checkers about his financial problems.
The GAO report states that an official or contractor with tax debts is “at risk of having to engage in illegal acts to generate funds” – and therefore could put national security secrets at risk. (Some high profile espionage cases, such as those of former CIA agent Aldrich Ames and FBI agent Robert Hanssen, sold secrets to Russia for cash, although neither was in debt.)
But the report notes that the current federal background check system does not check federal tax databases before granting clearances. Instead, it relies on “self-reporting” of debts and checking of credit reports – which do not disclose tax debts unless liens have been filed.
The issue of federal background checks has taken on new urgency after revelations that Washington Navy Yard shooter Aaron Alexis was granted a secret clearance for 10 years despite multiple security problems in his background, including a 2002 arrest for shooting the tires of a neighbor’s car. Alexis’ arrest, which he blamed on anger problems and which did not result in criminal charges, was never fully investigated by the private company, USIS, hired to do his background check.
USIS, now the subject of a federal grand jury probe, also performed the background check of ex-NSA contractor Edward Snowden, failing to interview any personal references other than his girlfriend. Nor did the firm investigate a reported security violation in his past, according to a report by the Office of Director of National Intelligence.
USIS has denied any wrongdoing, saying its background checks in both instances met federal standards and that it is cooperating with the federal investigation. 


This is something that should be easy to check. If USIS isn't doing it's job, they should be replaced with another company, even if it costs more money. Or, simply, make it mandatory in their contract that they do check with the IRS in the future and contact all personal references. When a tax cheat owes $2,000,000, that's a sizable chunk of money that the very needy US government is not getting, and it's also grossly unfair for some people to get away with that while others have to pay. Hopefully Congress will investigate this and get it straightened out. It may prove embarrassing to our current administration, if it was known before this report and if names are released to the press, of course. I'll brace myself for the scandal.




Syria destroys all chemical production equipment, weapons watchdog says--NBC

The Nov. 1 deadline has been met and Syria has destroyed its chemical weapons production and mixing facilities. The deadline was part of a compromise brokered by the U.S. and Russia, with the next deadline approaching in two weeks.

BEIRUT, Lebanon -- Syria has destroyed or rendered inoperable all of its declared chemical weapons production and mixing facilities, meeting a major deadline in an ambitious disarmament program, the international chemical weapons watchdog said Thursday.
The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, which won the Nobel Peace prize this month, said its teams had inspected 21 out of 23 chemical weapons sites across the country. The other two were too dangerous to inspect, but the chemical equipment had already been moved to other sites that experts had visited, it said

Syria "has completed the functional destruction of critical equipment for all of its declared chemical weapons production facilities and mixing/filling plants, rendering them inoperable," it said, meeting a deadline to do so no later than November 1.
The next deadline is November 15, by when the OPCW and Syria must agree to a detailed plan of destruction, including how and where to destroy more than 1,000 metric tons of toxic agents and munitions.
Under a Russian-American brokered deal, Damascus agreed to destroy all its chemical weapons after Washington threatened to use force in response to the killing of hundreds of people in a sarin attack on the outskirts of Damascus on August 21.

It was the world's deadliest chemical weapons incident since Saddam Hussein's forces used poison gas against the Kurdish town of Halabja 25 years ago.
"This was a major milestone in the effort to eliminate Syria's chemical weapons program," Ralf Trapp, an independent chemical weapons disarmament specialist, said.
"Most of the sites and facilities declared by Syria to the OPCW have been inspected, their inventories verified, equipment for chemical weapons production disabled and put beyond use, and some of the unfilled weapons have also been disabled."
At one of those locations the OPCW said it was able to verify destruction work remotely, while Syrian forces had abandoned the other two sites.
Trapp said it was "important to ensure that the remaining facilities can be inspected and their equipment and weapons inventoried and prepared for destruction as soon as possible."
The United States and its allies blamed Assad's forces for the attack and several earlier incidents. The Syrian president has rejected the charge, blaming rebel brigades.
Under the disarmament timetable, Syria was due to render unusable all production and chemical weapons filling facilities by November 1 -- a target it has now met. By mid-2014 it must have destroyed its entire stockpile of chemical weapons.
The OPCW mission is being undertaken in the midst of Syria's 2-1/2 year civil war, which has killed more than 100,000 people. The unprecedented conditions had raised concerns that the violence would impede the disarmament, but the OPCW says Syrian authorities have been cooperating with the weapons experts, who have been able to visit all but three of the chemical sites.
Syrian authorities said that "the chemical weapons program items removed from these sites were moved to other declared sites,"an OPCW document said. "These sites holding items from abandoned facilities were inspected."
The OPCW has not said which sites it has been unable to visit, but a source briefed on their operations said one of them was in the Aleppo area of northern Syria and another was in Damascus province.
One major chemical weapons site is located close to the town of Safira, south-east of Aleppo. Assad's forces have bombarded the town in recent weeks in an attempt to expel rebel fighters including al Qaeda-linked brigades.


Obama's threat to attack was, of course, the subject of Putin's famous Op Ed piece accusing him of brinksmanship. Putin's cooperation with the US to get the Syrian weapons neutralized probably wouldn't have occurred if the US hadn't threatened Syria, though. The Russians had been solidly behind Syria up to that time. I am relieved to see that the weapons and the weapon producing sites have been rendered harmless.

The Middle East does seem to be full of “bad guys,” usually in the name of religion. If religious organizations are not peaceful, they are failing in their main purpose. This has sometimes included Christianity. Whenever religious zealots take over, there is trouble. I don't think religions should be in the political game. Separation of church and state is in our Constitution for a reason. People should go to church to achieve peaceful goals, not political conquest.



'I had to step in': Hero bus driver coaxes woman off ledge of bridge – NBC
Video: Bus driver Darnell Barton is being hailed as a hero for helping a woman who was standing outside the railing of an overpass by coaxing her down from the ledge. NBC’s Mara Schiavocampo reports.
A bus driver in Buffalo, N.Y., is being celebrated as a hero after he stopped on an overpass and coaxed a woman who appeared to be on the brink of suicide to safety.
“Knowing that I saved somebody's life, it makes me feel good, being at the right place at the right time,’’ driver Darnell Barton told TODAY Thursday.
Barton, 37, was driving a bus full of McKinley High School students home on Oct. 18 when he spotted a young woman standing outside of a railing on a narrow ledge of an overpass on the Scajaquada Expressway.
“When I saw her on the other side of the guard rail, I immediately (thought)…this is something, this isn’t right,’’ Barton said.
Surveillance video shows Barton stopping the bus, opening the door and calling out to the woman, who is believed to be in her 20s. The woman has her back turned to the bus and is clinging to the railing while looking over the edge of the overpass. Barton called the Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority’s Metro Bus dispatcher to inform them of the situation while continuing to speak to the woman.
“Once I opened the door and made contact, and I saw her look back at me and then look back at the 198 (highway), I knew that was it,’’ Barton said. “I had to step in.”
Barton got off the bus, walked over to her, slipped his left arm around her body and gently coaxed her off the ledge. He then sat down on the ground next to her and put his arm around her.
“I said, ‘Whatever it is, it might feel bad, it may feel bad, but jumping is not the answer,’’’ Barton said.
Shortly after, officials arrived on the scene. When Barton got back on the bus, his student passengers gave him a round of applause. Another bus was dispatched to take the students home while Barton gave his account of the event to police. 
Barton returned to work, completing the rest of his shift for the day. 


After the story of the 14 year old girl who bullied her former friend to death over a boy, and who said in her Facebook “I don't give a f____,” we get a story about an ordinary citizen who, without any special training, followed his instincts and prevented a suicide, comforting the woman until help arrived. There is good as well as bad in the world. I was very glad to see this story. Things like this keep me from getting cynical and discouraged.





9,000-year-old painting of volcano linked to a real eruption – NBC

Hasan Dag volcano in Turkey erupted 9,000 years ago. The blast is depicted in the oldest known painting of a volcanic eruption.
DENVER — A 9,000-year-old painting of an exploding volcano, the oldest ever found, can now be linked to a real-life eruption in Turkey.
The towering Hasan Dag volcano erupted 8,970 years ago, plus or minus 640 years, according to a new dating technique that analyzes zircon crystals in volcanic rock, geochemist Axel Schmitt of the University of California, Los Angeles, reported here Wednesday at the Geological Society of America's annual meeting.
Turkish scientists long suspected Hasan Dag was the source of the painting's dramatic scene, but never had a precise date for its volcanic rocks, Schmitt told LiveScience. The volcano is about 80 miles (130 kilometers) from the ancient village of Çatalhöyük, where the painting was discovered in 1964 during an archaeological dig.

"The volcanological evidence also supports what previous interpreters have said about the volcanic style of the eruption here," Schmitt said. "It wasn't a Mount St. Helens-type cataclysmic event. It was small and local, more like a little burp of the volcano."
Schmitt and his colleagues dated volcanic pumice (lava that cooled so quickly it's glass) from the sides and top of Hasan Dag. Only pumice from the volcano's peak was 9,000 years old, they discovered. Rocks lower down were about 29,000 years old. This means the eruption wasn't big enough to spew lava and ash across the lower slopes.
"If anything, it was a relatively small event, like a Strombolian-type eruption," Schmitt said, referring to the small but spectacular lava fountains that frequently burst from Mount Etna and Mount Stromboli in Italy.

Catalhöyük was a proto-urban village settled during the Neolithic, or Stone Age. It is the largest and best-preserved Neolithic city ever found. The mural was painted in red-colored ochre on the wall of a shrine, showing what appears to be a map of the settlement and the double peaks of Hasan Dag.
Since its discovery, the painting has been preserved in a museum and Catalhöyük has become a popular tourist site. The evidence for a volcanic eruption has also been offered as proof that Hasan Dag is an active volcano.
Schmitt and his colleagues are conducting further studies to date the past eruption histories of Turkey's many volcanoes, and help better understand the risk of future eruptions.
"Some of these stratovolcanoes have probably had fairly large eruptions," Schmitt said. "They clearly need better constraints about their recurrence."


Some people think that information passed down from thousands of years in the past are simply “legends,” or elaborated and invented stories. Some of them, however, are clearly fact-based stories – history rather than entertainment for children. The solid facts may be fragmentary or changed in the retelling, but they should be valued when they can be connected with other stories or archaeological evidence to create a logical tale. Until science discovered the way to date the pumice, the drawing was only artwork, but now it is history. Being able to touch the past in this way is really exciting, taking us back to our forefathers in the Near East as they were developing into modern societies.

Wednesday, October 30, 2013
manessmorrison2@yahoo.com


News of the day



Mystery barges on two coasts set tech world abuzz -- from NBC


Three mysterious structures that appeared on the water in California and Maine have the tech world abuzz. 
Each of the boxy structures sits atop a barge and looks like a four-story building made up of metal boxes. Little is known about them, but they appear to have been registered by someone familiar with geek speak — and with a sense of humor. 
The structures are registered with a Delaware corporation as BAL0001, BAL0010, BAL0011 and BAL0100. In binary code used in computing, the numbers spell out "one," "two," "three" and "four." Currently, Nos. 1 and 2 are on the water in San Francisco and No. 3 is in Portland Harbor. 
Online speculation has focused on Google Inc., which has a patent for a floating data center that uses ocean water for cooling. Neither Google nor the company outfitting the vessel shed any light on the matter Tuesday. 
Sharon Gaudin, a writer for Computerworld, told the Portland Press Herald that the way the vessels were named suggested a technology origin or use. 
"That's a little telling," she said. 
Also, the Delaware company to which they're registered is called Buy and Large, a likely joking reference to "Buy N Large," the fictional mega-corporation in the 2008 film "WALL-E." 
While the floating structures may one day have a high-tech purpose, their construction appears to be fairly low tech. They consist of shipping containers welded together and placed atop barges. 

Barges – from New York Times
Over the weekend, a report by KPIX, CBS’s Bay Area affiliate, said the barge could be a floating store to sell Google Glass, the Internet-connected eye wear. According to this theory, the company reportedly wants to move the store from port to port, anchoring it near cities. A similar barge has been spotted in the harbor at Portland, Me.
What is known for sure is that Google is increasing production and sales of the consumer version of Glass, which will be broadly available next year, according to the company. On Monday, it said that the people who had been chosen to buy a test device could invite three people to sign up, too. The company also said its latest version of Glass would be compatible with prescription lenses.

From Computer World – barges
The barges, each carrying a large, modular looking structure about 40 feet wide and 70 to 80 feet long, have been moved into and docked in harbors in San Francisco and Portland, Maine.
"We know what's inside," said a Portland Coast Guard station spokesman. "We know it's not a threat to public safety here in Portland. It's following all regulations."
Both structures, which are four stories tall, appear to be built out of or are surrounded by modular containers. Most of the modules have thin slits instead of windows and each has an enclosed section on the second floor that goes down to the ground level at one end.
The structure in Maine also has four modules on the end that are covered by wood.
Industry analysts all point to the fact that Google received a patent for a floating data center back in 2009. The plan included he use of ocean water to cool the systems and waves to help power it.
"This appears to be an offshore data center," said Rob Enderle, an analyst at Enderle Group. "You can use water for cooling and there are a number of creative ways to get energy. More likely these will be moved around to provide localized support or backup as needed."


There is apparently very little known by the media about these barges, because all the reports said the same few things. I was able to get a closer description of them from Computer World. All the mystery must be to thwart industrial spies. It's a brave new world. We'll find out more over the next few years, I'm sure.




Little boy joins Pope Francis on stage, refuses to leave – NBC

A young boy joined Pope Francis on stage in front of an estimated crowd of 150,000 people on Saturday, and liked his moment in the limelight so much that he decided to stick around.
The boy hugged the pope's legs as he made his address at an event titled Family, Live the Joy of Faith!
Aides encouraged the boy to return to his seat, but he was having none of it.
After hanging out with the pontiff for a while the boy eventually settled for the best seat in the house, taking a pew on the pope's special white chair.


This is really charming. I do like the new Pope – he loves people, I think, despite his high position. This boy is the cutest!








Why aliens won't look like Flipper: The science of extraterrestrial tales – NBC

Alan Boyle, Science Editor NBC News
Video: As technology advances, scientists and social experts are taking the search for alien life forms to a new level. NBC's Rhonesha Byng meets up with some academics who say "it's good to be prepared."

Lots of aliens will be hitting the streets this Halloween. There'll be big-headed, beady-eyed grays ... pointy-eared Starfleet officers ... reptiles with mouths that bristle with fangs ... fur-faced wookiees and more.
But you hardly ever see depictions of extraterrestrials that live underwater — and there's a good reason for that, says Don Lincoln, author of a new book titled "Alien Universe: Extraterrestrial Life in Our Minds and in the Cosmos."
The reason? It's hard to build a fire underwater.
Some experts speculate that many of the habitable planets in our galaxy are water worlds, with no land in sight. But those wouldn't the best places for technologically advanced civilizations to take root.

"There could be alien cavemen underwater," Lincoln, a physicist at Fermilab in Illinois, told NBC News. "But truly, you can't smelt metal." And that means it's unlikely that intelligent dolphins will ever develop the technology for spaceflight.
In "Alien Universe," Lincoln blends together a compendium of alien tales going back to H.G. Wells and even earlier, plus a look at the scientific parameters that define the search space for intelligent aliens.
The book isn't aimed at veteran UFO fans looking for the latest revelations about the alien conspiracy. It doesn't address the search for microbial life on Mars, or Europa, or Enceladus — and it doesn't delve deeply into the search for planets beyond our solar system. Instead, "Alien Universe" is meant for those who wonder how all the stories about intelligent aliens got their start, as well as those who wonder how much science is behind those stories.
"It's not just fiction. It's not just pretend," Lincoln said. "There's some real scientific thinking going on."
"Alien Universe" looks at the fiction and the facts about the prospects for extraterrestrial life.
The chemistry of alien life
For example, there's a reason why all life on Earth is carbon-based, and why alien life is likely to be based on carbon as well. Carbon atoms can handle four chemical bonds (unlike a puny single-bonding hydrogen atom), and yet it's relatively easy to swap those bonds around (unlike, say, silicon-based chemistry ... sorry, Horta!).
There are also chemical reasons why water works so well as a solvent for life's processes, but it's possible to imagine other liquids serving a similar role. Methane, for example, could have some advantages over water — and liquid methane exists in abundance on Titan, a smog-shrouded moon of Saturn.
"This leads us to speculate that if life is an inevitable outcome of chemistry, then Titan should have at least primitive life," Lincoln writes. "If it turns out not to have life, then we must begin to suspect that there is something unique about the environment of Earth, perhaps including the use of water as a solvent."
The sociology of alien tales

Lincoln makes a distinction between primitive forms of life, which may well turn out to be common in the universe, and advanced forms of life that could head out from their home planets and contact us. In the book, he refers to those life forms as Aliens with an capital "A." Those types of Aliens are the main focus of "Alien Universe," as well as thousands if not millions of books and movies about extraterrestrials.
Surveys suggest that most Americans think such aliens have already visited Earth, and are behind at least some of the UFO sightings that have been reported over the past few decades. Today, the 1947 Roswell UFO Incident looms large on the list of UFO tales — but Lincoln said that story didn't make much of an impression when it happened. 

"The Roswell saucer disappeared from history," Lincoln said. "It only reappeared in the 1970s when the National Enquirer reran the report from the Roswell Daily Record."
He said the interest in UFOs actually got more of a boost from other tales in the 1950s and '60s, such as George Adamski's stories of flying saucers and Betty and Barney Hill's account of an alien abduction. Such accounts triggered a long string of Hollywood productions, ranging from "The Day the Earth Stood Still" to "Men in Black." And such movies, in turn, make the public more receptive to UFO stories.
"There's a loop between the stories, the media and Hollywood — they feed each other," Lincoln said.
That kind of alien appeal is what drove Lincoln to write the book in the first place. He's a particle physicist, not an astrophysicist — but his interest in the prospects for intelligent life beyond Earth began long before his interest in the Large Hadron Collider. "Aliens are something that absolutely fascinated me when I was a kid," he said.


This author speaks of life on other planets as possibly being inevitable given the nature of matter. From the article above, "This leads us to speculate that if life is an inevitable outcome of chemistry, then Titan should have at least primitive life," Lincoln writes. "If it turns out not to have life, then we must begin to suspect that there is something unique about the environment of Earth, perhaps including the use of water as a solvent."

Personally, I would be glad to find even the simplest forms of life. Life is so prevalent on earth and appears in so many forms that it does seem to me to be a natural occurrence, and therefore, probably has developed on other planets as well. As he points out, most life forms, at least on earth, could not have developed a technology capable of space travel, so we will probably never see them unless we go to their planets, and I personally think that even that is unlikely. It's a very long way to the other planets, taking 6 to 8 months in the case of Mars according to one web site on the subject, and then there are the dangers of landing on the planet and surviving in the atmosphere and the temperature extremes. I personally hope that mankind doesn't try to land on Mars. Space travel should take into account the likely loss of life on the project. I think some adventures should not be undertaken.




Gold rush sparked by global financial crisis devastates Amazon – NBC

LIMA, Peru — The ravaging of the Peruvian Amazon by a wave of illegal gold mining is twice as bad as researchers had thought.
That is according to a new study using groundbreaking technology that’s discovered thousands of previously undetected small mines in the Madre de Dios region of Peru, near the Bolivian border, a global biodiversity hotspot.
Thanks to its stunning wildlife, the region is home to various nature and indigenous reserves and dozens of thriving jungle lodges that welcome tourists from around the world.
Yet it’s also experienced widespread devastation since the 2008 global financial crisis saw gold prices rocket. Thousands of miners have flooded into the region, dredging riverbeds and carving up vast tracts of the forest floor in remotes areas beyond the reach of the authorities.

They have also poisoned the water table for miles around by dumping hundreds of tons of mercury, which miners use to extract gold from the soil.
According to the report, by the Carnegie Institution for Science and published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the mining has cleared 15,180 acres of forest per year since 2008 — twice previous estimates. That’s roughly the size of 20 Central Parks.
The researchers made their discovery thanks to new technology including LiDAR, a laser mounted on a plane overflying the Amazon that creates 3D maps of the forest in far greater detail than anything previously achieved.

“Our results reveal far more rainforest damage than previously reported by the government, NGOs, or other researchers,” said Greg Asner, the American scientist who led the study, in a statement.
“The gold rush in Madre de Dios exceeds the combined effects of all other causes of forest loss in the region, including from logging, ranching and agriculture,” he added.
“This is really important because we are talking about a global biodiversity hotspot. The region’s incredible flora and fauna is being lost to gold forever.”
Ernesto Raez Luna, from Peru’s Environment Ministry and co-author of the report with Asner, added: “We are using this study to warn Peruvians on the terrible impact of illegal mining in one of the most important enclaves of biodiversity in the world, a place that we have vowed, as a nation, to protect for all humanity.
“Nobody should buy one gram of this jungle gold. The mining must be stopped.”
Twice the size of California, the Peruvian Amazon is one of the largest surviving stretches of tropical rainforest anywhere on Earth.
It’s home to a staggering array of plants, fish, birds, mammals, reptiles and amphibians. And its trees warehouse vast quantities of carbon that contribute to global warming when the jungle is destroyed.
While many of the gold miners are poor locals desperate to support their families, others are wealthy businessmen using expensive mechanical diggers and even large boats to dredge riverbeds.
Police have raided some of the largest mining camps, where a Wild West atmosphere of guns and liquor rules. They have also blown up mining equipment and freed underage girls being forced to work in brothels, yet they have rarely been able to catch the miners working deeper in the jungle.
This story originally appeared on GlobalPost.


This story is too discouraging for words. The life of green plants and especially of the rain forests is one of the main processes that removes carbon dioxide from the world's atmosphere, not to mention the loss of the many lifeforms that are native to those regions. The local governments don't control logging and ranching in the region as they should, but this illegal gold mining is apparently even worse than that. Some of it is being done by poor local people, but it is also the work of businesses as well, and the police are having little success at catching them. Could the national military help? I hope the media follows the story and uncovers more information.





Trapped in van wreckage, dying man wrote letters to family – CBS
SALT LAKE CITY A missing Kansas man spent his final days trapped in the wreckage of his van in a rural Utah ravine - writing goodbye letters to the family he unexpectedly left in early September.
David Welch, 54, was found on Oct. 18 by a hitchhiker who spotted the crash in a desolate stretch of eastern Utah more than 50 miles from any town, said Utah Highway Patrol trooper Gary Riches.
They found Welch trapped inside his mangled minivan at the bottom of a 50-foot ravine - with hand-written notes to his wife and four adult sons.
What's in those letters, though, is not being made public. The Welch family declined comment for this story and the Utah Highway Patrol isn't sharing what they call very personal.
The discovery brought a tragic end to a difficult several weeks for Welch's family that began on Sept. 2 when they reported him missing from his home in Manhattan, Kan. The family said Welch, a retired salesman, left in a 2000 Pontiac Montana without telling anyone where he was going, said Riley County Police spokesman Matt Droge.
Over the next several days, Riley County Police of Kansas did several searches of the area that came up empty, said agency. Welch was put in the national missing persons database.
As the days went on, the family struggled with not knowing what happened.
They posted missing signs around the city and started a Facebook page to bring attention to the search, Droge said.
On the Facebook page, "Find Dave Welch," they asked people to drive two extra blocks each day in hopes of finding him somewhere in Manhattan. On. Oct. 17, the day before he was found, there was a post written directly to Welch, perhaps in hopes he might read them.
"Dear Dave, it has been 7 weeks since you left. Your wife, children and grandchildren miss you more than the sky is high. Your classmates and friends are concerned for your health and want to help. As we sit at home tonight with tears welling up; Our hearts aching, we wonder where you are. We only pray that you see this message and ask God to bring you home soon. We love you!"
Investigators believe Welch fell asleep at the wheel of his minivan as he approached a curve on Interstate 70 in eastern Utah around Sept. 3, Riches said. His minivan sped off the road and went airborne, smashing into the side of the ravine. It came to rest upside down, resting on the passenger side, he said.
Evidence suggests Welch was injured and unable to get out of the van, Riches said. The medical examiner has not yet determined his cause of death. Even if we would have been able to get out, the nearest city, Green River, was about 50 miles west.
Thousands of cars sped by on the nearby interstate without a clue - Welch's van couldn't be seen from the highway, Riches said. He may never have been found if not for the hitchhiker walking on the side of the road.
"It is very desolate," Riches said.
They believe he survived for days, maybe weeks, keeping a journal and writing notes to family in Kansas.
In his obituary, the family said Welch was a salesman at Pepsi Co. and later Frito-Lay until he retired in 2009. He liked landscaping his yard, being outdoors and scuba diving in the ocean. He had been married to his wife, Kelly Welch, an assistant professor at Kansas State University, for 31 years.
He was looking forward to the upcoming birth of his second grandchild, the obituary said.
It remains a mystery why he left his home state in the first place, said authorities in Utah and Kansas.
"I wish it would have turned out better for the family," said Droge. "It was an unpleasant turn of events for them."


This is very sad. The hitchhiker found him, but too late. I don't usually focus on how dangerous driving can be, because I want to continue to drive. Sometimes I can feel that my attention isn't on my driving when my speed starts creeping up, and I make a special effort to think about what I'm doing. I do pull over if I feel sleepy and get coffee, stay within the speed limit on highways – 65 mph is fast enough -- keep a good distance from the next driver's bumper, and keep my eyes on the road. Life is short enough without making it shorter.



­
Arguments Over Social Security Pit Old Vs. Young – NPR
­ Congress has until Jan. 15 to come up with another spending plan. As they negotiate, one thing you'll hear a lot about is overhauling entitlement programs — particularly Social Security.
The program accounts for about 20 percent of federal spending. One argument in favor of cuts is that Social Security amounts to a huge transfer of wealth from the young to the old.
­ One person making that argument is Stanley Druckenmiller, a retired hedge fund manager. He's been touring college campuses, hoping to rile up the young folks about Social Security the way he and his peers were riled up during the war in Vietnam.
"I watched the young people at that time bring down a president and change the whole political spectrum and end that horrible war," he told an audience at New York University.
Using a lot of charts and graphs, Druckenmiller argued that with the retirement of the baby boomers, spending on Social Security will rise so much there will be no federal dollars left over for things that young people care about and that the country needs: education, the environment, infrastructure, medical research and so on.
"This is all current seniors just feeding at the trough, stealing from future seniors," Druckenmiller said.
If "stealing" sounds like a harsh term, how about "war"?
"Older Americans, their lobbies and the politicians who do what they ask are actually waging war on young people," says Jonathan Cowan, the director of Third Way, a centrist Democratic think tank. Young people, he says, "aren't doing much of anything" about the problem.
Cowan has been concerned about the growth of Social Security spending since the 1990s, when he co-founded an organization called Lead or Leave. That group tried to worry young people that Social Security's reserve fund would run dry before it was their chance to collect.
In fact, if nothing is done, it actually will run dry in about 20 years. Cowan blames the lack of action in large part on the major lobby for seniors, the AARP.
"The AARP has stood in the way of virtually every serious entitlement reform that's come along for quite a long time," Cowan says.
That statement just makes AARP President Rob Romasco laugh. "We seem to get painted with that brush on everything," Romasco says.
Romasco says his organization isn't necessarily against changes to Social Security. He just doesn't think those should be part of the budget process, because the program doesn't contribute to the deficit. It's self-funded through the payroll tax.
"It should be part of a separate conversation to deal with retirement," says Romasco, because of vanishing pensions, declining 401(k)s and the difficulty that older people have finding work.

Third Way (think tank)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Third Way is a Washington, D.C.-based public policy think tank.
Founded in 2005, the organization develops policy ideas, conducts public opinion research and hosts issue briefings. The organization has four policy divisions: Economics, National Security, Clean Energy, and Social Policy & Politics.
Third Way develops and advocates for policies that it claims "represent the political center".[1]
Third Way was honored as "2013 North American Think Tank of the Year" by Prospect, a British monthly current affairs magazine, for its "original, influential, and rigorous work on the most pressing challenges facing people, governments, and businesses". In 2012, the first year that Prospect issued a prize for North America, the award went to The Carnegie Endowment. The judges commended Third Way for "making a real impact on debate in the center ground of American politics".[2]
Third Way was founded in 2005 by Jonathan Cowan, Matt Bennett,[3] Jim Kessler,[4] and Nancy Hale[5] in the wake of the 2004 election as a policy, messaging and strategy "idea center" and think tank. The organization was dedicated to understanding the wants, needs and expectations of self-described moderate Americans, who comprise 44% of the voting public
Third Way's President and Economic Program director made the case that progressives needed to reorient themselves and set forth a modern agenda focused on growth and middle class success for the 21st century in an opinion piece published on the Politico website in 2010.
Third Way has four major policy programs: the Economics Program[6] focuses on helping the middle class in America in the midst of growing global competition. The National Security Program[7] aims at issues of security and the US military. Third Way has also undertaken a program on [8] clean energy intended to influence policy decisions on reducing carbon emissions. In the fall of 2010, it unveiled a new Domestic Policy Program[9] to examine issues including poverty, education and the politics of the center. The Domestic Policy Program also includes Third Way’s Initiative Culture Initiative, which examines how progressives handle contentious culture issues.
CNN senior political analyst Bill Schneider is a Resident Scholar and a Distinguished Senior Fellow at Third Way. A few of the staff members for the organization now work in the Obama administration and several former Third Way Honorary Co-Chairs serve in President Obama's cabinet including Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius and Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar.[10]
In February 2011, Third Way announced [11] that Assistant House Democratic Leader James Clyburn (D-SC), and U.S. Representatives John Dingell (D-MI), Allyson Schwartz (D-PA) and Jared Polis (D-CO) would be joining as Honorary Co-Chairs.
On October 6, 2011, Jonathan Silver, the director of the Department of Energy's loan office, and a figure involved in the Solyndra loan controversy, resigned and become a distinguished visiting fellow at Third Way; Department of Energy officials stated that the decision was unrelated to the controversy.[12][13]
Third Way works with Senate Democratic leadership, including Senator Dick Durbin, to help define policy ideas and strategy.[21] In the wake of the loss of control of the House after the 2010 elections President Obama appointed former Third Way Trustee William Daley to replace Rahm Emanuel as White House chief of staff. This decision was intended to signal to the nation the administration's prioritization of economic growth and a willingness to work with both parties.[22]
Third Way contributed ideas regarding health reform debate that were eventually enacted into law. The often repeated message that health care reform would deliver "stability and security"[16] to the middle class traces its roots to a series of Third Way reports and memos issued in the spring and summer of 2009. Third Way's work was described as having "really become central to the White House's message".[17] A Third Way op-ed published in Roll Call in late summer 2009 urged progressives, upset by early reports on the contours of the bill, "Don't Pass on the 'Next New Deal'".[18]
Deficit reduction.[24] One example: a proposal to cut federal pensions was adopted by the Simpson-Bowles Deficit Commission and the House Republicans’ deficit package. The Grand Bargain - an over-aching tax and budget deal to reduce the deficit by cutting Social Security and Medicaid [25] is an issue they champion. [26]
Third Way proposals to reform Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security were included in White House debt talks and the congressional “Super Committee” deliberations.

Social Security (United States)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Social Security is funded through payroll taxes called Federal Insurance Contributions Act tax (FICA) and/or Self Employed Contributions Act Tax, (SECA). Tax deposits are collected by the Internal Revenue Service, IRS and are formally entrusted to the Federal Old-Age and Survivors Insurance Trust Fund, the Federal Disability Insurance Trust Fund, the Federal Hospital Insurance Trust Fund, or the Federal Supplementary Medical Insurance Trust Fund which comprise the Social Security Trust Funds.[
Total Social Security expenditures in 2013 were $1.3 trillion, 8.4% of the $16.3 trillion GNP (2013) and 37% of the Federal expenditures of $3.684 trillion.[5][6] Income derived from Social Security is currently estimated to keep roughly 20% of all Americans, age 65 or older, above the Federally defined poverty level.


I've never heard of Third Way, but they are apparently central to much of the Democratic Party's current policy positions. I was trying to find exactly what had been proposed to cut the Social Security program. If they allow young people to opt out of Social Security and buy their own pension plans, I would be against it, because it is my understanding that the actual source of money going out to Seniors is the current taxes being collected at the time. I had heard that there is no actual Social Security Fund; at the same time there used to be complaints about Congress borrowing from the Social Security Fund, with the danger of bankrupting it. When the young people reach age 67 or so they will be able to collect. The Wikipedia article does define what the sources of the Social Security Fund are, so it does exist.

One theory is that the Baby Boom generation – us – is too large to be covered without bankrupting the “fund” before the young ones come along. If that is so, maybe we need to raise the FICA and SECA taxes now, though there are always complaints when taxes are raised. We need the financial safety net of Social Security and Medicare for elderly people and the disabled. They can't work anymore, after all, even if someone would give them a job. We can't let politicians dismantle the safety net – too many people depend on it now, and many of those young ones certainly will, too, when they come of age. If you haven't done very well all your life and saved your money, you can't afford to retire on your own resources. It just costs too much money to live.


The end for today.

Tuesday, October 29, 2013
manessmorrison2@yahoo.com

News of the day

Obama administration knew millions could not keep their health insurance
President Obama repeatedly assured Americans that after the Affordable Care Act became law, people who liked their health insurance would be able to keep it. But millions of Americans are getting or are about to get cancellation letters for their health insurance under Obamacare, say experts, and the Obama administration has known that for at least three years.
Four sources deeply involved in the Affordable Care Act tell NBC News that 50 to 75 percent of the 14 million consumers who buy their insurance individually can expect to receive a “cancellation” letter or the equivalent over the next year because their existing policies don’t meet the standards mandated by the new health care law. One expert predicts that number could reach as high as 80 percent. And all say that many of those forced to buy pricier new policies will experience “sticker shock.”
None of this should come as a shock to the Obama administration. The law states that policies in effect as of March 23, 2010 will be “grandfathered,” meaning consumers can keep those policies even though they don’t meet requirements of the new health care law. But the Department of Health and Human Services then wrote regulations that narrowed that provision, by saying that if any part of a policy was significantly changed since that date -- the deductible, co-pay, or benefits, for example -- the policy would not be grandfathered.
Buried in Obamacare regulations from July 2010 is an estimate that because of normal turnover in the individual insurance market, “40 to 67 percent” of customers will not be able to keep their policy. And because many policies will have been changed since the key date, “the percentage of individual market policies losing grandfather status in a given year exceeds the 40 to 67 percent range.”  
That means the administration knew that more than 40 to 67 percent of those in the individual market would not be able to keep their plans, even if they liked them.
Yet President Obama, who had promised in 2009, “if you like your health plan, you will be able to keep your health plan,” was still saying in 2012, “If [you] already have health insurance, you will keep your health insurance.”
“This says that when they made the promise, they knew half the people in this market outright couldn’t keep what they had and then they wrote the rules so that others couldn’t make it either,” said  Robert Laszewski, of Health Policy and Strategy Associates, a consultant who works for health industry firms. Laszewski estimates that 80 percent of those in the individual market will not be able to keep their current policies and will have to buy insurance that meets requirements of the new law, which generally requires a richer package of benefits than most policies today.
The White House does not dispute that many in the individual market will lose their current coverage, but argues they will be offered better coverage in its place, and that many will get tax subsidies that would offset any increased costs.
“One of the main goals of the law is to ensure that people have insurance they can rely on – that doesn’t discriminate or charge more based on pre-existing conditions.  The consumers who are getting notices are in plans that do not provide all these protections – but in the vast majority of cases, those same insurers will automatically shift their enrollees to a plan that provides new consumer protections and, for nearly half of individual market enrollees, discounts through premium tax credits,” said White House spokesperson Jessica Santillo.
“Nothing in the Affordable Care Act forces people out of their health plans: The law allows plans that covered people at the time the law was enacted to continue to offer that same coverage to the same enrollees – nothing has changed and that coverage can continue into 2014,” she said
Individual insurance plans with low premiums often lack basic benefits, such as prescription drug coverage, or carry high deductibles and out-of-pocket costs. The Affordable Care Act requires all companies to offer more benefits, such as mental health care, and also bars companies from denying coverage for preexisting conditions.
Today, White House spokesman Jay Carney was asked about the president’s promise that consumers would be able to keep their health care. “What the president said and what everybody said all along is that there are going to be changes brought about by the Affordable Care Act to create minimum standards of coverage, minimum services that every insurance plan has to provide,” Carney said. “So it's true that there are existing healthcare plans on the individual market that don't meet those minimum standards and therefore do not qualify for the Affordable Care Act.”
Other experts said that most consumers in the individual market will not be able to keep their policies. Nancy Thompson, senior vice president of CBIZ Benefits, which helps companies manage their employee benefits, says numbers in this market are hard to pin down, but that data from states and carriers suggests “anywhere from 50 to 75 percent” of individual policy holders will get cancellation letters. Kansas Insurance Commissioner Sandy Praeger, who chairs the health committee of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, says that estimate is “probably about right.” She added that a few states are asking insurance companies to cancel and replace policies, rather than just amend them, to avoid confusion.
A spokesman for America's Health Plans says there are no precise numbers on how many will receive cancellations letters or get notices that their current policies don’t meet ACA standards. In both cases, consumers will not be able to keep their current coverage.
Those getting the cancellation letters are often shocked and unhappy.
George Schwab, 62, of North Carolina, said he was "perfectly happy" with his plan from Blue Cross Blue Shield, which also insured his wife for a $228 monthly premium. But this past September, he was surprised to receive a letter saying his policy was no longer available. The "comparable" plan the insurance company offered him carried a $1,208 monthly premium and a $5,500 deductible.
And the best option he’s found on the exchange so far offered a 415 percent jump in premium, to $948 a month.
"The deductible is less," he said, "But the plan doesn't meet my needs. Its unaffordable."
"I'm sitting here looking at this, thinking we ought to just pay the fine and just get insurance when we're sick," Schwab added. "Everybody's worried about whether the website works or not, but that's fixable. That's just the tip of the iceberg. This stuff isn't fixable." 
 
Heather Goldwater, 38, of South Carolina, is raising a new baby while running her own PR firm. She said she received a letter last July from Cigna, her insurance company, that said the company would no longer offer her individual plan, and promised to send a letter by October offering a comparable option. So far, she hasn't received anything. 
 
"I'm completely overwhelmed with a six-month-old and a business,” said Goldwater. “The last thing I can do is spend hours poring over a website that isn't working, trying to wrap my head around this entire health care overhaul."
Goldwater said she supports the new law and is grateful for provisions helping folks like her with pre-existing conditions, but she worries she won’t be able to afford the new insurance, which is expected to cost more because it has more benefits. "I'm jealous of people who have really good health insurance," she said. "It's people like me who are stuck in the middle who are going to get screwed." 
 
Richard Helgren, a Lansing, Mich., retiree, said he was “irate” when he received a letter informing him that his wife Amy's $559 a month health plan was being changed because of the law. The plan the insurer offered raised his deductible from $0 to $2,500, and the company gave him 17 days to decide.
The higher costs spooked him and his wife, who have painstakingly planned for their retirement years. "Every dollar we didn't plan for erodes our standard of living," Helgren said.
Ulltimately, though Helgren opted not to shop through the ACA exchanges, he was able to apply for a good plan with a slightly lower premium through an insurance agent.
He said he never believed President Obama’s promise that people would be able to keep their current plans.
"I heard him only about a thousand times," he said. "I didn't believe him when he said it though because there was just no way that was going to happen. They wrote the regulations so strictly that none of the old polices can grandfather."
For months, Laszewski has warned that some consumers will face sticker shock. He recently got his own notice that he and his wife cannot keep their current policy, which he described as one of the best, so-called "Cadillac" plans offered for 2013. Now, he said, the best comparable plan he found for 2014 has a smaller doctor network, larger out-of-pocket costs, and a 66 percent premium increase.
“Mr. President, I like the coverage I have," Laszweski said. "It is the best health insurance policy you can buy."


Until I got Medicare a few years ago I had no health insurance due to the cost. My health was very good and I simply didn't go to the doctor very often. I see from this that a large number of individuals do carry insurance, but it doesn't cover prescription drugs or mental healthcare. Now the Affordable Health Care mandates full coverage, but allows the insurance company to set the premiums, deductibles and co-pays, and being one of the big boys of the business world, they are setting the prices high. The president says the government will help cover premium costs and lower premiums may be found on the network they have set up – whose website isn't working – so I hope that will turn out to be true. $1,200 a month for health insurance is a very high cost on most budgets. It would be impossible on mine. I wonder what the fine that the IRS is planning to charge will be. If it's not too high, I'm betting many people will opt out on buying insurance and just pay the fine. There will be more bad news for the Obama administration on all this as time goes by, I'm sure, and there may be even more problems with the plan yet to be seen. I'm safe because I have Medicare, but I'm sorry to see this. I wonder how many buyers they have to have in order to keep the Affordable Care plan afloat?



Spy chiefs to face Congress as European allies complain about surveillance


WASHINGTON -- When top U.S. intelligence officials testified at a congressional hearing weeks ago, the public uproar was over the National Security Agency collecting the phone and email records of Americans.
But when the NSA director and other spy chiefs appear at a House Intelligence Committee hearing on Tuesday it will be against a backdrop of angry European allies accusing the United States of spying on their leaders and citizens.

The most prominent target appears to have been German Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose mobile phone was allegedly tapped by the NSA.
More than any previous disclosures from material given to journalists by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, the reports of spying on close U.S. allies have forced the White House to promise reforms and even acknowledge that America's electronic surveillance may have gone too far.
"We recognize there needs to be additional constraints on how we gather and use intelligence," White House spokesman Jay Carney said on Monday.
Senator Dianne Feinstein, who chairs the Senate's intelligence committee, joined the ranks of critics on Monday, expressing outrage at U.S. intelligence collection on allies, and pique that her committee was not informed.

"With respect to NSA collection of intelligence on leaders of U.S. allies -- including France, Spain, Mexico and Germany -- let me state unequivocally: I am totally opposed," said Feinstein, who appeared to confirm U.S. spying on Merkel's communications since 2002.
The White House is conducting a review of intelligence programs prompted by disclosures about top secret spying programs to the media by Snowden, who is living in Russia, out of reach of U.S. attempts to arrest him.
NSA Director General Keith Alexander, NSA Deputy Director Chris Inglis, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and Deputy Attorney General James Cole will testify at an open hearing of the House Intelligence Committee at 1:30 p.m. ET on Tuesday.
Their testimony will cover NSA programs and potential changes to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which regulates electronic eavesdropping.

"The House Intelligence Committee continues to assess a number of proposals to improve transparency and strengthen privacy protections to further build the confidence of the American public in our nation's FISA programs," said Susan Phalen, spokeswoman for Republican committee Chairman Mike Rogers.
The Senate Intelligence Committee conducted a similar hearing in late September at which Feinstein said proposals included putting limits on the NSA's phone metadata program, prohibiting collection of the content of phone calls, and legally requiring that intelligence analysts have a "reasonable articulable suspicion" that a phone number was associated with terrorism in order to query the database.
Heather Conley, director of the Europe Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a former deputy assistant secretary of state for Europe, said the administration needed to be more proactive in handling the uproar.
"The administration has been completely reactive to these leaks," she said.
The allegations of U.S. spying on Merkel and other leaders are likely to have a lasting impact on relations, Conley said.
In the last several years, Europeans have been disappointed with the Obama administration over its failure to close the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and its use of drone strikes to kill terrorism suspects. The spectacle of the recent federal government shutdown also dented U.S. prestige in Europe.
"It's just raising really big doubts, uncertainties and question marks about not only the president's leadership but whether the United States is a reliable ally," Conley said.


The danger in having the capability to track the conversations of millions of people is that a government – any government – is likely to use it and cloak it under Secret clearances. Then millions of patriotic citizens will defend it as a duty of their loyalty. Many Americans are in love with an idea of America as the most powerful, and therefore the “best” nation in the world. It seems to me that the rule “absolute power corrupts absolutely” applies. We need to be more transparent in our actions to retain the good will of our allies, and also to deserve the claim that we are the “best.” Israel was in the news several years ago for spying on the US and I was angry. It doesn't feel good to be on the receiving end of aggressive actions, so we should only do such things if there is a pressing need. We are at peace with Germany, and the head of an allied state should have a reasonable right to privacy.



'Don't giggle': Law firm under fire for memo to female employees
A law firm's employee memo about professional behavior has gone viral — and is being blasted online for what some say are sexist undertones. 
Prestigious global law firm Clifford Chance, which has 35 offices in 25 countries, is coming under fire for the five-page guide, sent to all the female employees in its two U.S. offices in New York and Washington, D.C. The tips, including “don’t giggle,” “don’t take your purse up to the podium,” and “no one heard Hillary the day she showed cleavage” was sent last week and leaked online shortly after.
The legal blog Above the Law acquired the memo and published it. Immediately, commenters began to weigh in with a wide range of opinions — some felt that the email was sexist, while others thought that the advice was solid despite a couple of clunkers taken out of context.
“Where is the corresponding document for men?” one commenter asked.
“Read the memo and take a lesson from what might apply to you. If some of the points don't apply to you, ignore them and move on,” wrote another.
A spokeswoman from Clifford Chance dismisses the allegations that the firm is sexist, saying that the memo was actually written by a woman. “It was put together by a female partner from her personal perspective after years of public speaking,” the rep told TODAY.com. “A lot of the tips in the document were gender-neutral. We believe that it is important that women as well as men are given access to a range of different viewpoints and approaches.”
According to Staci Zaretsky, the Above the Law assistant editor and law school grad who posted the memo, the Clifford Chance email was seen as insulting because so many of its tips (like “wear a suit, not your party outfit”) seemed obvious. 
“By the time you graduate from law school and pass the bar and work in a law office , you know how to dress,” she said, pointing out that any newly hired lawyer has already worked internships or summer associate jobs. “You saw other people dress poorly and get in trouble, and you know how to stay on the safe side.”
This isn’t the first time that a female Clifford Chance employee has spoken out about work. Last year, one of the firm’s female associates, who called herself Ms. X, quit her job by writing an email about the struggles of balancing family and a demanding workload.
The email, written in the form of a daily schedule, went viral. It included items like “Attempt to prioritize to-do list and start tasks; start an email delegating a portion of the tasks (then, remember there is no one under me)” and “finally arrive at daycare, baby spits up on suit, get kids to their classrooms , realize I have a conference call in 15 minutes.”
Victoria Schwartz, associate professor at Pepperdine University’s law school, believes that the Clifford Chance memo may have been a response to stories like Ms. X's — an attempt to specifically help out female employees by giving them advice from older, more experienced colleagues.
“Part of what we teach our law students is how to be professionals,” explains Schwartz. “I can’t model for my male students what male attire should look like, but I make a point of modeling it for women.”
Schwartz feels that female-specific advice from women is a good way to address workplace inequality. “Part of this memo is saying, ‘look, there are different dynamics.' You can pretend it doesn’t exist or you can give women tools. There’s at least potential that the firm was trying to do something good here.”


This was interesting to me in that some of the things mentioned (don't show cleavage) are apparently a problem at the current time or they wouldn't have been mentioned. I know they are in some work environments that I have been in. I've seen people in what looks like party dresses at work – super soft and sheer fabrics – and while I don't want to have to wear a suit to work because I like a “business casual” office, I would buy suits if I worked in a prestigious law office. “Don't giggle” does sound sexist to me. For the men we might say “don't be a bully.” Some of the things in this memo seemed to be aimed at the non-professional level of employees and not at the lawyers. I would expect the lawyers to try to be dignified and follow conservative dress rules as a matter of course. One thing I didn't see mentioned was “don't wear a mini-skirt.” Many business suits have very short skirts. That should be stated while they're at it. And maybe “don't wear perfume or other highly scented products.” Many people are allergic to perfume in the air, especially the stronger scents. I think sending this memo around was more fair than firing employees without warning over one of these issues. And I don't find that the phrase “be professional” is informative enough, if the business is thinking about dismissing the employee. They need fair warning in that case. So, for me, this memo was not anti-feminist. It might have more to do with “class” and personal maturity instead.



Poverty linked to smaller brains, study finds

NEW YORK - Children who grow up in poor families may have smaller brains than their more well-off peers, says a new study. But good parenting may help overcome that disadvantage.
Researchers found that kids who grew up poor tended to have smaller hippocampus and amygdala volumes. Those areas of the brain are partly responsible for regulating memory and emotions.
"Generally speaking, larger brains within a certain range of normal are healthier brains," Dr. Joan Luby, the study's lead author, said.
"Having a smaller brain within a certain range of normal is generally not healthy. It's associated with poorer outcomes," Luby told Reuters. She is a professor of child psychiatry at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.
Prior studies looking at poverty and brain size found similar patterns. But Luby and her colleagues also wanted to look at what may bring about brain changes.
They found kids tended to have smaller brains when they had experienced stressful life events or when their parents were hostile or unsupportive.
The new findings give parents and researchers a "very specific and changeable" target, Luby said.
For their report, published in JAMA Pediatrics, she and her colleagues used data from an existing study of 145 children from in and around St. Louis.
The children were between the ages of six and 12 at the time their brains were imaged. They had been followed since preschool with annual screenings.
The screenings included tests for stress and whether or not the children had entered puberty. At one session, parents and their children were observed together and the researchers assessed parenting styles.
They found children from poor families tended to have smaller brains. But stressful life events and a lack of parental support in family interactions explained some of that link.
The study can't prove poverty or parenting caused the changes in brain size. But the findings suggest the chance that poor children will have smaller brains may be reduced with supportive parenting, Luby said.
She added that kids would do best with parents who are sensitive, nurturing, attentive and emotionally available.
"It's not as if those affluent families are protected from these same (parenting) issues," Charles Nelson, who wrote an editorial accompanying the new study, said.
"The reason it's probably more common in poorer families is that they're lacking in resources and trying to make ends meet."
"There is a level of background stress … that may keep them from being the parent they want to be," Nelson told Reuters. He is a professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School and Boston Children's Hospital.
Nelson said the findings are limited by the fact that many children in the study were depressed or at high risk of depression. That may influence the results. But he said the new study adds to what is already known about poverty and childhood brain development.
Luby said it will be important to find out what interventions - such as early preschool programs, for instance - may encourage a healthy environment for the developing brain.
"Biology is very much influenced by the environment," she said. "The question is what period might be the time when the brain is most sensitive to influence."


It looks like poverty tends to affect how well people parent their children in many cases. It is stressful on a daily basis to struggle with the lack of money. That it actually affects the size of their child's brain is surprising and could show how a kid's background causes him to have poorer grades in school and less emotional control – like the girl who recently was arrested for bullying another child. Her mother has been arrested for beating two of the other children, and she probably did the same to all her children. Maybe social service agencies should intervene earlier when abuse is suspected and remove the child from the home. Of course sometimes foster parents are no better in their parenting skills than the original parents, and they don't have the natural love that most parents do. I noticed that this article didn't mention the simple differences in nutrition that also tend to be part of the poverty cycle. Poor nutrition causes all sorts of developmental problems.


Study reveals people physically take pleasure in others' pain
Scientific evidence shows that people take pleasure in others' pain, a study claims.
A collection of four experiments showed biological and self-reported evidence that people experienced happiness when someone they were jealous of or despised had something negative happen to them.
The phenomenon is known as "Schadenfreude."
The first experiment measured subjects' physical responses to various people and situations. The participants had their cheek movements monitored with an electromyogram (EMG), which measures the electrical activity of facial movements when a person smiles.
The participants were shown photos of various stereotypical people: the elderly (pity), students or Americans (pride), drug addicts (disgust) and rich professionals (envy). Then, the photographs were paired with a positive, neutral or negative events like winning five dollars, going to the bathroom or getting soaked by a taxi. The subjects were then asked how they would feel if this event happened to the person in the picture.
No matter what people said, the scientists saw that people tended to smile more when something negative happened to the rich individuals.
The second experiment used self-reporting and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans to see if subjects were okay with harming certain people. The fMRI looked at blood flow changes in the brain. The subjects were shown the same photographs and events in the first study, and then asked on a scale of one to nine (with nine being extremely good) how they felt about the event happening to the person.
The participants said they felt the worst about the positive events happening to the rich individuals, and felt the best about the negative occurrences happening to people in that group.
Two weeks later, the subjects were asked to take an online survey. They played a scenario-based game that allowed them to hurt another person with electric shocks in order to avoid others from being hurt. They were all too willing to allow the rich professionals to be shocked when they didn't have to physically tell someone their answer.
"People were willing to hurt an envy target, saying, 'Yes, let's shock her,'" lead author Mina Cikara, an assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon University, said in a press release. "We found that surprising because we weren't certain participants would self report that. While it's true that people are generally averse to harming others, the bottom line is that people don't feel this way all the time."
The third experiment switched up the stereotypes of the rich individual in order to get rid of stereotype bias. The subjects were asked to read various scenarios about an investment banker, including one where he was employed and a member of the status quo (signifying envy), another where he was advising clients pro-bono (pride), another where he was using his money to buy drugs (disgust) and another where he was unemployed but still dressing as if he was going to work (pity).
As the previous experiments showed, the subjects were less understanding about the envy and disgust scenarios than they were about the pride and pity.
In the final experiment, subjects were asked to watch a game between the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees. All participants had been prescreened for "intense fandom" for either team. They were monitored with fMRIs, and self-reported how they felt when they watched a series of plays where the opponent of their favorite team was struck out, scored runs or made amazing plays.
Not surprisingly, subjects reported more pleasure when they saw their team winning. But, when they watched a neutral team -- the Baltimore Orioles -- do the same thing, the fans had little to no reaction to positive or negative events. They also did not wish Orioles fans any harm.
That was until the subjects saw their rival team lose to the Orioles -- they all reported intense happiness.
An online self-reported survey two weeks after the test showed that both groups of "intense" fans were more likely to heckle, insult, threaten or hit a opposing fan while watching the plays.
"We used a sporting event because it's something you can bottle," said Fiske. "Rabid fans are passionate about it, and we were looking for an intergroup phenomenon that reaches people where they live. This is certainly it. But it's important to remember that this study isn't just about sports teams. It's about intergroup rivals of more consequence."
The authors argued that a lack of empathy for others isn't always a pathological problem. It can be a human response that many people experience. They pointed out that if Schadenfreude exists, setting up competitions in the workplace may backfire -- and breed a desire among co-workers to see others fail.
"It's possible, in some circumstances, that competition is good. In other ways, people might be preoccupied with bringing other people down, and that's not what an organization wants," Cikara said.
This mentality can also spread to the American government, which the authors argued is seen as a world power but not necessarily one that can relate to other people or countries. Studies have shown that this makes America a bully in other people's eyes, and the authors pointed out this study may show that this mentality can increase animosity among citizens of other countries.
The study was published in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences in September.


This story is about the human tendency to compete. I am not generally competitive unless confronted, though I do feel it with political party issues, sports teams if I watch the sport, or certain human interactions such as bullying behavior and extreme social class privileges. I don't approve of bringing up kids to be competitive people, since I think humility is better. Striving to achieve can be done without ego ruling the personality – just try to do your best in your own endeavors. That's good enough. I like to see people cooperate instead of having conflicts, and be nurturing individuals in their relationships. Love if you can, tolerate if you can't. Then relax a little and enjoy life.



Amid controversy over NSA programs, Congress mulls changes
Amid growing questions about the United States' international surveillance programs, the House Intelligence Committee is turning its attention back to the question of whether to amend the laws about metadata collection by the National Security Agency.
The rare open hearing before the panel Tuesday features Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, Deputy Attorney General James Cole, National Security Agency Director General Keith Alexander, and Deputy Director of the NSA Chris Inglis. The witnesses from the NSA are all but certain to be asked about U.S. surveillance of its allies, which has been in the news this week.
Chairman Mike Rogers opened the hearing with a defense of the country's intelligence collection, which he said has and will help to break up terrorist plots in an increasingly interconnected world.
"Our challenge is to build confidence and transparency while keeping our intelligence services agile and effective against our adversaries," he said. Rogers added that what makes the U.S. unique is not that it collects foreign intelligence - every country does that, he said - but that it has a unique commitment to privacy.
"China does not ask a FISA court for a warrant to listen to a phone call on their state-owned and censored network. The Russian Duma does not conduct oversight on the FSB" he said. "But America has those checks; America has those balances. That is why we should be proud of the manner in which America collects intelligence."
NSA spying: Will Obama end surveillance program on world leaders?
NSA surveillance: Officials defend programs
Among the changes the panel is putting the attorney general, instead of the NSA, in charge of making a "reasonable, articulable suspicion" determination that a particular phone number is related to a terrorist and therefore may be used to search bulk telephone records. They are also examining ways to increase transparency of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court orders, including the possibility of requiring more court orders to be declassified or publicly released in redacted form.
Rogers said transparency could also improve by codifying the process and standards for what happens to information that is incidentally collected about U.S. citizens who are not the target of their programs, and to provide more public reporting how often it happens.
Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger,D-Md., the committee's ranking member, said, "One key fact we need to keep in mind is that NSA's focus is on foreign threats. Under FISA, NSA does not target Americans in the U.S. and does not target Americans anywhere else, without a court order."
The entire U.S. surveillance program has been under fire this year after leaks from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed the extent of the collection of both domestic and foreign communications.
Germany has been particularly incensed after learning that the U.S. government monitored the communications of Chancellor Angela Merkel for years. The White House insists it is not and will not spy on Merkel in the future, but media reports indicate that President Obama only learned of the program this summer.
On Monday, Senate Intelligence Committee chairwoman Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., indicated that the Senate was also not informed about the program and called for a total review of all intelligence programs.
"With respect to NSA collection of intelligence on leaders of U.S. allies--including France, Spain, Mexico and Germany--let me state unequivocally: I am totally opposed," she said in a statement. She also said the White House had informed her that monitoring of the U.S.'s allies would not continue.
The White House did not comment on Feinstein's statement, instead asserting that they are in the middle of a broad review of intelligence collection that will examine "whether we have the appropriate posture when it comes to Heads of State; how we coordinate with our closest allies and partners; and what further guiding principles or constraints might be appropriate for our efforts," according to National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden. "We are also looking at whether the system that's been in place for many years, called the National Intelligence Priorities Framework, could be modified to provide better policy guidance for our intelligence activities."
The review is expected to conclude by the end of the year.


I hope they do cut back on information collection from people who are not under rightful suspicion, both in this country and abroad. Having it be restricted to cases that are approved by the Attorney General as stated above would be very helpful. In an article several years ago about the kind of information they were collecting it gave as an example that a reference in a telephone conversation to “a birthday party” could be in actuality about a terrorist attack. It's clear to me that it is far more likely to be about a birthday party, just like it says.

After 9/11 our regulations concerning the government spying on the people of the US changed. In one way it was understandable, but in another way it was dangerous. We came one more step toward being a “Big Brother” society. Not long after that there were several instances in the news of people going to the airport to travel somewhere and finding that there was a “no fly” ban on their name. Sometimes it was a common name and therefore a mistake was made, but sometimes it could easily be that “evidence” collected by the NSA had made it's way into a file somewhere in the government on that citizen. With a rule like “birthday party” means “bomb attack” I can see how a mistake like that could be made.

I do hope that Congress will make some meaningful changes in our laws. It's bad indeed that spying on the likes of Angela Merkel has been going on, apparently without any real suspicion of her, but the citizens of this country should be safe from it as well. Unfortunately I can see why some people hate and fear “the government.” While those people are generally on the borderline of the law --- members of the NeoNazi party, etc. -– they are looking at the great amount of information that is arbitrarily withheld from the populace. That poisons the atmosphere of politics in this country and makes us less stable as a society.

Monday, October 28, 2013

News clips of the day


Pack of bikers arrested on Long Island for speeding recklessly, police say

NEW YORK — Seven motorcyclists were arrested on reckless driving charges on Long Island on Sunday, and dozens more were issued citations, authorities said.
Dozens of 911 callers reported that the pack of bikers and ATV operators estimated to number from 20 to 50 were speeding and driving recklessly between 3 p.m. and 4 p.m., according to the Suffolk County Police Department.
Police from two precincts pursued the pack of bikers before making arrests and issuing summonses. Several of the arrests were for fleeing police and leaving the scene of an accident.
In addition to the seven bikers arrested for reckless driving, another pack of 30 was arrested for trespassing after gathering on county property.
Earlier this month, Suffolk County PD made seven arrests for a pack of bikers on Columbus Day driving at high speeds on the Long Island Expressway. Speeds in a chase with two police cruisers reached 90 mph at one point. One of the bikes pulled over that day had "Let me guess ... License and Registration" painted on the side.
Both of these incidents follow a widely publicized biker attack in New York, in which the driver of an SUV was surrounded and later beaten by a pack of bikers in Manhattan. An undercover New York Police Department officer who took part in the ride has been charged, along with several other off-duty officers.
Daniel Arkin of NBC News contributed to this report.


The NYC police are being more assertive with bikers now, it seems. I think it's safe to say they learned a lesson with the totally out of control SUV incident earlier. I wonder if they have been sued. I hate motorcycles if they weave in and out of lane and generally cause trouble, but if they drive in a disciplined manner and go the speed limit they're kind of exciting in a pleasant way.



He's not dead, he just plays it on TV
Professional Dead Guy is not a career many people can make happen. But one man has realized his dream of playing a dead body, and he clearly has the cold, clammy touch for the job.
“When I started doing this, I thought, ‘I really do look like a dead guy,’” said Chuck Lamb, the living human behind DeadBodyGuy.com. “I’m pale and I’m bald, I have bags under my eyes — you could definitely pick me out as a zombie or a dead guy anywhere.”
Lamb, who has played dead bodies on TV and in movies wasn’t always the go-to pro corpse he is today. A former Ohio-based computer programmer, one night he dreamed that he was a dead body on “Law & Order,” with Det. Lennie Briscoe staring down at him. It was a vision of the future, he hoped.
“I told my wife, ‘I could be Dead Body Man!’” he said. “Everybody needs a dead body.”
Lamb created a website in 2005 to self-promote himself to the industry, and got more response than he bargained for (he says they stopped counting hits on the site after 50 million). He landed corpse jobs on TV series like “What I Like About You” and “The Jury,” plus movies like “Stiffs,” and garnered a lot of media attention, including a story in The New York Times and a 2006 appearance on Today.
Lamb got lucky — it seems that everyone thinks they can play a dead body. And while there’s a bottomless well of need for corpses at any number of series and reality re-enactment dramas, David Waldron, who casts background actors for “Law & Order: SVU” said the competition is, well, stiff.
“Everyone says ‘I want to be a dead body,’” said Waldron. “And I say, ‘You don’t really want to be a dead body.’ If you’re working with me, you know it’s not an easy job.”
That’s because it’s uncomfortable work, particularly on “SVU.” On that show, bodies get dumped in the mud, covered in red corn syrup and maggots, stuffed behind a dumpster with cats crawling on them, and left behind with their clothes torn in cold Central Park. Which means the actors have to endure those indignities, too. Other times, a body in the autopsy room may require three hours of makeup, while a burn victim can take up to five hours.
“The novelty goes quickly out the window,” said “SVU’s” casting director Jonathan Strauss. “That separates the professionals from the amateurs. The hardest working men and women in show business are the dead.”
Lamb, however, had a knack for it. Aside from — as he puts it — looking a little dead already, he was extremely dedicated to his work. For “Jury,” he was portraying a body in the Florida sand dunes when he was accidentally laid him out on a pile of red ants. “I laid there for ten minutes before I said, ‘These ants are biting the piss out of me!’” he recalled. “They had to hose me off I had so many red ants on me.”
For some, playing dead can be a way station to greater things: Actor Mike Shiflett, who has since worked on HBO’s “John Adams” and Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln” in live, speaking roles, had an early start as serial killer Ray Copeland on Discovery ID’s “Forensic Files.” It helped him discover that he really, really loved acting. “It’s been fun, it’s been an adventure, and a real learning curve,” he said.
As for Lamb, he's scaled back his ambitions, since he didn’t want to move to Los Angeles or New York to really dedicate himself entirely to the dead guy pursuit. But he would like to fulfill one remaining dream. 
“If I got on ‘Law & Order,’” he said, “we could close up shop after that.
“Everybody wants to make their mark in the world,” he said. “It’s fulfilling a dream. I know it might seem a weird dream, but it’s my dream.”


Several times when I was looking for work I have found ads for a film company down in St. Augustine asking for extras. They make commercials, and maybe some other short films, too. I never went down to try out, but it always seemed like it would be fun. It's a long way to drive to work, though, and I probably wouldn't get the role. It's safer to stick with what I know. I have since stopped looking for work and am living very carefully on Social Security. I'm 68 years old, and it feels good not to worry about a job.



christening revealed 

Jillian Eugenios TODAY
Oct. 26, 2013 at 5:01 PM ET
When the photos of Prince George's christening were released this week, the world oohed and ahhed.
Get ready for round two.

© Jason Bell / Camera Press
The portraits of Prince George’s christening were taken in the Morning Room at Clarence House, which dates back to 1825.
An additional photo was released Saturday, which shows an intimate moment between the three-month-old and his adoring parents Prince William and Duchess Kate. 
The photo was taken by celebrity portrait photographer Jason Bell, who snapped the impossibly adorable baby and his famous family just after the christening ceremony. 
The affair was attended by only close relatives and friends. Those in attendance included the royal couple’s family members, including their parents and siblings, as well as Queen Elizabeth II, who gathered for the portraits in the Morning Room at Clarence House, the official residence of Prince Charles and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall.


I have copied the christening photo of Prince George and his parents, so I hope it transfers over to the blog. On the news several days ago a British commentator put Prince George's photo beside Prince William's when he was the same age and there is a close resemblance. His mother looks like she is very proud of him. I hope she and William will have a peaceful and happy marriage, and not like that of Charles and Diana. Prince William doesn't look like the carousing type, and he also seems really to love Kate. It cheers me up to see them.



Man live-tweets former NSA chief's overheard phone call on train
A man eavesdropping on a public phone conversation by a former national security official took "overheard on the train" to a new level on Thursday. 
Tom Matzzie was riding on an Acela Express headed from Washington to New York City when he started live-tweeting details from what he said was a loud phone conversation of the passenger two rows behind him — former National Security Agency Director Michael Hayden. Matzzie, the owner of a renewable energy company and a former Washington director of the political group MoveOn.org, claimed Hayden could be heard bashing the Obama administration while giving "off-the-record" interviews and discussing covert sites. 
It wasn't until about a half hour into the ride that Matzzie realized it was Hayden on the phone, after initially believing it was current Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. 
"After probably the third phone call, I looked back one more time and said, 'That's not Clapper, that's Michael Hayden,''' Matzzie told Peter Alexander on MSNBC's "Andrea Mitchell Reports" on Friday. "At some point I felt compelled to share what I was experiencing, so I took to Twitter."
Hayden talking about a famous blackberry now.
— Tom Matzzie (@tommatzzie) October 24, 2013

Hayden was bragging about rendition and black sites a minute ago.
— Tom Matzzie (@tommatzzie) October 24, 2013

Michael Hayden on Acela giving reporters disparaging quotes about admin. "Remember, just refer as former senior admin" #exNSAneedsadayjob
— Tom Matzzie (@tommatzzie) October 24, 2013

On Acela: former NSA spy boss Michael Hayden just ended last of handful of interviews bashing admin.
— Tom Matzzie (@tommatzzie) October 24, 2013

On Acela listening to former NSA spy boss Michael Hayden give "off record" interviews. I feel like I'm in the NSA. Except I'm in public.
— Tom Matzzie (@tommatzzie) October 24, 2013

On Acela: phone ringing. I think the jig is up. Maybe somebody is telling him I'm here. Do I hide?
— Tom Matzzie (@tommatzzie) October 24, 2013

On Acela: Hayden's comments to press were clearly about NSA spying on foreign allies. #haydenacela
— Tom Matzzie (@tommatzzie) October 24, 2013
Hayden soon got wind of Matzzie's tweets and paid him a visit, even taking a picture with him. Hayden declined comment when reached by TODAY. 
Me and Steeler fan Michael Hayden. pic.twitter.com/vOmr6RIMPe
— Tom Matzzie (@tommatzzie) October 24, 2013

I just had a very nice conversation with Michael Hayden. He was a gentleman and we disagree.
— Tom Matzzie (@tommatzzie) October 24, 2013
"There was definitely a moment of kind of...I clenched myself,'' Matzzie told Alexander. "He's not just the former head of the NSA, he's also the former head of the CIA, so there was a little bit of that. I suspected he was probably going to be a gentlemen, and we'd have a conversation and that's what happened.
"The first thing he said was, 'Would you like a real interview?' I said, 'Well I'm not a reporter,' and then he said, 'Everybody is a reporter,' which I guess in the age of Twitter is true."
The two then launched into a discussion about the Fourth Amendment, warrant-less wire-tapping, and eavesdropping on foreign leaders, according to Matzzie. He also recalled overhearing Hayden say something about President Barack Obama's famous Blackberry. 
"The implication I got was he should know we're spying on these foreign leaders because we told him not to use a Blackberry, implying that we're listening to every other cell phone conversation int he world,'' Matzzie said. 
Matzzie believes he was not invading Hayden's privacy by live-tweeting his phone conversations. 
"First of all, I don't think it's a fair characterization,'' he said. "He was in public. There's no reasonable expectation of privacy when you're on the train blabbing like that. The right thing for him to do would've been to stand up, walk to the end of the train to one of the more private areas, and he would at that point be kind of cloaking himself in a presumption and expectation of privacy, and I would've been violating his privacy at that point to do those tweets." 


Can you believe this? You would think a head of the NSA would know to be careful on the telephone. Of course, I think the government has too many things classified as secret. Sometimes it's classified that way when the spying or other activities such as renditions and black sites shouldn't be happening at all. It's like the torture of prisoners in Iraq and even in Cuba. Too me it doesn't help our national security if the prisoners will make up a story to tell in order to stop the torture, but above all it goes against our position as an ethical society. How can we expect to be trusted?



Giant George, once world's tallest dog, dies
The Great Dane who once held the Guinness Book of World Records title for being the world’s tallest dog has died a month shy of his eighth birthday. Although the world knew him as Giant George, to his owners, Dave and Christine Nasser of Tuscon, Ariz., he was just plain old George, their beloved family pet.
“He was the outcast of the litter,” Dave Nasser told TODAY.com about the fateful day he first laid eyes on the blue-grey pooch. “He was off to the side, not playing with the others.”
But George was anything but a runt. Christine Nasser chose the pup’s name, telling her husband, “a dog this size needs a person’s name.” From then on, George was just another member of the family — even though his massive size sometimes caused surprisingly funny problems around the house. “His tail — one time he put a dent in the drywall just by wagging it,” Dave Nasser laughs. “Yet he was also delicate and gentle. The kids could be around and you were never worried.”
When Dave and Christine welcomed children — the kids are now 4 and 2 — George warmed up to them and kept a watchful eye on anyone who got too close. “Danes do not do well separated from their families. They want to hang out, be with you, spend time with you, be part of the family. They just want to feel included in everything.”
Once the Guinness Book came calling (George held the record from 2010-2012), the Nassers felt their lives change almost instantly. George had already been a local celebrity, with strangers asking to take pictures, but the new-found fame catapulted them to another level. Dave, who works in real estate, felt that George had become his second job. He organized a Facebook page, handled interview requests, and answered fan mail from around the world — including one request from a man in England who collects paw prints of famous dogs.
Since announcing George’s death on October 18, his owners have been bereft. But Dave has found comfort by going online and interacting with the fans around the world who had come to love the three-foot, seven-inch-tall dog.
“The day that we put up on Facebook that he had passed away,” he says, “we got 13,000 comments. They were all so amazingly nice. I just sat there, and it was so emotional. It helped, but it made me sad too.”
Touched by the kind responses, Dave knew he had to do something to memorialize the dog he loved so much. He’s organizing National Giant George Service Day on November 17. That day, he’s encouraging all of George’s fans to donate money or volunteer with their favorite animal-related charity.
“It’s hard to believe that he touched so many people,” Dave says about his ordinary pet-turned-celebrity. “It’s really overwhelming.”


Great Danes are usually very gentle, which is a good thing. Once when I was sitting in my car waiting for someone to come back a man leading a Great Dane walked by. I could have reached out the window and put my hand on its back. It was as tall as the window of my car. They are among the more beautiful dogs to me, to be so large. Their fur is fine and short – it looks like velvet.



Biden to Roker: 'I got so much heat' for inaugural parade handshake 
That handshake Al Roker snagged from the vice president during the inaugural parade earlier this year?
Yeah, it got Joe Biden in hot water.
“I got in so much trouble for coming over in the inauguration day parade with you,” he told Al Roker. “I got so much heat!”
The vice president took a break from viewing flood-ravaged Colorado communities to razz Roker about that infamous handshake. It took place while Roker was along the rope lines of the Jan. 21 parade commemorating President Obama’s second inauguration.
Roker had repeatedly called out to the vice president, urging him to come over for a handshake. Biden recounted the moment for FEMA administrator Craig Fugate following an interview the pair had just conducted.
“So I walked out and they said, ‘eh, that Biden. He’s running for president, man. He must be — he went to see Al Roker,’” the vice president recalled.
That’s when Roker went in for the big ask.
“The invitation is open at any time for you to come do the TODAY show,” he said.
Biden laughed off the invite, although he acknowledged, “I may need a job soon, you don’t know.”
“You’d be great,” Roker assured him.
TODAY is standing by.


People can't just “live” once they get into high government office. Every move has to be carefully considered to work with the Secret Service. The most appealing thing about Biden is that he is more relaxed than many politicians, and is full of quips. I do think he is bright enough to be President and make difficult decisions, though I wonder if he will run against Hillary Clinton. This next election will be very exciting for Democrats if Hillary runs. I think she has a chance to get the nomination, and I will probably vote for her if she does run.


Well, that's the news. It's time to go do errands.