Sunday, November 3, 2013
manessmorrison2@yahoo.com

News of the day:


Skydivers leap to escape fiery collision of planes over Wisconsin – NBC

By Gil Aegerter, Staff Writer, NBC News
Two single-engine aircraft carrying skydivers collided 12,000 feet above Superior, Wis., on Saturday evening, sending one plane plummeting to earth in flames – but all nine jumpers and both pilots survived, said one of the jumpers.
The only person injured, except for bumps and bruises, was the pilot of the plane that crashed. He used an emergency chute to escape the falling aircraft but suffered cuts, Mike Robinson, who was aboard that plane, told NBC News.
The incident occurred as a Cessna 185 was closely following a Cessna 182 for a maneuver called a tracking dive, Robinson said, in which a lead jumper is followed across the sky by the other jumpers.

Robinson, 64, of Duluth, Minn., said the weather was good – lingering clouds had dissipated. “The sun was just getting ready to set, it was our last load of the day,” he said. “It was just a perfect time to be up in the sky.”
He was one of four jumpers aboard the lead aircraft. All four were outside the door on the step ready to leap from 12,000 feet when the trailing plane collided with their aircraft – although Robinson said it is unclear just why that happened. The wings on his aircraft separated and the fuselage caught fire, and all four jumpers immediately leaped to safety.
The pilot had on an emergency parachute and was able to get out of the plummeting fuselage, although he suffered cuts to his hands and face, Robinson said. NBC station KJBR of Superior reported that he was taken by ambulance to a hospital, but Robinson said he did not seem too badly injured.
The other aircraft, a Cessna 185 with five jumpers and a pilot on board, went into a steep dive, Robinson said. Three jumpers had been on the step on the aircraft's exterior, and two were able to jump immediately, but the third was pinned to the outside, he said. Eventually that person was able to leap, and two others inside also jumped. The pilot was able to pull out of the dive after losing several thousand feet, then landed that aircraft, although it suffered damage, Robinson said.
“The outcome for us was as good as it could be,” he said.
Braydon Kurtz of Superior told the Duluth News Tribune that he was duck hunting along the St. Louis River.
“We heard a boom and looked up and there’s a fireball and smoke,” he said. He said one plane “was circling down and one was going down straight.” 
KJBR said the Federal Aviation Administration had been notified of the accident. The planes were owned by Skydive Superior.
Robinson said most of the jumpers were in their 20s and 30s, and he was the oldest member of the group. “This was my fourth jump of the day – I have over 900 skydives,” Robinson said. "I'll remember this one more than most.”


Jumping out of airplanes is one of those things I don't see myself ever doing, but I do admire those who learn to control their fall by the positions they assume and land safely on their feet. They look beautiful flying through the air, and I was impressed when President George Bush jumped out on his 85th birthday. You have to give him credit for courage and being, apparently, in great condition for his age. The need for an adrenalin rush is the same as the bikers who terrorized New York City drivers, but it isn't immoral or illegal. Go, jumpers!




Pakistan officials say US drone strike sabotaged peace talks with Taliban – NBC

By Wajahat S. Khan and Mushtaq Yusufzai, NBC News
Pakistani officials sharply criticized the United States on Saturday for a drone strike that killed the leader of the Pakistani Taliban, summoning Washington's ambassador to lodge a protest and accusing the Obama administration of sabotaging peace talks between their country and the Islamic militant group.
Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, Pakistan's interior minister and the official in charge of negotiations with the Taliban, called Friday's CIA drone strike that killed the brash Taliban leader Hakimullah Mehsud "counterproductive" to peace negotiations and announced that the Cabinet Committee on National Security, the highest conflict-management body in Pakistan’s newly elected government, will “review all perspectives of the relationship with the U.S.”
Khan said Pakistan had invested "days and weeks and months of work" in peace talks with the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), the official name of the Pakistan Taliban, but that the drone strike that targeted Mehsud "murdered the hope and progress for peace in the region.”

Speaking angrily at a press conference in Islamabad, and disclosing details of interactions with President Barack Obama, Secretary Kerry and Ambassador Richard Olson,  Khan wondered “how can the U.S. say it supports the peace process in the region when it takes out the leader of the other outfit on the eve of the talks?”
Pakistan’s Foreign Office took a similar line as it lodged a protest with Ambassador Olson, summoning him to lodge a protest but not issuing a diplomatic “demarche” -- a formal protest about the U.S. government's policy or actions -- that Khan had threatened.
"The latest drone strike will have a negative impact on the government's initiative to undertake a dialogue with the TTP," the Foreign Ministry said in a statement Saturday. "The government, however, is determined to continue with these efforts to engage with the TTP, to bring an end to the ongoing violence and make them a part of mainstream politics within the parameters of our constitution."
The statement added the recent U.S. drone strikes violate their sovereignty and international humanitarian laws and said Pakistan's leaders have raised their concerns with President Barack Obama and the United Nations.
Politically, Mehsud’s death is becoming an anti-American rallying cry in Pakistan. Imran Khan, the chairman of Pakistan’s Movement for Justice (the Pakistan Tahreek-e-Insaf, or PTI), whose party rules the violent Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province adjacent to Afghanistan, also condemned the strike and threatened to “stop all NATO convoys that pass through our land.”
The NATO convoy routes pass through what the U.S. military calls GLOCs (Ground Lines of Communication) that are essential for the billions of dollars worth of military hardware that is expected to pass through Pakistan’s roads and through its ports as the U.S. and other western coalition powers prepare to withdraw from Afghanistan in 2014.
Pakistan has officially blocked the NATO supply routes in the past as a form of protest against U.S. actions, but neither Khan, the interior minister nor the Foreign Office have mentioned their closure since Friday’s drone strike.
Pakistani and U.S. officials, who spoke with NBC News on condition of anonymity, confirmed Mehsud's death in a CIA drone strike in northwest Pakistan on Friday, along with the Taliban.
A Pakistani security official said the attack occurred in Danday Darpakhel village of North Waziristan, the tribal area where a majority of US drone attacks have occurred since 2004.
A Taliban spokesperson told NBC News that the militant group held an emergency meeting in the tribal area of North Waziristan soon after learning of Mehsud's death and shortlisted four commanders – Khan Said “Sajna”, a TTP leader in South Waziristan, Hafiz Saeed Khan, a TTP leader from the tribal Orakzai area, Maulvi Omar Khalid Khurasani, a commander in the Mohmand tribal region, and Maulana Fazlullah, head of the Swat Taliban -- as possible replacements for Mehsud.
In the meeting, the TTP Shura members from South Waziristan, North Waziristan, Kurram, Orakzai and Bajaur tribal regions as well as representatives of settled areas took part. According to Taliban sources, another meeting took place somewhere in Afghanistan's Kunar province, where militant leaders of the Malakand, Bajaur and Mohmand tribal regions were present.
"In both the meetings, Maulana Fazlullah and Hafiz Saeed Khan were shortlisted and it was decided that a final meeting of the Shura will nominate one of them as the next head of the Pakistani Taliban," one of the Shura members said.
TTP spokesman for South Waziristan Maulana Azam Tariq denied reports of Commander Khan Said's nomination.
Unlike the Afghan Taliban, who believe in the religious superiority of their leader Mullah Muhammad Omar, the self-declared “commander of the faithful”, the Pakistani Taliban are more decentralized and “vote in” their leadership through consensus, usually built around operational prowess and tribal lines.
The TTP has waged a decade-long insurgency against the Pakistani government from sanctuaries along the Afghan border, claiming thousands of lives of civilians in vicious suicide bombing and complex attacks on military installations.
It has mainly targeted the Pakistani state but has on occasion helped the Afghan Taliban in their war against U.S.-led NATO troops in Afghanistan.
The TTP claimed responsibility for a failed bombing plot in New York City's Times Square in 2010 as well as an attack on Camp Chapman in Afghanistan's Khost province in 2009 that killed seven CIA officials.
Mehsud had a $5 million bounty on his head posted by the U.S. It’s not clear if his death is related to the apprehension of his deputy and cousin, Latifullah Mehsud, in Afghanistan by U.S. Special Forces in early October.


I wonder how much control President Obama has over which people are killed by the drone attacks. Whoever controls it, there should be care given so that peace initiatives aren't disrupted. This looks like we either don't know what we're doing, or aren't cooperating with the Pakistani government when we should be. The drone strikes are an indiscriminate way of killing in general, and I wish we would stop them.





Wild science: Breakthroughs in animal health care may hold treatments for humans – NBC
Bill Briggs NBC News
Dr. Barbara Natterson-Horowitz checks the aorta of an anesthetized gorilla at the Los Angeles Zoo, where Natterson-Horowitz is a consulting physician. (He was deemed healthy.)
There’s an orangutan in your orthopedist’s waiting room. It’s only partly a joke.
While human doctors and veterinarians are usually thought to keep to their own corners of the animal kingdom, more are seeing the same maladies in their patients – from breast cancers to addictions to eating disorders – causing the two disciplines to increasingly team up to crack medical mysteries.
A joint conference Saturday of some 300 top physicians and veterinarians in New York City, which will include medical “rounds” by both groups at the Bronx Zoo, marks a seminal moment in the melding of these once-separate disciplines and, perhaps, a chance to make fresh scientific discoveries, experts say.
“We intend this as the beginning of a more productive collaboration. It’s going to lead us to very good places,” said Dr. Larry Norton, an oncologist and deputy physician-in-chief for breast cancer programs at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in Manhattan.
“Mammals are mammals are mammals,” Norton added. “There are more similarities than there are differences between the species. When these similarities [in illness] arise, they convey important information. The more knowledge we have about cancer in mammals, for example, the more we can help all the mammals – whether it’s humans or the animals.”
Twin ailments among the planet’s two-legged and four-legged creatures is, of course, sad on an individual level, yet such cases also are potentially fruitful for researchers, say physicians and veterinarians, who cite technological advances in helping to expose the parallels.
The shared afflictions span physical, psychological, even social realms. And animals with diseases once thought to be uniquely human have been found in the wild as well as in zoos, aquariums and homes.
Dr. Barbara Natterson-Horowitz performs cardio-imaging on an anesthetized lionness with a buildup of fluid around her heart, at the Los Angeles Zoo.
Addiction has been detected in nature: Bohemian waxwing birds are known to get hooked on the juice of fermented berries just as some bighorn sheep become habitual grazers of lichen laced with psychoactive qualities. Obsessive-compulsive disorder has been diagnosed in a polar bear. Melanoma has been found on buffalo, and malaria in a penguin. In Australia, clusters of koalas carry chlamydia. In tigers, llamas and beluga whales, breast cancer is on the rise.
During the conference, pairs composed of one physician and one veterinarian each will discuss their version of the same cross-species case: an eating disorder in both a beagle and a middle-aged woman; neurodegenerative disease in both a 10-year-old boxer and a 45-year-old man; an anxiety disorder in both a pit bull and a 25-year-old woman.
“This is made to bridge those barriers that still exist – just because of a lack of knowledge, I think – between human medicine and veterinary medicine,” said Dr. Richard Goldstein, chief medical officer of the Animal Medical Center, a leading academic veterinary hospital based in Manhattan. He will be a presenter at the forum.
Across both branches of the science, there is a collective “movement” – a widening hunger to compare similar, naturally occurring diseases in animals and in people to better understand, diagnose, treat and heal the illnesses where ever they arise, Goldstein said.
This also is prompting a drift away from science relying so heavily on artificially inducing infirmities in lab animals, like mice and rats, in order to examine those ailments, he added. 
“Anti-cancer vaccines for humans, based on veterinary technology, are in clinical trials right now. Those clinical trials probably would not have happened without the success of the animals studies,” Norton said. “These were pets that got cancer and their owners wanted the animals treated. They agreed to participate in trials of experimental vaccines.
“If we can help animals and at the same time help people, it’s a win-win,” Norton added.
The New York gathering is the third of its kind, and the biggest yet. The event is named after and inspired by the 2012 best-selling book "Zoobiquity: The Astonishing Connection Between Human and Animal Health," written by cardiologist, wildlife enthusiast, and UCLA professor Dr. Barbara Natterson-Horowitz.
“If I contributed something to this conversation, I think it is looking beyond [animal-to-human] infection to some of these really intriguing areas that are hiding in plain site, beyond cancer and beyond heart disease to a shared overlap in psychiatric illnesses,” said Natterson-Horowitz, an organizer of the event.
In practice, she consults the Los Angeles Zoo, helping to treat a heart ailment in a lioness and using cardio-imaging to confirm that a western lowland gorilla had a healthy aorta. But she is equally drawn to conditions that, in humans, carry stigmas, such as certain mental-health impairments.
She’s been fascinated to learn, for example, that a form of OCD occurs in dogs and that self-harming is found in horses that bite their own flanks and in birds that pluck their feathers – both as coping mechanisms to combat feelings of stress or isolation.
“For patients who struggle with eating disorders, OCD, addictions or self-injury, I think understanding that these same behaviors have existed in the wild for many millions of years has the potential to be de-stigmatizing,” Natterson-Horowitz said. “It is powerful on so many levels to simply know that, in having these, we are not alone


This story shows a real step forward in science. One of the things that has always annoyed me is the great gulf in the thinking of many people about animals versus humans. It goes back as far as the prejudices of “us” versus “them,” and gives people the excuse they need to abuse “them” just because they are different, rather than extending caring and gentleness to all life forms. Christians, based on Biblical passages, have tended to denigrate animals as “below” us and, therefore, okay to torture or kill if you happen to want to. Some of the horrors of slavery in the US were excused by the belief that black people weren't fully human.

Laws in most areas now do have prohibitions against animal abuse, but individual people are still sometimes going to do things like fight dogs or roosters, wound and then kill bulls in the ring in Spanish cultures, “train” animals by beating or browbeating them unnecessarily, and in scientific laboratories subject animals to cruel treatment to prove some kind of point. Researchers are now beginning to use tissue cultures to test chemicals now, which is a step forward, and we owe it to animal experiments in psychology of the last 75 years or so to prove the similarities in brain and neurological function between animals and humans. The distinctions between animals and humans just aren't as clear-cut as they have been thought.

I do eat meat, which shows I'm not as humane as some people, but I do consider the need to eat as basic, and meat is the best way to get complete protein. In nature there are endless instances of predatory behavior, without which species wouldn't survive. A wolf can't live on rice and beans. I accept killing to eat philosophically, but I draw the line at hunting without eating the animal, such as trophy hunting on safaris and in the rural south of the US and any sort of abuse. Pitting animals against each other in fights is, to me, immoral, and I would like to see all use of animal parts such as the skin or the tusks to cease to exist. We can do without our fur coats, and Chinese medicine should come out of the dark ages and stop using mysterious potions to combat erectile dysfunction, etc. Leave the rhinos alone!




The rise of secessionist movements – CBS
(CBS News) What citizen fed up with the doings in their state capital hasn't daydreamed of living in a state of their own? Turns out, some of our nation's discontented have been doing a lot more than daydreaming. Our Cover Story is reported by Barry Petersen:
The map says this is northern California, so mapmakers and visitors might be a bit confused about a sign claiming this is the State of Jefferson.
"The State of Jefferson, as originally envisioned, would be the same size as, say, New Mexico," said Geri Byrne, Chairman of the Modoc County Board of Supervisors, which passed a resolution in September to leave California and help form the State of Jefferson. "It would be, like, the 44th largest state, and the 44th largest by population, too."
A newspaper poll in Siskiyou County next door showed overwhelming support after that county's board also voted to leave California: 66 percent for secession, 22 percent against, 11 percent not sure.
And the sentiment is spreading to other counties across northern California.
It is fed by anger across rural America . . . a mood of us-against-them, against big cities that increasingly dominate state legislatures, passing laws some say ignore rural needs.
Bryne said that regulations on agriculture and timber harvesting have a direct impact on their community. "Our local economies in rural California are basically dependent on ranching, farming, timber, hunting, fishing. And every time, you know, we make bureaucratic decisions that impact that, we destroy the economies of northern -- the North State."
This isn't their first try. The people in northern California and southern Oregon tried breaking away once before, in 1941, even setting up roadblocks on the borders of a State of Jefferson. It fizzled out with the beginning of World War II.
And it turns out that breaking away from one state to form a new one is as old as the United States, beginning in 1776 when the colony of Delaware broke from Pennsylvania. Maine was once part of Massachusetts. West Virginia and Kentucky were once part of Virginia, and Tennessee was a breakaway from North Carolina.
And, of course, much of the South seceded and called itself a separate country, until it was defeated in the Civil War.
"Secession is with us, a tradition almost like Thanksgiving -- well, except Thanksgiving stays and secession comes and goes," said Douglas Brinkley, a professor of history at Rice University and a CBS News contributor. He says the founding fathers made sure rural America was listened to, starting with the way we choose a president.
"That's why we have an Electoral College system, that we don't forget rural people," Brinkley said. "That system of having two senators from every state, regardless of population, is a gesture -- a big one -- to rural populations that they are being listened to."
Listened to or not, these modern-day movements are popping up from Maryland to the upper peninsula of Michigan to northern Colorado.
In northern Colorado this Tuesday, voters in 11 counties will decide about letting their county commissioners explore breaking away from the state. Opinions are mixed.
"It's divisive," said one man. "Pretty soon, we'll have 100 states, potentially."
Joy Beuer told Petersen the Colorado counties should be allowed to secede. "Because we are not getting heard," she said.
A forum, sponsored by the League of Women Voters, drew a full house in Weld County.
"Something's changed in the last decade," said county commissioner Sean Conway. "The Colorado we grew up in, the Colorado we love, has changed."
Chuck Sylvester's family started a farm in 1869, which he and his wife, Roni, still run. Now he lives in a Colorado with legalized marijuana, new gun control regulations, and civil unions for gays.
"In my job that I had, I had many people of different sexual preferences," Sylvester said. "And some of them were like sons and daughters to me, I thought so much about. But it is defined by God in the Bible that marriage is between a man and a woman. Don't change that."
"So that wasn't your culture when this was being dealt with, as in your beliefs?" asked Petersen.
"Yeah, that's very correct," he replied.
Petersen asked Brinkley, "When I hear the word 'values' by people in rural areas, is this part of what's at play, that our culture has really changed dramatically?"
"Absolutely," he replied. "Anybody who's a hardened secessionist, in the end, you're going to find just doesn't like 'the other.' And 'the other' tends to be people with different colored skin or different cultural values than the ones they grew up with in their particular county."
But values are beside the point for Roni Sylvester
For her the driver of secession is economic: "We see a lot of economic decisions being made by the populous that have a direct negative impact on those of us in the rural areas."
Weld County is rich in oil, and that means "fracking." Some want fracking banned because of potential environmental damage.
"If you have property," Sylvester said, "for example, with gas, oil and mineral rights on it, that you should have the right to allow that to be explored. And I know a lot of people are dependent on their royalties now, particularly our senior citizens. It's their security."
But the constitutional hurdles for breaking away were set high. First, a state's legislature must approve, and then the U.S. Congress must vote to accept, the new state.
Dave Young, a native Coloradan, represents part of Weld County in the Colorado House of Representatives, and opposes secession. Young doubts that secession would fly in the Colorado legislature.
"If we just build walls and refuse to talk to each other," Young told Petersen, "that's the dangerous piece. I think we lessen our power as a country. When we split off in different directions, are we really as powerful as we were before?"
"We pride ourselves in this country on a willingness to hear everybody out," Petersen said to Brinkley. "Is it kind of a good thing that these people are saying these things?"
Brinkley said, "I don't find the attention good, because you're leading people down a garden path to nowhere. It never ends. If you start indulging one secessionist movement, then you'll have to indulge another, and there would be no United States."
In northern California, they feel they no longer have a choice.
"We're so outnumbered, I don't know that politically there is another viable way," said secessionist Geri Byrne. "You know, I mean, this at least focuses the attention on the problems that exist. Is it something that's going to be easy to do? No. You know, is it something possible? Maybe. There's a lot of people behind this movement."



Union Forever! Anti-Secession Petitions Gaining Clicks, Too – ABC
By Chris Good
Nov 14, 2012 5:54pm
Call it the Battle Hymn of the Online Petitioners.
Since President Obama’s re-election, a wave of visitors have submitted petitions to WhiteHouse.gov, calling on the president to allow states to secede from the United States, peacefully.  To sign, all visitors need to do is validate their email addresses.
Petitions have now been submitted for every state except Vermont. A petition to allow Texas to secede has gained 101,328 online signatures,  leading all petitions.
Visitors can submit and sign petitions at “We the People,” a crowdsourcing site run by the White House for it to solicit suggestions and questions about government policy.  The White House promises to review and issue official comment on any petitions gaining more than  25,000 signatures. The White House has said it would comment on the secession petitions, but it hasn’t  done so yet.
But opponents of this movement have countered with their own, sometimes tongue-in-cheek petitions against secession. While they haven’t obtained nearly as many signatures as the purported seceders, the they have matched their anti-United-States counterparts in snark.
Among the most bitter and retributive of all anti-secession petitions is one that asks Obama to strip the citizenship of everyone who’s signed a petition to secede. It’s also the most popular, having gained 10,652 signatures at the time of this posting. It reads:
Strip the Citizenship from Everyone who Signed a Petition to Secede and Exile Them
Mr. President, please sign an executive order such that each American citizen who signed a petition from any state to secede from the USA shall have their citizenship stripped and be peacefully deported.
A petition to allow Austin, Texas, to secede from the state and annex several other cities has gained 5,348 signatures. It reads:
Peacefully grant the city of Austin Texas to withdraw from the state of Texas & remain part of the United States.
Austin Texas continues to suffer difficulties stemming from the lack of civil, religious, and political freedoms imposed upon the city by less liberally minded Texans. It is entirely feasible for Austin to operate as its own state, within the United States, in the event that Texas is successful in the current bid to secede. It is important for Austin to remain in the union as to do so would protect it’s citizens’ standard of living and re-secure their rights and liberties in accordance with the original ideas and beliefs of our founding fathers.
We would also like to annex Dublin Texas, Lockhart Texas, & Shiner Texas.
Another, to prevent any secessions, has gained 2,190 signatures. It reads:
Keep the United States United
The United States of America was founded on principles of democracy and cooperation. We have gone through over two centuries of triumph and turmoil, but more importantly,we have done so as a united country.
Times have been tough for all of us; some states are frustrated to the point of petitioning for secession, but now is not the time to be divided.Their actions can only harm our country. The best way to help the American people is not through bipartisan bickering, secession, or the general lack of cooperation that runs rampant in our country. The best and only way to help the American people is by continuing to be “one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
We the undersigned implore the Administration to do everything in its power to keep our nation united.
Yet another asks Obama to force any seceding states to pay back their shares of the federal debt. It has gained 3,196 signatures:
Force all states to pay their portion of the national debt before they can secede from the union
Residents of all states who wish to secede from the union should be required to take their own advice about ‘personal responsibility’, and pay their share of the national debt before being released to fend for themselves.
This debt must be paid in full, or they cannot leave.
This means no federal assistance, period.
Abridged list includes no more upkeep for highways, nor for interstates or bridges, no federally funded law enforcement or fire department, no public libraries, no phone lines, no cable television, no cell phone towers, no power grids, no water lines, no mail services, no paramedics, no hospitals which accept Medicare/Medicaid funding, no ATF, FBI, DOJ, SWAT, or Department of Homeland Security, no Border Guard, National Guard, Coast Guard, Corps of Engineers, or WITSEC


I looked on the Internet for other information on 20th century secessionist talk, and it is mainly coming from the conservative and rural parts of society. I'm not really worried, because I don't think such a move could possibly succeed. It gives discontented people something to talk about, but I don't think there are enough people in this country who would agree with it for it actually to go through. I think we're safe during this century.



­
Run For Coroner, No Medical Training Necessary
by Sarah Harris, NCPR
­ It's a windy Thursday afternoon in Ogdensburg, part of a sprawling rural county in northern New York.
The choir at the Episcopal Church is practicing, and Eric Warner is behind the piano. He's a former funeral director, an organist and a stay-at-home dad who raises Clydesdale horses.

In St. Lawrence County, N.Y., the position of coroner is still elected.
Sarah Harris/NCPR
In St. Lawrence County, N.Y., the position of coroner is still elected.
Sarah Harris/NCPR
He's hoping to become one of St. Lawrence County's four elected coroners — there are two open seats this year — and he's running as a Democrat.
"I miss dealing with the peoples as they go through a grieving time," Warner says. "That's really why I wanted to be a county coroner, so I can help people who are grieving or who have lost a loved one."
Just a few blocks away, coroner candidates Kevin Crosby and incumbent June Wood are at the annual county Republicans' meet-the-candidates dinner. Wood takes the microphone first. She explains that she's been a county coroner for 12 years and works on a local rescue squad.
Crosby goes next: "I'm a lifelong resident of Morristown. I'm a 22-year member of the Morristown Fire and Rescue Company, serving the past 17 years as fire chief."
The three candidates all say they're running because they want to be there for the people of the county when somebody dies. Now it's up to the voters to decide who they want around.
Popularity Politics
St. Lawrence County is among 1,600 counties around the country that elect its coroners. They are paid employees; they make about $6,000 a year and get health insurance.
They don't do autopsies — that's done by the medical examiner from a neighboring county. Coroners do pronounce people dead and sign death certificates. You don't have to have any medical training to be a coroner here. You just have to live in the county and be old enough to get on the ballot.
Even though they run for office on party lines, party politics don't matter very much, Wood says. People politics do.
"Basically, to be a coroner, you just have to be publicly popular," she says. "I guess it's more of a popularity contest. Then you learn the job as you go."
Warner, the Democratic candidate, agrees. A few weeks ago, all the coroner hopefuls were at another meet-the-candidates event. While other politicians were asked their opinions on New York State's tough new gun laws, the coroners weren't.
"They would never ask a coroner that!" Warner says. "They could care less about what we think about what toilet paper to use in the community building."
Small-Town Campaigning
Electing a coroner is a holdover from medieval English common law, where the coroner's job was to determine how and when people had died in order to collect taxes. That system worked in early America, too.
And in a lot of places, if the sheriff committed a crime, it was the coroner's job to make the arrest.


Here is an office with only one function – to declare death and sign the death certificate. If they have no medical training, I assume they don't examine the person's body to declare him dead. They must go by what the medical examiner says. This is like some other archaic laws I've heard of which have no current use. It looks really silly to me. Have the medical examiner sign the death certificates and save $6,000 a year.



­ Space Agencies Of The World, Unite: The U.N.'s Asteroid Defense Plan
by Alan Yu
­ The United Nations General Assembly may approve a plan soon for the world's space agencies to defend the Earth against asteroids.
The plan, introduced last week, is expected to be adopted by the General Assembly in December. It would do two things: create an International Asteroid Warning Network so countries can share what they know about asteroids; and spin up a group of scientists from several countries' space agencies to look for smaller asteroids, as well as make plans to divert them away from the Earth.
The problem here isn't a large asteroid. NASA has already found more than 90 percent of the comets and asteroids larger than 1 kilometer, or 0.6 miles, across — those are the ones big enough to do global damage.
The concern is for the smaller meteoroids — ones that are more than 450 feet across. These can still get through the Earth's atmosphere and rain down on the planet. Although most of the Earth is covered by oceans, an asteroid of this size could destroy several states or an entire city if it lands in the wrong spot.
An international group, formed from discussions at the U.N., would test a strategy to deflect an incoming asteroid by using "a fleet of robot spacecraft to slam into the asteroids," says veteran NASA astronaut Tom Jones. These kamikaze robots would change the direction of the incoming asteroid so it doesn't crash into the Earth.
NASA tried something similar with its 2005 Deep Impact mission, which slammed into a comet to see how the inside differs from the outside.
Jones estimates the cost of a deflection plan would be comparable to the price tag for the Mars Curiosity Rover, which cost $2.5 billion. By working with other space agencies, this cosmic insurance policy would spread this cost around. The plan is for the space agencies to work together, like they have done on the International Space Station, except this project would come with the blessing of the U.N. and the global community.
Jones, who also chairs the Association of Space Explorers' committee on Near-Earth Objects, says the telescopes NASA currently has can't spot these small, but potentially deadly space rocks.
"Those telescopes are not sensitive enough to see distant, small, dark asteroids," Jones says. "The only time they see those is by accident when those asteroids drift past the Earth close by, then you can catch a few of them in your sights."
In 2005, Congress passed legislation asking NASA to find 90 percent of these small asteroids by 2020, but NASA is still working on that. The space agency recently called for the public's help in searching for them, and it brought back a retired spacecraft to spot them. To get closer to this goal, NASA needs special infrared telescopes in space, but the space agency doesn't have the money for them, says Lindley Johnson, program executive for NASA's Near-Earth Object Program, which tracks comets and asteroids in the Earth's neighborhood.


I've been concerned about these asteroids of various sizes because they would do tremendous damage if they hit, and the plans I've heard to deflect them or blow them up with nukes don't sound too convincing. The most interesting is to send up a device to push the asteroid off its course so that it misses the earth. It has been argued that a nuke might just break it up into smaller pieces, all of which would then rain down and do damage.

I hope UN efforts do develop some plans which might work. It would allow countries to share the costs of the technology, maybe. It's probably a matter of when, not if a strike occurs, as they have have hit in the past several times within history. That's how we got all those craters in various parts of the world. I am resigned to the possibility of a strike happening within my lifetime, as I can't do anything about it. At some point we just have to be prepared to die.