Tuesday, January 14, 2014
CONTACT ME AT: manessmorrison2@yahoo.com


News For The Day



Retired cop guns down man for texting at Florida movie: sheriff
By M. Alex Johnson, Staff Writer, NBC News

The retired Tampa police captain accused of gunning down a man texting during a Mark Wahlberg war movie will be arraigned on a second-degree murder charge Tuesday in a Florida court.

Curtis Reeves Jr., 71, is charged with shooting Chad Oulson, 43, the Pasco County Sheriff’s Office said Monday, after a verbal and physical confrontation.
Chad Oulson was pronounced dead at a hospital, and his wife, Nichole, was treated for a gunshot wound to her hand.

“To have a retired police officer — I don’t know what he was thinking at the time,” Pasco County Sheriff Chris Nocco told reporters. “I can tell you, anybody, over a cellphone, to take their life, it's ridiculous.”

Reeves remained in Pasco County jail overnight Monday, and a judge could decide Tuesday whether to set bail.

Officials are crediting an off-duty sheriff’s deputy from neighboring Sumter County for detaining Reeves at the Grove 16 Theatre in Wesley Chapel, north of Tampa. The deputy also secured the weapon, described as a .380-calber handgun, until Pasco authorities arrived, Nocco said.

“He was a true hero in there. He reacted,” said Nocco, who also praised the efforts of two nurses who were in the theater and tried to save Oulson's life.
Nocco said that when when the first emergency calls came in, his mind immediately turned to recent shootings at schools and movie theaters, an apparent reference to the mass killings at a theater in Aurora, Colo., in July 2012, and at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., just five months later.

“Hearing what we heard, we were prepared for a large incident, but I want to reiterate this was just an isolated incident,” he said.
“This situation over a cellphone use — to escalate that high, I can tell you it's very scary,” he said. “Or the fact it's a movie theater or, you know, a place such as a school, where people have a belief that they should be in a movie theater to relax or a school to learn and have it arise to this kind of level.”

Nocco said the tragedy unfolded after Reeves became outraged over something trivial: “somebody texting.”
Reeves and his wife were sitting behind the Oulsons as the preview trailers were rolling just before the showing of “Lone Survivor,” the Mark Wahlberg movie about a failed 2007 Navy Seal raid in Afghanistan, investigators said.
Reeves asked Chad Oulson several times to stop, to no avail, Nocco said. He then left the theater to complain to the theater's management before returning to his seat, the sheriff said.

Upon his return, “Chad Oulson then starts confronting him verbally, starts saying: ‘Oh, did you go in there and start complaining on me? Did you tell the staff about me?’” Nocco said.

“This verbal altercation starts getting louder and louder. During this altercation, it goes from a verbal to a physical altercation,” he said.
Then, “the suspect, Curtis Reeves, pulled out a gun,” Nocco said.
Only one shot was fired, Nocco said. Nichole Oulson was wounded in the hand when she grabbed her husband as Reeves pulled the trigger, he said.

The theater's operator, Cobb Theatres, said in a statement that it was “truly heartbroken by this incident” and that it was cooperating with investigators.
Reeves retired as a captain from the Tampa Police Department in 1993, said Laura McElroy, a spokeswoman for the department, adding that Reeves helped set up the department's first SWAT team.

“We are not aware of any contact with the department since his departure more than 20 years ago,” she said in a statement.



Though the victim's texting is not a serious issue, and Reeves should not have been provoked so far as to shoot him, the victim did confront Reeves for reporting his cell phone use. Tempers can flare during arguments, so in a more primitive society what he did could have been excused. Reeves is 71 years old, and I wonder if he has dementia or Alzheimers, either of which can cause extreme irritability and poor judgment. The worst problem was that he was carrying a gun at all. It's a case, I suspect, of someone who was no longer mentally balanced having a weapon on his person in a public place and using it. It's sad all the way around. I wonder what sentence he will get. I could find no prior record on Reeves on the Internet. Still, he should receive some punishment. You just can't be shooting people for no reason. If he is mentally disabled, that should be brought out in the courtroom.





'Messianic' John Kerry should 'leave us alone,' Israel's defense minister says – NBC

By Paul Goldman and Henry Austin, NBC News

TEL AVIV, Israel -- Secretary of State John Kerry was branded “messianic” by Israel's defense minister in a newspaper interview just days before he is due to visit the country.

Moshe Yaalon was quoted by Yediot Aharonot newspaper on Tuesday as saying that the only thing that could "save" Israel was for Kerry to receive the Nobel Peace Prize and "leave us alone."

“Secretary of State John Kerry came here very determined and operates based upon an unfathomable obsession and a messianic feeling,” Yaalon was quoted as saying. “Throughout the recent months, there is no negotiation between us and the Palestinians, but rather, between us and the Americans. The only thing that can 'save' us is that John Kerry will get a Nobel Peace Prize and leave us alone.”

The United States is seeking to broker an agreement on a "two-state solution" in which Israel would exist peacefully alongside a new Palestinian state. Kerry wants the sides to agree to a framework for an interim accord ahead of a deal in April, which would launch another year of talks aimed at a full-blown peace treaty. 
A framework would touch on all the main issues, including security, the future of Jerusalem and the fate of refugees. 

The Palestinians see the Jewish settlements as an obstacle to achieving a viable state in East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, territories Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war. Most countries consider Israel's settlements there illegal.

Yaalon also told Yediot Aharonot that the latest U.S. peace plan for the region was “not worth the paper it was written on” because it contained “neither security nor peace.”   

"I live and breathe the conflict with the Palestinians,” he said. "I know what they think, what they want and what they really mean."
Kerry is expected to return to Israel within days as part of his peace push.
Intelligence and Strategic Affairs Minister Yuval Steinitz told Israel Army Radio that he agreed with the contents of Yaalon's interview, but added that despite disagreements there was no need to resort to personal insults.
 

I wish I thought that either of the two parties want peace. The Palestinians want the Israelis out of what they consider to be their homeland, and the Israelis make the same claim for the territory. As long as that conflict exists there are numerous other countries in the region who will continue to support the Palestinians, and the US will be enmeshed in military actions there unless we stop supporting Israel until they pull out of the disputed territories or at any rate negotiate with the Palesti8nians for them. As the situation stands, I have almost no hope of peace there.





The 'smart life': How connected cars, clothes and homes could fry your brain – NBC
Keith Wagstaff NBC News


It's all coming together: The Samsung smart watch and smart phone interact with the BMW 3i electric car to both simply and complicate your connected life.
Welcome to the "smart life." Brain cells, beware.

It's an entirely wired existence where your Pebble smart watch is connected to your smartphone, which communicates with Google Glass, which can send commands to your Internet-enabled refrigerator and robotic vacuum — all from the comfort of your iOS-equipped car. Sound like a bit much?

Sure, that vision of the future might seem like an amalgam of over-hyped tech trends. But it's probably coming sooner than most people think.
Take "smart homes," connected houses filled with light bulbs, security systems, appliances and TVs that talk to each other and their owner, either through a smartphone or directly through voice and gesture commands. They aren't a "Jetsons" fantasy; in fact, they could be relatively common in five years, said Dr. Sanjay Sarma, director of digital learning at MIT. 

And while "wearables" — including wearable gadgets like Google Glass, smart watches, fitness trackers and even sensor-equipped socks — aren't the norm right now, Juniper Research predicts that the size of the market will explode from $1.4 billion in 2013 to $19 billion in 2018.

The car of the future will also probably be connected. Google announced partnerships with Audi, GM, Honda and Hyundai to bring Android information and entertainment systems to dashboards starting this year. Apple announced a similar deal with BMW and Mercedes-Benz in June. By 2020, 60 to 70 percent of cars sold in the United States could be equipped with Android, iOS or some other operating system, said Dr. Egil Juliussen, a principal analyst at research firm IHS.

This is on top of the smartphones that are already out there. Smartphone subscriptions are expected to jump from 1.3 billion last year to 5.9 billion in 2019, according to a study from Ericsson.

It all seems like a techie's dream, but the "smart life" could have unintended consequences. 
"The problem is that your brain didn't evolve to process all of that information at the same time," Earl Miller, professor of neuroscience at MIT, told NBC News. "We evolved in an environment where every new sight or noise was important — it could mean a predator was about to leap out of the bushes and eat you."

An attendee uses an interface on a refrigerator using LG's Smart ThinQ technology at the LG Electronics booth at CES in Las Vegas.
An email alert on a person’s smart watch isn't life or death. But the human brain can't help but pay attention to it, which could be a problem when five other devices are vying for its attention.

Even when people think they're multitasking, what they are really doing is switching between tasks, not doing them simultaneously. And constant exposure to multiple devices at the same time isn't making people any better at it. 

"The more stuff you have, the less you are able to focus on individual things," Miller said. "There is very limited bandwidth for conscious thought."
That assertion has been backed by several studies, including one from Stanford researchers that found that heavy multitaskers were worse at filtering out distractions and focusing on a single task.

Not to condemn the "smart life" as entirely bad thing. Organizing the household, communicating with friends and family, and accessing information — whether it's maps or obscure facts or whether or not there is any beer in the fridge — will be easier than ever before. 

"Personally, I'm a technophile," said Edward Vogel, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of Oregon. "There are a lot of positives to this technology. Google Glass and other devices have the potential to augment our world and help us quickly make more informed decisions."
The problem, Vogel said, was that tasks that require more contemplation and sustained focus could become more difficult.

That’s particularly bad news at high speeds.
The dangers of texting and operating a vehicle are obvious. In 2008, texting was the most likely cause of a train accident that killed 25 people in Southern California.
But studies and multiple experts have claimed that even hands-free communication distracts drivers from the road. That is because people overestimate their ability to multi-task, Miller said, causing them to believe that that the highway is clear only to crash into another car while giving voice commands to their smart glasses. 
In the end, however, the only solution to technology overload, especially when driving, might be even more technology. 

"People love technology and having this constant connectedness to the rest of the world. We are never going to put that genie back in the bottle," Vogel said. "The only way we are going to be safe when it comes to transportation is once Google perfects the self-driving car."



http://quotationsbook.com/quote/36353/
1. Quotes by Thoreau, Henry David

>“Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify, simplify! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb-nail.”

Personally, I don't enjoy learning to operate new pieces of technology, though with the computer I certainly do like the functions it can perform. I am never going to buy a self-driving car, though, and I hate to see that they are expected to be on the market soon. They can't possibly be as safe as a human being who is carefully watching the road ahead. I don't even see the use of a smart refrigerator. Just get up off your seat and go open the refrigerator door. You can quickly see whether there is any beer there or not.

We don't need for our phones, wrist watches etc. to be so very smart. I have almost forgotten how to add and subtract since I began using a calculator. All that technology costs a great deal of money and serves no really useful purpose in most cases. People paralyzed by Lou Gehrig's Disease may really need it, but they can't get along without a nursing assistant anyway, and she can go open the fridge if she really thinks they should be drinking a beer. I can only say “Bah! Humbug!”





State efforts to block Obamacare are working, study finds – NBC
Maggie Fox


States whose governments are hostile to Obamacare are hindering efforts to get people signed up for health insurance, according to a study released Tuesday.
Laws restricting outreach and enrollment efforts have handicapped community health centers that are a key component of plans to get health insurance to millions of Americans who lack it, researchers at George Washington University found.

“This is the first study to attempt to measure the impact of restrictive state policies,” said Sara Rosenbaum, who led the team at GW’s Department of Health Policy that did the study. “The navigator laws are having a real effect.”

The 2010 Affordable Care Act seeks to get health insurance to the 15 percent of Americans who don’t have it in several ways: with online health marketplaces called exchanges, by expanding Medicaid and by changing insurance laws so that companies cannot refuse to cover certain people or stop their coverage once it gets expensive.
To sign people up, the Obama administration recruited and trained so-called navigators, assistants to help people choose which plans would be best for them among the dozens of choices in some states. And community health centers launched their own efforts, because many of their clients fall into the groups most in need of health insurance.

But after the Supreme Court gave them the option, many states decided not to expand Medicaid — even though the federal government will pay for the entire cost until 2017. Around 20 have decided against it.

In addition, states such as Missouri, Montana, Texas and Florida have passed law restricting what navigators and others can ask and say in helping people enroll in health care. They're all states that have refused to expand Medicaid or to operate exchanges, forcing the federal government to step in and do it.

The Missouri law requires the navigators to pass an exam and pay a fee before they can be licensed by the state. Texas is requiring extra training and testing for navigators, while Florida forbids navigators from working in state offices. 
Supporters of the laws say it's important to ensure that people working with private information — names, addresses, Social Security numbers and income details — be properly trained and vetted. The Obama administration calls it "bullying."

"This is a blatant attempt to add cumbersome requirements to the navigator program and deter groups from working to inform Americans about their new health insurance options and help them enroll in coverage,” U.S. Health and Human Services department spokesman Fabien Levy said in September after Texas passed its law.

Some of the laws were passed to address issues raised by licensed insurance agents and brokers, Rosenbaum says. But it has affected efforts to help people sign up.
“The big smoking gun as far as I am concerned is assisting in selecting a health plan,” Rosenbaum told NBC News. “There is a highly significant difference between the restrictive states and the non-restrictive states in community enrollment assisters who are actually helping people figure out the health plans.”

Don McBride of ACCESS Family Care in Neosho, Mo., says he’s seen it. “We have been handicapped,” McBride told NBC News. “But with everything that is going on, I think we are making the best of it.”

“We haven’t been able to reach as many people,” agreed Kally Taul, outreach coordinator and a navigator at the clinic system.
But McBride, Taul and others say they are not simply being hobbled by state laws. It’s more complex than that, they say. “It’s not the funding. The main thing is the negative publicity,” Taul said.

Bad publicity had made people mistrustful, McBride agreed. “They call it ‘Obamacare’ and it’s like the atom bomb,” he said. “It is definitely going to take some time to build trust.”

Rosenbaum’s team surveyed 606 out of the nation’s 1,198 federally qualified community health centers. They compared the answers from health centers in states that have embraced health reform to those that have been less welcoming and found that community health centers in restrictive states had smaller enrollment staffs and workers there expected more of the patients they assisted to remain uninsured. 
At least 19 states have passed laws that limit what navigators or other assisters may say and do, or that add hours of training and licensing requirements on top of what the federal governments asks.

“Health centers in restrictive states reported approximately half the staffing capacity maintained by health centers in full implementation states,” the report reads.

“Of particular significance in measuring the impact of navigator restrictions is the fact that health centers in restrictive states were significantly less likely to assist with plan enrollment,” it adds.

This can hurt because the people signing up at health centers are those who are the least likely to understand health insurance in the first place, Rosenbaum says.
“The significantly lower rate of plan enrollment assistance suggests that the regulatory burdens created by navigator laws are affecting not only the work of certified navigators but community outreach and enrollment efforts more generally,” the report concludes.

“When you change the policy environment and put the brakes on things, it really trickles down to the community,” Rosenbaum said.

The survey was done last year and it's too soon to say whether actual enrollments were affected. The Obama administration said Monday that 2.2 million people have signed up for private health insurance on the exchanges, and more than 3 million more have newly qualified for Medicaid, the state-federal health insurance plan for the low-income.


When the time came for me to sign up for Medicare I was somewhat intimidated by the number of factors I had to consider, but I was sent a list of available plans with their options and coverages summarized. I didn't want to, but I had to read over them all and try to select one that would cover my typical illnesses. Maybe I could have done better, but I am mainly happy with my plan. It's like trying to file your own taxes. You have to read instructions written in legalese. Most people can either do it themselves or find a friend who went farther in school to help them. I know some people didn't finish high school.

I don't think the difficulty of picking a plan is what is keeping young people from signing up. I think they tend to think that they never get sick, so they shouldn't need insurance. I went without insurance for around seven years before I qualified for Medicare. That was because all individual insurance was way too expensive for me to afford, as I was only employed part time. The same thing will be the case for a lot of young people, I think, because even if they are employed, many businesses don't pay for health insurance or even provide a plan to join. Supposedly the “marketplace” will provide low-cost plans, but it's a matter of how low the cost is.

A penalty of $95.00 or more is not enough to keep those who truly can't afford insurance even after the government stipend is paid to them from opting out. The following website details the penalties and exemptions. http://www.forbes.com/sites/mikepatton/2013/10/28/obamacare-penalties-and-exemptions/ Many of those who are poorest will be exempted from paying a penalty. If they are, they will still be going to the emergency room at government subsidized hospitals as they do today.



­

Congress Poised To Pass $1.1 Trillion Spending Bill – NPR
by Mark Memmott
­
The House is expected to vote Wednesday on a $1.1 trillion spending bill that would fund the federal government into October and bring to an end, for now at least, the bitter partisan battles that have led to one government shutdown and threatened to push the U.S. into defaulting on its bills.

According to The Associated Press, "the GOP-led House is slated to pass the 1,582-page bill Wednesday, though many Tea Party conservatives are sure to oppose it." A Senate vote is expected by week's end and that Democratic-led chamber is also expected to pass the plan.

NPR's Ailsa Chang tells our Newscast Desk that the bill "fleshes out the broad outlines provided in last month's budget agreement on Capitol Hill."
The budget, she says, authorizes spending "for nearly every speck of government within the guidelines of last month's budget agreement. One notable difference between this bill and the December deal involves cuts to military pensions. The budget agreement announced last month reduced the annual cost-of-living increases for military retirees under 62 by one percent. This spending plan reverses that cut, but only for disabled veterans and relatives of deceased members of the military."

Reuters adds that:
"The measure eases across-the-board spending cuts by providing an extra $45 billion for military and domestic discretionary programs for fiscal 2014, to a total of $1.012 trillion. It also provides an additional $85.2 billion for Afghanistan war funding that is typically handled off-budget."

Bloomberg News notes that "funding runs through Jan. 15 [Wednesday], so lawmakers also plan to pass a separate three-day stopgap bill at current funding levels to push the deadline to Jan. 18. That would give lawmakers enough time to enact the comprehensive legislation without risking a government shutdown. The House plans to vote on the three-day measure today."

As for the politics of all this, The Hill says that:
"The series of votes this week creates opportunities for disagreements that could lead to a shutdown, particularly given the secretive talks on the bill and the possibility that members of either party will object to spending provisions.
"But neither party seems in the mood to create a huge fight over either the continuing resolution or the omnibus, which is based on spending levels set by a budget deal approved by Congress in December. Republicans in particular are keen to avoid another shutdown after their approval numbers plummeted during the 16-day shutdown in October. The GOP now wants to keep the discussion on ObamaCare's flawed rollout as much as possible."


It looks like the mainstream Republicans learned a lesson for having gone along with the Tea Party to shut down the government. They want to have a real chance at winning future elections. The government shutdown was so damaging that even loyal Republican voters complained loudly. This news is good.




­

Chomp! Fish Snatches Bird In Flight: VIDEO – NPR
by Mark Memmott
­
The Smithsonian Channel doesn't call it "the ferocious tigerfish" for nothing.

My what big teeth you have. An African tigerfish.
Smithsonian Channel

It's been clear for ages that the African tigerfish is a vicious predator. Just check out those teeth.

Now researchers in South Africa say they've got video that proves something else that's really amazing about "Africa's answer to the piranha":
It can leap from the water to snatch a bird — and not a feathered snack that's just floating or standing around in shallow water. We're talking about a fast-flying swallow. Take a look at the clip, which Nature Newstream has helpfully presented in both real time and slow motion.

It's thought to be the first evidence of a freshwater fish "catching birds on the wing," the BBC says.
The researchers' work is published in the latest Journal of Fish Biology.


Tigerfish
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Tigerfish can refer to fish from various families, and derives from official and colloquial associations of these with the Asian tiger (Panthera tigris). However, the primary species designated by the name "tigerfish" are African and belong to the family Alestidae.

African tigerfish[edit]

Hydrocynus vittatus
Several species belonging to the genus Hydrocynus of the family Alestidae are referred to as "tigerfish," and are particularly prized as gamefish. These African fish are found in many rivers and lakes on the continent and are fierce predators with distinctive, proportionally large teeth.

The goliath tigerfish (Hydrocynus goliath) is among the most famous tigerfish. It can reportedly reach an adult weight of 50 kg (110 lb), and is found in the Congo River system and Lake Tanganyika. It is the largest member of the Alestidae family. Another famous species, simply called the tigerfish (Hydrocynus vittatus), is commonly found in the southernly Okavango Delta, and the Zambezi River, and also in the two biggest lakes along the Zambezi, Lake Kariba in Zambia, Zimbabwe, and Cabora Bassa in Mozambique, and finally in the Jozini dam in South Africa.

Both the goliath tigerfish and its smaller relative bear a striking resemblance, in appearance and habits, to the dorados of South America. The African alestidae tigerfish species are silver, as opposed to the most famous species of dorado, which is golden. Coincidentally, the dorado is known as the "tigre del rio" (tiger of the river) in its homeland.(Although 'tigre' can refer to any predatory cat in this part of the world)

Behaviour[edit]
In the western gamefishing world, Hydrocynus vittatus is regarded to be Africa's equivalent of the South American piranha,[citation needed] though it belongs to a completely different zoological family. Like the piranha, individual tigerfish have interlocking, razor-sharp teeth, along with streamlined, muscular bodies, and are widely known to be extremely aggressive and capable predators who often hunt in groups.

The African tigerfish is the first freshwater fish to be recorded and confirmed to attack and catch birds in flight.[1]


These fish are new to me. They don't seem to attack humans, at least there is no mention of it in this article. The dangerous piranha is prized for food among the native people in South America, and even thought to give greater virility to the eater, though you have to be careful how you catch them. This bird catching fish must be very aggressive. The dorados mentioned also in the Wikipedia article above are a favorite in restaurants, the mahi-mahi. The Golden Dorado is another South American species prized for its very active fighting when caught by fly fishermen. Getting a picture of the tiger fish leaping out to catch a bird was a great stroke of luck to the photographer. He or she must be a happy person. Hopefully he was paid for the shot by NPR.