Bwel1985

I’ve always liked the view from my mother-in-law’s house at night,
Oil rigs off Long Beach
Like floating lanterns out in the smog-dark Pacific,
Stars in the eucalyptus,
Lights of airplanes arriving from Asia, and town lights
Littered like broken glass around the bay and back up the hill.

In summer, dance music is borne up
On the sea winds from the hotel’s beach deck far below,
“Twist and Shout,” or “Begin the Beguine.”
It’s nice to think that somewhere someone is having a good time,
And pleasant to picture them down there
Turned out, tipsy and flushed, in their white shorts and their turquoise
         shirts.

Later, I like to sit and look up
At the mythic history of Western civilization,
Pinpricked and clued through the zodiac.
I’d like to be able to name them, say what’s what and how who got
         where,
Curry the physics of metamorphosis and its endgame,
But I’ve spent my life knowing nothing.

If you aren't from Illinois, you might not know what Casimir Pulaski Day is. But if you grew up in Illinois and don't live there anymore, you may be wondering why you don't have this holiday—which is celebrated the first Monday each March—off from work or school.

WBEZ Chicago has a great guide to the holiday, which commemorates Casimir Pulaski, one of Illinois' favorite sons (who died decades before Illinois even became a state).

Casimir Pulaski was a talented military leader and brilliant battlefield tactician who, in the 1770s, had to leave his native Poland after participating in the unsuccessful wars to oust Stanisław II, a king put in place to rule at the behest of the Russians. While in exile in Paris, Pulaski met and befriended Ben Franklin, who recruited him for the American Revolution's cause.

After initial resistance from Colonists reluctant to place a foreigner in an important military post, Pulaski, serving informally, proved his mettle at Brandywine and Germantown. George Washington was so impressed that he made Pulaski a Brigadier General and the first Commander of the American Cavalry. Soon after this recognition, in 1779, Pulaski died from wounds sustained at the Siege of Savannah.

Flash-forward a century or so to Chicago, which, by the late 1800s, had become a worldwide capital for Polish emigration. In the 1930s, Polish citizens in the city, who had faced discrimination, had taken to championing Casimir Pulaski as an example of a great Polish-American hero in the name of cultural integration and understanding. Tributes to the general sprouted up around town—most notably the renaming of a major thoroughfare "Pulaski Road."

Pulaski's profile in Chicago grew, and in 1977, the Polish American Congress successfully lobbied for a law in Illinois designating the first Monday of March as “Casimir Pulaski Day.” At first, it was merely a commemorative holiday, meaning schools and other institutions stayed open, but in 1985, Pulaski Day became a full public holiday for schools. Depending on where you were in the state, other government offices and some banks would also choose to close on that Monday.

Currently, Casimir Pulaski Day is less prevalent than it was in the '80s and '90s. It became an optional holiday for schools in 2009, and, according to WBEZ, "74 percent of the districts chose to keep school open on Pulaski Day." In 2012, Chicago Public Schools tossed the holiday altogether during negotiations between Mayor Rahm Emanuel and the teachers union.

While Pulaski the day may be waning, the man won't be forgotten in Chicago any time soon, as his name and image appear all over town (check out the Polish Museum of America for more). And, in 2009, former Chicago resident Barack Obama signed a joint resolution of the House and the Senate to make Casimir Pulaski an honorary United States citizen.

Now that the worst is over, they predict
Something messy and difficult, though not
Life-threatening. Clearly we needed

To stock up on water and candles, making
Tureens of soup and things that keep
When electricity fails and phone lines fall.

Igloos rise on air conditioners, gargoyles
Fly and icicles shatter. Frozen runways,
Lines in markets, and paralyzed avenues

Verify every fear. But there is warmth
In this sudden desire to sleep,
To surrender to our common condition

With joy, watching hours of news
Devoted to weather. People finally stop
To talk to each other—the neighbors

We didn’t know were always here.
Today they are ready for business,
Armed with a new vocabulary,

Casting their saga in phrases as severe
As last night’s snow: damage assessment,
Evacuation, emergency management,

The shift of the wind matters again,
And we are so simple, so happy to hear
The scrape of a shovel next door.

The number of earthquakes in Oklahoma has increased dramatically over the past years. There are now more measurable quakes in OK than California or Alaska. Why? Fracking.

Oklahoma recorded more than three times as many earthquakes as California in 2014 and remains well ahead in 2015. Data from the U.S. Geological Survey shows that Oklahoma had 562 earthquakes of magnitude 3.0 or greater in 2014; California had 180. As of Jan. 31, Oklahoma recorded 76 earthquakes of that magnitude, compared with California's 10.

According to the Advanced National Seismic System global catalog, in 2014, Oklahoma even beat Alaska, the nation's perennial leader in total earthquakes, though many small events in remote areas go unrecorded there.

Tags: earthquakes

A failed Kinston charter school that mismanaged money for years got $667,000 in taxpayer funds months before it shut down, then paid the couple who headed the school $11,000 while other employees were owed $370,000, state auditors said Wednesday.

• Read more education news
• Read more state political stories
• Get the latest political news at our Under the Dome blog

The study found evidence of “adverse tiering,” or placing all of the drugs used to treat H.I.V. in a specialty tier, where consumers are required to pay at least 30 percent of the cost of the drug.

Related to my post last November about how the biodiversity of Yosemite Valley was mismanaged, author Michael Crichton shared a story at a 2005 talk about how the National Park Service has grossly mismanaged nature at Yellowstone National Park, resulting in less biodiversity, the disappearance of many natural species from the park, and catastrophic fires. Since this anecdote was part of a longer talk, I'll quote the whole thing from the transcript.

Long recognized as a scene of great natural beauty, in 1872, Ulysses Grant set aside Yellowstone as the first formal nature preserve in the world. More than two million acres, larger than Delaware and Rhode Island combined. John Muir was very pleased when he visited in 1885, noting that under the care of the Department of the Interior, Yellowstone was protected from, quote, "the blind, ruthless destruction that is going on in adjoining regions."

Theodore Roosevelt was also pleased in 1903, when as President, he went to Yellowstone for a dedication ceremony. Here he is. This was his third visit. Roosevelt saw a thousand antelope, plentiful cougar, mountain sheep, deer, coyote and many thousands of elk. He wrote at that time, "Our people should see to it that this rich heritage is preserved for their children and their children's children forever, with its majestic beauty all unmarred."

But in fact, Yellowstone was not preserved. On the contrary, it was altered beyond repair in a matter of years. By 1934, the Park Service acknowledged that whitetail deer, cougar, lynx, wolf, and possibly wolverine and fisher are gone from the Yellowstone.

What they didn't say was that the Park Service was solely responsible for the disappearances. Park rangers had been shooting the animals for decades, even though that was illegal since the Lacey Act of 1894. But they thought they knew best. They thought their environmental concerns trumped any mere law.

What actually happened at Yellowstone is a cascade of ego and error, but to understand it, we have to go back to the 1890s. Back then, it was believed that elk were becoming extinct, so these animals were fed and encouraged. Over the next few years, the number of elk in the park exploded. Here you can see them feeding them hand to hand.

Roosevelt had seen a few thousand animals on his visit, and he'd noticed that the elk were more numerous than in his previous visit. Nine years later, in 1912, there were 30,000 elk in Yellowstone. By 1914, there were 35,000.

Things were going very well. Rainbow trout had also been introduced, and although they crowded out the native cutthroats, nobody really worried. Fishing was great. Bears were increasing in numbers, and moose and bison as well.

By 1915, Roosevelt realized the elk had become a problem, and he urged scientific management, which meant culling. His advice was ignored. Instead, the Park Service did everything they could to increase the number of elk. The results were predictable. Antelope and deer began to decline. Overgrazing changed the flora. Aspen and willows were being eaten at a furious rate and did not regenerate. Large animals and small began to disappear from the park.

In an effort to stem the loss, the park rangers began to kill predators, which they did without public knowledge. They eliminated the wolf and the cougar, and they were well on their way to getting rid of the coyote. Then a national scandal broke out. New studies showed that it wasn't predators that were killing the other animals. It was overgrazing from too many elk. The management policy of killing predators therefore had only made things worse.

Actually, the elk had so decimated the aspen that now, where formerly they were plentiful, now they're quite rare. Without the aspen, the beaver, which use these trees to make dams, began to disappear from the park. Beaver were essential to the water management of Yellowstone, and without dams, the meadows dried hard in summer and still more animals vanished.

The situation worsened further. It became increasingly inconvenient that all the predators had been killed off by 1930, so in the 1960s, there was a sigh of relief when new sightings by rangers suggested that wolves were returning. Of course, there were rumors all during that time, persistent rumors that the rangers were trucking them in. But in any case, the wolves vanished soon afterward. They needed to eat beaver and other small rodents, and the beaver had gone.

Pretty soon, the Park Service initiated a PR campaign to prove that excessive elk were not responsible for the problems in the park, even though they were. The campaign went on for about a decade, during which time the bighorn sheep virtually disappeared.

Now, we're in the 1970s, and bears were recognized as a growing problem. They used to be considered fun-loving creatures, and their close association with human beings was encouraged in the park. Here're people coming to watch bear feedings. There's a show at a certain hour of the day. And here's one of my favorites. Setting the table for bears at Lake Camp in Yellowstone Park. You see they're very well behaved.

But that didn't actually continue-the good behavior, I mean. There were more bears, and certainly there were many more lawyers, and thus the much-increased threat of litigation, so the rangers moved the grizzlies out. The grizzlies promptly became endangered. Their formerly growing numbers shrank. The Park Service refused to let scientists study them, but once they were declared endangered, the scientists could go back in again.

And by now, we're about ready to reap the rewards of our 40-year policy of fire suppression, Smokey the Bear and all that. The Indians used to burn forests regularly, and lightning causes natural fires every year. But when these are suppressed, branches fall from the trees to the ground and accumulate over the years to make a dense groundcover such that when there's a fire, it is a very low, very hot fire that sterilizes the soil. In 1988, Yellowstone burned, and all 1.2 million acres were scorched, and 800,000 acres, one third of the park, burned.

Then having killed the wolves, having tried to sneak them back in, they officially brought the wolves back. And now the local ranchers screamed. The newer reports suggested the wolves seemed to be eating enough of the elk that slowly, the ecology of the park was being restored. Or so it is claimed. It's been claimed before. And on and on.

The Park Service's bungling efforts at conservation were covered by Alston Chase in his 1987 book, Playing God in Yellowstone. (via @jhreha)

Update: As Crichton notes above, wolves were reintroduced into Yellowstone in 1995 and their presence started what's called a trophic cascade. From Wikipedia:

Trophic cascades occur when predators in a food web suppress the abundance or alter traits (e.g., behavior) of their prey, thereby releasing the next lower trophic level from predation (or herbivory if the intermediate trophic level is a herbivore). For example, if the abundance of large piscivorous fish is increased in a lake, the abundance of their prey, zooplanktivorous fish, should decrease, large zooplankton abundance should increase, and phytoplankton biomass should decrease. This theory has stimulated new research in many areas of ecology. Trophic cascades may also be important for understanding the effects of removing top predators from food webs, as humans have done in many places through hunting and fishing activities.

In a TED talk, George Monbiot explains the surprising effects the wolves had on Yellowstone...they even changed the courses of the rivers flowing through the park.

Fascinating. A sort of trickle down ecology. (via @gasperak and several others)

Tags: Alston Chase   George Monbiot   Michael Crichton   Yellowstone National Park

Believe it or not, it’s been five years’ since Sufjan Stevens released his last album, Age Of Adz. So it’s exciting news that Sufjan Stevens has announced a new album titled Carrie & Lowell. It will be released on March 31 via Asthmatic Kitty.

The album was named after Steven’s mother and stepfather, and features 11 songs about “life and death, love and loss, and the artist’s struggle to make sense of the beauty and ugliness of love.”

Longtime fans of Stevens may be pleased to learn that the album is being called a return to Steven’s folk roots. Age Of Adz, while a great album, dabbled into electronic territory, which may have turned some fans away who were used to his more folk-oriented work. And who knows, maybe he can work in some special Illinois shows with the eventual tour for the album, consider it’s the 10th anniversary of the classic.

Carrie & Lowell was recorded by Stevens along with Casey Foubert, Laura Veirs, Nedelle Torrisi, Sean Carey, Ben Lester and Thomas Bartlett.

Check out a beautiful album trailer that the label released below, featuring presumably a new track off the record. The album tracklist follows.

1. Death With Dignity
2. Should Have Known Better
3. All of Me Wants All of You
4. Drawn to the Blood
5. Fourth of July
6. The Only Thing
7. Carrie & Lowell
8. Eugene
9. John My Beloved
10. No Shade in the Shadow of the Cross
11. Blue Bucket of Gold

If you want to learn about someplace, you can always pick up a textbook. But if you want to get to know a place, you're going to have to dig a little deeper. And what you find there might be a little strange. The Strange States series will take you on a virtual tour of America to uncover the unusual people, places, things, and events that make this country such a unique place to call home. This week we’re heading to North Carolina, the home of Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, the Hardee’s fast food franchise, Golden Corral Buffet, and the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, makers of Camels and Pall Malls.

NORTH CAROLINA'S SUPER-LOW RAILROAD TRESTLE—A.K.A. THE CAN OPENER

If you ever find yourself driving a delivery truck or an RV through Durham, North Carolina, make sure you know how tall your vehicle is from the road to the top of the roof. Because if you’re not careful, you just might become the latest victim of “The Can Opener.”

Built around the turn of the 20th century, the railroad trestle at the corner of Gregson and Peabody Streets has a road clearance of only 11 feet 8 inches, well below the current state standard of 14 feet 6 inches. Despite flashing lights and yellow and black warning signs letting drivers know they’re coming up on a dangerously low bridge, trucks and RVs regularly get jammed underneath—and some unlucky drivers have the tops of their cargo containers sheared off, giving the overpass its kitchen tool nickname. 

For Duke University IT employee Jurgen Henn—whose office has a clear view of The Can Opener—the bridge has become a source of internet infamy. His website, 11foot8.com, uses a couple of webcams to document the crashes at the bridge, which sometimes occur as often as once a month. Thankfully, despite how much damage is done to these unfortunate vehicles, the human toll is usually little more than bruised egos. So don’t feel too bad laughing as you watch truck after truck get demolished. 

The railroad company needs the bridge to keep their trains running, so shutting The Can Opener down for a lengthy rehab just isn’t an option. But the City of Durham can’t just lower Gregson Street, either, because a sewer main runs underneath the pavement, and rerouting the main would come out of the taxpayers' wallets. In the end, it’s easier and cheaper to maintain the flashing lights and warning signs, and let the driver’s insurance company deal with the aftermath of The Can Opener.

Have the scoop on an unusual person, place or event in your state?  Tell me about it on Twitter (@spacemonkeyx) and maybe I’ll include it in a future edition of Strange States!  

See all the entries in our Strange State series here.

Costa Rica is as well known for its beautiful natural landscape and bustling biodiversity as it is for its wonderful, happy residents. Here are 16 interesting facts about Costa Rica that help make the country a truly singular place.

1. Over a quarter of the land is dedicated to conservation.

Tourists and locals alike are drawn to Costa Rica’s natural beauty—and are committed to preserving it. With 20 national parks, 8 biological reserves, animal refuges, and protected areas, 26 percent of Costa Rica’s land is protected.

2. Tourism is the country’s leading foreign exchange earner.

All that natural beauty and the diverse landscape with two oceans and access to countless adventure activities have made Costa Rica a great vacation destination. In 1995, tourism overtook bananas to become Costa Rica’s leading foreign exchange earner. Tourism reached an all-time high for Costa Rica in 2013 with 2.4 million visitors.

3. Costa Rica is home to four UNESCO World Heritage Sites.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has designated four locations in Costa Rica as World Heritage Sites for their universal cultural and natural value. They are: La Amistad National Park, Cocos Island National Park, Area de Conservación Guanacaste, and the Precolumbian Chiefdom Settlements with Stone Spheres of the Diquís.

4. Costa Rica is one of 23 countries in the world that doesn’t have a standing army.

Costa Rica dissolved its national army in 1948, and the abolition of the military was written into the national constitution in 1949. Twenty-one countries, including the United States, signed the Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance in 1947, pledging to provide military support to Costa Rica (and any other signee) should they need it. In 1980, the United Nations University for Peace was created and housed in Costa Rica.

5. It has one of the highest life expectancies in the world.

According to the World Bank, Costa Rica's life expectancy at birth is 80 years. This figure is higher than that of the United States (which is 79). The Nicoya region of Costa Rica is also one of five Blue Zones—“longevity hotspots” populated by the longest-living people in the world—on the globe. All that natural beauty and happiness must be good for you!

6. There are over 200 volcanic formations in Costa Rica.

Of these, approximately 112 have shown some type of activity—60 are considered dormant, which means they don't currently show signs of activity, but could possibly become active again. Arenal is the most active volcano in Central America, while Poás is the second widest volcanic crater in the world, and Irazú is Costa Rica’s tallest volcano.

7. Costa Rica is slightly smaller than Lake Michigan.

At 19,730 square miles, Costa Rica occupies slightly less territory than Lake Michigan (which measures 22,394 square miles). The country contains 801 miles (1,290 km) of coastline.

8. Costa Rica is home to more than 5 percent of the world’s biodiversity.

Costa Rica may not be a large country, but it packs a lot of life into its borders. While Costa Rica only occupies .03 percent of the world's surface, it boasts the globe's highest biodiversity density. The country is home to more than 500,000 species! And, with nearly 3 percent of the world’s biodiversity contained in its borders, Corcovado National Park has been deemed “the most biologically intense place on the planet.”

9. There are tons of butterflies in Costa Rica.

Seriously—there are so many butterflies. Costa Rica contains approximately 90 percent of the butterfly species found in Central America, 66 percent of all neo-tropical butterflies, and about 18 percent of all butterfly species in the world.

10. There are also over 50 species of hummingbirds.

Of the 338 known species of hummingbirds, about 50 live in Costa Rica. The smallest Costa Rican hummingbird (the male scintillant hummingbird) weighs only two grams. The largest (the violet sabrewing) weighs an average of 11.5 grams.

11. Costa Rica residents are called Ticos and Ticas.

Costa Ricans colloquially refer to themselves as Ticos (male) and Ticas (female). This stems from their practice of adding the diminutive suffix "tico" to the end of most words. For example, un poco means "a little" in standard Spanish. The typical diminutive is un poquito (a little bit), but Costa Ricans would instead say un poquitico.

12. Ticos and ticas in love use a sweet term of endearment.

Costa Ricans use the term media naranja to refer to their soul mate or other half. It literally translates to "half an orange."

13. Most Costa Rican radio stations play the country's national anthem at 7:00 each morning.

The national anthem, unofficially called "Noble patria, tu hermosa bandera" ("Noble homeland, your beautiful flag") was first played in 1852 to welcome United States and United Kingdom diplomatic representatives. The song, with music by Manuel Maria Gutierrez and lyrics written by Jose Maria Zeledon in 1903, was officially named Costa Rica's National Anthem in 1949.

14. Costa Rica didn't use street signs until 2012.

While a GPS will display street names in Costa Rica, locals use landmarks (past and present) to give directions. To get to the National Theater in San Jose, for example, you would take a "left-hand turn 100 (meters) south of the People's Bank." While San Jose residents readily used street names and numbers until the early 20th century, the practice fell off following a population boom in the 1950s and '60s.

In 2012, the city undertook a $1 million project to reintroduce street signs and a more regulated postal system to San Jose.

15. Costa Ricans live by pura vida.

Costa Ricans will often greet one another and bid farewell by saying "pura vida." But pura vida, which translates to "pure life," is more than a turn of phrase to Costa Ricans—it's a state of mind. Costa Ricans take every opportunity to live life to the fullest.

16. Costa Rica ranks number one in the Happy Planet Index.

With pura vida as their philosophy, it comes as no surprise that Costa Ricans are considered to be some of the happiest people on Earth. The Happy Planet Index uses three criteria—life expectancy, experienced well-being, and Ecological Footprint—to determine the overall happiness levels of 151 countries across the globe. With a score of 64.0, Costa Rica tops this list. (The United States, for comparison, has an HPI of 37.3.)

There is still even more to discover in Costa Rica. To see what overworked Americans are discovering in Costa Rica, visit SavetheAmericans.org.

Plan accordingly.

Steven Brill has written a book about the making of the Affordable Care Act called America's Bitter Pill: Money, Politics, Backroom Deals, and the Fight to Fix Our Broken Healthcare System.

America's Bitter Pill is Steven Brill's much-anticipated, sweeping narrative of how the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, was written, how it is being implemented, and, most important, how it is changing -- and failing to change -- the rampant abuses in the healthcare industry. Brill probed the depths of our nation's healthcare crisis in his trailblazing Time magazine Special Report, which won the 2014 National Magazine Award for Public Interest. Now he broadens his lens and delves deeper, pulling no punches and taking no prisoners.

Malcolm Gladwell has a review in the New Yorker this week.

Brill's intention is to point out how and why Obamacare fell short of true reform. It did heroic work in broadening coverage and redistributing wealth from the haves to the have-nots. But, Brill says, it didn't really restrain costs. It left incentives fundamentally misaligned. We needed major surgery. What we got was a Band-Aid.

I haven't read his book yet, but I agree with Brill on one thing: the ACA¹ did not go nearly far enough. Healthcare and health insurance are still a huge pain in the ass and still too expensive. My issues with healthcare particular to my situation are:

- As someone who is self-employed, insurance for me and my family is absurdly expensive. After the ACA was enacted, my insurance cost went up and the level of coverage went down. I've thought seriously about quitting my site and getting an actual job just to get good and affordable healthcare coverage.

- Doctors aren't required to take any particular health insurance. So when I switched plans, as I had to when the ACA was enacted, finding insurance that fit our family's particular set of doctors (regular docs, pediatrician, pediatric specialist that one of the kids has been seeing for a couple of years, OB/GYN, etc.) was almost impossible. We basically had one plan choice (not even through the ACA marketplace...see next item) or we had to start from scratch with new doctors.

- Many doctors don't take the ACA plans. My doctor doesn't take any of them and my kids' doc only took a couple. And they're explicit in accepting, say, United Healthcare's regular plan but not their ACA plan, which underneath the hood is the exact same plan that costs the same and has the same benefits. It's madness.

- The entire process is designed to be confusing so that insurance companies (and hospitals probably too) can make more money. I am an educated adult whose job is to read things so they make enough sense to tell others about them. That's what I spend 8+ hours a day doing. And it took me weeks to get up to speed on all the options and pitfalls and gotchas of health insurance...and I still don't know a whole lot about it. It is the most un-user-friendly thing I have ever encountered.

The ACA did do some great things, like making everyone eligible for health insurance and getting rid of the preexisting conditions bullshit, and that is fantastic...the "heroic work" mentioned by Gladwell. But the American healthcare system is still an absolute shambling embarrassment when you compare it to other countries around the world, even those in so-called "developing" or "third world" countries. And our political system is just not up to developing a proper plan, so I guess we'll all just limp along as we have been. Guh.

1. I hate the word "Obamacare" and will not use it. It's a derisive term that has been embraced for some reason by ACA/Obama supporters. It needlessly politicizes an already over-politicized issue. ↩

Tags: America's Bitter Pill   Barack Obama   books   economics   healthcare   Malcolm Gladwell   medicine   politics   Steven Brill

Leo Gerard, president of the United Steelworkers International union, writes about a Institute for Policy Studies report called Fleecing Uncle Sam. One of the most eyebrow-raising details is this:

Of America's 100 top-paid CEOs, 29 worked schemes that enabled them to collect more in compensation than their corporations paid in income taxes. The average pay for these 29: $32 million. For one year.

And from the report:

All seven of these firms were highly profitable, collectively reporting more than $74 billion in U.S. pre-tax profits. However, they received a combined total of $1.9 billion in refunds from the IRS, giving them an effective tax rate of negative 2.5 percent.

The seven CEOs leading these tax-dodging corporations were paid $17.3 million on average in 2013. Boeing and Ford Motors both paid their CEOs more than $23 million last year while receiving large tax refunds.

Total bullshit.

Tags: business   Leo Gerard   taxes

Set a course for the Festivus Quadrant and press play on your YouTube thingy. There is zero educational content in this video, but it is delightful. Make it so!

(If you're more of a Star Wars fan, happy life day!)

A major study conducted by the Harvard School of Public Health has found a significant link between autism and the exposure of the mother to high levels of air pollution during the third trimester of pregnancy.

Researchers focused on 1,767 children born from 1990 to 2002, including 245 diagnosed with autism. The design of the study and the results rule out many confounding measures that can create a bias, Weisskopf said. The researchers took into account socioeconomic factors that can influence exposure to pollution or play a role in whether a child is diagnosed with autism.

The fact that pollution caused problems only during pregnancy strengthened the findings, since it's unlikely other factors would have changed markedly before or after those nine months, he said in a telephone interview.

The ultimate cause of autism remains a mystery in most cases, said Charis Eng, chairwoman of the Lerner Research Institute's Genomic Medicine Institute at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio. While the Harvard study isn't definitive and the findings could be coincidental, it's not likely given the large size and the precise results, she said in a telephone interview.

"The truth is there has to be gene and environmental interactions," said Eng, who wasn't involved in the study. "I suspect the fetus already had the weak autism spectrum disorder genes, and then the genes and the environment interacted."

It would be a huge help (and I am not in any way being facetious about this) if Jenny McCarthy and all the other celebrity "vaccines cause autism" folks threw their weight behind cleaning up pollution the way they attacked vaccination. Redeem yourselves. (via @john_overholt)

Tags: autism   Jenny McCarthy   medicine   science

On March 3, Modest Mouse will release their new album Strangers To Ourselves (via Epic Records), their first album since 2007’s We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank. It’s been a long time coming.

Today they premiered “Lampshades On Fire” on Minnesota radio station 89.3 The Current. It’s the first single from the album. Test pressings of the 7″ of the single were sent to fans over the weekend, in a smart piece of buzz-building by the band and their management. People were talking about the single ahead of it’s official release, which comes tomorrow.

After spending much of today getting familiar with “Lampshades On Fire,” I gotta say, I’m digging it. It pretty much picks up right where the band left off, hitting that signature Modest Mouse vibe. It’s a good one folks.

Stream it below.

L.A. trio The Great Escape released their self-titled album back in October. They give classic ideas a contemporary spin, a refreshing look at what it means to be a rock and roll band in 2014.

Take “Rebel” a song that hits like The Dead Weather, only with a old school spin with Janis Joplin-esque vocals and even some brass horns for good measure. Gritty rock and roll licks and fired up vocals with a soulful twist.

Find it posted below.

A letter to the editor in The Times today details an unusual lifesaving technique from a quick-thinking shepherd.

Sir, Atul Gawande's article "How a checklist saved a little girl's life" (Opinion, Nov 22) reminded me of an event in the late 1970s, when an infant fell into the garden pond of one of my neighbours. On hearing an anguished scream followed by pleas for help, I and an elderly neighbor dropped our gardening tools and struggled over the hedges and fence that separated us from the commotion.

The three-year-old girl was at the bottom of the pond; I jumped in, pulled her out and passed her lifeless body to my neighbour. He lay her down, got hold of her ankles, lifted her up and began, in a lunatic fashion, to swing her around his head. Horrified and paralysed, the child's mother and I watched as, moments later, water poured from the child's mouth and nose, and she gave a loud cry.

I asked my neighbour where he'd learnt to do such a thing. He said he'd been a shepherd for 30-odd years, and when lambs were born "dead" it was the standard way of making them breathe and of ridding their mouth of birth debris. But for the grace of this old shepherd, Aaron, that child would not be alive today.

Genius. I wonder if this centrifuge move might be more effective in helping lighter drowning victims breathe than CPR. (via @JRhodesPianist & @themexican)

When my mother was an astronaut (oh, man, this is so good.)

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US abortion doctors speak:

Recruited as part of the first batch of legal abortion counsellors in Texas, Glenna joined Curtis at his first clinic, the Fairmount Center in Dallas, in 1974. Since then, she says, things have changed for the worse. “Women express more shame. I can’t think of a time when it was worse than it is now. I used to ask women how they first heard the word abortion, how they learned about it. There were always very personal stories about someone they knew, or found out had had one. Now, the first time they saw it was on some ugly billboard. It has been legal throughout their lifespan, not to mention their reproductive lifespan. But it has been completely politicised. ”

Curtis, 76, agrees: “Patients never came in talking about all this shame. They felt it was an OK thing to do, if they could just find somebody to do it for them.”

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Read more Link Roundup! at The Toast.

Michael Lewis on a new book about billionaires, the increasing economic inequality in America, and the impact of the behavior of the very rich is having on politics and happiness. The camp breakfast anecdote at the beginning of the article is gold.

You all live in important places surrounded by important people. When I'm in the big city, I never understand the faces of the people, especially the people who want to be successful. They look so worried! So unsatisfied!

In the city you see people grasping, grasping, grasping. Taking, taking, taking. And it must be so hard! To be always grasping-grasping, and taking-taking. But no matter how much they have, they never have enough. They're still worried. About what they don't have. They're always empty.

You have a choice. You don't realize it, but you have a choice. You can be a giver or you can be a taker. You can get filled up or empty. You make that choice every day. You make that choice at breakfast when you rush to grab the cereal you want so others can't have what they want.

The piece is filled with Lewis-esque observations throughout. Like:

Rich people, in my experience, don't want to change the world. The world as it is suits them nicely.

And:

The American upper middle class has spent a fortune teaching its children to play soccer: how many great soccer players come from the upper middle class?

But the studies about the effects of wealth and privilege on human behavior are what caught my eye the most.

In one study, Keltner and his colleague Paul Piff installed note-takers and cameras at city street intersections with four-way stop signs. The people driving expensive cars were four times more likely to cut in front of other drivers than drivers of cheap cars. The researchers then followed the drivers to the city's cross walks and positioned themselves as pedestrians, waiting to cross the street. The drivers in the cheap cars all respected the pedestrians' right of way. The drivers in the expensive cars ignored the pedestrians 46.2 percent of the time -- a finding that was replicated in spirit by another team of researchers in Manhattan, who found drivers of expensive cars were far more likely to double park.

Living in Manhattan, I see stuff like this all the time and it's becoming increasingly difficult to think of the rich and privileged as anything other than assholes, always grasping, grasping, grasping, taking, taking, taking.

Tags: economics   Michael Lewis

Today, nearly 30 years after the fact, Mark Tulbert can still get tongue-tied reminiscing about the first time he met Rob Maddrey.

“We met at a Durham Bulls baseball game,” he says, recalling Maddrey’s boyish grin. “I was just … just, you know. That was it.”

The flood of memories is interrupted by the old-fashioned ringtone on Tulbert’s smartphone, clanging like it’s still 1985. “Speaking of Rob,” he says, glancing at the screen. “Why is Rob calling me?”

Like many longtime married couples, they seem to have a sixth sense of when one is talking about the other.

In reality — in the eyes of the state of North Carolina, at least — they began their married life together just over a month ago, on Oct. 10, 2014. That’s the day U.S. District Judge Max Cogburn Jr. struck down North Carolina’s ban on same-sex marriage.

Tulbert and Maddrey, who tied the knot in Washington, D.C., after same-sex marriage was legalized there in 2010, are among the many same-sex couples in North Carolina whose out-of-state marriages are now recognized in their home state.

Tulbert, an arts administrator at NC State, says the legal recognition brings practical benefits.

“One of the nice surprises to us was how much our home and auto insurance dropped as soon as we could put them together on one policy,” he says.

Tulbert, a native of Union Grove, N.C., had a conventional small-town childhood in an unconventional era.

“In the late 1960s our town’s Easter weekend fiddlers convention turned into an annual Woodstock type of event,” he says. “So I tell people I grew up with hippies, Hare Krishnas and Hells Angels.”

But times have changed, and Tulbert’s life with his husband in Raleigh’s Five Points neighborhood is anything but radical.

“I think we’re pretty boring, middle-class people,” he says.

California Dreamin’

When Debbie Carraway met her future wife, Kara Stinnett, it wasn’t exactly a match made in heaven, despite the location.

“We met when I was visiting a church,” Carraway recalls. “I walked in the door, and she was the first person I talked to. And I hated her.”

Carraway’s initial aversion soon gave way to an equal and opposite reaction, and the pair became close friends, often dining together.

The self-described “hardcore geek” was falling in love but kept her feelings to herself.

“We went on several dates before she knew we were dating,” she says. “I was a chicken. But she figured it out.”

Carraway, an information technology manager at NC State, married Stinnett in San Diego on Aug. 8, 2008, three months after the California Supreme Court ruled that a statewide ban on same-sex marriage was unconstitutional.

“We got married in the courthouse,” she says. “It was nice and I was terrified. But in four minutes I managed to get married.”

The legality of the marriage was cast into doubt three months later when California voters approved Proposition 8, a state constitutional amendment eliminating the right of same-sex couples to marry. It would take a year for the California Supreme Court to rule that same-sex marriages performed before the passage of Prop 8 were legal.

Back in North Carolina, the couple celebrated their union with a second ceremony on Oct. 11, 2008 — this one including family and friends.

“We’re collecting anniversary dates,” Carraway laughs.

In addition to their first and second ceremonies in 2008, the couple counts Oct. 10, 2014, the day same-sex marriage was legalized in North Carolina, and Oct. 13, 2014, the day NC State recognized their marriage for the purpose of spousal benefits.

Carraway, a Jamestown, N.C., native who attended the National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights in 1987, relishes the advances she’s seen in society over the past three decades.

“It’s exciting to be part of progress,” she says. “It’s exciting to be part of a community that’s trying so very hard to be inclusive.”

O Canada

It might have been a romantic moment when Valerie Faulkner proposed to her future wife, Jenn Smith. The only problem is, she can barely recall it.

“I’m totally not romantic,” Faulkner admits. “I don’t remember the exact words, but Jenn says we were at a swim class and I asked her when we were in the pool.”

That’s not to say there haven’t been memorable moments in the couple’s 13-year relationship. Topping the list is their wedding on the beach in Ingonish, Nova Scotia, on June 17, 2008, and the party they threw for family and friends a few months later at the Durham Arts Council to mark the milestone.

Faulkner, a teaching assistant professor of elementary education at NC State, met Smith in 2001 through a mutual friend.

“We started dating and fell in love pretty quickly,” she says. After a year, they moved in together, and a year later they bought a house in Durham.

Faulkner, whose parents were both teachers, grew up in the northeast. She moved to the Triangle in 1981 to attend Duke University.

“I didn’t realize how oppressive the law was until it was overturned,” she says of North Carolina’s ban on same-sex marriage. “But when marriage equality came to our state, it felt like we were getting another layer of personhood.”

Taking a Stand

Three days before North Carolina voters went to the polls in May 2012 to decide the fate of Amendment 1, a measure banning same-sex marriage in the state, Justine Hollingshead stood on an outdoor stage in downtown Raleigh and took Debbie Dean’s hands in her own. There, under a cloudless sky in front of thousands of witnesses celebrating an annual gay pride event, the couple pledged their love to each other.

Even though same-sex marriage wasn’t legal in North Carolina that day, and even though the passage of Amendment 1 would throw up another roadblock to equal rights for gay and lesbian couples, Hollingshead and Dean were undaunted.

“It was a visible way to say, ‘You can’t stop us. You can’t stop the love we have for one another,’” Hollingshead says. “You may amend the North Carolina constitution, but that doesn’t stop two people from loving each other.”

Hollingshead, founder of NC State’s GLBT Center and an administrator in academic and student affairs, was proved correct. Amendment 1 remained North Carolina law for just two years. Her relationship with Dean, formalized by a wedding ceremony in Washington, D.C., in June 2012, is going strong after 17 years.

A native of Warren, Pennsylvania, Hollingshead arrived in Raleigh in 1995 with low expectations for the city.

“The climate was very different then,” she recalls. “There was no center and no services for gays and lesbians. It was very conservative. I decided I was going to stay for just one year.”

After working with college students in NC State’s housing division, she realized that the climate in Raleigh wouldn’t change unless someone took on the hard work of advocating for change. She launched a campus program called Project SAFE to train allies of the gay community — straight faculty, staff and students — to understand and address the needs of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender students.

She met Dean, then a website manager, while researching potential resources for the program.

“She’s quiet and introverted, and then there’s me,” Hollingshead says. “We’re a good balance for each other.”

Although the federal judge who struck down Amendment 1 probably didn’t time his ruling for dramatic effect, he issued the order just hours before Raleigh’s LGBT Center hosted its sixth annual awards gala at historic Cobblestone Hall. Arriving for the event just before 6 p.m., Hollinghead was surprised and delighted to hear the news.

“We literally had people get married at the clerk’s office and then come directly to the awards ceremony,” she says, savoring the memory.

“Between May 8, 2012, when Amendment 1 passed, and Oct. 10, 2014, when it was overturned, we felt such extremes of emotion, from frustration to elation and even disbelief,” she adds. “We just looked at each other and said, did this really happen?”

The answer for hundreds of North Carolina couples, formalized by a license from the state and solemnized before family and friends, was never really in doubt.

Justice, like love, is blind.

By Leo Babauta

I’m so excited: today I launch my new book, Zen Habits: Mastering the Art of Change.

And I need your help.

The book is written (just finished on Friday!), but I need your support to get it printed. So I’ve launched a Kickstarter campaign, and this limited edition of the book will only be sold there.

Go back it now!

The campaign will last 30 days (ends Dec. 17, 2014), and I’m asking for a minimum of $44,700, to pay for printing and shipping, editing and design, fees and taxes, and a couple other things. At this level, I won’t get paid, but the book will print and ship.

However, I’d like to go above that goal … partly to get paid, but also to print a second edition later in 2015 to get the book out to more people.

If you help me go higher than the $45K goal, for every $15K over that goal, I will record a new video: of my writing routine, my workouts, how I cook my healthy meals, and one on parenting. And one with my beautiful wife and kids.

Get the book.

The Book

This book will be an intentionally slender volume of about 150 pages, with a beautiful, minimalist design and high-quality printing. If funded, we’ll be printing it in January.

What is it about?

It’s about struggle, and how to overcome it. If you’ve struggled with changing your habits, as I did for many years, this book will be a practical guide to change.

But it’s about more than habit change: if you’ve struggled with major life changes, or stress, or unhappiness with yourself, or frustration with others … this book will help you cope.

I draw on some of the core Zen ideas, plus everything I’ve learned coaching thousands of people change their lives.

I’m publishing it in several forms:

1. The web edition — completely online
2. Digital editions — Kindle, iPad (epub) and PDF formats
3. Print edition — this is my favorite, because it will be a pleasure to read

In addition, I’m offering some limited bonuses, exclusive to this Kickstarter campaign — from bonus PDF guides to a small-group coaching program to webinars and more.

I’d like to thank you all for your support over the years, and for your help making this book — my dream — a reality.

Please support my book.

Groups including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation aim to help bring an easier-to-inject form of Depo-Provera to 69 developing countries.

According to a recent survey¹ of citizens in 14 countries, the United States ranks second in the amount of ignorance about things like teenage birth rates, unemployment rates, and immigration. Only Italians were more clueless. You can take a version of the test yourself and then view the results (results for the US only). Some of the more notable results:

- Americans guessed that the unemployment rate is 32%, instead of the actual rate of 6%.

- While 1% of the US population identifies as Muslim, Americans guessed 15%. 15!

- 70% of Americans guessed the US murder rate was rising. It has decreased by more than half since 1992.

- Americans guessed that almost 24% of girls aged 15-19 give birth each year. Actually, 3.1%.

Then again, what do Americans hear about constantly on the news? Unemployment, Muslims & immigration, murder, and teen pregnancy. It's little wonder the guesses on those are so high.

1. As you know, survey results are to be taken with a grain of salt. ↩

Tags: USA

On Last Week Tonight, John Oliver takes down the lottery.

$68 billion. That's more than Americans spent last year on movie tickets, music, porn, the NFL, major league baseball, and video games combined.

The lottery is a defacto tax on poor people. Despicable. Horrible. But fun!

Tags: gambling   John Oliver   video

You may have already read this over the weekend. Read it again! Perhaps print out several copies of it and staple it to the inside of the jacket of the men in your life. Laminate it on your heart, whatever.

Anti-abortion measures pose a risk to all pregnant women, including those who want to be pregnant.

Such laws are increasingly being used as the basis for arresting women who have no intention of ending a pregnancy and for preventing women from making their own decisions about how they will give birth.

Read more “Pregnant, And No Civil Rights”: Criminalizing Miscarriages at The Toast.

Why "personhood" is a fuckin' CROCK and how it can be used to arrest and harass women far outside the realm of conversations about abortion:

The principle at the heart of contemporary efforts to end legal abortion is that fertilized eggs, embryos and fetuses are persons or at least have separate rights that must be protected by the state. In each of the cases we identified, this same rationale provided the justification for the deprivation of pregnant women’s physical liberty, as well as of the right to medical decision making, medical privacy, bodily integrity and, in one case, the woman’s right to life.

Many of the pregnant women subjected to this mistreatment are themselves profoundly opposed to abortion. Yet it was precisely the legal arguments for recriminalizing abortion that were used to strip them of their rights to dignity and liberty in the context of labor and delivery. These cases, individually and collectively, highlight what is so often missed when the focus is on attacking or defending abortion, namely that all pregnant women are at risk of losing a wide range of fundamental rights that are at the core of constitutional personhood in the United States.

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Jazmine Hughes talked to a bunch of cool women about Imposter Syndrome:

To be honest, I felt like I didn’t deserve my PhD and it took me awhile to even acknowledge my own self as a doctor, a title I had earned after 6+ years of doing research. I’m getting better at trusting myself and my abilities to do the kind of work I want to do. I finally switched my Gmail signature to read Sabriya Stukes, PhD. There are definitely still times when I can feel “the Impostor Syndrome” creep in but I’ve slowly learned how to deal with it. Every time I feel that self-doubt rising I allow myself the space to recognize it for what it is: a choice, a choice between believing a destructive voice inside my head, or choosing to quiet it with a much louder voice that says “you are going to fucking slay it,” do a Beyoncé hair flip and face the next challenge.

Sabina Stuykes, PhD at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine

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Read more Link Roundup! at The Toast.

The chief administrator of North Carolina's courts told a top legislator that magistrates are duty-bound to marry gay couples and he's seen no federal law or rulings exempting them based on religious beliefs opposing same-sex marriage.

A woman recently took to the streets of NYC and walked around for 10 hours. She walked behind someone wearing a hidden camera that captured all of the catcalls and harassment directed toward her during that time...108 incidents in all. This is what it's like being a woman in public:

At The Awl, John Herrman notes the parallels between a woman on the streets of NYC and a woman spending time on the internet.

But the video works in two ways: It's also a neat portrayal of what it is like to be a woman talking about gender on the mainstream internet. This became apparent within minutes of publication, at which point the video's comment section was flooded with furious responses.

A typical post in the YouTube comments thread:

are you fucking kidding me "verbal harassment"? most of all the guys called that woman "beautiful" or said to "have a good day"....it would be harassment if the guys called that woman a "hoe" or "bitch"...you are a fucktard.

On Tumblr, Alex Alvarez neatly dispenses with that sort of "logic":

To anchor this more concretely, consider the behavior of the men in the video. Take a look at how they seek the woman out to wish her a good morning, despite her not having made eye contact or shown any interest in talking to them. Take a look at how they're not wishing a good morning to any other person, particularly male people, also walking around. The woman is walking directly behind the man filming her (the camera is hidden in his backpack), and not one of the men shown in the video are seen to be greeting him and wishing him a good day. Just her.

Why is this?

It's because they don't care, really whether she has a good day or not. What they care about is letting her know that they have noticed her -- her hair, her face, her body, her outfit. They want her to notice that they've noticed, and they want her to notice them, however fleetingly.

Tags: Alex Alvarez   gender   John Herrman   NYC   video