The Professor Who Put Brock Turner's Face in a Textbook Definition of Rape
Friday, June 07, 2019
THANKS TO US SANCTIONS CIA OPERATIONS TO UNDERMINE MADURO
Venezuela’s Collapse Is the Worst Outside of War in Decades, Economists Say
Butchers have stopped selling meat cuts in favor of offal, fat shavings and cow hooves, the only animal protein many of their customers can afford.
NYTIMES.COM
Butchers have stopped selling meat cuts in favor of offal, fat shavings and cow hooves, the only animal protein many of their customers can afford.
NYTIMES.COM
8-10 million Iranians died over Great Famine caused by the British in late 1910s, documents reveal
The document in the American Archives, reporting the widespread famine and spread of epidemic disease in Iran, estimates the number of the deceased due to the famine to be about 8-10 million.
Native American actor to get Oscar, a first, at honorary awards
Date created : 04/06/2019
The Academy praised Wes Studi's activism and involvement in Native American politics in announcing that he would receive an honorary Oscar
Date created : 04/06/2019
The Academy praised Wes Studi's activism and involvement in Native American politics in announcing that he would receive an honorary Oscar
Los Angeles (AFP)
A Native American actor will receive an Oscar for the first time, organizers said Monday, as the Academy published a list of honorary prizes following years of controversy over the awards' diversity.
Wes Studi, who is best known for his roles in "Dances with Wolves" and "The Last of the Mohicans" -- is one of three industry veterans who will receive honorary prizes at the glitzy Governors Awards ceremony on October 27, along with filmmakers David Lynch and Lina Wertmuller.
Actress Geena Davis, already an Academy Award winner, will receive a special prize for her humanitarian work.
Studi, 71, has appeared in more than 30 films and is "known for portraying strong Native American characters with poignancy and authenticity," the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences said in a statement.
It also praised Studi's activism and involvement in Native American politics.
"I am deeply honored and humbled. I finally get to say 'I'd like to thank the Academy...'," tweeted Studi, who is of Cherokee descent.
The award comes almost half a century after Marlon Brando memorably declined his best actor Oscar for "The Godfather" in protest at the movie industry's treatment of Native Americans.
Canadian indigenous musician Buffy Sainte-Marie shared a best original song Oscar in 1982.
Academy president John Bailey said the recipients of this year's honorary Oscars were chosen for their "lifetime of artistic accomplishment" and had "brought outstanding contributions to our industry, and beyond."
Lynch, regarded as one of the greatest American filmmakers of his generation, is the enigmatic director of cult classics such as "Blue Velvet" and "Mulholland Drive," as well as television's "Twin Peaks."
He has been nominated four times for competitive Oscars but never won.
The third honorary prize will go to Wertmuller, who in 1977 became the first woman ever nominated for best director for "Seven Beauties."
The Governors Awards ceremony was created as a separate event in 2009 to allow more time for the honorees to accept their prizes and to declutter the main show's packed schedule.
Davis, who won an Oscar for "The Accidental Tourist," will receive the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award for her work promoting gender equality in media.
The "Thelma & Louise" star founded an institute to tackle gender bias and stereotypes in film.
Previous winners of that award include Angelina Jolie, Oprah Winfrey and Elizabeth Taylor.
D-DAY STORIES
For all the Star Trek geeks who didn't know this about "Scotty"...(2016 article). Jimmy Doohan was a WWII war hero.
Photos of D-Day 75-year memorials show World War II jeeps, fighter planes, and parachuting veterans in Normandy
Canada has been ranked third-to-last in a detailed new study comparing health-care systems in 11 developed nations, managing to beat out only France and the bottom-ranked United States.
The study, published this week by a New York-based private research foundation called the Commonwealth Fund, focuses largely on America’s dismal performance, but also reveals stubborn weaknesses in Canada’s system that keep us lagging behind top-ranked countries like Australia, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands.
According to the study, which relies on 72 metrics grouped into five distinct categories (Care Process, Access, Administrative Efficiency, Equity, and Health Care Outcomes), those weaknesses include Canada’s comparatively higher infant mortality rate, the prevalence of chronic conditions, long wait times in emergency rooms and to see specialists, poor availability of after-hours care, and a lack of reliable coverage for things like dental work and many prescription drugs.
The report’s authors cite the “markedly lower performance of Canada, France and the United States compared to the other countries, which all group relatively closely above the 11-country average performance score.”
The document makes it clear Canadians are not getting value for money, spending the equivalent of 10 per cent of our GDP on health care in 2014. Meanwhile, many higher-ranked countries spent less and still managed to come out on top.
It’s certainly not all bad news, however.
Canada performed quite well on many metrics. The country has some of the lowest mortality rates for patients who end up in hospital following a heart attack, for example, and survival rates for certain types of cancer are also comparatively high. Unlike their peers abroad, Canadian doctors were unlikely to say that they wasted too much time on administrative tasks.
The survey results were drawn from a few sources. First, there are the Commonwealth Fund’s own international surveys of patients and doctors, conducted using widely accepted sampling and survey methods. Data was also drawn from the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
The Commonwealth Fund’s last review of the health-care systems across the 11 affluent countries, conducted in 2014, saw Canada ranked second-to-last, meaning we have jumped up one spot this time around.
But the authors themselves note that extremely small differences between scores and rankings on various metrics can easily bump a country up or down on the list. Results are often clustered closely together, with only a few percentage points separating Canada from all the countries above it on the list.
There were other limitations as well. In spite of improvements in recent years, the report notes, the availability of data on health system performance across nations “remains highly variable,” and the survey does not capture important information drawn directly from things like medical records or administrative data.
“Furthermore, patients’ and physicians’ assessments might be affected by their expectations, which could differ by country and culture … in general, the report relies predominantly on patient experience measures.”
© 2017 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
~ A fleet of 100 planes making 4,000 worldwide missions per year could help save the world from climate change. Also, it may be relatively cheap. That's the conclusion of a new peer-reviewed study in Environmental Research Letters.
It's the stuff of science fiction. Planes spraying tiny sulphate particulates into the lower stratosphere, around 60,000 feet up. The idea is to help shield the Earth from just enough sunlight to help keep temperatures low.
The researchers examined how practical and costly a hypothetical solar geoengineering project would be beginning 15 years from now. The aim would be to half the temperature increase caused by heat-trapping greenhouse gases.
This method would mimic what large volcanoes do. In 1991, Mount Pinatubo erupted in the Philippines. It was the second largest eruption of the 20th century, according to the United States Geological Survey (USGS).
In total, the eruption injected 20 million tons of sulfur dioxide aerosols into the stratosphere. USGS said the Earth's lower atmosphere temperature dropped by approximately 1-degree Fahrenheit. The effect only lasted a couple of years because the sulfates eventually fell to Earth.
Although controversial, some think that trying to mimic the impacts of a volcano eruption is a viable way to control global warming. This proposed type of climate geoengineering is called stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI). Theoretically if done at scale — and sustained — the impact can be large. The 1-degree temperature drop which accompanied Mount Pinatubo's eruption is equal to about half of the human-caused warming Earth has experienced since the Industrial Revolution began.
Dr. Gernot Wagner from Harvard University is an author of the paper. He said their study shows this type of geoengineering "... would be technically possible strictly from an engineering perspective. It would also be remarkably inexpensive, at an average of around $2 to 2.5 billion per year over the first 15 years."
But to reach that point, the study said an entirely new aircraft needs to be developed. Partly because missions would need to be conducted at nearly double the cruising altitude of commercial airplanes. The study's co-author, Wake Smith explained, "No existing aircraft has the combination of altitude and payload capabilities required."
So, the team investigated what it would cost to develop an aircraft they dub the SAI Lofter (SAIL). They say its fuselage would have a stubby design and the wing area — as well as the thrust — would need to be twice as large. In total, the team estimates the development cost for the airframe to be $2 billion and $350 million to modify existing engines.
In their hypothetical plan, the fleet would start with eight planes in the first year and rise to just under 100 within 15 years. In year one, there would be 4,000 missions, increasing to just over 60,000 per year by year 15. As you can see, this would need to be a sustained and escalating effort.
As one may imagine, a concept like this comes with a lot of controversy. Like treating a fever with aspirin, this type of engineering only treats the symptoms, it does not fix the root cause of the warming: Escalating levels of heat trapping greenhouse gases produced by the burning of fossil fuels.
The American Meteorological Society (AMS) expressed concerns that the possibility of seemingly quick and inexpensive fixes will distract the public and policymakers from addressing the underlying problems and developing adaptation strategies. And if for whatever reason the aerosol missions stopped, within a few years the temperatures would shoot up at breakneck pace. A pace that would likely be too fast for humanity to adjust.
The AMS official policy statement regarding this type of geoengineering begins with a warning, "Reflecting sunlight would likely reduce Earth's average temperature but could also change global circulation patterns with potentially serious consequences such as changing storm tracks and precipitation patterns."
In other words, the atmosphere is complex. Any band-aid fix is bound to have unintended consequences and possibly cause a new set of problems. The AMS goes on to say results of reflecting sunlight "would almost certainly not be the same for all nations and peoples, thus raising legal, ethical, diplomatic and national security concerns." One region may become a desert, while others become flooded out.
And if we learn to control SAI to tailor a favorable result, there's the concern it may be used for the disproportionate benefit of one nation over another. In a 2017 study in the publication Nature Communications, the authors warn their work "... reemphasizes the perils of unilateral geoengineering, which might prove attractive to individual actors due to a greater controllability of local climate responses, but with inherent additional risk elsewhere."
But perhaps the greatest reason to be skeptical of aerosol solar sunlight management is that it's not a silver bullet. As carbon dioxide continues to increase, the oceans are becoming increasingly acidic. According to NOAA, ocean acidification can cascade through the ocean food chain, reducing the ability of shell fish and reef-building corals to produce their skeletons. Injecting aerosols into the stratosphere simply limits sunshine, it does not tackle the underlying carbon dioxide build up. The ocean would continue to acidify.
Despite the potential drawbacks, the AMS does recognize — even with aggressive mitigation — we can't avoid some dangerous consequences of climate change already baked into the system. Plus, the scale of human adaptation is limited. Therefore, they urge caution and continued research.
The AMS policy statement closes with: "Geoengineering will not substitute for either aggressive mitigation or proactive adaptation, but it could contribute to a comprehensive risk management strategy to slow climate change and alleviate some of its negative impacts. The potential to help society cope with climate change and the risks of adverse consequences imply a need for adequate research, appropriate regulation and transparent deliberation."
Hemant Mehta drew attention to an article in the Star Tribune about meteorologist Paul Douglas, who is an Evangelical Christian and wants to persuade his fellow Christians to accept the evidence for climate change. The quote in the meme comes via the article, but is originally from his recent book, Caring for Creation.
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