03/24/2012 archive

THERE’S GOOD NEWS AND THERE’S BAD NEWS…

          Women’s World Cup titleholders Nadeshiko Japan beat the powerful Americans in soccer once again, this time 1-0 at the Algarve Cup tournament in Portugal.

   Unfortunately, however, the Japanese women would go on to lose 4-3 to Germany in the Algarve Cup final.

   US pop singer and 1980s icon Cyndi Lauper was in tsunami-hit Ishinomaki to cheer up local elementary school students with a few songs. Lauper was also here a year earlier, arriving on March 11, 2011. Not the greatest timing for a girl who just wanted to have…

   A private detective agency in Japan revealed that 21.5 percent of married women with jobs that they were hired to track had been unfaithful.

   The number of Japanese students who committed suicide in 2011 was up to 1,029, a record and over 100 higher than the previous year, according to the National Police Agency.

   A 6m fishing boat, swept away by the March 11 tsunami from a town in Iwate Prefecture and later recovered off the coast of Hyogo Prefecture, was returned to the owner’s family. The man who owned the boat was killed by the tsunami.

   A Buddhist temple in Nagano has made wooden Jizo statues, which spiritually protect temples, out of fallen pine trees from disaster-hit Rikuzentakata in Iwate Prefecture.

   US Navy Admiral Robert Willard, the man who coordinated the US military’s post-March 11 relief operations in Japan-Operation Tomodachi-stepped down from his post as commander of the US Pacific Command.

   An elderly man and woman were found dead in a Tokyo apartment. The pair apparently expired due to “illness,” according to the local police.

   Pieces of haniwa clay figures shaped in the form of humans dating from the 5th century were found at a burial site in Shimane Prefecture, the oldest artifacts of their type ever discovered in Japan.

Last Night’s Results

Tonight’s Action-

Welcome to the Stars Hollow Health and Fitness weekly diary. It will publish on Saturday afternoon and be open for discussion about health related issues including diet, exercise, health and health care issues, as well as, tips on what you can do when there is a medical emergency. Also an opportunity to share and exchange your favorite healthy recipes.

Questions are encouraged and I will answer to the best of my ability. If I can’t, I will try to steer you in the right direction. Naturally, I cannot give individual medical advice for personal health issues. I can give you information about medical conditions and the current treatments available.

You can now find past Health and Fitness News diaries here and on the right hand side of the Front Page.

   Last week I couldn’t believe the size and beauty of the cabbages one farmer was selling by the piece. I bought one for $2, took it home and weighed it: five pounds on the dot. It made five terrific meals, all with ingredients I had on hand.

   I’ve been covering a lot of brassicas lately – those healthy phytochemical-rich cruciferous vegetables like kale, kohlrabi, broccoli and cabbage. That’s what we have plenty of at this time of year, and there’s no reason to be bored with them. I stuffed the tough outside leaves of my big cabbage, quartered the rest and made a pizza, a pie, a stir-fry and the most wonderful baked beans I’ve ever eaten.

Martha Rose Shulman

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

Eugene Robinson: To Be Black in America …

For every black man in America, from the millionaire in the corner office to the mechanic in the local garage, the Trayvon Martin tragedy is personal. It could have been me or one of my sons. It could have been any of us.

How many George Zimmermans are out there cruising the streets? How many guys with chips on their shoulders and itchy fingers on the triggers of loaded handguns? How many self-imagined guardians of the peace who say the words “black male” with a sneer?

We don’t yet know every detail of the incident between Martin and Zimmerman in Sanford, Fla., that ended with an unarmed 17-year-old high-school student being shot dead. But we know enough to conclude that this is an old, familiar story.

Deborah James: Change is Gonna Come? Global Health Expert Nominated by US for World Bank Presidency

For the very first time, the U.S. government has nominated a qualified candidate to be the President of the World Bank. In order to maintain control of the institution by donors, rather than those impacted by its decisions, the U.S. and EU share a tacit agreement that the World Bank president has always been the American nomination – just as the head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is always a European (although one that Washington approves of). This job’s previous occupants included several top U.S. military brass (including Robert McNamara after the Vietnam War debacle, and most recently Paul Wolfowitz) as well as top bankers from Chase, Bank of America, JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs.

On Friday, however, President Obama nominated Korea-born Jim Yong Kim as the US candidate for the position. Dr. Kim is a co-founder, with Paul Farmer, of Partners In Health. In an email to supporters, Farmer and another PIH co-founder, Ophelia Dahl, said that “Jim is an inspired choice to lead the World Bank. Having seen him work in settings from inner-city Boston to the slums of Peru, from Haiti to Rwanda to the prisons of Siberia, we know that for three decades Jim has committed himself to breaking the cycle of poverty and disease. This has been his goal as a physician, a teacher, a policy maker, and a university president; it was ever his goal as a founder and director of Partners In Health, which now operates in more than a dozen countries.”

How did this seismic shift occur?

Today’s early games are on ESPN.  Due to far eastern Formula One blogging I think I’ll mostly nap.  Make your own fun.

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

Find the past “On This Day in History” here.

March 24 is the 83rd day of the year (84th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 282 days remaining until the end of the year.

March 24th is the 365th and last day of the year in many European implementations of the Julian calendar.

On this day in 1989, Exxon Valdez runs aground in Prince William Sound, Alaska.

The worst oil spill in U.S. territory begins when the supertanker Exxon Valdez, owned and operated by the Exxon Corporation, runs aground on a reef in Prince William Sound in southern Alaska. An estimated 11 million gallons of oil eventually spilled into the water. Attempts to contain the massive spill were unsuccessful, and wind and currents spread the oil more than 100 miles from its source, eventually polluting more than 700 miles of coastline. Hundreds of thousands of birds and animals were adversely affected by the environmental disaster.

It was later revealed that Joseph Hazelwood, the captain of the Valdez, was drinking at the time of the accident and allowed an uncertified officer to steer the massive vessel. In March 1990, Hazelwood was convicted of misdemeanor negligence, fined $50,000, and ordered to perform 1,000 hours of community service. In July 1992, an Alaska court overturned Hazelwood’s conviction, citing a federal statute that grants freedom from prosecution to those who report an oil spill.

The Exxon Valdez oil spill occurred in Prince William Sound, Alaska, on March 24, 1989, when the Exxon Valdez, an oil tanker bound for Long Beach, California, struck Prince William Sound‘s Bligh Reef and spilled 260,000 to 750,000 barrels (41,000 to 119,000 m3) of crude oil. It is considered to be one of the most devastating human-caused environmental disasters. As significant as the Valdez spill was-the largest ever in U.S. waters until the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill-it ranks well down on the list of the world’s largest oil spills in terms of volume released. However, Prince William Sound’s remote location, accessible only by helicopter, plane and boat, made government and industry response efforts difficult and severely taxed existing plans for response. The region is a habitat for salmon, sea otters, seals and seabirds. The oil, originally extracted at the Prudhoe Bay oil field, eventually covered 1,300 miles (2,100 km) of coastline, and 11,000 square miles (28,000 km2) of ocean. Then Exxon CEO, Lawrence G. Rawl, shaped the company’s response.

Timeline of events

Exxon Valdez left the Valdez oil terminal in Alaska at 9:12 pm on March 23, 1989, bound for Long Beach, California. The ship was under the control of Shipmaster Joseph Jeffrey Hazelwood. The outbound shipping lane was obstructed with small icebergs (possibly from the nearby Columbia Glacier), so Hazelwood got permission from the Coast Guard to go out through the inbound lane. Following the maneuver and sometime after 11 p.m., Hazelwood left Third Mate Gregory Cousins in charge of the wheel house and Able Seaman Robert Kagan at the helm. Neither man had been given his mandatory six hours off duty before beginning his 12-hour watch. The ship was on autopilot, using the navigation system installed by the company that constructed the ship. The ship struck Bligh Reef at around 12:04 a.m. March 24, 1989.

Beginning three days after the vessel grounded, a storm pushed large quantities of fresh oil on to the rocky shores of many of the beaches in the Knight Island chain. In this photograph, pooled oil is shown stranded in the rocks.

According to official reports, the ship was carrying approximately 55 million US gallons (210,000 m3) of oil, of which about 11 to 32 million US gallons (42,000 to 120,000 m3) were spilled into the Prince William Sound. A figure of 11 million US gallons (42,000 m3) was a commonly accepted estimate of the spill’s volume and has been used by the State of Alaska’s Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and environmental groups such as Greenpeace and the Sierra Club. Some groups, such as Defenders of Wildlife, dispute the official estimates, maintaining that the volume of the spill has been underreported. Alternative calculations, based on an assumption that the sea water rather than oil was drained from the damaged tanks, estimate the total to have been 25 to 32 million US gallons (95,000 to 120,000 m3).

Identified causes

Multiple factors have been identified as contributing to the incident:

   * Exxon Shipping Company failed to supervise the master and provide a rested and sufficient crew for Exxon Valdez. The NTSB found this was wide spread throughout industry, prompting a safety recommendation to Exxon and to the industry.

   * The third mate failed to properly maneuver the vessel, possibly due to fatigue or excessive workload.

   * Exxon Shipping Company failed to properly maintain the Raytheon Collision Avoidance System (RAYCAS) radar, which, if functional, would have indicated to the third mate an impending collision with the Bligh reef by detecting the “radar reflector”, placed on the next rock inland from Bligh Reef for the purpose of keeping boats on course via radar.

In light of the above and other findings, investigative reporter Greg Palast stated in 2008 “Forget the drunken skipper fable. As to Captain Joe Hazelwood, he was below decks, sleeping off his bender. At the helm, the third mate never would have collided with Bligh Reef had he looked at his RAYCAS radar. But the radar was not turned on. In fact, the tanker’s radar was left broken and disabled for more than a year before the disaster, and Exxon management knew it. It was (in Exxon’s view) just too expensive to fix and operate.” Exxon blamed Captain Hazelwood for the grounding of the tanker.

Economic and personal impact

In 1991, following the collapse of the local marine population (particularly clams, herring, and seals) the Chugach Alaska Corporation, an Alaska Native Corporation, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. It has since recovered.

According to several studies funded by the state of Alaska, the spill had both short-term and long-term economic effects. These included the loss of recreational sports, fisheries, reduced tourism, and an estimate of what economists call “existence value”, which is the value to the public of a pristine Prince William Sound.

The economy of the city of Cordova, Alaska was adversely affected after the spill damaged stocks of salmon and herring in the area. Several residents, including one former mayor, committed suicide after the spill.

I hope I’ll be a little more coherent tomorrow but these far east starts on top of March Madness Hoops and the time change thing leave me a little wonky and disoriented.

The major competition story is that Scuderia Marlboro UPC has a slow car, severely lacking in downforce.  Maranello is distinctly disappointed and while Alonso is making the usual nothing to see here noises; Massa, who’s career at Big Red hangs by a thread, has asked for and gotten an entirely new chassis, tuned just for him, which is no better.

Mercedes seems poised to take over the third team spot and has some kind of fiddly aero bit reminiscent of the F-Duct that doubly reduces drag when activated in conjunction with the Drag Reduction System everyone uses and it has been ruled legal.  So far.

Red Bull really is handicapped by the changes to the blown diffuser rules and are not nearly as dominant though they are easily the second best team and are much better at race management than McLaren who still suck.

Sepang is hot and wet.  Even odds that they have to break out the Inters or Wets at some point, though with track temperatures in excess of 91 Farenheit the prescribed Pirellis are the Hards and Mediums with about 1.7 seconds a lap between them.  The Mediums have shown a tendency to lock up under heavy fuel in race start trim.  Sepang is rated a Medium to High speed track, flat with 15 turns, as opposed to Albert Park which is a bumpy road course rated Medium to Slow.

Bernie Ecclestone (aka CVC) is looking to cash out of Formula One via IPO, orchestrated by none other than those paragons of Wall Street virtue, Goldman Sachs.  The Formula One Team Association (everyone except Red Bull and Ferrari) is not altogether happy about this concept.

• Formula One Official Site
• Speed Racecast

Tomorrow’s race starts at 2 am for GP2, 3:30 am for the start.

To be clear, your Bloguero is going nowhere. Really, he isn’t. It’s just that the format of “This Week In The Dream Antilles” has become obsolete. Outmoded. Not useful. Despite a mountain of his excellent intentions, your Bloguero hasn’t been keeping to the task. Yes, he’s put the headline up weekly, “The Week In The Dream Antilles,” but what does he do then? He doesn’t write a digest. No. He does something else.  Something else entirely. Whatever you may call it, one thing is clear: it’s not the digest of the week’s stories at The Dream Antilles.  And it’s been months since your Bloguero actually kept to the task and posted an actual digest. So, your Bloguero wonders solipsistically (you already know he talks to himself), “Ah, Bloguero, Sr. my friend, why are you keeping up this digestive kabuki? (Your Bloguero loves to punish himself). Why not instead just write a weekly essay for all of these wonderful group blogs. And drop the conceit of writing a digest of essays? Won’t that free up some of the neurons in your cranium?”

There you have it. But that’s not all. There’s this, repeated in its entirety:

Yet Another Broken Heart

President Obama got it entirely right when he said, “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon.” That captures it in a sentence.  A broken heart, and profound sadness and anger at the shooting of Trayvon Martin. And that’s why, today, students across South Florida, who understand from their own experiences how easy it is to be hassled, frisked, shot, or killed, walked out of school in protest. The death of Trayvon just is too much to bear. What else could they do?

And that’s why so many people are wearing hoodies today in solidarity with Trayvon and to symbolize their desire that justice be done.  I’m one of those. What else can I do?

And that’s why there are demonstrations in many cities that begin with the horror of the death of Trayvon Martin and go on to inevitable questions about the role of police, the constant frisking on the sidewalk. And the incessant of stopping of cars. And endemic surveillance and following and watching and stopping to ask questions.  Was it Justice Brandeis who wrote in dissent about the right of the people to be left alone?

It’s obvious. There’s something incredibly wrong going on. And it’s not new. No. It’s been going on in one dreadful form or another for more than half a millennium in this hemisphere and for more than 400 years in what is now the United States of America. And it continues.  In its simplest terms, it’s dehumanization. It has a long, horrible, degrading, exasperating history. And it continues.  It continues in many forms. Some are new, but others are age old. And it is persistent. And I have no idea how to stop it.  It has such deep roots and so much momentum. And despite all of the justified anger and all of the profound sadness, it continues.  Nobody seems to be able to stop it.

Here’s the heartbreak:  your teenager goes to the store to buy an iced tea and Skittles. Can he have two dollars? Sure. He doesn’t have any money. He says he’ll be right back. But he doesn’t come home alive.  He gets shot for no reason whatsoever. And he dies. Can you imagine this? And then the person who killed him isn’t even arrested.

And why isn’t he arrested? Is it because the police are stupid? Or incompetent? Or racists? Is it because the prosecutors are incompetent or racists? Or because the law of self defense has been so perverted that its been transformed by a state legislature in awe of the NRA into a shield for wanton killings of unarmed people by people with guns? Is it all of these things? Is it more than that? Is it something incomprehensible? Does it even matter why there’s been no arrest? Doesn’t the lack of an arrest speak volumes about the situation?

Here’s the heartbreak again: your teenager did nothing wrong and he’s dead. And nobody gets arrested, or charged, or indicted. And you and many other people suspect that your teenager has been murdered. But there’s no arrest. The police mumble on about the strange, new, self defense law and how somehow that ties their hands from making an arrest.  And they won’t make an arrest. And the person who should be arrested goes into hiding. And the police chief steps down temporarily. And now there’s a new state prosecutor and now there’s a federal, civil rights investigation. But there’s still no arrest. I wonder. Will there ever be an arrest? How long do I have to wait, and what exactly am I waiting for?

I wonder. How many thousands of parents have a version of this terrible event? How many parents have buried their children? How many children were lynched and killed before Emmett Till?  And how many killings of children have there been since? How many parents’ hearts have been broken when children have been killed? How many soul crushing, heartbreaking murders of children have there been? How many oceans of tears have been shed because of events just like this one?

My heart is again broken. The murder of Trayvon Martin is inexcusable. It’s yet another drop in the ocean of suffering filled with parents’ tears at the loss of their children. And the tears of the rest of us who feel their suffering. And it continues to grow.

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cross-posted from The Dream Antilles