August 13, 2013

Nuclear Weapons Plant To Be Home To Largest Federally Funded Wind Farm

AMARILLO, Texas (AP) — America’s only plant for disassembling and assembling nuclear weapons will soon be home to the largest federally owned wind farm.

Ground will be broken Tuesday for a wind farm that will have five turbines located on 1,500 acres east of the Pantex Plant, about 18 miles northeast of Amarillo in the Texas Panhandle.

A news release from the plant says the turbines will generate about 47 million kilowatt-hours of electricity annually, or enough to power nearly 3,500 homes, and supply more than 60 percent of the plant’s yearly electricity need.

The wind farm will help the plant achieve President Barack Obama’s directive that the federal government get 20 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2020.

The project is expected to be completed by July 2014.

August 13, 2013

Teacher Accused Of Calling Students ‘N’ Word On First Day Of School

Source: CBS Houston

DONALDSONVILLE, La. (CBS Houston) — A teacher is accused of calling students the “N” word during class on the first day of school.

CBS affiliate WAFB-TV reports that Lois Polite, a social studies teacher at Lowery Middle School in Donaldsonville, La., is under investigation by the Ascension Parish School System after a parent of a student filed a complaint.

“My son came home very upset,” Shemika Landry told WAFB-TV. “She frequently called the kids the ‘N’ word in the classroom, belittling them, calling them stupid.”

Landry claims that the teacher threatened the students if they complained.

“She told them they can call their ‘maw’ and sent them to the school with their booty shorts on and their high heels but it wasn’t going to change anything because she was the only social studies teacher there and they needed her,” Landry told WAFB.

The school system, who is allowing Polite to continue to teach during the investigation, offered an apology.

“[W]e can’t say a whole lot about the allegations other than we received a complaint and we did an investigation internally and we are handling it as a personnel issue,” Johnnie Balfantz, spokesman for the Ascension Parish School System, told WAFB.

Landry believes Polite should be fired.

“She should be terminated,” Landry said. “If I would go on my job and use that type of language I would be immediately terminated.”

Balfantz says that Polite is currently the only social studies teacher at the school but that substitutes are being lined up in case the teacher is suspended or fired.

Read more: http://houston.cbslocal.com/2013/08/12/teacher-accused-of-calling-students-n-word-on-first-day-of-school/

---

Hey, racism is dead, right? She was just teaching them 'bout them good ol' days.

August 13, 2013

Awesomely TimedPhotos

&t=17

August 12, 2013

How much water goes into your latte?

&t=0

I don't want to waste water, but I want caffeine. Lots of caffeine. Lots.

August 12, 2013

Can You Pass This 8th Grade Exam From 1912?

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2013/08/8th-grade-exam-puts-adults-to-the-test/

A museum in Kentucky has unearthed a rare find: an 8th grade exam given to students 100 years ago.

"For us, this is just fascinating," David Lee Strange, a volunteer at the Bullitt County History Museum, told ABC News. "It puts us in the mindset of 1912."

The exam spans eight subjects: spelling, reading, arithmetic, grammar, geography, physiology, civil government and history.

"Some people say that the questions are trivial, but the questions relate to what the children at the time would have been familiar with," Strange said.

For example, there's a geography query: "Locate the following countries which border each other: Turkey, Greece, Serbia, Montenegro, Romania."

An 8th grader today may have trouble with that one but "the students back then would have to be familiar with that part of the world," according to Strange.

Strange explained, "1912 was right around the corner from what would become World War I. Eighteen students in Bullitt County would go on to die in that war."

The exam also asks students to define the cerebrum and cerebellum, differentiate between copyright and patent rights, and define each part of speech in the English language.

Think you have what it takes to pass the 8th grade? Take a shot at these final exam questions:

How long of a rope is required to reach from the top of a building 40 feet high to the ground 30 feet from the base of a building?

What is a personal pronoun?

Through which waters would a vessel pass in going from England through the Suez Canal to Manila?

Compare arteries and veins as to function. Where is the blood carried to be purified?

During which wars were the following battles fought: Brandywine, Great Meadows, Lundy's Lane, Antietam, Buena Vista?

Sketch briefly Sir Walter Raleigh, Peter Stuyvesant.

Answers to the exam can be found on the Bullitt County History Museum's website.

http://www.bullittcountyhistory.com/bchistory/schoolexam1912ans.html

August 12, 2013

US judge orders NYPD stop-and-frisk monitor

Source: Yahoo News

Associated Press
COLLEEN LONG 11 minutes ago

NEW YORK (AP) — A federal judge has appointed an independent monitor to oversee changes to the New York Police Department's contentious stop-and-frisk policy.

U.S. District Court Judge Shira Scheindlin ruled Monday in the case of four men who say New York City police unfairly targeted them because of their race. There have been about 5 million stops during the past decade, mostly of black and Hispanic men.

Scheindlin ruled after a 10-week bench trial that included testimony from top NYPD brass and a dozen people who said they were wrongly stopped by police.

City lawyers argued the department does a good job policing itself with an internal affairs bureau, a civilian complaint board and quality assurance divisions.

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/us-judge-orders-nypd-stop-frisk-monitor-133351273.html

August 11, 2013

Those Damned Hippies. They're Saving the Post Office.

Those Damned Hippies. They're Saving the Post Office.

by jpmassar

Yup. Hippies. Straight out of the 60's, looking oddly like grandparents these days. Hardcore labor unionists. Harscrabble activists. Street kids. Cal students. Throw in a few of Berkeley's famous homeless and They may think it's a movement (as Arlo famously put it). A movement to save the Berkeley Post Office and stop the Privatization of our Commons.



One hundred plus people rallied at the downtown Berkeley Post Office yesterday, celebrating 15 days of successful Occupation organized by an activist coalition from Save the Berkeley Post Office and Strike Debt Bay Area.

We're fighting to stop the sale of the Berkeley Post Office. We're trying to call attention to the seemingly inexorable push to privatize and de-unionize the entire Post Office, just one instance of the more general goal of privatization across the board - from education to Social Security, from Medicare to owning the roads. (For more on these issues and the Occupation see the articles referenced in Background etal at the end of this picture essay).

Let's start with the basics: Why Are They There?




Read more:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/08/11/1230418/-Those-Damned-Hippies-They-re-Saving-the-Post-Office?detail=action

Great stuff! Photos, tweets, etc

August 11, 2013

San Antonio considers shale drilling’s effect on ozone

San Antonio considers shale drilling’s effect on ozone


By Neena Satija - Texas Tribune

As the ozone rating in San Antonio continues its slow upward march, area officials are beginning to investigate whether oil and gas drilling in the Eagle Ford Shale has anything to do with it. But their efforts are fraught with complications. And they remain far from answers in what is sure to be a high-stakes debate over the environmental impact of one of the country’s newest and fastest-growing oil and gas development regions.

<snip>

That “big stick” is held by the Environmental Protection Agency. For years, San Antonio has touted itself as the largest American city that is in compliance with federal ozone standards, and therefore not subject to extra regulation and enforcement from the EPA. That will soon change. Today, San Antonio is violating the Clean Air Act based on its ozone scores, the highest of which are far above the maximum acceptable value of 75 parts per billion.

“The San Antonio region has really become much more of an interest for ozone problems than it ever was before,” said Daniel Cohan, an associate professor of environmental engineering at Rice University who studies the formation and control of air pollution. Not only have the region’s ozone levels started to increase, but the EPA also lowered its ozone standards from 85 parts per billion to 75 parts per billion in 2008, during the final year of George W. Bush’s presidency.

San Antonio’s ozone uptick is relatively recent. The city’s ozone numbers dropped dramatically in the beginning of the last decade; in 2007, it was under the federal limit even during some of the hottest days of the summer. Starting in the late 2000s, ozone levels began to increase again — just as the first wells were being drilled in the Eagle Ford Shale, now a 400-mile swath of oil and gas production stretching from South Texas’ Mexico border all the way to East Texas, brushing the southern tip of the San Antonio metropolitan area.

That timing has not been lost on anyone. “I think that there can be and there might be impacts” of the oil and gas development, Bella said. This month, AACOG produced its first estimates of the Eagle Ford Shale’s emissions of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and nitrogen oxides (NOX), air pollutants that are the precursor components of ozone.

The numbers are very preliminary and have not been shared publicly. But they suggest that the oil and gas extraction-related activities in the Eagle Ford Shale result in dozens of tons of emissions of VOCs and NOX every day, according to AACOG’s estimates. Such emissions would be equivalent to as much as half of what’s emitted daily by the entire San Antonio-New Braunfels metropolitan region each day. During a recent health forum in San Antonio, AACOG officials suggested that Eagle Ford activities could increase the city’s ozone score by several parts per billion within the next decade.

<snip>

Spokesmen for the Texas Oil and Gas Association and the South Texas Energy & Economic Roundtable, which was established by the 11 largest operators in the Eagle Ford Shale, did not respond to requests for comment.

<snip>

Air pollution experts at the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, which will soon review AACOG’s report and help with revisions, have their own thoughts on the matter. They don’t believe that the Eagle Ford Shale is a major cause of the ozone changes in San Antonio, based on the data they are monitoring.


<snip>

This article is available online at texastribune.org/2013/08/01/is-the-eagle-ford-shale-polluting-san-antonio/

August 11, 2013

Walmart's 'Worst Nightmare' Competition Has Cashiers And Produce Clerks With $1 Million Pensions

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/08/09/1229983/-Walmart-s-Worst-Nightmare-Competition-Has-Cashiers-And-Produce-Clerks-With-1-Million-Pensions?detail=email

by james321


WinCo -- a low-cost grocery store chain from Idaho -- is being described as Walmart's 'worst nightmare' in a recent Time Article:

<snip>

So about that eye-catching Walmart quote. Those are the words of Burt Flickinger III, a widely respected supermarket retailing industry expert who works for the Strategic Resource Group. Flickinger was quoted in a recent Idaho Statesman story about WinCo, a chain of roughly 100 supermarkets in the western U.S., based in Boise.

“WinCo arguably may be the best retailer in the Western U.S.,” Flickinger says while touring a WinCo store. “WinCo is really unstoppable at this point,” he goes on. “They’re Walmart’s worst nightmare.”

Flickinger isn’t the only industry insider discussing WinCo and Walmart in the same breath. “While many supermarkets strive to keep within a few percentage points of Walmart Stores’ prices, WinCo Foods often undersells the massive discount chain,” the industry publication Supermarket News explained last spring.

<snip>

Prices are kept low through a variety of strategies, the main one being that it often cuts out distributors and other middle men and buys many goods directly from farms and factories. WinCo also trims costs by not accepting credit cards and by asking customers to bag their own groceries. Similarly to warehouse membership stores like Sam’s Club and Costco, and also to successful discount grocers with small stores like Trader Joe’s and Aldi, WinCo stores are organized and minimalist, without many frills, and without the tremendous variety of merchandise that’s become standard at most supermarkets. “Everything is neat and clean, but basic,” Hauptman told Supermarket News. “Though the stores are very large, with a lot of categories, they lack depth or breadth of variety.”

The second part of Walmart's nightmare is that WinCo does all this, and treats its employees really, really well. In addition to decent health care benefits, some employees -- including cashiers and produce clerks -- have pensions worth over $1 Million. (What white collar workers in America today have $1 Million pensions? A declining percentage, but, here, we're talking grocery store employees!)

In sharp contrast to Walmart, which regularly comes under fire for practices like understaffing stores to keep costs down and hiring tons of temporary workers as a means to avoid paying full-time worker benefits, WinCo has a reputation for doing right by employees. It provides health benefits to all staffers who work at least 24 hours per week. The company also has a pension, with employees getting an amount equal to 20% of their annual salary put in a plan that’s paid for by WinCo; a company spokesperson told the Idaho Statesman that more than 400 nonexecutive workers (cashiers, produce clerks, and such) currently have pensions worth over $1 million apiece.

<snip>


Be afraid, Walmart, be afraid. Karma, you know, is, well...

August 11, 2013

Canada Warns Obama on Keystone XL Pipeline

http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2013/08/01/Canada-Warns-Obama-on-Keystone-XL-Pipeline.aspx#page1

By JOHN DALY, OilPrice.com
August 1, 2013

On 6 July, a Montreal, Maine & Atlantic train carrying 72 tank cars filled with oil exploded after its brakes apparently failed, sending it rolling into the small Quebec town of Lac-Megantic, where it derailed and then exploded. In the conflagration that followed, an estimated 47 people were killed.

Whether Canadians like it or not, the use of such trains has soared in recent years. The Railway Association of Canada reports that as recently as four years ago Canadian railways moved just 500 carloads of crude oil, but that number has now soared to about 140,000 carloads annually.

While currently only about three percent of Canadian crude is currently transported by rail, one industry predicts railway carriage of oil products rising to as high as 25 percent by 2035.

Now, in a breathtaking display of chutzpah, the Canadian ambassador to the U.S. is warning President Obama if he does not approve the controversial Keystone XL pipeline, then he can expect similar oil trains and even trucks to enter the U.S. Ambassador Gary Doer said, “His choice is to have it come down by a pipeline that he approves, or without his approval, it comes down on trains. That’s just the raw common sense of this thing, and we’ve been saying it for two years and we’ve been proven correct. At the end of the day, it’s trains or pipelines.”

Greenpeace Canada publicized a May 2012 Transport Canada memo that reported that the department had "identified no major safety concerns with the increased oil on rail capacity in Canada, nor with the safety of tank cars that are designed, maintained, qualified and used according to Canadian and U.S. standards and regulations. Indeed, Canada and the U.S. work collaboratively to ensure the harmonization of rail safety requirements." In the wake of the Lac-Megantic tragedy Greenpeace Canada recommended that the federal government implement an immediate ban on shipping oil in the older, type 111A tanker cars that that the Canadian Transportation Safety Board has identified as spill-prone, reinstate mandatory two-person minimum train crews; and begin a comprehensive, independent safety review of all means of hydrocarbon transportation, including public hearings.

Greenpeace Canada Climate and Energy Coordinator Keith Stewart observed, “Transporting oil is always risky, but both rail and pipelines can be a lot safer than they are today. Breaking our addiction to oil is the only real solution and something we must do to combat climate change, but as we make the transition to clean energy we must reduce the harm from transporting and using oil.”

<snip>

Such a deal.

This article originally appeared at Oilprice.com. Read more from Oilprice.com:

Will Quebec Tragedy Derail Heavy Oil Upswing?
TransCanada Might Rethink Potential Keystone Launch Date
$1 Billion of Natural Gas Wasted in North Dakota Through Flaring in 2012