Eight years ago, the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office launched a campaign called “the Faces of Meth” to address Oregon’s methamphetamine problem. The images showed the jarring effects of meth on addicts’ faces through before-and-after pictures from their arrest records.
Rehabs.com recently followed suit with this infographic. Warning: these images are disturbing.
via Business Insider.
Ugh.
The new light source is called field-induced polymer electroluminescent Fipel technology. It is made from three layers of white-emitting polymer that contain a small volume of nanomaterials that glow when electric current is passed through them.
The inventor of the device is Dr David Carroll, professor of physics at Wake Forest University in North Carolina. He says the new plastic lighting source can be made into any shape, and it produces a better quality of light than compact fluorescent bulbs which have become very popular in recent years.
Wake university researcher with light The new light source is said to be twice as efficient as fluorescent bulbs”They have a bluish, harsh tint to them, ” he told BBC News, “it is not really accommodating to the human eye; people complain of headaches and the reason is the spectral content of that light doesn’t match the Sun – our device can match the solar spectrum perfectly.
“I’m saying we are brighter than one of these curly cube bulbs and I can give you any tint to that white light that you want.”
via BBC News.
Sounds cool.
Records provided to CNN show that $54.5 million was spent on the NRI program, mostly through the governor’s discretionary fund, which doesn’t require legislative approval.
The only data on the program’s accomplishments come directly from the Illinois Violence Prevention Authority. The NRI states that it created more than 3,484 jobs, provided counseling for more than 3,100 children, and helped 1,175 ex-cons. …
NRI participants were paid $8.75 an hour, first to receive mentoring from adults, and then go out to pitch positive messages and hand out fliers in their neighborhoods. …
[S]tudents earned $8.75 an hour to visit the DuSable Museum of African American History and to the National Museum of Mexican Art.
What the ??
Why would taxpayers pay for kids to attend mentoring? It would be like paying them to play basketball or video games or go to school.
$54.5 million / 3,484 jobs / $8.75 / hour = 1,787 hours & $15,642.94 per person. This is nothing more than paying kids for doing the right thing.
This first came up (recently at least) with the Hostess workers:
Interviews with more than a dozen workers showed there was little sign of regret from employees who voted for the strike. They said they would rather lose their jobs than put up with lower wages and poorer benefits.
“They’re just taking from us,” said Kenneth Johnson, 46, of Missouri. He said he earned roughly $35,000 with overtime last year, down from about $45,000 five years ago.
“I really can’t afford to not be working, but this is not worth it. I’d rather go work somewhere else or draw unemployment,” said Johnson, a worker at Hostess for 23 years.
via Reuters.
Yes, old news. But I came across this today:
In the recent past we noted the somewhat startling reality that “the single mom is better off earning gross income of $29,000 with $57,327 in net income & benefits than to earn gross income of $69,000 with net income and benefits of $57,045.” … the painful reality in America is that: for increasingly more Americans it is now more lucrative – in the form of actual disposable income – to sit, do nothing, and collect various welfare entitlements, than to work. … there is an earnings vacuum of around $40k in which US workers are perfectly ambivalent toward inputting more effort since it does not result in any additional incremental disposable income.
via ZeroHedge.
An interesting note is that the graphic comes from the PA Dept. of Public Health. It’s a slide from a whole presentation about welfare’s failure.
I recall a story from a friend of mine who used to run a mechanical company. He had a nice lady working at the office whom he gave a raise. She took her new pay stub and dutifully notified social services. As a result of the modest raise she was going to lose her housing voucher. So she had to go back to work and say, “Thank you very much but can you please take your raise back. I need to keep my housing voucher.”
The system is broken. Very very broken.
A pregnant Hurricane Sandy victim was booted from her hotel room yesterday and forced to hunt for a place to stay because FEMA dropped the ball on her reservation.
Keri Christian, 27, was living at Brooklyn’s Nu Hotel with her daughter, Serafina, 2, after the storm destroyed their Staten Island home.
Now the eight-months-pregnant mom is couch surfing at an acquaintance’s home in Bay Ridge until she finds a new place.
Her husband, Anthony Marotto, 41, has been in Staten Island, trying to raise their charred and flooded home from the ashes.
“I feel like a homeless person . . . like a street rat,” said Christian, who’s expecting a boy in January. “It’s aggravating and physically demanding. I’m really pissed.”
via NYPOST.com.
Insanity. If this was the Bush administration this would be national news every day. Every day.
Implemented in 1969 to make sure upper-income Americans pay their share of taxes, the AMT has increasingly snared more middle-income Americans over the years because it was never indexed for inflation.
During the 2011 tax year for example, the higher tax hit single taxpayers with incomes as low as $48,450 and joint filers making only $74,450.
But millions more Americans could be subject to the AMT in their 2012 returns if Congress fails to reach a deal on the fiscal cliff before year-end. That’s because the AMT is currently scheduled to hit individuals making as little as $33,750 a year and joint filers making $45,000.
via CNBC.
Being married and making over $45,000 a year is the “new rich.”
Incredible.
Two-thirds of millionaires left Britain to avoid 50p tax rate
Almost two-thirds of the country’s million-pound earners disappeared from Britain after the introduction of the 50p top rate of tax, figures have disclosed.
via Telegraph.
Shhhhh… This is a secret. No one tell the U.S. media. They think the “rich” will just stay and give Obama all their money.
There’s a story about Einstein’s brain over at the Washington Post. It’s your basic nature vs. nurture about how this guy got to have this unique piece of gray matter between his ears.
It appears quite a few Wash. Post readers don’t think much of Ol’ Albert or his accomplishments. One particular genius wrote:
He didn’t invent, or come up with, relativity. That has existed since time began … he was the person that first -realized- it existed and then fashioned working mathematical relationships to describe it. If it wasn’t Albert Einstein, it would have been someone else that first put 2 and 2 together ….
Brilliant!! Because yes, yes, the work Einstein did is really nothing more than 2 + 2.
This leads another commenter to write something I’ve thought for a long time:
So amusing to read the pronouncments of our typical modern day (Obongo supporting) clueless clowns with a little knowlege passing judgment on one of mankind’s greatest thinkers. Utterly underserved confidence in the most meager of abilities has been the only discernible triumph of the US liberal dominated dysfunctional education system in the last 50 years.
via The Washington Post.
The combination of arrogance and ignorance is very dangerous and has infected a significant portion of the population. People — you know who you are — have become so enamored with themselves that they either cannot or simply refuse to see real genius in others.
I’ve taken four college semesters of calculus ending with differential equations. These classes would not begin to cover the mathematics that Einstein did without the assistance of a computer or even a hand-held calculator. To imply that just anyone would come along and discover 2 + 2 shows just how little the average person walking down the street actually knows about math.
It’s very very sad. Ignorance is truly bliss; but at least years ago people knew enough to keep their trap shut when they didn’t know anything.
It all started simple enough.
Six days. That’s how long it took to build this level 9 Earthquake-resistant, sound-proofed, thermal-insulated 15-story hotel in Changsha, complete with everything, from the cabling to three-pane windows. The foundations were already built, but it’s just impressive.
While still in basking in the glow of success the same group decided to up the stakes a little …
The hotel is so solid that it can resist a 9 magnitude earthquake, as tested by the China Academy of Building Research (there’s a scene in which you can see the testing process, at 1:49). They claim this is five times more earthquake-resistant than conventional buildings.
The company also says that it is five times more energy efficient, with 6-inch thick glass curtain wall insulation and four-paned windows with built-in shades, a heat recovery system and 3-stage filtration air conditioning process that purifies indoor air to be 20 times purer than the air outside. They even have air quality monitoring in every room which, given the pollution problem in China, seems to be an important selling point there.
I guess since the two proof-of-principles have worked out it’s time to go straight to the head of the class.
According to its engineers, this will be the tallest skyscraper in the world by the end of March of 2013. Its name is Sky City, and its 2,749 feet (838 meters) distributed in 220 floors will grow in just 90 days in Changsha city, by the Xiangjiang river. Ninety days!
via Gizmodo.
For those too lazy to click, the magic here is that the building is pre-fab. Not so much like a trailer but more like a very cool and very complicated erector set. There’s video at the second link.
If this project goes off it will be time to seriously think — or re-think — about how we build things. This technology appears to be something incredible. Something we should be using here.
Black leaders are growing increasingly worried that a white candidate might seize the seat of former Democratic Rep. Jesse Jackson in the upcoming Illinois special election.
With a host of black candidates announcing their intention to seek the seat, the concern is that they could split the African-American vote and provide a plurality to a white contender. The worries escalated this week after former Rep. Debbie Halvorson, a white Democrat and veteran of suburban Chicago politics, threw her hat into the ring. …
“There’s a great deal of concern that Debbie Halvorson would win because the black vote would be split 18 ways,” said Delmarrie Cobb, a longtime Democratic political consultant in Chicago who formerly worked for Jackson Jr.“The battle we have is that we can’t afford to lose a black voice in Congress,” she added. “It would be a terrible loss in many ways.”
via POLITICO.com.
Where’s MLK or even Malcolm X when we need them?
It’s just so sad. I fear we’re heading backwards. This attitude is not going to help blacks and whites get along. It’s politics of division. It’s only making the problem worse.