Author: cjzurcher

Armenian-American Artist Wins Posthumous Fame

Pinajian’s work hangs on the well-lit walls of a SoHo gallery. Leading art historians say that, at his best, he ranks among America’s finest abstract expressionists. His estate has been appraised at $30 million. After several kind twists of fates, Pinajian has been vaulted out of obscurity and is now gaining improbable posthumous fame.

The first twist came with a real estate venture by a man named Thomas Schultz. It was 2005 when Schultz stumbled upon the cottage in Bellport, New York that was the longtime home of Pinajian and his sister.

“I came into the house to look at it with the purpose of figuring out if it was a good house to flip i.e. to buy and resell for profit and I walked among all of this art. I was intrigued by it because it was so vast. I knew what I was looking at was someone’s life’s work.”

For more on this story, visit: Armenian-American Artist Wins Posthumous Fame.

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University of Arizona App Warns Drivers of Dust Storm Danger

Springtime is near, and with it the start of dust storm season in the southwestern United States.
Arizona experiences some of the worst dust storms in the country during the spring and summer months, leading to poor visibility and potentially dangerous driving conditions on the state’s highways.
To help protect drivers from dust-related dangers on the road, the University of Arizona has created a mobile application for iPhones that provides dust storm alerts and safety tips.
Available for free download on iTunes, the app uses a person’s geographical location anywhere in the country to determine if there is danger of a dust storm, or any other type of storm, in the area. The warnings come directly from the WeatherBug service.
An Android version of the app is expected to be released later this month or next month.
In addition to storm alerts, the app provides a list of specific tips for what to do when a dust storm hits, such as:
  • Do not drive into or through a dust storm.
  • Do not stop in a travel lane or in the emergency lane.
  • Look for a safe place to pull completely off the paved portion of the roadway.
  • Turn off all vehicle lights, including your emergency flashers.

The app also offers a place to list emergency phone numbers or insurance policy numbers drivers may want to have readily available in a storm, as well as a list of things people should keep in their cars as part of a Dust Storm Survival Kit. Some of those items include water, snacks or energy bars, a basic first aid kit, flashlight, dust mask and a whistle or pocket siren to signal for help.

The Dust Storm app was the brainchild of Kirk Astroth, UA assistant dean of Cooperative Extension and director of the Arizona 4-H Youth Development program in the UA College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.

Developed by University Information Technology Services’ web/mobile services team, with support from Student Affairs Marketing, it is among a group of mobile apps designed and developed by members of the University community as part of the UA’s Mobile Matters initiative. The forthcoming Android version of Dust Storm is being developed with additional support from the University’s SBS Technical Services group and UA computer science senior David Celaya.

Astroth said he got the idea for the app after seeing something similar in North Dakota that provided tips for staying safe in a blizzard.

“Dust storms are so common in Arizona, and so many people are killed on the road because they don’t know what to do,” Astroth said. “We wanted to help.”

According to a report by the Arizona Department of Transportation, 193 crashes in 2011 occurred in weather conditions that included blowing sand, soil or dirt, resulting in two deaths and 140 people injured.

Astroth hopes those numbers will go down with education, noting that many people simply don’t know the proper action to take in a dust storm, especially out-of-state visitors who might not be accustomed to those types of events.

One of the most common mistakes, he noted, is simply attempting to drive through the storm, even when blinded by a curtain of dirt.

While dust is a fact of life in the desert Southwest, Arizona’s ongoing drought makes for even stronger dust storm conditions, said Mike Crimmins, UA Cooperative Extension specialist and associate professor of soil, water and environmental science.

With little moisture or vegetation to hold dust in place, high winds can quickly lead to blowing dust, said Crimmins, who was not involved in the development of the Dust Storm app.

There are two dust storm seasons in Arizona, Crimmins said. During the spring season, which typically starts in March, large-scale weather systems with lots of wind can kick up enough dust to close major highways including I-10 and I-40. Those storms may last for the better part of a day, with 20-30 mph sustained winds and gusts up to 50 mph.

A second round of dust storms typically appears during the summer monsoon season, when thunderstorm conditions create shorter-lasting, but more intense, dust storms known as haboobs, which can see winds gusting up to 100 mph, Crimmins said.

Officials statewide are working to address the dangers of dust.

During a recent dust storm workshop in Casa Grande, Ariz., organized by the Arizona Department of Transportation and the Phoenix and Tucson offices of the National Weather Service, officials said they have gotten more aggressive about monitoring dust storms and shutting down the state’s highways when visibility is poor.

Astroth hopes the Dust Storm app can also be part of the solution. He encourages drivers to check the app before they get on the road so they can avoid dangerous weather conditions in the first place.

“This seemed like an easy and good thing to do,” he said. “It’s free, and it could save people’s lives.”

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This years $1 million TED prize winner: Suguta Mitra. His wish: School in the Cloud.

“My wish is to help design the future of learning by supporting children all over the world to tap into their innate sense of wonder and work together. Help me build the School in the Cloud, a learning lab in India, where children can embark on intellectual adventures by engaging and connecting with information and mentoring online. I also invite you, wherever you are, to create your own miniature child-driven learning environments and share your discoveries.”

For more on this story, visit: Sugata Mitra.

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We Found Our Son in the Subway – NYTimes.com

The story of how Danny and I were married last July in a Manhattan courtroom, with our son, Kevin, beside us, began 12 years earlier, in a dark, damp subway station.

Danny called me that day, frantic. “I found a baby!” he shouted. “I called 911, but I don’t think they believed me. No one’s coming. I don’t want to leave the baby alone. Get down here and flag down a police car or something.” By nature Danny is a remarkably calm person, so when I felt his heart pounding through the phone line, I knew I had to run.

When I got to the A/C/E subway exit on Eighth Avenue, Danny was still there, waiting for help to arrive. The baby, who had been left on the ground in a corner behind the turnstiles, was light-brown skinned and quiet, probably about a day old, wrapped in an oversize black sweatshirt.

Peter Mercurio is a playwright and screenwriter whose latest screenplay is “Found (a True Story).”

For more on this story, visit: We Found Our Son in the Subway – NYTimes.com.

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Writing the Ship | Daily Nutmeg

Earlier this month, Connecticut Congressman Joe Courtney caught a big blunder in the new film biography of Abraham Lincoln. One scene shows states voting to ratify the amendment abolishing slavery, with Courtney’s 19th century Connecticut congressional counterparts heard voting against the 13th amendment when in fact all four of Connecticut’s congressmen at the time voted in favor of it.

The error seems especially odd to Connecticut audiences, since the director of Lincoln, Steven Spielberg, also directed the only major film made about the Amistad.

Writing the Ship | Daily Nutmeg.

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The American People Need Real Spending Cuts

President Obama and other so-called progressives insist that the American people are not overly dependent on government. They also predict dire consequences if the automatic budget “cuts” known as sequestration take place March 1.

Both claims cannot be true. If modest across-the-board “cuts” — mainly cuts in the rate of growth — in military and domestic spending pose a threat to the American people and the U.S. economy, then the country is alarmingly dependent on government.

Federal spending has grown dramatically since the 1970s, with the biggest increases coming during Republican administrations. Spending today is hundreds of billions greater than in 2008 and much higher as a percentage of the economy. True, it is lower now than in 2009, but that year, a combination of George W. Bush and Obama “stimulus” spending, set a record.

The sequester consists of $1.2 trillion in across-the-board cuts in non-entitlement spending growth over ten years. To put that in perspective, Reason editor Nick Gillespie writes, “Remember that we’re talking about $1.2 trillion dollars taken out of a projected $44 trillion or so in spending. What kind of budget discipline is that?”

As that March 1 sequester approaches, the Obama administration warns of severe consequences for national security and economic security.

For more on this story, visit: The American People Need Real Spending Cuts The Future of Freedom Foundation.

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Why the fracking boom may actually be an economic bubble | Grist

Surprise, Surprise ….

Fracking proponents like to use an evocative economic metaphor in talking about their industry: boom. The natural gas boom. Drilling is exploding in North Dakota and Texas and Pennsylvania. Only figuratively so far, but who knows what the future holds.

The Post Carbon Institute, however, suggests in a new report [PDF] that another metaphor would be more apt: a bubble, like the bubbles of methane that seep into water wells and then burst.

PCI presents the argument in its most basic form at ShaleBubble.org.

For more on this story, visit: Why the fracking boom may actually be an economic bubble | Grist.

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Where is this?

I know this is probably an easy test for anyone who frequents downtown New Haven spots, but where is it? If it’s too easy, then just say you know where it is. If not, then take a guess.

bar-taps

bar-light

 

 

 

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Financing the Global Sharing Economy – STWR – Share The World’s Resources

A report by Share The World’s Resources demonstrates how governments could mobilize over $2.8 trillion each year to bolster the global sharing economy and prevent life-threatening deprivation, reverse austerity measures and mitigate the human impacts of climate change.

Humanity is facing a global emergency. Extreme poverty and climate-related disasters are taking the lives of over 40,000 people every single day and severely affecting many millions of others. At the same time, dramatic cutbacks in public spending on social welfare and essential services are making it increasingly difficult for many families to meet their basic needs, even in the richest nations.

For more on this story, visit: Financing the Global Sharing Economy – STWR – Share The World’s Resources.

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Georgia Prepares for ‘Another Grotesque and Unjust Execution’ | Common Dreams

The state of Georgia is set to execute Warren Hill, a mentally disabled, African-American man, on Tuesday.

The state’s last execution was that of Troy Davis, prompting Christof Heyns, the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, to write that “the world community is again watching Georgia with great concern as it prepares to carry out another grotesque and unjust execution.”

 

Hill was given a death sentence after killing a fellow inmate while already serving a life sentence for the murder of his girlfriend.

 

Hill is reported to have an IQ of 70, and The Guardian reports that

All medical specialists who have examined Hill now agree that he is “mentally retarded” – the designation of intellectual disability still widely used in the US – and should be protected under the supreme court ban. In an important break in the case, three forensic psychiatrists who had previously testified that Hill did not meet the legal criteria for “mental retardation”, and was thus eligible for execution, have in recent days announced that they now believe their opinion was wrong.

For more on this story, visit: Georgia Prepares for ‘Another Grotesque and Unjust Execution’ | Common Dreams.

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Obama’s speeches are not just words — they are political action

The more we repeat the language of equality, freedom and social responsibility, the more those ideas come to dominate the public conversation. In turn, the character of public discourse determines what the news media promote and criticize, and what the candidates for public office must pay attention to. In this way, speech is political action.

obama-mit-af-pWhat are some other deep truths we can promote through words? That individual initiative is possible only with the infrastructure and human capital the American public has provided for all of us. That health care is inseparable from life. That education is far more than taking tests or competing in the global economy; it is what makes us free and equal. That the environment is not just outside; it is inside us, with polluted air and water and pesticides destroying our health, now and tomorrow. That women’s rights are human rights. That great disparities in wealth destroy opportunity.

From such speech, political action can flow. The State of the Union on Tuesday is an opportunity for Obama to make the link, to show how particular policies emerge from general truths, to move us from hope to responsibility.

But in the end, only we as citizens can force the president and Congress to act.

How? By speaking out.

For more on this story, visit: Obama’s speeches are not just words — they are political action – The Washington Post.

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Ash Wednesday 2013: A Good Day to be Arrested as an Advocate for God’s Creation

Ash Wednesday is a day of conscience, repentance and conviction; a day when we take stock of our personal lives – and of our life together on the planet; a day when we confess our self-indulgent appetites, our intemperate love of worldly goods and comforts, and our obsession with consumption of every kind. It is a day of profound, private self-examination, and yet it also includes a public witness – an ashen cross on our forehead to remind ourselves, and the world, who we are and whose we are. On Ash Wednesday, Christians acknowledge that we are accountable to the God who gave us life and who entrusted the earth to our care.

That we have not done a good job with that trust is news to no one. In his Second Inaugural Address, President Obama declared, “We, the people, still believe that our obligations as Americans are not just to ourselves, but to all posterity.” And he went on to say that our generation must respond “to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations.”

Because our generation is facing an unprecedented challenge – a challenge of our own making – repentance is essential if we are to find a way forward.

Ash Wednesday is a good day to be arrested because civil disobedience is a form of repentance. It was repentance of the sin of slavery that prompted Henry David Thoreau to lay out the principles of civil disobedience in the mid-nineteenth century. One hundred years later, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and hundreds of others engaged in nonviolent civil disobedience to prompt this nation to repent of the sin of racism and segregation.

Our generation must now repent of the sin of wrecking God’s creation. Our decades of science denial have now been exchanged for widespread recognition of the community-crushing effects of climate disruption, whether by way of wildfires, droughts, or superstorms.

These are the conditions in which the conscience of a nation can be born.

The Rev. Dr. Jim Antal is Minister and President of the Massachusetts Conference of the United Church of Christ, the largest Protestant denomination in the Commonwealth. A climate activist, he provides national leadership in that area for the United Church of Christ.

For more on this story, visit: Ash Wednesday 2013: A Good Day to be Arrested as an Advocate for God’s Creation.

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Soybean Farmer Takes Monsanto to Supreme Court

A single 75-year-old Indiana soybean farmer in rural southwestern Indiana is taking on the multibillion dollar agricultural giant Monsanto over the issue of who controls the rights to seeds planted in the ground.

When confronted with the David vs. Goliath nature of his battle, Vernon Hugh Bowman told The Guardian: “I really don’t consider it as David and Goliath. I don’t think of it in those terms. I think of it in terms of right and wrong.”

For more on this story, visit: Soybean Farmer Takes Monsanto to Supreme Court – Truthdig.

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Amazon to build facility, institute sales tax in Connecticut

Amazon Plans to Invest $50 million in State; Revenue Collection to Begin in November

 (HARTFORD, CT) – Gov. Dannel P. Malloy and Amazon today announced that over the next two years, Amazon will invest $50 million in Connecticut and create hundreds of new full-time jobs.  The Governor made the announcement at the same time that he announced an agreement under which Amazon will begin collecting sales tax revenue in the state.

amazon“All in all, this is a win for our state’s taxpayers, our main street retailers, and our workforce,” Malloy said.  “Amazon’s multi-million dollar investment and the hundreds of jobs that will come with both the construction and operation of their future facility will unquestionably boost our local economy.  Their agreement to begin collecting revenue is a great step, but federal action on this issue is still necessary.”

“These are two more significant steps that our administration is making to create jobs and maximize our revenues whenever possible,” Lt. Gov. Nancy Wyman said.  “This will both put people to work and help balance the budget, and we welcome Amazon as our newest partner in our effort to create long-term prosperity for Connecticut.”

Continue reading “Amazon to build facility, institute sales tax in Connecticut” →

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