O Arizona: Maricopa Sheriff's Office Uses Jail Improvement Funds Improperly: And Who is the Maricopa County Sheriff? O Sheriff Joe. . . .

Trips, parties paid by jail fund

Arizona collects and distributes millions of dollars every year from court fees so the 15 county sheriffs can improve their jails.

In Maricopa County, the Sheriff's Office has spent hundreds of thousands of those dollars on out-of-state travel for training, stays at luxury hotels and a staff party at a local amusement park, The Arizona Republic found.

The paper reviewed five years of spending records after the Sheriff's Office recently spent $456,000 from the Jail Enhancement Fund to buy a custom bus to transport inmates to court. The purchase drew the ire of the county Board of Supervisors, which has refused to put the bus on the street because it was bought without its approval. County administrators are looking into the Sheriff Office's use of the fund.

Former Arizona legislator Leo Corbet, a retired attorney who helped establish the Jail Enhancement Fund in 1982, said the intent was to help counties pay for basic jail necessities, such as locks and inmate transportation. When asked about recent expenditures such as the out-of-state travel, Corbet said, "Never in the world would we have condoned that kind of behavior."

Gerard Sheridan, Maricopa County chief of custody, called the expenditures "money well spent."

"When things are tight, especially with personnel, training is something that you cannot overlook. Matter of fact, you should train more in hard times with your staff," he said. "It helps us do more with less people, and especially now since we've got a hiring freeze on."

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Detroit Photographer Mitch Cope

Detroit Book : MITCH COPE

Mitch Cope

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Violence in Iraq: Down by 1/3 in July, Since US Pullout

The Raw Story | Iraqi death toll down in July after US handover

Violent deaths in Iraq fell by a third in July, the first month that Iraqi police and troops were in charge of security in urban areas since the 2003 US-led invasion, official figures showed Saturday.

A total of 275 Iraqis lost their lives last month, according to statistics compiled by the interior, defence and health ministries, compared to 437 deaths in June.

Two hundred and twenty-three Iraqi civilians, 40 police and 12 soldiers died in July, while 975 civilians, 93 police and 35 soldiers were wounded in attacks, according to the figures.

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Lesotho: A Hell of Gap Jeans

African dream turns sour for orphan army - Times Online

Gap’s decision to develop the production of jeans and T-shirts in Lesotho had heralded an era of opportunity for one of the world’s poorest nations but a Sunday Times investigation has exposed an unforeseen consequence of that commitment - the dumping of tons of waste, much of it dangerous, at unsecured municipal sites.

Over the past 12 months the child rag pickers have been attracted to garment dumps by the denim and plastic thrown away by a Taiwanese supplier whose clients include both Gap and Levi Strauss.

Such is the ubiquity of denim and cotton waste in Lesotho that garment refuse has replaced charcoal as cooking fuel. Alarmingly, for the two San Francisco-based firms, the waste dumped by their suppliers Nien Hsing and Formosa Textile - both part of the Nien Hsing Fashion Group - includes harmful chemicals, needles and razors.

Each day it is painstakingly picked over by children and mothers with ailing infants strapped to their backs in a community ravaged by HIV. Not only that, but Nien Hsing is leaking chemical effluent into a river from which cooking water is drawn.

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It's Only the Wind: Wind Turbine Syndrome, Who Knew?

Are wind farms a health risk? US scientist identifies 'wind turbine syndrome' - Green Living, Environment - The Independent

Living too close to wind turbines can cause heart disease, tinnitus, vertigo, panic attacks, migraines and sleep deprivation, according to groundbreaking research to be published later this year by an American doctor.

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Dept. of "Mozart: What's He Done Lately?"--Two Recent Discoveries To Be Performed

BBC NEWS | Europe | New Mozart pieces to be performed

Two newly discovered pieces of piano music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart are to be performed in the Austrian city of his birth, Salzburg.

The pieces had long been in the archive of the International Mozarteum Foundation but only recently were they identified as compositions by Mozart.

The foundation has released very few details about the music.

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RIP Dina Babbitt, Portraitist at Auschwitz

DinaBabbitt, Artist at Auschwitz, Is Dead at 86 - Obituary (Obit) - NYTimes.com

Dina Babbitt, who as a prisoner at the Auschwitz concentration camp bartered her services as a portrait painter for her life and her mother’s life, and spent the past several decades trying to retrieve her paintings from the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and State Museum, died on Wednesday in Felton, Calif. She was 86.

The cause was cancer, said her daughter Michele Kane.

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Christians Don't Kill People: Lack of insulin Does

BBC NEWS | Americas | US man 'killed child by praying'

A US jury has found a man guilty of killing his ill 11-year-old daughter by praying for her recovery rather than seeking medical care.

The man, Dale Neumann, told a court in the state of Wisconsin he believed God could heal his daughter.

She died of a treatable disease - undiagnosed diabetes - at home in rural Wisconsin in March last year, as people surrounded her and prayed.

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Would You Pee In This? Seems a Little Phallocentric, No?

Street Urinal Makes Public Peeing Practical | Gadget Lab | Wired.com

This is the Axixa, and here in Barcelona, we need it. The ceramic, water-stain shaped device is a public urinal. It even comes in pee-yellow.

Public urination is a big problem in my hometown: hordes of drunken tourists, all filled up with nowhere to go. Bars won’t let you use the restrooms unless you are a customer, there are almost no public toilets (a few porta-potties at the beach is about the size of it), and because the locals have some taste, there aren’t even many branches of McDonald’s, the default public bathroom for much of the world.

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Pastel Drawing of Langston Hughes

How To Disappear Completely.

Pastel drawing of Hughes
by Winold Reiss

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Girl

How To Disappear Completely.

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Hardwired? The Pentatonic Scale

Bobby McFerrin hacks your brain with the pentatonic scale - Boing Boing

Marilyn sez, "Bobby McFerrin uses the pentatonic scale and an audience's expectations to demonstrate neural programming at the World Science Festival 2009"

The video clip at the link shows a simple yet extraordinary phenomenon.

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American Productivity: Nothing but Weapons?

America makes nothing except weapons - Boing Boing

Jon Taplin reproduces this jaw-dropping chart: Floyd Norris's scary graph of Durable Goods Production, adding, "We have so hollowed out our industrial plant that the only thing we are now producing is weapons of war." He goes on to quote Toynbee on Rome: "The economy of the Empire was basically a Raubwirtschaft or plunder economy based on looting existing resources rather than producing anything new. The Empire relied on booty from conquered territories... With the cessation of tribute from conquered territories, the full cost of their military machine had to be borne by the citizenry."

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Lori Vrba: Photographer

traveling with the ghost: Lori Vrba - Safekeeping -

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The Direction of the RNC

Think Progress » RNC Adopts Wingnut Agenda: Calls ‘Obamacare’ Socialism, Bans Cap-And-Trade, Condemns Obama’s ‘Czars’

The RNC adopted three resolutions yesterday that give a pretty good indication of where the party is heading:

1) RNC resolution calls “Obamacare” a march toward “socialism.” For months, right-wing members of the RNC have been urging Michael Steele to call Obama a “socialist.” They even proposed a resolution renaming the Democratic Party the “Democrat Socialist Party.” But Steele pushed back, saying, “We don’t see this president so much as a socialist as we see him as a collectivist.” In recent weeks, however, Steele has succumbed to the right-wing’s influence and started calling Obama’s health care proposal “socialism.” Now, the RNC has adopted a resolution that “recognize[s] that Obamacare is marching America further towards Socialism and urge that it be stopped.” The resolution proposes “true cost savings” can be realized by encouraging seniors to opt out of Medicare:

RESOLVED, that true cost savings be achieved by allowing Medicare patients to opt out of Medicare program to pay for their own catastrophic insurance, and allowing Medicare participating physicians to discount their service fees for cash payments;

2) RNC resolution says Obama violated Constitution by appointing czars. For months, the right-wing fringe of the Republican Party has been railing against Obama for the appointment of policy “czars,” despite the fact that President Bush engaged in the same practice. Fox News has been pushing the conspiracy that Obama is acting unconstitutionally, even while the network’s own correspondent has acknowledged that the myth is false. The RNC has now adopted a resolution condemning Obama for his appointment of these policy liaisons:

RESOLVED, that the Republican National Committee recognize that the current concentration of powers in the Executive Branch is a violation of the powers of the President of the United States as defined in the U.S. Constitution and is dangerous to the citizens of America;

As ThinkProgress has noted, many of the “czars” that the right wing is up-in-arms over are actually Senate-confirmed positions. Moreover, the history of presidents appointing high-ranking policy advisers goes back over hundreds of years.

3) RNC adopts resolution to kill cap-and-trade. The RNC’s resolution on cap-and-trade declares that the cost of it will “greatly exceed any benefit.” It also declares that global warming is merely a “pretext” for passing cap-and-trade:

RESOLVED, that we urge Congress to vote no on Cap-and-Trade and to reject all efforts to use global warming as a pretext to increase federal revenues;

The language appears to be an attempt to mollify the global warming-denier base of the Republican Party. Expert analyses have found that Waxman-Markey clean energy legislation will cut pollution and create wealth over time. The EPA estimated that the bill will lower electricity bills by 2020.

For a Party attempting to broaden it base, these resolutions that pander to the conservative “wacko wing” are extremely unlikely to help that cause.

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Patio Furniture: Is Obama's Sense of Style Breaking Down?

The Poop : Obama's crappy patio furniture

Peter Hartlaub writes:

I can't believe the president doesn't have better patio furniture.

In reality, the Rose Garden patio furniture is probably quite expensive -- made of the best wrought iron, with wicker that was weaved at the hands of master artisans. I wouldn't be surprised if Obama specifically requested Lincoln's old patio furniture for this event.

But perception is everything is cases like this. And from a distance, it looks like Obama owns the type of furniture you would expect to encounter when eating a meal with Randy Quaid in a "Vacation" movie. (More Helper, Obama?) My first thought upon seeing the images on television yesterday was "Is that plastic?" I briefly lived next to some frat guys in college, and I think I saw Joe Biden's chair floating in the pool after every one of their parties.

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Violence in Tel Aviv Gay Bar

Al Jazeera English - Middle East - Gunman attacks gay club in Tel Aviv

At least two people have been killed and 12 others wounded when an unknown gunman attacked a Tel Aviv gay club, Israeli television has reported.

Rescue services said six of the wounded during the incident on Saturday were badly hurt.

Micky Rosenfeld, a police spokesman, said the attack was "most likely a criminal attack and not a terror attack."

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Iraq: Capt. Thief

BBC NEWS | Middle East | Iraqi officer 'behind bank heist'

An Iraqi army captain, possibly helped by presidential bodyguards, is believed to have been behind a major bank robbery in Baghdad, officials say.

Tuesday's robbery, in which eight people were killed and millions of dollars stolen, was among the biggest in Baghdad's history.

The money has since been recovered from inside a government compound in the city centre.

Two people have been arrested but another is still at large, police say.

A tip-off on Friday led police to the compound, close to the bank where the robbery took place in the district of Karrada.

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Bukowski's Refrigerator: Shall We Take Bets On What's In There?

adski_kafeteri: BUKOWSKI - 2 ( before the beard )

BUKOWSKI - 2 ( before the beard )
Bukowski's fridge

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"Case Study of One": Reading More, but Not Books

Tom Vander Ark: I don't read books Read the whole post at the link

Tom Vander Ark writes:

After 30 years of reading a book a week, I've only read a handful in the last two years--none in print format. I'm reading more than ever, just not the hardbound books that line my library. It's a case study of one but part of a trend.

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Whence the Mustard Museum? Put it On Your Calendar

TYWKIWDBI: Mustard Museum moving

The Mustard Museum, currently located in Mount Horeb, Wisconsin, is moving to Middleton, a suburb of Madison, the state capitol. This is somewhat big news for south-central Wisconsin, since the museum has achieved a sort of iconic status for this small rural community.

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Where Will We Find the Unoffensive Pronoun?

On Language - All-Purpose Pronoun - NYTimes.com

[M]any great writers — Byron, Austen, Thackeray, Eliot, Dickens, Trollope and more — continued to use they and company as singulars, never mind the grammarians. In fact, so many people now use they in the old singular way that dictionaries and usage guides are taking a critical look at the prohibition against it. R. W. Burchfield, editor of The New Fowler’s Modern English Usage, has written that it’s only a matter of time before this practice becomes standard English: “The process now seems irreversible.” Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (11th ed.) already finds the singular they acceptable “even in literary and formal contexts,” but the Usage Panel of The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.) isn’t there yet.

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Urban Mole: Elegant Notion (And It Will Never Happen)

Designer Phillip Hermes has come up with a new system to transport packages which, if ever instituted, could probably be much faster than any of today's available options (trucks, mailmen, airplanes, ponies). The Urban Mole -- which recently placed second in the Vision Works contest -- enables the use of "existing networks" of underground pipes (yes, sewer pipes) to transport packages up to about the size of a shoebox, which are put in capsules to fully protect the contents from the surrounding sewer water. The packages would be moved via a system of electric rails within the pipes, creating a robotic underground highway for transporting goods to drop off points, or "Mole Stations" where people can pick up their goods. Hermes estimates that an average cross-town trip could take less than ten minutes. Sounds a lot more eco-friendly and way faster than the grumpy mailman, right? It doesn't sound like there are any plans to bring this project to fruition, but we sure will keep hoping.

link: Urban Mole robot could deliver your mail via insane network of underground tubes

"Lost" Buddhist Treasures Recovered

BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | Hidden Gobi Desert relics found

Rare Buddhist treasures, not seen for more than 70 years, have been unearthed in the Gobi Desert.

The historic artefacts were buried in the 1930s during Mongolia's Communist purge, when hundreds of monasteries were looted and destroyed.

The relics include statues, art work, manuscripts and personal belongings of a famous 19th Century Buddhist master.

The leader of the search team, Michael Eisenriegler, described it as an "adventure of a lifetime".

A total of 64 crates of treasures were buried in the desert by a monk named Tudev, in an attempt to save them from the ransacking of the Mongolian and Soviet armies.

They belonged to Buddhist master Danzan Ravjaa and only Tudev knew where they were hidden. He passed on the secret to his grandson who dug up some of the boxes in the 1990s and opened a museum.

The current Austrian-Mongolian treasure hunt team found two more boxes. Mr Eisenriegler told the BBC World Service they were filled with "the most amazing Buddhist art objects".

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Film Review: Funny People

The Lenny Bruce Performance Film: The Front Row : The New Yorker Follow the link to see an interesting clip of Lenny Bruce's second last performance

Most of the funny people in Judd Apatow’s “Funny People,” which opens today, are Jewish, and, as David Denby points out in his review of the movie in the magazine this week, most of them joke about sex. In the early nineteen-sixties, Lenny Bruce, who was also Jewish, did the same thing, and got in lots of trouble for it. In this clip, from a 1965 performance that was his penultimate (he died the following year, at age forty), Bruce explains why Jews joke about sex (and I discuss his explanation). In that show, he also talked a great deal about his legal ordeals; his trial transcript was the closest thing he had to a script, and he performed it with gusto. Toward the end of his life, bankrupted by his legal ordeals and unable to perform anywhere but California (where he had won an obscenity case), Bruce was obsessed with the law. It’s a Jewish thing to be, and he became a stand-up Kafka in his bewildered journey through its labyrinths. (I reviewed the DVD of this performance when it was released, four years ago.)

In 1987, I was a temp in the word-processing department of Cardozo Law School, in Greenwich Village, when I began working with one of the professors, Edward de Grazia, on his manuscript regarding the modern history of obscenity law as it related to literature and, ultimately, to some major cases in which he was personally involved. One of his chapters had to do with Bruce, whose lawyer he was at the time of this performance. One day Ed brought over several letters, from Bruce to him, for me to transcribe. I recall one that was typewritten, but remarkably clumsily; words routinely fell off the edge of the odd-sized paper, and phrases were squeezed between lines. My physical contact with those documents, as well as my friendship with Ed, whose stories about Bruce are terribly sad, gave me the sense of a personal connection to Bruce and his work. The book, which came out in 1993, is magnificent; it has an odd title, “Girls Lean Back Everywhere,” which suggests little of the dramatic legal history and literary passion with which its thousand or so pages are packed.

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Italy Defies Church, OKs "Abortion Pill"

Italy's drug regulation agency has authorized the use of the abortion pill despite protests from the Roman Catholic church which threatens to excommunicate doctors who prescribe the drug and patients who use it.

link: Italy ok's abortion pill despite church opposition | International | Reuters

Zombie Ant Slaves Serve Fungus: Who Wants the Movie Rights?

Fungus Makes Zombie Ants Do All the Work: Scientific American

Problem: you’re a fungus that can only flourish at a certain temperature, humidity, location and distance from the ground but can’t do the legwork to find that perfect spot yourself. Solution: hijack an ant’s body to do the work for you—and then inhabit it.

A paper, to be published in The American Naturalist’s September issue, explores the astounding accuracy with which this fungus compels ants to create its ideal home.

The Ophiocordyceps unilateralis fungus infects Camponotus leonardi ants that live in tropical rainforest trees. Once infected, the spore-possessed ant will climb down from its normal habitat and bite down, with what the authors call a "death grip" on a leaf and then die. But the story doesn’t end there.

"The death grip occurred in very precise locations," the authors write. All of the C. leonardi ants studied in Thailand’s Khao Chong Wildlife Sanctuary had chomped down on the underside of a leaf, and 98 percent had landed on a vein. Most had: a) found their way to the north side of the plant, b) chomped on a leaf about 25 centimeters above the ground, c) selected a leaf in an environment with 94 to 95 percent humidity and d) ended up in a location with temperatures between 20 and 30 degrees Celsius. The researchers called this specificity "remarkable."

In other words, the fungus was transported via the zombie ant to its prime location. To see just how important this accuracy is to the fungus, the researchers identified dozens of infected ants in a small area of the forest. Some of the ants were moved to other nearby heights and locations, and others were left to sprout spores just where they had died.

Those ants that were left where O. unilateralis directed them grew normal, healthy hyphae (fungal threads) within several days, but those that had been moved never did.

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Less Nerdy Calculator

Ptak Science Books: Mechanical Calculating Pencil, 1876

Ptak writes:

I've seen a number of unusual calculating machines, but this one--patented by Marshall Smith in 1876) seems one of the smallest, and efficient--if not limited--varities. It is the second edition so-to-speak of a mechanical, graphite pencil, operating this time without rotors or any other internal mechanical devices. It was evidently a big seller--hosted in part, so it seems, by The Scientific American itself--having sold some 5,000 units.

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Pakistani Supreme Court Changes History

DAWN.COM | Pakistan | Supreme Court strikes down Nov 3 emergency

ISLAMABAD: In what has been billed as a verdict that may change the course of the country’s political and judicial history, the Supreme Court on Friday denounced successive military takeovers over the past four decades and their endorsement by the superior judiciary and then went ahead to declare Gen Pervez Musharraf’s Emergency Order of Nov 3, 2007, and most of the actions taken under it, including the appointment of over 100 superior court judges, as illegal and unconstitutional.

In a judgment that has no precedence in the country’s judicial history, a 14-judge bench, headed by Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, declared unconstitutional Justice Abdul Hameed Dogar’s appointment as the Chief Justice of Pakistan after the imposition of emergency. The court decided to refer to the Supreme Judicial Council the cases of Justice Dogar and other judges who had defied the order of a seven-judge bench on the same day and took oath under the PCO.

The verdict was quite clear on many points. It declared Gen Musharraf’s action of declaring emergency on Nov 3, 2007, as illegal and unconstitutional, but refrained from passing any order against him.

It also declared all appointments of judges since Nov 3 taken in consultation by, what it described as an unconstitutional chief justice, as illegal and that they ceased to exist as judges with immediate effect.

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O Arizona: Cats

No easy solution to combat Valley's feral cat problem

Experts estimate there are as many as 200,000 feral cats across the Valley, and those who work with them say the situation is getting worse. As Valley foreclosures increased, many residents left their pets behind.

"These cats just don't come out of nowhere . . . there's a lot of abandonment," said Kalish, a retired electrical engineer who traps cats several nights a week.

The problem is compounded by a lack of action by cities and by the county. Although leash laws call for Maricopa County Animal Care and Control and cities to pick up stray dogs, they don't say anything about cats, said agency spokeswoman Aprille Hollis.

"The problem is there are no state or county laws about stray cats," she said.

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O Arizona: The Poor Don't Flock To Private Schools: D'oh!

Tuition-aid program benefits wealthy families, raises worry

For more than a decade, an Arizona tax-credit program has allowed parents to receive financial help from the state to send their children to private schools.

That tuition-scholarship program promises to grow as recently passed laws open the doors to increased use of the tax credits and the ability to make payments out of payroll deductions.

But an Arizona Republic analysis found that the program is falling short in helping the poor, one of the prominent original goals.

Studies and interviews indicate that many students who benefit from the tax-credit scholarships are not from poor families.

The affluent are the prime taxpayers who take advantage of the credit, steering their state taxes to fund religious schools that don't always focus on helping the poor.

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