n2doc
n2doc's JournalWhen Crumbling Infrastructure Actually Crumbles
Freight rail transport on the United States' densely packed East Coast is anchored by a single rail line belonging to the CSX corporation. There are other rail lines in the East, of course, but this one, hugging Interstate 95 from Florida to New Jersey while connecting ocean ports, population centers, and the rest of the country's goods transportation network, is truly special. When the line reaches Maryland, just a little ways south of Baltimore, it's occupying the same route that once supported America's very first (real) railway, the Baltimore and Ohio. This is about where things go to shit.
Railways are big fans of things that work, less so of things that work more safety or even things that work more efficiently. Just after crossing onto the old B&O line, CSX trains cross the Thomas Viaduct, a nearly 200 year old stone bridge that looks like a piece of ancient Rome, and not long after that they'll find themselves in the Howard Street Tunnel. The tunnel, a relic of the late 1800s, caught fire in 2001 when a train carrying loads of bad-news chemicals jumped the tracks, spilling a full tanker of triproylene and 2,554 gallons of hydrochloric acid into a poorly ventilated, difficult-to-access hole underneath the downtown hub of a major US city.
The tunnel burned for almost a full week, with wood and paper goods going up along with the chemicals, effectively shutting down the entire central Baltimore core. It was an incident waiting to happen. An article from the Baltimore Sun quotes (as cited in the linked 2001 study on the fire) an unnamed federal transportation official as saying, "... the problem would be getting in there to fight the fire... If you had an explosion, fire would shoot out of both ends like a bazooka." Nothing much has changed since the accident.
A mile or so after the tunnel comes the next artifact, a viaduct carved through a quiet residential district called Charles Village, where trains pass below street level, like a tunnel without a roof. The passage is lined on either side by stone walls about a single story tall, themselves topped with wrought iron fencing. Like the tunnel, the viaduct dates back to the late 1800s; even the fencing is a century old. Finally, after days of epic rain, a wall of the viaduct collapsed (above), taking half a city street with it. Thankfully no one was hurt. Some residents are blaming the railroad, citing an extensive history of complaints pertaining to the long-sagging wall, while the city claims it performed structural tests on the viaduct only a year before, finding it safe.
more
http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/when-crumbling-infrastructure-actually-crumbles
Even GOP is getting sick of Benghazi deceit
By Jay Bookman
The lying and deception being used to fuel the Benghazi "controversy" has begun to embarrass even some prominent Republicans, and they're starting to speak out against the tactics employed by House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa.
The latest is U.S. Rep. Buck McKeon, the Republican chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. His committee has held extensive hearings into the question of whether U.S. military assets could have responded in time to assist our people in Benghazi, and it has concluded emphatically that the answer is no.
This week, however, Issa tried to resurrect the issue by caling a retired Air Force brigadier general to testify that "the military could have made a response of some kind" but did not, suggesting a response had been held back by the State Department. That claim quickly became headlines at Fox News, and was seized upon by U.S. Rep. Jason Chaffetz of Utah, who has been egregiously irresponsible and loose with the facts on this issue.
"We didn’t run to the sound of the guns,” Chaffetz said. “We had Americans dying. We had dead people. We had wounded people and our military didn’t try to engage in that fight."
That brought an unusually harsh response from McKeon, who noted that the retired general, Robert Lovell, did not serve in the chain of command in charge of events that night and had no firsthand knowledge of what capabilities were available.
more
http://www.ajc.com/weblogs/jay-bookman/2014/may/02/even-gop-getting-sick-benghazi-deceit/
The scary way Common Core test ‘cut scores’ are selected
BY VALERIE STRAUSS
You may have given no thought to the “cut scores” that are set for various tests, but they make all the difference in who passes and who fails. What exactly are cut scores? The Educational Testing Service describes them this way:
Cut scores are selected points on the score scale of a test. The points are used to determine whether a particular test score is sufficient for some purpose.
Notice the word “selected.” Cut scores are selected based on criteria that the selectors decide have some meaning. Unfortunately, it is often the case that the criteria have no real validity in revealing student achievement, which is the supposed mission of the test — and that means the scores have no meaning either. This post, by award-winning Prinicipal Carol Burris of South Side High School in New York, explains all of this in chilling detail.
Burris has been doing a remarkable job of chronicling New York’s botched reform effort for some time on this blog. (You can read some of her work here, here, here, here, here, and here.) Her narrative is important beyond the boundaries of New York, because other states are also doing some of the same things in the name of school reform. Burris was named New York’s 2013 High School Principal of the Year by the School Administrators Association of New York and the National Association of Secondary School Principals, and in 2010, tapped as the 2010 New York State Outstanding Educator by the School Administrators Association of New York State. She is the co-author of the New York Principals letter of concern regarding the evaluation of teachers by student test scores. It has been signed by thousands of principals teachers, parents, professors, administrators and citizens. You can read the letter by clicking here.
more
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2014/04/29/the-scary-way-common-core-test-cut-scores-are-selected/
You just can't make this stuff up!
GOP candidate was once a female impersonator
Steve Wiles, a Republican state Senate candidate who supports North Carolina’s constitutional amendment against same-sex marriage, once worked as a female impersonator at a gay nightclub in Winston-Salem and was gay at the time, according to a co-owner of the nightclub and a former employee.
Wiles, 34, was in his early 20s when he worked at the now-defunct nightclub, Club Odyssey, according to co-owner Randy Duggins and former employee Gray Tomlinson.
“He is Mona Sinclair,” Duggins said, referring to Wiles’ female persona.
more
http://www.journalnow.com/news/local/gop-candidate-was-once-a-female-impersonator/article_a1029862-5a82-5752-90e4-eac7155bce1e.html
Taiwan moves to levy "rich man's tax"
TAIPEI: Taiwan has moved to levy a so-called "rich man's tax" on nearly 10,000 of the island's wealthiest people in a bid to narrow the income gap, officials said Friday.
Under the proposal, those with annual net income of over Tw$10 million (US$333,000), or the richest 1.5 per cent of individuals or families, will pay a 45 per cent income tax rate, up from the current 40 per cent, said the finance ministry.
"We will raise taxes for the top (earners) and reduce taxes for low and modest income earners ... which will definitely improve the income distribution," finance minister Chang Sheng-ford told reporters.
Taiwan's tycoons, including Foxconn Group founder Terry Gou and Morris Chang, chairman of leading contract microchip maker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., backed the proposal as "they have donated more money than the additional taxes" they would be paying, Chang said.
more
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/asiapacific/taiwan-moves-to-levy-rich/1092790.html
Our manifesto for Europe (Piketty)
by
Thomas Piketty and 14 others
The European Union is experiencing an existential crisis, as the European elections will soon brutally remind us. This mainly involves the eurozone countries, which are mired in a climate of distrust and a debt crisis that is very far from over: unemployment persists and deflation threatens. Nothing could be further from the truth than imagining that the worst is behind us.
This is why we welcome with great interest the proposals made at the end of 2013 by our German friends from the Glienicke group for strengthening the political and fiscal union of the eurozone countries. Alone, our two countries will soon not weigh much in the world economy. If we do not unite in time to bring our model of society into the process of globalisation, then the temptation to retreat into our national borders will eventually prevail and give rise to tensions that will make the difficulties of union pale in comparison. In some ways, the European debate is much more advanced in Germany than in France. As economists, political scientists, journalists and, above all, citizens of France and Europe, we do not accept the sense of resignation that is paralysing our country. Through this manifesto, we would like to contribute to the debate on the democratic future of Europe and take the proposals of the Glienicke group still further.
It is time to recognise that Europe's existing institutions are dysfunctional and need to be rebuilt. The central issue is simple: democracy and the public authorities must be enabled to regain control of and effectively regulate 21st century globalised financial capitalism. A single currency with 18 different public debts on which the markets can freely speculate, and 18 tax and benefit systems in unbridled rivalry with each other, is not working, and will never work. The eurozone countries have chosen to share their monetary sovereignty, and hence to give up the weapon of unilateral devaluation, but without developing new common economic, fiscal and budgetary instruments. This no man's land is the worst of all worlds.
The point is not to pool all our taxes and government spending. All too often today's Europe has proved to be stupidly intrusive on secondary issues (such as the VAT rate on hairdressers and equestrian clubs) and pathetically impotent on important ones (such as tax havens and financial regulation). We must reverse the order of priorities, with less Europe on issues on which member countries do very well on their own, and more Europe when union is essential.
more
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/02/manifesto-europe-radical-financial-democratic
Some Christian:Oklahoma Lawmaker: I Don’t Care If Death Row Inmates Are ‘Fed To Lions’
On Tuesday, an Oklahoma inmate named Clayton Lockett was slowly tortured to death after a botched execution left him conscious and convulsing while strapped to a gurney. He eventually died of a heart attack 43 minutes into this ordeal.
Oklahoma state Rep. Mike Christian (R), however, apparently sees no problem with Lockett’s slow and painful death. According to a local news report, Christian said that he doesn’t care if inmates are killed by lethal injection, electrocution, a firing squad, a hanging, the guillotine or “being fed to the lions.”
Christian is also not alone in his willingness to revive discarded methods of execution in order to ensure that state-sponsored killings move forward. States that still execute inmates have had trouble obtaining the drugs they previously used for this purpose due to pharmaceutical companies refusing to sell these drugs to be used in executions and foreign governments restricting their sale. As a result, many states turned to drugs of uncertain quality. Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster (D) threatened to use a gas chamber to execute inmates. Wyoming considered resorting to firing squads. And the Virginia House passed a bill that would bring back the electric chair.
The Oklahoma Supreme Court briefly stayed Lockett’s execution, due to uncertainty about the source of the drugs that would be used to kill the Oklahoma inmate. Christian responded to this brief stay by ordering articles of impeachment to be drafted against the justices. The court lifted its stay shortly thereafter.
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2014/05/03/3433911/oklahoma-lawmaker-i-dont-care-if-death-row-inmates-are-fed-to-lions/
The U.S. Sends 2 Million Kids to Prison Every Year
By Sarah Mimms and Stephanie Stamm
May 2, 2014
When Justin Bodner was 12 years old he had a problem with swearing. Big time. His mother had tried to curb the habit, but as Bodner was walking his brother to school one day he ended up in a screaming match (which can't be transcribed here) with another child's mother. The argument didn't land him in the principal's office or a time-out. Instead, it landed him in prison.
Bodner ended up spending nine years in juvenile detention centers where he smoked marijuana and tried heroin for the first time. His cellmates even taught him how to steal a car. And Bodner missed his entire middle-school and high school career.
Hillary Transue was luckier. When she was 14, Hillary created a fake MySpace page mocking her assistant principal and, to her surprise, was arrested and sent a juvenile prison. Thanks to quick thinking by her mother, Hillary's case was referred to the Juvenile Law Center, sparking a broad investigation that took down two Luzerne County, Pa., judges and lead to Hillary's release just three weeks after she was arrested.
Both children were convicted of so-called "status offenses," crimes that would not be punishable under the law if committed by adults. Status offenses run the gamut from drinking alcohol to truancy to running away from home to "incorrigible behavior," according to the American Bar Association. As evidenced in the cases of Bodner and Transue, the definition is often broadened by judges.
more
http://www.nationaljournal.com/congress/the-u-s-sends-2-million-kids-to-prison-every-year-congress-is-trying-to-change-that-20140502
Hubble astronomers check the prescription of a cosmic lens
Two teams of astronomers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have discovered three distant exploding stars that have been magnified by the immense gravity of foreground galaxy clusters, which act like "cosmic lenses". These supernovae offer astronomers a powerful tool to check the prescription of these massive lenses.
Massive clusters of galaxies act as “gravitational lenses” because their powerful gravity bends light passing through them [1]. This lensing phenomenon makes faraway objects behind the clusters appear bigger and brighter — objects that might otherwise be too faint to see, even with the largest telescopes.
The new findings are the first steps towards the most precise prescription — or map — ever made for such a lens. How much a gravitationally lensed object is magnified depends on the amount of matter in a cluster — including dark matter, which we cannot see directly [2]. Astronomers develop maps that estimate the location and amount of dark matter lurking in a cluster. These maps are the lens prescriptions of a galaxy cluster and predict how distant objects behind a cluster will be magnified when their light passes through it. But how do astronomers know this prescription is accurate?
Now, two independent teams of astronomers from the Supernova Cosmology Project and the Cluster Lensing And Supernova survey with Hubble (CLASH) have found a new method to check the prescription of a gravitational lens. They analysed three supernovae — nicknamed Tiberius, Didius and Caracalla — which were each lensed by a different massive galaxy cluster — Abell 383, RXJ1532.9+3021 and MACS J1720.2+3536, respectively. Luckily, two and possibly all three of these supernovae appeared to be a special type of exploding star that can be used as a standard candle [3].
more
http://www.spacetelescope.org/news/heic1409/
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