A man from southern England posted a help wanted ad in his local newspaper looking for a drinking partner for his elderly father.
The job will pay roughly $14USD an hour and expenses for the lucky employee to take 88 year-old Jack Hammond from his nursing home to a local pub.
The chosen drinking partners are a retired doctor and former military man.
"Dad's now going to be going down to the pub several times a week -- three with his new friends and twice with me," Mike Hammond told The Times on Thursday. "I want to give him some of his old life back."
Eight Seattle-area students, aged 10 to 18, are finishing up their three-week bicycle trip to raise awareness of climate change today, Earth Day.
The trip began March 31 in Washington, D.C. and will end in Seattle today, after logging over 5,400 miles, for the Global to Local celebration.
The students rode bicycles across the country for the project, called An Inconvenient Ride, stopping in cities that had signed on to Seattle Mayor Greg Nichols' Climate Protection Initiative.
Check out their Web site, produced by the students, at An Inconvenient Ride. There you can see cyclist bios, photos from the trip and read daily blogs.
The Oregonian has coverage up today about the Restorative Listening Project in Portland, Ore.
The project allows blacks and whites to discuss and vent on the issue of gentrification. Based on the principles of similar projects that followed the Holocaust and apartheid, the project aims at getting Portlanders more comfortable discussing the issue, and perhaps aiding in resolution.
On the newspaper's Web site, you can hear 16 Portlanders--some black, some white, one Native American--discuss how the gentrification of Northeast Portland (the hub of Portland's black community) has affected them.
Results are personal and profound. Blacks are getting past their anger to talk about their pain. Whites are getting past their political correctness to admit their confusion. Some leave frustrated. Others experience relief. All can gain insight.
NASA got schooled yesterday by a 13-year-old boy from Germany. Nico Marquardt calculated that there is a one in 450 chance the astroid Apophis could collide with Earth. NASA had calculated the chance to be one in 45,000.
NASA had previously estimated the chances at only 1 in 45,000 but told its sister organisation, the European Space Agency (ESA), that the young whizzkid had got it right.
The schoolboy took into consideration the risk of Apophis running into one or more of the 40,000 satellites orbiting Earth during its path close to the planet on April 13 2029.
And to think, I was merely struggling with the quadratic equation when I was a wee lass of 13.
TradingMarkets.com has an interesting perspective on how campaigns are targeting the much-desired Pennsylvanian youth vote by going online and talking about the issues that matter to young people.
The director of the Student Public Interest Research Groups' New Voters Project said groups like hers have become more sophisticated in how they get out the vote.
"If you apply the same kind of outreach tactics to younger voters as older voters, like face-to-face contact or phone banks, it works," Jahagirdar said.
Candidates, she said, are also more actively courting the youth vote by "focusing more on issues young people care about," such as college tuition costs. And Internet sites have become more sophisticated in recent years, with blogs and quick interaction, giving the Internet generation more of a sense that the campaigns understand them.
Apparently, campaigns weren't previously aware that young people worry about issues as much as older generations do.
Even Fox News has picked up on the relationship between the youth vote and issues.
A dozen Randolph College students visited the Chicken Ranch, a legal brothel ouside Las Vegas, last week as part of a course on American consumption.
The brothel tour was a natural fit for a class that tells students "don't just study America -- live it," said Julio Rodriguez, the director of the college's American Culture Program.
Each semester the course examines a strain of American culture and ends with a class trip. Past destinations included post-Katrina New Orleans, Walt Disney World and the Civil Rights Memorial Center in Montgomery, Alabama.
This year's focus on Nevada started with a professor's interest in water rights and conservation. It grew to include discussions of the wedding and entertainment industries and, inevitably, prostitution.
The most scandalous field trip I ever made was a trip to the local waste management facility.
"The pay is generous. The experience is priceless."
The Leadership Institute is hiring 70(!) representatives to "help conservative students break the left-wing monopoly on college campuses."
"Benefits" include:
Field reps receive $2,500 per month salary, plus $600 per week housing allowance, as well as additional allowances for cell phone use, recruitment expenses, gas, and more.
A free laptop is yours to use throughout the semester. It becomes yours to keep upon successful completion of the program.
Your employment with LI as a field rep is resumé gold. Field reps use the experience and connections they gain from LI’s National Field Representative Program to launch rewarding careers...
Users can now view refugee camps through the popular Google Earth service.
The maps will aid humanitarian operations as well as help inform the public about the millions who have fled their homes because of violence or hardship, according to the office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, which is working with Google on the project.
Users can download Google Earth software to see satellite images of refugee hot spots such as Darfur, Iraq and Colombia. Information provided by the U.N. refugee agency explains where the refugees have come from and what problems they face.
I think this has the potential to do good by raising awareness about refugees around the world.
The Oregonian has a great profile of a microbrewery that has combined three of Portland's greatest pastimes: protecting the enviornment, bicycling and beer.
Hopefully green businesses will not just be a trend, but rather, a lasting industry.
The New York Times ran a piece yesterday on a report that wealthy people outlive poor ones.
In 1980-82, Dr. Singh said, people in the most affluent group could expect to live 2.8 years longer than people in the most deprived group (75.8 versus 73 years). By 1998-2000, the difference in life expectancy had increased to 4.5 years (79.2 versus 74.7 years), and it continues to grow, he said.
After 20 years, the lowest socioeconomic group lagged further behind the most affluent, Dr. Singh said, noting that “life expectancy was higher for the most affluent in 1980 than for the most deprived group in 2000.”
“If you look at the extremes in 2000,” Dr. Singh said, “men in the most deprived counties had 10 years’ shorter life expectancy than women in the most affluent counties (71.5 years versus 81.3 years).” The difference between poor black men and affluent white women was more than 14 years (66.9 years vs. 81.1 years).
This news isn't particularly shocking; just one more statistic to prove the gap between the haves and have-nots in our country. This does prove one thing: Our government should be more concerned with how to provide quality, affordable healthcare to the economically disadvantaged.
College students are stressed. Really, they are. They can't eat, they can't sleep, they have trouble concentrating and are sometimes irritable. An Associated Press and mtvU survey found that four in 10 students say they often feel stressd. Almost one in five said they feel stressed all the time. One in five has been too stressed to complete schoolwork or be with friends. Twenty percent also contemplated dropping out of school.
The study also goes into percentage of students with a mental health disorder (13 percent) and whether they stick to their treatment plan (about two-thirds).
On the upside, six in 10 reported that they are usually hopeful and are enjoying life.
One of the students quoted summed it up best:
"Everything is being piled on at once," said Chris Curran, a junior at the Albany College of Pharmacy in Albany, N.Y. He said he has learned to cope better since starting school. "You just get really agitated and anxious. Then you start procrastinating, and it all piles up."
Most of my stress came down to poor time management, too.
After taking a few Chinese politics and cultural courses, as well as three levels of Mandarin, I had an inkling and understanding that the Beijing Olympics would stir things up for China.
Since focus has shifted towards the country in preparation for the games, China has taken heat on Darfur, Tibet and even Taiwan (to an extent) while the world watches. The AP-by-way-of-Los Angeles Times reports that Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao accused Dalai Lama supporters of creating the violent instances of unrest that have occurred recently. The Dalai Lama has said he would resign if people perpetuated the violence.
It will continue to be interesting to see how China reacts to different pressures while the world's focus is on them. China's usual brand of force and retaliation will be more difficult to carry out, especially considering the U.S. dropped China from its list of top 10 human rights offenders.
The L.A. Times reported today that Los Angeles school officials had transferred an associate principal to another school even though he was removed from a previous school where he was being investigated for having sex with an underage student. Steve Thomas Rooney also allegedly pulled a gun on the girl's stepfather after their relationship was uncovered.
Last week, the assistant principal, Steve Thomas Rooney, 39, allegedly molested a student at the new campus, Markham Middle School. He was arrested and charged with five counts of forcible lewd acts on a child, stemming from allegations that he sexually assaulted the 13-year-old girl March 1 and at least one other occasion.
Los Angeles Unified School District officials declined to comment Wednesday about how Rooney had been reassigned to Markham last fall, saying they are conducting an internal investigation and citing a policy barring them from speaking publicly about cases under those circumstances.
District policy requires officials to conduct their own investigation into employee misconduct regardless of whether the allegations result in criminal charges. Officials would not say Wednesday whether such an inquiry occurred in the earlier case.
Unfortunately, the issue of school districts investigating claims of sex abuse, or even disciplining for sex abuse, and then passing teachers along is not unique. Last month The Oregonian wrote about a dozen cases in the past five years where complaints had been made about educators that were later convicted of sexual misconduct with a student.
The Associated Press reports on a Center for Disease Control study found that one in four teen girls have at least one STD. Human papillomaviruses, the virus that can cause cervical cancer, was found to be the most prevalent STD. Nearly half of the black teenagers studied had at least one STD.
A virus that causes cervical cancer is by far the most common sexually transmitted infection in teen girls aged 14 to 19, while the highest overall prevalence is among black girls - nearly half the blacks studied had at least one STD. That rate compared with 20 percent among both whites and Mexican-American teens, the study from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found.
About half of the girls acknowledged ever having sex; among them, the rate was 40 percent. While some teens define sex as only intercourse, other types of intimate behavior including oral sex can spread some infections.
Something is not working in American sex education. My bet is on abstinence-only programs.
When asked about modern sins, Archbishop Gianfranco Girotti listed pollution as a sinful act.
Girotti, in an interview headlined "New Forms of Social Sin," also listed "ecological" offences as modern evils.
In recent months, Pope Benedict has made several strong appeals for the protection of the environment, saying issues such as climate change had become gravely important for the entire human race.
Under Benedict and his predecessor John Paul, the Vatican has become progressively "green".
It has installed photovoltaic cells on buildings to produce electricity and hosted a scientific conference to discuss the ramifications of global warming and climate change, widely blamed on human use of fossil fuels.
The Chronicle of Higher Education reported that Matt Ivester of campus gossip blog JuicyCampus.com has posted a call for a ceasfire from posters. Ivester says he's received complaints from people claiming to be defamed. He also calls some of the posts "mean-spirited."
Mean-spirited is an understatment. Some of the comments include slurs based on sexual oreintation, claims that specific students have STDs and other juvenile name calling. I'm not going to link to comments or quote them because I refuse to perpetuate such hate. Which, according to Ivester, is "not Juicy."
Ivester describes "Juicy" as "the topics that are most important, interesting and entertaining to you."
To which I ask, since when has gossip ever been important?
The New York Times' Health page has an interesting article up that discusses different studies done on binge drinking. Before heading out to a tropical destination for spring break, check it out.
In a series of studies in the 1970s and ’80s, psychologists at the University of Washington put more than 300 students into a study room outfitted like a bar with mirrors, music and a stretch of polished pine. The researchers served alcoholic drinks, most often icy vodka tonics, to some of the students and nonalcoholic ones, usually icy tonic water, to others. The drinks looked and tasted the same, and the students typically drank five in an hour or two.
The studies found that people who thought they were drinking alcohol behaved exactly as aggressively, or as affectionately, or as merrily as they expected to when drunk. “No significant difference between those who got alcohol and those who didn’t,” Alan Marlatt, the senior author, said. “Their behavior was totally determined by their expectations of how they would behave.”
After two boys from a high school in Albany, Ore. were suspended for refusing to remove beaded crucifixes from their necks, The Oregonian investigate's the school's claim that the necklaces, similar to rosaries, are a gang symbol.
"When the 14-year-old and his 16-year-old friend Marco Castro were suspended recently for refusing to remove the religious beads because they were "gang-related," it thrust Oregon into the headlines and has triggered questions over the evolving role of rosaries in religion, fashion and street gangs.
In the latest cultural take of a symbol that's gone from Catholic altars to Britney Spears' bosom, the rosary is blurring the lines of liberty and safety on campus.
Some call the rosary-gang connection a stretch and urge caution. But for educators and public safety officials charged with blocking fluid gang trends, rosaries in the past few years have become one more marker to track suspicious activity."
Farc (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia), a left-wing rebel group in Colombia, released four former members of Colombia's congress that had been held hostage since 2001, according to BBC.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez brokered the release, this is not the first time Chavez moderated the return of Farc hostages. Farc has been responsible for at least 40 kidnappings of high-profile persons. It's estimated that Farc has over 700 hostages total.
BBC reports that Farc may expect something from Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, most likely the release of captured guerillas, for the return of the four ex-congress members.
In January, Chavez called for Farc to be removed from a list of terrorist organizations in Europe.
CNN has an interesting story by a CNNU correspondent at Brigham Young University. It’s an intriguing profile on students in Utah, the only state where it’s legal for licensed students and professors to carry a weapon on public campuses.
A sampling:
“Nick, who asked not to be fully identified so his fellow students wouldn't know he carried a gun, says he has had a concealed weapons permit for more than three years. But it was Seung-Hui Cho's murderous campus rampage that made him take a gun to class.
‘Last year, after Virginia Tech, I thought “I'm not going to be a victim,”’ Nick said.
‘My first thought was “how tragic.” But then I couldn't help but think it could've been different if they'd allowed the students the right to protect themselves.’”
The article serves as substantive debate between gun control and the right to bear arms. What do you think?
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