By DAN FROSCH New York Times
When Tyler Anastopoulos got in trouble for skipping detention at his high school recently, he received the same punishment that students in parts of rural Texas have been getting for generations. Tyler, an 11th grader from Wichita Falls, was sent to the assistant principal and given three swift swats to the backside with a paddle, recalled Angie Herring, his mother. The blows were so severe that they caused deep bruises, and Tyler wound up in the hospital, Ms. Herring said.
While the image of the high school principal patrolling the halls with paddle in hand is largely of the past, corporal punishment is still alive in 20 states, according to the Center for Effective Discipline, which tracks its use in schools around the country and encourages its end. Most of those states are in the South, where paddling remains ingrained in the social and family fabric of some communities.
Each year, prodded by child safety advocates, state legislatures debate whether corporal punishment amounts to an archaic form of child abuse or an effective means of discipline.
This month, Tyler, who attends City View Junior/Senior High School, told his story to lawmakers in Texas, which is considering a ban on corporal punishment. The same week, legislators in New Mexico voted to end the practice there.
Texas schools, Ms. Herring fumed, appear to have free rein in disciplining a student, “as long as you don’t kill him.” “If I did that to my son,” she said, “I’d go to jail.”
Steve Harris, the superintendent of the City View Independent School District in Wichita Falls, declined to comment in detail on the case but said his investigation of the school had found no wrongdoing. Corporal punishment, Mr. Harris pointed out, has long been “one of the tools in the toolbox we use for discipline.”
Up until about 25 years ago, corporal punishment in public schools could be found in all but a handful of states, said Nadine Block, the founder of the Center for Effective Discipline. Prompted by the threat of lawsuits and research that questioned its effectiveness, states gradually started banning the practice.
According to estimates by the federal Department of Education, 223,190 children were subjected to corporal punishment in the 2005-6 school year. That was a nearly 20 percent drop from a few years earlier, Ms. Block said.
In New Mexico — where more than a third of the school districts permit corporal punishment, according to a local children’s legal services group — legislators approved a paddling ban this month. Gov. Susana Martinez, a Republican, has not indicated whether she will sign the bill.
Opponents of the measure, like State Senator Vernon D. Asbill, worried that a ban would tie teachers’ hands and make it harder for them to control students. “With parental supervision and parental approval, I believe it’s appropriate,” said Mr. Asbill, a Republican and a longtime teacher and school administrator from Carlsbad. “The threat of it keeps many of our kids in line so they can learn.”
But State Senator Cynthia Nava, a Democrat and a school superintendent from Las Cruces who supports the ban, said schools were no place for violence of any sort. “It’s shocking to me that people got up on the floor and argued passionately to preserve it,” she said of corporal punishment. “We should be educating kids that they can’t solve problems with violence.”
Calls to end corporal punishment have gotten louder of late, even in states unlikely to pass a ban. In Mississippi, the family of a teenager who was paddled in school has filed a federal lawsuit. The suit, filed against the Tate County School District, claims that corporal punishment is unconstitutional because it is applied disproportionately to boys.
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Monday, March 28, 2011
Governor’s Change of Heart on Death Penalty Is Influenced by Faith
By SAMUEL G. FREEDMAN New York Times
Early on the morning of Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent’s season of penitence, Gov. Pat Quinn of Illinois went through some final, solitary rumination. For much of his political career, he had supported capital punishment, albeit with reservations, even debating it at the dinner table with his mother. Now a legislative bill abolishing it was waiting for his signature, or his veto.
In the preceding weeks, he had heard arguments on the subject from prosecutors who spoke of the death penalty’s deterrent effect and from the grieving relatives of murder victims who saw in it fierce justice. He had reacquainted himself with about 20 capital cases overturned by DNA evidence or tainted by judicial error.
But on that decisive morning of March 9, he laid aside the secular factors and opened his Bible to a passage in II Corinthians about human imperfection. He prayed. And when he signed the bill striking down the death penalty, he cited one influence by name: Cardinal Joseph Bernardin of Chicago.
The cardinal has been dead for nearly 15 years. To the last days of his life, he advocated what he termed a “seamless garment” or “consistent ethic of life,” which charged Roman Catholics with the task of ending abortion, poverty, nuclear war, euthanasia and capital punishment. For of all his eloquence, however, he had never built the constituency to transform theological precepts into public policy.
With the stroke of the governor’s pen, the cardinal has been posthumously vindicated on at least one piece of that seamless garment. In doing so, Mr. Quinn, a Democrat, also ratified the cardinal’s belief that religious thought has a place in the formulation of law, a premise the governor’s fellow liberals generally disdain.
“I think it’s indispensable,” Mr. Quinn said in a telephone interview this week. “When you’re elected and sworn into office, that oath really involves your whole life experience, your religious experience. You bring that to bear on all the issues.”
During his years in Chicago, Cardinal Bernardin had advocated a similar balance. “There is a legitimate secularity of the political process,” he put it in a 1991 speech, “just as there is a legitimate role for religious and moral discourse in our nation’s life.”
Cardinal Bernardin put that conscience onto the national stage in a 1983 speech at Fordham University, in which he first articulated a “consistent ethic of life.” Over the succeeding years, he sometimes devoted entire speeches to specific elements of this “seamless garment” concept, which included the death penalty.
He gave perhaps his boldest and most eloquent speech in 1985 before a committee of lawyers at Cook County Criminal Court, the assembly line that processes the metropolis’s mayhem. A recent Gallup poll, the cardinal noted, had found that nearly three-quarters of Americans supported capital punishment. Chicago’s passions for retribution had been recently inflamed by the murders of a 10-year-old boy and a high school basketball star.
“It is when we stand in this perspective of a ‘higher court’ — that of God’s judgment seat— and a more noble view of the human person that we seriously question the appropriateness of capital punishment,” Cardinal Bernardin said. “We ask ourselves: Is the human family made more complete — is human personhood made more loving — in a society which demands life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth?”
Since the governor ended the death penalty, public response has been overwhelmingly favorable, according to his press office. Those clerics who worked most closely with the cardinal have expressed a sense of satisfaction, or perhaps something beyond it, at his belated victory on the issue. “The bedrock of Catholic social teaching is that each life is a gift, created in the image and likeness of God,” said the Rev. Alphonse P. Spilly, who was the cardinal’s assistant for a dozen years. “It wasn’t just a theological principle for him. It was the way he dealt with every person, even the person who parked his car.”
Early on the morning of Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent’s season of penitence, Gov. Pat Quinn of Illinois went through some final, solitary rumination. For much of his political career, he had supported capital punishment, albeit with reservations, even debating it at the dinner table with his mother. Now a legislative bill abolishing it was waiting for his signature, or his veto.
In the preceding weeks, he had heard arguments on the subject from prosecutors who spoke of the death penalty’s deterrent effect and from the grieving relatives of murder victims who saw in it fierce justice. He had reacquainted himself with about 20 capital cases overturned by DNA evidence or tainted by judicial error.
But on that decisive morning of March 9, he laid aside the secular factors and opened his Bible to a passage in II Corinthians about human imperfection. He prayed. And when he signed the bill striking down the death penalty, he cited one influence by name: Cardinal Joseph Bernardin of Chicago.
The cardinal has been dead for nearly 15 years. To the last days of his life, he advocated what he termed a “seamless garment” or “consistent ethic of life,” which charged Roman Catholics with the task of ending abortion, poverty, nuclear war, euthanasia and capital punishment. For of all his eloquence, however, he had never built the constituency to transform theological precepts into public policy.
With the stroke of the governor’s pen, the cardinal has been posthumously vindicated on at least one piece of that seamless garment. In doing so, Mr. Quinn, a Democrat, also ratified the cardinal’s belief that religious thought has a place in the formulation of law, a premise the governor’s fellow liberals generally disdain.
“I think it’s indispensable,” Mr. Quinn said in a telephone interview this week. “When you’re elected and sworn into office, that oath really involves your whole life experience, your religious experience. You bring that to bear on all the issues.”
During his years in Chicago, Cardinal Bernardin had advocated a similar balance. “There is a legitimate secularity of the political process,” he put it in a 1991 speech, “just as there is a legitimate role for religious and moral discourse in our nation’s life.”
Cardinal Bernardin put that conscience onto the national stage in a 1983 speech at Fordham University, in which he first articulated a “consistent ethic of life.” Over the succeeding years, he sometimes devoted entire speeches to specific elements of this “seamless garment” concept, which included the death penalty.
He gave perhaps his boldest and most eloquent speech in 1985 before a committee of lawyers at Cook County Criminal Court, the assembly line that processes the metropolis’s mayhem. A recent Gallup poll, the cardinal noted, had found that nearly three-quarters of Americans supported capital punishment. Chicago’s passions for retribution had been recently inflamed by the murders of a 10-year-old boy and a high school basketball star.
“It is when we stand in this perspective of a ‘higher court’ — that of God’s judgment seat— and a more noble view of the human person that we seriously question the appropriateness of capital punishment,” Cardinal Bernardin said. “We ask ourselves: Is the human family made more complete — is human personhood made more loving — in a society which demands life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth?”
Since the governor ended the death penalty, public response has been overwhelmingly favorable, according to his press office. Those clerics who worked most closely with the cardinal have expressed a sense of satisfaction, or perhaps something beyond it, at his belated victory on the issue. “The bedrock of Catholic social teaching is that each life is a gift, created in the image and likeness of God,” said the Rev. Alphonse P. Spilly, who was the cardinal’s assistant for a dozen years. “It wasn’t just a theological principle for him. It was the way he dealt with every person, even the person who parked his car.”
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Cracking down harder on illegal immigrants
By JENNIFER BJORHUS, Star Tribune
Nobody has been fired from ROC Commercial Cleaning in Oakdale -- at least not yet. Since they got word that federal immigration officials are poring over the company's employment records, some janitors have simply quit.
Co-owner Peter Mogren said he has no idea how many of his 129 workers might walk away or be fired. One employee said nearly the entire workforce will go. Mogren is angry and bewildered. "This is new territory for me," he said.
His company is one of at least nine businesses across the Twin Cities undergoing a so-called immigration audit, part of the Obama administration's national crackdown on employers using undocumented workers. At least 2,000 people in the Twin Cities have lost their jobs in the last 18 months as a result of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) finding that they couldn't prove their eligibility to work in the United States.
The results of ICE's audits offer a warning to businesses, especially those using low-skill workers:
•The number of audits jumped more than 50 percent last year to about 2,200 from 1,444 in 2009.
•The average fine under Obama ($21,851) has increased about 30 percent compared with the Bush era ($16,666).
•Criminal arrests of employers have jumped 45 percent since 2008. Of the 196 employers arrested last year, 42 have been sent to prison so far, with sentences ranging from time served to 3 1/2 years. Many cases are pending.
Most recently in the Twin Cities, Harvard Maintenance Inc., a New York company with operations in Minnesota, began dismissing its janitors. The company will be forced to dismiss about 240 cleaners, more than half its local workforce, following an I-9 audit of its Twin Cities offices, the union representing the workers said last week. Harvard Maintenance has declined to discuss the matter.
The surge in workplace inspections is a growing source of frustration for employers, said Bill Blazar, senior vice president of the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce. "Either way, it creates heartache for the employees, heartache for the employer, and it doesn't do communities or the economies any good either," Blazar said. "I think this is evidence for further need of comprehensive immigration reform."
A local union is calling the firings an attack on the immigrant community. The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 26 in St. Paul, which represents about 5,000 local janitors and maintenance staff, is holding a vigil Sunday at Incarnation Church in south Minneapolis.
At issue are ICE's I-9 audits. The audits are a centerpiece of Obama's new strategy to hold employers accountable, as the administration shifts from arresting undocumented workers in worksite raids to targeting employers and illegal workers through employment records.
Employees fired after such audits typically aren't deported, as they were previously.
So far, the get-tough line hasn't impressed critics. They claim the arrests and fines are too weak given the estimated 8 million undocumented workers nationwide.
In one of the largest Twin Cities firings, about 1,200 janitors were let go from a unit of New York-based ABM Industries Inc. in 2009. ABM, with profits of $64 million, was ultimately fined about $108,000, roughly $90 per fired worker. The SEIU called it "a joke."
More than 300 businesses, large and small, have been audited and fined for violations since 2003, according to enforcement data that ICE gave the Star Tribune. Most of the businesses employ workers for physical work -- landscapers, dairy operations, roofers and restaurants, among others. No employers in Minnesota have ever been arrested for criminal violations, according to ICE, and only four have been fined since 2003, including ABM. Chipotle Mexican Grill, the burrito chain that fired 450 ineligible workers from its Minnesota workforce starting last December, isn't on the list. ICE is still investigating the Denver-based company in Virginia and Washington, D.C.
Koch Foods, one of the country's largest chicken producers with nearly $2 billion in annual sales, received the highest fine. ICE ultimately penalized the Ohio company $536,046 last year, following a 2007 raid that saw the arrests of about 160 undocumented workers.
Nobody has been fired from ROC Commercial Cleaning in Oakdale -- at least not yet. Since they got word that federal immigration officials are poring over the company's employment records, some janitors have simply quit.
Co-owner Peter Mogren said he has no idea how many of his 129 workers might walk away or be fired. One employee said nearly the entire workforce will go. Mogren is angry and bewildered. "This is new territory for me," he said.
His company is one of at least nine businesses across the Twin Cities undergoing a so-called immigration audit, part of the Obama administration's national crackdown on employers using undocumented workers. At least 2,000 people in the Twin Cities have lost their jobs in the last 18 months as a result of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) finding that they couldn't prove their eligibility to work in the United States.
The results of ICE's audits offer a warning to businesses, especially those using low-skill workers:
•The number of audits jumped more than 50 percent last year to about 2,200 from 1,444 in 2009.
•The average fine under Obama ($21,851) has increased about 30 percent compared with the Bush era ($16,666).
•Criminal arrests of employers have jumped 45 percent since 2008. Of the 196 employers arrested last year, 42 have been sent to prison so far, with sentences ranging from time served to 3 1/2 years. Many cases are pending.
Most recently in the Twin Cities, Harvard Maintenance Inc., a New York company with operations in Minnesota, began dismissing its janitors. The company will be forced to dismiss about 240 cleaners, more than half its local workforce, following an I-9 audit of its Twin Cities offices, the union representing the workers said last week. Harvard Maintenance has declined to discuss the matter.
The surge in workplace inspections is a growing source of frustration for employers, said Bill Blazar, senior vice president of the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce. "Either way, it creates heartache for the employees, heartache for the employer, and it doesn't do communities or the economies any good either," Blazar said. "I think this is evidence for further need of comprehensive immigration reform."
A local union is calling the firings an attack on the immigrant community. The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 26 in St. Paul, which represents about 5,000 local janitors and maintenance staff, is holding a vigil Sunday at Incarnation Church in south Minneapolis.
At issue are ICE's I-9 audits. The audits are a centerpiece of Obama's new strategy to hold employers accountable, as the administration shifts from arresting undocumented workers in worksite raids to targeting employers and illegal workers through employment records.
Employees fired after such audits typically aren't deported, as they were previously.
So far, the get-tough line hasn't impressed critics. They claim the arrests and fines are too weak given the estimated 8 million undocumented workers nationwide.
In one of the largest Twin Cities firings, about 1,200 janitors were let go from a unit of New York-based ABM Industries Inc. in 2009. ABM, with profits of $64 million, was ultimately fined about $108,000, roughly $90 per fired worker. The SEIU called it "a joke."
More than 300 businesses, large and small, have been audited and fined for violations since 2003, according to enforcement data that ICE gave the Star Tribune. Most of the businesses employ workers for physical work -- landscapers, dairy operations, roofers and restaurants, among others. No employers in Minnesota have ever been arrested for criminal violations, according to ICE, and only four have been fined since 2003, including ABM. Chipotle Mexican Grill, the burrito chain that fired 450 ineligible workers from its Minnesota workforce starting last December, isn't on the list. ICE is still investigating the Denver-based company in Virginia and Washington, D.C.
Koch Foods, one of the country's largest chicken producers with nearly $2 billion in annual sales, received the highest fine. ICE ultimately penalized the Ohio company $536,046 last year, following a 2007 raid that saw the arrests of about 160 undocumented workers.
Monday, March 21, 2011
U.S. and Allies Bomb Libya
NEW YORK TIMES
TRIPOLI, Libya — American and European forces intensified their barrage of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s forces by air and sea on Sunday, a day after an initial American cruise missile barrage badly damaged Libyan air defenses, military officials said.
In a first assessment from Washington, Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the first day of “operations yesterday went very well.” Speaking to NBC’s “Meet the Press,” he said a no-flight zone over Libya to ground Colonel Qaddafi’s warplanes — a prime goal of the attacks — was “effectively” in place and that a loyalist advance on the eastern rebel stronghold of Benghazi had been halted.
American warplanes became more involved on Sunday, with B-2 stealth bombers, F-16 and F-15 fighter jets and Harrier attack jets flown by the Marine Corps striking at Libyan ground forces, air defenses and airfields, while Navy electronic warplanes, EA-18G Growlers, jammed Libyan radar and communications. British planes flew frequent bombing missions, and French forces remained heavily involved in patrol and airstrike missions near Benghazi, officials said.
Rebel forces, battered and routed by loyalist fighters just day before, began to regroup in the east as allied warplanes destroyed dozens of government armored vehicles near the rebel capital, Benghazi, leaving a field of burned wreckage along the coastal road to the city. By nightfall, the rebels had pressed almost 40 miles back west toward the strategic crossroads city of Ajdabiya, witnesses and rebel forces said. And they seemed to consolidate control of Benghazi despite heavy fighting there against loyalist forces on Saturday.
A day after a summit meeting in Paris set the military operation in motion, some Arab participants in the agreement expressed unhappiness with the way the strikes were unfolding. The former chairman of the Arab League, Amr Moussa, told Egyptian state media that he was calling for an emergency Arab League meeting to discuss the situation in the Arab world and particularly Libya.
“What is happening in Libya differs from the aim of imposing a no-fly zone, and what we want is the protection of civilians and not the bombardment of more civilians," he said, referring to Libyan government claims that allied bombardment had killed dozens of civilians in and near Tripoli.
Both President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton have said in recent days that Colonel Qaddafi must go.
Admiral Mullen said the military was focused only on the mission given to it by Mr. Obama and the United Nations, protecting Libyan civilians from attack and opening up humanitarian relief, by whatever means necessary. He did not mention ousting Colonel Qaddafi or arming the Libyan rebels as an objective.
In Libya, Colonel Qaddafi delivered a fresh and defiant tirade against the allied military action on Sunday, pledging retaliation and saying his forces would fight a long war to victory.
He was speaking in a telephone call to state television, which, apparently for security reasons, did not disclose his whereabouts. The Libyan leader has not been seen in public since the United States and European countries began their strikes.
“We will fight you if you continue your attacks on us,” Mr. Qaddafi said. “Those who are on the land will win the battle,” he declared, warning without explanation that “oil will not be left to the United States, France and Britain.”
TRIPOLI, Libya — American and European forces intensified their barrage of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s forces by air and sea on Sunday, a day after an initial American cruise missile barrage badly damaged Libyan air defenses, military officials said.
In a first assessment from Washington, Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the first day of “operations yesterday went very well.” Speaking to NBC’s “Meet the Press,” he said a no-flight zone over Libya to ground Colonel Qaddafi’s warplanes — a prime goal of the attacks — was “effectively” in place and that a loyalist advance on the eastern rebel stronghold of Benghazi had been halted.
American warplanes became more involved on Sunday, with B-2 stealth bombers, F-16 and F-15 fighter jets and Harrier attack jets flown by the Marine Corps striking at Libyan ground forces, air defenses and airfields, while Navy electronic warplanes, EA-18G Growlers, jammed Libyan radar and communications. British planes flew frequent bombing missions, and French forces remained heavily involved in patrol and airstrike missions near Benghazi, officials said.
Rebel forces, battered and routed by loyalist fighters just day before, began to regroup in the east as allied warplanes destroyed dozens of government armored vehicles near the rebel capital, Benghazi, leaving a field of burned wreckage along the coastal road to the city. By nightfall, the rebels had pressed almost 40 miles back west toward the strategic crossroads city of Ajdabiya, witnesses and rebel forces said. And they seemed to consolidate control of Benghazi despite heavy fighting there against loyalist forces on Saturday.
A day after a summit meeting in Paris set the military operation in motion, some Arab participants in the agreement expressed unhappiness with the way the strikes were unfolding. The former chairman of the Arab League, Amr Moussa, told Egyptian state media that he was calling for an emergency Arab League meeting to discuss the situation in the Arab world and particularly Libya.
“What is happening in Libya differs from the aim of imposing a no-fly zone, and what we want is the protection of civilians and not the bombardment of more civilians," he said, referring to Libyan government claims that allied bombardment had killed dozens of civilians in and near Tripoli.
Both President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton have said in recent days that Colonel Qaddafi must go.
Admiral Mullen said the military was focused only on the mission given to it by Mr. Obama and the United Nations, protecting Libyan civilians from attack and opening up humanitarian relief, by whatever means necessary. He did not mention ousting Colonel Qaddafi or arming the Libyan rebels as an objective.
In Libya, Colonel Qaddafi delivered a fresh and defiant tirade against the allied military action on Sunday, pledging retaliation and saying his forces would fight a long war to victory.
He was speaking in a telephone call to state television, which, apparently for security reasons, did not disclose his whereabouts. The Libyan leader has not been seen in public since the United States and European countries began their strikes.
“We will fight you if you continue your attacks on us,” Mr. Qaddafi said. “Those who are on the land will win the battle,” he declared, warning without explanation that “oil will not be left to the United States, France and Britain.”
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Japan’s earthquake shifted balance of the planet
YAHOO NEWS
Last week's devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan has actually moved the island closer to the United States and shifted the planet's axis.
The quake caused a rift 15 miles below the sea floor that stretched 186 miles long and 93 miles wide, according to the AP. The areas closest to the epicenter of the quake jumped a full 13 feet closer to the United States, geophysicist Ross Stein at the United States Geological Survey told The New York Times.
The 9.0 magnitude quake (the fourth-largest recorded since 1900) was caused when the Pacific tectonic plate dove under the North American plate, which shifted Eastern Japan towards North America by about 13 feet (see NASA's before and after photos at right). The quake also shifted the earth's axis by 6.5 inches, shortened the day by 1.6 microseconds, and sank Japan downward by about two feet. As Japan's eastern coastline sunk, the tsunami's waves rolled in.
Why did the quake shorten the day? The earth's mass shifted towards the center, spurring the planet to spin a bit faster. Last year's massive 8.8 magnitude earthquake in Chile also shortened the day, but by an even smaller fraction of a second. The 2004 Sumatra quake knocked a whopping 6.8 micro-seconds off the day.
After the country's 1995 earthquake, Japan placed high-tech sensors around the country to observe even the slightest movements, which is why scientists are able to calculate the quake's impact down to the inch. "This is overwhelmingly the best-recorded great earthquake ever," Lucy Jones, chief scientist for the Multi-Hazards project at the U.S. Geological Survey, told The Los Angeles Times.
The tsunami's waves necessitated life-saving evacuations as far away as Chile. Fisherman off the coast of Mexico reported a banner fishing day Friday, and speculated that the tsunami knocked sealife in their direction.
Last week's devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan has actually moved the island closer to the United States and shifted the planet's axis.
The quake caused a rift 15 miles below the sea floor that stretched 186 miles long and 93 miles wide, according to the AP. The areas closest to the epicenter of the quake jumped a full 13 feet closer to the United States, geophysicist Ross Stein at the United States Geological Survey told The New York Times.
The 9.0 magnitude quake (the fourth-largest recorded since 1900) was caused when the Pacific tectonic plate dove under the North American plate, which shifted Eastern Japan towards North America by about 13 feet (see NASA's before and after photos at right). The quake also shifted the earth's axis by 6.5 inches, shortened the day by 1.6 microseconds, and sank Japan downward by about two feet. As Japan's eastern coastline sunk, the tsunami's waves rolled in.
Why did the quake shorten the day? The earth's mass shifted towards the center, spurring the planet to spin a bit faster. Last year's massive 8.8 magnitude earthquake in Chile also shortened the day, but by an even smaller fraction of a second. The 2004 Sumatra quake knocked a whopping 6.8 micro-seconds off the day.
After the country's 1995 earthquake, Japan placed high-tech sensors around the country to observe even the slightest movements, which is why scientists are able to calculate the quake's impact down to the inch. "This is overwhelmingly the best-recorded great earthquake ever," Lucy Jones, chief scientist for the Multi-Hazards project at the U.S. Geological Survey, told The Los Angeles Times.
The tsunami's waves necessitated life-saving evacuations as far away as Chile. Fisherman off the coast of Mexico reported a banner fishing day Friday, and speculated that the tsunami knocked sealife in their direction.
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
Women Better Than Men Even at "Manly" Things, Author Concludes
NEW YORK (WGHP)
An author and television host claims there is enough evidence to say that women are better than men, even in some supposedly masculine activities.
Dan Abrams, author of the new book, "Man Down," said more than 100 gender-based studies back up his claim that the weaker sex is actually stronger.
Abrams, also a legal analyst for ABC News, said the studies showed men made more mistakes because they took more risks, while women made fewer mistakes because they were more methodical and careful.
What specifically women are better at could be summed up by the book's full title: "Man Down: Proof Beyond a Reasonable Doubt That Women Are Better Cops, Drivers, Gamblers, Spies, World Leaders, Beer Tasters, Hedge Fund Managers and Just About Everything Else."
Abrams said he at first did not believe the studies but dug up many other independent studies that came up with the similar conclusions.
The book was released on Tuesday.
An author and television host claims there is enough evidence to say that women are better than men, even in some supposedly masculine activities.
Dan Abrams, author of the new book, "Man Down," said more than 100 gender-based studies back up his claim that the weaker sex is actually stronger.
Abrams, also a legal analyst for ABC News, said the studies showed men made more mistakes because they took more risks, while women made fewer mistakes because they were more methodical and careful.
What specifically women are better at could be summed up by the book's full title: "Man Down: Proof Beyond a Reasonable Doubt That Women Are Better Cops, Drivers, Gamblers, Spies, World Leaders, Beer Tasters, Hedge Fund Managers and Just About Everything Else."
Abrams said he at first did not believe the studies but dug up many other independent studies that came up with the similar conclusions.
The book was released on Tuesday.
Monday, March 7, 2011
Mike Huckabee Rips Natalie Portman Over Out-of-Wedlock Pregnancy
AOL NEWS
Mike Huckabee slammed actress Natalie Portman on a radio show for glamorizing out-of-wedlock pregnancy at the Academy Awards and sending an irresponsible message to women.
The former Arkansas governor and possible presidential hopeful said on "The Michael Medved Show" this week that most unwed mothers aren't able to support their children on a Hollywood actress' salary.
"You know, Michael, one of the things that's troubling is that people see a Natalie Portman or some other Hollywood starlet who boasts of, 'Hey look, you know, we're having children, we're not married, but we're having these children, and they're doing just fine,'" Huckabee said. "But there aren't really a lot of single moms out there who are making millions of dollars every year for being in a movie."
A record 41 percent of American children were born to single mothers in 2008, according to a study by the Pew Research Center.
During Sunday's Academy Awards, a pregnant Portman, who won Best Actress for her role in the film "Black Swan," thanked her fiance Benjamin Millepied. Portman said Millepied "choreographed the film and has now given me my most important role of my life."
But Huckabee said marriage should have come first and admonished the actress for glamorizing single motherhood. "Most single moms are very poor, uneducated, can't get a job, and if it weren't for government assistance, their kids would be starving to death and never have health care. And that's the story that we're not seeing, and it's unfortunate that we glorify and glamorize the idea of out-of-children wedlock," he said on the radio show the day after the Oscars.
The same day, Huckabee drew criticism for feeding into birther conspiracy theories by saying on another radio show that President Barack Obama has a different view of the West, "having grown up in Kenya." The president was born and raised in the United States.
Natalie Portman's publicist did not immediately respond to a request for comment today from AOL News. Huckabee issued a statement today clarifying his remarks and insisting that he did not "slam" or "attack" the actress:
"Natalie is an extraordinary actor, very deserving of her recent Oscar and I am glad she will marry her baby's father," Huckabee wrote in a statement sent to The Washington Post today. "However, contrary to what the Hollywood media reported, I did not "slam" or "attack" Natalie Portman, nor did I criticize the hardworking single mothers in our country. My comments were about the statistical reality that most single moms are very poor, under-educated, can't get a job, and if it weren't for government assistance, their kids would be starving to death. That's the story that we're not seeing, and it's unfortunate that society often glorifies and glamorizes the idea of having children out of wedlock."
Mike Huckabee slammed actress Natalie Portman on a radio show for glamorizing out-of-wedlock pregnancy at the Academy Awards and sending an irresponsible message to women.
The former Arkansas governor and possible presidential hopeful said on "The Michael Medved Show" this week that most unwed mothers aren't able to support their children on a Hollywood actress' salary.
"You know, Michael, one of the things that's troubling is that people see a Natalie Portman or some other Hollywood starlet who boasts of, 'Hey look, you know, we're having children, we're not married, but we're having these children, and they're doing just fine,'" Huckabee said. "But there aren't really a lot of single moms out there who are making millions of dollars every year for being in a movie."
A record 41 percent of American children were born to single mothers in 2008, according to a study by the Pew Research Center.
During Sunday's Academy Awards, a pregnant Portman, who won Best Actress for her role in the film "Black Swan," thanked her fiance Benjamin Millepied. Portman said Millepied "choreographed the film and has now given me my most important role of my life."
But Huckabee said marriage should have come first and admonished the actress for glamorizing single motherhood. "Most single moms are very poor, uneducated, can't get a job, and if it weren't for government assistance, their kids would be starving to death and never have health care. And that's the story that we're not seeing, and it's unfortunate that we glorify and glamorize the idea of out-of-children wedlock," he said on the radio show the day after the Oscars.
The same day, Huckabee drew criticism for feeding into birther conspiracy theories by saying on another radio show that President Barack Obama has a different view of the West, "having grown up in Kenya." The president was born and raised in the United States.
Natalie Portman's publicist did not immediately respond to a request for comment today from AOL News. Huckabee issued a statement today clarifying his remarks and insisting that he did not "slam" or "attack" the actress:
"Natalie is an extraordinary actor, very deserving of her recent Oscar and I am glad she will marry her baby's father," Huckabee wrote in a statement sent to The Washington Post today. "However, contrary to what the Hollywood media reported, I did not "slam" or "attack" Natalie Portman, nor did I criticize the hardworking single mothers in our country. My comments were about the statistical reality that most single moms are very poor, under-educated, can't get a job, and if it weren't for government assistance, their kids would be starving to death. That's the story that we're not seeing, and it's unfortunate that society often glorifies and glamorizes the idea of having children out of wedlock."
Thursday, March 3, 2011
The women's movement: Has it stalled?
By KIM ODE, Star Tribune
What if the revolution is over? The question is triggered by a new White House report out Tuesday, the first comprehensive federal look at women's status since 1963.
Its statistics are familiar: the continuing wage gap, the unequal division of household chores. But it's the fact that women still lag in many areas despite all their strides that's raising concerns.
Debra Fitzpatrick, director of the University of Minnesota Humphrey Institute's Center on Women and Public Policy, said it may be a significant signal that women's gains have plateaued. "We're at a real turning point of where we're going to go." For now, she said, "we're kind of stuck."
The data in the report show that young women now are more likely than young men to have a bachelor's or master's degree, and the numbers of women and men in the labor force are almost equal. Still, wages and income remain inequitable. At all levels of education, women earned about 75 percent of what their male counterparts earned in 2009.
And traditional roles stick: On days that they worked outside the home, almost 9 in 10 married women also did household chores, compared with slightly more than 6 in 10 married men.
"Despite women doing all the right things to gain economic parity, we're still seeing there is this tenaciousness to these issues," said Fitzpatrick. "This all points to the fact that the revolution isn't finished."
Nancy Heimer remembers applying for her first job as a certified public accountant in the late 1970s. "One of the men said, 'I've never known a woman who wanted to be a CPA, but I've known a lot of bookkeepers.'" She took the job anyway.
Fitzpatrick said the White House report, "Women in America: Indicators of Social and Economic Well-Being," is useful to remind people that despite the perception that all the right things are being done, "there's nothing necessarily inevitable about parity." She noted a new study of starting salaries by gender of physicians leaving residency programs in New York from 1999 to 2008. Researchers found "a significant gender gap that cannot be explained by specialty choice, practice setting, work hours or other characteristics."
Moreover, they considered the trend "unexplained" and "growing over time." In 2008, male doctors starting out in New York State made, on average, more than $16,000 more than newly trained female doctors, compared to a $3,600 difference in 1999.
"We're at a real crux," Fitzpatrick said. "It's not sustainable for women to continue to shoulder the excessive burdens. It shows up in mental health data, the dropping-out syndrome, in younger women saying, 'I'm just not going to do that superwoman thing.'"
Heimer raised a similar point. "In fairness to other women," she said, "what is the interest level or desire to be at the top? Do women really care as much as men? What satisfies me in my position is the relationship I have with my clients."
The data in the White House report will figure into how individuals, families, workplaces and governments address issues of women's well-being, socially as well as economically. It's possible, Fitzpatrick said, that people may decide that equity no longer is a goal, "that maybe we're good enough." "But if you think it matters that people are getting paid equally for the same work, if a piece of the American dream is that equal effort should result in equal economic opportunity, then these studies point out there's still some work to do."
What if the revolution is over? The question is triggered by a new White House report out Tuesday, the first comprehensive federal look at women's status since 1963.
Its statistics are familiar: the continuing wage gap, the unequal division of household chores. But it's the fact that women still lag in many areas despite all their strides that's raising concerns.
Debra Fitzpatrick, director of the University of Minnesota Humphrey Institute's Center on Women and Public Policy, said it may be a significant signal that women's gains have plateaued. "We're at a real turning point of where we're going to go." For now, she said, "we're kind of stuck."
The data in the report show that young women now are more likely than young men to have a bachelor's or master's degree, and the numbers of women and men in the labor force are almost equal. Still, wages and income remain inequitable. At all levels of education, women earned about 75 percent of what their male counterparts earned in 2009.
And traditional roles stick: On days that they worked outside the home, almost 9 in 10 married women also did household chores, compared with slightly more than 6 in 10 married men.
"Despite women doing all the right things to gain economic parity, we're still seeing there is this tenaciousness to these issues," said Fitzpatrick. "This all points to the fact that the revolution isn't finished."
Nancy Heimer remembers applying for her first job as a certified public accountant in the late 1970s. "One of the men said, 'I've never known a woman who wanted to be a CPA, but I've known a lot of bookkeepers.'" She took the job anyway.
Fitzpatrick said the White House report, "Women in America: Indicators of Social and Economic Well-Being," is useful to remind people that despite the perception that all the right things are being done, "there's nothing necessarily inevitable about parity." She noted a new study of starting salaries by gender of physicians leaving residency programs in New York from 1999 to 2008. Researchers found "a significant gender gap that cannot be explained by specialty choice, practice setting, work hours or other characteristics."
Moreover, they considered the trend "unexplained" and "growing over time." In 2008, male doctors starting out in New York State made, on average, more than $16,000 more than newly trained female doctors, compared to a $3,600 difference in 1999.
"We're at a real crux," Fitzpatrick said. "It's not sustainable for women to continue to shoulder the excessive burdens. It shows up in mental health data, the dropping-out syndrome, in younger women saying, 'I'm just not going to do that superwoman thing.'"
Heimer raised a similar point. "In fairness to other women," she said, "what is the interest level or desire to be at the top? Do women really care as much as men? What satisfies me in my position is the relationship I have with my clients."
The data in the White House report will figure into how individuals, families, workplaces and governments address issues of women's well-being, socially as well as economically. It's possible, Fitzpatrick said, that people may decide that equity no longer is a goal, "that maybe we're good enough." "But if you think it matters that people are getting paid equally for the same work, if a piece of the American dream is that equal effort should result in equal economic opportunity, then these studies point out there's still some work to do."
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
Libyan Leader Qaddafi Vows Fight to ‘Last Man’
NEW YORK TIMES
BENGHAZI, Libya — With new fighting reported for a key oil center, Libya’s Col. Muammar al-Qaddafi denied on Wednesday that an uprising against him started with demonstrations against his four decades in power, renewing accusations that Islamist forces outside Libya were responsible.
In a rambling speech lasting over 90 minutes, he challenged the United Nations to send a fact-finding mission to confirm his version of events, the opposite of what much of the world believes about the latest outbreak of Arab discontent that has toppled the leaders of neighboring Tunisia and Egypt and threatened others in Yemen, Bahrain and elsewhere.
“There were no demonstrations” in the eastern towns where the uprising started last month, Colonel Qaddafi told an indoor rally of loyalists to mark the 34th anniversary of the inception of what he called “people’s power” — part of his idiosyncratic prescription for government. “People came from outside Libya. Al Qaeda and the whole world knows that Al Qaeda does not take part in demonstrations.”
He called the rebels holding some cities “terrorists” and said loyalist forces would not surrender. “We will fight until the last man, the last woman, for Libya, from north, south, east and west,” he said.
Colonel Qaddafi was speaking in Tripoli as news reports said his forces had carried out bombing raids and were poised for counterattacks in areas held by his opponents.
The reports said government forces in trucks had overrun the lightly-defended rebel-held town of Brega, an oil-exporting terminal on the Libyan coast around 500 miles east of Colonel Qaddafi’s stronghold in the capital, Tripoli. But, in the confusion of the fighting, there were also reports that rebels were trying to retake the town.
The reports — supported by television images — spoke of an aerial attack on the town of Ajdabiyah, around 50 miles from Brega, where rebels have taken control of a large ammunition dump. The town lies on the western approaches to Benghazi, the rebel bastion, where dozens of semi-trained young volunteers stormed out of a military base on Wednesday, clambered onto a truck and said they were heading — unarmed — to the frontline. Other rebel fighters said they were hoping to load tanks on to transport vehicles to join the battle to the south of Benghazi.
At the Tripoli rally, Libyan state television showed Colonel Qaddafi exchanging clenched fist salutes with his supporters.
“It is the people who rule,” he said, repeating his assertion, disputed by many outsiders, that he wields no formal political power. “There is nothing else but people’s power,” he said. “There is no room for a king or guardian or master to replace people’s power,” he said.
After introducing the system in 1977, Colonel Qaddafi said, “I went back to my tent” — a reference to a favored form of accommodation reflecting his Bedouin roots. Scores of people attending the event, however, chanted an apparently choreographed slogan calling him their leader.
The developments on the ground came against a backdrop of debate in Western capitals about how to maintain pressure on Colonel Qaddafi to leave. Two American warships were reported to be sailing through the Suez Canal on their way to the Mediterranean on Wednesday while, on Libya’s western frontier with Tunisia, an exodus of migrant workers from Libya has reached “crisis point,” with tens of thousands of migrants, many of them Egyptians, unable to travel home.
The notion of imposing a no-fly zone over Libya has failed to draw support from either the United States or Russia and Libyan rebels say they are opposed to foreign intervention in a home-grown uprising against more than four decades of iron-handed rule by Colonel Qaddafi and, increasingly, his sons.
BENGHAZI, Libya — With new fighting reported for a key oil center, Libya’s Col. Muammar al-Qaddafi denied on Wednesday that an uprising against him started with demonstrations against his four decades in power, renewing accusations that Islamist forces outside Libya were responsible.
In a rambling speech lasting over 90 minutes, he challenged the United Nations to send a fact-finding mission to confirm his version of events, the opposite of what much of the world believes about the latest outbreak of Arab discontent that has toppled the leaders of neighboring Tunisia and Egypt and threatened others in Yemen, Bahrain and elsewhere.
“There were no demonstrations” in the eastern towns where the uprising started last month, Colonel Qaddafi told an indoor rally of loyalists to mark the 34th anniversary of the inception of what he called “people’s power” — part of his idiosyncratic prescription for government. “People came from outside Libya. Al Qaeda and the whole world knows that Al Qaeda does not take part in demonstrations.”
He called the rebels holding some cities “terrorists” and said loyalist forces would not surrender. “We will fight until the last man, the last woman, for Libya, from north, south, east and west,” he said.
Colonel Qaddafi was speaking in Tripoli as news reports said his forces had carried out bombing raids and were poised for counterattacks in areas held by his opponents.
The reports said government forces in trucks had overrun the lightly-defended rebel-held town of Brega, an oil-exporting terminal on the Libyan coast around 500 miles east of Colonel Qaddafi’s stronghold in the capital, Tripoli. But, in the confusion of the fighting, there were also reports that rebels were trying to retake the town.
The reports — supported by television images — spoke of an aerial attack on the town of Ajdabiyah, around 50 miles from Brega, where rebels have taken control of a large ammunition dump. The town lies on the western approaches to Benghazi, the rebel bastion, where dozens of semi-trained young volunteers stormed out of a military base on Wednesday, clambered onto a truck and said they were heading — unarmed — to the frontline. Other rebel fighters said they were hoping to load tanks on to transport vehicles to join the battle to the south of Benghazi.
At the Tripoli rally, Libyan state television showed Colonel Qaddafi exchanging clenched fist salutes with his supporters.
“It is the people who rule,” he said, repeating his assertion, disputed by many outsiders, that he wields no formal political power. “There is nothing else but people’s power,” he said. “There is no room for a king or guardian or master to replace people’s power,” he said.
After introducing the system in 1977, Colonel Qaddafi said, “I went back to my tent” — a reference to a favored form of accommodation reflecting his Bedouin roots. Scores of people attending the event, however, chanted an apparently choreographed slogan calling him their leader.
The developments on the ground came against a backdrop of debate in Western capitals about how to maintain pressure on Colonel Qaddafi to leave. Two American warships were reported to be sailing through the Suez Canal on their way to the Mediterranean on Wednesday while, on Libya’s western frontier with Tunisia, an exodus of migrant workers from Libya has reached “crisis point,” with tens of thousands of migrants, many of them Egyptians, unable to travel home.
The notion of imposing a no-fly zone over Libya has failed to draw support from either the United States or Russia and Libyan rebels say they are opposed to foreign intervention in a home-grown uprising against more than four decades of iron-handed rule by Colonel Qaddafi and, increasingly, his sons.
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