Woodstock CT Café

From John

Woodstock budget referendum passed by a 3 to 1 vote. The 2013-14 budget is $21.2 million budget.

The combined town and school spending passed 279-93, with 7.4 percent of the town’s 5,006 registered voters coming out. The budget represents a 0.5 mill increase to the tax rate.

The following votes come from the Cafe archives (a historical record fro October 2005 to the present):

2012
Yes votes = 333
No votes = 155
approx. 9.8% voter turnout

2011
YES votes = 352
NO votes = 286
12.6% voter turnout

2010
As predicted in the article below “Those days are over in Woodstock…” meaning the tumultuous years before 2010.
YES = 342
NO = 152
9.8% voter turnout

2009
YES – 675 (85%)
NO – 123 (15%)

2008
Voting on June 24th, 2008:

Ballots Cast Voting YES …680
Ballots Cast Voting NO …646
A 27.6% TURNOUT

Voting on June 3rd, 2008:
Ballots Cast Voting YES … 530
Ballots Cast Voting NO … 864
a 29% turnout

2007
YES … 693
Vulgarians … 560

2006
YES … 920
NO … 200

What was happening then:

“The Ahmadinejads of Woodstock” published June 21, 2009

From John

What Mr. Powers, Mr. Rosendahl, and Mr. Shultz lacked for the June 9th referendum (when the populous rose up and defeated their attempt to recall the Board of Education) was Ahmadinejad’s approach. Simply deny the ballots and declare victory by a 2/3rds margin. Those days are over in Woodstock just like they are in Iran. Never again will things be the same in Woodstock.

Why do I say this? The Democratic Town Committee played their hand and lost. I don’t mean the Woodstock Democrats lost (that includes me), it was the DTC that lost. DTC Chairman, James Kaeding, played his hand with a last minute Letter to the Editor in the Villager advocating repeal of the Board of Education while Mr. Powers, the instigator of the petition, and Ms. Wholean (DTC Secretary) soon to be DTC candidate for First Selectman signed the petition together, possibly while holding hands.

Mr. Kaeding decided not to sign the petition because it looked bad as he is Chairman of the DTC. How disingenuous.

The contrast between Allan Walker and Ms. Wholean is remarkable. For example, Mr. Walker turned back a raise this year while Ms. Wholean awarded herself a 9% raise in her final last 7 months as First Selectman. She went on to lie on WINY saying that the purpose of this raise was to guarantee that ‘there would be enough money in the budget to support hiring of a Town Manager’ (gag me with a spoon ). Ms. Wholean handed over FOI information that she requested from the BOE, while she was First Selectman, to CPS litigator, Mr. Shultz, so that he could pursue his FOI litigation at the FOIA Commission on behalf of the Citizens for Prudent Spending, forcing the BOE to defend themselves incuring more lawyer costs.

On the other hand, Mr. Walker has been careful to show no bias as First Selectman to any party although he is a Republican. This is perhaps the exemplary role that a First Selectman should play. He has stabilized Town management while Ms. Wholean commanded in her last six months in office that no communications would be sent from the Town Hall without her approval (Yuk!).

Ms. Wholean’s smoking gun handed to Mr. Shultz turned out to be loaded with hydrogen sulfide (e.g. rotten eggs). The silly nature of this smoking gun and the Wholean/Shultz collaboration was revealed at the FOIA commission hearing last June 5th in Hartford, so it’s a matter of public record (see the article on this hearing published at the Cafe on June 6th 2008 ).

We’ve talked about CPS a lot at the Café and Joe Klusek has complained about our characterization of CPS as a proponent of the latest petition from Misters Powers, Shultz, and Rosendahl. I think Joe is correct to complain about the correctness of this association because it has become clear that Powers and Shultz have hijacked the CPS name in pursuit of their own personal agenda – their relentless attacks on the school system and the BOE for personal gain (readers need to try and figure this out yourselves). For example, Powers claimed that he was acting on behalf of the CPS organization in the weeks leading up to the June 9th referendum and all of Shultz FOIA complaints have been on behalf of … you guessed it, Citizens for Prudent Spending. No wonder Café’ers are confused about CPS. The CPS organization has allowed Powers and Shultz to get away with this.

In Powers case the petition was his last ditch effort to … (well, if you can’t figure this out, giving you the answer is a waist of time).

From Steve Smock at Fix46

Tomorrow is the referendum vote for the 2013-14 Town budget.  This will take place from noon-8PM @ Town Hall.

Documents related to the budget can be found @  

http://www.woodstockct.gov/documentsforms/category/73-annual-budget-material.html

Please take a couple of moments tomorrow to vote.  If the budget gets voted down, the Board of Finance has no recourse but to bring a budget back to the town at a future referendum vote with additional cuts to personnel or services.

Thanks, Steve

From John

From National Geographic News: “An instrument near the summit of Mauna Loa in Hawaii has recorded a long-awaited climate milestone: the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere there has exceeded 400 parts per million (ppm) for the first time in 55 years of measurement—and probably more than 3 million years of Earth history.”

The graphics below suggest that we are about 10,000 years into a warm spell on planet Earth. Prior to the last ice age we had about 17,000 years of relative warmth before things started to go down hill. If 17,000 years is about right for our current warm spell, then we have only 7,000 years left in our Garden of Eden. But we are clearly polluting our environment. The big difference now is that in the warm spell that took place between 132,000 and 115,000 years ago there were only a million or so homo sapiens around and no polluting industry. Now we have almost 8 billion modern humans and an industrial society.

It’s clear that whomever coined the term “Global Warming” coined a misnomer because it looks as though our atmosphere was warmer 130,000 years ago. The popular phrase should be “Global Polluting” shouldn’t it? Then the nay-sayers might accept the problem and take some responsibility for it. Otherwise human beings may not be around to have the next ice age.

I’ve added some benchmarks to the graph below which shows the patterns of warming and cooling of the Earth for the last 400,000+ years. The warming and cooling of the Earth is caused by a very subtle movements closer and farther from the Sun in our eliptical orbit. This is not man-made. The last ice age took longer than the three previous ice ages shown in the graph which is based on chemical analysis of core samples from the Vostok ice sheet in Antarctica.  Two benchmarks are the demise of H. erectus and Neanderthals based upon the fossel record. These two species of Homos died off near the ends of two ice ages. Imagine what it would be like for us if the biosphere was 13 degrees colder on average than it is today. Back then their only refuge was a chilly cave or to head south. No wonder humans got their start in Africa.

Our current understanding of human history only came about since 1970 when nucleic acid hybridization became a tool for understanding the divergence of genes among all lifeforms. The rate of hybridization of two strands of DNA is a function of complimentarity of the Watson-Crick double helix.

From the last full cycle it appears that warm spells last about 18,000 years whereas the last ice age lasted about 97,000 years. It looks like archaic Homo sapiens survived two ice ages whereas Neanderthals only survived one. But our human male Y chromosome was passed on from H. erectus while the earliest date of discovery of mitochodrial DNA was during the time that archaic H. sapiens roamed sub-Saharan Africa. The mitochondrial DNA genome is inherited from mothers, not fathers; likewise in plants, chloroplasts are not carried in pollen when the female part of the plant is fertilized.

This is all very mind-boggling to consider. Will scientists have the answers for how to deal with the next ice age? Yup! Will politicians cooperate? We’ll just have to wait and see.

Graph of CO2 (Green graph), temperature (Blue graph), and dust concentration (Red graph) measured from the Vostok, Antarctica ice core. The shifts between hot and cold periods is thought to be controlled by the the Milankovich cycles:
1. The earth’s orbit changes from being nearly circular to slightly elliptical (eccentricity). This cycle is affected by other planets in the solar system and has a period of around 100,000 years.
2. The angle of tilt of the earth’s axis changes from 22.1° to 24.5° (obliquity). This cycle has a period of 41,000 years.
3. The direction of the tilt of the axis changes (precession) on a cycle of 26,000 years.

CO2 followed temperature change “with a lag of some hundreds of years” amplifies temperature change. Among other factors, CO2 is more soluble in colder than in warmer water. Higher dust levels are believed to be caused by cold, dry periods.

From John

I first published the article “Gene Doping in Athletics – Prospects for the 21st Century” prior to the 2008 Summer Olympics and then reposted it at the Cafe prior to the 2012 Summer Olympics. This turns out to be the most accessed article at the Cafe. In the last six days, this article is still the most directly accessed with the exception of Cafe visitors that come directly to woodstockctcafe.com. As a part of my work, this article was also passed on to the head of the US anti-doping agency before the 2012 Olympics, the fellow in the news who was dealing with Lance Armstrong. In our conversation I mentioned that my cousin’s daughter was 15th in the US Marathon Olympic trials in Houston in January 2012. His quick response was ‘Did she cheat?’ He was kidding of course and we had a good chuckle about that.

The focus of the story was on use of an RNAi drug to silence the myostatin gene in athletes in order to build muscle. I have been surprised that there has been rare attention to myostatin genetics since 2004 when the New England Journal of Medicine published a case study of a muscular child born without a functional myostatin gene (see my gene doping article). There are breeds of cattle, sheep, race horses, and racing dogs that have been selected for muscle hypertrophy. Take the whippet, for example, shown in the picture. The dog is a top breed for racing and is myostatin -/-. Myostatin regulates muscle homostasis to keep the balance of muscle formation in relation to skeletal stature; so its primary role is to break down muscle fibers.

Yesterday I found the time to look for more studies of myostatin genotyping among humans and I found something new and very interesting. This is a paper published in 2006 entitled “Human Adaptive Evolution at Myostatin (GDF8), a Regulator of Muscle Growth” by Matthew Saunders, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Arizona, with co-authors at the Department of Human Genetics, University of Pittsburgh, and the Department of Ecology and Evolution, University of Chicago. Apparently Saunders has now moved to the University of Chicago. The genetic language of this paper makes it difficult to read, but I think I have extracted the main points correctly.

In their study, the authors examined a panel of genomic DNAs of African American (recruited in Pittsburgh) and European peoples and sequenced their myostatin genes. They found a prevalence of amino acid changing mutations at the following coding sites in the myostatin gene in their examination of 76 African Americans and 70 Europeans:

1. alanine to threonine at amino acid 55 resulting from a change in the DNA sequence of the gene in a change GCC (coding for alanine) to ACC (coding for threonine), and
2. lysine to arginine at amino acid 153 resulting from a change in the DNA sequence of the gene in a change AAG (coding for lysine) to AGG (coding for arginine).  

The two gene polymorphisms causing changes in amino acids position 55 and 153 in the myostatin protein were found at relatively high frequency among African Americans at 12% and 20%, respectively, and among Nigerians at these sites at a frequency of 22% (for each of the two amino acid replacements). Read the rest of this entry »

From John

Yesterday we read in the NYTimes of a successful cloning of human embryonic stem cells by Oregon Health and Sciences University researchers led by Professor Shoukhrat Mitalipov. This accomplishment was also published yesterday in the acclaimed journal Cell. The synchronous timing of the news release and Cell article hints that a patent may have been filed a day earlier on this method of cloning.

This is the third time since 2005 that this achievement has been announced through a news release. This latest claim sounds more credible because a somatic skin cell nucleus was taken from an 8-month old infant with defined genetic markers; so the proof of this cloning will be in observing these markers as in the embryonic stem cells that are expanded in culture. My caution stems from the two previous announcements in 2005 and 2008.

In May of 2005 a Korean scientist reported a false claim of his cloning accomplishment, a claim that was later disproved as other scientists attempted to verify the Korean result.

On January 18, 2008, we learned in a news release of the successful cloning of human embryonic stem cells representing a unique human individual by scientists at the small private company, Stemagen in La Jolla California. We have not heard from Stemagen since except for a statement at the company’s website stating that it has refrained from publishing its results.

Professor Mitalipov assured readers that embryos containing a transplanted somatic nuclei would not be implanted in the uterus of a woman to grow cloned human beings but, of course, someone will eventually try this and a cloned human being will be born.

At this stage we really know nothing about the quality of life of a clone. Thousands of cloned animals have been produced but we have yet to be able to interview them. The cloned sheep, Dolly, would not speak to the press either.

In considering the prospect of cloning a human being, I believe that it is important to go beyond philosophical and religious arguments. One must build their case for or against cloning of human beings based upon science. While the odds appear to be extremely low for the near future that a human being will be born from the transfer of a somatic nucleus into a human oocyte — it is imperative that we consider the risks not only to prepare ourselves but to warn the perpetrators of the inherent dangers. Regardless of our feelings about human cloning, if a clone is born, we must treat any clone as a human being. We must greet this individual with support and empathy.

What are the actual risks faced by the cloned child due to birth by this procedure? One area that most embryologists are concerned about is the concept of reprogramming of the foreign somatic nucleus used to “fertilize” a human egg. “Somatic” refers to the terminally differentiated state of a cell in contrast to the reproductive potential of a germ cell. “Reprogramming” is a concept that I first learned during a seminar by John Gurdon, an esteemed embryologist from Oxford and recent Nobel Prize winner, at Johns Hopkins University in 1975. At the time Gurdon was conducting research on “nuclear transfer” except that he was using frog oocytes and thus his work was not considered controversial. Much of his work was dedicated to understanding how an enucleated egg could reprogram a foreign nucleus such as a skin cell or a tumor cell nucleus to produce, in his case, tadpoles. Read the rest of this entry »

From John

Today, May 16 2013, The NYTimes published the contents of a note left by Jahar: Dzhokhar Tsarnaev scrawled a note inside the hull of the boat where he was hiding that said ‘the attack was retribution for wars the United States waged in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to two law enforcement officials.’ It was my conclusion in writing this article that radicalization of Muslims stemmed primarily from the protracted wars in Iraq and Afganistan.

An article today in the NYTimes attempts to tell the story of the Tsarnaev brothers sudden radicalization to jihadism, in particular younger brother Jahar’s (nickname) unobvious secret radicalization. I read this article with great interest because since the Boston Marathon bombing I have wondered how the brothers could have given up the promise of the successful life their parents were looking for – the life their kids were offered in America. We learned that they came to our country in 2002 when Jahar was only nine years old to escape Chechen turmoil in central Asia. The brothers seemed fully assimilated into Bostonian life excepting their subliminal inheritance of Islam. The parents, on the other hand, divorced and returned separately to Dagestan.

Recently Jahar is purported to have said that ‘God is all that matters. It doesn’t matter about school and engineering … When it comes to school and being an engineer, you can cheat easily. But when it comes to going to heaven, you can’t cheat.’ Obviously there are Christians, Jews, and people in other religions who agree with the importance of God. But why would one shirk the responsibility of building a career and supporting a family because God is so important. Perhaps this is a clue. Some Muslims choose a fast track to heaven rather than living a responsible life. Isn’t there anything else that the Koran teaches besides promoting ‘death to infidels?’ Jahar’s stated philosophy came a year or two after Jahar was purported to have said ‘I’m not into that.’ It is also telling that the all-American Rhode Island girl who became Tamerlan’s wife also embraced Islam. It will be interesting to follow how her religious views evolve as she recovers from this whole affair. Her faith and the secret faith of Jahar underscores the blinding impact of religious fundamentalism that infects all of our lives today. Contrary to Rush Limbaugh, we need to be much more aware of this part of our diverse society in the future.

How does a person acquire the jihadist mindset?

My understanding is that jihadism has been an Islamic terrorist movement directed primarily against both Russian and American efforts (including our allies, the British) to install a more westernized form of rule over Muslim societies and their many Islamic sects. Perhaps our schizophrenic Middle Eastern policies of the last 60 years is the cause of this radicalization. There can be no doubt that the United States is the primary enemy of jihadism for whatever reason.

Take Afghanistan, for example. The emergence of jihadism is a relatively recent development traced in part to the Russian invasion of Afghanistan. The Russians were defeated in Afghanistan when the US supported the Afghan rebels with guns, ammunition, and advisors to help defeat the Russian invaders. But no lessons were learned from the demise of the Russians and any good will that we gave out was negated by the Afghan war of this last decade. Besides going after Bin Laden, the US wanted to help those who would come under the oppression of fundamentalist Islam, mainly the women of Afghanistan. I was all for this as a secondary benefit of our being there. But that wasn’t our stated reason for invading Afghanistan. Worse yet, rather than completing the job in Afghanistan swiftly, the Bush administration embarked on a more expensive and unjustified war in Iraq dividing our resources and at expense to the American public for years to come.

Then there is Chechnya, for example. It was the Chechen rebellion and Chechen acts of terror in Moscow that helped define jihadism. To my knowledge we stayed out of the Chechen rebellion but may have paid a price for that war in the Boston Marathon bombing. Because of this bombing we have discovered the phenomenon of ‘self radicalization.’ It seems likely that self-radicalization of the Tsarnaev brothers stemmed directly from the Chechen situation and indirectly from involving ourselves in Middle Eastern Muslim affairs during their parents’ generation.

As I have said before, our involvement in Iraq and earlier events created a battlefield in Iraq for radicalized Muslims that didn’t exist before. This was the merit of the protracted Iraq war according to Tony Blair when he attended the opening of the G. W. Bush library a week ago. I don’t see the merit that Blair talked about in his justification of his alignment with Bush. Now, apparently, the turmoil in Syria is drawing radicalized Eastern European Muslims into the conflict. I think it is correct to say that our hesitation to entering the Syrian conflict is that we would be joining forces with the enemy rather than carrying out a humanitarian mission. Read the rest of this entry »

Your voices have been heard! Governor Malloy will be signing formal notification that the DESPP proposal for the Firearms Facility Relocation to Glastonbury has been withdrawn. We thank everyone for their support in helping us conserve the Meshomasic State Forest. We will continue to work with the CFPA to protect our forests and trails. We will also continue to work with CT State Police Dept to ensure our officers have a training facility. We will be updating and utilizing our website: GlastonburyMatters.com for conservation efforts. Thank you all! Melissa Pericolosi

State Drops Plans For State Police Gun Range In Glastonbury

From John

“Do you know the State is proposing to put a 55,000 sq foot firearms training facility in Glastonbury? More than 200 families and two elementary schools in Glastonbury would be directly affected.”

Two years ago a visitor to the Annual Woodstock Fair was hit by a bullet from the Putnam Firearms Training Facility. Now the State wants to take over a park in a school zone in Glastonbury for a new 30-acre training facility rather than simply improve the one currently in Simsbury. I’ve already signed the petition. Woodstockers and persons in surrounding towns should support Glastonbury residents. Soon the state will be coming to our towns to take over properties, and we will need Glastonbury’s support at that time.

GO TO Glastonbury Matters and sign the petition.

The state proposal offers no alternative sites in their proposal.

From John

In 1989 I called the IRS in Fresno CA to tell them that they had made a simple mistake in reviewing my tax return. I had received a brief statement from them telling me that I owed $1000-$2000 because of a mistake in my return. It didn’t take me long to figure out that the IRS had misread my return by one line on page 2. So I called Fresno to straighten it out without complaint. The agent that answered my call listened to me for a minute or less and then lit into me in a rage. ‘Pay your damn taxes you good-for-nothing laggard.’ I hung up and went to H&R Block to show them what had happened. We ended up writing a letter and the matter was dropped by the IRS with no apology.

In the summer of 1995 I received a letter of audit from the IRS. This came about because my ex-wife had attended a free IRS advice session at Sears in Odessa Texas. She showed them her tax returns and their advice to her was that I had cheated her tax-wize on alimony. It turns out that Texas has no alimony requirement. My former wife, I’m sure befuddled by the IRS advice, forgot to tell them that I had supported the family, paid H&R Block to fill out her tax return, and then paid her taxes with a personal check. I had done this for the previous eight years since our divorce. Becki and I were supporting two families.

For the audit, I arranged for help with an agent from H&R Block who lived in Santa Cruz. Yes, there was a hippie side to this young agent, Alan, who impressed me as being very smart. By the way, don’t ever try to use a lawyer in a matter like this. We sat down and read the law together. We both concluded that I had followed the law. So we went together to the gold-windowed IRS building in San Jose for my meeting with the IRS.

The meeting at the beginning was cordial. We were meeting with an agent that we determined was in training. When we asked a tough question, he would get up and go into the next office to ask his supervisor how he should answer the question. He would uniformly come back with the wrong answer. After about an hour we ended the meeting and Alan said to the agent “There will be no fine, will there?” (because I hadn’t knowingly done something wrong). The agent suggested there would be no fine. I forgot to mention that after the first 15 minutes of this meeting, we all had to leave the building because of a bomb threat.

Then I received a letter from the IRS indicating that I owed the >$30,000 in back taxes, fines and penalties. When I received the letter we were two months from moving across country in a caravan of a large U-Haul truck towing my mustang and Becki, seven year-old Mariah, dog Lickety, cat Potsticker, and the goldfish in a bowl following in the Van. I quit my job at the end of December and went on unemployment compensation in January while I looked for a job.

Alan said to go ahead and he would handle this in California for me. We took the matter to a Judge arbitrator. When Alan presented my case, the Judge came down on my side. In March of 1996 I received a letter from the IRS saying ‘Never mind’ with no apology.

I was so relieved, I looked up H&R Block’s home office in St. Louis and wrote Henry and all of the executives of H&R Block about what Alan had done for me. I pointed out that everyone except Alan in the California office said I was going to lose. Then, I received a letter back from Henry thanking me for my feedback about Alan’s work. He said he would inform the California office of Alan’s work. Then I received an envelope in the mail which was virtually empty except for Alan’s new business card. He had been promoted to district manager.

End of story except for my visit to H&R Block in Putnam. Mark has been my agent since the spring of 1996. Every year we spend 15 to 20 friendly minutes together as he figures out my taxes. Last year was particularly complicated because of the liquidation of my parents messy estate.

In 1996 in my first meeting with Mark, I showed Mark my letter from Henry, his boss. We did the tax return and I picked it up a week later at the Putnam office. When I went to the receptionist to retreive my return, she pulled open the long drawer with hundreds of tax returns. Mine was the easiest to find because it was the only one that was leather-bound .

From John

I have not yet heard any explanation of why ‘Ambassador’ Chris Stevens was staying in an undefendable facility in Benghazi.

Year Attackee
1979 United States Tehran, Iran. 9 killed in Iran hostage crisis
1979 United States Islamabad, Pakistan. U.S. Embassy Burning in Islamabad
1979 United States Tripoli, Libya. U.S. Embassy Burning in Libya
1983 United States Beirut, Lebanon 64 killed 1983 United States embassy bombing
1983 United States Kuwait City, Kuwait. 6 killed in Kuwait bombings
1986 United States Jakarta, Indonesia. Commie Japanese Red Army mortar attack
1987 United States Rome, Italy. Japanese Red Army mortar attack
1990 United States Tel Aviv, Israel. US Embassy attack in Tel Aviv
1998 United States Nairobi, Kenya. 212 killed in United States embassy bombings
1998 United States Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. 11 killed in United States embassy bombings
1999 United States Beijing, People’s Republic of China. U.S. & Chinese embassy bombings in Belgrade
2002 United States Calcutta, India. Gunmen associated with Harkat-ul-Jihad al-Islami attack the U.S. Consulate. Five people are killed.
2002 United States Denpasar, Indonesia. U.S. diplomatic offices bombed as part of a string of “Bali Bombings.”
2003 United States Islamabad, Pakistan. Several gunmen fire upon the U.S. Embassy. Two people are killed.
2003 United States Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Armed al Qaeda terrorists storm the diplomatic compound, killing 36 people including nine Americans. The assailants committed suicide by detonating a truck bomb.
2004 United States Tashkent, Uzbekistan. A suicide bomber from the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan attacks the U.S. Embassy, killing two people.
2004 United States Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Al Qaeda terrorists storm the U.S. Consulate and occupy the perimeter wall. Nine people are killed.
2004 United States Tashkent, Uzbekistan. 2 killed in Tashkent embassy bombings
2004 United States Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Jeddah consulate attack
2006 United States Damascus, Syria 4 killed in Damascus bombings and other attacks
2006 United States Karachi, Pakistan again. Suicide bomber attacks the U.S. Consulate killing four people, including U.S. diplomat David Foy who was directly targeted by the attackers. (I wonder if Lindsey Graham or Fox News would even recognize the name “David Foy.” This is the third Karachi terrorist attack in four years on what’s considered American soil.)
2006 United States Damascus, Syria. Four armed gunmen shouting “Allahu akbar” storm the U.S. Embassy using grenades, automatic weapons, a car bomb and a truck bomb. Four people are killed, 13 are wounded.
2007 United States Athens, Greece. Members of a Greek terrorist group called the Revolutionary Struggle fire a rocket-propelled grenade at the U.S. Embassy. No fatalities.
2008 United States Istanbul, Turkey. Four armed terrorists attack the U.S. Consulate. Six people are killed.
2008 United States Sana’a, Yemen. Terrorists dressed as military officials attack the U.S. Embassy with an arsenal of weapons including RPGs and detonate two car bombs. Sixteen people are killed, including an American student and her husband (they had been married for three weeks when the attack occurred). This is the second attack on this embassy in seven months.
2011 United States Kabul, Afghanistan. Kabul Attacks
2012 United States Cairo, Egypt 2012 attack on the American Embassy in Egypt
2012 United States Benghazi, Libya. 4 killed in U.S. Consulate attack in Benghazi
2012 United States Sanaa, Yemen 2012 attack on the American Embassy in Yemen
2013 United States Ankara, Turkey 2 2013 United States embassy bombing in Ankara

News Flash from Diane

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—In what may be the most serious allegation ever made against the former Secretary of State, Fox News Channel reported today that Hillary Clinton was involved in the conspiracy to murder President Abraham Lincoln…

From John

Our environment, e.g. the biosphere, is the limiting factor (Fig. 1). GMO salmon developed by AquaBio (Fig. 2), and a recombinant algae farm for biofuel production a la Synthetic Genomics/Exxon (Fig. 3).

From John: I don’t normally publish something published somewhere else but I am making an exception here because of the article’s timeliness. You can read the origninal article HERE.

Ronald Kleinman, M.D., is chief of the Department of Pediatrics at Massachusetts General Hospital and physician-in-chief at MassGeneral Hospital for Children. He is a consultant for profit and not-for-profit organizations in the food industry.

“The recent call for labeling of foods containing genetically engineered ingredients — especially on a state-by-state basis as in Connecticut — is unnecessary, unrealistic and uninformed.

As someone who grew up and attended college in Connecticut, I particularly appreciate the state’s farmland preservation program and the thriving local agriculture, which is being encouraged and protected. And as a pediatrician I know the weight new parents place on every decision affecting their children — from infancy to young adult. I have made it my life’s work to help guide parents through these challenges. This work, however, has been made even more complicated by the barrage of messages, information and misinformation that we all encounter daily. What is most important is to help parents separate myth from fact, and recognize when emotion has trumped hard science.

That is exactly what is at the core of a debate currently playing out in Connecticut over foods produced through biotechnology, also known as genetic engineering or genetic modification. A bill before the General Assembly would require labeling of genetically engineered food.

For more than 15 years, the majority of packaged foods and beverages consumed in the U.S. and dozens of other countries has contained some ingredient that was developed through the use of biotechnology. Biotechnological advances have included improved resistance to plant diseases and reduced reliance on pesticides, resulting in safer, more nutritious food that is able to sustain the growing demands of our world and has helped to protect the environment at the same time. Biotech ingredients are grown by Connecticut farmers, and foods containing biotech ingredients are sold in local stores for local consumption. Read the rest of this entry »

From Formerly A Student

We’ve had a couple somewhat brief discussions of GMOs (genetically modififed organisms) here at the Cafe, but they haven’t really gone anywhere. As you all probably know, companies such as Monsanto, Dow, and AquaBounty are genetically engineering seeds and, in AquaBounty’s case, salmon, with promises of increased yield, more profit to farmers, less environmental impact due to less fertilizers used, etc. However, watching documentaries such as Food Inc. and The Future of Food reveal the less-than-flattering side of GMOs and the companies that produce them. Monsanto’s prosecuting farmers who dare to save and reuse their seeds (that they are supposed to purchase annually) or whose fields get contaminated by GMO seeds blowing off trucks driving by fields, the weeds developing immunity to RoundUp (which Monsanto’s GMOs resist) requiring increased use of the chemicals, threats to the bee population, and human health issues (including cancer, indigestion, allergies, etc.), the idea of greedy corporations patenting life and potentially putting natural lifeforms to extinction and developing an empire of food supply domination (perhaps this is somewhat more cynical than the rest), etc. lead me personally to be opposed to GMOs. I encourage you to do more research on GMOs and those companies to fully understand what I’m talking about.

Having said that, as I’ve said before, whether or not you’re a fan of GMOs, I hope that you believe in at least labeling the GMO-containing products until, hopefully, the US catches up with the 63(?) countries that have already banned GMOs themselves entirely. It comes down to knowing what’s in your food — foods are already labeled with nutrition and ingredients information, and sometimes allergy information, so why shouldn’t GMOs be labeled as such? Opponents of GMO labeling think that the labeling will ruin the economy. Someone please explain why this would happen. It only requires a modest modification to existing printing on packaging. If it turns out that a GMO food is inferior to a non-GMO food side-by-side, and that ruins Monsanto’s economy, good. If the opposite is true, and people start purchasing more GMOs and we don’t see a spike in sickness and deaths in the people who eat them, good. If the GMO companies believe that their product is, indeed, superior and safe, they have nothing to worry about, and perhaps GMO labeling will actually be of benefit to them.

Anyway, I digress. There are two bills that are currently in the legislative process: HB 6519 (labeling of genetically engineered food) and HB 6527 (labeling of genetically engineered baby food). Apparently Brendan Sharkey, Speaker of the House, is impeding the bills’ progress by not calling them for a vote. Please contact him to change that.

Furthermore, our local representative Mike Alberts is not on the list of supporters of the bills (but is that a surprise?). Please contact him as well.

http://www.consumersunion.org/research/testimony-on-hb-6519-an-act-concerning-the-labeling-of-genetically-engineered-food-before-the-committee-on-public-health/

http://gmofreect.org/

I would think that the Quiet Corner would provide a considerable amount of support for GMO labeling considering the amount of organic farms and healthy eaters that are around here.

I also believe that there will be GMO labeling somewhere in the country not too far in the future. Once one state breaks the ice, there will probably be many more to follow. How about CT does something right and leads the way with something so important as protecting our food supply and well-being?

From Con

Obviously this is excellent news. While unrelated to the equipment mentioned, I have 2 important questions:

1) I’ve always wondered if Woodstock possess (or needs) one of those specialized Infra-Red devices that can determine if there is still a human alive inside a burning structure (viewing made possible through such a device)?

I don’t know much about it except from specialized articles on the subject, but such an article called it one of the most valuable tools existing to any Fire-Fighting efforts; one which has saved many lives while not endangering the lives of Fire-Fighters who otherwise may choose a risky search or the like.

I grew up with a nearby barn that had Alarm-horns mounted on it’s roof and so was woken many nights by that loud alarm notifying nearby volunteers that it was time to get up and risk their lives. As a child my imagination was keen and I always pictured off of the grim faces in that household while the Volunteer dressed quickly and hit the road. I’ve never stopped admiring Volunteers and the more I learn, the greater my admiration.

2) The West Texas disaster brought this home in an especially tragic way – “…confirmed dead included five West volunteer firefighters and four volunteer emergency medical technicians, according to the mayor.”

I know I’m ‘off-topic’, but what (if any) provisions were made for these first-responders and their families who volunteered to do as professional job as any organized, professional first-responders? This has been on my mind as this seemingly foreseeable and avoidable disaster was nearly fully-eclipsed because of the Boston Terror Bombings. Will their families be taken care of? Was/is there an actual Policy in place for this?

If so, does such a Policy apply to volunteers across America? I haven’t been able to find these answers anywhere, in any story describing the disaster and it truly haunts my thoughts and I doubt that I’m alone. Does anyone have truthful answers? Thanks for your patience.

From TPOV

I call the fetus a human being because the I believe the fetus IS a human being (responding to Diane). To not state it that way would be untrue to my beliefs, and would not be fair to any of you or to me. I do not mean to belittle anyone, only to be accurate and true. I have not referred to them as children or babies, only human beings, which, in my opinion, they are.

I have not implied that those who favor choice are knowingly murdering babies. In fact, I don’t believe they are. First of all, murder is the illegal killing of a human being, and abortion is currently legal. Therefore, it is not murder, and I have never said that it was. To do so would be inaccurate. Also, I don’t think the word ‘knowingly’ is accurate. I feel there are many that believe that abortion should be legal because they don’t think the fetus is a human being. Therefore, they are not knowingly killing a human being. My goal is not to belittle those people, but to help educate them.

Slave owners, many years ago, were not ‘knowingly’ enslaving a human being in their mind, because they were not humans, only property. Even the SCOTUS classified them as such. Looking back, are those that had strong convictions that blacks should not be considered property considered to have been untrue and offensive? Those that wanted slavery abolished were very vocal in their labeling of ‘blacks’ as human beings. Were they wrong to do that? Were people back then saying “stop saying ‘blacks’ are human being as if there’s no point of contention”?

You are clearly assigning beliefs to me based on implications I’ve never made. Again, I’ve never claimed to have “a reverence for human life, in all conditions, at all stages.” I’ve openly stated that my support is for “innocent human life” that is not a threat to the lives of other humans (a condition). That is very consistent. Unborn human beings are innocent of any wrong-doing. Murderers are not. Read the rest of this entry »

Congrats to Muddy Brook!

The Muddy Brook Fire Department in East Woodstock won a grant from the Department of Homeland Security’s Assistance to Firefighters Grants (AFG) program of $157,415 to purchase and install a fixed base breathable air compressor. This equipment is used to refill the cylinders which are a part of the Self Contained Breathing Apparatus (SCBAs) used by firefighters when entering a burning structure and during HAZMAT operations. The funding will also be used to replace 16 SCBAs that are no longer in compliance with National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) guidelines.

“This is about the safety of my firefighters,”said Muddy Brook Fire Department Chief Christopher Wootton to Congressman Courtney who helped support the application. “The grant will help bring us back into NFPA and OSHA compliance. This was the second year we applied, but we stuck with it and prevailed. It’s a project we clearly couldn’t have funded on our own.”

This was the second time they applied for this grant and persistence paid off.