Children's Geographies; 12/01/2023
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The post Doing Radical Things Right: Ethical Good Practice for Basic Income Experiments was curated by information for practice.

The state currently has over 3,000 children in foster care. And while DSS has made improvements in recent years, they still need help to give each child the support they deserve.

The post ‘If we’re not taking care of the youth, what are we really doing?’ Foster care advocates encourage more to get involved was curated by information for practice.

Every other Friday on Morning Edition, Outside/In host Sam Evans-Brown tackles a question from a listener. Suzanne from Concord asks: “I’m trying to find out why ladybugs are in my house in the spring, and did they all live together in my house over the winter? And if they did that, what did they eat? Or do they eat? Do they hibernate? And now they’re dropping dead, I mean out of six ladybugs, there are two alive.” Note: This eidition of Ask Sam originally aired in March of 2020. What you are most likely seeing is called (among many other things) the Harlequin Ladybeetle . It gets that name (as well as all its others) because it has a lot of different presentations — many different numbers and arrangements of spots — and it's an invasive species from Asia. “It’s basically been released as a biological control agent, in multiple places,” says William Fincham, who researches ladybugs with the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, “In the U.S, in multiple places in Europe as well.” Even

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks to the media about the cruise industry during a press conference at PortMiami in April. DeSantis faces criticism for failing to do all he could on Florida's biggest environmental threat: climate change.; Credit: Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Brick by brick, the stucco shell of a new flood-resilient public works building is taking shape blocks from the beach, the most visible sign yet of a small community's enormous task staving off the rising sea.

"This is actually the highest point in the city," Satellite Beach City Manager Courtney Barker said, adding that right next door to the new public works building will be a new fire station.

It's a close-knit community established by rocket scientists south of Kennedy Space Center, on a low-slung barrier island between the Atlantic Ocean and Indian River Lagoon.

By 2040, community leaders expect significant impacts associated with climate change. Already flooding is a problem, and beach-front homes perch precariously atop a sand dune left exposed after a series of storms and hurricanes washed away a sea wall.

The needs are great, and in Gov. Ron DeSantis, Barker sees a potential ally.

"At least he talks about climate change as actually being real, so that's good," she said. "And he's putting money toward it so that's encouraging."

But Barker also feels DeSantis is doing only part of the job.

"We desperately need to grow up as a state and realize that we need to get our emissions down," Barker said.

Since his election in November 2018, DeSantis is making good on some of his environmental promises, including what he likes to call "resilience," a new buzzword for climate adaptation. But as the governor prepares for a reelection bid in 2022, and is seen as a potential Republican frontrunner for the presidency in 2024, DeSantis faces criticism for failing to do all he could on Florida's biggest environmental threat: climate change.

Some of his critics acknowledge that the $1 billion Resilient Florida plan he announced in January could be a first step toward helping some communities pay for adaptation. But critics also point out that DeSantis has done almost nothing to put Florida on a path to scaling back the state's heavy reliance on fossil fuels.

"I would give him probably a C-minus," said former Republican Gov. Charlie Crist, who served from 2007 to 2011, and now represents St. Petersburg in the U.S. House of Representatives as a Democrat.

Crist still gets plaudits from environmentalists for his administration's climate initiatives, including a cap-and-trade system to curb carbon emissions and an executive order that was intended to put the state on a path to reducing its greenhouse gas emissions 80% by 2050. But those were basically abandoned by Gov. Rick Scott, the Republican now serving in the U.S. Senate.

Crist, who switched parties and this week announced he is running for governor in 2022, said DeSantis should be "encouraging renewables such as wind energy, solar energy, and particularly solar. I mean, my goodness, we're the Sunshine State."

DeSantis' press office declined to make the governor available for an interview and did not respond to written questions.

In comments at two press conferences earlier this year, the governor cited his support for spending hundreds of millions of dollars on water projects and Everglades restoration as evidence of his environmental credentials, while promising to double down on funding for coastal resilience.

Florida needs "to tackle the challenges posed by flooding, intensified storm events [and] sea level rise," he said. "When you look at how an insurance market would view property insurance, and to see that Florida is leading and trying to get ahead of some of these impacts, we think it'll be a very smart thing to do."

Lawmakers have had their own ideas on how to handle climate threats, and have passed two bills that, when taken together, are similar to DeSantis' Resilient Florida proposal.

"It's not exactly as he said he wanted it, but it's close," said Jonathan Webber, deputy director of Florida Conservation Voters. "These are policies that need to happen. It would have been better if they happened 20 years ago."

"I am not a global warming person"

In his 2018 campaign, DeSantis appealed directly to supporters of former President Donald Trump, such as in this ad where he tells one of his children to "build the wall" with toy blocks. The environment was a major issue in that election.

Residents were grappling with a toxic red tide and blue-green algae crisis that made beaches and waterways unsafe, and left marine-life belly-up.

In recent years Floridians have also experienced deadly, devastating consequences of back-to-back major hurricanes.

All the while, advocates were highlighting likely links between the state's environmental woes and global warming.

Florida's climate challenges are among the biggest in the country. Beyond those related to hurricanes intensified by climate change, they include sea level rise, extreme heat, drought and increasing health threats from mosquito-borne diseases.

By its own numbers, the DeSantis administration predicts that with sea level rise, $26 billion in residential property statewide will be at risk of chronic flooding by 2045.

But in 2018, DeSantis let voters know that he had clear limits when it came to climate change.

"I am not in the pews of the church of the global warming leftists," DeSantis told reporters at one 2018 campaign stop. "I am not a global warming person. I don't want that label on me."

Early plaudits from environmentalists

Once in office, DeSantis won early plaudits for directives aimed at cleaning up water and helping Florida adapt to climate change. He appointed the first state resilience officer and the first chief scientist, and ordered Florida's Department of Environmental Protection to make sure its decisions were based on the best available science.

In 2019, they approved of DeSantis' order to his environmental regulators to oppose fracking, but he since has failed to get his Republican colleagues in the legislature to pass a statewide fracking ban, something he advocated for during his campaign. The state's oil and gas industry does not currently use fracking as a drilling method, but environmentalists are worried it might start doing so, resulting in water pollution.

Environmental groups also praised DeSantis in 2020 when the governor announced the state was backing a plan to buy 20,000 acres of the Everglades to prevent oil development there.

And they did the same when DeSantis backed spending $166 million in settlement money Florida received from Volkswagen on electric vehicle charging stations and cleaner electric buses. The money, part of a larger $14.7 billion settlement, came after the German automaker was caught lying about its cars' diesel emissions.

"Everyone was optimistic," said Susan Glickman, the Florida director for the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy. "I kept hearing an opening on climate."

Two years later, though, Glickman and other advocates are assessing DeSantis' climate record much like this: He's done more than previous Governor Scott, but that's not saying much.

DeSantis quietly replaced his chief science officer in March with Mark Rains, a professor, and chair and director of the School of Geosciences at the University of South Florida. But he never has replaced his chief resilience officer after she left for the Trump administration after only a few months in the position.

"Missing in action" on renewables

In many ways, it's what DeSantis hasn't done that defines his climate record. He has chosen not to use his bully pulpit to advocate for a clean-energy future, like his Democratic Party counterparts in the Southeast states of North Carolina and Virginia, or like the mayors of Orlando and Tampa.

DeSantis has also been "missing in action" in debate over bills this year in the Florida legislature that would undermine local government efforts to transition to clean energy, said Webber, with the Florida Conservation Voters group.

One such bill, that has passed the House and Senate and awaits DeSantis' consideration, would ban local governments from restricting fuel sources. The oil and gas industry has supported such measures around the country. They aim to block the push by climate activists to ban natural gas hook-ups in new buildings, and electrify them instead to reduce carbon emissions.

Of course, electrification only reduces emissions if it's powered by renewable energy. But Florida has no requirement that utilities provide a certain amount of that. Solar power accounts for only about 2.5% of the electricity produced by utilities, while they rely on fossil fuels for about 84%.

When DeSantis had a chance to appoint someone to the state's powerful Florida Public Service Commission, a regulatory body with a big say in state energy policy, he chose the Florida chairman of the American Legislative Exchange Council, a group known for its support of fossil fuels.

"We are very frustrated by the messaging, and the lack of acknowledgement of the root of the problem of all these issues," said Yoca Arditi-Rocha, executive director of The CLEO Institute, a nonprofit that focuses on climate science education.

"We need to acknowledge the warming temperatures and the rising seas are a result of our warming climate," she said. "We cannot adapt our way out of it. We need to aggressively tackle mitigation."

"What places can we not save?"

In Satellite Beach, Courtney Barker, the city manager who welcomes the governor's help with adapting to climate change, also wants to see him tackle the emissions side of the equation.

Besides moving the public works building and fire station to higher ground, the community is fortifying its system of flood control. Barker said the community needs more funding opportunities from the state.

"We're looking for assistance in helping us engineer our way out of it," she said.

Marine and climate scientist Jeff Chanton, of Florida State University, thinks there's too much emphasis on sea walls, which can cause beach erosion and destroy tidal zones vital to marine life, including crabs and turtles.

"An ideal governor would try to lessen the impacts of growth in this state, especially along our coastlines," he said.

Before her departure, Julia Nesheiwat, DeSantis' chief resilience officer, characterized the state's infrastructure as "outdated" in a report, and called its resilience strategy "disjointed."

For Thomas Ruppert, an attorney and coastal planning specialist with Florida Sea Grant, DeSantis' emphasis on hardening infrastructure ignores that — for some communities — the investments will be futile in staving off the inevitable.

"Ultimately, what we really need is to start talking seriously [about] what places can we not save? And what is an exit strategy? Because we have no idea," Ruppert said.

Barker hopes it doesn't come to that in Satellite Beach, where she grew up.

"It's personal to all of us, because I think everyone can look at their own hometown, and you can't imagine being anywhere else."

This story is a collaboration between Inside Climate News and WMFE Orlando, a member of ICN's National Reporting Network-Southeast.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Latest COVID-19 Conversations webinar discusses implementing crisis standards of care.

It's easy to fall prey to mediocrity. But, when you’re willing to put in the hard work and do what many people will not do, you'll find that the payoff is well worth it.

I’m lucky enough to work with a lot of good-hearted contractors. What I know is contractors in general, despite the skewed view of the media to the contrary, want to do the right thing for their customers and their community.

Businesses don’t succeed in a vacuum — and that is true in all industries, including plumbing, HVAC and electrical contracting businesses. Thankfully, contracting business owners are not on their own and don’t have to learn to “reinvent the wheel.” There are a number of industry associations and best practice organizations available to help.

For all the COVID-19 safety guidelines circulating, some hundreds of pages long, basic best practices are straightforward and known by most Americans. Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since 1984, recently recounted them in an interview with the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Are we doing enough to keep firefighters safe? No, we are not – but setting priorities and executing on requirements is easier said than done. 

Rebecca Babcock Coaching Launches The Babcock Method™: A Revolutionary Approach to Finding Your Purpose a world saturated with coaching programs, Rebecca Babcock Coaching stands out with a bold message: "Stop! You are doing it all wrong!"

inserting Amnesty for millions of illegal aliens into a budget bill to subvert the filibuster rule violates Senate rules.

Chevo Wins Contracts in Unrestricted and Small Business Tracks, Valuing $82 Million

Sarah Federman, assistant professor at the University of Baltimore, studies how companies handle their historical misdeeds and what that means for employees and customers. From insurance firms that backed slave owners to railroad companies that transported victims of the Holocaust, many legacy companies can find they played a role in past transgressions. Federman makes a moral and practical argument for uncovering and addressing these misdeeds, even though there may no longer be legal repercussions. And she shares how some leaders have been transparent, apologized, and found meaningful ways to make up for their organization's difficult history. Federman wrote the HBR article “How Companies Can Address Their Historical Transgressions: Lessons from the Slave Trade and the Holocaust.”

Data-share this, pal: As the man said, you have no obligation to share any of your data and I have no obligation to believe anything you say.

As forwarded to us by Max Shepsi: I’m starting to see a pattern here!

Several people pointed me to this news report on a successful bettor in an election prediction market: Not only did he see Donald Trump winning the presidency, he wagered that Trump would win the popular vote—an outcome that many political … Continue reading →

Anybody who would be interested in a great new theme about beds and home furniture please drop me a line or comment on this post. Im just mulling over the idea got a good template in mind with a pic of a leather bed and nice mattress kind of a sleep blog theme. Should appeal [...]

This session will go on a whistlestop tour of some of the new developments made for the March 2008 relaunch of Edge Hill's corporate Web site. See what a small, centralised Web team can deliver without a 1 million pound CMS! More buzzwords than you can shake a stick at and not afraid to get technical. The session was facilitated by Mike Nolan, Edge Hill University.

Starts: Thu, 28 Nov 2024 18:30:00 -0500
11/28/2024 05:30:00PM
Location: Montreal, Canada

Often hailed as the heir apparent to Wallace Stegner, Ivan Doig is among the finest chroniclers of the contemporary American West. In Mountain Time, Lexa McCaskell and Mitch Rozier leave their Seattle home to visit Mitch's dying father in Montana. There Mitch clashes with both Lexa and his father as events from the past are explored and difficult memories resurface. "Mountain Time will not dissuade those who rank Doig among the best living American writers."-San Francisco Chronicle

Our special series, Body Electric, is back! This time, host Manoush Zomorodi does a deep dive into our headphone habits... because many of us wear them for hours at a time, and all that listening is taking a toll on our hearing.

Manoush speaks with exposure scientist Rick Neitzel, who has partnered with Apple on a first-of-its-kind study to find how our daily listening patterns are affecting our hearing. Neitzel offers advice on safe listening habits that can help protect our ears in the long term.

Later, Manoush takes us into the future of "consumer hearables" and how tech companies want us to never — ever— take our earbuds out.

Interested in joining the Apple Hearing Study? Sign up here.

Binge the whole Body Electric series here. Sign up for the Body Electric Challenge and our newsletter here.

Talk to us on Instagram @ManoushZ, or record a voice memo and email it to us at BodyElectric@npr.org.

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Billionaires have long leveraged the housing market for money. But a new report outlines how to regulate the market so people—not hedge funds—can buy homes.

Just in time for 2025 planning, KnowHow and the R.I.A. reveal their “Cost of Doing Business” Study, an extensive look at all facets of successfully running a restoration business, examining the best (and worst) factors to move your company forward today!

The 4th and final part of our series on human trafficking explains what lawmakers and the PCC have been doing to help solve the problem. https://fb.watch/7X9-8f1Bdi/

Packaging Strategies has reported extensively on the move toward eco-friendly packaging in multiple markets — from snacks to fresh produce to foodservice. A similar shift is underway in the packaging of meat, poultry and seafood.

The FDA continues to take creative and flexible approaches to address access to critical medical products in response to COVID-19. Researchers at academic institutions, non-traditional manufacturers, communities of makers, and individuals are banding together to support and fill local and…

While AI opens up technical solutions in healthcare, giving Big Tech unregulated access to health data is a big mistake, argues Dr Nicole Gross.

Read more: Is the EU doing enough to protect health data from AI-powered Big Tech?

Robot developers keep making it seem like housebots are imminent when they’re decades away, argue Dr Carl Strathearn and Dr Dimitra Gkatzia from Edinburgh Napier University.

Read more: How soon will robots be doing our household chores?

Location: Electronic Resource- 

Shavo Odadjian currently has some time away from his regular job of laying down monster bass riffs for the multi-platinum selling rock band System of a Down

"With the re-election of Trump I’m convinced that our generation’s time – I’m in my 80s -- has passed. The values I admire, the qualities of character I respect, seem to be relegated to some kind of antique standards shop. We’re decidedly outta style." -- Harry Puncec, Lakewood

Chris Brew is excited about new series “The Start Up.”

A white balloon-like machine resembling a giant jellyfish, wafting over metro Denver and northeastern Colorado Friday morning, turned a few heads.

I’m designing a photographic history exhibit for a prestigious university. The project requires a series of panels that each depict a different decade, from the 1930s to the present.

Client: “You know, this is all great, but it could use a little more diversity. Right now, there are a lot of photos of all white men, and we don’t want to send the wrong message.”

Me: “Okay, that’s a reasonable request. I could pull some photos of your black student organizations and women’s center and add those to the panels showing the school’s more recent history.”

Client: “Actually, we’d love more diversity in the early panels too.”

Me: “What do you mean?”

Client: “Like this panel depicting the university in the 30s. All the photos are of white men!”

The school did not admit black students until the 1970s.

Amichai Feit had known Seema Jayachandran as a Twitter-famous development economist.  She became Feit’s senior thesis advisor for a policy-analysis project that included economic field research in India.

The New York Post had two articles recently on apparent animal sacrifice in the Jamaica Bay area of Long Island (politically in both Brooklyn and Queens). “Animal Sacrifices on the Rise in Queens with Chickens, Pigs being Tortured in ‘Twisted’ … Continue reading →

velocityconf: @da3mon Sorry! We were just doing some followup with past Velocity attendees. Sorry to intrude. No harm intended. :-(

Math may sometimes seem as if it's comprised of countless meaningless unconnected exercises, but in reality, it's much more. It's figuring out how to do something, and, even better, why something works the way it does. The math you're doing now can open doors for you so that you can answer deep questions yourself about a subject or idea that you're interested in. Give those questions a shot and perhaps someday also help others solve their problems. Five mathematicians (Alexander Diaz-Lopez, Trachette Jackson, Francis Su, Erika Tatiana Camacho, and Deanna Haunsperger) talk about what mathematics means to them.

More schools are trying to shift to some in-person learning for students, but many teachers don’t believe it’s safe.

Maryland may be a model for how states should approach educating students for the workforce of the future, according to a new policy brief.

It’s not the most urgent news story that’s gripped the world since 2020, but it might be the weirdest: The last three years have seen more 400 “encounters”— many reports have used the word “attacks”—between orca whales and boats in the Strait of Gibraltar. Because the orcas are particularly fond of tearing the propellers off of yachts, the temptation to characterize these six-ton, pack-hunting, demonstrably intelligent mammals as class warriors fighting back against the 1 percent is strong, and the memes have been fun (https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/orca-wars-killer-whales-attacking-boats) . But trying to understand animal behavior in human terms is a mistake. In this episode, we speak with Carlyn Kranking (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/author/carlyn-kranking/) , Smithsonian’s assistant digital science editor, about why stories about animal behavior are so popular with our readers, and how she decides which ones deserve more scrutiny. Then, I speak with Lori Marino, a biopsychologist with a specific focus on whale and dolphin intelligence, about what’s really happening between the orcas and the yacht set. Dr. Marino invites you to learn more about The Whale Sanctuary Project at their site (https://whalesanctuaryproject.org/about-the-whale-sanctuary-project/) . You can also see Dr. Marino in the documentary films Blackfish (2013), Unlocking the Cage (2016), and Long Gone Wild (2019). Find prior episodes of our show here (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/podcast/) . And read the transcript of this episode here (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/are-wild-animals-really-just-like-us-180982939/) . There’s More to That (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/podcast) is a production of Smithsonian magazine and PRX Productions. From the magazine, our team is Chris Klimek, Debra Rosenberg and Brian Wolly. From PRX, our team is Jessica Miller, Adriana Rosas Rivera, Genevieve Sponsler, Terence Bernardo, and Edwin Ochoa. The Executive Producer of PRX Productions is Jocelyn Gonzales. Fact-checking by Stephanie Abramson. Episode artwork by Emily Lankiewicz. Music by APM Music.

ARTICLE: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/civil-war-veterans-come-alive-in-audio-and-video-recordings-97841665/ In this exclusive clip from the 1930s, Confederate veterans step up to the mic and let out their version of the fearsome rallying cry.

Czech immigrants brought the pastry to Texas; Autumn Stanford brought them to New York

Last summer, news reports of orcas deliberately tearing the propellers off of yachts in the Strait of Gibraltar thrilled observers who were eager to cast these intelligent and social pack hunters as class warriors striking a blow for the “common mammals” against the one percent. That turned out to be wishful thinking, according to guest Lori Marino, a biopsychologist who studies whale and dolphin intelligence. She told us that these six-ton whales were just having fun—if they wanted to harm the occupants of those boats, we’d know it.  Even so, these encounters are becoming a predictable seasonal occurrence between the months of May and August: A 50-foot charter vessel sank after its hull and rudder were damaged in an orca encounter near the Strait of Gibraltar on May 12. So here again is our episode on the perils of assigning human motives to wild animals, featuring Marino and Smithsonian assistant digital science editor Carlyn Kranking. This episode was originally released in September 2023.   Dr. Marino invites you to learn more about The Whale Sanctuary Project at their site (https://whalesanctuaryproject.org/about-the-whale-sanctuary-project/) . You can also see Dr. Marino in the documentary films Blackfish (2013), Unlocking the Cage (2016), and Long Gone Wild (2019). Find prior episodes of our show here (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/podcast/) . And read the transcript of this episode here (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/are-wild-animals-really-just-like-us-180982939/) . There’s More to That (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/podcast) is a production of Smithsonian magazine and PRX Productions. From the magazine, our team is Chris Klimek, Debra Rosenberg and Brian Wolly. From PRX, our team is Jessica Miller, Adriana Rosas Rivera, Genevieve Sponsler, Rye Dorsey, and Edwin Ochoa. The Executive Producer of PRX Productions is Jocelyn Gonzales. Fact-checking by Stephanie Abramson. Episode artwork by Emily Lankiewicz. Music by APM Music.

A group of young Swiss Christians use small, practical acts of service to share Christ’s love with families in need in Hungary.