Month: October 2007

Mark Foley Revealed

Mark Foley’s Private Life: Politics & Power: vanityfair.com
Everyone knew Mark Foley was gay. Everyone. And everyone who had a stake in his success—party, press, parents, staff, supporters, and pages—conspired for their own purposes to keep the closet half closed.

Born at the peak of the baby boom, in 1954, he grew up near Palm Beach, in the scrappy little town of Lake Worth, Florida, which in recent years has become a popular refuge for gay retirees. That subculture most likely did not enter into the consciousness of his parents, Irish Catholics from Massachusetts.

Londoners commute to see their “Local” doctors

Bloomberg.com: U.K. & Ireland
U.K. businesses lose four times as many hours of productivity to doctor visits than to strikes, said the Confederation of British Industry, the country’s main employer group.

The taxpayer-funded NHS provides health care to all Britons, with no direct payments for doctor consultations or services when they go through their registered general practitioner. The requirement is a legacy from the days when physicians were expected to pay house calls.

However, delays and inconvenience mean U.K. workers spend 3.5 million working days a year traveling to and from NHS family doctor visits, at an annual cost of 1 billion pounds to employers, the CBI says.

And Now For The Good News, from the UN

Clear-Eyed Optimists – WSJ.com
In the late 60’s a group of scientists calling themselves the Club of Rome issued a report called “Limits to Growth.” It explained that lifeboat Earth had become so weighed down with humans that we were running out of food, minerals, forests, water, energy and just about everything else that we need for survival. Paul Ehrlich’s best-selling book “The Population Bomb” (1968) gave England a 50-50 chance of surviving into the 21st century. In 1980, Jimmy Carter released the “Global 2000 Report,” which declared that life on Earth was getting worse in every measurable way.

So imagine how shocked I was to learn, officially, that we’re not doomed after all. A new United Nations report called “State of the Future” concludes: “People around the world are becoming healthier, wealthier, better educated, more peaceful, more connected, and they are living longer.”

Yes, of course, there was the obligatory bad news: Global warming is said to be getting worse and income disparities are widening. But the joyous trends in health and wealth documented in the report indicate a gigantic leap forward for humanity. This is probably the first time you’ve heard any of this because — while the grim “Global 2000” and “Limits to Growth” reports were deemed worthy of headlines across the country — the media mostly ignored the good news and the upbeat predictions of “State of the Future.”

But here they are: World-wide illiteracy rates have fallen by half since 1970 and now stand at an all-time low of 18%. More people live in free countries than ever before. The average human being today will live 50% longer in 2025 than one born in 1955. Continue reading “And Now For The Good News, from the UN”

Coffee: The Generation Gap

Coffee: The Generation Gap
It’s a grind these days for the biggest makers of grocery-store coffee. Procter & Gamble (PG) and Kraft Foods (KFT) are facing sluggish sales for their hallmark Folgers and Maxwell House brews—and the demographics are moving against them. Youngsters drink far less coffee than their baby boomer parents, and, when they do, it’s more likely to be on the go. Only 37% of young adults between 18 to 24 drink coffee, compared with 60% for those between 40 and 59 and 74% for Americans over 60, according to National Coffee Assn. data.

Coffee is still a growing market. Overall consumption rose by 9% a year between 2001 and 2006. The problem for P&G and Kraft is that their supermarket brands no longer cut it with consumers who have gotten hooked on the darker, richer brews from Starbucks, Dunkin’ Donuts, and even McDonald’s (MCD). “Retail coffee is unexciting,” says Robert Goldin, executive vice-president of Chicago food consultancy Technomic.

Marooned Mega-Yacht On The Move

The Associated Press: Yacht Marooned After Fla. Storm to Move
The two sides finally came to an understanding in January — Halmos will have to replant the damaged seagrass at his own expense. But then they had to work out the details of the plan to extricate the boat. And then a diving company had to specially make a pump.

Finally, in mid-September, workers from a salvage company began operating a machine that uses powerful streams of water to cut into the sea bottom in front of the Legacy. A boat hundreds of yards away is using a large winch and two heavy cables to pull the Legacy into deeper water.

The work is said to be going well, though the Legacy is moving only about 10 feet per day. With a total of about 1,300 feet to be covered, the job will take several weeks.

“There’s been some red ink that last couple of years. Luckily, I have enough zeros after my name that I can absorb it,” Halmos said. NYTimes Coverage

Pictures of the Salvage Continue reading “Marooned Mega-Yacht On The Move”

East, West German Shepherds Rivalry

East, West German Dog Breeders Divided | World Latest | Guardian Unlimited
One thing nobody denies is that in the more than four decades of Germany’s division, the dogs did develop different looks: Eastern shepherds are mostly dark gray or black, while the Western dogs have the better-known yellow-and-black appearance.

Schultze, 46, has been breeding shepherds on the eastern outskirts of Berlin for more than 20 years and is convinced that the East German bloodlines are better than those of the West.“Our dogs are healthier and have a better personality,” she said. “Those overbred shepherds in the West are merely about good looks.”

Heiko Grube, a west German shepherd aficionado and the spokesman of the national German Shepherd’s Club, strongly disagrees.“It is absolutely not true that the bloodlines of the East are better,” he said. “After all it was the East Germans who weren’t allowed to leave their country while in the West we had an open market for the fresh blood that’s needed for successful breeding.’

East German breeders get particularly upset when confronted with the widespread assumption that most of their dogs were used at the border to keep citizens from fleeing to the West. “The army and the police only got the scum – the best ones went to dog lovers,” said Werner Dalm, the former government official for shepherd dog breeding in communist East Germany. However, he acknowledged that the East German army asked particularly for those “that could really bite well.”