The National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs (NCAVP) released its report, Hate Violence Against Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer and HIV-Affected Communities in the United States in 2011 on Thursday, and the statistic that jumped out is the rise in anti-LGBT murders, up 11%.
The report also listed policy recommendations to bring these numbers down in the future: Increase funding for LGBTQH anti-violence support and prevention. End police profiling and police violence against LGBTQH communities. End the root causes of anti-LGBTQH violence by reducing poverty against LGBTQH communities and systemic homophobic, biphobic, and transphobic discrimination in laws, policies, employment, public services, and education. End the homophobic, transphobic, and biphobic culture that fuels hate violence. Collect data and expand research on LGBTQH communities particularly data and research on LGBTQH communities’ experiences of violence.
Will anyone listen?
Monitoring stations across the Arctic this spring are measuring more than 400 parts per million of the heat-trapping gas in the atmosphere. The number isn't quite a surprise, because it's been rising at an accelerating pace. Years ago, it passed the 350 ppm mark that many scientists say is the highest safe level for carbon dioxide. It now stands globally at 395. So far, only the Arctic has reached that 400 level, but the rest of the world will follow soon.
So far, only the Arctic has reached that 400 level, but the rest of the world will follow soon.
It's been at least 800,000 years — probably more — since Earth saw carbon dioxide levels in the 400s, Butler and other climate scientists said. Until now.
Until now.
Young illegal immigrants, saying President Obama has done little to diminish the threat of deportations they face despite repeated promises, have started a campaign to press him to use executive powers to allow them to remain legally in the country. The campaign is led by the United We Dream Network, the largest organization of young immigrants here illegally who would be eligible for legal status under a proposal in Congress known as the Dream Act.
The campaign is led by the United We Dream Network, the largest organization of young immigrants here illegally who would be eligible for legal status under a proposal in Congress known as the Dream Act.
To a remarkable degree, the challenges to the Affordable Care Act reflect an effort to codify legal nostalgia as legal doctrine. The opinions of some lower courts striking down the individual mandate, as well as the arguments of the States and private plaintiffs in the Supreme Court urging that result, repeatedly hark back to bygone eras of American jurisprudence. This legal facsimile of reincarnation seeks to revive not just the long discredited doctrines invoked by an ossified Judiciary to thwart the New Deal. It goes back further still, to the dogma of an earlier time when the Judiciary regarded its principal function as the protection of private property, even at the expense of social justice, democratic values, and other individual rights.
The European bailout of 130 billion euros ($163.4 billion) that was supposed to buy time for Greece is mainly servicing only the interest on the country’s debt — while the Greek economy continues to struggle. If that seems to make little sense economically, it has a certain logic in the politics of euro-finance. After all, the money dispensed by the troika — the European Central Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the European Commission — comes from European taxpayers, many of whom are increasingly wary of the political disarray that has afflicted Athens and clouded the future of the euro zone.
If that seems to make little sense economically, it has a certain logic in the politics of euro-finance. After all, the money dispensed by the troika — the European Central Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the European Commission — comes from European taxpayers, many of whom are increasingly wary of the political disarray that has afflicted Athens and clouded the future of the euro zone.
In an elaborate payment system that began after the May 6 election that brought down the Greek government and is meant to ensure that the Greeks do not touch the cash, the big three creditors are now wiring bailout payments to an escrow account in Greece. There the money sits for two or three days — before much of it is sent back to the troika as interest payments on the Greek bonds that Europe accepted under terms of the bailout deal struck in February.
Some major U.S. corporations that support climate science in their public relations materials actively work to derail regulations and laws addressing global warming through lobbying, campaign donations and support of various advocacy groups, according to a new report by the Union of Concerned Scientists, an environmental and scientific integrity group.
It is likely the Sun will be flung into a new region of our galaxy, but our Earth and solar system are in no danger of being destroyed.
The richness of Cézanne’s legacy derives from the complexity of his technique, which combines linear and planar elements with passages of solid modeling and allows the white ground of the canvas to interrupt what is represented on it. This creates a picture space full of shifts and ellipses, especially noticeable in depictions of the human figure, where even small alterations in the shapes and sizes of body parts or facial features are conspicuous. Cézanne’s manner of building his forms with accumulations of small, planar strokes was as much a way of not fully defining objects as it was of depicting them. What results is a tension between the painted surface and what is represented on it. Consequently, Mondrian could write that Cézanne showed how beauty was created not by the objects he represented “but by the relationships of form and color,” while Kandinsky emphasized the content of Cézanne’s paintings, his “gift of seeing the inner life in everything.” The grandeur of Cézanne’s achievement and the tensions that underlay it are superbly exemplified in The Large Bathers, from 1906, which will be a key work in the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s forthcoming exhibition “Gauguin, Cézanne, Matisse: Visions of Arcadia,” on view from June 20 through September 3.
Cézanne’s manner of building his forms with accumulations of small, planar strokes was as much a way of not fully defining objects as it was of depicting them. What results is a tension between the painted surface and what is represented on it. Consequently, Mondrian could write that Cézanne showed how beauty was created not by the objects he represented “but by the relationships of form and color,” while Kandinsky emphasized the content of Cézanne’s paintings, his “gift of seeing the inner life in everything.”
The grandeur of Cézanne’s achievement and the tensions that underlay it are superbly exemplified in The Large Bathers, from 1906, which will be a key work in the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s forthcoming exhibition “Gauguin, Cézanne, Matisse: Visions of Arcadia,” on view from June 20 through September 3.
From Peterson's "Guide" and Carson's "Silent Spring" a movement was born: environmentalism. It grew out of a new set of relationships between Homo sapiens and nature. Peterson invited the public to care enough about birds to identify them and, by extension, to identify with them. Carson showed that in caring about the fate of another species we were implicitly protecting our own fate as a species. The "Life List" that is kept by most birders acquired a double meaning: It names every live species seen in a person's lifetime.
Some lawmakers will go to great lengths to deny the reality of climate change. But this week, North Carolina lawmakers reached new heights of denial, proposing a new law that would require estimates of sea level rise to be based only on historical data—not on all the evidence that demonstrates that the seas are rising much faster now thanks to global warming. The sea level along the coast of North Carolina is expected to rise about a meter by the end of the century. But business interests in the state are worried that grim projections that account for climate-induced sea level rise will make it harder for them to develop along the coast line. So policymakers in the state plan to deal with that issue by writing a law requiring inaccurate projections.
The sea level along the coast of North Carolina is expected to rise about a meter by the end of the century. But business interests in the state are worried that grim projections that account for climate-induced sea level rise will make it harder for them to develop along the coast line. So policymakers in the state plan to deal with that issue by writing a law requiring inaccurate projections.
North Carolina legislators have decided that the way to make exponential increases in sea level rise – caused by those inconvenient feedback loops we keep hearing about from scientists – go away is to make it against the law to extrapolate exponential; we can only extrapolate along a line predicted by previous sea level rises. Which, yes, is exactly like saying, do not predict tomorrow’s weather based on radar images of a hurricane swirling offshore, moving west towards us with 60-mph winds and ten inches of rain. Predict the weather based on the last two weeks of fair weather with gentle breezes towards the east. Don’t use radar and barometers; use the Farmer’s Almanac and what grandpa remembers.
Which, yes, is exactly like saying, do not predict tomorrow’s weather based on radar images of a hurricane swirling offshore, moving west towards us with 60-mph winds and ten inches of rain. Predict the weather based on the last two weeks of fair weather with gentle breezes towards the east. Don’t use radar and barometers; use the Farmer’s Almanac and what grandpa remembers.