Eideard

A proposed constitutional amendment to lift the ban on public funding of religious groups should be ripped from the 2012 ballot because it is “misleading and insufficiently specific,” according to a lawsuit filed by Florida’s largest teachers union…

“This is designed to open the state treasury to voucher schools, but this is not what the ballot summary says,” said Andy Ford, president of the Florida Education Association…

By attacking the ballot summary as “misleading,” the teachers union takes aim at a sensitive issue for the Republican lawmakers, who have watched in recent years as the Florida Supreme Court used that very reason to block a series of constitutional changes from the ballot.

In response to the legal challenges, the GOP-controlled Legislature passed a new law this year requiring the attorney general to fix any ballot titles or summaries a court deems problematic and return it to the ballot within 10 days.

The teachers union is also trying to reverse that law in their suit, saying it violates the separation powers provision in the state Constitution…

The ban on public funding of religious institutions, known as the Blaine Amendment, was cited by the 1st District Court of Appeal in an earlier ruling against the program…

Instead of giving religious institutions the right to public funding in the U.S. Constitution, plaintiffs argue the Florida change would mandate it. Union attorneys, led by Ron Meyer, also argue the ballot summary falsely implies the change is required by the U.S. Constitution.

Meyer also said the ballot title of “religious freedom” is deceptive.

Not that deception is new to political practices either side of the aisle. Historically Democrats have pulled the wool over voters eyes in many cities and states – the usual reason being good old-fashioned graft and corruption.

The New Wave of Republican lies is a lot more ideological. They’d love to return the nation to 19th Century standards of citizenship and practices – including forcing religion down the throats of everyone, official kowtowing to the wants of corporate crowned heads, dismantling any additions to civil rights in the past century – all paid for by taxes destined solely for the backs of ordinary working people.

An ambitious solar energy project on a massive scale is about to get underway in the Arizona desert. EnviroMission is undergoing land acquisition and site-specific engineering to build its first full-scale solar tower – and when we say full-scale, we mean it! The mammoth 800-plus meter (2625 ft) tall tower will instantly become one of the world’s tallest buildings. Its 200-megawatt power generation capacity will reliably feed the grid with enough power for 150,000 US homes, and once it’s built, it can be expected to more or less sit there producing clean, renewable power with virtually no maintenance until it’s more than 80 years old…

Enviromission’s solar tower is a simple idea taken to gigantic proportions. The sun beats down on a large covered greenhouse area at the bottom, warming the air underneath it. Hot air wants to rise, so there’s a central point for it to rush towards and escape; the tower in the middle. And there’s a bunch of turbines at the base of the tower that generate electricity from that natural updraft…

Then, raise that tower up so that it’s hundreds of meters in the air – because for every hundred metres you go up from the surface, the ambient temperature drops by about 1 degree. The greater the temperature differential, the harder the tower sucks up that hot air at the bottom – and the more energy you can generate through the turbines.

The advantages of this kind of power source are clear:

Because it works on temperature differential, not absolute temperature, it works in any weather;

Because the heat of the day warms the ground up so much, it continues working at night;

Because you want large tracts of hot, dry land for best results, you can build it on more or less useless land in the desert;

It requires virtually no maintenance – apart from a bit of turbine servicing now and then, the tower “just works” once it’s going, and lasts as long as its structure stays standing;

The critter is scheduled to start producing power in 2015. If we had a public power company that made it to the 20th Century – if not the 21st – we could do something similar here in New Mexico.

The only people who aren’t likely to get it – are the fracking politicians and bureaucrats who sit in the way of any kind of progress in this nation. And that could have changed by now, too – but, hasn’t.

There is absolutely no doubt that the human condition thrives on challenge. Fresh from creating the world’s cheapest car, the US$2500 Tata Nano, Tata Corporation is now intending to create the world’s cheapest house.

The flat-roofed 20 sq meter house will cost $715, can be built in a week and came about from an aim to deliver a viable package for beneficiaries of the Indira Awaas Yojana shelter rehabilitation scheme in Tata’s native India. The scheme provides Rs 40,000 per house for people below the poverty line, scheduled castes and tribes, freed bonded laborers and ex-servicemen.

If Tata can hit its targets, the scheme will bring much greater access to shelter for millions of Indians. India is world’s second most populous nation with 1.21 billion people and it is growing at such a rate that it is expected to pass China by 2030. It has already surpassed China for the number of people who live in poverty (800 million people).

Utility can be inexpensive – no doubt. And kudos to Tata for trying on the project. Not exactly a corporate profit center.

 
Herbal teas often contain unlisted extra ingredients such as weeds, ferns or bits of tree, according to a study by New York high school students that could help tighten labeling rules.

“A third of the herbal teas had things in them that are not on the label,” Mark Stoeckle, of the Rockefeller University who helped oversee the project…

The students collected dozens of teas and herbal teas and found extra ingredients in some including ferns, grass, parsley, other weeds and even traces of an ornamental tree, Taiwanese cheesewood, they said…

The students said that three of 70 tea products tested and 21 of 60 herbal products contained rogue ingredients not on the labels…

Stoeckle said extra ingredients such as camomile or parsley might be added deliberately to provide flavor or color. Or manufacturers may seek to sell full-looking tea bags and so pad them with filler.

“This is something that manufacturers and regulators could use,” Stoeckle said of the DNA technique for tea. Importers, for instance, could double check if a shipment of dried leaves is really tea.

We used to have a fave herbal tea that we called Monty Python tea because – one of the major ingredients was “The Larch”.

The claim…is one of several assertions made by a former parliamentary official in Italy calling himself ‘Spider Truman’. A Facebook page he set up this week to protest against the lavish privileges enjoyed by Italian MPs – the highest paid in Europe – has attracted more than 350,000 followers.

The claims made in the Facebook page and a related blog have fuelled widespread indignation among Italians that their MPs continue to be handsomely rewarded when the rest of the country is being asked to tighten its belt, amid fears that Italy’s huge public debt and static growth render it vulnerable to a Greek-style meltdown.

The Italian parliament last week passed a 48 billion euro austerity package which hit families hard but failed to erode the privileges enjoyed by MPs, who have an average annual salary of 140,000 euros – nearly twice the amount earned by British MPs.

In his blog, called “The Secrets of the Caste“, Spider Truman claims that some of Italy’s 945 MPs and senators falsely report personal items such as laptop computers stolen and then claim for them through a parliamentary insurance scheme.

He also claimed that members of the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies had sent themselves bogus death threats so that they could request an escort of armed bodyguards…

Italian MPs’ benefits include generous pensions, free flights and train travel and the use of a sports club on the banks of the River Tiber in Rome, complete with a swimming pool and tennis court.

They are entitled to subsidized haircuts from seven barbers working in the parliamentary hairdressers, as well as discounts on health care and complimentary theatre and cinema tickets.

They are chauffeured around in expensive Alfa Romeos and Maseratis with tinted windows, which are escorted by police motorcycle outriders and cut through traffic by attaching flashing blue lights to their roofs…

The issue has spread to other social networking sites, with some Italians comparing the gulf between the ruling classes and ordinary people to that of pre-revolutionary France.

But, then, Berlusconi has been telling the working class of Italy – “Let ‘em eat cake” – for decades. If people are foolish enough to vote in a viagra-fortified fop for his football club, they get what they asked for.

Merton, England, officials declined to say how much it had spent on trying to protect this minute patch of green.

The council also declined to say which officer had take the decision to send a workman – or team of workmen – to hammer in the sign.

“The sign was put up to remind motorists that it is illegal to park on the footway, and is designed to deter indiscriminate parking,” a spokesman said.

Ummm – OK.

A female-only species

Stick insects have lived for one million years without sex, genetic research has revealed.

Scientists in Canada investigated the DNA of Timema stick insects, which live in shrubland around the west coast of the US. They traced the ancient lineages of two species to reveal the insects’ lengthy history of asexual reproduction. The discovery could help researchers understand how life without sex is possible…

Certain species of Timema stick insects were known to reproduce asexually, with females producing young in “virgin births” without the need for egg fertilisation by males. The insects instead produce genetic clones of themselves.

Dr Tanja Schwander and her team set out to test how old these species were, and therefore to find out how long they had reproduced in this way. By analysing the DNA of the insects, scientists were able to trace back their lineages to identify when they became a distinct species. The team discovered that five of the asexual stick insects were “ancient”, dating back more than 500,000 years. Two of them were even older.

“All the evidence points to Timema tahoe and Timema genevievae having persisted for over one million years without sex,” Dr Schwander told BBC Nature. “Our research adds to the growing amount of evidence that asexuality does not always result in the rapid extinction of a lineage,” she said…

Asexuality does bring certain benefits, including rapid population growth. But the repeated cloning of genes through generations is thought to have significant negative consequences too. This replication means that species are less able to adapt to new environments through “shuffling and tweaking” of genes.

Dr Schwander said: “Why Timema asexuals have been able to persist for so long despite all the predicted negative consequences of asexuality is the focus of ongoing studies.”

On the other hand, I know couples where it just feels like a million years since they had sex.

It might not quite have been what Pierre de Coubertin had in mind when he coined the “faster, higher, stronger” motto of the modern Olympics. But the world’s largest fast-food chain is using the Games in London next year as a pretext to break its own records; it has announced plans to open the world’s biggest, and busiest, McDonald’s restaurant on the Stratford site.

Metres from where famous athletes will strain every sinew to win their medals, up to 1,500 people will be able to dine in the biggest McDonald’s yet built. The two-storey, 3,000 sq-metre, diner will be one of four McDonald’s restaurants built in and near the Olympics park in east London. There will be two public eateries, one in the athlete’s village, one in the media centre.

The firm insists there is no discrepancy between the Games’ ideals and its plans to serve 1.75m of its meals during the 29 days of the Olympics and Paralympics…

But its presence is bound to attract protests from those who feel the Games should not be so closely associated with potentially unhealthy food brands.

The London organising committee will say that it relies on its own domestic sponsors, who have raised £700m, and the International Olympic Committee’s 11 backers, to find two-thirds of its £2bn Games budget. The organisers promise a wide range of food available at the Olympics park, including from local suppliers. But it will all have to be unbranded, with only official sponsors afforded the right to have their names on the food they sell.

McDonald’s is expected to use the Games to try to highlight its “corporate social responsibility“. It has been involved in the recruitment of 70,000 Games volunteers and has pledged re-use of the furniture, refrigeration plants and other equipment in its other UK restaurants after the Olympics.

Um, OK. Aside from vegans who would have a tough time convincing muscle-based athletes to give up animal protein, I guess the “local food” crowd will be the focus of opposition.

Though some of the best days I spent living on the cheap in east London relied on animal protein from a dozen different cultures – who offered great street food.

Some of the largest U.S. grocers announced that they would join forces with First Lady Michelle Obama to bring healthy food to parts of the country, urban and rural, where access to fresh groceries is poor.

Walmart, the largest food retailer in the United States, took part in an announcement with the first lady at the White House on Wednesday afternoon. Supervalu and Walgreens are also participating.

All three chains announced plans to open stores in so-called “food desert” parts of the country, where people lack access to grocery stores and their fresh produce and meats. According to data provided by Supervalu, there are more than 23 million people, including more than 6 million children, live in U.S. food deserts…

Such efforts could help Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer, to win favor with city councils and other leaders who object to its efforts to open stores in New York City and other parts of the country…

“The first lady’s efforts in these areas have helped focus our real estate process, to take a particular look at these areas as we build out our real estate plans,” said Leslie Dach, executive vice president of corporate affairs at Walmart.

Supervalu already operates about 400 stores in areas some may consider food deserts, including five recently opened units on the Chicago’s South Side, Chief Executive Craig Herkert told Reuters.

“What’s new for us is committing very publicly with the Partnership for a Healthier America and the first lady to 250″ new stores in food deserts, he said.

Walgreen Co, the nation’s largest drugstore chain, committed to convert or open at least 1,000 “food oasis” stores over the next five years stocked with fruits, vegetables and other healthy fare.

More than 45 percent of Walgreen’s existing stores are in areas that do not have easy access to fresh food, CEO Greg Wasson said in a statement.

Every little bit helps.

Convincing urban poor folks that better food, better nutrition is a benefit will be as big a problem as access to healthier food in the first place. Not just my humble opinion – but, my experience dealing with 2nd or 3rd generation urban poor. That’s a very different culture from poor rural folks moving into cities.

Extremely detailed knock-off Apple retail stores, complete with blue t-shirt-wearing employees claiming to work for the company, have been discovered in China.

According to the blog BirdAbroad, several counterfeit Apple stores have popped up in Kunming, China. One such location featured a winding staircase and employees in t-shirts with Apple logos and name tags.

“The name tags around the necks of the friendly salespeople didn’t actually have names on them – just an Apple logo and the anonymous designation “Staff,”” the report read.

The author called the store “the best ripoff store” she had ever seen, though there were several giveaways, such as the poor quality of the staircase and a sub-par paint job. Also, the stores do not appear to have upgraded to Apple’s Retail 2.0 layout that uses iPads as “smart signs.”

According to her, the employees at the store “all genuinely think they work for Apple.” After store security guards and employees prohibited her from taking photos, the author hinted that she and her husband were “two American Apple employees visiting China and checking out the local stores” and were then allowed to photograph the store.

A world-class “Har”.