All posts by nedhamson

Activist, writer, researcher, addicted to sharing information and facts.

Second Oarfish In A Week Washes Ashore : LAist

An oceanic canary in the mine? Something needs investigating!

For the second time in a week, a rare serpentine oarfish has surfaced on a Southern California beach, NBC reports.

The one found Friday afternoon at Oceanside Harbor wasn\’t quite as large as the 18-foot behemoth found near Catalina Island. This one was only 13-and-a-half feet long. It weighed an estimated 200 pounds and took 15 people to carry.

That is actually quite small for an oarfish. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, it\’s the largest bony fish in the sea and can grow to more than 50 feet long.

via Second Oarfish In A Week Washes Ashore : LAist.

6-Year-Old Newtown Victim Saved Classmates By Telling Them To Run: Gothamist

Jesse Lewis, 6, was a student in 27-year-old Victoria Soto\’s first-grade class, and though Jesse, Soto and a number of other students in the class were killed, 11 of his classmates survived. Some of those children told investigators they were huddled in a corner holding hands while Lanza was shooting, out of his line of fire; when Lanza\’s gun jammed for a second, he stopped firing, and Jesse yelled at them to run. Six students ran to safety. \”He yelled, ‘Run!’ ” Jesse\’s mother, Scarlett Lewis, told The Associated Press. “Adam reloaded and shot him in the head.”

via 6-Year-Old Newtown Victim Saved Classmates By Telling Them To Run: Gothamist.

Roma teens deportation was right, says French minister – FRANCE – FRANCE 24

Roma teens deportation was right, says French minister – FRANCE – FRANCE 24.

Interior Minister Manuel Valls told French media Sunday that he has no regrets about the way a 15-year old girl of Roma gypsy origin and her family were rounded up and deported, after widespread criticism in the media and from his own political party.

“We should be proud of what we are doing, rather than feeling sorry for ourselves,” Valls, a Socialist, told the Journal de Dimanche weekly in an interview published on Sunday.

He should be fired!

Can We Get Over Beirut Being Among The World’s Best Cities?

Too much of the historical city has been lost to modern boxes that are just tall/

A Separate State of Mind | A Blog by Elie Fares

20131019-190524.jpg

I’ve debated whether to write this or not. Then whether to publish it or not. Then I figured, screw it.

I am a proud Lebanese. And it’s because I like my country that I can’t sit aside and pretend that fake accolades mean more than they are, that void accomplishments are fuller than they actually are.

Beirut isn’t a bad city, sure. It’s perhaps the best city that we have given that our centralization policies have put everything only in and around it. But, forgive the bluntness, there’s no freaking way in hell Beirut can find itself on a world’s best cities list. Unless the person doing that list was high on some Bekaai hashish.

Beirut recently found itself to be on a list of the world’s top 25 cities, courtesy of CN Traveler. Those same people, for those who remember, voted Byblos as the city in the region…

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hue-photo-challenge/ #photography #poetry

penned in moon dust

 

Dawn rises

blue fire in your eyes

warmth of spring

brushes against your skin

Sun sets

golden-red burnishing your heart

cooled only by love

the heart to hold within

This week’s Word Press Photography Challenge is Hue and what are the colors that define us. What colors define you? I’m a combination of the sun and the sea so cool blues and warm reds and oranges (a Gemini always two sided)

A colorful and talented bunch of folks here:

  1. Weekly Photo Challenge: The Hue of You | Chicomallorca’s Blog
  2. Weekly Photo Challenge: The Hue of You | This, that and the other thing
  3. Weekly Photo Challenge: The Hue of You | Flickr Comments
  4. Weekly photo challenge: The Hue of you | Something more to think about
  5. Weekly Photo Challenge: The hue of you | So where’s the snow?
  6. Weekly Photo Challenge: The Hue of You | The Ambitious Drifter

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Over half a million pensioners dead and the Tories have gone from long johns to jumpers

Heartless? No; this is beyond heartless – murder he says!

Pride's Purge

(no, not satire – it’s the Tories!)

In about 1987, Tory health minister Edwina Currie ‘advised’ elderly people who couldn’t afford to heat their homes properly that they should avoid hypothermia by wearing woolly hats and long johns.

And now, over 25 years later, the Tories are making exactly the same mistake – this time ‘advising’ elderly people who can’t afford to heat their homes properly that they should avoid hypothermia by wearing jumpers.

This ‘advice’ unsurprisingly isn’t working because Age UK estimate that as many as 200 old people die every day in the UK from cold during the winter. That’s around 24,000 old people dying of cold every year because they don’t have enough money to keep themselves warm.

Which means during the 25 years it’s taken the Tories to go from woolly hats and long johns under the Thatcher government to jumpers under David Cameron’s…

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Over half a million pensioners dead and the Tories have gone from long johns to jumpers | Pride’s Purge

Tories are making exactly the same mistake – this time ‘advising’ elderly people who can’t afford to heat their homes properly that they should avoid hypothermia by wearing jumpers.

This ‘advice’ unsurprisingly isn’t working because Age UK estimate that as many as 200 old people die every day in the UK from cold during the winter. That’s around 24,000 old people dying of cold every year because they don’t have enough money to keep themselves warm.

Which means during the 25 years it’s taken the Tories to go from woolly hats and long johns under the Thatcher government to jumpers under David Cameron’s – well over half a million old people have died from the cold in the UK.

via Over half a million pensioners dead and the Tories have gone from long johns to jumpers | Pride’s Purge.