New Yorkers Aren't As Quick As They Think They Are

Growing up in Los Angeles, people always thought it was strange that I walked so fast. Their curiosity was also piqued when I wanted to walk to specific destinations as opposed to driving. Naturally I found it not surprising that I wound up in New York, where everyone else walks quickly. However, I found this recent study that examined the quickest walkers in the world and was definitely disappointed by the results.

From The Empire Zone:

Positing that walking is a physical measure of urban frenzy, a University of Hertfordshire researcher released a study that found that New Yorkers ranked far down on a list of quick-steppers around the world.

In a sample of 32 cities, New York ranked 8th.

Its residents, on average, took 12 seconds to cover 60 feet, or some 3.4 miles per hour. (Michael Johnson’s world record for the 200-meter dash is equivalent to 23 miles per hour.)

But, in what some are taking as a blow to hometown pride, the Hertfordshire study of “the pace of life” found that the residents of Berlin; Curitiba (a city of 3 million in Brazil); Dublin; Guangzhou (formerly Canton, a city of 6 million in China); Madrid; and Copenhagen all out-hustled New York.

I personally don't like this study. Perhaps there are misconceptions out there about certain cities if they are slow or fast, but I know NYC is definitely a quick-footed town. I think the study needs to differentiate between locals and tourists. Myself and many other New Yorkers constantly have to side-step the throngs of visitors strolling along with their subway maps and frequent standstills in order to have their picture taken in front of some famous building. Don't get me wrong, I am fully in favor of letting our guests soak it all in, but if you are going to do a study on this, make sure your subjects look like they are walking somewhere with a purpose.

Nuns Pose Security Threat To Walmart

A feeling of danger usually isn't the first thing that comes to me when I see a group of nuns. If you an evil corporate giant and happen to be called Wal-Mart, well then that is an entirely different matter. The Boerne nuns in the Hill country of Texas having been speaking out and demanding better treatment of Wal-Mart employees for a long time now. Apparently Wal-Mart became afraid of their activities and decided to put surveillance on the sisters.

From The San Antonio Express-News:

Sister Susan Mika is part of the Benedectine Sisters, which is part of the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility. The center has been questioning Wal-Mart's business practices for years.

"We've been raising questions with them for about 17 years, so it's not like they don't know it," Sister Mika said.

Now, the sisters find themselves on Wal-Mart's security threat list. Sister Mika said the group has been wrongly labeled.

"In no way have we ever been a threat to the company in that sense. We might be a threat in the kind of question that we're asking, but not a security threat," Sister Mika said.

What Wal-Mart is afraid of is a church-related group exposing their many sins against hundreds of thousands of citizens they employ and society as a whole. They are guilty of paying unfair wages, strong-arming suppliers, treating their workers like garbage and now insulting a nice group of nuns. The Sisters' want an apology and they deserve one. After they get around to that they should start apologizing to the whole damn country for what their greed has done.

Debating Immigration

Current TV nails it when bringing up the hotly contested issue of immigration. Lest all those minutemen forget who immigrated here first, they better watch this:

MPEACHW

Liberals tend to be a creative bunch, whether it is in the arts, science or coming up with interesting license plates. Heather Moriah chose the latter to express herself and add that personal touch to her Prius that she drives around Rapid City, S.D. She wanted to match her partner's IMPCH-W plates. While she generally got good responses, one person got so offended that they contacted the DMV. Now they are taking away her plates for requesting an 'offensive' license plate.

From The Rapid City Journal:

Division of Motor Vehicles director Deb Hillmer said Thursday that the law clearly gives the state authority to recall the plates and have them forcibly removed if necessary. And although only one person complained about Moriah’s political statement, that’s all it takes to recall a set of vanity plates, Hillmer said.

“I’m following the letter of the law,” she said. “It’s offensive to someone and not in good taste and decency. And the plates are the property of the state of South Dakota.”

State law declares motor vehicle licenses plates to be the property of the state as long as the plates are valid. The law also allows personalized plates with as many as seven letters for an extra $25 fee. But it gives DMV officials the right to refuse to issue “any letter combination which carries connotations offensive to good taste and decency.”

Hillmer may be 'following' the law but if there is something on the books that allows one person to complain about a license plate and it is automatically taken away, thats a problem. There should be some sort of review to check if people don't just have an angry neighbor or someone that disagrees with your political views. South Dakota's law is in violation of the First Amendment and should be striken down or revised.

Racism On The Rails In NYC

The legacy of racism runs deep in this country, from its founding until now. Of course it's symptoms have become more subtle nowadays, nevertheless it still exists. Even here in liberal New York City the problem exists and it shows on the trains and buses, at least when it comes to the police force that keeps the peace for the MTA.

From WCBS TV:

The plaintiffs -- current and former detectives, officers and sergeants -- said the MTA permits its supervisors to exercise "unbridled discretion to deny African Americans and Hispanics opportunities for career advancement and equal earning opportunities while allowing for them to create a racially charged and hostile work environment."

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, asked for an order banning the MTA from discriminatory actions along with $8 million in damages.

The lawsuit said the plaintiffs in the lawsuit were subjected to blatant racist statements including the use of a racial epithet against blacks.

"The MTA Police Department is permeated with discriminatory intimidation, ridicule and insult whereby supervisors disparage the abilities of African-American and Hispanic officers and cause them to feel as though they are continually at risk of disciplinary action," the lawsuit said.

The lawsuit also accuses supervisors of discriminate treatment for non-whites including intense scrutiny of all their actions as opposed to relaxed supervising of white officers. When confronted about the problem by the officers, the plantiffs allege that the MTA threatened them by withholding promotions, assigning menial tasks and other denigrating activities.

Goin' Down To Baghdad

Antiwar Protest song by the Spicewood Seven of Austin, Texas; Music Video by famed italian post-realist director Antonio Zapanini.

McCain Still Swimming In The Deep End: Panders To Homophobes

John McCain is truly pathetic. As he tries desperately to move back up in the polls, he continues to reach new depths of stupidity, ignorance and playing to wing-nut fears. This time he echoed a right wing talking point that bashes gays that serve in the military. Most members of the armed forces are comfortable serving with men and women with a different sexual orientation, but that doesn't stop McCain and the religious right.

From the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network:

In an April 16 letter to Servicemembers Legal Defense Network (SLDN), McCain says the law, passed in 1993, “unambiguously maintains that open homosexuality within the military services presents an intolerable risk to morale, cohesion and discipline.” Senator McCain goes on to incorrectly assert that the U.S. Supreme Court “has ruled that the military may constitutionally discharge a service member for overt homosexual behavior.” […]

“Most importantly, the national security of the United States, not to mention the lives of our men and women in uniform, are put at grave risk by policies detrimental to the good order and discipline which so distinguish America’s Armed Services.”

McCain has his facts all wrong while trying to make the spin sounds just right for his targeted audience. That Supreme Court ruling doesn't exist, no one really cares outside of wingnutopia about gays serving in the military and most importantly, it is hateful policies like "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" that hurts our mission and makes the military less capable. Kicking out Arabic translators because of their sexual orientation is mean-spirited and childish, not to mention stupid as we are fighting so much in countries where they speak Arabic. I hope McCain keeps falling in all the polls, along with any Republican that thinks like he does.

The NRA Goes Too Far, And Then Some

The NRA is an interesting organization. It raises tons of money to lobby for gun rights and all things related to the second amendment. The right for people to keep and bear arms is the essential part of the text for them. Organized militias are a thing of the past and are generally frowned upon, except in certain rural areas of the country. The NRA loves to come out and lobby for guns and their owners, particularly at terrible times that relate to murder. The current example would be the massacre at Virginia Tech.

Well a few days ago Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) introduced the "Denying Firearms and Explosives to Dangerous Terrorists Act of 2007." This bill gives the Justice Department the authority to restrict gun sales to known terrorists. The Bush Administration and particularly Alberto Gonzales greedily gobbled up the potential power and is backing the bill. The problem for the Administration is that their backers over at the NRA are appalled at losing even a little bit of their gun rights, even for the terrorists that share their love of guns.

Throughout the whole U.S. Attorney scandal, most of these people stayed silent as Gonzales' remained steadfast in his denial that he did anything wrong when he let eight attorneys be fired for political purposes. Now that he is backing S.1237, they are calling for his head. Well at least the gun nuts and the left can agree on the fact that Gonzales should be canned. Too bad for them that our reasoning is on more solid moral ground. Letting terrorists buy guns due to loopholes in the law isn't really the best thing for the security of our nation, something the NRA doesn't seem to care about.

Rachel Maddow's Campaign Asylum

Watch your step as you enter, Rachel talks about Republicans' unholy worship of Ronald Reagan. It's scary stuff:

GOP Hates Senior Citizens And The Troops Too

One reason that Republicans claimed that they did not like the Hate Crimes bill was that senior citizens and members of the Armed Forces were not added to the list. For two days they went on and on about the issue. So what did the Dems do? John Conyers led the way for the bill and responded to the GOP's demands. He said it wasn't a problem. So did the Republicans cheer for the bipartisan compromise?

From AmericaBlog:

The Republicans have been railing for days about how this legislation doesn't cover our Armed Forces and senior citizens, and now that the Dems offer to put our Armed Forces and seniors in this legislation, the Republicans said no and affirmatively stopped the Democrats from doing it anyway.

That means the Republicans had no intent on helping our Armed Forces and seniors, on protecting them. It was just a stunt. The GOP leaders in Congress just got up and used our Armed Forces and seniors as political fodder when they had no intent on actually doing anything to help our Armed Forces and seniors.

Well of course it didn't matter to them. Republicans don't actually care about helping the troops or our seniors. The reality is that to the right, using people for their own ideological ends is standard operating procedure. And sure enough, when the Democrats called them on it, Republicans showed their true colors. The bill passed anyways, with some Republican votes as well, 237 to 180. Yet the President will most likely veto this, as a nice little present to his extreme ideological base.

Evacuating Australia

Climate change is affecting the entire planet, from severe snowstorms in Colorado, the melting Alps and Arctic Sea, excessive heat in Europe this spring and now the massive drought in Australia. The land down under is being hit particularly hard because of the severe lack of water across the continent. In fact, things are getting so bad, that entire towns are now being considered for evacuation.

From The Courier Mail:

TWO towns on Queensland's Darling Downs face evacuation because they have almost run out of water and cannot afford to indefinitely cart supplies.

Senior state bureaucrats have discussed the possibility of moving residents from Leyburn, population 200, and Killarney, home to 1500 people.

One of Leyburn's two bores has run dry and there are fears the other could follow.

It is costing $8000 a week to cart water to Killarney, which is at the source of the Murray Darling river system.

These are just two small towns in the eastern Australian state of course. Yet the drought is affecting the entire country. Imagine what would happen if the situation got so dire that major international cities like Brisbane or Sydney would have to be evacuated. Would you move the population nearby to Eastern Asia? Or to cold and rainy Canada? Things are getting so crazy down there over water that weathermen are turning to the aborigines for predictions and dirty car owners are finding nude car washes.

People, climate change is serious business. This is just one example of the many changes forced upon human life that is the result of human life and waste. We must change our way of life and live more in harmony with the planet. If we don't, there will be bigger evacuations, as the seas rise and swallow islands, eventually many more places will be submerged. Eventually, there will be no place to turn.

George Tenet And Ron Jeremy Have Something In Common

Usually those two names never go in the same sentence but apparently the two know each other quite well. Before Tenet became a tool for the Bush Administration and Ron Jeremy wasn't using his tool as much, the two went to Cardozo High School here in New York City.

Tucker took the time to play this tidbit on his MSNBC show: