News
Friday, May 25, 2012
News East River Ferry More Than Doubling The Size Of Its Boats, Adding Snacks
Posted by Sydney Brownstone on Fri, May 25, 2012 at 1:09 PM
From the New York Times:
News 6 Reasons to Stay in NYC This Memorial Day Weekend
Posted by Cathy Erway on Fri, May 25, 2012 at 12:17 PM
Thinking of hitting the road this weekend? We've got news for you: it's a lot quieter, calmer, and generally more pleasant staying in this city than the highway. But if you're looking for more fun ways to celebrate the start of summer than throwing your own barbecue, here are a few clues. Enjoy the mild weather and slow pace while it lasts!
News Brooklyn High Schoolers Dream Of A Newtown Creek With Ziplines
Posted by Sydney Brownstone on Fri, May 25, 2012 at 9:49 AM
Not only did the students of the city's Architecture Construction Engineering mentoring program dream of ziplines, but a massive ferris wheel, baseball fields, a boardwalk, and an amphitheater to boot, reports the Brooklyn Paper. The plan earned an honorable mention in the Construction Industry Roundtable’s national design competition, presumably for fresh, new hope in the face of sewage overflows, oil slicks and carcinogenic sediment. Plausible or not, we think it's great to think in these optimistic terms. Go big or go home, right?
Thursday, May 24, 2012
Art / News Dump Educators, Dump Education, Duh
Posted by Paul D'Agostino on Thu, May 24, 2012 at 4:43 PM
Some museums are known for vast collections. Some are known for rarefied and priceless collections. Some are known for both.
Others might be known for variable period-specific holdings, curatorial integrity, visitor-friendliness, impressive architectural design, lush layout of grounds, perhaps even strangely intelligent placement of parking lots.
And then there's the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, which is somewhat well known for all such things. What's more, it's also long been well known for its educational program employing many highly skilled museum docents—and ostensibly decently paid ones—tasked with providing enriching tours for visitors.
Yet now this latter feature of the museum, according to Hyperallergic and the LA Times, has seen the keen side of the axe of payroll-slimming pecuniary scrutiny. The educational staff will keep only 32 of its 51 employees, and the teaching staff will drop from 17 docents to 5, all of which should save the museum just over $4 million of its annual budget. Meanwhile, other branches of the museum's payroll haven't been touched much at all, and the monies saved are earmarked for acquisitions.
News Bloomberg Isn't The Only One With A Helicopter Problem
Posted by Sydney Brownstone on Thu, May 24, 2012 at 12:44 PM
The Guardian's Duncan Clark reports:
The giant sash windows of Oxford's spectacular Radcliffe Observatory were designed to provide astronomers the best possible view of the starry heavens. But on Monday I found myself using them to scour the skies for something altogether less likely: a helicopter carrying rap superstar Will.i.am to the university to discuss, of all things, distributed climate change modelling.
News With Spring, a New Sex Assault in South Slope
Posted by Henry Stewart on Thu, May 24, 2012 at 9:50 AM
The paper doesn't have the whole story, but early reports indicate that neighbors responded to the victim's screaming, caught the perpetrator, and detained him until police arrived. "It is rumored that responding officers let the suspect go and failed to take witness statements," the paper reports—a distressing echo of last year, when police were widely criticized for failing to respond seriously to the attacks.
Wednesday, May 23, 2012
News Anonymous Internet Commenters Are Pissing Off New York Politicians
Posted by Sydney Brownstone on Wed, May 23, 2012 at 12:50 PM
But the effort is real, and, apparently, it all comes down to a matter of cyberbullying. "Victims of anonymous cyberbullies need protection," State Senator Tom O' Mara, a sponsor of the Senate bill, said in a press conference. "We're hopeful that this legislation can be helpful to the overall effort to deter and prevent anonymous criminals from hiding behind modern technology and using the Internet to bully, defame and harass their victims."
News Brooklyn Led City in Murders in 2011
Posted by Henry Stewart on Wed, May 23, 2012 at 9:49 AM
Tuesday, May 22, 2012
News New York City's Hudson River Gas Pipeline Has Been Approved
Posted by Sydney Brownstone on Tue, May 22, 2012 at 3:41 PM
- saneenergyproject.org
- Map of the pipeline route.
Though the commission ruled that building the pipeline under a densely populated area shouldn't pose significant environmental threats, critics of the endeavor have been wary of things like explosions, contamination of the water supply, as well as noise from construction.
News Bei Bei Shuai, Imprisoned For Attempting Suicide While Pregnant, Finally Released
Posted by Audrey Ference on Tue, May 22, 2012 at 2:20 PM
In December 2010 Shuai was running a Chinese restaurant in Indianapolis with her boyfriend, Zhiliang Guan, by whom she was eight months pregnant. Just before Christmas, he informed her that he was married and had another family, to which he was returning. When Shuai begged him to stay, he threw money at her and left her weeping on her knees in a parking lot. [The Nation]
Luckily, she survived. Unfortunately, her fetus did not:
Although Ms. Shuai did everything she could, including undergoing cesarean surgery, to ensure that her baby survived, her newborn died shortly after birth.Ms. Shuai was arrested for the crime of murder (defined to include viable fetuses) and feticide (defined to include ending a human pregnancy at any stage). The sentence for murder can be the death penalty or 45 years-to-life. The sentence for attempted feticide is up to 20 years. Both of these kinds of laws are promoted and supported by “pro-life” organizations. [Change.org]
Today, after spending more than a year in jail, she was finally released. We value the lives of women so little that we criminalize any mental illness that endangers their roles as baby incubators. Under Indiana law, she was facing 45-65 years in jail. The law that put her away is still on the books, and pro-lifers want more of them. Women who miscarry can be subject to police investigation. It's getting very, very scary out there.
I guess if you consider losing your partner, child, and spending only a year in jail for it a happy ending, then Bei Bei Shaui deserves congratulations. I think she deserves an apology, and I hope she's able to heal from all of this. Let's hope the next woman who has something awful happen to her is as "lucky."
News Joffrey Ballet To Begin Residency At Bay Ridge High School
Posted by Sydney Brownstone on Tue, May 22, 2012 at 1:19 PM
According to the Daily News, the idea was conceived at a barber shop, while the husband of one of the school's finance teachers was touching up the Joffrey director's, Gail D'Addario's, highlights.
Monday, May 21, 2012
News Artist Arrested for Bedford Avenue Bomb Scare
Posted by Henry Stewart on Mon, May 21, 2012 at 10:43 AM
News New York City's 1 Percent Takes In A Third Of The Personal Income Pie, Study Finds
Posted by Sydney Brownstone on Mon, May 21, 2012 at 8:59 AM
“There is some evidence of the kind of common worry that New York has a weak middle,” said Frank Braconi, chief economist in the comptroller’s office.The report analyzed tax filings by city residents for income earned from 2000 through 2009, the most recent data available, and compared them with the national numbers. All of the numbers were adjusted for inflation. [NYT]
Friday, May 18, 2012
News Watch: Three Wiggly, Adorable Baby Otters Born At Prospect Park Zoo
Posted by Sydney Brownstone on Fri, May 18, 2012 at 2:23 PM
Happy Friday, everybody. Video of the three baby river otters born at the Prospect Park Zoo (the first batch in more than 50 years) has finally arrived. Parents Dixie (3-year-old mama otter) and Oogie (10-year-old papa otter) must be very proud. There's not really much more to say here other than the gibberish a person usually says to a computer screen full of playful furry things rolling around and nuzzling each other. Dawww. Bawww. Schooooookyooootohmigod bawwww. Enjoy.
[via DNAinfo]
Thursday, May 17, 2012
News Brooklyn Brewery Weighs In On Fracking, Brings Up Very Good Point
Posted by Sydney Brownstone on Thu, May 17, 2012 at 9:02 AM
"We need good water to make beer," Hindy said in a video, produced by Climate Desk, below. The idea that we could ruin our drinking water system through fracking, he added, was criminal. "You can't brew out benzene," Mackenzie Schoonmaker, attorney for water quality watchdog Riverkeeper, also said.
Wednesday, May 16, 2012
News Judge Grants Stop-and-Frisk Lawsuit Class Action Status
Posted by Audrey Ference on Wed, May 16, 2012 at 1:11 PM
Judge Shira A. Scheindlin of Federal District Court in Manhattan wrote in her ruling on Wednesday that the evidence presented to her showed that the Police Department had a centralized policy that had led to a vast number of illegal stops.Judge Scheindlin said that the evidence also showed that the department had a “policy of establishing performance standards and demanding increased levels of stops and frisks” that has led to an exponential growth in the number of stops. [City Room]
Last year, there were more black men ages 14 to 24 stopped than there are black men in that age group in the entire city. Which means lots of people are being stopped very frequently. Though police sources defend stop and frisk because they credit it with bringing down the murder rate in the city (a dubious claim that would be pretty difficult to actually substantiate with facts), it doesn't really matter, because nobody's civil rights should be violated in the name of crime reduction. That's kind of the point of having civil rights!
Anti-stop-and-frisk campaigners are holding a silent march on June 17—Fathers' Day—to protest the policy.
Tuesday, May 15, 2012
News 57 Times Reporters Petition Sulzberger Over Layoff Of Lawyer George Freeman
Posted by Sydney Brownstone on Tue, May 15, 2012 at 10:38 AM
Read the letter below.
Monday, May 14, 2012
News Explaining The Complicated "States' Rights" Same-Sex Marriage Issue
Posted by Audrey Ference on Mon, May 14, 2012 at 4:14 PM
What would de-federalizing marriage law do? It will make it possible for same-sex marrieds to be treated not just as married in their home states, but also in the United States. That's what would happen if DOMA is either repealed by Congress — and Obama openly supports the Respect for Marriage Act, which would do just that — or is knocked down by the federal courts, as a number of lawsuits are seeking — and, again, which the Obama Justice Department also actively supports. Let us be 100 percent clear on this point: The administration is refusing to defend DOMA in court, and is filing briefs supporting the same-sex couples' stands. When marriage law is de-federalized, returned to the states, then mixed-nationality couples will be free to marry in the six (and expanding) states that now marry same-sex couples — and the federal government will have to recognize that marriage for the purpose of the foreign-born partner's immigration status.Will other states have to recognize those marriages as well? That's the open question: the lawyers tell me that full faith and credit doesn't necessarily apply if another jurisdiction's marriage law violates that state's public policy. Would it be valid for a couple living in Texas to go to Connecticut or Iowa specifically to evade their home state's marriage laws? Obama hasn't weighed in on that yet. And thank God — if supporters of marriage equality want to win, it's better to keep that question from being called up for public debate just yet, and better to keep Obama out of polarizing the debate. But given the administration's record, my guess is that an Obama Department of Homeland Security and an Obama Justice Department would be on the right side of that legal question. It's equally clear that a Romney administration would not. When Romney was my state's governor, he put his administration to work unearthing and enforcing a 1913 law that refused Massachusetts marriage licenses to anyone from states where that particular marriage would not have been performed — a law written to prevent out-of-state mixed-race couples from marrying in Massachusetts if they couldn't marry back home.
[What Straight Allies Need to Understand About Gay Marriage and States' Rights]
There's more—so much more! And it is very helpful in explaining a lot of the legal intricacies of marriage law and how the piece fit together between states and federal that non-lawyer dummies like me don't really get at first glance. Get your vitamin longreads for the day.
News Wait, What?! Kodak Had a Nuclear Reactor in the Basement
Posted by Audrey Ference on Mon, May 14, 2012 at 12:41 PM
Although the reactor was not a secret, it was unclear if Kodak informed police and fire departments of its existence. Local authorities were also unaware of its existence.The reactor contained more than 3lbs of highly enriched uranium — the same material used to construct nuclear weapons. The uranium was removed in November 2007 in protective containers, the report said.
Company spokesman Christopher Veronda said he could find no record that Kodak ever publicly announced the reactor.
[NY Post]
I know there is a "nuke the fridge" joke in here somewhere, but I don't really feel like doing the math.
News The Trees Are Trying to Kill You
Posted by Audrey Ference on Mon, May 14, 2012 at 11:21 AM
Tree-care experts say the testimony and records raise broad safety questions nationally. Preventive care of urban trees has been a budget casualty from Philadelphia to Chicago to San Jose. “It’s a problem here and everywhere,” said Douglas Still, the chief city forester in Providence, R.I. “Pruning programs are being cut, not increased.”
I must congratulate chief city forester Still for not giving into the temptation to pun.
