Otis Redding:
Month: April 2015
See how we are
X:
Happy Hour: Charles Mingus – Fables of Faubus…
https://youtu.be/l24FZCmtY0Q
Good news in Philly
OOPS! APRIL FOOLS, I GOT PUNKED!
We had a surprise Republican win in a local win in a special election, but the Dems have recovered the ball:
Throughout the campaign, Martina White picked up dozens of important labor endorsements, and in a press release issued on April 1, she stated that she will caucus with the Democratic Party over the next two years, and will then run as a Democrat. This move will help the struggling House Democratic Campaign Committee save money that would have been needed in other key primary primaries and local elections.
Panhandle Slim… Art for Folk…
R.I.P. Cynthia Lennon
Student debt strike
This is what it will take to stop these crooked schools. Just refuse to pay them! They’re crooks, they lie to the students and they get rich doing so. Why should they profit from fraud?
A group of students refusing to pay off loans they took out to attend a now-maligned for-profit college has ballooned from 15 to more than 100 over the last several weeks.
The group, initially dubbed the Corinthian 15, sent a letter to the Department of Education last month, saying they would stop paying the federal student loans they took out to pay to attend various outposts of Corinthian Colleges, a chain of for-profit colleges. Under a deal with Department of Education last year, the company agreed to shut down or sell its schools last year amid allegations the company lured students by advertising dubious job prospects and career services.
The CFPB reached an agreement last month to help Corinthian borrowers get rid of their private debt. That deal, with ECMC Group, which now owns many former Corinthian schools, forgives $480 million for students who took out private loans from Corinthian College that the CFPB describes as “high cost.” According to the CFPB, the loans had interest rates that were typically much higher than their federal counterparts and were often for tuition costs that were more expensive than comparable programs.
Those borrowers covered by the deal will see an immediate 40% drop in their outstanding private student loan debt. Politicians and activists are pressuring the Department of Education to wipe away former Corinthian students’ federal loan debt.
The protesters, part of an Occupy-backed movement called the Debt Collective, have chosen a different route, by simply refusing to pay. And they seem to be attracting attention, in addition to bolstering their ranks. The group is meeting with the CFPB and at least one official from the Department of Education this week.
“This is a historic strike,” Ann Larson, a director of the Debt Collective and one of the organizers of the Corinthian Collective, the group’s pilot initiative, said in an interview on a train Sunday en route to Washington for the meetings. “Officials in Washington recognize that.”
Hundreds of students reached out to the Debt Collective after it first announced the Corinthian campaign last month looking to take part, Larson said. Each interested student was vetted by volunteers and told some of the possible consequences of participating, including garnishing tax refunds, wages, Social Security and a ding to their credit score. In the end some chose not to take part, Larson said.
Many of those who expressed interest are already in default, meaning they’re at risk of suffering these consequences. Larson added that the group is still getting in touch with the students who want to be strikers, indicating that the group will likely continue to grow.
In addition to the strikes, the group is launching a legal strategy. Former Corinthian students and activists plan to submit Defense to Repayment claims on the steps of the Education Department on Tuesday. This legal appeal asks the Education Department to discharge on the basis that the school engaged in wrongdoing.
The Lower Moreland Chainsaw Massacre
We don’t yet know the story behind this, but I’m glad I don’t live near it:
LOWER MORELAND, Pa. (WPVI) — Police are investigating a grisly discovery at a home in Lower Moreland Township, Montgomery County where the bodies of a husband and wife were found Tuesday afternoon.
It was around 12:50 p.m. Tuesday when Lower Moreland Police were called out to a home on the 1100 block of Country Lane.
The Montgomery District Attorney’s Office says the couple’s child found the bodies inside the home – both had been mutilated with a chainsaw.
There are only a few houses on the road where it happened.
Eric Shallcross is a family friend of the wife and husband who own the 3700 square foot home.
Action News has confirmed the 48-year-old man is the owner of a Huntingdon Valley-based excavating company.
Shallcross says he went to high school with the 43-year-old wife.
“I know they’ve had come troubles. I’ve heard that from mutual friends and people who have been closer to them then I have been recently. But they’ve been together for 15, 20 years.”
According to the DA, the wife died of an apparent homicide. The manner of death for the husband remains uncertain.
Once again
WASHINGTON (AP) – New Jersey Governor Chris Christie’s move to privatize the state lottery’s management has benefited firms close to the governor while failing to deliver expected income gains.
The Associated Press found the state’s lottery had been one of the most efficient under government control. But since a private manager took over two years ago, the games are heading for a second straight year of missed financial targets.
The deal was shepherded by lobbying and public relations firms close to Christie. They received hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees, while the lottery’s financial shortfalls could spell trouble for social programs that depend on the money.
This is so cool
Take cropleek and garlic, of both equal quantities, pound them well together… take wine and bullocks gall, mix with the leek… let it stand nine days in the brass vessel…
So goes a thousand-year-old Anglo Saxon recipe to vanquish a stye, an infected eyelash follicle.
The medieval medics might have been on to something. A modern-day recreation of this remedy seems to alleviate infections caused by the bacteria that are usually responsible for styes. The work might ultimately help create drugs for hard-to-treat skin infections.
The project was born when Freya Harrison, a microbiologist at the University of Nottingham, UK, got talking to Christina Lee, an Anglo Saxon scholar. They decided to test a recipe from an Old English medical compendium calledBald’s Leechbook, housed in the British Library.
Some of the ingredients, such as copper from the brass vessel, kill bacteria grown in a dish – but it was unknown if they would work on a real infection or how they would combine.
Careful collection
Sourcing authentic ingredients was a major challenge, says Harrison. They had to hope for the best with the leeks and garlic because modern crop varieties are likely to be quite different to ancient ones – even those branded as heritage. For the wine they used an organic vintage from a historic English vineyard.
As “brass vessels” would be hard to sterilise – and expensive – they used glass bottles with squares of brass sheet immersed in the mixture. Bullocks gall was easy, though, as cow’s bile salts are sold as a supplement for people who have had their gall bladders removed.
After nine days of stewing, the potion had killed all the soil bacteria introduced by the leek and garlic. “It was self-sterilising,” says Harrison. “That was the first inkling that this crazy idea just might have some use.”
A side effect was that it made the lab smell of garlic. “It was not unpleasant,” says Harrison. “It’s all edible stuff. Everyone thought we were making lunch.”
The potion was tested on scraps of skin taken from mice infected with methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. This is an antibiotic-resistant version of the bacteria that causes styes, more commonly known as thehospital superbug MRSA. The potion killed 90 per cent of the bacteria.Vancomycin, the antibiotic generally used for MRSA, killed about the same proportion when it was added to the skin scraps.