| News That Matters Brought to you (Almost Daily) by PlanPutnam.Org | ||
| Contact Us | Shop Putnam | Putnam Outdoors | RSS Feed | Visit the Blog | Visit our Sponsor | Donate | Blogsite | Events | ||
| | ||
The 2009 PlanPutnam Annual Fund Drive Is Coming To A Close Have you helped keep this newsletter coming? If not, please click here today. Your Support Is What Keeps Us Growing! Good Wednesday Morning, Rumor has it I'll be running for Supervisor of the Town of Kent in 2011. I heard that the other day - from the current Supervisor - who said she'd heard it from someone else. Well, whoever is spreading that rumor should let me know about it, don't you think? The Putnam Valley Farmer's Market reminds you that today is your last chance at getting some hand-crafted, locally produced gifts for friends and family. The Market is open today from 3-7PM at the Lake Peekskill Community Center. The weather report for the holiday weekend is mixed. Look for rain/freezing rain late on Christmas Day and into Boxing Day on the 26th. Please, drive carefully! A snowball fight in Washington DC organized by a Twitter group turned interesting when an off-duty DC detective pulled his gun on the crowd. See the article below. (or the video, here) According to an article in the NYJN this morning, John Bucolo of Mt. Kisco does not have the Christmas Spirit. The article says he found a wallet accidentally lost outside a convenience store in Mahopac, picked it up, allegedly removed the cash and put the wallet back where he'd found it. Survellience cameras caught him in the act and he was arrested by Carmel police and charged with a felony count of possession of stolen property. Have you ever found a wallet or something of value? What's your story? A Note to the New York State Senate: What does Washington, D.C., Spain, Uruguay, Massachusetts, Ecuador, Colombia, Connecticut, Mexico City, Argentian, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, France, Hungary, Israel, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Portugal, Northern Ireland, South Africa, Switzerland and the UK, Belgium, Norway, Andorra, the Czech Republic, Greenland, Germany, Iceland, Luxembourg, Slovenia and New Caledonia all have that we don't have? Legislators with common sense. But New York, considered by many to be the cultural and economic capital of the world has... well, it's pretty embarrassing, all things considered. Write Senator Leibell and tell him - and the rest of the NY State Senate - to join the rest of the world in civil and equal right protections. That would be one heck of a Christmas present.The Christmas Tree: Wikipedia vs Conservapedia. We report - you decide: "King Tut never saw a Christmas tree, but he would have understood the tradition which traces back long before the first Christmas, says David Robson, Extension Educator, Horticulture with the Springfield Extension Center.And for those who believe everything the bible has to say we have this caution from Jeremiah (KJV): Jeremiah 10:2-4: "Thus saith the LORD, Learn not the way of the heathen, and be not dismayed at the signs of heaven; for the heathen are dismayed at them. For the customs of the people are vain: for one cutteth a tree out of the forest, the work of the hands of the workman, with the axe. They deck it with silver and with gold; they fasten it with nails and with hammers, that it move not."In just a few days time Santa Claus will be making his way around the world and to ensure that he doesn't set off WWIII accidentally, NORAD will be earning their money tracking his every move. On Christmas eve, grab your kids and go here to witness the event. There will not be a News That Matters edition this coming Friday. Not that I'll be unwrapping presents (it's not my holiday, after all) but you will be and odds are you won't be seeking that dose of world-reality we bring you three times each week, 50 or so weeks a year, every year for the past ten years. Instead, if you've got that Christmas Spirit on Friday, click here and spread a little cheer our way. Be safe, be happy and spread a little Christmas throughout the year. The 2009 PlanPutnam Annual Fund Drive Is Coming To A Close Have you helped keep this newsletter coming? If not, please click here today. Your Support Is What Keeps Us Growing! And now, The News:
The Price of SkiingBy Matthew BriggsLast year I was a senior Economics major at Colby College. This meant that I had to do a final project that involved a lot of my own research and said something new about what I found. I decided to do my project on skiing. Specifically, I wanted to see if there was any relationship between the quantifiable factors that describe a given cross-country ski center and the price that that ski center charges. Without getting too deep into the details of the project, this article seeks to describe what I did and what I found. I started off with a sample of cross-country ski centers. I decided to use all the centers I could find in New England and New York. I then dropped the ones that run without charging for trail passes. This left me with 80 different centers across the northeast. I then came up with any variable I felt may play a role in the pricing of a center. There were 12 variables I came up with. I collected data on all 12 for all 80 ski centers. There were two types of variables. The first group were normal ones that lend themselves to being quantified, including total kms, average annual snowfall, average local income, other centers within 20 miles, other centers within 100 miles, population within 20 miles, and population within 100 miles. The second group of variables accounts for things that are harder to quantify. They are just answers to yes or no questions, such as, “is there a retail shop?” If yes, then that center has a “1″ in that category. If no, the center has a “0″. There were five of these “amenity variables”. They were: is there a high-quality grooming machine (Pisten Bully, Bombardier, etc. ), is there a retail shop, are there lessons offered, is there on-site lodging, and is there a downhill resort nearby. With those twelve statistics as well as the price of each center established, I was ready to dive into the analysis. Read More Climate Change and Sustainable Development: The Quest for Green CommunitiesBy John R. NolonJohn R. Nolon is the James A. Hopkins Professor of Law, Pace University School of Law; counsel to the Land Use Law Center; director of the Kheel Center on the Resolution of Environmental Interest Disputes; and visiting professor at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. He thanks his research assistant, Kelly Belnick, for her excellent substantive and editorial contributions. Introduction to Climate Change Mitigation Through Sustainable Development Law This is the first of two commentaries that explore the role of local governments in mitigating and adapting to climate change through sustainable development strategies. They focus on the significant authority to regulate land use and building construction that is delegated to local governments by their states, and how that authority can be coordinated with the roles and responsibilities of state and federal governments to manage climate change and achieve sustainable development. In a forthcoming article, I illustrate how local governments could use existing sustainable development strategies to achieve an annual reduction of 1,200 million metric tons of CO2 by midcentury. In the algebra of climate change management, 1,200 million metric tons — or 1.20 gigatons (Gt)—is a significant figure. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), 38Gt of CO2 are emitted worldwide each year, nearly 20 percent of which is attributable to the United States (7.1Gt). Sequestration by the natural environment currently removes approximately 15 percent of the total U.S. CO2 emissions, leaving 6.1Gt in the atmosphere. My estimate for emissions savings achievable through local sustainable development law (1.20Gt) represents 20 percent of these net emissions. Read More (PDF) States Settle With Plant Polluting Region’s AirBy MIREYA NAVARROAir quality in the New York tri-state region stands to benefit from a court settlement requiring Duke Energy, one of the nation’s largest electric power companies, to drastically cut sulfur dioxide emissions from a coal-fired plant in Indiana, state and federal officials said Tuesday. New York, New Jersey and Connecticut joined the federal government and two environmental groups in a 1999 lawsuit over pollution from the Duke plant, the 560-megawatt Gallagher Station, which blows eastward and brings smog and soot to the Adirondacks and other areas. Under the terms of the settlement, filed Tuesday in United States District Court for the Southern District of Indiana, Duke Energy commits itself to spending about $80 million to switch to natural gas as fuel in two of the plant’s units and installing the latest pollution control technology in two other units. A 30-day comment period remains before the settlement becomes official. Federal officials said the measures are expected to reduce sulfur dioxide emissions by 86 percent from last year at Duke. Read More The self-employed deserve coverageI read every day the comments and reflections of your readers expressing their views about our health reform. Yet few might know that you cannot amend what was never legislated for the taxpayers.The only known medical coverage we have in our beloved country was born on July 30, 1965, signed by President Lyndon Johnson and endorsed by former President Truman, for senior citizens of age 65 and older. The next medical protection was made available to the working force by a limited number of wealthy employers in the private sector, the government, states and counties' employees thanks to the pushy unions, and naturally for the war veterans. The remaining unlucky and unprotected bunch are the small self-employed who now should be recognized and enrolled into some kind of medical coverage. This is a legitimate initiative that all our people are entitled to demand. Read More NY Dog Has First Confirmed Canine Case of H1N1 FluWHITE PLAINS, NY (AP) -- Experts say a dog from suburban New York has contracted the same strain of swine flu that is currently infecting humans.The American Veterinary Medical Association said Tuesday it's the first confirmed canine case of the 2009 H1N1 virus in the United States. Spokesman Michael San Filippo said the diagnosis was confirmed at two labs. Read More Detective pulls weapon at D.C. snowball fightA Washington D.C. police detective has been placed on desk duty after he pulled his weapon at a snowball "fight" which was taking place at 14th and "U" Streets, NW, on Saturday. By all accounts, the snowball "fight" was good natured and involved one side of the street against the other. There are even pictures of the crowd pushing out a marked police cruiser which became stuck in the snow.There have been suggestions made that the detective may have been responding to a call involving reports of a male seen with a gun during the snowball fight. While that is a possibility, it seems unlikely from the many videos that were recorded of the event from witnesses with cell phones. In those videos, it is possible to hear the detective only asking about who threw snowballs at his vehicle. He never once mentioned or asked if anyone had observed a male with a gun (other than himself). It is also unclear why he found it necessary to pull his weapon in the first place. His weapon became visible right after he exited his vehicle and faced the crowd. Read More Why is Dec. 25 the date to celebrate Christmas? Two explanations compete.By: RICHARD OSTLING - Associated PressIn simultaneous pre-Christmas cover stories, Time and Newsweek magazines sifted with skepticism the narratives of Jesus' birth in Matthew and Luke, the only accounts we have since no other chroniclers recorded this obscure peasant's nativity. It's far less important than those historical debates, but there's also a small disagreement about why the church later chose Dec. 25 for Christmas. Two main theories compete. One notes that in A.D. 274, the Roman Emperor Aurelian inaugurated Dec. 25 as the pagan "Birth of the Unconquered Sun" celebration, at the calendar point when daylight began to lengthen. Supposedly, Christians then borrowed the date and devised Christmas to compete with paganism. Aurelian's empire seemed near collapse, so his festival proclaimed imperial and pagan rejuvenation. Prior to 274 there's no record of a major sun cult at the Northern Hemisphere's winter solstice (the year's shortest day, which actually occurs before Dec. 25). William Tighe, a church history specialist at Pennsylvania's Muhlenberg College, champions the exact opposite theory. Read More Ballot Fight as Party Lines Divide Newcomer and NativeBy NICHOLAS CONFESSORETAGHKANIC, N.Y. — For years, Republican officials here have watched with growing alarm as newcomers from New York City arrived in late-model cars, built second homes and started to vote in increasing numbers, usually for Democrats. Now Republicans, armed with private investigators, are pursuing a new strategy to preserve their power: take away part-time residents’ right to vote here. Last month, after Democrats cast enough votes to threaten the Republican Party’s generations-old dominance of the town, Republican candidates filed a suit to review dozens of the Democrats’ absentee ballots, claiming they were cast by occasional residents who had no business voting here. Republican leaders have dispatched lawyers who have asked a state judge for permission to subpoena personal information including income tax returns, E-ZPass records, bank statements, even newspaper subscriptions. The Democrats claim harassment. Republicans say they are exercising their legal rights. Read More The 2009 PlanPutnam Annual Fund Drive Is Coming To A Close Have you helped keep this newsletter coming? If not, please click here today. Your Support Is What Keeps Us Growing! |
| |
| Copyright © 2009 News That Matters | ||
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
News That Matters - December 23, 2009
