David McCandless: The beauty of data visualization - Outstanding presentation on data presentation - how creative economists see and show the world, at our best

Watch and see the first Carbon Neutral Volcano... and, Facebook Knows When You Will Breakup...

I once told an supposedly "green" friend that in the future he will not get to jet off to India or Brazil if he can afford, as that will not be ecologically responsible. He nearly cried.

Flying Is One of the Worst Things You Can Do for the Environment -- So Why Do So Many Well-Intentioned Folks Do It?

It's not easy being "Green" - that is life... as highlighted here, and provided in full below, from AlterNet:

The trouble with this is that flying is the single most ecologically costly act of individual consumption, one that requires the exploitation of large amounts of environmental and human resources. In a world of deep inequality, it thus also speaks to privilege -- most notably what we might call ecological privilege -- and its ugly flipside, disadvantage.

Moreover, the climate-destabilizing effects of air travel -- per passenger mile -- dwarfs that of other modes because of the enhanced climatic “forcing” it brings about: due to the height at which planes fly combined with the mixture of gases and particles they emit, conventional air travel detrimentally impacts global climate approximately 2.7 times more than that of its carbon emissions alone, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

My thoughts exactly... but then I'm not paid to pimp for Democrats or Republicans... I DID SOMETHING TO MAKE CHANGE HAPPEN INSTEAD, FOR FREE... FOR FREEDOM - REALNEO.US

What to do if you’re courageous enough to admit the Obama administration and Democrats are full of shit and the Tea Party and Republicans are dangerous and stupid?

  When it comes to the treatment of big business, we can’t tell the difference, either

President Barack Obama soared into the public consciousness with a stirring speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. He then took Howard Dean’s example and used the power of the Internet to create a fundraising juggernaut for his historic 2008 Presidential run. With a swiftness not seen since JFK’s political ascendancy, Obama became president and claimed broad power to affect “change” across the country. But Kennedy only had to surmount his Irish Catholic background — Barack Obama had to transcend the fact that he is African-American.

But appearances are, in the final analysis, immaterial. Just as a magician uses scenery and sleight-of-hand to divert the audience’s attention, Barack Obama has used his background, intellect, perceived worldliness and powers of speech to distort the reality field, as I call it (to repurpose Steve Jobs’ “reality-distortion field”).  To get Americans thinking about a certain reality, while another is at work behind the scenes.

Maybe you — an Obama voter — have asked yourself, “What happened to the man for whom I voted?” I would argue nothing. Make no mistake about it: Barack Obama is a masterful political manipulator.  And if one is able to let dissolve mental distinctions of party — Democrat, Republican — then Obama can be seen for what he really is: a trojan horse.

To those who don't understand the change that is occurring in the civilized world, outside Ohio, consider this new product line from Colorado and realize if you are in Ohio you can't have any - you can't have the health benefits - you can't be an entrepreneur to compete with this product line - you can't innovate in this space - you can't hang out with these innovators or their class of people - you can't access their markets, customers or investors - because you live across the cannabis divide from civilization, in corrupt, coal-brained Ohio.

But you WILL have lots of pollution from coal-burning in your lungs, in Ohio!

Smart? No! Grohio!

Marijuana Soda Provides a High Without the Smoke

One Colorado soda company has developed a line of sodas that have an unusual ingredient: marijuana. Dixie Elixirs has made their drinks available to anyone with a prescription for medical marijuana.

Did anyone go to hear the Lame Duck Democrats speak in Cleveland - did they apologize for the harm their party causes Cleveland?

I expect an apology - and I expect never to see any of these lame ducks running for office in America again.

That includes President Obama and Vice President Biden.

Does the Democratic Party have plans to get its shit together, be real, and run better candidates for better leadership in 2012... locally and nationwide?

Here is the legacy Obama squandered by selling his people (all Americans) down his polluted, warmongering river, after the disastrous Bush era... "Think of the growth I expect like when an economy is freed from a dictatorship and people are allowed to be free and thrive - markets open up - that is America, now that Bush has been replaced by democracy."

Already, we've spent more than $1 trillion in Iraq, not counting the $700 billion consumed each year by the Pentagon budget.
And spending in Iraq and Afghanistan now comes to more than $3 billion weekly

There is an important update on the cost to Americans of the war in Iraq and Afghanista, published in the Daily Beast October 27, 2010 - How the Wars Are Sinking the Economy - reporting "Nobel Prize recipient Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard budget guru Linda J. Bilmes are revising their original $3 trillion war cost estimate. As Bilmes reports, the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are at least 25 percent costlier than previous projections—the cost of the wars will reach between $4 trillion and $6 trillion."

They frame these costs from the perspective of the burden the wars place on our economy, which will peak in about a half-century:

For example, we recently analyzed the medical and disability claim patterns for almost a million troops who have returned from the wars, and, based on this record, we've revised our estimate upward to between $600 billion and $900 billion—a broad specter, yes, but certainly also a significant upward tick from our earlier projection of $400 billion to $700 billion, based on historical patterns.

Similarly, our estimates for the economic and social costs associated with returning veterans can be expected to rise by at least a third—the staggering toll of repeated deployments over the past decade.

These poll results, just released today, explain why I will vote and I will vote ANYTHING BUT REPUBLICAN - followed by ANYTHING BUT CONSERVATIVE - followed by ANYTHING BUT 65+ OLD FART... those groups of people are found by most recent Gallop polling to be most likely to be flat-Earther anti-science tools of industry and are not welcome as leaders of my society.

Those I will seek out to vote for will be, in the following order, LIBERALS, THOSE 18-49, from the WEST, DEMOCRATIC and INDEPENDENT, as they poll as most real about public health, liberty, economics and freedom... which is what the issue of legalization of marijuana and hemp is all about.

How I shall ultimately cast my most important ballot is with my feet, choosing to move where I find people most like myself, being liberal, Independent, young (at heart) and West... until Ohio shakes its old-fart conservative Flat Earther failure and gets real.

The first order of business for Cuyahoga County's new executive should be to kill the Land Bank--

See why:

http://www.annarbor.com/news/washtenaw-county-officials-vote-to-dissolve-land-bank-authority/

I just received an after-the-fact announcement from President Obama's U.S. Department of Energy that Obama Administration Hosts Great Lakes Offshore Wind Workshop in Chicago with Great Lakes Wind Collaborative, reporting on "a workshop with the Great Lakes Wind Collaborative in Chicago on October 26 – 27, 2010, focused on the siting of offshore wind power in the Great Lakes. The two day workshop brought together wind developers, Federal and state regulators, environmental advocates, and other regional stakeholders to discuss methods for ensuring greater clarity, certainty and coordination of Federal and state decision-making for offshore wind development in the Great Lakes."

Yet, on September 14, 2010, the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported Bechtel among developers selected for building a Lake Erie wind farm off Cleveland's coast, stating:

The company that built Hoover Dam, the tunnel under the English Channel and 23,000 other gargantuan projects around the world is going to build the first wind turbines in Lake Erie. Bechtel Development Co. of San Francisco is one of three companies chosen to construct and own the five-turbine demonstration project about 7 miles off shore at an estimated cost of $100 million.

Small by wind farm standards, the five-turbine cluster has been proposed as the precursor to erecting thousands of turbines in the lake -- and jump-starting an entire industry in Northeast Ohio.

Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Bill Mason, who has chaired the Great Lakes Energy Development Task Force for more than four years, agreed that the idea has always been jobs, not electricity, at least not at this point.

As October is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, citizens of Ohio should reflect upon the words of Ohio Governor Ted Strickland and his official state policy on Medical Marijuana - “The governor feels that the predominant opinion of the medical community is that there are existing medicines available that provide appropriate patient care“... “So based on that opinion and the current research, he feels this type of legislation doesn’t seem necessary or warranted“ - and realize he is DEAD wrong - "the latest research is proving that cannabinoids, as part of this bodily system, play a mitigating role in breast cancer." That is consistent with historical findings that cannabinoids may have cancer-fighting qualities:

What begs discussion on the occasion of California’s historic vote, which the whole world is watching, is that cannabis has been shown in hundreds of laboratory studies over the past ten years not only to be physiologically harmless, but also to be the most potent anti-cancer agent found in nature. No other natural substance holds the cancer-stopping power of cannabis and that's a proven fact.

In addition, cannabinoids, the active ingredients in marijuana, shrink and prevent the spread of tumors far more effectively than synthetic chemotherapy agents, for the simple reason that they destroy cancer cells without damaging healthy cells, a feat that widely prescribed chemotherapy cocktails can't duplicate.

Dear Reader,

Since you have been reading AlterNet, you know that we feel very strongly about the destructive effects of the drug war. In the case of marijuana, our laws are clearly doing more harm than good.  

For a substance with many beneficial qualities and very little negative effects, tens of thousands of lives are undermined and enormous amounts of money is wasted. Somewhere around 750,000 arrests are make each year for possession of small amounts of marijuana, which seems absurd.

Legal, licensed Super Skunk and Blueberry Medical Marijuana and Cannabutter food samples from Green Depot, Denver, Colorado

In Denver, Colorado, the above medicine cabinet provides citizens economic opportunity and legal, natural, organic relief from many health ailments - in Cleveland, Ohio, the contents get citizens arrested... especially if they fit the demographic profiles targeted by new Jim Crow laws in America, designed to imprison our poor, minority, urban male population.

That reality defines The Cannabis Divide in America, which presents modern Americans with some of the greatest economic and social disparities in the history of the nation, leading to treatment and accommodations for blacks and Latinos (prison) that are inferior to those provided for white Americans (freedom), systematizing a number of economic, educational and social disadvantages (defining Jim Crow laws).

As I highlight below, from a study about criminal injustice in Northeast Ohio: "those areas that have the highest percentages of African-Americans are especially likely to be subject to police surveillance and arrests" for drug possession, leading to poorer treatment and accommodation of proportionately more blacks than whites in our inferior quality-of-life prisons.

"Of those drug possession cases in which the race of arrestee is known within Cleveland city limits, as Table 1 below illustrates, there has been a consistent magnitude of over-representation of non-whites among drug possession arrestees over the past 10 years."

American homicide rate over the last century-plus

This is cool, Cleveland - hardcore first-wave thrashings from the lead poisoned capital of America at the height of lead poisoning's impact on Americans... sonic origins don't get any more mutated than that. I'll guarantee the following compilation re-release will take listeners to the depths of our industrial hell, at tis worst... and I haven't even heard the album - sounds awesome and as real as Cleveland music may get:

 EPIC CLEVELAND HARDCORE COMPILATION THE NEW HOPE
Released By Smog Veil Records As Double LP -- Ships November 2, 2010

Chicago, IL, October 26, 2010 – Smog Veil Records is excited to announce The New Hope double LP featuring 64 tracks with performances by ten North Eastern Ohio first wave hardcore bands.

The New Hope comp was originally released on Tom Dark’s New Hope Records in 1983. It included debut performances from The Guns, The Dark, No Parole, Offbeats, Agitated, Zero Defex, Starvation Army, Spike In Vain, Outerwear, and PPG.

The repackaging of LeBron James beyond parochial-Cleveland regional slave to global free-thinking phenomenon has begun. Enjoy this first world-class commercial video redefining the LeBron James persona of the future - the African American leader of the future - escaped from the slavery of small-mindedness, asking "What should I do? Should I be who you want me to be?"

From my personal experience, I must ask Clevelanders... do you really know who are your greatest leaders, and what you want your leaders to do? Are you satisfied with what your chosen leaders provide to citizens? Are they the real reason the Cavs are not champions - that LeBron is gone?

This week, I was thrilled to receive the following forward-thinking message from Nachy Kanfer, Campaign Representative, Midwest States, Sierra Club Beyond Coal Campaign:

Hi Norm, I think we should take down Cleveland Thermal. Thoughts?

Cleveland Thermal is a major private out-of-state-investor-owned downtown Cleveland and regional air polluter that burns 10,000s tons of coal each year... emits 1,000s of tons of pollution on Clevelanders and the surrounding world each year... to benefit only large real estate investors and corporate, institutional and government customers - much like the private, out-of-license "district" coal-burning Medical Center Company (MCCO) plant polluting the community excessively a few miles away, in University Circle.

EPA Greenversations: “Preventing Lead Poisoning”

Posted on October 25th, 2010 - 10:30 AM

Picture this: You live in a gorgeous older row home in Washington D. C. Although it’s a “fixer upper”, you bought it for its unmatched Victorian charm and its unbeatable location (Who doesn’t want to live next to a cupcake shop?). You finally decide it’s time to remodel the kid’s room and update the kitchen, but your spidey-sense is going off because you know that renovating a pre-1978 homes with lead paint can have risks. What’s the next step?

• Do a search on the internet about EPA’s Lead Renovation, Repair and Painting rule

• Look for a contractor, but make sure to ask them if they are EPA Lead-Safe Certified

• Check with your pediatrician about testing your children for lead

I've learned first-hand how people become environmentalists. They realize they are being polluted, get mad as hell, and do something about it... NIMBY... Not In My Back Yard!

Learning the harm of lead poisoning in my back yard made me an environmentalist against lead poisoning in my community and worldwide.

Learning the harm of pollution from the Arcelor/Mittal Cleveland Works steel mills in my back yard made me an environmentalist against steel production pollution in my community and worldwide.

Learning the harm of pollution from Medical Center Company coal burning in my back yard made me an environmentalist against coal burning in my community and worldwide.

Which has me exploring how big is my back yard... how big is my community?

Hey, it's Pittsburgh week.  This fits into a RealNEO discussion.

Pittsburgh is more polluted than Cleveland.  Heck, it's worth noting Cleveland didn't even make these lists.

GO BROWNS!!!Pittsburgh SUCKS!!!

National Trends Show that Declines in Ozone and Particle Pollution Have Stalled
Posted in | Pollution | Transportation

Can anyone think of a reason why Case Western Reserve University would not pay its property taxes for this parcel, going back to 2007 - I believe it is the Triangle property, at the corner of Mayfield and Euclid, which is considered one of the most important development locations in the Midwest, which has received lots of charitable and community support for redevelopment as MOCA, the CIA expansion site and some other plans by Ari Maron. 

For the time being, there is nearly $300,000 owed the citizens in taxes, interest and penalties going back to 2007. Why do I have a feeling this is a case of government-enabled intentional tax-evasion in process.

Sort of like writing off power plants and parking lots as charitable endeavors.

On July 4, 2006, I posted Independence of the day: May the people of NEO find freedom from "Cleveland Works" - a big picture analysis of the $ multi-billion harm caused in Northeast Ohio each year as a result of the Mittal Cleveland Works steel plant being here, and I concluded: "I propose we start working as an activist community to eliminate Mittal and Cleveland Works and all polluters large and small from our region"... leading to "When I met with my counsel about legalizing cannabis in Ohio, I explained I never bring up a problem without a solution".

It is safe to say that my 2006 posting against Mittal pollution of Northeast Ohio was my first shot in a one-website war against all excessive and unreasonable polluters in Northeast Ohio - a war that has made me about as popular here as was Patton with the Nazis.

Clevelanders are victims of uncaring totalitarian dictators who are gassing our families with toxins that are unsafe for us and our community - they are disfiguring the data that would warn citizens of this harm - they use mainstream media to propagandize for polluters - they attempt to increase the pollution for industrialists' financial gains, at great public cost - they make us sick and weak with toxins that shorten our lives - they make this an undesirable place to raise a family, and for our children to raise families - THEY must be stopped.

In honor of the Reclaiming Vacant Properties conference in Cleveland this week, I thought I would share some real reflections on why so much property is vacant in Cleveland - lead poisoning... which impacted the whole world but has caused especially pronounced harm in Northeast Ohio, continuing today.

Comparison of relative temporal changes in lead concentration in tooth enamel and lake sediments, and relative changes in the total amount of lead additives to gasoline. Maximum absolute values and symbols are:  4.94 μg/g (teeth, smoothed data, uninterrupted line), 72.7 ppm (“new core Lake Erie sediment, triangles), 41.1 ppm  (Graney et al., 1995 Lake Erie sediment, open circles), and 253,000 mt of lead additives to gasoline produced in the US, closed circles (see Methods).

While I don't recall it being reported in Cleveland before, Thaindian News, of Bangkok, Thailand, reported, on June 16, 2010, Leaded gasoline chief culprit for 20th century neurological defects, which raises significant concerns about lead poisoning issues in Cleveland, Ohio, and America-wide, finding “It raises the question, has leaded gasoline had a lasting effect on many present-day Cleveland adults?” From Thaindian.com:

Leaded gasoline is to be blamed for nearly two-thirds of toxic lead ingested or inhaled by African-American children in Cleveland during the latter two-thirds of the 20th century, says a new study.

According to researchers from Case Western Reserve University, their findings probably apply to many cities across the US and reinforce concerns about the health threat for children in countries still using leaded gasoline.

However, they emphasize that the results do not minimize the ongoing importance of current childhood lead exposure due to persistence and deterioration of leaded paint which was used as late as the 1960’s.

This makes my day--thank you to the amazing educators at Denison School!!

There is an insightful article in the September 13, 2010, Wall Street Journal - Turning Away From Coal - which points out "Power companies are increasingly switching to natural gas to fuel their electricity plants, driven by low prices and forecasts of vast supplies for years to come. While the trend started in the late 1990s, the momentum is accelerating and comes at the expense of coal. Some utilities are closing coal-fired plants; others are converting them to run on gas." Futher, "The switch is occurring globally and is getting a push from regulators who want to limit emissions that contribute to climate change, haze and health problems such as respiratory illness."

This is excellent news for citizens of Northeast Ohio, who are victims of pollution from burning coal in many local and upwind coal powerplants that cause serious health consequences here - one in particular that citizens are fighting now is operated by the Medical Center Company, in the heart of University Circle, Cleveland, Ohio. Regarding such small coal-fired powerplants, The Journal reports: "Most big coal-burning utilities have invested billions of dollars to install pollution-control equipment on their largest coal-fired plants. But they are replacing or idling smaller coal plants for which such expenditures can't be justified."

Cannabis Convention - Denver, CO April 02, 2010 from Cannabis Commerce on Vimeo.

Pro-pot, progressive-minded voters of NEO, are you envious of the tremendous legalization inroads made in pioneering states like Colorado? The ones Norm Roulet described on realNEO here and here? Well, with the benefit of a couple years worth of hindsight, you have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to actually improve upon legalization models developed by California and Colorado.

That’s right – disparaged, denigrated, and despoiled, Cleveland and NEO have a unique opportunity to shock the nation, transforming urban blight to urban bliss via cannabis commerce as Norm envisions with here and here.

But that can only happen if NEO pot proponents get it right from the start. I urge you to.

And I’m here to tell you exactly how you can.