George’s slightly off-center view of the world
What doesn’t fit elsewhere
This…
“In 2011, the state Legislature cut Texas’ family planning and women’s health program, which provide care and routine screenings for low-income women. Lawmakers slashed its budget by two-thirds—and kicked out women’s health providers that also provide abortions.”
Then this…
“Within a two-year period between 2010 and 2012, the rate of pregnant women dying in Texas doubled – and it’s not entirely clear why.”
Portland, where I grew up, and where I will soon return, has lately been in the news as the “Whitest City in America.” It’s also one of the most rapidly gentrifying. OregonLive, aka the Oregonian, recently reported on how minority communities are doing.
I’m glad to have been a teenager in the time before cell phones and GPS tracking allowed parents to always know where their kids were. And as a parent of now-grown daughters, well, if you don’t want to know the answer, don’t ask the question.
Here are some useful smartphone apps, and not just for travelers. But don’t use them when you’re crossing a busy street.
ExxonMobil touts its success in extracting natural gas by fracking – hydraulic fracturing. They also want us to know how safe and inconsequential to the surroundings it is. But just in case, ExxonMobil’s CEO Rex Tillerson is suing to prevent fracking near his property in Texas. It would impinge on his “rural lifestyle.”
The economy in California has been getting better. Californians are increasing their production of trash: 33.2 million tons in 2015, compared to 31.2 million tons the previous year. That’s 4.7 pounds per person per day, up from 4.5 pounds in 2014. Here in Sonoma County, we did much better, swelling our output to 4.3 pounds per person per day, 19.4% more than 2014’s 3.6 pounds, but still less than the state as a whole. California overall had a meager increase of less than half a percent.
Enjoying that hamburger? It took 900 gallons of water to produce that half-pound burger. The source of that ground beef released thirteen pounds of greenhouse gases: methane from farts and burps, and nitrous oxide from manure. Thirty percent of the land in the world is used to raise grain to feed cattle, chickens and pigs. Feeling guilty? The solution is clear: Bugs!
