Society's ChildS


Nuke

Fukushima plant area had collapse and subsidence due to the last Typhoon, no press release

Mochizuki
Fukushima Diary
Mon, 21 Oct 2013 13:22 UTC
Fukushima nuclear plant
© REUTERS/ Air Photo ServiceFukushima Nuclear Power Plant
Two Fukushima workers commented on Twitter that the previous Typhoon "WIPHA" caused a slope in Fukushima plant area to collapse.

The slope faces the main street, and the earth and sand blockaded the street. Also, there was a part to have had a subsidence.

Those workers are surprised because there was no press release from Tepco about this.

The worker added there are more slopes in the area and they may collapse due to the next Typhoon that may hit eastern Japan this weekend.

(cf, Next typhoon to hit eastern Japan this weekend / "Very strong" again [URL 2])
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Eye 2

Nearly 100 snakes seized from Ohio home

Timothy Weisberg
nbcwashington.com
Wed, 16 Oct 2013 12:54 UTC
Owner found breeding and selling snakes out of home
Image
© Josh KeppeThe owner was bitten by a rattlesnake, which led police to his home and the discovery of nearly 100 snakes.

It was snakes galore at an Ohio home. Inside cages, others slithering across the floor, police found nearly 100 snakes that were eventually confiscated and taken to an Ohio sanctuary.

The snakes were seized after police say the home owner, Joseph McCollum, was bitten by a rattlesnake and had not seeked proper treatment, NBC affiliate WXLY reported.That's when police found the snakes and a 12-year-old boy living in the home.

Four of the snakes - a western diamondback, a cobra, an asian cobra and copperhead - were venomous and taken to a reptile zoo in Kentucky, WXLY reported.

"It concerns me there were venomous snakes in a home [in the] same building another family was in, they were not aware of the situation," Reptile Zoo employee Kristen Wiley told WXLY.

McCollom was arrested and charged with endangering the welfare of a child and operating a business from his home.

Comment: See also.Snakes alive! Countless reports of snakes turning up in weird places

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Arrow Down

Undercover video shows 'shocking' cruelty at Alberta chicken farm

Brett Wilkins
Digital Journal
Mon, 21 Oct 2013 17:23 UTC

A leading Canadian animal rights group has released secretly-shot video footage of cruelty and abuse of chickens at two Alberta farms.

Canadian Press reports Mercy For Animals Canada recorded the undercover video footage at Creekside Grove Farms in Spruce Grove and Ku-Ku Farms near Edmonton. The video, which was aired on CTV's W5 program last week, shows hens cruelly crowded into battery cages, where they spend their entire lives, as well as chicks having their heads smashed before being thrown into garbage bags to suffocate to death, often while still conscious. The footage also shows dead hens rotting in cages and chicks covered in feces.

The battery cages shown in the video are considered so inhumane that they have been banned in the entire European Union, New Zealand and the US states of California and Michigan, Mercy For Animals Canada said.
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Question

Atlanta man's body found in California missing organs

George Franco
MyFoxAtlanta
Tue, 22 Oct 2013 02:59 UTC
Victim
© MyFoxAtlanta
Mableton, Georgia - A potential and unusual murder mystery two thousand miles away has left an Atlanta family with a lot of heart-breaking questions.

A Mableton mother is searching for answers about her son's death, including why internal organs were missing from his body.

24-year-old Ryan Singleton left metro Atlanta in early July to chase his dream of becoming an actor or model in Hollywood.

Instead of dreams coming true, his mother is now living a nightmare, wondering about her son whose body turned up near one of the most inhospitable places on earth in Death Valley, California.

Iris Flowers told FOX 5'S George Franco, "He (her son) went to Las Vegas during a weekend visit and got missing in Baker, California on the way back."

Ms. Flowers learned joggers discovered Singletons' body on September 21st in the desert near Baker, California, between Las Vegas and Los Angeles.

She says she'll never forget the call from police.

Ms. Flowers said. "There were no organs. He said ma'am, there were no eyes, there was no heart, there was no lungs, there was no liver, there were no kidneys."
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Airplane

Laser pointer attacks on airplane pilots have jumped 1100% since 2005

Roberto A. Ferdman
Quartz
Mon, 21 Oct 2013 01:49 UTC
Cockpit
© Reuters/Guillermo GranjaBright lights can blind pilots and jeopardize otherwise routine landings.
As if airplane pilots didn't already have enough to worry about, they're now facing record levels of attacks from laser pointers while landing their planes.

The FBI's terrorism unit is investigating two incidents last week at New York City's LaGuardia airport in which airplane pilots were temporarily blinded by green lights shone from several miles away. They are thought to have come from small, handheld laser pointers, such as the battery-powered ones often used in classrooms. Laser lights that hit at a particular angle can illuminate the whole cockpit with a bright green or red light, and blind the pilots as they're trying to land.

Things are so bad that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) even has a webpage about the problem, explaining how pilots can mitigate its effects, and laying out its potential costs. The lasers have never caused a crash, but they can disorient pilots at crucial moments. "It can blur the vision basically, it can fog the vision of the cockpit when you're looking out the glass so it's much harder to look out the glass and identify locations where you're going," FBI special agent Rich Frankel told CBS.
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Cell Phone

Will insurance companies use smart appliances to monitor "unhealthy" habits?

Daniel Taylor
Old-Thinker News
Mon, 21 Oct 2013 21:27 UTC
Since 2008 Old-Thinker News has been covering the rapidly advancing Internet of Things (IoT). According to CIA chief David Patraeus the IoT will have a monumental impact on "clandestine tradecraft."


Consumer appliances are now becoming activated and "smart." RFID chips and wireless internet connections enable devices like televisions, refrigerators, printers, and computers to communicate with each other and generally make life easier for us. This comes at a price, however. Your privacy is eliminated.

A detailed multi-dimensional image of our daily lives will be built with this system. Individuals to entire group dynamics will be tracked. It will be unparalleled in history. Everything from daily travel routes to eating habits will be traceable. Every day objects will be transmitting data 24/7.
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Piggy Bank

Nearly half of US public school children are poor

Kate Randall
World Socialist Web Site
Sat, 19 Oct 2013 00:00 UTC
Image
Nearly half of public school children in the United States were poor in the school year that ended in 2011, according to a new study by the Southern Education Foundation (SEF), the oldest US educational charity. In 17 states in the South and four in the West, children from low-income families comprised a majority in public schools

The SEF study, based on data collected by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), further found that the percentage of low-income students in public schools rose dramatically from 2001 to 2011, far outpacing public school funding. The study also found a direct correlation between levels of poverty and academic performance.

The findings are the latest exposure of the growth of poverty in the US alongside burgeoning social inequality.

The SEF study defines poor students as those qualifying for either free or reduced-price lunches in preschool through 12th grade (P-12). According to Department of Agriculture Guidelines, a student from a household with an income below 130 percent of the Federal Poverty Guidelines (FPG) - about $29,000 for a family of four - qualified for free lunches. Children from four-person households with incomes below 185 percent FPG (about $41,000) qualified for reduced-price lunches.

Comment: As income inequality rises and more people fall into poverty, children bear the brunt of this and the cycle of poverty continues. The heartless psycopaths in power have the wealth and ability to change things, but prefer to have a docile underclass willing to do their bidding just to survive.
Fear, stress among the poor hinder learning
Poverty Goes Straight to the Brain
How Can the World's Richest Country Let Children Go Hungry? 6 Tricks Corporate Elites Use to Hoard All the Wealth
$240 billion amassed by 100 richest people enough to end extreme poverty four times over: Oxfam

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Stormtrooper

Taiwanese soldiers wearing ballistic masks look like 'the cavalry from hell'

Jeremy Blum
South China Morning Post
Mon, 21 Oct 2013 19:37 UTC
Taiwanese Soldier_1
© DDN JapanBallistic masks are worn by soldiers to prevent shots to the head.
Images of Taiwanese soldiers decked out in black body armour and ballistic masks have gone viral thanks to exposure on Japanese news sites, where viewers compared the look of the officers to something out of a video game or comic book.

The photographs, originally part of a series taken during a 2011 ceremonial parade in Taipei, depict Taiwan's Armed Forces, including both male and female special operations soldiers and military frogmen.

All of the soldiers in the photos wield heavy weaponry including assault rifles, bulletproof shields and submachine guns, but the images that especially captivated netizens were those that showed the elite forces wearing ballistic face masks.
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People 2

Why have young people in Japan stopped having sex?

Abigail Haworth
The Guardian
Sun, 20 Oct 2013 16:17 UTC
What happens to a country when its young people stop having sex? Japan is finding out...

japan sex
© Eric RechsteinerArm’s length: 45% of Japanese women aged 16-24 are ‘not interested in or despise sexual contact’. More than a quarter of men feel the same way.
Ai Aoyama is a sex and relationship counsellor who works out of her narrow three-storey home on a Tokyo back street. Her first name means "love" in Japanese, and is a keepsake from her earlier days as a professional dominatrix. Back then, about 15 years ago, she was Queen Ai, or Queen Love, and she did "all the usual things" like tying people up and dripping hot wax on their nipples. Her work today, she says, is far more challenging. Aoyama, 52, is trying to cure what Japan's media calls sekkusu shinai shokogun, or "celibacy syndrome".

Japan's under-40s appear to be losing interest in conventional relationships. Millions aren't even dating, and increasing numbers can't be bothered with sex. For their government, "celibacy syndrome" is part of a looming national catastrophe. Japan already has one of the world's lowest birth rates. Its population of 126 million, which has been shrinking for the past decade, is projected to plunge a further one-third by 2060. Aoyama believes the country is experiencing "a flight from human intimacy" - and it's partly the government's fault.
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Health

Hospitals face whole new world under health law

Shelley DuBois
USA Today
Sun, 20 Oct 2013 17:05 UTC
Image
© John Partipilo, The TennesseanDr. Todd Arkava treats Charles Robert Connor for a dislocated shoulder in the emergency room at TriStar Skyline Medical Center.
One thing about the Affordable Care Act is clear: Hospitals will exist in a world where they are rewarded more for the quality of care than for the volume of patients they treat.

A grisly headshot of Walter White, the anti-hero of "Breaking Bad," glares from two computer monitors on the desk of Mike Schatzlein, the CEO of Saint Thomas Health, one of Nashville's major health care systems. The TV character's meth-cooking ways don't exactly line up with Saint Thomas' mission of faith-based care, Schatzlein joked, but he still loves a good show.

Schatzlein took the helm at Saint Thomas three years ago, just in time to pilot the system through some drama of its own - namely, the Affordable Care Act and federal health reform.

Today, hospitals across the country must transform to survive.
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