This looks like the Kindle that will finally make me purchase a e-book reader.

There are a few new features as well, the most important of which is a new WebKit-based browser. WebKit is the open-source base for all of our favorite mobile web browsers, including those used by the iPhone, iPad, Palm Pre, and various Android devices. The Kindle’s web browser is, due to hardware limitations, not going to be replacing your iPad for web browsing anytime soon, but I was pretty surprised at how usable it is. For any kind of reading (news, blogs, comedy, Wikipedia, that kind of thing), it’s really not bad.

For me, the most impressive new feature is the screen. Amazon’s previous e-ink screen was fine, but some other readers (like Sony’s Pocket Reader and, arguably, Barnes & Noble’s Nook) packed clearer, sharper screens. Well, not anymore, because the new Kindle’s screen is, bar none, the best e-ink screen I’ve ever seen. It’s fantastically sharp, with excellent contrast (Amazon claims 50% better contrast than any other e-ink display on the market), and it refreshes noticeably faster (Amazon says 20% faster) than the previous generation, which was already pretty quick for e-ink. Amazon has also taken the time to work on the fonts, offering new, more precise font sizes as well as custom-made, very pretty fonts.

Amazon has also doubled the storage of the new Kindle, so it can store up to about 3,500 books, and has, more impressively, doubled the battery life. With wireless turned off, Amazon rates the Kindle’s battery life as up to one month (and a comparatively pitiful 10 days with it on). A month of battery life! That might get glossed over, but it’s insane that an electronic device (with a 6-inch screen, no less) could last for an entire month on a single charge.

One day last fall, a police officer here put on his uniform and sat on a drab tan couch before a video camera. In a halting monotone, he recorded two video appeals to Vladimir V. Putin, 13 minutes in all.

He was a nobody cop from a nowhere city, but his words would startle this country.

“How can a police officer accept bribes?” the officer asked. “Do you understand where our society is heading?

“You talk about reducing corruption,” he said. “You say that it should not be just a crime, that it should be immoral. But it is not like that. I told my boss that the police are corrupt. And he told me that it cannot be done away with.

“I am not afraid of quitting. I will tell you my name. I am Dymovsky, Aleksei Aleksandrovich.”

The videos were uploaded to YouTube in November, and a nation that has grown increasingly infuriated by police wrongdoing could not take its eyes off them.

Here, finally, was an insider acknowledging the enveloping culture of corruption in Russia’s police forces — the payoffs large and small, the illegal arrests to extort money, the police chiefs who buy fancy cars and mansions on modest state salaries.

The videos have been watched more than two million times, giving Mr. Dymovsky a kind of fame in Russia similar to that of the police whistleblower Frank Serpico, who in the 1970s spoke out against police corruption in New York City.

Dymovsky was fired from the police force soon after posting the videos. His YouTube messages prompted a wave of videos from other Russian police officers describing corruption and the framing of innocent people.

via

What’s best for Paul’s family is best for everyone’s family in the NBA. It needs James to restrict the polluting onto others of his own warped value system. James plays for the Miami Heat, but somehow he wants control of transactions elsewhere, too. He wants the building of these so-called super teams to protect his own legacy, to make it look like he isn’t the only superstar searching for the easy way to championships.

At parliamentary committee hearings in early 2009 — before the current commission was established — NDP MP Jean Crowder, from B.C., listened to the official Indian Affairs ministry count that 97,000 survivors claimed compensation, with 72,000 approved (average payment, $20,500), but that 20,000 had been found ineligible, and had the right to appeal.

Crowder raised the issue of survivors who were rejected “for seemingly minor reasons . . . We’ve had some people say that they couldn’t remember the name of the teacher who abused them when they were six years old, and that was the reason their claim as rejected. They’re now in their late 60s and 70s. It’s not unreasonable, I think, that they could not remember . . . .”

She demanded to know what research was being done to help these people. An official said it was very thorough but that she had to remember, “with all due respect, the people who go to these hearings are very often, as I’ve mentioned already, in a fragile mental state.”

“Well,” retorted Crowder, “they’re traumatized, and then they’re traumatized all over again.”

Unfortunate parallels with history haunt. Between 1927 and 1951, Canada enforced legislation under the Indian Act making it illegal for aboriginal people to hire lawyers to represent them in any activity related to land claims.

Under the settlement appeals process, survivors can hire lawyers, but it’s designed so that anything over 15 per cent going to the lawyer is sent for adjudication. Sounds good on the surface, according to a lawyer busy with aboriginal cases, because most work can be done for 15 percent.

He describes one case in Quebec, however, in which he spent huge amounts of time and got a particularly good settlement. He charged 30 per cent. He does a lot of pro bono work already, and with expenses, can’t afford to offer it to appeals. His client supported him and he’s waiting for a decision. But the official who questioned him taunted: “Looks like you gave him Cadillac service.”

So, he asks, are Indians entitled to only second-class service?

Make sure you read the entire article.

One of the things that came out of it for me is that mental health issues and government doesn’t seem to a partisan issue, both parties have struggled coming up with a mental health plan going back decades now.  The first time it hit the radar for me was when the Grant Devine Tories shut down many of the facilities in Saskatchewan but never introduced the community supports to help their patients live independently in the communities.  Of course without a strong advocacy group, how could you expect anyone to increase funding during some of the deepest spending cuts in Canadian history during the 1990s.  Lately I have been reading about some the impact on society that FASD has had as well.  it’s no small issue and again, there are limited community supports available.  So it’s not really a NDP or Sask Party issue but it is a societal one and I don’t really see a long term government plan to address it.

Of course if you are a Sask Party MLA or one of Saskatchewan’s few Liberals, I am more than willing to give you a piece of my mind and lobby you on the issue as well.

Now I think we only paid $99 for it from Superstore but I am unsure if I want to replace it this year.  The weather is so weird that this year that I am not sure that it won’t happen again.  The other alternative is a 8 x 8 deck out there to go with the 6 x 8 deck at the front.  Of course one can actually hear the mosquitoes and dragon flies go nuts at night so maybe a covered structure is the way to go after all.

So hopefully between 8:00 p.m. and 10:00 p.m. tonight, the series will be uploaded and linked together and I finally have some measure of closure in my life.

Update: Not so fast.  To make a long story short, during the final edits, I wanted to research some more about mental health issues and Riversdale as well as I started to read about what the concentration of services in Skid Row had done to that neighborhood. 

I am off to the cabin today until Sunday but I plan to bring my netbook along and post something later tonight if not tomorrow.

So, to summarize: Google is responsible for Orkut, Wave, and Buzz. Ex-Googlers are responsible for Facebook, Foursquare, and Twitter. Discuss.

I checked out SaskLiberal.ca but there was nothing there either.

Even newly nominated star Liberal candidate Darren Hill doesn’t have the information on his Facebook page.

I have tried to sign up for Liberal Party e-mail updates before from the Sask Liberals but they are so inconsistent that I don’t know if I have been dropped from them or not.  All I know is that I wanted to hear Michael Ignatieff speak, I wanted to bring my ten year old son out to hear him speak (who is the same age I was when I started to help out on campaigns) and I was thwarted by Team Ignatieff.

I am left with one of four options. 

1. The turnout for Ignatieff was so great in Saskatoon that they were afraid that if Mark and I were there, it would cause the already saturated Saskatoon soil to turn to quicksand.
2. Things are going so well for the Liberals in Saskatoon that they don’t need anymore support of voters.
3. The advance people and organizers in Saskatoon are simply going through the motions.
4. Going to a city with no visible signs of Liberal grassroots support, rather than visiting Ralph Goodale’s riding was a big mistake.  Of course with how this tour is going, perhaps the Goodale team was content to watch this from afar.

During the last federal campaign, the campaign was three weeks old before the Liberal Party website had the name of my local Liberal candidate.  The same thing happened tour wise with Stephane Dion.  Several times he came to Saskatoon and I only heard of it after he left.  I should not have to work at finding out or have to beg to be told when a party leader is coming to Saskatoon for a public event.  Considering this was a party that ran great candidates and won seats under Jean Chretien, I find myself at a loss at how poorly they are organized in the province right now.  I have a feeling that if some more adults were in charge of things in Ottawa, this would not be happening.   Even the Saskatchewan Liberal leader’s Twitter account (that is advertised everywhere on their site) doesn’t actually have any Saskatchewan politics on it.  Somebody do something quick before environmentalists have to resort to finding Liberals somewhere else in the country and reintroduce them back into Saskatchewan after they have become extinct. 

With approximately 2.6 billion people worldwide following the 2010 World Cup, the spectacle has been a field day for marketers, each trying to connect their brand with the strong emotions fans have for their favorite teams. But the stakes are particularly high for those brands that actually sell football gear. Two contenders, Adidas and Nike, each have a shot at becoming undisputed market leader when the whistle blows on July 11 and the final game concludes. Coming into 2010, their records show them evenly matched: each is estimated to have earned $1.5-1.7 billion in football merchandise sales in 2008 and 2009, and each controls about a third of the total market.

Adidas is playing its tried and tested strategy of being the official FIFA sponsor of the World Cup games. This means the referees wear Adidas uniforms, the footballs are Adidas-branded and televised ads for football apparel and equipment during matches can only be, you guessed it, for Adidas. Moreover, Adidas is the official sponsor for 12 of the 32 teams playing in the World Cup — so the uniforms of teams such as Germany, Argentina, and Spain (all of which advanced to the quarter finals) were emblazoned with the Adidas logo.

Nike meanwhile had to come up with a different approach…

Such high-level attention to summer reading is welcomed by educators concerned about the way summer tends to sap learning gains. Two-thirds of the reading achievement gap between low-income 9th-graders and their higher-income peers can be attributed to different levels of reading in the summers, according to research cited by the National Summer Learning Association in Baltimore.

Giving away books is a good first step, “and it also helps if a parent or a teacher is working with the child … asking questions [about the books],” says Jeff Smink, the association’s vice president of policy.

Here is how to do it

In a study that compares students who received free books over the summer with students who didn’t, Richard Allington, an education professor at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, found encouraging results. He tracked low-income first- and second-graders in Florida who chose a dozen free books at their reading level for three summers in a row.

“The effect was equal to the effect of summer school,” Professor Allington says. “Spending roughly $40 to $50 a year on free books for [each kid] began to alleviate the achievement gap that occurs in the summer.”

The study couldn’t show how many of the books the students actually read, but the students who sent in reading logs answering brief questions about the books showed even stronger achievement gains.

If I was a local church pastor, I would put together a proposal for local companies to sponsor this next summer and run this out of your church.  Some computers, some reading stations, parent volunteers, and a lot of Hardy Boys, Harry Potter, and Diary of a Wimpy books to give out.  via

More than 27,000 abandoned oil and gas wells lurk in the hard rock beneath the Gulf of Mexico, an environmental minefield that has been ignored for decades. No one — not industry, not government — is checking to see if they are leaking, an Associated Press investigation shows.

The oldest of these wells were abandoned in the late 1940s, raising the prospect that many deteriorating sealing jobs are already failing.

The AP investigation uncovered particular concern with 3,500 of the neglected wells — those characterized in federal government records as "temporarily abandoned."

Regulations for temporarily abandoned wells require oil companies to present plans to reuse or permanently plug such wells within a year, but the AP found that the rule is routinely circumvented, and that more than 1,000 wells have lingered in that unfinished condition for more than a decade. About three-quarters of temporarily abandoned wells have been left in that status for more than a year, and many since the 1950s and 1960s — eveb though sealing procedures for temporary abandonment are not as stringent as those for permanent closures.

So what’s the worst thing that could happen?

As a forceful reminder of the potential harm, the well beneath BP’s Deepwater Horizon rig was being sealed with cement for temporary abandonment when it blew April 20, leading to one of the worst environmental disasters in the nation’s history. BP alone has abandoned about 600 wells in the Gulf, according to government data.

There’s ample reason for worry about all permanently and temporarily abandoned wells — history shows that at least on land, they often leak. Wells are sealed underwater much as they are on land. And wells on land and in water face similar risk of failure. Plus, records reviewed by the AP show that some offshore wells have failed.

Oh, at least someone is watching the right?

Despite the likelihood of leaks large and small, though, abandoned wells are typically not inspected by industry or government.

Oil company representatives insist that the seal on a correctly plugged offshore well will last virtually forever.

Well that’s reassuring because the last thing big oil would do to us is lie about an environmental issue.  Especially an environmental issue that would cost them money.

Officials at the U.S. Interior Department, which oversees the agency that regulates federal leases in the Gulf and elsewhere, did not answer repeated questions regarding why there are no inspections of abandoned wells. 

Duh, the oil industry has said that everything is okay.  Why would anyone need to check up on big business?

State officials estimate that tens of thousands are badly sealed, either because they predate strict regulation or because the operating companies violated rules. Texas alone has plugged more than 21,000 abandoned wells to control pollution, according to the state comptroller’s office.

Offshore, but in state waters, California has resealed scores of its abandoned wells since the 1980s.

In deeper federal waters, though — despite the similarities in how such wells are constructed and how sealing procedures can fail — the official policy is out-of-sight, out-of-mind.

Like I said before, what’s the worst thing that could happen?  via

When the NBA powerbroker and adviser to James, William Wesley – famously known as Worldwide Wes – heard the news, he was duly impressed. After all these months, all this careful planning, Riley had cleared the cap space to give the three stars of free agency contracts starting at about $15 million.

For months, Wesley had believed James’ choice would be the Chicago Bulls, but no one had counted on Riley’s relentlessness in clearing enough cap space to accommodate the three stars. Free agency wouldn’t officially start for another week on July 1, but from then on, Wesley had two words about LeBron and the Heat for the closest of associates: done deal.

Worldwide Wes had understood something about James the Cavaliers refused to believe, and even James’ childhood buddies from Akron were still somewhat unwilling to accept: LeBron James was never re-signing with the Cleveland Cavaliers, and now it was a matter of securing him the proper complement of teammates for the greatest free-agent haul in history.

Riley was 65, a five-time NBA champion, a Hall of Famer and he wanted a dynasty to fade into the sunset of his basketball life. He had kept his word, continuing to dump contract upon contract in a high-wire act that left him without a safety net.

Riley believed he could unload those contracts. And mostly, he believed in his own power of persuasion. He is still the biggest presence, biggest voice in the room. Houston Rockets GM Daryl Morey, a statistics analyst, met with Chris Bosh at 12:01 a.m. on July 1 armed with an iPad. Morey’s cult followers on the web hailed it as a resounding success, but Riley never believed he was losing Bosh to the MIT gang.

Riley believed in his ability to get into the room with James and sell him on the way the 1980s Los Angeles Lakers sacrificed salary, shots and statistics for the greater good of a dynasty. Most of all, Riley believed he could benefit on the close relationship that James had with Wade, and that there wasn’t a franchise with cap space that could offer such a compelling case to the two-time defending MVP.

The article is a great one and goes a long ways to show how incredibly sheltered and immature that LeBron James and his inner circle are and why his legacy of one the greatest basketball players in history will always be tarnished and redefined as a self-absorbed, manipulated, quitter.  Quite the price to pay for a championship ring.

Of course we knew The Big Picture would be covering the World Cup but I was blown away by how large the stadium was in Cape Town compared to the rest of the city.

(1) the Executive Director quit and was replaced by the Tech guy; yup, the coax cable guy (his expression) now runs the Greens.
(2) one Deputy Leader was replaced by another guy, who proceeded to quit within months, join the Bloc Quebecois, and now won’t return the Leader’s calls.
(3) more layoffs and employee resignations too numerous to list (including most the organizers).
(4) more high-profile candidates resigning (amazingly the top 3 Green candidates from 2008 are now gone, not including the leadership of course).
(5) the leader’s campaign manager in Saanich-Gulf Islands quit, and was replaced by an underling from Nova Scotia.
(6) a 20% decline in average party support from this time 2 yrs ago (i.e. 4 months before the last election).
(7) more EDAs de-registered by Elections Canada (bringing the total to 44 over the last few yrs — 3 times more than all other major parties combined).
(8) …that means still no local organization in 1/4 of the country.
(9) most Federal Council positions being acclaimed because of lack of interested candidates…
(10) a precipitous 20% decline in the party’s membership in the last year — yes, you read that right, down 20% in one year!
(11) a near 50%(!) decline in the # of donors from 2008, which is especially bad since…
(12) it’s the only party in the red – $1.2 million in outstanding liabilities and negative working capital.

So in response, Elizabeth May is trying to hold off a leadership review vote of her performance

Given the party’s documented decline, it’s no wonder the leader’s posse is desperately trying to change the rules, so she doesn’t have to face any kind of leadership vote or leadership review until what could be mid-2013, which could mean going 7 years(!) without any kind of performance review (i.e. within 6 months after the next election, which need not happen until fall 2012). Most expected a leadership race to culminate in a convention next month, but they postponed it so they can get the members to rubber-stamp changing the 4-year mandate to an indefinite one. With the leader using the party’s email list to advocate for her preferred motion (needless to say, advocates of competing motions have not been given the same courtesy), it appears to be a foregone conclusion that the change will be pushed through since the motions are so confusing, people will look for guidance.

In other words, there is less and less to distinguish The Green Party of Canada from any other political party when it comes to ambition and leadership.  Nor is there much to distinguish Green Party members from any other party when it comes to ruthlessness when it is time to ditch a leader.

Three of the four of us are using Goodreads around the house.  You can find me at www.goodreads.com/jordoncooper, Wendy at www.goodreads.com/wendycooper and Mark is now at www.goodreads.com/markcooper.  If you want to follow what we are reading and what we think about it, you now can.

Guess who most of us are rooting for this British Open? 

When Tiger debuted on tour, it was planned, calculated, sponsored. "Hello world," he said in his first press conference, his sentences already ending in Nike swooshes and dollar signs. When he won his first major, it was impressive but expected, like Lindsay Lohan’s STD collection. Daly crashed at countless Days Inns on the Nationwide Tour before qualifying for the PGA in 1991 and — improbably — winning the PGA Championship later that year. When he found out he’d made the field (as the ninth alternate), he spent all night driving odd-numbered interstates from Memphis to Indiana. He changed shoes in the Crooked Stick parking lot and proceeded to leave his footprints all over the field.

"I don’t have anybody to blame for this win but me," he said after his victory, and he’s carried that same attitude out of the locker room and into his life. The wins haven’t come as often — and not at all since 2004 — but he’s continued to hack away, even though most of the names from the ’91 leaderboards have swapped their three irons for 2.5 kids and a life away from the Tour.

Off the course, Daly has long since filled his "Nobody to Blame But Me" file cabinet. He’s been married in a casino, remained committed to the mullet hairstyle and was arrested outside a North Carolina Hooters, successfully completing the white trash trifecta.

Surprisingly his ruddy-cheeked Forsyth County mugshot (where he looked disturbingly like Janet Reno in an orange jumpsuit) wasn’t his lowest point. For that, he could pick between being allegedly stabbed by his estranged wife, selling his own memorabilia across from the entrance to Augusta National or recording a country album with half of Hootie and the Blowfish. By the time he launched his own clothing line — one that featured a lion as a logo — Daly looked less like the King of the Jungle and more like an aging attraction at a nature preserve.

But he’s still out there, still trying, even though he’s long since lost the sponsors for his clubs and golf balls. In the past five years, he’s missed more cuts than he’s made, but he’s making an effort to leave some of his bad habits in a roadside bunker. He still chain smokes and pounds Diet Coke, but since having lap band surgery he no longer sweats sawmill gravy. Daly has dropped over one hundred pounds so far — the equivalent of that surly girl from the Twilight series — so he and Tiger Woods both weigh in at 185 pounds.

One paradox identified by Pew is that some groups that "have been hardest hit by this recession (including blacks, young adults and Democrats) are significantly more upbeat than their more sheltered counterparts (including whites, older adults and Republicans) about a recovery." For instance: Blacks suffer higher unemployment than whites (15.4 vs. 8.6 percent in June) but believe more strongly that the recovery has begun (47 to 38 percent). Pew’s explanation is politics. With a Democratic administration, Democrats are more upbeat and Republicans more glum.

Another theory — more powerful, I think — is that the Great Recession, though jarring to almost everyone, has been most disruptive and disillusioning to those who were previously the most protected. It punctured their cocoons so unexpectedly that they became more cautious and fearful, whereas those who even in good times faced job loss and income shifts (many blacks, the young and the poor) were less surprised. One legacy of the Great Recession is that insecurity and uncertainty have gone upscale. People feel more exposed. They tend to plan for the worst rather than hope for the best. Their reluctance to make major purchase commitments (a new car or home) validates their pessimism by retarding recovery.

I posted more about it here.

This week Mark and I are up at the lake for a couple of days of male bonding before Wendy comes up this weekend with Oliver.  The weather has been hot but I don’t have a huge to do list.  Well I had a big to do list but I was reminded this summer but a friend of ours that he spent so much time finishing their family cabin, he didn’t enjoy it as much has he should have.  So Mark and I have cooked meals over an open fire, taken Maggi swimming a lot, and hung out reading.

So far this week I have read Samantha Power’s captivating book, Sergio: One Man’s Fight to Save the World about Sérgio Vieira de Mello, the United Nations diplomat who was described as being a cross between James Bond and Bobby Kennedy.  His resume took him from Bangladesh to East Timor to eventually Iraq (where he was killed) in his attempts to bring about peace, alleviate human suffering, and bring hope and security to those that have none. 

What struck me as I read it is he was a flawed man (terrible womanizer), who made big compromises and mistakes (befriending more than one person accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity in his attempt to bring about peace), yet consistently learned from them and adapted to new challenges.  I was contrasting him to what I had been taught about leadership which says that it requires perfect character and looks down on compromise and has people scorning or ignoring their enemies.   There is also the aspect of how contextual what we have learned really is.  What works well in one situation won’t work well in another situation.

Finally, this is shown by Sergio Vleira de Mello’s life and Samantha Power’s worldview and writing but the world’s problems require nuance, understanding of complex factors, and a wider view of context than is often given (MacNamara’s description of the misunderstanding of the nature of the Vietnam War comes to mind as an overly narrow understanding of a conflict).

Now back to the vacation.  Mark was engrossed by The Hardy Boys and is looking forward to a late night session of playing his PSP.  We tried to go swimming today but the algae was so gross that Maggi is a bright green shade right now, despite having given her a shower (it was as bad as it sounds).

Probably more interesting than the font, is the accusation that LeBron quit during the playoffs.  If he was right, the same thing could be said about many other players but most times their owners don’t say it publically. 

Finally, it has to suck to be a Chicago Bulls, New York Knicks, or New Jersey Nets fan.  Your team got rid of a lot pieces so it would have cap space to get LeBron, Bosh, or Wade and now you are all fighting over Carlos Boozer and not much else.  Good luck with that since by almost all accounts, you don’t seem to have a Plan B.  Yes, NY got Amare but they don’t have much else in terms of talent. 

As for projects this week, they are the following.

Home:

• Tossing out a lot of water damaged goods and weeding out my personal library.  I plan to get rid of about 400 books before this entire process is over.
• Finishing the Adirondack chairs.  We are painting them with a cranberry coloured door paint which should slow the pealing and the fading.   The none stop rain has slowed this project down.

Cabin:

• Trying to decide if a half dead tree at the side of the cabin can be saved.  If it can’t, I am going to take it down.
• Levelling the front step.  There are some tree roots there that are causing me problems that I am going to have to deal with in getting the steps done.
• I am going to decide on how I want the patio or if I want a deck at the front.  The area at the front I want to use is on quite a slope and I am trying to decide if I want to go high and over it or cut into the ground and keep it low.  High! Low!  I sound like Grover.
• Putting together a bed frame for Wendy’s and mine bed at the cabin.

Mark and I have some plans as well.  We want to do some hiking north of the cabin along the lake and then teach him to cook with fire over the firepit and the barbecue.  If that doesn’t work well, we went to Costco and bought some chimichangas to microwave.

We bought Mark five classic Hardy Boys books today so even if we don’t bond, he will know how to fight crime by the time the week is up.

SeaWorld doesn’t forget, and conducts safety and rescue training once a month. Among other things, trainers are taught to go limp if they are grabbed, so the whales will lose interest. The killer whales are taught to keep their mouths closed while swimming, and desensitized so they stay calm and circle the perimeter of the pool if someone accidentally falls in. They learn emergency recall signals—transmitted via a tone box and hand slaps—and are trained to swim to a pool exit gate if a net is dropped in. Scuba gear is always nearby. SeaWorld’s intensive regime helped its trainers interact with killer whales more than two million times without a death. But when a killer whale breaks from its training, all bets are off.

It’s hard to know exactly what triggers an incident. It could be boredom, a desire to play, the pent-up frustration of confinement, a rough night in the tank with the other orcas, the pain of an ulcer, or maybe even hormonal cycling. Whatever the motivation, some trainers believe that killer whales are acutely aware of what they’re doing. "I’ve seen animals put trainers in their mouths and know exactly what the breaking point of a rib cage is. And how long to hold a trainer on the bottom," says Jeffrey Ventre, who was a trainer at SeaWorld Orlando from 1987 until 1995, when he was let go for giving a killer whale a birthday kiss, in which he stuck his head into an orca’s mouth.

Of course the Orca that snapped had some other problems, in addition to being kept in bad conditions in his earlier home of Sealand.

If you’re a killer whale in a marine park, there’s probably no better place than SeaWorld. Yet no matter how nice the facility, there’s stress associated with being a big mammal in a relatively small pool. Starting at Sealand, Tilikum had developed the habit of grinding his teeth against metal pool gates. Many of his teeth were so worn and broken that SeaWorld vets decided to drill some of them so they could be regularly irrigated with antiseptic solution. And once again, he had to deal with the stress of hostile females, particularly a dominant orca called Katina. "Tili was a good guy that got beat down by the women," says Ventre, now a doctor in New Orleans. "So there are a lot of reasons he might be unhappy."

John Jett, who was a team leader for Tilikum, says he sometimes would suffer a beatdown bad enough to rake up his skin and bloody him and would have to be held out of shows until he healed. Jett had a term for the blood left streaming in the water: "sky writing." After a good thrashing from the other orcas, Jett says, Tili kum might be "off" for days, "splitting" from his trainer to swim at high speed around the pool, acting agitated around the females, or opening his eyes wide and emitting distress vocals if asked to get into a vulnerable position (like rolling over on his back). "It’s extremely sad if you think about being in Tili’s situation," says Jett. "The poor guy just has no place to run."

There was also an ugly incident in 1999

In 1999, Tilikum reminded the world that, at least when it came to humans, he could be a very dangerous animal. Early on the morning of July 6, Michael Dougherty, a physical trainer at SeaWorld, arrived at his office near the underwater viewing area of G pool. He glanced through the viewing glass and saw Tili kum staring back, with what appeared to be two human feet hanging down his side. There was a nude body draped across Tilikum’s back. It wasn’t moving. As in the Brancheau incident, Tilikum was herded onto the medical lift in order for SeaWorld staff to retrieve the body. Rigor mortis had already set in. It was a young male, and again the coroner’s and sheriff’s reports are telling. He had puncture wounds and multiple abrasions on his face.

The victim was Daniel Dukes, a 27-year-old with a reddish-blond ponytail, a scraggly beard and mustache, and a big red "D" tattooed above his left nipple. Four days earlier, he’d been released from the Indian River County Jail after being booked for retail theft. On July 5, he apparently hid at SeaWorld past closing or sneaked in after hours. At some point during the night, he stripped down to his swim trunks, placed his clothes in a neat pile, and jumped into the pool. Perhaps he was simply crazy or suicidal. Perhaps he believed in the myth of a friendly Shamu.

The coroner determined the cause of death to be drowning. There were no cameras or witnesses, so it’s not known if Tilikum held him under or hypothermia did him in. But it’s clear Tilikum worked Dukes over. The coroner found abrasions and contusions—both premortem and postmortem—all over his head and body, and puncture wounds on his left leg. His testicles had been ripped open. Divers had to go to the bottom of the pool to retrieve little pieces of his body. SeaWorld ramped up its security, posting a 24-hour watch at Shamu Stadium.

So SeaWorld brought in a whale with issues from another park despite being a far older male than what it was used to working with, it had a series of problems with the whale that resulted in two other deaths, saw that it had anxiety and abuse issues and still decided that it was a good idea to use it in it’s shows.  The OHSA report is going to be a great read when it comes out.

Update: SeaWorld plans to return Tilikum to being in it’s shows.  Apparently it feels that despite being involved in the deaths of three people, Tilikum is fine to be around other people.  Is it just me or have we seen this movie before?

Even by the standards of this deficit-ridden state, Illinois’s comptroller, Daniel W. Hynes, faces an ugly balance sheet. Precisely how ugly becomes clear when he beckons you into his office to examine his daily briefing memo.

He picks the papers off his desk and points to a figure in red: $5.01 billion.

“This is what the state owes right now to schools, rehabilitation centers, child care, the state university — and it’s getting worse every single day,” he says in his downtown office.

Mr. Hynes shakes his head. “This is not some esoteric budget issue; we are not paying bills for absolutely essential services,” he says. “That is obscene.”

For the last few years, California stood more or less unchallenged as a symbol of the fiscal collapse of states during the recession.

Now Illinois has shouldered to the fore, as its dysfunctional political class refuses to pay the state’s bills and refuses to take the painful steps — cuts and tax increases — to close a deficit of at least $12 billion, equal to nearly half the state’s budget.

Of course the impact is more than on just Illinois

The federal dollars are nearly spent. Last month, local governments nationwide shed more than 20,000 jobs. Should the largest struggling states — like California, New York or Illinois — lay off tens of thousands more in coming months, or default on payments, the reverberations could badly damage a weakened economy and push housing prices down still further.

“You’re not seeing these states bounce back, and that could be a big drag on the national economy,” said Susan K. Urahn of the Pew Center on the States. “It could be a very tough decade.”

Here is what it looks like in real terms

The Community Counseling Centers of Chicago is another of those workaday groups that are like the stitches on a baseball, holding together poor and working-class neighborhoods. With an annual budget of $16 million, the agency tends to families torn by crime and violence as well as people who are psychologically stressed and abusing drugs.

On any given Monday morning, the agency’s chief administrative officer, John J. Troy, 61, has no idea how he is going to keep its doors open until Friday. He said the state had not come through with an expected $2.2 million, which is about six months of arrears. He has laid off and recalled employees three times in the last two years.

“Two weeks ago, I had days to meet my $420,000 payroll and all I was looking at was a $200,000 line of credit from a bank,” recalled Mr. Troy. “I drove down to Springfield and said, ‘Hey, you owe us $3 million.’ They said: ‘Oh, that’s nothing. We owe another agency $10 million.’ ”

“The fact of the matter is,” he added, “I don’t sleep much these days.”

I know that several current and former politicians across the country read this blog but I can’t think of a Canadian equivalent.  In reading about the second Devine government in Saskatchewan the province was pretty much broke but from what I recall, bills were being paid.  While the Ontario government had Rae Days, I am pretty sure the bills got paid.  Actually outside of the 1930s, I can’t think of a time when a Canadian government didn’t pay it’s bills.  Anyone have an example?

To believe the best-athlete myth is to fundamentally misunderstand American soccer’s plight. Athletic ability is not the problem. In fact, it’s generally considered a Team USA strength, along with competitive spirit. We can run and jump with the world’s best. Compared to their superstar Argentine and Spanish peers, however, our best players lack vision, creativity and technical skill. On-ball magic. Soccer-specific attributes that don’t transfer from one sport to the next, that can’t be measured with the stopwatches and shuttle cones of a scouting combine. Does being able to hit a major league curveball automatically make you a PGA Tour prospect? The things American soccer needs to improve on come from immersion and exposure, from how you grow up in the sport.

And in that regard, our best isn’t good enough. Not even close.

As a teenager, Messi attended the training academy of top professional club Barcelona, living and breathing the game’s highest level; by age 19, he was playing in his first World Cup. In the world of international soccer, his story is the norm. It’s also the norm in the United States — provided you play football, basketball or baseball, where the minors and/or de facto minor league college sports prepare you to be a pro in sink-or-swim, survival-of-the-fittest fashion.

Play soccer, by contrast, and you’ll likely spend your formative years in college — well below MLS, a Marianas Trench removed from the big-money, high-pressure hothouse of European club competition. By the time America’s top talents reach the international level, they’re stuck playing catch-up. Though a shift to continental-style player development is taking place — witness U.S. midfielder Michael Bradley, who trained at the IMG soccer academy in Florida, went to MLS at age 17 and is now playing in Germany — overnight dividends aren’t a sure thing. How else to explain Freddy Adu?