Wednesday Reads

Its Wednesday Morning, the last Wednesday in February, can you believe it? The news in Libya is changing fast.  So I will link to a few things below. Look for Live Blog Post to find any updates as events warrant.

The Associated Press: US to evacuate Americans from Libya by ferry

Live Blog – Libya Feb 23 | Al Jazeera Blogs

Libya – Al Jazeera English

The project for a new Arab century – Opinion – Al Jazeera English

In Chicago, they have a new mayor: Emanuel Wins in Chicago, A.P. Projects – NYTimes.com

Rahm Emanuel, a former congressman who worked for two presidents, was elected mayor of Chicago on Tuesday, according to The Associated Press, a victory that would mark a new path for a city that has, for 22 years, been led by a singular, powerful force, Richard M. Daley.

Mr. Emanuel, who will take office in May, had 55 percent of the vote against five other candidates with 86 percent of the precincts reporting.

Wisconsin, Indiana, Ohio…who is next?

Workers’ protests swell in Midwest as budget battles continue – CNN.com

Republican lawmakers in the nation’s heartland might be feeling a case of heartburn after their budget bills spawned demonstrations in at least three states over what protesters view as an attack on workers’ rights.

Crowds in Ohio, Wisconsin and Indiana gathered Tuesday in a series of budgetary showdowns that challenge long-standing rights and benefits afforded to unionized labor while raising questions about the fiscal health of state and local governments.

Indiana Democrats Stage Boycott – WSJ.com

Indiana Democratic lawmakers Tuesday boycotted legislative sessions to deny Republicans a quorum needed to pass a bill that would restrict union rights in the state, following the lead of Democrats from Wisconsin who used a similar strategy.

[…]

Protests also grew Tuesday in Ohio, where more than 10,000 union supporters flooded the capitol in Columbus to demonstrate outside a hearing on a state Senate bill that would strip most collective-bargaining rights from the state’s 400,000 public employees. Republican Gov. John Kasich supports the bill.

Look for more updates on the US Labor Union protest in the comments below.  For recent Sky Dancing post about the Union protest, click here.

Recently Sima wrote a blog post about the effect of GM crops on bee colonies. Aside from Genetically Modified crops, which can negatively affect other strains of seed they come in contact with, and can also affect the behavior of bees that harvest the pollen from GM crops; there are many environmental hazards in pesticides which are used on crops that also negatively impact the environment and animals that come in contact with them. Frogs are some of the best indicators of these poisonous chemical treatments. Yesterday this article was published in the Guardian. Solving the mystery of the bizarre deformed frogs | Environment | guardian.co.uk

A frog floats with cranberries awaiting harvest on a cranberry bog in Wareham, Massachusetts Photograph: Charles Krupa

For the last two decades, strange things have been happening to frogs. Some frog populations have high rates of limb deformities, while others have high incidences of what is known as “intersex” — traits associated with both males and females, such as male frogs whose testes contain eggs.

David K. Skelly, professor of ecology at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, set out to discover what was causing these deformities, which some researchers were attributing to the use of an agricultural pesticide called atrazine. Skelly launched an experiment in ponds throughout Connecticut, studying frogs in four landscapes: forests, agricultural areas, suburbs, and cities. And what he found was surprising — the highest rates of deformities were not occurring in and around farmlands, but in cities and suburbs.

In an interview with Yale Environment 360 contributing writer Carl Zimmer, Skelly described what chemicals may be causing these abnormalities in frog populations, and explained why this phenomena may have troubling implications not only for amphibians, but for other vertebrates, including humans. One thing seems clear: The deformities showing up in frogs are almost certainly not caused by a single chemical, but rather by a whole suite of substances — including medicines excreted by humans into the environment — that act in concert to mimic hormones like estrogen or cause other ill effects.

These cocktail of pesticides and various chemicals can wreak havoc on the environment. Please read the interview with Dr. Skelly in the link above. Some truly interesting stuff.

Many of our readers may remember this incident. When a letter of protest was written to The New Yorker magazine regarding the lack of content written by female writers. Why women hit the media glass ceiling | Megan Carpentier | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

The writer and editor Anne Hays recently penned an open letter to the New Yorker on Facebook, demanding her money back for the most recent issue. Why? The New Yorker contained only two pieces by women – and it wasn’t the first time. The letter went viral and was republished by publications such as Ms. and the website Jezebel – which used it to note how few other submission-based magazines have a regular number of women writers. Naturally it had its detractors as well, including Donald Douglas, who declared it an example of “feminist schizophrenia”.

The letter sparked a broader discussion about how to raise the number of women represented on some of America’s most prestigious mastheads. A consensus of sorts emerged: that editors play a huge role in which pitches get accepted and to whom assignments go. Ann Friedman, a former editor at AlterNet and the American Prospect, wrote that getting more women published would require editors to take concrete steps to solicit pieces from women writers and to be constantly vigilant in their efforts to bring parity, lest the slots inevitably go to the squeakist freelancer wheel (the person that pitches the most, and the most hard) or to only a few recognisable names. The Nation’s Katha Pollitt wrote that women atop the masthead can ameliorate the problem but wouldn’t be enough to bring parity of access, even as their presence in the pool of potentials start to overwhelm that of men.

[…]
As an editor, I sympathise with The Awl editor Choire Sicha, who went from working for others to being his own boss and suffered the slings and arrows of having a liberal site that doesn’t quite achieve gender parity. In the media, as in my earlier career as a lobbyist, one comes to sadly realise that most applications come from men – even supremely unqualified ones. It’s difficult to constantly try to beg certain writers to provide you with their work when others are imploring you for an opportunity, but it’s no different in any industry: you promote the person asking for the promotion that they seemingly deserve more often than the utility player who fails to sell his or her work – and women are inevitably schooled in modesty while their male peers are schooled in self-promotion.

Meagan Carpentier goes on to discuss the rise of the woman in conservative media outlets, which do not have difficulty in employing and promoting women, when the left media has such difficulty in finding women writers and journalist as their ratio of female to male employees suggest. We mentioned the lack of women voices in the US main stream media coverage of the Egyptian protest here on Sky Dancing. I must reiterate my pleasure of watching the AJE coverage of the day Mubarak left the presidency. Their live feed coverage featured many women journalist, and it was wonderful to hear these women’s voices describing the events as they happened.

Speaking of Al Jazeera, it seems they are in talks to finally get their broadcast available on US Cable channels. (Hope satellite is next.)

Al Jazeera in Talks With Comcast Over U.S. Distribution | Epicenter | Wired.com

Al Jazeera is in discussions with Comcast about bringing the network’s English-language channel to millions of U.S. homes via the nation’s largest cable operator. It would be a major breakthrough, capitalizing on the network’s growing reputation here as a honest and steadfast provider of news from an increasingly tumultuous Middle East.

“We’re very grateful for all the support and appreciation we’ve been receiving,” Al Jazeera English managing director Al Anstey said in a statement. “Clearly the demand is there for Al Jazeera, and people want to see us on their screens.”

Anstey arrived in New York City on Tuesday to lead the talks, the network said. The Comcast meeting was the first gambit in a new push by Al Jazeera to get on U.S. cable systems, which have been reluctant to carry the Qatar-based news network.

This next article from the NYT has a personal connection to me. When we lived in Manhattan, I loved going to Little Italy, to a restaurant called Vincent’s. They made the best Eggplant Parmigiano, and believe me I am one tough customer to please when it comes to Italian cooking.  That was over 10 years ago, and at the time I became aware of the encroachment of China Town on Mulberry Street. Even then the site of duck hanging in shop windows could be seen as you walked along the cross streets of Mulberry.

In New York’s Little Italy, Fewer and Fewer Italians – NYTimes.com

In 1950, nearly half of the more than 10,000 New Yorkers living in the heart of Little Italy identified as Italian-American. The narrow streets teemed with children and resonated with melodic exchanges in Italian among the one in five residents born in Italy and their second- and third-generation neighbors.
[…]
Little Italy is becoming Littler Italy. The encroachment that began decades ago as Chinatown bulged north, SoHo expanded from the west, and other tracts were rebranded more fashionably as NoLIta (for north of Little Italy) and NoHo seems almost complete.

The Little Italy that was once the heart of Italian-American life in the city exists mostly as a nostalgic memory or in the minds of tourists who still make it a must-see on their New York itinerary.

The only streets that really feel like they belong to Little Italy, Mulberry and Grand, are still crammed with venerable Italian restaurants and shops. But Chinese-language advertisements for reflexology spas pepper the sidewalk, a poster announces the Lunar New Year celebration, and a “for rent” sign hangs on a new seven-story condominium building at 182 Mulberry.

I will end with a couple of links to movies that deal with Labor Union disputes. I know there are many more, so hopefully you will post some others in the comments below.

Norma Rae (1979) – IMDb – Whenever this movie comes on TV, I try to catch it. I just love it. Sally Field climbing on the table with the Union sign has to be such an iconic scene in film history.

The Devil and Miss Jones (1941) – IMDb From what I understand, there was a porno with a similar  title…but this film from 1941 has great dialogue…it is about a group of department store workers that are trying to form a union.  The store owner goes undercover to find out who is leading the workers, but realizes that the workers are actually correct in their demands. (Like this will ever happen in real life.) Anyway, it is fun to watch, and they usually play it on TCM when they celebrate Jean Arthur’s birthday.

So what are you reading today, hit it!