2016: The year bullshit was weaponized [Respectful Insolence]

This will almost certainly be my last post of 2017. Unless something so amazing, terrible, or just plain interesting to me happens between now and tomorrow night, I probably won’t be posting again until January 2 or 3. Many bloggers like to do “end of year roundup”-type posts that list their best or most popular post, trends noted in 2016 relevant to their area of blogging interest, or predictions for the coming year as their last post of the year, but that’s never really been my style. I don’t remember the last time I did a post like that, and I’m too lazy today to bother to go and look it up, given that I’ve now been at this blogging thing for 12(!) years, my very first substantive post having gone live December 12, 2004.

That’s not to say that I don’t sometimes become contemplative as the year ends, and if there is a year that makes me contemplative as it finally shuffles off ignominiously into history, it’s 2016. Indeed, I’m having a hard time figuring out where to place 2016 in the annals of badness. Certainly it ranks up there in my lifetime. The last time I thought about it, I concluded that 2016 has been the worst year since at least 2001, and 2001, of course, was the year that roughly 3,000 people died in coordinated terror attacks on New York and the Pentagon, leading to the “war on terror,” the Patriot Act, the invasion of Iraq a year and a half later, and a whole lot of really bad things. Given the results of the election, we can’t know how bad this year truly is, but I rather suspect that fifteen years from now in 2031 we’ll be arguing over which year was worse, although, truth be told, 2017 is likely to be the real year to worry about. However, 2016 was still plenty bad. In essence, 2016 was the year bullshit was weaponized.

If 2016 were a person, it would be Mike Adams, the alternative medicine “entrepreneur” huckster who got his start selling Y2K scams in the late 1990s and for whom no conspiracy theory is too outrageous and no quackery is too ridiculous. Indeed, just check out his site now, and you’ll see that, among the usual antivaccine crap and rants against science-based medicine, Mikey is peddling conspiracy theories about President Obama trying to start World War III before January 20, referring to him as “quite literally a ‘sleeper cell’ agent who has been trying to destroy America from day one” and how the feds are supposedly probing NaturalNews.com and InfoWars for DDoS attacks to take them down. That’s because 2016 is the year that saw the rise in belief in conspiracy theories like the ones Adams peddles and their elevation into mainstream prominence, thanks to a presidential candidate and his followers who believe them, including all sorts of antivaccine nonsense. We now have a President who not only believes conspiracy theories like that but believes that vaccines are a “monster shot” that causes autism and has met with, of all people, Andrew Wakefield to discuss vaccine policy. 2016 was a year when Deepak Chopra castigated our new President-Elect for not being sufficiently reality-based. At the time, I said that irony meters everywhere exploded, but, having observed Donald Trump a while longer, I’m not entirely sure that he isn’t less reality-based than Deepak Chopra. We all make mistakes, I guess. That doesn’t change the fact that Trump appointed a man to run the Department of Health and Human Services who belongs to the premiere crank medical “society” in the US, the Association of American Physicians and Scientists (AAPS), which is still cranking out antivaccine nonsense as we speak, while the top to candidates to run the FDA include a man who doesn’t think the FDA should require evidence of efficacy before approving a drug versus a man who is, quite literally, a pharma shill. No wonder I fear for science policy, and that doesn’t even consider climate science.

If 2016 were a blog post, it would be this one, Autism Rates Skyrocket Since SB277 Took Hold In California or this one, Autism Rates in California Schools Jumped As Much as 17% Among Kindergartners Since Mandatory Vaccine Bill Was Signed. The idea is that SB277, the bill that eliminates nonmedical exemptions to school vaccine mandates, has already increased autism rates in California. Never mind that the bill was only signed into law in the summer of 2015 and didn’t take effect until the 2016-2017 school year. Never mind that the median age of diagnosis of autism spectrum disorders ranges from 3 years, 10 months for autistic disorder to 6 years, 2 months for Asperger’s, meaning that, even if vaccines cause autism (which they don’t), the earliest we could expect to have a chance of detecting an increase in autism prevalence potentially related to SB 277 for at least two or three years after the law took effect; i.e., 2019 or so. Even then, it would be ridiculous to attribute such a marked increase in autism prevalence to SB 277, given that at most SB 277 could only be expected to increase vaccination rates by a few percent. Why? Because less than 10% of California kindergarten children aren’t fully vaccinated and there will always be at least a couple of percent of children who need medical exemptions to school vaccine mandates. That means that, at most, SB 277 will increase vaccine uptake a few percentage points, single digits. That’s enough to make sure that herd immunity isn’t compromised, but, even if you buy into the pseudoscientific belief that vaccines cause autism, it’s not enough to cause a massive increase in autism prevalence as massive as these two reality-challenged antivaccine loons are claiming. Of course, given that vaccines don’t cause autism, these are even dumber posts, perfect for 2016.

Or maybe this post by—who else?—Mike Adams best encapsulates 2016, The top 10 most outrageous science hoaxes of 2016. Indeed, when I first got the idea for this post, I thought that I would spend the whole post deconstructing these “top ten” science “hoaxes,” but, as I wrote, my viewpoint switched to, “Why bother?” It’s the same old, same old, some “hoaxes” so ridiculous that they are practically self-refuting, like the claim that the EPA intentionally poisoned the children of Flint, MI with lead in their drinking water in order to cause brain damage and, well, I’ll let Mikey tell you:

The result of all this was the mass poisoning of mostly African-American children with a toxic heavy metal that’s well known to damage cognitive function and impede learning. What a great way to raise more democrats! It’s all part of the new “science” of keeping the sheeple dumbed down so they will keep voting for corrupt criminals like Hillary Clinton. Instead of “let them eat cake,” the new progressive Jon Podesta version is, “Let them drink lead!”

Any time you see the word “sheeple” used in an article unironically and without mockery of the word, you know you’re dealing with a grade-A idiotic conspiracy theorist. The rest of the “hoaxes are a standard load of right wing, Alex Jones-style conspiracy theories, such as the idea that SB 277 is a plot by pharmaceutical companies, who claim that “vaccines pose zero risk to children (i.e. claiming they do not harm a single child…ever),” something no pro-vaccine advocate, to my knowledge, has ever claimed and that the Zika virus scare was also a conspiracy. Then, of course, there’s the usual anthropogenic climate change denial and rants about transgenderism. (I wonder if any of the lefties who share Adams’ bilge know just how viciously bigoted he is when he talks about transgender people.) The sole exception to the right-wing conspiracy mongering is one that made me chuckle, namely Adams’ unhappiness with Republicans passing a law that banned GMO labeling. I mentioned my amusement with Adams’ discomfiture back when I discussed the nomination of Tom Price to head HHS, given that Adams has reinvented himself as a darling of the alt right and a rabid Donald Trump supporter.

Finally, if 2016 to be described by a survey, it would have to be this one, which shows that Americans believe a lot of crazy things, with 31% believing that vaccines cause autism, 53% believing that weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq, and 36% believing that President Obama was born in Kenya. Not surprisingly, nearly twice the percentage of Trump supporters believe that vaccines cause autism compared to Clinton supporters (31% vs. 18%), although pretty equal numbers of Trump and Clinton supporters believe that 9/11 was an “inside job” (between 15% and 17%). The point is that belief in things that, objectively, are not true is widespread and always has been. Anyone who’s been involved in skepticism, either organized or not, knows this. Be it ghosts, Bigfoot, the claim that vaccines cause autism, alternative medicine quackery, 9/11 “Truth,” Holocaust denial, or any of a number of conspiracy theories, pseudoscience, and pseudohistory, belief in things that can be objectively shown not to exist or beliefs that can objectively be shown noto to be true is rampant.

It’s an old problem, too. I think back to a post I wrote about cancer quackery in the late 1970s and how little has changed in the list of alternative medicine cancer “cures” over more than three decades, and I can’t help but think that three decades from now (if I’m still alive) I’ll still be seeing the same stuff. Laetrile, antineoplastons, the Gerson protocol, Hoxsey therapy, and many more were all around then and will likely still be around long after I’m dead. Similarly, antivaccine tropes have been around forever. I was reminded of this yesterday when I saw a post by John Rappaport in which he republished a chapter on vaccines from a book he wrote in 1987, AIDS, Inc.. The same antivaccine misinformation and lies are there, such as:

• The decline in vaccine-preventable diseases like polio is mostly due to improved housing, to a decrease in the virulence of micro-organisms, but, most importantly, a “higher host-resistance due to better nutrition.” (In other words, vaccines never get the credit.)
• In outbreaks, more vaccinated than unvaccinated children get the disease. (It’s the same way antivaccine ideologues ignore percentages, which clearly show that in outbreaks, the unvaccinated get the disease at much higher rates than the vaccinated. The only reason that the absolute numbers are higher is because so many more children are vaccinated than unvaccinated.)
• Serious, life-threatening adverse reactions to vaccines are common when in fact they are rare.
• Measles and polio had been regressing before the vaccines, and the vaccines had nothing to do with their elimination.

There are several more. If these lies sound familiar, they should. I’ve discussed pretty much every one of them at least once, some many times over the years. I expect that I will continue to have to do so for as long as I manage to continue this blog.

So in one respect, the revelation that people believe nonsense is no revelation at all. I’ve known it for a long time, as have skeptics and critical thinkers. What was different in 2016 is that a perfect storm of politics, anger, a presidential candidate who believes a whole lot of said nonsense, and the facility with which the Internet can be used to spread conspiracy theories and fake news conspired to overwhelm all safeguards that had previously at least kept pseudoscience, pseudohistory, and conspiracy theories from achieving mainstream acceptance. In essence, in 2016 bullshit was weaponized, and it turned out to be an incredibly effective weapon indeed.

We saw the rise of fake news, which, remember, is not the same thing as bad and/or biased reporting, given that fake news is made up nearly completely from whole cloth for profit and influence, while bad and biased reporting at least starts from real events. Unfortunately, the term “fake news” has already been devalued as people like Adams are quick to label the mainstream press “fake news” and even skeptics mistake bad or biased reporting for bad news.

What can we as skeptics do? The weaponization of bullshit is not qualitatively different from anything we’ve seen before. It is, however, quantitatively much worse, and, as always, we remain woefully outmatched. Powerful political and economic forces are behind the weaponization of bullshit. There’s no way we can match the resources they have. Fortunately, the Internet remains a great equalizer, which means that the misinformation can be countered, but that is not enough. What needs to be happen in 2017 and beyond is that skeptics and critical thinkers will need to study the BS and find ways to counter it. Countering pseudoscience and misinformation has always been a battle that will last lifetimes, but unfortunately 2016 just made it a whole lot more difficult.

Maybe Bluto showed us the way, all the way back in 1978:

OK, a really stupid and futile gesture is not the way to go, but we need this spirit if we are to find a way to combat the misinformation to survive the Age of Trump and minimize the damage done by him and the forces he’s weaponized.

from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/2iMhZb7

This will almost certainly be my last post of 2017. Unless something so amazing, terrible, or just plain interesting to me happens between now and tomorrow night, I probably won’t be posting again until January 2 or 3. Many bloggers like to do “end of year roundup”-type posts that list their best or most popular post, trends noted in 2016 relevant to their area of blogging interest, or predictions for the coming year as their last post of the year, but that’s never really been my style. I don’t remember the last time I did a post like that, and I’m too lazy today to bother to go and look it up, given that I’ve now been at this blogging thing for 12(!) years, my very first substantive post having gone live December 12, 2004.

That’s not to say that I don’t sometimes become contemplative as the year ends, and if there is a year that makes me contemplative as it finally shuffles off ignominiously into history, it’s 2016. Indeed, I’m having a hard time figuring out where to place 2016 in the annals of badness. Certainly it ranks up there in my lifetime. The last time I thought about it, I concluded that 2016 has been the worst year since at least 2001, and 2001, of course, was the year that roughly 3,000 people died in coordinated terror attacks on New York and the Pentagon, leading to the “war on terror,” the Patriot Act, the invasion of Iraq a year and a half later, and a whole lot of really bad things. Given the results of the election, we can’t know how bad this year truly is, but I rather suspect that fifteen years from now in 2031 we’ll be arguing over which year was worse, although, truth be told, 2017 is likely to be the real year to worry about. However, 2016 was still plenty bad. In essence, 2016 was the year bullshit was weaponized.

If 2016 were a person, it would be Mike Adams, the alternative medicine “entrepreneur” huckster who got his start selling Y2K scams in the late 1990s and for whom no conspiracy theory is too outrageous and no quackery is too ridiculous. Indeed, just check out his site now, and you’ll see that, among the usual antivaccine crap and rants against science-based medicine, Mikey is peddling conspiracy theories about President Obama trying to start World War III before January 20, referring to him as “quite literally a ‘sleeper cell’ agent who has been trying to destroy America from day one” and how the feds are supposedly probing NaturalNews.com and InfoWars for DDoS attacks to take them down. That’s because 2016 is the year that saw the rise in belief in conspiracy theories like the ones Adams peddles and their elevation into mainstream prominence, thanks to a presidential candidate and his followers who believe them, including all sorts of antivaccine nonsense. We now have a President who not only believes conspiracy theories like that but believes that vaccines are a “monster shot” that causes autism and has met with, of all people, Andrew Wakefield to discuss vaccine policy. 2016 was a year when Deepak Chopra castigated our new President-Elect for not being sufficiently reality-based. At the time, I said that irony meters everywhere exploded, but, having observed Donald Trump a while longer, I’m not entirely sure that he isn’t less reality-based than Deepak Chopra. We all make mistakes, I guess. That doesn’t change the fact that Trump appointed a man to run the Department of Health and Human Services who belongs to the premiere crank medical “society” in the US, the Association of American Physicians and Scientists (AAPS), which is still cranking out antivaccine nonsense as we speak, while the top to candidates to run the FDA include a man who doesn’t think the FDA should require evidence of efficacy before approving a drug versus a man who is, quite literally, a pharma shill. No wonder I fear for science policy, and that doesn’t even consider climate science.

If 2016 were a blog post, it would be this one, Autism Rates Skyrocket Since SB277 Took Hold In California or this one, Autism Rates in California Schools Jumped As Much as 17% Among Kindergartners Since Mandatory Vaccine Bill Was Signed. The idea is that SB277, the bill that eliminates nonmedical exemptions to school vaccine mandates, has already increased autism rates in California. Never mind that the bill was only signed into law in the summer of 2015 and didn’t take effect until the 2016-2017 school year. Never mind that the median age of diagnosis of autism spectrum disorders ranges from 3 years, 10 months for autistic disorder to 6 years, 2 months for Asperger’s, meaning that, even if vaccines cause autism (which they don’t), the earliest we could expect to have a chance of detecting an increase in autism prevalence potentially related to SB 277 for at least two or three years after the law took effect; i.e., 2019 or so. Even then, it would be ridiculous to attribute such a marked increase in autism prevalence to SB 277, given that at most SB 277 could only be expected to increase vaccination rates by a few percent. Why? Because less than 10% of California kindergarten children aren’t fully vaccinated and there will always be at least a couple of percent of children who need medical exemptions to school vaccine mandates. That means that, at most, SB 277 will increase vaccine uptake a few percentage points, single digits. That’s enough to make sure that herd immunity isn’t compromised, but, even if you buy into the pseudoscientific belief that vaccines cause autism, it’s not enough to cause a massive increase in autism prevalence as massive as these two reality-challenged antivaccine loons are claiming. Of course, given that vaccines don’t cause autism, these are even dumber posts, perfect for 2016.

Or maybe this post by—who else?—Mike Adams best encapsulates 2016, The top 10 most outrageous science hoaxes of 2016. Indeed, when I first got the idea for this post, I thought that I would spend the whole post deconstructing these “top ten” science “hoaxes,” but, as I wrote, my viewpoint switched to, “Why bother?” It’s the same old, same old, some “hoaxes” so ridiculous that they are practically self-refuting, like the claim that the EPA intentionally poisoned the children of Flint, MI with lead in their drinking water in order to cause brain damage and, well, I’ll let Mikey tell you:

The result of all this was the mass poisoning of mostly African-American children with a toxic heavy metal that’s well known to damage cognitive function and impede learning. What a great way to raise more democrats! It’s all part of the new “science” of keeping the sheeple dumbed down so they will keep voting for corrupt criminals like Hillary Clinton. Instead of “let them eat cake,” the new progressive Jon Podesta version is, “Let them drink lead!”

Any time you see the word “sheeple” used in an article unironically and without mockery of the word, you know you’re dealing with a grade-A idiotic conspiracy theorist. The rest of the “hoaxes are a standard load of right wing, Alex Jones-style conspiracy theories, such as the idea that SB 277 is a plot by pharmaceutical companies, who claim that “vaccines pose zero risk to children (i.e. claiming they do not harm a single child…ever),” something no pro-vaccine advocate, to my knowledge, has ever claimed and that the Zika virus scare was also a conspiracy. Then, of course, there’s the usual anthropogenic climate change denial and rants about transgenderism. (I wonder if any of the lefties who share Adams’ bilge know just how viciously bigoted he is when he talks about transgender people.) The sole exception to the right-wing conspiracy mongering is one that made me chuckle, namely Adams’ unhappiness with Republicans passing a law that banned GMO labeling. I mentioned my amusement with Adams’ discomfiture back when I discussed the nomination of Tom Price to head HHS, given that Adams has reinvented himself as a darling of the alt right and a rabid Donald Trump supporter.

Finally, if 2016 to be described by a survey, it would have to be this one, which shows that Americans believe a lot of crazy things, with 31% believing that vaccines cause autism, 53% believing that weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq, and 36% believing that President Obama was born in Kenya. Not surprisingly, nearly twice the percentage of Trump supporters believe that vaccines cause autism compared to Clinton supporters (31% vs. 18%), although pretty equal numbers of Trump and Clinton supporters believe that 9/11 was an “inside job” (between 15% and 17%). The point is that belief in things that, objectively, are not true is widespread and always has been. Anyone who’s been involved in skepticism, either organized or not, knows this. Be it ghosts, Bigfoot, the claim that vaccines cause autism, alternative medicine quackery, 9/11 “Truth,” Holocaust denial, or any of a number of conspiracy theories, pseudoscience, and pseudohistory, belief in things that can be objectively shown not to exist or beliefs that can objectively be shown noto to be true is rampant.

It’s an old problem, too. I think back to a post I wrote about cancer quackery in the late 1970s and how little has changed in the list of alternative medicine cancer “cures” over more than three decades, and I can’t help but think that three decades from now (if I’m still alive) I’ll still be seeing the same stuff. Laetrile, antineoplastons, the Gerson protocol, Hoxsey therapy, and many more were all around then and will likely still be around long after I’m dead. Similarly, antivaccine tropes have been around forever. I was reminded of this yesterday when I saw a post by John Rappaport in which he republished a chapter on vaccines from a book he wrote in 1987, AIDS, Inc.. The same antivaccine misinformation and lies are there, such as:

• The decline in vaccine-preventable diseases like polio is mostly due to improved housing, to a decrease in the virulence of micro-organisms, but, most importantly, a “higher host-resistance due to better nutrition.” (In other words, vaccines never get the credit.)
• In outbreaks, more vaccinated than unvaccinated children get the disease. (It’s the same way antivaccine ideologues ignore percentages, which clearly show that in outbreaks, the unvaccinated get the disease at much higher rates than the vaccinated. The only reason that the absolute numbers are higher is because so many more children are vaccinated than unvaccinated.)
• Serious, life-threatening adverse reactions to vaccines are common when in fact they are rare.
• Measles and polio had been regressing before the vaccines, and the vaccines had nothing to do with their elimination.

There are several more. If these lies sound familiar, they should. I’ve discussed pretty much every one of them at least once, some many times over the years. I expect that I will continue to have to do so for as long as I manage to continue this blog.

So in one respect, the revelation that people believe nonsense is no revelation at all. I’ve known it for a long time, as have skeptics and critical thinkers. What was different in 2016 is that a perfect storm of politics, anger, a presidential candidate who believes a whole lot of said nonsense, and the facility with which the Internet can be used to spread conspiracy theories and fake news conspired to overwhelm all safeguards that had previously at least kept pseudoscience, pseudohistory, and conspiracy theories from achieving mainstream acceptance. In essence, in 2016 bullshit was weaponized, and it turned out to be an incredibly effective weapon indeed.

We saw the rise of fake news, which, remember, is not the same thing as bad and/or biased reporting, given that fake news is made up nearly completely from whole cloth for profit and influence, while bad and biased reporting at least starts from real events. Unfortunately, the term “fake news” has already been devalued as people like Adams are quick to label the mainstream press “fake news” and even skeptics mistake bad or biased reporting for bad news.

What can we as skeptics do? The weaponization of bullshit is not qualitatively different from anything we’ve seen before. It is, however, quantitatively much worse, and, as always, we remain woefully outmatched. Powerful political and economic forces are behind the weaponization of bullshit. There’s no way we can match the resources they have. Fortunately, the Internet remains a great equalizer, which means that the misinformation can be countered, but that is not enough. What needs to be happen in 2017 and beyond is that skeptics and critical thinkers will need to study the BS and find ways to counter it. Countering pseudoscience and misinformation has always been a battle that will last lifetimes, but unfortunately 2016 just made it a whole lot more difficult.

Maybe Bluto showed us the way, all the way back in 1978:

OK, a really stupid and futile gesture is not the way to go, but we need this spirit if we are to find a way to combat the misinformation to survive the Age of Trump and minimize the damage done by him and the forces he’s weaponized.

from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/2iMhZb7

In the fight for a rest break, Dallas construction workers find their voice: ‘This is not the end, but a stepping stone to something bigger’ (rerun) [The Pump Handle]

The Pump Handle is on a holiday break. The following, which was originally published on May 23, is one of our favorite posts from 2016.

by Kim Krisberg

Last summer, 25-year-old Roendy Granillo died of heat stroke while he installed flooring in a house in Melissa, Texas, just north of Dallas. His tragic and entirely preventable death marked a turning point in advocacy efforts to pass a rest break ordinance for local construction workers.

About five months after Granillo’s death, the Dallas City Council voted 10-5 to approve such an ordinance, which requires that construction workers be given a 10-minute rest break for every four hours of work. On its face, it seems like an incredibly simple and logical request, especially considering the extreme heat of Texas summers. However, it took advocates and supporters nearly two years to secure this basic worker safety protection. Among those many supporters were Granillo’s parents, who joined the rest break campaign and called on local legislators to protect other construction workers from the circumstances that took their young son.

“On the day of the vote, it really was amazing,” said Diana Ramirez, campaign organizer at the Dallas office of Workers Defense Project (WDP), which led the rest break campaign. “Roendy’s parents were there, our members were there…the whole room started clapping. It was a long fight and people were tired, but it re-energized everyone to know that if we keep working hard, things will get better. Now, (workers in Dallas) feel like they have a voice.”

‘It was so basic, we thought surely they’d go along with it’

The roots of the Dallas rest break effort began with stories from workers, Ramirez said. Every Tuesday night, WDP hosts a gathering of its members and workers from the community, who come together to share stories, learn about their labor rights, and organize for better working conditions. It was during these meetings that the lack of rest breaks among construction workers became distressingly clear. For example, Ramirez said she and fellow WDP staff would often ask “extremely tired” construction workers how many breaks they had taken or if their employers had provided enough water breaks on a scorching hot day.

“They would look at us like we were crazy and say ‘of course not,’” she told me. “Employers would say ‘you’re not here to rest, you’re here to work.’ Even on the hottest day of the year.”

Based on such feedback from workers, the WDP Dallas office, which had opened in 2012 and was still fairly new at the time, decided to push for a rest break ordinance similar to one that passed in Austin in 2010. Ramirez said she and colleagues thought it would be a relatively easy sell — maybe it would take a few months at the most. Instead, workers and advocates spent the next two years in an uphill battle against industry for a simple, low-cost accommodation that could literally save a worker’s life.

“We were extremely surprised,” Ramirez said. “We had members come and give testimony, we had members meet with council members…and it was just heartbreaking to see that their point wasn’t getting across. Industry saw this rest break (campaign) as a threat — as a group of workers speaking up and demanding something.”

The data, however, show that construction workers in Texas have every right to be concerned. According to a 2013 WDP report conducted with the University of Texas-Austin and that surveyed nearly 1,200 construction workers in Austin, Dallas, El Paso, Houston and San Antonio, 39 percent of workers said they do not receive rest breaks during the day besides a break for lunch. In addition, while federal OSHA law requires that employers provide drinking water for workers, 59 percent of workers surveyed said their employers did not do so. And 15 percent of construction workers said they had seen a co-worker faint due to heat exhaustion. Texas law doesn’t require employers to give construction workers rest breaks — in fact, it doesn’t even mandate meal breaks. Overall, Texas remains the most dangerous state to be a construction worker.

When it comes to heat, the latest heat illness surveillance report from Dallas Health and Human Services shows that the majority of heat illness reports among people ages 18 to 50 are related to outdoor work. Between July 2015 and mid-September 2015, the health department documented 164 cases of heat exhaustion, 31 cases of heat stroke and two heat-related fatalities. (It’s very likely that many heat-related illnesses that happen on the job go unreported. For example, OSHA only receives reports on those heat-related illnesses that were severe enough to require hospitalization.) On July 19, 2015, the day Granillo died, the Dallas heat rose to 99 degrees.

“It was so basic, we thought surely they’d go along with it,” said Bethany Boggess, research coordinator at WDP, of the Dallas City Council. “But there was really strong opposition.”

WDP first proposed the Dallas rest break ordinance in June 2014, and the Dallas City Council held its first briefing on the ordinance a few months later in September. Both Boggess and Ramirez relayed to me a litany of opposing arguments that came up during the process, such as arguing that it doesn’t get that hot in Dallas, or that regulating rest breaks was OSHA’s responsibility, or that there weren’t enough heat-related deaths to warrant such action. In one instance, according to both Ramirez and Boggess, a council member wondered aloud why Latino construction workers would need a rest break at all after having traveled through the desert just to get to the United States.

“Some of the comments were just racist,” Ramirez said. “We were a bit prepared to hear something like that in a one-on-one meeting, but it definitely surprised me to hear this said at a public hearing.”

At one point, Boggess said, policy-makers offered up an alternative ordinance that focused entirely on educating construction workers about heat stress without actually mandating a rest break. But OSHA already educates workers about heat hazards, she said, and that clearly isn’t enough to properly protect workers. WDP rejected the alternative and continued pushing for an ordinance with some teeth.

Then, on July 19, 2015, Roendy Granillo died on the job.

‘This is the worst that can happen’

On a blazing Texas day, Granillo was installing flooring in an unventilated house in Melissa, Texas, about 40 miles outside of Dallas. Ramirez, who has spoken with Granillo’s parents, told me that Granillo often worked 12- to 14-hour days. His mom would pack him a lunch; but on many occasions, he’d return at the end of the day without having had the chance to take a single bite. On the day he died, he told his employer he wasn’t feeling well and he needed to rest. His employer ignored his requests and told him to get back to work. At about 4 p.m., Granillo passed out.

He was taken to a local hospital, where he died at age 25 of heat stroke. According to Ramirez, his body temperature reached 110 degrees — “I can only imagine how he must have felt when he asked for help,” she said. Ramirez said what struck her most was that Granillo’s stomach was empty when he died. He hadn’t even been given time to eat.

“This is the worst that can happen,” Ramirez said. “But we hear stories all the time from workers about getting dizzy (from the heat) and feeling like they’re going to throw up.”

Mario Alberto Ontiveros has been a member and volunteer with WDP for more than three years and a construction worker for 16 years. Through a translator, he told me how easy it is to get dehydrated while working on a construction site on a hot day. In fact, Ontiveros said he believes many fall-related injuries and deaths are associated with heat, too — in other words, roofers and bricklayers get dizzy from the extreme heat and dehydration, lose their balance and fall. He said he’s seen first-hand how dangerous conditions can become when workers don’t get enough rest while working in the unrelenting heat.

Fortunately, Ontiveros said he typically works for companies that do provide rest and meal breaks. But he said working with contractors has been another story. For example, about six years ago, he was working for a contractor painting a stadium near Dallas. He took a lunch break at noon, and then continued painting without a break until 5 p.m. in temperatures above 100 degrees. The next day, he couldn’t move his arm and was eventually diagnosed with tendonitis. The injury left him unable to work for weeks.

“Every time there’s a new ordinance or law that would help workers…the industry doesn’t want it,” Ontiveros told me. “They’re only worried about the money, not about the worker. They would always say it would cost a lot of money, but what about the families who suffer when there’s accidents?”

In the weeks following Granillo’s death, WDP held a candlelight vigil for the 25-year-old worker outside Dallas City Hall. Both Boggess and Ramirez said the preventable tragedy was a turning point for the rest break campaign. In addition to hearing directly from Granillo’s family, Dallas City Council members also heard via letter from a local emergency room doctor, John Corker, who wrote:

While many construction workers are able to take breaks and drink water throughout the day, others are employed by less scrupulous employers who have little regard for the health and safety of their employees. Roendy Granillo was one such employee, toiling for 14 hours per day without breaks of any kind in Dallas suburbs. The 25-year-old repeatedly asked his employer to be taken to the hospital because he felt ill but was repeatedly denied medical care. It was not until Mr. Granillo collapsed on the construction site this past July that he was finally given any medical care, but by then it was too late. His body temperature had risen to 110 degrees Fahrenheit, leading to multiorgan system failure which occurs in severe cases of heat stroke. As a last noble act, Mr. Granillo wished to be an organ donor, but unfortunately only his skin and bones could be harvested for transplant because the rest of his organs had been destroyed by the prolonged exposure to heat.

On Dec. 9, 2015, the Dallas City Council voted 10-5 in favor of the rest break ordinance, becoming only the second Texas city, in addition to Austin, to adopt such protections for construction workers. (Boggess noted that the vote was pretty evenly split among those who received campaign funding from the construction and real estate industry and those who didn’t.) The ordinance, which covers only construction workers and went into effect in January, requires a minimum 10-minute rest break for every four hours of work. The Dallas ordinance is expected to cover about 120,000 workers.

According to the ordinance, every construction site must now post signs in English and Spanish that inform workers of their right to a rest break and tells workers how to report a violation. Unlike the Austin ordinance, Dallas construction sites won’t be subject to random inspections related to rest breaks; however, Dallas building code inspectors do have authority to enforce rest break signage during their regular inspections. Dallas construction workers can also call 311 to log rest break complaints and violations, though Boggess said the investigative process that will follow is still being worked out.

Boggess said WDP is currently working on the best ways to enforce the ordinance as well as on ways to raise awareness of the new protection among Dallas construction workers.

“After this victory, people realize we’re here and we’re not going anywhere,” Ramirez said. “We’re going to keep fighting for workers.”

For Ontiveros and his wife Lourdes, who had testified for her husband before the City Council while he was at work, the winning vote was just the beginning. Now, they both said, successful implementation will be key.

“For me, I had a lot of joy in knowing we had passed this ordinance to help so many construction workers,” Lourdes said. “It was very gratifying…but I also know that the implementation needs to work for this to be a real victory — that this is not the end, but a stepping stone to something bigger.”

Her husband added: “On my way to City Hall to celebrate with everyone, I just kept thinking about Roendy and all those deaths and injuries that would have been prevented with this ordinance. …We always need more people that support and fight to better their own lives and their own conditions at work. We want a safe and healthy city in all aspects of the word.”

To learn more about worker safety efforts in Dallas and Austin, visit the Workers Defense Project.

(A special thank you to Diana Ramirez for providing translation during interviews for this story.)

Kim Krisberg is a freelance public health writer living in Austin, Texas, and has been writing about public health for nearly 15 years.

from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/2ixj5bb

The Pump Handle is on a holiday break. The following, which was originally published on May 23, is one of our favorite posts from 2016.

by Kim Krisberg

Last summer, 25-year-old Roendy Granillo died of heat stroke while he installed flooring in a house in Melissa, Texas, just north of Dallas. His tragic and entirely preventable death marked a turning point in advocacy efforts to pass a rest break ordinance for local construction workers.

About five months after Granillo’s death, the Dallas City Council voted 10-5 to approve such an ordinance, which requires that construction workers be given a 10-minute rest break for every four hours of work. On its face, it seems like an incredibly simple and logical request, especially considering the extreme heat of Texas summers. However, it took advocates and supporters nearly two years to secure this basic worker safety protection. Among those many supporters were Granillo’s parents, who joined the rest break campaign and called on local legislators to protect other construction workers from the circumstances that took their young son.

“On the day of the vote, it really was amazing,” said Diana Ramirez, campaign organizer at the Dallas office of Workers Defense Project (WDP), which led the rest break campaign. “Roendy’s parents were there, our members were there…the whole room started clapping. It was a long fight and people were tired, but it re-energized everyone to know that if we keep working hard, things will get better. Now, (workers in Dallas) feel like they have a voice.”

‘It was so basic, we thought surely they’d go along with it’

The roots of the Dallas rest break effort began with stories from workers, Ramirez said. Every Tuesday night, WDP hosts a gathering of its members and workers from the community, who come together to share stories, learn about their labor rights, and organize for better working conditions. It was during these meetings that the lack of rest breaks among construction workers became distressingly clear. For example, Ramirez said she and fellow WDP staff would often ask “extremely tired” construction workers how many breaks they had taken or if their employers had provided enough water breaks on a scorching hot day.

“They would look at us like we were crazy and say ‘of course not,’” she told me. “Employers would say ‘you’re not here to rest, you’re here to work.’ Even on the hottest day of the year.”

Based on such feedback from workers, the WDP Dallas office, which had opened in 2012 and was still fairly new at the time, decided to push for a rest break ordinance similar to one that passed in Austin in 2010. Ramirez said she and colleagues thought it would be a relatively easy sell — maybe it would take a few months at the most. Instead, workers and advocates spent the next two years in an uphill battle against industry for a simple, low-cost accommodation that could literally save a worker’s life.

“We were extremely surprised,” Ramirez said. “We had members come and give testimony, we had members meet with council members…and it was just heartbreaking to see that their point wasn’t getting across. Industry saw this rest break (campaign) as a threat — as a group of workers speaking up and demanding something.”

The data, however, show that construction workers in Texas have every right to be concerned. According to a 2013 WDP report conducted with the University of Texas-Austin and that surveyed nearly 1,200 construction workers in Austin, Dallas, El Paso, Houston and San Antonio, 39 percent of workers said they do not receive rest breaks during the day besides a break for lunch. In addition, while federal OSHA law requires that employers provide drinking water for workers, 59 percent of workers surveyed said their employers did not do so. And 15 percent of construction workers said they had seen a co-worker faint due to heat exhaustion. Texas law doesn’t require employers to give construction workers rest breaks — in fact, it doesn’t even mandate meal breaks. Overall, Texas remains the most dangerous state to be a construction worker.

When it comes to heat, the latest heat illness surveillance report from Dallas Health and Human Services shows that the majority of heat illness reports among people ages 18 to 50 are related to outdoor work. Between July 2015 and mid-September 2015, the health department documented 164 cases of heat exhaustion, 31 cases of heat stroke and two heat-related fatalities. (It’s very likely that many heat-related illnesses that happen on the job go unreported. For example, OSHA only receives reports on those heat-related illnesses that were severe enough to require hospitalization.) On July 19, 2015, the day Granillo died, the Dallas heat rose to 99 degrees.

“It was so basic, we thought surely they’d go along with it,” said Bethany Boggess, research coordinator at WDP, of the Dallas City Council. “But there was really strong opposition.”

WDP first proposed the Dallas rest break ordinance in June 2014, and the Dallas City Council held its first briefing on the ordinance a few months later in September. Both Boggess and Ramirez relayed to me a litany of opposing arguments that came up during the process, such as arguing that it doesn’t get that hot in Dallas, or that regulating rest breaks was OSHA’s responsibility, or that there weren’t enough heat-related deaths to warrant such action. In one instance, according to both Ramirez and Boggess, a council member wondered aloud why Latino construction workers would need a rest break at all after having traveled through the desert just to get to the United States.

“Some of the comments were just racist,” Ramirez said. “We were a bit prepared to hear something like that in a one-on-one meeting, but it definitely surprised me to hear this said at a public hearing.”

At one point, Boggess said, policy-makers offered up an alternative ordinance that focused entirely on educating construction workers about heat stress without actually mandating a rest break. But OSHA already educates workers about heat hazards, she said, and that clearly isn’t enough to properly protect workers. WDP rejected the alternative and continued pushing for an ordinance with some teeth.

Then, on July 19, 2015, Roendy Granillo died on the job.

‘This is the worst that can happen’

On a blazing Texas day, Granillo was installing flooring in an unventilated house in Melissa, Texas, about 40 miles outside of Dallas. Ramirez, who has spoken with Granillo’s parents, told me that Granillo often worked 12- to 14-hour days. His mom would pack him a lunch; but on many occasions, he’d return at the end of the day without having had the chance to take a single bite. On the day he died, he told his employer he wasn’t feeling well and he needed to rest. His employer ignored his requests and told him to get back to work. At about 4 p.m., Granillo passed out.

He was taken to a local hospital, where he died at age 25 of heat stroke. According to Ramirez, his body temperature reached 110 degrees — “I can only imagine how he must have felt when he asked for help,” she said. Ramirez said what struck her most was that Granillo’s stomach was empty when he died. He hadn’t even been given time to eat.

“This is the worst that can happen,” Ramirez said. “But we hear stories all the time from workers about getting dizzy (from the heat) and feeling like they’re going to throw up.”

Mario Alberto Ontiveros has been a member and volunteer with WDP for more than three years and a construction worker for 16 years. Through a translator, he told me how easy it is to get dehydrated while working on a construction site on a hot day. In fact, Ontiveros said he believes many fall-related injuries and deaths are associated with heat, too — in other words, roofers and bricklayers get dizzy from the extreme heat and dehydration, lose their balance and fall. He said he’s seen first-hand how dangerous conditions can become when workers don’t get enough rest while working in the unrelenting heat.

Fortunately, Ontiveros said he typically works for companies that do provide rest and meal breaks. But he said working with contractors has been another story. For example, about six years ago, he was working for a contractor painting a stadium near Dallas. He took a lunch break at noon, and then continued painting without a break until 5 p.m. in temperatures above 100 degrees. The next day, he couldn’t move his arm and was eventually diagnosed with tendonitis. The injury left him unable to work for weeks.

“Every time there’s a new ordinance or law that would help workers…the industry doesn’t want it,” Ontiveros told me. “They’re only worried about the money, not about the worker. They would always say it would cost a lot of money, but what about the families who suffer when there’s accidents?”

In the weeks following Granillo’s death, WDP held a candlelight vigil for the 25-year-old worker outside Dallas City Hall. Both Boggess and Ramirez said the preventable tragedy was a turning point for the rest break campaign. In addition to hearing directly from Granillo’s family, Dallas City Council members also heard via letter from a local emergency room doctor, John Corker, who wrote:

While many construction workers are able to take breaks and drink water throughout the day, others are employed by less scrupulous employers who have little regard for the health and safety of their employees. Roendy Granillo was one such employee, toiling for 14 hours per day without breaks of any kind in Dallas suburbs. The 25-year-old repeatedly asked his employer to be taken to the hospital because he felt ill but was repeatedly denied medical care. It was not until Mr. Granillo collapsed on the construction site this past July that he was finally given any medical care, but by then it was too late. His body temperature had risen to 110 degrees Fahrenheit, leading to multiorgan system failure which occurs in severe cases of heat stroke. As a last noble act, Mr. Granillo wished to be an organ donor, but unfortunately only his skin and bones could be harvested for transplant because the rest of his organs had been destroyed by the prolonged exposure to heat.

On Dec. 9, 2015, the Dallas City Council voted 10-5 in favor of the rest break ordinance, becoming only the second Texas city, in addition to Austin, to adopt such protections for construction workers. (Boggess noted that the vote was pretty evenly split among those who received campaign funding from the construction and real estate industry and those who didn’t.) The ordinance, which covers only construction workers and went into effect in January, requires a minimum 10-minute rest break for every four hours of work. The Dallas ordinance is expected to cover about 120,000 workers.

According to the ordinance, every construction site must now post signs in English and Spanish that inform workers of their right to a rest break and tells workers how to report a violation. Unlike the Austin ordinance, Dallas construction sites won’t be subject to random inspections related to rest breaks; however, Dallas building code inspectors do have authority to enforce rest break signage during their regular inspections. Dallas construction workers can also call 311 to log rest break complaints and violations, though Boggess said the investigative process that will follow is still being worked out.

Boggess said WDP is currently working on the best ways to enforce the ordinance as well as on ways to raise awareness of the new protection among Dallas construction workers.

“After this victory, people realize we’re here and we’re not going anywhere,” Ramirez said. “We’re going to keep fighting for workers.”

For Ontiveros and his wife Lourdes, who had testified for her husband before the City Council while he was at work, the winning vote was just the beginning. Now, they both said, successful implementation will be key.

“For me, I had a lot of joy in knowing we had passed this ordinance to help so many construction workers,” Lourdes said. “It was very gratifying…but I also know that the implementation needs to work for this to be a real victory — that this is not the end, but a stepping stone to something bigger.”

Her husband added: “On my way to City Hall to celebrate with everyone, I just kept thinking about Roendy and all those deaths and injuries that would have been prevented with this ordinance. …We always need more people that support and fight to better their own lives and their own conditions at work. We want a safe and healthy city in all aspects of the word.”

To learn more about worker safety efforts in Dallas and Austin, visit the Workers Defense Project.

(A special thank you to Diana Ramirez for providing translation during interviews for this story.)

Kim Krisberg is a freelance public health writer living in Austin, Texas, and has been writing about public health for nearly 15 years.

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A comet on New Year’s Eve?

Comet 45P/Honda-Mrkos-Pajdušáková on December 31, 2016. Notice the moon. This part of the sky will be lit by twilight, shortly after sunset. The moon will be hard to see. It’s unlikely you’ll see the comet. On the other hand, if your sky is clear, you’ll definitely see the bright planet Venus! See the chart below. Image via NASA.

Several media stories that a comet will be “near Earth” and “visible” in the west after sunset on New Year’s Eve. It’s true that Comet 45P/Honda-Mrkos-Pajdušáková is in the west after sunset now. It’s not there only on New Year’s Eve, but has been there for some weeks. But visible? That depends on your definition of the word. Comet 45P/Honda-Mrkos-Pajdušáková is currently estimated at 6th magnitude. That’s barely within the limit for visibility with the unaided eye. A diffuse object, like a comet, at that brightness will be even tougher to see. You will need an extremely dark sky (a tough sky to find in the twilight direction, shortly after sunset) and likely optical aid (at least binoculars, probably a telescope) to see this comet.

There is an extremely bright object in that same part of the sky now. It’s the planet Venus. Many will likely look westward after sunset, see Venus, and think they’re seeing the comet.

Here’s an EarthSky chart for December 31, 2016. You might catch the very slim waxing crescent moon, beneath the planets Venus and Mars on that date. The comet is next to the moon. Neptune is there, but you’ll need optical aid to see it, too.

Is the comet near Earth? Well, sky distances are relative. It’s true that the comet is relatively near Earth, but not near on any human scale. It’s about 0.083 Astronomical Units away — more than 7 million miles away – or about 30 times more than the distance of Earth’s moon.

The comet will pass closest to the sun on December 31, 2016.

On the other hand … there is an comet that shows some promise of becoming (somewhat) visible, perhaps more easily seen than Comet 45P/Honda-Mrkos-Pajdušáková, during the first week of January. Read more about C/2016 U1 NEOWISE here. We’ll try to get a chart and more info up about it later today.

Comet 45P/Honda-Mrkos-Pajdušáková on December 30, 2016, via theskylive.com

Gerald Rhemann captured this photo of Comet 45P/Honda-Mrkos-Pajdušáková – using a telescope – on December 22 from Farm Tivoli in Namibia, Africa. Used with permission. Read more about this image.

Bottom line: Comet 45P/Honda-Mrkos-Pajdušáková is in the west after sunset now. It requires optical aid to be seen. By the way, we’ve seen very few photos of this comet, likely because even experts are having trouble finding it so near the twilight glare.

from EarthSky http://ift.tt/2ikQx4Y

Comet 45P/Honda-Mrkos-Pajdušáková on December 31, 2016. Notice the moon. This part of the sky will be lit by twilight, shortly after sunset. The moon will be hard to see. It’s unlikely you’ll see the comet. On the other hand, if your sky is clear, you’ll definitely see the bright planet Venus! See the chart below. Image via NASA.

Several media stories that a comet will be “near Earth” and “visible” in the west after sunset on New Year’s Eve. It’s true that Comet 45P/Honda-Mrkos-Pajdušáková is in the west after sunset now. It’s not there only on New Year’s Eve, but has been there for some weeks. But visible? That depends on your definition of the word. Comet 45P/Honda-Mrkos-Pajdušáková is currently estimated at 6th magnitude. That’s barely within the limit for visibility with the unaided eye. A diffuse object, like a comet, at that brightness will be even tougher to see. You will need an extremely dark sky (a tough sky to find in the twilight direction, shortly after sunset) and likely optical aid (at least binoculars, probably a telescope) to see this comet.

There is an extremely bright object in that same part of the sky now. It’s the planet Venus. Many will likely look westward after sunset, see Venus, and think they’re seeing the comet.

Here’s an EarthSky chart for December 31, 2016. You might catch the very slim waxing crescent moon, beneath the planets Venus and Mars on that date. The comet is next to the moon. Neptune is there, but you’ll need optical aid to see it, too.

Is the comet near Earth? Well, sky distances are relative. It’s true that the comet is relatively near Earth, but not near on any human scale. It’s about 0.083 Astronomical Units away — more than 7 million miles away – or about 30 times more than the distance of Earth’s moon.

The comet will pass closest to the sun on December 31, 2016.

On the other hand … there is an comet that shows some promise of becoming (somewhat) visible, perhaps more easily seen than Comet 45P/Honda-Mrkos-Pajdušáková, during the first week of January. Read more about C/2016 U1 NEOWISE here. We’ll try to get a chart and more info up about it later today.

Comet 45P/Honda-Mrkos-Pajdušáková on December 30, 2016, via theskylive.com

Gerald Rhemann captured this photo of Comet 45P/Honda-Mrkos-Pajdušáková – using a telescope – on December 22 from Farm Tivoli in Namibia, Africa. Used with permission. Read more about this image.

Bottom line: Comet 45P/Honda-Mrkos-Pajdušáková is in the west after sunset now. It requires optical aid to be seen. By the way, we’ve seen very few photos of this comet, likely because even experts are having trouble finding it so near the twilight glare.

from EarthSky http://ift.tt/2ikQx4Y

A Sirius culmination

Brightest star Sirius at culmination, or highest in the sky, via Project Nightflight.

Karoline Mrazek and Erwin Matys of Project Nightflight – based in Vienna, Austria – posted this image on their website on December 26, 2016. It’s Sirius in the constellation Canis Major the Greater Dog, the brightest star in the night sky, which always reaches its midnight culmination on New Year’s Eve. Project Nightflight wrote:

Fireworks and celebrations, that’s what many people associate with the coming of the New Year. But as the countdown is peaking and expectations are running high, there is yet another show going on in the sky. The brightest star visible from Earth reaches its highest point of its apparent path across the night sky. Sirius culminates around midnight on New Year’s Eve. This is a phantastic coincidence. And, of course, this happens every year at midnight as the old year ends and the next year begins and is visible from almost everywhere on Earth. So, if the skies are clear and you have a moment, look due south at midnight on New Year’s Eve and perhaps you can glimpse Sirius adding celestial splendor to the fireworks.

This image was taken by Project Nightflight during a culmination of Sirius above the volcanos of La Palma island. It shows the constellation Canis Major, the Great Dog, of which Sirius is the most prominent star, and the dark, volcanic landscape that is typical of the Canary Islands. Whisps of cirrus clouds added dramatically to the image that is the result of nine untracked digitally combined original shots.

We wish all our followers, friends, partners and sponsors a Happy New Year 2017!

Thanks, Project Nightflight, and same to you!

See more from Project Nightflight:

On the Star Walk trail

Awesome new project Sounds of the Night

Check it out! Full-sphere astrophotos

from EarthSky http://ift.tt/2iwYAeL

Brightest star Sirius at culmination, or highest in the sky, via Project Nightflight.

Karoline Mrazek and Erwin Matys of Project Nightflight – based in Vienna, Austria – posted this image on their website on December 26, 2016. It’s Sirius in the constellation Canis Major the Greater Dog, the brightest star in the night sky, which always reaches its midnight culmination on New Year’s Eve. Project Nightflight wrote:

Fireworks and celebrations, that’s what many people associate with the coming of the New Year. But as the countdown is peaking and expectations are running high, there is yet another show going on in the sky. The brightest star visible from Earth reaches its highest point of its apparent path across the night sky. Sirius culminates around midnight on New Year’s Eve. This is a phantastic coincidence. And, of course, this happens every year at midnight as the old year ends and the next year begins and is visible from almost everywhere on Earth. So, if the skies are clear and you have a moment, look due south at midnight on New Year’s Eve and perhaps you can glimpse Sirius adding celestial splendor to the fireworks.

This image was taken by Project Nightflight during a culmination of Sirius above the volcanos of La Palma island. It shows the constellation Canis Major, the Great Dog, of which Sirius is the most prominent star, and the dark, volcanic landscape that is typical of the Canary Islands. Whisps of cirrus clouds added dramatically to the image that is the result of nine untracked digitally combined original shots.

We wish all our followers, friends, partners and sponsors a Happy New Year 2017!

Thanks, Project Nightflight, and same to you!

See more from Project Nightflight:

On the Star Walk trail

Awesome new project Sounds of the Night

Check it out! Full-sphere astrophotos

from EarthSky http://ift.tt/2iwYAeL

Use Orion’s Belt to find other stars

Tonight look for Orion the Hunter, the most noticeable of all constellations. Then use Orion’s three super-noticeable Belt stars to identify other bright stars.

For example, use Orion’s Belt of three sparkling blue-white stars to locate Orion’s two brightest stars, ruddy Betelgeuse and blue-white Rigel.

Look at the chart at the top of this post. Betelgeuse is to the north of Orion’s Belt, while Rigel is on the opposite side, about an equal distance south of Orion’s Belt.

No matter where you are on Earth now, Orion will rise above your eastern horizon in early evening. It’ll parade westward across your sky throughout the night. Orion transits (reaches his highest elevation above the horizon) in the middle of the night. In the hours before dawn, the giant figure is beginning to plunge beneath your western horizon.

The sky chart at top shows Orion’s position for around early-to-mid evening, as viewed from mid-northern latitudes. If you’re in the Northern Hemisphere, the Mighty Hunter lords over your southern sky at late evening, standing tall and proud. This is in stark contrast to his appearance at mid-evening, when Orion first rises above the eastern horizon. He then assumes a reclining position.

Okay, ready to identify two more stars, using Orion’s Belt?

Best New Year’s gift ever! EarthSky moon calendar for 2017

Orion’s Belt points in one direction to Aldebaran in Taurus, and in the other direction to Sirius in Canis Major.

Draw a line through Orion’s Belt toward the ruddy star Aldebaran in the constellation Taurus the Bull. Going in the opposite direction, Orion’s Belt points to Sirius in Canis Major the Greater Dog – sometimes called the Dog Star – brightest star in the nighttime sky.

Have fun!

Bottom line: Use Orion’s Belt to find four bright stars – Betelgeuse and Rigel in Orion – Aldebaran in Taurus the Bull and Sirius in Canis Major.

EarthSky astronomy kits are perfect for beginners. Order today from the EarthSky store

from EarthSky http://ift.tt/1AeG11x

Tonight look for Orion the Hunter, the most noticeable of all constellations. Then use Orion’s three super-noticeable Belt stars to identify other bright stars.

For example, use Orion’s Belt of three sparkling blue-white stars to locate Orion’s two brightest stars, ruddy Betelgeuse and blue-white Rigel.

Look at the chart at the top of this post. Betelgeuse is to the north of Orion’s Belt, while Rigel is on the opposite side, about an equal distance south of Orion’s Belt.

No matter where you are on Earth now, Orion will rise above your eastern horizon in early evening. It’ll parade westward across your sky throughout the night. Orion transits (reaches his highest elevation above the horizon) in the middle of the night. In the hours before dawn, the giant figure is beginning to plunge beneath your western horizon.

The sky chart at top shows Orion’s position for around early-to-mid evening, as viewed from mid-northern latitudes. If you’re in the Northern Hemisphere, the Mighty Hunter lords over your southern sky at late evening, standing tall and proud. This is in stark contrast to his appearance at mid-evening, when Orion first rises above the eastern horizon. He then assumes a reclining position.

Okay, ready to identify two more stars, using Orion’s Belt?

Best New Year’s gift ever! EarthSky moon calendar for 2017

Orion’s Belt points in one direction to Aldebaran in Taurus, and in the other direction to Sirius in Canis Major.

Draw a line through Orion’s Belt toward the ruddy star Aldebaran in the constellation Taurus the Bull. Going in the opposite direction, Orion’s Belt points to Sirius in Canis Major the Greater Dog – sometimes called the Dog Star – brightest star in the nighttime sky.

Have fun!

Bottom line: Use Orion’s Belt to find four bright stars – Betelgeuse and Rigel in Orion – Aldebaran in Taurus the Bull and Sirius in Canis Major.

EarthSky astronomy kits are perfect for beginners. Order today from the EarthSky store

from EarthSky http://ift.tt/1AeG11x

Top 10 new species of 2016 [Life Lines]

Drumroll please…..

Out of roughly 18,000 new species discovered this past year, the International Institute for Species Exploration at SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry has narrowed down the top 10 to the following:

I am rather partial to tortoises myself. What were your favorites?

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Drumroll please…..

Out of roughly 18,000 new species discovered this past year, the International Institute for Species Exploration at SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry has narrowed down the top 10 to the following:

I am rather partial to tortoises myself. What were your favorites?

from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/2iLEnFw

Pigeons can identify words [Life Lines]

A study recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences provides evidence that pigeons can learn to recognize words. That is after the birds were trained over a period of 8 months. According to the study authors “The pigeons’ performance is actually more comparable to that of literate humans than baboons’ performance.”

To read, we must be about to decode letters and the sounds they make as well as orthographic knowledge to recognize words by sight. Although our lineages split over 300 million years ago, pigeons (like humans and baboons) possess orthographic knowledge. In fact, the researchers found that pigeons were able to learn properties that distinguished 26-58 different four-letter words from the non-words they were exposed to. They could also identify words in which letters were transposed (“very” vs “vrey”).

This study makes me think those birds are just ignoring the “please stop pooping on my porch and car” signs that I hung up…I’m on to you pigeons…

Source:

Scarf D, Boy K, Reinert AU, Devine J, Gunturkun O, Colombo M. Orthographic processing in pigeons (Columba livia). Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 113(40): 11272-11276, 2016. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1607870113

from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/2iwyUPw

A study recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences provides evidence that pigeons can learn to recognize words. That is after the birds were trained over a period of 8 months. According to the study authors “The pigeons’ performance is actually more comparable to that of literate humans than baboons’ performance.”

To read, we must be about to decode letters and the sounds they make as well as orthographic knowledge to recognize words by sight. Although our lineages split over 300 million years ago, pigeons (like humans and baboons) possess orthographic knowledge. In fact, the researchers found that pigeons were able to learn properties that distinguished 26-58 different four-letter words from the non-words they were exposed to. They could also identify words in which letters were transposed (“very” vs “vrey”).

This study makes me think those birds are just ignoring the “please stop pooping on my porch and car” signs that I hung up…I’m on to you pigeons…

Source:

Scarf D, Boy K, Reinert AU, Devine J, Gunturkun O, Colombo M. Orthographic processing in pigeons (Columba livia). Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 113(40): 11272-11276, 2016. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1607870113

from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/2iwyUPw