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Pat Woodell dies at 71; actress best known for 1960s sitcom 'Petticoat Junction'
Actress Pat Woodell, who starred as one of a trio of sisters in the wholesome 1960s sitcom "Petticoat Junction" before she went on to be featured in a series of not-so-wholesome exploitation films, died Sept. 29 at her home in Fallbrook, Calif. She was 71.
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Known as Patricia McDade off screen, she had battled cancer for more than 20 years, said her husband, Vern McDade.
She was born July 12, 1944, in Winthrop, Mass. Her initial aim in show business was to be a singer, and she had early gigs at resorts in the Catskills. In 1962, gossip columnist Harrison Carroll wrote, "Everybody wants to hear 18-year-old singer Pat Woodell."
Woodell, a statuesque brunette, was signed to a contract by Warner Bros., and her first network TV credit was on a 1962 episode of the western series "Cheyenne." She followed that up with appearances on "Hawaiian Eye" and "77 Sunset Strip," and had a role in a government-sponsored anti-communism drama, "Red Nightmare," narrated by Jack Webb.
more
http://www.latimes.com/local/obituaries/la-me-pat-woodell-20151018-story.html
Saudi prince avoids felony charges in sex assault case near Beverly Hills
Source: LA Times
Los Angeles County prosecutors will not file charges against a Saudi prince arrested on suspicion of sexual assault at a compound on the edge of Beverly Hills because of insufficient evidence, officials said Monday.
Majed Abdulaziz Al-Saud, 29, was arrested last month for allegedly trying to force a female worker to perform a sex act on him inside a Beverly Glen residence he was renting. Police alleged there were multiple victims and within days of Al-Saud’s arrest, three women sued him.
But prosecutors said Monday there wasn’t enough evidence to charge Al-Saud with a felony. The case was referred to the L.A. city attorney’s office, which can charge him with a misdemeanor. Officials in the city attorney’s office said they would have to review the case before considering charges.
Read more: http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-saudi-prince-beverly-hills-20151019-story.html
Long-sought-after 'glueball': Exotic particle may have been discovered
Scientists at TU Wien (Vienna) have calculated that the meson f0(1710) could be a very special particle -- the long-sought-after 'glueball'.
For decades, scientists have been looking for so-called "glueballs." Now it seems they have been found at last. A glueball is an exotic particle, made up entirely of gluons -- the "sticky" particles that keep nuclear particles together. Glueballs are unstable and can only be detected indirectly, by analysing their decay. This decay process, however, is not yet fully understood.
Professor Anton Rebhan and Frederic Brünner from TU Wien (Vienna) have now employed a new theoretical approach to calculate glueball decay. Their results agree extremely well with data from particle accelerator experiments. This is strong evidence that a resonance called "f0(1710)," which has been found in various experiments, is in fact the long-sought glueball. Further experimental results are to be expected in the next few months.
Forces are Particles too
Protons and neutrons consist of even smaller elementary particles called quarks. These quarks are bound together by strong nuclear force. "In particle physics, every force is mediated by a special kind of force particle, and the force particle of the strong nuclear force is the gluon," says Anton Rebhan (TU Wien).
Gluons can be seen as more complicated versions of the photon. The massless photons are responsible for the forces of electromagnetism, while eight different kinds of gluons play a similar role for the strong nuclear force. However, there is one important difference: gluons themselves are subject to their own force, photons are not. This is why there are no bound states of photons, but a particle that consists only of bound gluons, of pure nuclear force, is in fact possible.
more
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/10/151013103227.htm
Paul Krugman- Something Not Rotten in Denmark
No doubt surprising many of the people watching the Democratic presidential debate, Bernie Sanders cited Denmark as a role model for how to help working people. Hillary Clinton demurred slightly, declaring that “we are not Denmark,” but agreed that Denmark is an inspiring example.
Such an exchange would have been inconceivable among Republicans, who don’t seem able to talk about European welfare states without adding the word “collapsing.” Basically, on Planet G.O.P. all of Europe is just a bigger version of Greece. But how great are the Danes, really?
The answer is that the Danes get a lot of things right, and in so doing refute just about everything U.S. conservatives say about economics. And we can also learn a lot from the things Denmark has gotten wrong.
Denmark maintains a welfare state — a set of government programs designed to provide economic security — that is beyond the wildest dreams of American liberals. Denmark provides universal health care; college education is free, and students receive a stipend; day care is heavily subsidized. Overall, working-age families receive more than three times as much aid, as a share of G.D.P., as their U.S. counterparts.
more
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/19/opinion/something-not-rotten-in-denmark.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=opinion-c-col-left-region®ion=opinion-c-col-left-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-left-region&_r=1
Franklin Pierce-Herald poll: Sanders keeps lead over Clinton
Sanders holds a 38-30 percent lead over Clinton in the first-in-the-nation primary state, while Biden draws 19 percent in the poll of 403 likely Democratic primary voters conducted immediately after last week's debate.
Sanders' 8-point lead is essentially unchanged from the 44-37 percent advantage the Vermont senator held in a stunning Franklin Pierce-Herald poll in August -- the first to show the former Secretary of State behind in New Hampshire.
The new poll also has Sanders holding an even bigger 10-point lead over Clinton if Biden isn't in the presidential field.
The results suggest Clinton will have a tough time overcoming the deficit, as more than half of notoriously finicky Granite State voters now say they have made up their minds.
more
https://www.bostonherald.com/news_opinion/local_coverage/herald_bulldog/2015/10/franklin_pierce_herald_poll_sanders_keeps_lead
Why Free Markets Make Fools of Us
by Cass R. Sunstein
Very few economists foresaw the great recession of 2008–2009. Why not? Economists have long assumed that human beings are “rational,” but behavioral findings about human fallibility have put a lot of pressure on that assumption. People tend to be overconfident; they display unrealistic optimism; they often deal poorly with risks; they neglect the long term (“present bias”); and they dislike losses a lot more than they like equivalent gains (“loss aversion”). And until recent years, most economists have not had much to say about the problem of inequality, which seems to be getting worse.
There is a strong argument that within the economics profession, these problems are closely linked, and that they have had unfortunate effects on public policy. Most economists celebrate free markets, invoking the appealing idea of consumer sovereignty. If people are buying potato chips, candy, and beer, or making risky investments, that’s their business; they know their own values and tastes. Outsiders, and especially those who work for the government, have no right to intervene. To be sure, things are different if someone is inflicting harms on third parties. If a company is emitting air pollution, the government can legitimately respond. But otherwise, many economists tend to believe that people should fend for themselves.
It is true that companies might try to take advantage of consumers and investors, perhaps with outright lies, perhaps with subtler forms of deception, perhaps by manipulating their emotions. But from the standpoint of standard economic thinking, that’s nothing to panic about. The first line of defense is competition itself—and the market’s invisible hand. Companies that lie, deceive, and manipulate people are not going to last long. The second line of defense is the law. If a company is really engaging in fraud or deception, government regulators might well get involved, and customers are likely to have a right to compensation. But for economists, competitive markets are generally trustworthy, and so the old Latin phrase retains its relevance: caveat emptor.
By emphasizing human fallibility, the group of scholars known as behavioral economists has raised a lot of doubts about this view. Their catalog of errors on the part of consumers and investors can be taken to identify a series of “behavioral market failures,” each of them calling for some kind of government response (such as information campaigns to promote healthy eating or graphic warnings to discourage smoking). But George Akerlof and Robert Shiller want to go far beyond behavioral economics, at least in its current form. They offer a much more general, and quite damning, account of why free markets and competition cause serious problems.
more
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2015/oct/22/why-free-markets-make-fools-us/
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