Oklahoma isn't working. Can anyone fix this failing American state?

A teacher panhandles on a roadside to buy supplies for her third-grade classroom. Entire school districts resort to four-day school weeks. Nearly one in four children struggle with hunger.

A city overpass crumbles and swarms of earthquakes shake the region – the underground disposal of oil and gas industry wastes have caused the tremors. Wildfires burn out of control: cuts to state forestry services mean that out-of-state firefighting crews must be called in.

A paralyzed and mentally ill veteran is left on the floor of a county jail. Guards watch for days until the prisoner dies. A death row inmate violently convulses on the gurney as prison officials experiment with an untested cocktail for execution.

Do these snapshots of Oklahoma show a failing state?

more
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/aug/29/oklahoma-education-system-four-day-school-weeks-poor

Might try electing Democrats for a change....

Wednesday Toon Roundup 3 - The Rest

Joe





Joel



Ted


Fox


Energy





Health

Wednesday Toon Roundup 2 - Bigoted, Orange and Stupid is a helluva way to go through life

Wednesday Toon Roundup 1 - Government is here to help

Are Some Psychiatric Disorders a pH Problem?

Sometimes our brains are on acid—literally. A main source of these temporary surges is the carbon dioxide that is constantly released as the brain breaks down sugar to generate energy, which subsequently turns into acid. Yet the chemistry in a healthy human brain tends to be relatively neutral, because standard processes including respiration—which expels carbon dioxide—help maintain the status quo. Any fleeting acidity spikes usually go unnoticed.

But a growing body of work has suggested that for some people, even slight changes in this balance may be linked with certain psychiatric conditions including panic disorders. New findings this month provide additional evidence that such links are real—and suggest they may extend to schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.

There were earlier hints that this was the case: Post-mortem studies of dozens of human brains revealed lower pH (higher acidity levels) in patients with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Multiple studies in the past few decades have found that when people with panic disorders are exposed to air with a higher-than-normal concentration of carbon dioxide—which can combine with water in the body to form carbonic acid—they are more likely to experience panic attacks than healthy individuals are. Other research has revealed that the brains of people with panic disorders produce elevated levels of lactate—an acidic source of fuel that is constantly produced and consumed in the energy-hungry brain.

more

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/are-some-psychiatric-disorders-a-ph-problem/

There Is So Much Wrong With This Sentence in The New York Times

BY CHARLES P. PIERCE
AUG 29, 2017

There is so much wrong with this one sentence from The New York Times on Tuesday morning that it may be the single wrongest sentence in the history of wrongness, and of sentences.

Hurricane Harvey was the rarest of disasters to strike during the Trump presidency — a maelstrom not of Mr. Trump's making, and one that offers him an opportunity to recapture some of the unifying power of his office he has squandered in recent weeks.

When in the name of god has this president* demonstrated the power to unify anything except division and anger? "Recapture" implies that he had it in the first place, or that he's shown any indication that he ever wanted it. In the immortal words of the late Muddy Waters, you can't spend what you ain't got and you can't lose what you never had.

The lifeboat phrase there, of course, is when Glenn Thrush places this "unifying power" in his office, rather than in the president* himself. Again, however, this particular occupant of the office has demonstrated right from his inaugural address that, even if he believed in the power of his office to unify, he wouldn't know where to look for it. In that particular event, he'd be a guy who tried to turn on the lights of his office with the taps in the bathroom sink. But this most recent appeal for the vaunted presidential "pivot," which is likely to prove as vain as all the other ones have been, demonstrates a phenomenon common to many political observers besides Glenn Thrush, and a phenomenon that did not begin with elevation of this particular president*.

more

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a57257/trump-harvey-response-unity/

Early signs of 'incompetence at every level' went unheeded during Nuclear Plant Construction

COLUMBIA -- The scaffolding wasn't there when welders arrived. So they stood around.

Construction orders for dozens of ironworkers weren't handed out until mid-afternoon. So they pushed brooms.

Workers couldn't tighten bolts to steel beams because of questionable engineering. So they spent hour after costly hour doing workarounds.

Seasoned laborers who worked on two now-cancelled nuclear reactors in South Carolina described the $9 billion construction effort as one of the most dysfunctional jobs they have ever done.

more
http://www.postandcourier.com/business/early-signs-of-incompetence-at-every-level-went-unheeded-as/article_b47acd2c-89a5-11e7-830a-9364c7e7b71b.html

Minecraft Creator Alleges Global Conspiracy Involving Pizzagate, a Manufactured Race War,

Markus “Notch” Persson, the Swedish billionaire who created the wildly popular sandbox video game Minecraft, has riled up thousands of conspiracy theorists by embarking on a long-winded defense of Pizzagate and a host of other conspiracy theories, including a “manufactured race war,” on Twitter.

On Friday, Persson, who sold Minecraft to Microsoft for $2.5 billion in 2014, tweeted “(pizzagate is real),” to his almost 3.9 million followers. The tweet immediately caught the attention of a vocal crowd of supporters that continues to believe a debunked conspiracy theory that Democrats led a pedophile ring out of a pizzeria in Washington, D.C.

When The Daily Beast asked Persson to clarify his beliefs on Friday, the 38-year-old responded: “I feel more like people are picking one of two sides emotionally in this incredibly insanely huge binary split, much like politics.”

However, shortly afterward, Persson embarked on a verbose defense of Pizzagate. The man who publicly called Zoe Quinn, the initial victim of Gamergate, a “cunt” in June, rallied up even more support among ardent believers, writing: “People are saying there's a lot of suspect codewords including the word ‘pizza’. That place has very disturbing art and social media.”

more

http://www.thedailybeast.com/minecraft-creator-alleges-global-conspiracy-involving-pizzagate-a-manufactured-race-war-a-missing-tabloid-toddler-and-holistic-medicine

Just what we need, another fucking nutcase billionaire.

Tuesday Toon Roundup 3: The Rest

Police




GOP



Bannon



Satan


Trumpers





Propaganda




Insurance



Limits

Tuesday Toon Roundup 2: Pardoner in Chief