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Voter Turnout Shaping Up To Be Lower Than 2008

WASHINGTON -- A drop in voter turnout in Tuesday's election didn't keep President Barack Obama from winning a second term.

Preliminary figures suggest fewer people voted this year than four years ago, when voters shattered turnout records as they elected Obama to his first term.

In most states, the numbers are shaping up to be even lower than in 2004, said Curtis Gans, director of American University's Center for the Study of the American Electorate. Every state but Iowa is showing a smaller turnout than in 2008, Gans said. Still, the full picture may not be known for weeks because much of the counting takes place after Election Day.

"This was a major plunge in turnout nationally," Gans said.

In Maryland, where voters approved a ballot measure allowing gay marriage, turnout in the presidential race was running more than 7 percentage points behind 2008. Pennsylvania and South Carolina were seeing slightly smaller declines.

With 97 percent of precincts reporting, The Associated Press' figures showed nearly 119 million people had voted in the White House race, but that number will increase as more votes are counted. In 2008, 131 million people cast ballots for president, according to the Federal Election Commission.

Experts calculate turnout in different ways based on who they consider eligible voters. A separate, preliminary estimate from George Mason University's Michael McDonald put the 2012 turnout rate at 60 percent of eligible voters. That figure was expected to be revised as more precincts reported and absentee votes were counted.

Large drops, according to the American University analysis, came in Eastern Seaboard states still reeling from the devastation from Superstorm Sandy, which wiped out power for millions and disrupted usual voting routines. Fifteen percent fewer ballots had been counted in New York than in 2008. In New Jersey, it was more than 10 percent. The gap in New Jersey could narrow in the coming days because elections officials have given displaced residents in some areas until Friday to cast special email ballots.

Best efforts be darned, making it to the polls in the wake of Sandy may have simply been too much for some affected voters. In Hoboken, N.J., Anthony Morrone said he's never missed a vote – until now.

"No time, no time to vote, too much to do," said Morrone, 76, as he surveyed the exterior of his home: a pile of junked refrigerators, a car destroyed by flooding and a curbside mountain of waterlogged debris.

In other areas not affected by the storm, a host of factors could have contributed to waning voter enthusiasm, Gans said. The 2012 race was one of the nastiest in recent memory, leaving many voters feeling turned off. With Democrats weary from a difficult four years and Republicans splintered by a divisive primary, neither party was particularly enthused about their own candidate. Stricter voting restrictions adopted by many states may also have kept some voters away from the polls.

"Beyond the people with passion, we have a disengaged electorate," Gans said. "This was a very tight race, there were serious things to be decided."

Decided they were – by the millions of voters who, in many cases, braved all kinds of inconveniences to make sure their voices were heard.

Some voters in South Carolina's Richland County waited more than four hours to vote, and leaders from both parties blamed the delays on broken voting machines. Officials in Virginia and New Hampshire reported many voters were still waiting to vote when polls closed in the evening. In major battleground states like Ohio and Florida, lines snaked back and forth as voters waited patiently to cast their ballots.

"I've been waiting for four years to cast this vote," said Robert Dan Perry, 64, as he did so for Romney in Zebulon, N.C.

Both Obama and Republican Mitt Romney made voter turnout a top priority in the waning days of an intensely close race. But for months leading up to Election Day, both candidates were obsessed with that tiny sliver of undecided voters.

It may be that those who were still undecided Tuesday decided just not to show up, said Kyle Kondik, a political analyst at the University of Virginia's Center for Politics.

"Everyone was talking about how the Democrats are unenthusiastic and the Republicans are fired up," Kondik said. "It sounds like that was all talk."

One bright spot this year was the number of early and mail-in ballots cast. Before polls opened on Election Day, more than 32 million people had voted, either by mail or in person, in 34 states and the District of Columbia. In a number of states, including Iowa, Maryland and Montana, early voting appeared to far exceed totals from 2008.

914 Page Views.. Going for 1000!

Good morning everyone of the page.. Just wanted to let you guys know that I have 914 official page views so far, and I want to get to a thousand. Been busy lately, but I will start posting more now that I have time.

Have a cup of coffee..  and thanks for visiting. :)

MIAN


....Update 11/15/2012....  

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Gothic Music - The Eternal Forest

Millions of unexploded bombs lie in waters off US coast, researchers say

Lurking (and leaking) beneath the world's oceans are an estimated 200 million pounds of unexploded and potentially dangerous explosives -- from bombs to missiles to mustard gas.

Texas A&M oceanographers William Bryant and Niall Slowey documented two such dumpsites in the Gulf of Mexico recently. They conservatively guess that at least 31 million pounds of bombs can be found not just in the Gulf, but also off the coasts of at least 16 states, from New Jersey to Hawaii.

Thousands of gallon containers of mustard gas lie strewn off the New Jersey coast, for example. And there are a total of seven dumpsites on the Gulf seafloor, each approximately 81 square miles, one at the mouth of the Mississippi River Delta.

“The amount that has been dumped was unbelievable,” Bryant said. “No one seems to have reported seeing explosives in the Gulf. We felt it was our responsibility to report it.”

The existence of unexploded ordnance (UXO) is hardly a secret, they acknowledge: Sea disposal of munitions was an accepted international practice until quite recently. Dumping conventional and chemical munitions captured from enemies -- from Nazi Germany, for example -- was also an accepted practice.

In 1970 the Department of Defense prohibited the practice, and Congress followed up by passing the Marine Protection, Research, and Sanctuaries Act in 1972, generally banning sea disposal.

 But after half a century or more on the sea floor, the condition of the munitions is a dangerous unknown.

“Is there an environmental risk? We don’t know, and that in itself is reason to worry,” Bryant said. “We just don’t know much at all about these bombs, and it’s been 40 to 60 years that they’ve been down there.”

Suspicions have long circulated that undocumented munitions have been “short-dumped” -- as in dumped long before reaching their designated site, leaving them far closer to the coast than believed by authorities.

While conducting marine geology research on the sea floor of the Gulf, Bryant’s team came across the two dumpsites and vividly captured decaying canisters they believe most likely contain chemical weapons.

They presented their research at the International Dialogue on Underwater Munitions in Puerto Rico recently.

They also found themselves floating in a field of munitions as large as 500 pounds.

According to a statement published by Texas A&M University, an explosion from UXO could threaten ship traffic, commercial fishing, cruise lines and other activities, as well as the approximately 30,000 people working on the oil and gas rigs and marine life in the Gulf.

The team said Texas is closest to the bombs they have seen, which lie as near as 50 miles offshore. Louisiana was the second closest, particularly the Mississippi River Delta.

So what exactly is down there -- and is it still as lethal as the day it was created?

The Defense Department began a massive research effort in 2004, thousands of hours of labor spent reviewing several million pages of documentation, to get a grip on the location, type and quantity of weapons in the water.

While this project initially focused on chemical warfare material, it shifted to locating conventional munitions and considering where ranges and coastal artillery batteries could have deposition munitions.

Oceanographers and other experts believe no one knows for certain just what’s offshore, hence Prof. Bryant’s efforts to raise awareness about the Gulf of Mexico sites.

Sea-disposed munitions that aren’t fused or armed are called discarded military munitions (DMM). UXO have undergone the arming sequence but failed to function as intended, so are often designated the most dangerous of DMM.

There are two potential risks associated with these and any underwater munitions: immediate detonation or exposure to toxic chemical agents and long-term prolonged exposure.

Recovery from the world’s waters, either by destroying them in place or lifting them from the water, can be more dangerous than leaving them as is, however.  Bryant’s work reveals that many underwater munitions have deteriorated over time and exposure.

Yet proximity to shore means they’re hardly hidden.

Reports of Louisiana shrimpers pulling up hissing barrels in their nets have led to suspicions that the shrimpers are exposing themselves to mustard gas. The incidents haven’t been confirmed as chemical weapons, but Bryant said he “can’t imagine what else would have been dumped in those canisters and begun to hiss.”

American shrimpers finding mustard gas drums in their fishing nets -- what will they find next?

Hidden in the Glades, a giant relic of the U.S. quest for space

Less than an hour’s drive north of Key Largo, the fringes of America’s greatest swamp hide a secret; a great hulking rocket.

Get out of your car, walk south a while and you come to a bunker. Walk past the bunker down the abandoned road and you’ll arrive at a large steel shed. A close look at the surrounding asphalt reveals embedded supports for moving the entire structure back and forth. Huge air-handling equipment and ductwork snake through the structure’s roof. Industrial fans line the walls of this shed-on-steroids. Clearly, this is no ordinary building.

A look inside shows electronic instrument racks along the far wall. Overhead, a 20-ton crane sits silent, its chains swaying in the whistling breeze that permeates the open shed. Standing here, you begin to get that fury feeling that there is something more here.

Directly below you, there is: a silo, plunging 180 feet straight down into the earth, and in it stands a rocket, a rusting apparition 10 stories high and as wide as a two-car garage. It is the largest solid rocket motor ever built and it was intended to take us to the moon.

You can’t help but wonder, what is the story behind it all? I became determined to find out.

As my research became more and more pointed, it was obvious that a lot of people wanted to keep this place a secret. Aerojet, the company that owned the facility, would not cooperate with my story, and not one manufacturer of equipment I saw at the site would return my e-mails. Even the public information officer of Everglades National Park wouldn’t return my calls.

The secrecy surrounding the place was a story too good for me to pass up. And what could be more compelling than a hulking factory complex that once built and tested the mightiest monolithic rocket motors in history rusting away smack in the middle of the Florida Everglades?

Space age in Homestead

America’s space program came to South Florida in 1963 when the U.S. Air Force gave Aerojet General, a Sacramento, Calif. rocket builder and subsidiary of General Tire’s GenCorp, $3 million to start construction of a manufacturing and testing site in Homestead, less than five miles from Everglades National Park.

Sputnik had been launched five years earlier, sparking two space races — one between the United States and the Soviet Union, and one between the Air Force and the fledgling National Aeronautics and Space Administration. While NASA’s Wernher von Braun worked on perfecting the smaller rockets that were part of the Mercury and Gemini programs, two schools of thought emerged regarding the rockets that would propel Apollo astronauts to the moon.

The issue was whether to use liquid-fuel rocket engines, solid-fuel rocket motors, or a combination of the two. Apollo would need massive thrust capability, enough to lift 100,000 pounds of orbital payload to space. That favored the solids. But once free of earth orbit, liquids seemed the way to go. Early on, von Braun would favor a liquid-fueled Saturn rocket, which proved prophetic for Homestead.

Homestead’s location was perfect for Aerojet and the nation; it was close to Cape Canaveral. A proposal was made to dig a canal from the plant to Barnes Sound on the Atlantic Ocean. If the C-111 canal project was approved, it would allow barges to carry NASA’s rockets from the homestead Plant to Cape Canaveral via the canal and the Intracoastal Waterway.

It was a time of economic expansion for the region. Everglades National Park had been open since 1947, but environmental conflicts were downplayed in favor of economic development. The C-111 canal would be dug for Aerojet and agricultural interests in the name of flood control. Homestead won the competition for Aerojet, beating out sites in California, Texas and Daytona Beach. South Dade residents were ecstatic; the space age was coming to South Florida!

Giant rocket parts

The first thing you need when building a moon rocket is a cylindrical chamber strong enough to withstand the monumental forces of space flight. After researching several possibilities with the assistance of the U.S. Air force, Aerojet subcontracted fabrication of a 260-inch-diameter chamber to Sun Ship and Dry dock Company of Chester, Pa. Sun’s location on the Delaware River would facilitate shipping the chamber by barge to the Aerojet facility in Florida. They were short-length designs, half the length of the planned final version; hence the test designations SL-1, SL-2, and SL-3.

Two rocket chambers were delivered to Aerojet, the first in March 1965. The C-111 canal was not yet finished, so the rocket chambers were barged down from Sun Ship to Homestead via the Intracoastal Waterway and then trucked in from Biscayne Bay.

After you’ve got a strong chamber, you need the fuel, or propellant. The fuel would be manufactured at three batch plants at the Everglades facility.

Before the chamber could be filled with fuel, it had to be insulated and lined at the General Processing building in the Everglades. Insulating the chamber is key to confining the massive pressure and heat of the burn, as well as allowing an even, non-stick curing of the fuel inside the chamber. This was done inside the huge processing building that still stands at the site.

Then the chamber was trucked three miles down the straight asphalt road linking the General Processing Building and the silo.

Meanwhile, the solid propellant was being mixed and analyzed at the batch plants and quality-control lab adjacent to the General Processing facility.

After officials were satisfied with the propellant, it would be produced in sufficient quantities to fill the rocket motor chamber now standing ready, placed vertically in the underground silo.

Test firings

Three static test firings were done between Sept. 25, 1965 and June 17, 1967.

SL-1 would produce more than 3 million pounds of thrust, as measured by the silo’s accelerometers and other instruments. An ignition motor, a knocked-down Polaris missile B3 first stage known as “Blowtorch,” was used to jump-start the motor. Remnants of all this — cables, poles and concrete slab anchors — are all still on the site.

Wernher von Braun himself came to the test of SL-2, a spectacular night test firing. The flames could be seen as far away as Miami. Thrust measurements were even higher than SL-1.

By the third test, however, von Braun and NASA had decided that liquid fueled engines would power Apollo’s Saturn V moon rockets.

The last test had problems, ejecting the rocket nozzle and tons of propellant made of hydrochloric acids across wetlands and avocado fields. In Homestead, people complained of damage to their automobiles’ paint from the fallout. By then, however, Aerojet and Homestead had too much invested to stop and walk away.

When Aerojet came to Homestead and Southern Dade County, people wanted it there. Local, county and state government paved the way, literally. The federal government even carved out the C111 canal — later to be known as the Aerojet Canal — for the company. The Senate expedited the appropriation through Congress, calling it a “National Security Priority.” Nearby Everglades National Park and the National Park Service said little or nothing and the locals opened their arms in the name of economic development.

Aerojet acquired land for the plant with the help of real estate giant Arvida, paying $2.50 an acre per year for an annual lease with an option to buy up to 25,000 acres more at nickels on the dollar. After Apollo’s Saturn V went liquid, the site sat vacant and abandoned, its workers laid off.

Later, in 1986, after NASA had awarded the Space Shuttle booster contract to Morton Thiokol of Utah, Aerojet sued the State of Florida, exercised its options and pulled out of South Florida for good.

Land returns to swamp

The company sold most of its land holdings to the South Dade Land Corporation for $6 million. After unsuccessfully trying to farm it, the corporation sold it to Florida for $12 million. County and federal courts were kept busy for years with lawsuits between Aerojet, Dade County and the State of Florida.

After losing the Shuttle contract in 1986 Aerojet later traded its remaining 5,100 acres in the wetlands of South Dade for 55,000 acres of environmentally sensitive land belonging to the U.S. Bureau of Land Management in New Mexico. That 5,100 acres surrounding the factory site is now controlled by South Florida Water Management District.

Some folks say the Aerojet site should be a museum, but water management district officials are land and water managers. They told me they do not have the resources nor the inclination to run a museum. To date, no private or joint effort has been forthcoming.

In February 2010, the Homestead City Council entertained a proposal by Rodney Erwin, representing the Omega Space Systems Group, to resurrect the Aerojet facility as a new rocket plant. Homestead Mayor Steve Bateman voiced support for the plan, stating “jobs, jobs, jobs.” The water management district immediately shot down the idea.

I visited the Aerojet site four times. For my last visit, I contacted the South Water Management District and met its director of communications at the site.

One very interesting thing happened during one of those visits. Exactly 1.5 miles from the General Processing facility, as you head south towards the silo, a mound appears out of nowhere. But there is a gravel “driveway” up to it. Approach, and you’ll see a concrete block sticking out of both sides of the mound and through the block run three 6 inch PVC pipes. A vent of some sort? Maybe a forward observation post for the tests, protected by earth? No. Not a door or hatch to be found. Just that “vent.”

What’s in there that has to be vented?

An eeriness pervades here. Everything is quiet except for the wind whistling through broken windows and the distant thunder of the ever-present Everglades rain machine.

Rust blows across the concrete floors and dislodged aluminum siding swings and bangs in the breeze. My first impression of the place was Tombstone brought forward; a space-aged ghost town, with the biggest, baddest ghost of all lurking in that 150-foot-deep hole out on the edge of town.

To walk amongst the dials and switches, the bunsen burners and boilers, and then finally to bend to my knees and look down at the mighty rocket itself, all that history looming up at me, was something I will never forget — even if others would like me to.

How to Transform a Broken Heart

How can you mend a broken heart?
How can you stop the rain from falling down?
How can you stop the sun from shining?
……Please help me mend my broken heart and let me live again.
-  Lyrics from the Bee Gee’s 1971 Hit Song 
When we suffer a deep loss or trauma our hearts can literally feel that they have been shattered into a million pieces. Or we feel that our heart has broken open and we are bleeding metaphorically. At times it can even be difficult to breathe. Our heart is both a living organ that is our life source as well as an emotional mind/body metaphor referred to when we experience heartache and sorrow. It’s as if the heart that beats to an electrical energy wave becomes short circuited and burns out, flares out or is broken into many tiny pieces.
After the initial shock of a loss many feel the need to push aside their grief lest it overwhelms them with its intensity. This is understandable, but the longer you avoid your pain and attempt to push it away, the more difficult it will be to break out of the paralysis. Just as birds are drawn to bread crumbs on the ground, the pain will keep returning after you shoo it away.

When I work with my patients in the initial stage of sorrow I suggest that at first they just sit with their pain and grief, simply noticing it as if they are sitting on a riverbank watching these heavy feelings float downstream. During this time many of them ask, “Why is this happening to me?”  While it is impossible for us to see the big picture, I suggest to them that when they are ready to use this experience to honor themselves by learning, and growing from it. A translation of a Rumi poem says, “When your heart breaks (open), journey deep inside.” So if you are going to be courageous and take that journey it’s helpful to be guided by the following seven steps for overcoming and transforming a broken heart.

Step 1: Struggle with Denial

Denial is the first round of defense that we immediately enter into like the first chamber in the heart that breaks. In this inner chamber we face the demons of trying every which way to not accept the loss. It’s as if a visitor with bad news has entered our home and we try to push him/her back outside so we don’t have to listen to the painful message.

Step 2: Acknowledging your Brokenness 

You must start to acknowledge to yourself that your heart has been broken by someone, something or some event. Step into the experience of attempting to tolerate the unbearable quality of this sorrow. I say “attempt” to deal with the sorrow as you must acknowledge that your pain in order over time to learn to manage, handle, and heal it.

Step 3: Overcoming Rationalization 

We rationalize this is not happening, it can’t be so, it's only a terrible nightmare, things will change and everything will be as it was! The denial of pain. We pray to God that if this experience is taken from us we will repent, we will change, we will dedicate our life to a great cause. Anything but to feel this deep, aching wound of hurt and sorrow. So often when our heart is breaking we want someone, anyone to tell us what to do, or where to go, or how to instantly heal.

Step 4: Surrender

The Beatles insightful song Tomorrow Never Knows says, "Turn off your mind, relax and float down stream ….That you may see the meaning of within.”  The step of entering into the chamber of Surrender is an essential stage in order to allow the self to begin the arduous process of mending a broken heart.  When we surrender, we enter the state of not knowing and not doing. Since we do not know just how long the journey will take it is helpful to accept what I write about in my book on finding meaning and purpose in times of challenges that we never fully get over a loss but instead we learn to navigate through it. “Taking as long as it takes” is a phrase I use with my patients while they are in this stage.

Step Five: Acceptance 

It takes great courage to pull yourself up off the floor, bed, or couch and get back into the world when your heart is broken. Acceptance gives us the first few steps we need to begin to slowly scratch and claw our way back into the land of the living.  One of the most painful aspects of when I had a broken heart was going out to the movies or dinner or on a vacation and all I ever saw was couples or families but still we need to exercise the organ of the emotional heart with fierce grace in order to step forward and go back outside into the world of possibilities.

Step Six: Embrace the Now  

The Buddha said what is past is now dead and gone; the past is the past, the present is now, and the future is yet to arrive. When grieving we tend to live in the past reliving the trauma or memories of the one we lost. Now memories are important to maintain but within reason. In order to take the next step we must embrace the present to manifest the future. One of the easiest and most effect techniques that I recommend to my patients is to develop a mindfulness meditation practice (see the video below for tips on how to meditate). By practicing mindfulness we can learn to slowly tolerate, pace the painful feelings, and slow down the afflictive and repetitive thought patterns. In my book, Wise Mind, Open Mind I have a specific meditation to overcome a broken heart. Mindfulness is both an ancient and modern non sectarian method for teaching us to follow our breath in and out and to relax, to let go of the pain and eventually release and transform it into vitality, acceptance and equanimity. Other methods to help one become more present are yoga, Tai Chi, walks in nature, jogging or visiting museums.

Step Seven: Create a New Future

There is a field of thinking within positive psychology that says the way through pain includes becoming your own architect and actively engaging and involving yourself in the planning of a new future. The victim in us will want to remain on the floor curled up in agony, wishing to avoid any future painful experiences that life may present to us. One who is engaged and empowered realizes and accepts that the past is the past and all we have now is the present moment and the future.  It’s all in the next breath in and the next breath out and creating in your mind’s eye a future storyline for yourself.  Dare to dream and be wild with your imagination. Have the courage to dream any positive, loving, creative future with no bounds. Remember after Death comes Rebirth!  

It’s your storyline you are creating, like writing the next chapter of your life in a novel. But in your story I challenge you to JUMP into the water, catch the next wave and maybe you will just be surprised and delighted to experience yourself riding that new wave with confidence, joy and possibility!!!

Mars 'Blueberries': Iron Baubles Spotted By NASA Opportunity Rover, Suggests Life Existed On Red Planet

It's a question that has plagued scientists for decades: Is there, or has there ever been, life on Mars?

While the answer to that question has often swayed from a slight "maybe" to a definitive "no," the recent discovery of iron 'blueberries' -- small, spherical hematite balls -- by the NASA Opportunity Rover indicates that life may have existed on Mars millions of years ago.

These 'blueberries,' as they have been dubbed, were initially thought to provide evidence of water on Mars, according to LifeScientist. However, researchers from the University of Western Australia and the University of Nebraska found that similar iron-oxide spheres analyzed on Earth are formed by microorganisms. If the same holds true for Mars, the iron 'blueberries' could not have plausibly been created without the existence of microbes on Mars.

Published in the August issue of Geology, the study analyzed the bio-signatures of iron 'bluberries' found here on Earth on beaches and deserts such as the Jurassic Navajo Sandstone in Utah. Using a high resolution microscope, the researchers evaluated the apparent connections in the iron-oxide spheres, noting a particular relationship between microbe-like forms and biological elements.

Though previous theories surrounding the iron 'blueberries' suggested they were formed by chemical reactions, this new analysis indicates microorganisms were a crucial part of their formation. Thus, the evidence indicates that water, and life, once existed on the red planet.

Despite a recent study that suggests magma, rather than water, may have formed some of the deposits on the planet, the new research reinforces the theory that water was present on the Red Planet. However, more research is still required to further the theory of life on Mars.

Medvedev Calls for Pussy Riot Release

Friends leaving the Yelokhovsky Passage mall in the direction of Yelokhovsky Cathedral, background, where Pussy Riot sang before Christ the Savior Cathedral. Dmitry Medvedev is calling for the rockers’ release.

Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev on Wednesday called for the early release of jailed members of the Pussy Riot punk band.

Speaking to United Russia activists in Penza, Medvedev said the jail time already served by the three band members was “a very, very serious punishment” and adding any more would be “counterproductive in this case,” Interfax reported.

A Moscow court on Aug. 17 sentenced band members Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Maria Alyokhina and Yekaterina Samutsevich to two years in jail for their February “punk prayer” in Christ the Savior Cathedral in which they denounced Putin and Patriarch Kirill.

The verdict against Pussy Riot will not go into force until the Moscow City Court rules on their appeal on Oct. 1.

Medvedev also made it clear that he was not prepared to support the band.

“I am sick over what they did, of their public appeal and the hysteria that surrounds them,” he said.

Medvedev’s comments came less than a week after President Vladimir Putin condemned the band’s performances as “witches’ sabbaths.”

And they came a day after state television suggested that the band’s stunt in Christ the Savior Cathedral was orchestrated by exiled tycoon Boris Berezovsky.

A documentary-style report aired on the Rossia 1 channel Tuesday night that quoted Alexei Veshnyak, identified as a close Berezovsky associate, as saying that Berezovsky had discussed plans for Pussy Riot’s February performance with him.

The report also quoted U.S. publicist William Dunkerley as saying that a London-based public relations agency had offered Western celebrities cash if they supported Pussy Riot.

The report, titled “Provocateurs. Part 2,” appeared as an installment in the “Special Correspondent” series hosted by Arkady Mamontov, who has been branded by critics as a Kremlin propaganda mouthpiece.

In April, Mamontov made the same claim about Berezovsky as the television program.

Berezovsky on Wednesday denied the accusations.

“I would be proud if I had thought up” the Pussy Riot performance, he said on Ekho Moskvy radio. He added that he knew Vishnyak but had never discussed Pussy Riot with him.

Tuesday’s program identified Veshnyak as the head of a nongovernmental organization called Preobrazheniye, or Transfiguration.

Moskovskiye Novosti reported in April that someone named Alexei Vishnyak heads the Vrata-1 and Vrata-2 companies, which sell souvenirs and jewelry on the premises of Christ the Savior Cathedral.

Vishnyak was also registered in 2010 as the head of Vrata-4, a subsidiary of the Christ the Savior Cathedral Fund, which is financed by City Hall, the report said.  

It was unclear whether Veshnyak and Vishnyak are the same person.

Dunkerley, meanwhile, denied Mamontov’s claim that he had obtained evidence of Berezovsky’s involvement.

Reached by telephone in Connecticut, he said a colleague had told him that the Bell Pottinger PR firm had offered artists up to 100,000 euros ($129,000) for making statements in support of Pussy Riot.

The fact that Bell Pottinger had worked for Berezovsky in the past “is an interesting parallel,” he said.

The London-based company was founded by Timothy Bell, the British godfather of PR, who worked for both British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko. Bell Pottinger did not immediately respond to an e-mail seeking comment.

Dunkerley, who first linked Berezovsky to the Pussy Riot case in Komsomolskaya Pravda earlier this month, said he has no political agenda.

“I am not endorsing one side or another, but I am happy to be used as a source to get to the truth,” hesaid.

Meanwhile, Orthodox theologian Andrei Kurayev questioned Mamontov’s program by saying that the Pussy Riot performance was not a “persecution” of the church. Writing on his LiveJournal blog, Kurayev suggested that Preobrazheniye, the organization linked to Veshnyak, does not exist, and he assailed the program for linking the toppling of an Orthodox cross by Ukraine’s Femen activists with a promise by a Pussy Riot lawyer to stage an event to support the band.

Kurayev is no stranger to conspiracy theories himself. In July, he speculated that Pussy Riot’s performances were orchestrated by the head of City Hall’s culture department, Sergei Kapkov, to boost support for Putin.

Pussy Riot Festival to Go Ahead

Televizor, a Soviet protest group from the late 1980s that was banned.

ST. PETERSBURG — A concert in support of Pussy Riot looks set to go ahead at a St. Petersburg club despite allegations of police pressure.

The concert at Glavclub on Sunday will not, however, be advertised on street posters, because the outdoor advertising agency that was approached to do the job "got scared," organizers said.

Glavclub's owner, Igor Tonkikh, said that he had started receiving threatening calls from the police and district administrations of both the Petrograd Side of the city, where Glavclub's temporary summer marquee was located, and of the Central District, where Glavclub moved its activities to on Sept. 1.

He was told that there were many agencies who would probe various violations that the club was allegedly responsible for if the concert went ahead.

Tonkikh said he had decided to host the Free Pussy Riot Fest because he organized concerts by Televizor — one of the show's participants — as an underground promoter in Moscow when the band was banned in the late 1980s for its protest songs such as "Get Out of Control" and "Your Daddy Is a Fascist." However, he said he also felt responsible for the jobs of the people working at his venue.

The concert will be the second charity event to be held at the club this week. The club will host a non-political concert aimed at supporting the homeless on Thursday.

"We haven't received any calls about that event," Tonkikh stressed.

The police denied they had called the venue, and said that no permits for holding concerts were needed, Rosbalt reported last week.

However, concert organizer Olga Kurnosova said she had managed to get a "permit" from the police.

"I asked the police to provide assistance in holding the concert and received a document from them," she said, adding that the piece of paper does not guarantee the event from further harassment from the authorities.

According to Kurnosova, one of the police chiefs with whom she negotiated initially argued that Glavclub was "too close" to the St. Alexander Nevsky Lavra monastery — which is about 1 kilometer from the club — and suggested that the organizer should find a venue located further from a church for the concert.

DDT, Televizor, PTVP, Electric Guerrilas, Razniye Lyudi and Gleb Samoilov will be taking part, as well as some younger bands who offered to play, but several acts refused to take part, most notably Boris Grebenshchikov of Akvarium.

Tickets cost 500 rubles ($15) and the proceeds will go to support the imprisoned members of Pussy Riot — Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Maria Alyokhina and Yekaterina Samutsevich — who were sentenced to two years each in a prison colony in Moscow last month.

A portion of the funds raised will go to the "Prisoners of Bolotnaya," activists arrested in the aftermath of the May 6 demonstration on Bolotnaya Ploshchad in Moscow that erupted into clashes as the result of an alleged police provocation, and also to Taisia Osipova, an opposition activist sentenced last week to eight years in prison in Smolensk on dubious drug distribution charges.

Free Pussy Riot Fest will take place Sunday. 7 p.m. Glavclub, 2 Kremenchugskaya Ulitsa. Metro Ploshchad Vosstaniya. St. Petersburg. Tel. (812) 905-7555.

Pussy Riot Films Dramatic Thank-You Stunt

A photo of Putin burning after Pussy Riot members ignited it as part of a video thanking supportive musicians.

Members of punk band Pussy Riot have released a video in which they thank musicians Madonna and Bjork for their support of the group while they rappel down the side of an abandoned building and burn a picture of President Vladimir Putin.

The group released the video apparently in response to questions submitted to it by American television network MTV ahead of the MTV Video Music Awards, which aired in the States on Thursday evening.

MTV News said in an article that it had asked Pussy Riot to respond to the prominent musicians around the world who have expressed support for the group, three of whose members were sentenced to two years in prison last month for performing an anti-Putin song in a Moscow church.

In the 1-minute 15-second video, three women wearing the group's trademark colorful balaclavas, short dresses and stockings are shown on the roof of an abandoned concrete building.

The women speak emphatically in English about their fight against the authorities and call Putin and strongman Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko "evil men."

"We've been fighting for the right to sing, to think, to criticize," a woman in a green knit balaclava says to open the video.

"To be musicians and artists, ready to do everything to change our country, no matter the risks," another female voice follows.

The women, while rappelling down the side of the building, thank singers Madonna and Bjork as well as the bands Red Hot Chili Peppers, Green Day and other musicians, for supporting Pussy Riot. Madonna and Red Hot Chili Peppers have expressed support for the women in concerts in Moscow and St. Petersburg in recent months.

The women then condemn Putin and Lukashenko, saying they are intolerant of political opposition and support of gays and lesbians. Two of the women then light flares and burn a photo of Putin hanging from the building.

A member of Green Day wore a "Free Pussy Riot" T-shirt at the MTV Video Music Awards on Thursday, the Los Angeles Times reported. It was unclear whether the latest Pussy Riot video was shown during the Los Angeles ceremony, at which a variety of awards were given out to popular musicians. The video was posted on MTV's website, mtv.com.

Pussy Riot members Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 22, Maria Alyokhina, 24, and Yekaterina Samutsevich, 30, were sentenced on Aug. 17 by a Moscow court to two years in prison for their February "punk prayer" in Christ the Savior Cathedral in which they denounced Putin and Russian Orthodox Church head Patriarch Kirill.

World-famous musicians have backed the women's right to free speech, and human rights groups and Western governments have condemned their jail sentence as disproportionate.

A group of Russian musicians planned to play at a benefit concert in support of the band in St. Petersburg late Sunday.

Glavclub's owner Igor Tonkikh, the only owner of a large club in the city to agree to host the charity show, asked the organizers to get at least some kind of "permit" from the police that would guarantee the venue would not be shut down on the day of the concert, he said earlier at a news conference.

Tonkikh said he had started receiving threatening calls from the police and other authorities. The police denied they had called the venue and said no permit for holding concerts was needed, Rosbalt reported last week.

DDT, Televizor, Electric Guerillas and Gleb Samoilov signed up to take part, as well as some younger bands who offered to play, but several acts refused to take part, most notably Boris Grebenshchikov of Akvarium.

Separately, Lech Walesa, Poland's Nobel Peace Prize laureate, said he had sent a letter to Putin urging him to release the three band members sentenced last month, Reuters reported Friday.


"I'm not familiar with Russian law, but I'm calling on President Putin to liberate the girls if the law allows that," Walesa, who served as a president of post-Communist Poland, told Reuters in an interview.

Could it be that our Facebook personas are as scripted as reality television?

I was sitting in a church today not because I’ve ever been Christian or particularly religious, but rather because I find churches a peaceful place to collect my thoughts. I’ve been blessed to be on several university campuses with beautiful places of worship that are truly awe-inspiring. So much so that as I began to quiet my mind, I found myself interrupted by the incessant click-click sounds of cameras. Granted, I was sitting in a truly gorgeous place with an ethereal light shining down into the sacred space. The intricate golden mosaic artwork and Spanish-style architecture I’d determined was impossible to ever truly capture on film. Nothing would do it justice other than to experience it directly. The same way that one can view photos of Italian paintings, chapels, and architecture, and yet it is all second to traveling to Italy to see it with one’s own eyes.
Seeing people file in and out of the church, snapping pictures and making a quick exit brought many questions to my mind. Mostly, I wondered what makes us so determined to document and capture every moment often with the intent of sharing it with others? What keeps us from simply taking it in? It is far too simplistic to blame technologies and point immediately to social networking sites such as Facebook. And yet, I was surprised when an article I wrote on deleting Facebook friends was received with overwhelming enthusiasm. It seems people are just over it.

The idea of Facebook “depression” “addiction” and other such terms seem to be more ubiquitous now that everyone’s third cousin and elementary school teacher is on it. Social networks expand in large complicated ways as boundaries blur and identities become ambiguous. The problem of Facebook, however, rests not necessarily with others and what they are doing. Too often we blame “friends” and their carefully photoshopped lives. “Look at my amazing vacation,” and “here are my adorable children.” For the financially strapped or those struggling with fertility, seeing these updates is a virtual and constant slap in the face. How many times have my female therapy clients complained that all of their friends are married and that they are the only single one left? And it’s not a faulty cognition—there’s proof!

While certainly witnessing what appears to be others’ triumphs may prove difficult, there is more to the story. What about the falsehoods we create about our own lives? Do we believe the lies we tell ourselves on Facebook? It rarely escapes most people’s attentions that the most vibrant, exciting, party-filled lives are typically the loneliest and most unhappy. After all, if your life is so wonderful and glamorous, then why do you feel the need to constantly prove the fact again, over and over? And frankly, what are you doing on Facebook all day long if you’re so popular and in demand? Aren’t those who are most fully engaged in life the ones with too little time to devote to their Facebook pages?
In truth, we have all done it. We’ve had bad days, rejections, and times when life hits the blahs. We post something fun and upbeat, perhaps as a way to snap ourselves out of it. Maybe it’s to garner a “like” or cheery comment. But at the end of the day when we turn off our computers, our social networks, if confined to a pixilated screen, will snap off just as quickly.
The reality is that our own lives are slowly slipping into the makeup of today’s reality television shows. Carefully crafted or scripted, our high highs and low lows are broadcast loudly to the world. We hold our coffees in one hand, our phones in the other, and if we are ultra sleek, we peer out only occasionally from our big sunglasses which shield us from more than just the sun. We are in effect turning into the very celebrities we so claim to disdain.
A line I recently came across from a spiritual leader noted that in our cores, many of us are longing for love. Self-love is one of the most important types of love that we rarely speak of. It’s a foreign concept as we have few moments truly to ourselves without the distraction of others or electronics. We don’t have the opportunity to be left alone and to learn to take joy in our own solitude and company.
It simply looks weird to sit down at a coffee shop with just your latte while you stare off into space. It makes everyone around you a lot more comfortable if your nose is buried in a book or your fingers are quickly tapping away a text message or update. But there is nothing wrong with stillness; the contentment that lingers is often a quiet one. It may not require any documentation, or if you have the impulse to immediately “share” it, it is an urge worth resisting. Sure, life on Facebook is fun. It’s not unlike the dramatic train wrecks people enjoy watching on trashy television. But creating a life worthy of the “silver” in silver screen is even better.

If You Live Alone, Have You Made a Virtue of Selfishness?

“…change has to be carefully nurtured by sentries on the lookout for indulgence, corrosion and selfishness.” That’s the view attributed to the Founding Fathers by American Interest contributor Benjamin E. Schwartz in his indictment of the growing trend toward living alone. We solo dwellers are the ones being selfish and indulgent, when we should be married-with-children sentries watching out for other people headed down the road to corrosion.
Schwartz does not like Eric Klinenberg’s suggestion in Going Solo that the rise of living alonerepresents a collective achievement. He does not like Klinenberg’s book, and he is really miffed that so many other people do like it. He thinks that the positive arguments put forward about living alone amount to an attempt to recast selfishness as a virtue.

People who live alone, he thinks, are seeking “instant gratification” and abdicating their responsibility “for ensuring that certain values outlast and outlive” them.

Schwartz is worried about the next generation. “Individuals are biologically incapable of producing a next generation except in the crudest possible sense of the term.” I think he is saying that using reproductive technology to have children is crude, but I’m not entirely sure. In any case, that’s not his main gripe. He’s more worried about “social reproduction,” the question of “how well America is developing the character of the next generation.”

People who live alone, Schwartz seems to be arguing, are not socializing the next generation. We’re too caught up in our “expressive individualism,” which he defines as “the idea that one’s greatest priority out to be self-expression, self-cultivation and self-fulfillment.”

He does seem to realize that some of the people who are living alone were once married but are currently divorced. (There’s no mention of being widowed.) He also knows that there are lots of single parents –whether divorced or always single – who are raising children. Somehow, none of those people get credit for socializing the next generation. He instead ascribes to the myth that the children of single parents are doomed.

I have addressed the overwrought take on the supposedly pitiful children of single parents many times before, so that’s not what I will discuss here. Instead, I want to critique two other assumptions: that solo dwellers do not connect with other people except in the most self-indulgent ways (to go to a football game or a movie, for example), and that the proliferation of choices about how to live is a bad thing.

To read Schwartz is to believe that people who are single have nothing to do but play (another myth debunked here). He mentions the evidence that single people go out to dinner more often than married people do, but not that they also stay in touch more, and more often exchange help with, parents, siblings, friends, and neighbors.

He also does not acknowledge that single people often provide more than their share of the caring of aging relatives. Oddly, he does not seem to recognize the many ways that adults can contribute to the socializing of the next generation other than by raising them in nuclear family households. Teaching, mentoring, befriending, pitching in to help with other people’s kids, or just hanging out with kids – none of that seems to count as an investment “in the acculturation of future generations.”

Maybe the more fundamental problem with Schwartz’s argument, though, is that he seems to implicitly condemn a fact of contemporary life – that we have ever more choices about how to live. I think Schwartz would be happy if we all married, had kids, and stayed married.

He cannot seem to allow that for some people, marrying and having kids is the good life, but that it is not the best life for everyone – nor would it be best for society if everyone followed the same life path.

I think we all benefit when people who do not want to be parents, and who would not be very good at it, do not feel compelled to have kids anyway. I think it is good for individuals and for society when people who are passionate and talented in the pursuit of scientific innovation or social justice (or any other endeavor that benefits more than a small set of biological children) feel free to make use of their abilities single-mindedly and without guilt.

If you love what you are doing and work hard at it, then yes, you will enjoy “self-expression, self-cultivation, and self-fulfillment,” Schwartz’s defining features of the expressive individualism that he detests. But maybe you will also contribute to a better society in ways that endure for many generations to come.

Did you find yourself going crazy with last night's blue moon?

When I was in elementary school, my teacher told my class that the full moon makes people crazy.

She said it was caused by the gravitational tug of the moon on the Earth—the same forces that cause high and low tides—the argument being that our bodies are more than 60% water.

I was impressionable and fascinated by weird science—who isn't at that age?—and have long since stored that "fact"oid in my ever-developing hippocampus. The full moon last night (the blue moon, in fact—the second full moon of the month) reminded me of this theory and made me want to do a little research of my own.

Does the full moon really do something to our brains?

Firstly, we must be on the same page as to what a "full moon" really means. The moon revolves around the Earth, and the Earth revolves around the sun. The phases of the moon simply represent the portions illuminated by the sun.

All of this motion creates a very dynamic display for us earthlings. So when you see that little sliver in the sky, the rest of the moon is still there—the sun's rays just aren't reflected on the surface we're seeing.


That being said, why would an illuminated moon have some sort of effect (on tides, craziness, etc.), while a shadowed moon wouldn't?

Here's where the "science" comes in.

A 1985 meta-analysis review of 37 studies regarding moon phase and lunacy (including mental hospital admissions, hotline crisis calls,psychiatric disturbances, and criminal offenses) found no statistically significant relationships between the full moon and human behavior.

Sleep disturbances have been reported in response to a full moon. A 1999 hypothesis details how the additional outdoor lighting may contribute to sleeplessness.

We should, perhaps, turn to the animal world to see how some non-self-conscious beings react to the full moon.

A study on Azara's owl monkeys found them prowling the Argentinean forests more actively on full moon nights; the poor things will actually sleep in late the next morning, not unlike your average teenager.

Interestingly, a hypothesized light-sensitive protein in Acropora millepora corals may account for their synchronous spawning for a few nights every year just after the full moon. (Good thing humans don't carry that gene.)

It also appears that prey are less active during the full moon, as the additional light makes them more visible to predators.

So the full moon isn't causing, like, mini gravitational tides in our watery bodies. The extra light is messing with our heads, somehow. Truth be told, we're likely just being paranoid and superstitious. Or perhaps those who claim lunacy are those who transform into werewolves a couple times a year.