They’re in charge of keeping an eye on the entire planet with the most advanced imaging technology in the world, and they have an estimated annual budget of at least $5 billion. But right now they have a position for a sign language interpreter that they’re not allowed to fill. Why? Because Donald Trump’s federal…
When Olympic gold medalist Aly Raisman was asked about the one thing that’s bothering her most, she said it’s the pervasive issue of sexual violence.
“The statistics are just alarming, it’s one in four girls are sexually abused, and those are just the girls that speak up and that [statistic] was from a couple of years ago,” the Olympic gymnast said in a Facebook Live video for People Magazine on Wednesday. “I can’t tell you how many girls I know that have been sexually abused at some point in their life and it’s so sad.”
Raisman emphasized the issue of victim-blaming and slut-shaming, and why the onus should never, ever be on women to avoid being assaulted. “We also live in a culture where if a girl is wearing a short skirt or she’s wearing a low cut blouse it’s okay for men to rape women,” she said. “It’s just out of control.”
Speaking up about the issue, Raisman said, will help solve it. She told People that she thinks boys and girls should learn at a young age what the definition of consent means. “There needs to be a class that’s valued just as much as math class that teaches boys and girls to respect each other,” she said.
“If a girl doesn’t say ‘yes,’ then it’s not consent.”
Raisman’s comments come at the very beginning of National Sexual Assault Awareness and Prevention Month, an after more than 100 women accused former USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar of sexual abuse ― a sex abuse scandal that involves more victims than that of Bill Cosby’s and Jerry Sandusky’s scandals combined.
Check out Raisman’s full interview here.
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H/T Refinery29
Need help? Visit RAINN’s National Sexual Assault Online Hotline or the National Sexual Violence Resource Center’s website.
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A selfie taken along California’s highest bridge nearly cost a woman her life.
The woman was taking selfies in a restricted area of the Foresthill Bridge in Placer County on Tuesday when authorities say she lost her balance and plunged 60 feet.
The Placer County Sheriff’s Office, which life-flighted the injured woman from the bridge, which at its highest point stands at 730 feet, said it’s astounding she survived.
“This young lady is very lucky to be alive and the consequences could have been worse for her, her friends and her family,” the office said in a Facebook post.
The Sacramento woman was among a group of six friends posing for photos on a walkway beneath the bridge when she lost her footing and plunged over the edge, Paul Goncharuk, who was among that group told CBS 13 News.
“They were taking a picture on the bridge and then the big bolts holding the bridge together, she kind of stepped on them weirdly and lost balance and fell backwards,” he said.
The woman was knocked unconscious from the fall and suffered fractured bones that will require surgery, Goncharuk told the station.
“It’s a cool place to take pictures but honestly it’s not worth the risk,” he added.
The sheriff’s department warned that anyone caught along the bridge’s catwalk will be cited and/or arrested.
“Worse yet, you can lose your life and none of that is worth a selfie! Enjoy the bridge and canyon from the designated areas,” they said.
Warnings like that appear to have little impact on some daredevils, however.
A search on social media reveals an assortment of photos taken in a restricted area of the bridge, emphasizing the extreme height these risk takers face.
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WASHINGTON ― Democrats on Thursday followed through with their threats to filibuster Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch, setting the stage for Republicans to unilaterally change the rules to force through his confirmation.
Nearly all Democrats voted to block President Donald Trump’s court pick. They needed 41 to pull it off, and they had 44. Four Democrats sided with Republicans to end the filibuster: Sens. Michael Bennet (Colo.), Joe Donnelly (Ind.), Heidi Heitkamp (N.D.) and Joe Manchin (W.Va.).
It was a dramatic move by Democrats, and one that their base was demanding from them. But it won’t have any effect on stopping Gorsuch. Republicans have been signaling for weeks that they are prepared to take the extreme step of blowing up Senate rules so it only takes 51 votes, instead of 60, to move forward on a Supreme Court nominee. There are 52 Republicans, so that would allow them to bypass Democrats and confirm Gorsuch themselves.
Nobody likes the idea of changing the rules, and it will be historic if the Senate waters down its rules to allow one party to confirm Supreme Court nominees. But Republicans are determined to get Gorsuch through. Even GOP senators who said changing the rules will harm the Senate and the courts, such as Arizona Sen. John McCain, have said they will go along with the rules change.
Ahead of the vote, senators in both parties chastised each other for dragging the Senate into such an ugly, partisan fight.
“You know that he’ll be confirmed,” Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) scolded Democrats. “That’s why this is an especially sad state of affairs.”
He called it “ridiculous” that Democrats would filibuster Gorsuch given his “outstanding qualifications” to be on the Supreme Court.
Democrats pointed out that President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland, also had outstanding qualifications, but Republicans refused to move his nomination forward all last year. Indeed, GOP senators’ arguments for why Gorsuch deserves an up-or-down vote echo the same arguments Democrats made last year for why Garland deserved a vote.
“There must have been a hacking into his computer because he can’t print the name Merrick Garland to include in the speech … That name is the reason we are in this spot today,” Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said. “For the first time in the history of the Senate, for the first time ever, this Republican-led Senate refused to give this nominee a hearing and a vote. It had never, underline the word never, happened before.”
Democrats have insisted their opposition is not simply partisan and that they are trying to block Gorsuch on principle. While they haven’t said he is unqualified, they have said he is too ideological, siding time and time again with big money interests over regular people.
“His record shows, far from being the kind of mainstream candidate for the Supreme Court that could earn 60 votes, he may very well turn out to be one of the most conservative justices on the bench,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Thursday.
Schumer said the answer was not to change Senate rules, but to come up with a nominee that at least eight Democrats could support.
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Nothing eases the pain of a flight delay like 800 pizzas.
After thunderstorms forced Delta to cancel and delay hundreds of flights across the South on Wednesday, crews stepped up and hosted impromptu airplane pizza parties for stranded passengers at a number of airports, spokesperson Michael Thomas confirmed to HuffPost.
Photos surfaced of flight attendants, pilots and ground crews unloading slices, with Twitter users including comments of thanks.
In total, Delta distributed more than 800 pizzas at airports across the South, Thomas said. Nashville passengers were also treated to foot-long subs, and travelers in Panama City, Florida got 20 trays of chicken biscuits.
“We empower our agents and airport station leaders to find ways to take care of our customers when irregular operations disrupt travel,” Thomas said.
In 2015, Delta crews made similar seat-side pizza deliveries after rain delayed planes bound for Atlanta. In 2013, they performed a similar feat on a grounded flight in Knoxville.
We’d take a slice of kindness over airplane food any day.
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Millions of people joined the women’s marches across the country in January, making it arguably the biggest single-day demonstration ever in the United States.
And every single one of those women, men and children just won a very cool award.
PEN America, a non-profit promoting literature and human rights, announced this week that it is presenting the Women’s March ― meaning its organizers and its participants ― with the 2017 PEN/Toni and James C. Goodale Freedom of Expression Courage Award. It honors “exceptional acts of courage” exercising freedom of expression.
“The Women’s March convinced Americans that mass civic action was possible,” Suzanne Nossel, executive director of PEN America, said in a press release announcing the prize. “If not for the Women’s March, people would not have flooded to airports over a weekend to reject a discriminatory visa ban just days later. We honor the Women’s March for acting at a critical moment to overcome the inertia and fear of failure that can impair public mobilization, and for inspiring millions in America and around the world to do the same.”
Bob Bland, one of the four national co-chairs who helped dream up and organize the Women’s March, will accept the award later this month in New York City. Past honorees include the surviving staff of Charlie Hedbo, the French satirical weekly that was the target of a brutal shooting rampage in 2015.
The award is being given to the Women’s March as a whole, and that includes every person who demonstrated in cities and towns across the country the day after President Trump’s inauguration.
“[The Women’s March] demonstrated the power of women,” Andrew Solomon, president of PEN America, said in a press release, “and, in turn, the power of the vast diversity that is America.”
Well done, marchers. Well done.
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NEW YORK ― Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards and acclaimed feminist author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie had a riveting conversation about feminism and activism on Wednesday night.
The two icons sat down with Katie Couric to discuss how to raise a feminist for Tina Brown’s Women in the World Summit, which kicked off that day. Richards, a mother of three, and Adichie, a new mother of a young daughter, talked about the ever-changing landscape of feminist activism, especially in light of President Donald Trump’s administration.
When Couric asked Richards what she thinks of young women who refuse to identify as feminists, the Planned Parenthood president pointed to the impact of the Women’s March.
“Women didn’t just march, they’re now going to town hall meetings, speaking to members of their Congress, calling and really taking action,” Richards replied. “And to me that says more than any label says.”
Adichie expanded on that thought, telling Couric that women of color have a different relationship with the term “feminist.”
“I also do think the label is important. We need a name,” said Adichie, who recently came under fire for her comments about trans women. “There are many black and brown women in this country who are uncomfortable with that word, and I think understandably so because the history of Western feminism is racist and excluded them. But I also think that we’ve come to the point where we can re-own it and re-take it and make it this complex, multi-thing that it should be.”
As intersectionality becomes more and more understood by mainstream culture, the easier it will be for more people to accept the feminist label, Richards said.
“Feminism isn’t about you, it’s not about your rights. It’s about believing in equal rights for all women,” Richards said. “Understanding that feminism is about a belief in everyone, not just an individual.”
As Richards said earlier in the discussion: “Feminism cannot be sort of a passive identity. It has to be something that we stand up and fight for.”
Watch the full 30-minute panel below.
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NVIDIA’s latest graphics card is the NVIDIA TITAN Xp, a GPU with more cores, faster clocks, faster memory, and more TFLOPS than the TITAN X that came before it. This graphics card is being delivered to users direct from NVIDIA through NVIDIA’s online store. It’ll be available to be used by both PC users and Apple computer users – though … Continue reading
Even as President Donald Trump and his administration continue to deny the urgency of climate change, an international team of researchers has revealed how global warming has already melted Greenland’s coastal glaciers and ice caps past the point of no return.
In a study published in Nature Communications on Friday, scientists based in Europe and the U.S. describe how the glaciers and ice caps that cover tens of thousands of square miles along the coast of Greenland have reached a critical “tipping point,” beyond which further melting is unavoidable.
Troublingly, the ice had already surpassed this tipping point 20 years ago, the researchers said — only the technology to confirm this hadn’t existed until now.
“These peripheral glaciers and ice caps can be thought of as colonies of ice that are in rapid decline, many of which will likely disappear in the near future,” said Ian Howat, study co-author and glaciologist at Ohio State University, in a statement last week. “In that sense, you could say that they’re ‘doomed.’”
The complete melting of Greenland’s coastal ice could raise global sea levels by about 1.5 inches, researchers said. It’s an increase that could impact some islands and low-lying coastal areas through flooding, erosion and other effects. But according to the study’s authors, there’s much more at stake than even that.
“The [1.5 inch figure] does not sound like much,” lead author Brice Noël told The Huffington Post on Thursday from Utrecht University in The Netherlands, where he’s a doctoral researcher. “But these ice caps are an alarm signal of what will happen on the Greenland ice sheet if temperatures continue to increase.”
The Greenland ice sheet, which covers about 80 percent of the island’s surface, is the second-largest ice body in the world after the Antarctic ice sheet. The same processes that have caused the accelerated melting of Greenland’s coastal ice bodies could also influence the island’s massive ice sheet — with devastating results, Noël said.
“For now, the ice sheet is still safe,” he said. “Its tipping point hasn’t been crossed yet. But if warming continues, it’s very likely that it will be crossed.”
If the entire Greenland ice sheet were to melt, it would cause a global sea level rise of more than 20 feet.
To understand why Greenland’s coastal glaciers and ice caps have reached the tipping point the researchers describe, you need to know how these ice bodies are formed.
Glaciers (slow-moving masses of ice) and ice caps (essentially mini ice sheets) are created when snow accumulates in an area and eventually transforms into ice. When new layers of snow fall, the compress the previous layers and eventually force them to recrystallize, forming larger and larger grains of snow that later become larger and larger crystals of ice. As the crystals grow, air pockets between them diminish, and after many years — typically, many decades — near-impermeable glacial ice forms.
But between the snow phase and the glacial ice phase, there’s an intermediate phase called “firn” ― when layers of compressed snow have yet to turn into ice. It typically takes about two winters to form firn in colder regions like Greenland, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center in the U.S.
Firn is critical for preventing glaciers and ice caps from melting, researchers say in the new study. When snow melts on the surface of these ice bodies during the warmer months, meltwater collects in gaps in the firn on the way down to the layer of glacial ice below. The bottom layer of this meltwater will re-freeze, ensuring that the glacier or ice cap keeps its size or continues to grow.
These peripheral glaciers and ice caps can be thought of as colonies of ice that are in rapid decline, many of which will likely disappear in the near future.
Ian Howat, Ohio State University
The firn, explained Noël, “works like a sponge that can buffer a large amount of meltwater.”
But Noël and his team discovered that Greenland’s coastal glaciers and ice caps have melted so quickly in the past few decades that about 20 years ago, the firn of these ice bodies became fully saturated with frozen meltwater.
In other words, there was “enough melt to fill up all the pore spaces in the snowpack,” explained Allen Pope, an NSIDC glaciologist who was not involved in the study, in an email to HuffPost on Thursday.
With nowhere else to go, the meltwater from these coastal glaciers and ice caps started running into the sea, causing these ice bodies’ rapid decline, the study says.
Until 1997, the glaciers and ice caps had been able to “contain and refreeze enough meltwater to remain stable despite temperature fluctuations,” Utrecht University said in a news release. Since then, however, they’ve been melting at an accelerated pace, losing about three times as much mass annually as they did before 1997. It’s an effect that the scientists have called “irreversible.”
“It would require decades to regrow a new, healthy snow cover that can buffer the summer melt again,” said Noël. And with temperatures continuing to rise because of climate change, this regrowth will likely be impossible.
“In a warmer climate, rainfall will increase at the expense of snowfall, further limiting the formation of a healthy snow cover,” Noël added.
Greenland’s coastal glaciers and ice caps measure about 35,000 square miles (about the size of Maine), and according to Utrecht University, represent the largest glacierized area on Earth outside of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets.
Citing earlier research, Noël said up to 30 percent of Greenland’s coastal ice is expected to disappear by 2100.
Global warming, said researchers, is a clear culprit of this precipitous decline: Higher temperatures have meant not just more meltwater production, but also less firn accumulating every year to absorb the meltwater.
Observers have known for years that Greenland’s coastal ice is shrinking, but until now, it was impossible to confirm the exact cause due to technological limitations, the study’s authors said. Ohio State glaciologist Howat said in an email that past researchers lacked three necessities: a high-resolution topographic model of the glaciers and ice caps, a detailed map of their boundaries and a high-resolution numerical model of drainage processes.
Today, however, new technology like Howat’s Greenland Ice Mapping Project Digital Elevation Model, and the Regional Atmospheric Climate Model, developed in part by Utrecht University, have allowed scientists to better understand the processes that are shrinking Greenland’s coastal ice.
The results of the study, said Noël, were “quite surprising.” His team had not expected the saturated firn to contribute so significantly to the ice’s accelerated decline, he said.
This information could have far-reaching implications, researchers said.
If the Earth’s temperature increases by 2 degrees Celsius, the benchmark agreed upon in the landmark Paris climate agreement, the Greenland ice sheet could experience the same accelerated melting that the island’s coastal glaciers and ice caps are facing, said Noël.
The ice sheet is larger and more climatologically isolated than the coastal ice bodies and therefore more stable, but researchers have already observed similar changes to certain parts of the ice sheet’s firn layer, said Howat. These changes are part of “an important process in increasing the rate at which the ice sheet responds to warming, even if it is much slower than the little glaciers at the periphery,” he said.
The Greenland ice sheet has been melting at an accelerated pace since 1979. A study published in December revealed that the large ice cache is less stable than previously believed.
These ice caps are an alarm signal of what will happen on the Greenland ice sheet if temperatures continue to increase.
Brice Noël, Utrecht University
Trump and some members of his administration, including Scott Pruitt, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, have denied that climate change is an immediate threat worth tackling. Trump signed an executive order last week targeting climate change regulations introduced by his predecessor Barack Obama. Trump’s call to roll back the Clean Power Plan, a regulation aimed at reducing carbon emissions from existing power plants, could significantly handicap U.S. efforts to meet its Paris Agreement commitments.
Last month, Pruitt prompted a furor when he contradicted overwhelming scientific consensus by claiming that carbon dioxide released by humans is not definitively the primary contributor to climate change.
Trump has proposed steep budget cuts at the EPA, the agency Pruitt now leads. According to reports this week, these cuts could imperil the jobs of hundreds of employees working on climate change.
______
Dominique Mosbergen is a reporter at The Huffington Post covering climate change, extreme weather and extinction. Send tips or feedback to dominique.mosbergen@huffingtonpost.com or follow her on Twitter.
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They say he narrated Morgan Freeman’s life, made a Happy Meal cry, and beat the sun at a staring contest. Add becoming an honorary Texan to the list of Chuck Norris’ accomplishments.
Senate Resolution 569 commends the actor and subject of endless nonsensical internet humor “for his many contributions to our state.” The bill passed unanimously. (Obviously — it’s Chuck Norris!)
Norris, originally from Oklahoma, received a State Senate gavel and a flag that had been flown over the Alamo, the Austin American-Statesman reported. He was present in Austin for the ceremony on Tuesday.
Norris is, of course, best known as the star of the television show “Walker, Texas Ranger.” He seemed pretty happy about being honored by the Lone Star State.
Texas Monthly noted that Norris was made an honorary U.S. Marine in 2007 and an honorary member of the Texas Rangers in 2010.
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