Obese Coffins?

This is a must read article. It is wonderfully written and tells a story of great social significance. The story in a nutshell is that there is a lucrative market in the United States for “plus” size coffins. Often these coffins won’t fit in hearses, require purchase of a double plot and won’t fit through funeral home doors.

I get a vision of a funeral where the coffin is delivered by some kind of truck, hopefully black.

The implications for this society are scary.

Please read the whole article.

James Pilant

In death, as in life, one size doesn’t fit all | Al Jazeera America

Eating into an early grave

If anyone can do a snap survey of the fluctuating fortunes of overweight Americans, it’s Keith Davis. From the casket-manufacturing business he inherited from his father, he has a pretty good sense of how widespread the obesity problem is and how young those who die of obesity-related complications can be.

“We have a generation of people now, especially the younger ones in their 30s, who are going to die before their parents because of obesity,” he says. “As I travel around and deliver these caskets, the average age of these people is 40, 45 years old. And many of them are younger than that.

“I’ve delivered to people who are 25 years old, and it’s not because they died on a football field. They were just so big, their hearts gave out or their kidneys gave out,” he says. “We’re eating ourselves into an early grave, one shovelful at a time.”

Davis’ father, Forrest Davis, began building caskets for overweight people in the late 1970s and ’80s. As Keith Davis explains it, funeral directors would call their distributors and ask for bigger caskets. Because there were no established dimensions for the larger sizes, a carpenter or “someone who was handy” would make a box. Forrest Davis quit his job as a welder in a casket factory and began building his own extra-large caskets in an old converted hog barn on the family farm.

Now Keith Davis and his family sell several hundred oversize caskets a year, ranging from 33 to 52 inches wide. The 52-inch caskets are for people who tip the scales at 700 to 800 pounds, he says.

“We’re getting larger. One of the things we found is, people are not only getting wider, they’re getting thicker and deeper,” he says. “So the caskets have to accommodate the belly, and I don’t know how else to describe it.”

Those caskets are for people “who can’t walk or can’t survive outside a bed or a chair,” he adds.

One 37-inch casket he’s preparing is destined for a funeral home in Mississippi, Davis notes, for a person who is not only “wide but thick. That’s about the size of your desk. That’s a large, large person, probably weighs around 500 pounds.”

via In death, as in life, one size doesn’t fit all | Al Jazeera America.

Pope Scaring Rich People?

The article goes into more explanation about how troubled the Home Depot founder is, but I am little concerned. I was raised in Christianity and well remember the teaching in regard to the rich. The bible does not hold them in high esteem, not should it.

James Pilant

Home Depot Founder: Pope Francis’ Criticism Of Capitalism Will Scare Away Rich People | ThinkProgress

The idea that possessing significant wealth inherently makes it harder to behave morally is a bedrock part of Christian ethical thought. In a well-known passage from the New Testament, a rich man asks Christ what he must do to fully follow God’s law. When Christ responds “sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor,” the man walks away dejected, prompting Christ to observe that “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”

via Home Depot Founder: Pope Francis’ Criticism Of Capitalism Will Scare Away Rich People | ThinkProgress.

Tar Sands Mercury

This needs looking into. It appears to be similar in many ways to U.S. concerns over fracking. Of course, the Canadian government has promised an energy bonanza if the sands are developed, a claim becoming more dubious over time. I don’t believe that government will take any action that would endanger the development. So, there will have to be a reliance on private research to reveal what’s happening.

What are the business ethics here? It seems to me that we can have energy and clean air and water. If we can’t we need to have a discussion about what kind of priorities this society has. What we have now is the kind of closed political discussion associated with vast industry profits and a contempt for democracy. If we can’t breath and the water is contaminated, it may well happen before any effective action can take place.

James Pilant

Researchers find 7,300-sq-mile ring of mercury around tar sands in Canada | Al Jazeera America

Scientists have found a more than 7,300-square-mile ring of land and water contaminated by mercury surrounding the tar sands in Alberta, where energy companies are producing oil and shipping it throughout Canada and the U.S.

Government scientists are preparing to publish a report that found levels of mercury are up to 16 times higher around the tar-sand operations — principally due to the excavation and transportation of bitumen in the sands by oil and gas companies, according to Postmedia-owned Canadian newspapers like The Vancouver Sun.

Environment Canada researcher Jane Kirk recently presented the findings at a toxicology conference in Nashville, Tenn.

The revelations add to growing concerns over the environmental impact of mining the tar sands. Many environmentalists charge that extracting oil from the sands will lead to an increase in carbon emissions, the destruction of the land, water contamination and health problems for Canadians. The debate over the tar sands crossed over into the United States when energy company TransCanada proposed building the Keystone XL pipeline to transport crude oil to the southeastern U.S. for refining and distribution.

via Researchers find 7,300-sq-mile ring of mercury around tar sands in Canada | Al Jazeera America.

Occupy Wall Street Still Innovative

Occupy Madison provides housing for the homeless.

James Pilant

Homeless Couple Gets A Home On Christmas Eve, Thanks To Innovative ‘Occupy’ Group | ThinkProgress

For many couples, the thought of living together in a 96-square-foot house sounds awful. But for Chris Derrick and Betty Ybarra, it’s a Christmas miracle.

That’s because Derrick and Ybarra have spent the better part of a year braving Madison, Wisconsin’s often-harsh climate without a roof over their head.

They’ll spend this Christmas in their own home, thanks to more than 50 volunteers with Occupy Madison, a local Wisconsin version of the original Occupy Wall Street group in New York. The group, including Derrick and Ybarra, spent the past year on an innovative and audacious plan to fight inequality in the state’s capital: build tiny homes for the homeless.

via Homeless Couple Gets A Home On Christmas Eve, Thanks To Innovative ‘Occupy’ Group | ThinkProgress.

 

Pushback!

The character glorified by the new movie, The Wolf of Wall Street, has a daughter and she is not impressed. I share her sentiments and regard these financial predators as criminals not heroes.

James Pilant

An Open Letter to the Makers of The Wolf of Wall Street, and the Wolf Himself

I believed everything my father told me. I believed it was the government’s fault he was going to prison and leaving his little princess, I believed it was your fault, Jordan Belfort. I believed that by taking out all those credit cards in my name, my father was attempting to save me. I believed him when he got out, and when he told me everything would be OK. I believed him until he tried to do the same thing all over again — until I was at risk of being arrested myself (and I’m saving that story for the memoir).

So here\’s the deal. You people are dangerous. Your film is a reckless attempt at continuing to pretend that these sorts of schemes are entertaining, even as the country is reeling from yet another round of Wall Street scandals. We want to get lost in what? These phony financiers\’ fun sexcapades and coke binges? Come on, we know the truth. This kind of behavior brought America to its knees.

And yet you\’re glorifying it — you who call yourselves liberals. You were honored for career excellence and for your cultural influence by The Kennedy Center, Marty. You drive a Honda hybrid, Leo. Did you think about the cultural message you\’d be sending when you decided to make this film? You have successfully aligned yourself with an accomplished criminal, a guy who still hasn\’t made full restitution to his victims, exacerbating our national obsession with wealth and status and glorifying greed and psychopathic behavior. And don\’t even get me started on the incomprehensible way in which your film degrades women, the misogynistic, ass-backwards message you endorse to younger generations of men.

But hey, listen boys, I get it. I was conned too. By. My. Own. Dad! I drove a white Range Rover in high school, snorted half of Colombia, and got any guy I ever wanted because my father would take them flying in his King

via An Open Letter to the Makers of The Wolf of Wall Street, and the Wolf Himself.

Internet Privacy, A Vital Human Right

Our communications on the internet, our browsing habits, our social media, etc. should all be free of government surveillance. Why? Because that is where a great deal of our lives takes place. The Internet has taken the place of television, radio and the public commons. It’s where we live.

Without privacy, it is difficult to have an effective life, a life worth living. A life under the microscope of government and private interests is a much diminished life. 

James Alan Pilant 

Internet privacy as important as human rights, says UNs Navi Pillay | World news | The Guardian

The UN general assembly unanimously voted last week to adopt a resolution, introduced by Germany and Brazil, stating that \”the same rights that people have offline must also be protected online, including the right to privacy\”. Brazils president, Dilma Rousseff, and the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, were among those spied on, according to the documents leaked by Snowden.The resolution called on the 193 UN member states \”to review their procedures, practices and legislation regarding the surveillance of communications, their interception and collection of personal data, with a view to upholding the right to privacy of all their obligations under international human rights law\”. It also directed Pillay to publish a report on the protection and promotion of privacy \”in the context of domestic and extraterritorial surveillance … including on a mass scale\”. She told Berners-Lee it was \”very important that governments now want to discuss the matters of mass surveillance and right to privacy in a serious way\”.Berners-Lee has warned that online surveillance undermines confidence in the internet, and last week published an open letter, with more than 100 free speech groups and leading activists, to protest against the routine interception of data by governments around the world.

via Internet privacy as important as human rights, says UNs Navi Pillay | World news | The Guardian.

Occupy Wall Street Has Only Begun

We have planted new ideas in the political discussion from outside the incompetent and insular beltway. And these ideas aren’t going away.

James Pilant

The Year in Inequality: Lots of words, but will actions follow? | Al Jazeera America

Occupy Wall Street began more than two years ago with a bang as loud as a thousand bongo drums. It essentially vanished from the public eye a few months later when New York police cordoned off Zuccotti Park and forcibly removed its new occupants under the cover of night and a media blackout.

But despite its quick end two years ago, the conversation Occupy started is just beginning to gain traction in the United States.

OWS members may no longer be on street corners, but the movement’s vocabulary of economic injustice, previously common only on college campuses, has become more accessible to a wide variety of Americans.

This year, as the disparity between rich and poor continued to grow to levels not seen since 1928, the nation’s new consciousness about the economy allowed income inequality to take hold of the country’s conscience.

Indeed, 2013 was the year of thinking and talking about income inequality.

via The Year in Inequality: Lots of words, but will actions follow? | Al Jazeera America.

A Better World While Doing Your Duty.

From the article: “This is the Pope we have been waiting for a long time.”

Pope addresses first Christmas message to those hoping for better world | World news | theguardian.com

Pope Francis has addressed his first Christmas message to every man or woman \”who hopes for a better world, who cares for others while humbly seeking to do his or her duty\”.He appeared at the vast balcony at the front of St Peters basilica to be greeted by screams fit for a pop star. Below him in St Peters Square was a crowd brimming with enthusiasm for the new pontiff and his humble, ascetic and socially aware form of Catholicism.That view of his faith was at the heart of his address. \”Looking at the child in the manger, our thoughts turn to those children who are the most vulnerable, victims of wars, but we think too of the elderly, of battered women, of the sick,\” he said.\”He exemplifies what a pope should be,\” said Marian Merrett from Belleville, Ontario. \”Hes like Jesus. Jesus too fed the poor and cared for the sick. He exemplifies what Jesus stood for. He lives like Jesus.\”In his sermon at the Christmas Eve mass, Francis had returned to his favourite theme, declaring that the shepherds who according to the gospels were the first to see Jesus after his birth \”were the first because they were among the last, the outcast\”.\”This is the pope weve been waiting for for a long time,\” said Anna Maria Pistorio as she waited by the barriers erected in St Pet

via Pope addresses first Christmas message to those hoping for better world | World news | theguardian.com.

Andre Schiffrin Was Right.

The difference in perception between book readers and those relying on other media is dramatic. Books convey a subject with considerable depth and sophistication. A post like this one is just too brief to cover a subject adequately but I, of course, have to work within the limitation of the media I’m using. Too few companies control too many books. How sad. How dangerous.

James Pilant

Books must stop being a sideshow to mass media | Al Jazeera America

An influential editor at Pantheon Books and later a founder of the New Press, Andre Schiffrin was an outspoken critic of the corporatization of publishing, which he saw as an attack on freedom of speech. With his death on Dec. 1 at 78, we lost one of the great publishing figures of the 20th century.

But his arguments still live — and they must. The merger between Penguin and Random House this year has created a giant company that will control 25 percent of the global book trade. The big five U.S. publishers — Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster — control roughly two-thirds of the U.S. consumer book publishing market. This narrowing of the industry to a few megapublishers threatens to marginalize novel ideas and place the world of books under corporate control.

In setting up the New Press and its public-interest mandate — to publish underrepresented voices and simultaneously reach out to an audience “intellectually red-lined” by commercial publishers — Schiffrin became a trailblazer for not-for-profit publishing.

Schiffrin also argued that books are a crucial (according to him, “just about the only”) venue for nonmainstream expression in the face of an increasingly corporate-owned press. He was the first, for example, to translate and publish Mich

via Books must stop being a sideshow to mass media | Al Jazeera America.