Monthly Archives: January 2008

Man Apes Squirrel

Jeb Corliss is one of a number of people competing to be the first person to jump out of a plane without a parachute:

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All of this is technically possible,” said Jean Potvin, a physics professor at Saint Louis University and skydiver who performs parachute research for the Army. But he acknowledged a problem: “The thing I’m not sure of is your margins in terms of safety, or likelihood to crash.”

*Flying Squirrel gallery after the jump …* Continue reading →

United Nations headquarters complied with New York fire code – during Eisenhower Administration

But not since the Eisenhower Administration. Now, 55 years later, Marjorie Bloomberg Tiven – the mayor’s sister and the city’s chief of diplomatic protocol, has persuaded the United Nations to do the right thing:

In January, the city’s Fire Department found 866 violations of the fire code. By October, less than 20 percent of the violations had been addressed. (Because of concerns about possible terrorist attacks, Ms. Tiven will not be more specific about the violations.)

The U.N. took 9 months to allow a fire inspection

In an Oct. 30 letter, drafted by Ms. Tiven’s office and signed by the mayor, the city demanded that the United Nations provide proof of, among other things, a fire safety plan, additional smoke detectors, and resolution of the remainder of the 866 violations by early next year.

“If the United Nations does not adhere to these deadlines,” Mayor Bloomberg said, “the city will be forced to direct the cessation of all public school visits to the United Nations.”

“The mayor has been patient,” Ms. Tiven said, “but he can’t be patient forever. The city is going to do the right thing.”

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DOJ reverses position that emergency response is “routine;” had attempted to deny death benefits to firefighter’s widow

“Firefighter’s Widow to Get Death Benefits,” The New York Times, November 23rd:

Since her firefighter husband died of a heart attack nearly four years ago after responding to an emergency, Kathleen Shea has not received any death benefits, despite a 2003 federal law that indicated she was entitled to them.

But this week she learned that in a reversal, the Department of Justice had determined that she was entitled to benefits under the Hometown Heroes Survivors Benefits Act. The law extends federal benefits to the survivors of firefighters, police officers and other first responders who die of heart attacks or strokes while on duty.

Ms. Shea lives in Elsmere, N.Y., southwest of Albany, where her husband served as the volunteer fire chief.

The Department of Justice had denied benefits to Ms. Shea and scores of other families around the country, arguing that language in the law indicated they were ineligible because their family members died during routine activities.

But Senator Charles E. Schumer, the New York Democrat who sponsored the original legislation introduced by Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, helped Ms. Shea and other families appeal the decisions because he said responding to an emergency was “inherently nonroutine.”

So far, all four appeals have resulted in benefits for families, but nearly 40 more families still have to go through the process.

David Leonhart on the costs of reduced alcohol taxes

David Leonhart argues in the Times

that alcohol taxes have, in effect, been dropping, and that the principal benefits of alcohol taxes – reductions in use (and the consequent harms), and offsetting the costs of alcohol use. From “Let’s Raise a Glass to Fairness,

” published on December 26th:

Since the early 1990s, the federal tax on wine — $1.07 a gallon — hasn’t budged. The taxes on beer and liquor haven’t changed either, which means that, in inflation-adjusted terms, alcohol taxes have been steadily falling. Each of the three taxes is now effectively 33 percent lower than it was in 1992. Since 1970, the federal beer tax has plummeted 63 percent. Many states taxes have also been falling. At first blush, this sounds like good news: who likes to pay taxes, right? But taxes serve a purpose beyond merely raising general government revenue.

Jonathan Gruber: “taxes are way too low on alcohol” ff

Taxes on a given activity are also supposed to pay the costs that activity imposes on society. And for all that is wonderful about wine, beer and liquor, they clearly bring some heavy costs. Right now, the patchwork of alcohol taxes isn’t coming close to covering those costs — the costs of drunken-driving checkpoints, of hospital bills for alcohol-related accidents and child abuse, and of the economic loss caused by death and injury. Last year, some 17,000 Americans, or almost 50 a day, died in alcohol-related car accidents. An additional 65,000 people a year die from other accidents, assaults or illnesses in which alcohol plays a major role. Mr. Cook, besides being a wine lover, has been thinking about the costs and benefits of alcohol for much of his career, and he has come up with a blunt way of describing the problem. “Do you think we should be subsidizing alcohol?” he asks. “Because that’s what we’re doing.”

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