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  • Exploratorium’s Science of Baseball; The Girls of Summer

    Now that we’re in the last month of regularly scheduled baseball games, we decided to bring you to the San Francisco Exploratorium special exhibit on the Science of Baseball, and its subset,  The Girls of Summer. Try to prepare  for packing away sweatshirts, caps, pins and a mitt. It isn’t easy for us hardcore baseball fans, particularly those who learned the sport at such stadiums as New York City’s Polo Grounds and who recently had to give a fond farewell to the Giants’ hero, Bobby Thomson.

    Some of the introduction to the Girls of Summer follows from the well organized and interesting website:

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  • Exposed: Voyeurism, Surveillance and the Camera at the Tate Modern

    Tate Modern presents Exposed: Voyeurism, Surveillance and the Camera, a fascinating insight into photographic images made surreptitiously or without the explicit permission of those depicted. Spanning a variety of lens-based media from the late nineteenth century to the present day, the exhibition offers an illuminating and provocative perspective on subjects both iconic and taboo.

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  • Numbers of Unauthorized Immigrants Into the US Reduced

    The PEW Hispanic Center has released the following release about a new report with a state-by-state Interactive Map: Unauthorized Immigrants in the US:

    US Unauthorized Immigration Flows Are Down Sharply Since Mid-Decade
    by Jeffrey Passel and D’Vera Cohn

    The annual inflow of unauthorized immigrants to the United States was nearly two-thirds smaller in the March 2007 to March 2009 period than it had been from March 2000 to March 2005, according to new estimates by the Pew Hispanic Center.

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  • NEJM Perspective: Indoor Tanning — Science, Behavior, and Policy

    David E. Fisher, M.D., Ph.D., and William D. James, M.D.

    An estimated 1 million times per day, someone in the United States uses ultraviolet (UV) radiation for skin tanning. According to the indoor tanning industry, tanning beds are used by 30 million Americans, or about 10% of the US population, each year (www.theita.com/indoor). These users include minors, who often have ready access to tanning beds. In response to considerable grassroots and political opposition to indoor tanning, in late March the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) convened an advisory panel to review the safety of the procedure. The FDA is expected to announce a decision soon on whether and how to reclassify tanning lamps and possibly to address minors’ access to them.

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  • Love, an Inspiration … or Not?

    by Joan L. Cannon

    I recently ran across a quote from Francine Prose saying that Love is a poor inspiration for art because it is an element of life that is too fragile, too short-lived to be worthy of the labor of great artists. Having given this some serious thought after I got past my right-off-the bat astonished disagreement, I’ve decided I still believe that there must have been more to the context than I saw. After all, it’s not as if this pronouncement came from just anybody — but I think she’s wrong.

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  • FTC and the Clean Credit Report Repair Court Order

    A credit repair operation has agreed to stop making false claims and stop charging up-front fees under a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission. The settlement is part of an ongoing crackdown on scams that target financially strapped consumers, in this case taking hundreds of dollars in fees to purportedly remove negative information from consumers’ credit reports even if the information is accurate and timely. The FTC filed the action in “Operation Clean Sweep” in October 2008.

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  • Problems with State-Local Final Pay Plans; Options for Reform

    The Center for Retirement Research at Boston College has published another Brief of interest by Peter A. Diamond, Alicia H. Munnell, Gregory Leiserson, and Jean-Pierre Aubry, August 2010

    Introduction

    As widely publicized, the financial crisis dramatically worsened the funded status of state and local pension plans.  In response, public sector sponsors are making a number of changes.  Most of these changes involve increasing employer and employee contributions and cutting benefits for new employees primarily by increasing the age for full benefits.  A couple of states have cut cost-of-living adjustments for current retirees, but they are in the process of being sued.  One item not on anyone’s agenda is reconsidering the basic design of public-sector defined benefit plans.

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  • Too Good to Miss: 2009 Beaujolais – A Once-in-a-Lifetime Vintage

    by Sharon Kapnick

    I like to sing the praises of Beaujolais. It’s a very versatile wine — an ideal all-season wine that’s enjoyable at the picnic table as well as the Thanksgiving table. Because it has soft tannins and a smooth, silky texture and benefits from being lightly chilled, Beaujolais is the red wine that white wine fans will find easy to love. Thanks to its wide range, Beaujolais is both a wine to call upon when you’re not sure which wine to serve and a wine to take along when you’re invited to a friend’s home for dinner. Another plus: it offers great value because it’s recently been–undeservedly — out of favor.

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  • Website Houzz, Home Design

    When we were gathering ideas for the house we built two years ago, we had folder upon folder of tear sheeets collected from numerous magazines. Unfortunately, a number of those magazines have disappeared, unappreciated by their publishers after years in mailboxes and on newstands. Two of those prized resources were House & Garden and Metropolitan Home.  Some were recent newcomers in the magazine field, such as Domino, and a number of them are still sorely missed. Here’s a website that might make that search for the perfect room easier. From their website:

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  • Socially Networked? Older users flocking to Facebook, Twitter

    Older Adults and Social Media

    by Mary Madden, Senior Research Specialist, Pew Internet & American Life Project

    Social networking use among internet users ages 50 and older has nearly doubled — from 22% to 42% over the past year.

    While social media use has grown dramatically across all age groups, older users have been especially enthusiastic over the past year about embracing new networking tools. Although email continues to be the primary way that older users maintain contact with friends, families and colleagues, many users now rely on social network platforms to help manage their daily communications — sharing links, photos, videos, news and status updates with a growing network of contacts.

    Half (47%) of internet users ages 50-64 and one-in-four (26%) users ages 65 and older now use social networking sites.

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