Wednesday, September 23, 2015

Garbage Wednesday

It's what the Globe is offering for lunch. 

I'm not liking any of the menu (haven't read a word yet; maybe over lunch) they cooked up:

Amid push for cage-free eggs in Mass., advocates laud McDonald’s

I saw something about bird flu so avoid eggs and the broilers.

Don't eat any emu, either. 

I suppose anything is okay if it is cooked long enough, even at Taco Bell. You can order out and get it delivered if you want to be on the safe and healthy side:

"Three cases of salmonella in Louisiana may be part of the outbreak that sickened 285 people in 27 states."

Yeah, I'd avoid the Chipotle’s salad bar if I were you.

Maybe you kids should just go to the machine and get a bag of peanuts before heading back (watch where you step) to class (despite the salt). No cigarette for the kid after the meal (they lovin' it!), and if the faculty catches you smoking on campus they'll... they'll.... tell the FDA!

So what's for desert?

Pie shop may get KO’d by more condos in Southie

They serve cranberry pies

How about some PUDDING!?


"Harvard students press for end to all-male Hasty Pudding revue; Female students set to audition in bid to get Harvard troupe to change" by Peter Schworm Globe Staff  September 09, 2015

Hasty Pudding Theatricals, Harvard’s renowned theater group that bills itself as the world’s third-oldest theater organization, ha[s] always been a men-only production.

Now that long-held division is coming under challenge by female students at Harvard, who say the practice is discriminatory and badly outdated. And they are making a bid to change it.

In a quick-moving campaign that gained momentum through social media over the past week, at least 17 women at Harvard have signed up for auditions this weekend to perform in what many describe as Harvard’s most professional, prestigious production.

“It’s a really incredible opportunity for any aspiring performer,” said Megan Jones, a senior who signed up for Saturday’s auditions. “There is no equivalent on campus.”

The group, which performed its first musical in 1844, is well known for its yearly awards to actors and actresses. It stages a yearly sendup musical that has a 35-show run in Cambridge, with additional dates in New York City and Bermuda, and boasts that such luminaries as Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Jack Lemmon have worn drag on the company’s stage.

On its website, the group says that from its “humble beginnings in a Harvard dorm room,” it has grown into “an original, student-written and composed, full-scale pun-filled musical extravaganza, which culminates each year in an all-male kick line.”

But seniors Olivia Miller and Tess Davison, frustrated over being excluded, decided to sign up for the Saturday auditions, and urged others to do the same.

“I think that the Hasty Pudding Theatricals has yet to evolve with the rest of the university,” Miller said.

Representatives from the theater group could not be reached for comment Tuesday. The Harvard Crimson, which first reported that the women planned to audition, quoted the group’s president, Robert Fitzpatrick, as saying the prospect of adding women to the cast had been a “topic of serious conversation.”

Adding women to the cast would require “structural changes to the production, the company, and our larger institutional traditions,” Fitzpatrick said in a statement, according to the newspaper.

Students said they had not formally contacted the theater group — they merely put their names on a signup sheet — and are not sure what to expect during auditions. But Miller and Davison said that many members of the group have expressed support for bringing women into the show.

“What we’ve heard is that undergraduates overwhelmingly want this to happen,” Miller said.

*********************

Students said the group’s productions typically involve six male characters and six female characters, which are played by men wearing women’s clothing. Women could easily dress up to play male characters, they said, without losing any comedic value.

“Women playing men would keep the tradition of the drag show alive,” Davison said.

Harvard does not recognize single-gender social groups, such as final clubs. Administrators have been working with leaders of social groups to discuss expectations and ways groups can “better align” with the college’s mission, a university official said. Currently, women can play any role in the production other than taking the stage.

Miller and Davison decided to pursue the auditions this summer when they were writing a script to submit as a candidate for the group’s spring show.

As they developed the characters, they began to think how much fun it would be perform them....

That women can be closely involved in productions but not allowed to take the stage is galling, students said, particularly given the prominence of the shows.

“There’s nothing on campus that’s remotely equal to what the Pudding provides,” Miller said. The shows are professionally directed and choreographed, students said.

Jones, the senior, said interest in the protest has “blown up” in recent days, and that many students believe the tradition is a relic from a bygone era....

Some students noted that comedian Amy Poehler, named Woman of the Year by the group in January, had raised the issue of women’s exclusion. At a celebratory roast in her honor, Poehler absorbed some good-natured ribbing before delivering a pointed message of her own.

“I want to say that it’s unsettling that there will be no women on stage tonight,” she said, according to a WBUR report. “You know it’s time for a change when the Augusta National Golf Club has lapped you in terms of being progressive.”

--more--"

RelatedAuditions, but no Hasty Pudding roles yet for women

Kantor and Hirschhorn are making a statement.

"In a historic move, the Spee Club, one of Harvard’s all-male social clubs, has decided to invite women as prospective members, drawing praise from administrators who said they hope other clubs will follow suit." 

Former governors Deval Patrick and William Weld were members of The Fly Club(??).

Culture change needed for Harvard fund, chief says

Why? It's growing good (not as good as it should??, but....??).

"With some students saying they feel as if they’re in a zoo, university officials have posted sandwich board signs reminding the hundreds of thousands of tourists each year from across the world that some kinds of sightseeing just go too far."

Speaking of animal-like treatment:

Harvard geneticist wins Lasker Award for DNA work

Related:

"In a session highlighted by partisan clashes, Committee chairman Bob Goodlatte, a Virginia Republican, said Planned Parenthood ‘‘is granted huge amounts of federal funds’’ and Congress must ‘‘do what we can to ensure federal taxpayers are not contributing to the sorts of horrors reflected in the undercover videos.’’ Republicans and conservatives say those videos show Planned Parenthood was illegally selling fetal tissue for profit and violating other federal prohibitions. Planned Parenthood provides contraception, tests for sexually transmitted diseases, and abortions in clinics across the country. It receives more than $500 million each year from federal and state governments."

So when do my tax dollars stop funding the horrors of war, Bob?

I hadn't planned on that issue being part of the climate of this post because I have suspended reading the Globe (I have that right in what is a different kind of abortion).

More controls urged for stem cell clinics

The Journal questions efficacy of expensive treatments

Exhibit AWoburn man charged in market manipulation cases

Harvard Medical School revamps curriculum

I would sure as hell hope so!

Nearly a quarter of college women say they were assaulted, survey finds

Life doesn’t come with trigger warnings, and neither should college

Woman died of natural causes

MIT mourns death of graduate student

What is going on over there? Mind control experimentation?

MIT apologizes over mistaken active shooter alert
Police investigate suspicious package near BU
Shelter-in-place order lifted for N. Brookfield students
Hand grenade discovered in East Falmouth basement

I see the school psyops are in full swing still!

Black, Hispanic students see gains on MCAS scores
Northeastern president is a gadabout with a purpose
Wellesley College’s aid calculator catches on
Houghton Mifflin writes a new future for itself

I quit calculating and closed the book on those texts, sorry.

"Family of Boston man who drowned in harbor sues bar" by Peter Schworm Globe Staff  September 14, 2015

The family of a 24-year-old man who drowned on a February night last year after wandering drunkenly into Boston Harbor has brought a wrongful death lawsuit against a Financial District bar, claiming the establishment kicked him out and left him to “fend for himself.’’

In February 2014, Eric Munsell was ousted from the Market bar and lounge after a bouncer saw him stumbling and bumping into other customers. Although it was below freezing outside, Munsell was not given a chance to retrieve his coat or tell his friends he was leaving, the lawsuit says.

“It was foreseeable that ejecting Mr. Munsell from the bar to fend for himself in his intoxicated state and without a coat created a dangerous situation that placed Mr. Munsell at increased risk of injury and death,” the suit said.

After ousting Munsell, the bouncer stood and watched as Munsell “stumbled off toward the street, weaving unsteadily,” according to the suit. The bouncer did not tell Munsell’s friends he had been kicked out or call him a cab, it alleges.

“Neither the bouncer who threw out Mr. Munsell nor any other Market employee made any effort to avoid or mitigate this unsafe situation,” the suit states.

Munsell’s body was recovered from the water near Long Wharf in April 2014.
Eric Munsell’s body was recovered from the water near Long Wharf several weeks after he was kicked out of a Boston bar.

Eric Munsell’s body was recovered from the water near Long Wharf several weeks after he was kicked out of a Boston bar.

The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages from the owners and operators of the bar, JPC Venture Corp. and the Cronin Group, asserting they did not have appropriate policies for removing drunk patrons and acted negligently by failing “to take reasonable steps to ensure his safety when removing him.”

A lawyer for Munsell’s family said they hope the suit encourages bars to take more care ejecting intoxicated customers....

--more--"

Excuse me, but where is the bathroom?

"Advocates for composting not always on fertile ground" by Beth Teitell Globe Staff  September 08, 2015

To enthusiasts, composting seems like magic. Microbes, worms, insects, and fungi decompose organic material aerobically, turning coffee filters and potato peelings and old newspapers into nutrient-rich soil over a period of months.

But what one person sees as a beautiful way to reduce the amount of trash we produce, or to make great garden soil, another sees as an invitation for rodents and fruit flies, a stinking rotten mess, one more chore.

The composting movement is fueled by a desire to divert waste from landfills, and a growing interest in not just where food comes from, but where it ends up, said Andy Brooks, the founder of Jamaica Plain’s Bootstrap Compost, a service that charges customers $8 a week to pick up their food scraps, and also does scrap pickups from on-trend weddings and bar mitzvahs, among other events.

“The thoughtfulness about eating organic or local has attached itself to the end cycle,” he said.

The interest in residential composting can be seen in Boston and Cambridge, which are expanding pilot composting programs, and in Somerville, which is studying the economics of a limited curbside pickup pilot program.

The state has also stepped up; rules now prohibit large businesses from disposing of food waste.

At Harvard, after a composting pilot for the 2013-14 school year, dorm room décor for all incoming freshmen now includes compost buckets along with trash and recycling cans. And in Newton, Grant Berman, a 17-year-old composting entrepreneur has built a business — Dirty Boys Composting — that is charging novices $125 for a starter program.

The fee includes delivery and installation of a rodent-resistant composter, a red wiggler worm infusion, follow-up checkups, phone and e-mail support, and emergency visits if the compost starts to fail — meaning it refuses to decompose into dark, rich soil.

That’s usually a problem caused by too much wet foodstuff, Berman said, and not enough odor-eating leaves or shredded newspapers. “There usually isn’t a pile so bad you can’t bring it back,” he said.

One client, Sarah Birkeland, had such success with her backyard composter that not only did her daughter’s preschool class take a field trip to their house to watch her husband mix it with a pitchfork, but the kids began sending their discarded banana peels and apple cores home with her daughter.

That was great until the Friday afternoon when Birkeland forgot to empty her little girl’s purple polka-dot backpack. “By Monday it was really smelly,” she said, as if it were a positive.

Her daughter is Abby Edelstein.

Katie Ulman, a coordinator at a South End hair salon, sounds pained when describing her unsuccessful attempts to get her boss to compost the mounds of trimmed hair the salon sweeps up every day. “Oh my god, your dirt could be so gorgeous with that,” she said.

And so it goes, as composting inches its way from the green edge into the mainstream. Bins of decomposing material are becoming the source of pride, obsession, angst, and, sometimes, tension....

“It’s kind of like a cult following.” 

--more--"

It really is a self-centered pos.

Related
Demand for local foods helps Mass. farming find its footing 

More Jewish garbage. 

Small farmers concerned over new waterways rules 

We are all Palestinians now.

Don't get me wrong; I'm no longer grousing about the dinosaur-sized apeshit coming from the Globe. Only problem is the landfills are overflowing.

See you at the shit pit!

NDUs: 

State considers deer hunting at Blue Hills Reservation

That is the state's answer to everything: kill it.

Researchers spot large, unruly great white off Cape 

It's too cold to go swimming now.