Vroom, vroom

Idle Minds

By Jen Sorenson

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Raimondo discovers new way to get public to finance campaign

New Treasurer Staffer Looks Like A Campaign Operative

By Bob Plain in RIFuture.org

A Smith Hill pol is using the people’s hard-earned money to hire an under-qualified, overpaid staffer.

While this might read like the beginning of every single column Ed Achorn writes about the State House, he probably won’t be waxing eloquent on this one. He only spouts off when a union-centric Democrat commits such a transgression. When it’s Gina Raimondo, a Wall Street-centric Democrat, he’d rather write about the Beatles.

Mediterranean Diet Helps Cut Risk of Heart Attack, Stroke

It REALLY works and it's delicious!

From ScienceDaily.com

Results of the PREDIMED study, aimed at assessing the efficacy of the Mediterranean diet in the primary prevention of cardiovascular diseases, have been published in The New England Journal of Medicine. They show that the Mediterranean diet supplemented with extra-virgin olive oil or tree nuts reduces by 30 percent the risk of suffering a cardiovascular death, a myocardial infarction or a stroke.

OMG PD

Alcohol May Have Played Role

By Samantha Turner  Narragansett-South Kingstown Patch 

Notably Over the Limit

This week’s highest blood alcohol content measurement allegedly goes to one 34-year-old man from South Kingstown. At a .326, this man was allegedly more than four times the legal limit when he drove his car into a stone wall in South Kingstown, according to police reports. To add to the story, it seems the man hadn’t quite learned from past experiences: according to reports, he was arrested by Narragansett police only 13 days prior on charges of (you guessed it) drunken driving.

Comment procedure for Progressive Charlestown has been changed

No more anonymous comments – you must be registered

By Will Collette

Since Tom Ferrio and I launched Progressive Charlestown two years ago, we’ve generated more than 5,000 comments. We have published just under 3,500 of them.

We’ve struggled with what to do about “anonymous” comments from the start. There’s never been a consensus among the PC writing crew about them, although I think we’ve all agreed that, all things considered, we’ve always favored comments that were signed by the authors.

After all, we sign our work so it’s only fair that commenters should sign theirs as well.

Increasingly, we’ve been swamped by hundreds of anonymous commercial “comments,” usually originating from outside the US. They say things like “golly gee, brother, what a great blog you have you are truly amazing what great information and now you should check out my website, www.seriouslyboguscrap.com.” Don’t worry, there isn’t really a “seriouslyboguscrap.com” website.

On sensitive topics like gun control, we get lots of anonymous comments that if they were delivered by snail mail, they’d be done in crayon. We have one anonymous jerk who keeps sending us homophobic comments that we have all decided we will never run.

Meaning of life

Being connected doesn't make them the same

R.I. and Block Island Sounds Aren’t Identical Twins

By ALAN DESBONNET/special to ecoRI.org News

The waters off the coast of Rhode Island, specifically Rhode Island Sound and Block Island Sound, while traversed routinely for maritime trade and recreational cruising, have largely been scientific enigmas regarding the details of their physical and chemical properties. This is even more so regarding the waters outside their backdoor—the waters extending out to the edge of the Continental Shelf.

Those drafting the Rhode Island Ocean Special Area Management Plan (Ocean SAMP), however, needed a better understanding of those waters. The oceanographic characteristics of an area have a major influence on the ecology, and you can’t adequately avoid or mitigate ecological impacts if you don’t understand the ecology, which in this case means you need to understand the physical oceanography.

Green energy really does lead the way

Renewable Energy Capacity Fuels Power Growth in January

From: THOMAS SCHUENEMAN, Global Warming is Real, More from this Affiliate 

The latest Energy Infrastructure Update just released by the Office of Energy Projects at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission reports that the US had 1,231 megawatts (MW) of new in-service generating capacity come online in January of 2013 — all of it from renewable sources including wind, solar and biomass. 

60% of Rhode Islanders support marriage equality

Poll: 3 Of Every 5 RIers Support Marriage Equality
By Bob Plain in RIFuture.org

Three out of every five Rhode Islanders want the state Senate to follow the House’s lead and allow same sex couples the same marriage rights that other loving couples enjoy, according to a new Brown poll.

Duck and Cover, RIP

Gone to the big old fallout shelter in the sky

By Will Collette

Those of us of a certain age still react viscerally to matters nuclear – whether it’s nuclear saber-rattling by North Korea or Iran, or trouble at our local nuclear power plant, Millstone, near New London – by remembering the bad old days of the Cold War.

Steuart Lansing Pittman died very recently at age 93 in rural Maryland. You probably don’t remember his name, regardless of your age, but he was one of the key individuals responsible for imprinting those memories of nuclear Armageddon.

Forbidden love and fishing

For more from Fake Science, click here.

Comfort food

Crispy Smashed Potatoes

Photo and text by KARA DiCAMILLO/ecoRI.org News contributor

One vegetable that you can count on almost always this time of year at the farmers market is potatoes. 

Potatoes can be used for so many different things, so they are a staple in my household. 

Maplewood Farms in Portsmouth is a 37-acre farm that was founded in 1950, and I always buy a 10-pound bag of white potatoes at the Saturday market in Bristol.

The "Big Lie"

NOM-RI’s 'Big Lie' On Marriage Equality

Political Research Associates in Narragansett-South Kingstown Patch

As lawmakers in Rhode Island move toward passing marriage equality, National Organization for Marriage–Rhode Island (NOM-RI) responded with a series of very familiar newspaper ads and personal mailings warning voters of the “consequences” of marriage equality.

The newspaper ad, with the heading “The Big Lie,” claimed that religious organizations would be forced to sanctify same-sex marriages, as happened to the Knights of Columbus, and cites another case in New Jersey involving a Methodist organization. 

Gun hysteria in Rhode Island

RI Legislature Should Ignore NRA Lobbyist

By Erik Loomis in RIFuture.org

In May 1998, I was driving through east Texas. I pulled off at a restaurant to grab a bite to eat. I grabbed a newspaper to catch the headlines. I turned the folded paper over and received perhaps the biggest shock of my life. 

Mrs. Kinkel, my high school Spanish teacher in Springfield, Oregon, where I grew up, had been shot by her son, who then went over the town’s other high school, where he killed two students and wounded twenty-five. Today, the killing of two students by gun violence at a high school barely receives any attention. It takes a horrible massacre like Newtown to grab the nation’s attention about gun violence.

So I was more than a little dismayed when Rep. Lisa Baldelli Hunt invited a National Rifle Association lobbyist to hold “an informational briefing,” i.e. a meeting to shape gun policy, for Rhode Island legislators. 

Obviously any organization should have the right to make its opinion known, but the NRA holds power far beyond its membership numbers in modern politics, promoting the almost unfettered access to any weapon, no matter the potential for violence or the number of people who die from guns in this country.

We all should love a Win-win

Aquaculture- In My Back Yard (IMBY)

Perry Raso working the highly successful Matunuck Oyster Farm

By Mac Richardson

According to some individuals at the Charlestown Town Council meeting on February 12, oyster aquaculture in Quonochontaug Pond waters is a bad thing.

Are you kidding?

Culturing oysters in Quonnie Pond is a good thing. And here is why. A few shellfish aquaculture leases actually cleanse Quonnie Pond, help restore the fishery, increase the chance of eelgrass restoration, and add to the esthetic appreciation of salt ponds.