He said, she said

For more cartoons by Ruben Bolling, CLICK HERE.

Honor for Planned Parenthood Champion

CLICK HERE for tickets

Former agency employee calls White House crackdown on climate science "absolutely appalling"

Gagged EPA Scientists Scheduled to Speak in Providence

By TIM FAULKNER/ecoRI News staff

The two Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) scientists and one contractor recently prevented from presenting their research on the health of Narragansett Bay will be speaking at an upcoming science conference at the Rhode Island Convention Center.

Autumn Oczkowski, who was the scheduled keynote speaker at the Oct. 23 event at Save The Bay, is the co-chair of the Coastal & Estuarine and Research Foundation Conference scheduled for Nov. 5-9. Rose Martin, a postdoctoral fellow, and Emily Shumchenia, an EPA consultant, are also presenting.

The three coastal experts work at the EPA Atlantic Ecology Division in Narragansett, where the effects of climate change are a major area of study. 

It’s also a topic top EPA officials in Washington, D.C., are discrediting and suppressing, as revealed in numerous media reports. 

Most recently, the EPA is replacing scientists on its most influential advisory boards with researchers from the businesses they regulate.

Trump's Week 41 in Review

Daydreaming is good: It means you're smart

Brain study suggests mind wandering at work and home may not be as bad as you might think

Georgia Institute of Technology

A new study from the Georgia Institute of Technology suggests that daydreaming during meetings isn't necessarily a bad thing. It might be a sign that you're really smart and creative.

"People with efficient brains may have too much brain capacity to stop their minds from wandering," said Eric Schumacher, the Georgia Tech associate psychology professor who co-authored the study.

Schumacher and his students and colleagues, including lead co-author Christine Godwin, measured the brain patterns of more than 100 people while they lay in an MRI machine. Participants were instructed to focus on a stationary fixation point for five minutes. The Georgia Tech team used the data to identify which parts of the brain worked in unison.

Is Trump Smarter Than A Fifth-Grader?

Carnegie Mellon University Study Provides The Answer

By Gracie Lou

So, is Trump really smarter than a fifth-grader?

When it comes to Trump’s boasting about how ‘smart’ he is, the Los Angeles Times says what a lot of us have been thinking.

Anyone who feels compelled to boast how smart he is clearly suffers from a profound insecurity about his intelligence and accomplishments. In Trump’s case, he has good reason to have doubts.

So, is Trump really smarter than a fifth-grader?

PR Newswire cites a Carnegie Mellon University study, and others, that show just how low Trump’s intellectual skills really are.

Plea for peace

The Pope Sends a Veiled Message to Trump And His Generals

BY ROBERT HAFFEY 

Pope Francis, head of the Roman Catholic Church, is concerned about the future of the world now that Donald Trump is the leader of the free world.

He visited a U.S. military cemetery and issued a heartfelt plea for world peace, reports Reuters. He was joined by the U.S. Ambassador to Italy and the acting U.S. Ambassador to the Vatican.

The cemetery is located south of Rome and marks the final resting points of some 7,860 Americans who died liberating Italy from fascists during World War 2. 

The pope said that the sacrifices of the dead are more crucial to remember than ever as it seems like the world is preparing to go “even more forcefully into war” than it is now. “Humanity has not learned the lesson and seems that it does not want to learn it,” he added.

The comments can be seen as an oblique reference to President Trump’s evermore bombastic rhetoric towards a nuclear-armed North Korea.

Football, the new culture war frontline

For more cartoons by Ted Rall, CLICK HERE.

November 9, you're invited.

Ocean dynamics

A sustainable future powered by sea

Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) Graduate University

The blades of this five-blade turbine are made of a soft material and they rotate on their axis when influenced by ocean waves -- the diameter of the turbine is about 0.7 meters. The axis is attached to a permanent magnet electric generator, which is the part of the turbine that transforms the ocean wave energy into usable electricity. The ceramic mechanical seal protects the electrical components inside of the body from any saltwater leakage. This design allows the turbine to function for ten years before it need replacing. Credit: Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University (OIST), Quantum Wave Microscopy Unit

Professor Tsumoru Shintake at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University (OIST) yearns for a clean future, one that is affordable and powered by sustainable energy. Originally from the high-energy accelerator field, in 2012 he decided to seek new energy resources -- wind and solar were being explored in depth, but he moved toward the sea instead.

That year, Professor Shintake and the Quantum Wave Microscopy Unit at OIST began a project titled "Sea Horse," aiming to harness energy from the Kuroshio ocean current that flows from the eastern coast of Taiwan and around the southern parts of Japan. 

This project uses submerged turbines anchored to the sea floor through mooring cables that convert the kinetic energy of sustained natural currents in the Kuroshio into usable electricity, which is then delivered by cables to the land. 

The initial phase of the project was successful, and the Unit is now searching for industry partners to continue into the next phase. But the OIST researchers also desired an ocean energy source that was cheaper and easier to maintain.

This is where the vigor of the ocean's waves at the shoreline comes into play. 

Five seal pups released from Charlestown’s Blue Shutters Beach

Mystic Aquarium does it again!

Dale Wolbrink

It was a November morning like no other: Blue Shutters Beach welcomed a crowd of over 100 people who eagerly awaited the arrival of five harbor seal pups from Mystic Aquarium’s Animal Rescue Program.

Marigold, Begonia, Indigo, Viola and Blossom – all named for this year’s theme of flowers – were considered to be abandoned shortly after birth. 

Following months of rehabilitation, the five pups, now approximately 4 – 5 months old, were deemed healthy and prepared for life at sea.

Marigold was rescued in Owl’s Head, ME and arrived at Mystic Aquarium on May 28 weighing 17 pounds. 

Begonia was rescued in Kennebunkport, ME and arrived at Mystic Aquarium on May 28 weighing 20 pounds. 

Indigo was rescued in Harpswell, ME and arrived at Mystic Aquarium on June 1 weighing 16 pounds. 

Viola was rescued in Falmouth, ME and arrived at Mystic Aquarium on June 26 weighing 16 pounds.

Trump Is Headed To Japan

This Is What Happened On His Last Visit.

BY LUCIA BRAWLEY

Donald Trump has come a long way since his last visit to Japan in 1990, when his request to meet the emperor was denied due to the fact that the emperor had never heard of the New York vulgarian. 

Hopefully, now that he’s president, he won’t make the same gaffe he did last time — saying he would not eat “f****ing raw fish” and dining instead on a McDonald’s hamburger, according to Harry Hurt’s Trump biography Lost Tycoon: The Many Lives of Donald J. Trump, published back in 1993. 

A repeat performance would disgrace the United States more than Trump already has, if such a thing is even possible.  

The book details how, in order to try to earn media attention, Trump had falsely claimed that Michael Jackson was going on the trip with him.  The ruse lines up with Trump’s history of fake claims and aliases designed to boost publicity.  

But it did not turn out well for Donald in Japan:

Our nation’s self-inflicted wounds

A “critical period” for our health, hormones

Brian Bienkowski for Environmental Health News

Regulatory rollbacks and decreased public health protections threaten progress on chemicals that mess with our reproduction, brains and behavior.

Inefficient federal testing and outsized industry influence in Washington threaten decades of progress on protecting people from hormone-altering chemicals, scientists warn in a new commentary.

Health researchers are used to talking about "critical periods" — windows of time when chemical exposures can have the most devastating, and long-lasting, impacts—now they say we, as a society, are in a critical period of our own.

I believe it, don't you?

Unfit