Sailing the ocean green

URI to host two-day workshop to promote ways to make ships, ports greener

Elizabeth Rau

URI Graduate School of Oceanography’s Research Vessel Endeavor
underway on Narragansett Bay. Photo by Nora Lewis.

NARRAGANSETT, R.I– Landlubbers are trying to reduce their carbon footprint, but what about seafaring souls? 

Making ships and ports green is gaining momentum throughout the world thanks, in part, to efforts by the University of Rhode Island’s Graduate School of Oceanography.

For the second time since the first Green Boats Workshop was held at Duke University in 2012, GSO, the University National Oceanographic Laboratory System (UNOLS), National Science Foundation (NSF), Office of Naval Research (ONR) and 11th Hour Racing will bring together shipbuilders, marine architects, agency and port representatives, ocean scientists and owners of commercial and research vessels to brainstorm about ways to make boats and ports more environmentally friendly.

VIDEO: How stupid is Donald Trump's border wall?

Watch this directly on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vU8dCYocuyI

What did Mitch McConnell mean?

Will Hitler make a comeback?

And a Magic Eight-ball

URI ocean engineers receive federal grant to improve prediction, protection from coastal storms

Elizabeth Rau

KINGSTON, R.I., University of Rhode Island ocean engineers have been studying for decades how rising sea levels and destructive storms are threatening the state’s coastline. Thanks to a federal grant, they—and researchers in the four other New England coastal states—can continue to explore ways to protect shorelines.

Rhode Island, through URI and the Rhode Island Coastal Resources Management Council, is among five New England states that have received funding from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Office of Coastal Management to study ways to improve storm prediction and protection. URI and CRMC received $110,000 of the $890,000 awarded.

Save the General Stanton Inn, MEETING TONIGHT!

Easter Egg Hunt and more from Parks & Rec

The Easter Bunny arrives at Ninigret Park in 2012

Annual Easter Egg Hunt

Don't forget to bring the kids to the Annual Easter Egg Hunt, sponsored by The Washington Trust, on Saturday, March 26th, at Ninigret Park.

The day will begin at 10:30 am with an Easter Bunny meet and greet at the Community/Senior center, with light refreshments donated by Dunkin Donuts and fun with entertainer extraordinaire Jay Brunelle. Take pictures of the kiddies with the Easter Bunny.

The egg hunt will begin at 1:00 pm by the playground and Little Nini Pond. There will be arts and crafts, a free moon bounce and lots of eggs which contain goodies. The event is free and open to those age 2-10. There is no pre-registration necessary. Be sure to bring your camera!

Lions, Tigers and bears, “Oh my”

Don't miss out on the Charlestown Parks and Recreation Department spring trip to the Bronx Zoo on Thursday, April 21st. The trip leaves from Ninigret Park in Charlestown at 8 am and will leave the zoo at 4 pm. The cost for this fun day is $60, which includes coach transportation and admission to all of the different areas within the Zoo. We realize that many go away for the April vacation but for those who haven’t made plans yet, it will be a great trip!

Sign up is online at www.charlestownri.org or in person at the Charlestown Parks and Recreation Department located at 4540 South County Trail Rd. Charlestown. Call 364-1222 for further information.

Tennis Lessons

Spring Outdoor Tennis Lessons will be offered in Ninigret Park on Saturday mornings from April 2 to May 28. The classes are from 8-9 am for 6-8 year olds, 9-10 am for 9-11 yr. olds and from 10-11 am for 12-17 year olds. The instructors are Don Fair and Anna Overend.

The cost is $95 and you must pre-register for this program. Visit the Parks and Recreation office or call 364-1222 to register or for more information.

What’s at Stake in the Latest Supreme Court Contraception and Religious Freedom

In oral arguments today, religious groups contend that just signing a form to facilitate access to birth control violates their rights.

By Sarah Smith and Nina Martin for ProPublica

This story was co-published with Mother Jones.

Three weeks after oral arguments in what could be the most important abortion rights case in a generation, the U.S. Supreme Court is poised Wednesday to hear a second reproductive-rights case with potentially huge stakes. 

The central question in Zubik v. Burwell is whether President Obama’s signature health care law, the Affordable Care Act, improperly forces religious nonprofits — everything from nursing homes to universities — to compromise their beliefs by requiring them to take part in a process that requires employee health insurance to pay for contraceptives. 

Legal analysts have called the case Hobby Lobby Part 2, and like that landmark 2014 ruling by the high court, Zubik has implications far beyond the realm of reproductive health care.

The religious groups contend that even the simple act of signing a bureaucratic form violates their core beliefs if it helps employees obtain birth control. 

“It’s an unprecedented challenge to the very process by which a religious objector gets out of complying with the law,” said Gretchen Borchelt, vice president for reproductive rights and health at the National Women’s Law Center. “This is something we have not seen before.” 

A ruling in favor of the religious nonprofits would not only undermine key provisions of the ACA, but it could lead to challenges to laws meant to protect gays and lesbians from discrimination, Borchelt said.

The religious petitioners make their own slippery-slope argument. “We could quickly see this turning into abortion coverage as something mandated,” said Patrick Reilly, president of the Cardinal Newman Society, a Catholic education watchdog. “We could even see mandatory coverage for the drugs needed for assisted suicide in states that have legalized it.”

To help sort through the issues raised by the case, here are answers to some of the most common questions.

VIDEO: GOP is abdicating its constitutional responsibility

Courts should be Tell Your Senators to Do Their Job

By Robert Reich

Watch this video on YouTube:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l014xi25v7Y

The Constitution of the United States is clear: Article II Section 2 says the President “shall nominate, and by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, shall appoint … judges to the Supreme Court.”

It doesn’t say the President can’t appoint in the final year of his term of office. In fact, a third of all U.S. presidents have appointed a Supreme Court justice in an election year. Yet many Republicans argue that no appointment can be made in the election year.

And the Constitution doesn’t give the Senate leader the right to delay and obstruct the rest of the Senate from voting on a President’s nominee. Yet this is what the current Republican leadership argues.

In refusing to vote or even hold a hearing on the President’s nominee to the Supreme Court, the GOP is abdicating its constitutional responsibility. It’s not doing its job.

No appointing while black

VIDEO: Donald Trump courts the women's vote

Watch this video directly on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkSRJSUY0vs

Why the wind blows

Science can now link climate change with some extreme weather events

Penn State University

Extreme weather events like floods, heat waves and droughts can devastate communities and populations worldwide. 

Recent scientific advances have enabled researchers to confidently say that the increased intensity and frequency of some, but not all, of these extreme weather events is influenced by human-induced climate change, according to an international National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine report released March 11.

"In the past, many scientists have been cautious of attributing specific extreme weather events to climate change. People frequently ask questions such as, 'Did climate change cause Hurricane Sandy?' Science can't answer that because there are so many relevant factors for hurricanes. What this report is saying is that we can attribute an increased magnitude or frequency of some extreme weather events to climate change," said David Titley, professor of practice in Penn State's Department of Meteorology and founding director of Penn State's Center for Solutions to Weather and Climate Risk, who chaired the committee that wrote the report.

New from the Worm Ladies of Charlestown

	Your best resource for everything vermiculture!

	About Us     About Our Worms   Shop    Contact

	You can't buy fertilizer this good; you have to make it!  Ben Bell, designer of the Hungry Bin

	The Worm Ladies are now suppliers of The Hungry Bin which originated in New Zealand.​

Hungry Bin YouTube

	FOR COMMERCIAL OR HOME USE Each Hungry Bin can: - Compost up to 4 lbs.of waste a day using compost worms -Deliver up to a quart of worm tea a week that can be diluted up to 10:1 due to its nutrient rich potency, Rocket Fuel for your home garden! -Provide a tray of worm castings every 2 to 4 months which can be sprinkled around plants or added to soil providing the best natural soil enhancer there is! -Save the homeowner hundreds of dollars on soil enhancer per year. Make your own natural soil enhancer by composting from your home worm farm. The tide is rising worldwide to get back to honest, locally grown organic fruit and vegetables that are raised in a cost effective manner, reducing the strain on the environment. People from backyards to community gardens are discovering that using natural fertilizer from worm composting at home is a cost effective path to producing great organic crop yields. Why buy compost and fertilizer for your garden when you can make your own at home using compost worms in your Hungry Bin? Why give away your free compost and soil enhancer to the landfill or city council, let Hungry Bin transform it for you.​

	REDUCE SCHOOL WASTE  Hungry bin is ideal for class programs looking to reduce school waste from cafeterias and other organic waste streams and compost them onsite into the best worm casting soil enhancer you can buy, naturally! Hungry Bin can help assist with school composting programs for all age groups while providing the best worm tea and worm castings for growing great natural food for cafeterias. Each Hungry Bin can produce up to 1 quart of liquid fertilizer per week, (which can be diluted 10:1 due to its natural potency) all while reducing school waste management costs.

	GREENHOUSE & FARM COMPOSTING   Commercial Greenhouse and Farm operations consume a lot of fertilizer, many of them produced from petrochemical products, to meet the pressure of constant crop yields. Why not recycle plant and other onsite green waste into natural nutrient-rich fertilizer that can boost crop yield and nutrition, while saving money on overhead supplies? Hungry bins can be supplemented with a range of organic wastes to calibrate your specific fertilizer ratio requirements. For example seaweed can be added to ensure the completed soil enhancer contains trace nutrients like selenium and iodine.

	COMMERCIAL / BUSINESS COMPOSTING    Although institutions and commercial/industrial facilities contribute large amounts of food waste to landfills, businesses can choose to reduce waste on site into highly nutritious worm tea and worm castings. Hungry Bin provides a great opportunity for Commercial Composting for all businesses to assist with waste reduction. When organic waste is processed on the premises, food scraps, and select paper products (shredded paper and cardboard) are transformed into high quality liquid fertilizer and worm castings, which can support landscaped areas on site. The Hungry Bin waste reduction system does not require power, water or a sewerage connection like many other organic waste processing solutions. When installed, it has almost no on-going costs other than labor.

The Worm Ladies Hungry Bins and Red Wiggler Worms can be seen at Earth Care Farm in Charlestown, Rhode Island or at The Worm Ladies location. Earth Care Farm Website

The Worm Ladies can meet with your team to determine your needs. We can install a multi-unit Hungry Bin worm farm system to manage your organic waste stream using standalone or custom built metal framing options. Please contact us to hear about our affordable worm farm packages and school waste reduction solutions for institutions of all sizes, helping to meet sustainability targets while saving you money. Learning about sustainable practices is critical for everyone; why not let The Worm Ladies make it fun!

The Hungry Bin is designed to be highly efficient, easy to use and require very little space. Individual units can be fitted onto a custom rack, meaning reducing waste can be done efficiently  for any sized business. Twenty-four units fit into a standard car parking space and will process up to 18 tons of waste per year.

	161 East Beach Road Charlestown, Rhode Island 02813

The Humpty Dumpty Party

The GOP probably can’t win the White House in 2016 with Trump or without him.

By Emily Schwartz Greco

Is Donald Trump’s presidential bid terrifying you?

Try to relax. The bullying billionaire probably can’t make it to the White House.

He needs to win a majority of all voters, not just Republicans. That will be tough when nearly two out of three of Americans already abhor him. And his bid could fracture or destroy the GOP.

Barring credible reports that he’s an al-Qaeda operative or widely streamed footage of the guy having sex with multiple members of the Clinton family, Trump’s bound to keep winning primaries.

He might even arrive at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland with 1,237 delegates, the usual threshold for automatically becoming the party’s nominee.

Thanks to number-crunching by services like PredictWise, we know that people who bet on these things were giving Trump an 80 percent chance of winning the nomination following the high-stakes Florida and Ohio primaries. The website, which calculates political odds, was only giving him a 20 percent shot at winning the whole presidential race at that point.

“The night I fired Donald Trump”

Canadian concert producer Michael Cohl tells the story of how he fired Donald Trump and kicked him out of his own building.

By Gryphen in the Immoral Majority

So Michael Cohl was working on a pay-per-view deal for the Rolling Stones Steel Wheels tour, which was the biggest rock and roll tour in history back in 1989.

During the negotiations Cohl had trouble finding somebody to partner with on the pay-per-view part of the deal, so he settled on Donald Trump.

The only problem was that the Rolling Stones hated Donald Trump and refused to have their name associated with him.

Cohl then got Trump to promise to stay in the background and not show up at any venues and made the deal.

Unfortunately Trump decides that he wants to attend the Atlantic City show, and starts to get a little pushy about it.

After Keith Richards essentially threatens to stab Trump if Cohl cannot get him out of the building this is the exchange that Cohl has with the Donald, courtesy of Pollstar: