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Dear American sports stadiums: Just make regular stadium food

There’s a growing menace infecting our stadiums and it comes in the form of bronze fennel, swiss charr and bluefish rillettes. Artisanal food is creeping into the ballpark and the resulting foodie arms race is threatening to alter the fan experience like nothing since cell phones or that time the Pacers had Ron Artest and Stephen Jackson.

On Tuesday, ESPN’s Darren Rovell shared a picture of the new Peking Duck Bao at Levi’s Stadium. It joins stadium offerings that now include trendy meat selections, Tuscan kale soups, chili-dusted papitas, ridiculous experiments in meat-based buns and countless other items straight from the kitchens of restaurants you go to on your birthday or anniversary.

Luxury suites at Yankees games feature wild boar borscht, lamb cheeks, tandoori duck, halibut, ramp risotto, and fiddlehead ferns. How nice. Just think of how much better Take Me Out To The Ballgame would be if it were written today: “Buy me some peanuts and waygu beef, it provides my palette a lovely motif.”

Stop this madness. Please. These fancy dishes all sound lovely, except for the fact they’re served at decidedly un-fancy places. You go to restaurants for the ambiance, attentive service, tasteful decor and the ability to enjoy your meal without having to listen to the guy in mesh shorts who keeps bumping into your leg incorrectly explain the infield fly rule as he downs his seventh Bud Lite Lime.

No. No. No, no, no. (El Real Tex-Mex Cafe.)

These look delicious, but not during the seventh-inning stretch. (El Real Tex-Mex Cafe)

Would you go to a nice restaurant, sit down at the table and ask the server to wheel in a TV so you can watch the Mets game? Of course not. So why would you ruin your sports-going experience by trying to replicate a fine dining one? The beauty of going to the ballpark is that you’re at the ballpark, a place where it’s acceptable to wear a hat, drop peanut shells on the ground and inhale multiple chili dogs in the presence of strangers. It’s like Xanadu. You’re allowed, nay REQUIRED, to eat awful food at games. You get a pass from reality. Don’t use that to eat duck confit. Use it to order foods exclusively wrapped in salted, cured meats.

Eating a great meal at a game is rarely worth it anyway. The food is always going to be inferior to one you’d order at a restaurant. There’s less care taken at a stadium. It won’t be as hot. You’ll either be eating while wedged into your seat or awkwardly standing and attempting to use two hands to bite while holding a plate at the same time. And the lines? Oh, the lines.

People inexplicably wait at the Shake Shack at Citi Field. (Getty Images)

People inexplicably wait at the Shake Shack at Citi Field. (Getty Images)

When Shake Shack opened at Nationals Park, fans waited hours for the opportunity to taste a burger they could have bought at multiple D.C. locations that didn’t require a baseball ticket, nor a two-hour wait, to patronize. No one cared! Why get an overrated burger in Dupont Circle when you can miss four innings to get a slightly-inferior, overrated burger in an outfield concourse? To these folks, it was a no-brainer.

Given our passion for ridding ballparks of this unholy trend, here are For The Win’s rules for introducing new ballpark foods.

Main ingredients

1. Smoked/cured/spiced meat, preferably in link form. If you want to wrap that in bacon, we’re not going to stop you.

2. Bun of sizable length and minimal fanciness.

Any or all of these will be fine, thank you. (USA TODAY)

Any or all of these will be fine, thank you. (USA TODAY)

3. Item that used to be a vegetable or includes vegetable as a binding element (ie, sauerkraut, caramelized onions, dill pickles, chili).

4. Something melted, preferably cheese. No, definitely cheese.

5. A condiment that’s a step up from French’s but a step down from something organic you’d buy at a Park Slope co-op.

This will do nicely. (Handout/Photo by William Brinson)

This will do nicely. (Handout/Photo by William Brinson)

6. Can eat without a plate.

7. Requires a maximum of three napkins.

Too messy. (Aramark.)

Too messy. (Aramark.)

8. Is under $10.

9. Made to order, but quickly enough that you miss a maximum of a half-inning while buying it.

10. Can be carried in conjunction with at least one, but preferably two, beers.

(USA TODAY Sports Images)

(USA TODAY Sports Images)

These are the simple rules. We don’t need fine dining at sporting events. We need quick, gluttonous dining. It’s a football game, not a cocktail party on Top Chef.

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MLB's failures, not Justin Turner, are to blame for risky World Series celebration

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Dodgers World Series shirts, hats, banners, and masks: Check out Los Angeles' 2020 championship gear

This content is provided by a partner, Fanatics. It does not represent the editorial voice of FTW.

Your Los Angeles Dodgers are 2020 World Champs! Now is your chance to get the same hats and shirts the players were wearing on the field and in the clubhouse after the game.

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Orioles celebrate AL East title by gleefully smashing fans in the face with pies

The Baltimore Orioles haven’t won the AL East since 1997. On Tuesday night, the O’s clinched that elusive division title and celebrated with beer, champagne, and smashing fans in the face with pies.

You get a pie, and you get a pie, and YOU get a pie!

And also champagne!

(USA TODAY Sports)

(USA TODAY Sports)

“It’s an awesome experience,” right fielder Nick Markakis told the Baltimore Sun. “We worked hard all season long to get to where we are now, and we got step one out of the way. Now we’ve got a couple more steps to go … Just taking it all in and the experience itself is something I’ll never forget.”

He’ll also probably never forget all the pies.

[mlbvideo id=”36328483″ width=”640″ height=”395″ /]

(Thanks to Cut 4 for sharing)

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LeBron James 'wouldn't feel good' about winning Finals MVP if the Cavaliers lose

LeBron James raised a few eyebrows by stating after Game 5 that he's "the best player in the world," and though his performance in the first five games of the NBA Finals has been nothing short of legendary, the best player in the world might not win the series MVP award.

Surprisingly, James isn't bothered by that possibility.

The NBA Finals MVP has come from the losing team only once, when Jerry West was named MVP despite losing to the Celtics in 1969. With Kevin Love and Kyrie Irving off the floor, James has nearly averaged a triple-double in the...

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Mitt Romney doesn't entirely rule out becoming the next FIFA president

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Taylor Gabriel schooled Malcolm Butler with a devastating route

Malcolm Butler has had some amazing Super Bowl moments. His attempt to cover Atlanta Falcons WR Taylor Gabriel was not one of them.

The Super Bowl XLIX hero was flat-out embarrassed by Gabriel on this route.

Take a seat, Malcolm.

A few plays later, Gabriel got the better of Butler again, drawing a defensive holding call that extended the Falcons drive, which would eventually end in a Tevin Coleman touchdown catch.

Let’s take this time to remember Gabriel was cut by the Browns. Sorry, Cleveland.

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Week 8 fantasy football studs, duds and sleepers: Josh Allen could have a rough day

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NFL Week 8 power rankings: The Cardinals are contenders but the Patriots are in free fall

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Playoff chances for all 32 NFL teams after Week 7

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The Tennessee Vols take 'Catan' very seriously

The Tennessee Volunteers are insanely competitive no matter what — and that includes when they play one of their favorite board games, Catan, also known as The Settlers of Catan.

Introduced to the German game by junior guard Lucas Campbell, the game has become a staple of team road trips, they explained in a video. Campbell explains:

“It’s about using resources to build things, so you literally just using the resources — there are different cards, you roll dice and try to build the biggest community.”

And it’s even helped build their team chemistry — although sophomore forward Grant Williams said his teammates once wouldn’t talk to him for the rest of a night after he won. He said:

“There’s a couple parallels between basketball and Catan. I’d say really just the communication side of it and also just the frustration side of it because there’s times where you don’t get the certain role. So it kind of brings out the anger — maybe like missing a call.”

Campbell added:

“I think it has had an impact on chemistry. It does get us bonding and talking, and we get to hang out.”

No. 3 seed Tennessee beat No. 14 seed Wright State in the first round of the NCAA tournament and will play No. 11 seed and Cinderella hopeful Loyola in the second round Saturday (6:10 p.m. ET, TNT).

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Venice Marathon ends in ankle-deep water

The final leg of the Venice Marathon on Sunday saw runners sloshing through ankle-deep water after a high tide left the city portion of the course flooded in what officials described as “the worst conditions ever for the event.”

A high tide known as acqua alta from the Northern Adriatic Sea resulted in waters rising 58 inches above sea level, the Daily Mail reported.

Competitors also dealt with a strong headwind and driving rain, according to the Venice Marathon press release.

Mekuant Gebre of Ethiopia won the men’s division in a time of 2:13:13. Angela Tanui of Kenya won the women’s division in 2:31:30.

“The final stretch was really tough, but I knew I had a good lead and it was trouble for everyone,” Gebre said.

From Runner’s World:

The Venice Marathon starts deep inland, almost to the city of Padua, then makes its way toward Italy’s eastern coastline. Runners leave the mainland around mile 20, making their way to Venice along the Ponte della Libertà, then wrap around the city’s southern Giudecca waterfront before finishing on the final straightaway of the Riva dei Sette Martiri.

It was only there, in the last couple miles, that the Venetian Lagoon’s overflow impeded runners. The race also said it had been forced to close St. Mark’s Square, the famous center of the city that participants loop through just before they finish, but it was unclear if that was for runners or just spectators.

One runner joked that he “should have hired a gondola.”

Also on BNQT: Cross country team saves lost hunter’s life

At least nobody got lost this time.

In last year’s Venice Marathon, the motorcycle guiding the lead six runners took a wrong turn and led them several hundred meters in the wrong direction before being redirected to the course. They lost two minutes and it enabled an Italian, Eyob Faniel, to win the race for the first time in 22 years.

Photo is a screen grab from the video.

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Bayern Munich vs Liverpool Live Stream: Lineups, How to Watch Champions League Online, US TV Channel

Bayern Munich and Liverpool have kicked off at the Allianz Arena in Munich for what should be a raucous affair between two of Europe’s top teams. Liverpool, coming off a Champions League title run, are nearly even with Man City at the top of the EPL. Bayern, meanwhile, hasn’t missed the quarterfinals since 2011 and will have the home fans to urge them on in their Round of 16-second leg.

Bayern Munich vs. Liverpool

Date: Wednesday, March 13

Time: 4 p.m. ET

Location: Allianz Arena, Munich, Germany

Live Stream: fuboTV (watch for free)

Liverpool: Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool, currently trailing Premier League leaders Manchester City by one point, have displayed somewhat shakier form of late and won only three of their last eight games—despite being unbeaten in 10.

The first-leg draw against Bayern was one of five draws during that run. Klopp will hope the Reds can settle the result definitively in Bavaria, but Bayern’s failure to score on Merseyside means a score draw would see Liverpool advance to the quarterfinals. Die Roten chief Niko Kovac has seen his options boosted after left-back David Alaba and winger Kingsley Coman were passed fit to feature. Rafinha should stand in for banned right-back Joshua Kimmich, while Thomas Muller is also suspended and playmaker Corentin Tolisso is injured.

Naby Keita is the only new injury for Klopp, whose center-backs Dejan Lovren and Joe Gomez remain the more long-term absentees.

Liverpool held a six-point lead at the Premier League summit coming into 2019 but now trail City by a point in their bid to win a first top-flight title since 1990. Despite the challenge of two major competitions, Klopp dismissed the notion a European exit would lighten their domestic pressure:

“We don’t draw up a season and say the best way to go through it is to go out of all the cup competitions early. You do that and at that moment the same people go for you like mad.

“Now it is closer to the end of the season and it is allowed to go out of the Champions League without even trying to go through? That’s really mad.”

Liverpool XI: Alisson, Alexander-Arnold, Matip, Van Dijk, Robertson, Milner, Wijnaldum, Henderson, Mane, Salah, Firmino

Bayern Munich: Bayern has capitalized upon Borussia Dortmund’s own wobbles in the German title race and now lead the Bundesliga on goal difference, having gone unbeaten in their last 18 games.

Mercurial Mohamed Salah has scored once in his last eight appearances for Liverpool and will hope he can shake off the rust to force what could be a crucial away goal in Bavaria.

Bayern XI: Neuer, Rafinha, Sule, Hummels, Alaba, Javi Martinez, Thiago, Gnabry, James Rodriguez, Ribery, Lewandowski

Liverpool is hoping to make back-to-back appearances in the Champions League quarter-finals for the first time in a decade, but an experienced Bayern cast threatens to rain on the Red parade. You can watch this match – and every Champions League knockout stage game – live on fuboTV. Sign up now for a free trial to start watching.

We recommend interesting sports viewing and streaming opportunities. If you sign up to a service by clicking one of the links, we may earn a referral fee.

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LA Galaxy vs. Portland Timbers live stream, MLS predictions, odds, tv channel, start time

The LA Galaxy are faced with a must-win game tonight if they plan on making the 2020 MLS Cup Playoffs this season. The Galaxy will travel to Providence Park to take on the Portland Timbers on Wednesday night.

Portland is prepared for a difficult match against the five-time champion Galaxy who are in need of points and a win tonight to keep their playoff hopes alive.

This will be a match you don't want to miss, tune in tonight and see if LA can keep their playoff hopes alive.
LA Galaxy vs. Portland Timbers

When: Wednesday, October 28
Time: 10:00

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UEFA Champions League, Group Stage: Juventus vs. Barcelona live stream, TV channel, lineups, odds, start time

One of the biggest fixtures of the 2020-21 Champions League campaign will take place on Wednesday when Juventus hosts Barcelona in a rematch of the 2015 Final.
Unfortunately, Cristiano Ronaldo will be unable to play against Lionel Messi in this long-awaited match due to coronavirus. There will be plenty of star power on both sides of the ball today and with both clubs having new managers, they will look to make their mark in this monster matchup.
This should be an absolutely fantastic match between Juventus and Barcelona, make sure you tune in, here is everything you need to know...

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UEFA Champions League, Group Stage: Manchester United vs. RB Leipzig live stream, TV channel, lineups, odds, start time

Manchester United will look for their second win in as many matches when they face Bundesliga powerhouse, RB Leipzig on Wednesday from Old Trafford.

This should be a fantastic match between Manchester United and RB Leipzig, make sure you tune in, here is everything you need to know to stream all the Champions League action!

Manchester United vs. RB Leipzig

When: Wednesday, October 28
Time: 4:00 p.m. ET
TV Channel: Galavision
Live Stream: fuboTV (watch for free)
Live Stream: via CBS All Access (

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Carlos Zambrano is still pitching and he likes corn on his hot dogs

It’s all true, folks!

Remember Carlos Zambrano? For a brief, shining, extremely emotive minute in the middle part of the last decade, he was a stud starter for the Cubs. But Zambrano’s pitching excellence was sometimes overshadowed by his habit of unleashing maniacal fury on any opponent, teammate, umpire or water cooler he felt wronged him. He signed a big contract extension in 2007, threw a no-hitter in 2008 and abruptly retired after a bad start in 2011 only to return with the Marlins for a final big-league season in 2012.

At his best, Zambrano was a phenomenally entertaining player to watch, both because he was a talented and emotional pitcher with a penchant for hitting monster homers, and because there always existed some real chance he’d go completely berserk over a mild fielding misplay and start chucking sporting goods all over the park.

Anyway, it turns out that Zambrano spent stints playing in Mexico and Venezuela last year after a four-year absence from the sport. He’s now pitching in relief and doing some pinch-hitting for the independent Chicago Dogs of the American Association, and he prefers his hot dogs topped with onion, mustard, corn, ketchup and cheese.

Even without the inclusion of corn, it’s a notably specific combination. If Zambrano had said any combination of two or three of mustard, ketchup, cheese and onion, it might seem like something he never contemplated all that much before he was challenged by whatever Chicago Dogs employee put together the program. But that he named all four — and those four; not relish, not sauerkraut, not chili, not Chicago’s trademark pickled salad mess that sogs up the bun — suggests that Carlos Zambrano has distinguishing taste in hot dog toppings, if not particularly good taste.

But throwing corn into that mix implies either that a) somewhere Carlos Zambrano has been, they serve hot dogs with mustard, ketchup, corn, cheese and onion, and he enjoys them or b) Carlos Zambrano has really spent a whole lot of time considering his own perfect hot dog. The Wikipedia’s list of hot dog variations features only one mention of topping hot dogs with corn, in a description of a complex and fascinating Brazilian wiener variant that also includes mashed potatoes.

(Thanks to r/baseball for calling our attention to this Tweet.)

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This content is provided by a partner, Fanatics. It does not represent the editorial voice of FTW.

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Farmers Are Struggling to Make Ends Meet. This Controversial Policy Could Help.

“Don’t raise more than what can be consumed.”

The Dykstra Dairy Farm has been a fixture in Burlington, WA, for three generations of the Dykstra family. Conventional dairy farms have been struggling for years. Until recently, Dykstra said it seemed organic dairy farms were somewhat shielded from the volatility of the conventional market. Now, organic dairies are struggling alongside conventional dairies, further adding to the impact on the local agriculture economy. Charles Biles/AP

For indispensable reporting on the coronavirus crisis, the election, and more, subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily newsletter.

With a trade war looming, commodity prices falling, and the dairy industry in full-blown crisis, a growing number of American farmers are embracing a controversial set of farm policies that would manage the country’s commodity production and stabilize crop prices. The policies, known as supply management, governed US agriculture for decades but were abandoned in the late 20th century as large-scale monocropping and commodity exports came to define farm policy.

Produced with FERN, non-profit reporting on food, agriculture, and environmental health.

“Just in the last few months, people are paying attention to it,” says writer and National Family Farm Coalition consultant Siena Chrisman of supply management policy. In prior farm policy debates, she says, “nobody ever wanted to hear about it, nobody cared, nobody knew what it was.” But in the lead-up to the next farm bill, and particularly in light of devastatingly low milk prices, she says, farmers are considering supply management with renewed interest.

Supply management can be summarized as “don’t raise more than what can be consumed,” says Gary Hoskey, a hog farmer and the former president of the Iowa Farmers Union, in a new video on farm prices produced by ActionAid USA. The building blocks of supply management are a floor price for commodities based on the cost of production, a commodity reserve that can be drawn upon in less fruitful years and contributed to in years of excess, and conservation programs that take agricultural land out of production. Those policies together could control how much of a commodity is being produced, stabilize prices for farmers, and ensure that consumer demand is met despite seasonal fluctuation.

Supply management was once the dominant farm policy in the US. The first farm bill, passed in 1933, introduced price supports and supply management for commodities, in part by establishing the Commodity Credit Corporation, which stored surplus commodities in an effort to stabilize farm prices. Some variation on supply management existed in US agriculture policy for many decades.

But in the second half of the 20th century, policymakers began calling for a free-market approach to agriculture. A major shift occurred in 1973, when Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz called on farmers to plant “fencerow to fencerow” to increase the country’s commodity harvest. In the following years, farm policy moved away from supply management and instead dealt with low commodity prices through direct payments and other subsidies. In 1996, the last vestige of federal supply management was abandoned when the US grain reserve was closed.

The post-Butz era has been defined by large-scale commodity growing, monocropping, and the rise of powerful agribusiness corporations that increasingly shape farm policy. The culture of farming has also changed, and today, some farmers see production controls as an affront to their identity. To these farmers, says Tristan Quinn-Thibodeau, a campaigner with ActionAid USA, “being told not to produce…feels wrong. Like they are sitting idle or being paid to not work.”

But despite the shift in farm culture, policy, and politics, many farmers have held onto supply management as the best solution for ensuring they get a fair price. Before the 2007 farm bill, the National Family Farm Coalition proposed a comprehensive overhaul of the omnibus legislation that was based on supply management. In the lead-up to the 2012 farm bill, the National Farmers Union commissioned a study on the viability of the strategy, which found that if a reserve system had been in place between 1998 and 2010, it would have reduced government crop payments by nearly $100 billion while net farm income would have remained about the same.

Even the largest dairy cooperative in the country, Dairy Farmers of America, is today discussing supply management policies. In March, at the co-op’s annual meeting, delegates passed a resolution to investigate the possibility of a national production control system among co-op membership. Charles Untz, a Wisconsin dairy farmer and DFA board member who was present at the meeting, says the resolution “was a pretty good message to the co-op that we’re frustrated” with the current state of the dairy industry.

Some US dairy farmers are turning to Canada for a model of how supply management could work. Canada’s milk supply management system is built around production quotas, which can be bought and sold by farmers. Farmers are paid a government-set price for milk based on a reasonable cost of production for an “efficient” farm. Canada’s trade policy also limits how much milk can be imported without imposing tariffs.

Those trade limits have at times curdled Canada’s trade negotiations with the US, most recently in the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement. But the policies have also helped keep Canadian dairy farmers in business. In Quebec, dairy farmers are paid about $24 per hundredweight of milk. Just across the border in Vermont, it’s about $14 per hundredweight, a devastatingly low price that has caused many farms to close.

In March, the Wisconsin Farmers Union hosted two Canadian dairy officials in a series of five community meetings with dairy farmers who wanted to learn about the Canadian supply management system. Kara O’Connor, government relations director for the Wisconsin Farmers Union, says that farmers were “rapt” as they learned how Canada’s quota system works. She attributed the farmers’ interest to their disappointment in the current US approach to milk pricing. At the events, she says, presenters asked farmers whether anyone thought the current US dairy pricing system was working well. “I don’t think that in the five presentations we did a single hand went up.”

O’Connor says that “some of the challenges that dairy farmers in the United States are facing are unheard of in Canada.” Under the Canadian system, if a processor lost its market or had to close, “everyone would take a haircut so that no one would be cut off at the knees,” she says. Meanwhile, in the US, dairy farmers have been dropped by several processors and cooperatives, leaving them with few options for selling their milk.

Another reason for commodity farmers’ renewed interest in supply management is the changing structure of the agricultural economy. As processors have consolidated, farmers have fewer options when it comes to buyers and less ability to bargain for a better price, which in turn contributes to lower farm income. Quinn-Thibodeau says that, as a result, farmers “[view] supply management as a way to get fair prices. And not fair prices from consumers but fair prices from…the agribusiness corporations that they sell to.”

Two US agricultural commodities have retained some form of production control: cranberries and sugar beets. In late April, the Department of Agriculture proposed a 25 percent drop in the 2018 cranberry crop in order to bring supply closer to demand. The USDA proposal is supported by the Cranberry Marketing Committee, a board comprised of growers and handlers, and Ocean Spray, the country’s largest cranberry cooperative.

Meanwhile, the supply of sugar beets is also managed by the USDA with a variety of tools, including price supports, import quotas, and limits on how much sugar each processor can sell.

The US has also used strategic reserves for other parts of the economy, notably in the oil sector. The country’s strategic petroleum reserve in Texas, retained in case of an energy emergency, can hold more than 700 million barrels of crude oil.

As negotiations for the 2018 farm bill continue, some farm advocacy groups are pushing to make federal supply management policies part of the omnibus legislation. The National Family Farm Coalition includes strategic reserves in its policy platform for the 2018 bill. The board of the National Farmers Union also supports an “inventory management program” for milk as part of the bill.

In negotiations for the 2014 farm bill, Congress considered, and initially passed, a modified supply management scheme for dairy, but the policy was cut from the final version of the bill.

Headshot of Editor in Chief of Mother Jones, Clara Jeffery

It sure feels that way to me, and here at Mother Jones, we’ve been thinking a lot about what journalism needs to do differently, and how we can have the biggest impact.

We kept coming back to one word: corruption. Democracy and the rule of law being undermined by those with wealth and power for their own gain. So we're launching an ambitious Mother Jones Corruption Project to do deep, time-intensive reporting on systemic corruption, and asking the MoJo community to help crowdfund it.

We aim to hire, build a team, and give them the time and space needed to understand how we got here and how we might get out. We want to dig into the forces and decisions that have allowed massive conflicts of interest, influence peddling, and win-at-all-costs politics to flourish.

It's unlike anything we've done, and we have seed funding to get started, but we're looking to raise $500,000 from readers by July when we'll be making key budgeting decisions—and the more resources we have by then, the deeper we can dig. If our plan sounds good to you, please help kickstart it with a tax-deductible donation today.

Thanks for reading—whether or not you can pitch in today, or ever, I'm glad you're with us.

Signed by Clara Jeffery

Clara Jeffery, Editor-in-Chief

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text:
The 6th Street Viaduct

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The 6th Street Viaduct in Los Angeles has been slowly crumbling for years thanks to defects in the cement originally used to build it, and the city recently unveiled its plans for a replacement:

After a series of public meetings over the last two years, city engineers decided that replacing the bridge was the only viable option….A model of the proposed span shows two rectangular towers in the middle of the bridge, with cables down both sides.

….The cost of replacing the viaduct with the proposed structure is estimated to be about $345 million, officials said.

This is just idle musing, but I wonder why this bridge costs so much?  The original structure cost $2.3 million, which comes to about $36 million in today’s dollars.  In real terms, then, the bridge costs ten times as much today as it did in 1932.

Why?  Labor costs are proportionately higher today, of course.  The old bridge has to be built around and then demolished.  LA is built up and we can’t just build a cement factory on site, the way we did 75 years ago.  Earthquake standards and general permitting requirements are more stringent.

On the other hand, we also have 75 years of technology progression.  Labor costs may be higher, but we use less total labor and more machinery these days.  And computers help with most of the design work.

Like I said, just idle musing.  But it sure seems odd that after 75 years of fantastic technological progress, it not only costs more to build a bridge than it used to, but it costs ten times more.  That’s a lot of dough.  I just hope it’s shovel ready.

Headshot of Editor in Chief of Mother Jones, Clara Jeffery

It sure feels that way to me, and here at Mother Jones, we’ve been thinking a lot about what journalism needs to do differently, and how we can have the biggest impact.

We kept coming back to one word: corruption. Democracy and the rule of law being undermined by those with wealth and power for their own gain. So we're launching an ambitious Mother Jones Corruption Project to do deep, time-intensive reporting on systemic corruption, and asking the MoJo community to help crowdfund it.

We aim to hire, build a team, and give them the time and space needed to understand how we got here and how we might get out. We want to dig into the forces and decisions that have allowed massive conflicts of interest, influence peddling, and win-at-all-costs politics to flourish.

It's unlike anything we've done, and we have seed funding to get started, but we're looking to raise $500,000 from readers by July when we'll be making key budgeting decisions—and the more resources we have by then, the deeper we can dig. If our plan sounds good to you, please help kickstart it with a tax-deductible donation today.

Thanks for reading—whether or not you can pitch in today, or ever, I'm glad you're with us.

Signed by Clara Jeffery

Clara Jeffery, Editor-in-Chief

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Tom Friedman: Good or Evil?

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Tom Friedman devotes today’s column to a “public service”: bringing Intel CEO Paul Otellini’s concerns about the federal tax code to the broader public:

“The things that are not conducive to investments here are [corporate] taxes and capital equipment credits,” he said….If the government just boosted the research and development tax credit by 5 percent and lowered corporate taxes, argued Otellini, and we “started one or two more projects in companies around the country that made them more productive and more competitive, the government’s tax revenues are going to grow.” With the generous research and development tax credits and lower corporate taxes they receive, Intel’s chief competitors in South Korea basically have “zero cost of money,” said Otellini.

Matt Yglesias is gobsmacked: “Read today’s Tom Friedman piece and watch in amazement as he doesn’t even consider the possibility that Paul Otellini’s ideas might be motivated by anything other than a disinterested concern for the welfare of the American people.” In other words, it’s Friedman being Friedman. Here’s an exasperated excerpt from my review of The World is Flat a few years ago:

He reprints entire PR messages from eager CEOs without any apparent sense that of course these guys think their companies are doing world-shaking things. I spent the decade of the 90s as a marketing executive at a software company, and these kinds of breathless paeans are sadly familiar to me.

But Friedman remains resolutely credulous in the face of these gales of corporate spin, and in the end, his corporate triumphalism becomes an idée fixe….Every CEO he talks to is brilliant, insightful, and far seeing. Raising his own everyday experiences to the level of epiphany is yet another. He figures out one day that Southwest Airlines allows you to print a boarding pass on your computer, and it immediately becomes a strained metaphor for a global convergence of technology and human psychology. The chairman of Starbucks tells him they offer soy milk because their customers asked for it, and he presents this mundane act of satisfying customer demand as something new and visionary.

This is what makes Friedman so infuriating. His basic thesis, as it often is, is fine in today’s column: Education is important, innovation and entrepreneurship are important, and American competitiveness is important. Even his tin-earred penchant for oversimplification is understandable. It might drive me nuts, but he’s writing for a wider audience than just people like me. So that’s fine. But then there’s his actual narrative, which is so interwoven with almost childlike reverence toward the banal sayings of the rich and powerful that it’s enough to make you throw his books across the room and swear off reading forever. If I want to immerse myself in breathless corporate spin, after all, I can always turn on CNBC.

But here’s the question that always gnaws at me: on balance, does Friedman do more good than harm? I genuinely don’t know. He really does have a huge audience, he really does explain things in a way that probably appeals to a lot of them, and for the most part his hobbyhorses are basically decent ones: clean energy, climate change, dealing with globalization, improving education, etc. He’s mostly given up his cheerleading for endless war, too. So does that make up for his corporate shilldom and other assorted sins? I’m not sure.

Headshot of Editor in Chief of Mother Jones, Clara Jeffery

It sure feels that way to me, and here at Mother Jones, we’ve been thinking a lot about what journalism needs to do differently, and how we can have the biggest impact.

We kept coming back to one word: corruption. Democracy and the rule of law being undermined by those with wealth and power for their own gain. So we're launching an ambitious Mother Jones Corruption Project to do deep, time-intensive reporting on systemic corruption, and asking the MoJo community to help crowdfund it.

We aim to hire, build a team, and give them the time and space needed to understand how we got here and how we might get out. We want to dig into the forces and decisions that have allowed massive conflicts of interest, influence peddling, and win-at-all-costs politics to flourish.

It's unlike anything we've done, and we have seed funding to get started, but we're looking to raise $500,000 from readers by July when we'll be making key budgeting decisions—and the more resources we have by then, the deeper we can dig. If our plan sounds good to you, please help kickstart it with a tax-deductible donation today.

Thanks for reading—whether or not you can pitch in today, or ever, I'm glad you're with us.

Signed by Clara Jeffery

Clara Jeffery, Editor-in-Chief

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text:
Obama’s Yawn-Inducing Outrage

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Today President Obama stunned the world by saying this:

The borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states.

The New York Times reports that Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu “reacted icily.” The American right wing, by contrast, has been sent into a near frenzy. You’d think it was the end of the world.

This is one of the reasons why the Israel-Palestine issue is so difficult to deal with for those of us who haven’t followed its every nuance for the past 30 years. I mean, this has been the basis of every peace negotiation in the Middle East for the past three decades, hasn’t it? Most recently it was the basis of Wye River, Camp David, and Taba. Whether it was stated in precisely that way or not, every proposed deal has involved two states, with borders to be negotiated based on the facts on the ground that Israel has so assiduously built up since 1967. In other words, “the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps.”

And yet, for some reason, actually saying what’s been obvious for decades sends everyone into a tizzy. All because of some minuscule change in wording that, to ordinary ears, means nothing.

Somebody help me out here. Pretend I’m five years old and you have to explain things in words of one syllable. Why is Obama’s formulation worthy of anything more than a yawn, let alone widespread outrage?

Headshot of Editor in Chief of Mother Jones, Clara Jeffery

It sure feels that way to me, and here at Mother Jones, we’ve been thinking a lot about what journalism needs to do differently, and how we can have the biggest impact.

We kept coming back to one word: corruption. Democracy and the rule of law being undermined by those with wealth and power for their own gain. So we're launching an ambitious Mother Jones Corruption Project to do deep, time-intensive reporting on systemic corruption, and asking the MoJo community to help crowdfund it.

We aim to hire, build a team, and give them the time and space needed to understand how we got here and how we might get out. We want to dig into the forces and decisions that have allowed massive conflicts of interest, influence peddling, and win-at-all-costs politics to flourish.

It's unlike anything we've done, and we have seed funding to get started, but we're looking to raise $500,000 from readers by July when we'll be making key budgeting decisions—and the more resources we have by then, the deeper we can dig. If our plan sounds good to you, please help kickstart it with a tax-deductible donation today.

Thanks for reading—whether or not you can pitch in today, or ever, I'm glad you're with us.

Signed by Clara Jeffery

Clara Jeffery, Editor-in-Chief

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text:
Wall Street and the Rest of Us

For indispensable reporting on the coronavirus crisis, the election, and more, subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily newsletter.

Tony Soprano is right about the stock market: “You have to be high up in the corporate structure to make that sh-t work for you.” Or, as economist Ilene Grabel of the University of Denver told me, “Stock markets prove profitable for a small proportion of the U.S. and global economy, but the relationship between the stock market and the underlying economy has never been established.”

Have you ever wondered how the world might be a different—and better—place if Wall Street didn’t demand ever-widening profit margins? The income gap would likely shrink, making 90 to 99.9 percent of Americans happier. And a broader view of corporate success might lead corporations to show some respect for the environment and their workers.

The New Yorker brings a little good news on this front (caveat: It’s the magazine’s job to make New Yorkers feel good about themselves). James Surowiecki calls bullshit on the “7 percent rule,” a handy rule of thumb that sprung up during the dotcom boom, suggesting that any company announcing layoffs would see a 7 percent rise in its stock value.

Surowiecki argues that layoffs only make long-term financial sense when demand changes significantly—not, as they have become of late, as “a default business strategy, part of an inexorable drive to cut costs.” Stock prices may feel as cold and hard as a surgical knife, but Surowiecki claims they generally reflect what you know is true if you’ve ever worked through a round of layoffs: “Downsizing may make companies temporarily more productive, but the gains quickly erode, in part because of the predictably negative effect on morale.”

Stock prices consider my feelings? That feels a bit too cheerleader-y, so let’s get back to the bad news. The flies in the ointment are, you guessed it, C.E.O.s and analysts. (What would the world look like without them?) Many analysts push companies to downsize, and companies have to act like they’re listening even though the analysts aren’t always right. And C.E.O.s are all about quick and dirty: “The average C.E.O.’s tenure today is just six years, long enough to see the benefits of downsizing (like a lower payroll) but not long enough to suffer costs that may appear in the long term.”

Assuming no one will take my suggestion to abolish the stock market seriously, here’s a few quick partial fixes that are good for the rest of us. Can you say labor unions, where wages are higher and layoffs more difficult? We could also stop paying C.E.O.s so much, at least in stock options. And less golf for bigwigs.

Headshot of Editor in Chief of Mother Jones, Clara Jeffery

It sure feels that way to me, and here at Mother Jones, we’ve been thinking a lot about what journalism needs to do differently, and how we can have the biggest impact.

We kept coming back to one word: corruption. Democracy and the rule of law being undermined by those with wealth and power for their own gain. So we're launching an ambitious Mother Jones Corruption Project to do deep, time-intensive reporting on systemic corruption, and asking the MoJo community to help crowdfund it.

We aim to hire, build a team, and give them the time and space needed to understand how we got here and how we might get out. We want to dig into the forces and decisions that have allowed massive conflicts of interest, influence peddling, and win-at-all-costs politics to flourish.

It's unlike anything we've done, and we have seed funding to get started, but we're looking to raise $500,000 from readers by July when we'll be making key budgeting decisions—and the more resources we have by then, the deeper we can dig. If our plan sounds good to you, please help kickstart it with a tax-deductible donation today.

Thanks for reading—whether or not you can pitch in today, or ever, I'm glad you're with us.

Signed by Clara Jeffery

Clara Jeffery, Editor-in-Chief

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text:
Gov’t Legally Required to Step Up Spill Efforts

Photo by uscgd8, via Flickr.

For indispensable reporting on the coronavirus crisis, the election, and more, subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily newsletter.

The federal government has so far left it up to BP to fix the well spewing into the Gulf of Mexico. But if BP‘s latest plan to stop the gushing Gulf well fails, the government may be obligated to take control of the situation, according to federal law.

The Oil Pollution Act of 1990, passed in the wake of the Exxon Valdez disaster, amends a portion of the Clean Water Act to not only allow but require the federal government to take over if discharge from a “vessel, offshore facility, or onshore facility” is determined to be “of such a size or character as to be a substantial threat to the public health or welfare of the United States.” (I’m pretty sure the Gulf disaster more than qualifies as such at this point.)

“The President shall direct all Federal, State, and private actions to remove the discharge or to mitigate or prevent the threat of the discharge,” the law states. It continues that the president may “remove and, if necessary, destroy a vessel discharging, or threatening to discharge, by whatever means are available.”

David Pettit has more over on the Natural Resources Defense Council blog. Furthermore, he writes, under the National Contingency Plan developed by the EPA, the head of the Homeland Security Department is directed to appoint a federal incident commander charged with carrying out this obligation. In this case, the DHS head Janet Napolitano has appointed Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Thad Allen (yes, the same guy who maintains that he still trusts BP to fix the issue).

The federal government wants to keep this ball in BP’s court in hopes of minimizing the political implications for the administration should efforts to cap the well continue to fail. But it’s clear that they have a legal, if not moral, obligation to do more.

Headshot of Editor in Chief of Mother Jones, Clara Jeffery

It sure feels that way to me, and here at Mother Jones, we’ve been thinking a lot about what journalism needs to do differently, and how we can have the biggest impact.

We kept coming back to one word: corruption. Democracy and the rule of law being undermined by those with wealth and power for their own gain. So we're launching an ambitious Mother Jones Corruption Project to do deep, time-intensive reporting on systemic corruption, and asking the MoJo community to help crowdfund it.

We aim to hire, build a team, and give them the time and space needed to understand how we got here and how we might get out. We want to dig into the forces and decisions that have allowed massive conflicts of interest, influence peddling, and win-at-all-costs politics to flourish.

It's unlike anything we've done, and we have seed funding to get started, but we're looking to raise $500,000 from readers by July when we'll be making key budgeting decisions—and the more resources we have by then, the deeper we can dig. If our plan sounds good to you, please help kickstart it with a tax-deductible donation today.

Thanks for reading—whether or not you can pitch in today, or ever, I'm glad you're with us.

Signed by Clara Jeffery

Clara Jeffery, Editor-in-Chief

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text:
Saws Cut Off 4,000 Fingers a Year. This Gadget Could Fix That.

So why are the big power tool companies refusing to use it?

A longer version of this story appears at FairWarning.

Gerald Wheeler caught the hot dog demonstration at the International Woodworking Fair in Atlanta in 2002. A man took an Oscar Meyer wiener and pushed it into the blade of a table saw spinning 4,000 times per minute. As the hot dog touched the whirring saw, the blade came to a dead stop in about three one-thousandths of a second, leaving the dog with only a minor nick.

The saw was equipped with a safety device called SawStop that could distinguish between wood and flesh and then stop the blade fast enough to prevent a gruesome injury. Wheeler was amazed. As the operator of a wood shop in Hot Springs, Arkansas, he was all too aware of the unforgiving nature of table saws. Not long before, two of his employees had been maimed within a few weeks of each other. Wheeler felt awful about the injuries, the loss of two good workers, the $95,000 in medical bills, the doubling of his workers compensation rates. Watching SawStop in action, Wheeler thought: If only this had come along sooner.

Those kinds of injuries are all too common: Each year, more than 67,000 workers and do-it-yourselfers are injured by table saws, according to the Consumer Product Safety Commission (PDF), resulting in more than 33,000 emergency room visits and 4,000 amputations. At an average cost of $35,000 each, these accidents lead to more than $2.3 billion in societal costs annually including medical bills, lost wages, and pain and suffering.

Since it started making table saws in in 2004, SawStop has recorded 2,000 “finger saves”—customer reports of accidents likely to have caused disfiguring injuries with conventional saws, but that resulted in minor cuts or a few stitches at most. (SawStop also has acknowledged two reports of amputations.) Wheeler bought two of the company’s first saws. In March 2006, Carl Seymour, a foreman at his shop, accidentally touched a whirring blade. A photo on SawStop’s website shows Seymour beaming in triumph as he displays his thumb, which looks like it has a paper cut. “You couldn’t wipe the smile off him after this,” Wheeler says, adding that he, too, was “totally ecstatic.” All saws should have this technology, Wheeler says. “I mean, we’re dealing with human beings.”

However, SawStop still makes the only saws with skin-sensing technology, and accounts for a tiny fraction of total saw sales. Tens of thousands of digits have been sliced off in the past decade, but the rest of power tool industry has snubbed the technology and carried on as before.

Gass says a power tool executive warned him, “If you guys don’t cooperate with us, the industry is going to get together and squish you.”

For more than a decade, toolmakers and the Power Tool Institute, their trade group, have defended the design of conventional table saws and their decision to not adopt SawStop or a similar safety device. Publicly they’ve offered several arguments: The number of saw injuries and their impact are exaggerated; the market for popular, lightweight saws, which cost as little as $100, would be destroyed by the added expense of SawStop; SawStop may stop a blade when it touches conductive materials like metal or very wet wood, usually destroying the blade. But as court records and testimony have shown, the power tool companies have rejected the safety advance for another reason: They are worried that if a new way to prevent severe injuries became widespread, they would face a wave of liability suits for accidents involving conventional saws.

The SawStop story is about an industry’s ability to resist a major safety advance that could have prevented countless disfiguring injuries, but might have been bad for business. It also highlights the bureaucratic obstacles that make it virtually impossible for regulators to enact safety measures over the unified objections of industry. The power tool industry representatives contacted for this story declined interview requests or did not return calls and emails. The Robert Bosch Tool Corporation provided a statement: “Safety has historically been one of the Bosch principles…and is reflected in our slogan ‘Invented for life.'”

“Safety doesn’t sell”

Stephen Gass, an energetic, intense 49-year-old, grew up on a horse farm in eastern Oregon and learned woodworking from his father. He earned a doctorate in physics and a law degree, then joined a patent law firm in Portland, but never lost his interest in building things. One fall day in 1999, while out in his home workshop, he was struck by a question: Would it be possible to stop a table saw quickly enough to keep it from slicing off your fingers? After a doing a series of calculations and using parts you could buy at Radio Shack, he showed it could be done.

His invention works by running a weak electrical current through the saw blade. When someone comes in contact with the blade, the body absorbs part of the current. A sensor detects the change in current and activates a spring, which jams an aluminum wedge between the teeth of the blade, acting as a brake. The blade also drops below the surface of the table. It all happens so quickly that unless the hand is moving unusually fast when it hits the blade, any injury is minor.

It’s a mystery why the power tool industry, with its engineering prowess, didn’t invent SawStop before Gass did. Maybe it didn’t because there were no clear financial or legal incentives to do so. Table saws are must-have tools for millions of construction workers, carpenters, and do-it-yourselfers. There are about 9.5 million of them in use in the United States. About 500,000 sold each year, 85 percent of them made by members of the Cleveland-based Power Tool Institute, which represents well-known brands such as Black & Decker, DeWalt, Makita, Skil, Bosch, and Ryobi.

For decades, the companies were shielded from liability by a few unquestioned assumptions: Table saws are inherently dangerous; everyone knows this; accidents typically involve carelessness or failure to follow directions; therefore, when people get hurt it is their own fault. As an industry lawyer told a jury in a recent injury lawsuit: “This is a table saw. It cuts wood. And if you’re not careful, you can get injured.”

The companies are guided by voluntary safety standards developed by an industry-dominated technical committee and Underwriters Laboratories. When SawStop came along, the voluntary standard called for table saws to have a guard that fits like a hood over the blade. Because a hand can slip under the guard, many thousands of injuries occurred even with the guard in place. However, the guard usually wasn’t used. Because it limited visibility, had to be removed for certain cuts, and took a long time to detach and put on again, most saw users worked without it.

Gass thought his invention would be an easy sell. SawStop meant that saw makers now had the ability to prevent the tragedies they knew would happen otherwise. “I couldn’t imagine that anyone would not want to put this on the saws that they were offering to people,” he says. But the industry’s initial reaction was not encouraging. Gass recalled one tool executive telling him, “The marketing guys say safety doesn’t sell.”

The industry took notice after Gass did the hot dog demo at the 2000 International Woodworking Fair and SawStop was awarded a top prize for technological advancement. Gass and his partners visited the offices of Black & Decker (now Stanley Black & Decker), Emerson Electric, Ryobi, and Bosch. In November 2000, they briefed members of the Power Tool Institute in Cleveland. Gass was overconfident. “We think you don’t have any choice here,” Gass recalls telling one executive. “It’s the right thing to do. And if you don’t do it, you’re going to be liable for the injuries—and there’s a lot of injuries happening.” Still, the power tool companies seemed wary. Gass says a Black & Decker executive warned him, “If you guys don’t cooperate with us, the industry is going to get together and squish you.”

SawStop’s prospects seemed to rise in July 2001 when CPSC engineers announced the results of a technical evaluation, finding that “The SawStop concept is valid and the prototype impressively demonstrates its feasibility.” Ann Brown, then head of the agency, awarded SawStop a Chairman’s Commendation for safety innovation. SawStop held negotiations with several companies, and nearly finalized a deal with Ryobi, but none ended up adopting the technology.

“Liability exposure has increased”

One of the power tool companies’ main concerns about SawStop, court testimony and corporate documents reveal, was that it would worsen their liability risk. According to courtroom testimony by David Peot, Ryobi’s former director of advanced technologies, “There certainly was a feeling that if a single company invents or improves a product that could have an effect on product liability, then other manufacturers could be at a disadvantage if they don’t have that on their product.”

Gass SawStop

SawStop inventor Stephen Gass with the patents for his company’s safety device FairWarning

Without naming SawStop, an April 2002 Bosch memo, revealed in a lawsuit, warned of the threat from “competitive technology.” The “expectation will be that the most severe injuries will be mild to moderate lacerations and that amputations will be virtually eliminated,” it said. This “will create a new and significant liability concern for our corporation because of this enhanced safety performance.” Or, as minutes of the Power Tool Institute’s product liability committee in September 2002 put it: “Liability exposure has increased based on the product’s introduction at IWF [International Woodworking Fair].”

“What the industry saw as a problem was not the amputations and injuries occurring on their product, but the advent of a technology that could prevent those injuries. That was the problem we created,” says Gass. He recalled Peter Domeny, the former chairman of the Power Tool Institute’s product liability committee and Bosch’s director of product safety, telling him that SawStop had kept him awake wondering how the industry could defend itself from lawsuits. Domeny was questioned about this in 2008 at a deposition in the case of a Pennsylvania man who had four fingers amputated. “We had discussions as far as the liability implication, but not in that form as he [Gass] quotes it,” Domeny replied. “I don’t think I have discussed my sleep patterns with Mr. Gass.”

Shut out by the toolmakers, Gass and his partners faced a stark choice: Either let their invention die or make their own saws. They chose the latter and raised $3 million from about 30 investors. Along with flesh-detection technology, the SawStop saws came with an important safety device called a riving knife that had been mostly limited to models sold in Europe. A riving knife is a curved steel blade that cuts the risk of “kickback,” which occurs when a piece of wood suddenly jerks while being cut, sometimes pulling the operator’s hand into the blade. About 40,000 SawStop saws have been sold.

Each year, more than 67,000 people are injured by table saws, resulting in more than 4,000 amputations.

In response to the threat from SawStop, the power tool industry sprang into action. Five companies, including Black & Decker, Bosch, and Ryobi, formed a joint venture to develop their own injury reduction system. To head off possible antitrust problems, they alerted the Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission that they would pursue “research and development of technology for power saw blade contact injury avoidance, including skin sensing systems, blade braking systems, and/or blade guarding systems.”

The joint venture ended in 2009, when the companies said they had developed a system superior to SawStop. Their design retracts the saw blade into the table immediately upon skin contact. Unlike SawStop, it does not use a brake, which damages the blade. Yet this safety system has yet to be offered in a single saw. Ryobi, Black & Decker, and Bosch did not return calls about when or if the technology will be used. Industry comments filed with the CPSC suggest that SawStop’s patents were holding them back, potentially forcing them to pay royalties or engage in expensive patent litigation to roll out their system.

In April 2003, SawStop submitted a petition signed by more than 300 woodworkers, shop teachers, and others, asking the CPSC to require injury reduction technology. Prompted by the petition, in July 2006 the CPSC commissioners voted 2 to 1 to begin the initial stages of the rulemaking process. Yet within days of the vote, commission chairman Hal Stratton, who had voted yes, resigned to join a law firm. The resulting 1-1 stalemate meant the rulemaking notice could not be approved. It would be another five years before the commission would address the issue again. Yet while regulation stalled, the battle over table-saw injuries moved to the courts.

“there was blood on my face”

Carlos Osorio moved to the Boston area from Colombia in 2003. Unable to find work as a computer technician, he took a job as a flooring installer. He was working at a home in Lexington, Massachusetts, in April 2005 when a piece of flooring got stuck in his Ryobi table saw and his hand slid into the blade. “There was blood on my face, my body. It was everywhere,” Osorio later testified. “I was able to see my tendons.”

The first of five surgeries lasted 12 hours and reattached Osorio’s pinky finger. Another transferred tendons from a toe to his hand in an attempt to restore movement. Osorio said he endured so much pain that one doctor suggested he have two of the injured fingers surgically removed. Osorio had 95 physical therapy sessions. His medical bills topped $384,000. He kept all his fingers but still has limited use of his left hand. “The damage that was done to my hand, it’s something that stays with you for the rest of your life,” he said. “I think the manufacturers should think less about cost, but more about people who are using the saws.”

Osorio sued Ryobi for damages. During the trial of his lawsuit in February 2010, in federal court in Boston, Osorio admitted he’d been working without a guard on the saw. Before SawStop came along, this fact alone would have made a successful lawsuit unthinkable. But Gass testified about his efforts to license SawStop to Ryobi and other companies. He said that Osorio almost certainly would have escaped serious injury had SawStop or another skin-detection system been in use. The jury awarded Osorio $1.5 million.

“If the manufacturers had to pay the cost of those injuries, they would have adopted technology like this within months of the time they heard about it.”

Roughly 150 liability suits have been filed against power tool companies since SawStop saws were introduced. SawStop was a “game changer,” says Osorio’s attorney, Richard Sullivan, whose firm has been involved in most of the cases. The industry position, he says, was “‘Hey, don’t blame us.’ Now with Saw Stop it was ‘Oops, we actually can prevent these accidents from taking place.'” About 70 of the cases have been settled out of court, according to Sullivan. Only two others besides Osorio’s have gone to trial. A case in Los Angeles last year ended in a hung jury and then was settled. In the other, tried last July in Chicago, Ryobi was victorious.

The plaintiff was Brandon Stollings, who cut off two fingers while installing flooring at his mother’s house in Wisconsin in May 2007. He testified that after the blade sliced into his hand, he began running around in circles in the yard, screaming in pain and terror. “Am I ever going to be able to do carpentry?” he remembered thinking. “If I cut off my ring finger, who’s going to want to marry me if I can’t even put a ring on my finger?” Lying in the ambulance, the then-23-year-old told his mother to let him die. “I thought my life was over.”

His ring finger was reattached after nine hours of surgery, but Stollings lost his index finger. Five years after the accident, Stollings said he remained self-conscious about his injury. “If I’m meeting new people, my hands will be in my pocket,” he said. “I never had this hand really out in the open.”

Stollings, who had years of experience with table saws, testified that he was not using a guard and never did because it got in the way. Gass testified that Stollings would have escaped serious injury if his saw had skin-sensing technology. “If the manufacturers had to pay the cost of those injuries,” Gass said, “they would have adopted technology like this within months of the time they heard about it instead of looking for excuse after excuse to delay for year after year.”

This time, however, Ryobi’s lawyers shifted the focus from the maiming of a young man to a purported conspiracy between plaintiffs attorneys and Gass—designed to bleed the industry by, in the case of the lawyers, filing lawsuits; and in the case of Gass, forcing manufacturers to adopt SawStop. The jury found Ryobi not liable.

“we have the means to prevent these accidents”

SawStop employs about 40 people in its headquarters in the Portland suburb of Tualatin. Its table saws aren’t actually manufactured here; they’re made in Taiwan, like nearly all saws sold in the United States. Inside its offices, rows of shiny mounted patents for saw components cover entire walls. Those patents have become an obsession of the power tool industry as it fights to keep federal safety regulators off its back.

In 2008, Congress resuscitated the CPSC, expanding its funding and adding two new commissioners. Yet the table saw issue remained stalled. In November 2010, the National Consumers League fired off a letter to commission chairman Inez Tenenbaum protesting the delay. “Every day ten new amputations associated with the use of table saws occur,” the letter stated. “The hazards posed by table saws are unacceptable, especially when we have the means to prevent these accidents.” In October 2011, the five CPSC commissioners voted unanimously to restart the rulemaking process that had been frozen nearly five years earlier. “This is a serious hazard which has greatly impacted far too many lives,” commission spokesman Scott Wolfson says. “This is a rulemaking that can make a difference…if we can reach the final rulemaking stage.”

The Power Tool Institute maintains that a new federal safety rules would grant a “monopolistic advantage” to SawStop.

Yet the Power Tool Institute maintains that a new federal regulation would grant a “monopolistic advantage” to SawStop, whose patents might shut out rival safety systems, such as the one developed by the toolmakers. “There can be little question that Mr. Gass and the SawStop company primarily are motivated by their own monetary gain,” the institute declared in comments filed with the CPSC in March 2012, “rather than purely to improve public safety.” (SawStop isn’t the only company with an interest in promoting its saw-safety device: The Massachusetts-based Whirlwind Tool says it has developed a “proximity detection” system that will shut down a saw when a hand comes close to the blade.)

The industry also reminded the commission of a legal constraint that could make regulating it extremely difficult. Legally, the commission must defer to voluntary standards that could adequately reduce safety risks. By revising its voluntary standards or by simply working on revisions, the power tool industry might be able to forestall regulation indefinitely. The industry has made a couple of changes to its safety standards since SawStop was introduced. A 2005 revision provided for use of a riving knife, another in 2007 called for an improved blade guard. Hundreds of thousands of saws with the new guard are now in use. Therefore, the industry has insisted, the CPSC must investigate the impact of these changes before adopting any new regulations. The agency has agreed to study the new guards.

Ann Brown, who left the CPSC chairmanship in 2001 soon after giving the commendation to SawStop, says she is “shocked” that the issue remains unresolved. “The industry has managed to delay every step of the way,” she says. Former commission chairman Stratton is not surprised. “How could I be, after being there and experiencing working at the agency?” he asks. “The way the law is written, there’s a lot of hurdles to get over to get a regulation passed.”

Expecting little action from the CPSC, SawStop tried another way to move ahead. Last year, it lobbied the California legislature to pass a bill requiring injury reduction technology for all table saws sold in the state. California is such a huge market that when companies are forced to meet its design standards, they sometimes apply the changes across entire product lines. The bill was defeated, however.

Gass admits that SawStop could make plenty of money if a table saw standard were adopted, but he says it’s making good money just selling saws. “I feel like I’m doing a good thing,” he says. But he says he doesn’t take “a lot of moral credit” for inventing and promoting his safety device. “I’m doing what I also think is in my financial interest.”

Lilly Fowler of FairWarning contributed to this story. FairWarning is a Los Angeles-based nonprofit investigative news organization focused on public health and safety issues.

Headshot of Editor in Chief of Mother Jones, Clara Jeffery

It sure feels that way to me, and here at Mother Jones, we’ve been thinking a lot about what journalism needs to do differently, and how we can have the biggest impact.

We kept coming back to one word: corruption. Democracy and the rule of law being undermined by those with wealth and power for their own gain. So we're launching an ambitious Mother Jones Corruption Project to do deep, time-intensive reporting on systemic corruption, and asking the MoJo community to help crowdfund it.

We aim to hire, build a team, and give them the time and space needed to understand how we got here and how we might get out. We want to dig into the forces and decisions that have allowed massive conflicts of interest, influence peddling, and win-at-all-costs politics to flourish.

It's unlike anything we've done, and we have seed funding to get started, but we're looking to raise $500,000 from readers by July when we'll be making key budgeting decisions—and the more resources we have by then, the deeper we can dig. If our plan sounds good to you, please help kickstart it with a tax-deductible donation today.

Thanks for reading—whether or not you can pitch in today, or ever, I'm glad you're with us.

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British Prime Minister David Cameron Comes Clean About “Panama Papers”

Dan Kitwood/AP

For indispensable reporting on the coronavirus crisis, the election, and more, subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily newsletter.

Just days after dismissing the revelation that his late father managed an offshore fund, calling it a “private matter,” British Prime Minister David Cameron on Thursday admitted to having profited from the very same fund. According to Cameron, he sold his investments for £31,500 (around $44,300) before becoming Prime Minister.

“I want to be as clear as I can about the past, about the present, about the future because frankly I don’t have anything to hide,” Cameron told ITV News.

Cameron’s admission contrasts with earlier statements he made concerning last weekend’s massive Panama Papers leak. The 11.5 million files from the Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonesca traced a number of international leaders and their allies to complex offshore banking arrangements to avoid paying millions in taxes.

Since the leak, Cameron has repeatedly evaded reporters’ questions about whether he profited from his father Ian Cameron’s offshore trust. When asked by Sky News on Tuesday about whether he benefited from the fund at the time, or stood to earn profits in the future, Cameron only answered in present day terms: “I have no shares, no offshore trusts, no offshore funds, nothing like that.”

Cameron’s concession is the latest development in the “Panama Papers” leak. After being named in the documents, Icelandic Prime Minister Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson and Austrian banking CEO Michael Grahammer have both resigned from their posts. The offices of FIFA’s newly-minted president have also been raided.

Headshot of Editor in Chief of Mother Jones, Clara Jeffery

It sure feels that way to me, and here at Mother Jones, we’ve been thinking a lot about what journalism needs to do differently, and how we can have the biggest impact.

We kept coming back to one word: corruption. Democracy and the rule of law being undermined by those with wealth and power for their own gain. So we're launching an ambitious Mother Jones Corruption Project to do deep, time-intensive reporting on systemic corruption, and asking the MoJo community to help crowdfund it.

We aim to hire, build a team, and give them the time and space needed to understand how we got here and how we might get out. We want to dig into the forces and decisions that have allowed massive conflicts of interest, influence peddling, and win-at-all-costs politics to flourish.

It's unlike anything we've done, and we have seed funding to get started, but we're looking to raise $500,000 from readers by July when we'll be making key budgeting decisions—and the more resources we have by then, the deeper we can dig. If our plan sounds good to you, please help kickstart it with a tax-deductible donation today.

Thanks for reading—whether or not you can pitch in today, or ever, I'm glad you're with us.

Signed by Clara Jeffery

Clara Jeffery, Editor-in-Chief

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Tuesday Crochet TIps

Tuesday Crochet Tip: Yarn Tension

You have a hook and some yarn, and now it’s time to start crocheting. One of the first things every beginner has to learn is how to hold their yarn. Before you begin, it may help to understand the purpose of threading the yarn through your support hand.

In much the same way that you thread a sewing machine to create and maintain the proper amount of tension on the thread so that stitches are even as you sew, you thread the yarn through your fingers to create even tension on the yarn so your crochet stitches have a uniformity they would otherwise lack.

This concept sounds so simple, however, in practice, I found it to be one of the more difficult aspects of crocheting to master. At first I crocheted so tightly I bent hooks. As I was trying to adjust, I then had patches that were tight and others loose, making my work look uneven. Finally, I settled into a steadier flow and my work became even and uniform.

Finding that sweet spot can present a challenge for some crocheters, but here are some tips to help you adapt.

How I hold yarn when crocheting
How I hold the yarn now
How I learned to hold the yarn
How I was taught to hold the yarn

Hold your yarn and hook the same way every time

There are a dozen ways to hold your hook and another dozen options for your yarn. I’m of the opinion that there is no right or wrong way, simply the way that works best for you. But if your way is creating too much or too little tension, try some of the other methods.

My teacher taught me to thread my yarn over my pinky, under the ring and middle finger, then over the index. But I found I wasn’t getting enough tension that way. With a little experimentation, I realized that I needed to change my methods a little to get the desired results. I now loop the yarn around my pinky so it does a full circle as it rounds that finger, then under the ring and middle, over the index. That creates a little more tension on the yarn that works for me.

Do what you have to do to accommodate your crocheting style.

Crochet with the same hook throughout a project.

Obviously you want to stay with the same size hook throughout a project (unless the pattern specifies a change for a specific reason) but even a minor change in the hook can make a difference in your stitch. Once I start a project, I don’t usually put the hook away. I simply weave it into the project or skein of yarn and leave it with the project. That way if I get busy, I don’t forget which hook I was using and change mid-project. It really does make a difference.

Sit in the same location if possible.

I know it seems insignificant, however, changing where or how you sit when you crochet can cause variations in your crocheting. A chair with armrests might have you moving slightly different than a seat where your elbows are not propped. Leaning to one side or the other can limit or alter your movement, changing your stitches. Keep the lighting consistent as well, as this seems to have an impact on some projects.

Overall, the best advice is to find the method that works best for you, then be consistent in how you crochet and that will help you achieve consistency in your work and stitches. It can take some time and you may complete a few projects before you start to feel like you’re learning to control your yarn tension. But don’t give up! Keep working at it and soon you will have beautifully smooth stitches with even tension.

Happy Crocheting!


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We help businesses and nonprofits create and increase their digital presence in Philadelphia, and Bucks and Montgomery Counties. The first step in obtaining a digital presence is to have a high quality, professional website.   We build premium responsive/mobile WordPress websites in addition to being a Wix Agency Partner. We also offer all of the  services needed to help websites increase their organic search score in order to compete for the highest rankings!

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Início / 2011 / Firefly Noir 29

a collection of long exposures (and one short one) Look, I had better things to do than take damn pictures all the time, but I had a couple of episodes where the beauty cried out to me and said "record!" so I submitted to the ghostly call.


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Hot shreya stills 3

Hot shreya stills 3
Photographed in Kamala Cinemas, Arcot Road, State Highway 113, Vadapalani, Chennai, TN 600026, India.
Date uploaded: 29. August 2010.
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Game developer in Leeuwarden

Grendel Games

Apply for the job
Leeuwarden, The Netherlands
Job Type
Full Time
Date Posted
Posted 2 weeks ago

We are looking for an all-round game programmer with experience in developing with Unity and C#. We offer a creative, fulfilling and demanding position in which you work independently in a small development team.

Grendel Games

We are an international, award-winning serious game developer located in the Netherlands. We create games with a purpose for healthcare, education and sustainability issues. Our games include both client projects as well as our own initiatives, and combine entertainment with purpose in a unique way. We have close-knit team built on trust, openness and equality.

What you will be doing?

You will be the programmer in one of our three independent development teams and will be responsible for the technical design and implementation for that team’s projects. Each team consists of 1 designer, 1 artist and 1 engineer and each team owns multiple projects which are worked on in scheduled blocks of two weeks.

  • Together with the team and stakeholders you will create the technical design for a game.
  • You will program the game’s code, taking into account re-use of existing modules and libraries and designing your own code for easy re-use in future projects.
  • You will ensure your game’s technical correctness and performance.
  • You have input in all aspects of a game’s development, both technical as well as artistic and design-wise.
  • You will communicate with the client about the technical requirements for a game and gather these requirements in formal documentation.
  • As part of the engineering team you will formulate and iterate on the company’s technical vision for the future.

What are the requirements?

  • Skilled in software design.
  • Proficient in C++/C# and Object Oriented Programming.
  • A strong grasp of vector mathematics and algebra.
  • Experience with developing for PC/Mac, web and mobile platforms.
  • Ability to clearly comment code and conform to specific coding standards.
  • Experience with using SVN or similar source control systems.
  • Experience with debugging and optimizing software.
  • Be eager to learn.
  • Experience with web development, PHP and/or Laravel is a plus.
  • Be able to work independently.
  • Have a strong vision and drive.
  • Have a strong client-oriented mindset and good communication skills.
  • Be able to work closely in a small creative team.
  • Having shipped 2 titles.
  • Having a portfolio demonstrating a range of work illustrating these requirements.

What we have to offer?

  • Be able to make games WITH a purpose to make our world a better place.
  • Responsibility and freedom in your work.
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  • Work with a creative and driven team of professionals.
  • Work in an old Dutch prison in a relaxed game studio.
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a game by Level 9 Computing, Ltd.
Platform: Amiga
User Rating: 9.0/10 - 2 votes
Rate this game:
See also: King Arthur Games, Medieval Games

The legend of Lancelot, greatest of King Arthur's Knights of the Round Table, is the basis for this illustrated text adventure produced by the Level 7 group. The disk contains three linked episodes, each illustrated with several attractive drawings. The computerist participates in adventures derived from Malory's "Le Mode d'Arthur," that covers the period from Lancelot's arrival in Camelot to the quest for the Holy Grail.

Lancelots potentially entertaining story is undercut by its dull format. The interface, very similar to the Magnetic Scrolls system in The Pawn, Jinxster and other titles, requires the player to laboriously type every command. The pictures break up the monotony of screens full of type.

So Lancelot boils down to the same old word-guessing contest familiar to players of Scott Adams, Infocom and other lines of alltext adventures. In such games, the primary source of frustration is knowing what the character should do, but not being able to think of the word the program's parser will accept. The writing in Lancelot emphasizes key words to minimize the difficulty of word selection, but icons, menus and similar devices eliminate the need for any such search in the first place.

The text crawls up the screen from the bottom, a few lines at a time. A prompt tells the player to hit a key whenever there is too much copy to roll onto the screen in one batch.

The illustrations are mounted on a pull-down menu. The player puts the wizard-shaped cursor on the edge of the drawing, holds the left mouse button and drags it into view. The illustrations, though acceptable, are a little sparse. A few additional pictures would have made Lancelot more fun to play. It dims Lancelot's arrival in Came-lot to still have a road cutting through the countryside on the display.

The writing attempts to echo the prose of Sir Thomas Malory, but mostly succeeds in being tedious. The repetition of the character's name at the start of virtually every sentence is especially tiresome. The wordiness also increases the player's reading time, which, in turn, slackens the pace of events and dilutes the impact of the disk's three stories.

There are obviously still many computerists who enjoy this genre of interactive fiction, no longer the dominant form. However, most electronic adventurers have clearly expressed a preference for quests which connect the player directly to the action through the mouse or joystick without the barrier of the keyboard. Those who don't mind lots of typing will find Lancelot an entertaining journey through the age of chivalry. Those who don't like to type should direct their quest for adventurous software toward a different goal.

Download Lancelot

System requirements:

  • PC compatible
  • Operating systems: Windows 10/Windows 8/Windows 7/2000/Vista/WinXP

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text:
Just taking a council request mission and the reward is a new soldier, of rank Major.

Do these "reward" troops get the Iron Will bonus & so have the higher will-power?

  • 1
    This is one that's hard to confirm, but I don't believe that they do. – agent86 Nov 28 '12 at 17:22
  • Yeah, hard to confirm. I've almost always chosen missions with engineers as reward, because that's the most logical strategy. – vartec Nov 28 '12 at 17:35
  • I'd have to test but I'd be surprised if they don't...they don't come fully promoted, you have to pick their skills, so I'd expect it to be as if they earned the promotions in your base in other aspects as well. – Theodore Murdock Nov 28 '12 at 17:59

Yes, they do. I took two of them in my last game, and they immediately had the highest will of my squad. They later became the first to get psi powers.

| improve this answer | |

Yes, but with limited gains. A new Major ranked soldier never got more than 100 willpower with many reloads. But a Major I train myself can have a maximum of 112 willpower.

| improve this answer | |

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