Hil, that woman even wrote a column about another mother who had given up an adopted child chastising her for doing so. It's all very weird. But in the end, the boy is thriving with another family and that's probably the best outcome.

She also talks about using only his first initial to protect privacy, but in the comments on the first article, she uses his full name, and the Today Show segment blurred his face but not the faces of her daughters. And everything is about her feelings and her reactions, almost nothing about the actual child. It just seems odd that she chose to share the story, but isn't sharing what seem like the most relevant parts. (Not that her feelings aren't important, of course, but it seems odd to write about how you weren't bonding with the child without writing almost anything at all about the actual child.)

The only way that the timeline seems to work out is if she were already very pregnant when he arrived, and then got pregnant again within a few months, if she gave birth to two girls during the 18 months that he was with them.

in The Guardian: Will California become America's first failed state?

Yet California is currently cutting healthcare, slashing the "Healthy Families" programme that helped an estimated one million of its poorest children. Los Angeles now has a poverty rate of 20%. Other cities across the state, such as Fresno and Modesto, have jobless rates that rival Detroit's. In order to pass its state budget, California's government has had to agree to a deal that cuts billions of dollars from education and sacks 60,000 state employees. Some teachers have launched a hunger strike in protest. California's education system has become so poor so quickly that it is now effectively failing its future workforce. The percentage of 19-year-olds at college in the state dropped from 43% to 30% between 1996 and 2004, one of the highest falls ever recorded for any developed world economy. California's schools are ranked 47th out of 50 in the nation. Its government-issued bonds have been ranked just above "junk".

Somewhat longish article. Interesting to read a non-US perspective of the mess (although the article doesn't really go too much into the political causes of the mess).

Wow. An article tracing e coli contamination in ground beef: [link] The inspection system seems like not so much a system. And the standard instructions about how to keep your kitchen safe don't actually work -- they found that a cutting board washed with soap still had e. coli on it -- the way to actually remove it is bleach, but all the safe handling instructions say to use soap. And cooking it to the recommended temperature doesn't always work, either.

And the way that ground beef is produced and tested, they might grind together meat and trimmings from five different suppliers and then test the final product, so that even if they find contamination, they can't trace it back to the source and warn any other grinders who bought from that same slaughterhouse. And according to most of the grinders (though the slaughterhouses deny it), most slaughterhouses refuse to sell to grinders who do test before grinding.

The USDA tried mandating standard procedures for how and when beef should be tested, and got resistance from the industry.

But the department received critical comments on the guideline, which has not been made official. Industry officials said that the cost of testing could unfairly burden small processors and that slaughterhouses already test. In an October 2008 letter to the department, the American Association of Meat Processors said the proposed guideline departed from U.S.D.A.’s strategy of allowing companies to devise their own safety programs, “thus returning to more of the agency’s ‘command and control’ mind-set.”

Dr. Kenneth Petersen, an assistant administrator with the department’s Food Safety and Inspection Service, said that the department could mandate testing, but that it needed to consider the impact on companies as well as consumers. “I have to look at the entire industry, not just what is best for public health,” Dr. Petersen said.

Why is the USDA in charge of both food safety and promoting the various agriculture industries? Wouldn't it make far more sense to have the people in charge of ensuring safety and the people in charge of ensuring profit be different people?

I WILL NOT read that woman's article or watch the interview, no way will not nuh uh.

I will report that my little man has so far had a wonderful weekend and is recovering so much better to situations of disappointment and anger (both from me and him).

I will report that my little man has so far had a wonderful weekend and is recovering so much better to situations of disappointment and anger (both from me and him).

That's great.

Totally random Catholic imagery question -- a figure of a woman with a scarf over her head that looks like a nun's habit and wearing a cross necklace is supposed to be a nun and not Mary, right? Because Mary wouldn't have worn a cross necklace? (I know that, logically, without time travel, she wouldn't, but I'm not familiar enough with Catholic imagery to say for certain that a depiction of a woman wearing one is not meant to be her.)

Why is the USDA in charge of both food safety and promoting the various agriculture industries? Wouldn't it make far more sense to have the people in charge of ensuring safety and the people in charge of ensuring profit be different people?

Hahaha. And when those two directives conflict, I wonder which one wins... money or public safety? ...oh, no, wait, I don't wonder.

Yep, Hil, that'd probably be a nun. Mary always has a vaguely nunny (but prettier) headcovering, sometimes with a crown on it, and a long blue dress. Accessories include often a baby, occasionally a flower, and every now and then a serpent being stepped on. If the woman in question is uncrowned, unbabied, flowerless, not in blue, and not stepping on a snake she's probably a garden-variety nun.

Not reading the USDA or the California stories; just glad I don't eat meat, heartbroken for my beloved home, and grimly unsurprised by either story.

Huh. This is kind of cool. For the ground beef story, the Times put up on their website scans of 106 pages of documents they used as sources -- everything from the logs of the grinding facility the day of a particular contamination to letters from executives to research about how effective the various testing and cleaning methods actually are. [link]

edit: the second document is from a FOIA request and has a lot of details blacked out, and then the next one is the same letter that they obtained from "sources" with all the details shown.

That's great, msbelle! And that sounds so cool, Kat.

I'm back from a fun evening over at a neighbor/coworkers. It was a little odd to think I might be the oldest one there, but still fun. Nice to be able to walk there and back (though I didn't walk back, some people wanted to see my house and were also leaving so I got a ride.) ALSO, I spent a long time exchanging travel adventures with this one couple, half of which was merchant marine, and it may have netted me an invite to a party next weekend with a bunch of, and I quote " single really dirty sailors" and I am buzzed enough right now to think that is a COMPLETELY BRILLIANT IDEA.

Other than this evening, day was a bust. Missed my walk due to timing, had to try on swimsuits (mine is having structural failure) and then I get to the pool, AND IT WAS CLOSED. AHRG. First day in a month I haven't exercised somehow. Though I did climb 8 flights of stairs, so maybe that counts. Oh, and I finished murdering the medusa bush. That also totally counts. Took the edge off of missing the pool.

Tomorrow, long walk and long pool, damnit.