Cop Car's Beat

For Bogie

This is what our foundation planting looks like at the back of the house.

From left to right:

Sage is nestled in the corner that the steps make with the porch. You may recall that it has been there for probably 10 years. At the very right-hand edge of the sage is a volunteer tree - some kind of ash, I think; but, if the girls don't want it when they get their house built, that tree will come out.

The feathery stuff to the right of the porch is volunteer dill. Under the dill (can't be seen in the photo) is a red azalea. It gets plenty of water because that is where I empty the birdbath that is on the porch before re-filling with fresh water.

In front of and to the right of the dill (reddish bushes) are three Coppertina ninebarks. In front of the ninebarks are some airplane plants (Chlorophytum comosum) that will be re-potted to spend another winter in the dining room. Somewhere behind/around the ninebarks are some wide-leaved houseplants (nephthytis). There are asparagus plants at the foundation behind the farthest right-hand of the three Coppertinas.

The little "tree" under the fireplace exhaust outlet is a clump of redbuds that I've intentionally kept short to see if the girls will want it. If not, it will come out. In front of the redbud clump, and to the right are three spirea bushes - the larger two are one kind, the smaller one is different. I don't know which is/are Magic Carpet and which is/are Double Play Big Bang.

To the right of the spirea is a red maple tree - came free with catalpa twigs that I ordered and is being saved for the girls.

To the right of the maple are more ninebarks - Little Devil (Physocarpus opulifolius 'Donna May'). The green arc is another red bud that is destined to leave or die (no pun intended).

The far right variegated bush is an Ivory Halo Dogwood (Cornus alba 'Bailhalo'). It is at the corner of the house where the pinons were before I had to have them taken out.

Previously, the area had been a garden patch. At its best, this is what a portion of it looked like (below).

Finally, this (below) is the overview of the area as it appeared in October 2006 before the pinons and had grown very much. I see that it also pre-dates the sage, so the sage is not 10 years old!

Birds in the back

Tufted Titmouse in the bath

Tufted Titmouse flitting in the bath

Tufted Titmouse all wet

Tufted Titmouse back for more

House Finch thinking it is his turn

No bath for Mr Cardinal

Young House Finch siblings

 

Misuse of privilege (Pet Peeve #11)

From Slashdot.org comes this posting:

Stopping Universities From Hoarding Money 69

Posted by samzenpuson Thursday August 20, 2015 @08:14AM from the pile-of-gold dept.

HughPickens.com writes: Victor Fleischer writes in the NYT that university endowments are exempt from corporate income tax because universities support the advancement and dissemination of knowledge. But instead of holding down tuition or expanding faculty research, endowments are hoarding money. Last year, Yale paid about $480 million to private equity fund managers for managing about $8 billion, one-third of Yale's endowment. In contrast, of the $1 billion the endowment contributed to the university's operating budget, only $170 million was earmarked for tuition assistance, fellowships and prizes. Private equity fund managers also received more than students at Harvard, the University of Texas, Stanford and Princeton.
Fleischer, a professor of law at the University of San Diego, says that as part of the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act expected later this year, Congress should require universities with endowments in excess of $100 million to spend at least 8 percent of the endowment each year. Universities could avoid this rule by shrinking assets to $99 million, but only by spending the endowment on educational purposes, which is exactly the goal.  According to a study by the Center for College Affordability and Productivity a minimum payout of 5 percent per annum, would be is similar to the legal requirement for private and public foundations. "The sky-high tuition increases would stop, and maybe even reverse themselves. Faculty members would benefit from greater research support. University libraries, museums, hospitals and laboratories would have better facilities," concludes Fleischer. "We've lost sight of the idea that students, not fund managers, should be the primary beneficiaries of a university's endowment."

 

 

Hunky Husband and I were, just a couple of days ago, lamenting over the sky-high tuition charges* the state-owned universities in Kansas are charging these days. When he and I attended a state-owned school in Missouri, tuition was essentially free to in-state students. When I transferred to the then-city-owned University of Wichita (now Wichita State U), tuition wasn't free; but, it did not cost an arm-and-a-leg or I would have been out of luck. Ten years later, graduate school wasn't free at Wichita State U; but, it was reasonable and by then our finances could afford my tuition. Today, I'm not sure how anyone who doesn't get a full-ride scholarship can afford to attend any university!

 

Well, the universities are not alone in hoarding (and I couldn't tell you how much the state-owned schools in Kansas hoard, not having yet checked). We (collectively) decry huge corporations for what we consider to be their poor citizenship, their lack of caring for anyone but the stockholders to whom they are beholding. Even more, I decry all of the non-profit organizations, be they religious-based or be they enterprise-based. In Kansas, not-for-profit companies like LLCs [from Wikipedia: "A limited liability company (LLC) is the United States-specific form of a private limited company. It is a business structure that combines the pass-through taxation of a partnership or sole proprietorship with the limited liability of a corporation."] and their owners pay no state tax on the income that the corporation produces.

 

Churches and non-profits are so pervasive (and growing!) that it is no wonder we have a hard time keeping reasonable tax rates on the "little people" while producing sufficient governmental income to support the services that only governmental units are equipped to provide.

 

* Tuition (not stated, but these number look like annual numbers to me) for the state-owned universities in Kansas, from College Data:

 

	Kansas	Kansas State	Wichita State	Fort Hays State	Pittsburg State	Emporia State
Equivalent Full-Time Students	19,217	20,169	11,787	11,433	6,236	3,873
In-State Tuition	$10,448	$9,034	$7,265	$4,766	$6,230	$5,746
Out-of-State Tuition	$25,731	$22,624	$15,299	$14,036	$16,336	$17,896
In-State Estimated Total Expenses	$22,880	$20,424	$20,063	$16,082	$17,602	$17,588
Out-of-State Estimated Total Expenses	$38,163	$34,014	$28,097	$25,352	$27,708	$29,738

 

Demographics - Kansas & Nebraska

In a comment to the previous posting, I attempted to guess at certain aspects of the demographics of the people with whom we spent a week in Omaha NE. Below are the demographics for Kansas and Nebraska (only two counties in Iowa are represented in the population, so I'm choosing not to include Iowa.)

The table presents the demographics for those in the photo (75% of all those who attended the meetings) as I guessed them - with a comparison to the appropriate numbers from the census table.

Ethnicity/Race	Attendance   (%)	Kansas (%) *	Nebraska   (%) *
(Non-Hispanic) White	75.5	78.2	82.1
Black/African-American	8	5.9	4.5
Asian	2-4	2.4	1.8
(Hispanic) White	10	10.5	9.2
American Indian/Alaska Native	4	1	1
Male	37	49.6	49.6
Female	63	50.4	50.4

* IndexMundi, which in turn gathered the data from United States Census Bureau.

It's been busy around here

Hunky Husband and I spent a busy week in Omaha NE in meetings with 63 of our fellow volunteers (49 of us are in the photo, below). Correction: Most (perhaps 75%) of the people in the photo are employees!!

We had been home from Omaha for only a couple of days when HH called me at the office to tell me that he was preparing to drive to Peoria IL where he spent about 10 days on assignment.

There hasn't been a day this week during which I didn't have a meeting of some kind or another. Today, it was the funeral of a guy whom we've known for nearly 60 years, who built two houses for us here in Derby. One of his daughters was dearest friend to Dudette during their high school years.

Tomorrow, I go help install smoke alarms in homes in the 67214 ZIP code. More deaths have occurred due to home fires in that ZIP code than in any other ZIP code in the state - 14 since 2008. There are approximately 8000 homes, of which we plan to hit about one-eighth. The troops will check existing smoke alarms if the residents are willing, provide and install new batteries or new smoke alarms if needed. The goal is to install at least 300 alarms.

 

 

Just for laughs

The title of the following posting from Slashdot.org is what gave me a laugh. I could tell them that anything designed more than 25 years ago would probably appear to be sexist. In aviation, our standard passenger was a 160# male and the standard pilot was a 170# male, as I recall. Women should be pleased to learn that, in later years, it has been recognized that both sexes of any age may be aboard an aircraft. I was an "over-50 female" for one evacuation test. I was well "over-50" at the time (about 65) and we found the door blocked, so had to exit through an escape window - onto the wing, down to the ground. I was also the Guinea pig for testing to see whether a woman in high heels had a problem with using re-designed control pedals (I had to borrow the shoes!)

Researchers: The Thermostat In Your Office May Be Sexist 304

Posted by samzenpuson Tuesday August 04, 2015 @05:30AM from the coat-day dept.

sciencehabit writes: If you're constantly bundling up against your office building's air conditioning, blame Povl Ole Fanger. In the 1960s, this Danish scientist developed a model, still used in many office buildings around the world, which predicts comfortable indoor temperatures for the average worker. The problem? The average office worker in the 1960s was a 40-year-old man sporting a three-piece suit. But fear not, those for whom the 'work sweater' has become a mandatory addition to office attire: Researchers say they have built a better model.

Effects of reducing light pollution

Below are excerpts from The Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health. For listings of authors, affiliations, and references, please follow the link to the posting. I found the posting through an article by Eric Betz in Astronomy Magazine, Humans cling to their primal fear of the dark.

The effect of reduced street lighting on road casualties and crime in England and Wales: controlled interrupted time series   analysis                           

• Received 6 May 2015                                 
• Revised 2 June 2015                                 
• Accepted 3 June 2015                                 
• Published Online First 28 July 2015                                 

Abstract

Background Many local authorities in England and Wales have reduced street lighting at night to save money and reduce carbon emissions. There is no evidence to date on whether these reductions impact on public health. We quantified the effect of 4 street lighting adaptation strategies (switch off, part-night lighting, dimming and white light) on casualties and crime in England and Wales.                                 

Methods Observational study based on analysis of geographically coded police data on road traffic collisions and crime in 62 local authorities. Conditional Poisson models were used to analyse longitudinal changes in the counts of night-time collisions occurring on affected roads during 2000–2013, and crime within census Middle Super Output Areas during 2010–2013. Effect estimates were adjusted for regional temporal trends in casualties and crime.                                 

Results There was no evidence that any street lighting adaptation strategy was associated with a change in collisions at night. There was significant statistical heterogeneity in the effects on crime estimated at police force level. Overall, there was no evidence for an association between the aggregate count of crime and switch off (RR 0.11; 95% CI 0.01 to 2.75) or part-night lighting (RR 0.96; 95% CI 0.86 to 1.06). There was weak evidence for a reduction in the aggregate count of crime and dimming (RR 0.84; 95% CI 0.70 to 1.02) and white light (RR 0.89; 95% CI 0.77 to 1.03).                                 

Conclusions This study found little evidence of harmful effects of switch off, part-night lighting, dimming, or changes to white light/LEDs on road collisions or crime in England and Wales.                                 

• ACCIDENTS
                              
• SPATIAL ANALYSIS
                              
• Environmental epidemiology
                           

This is an Open Access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/