Potty Talk

How do you get people interested in the difference something as simple as a toilet can make for health?

If you're the head of the World Toilet Organization (yes, there is one), or the author of a page-turner about sanitation, or you're part of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, you talk toilets up. A lot.

And, it turns out, if you're in Seattle, which considers itself the home for new ideas on global health, talking about poop and toilets will pack an 842-seat theater on a Friday night.

Around the world, 2.6 billion people make do without access to clean facilities. Diarrhea — spread by exposure to germs in feces — is the second-leading cause of death in children under 5.

More people in the world have access to cellphones than to decent toilets.

Among advocates for better sanitation, the only question is whether to play it straight or joke about the john. Pretty much everyone gives in to humor.

The evening started with a Gates Foundation video that held all the giggle-words. Kaka (that's how they spell it). Doodoo. Crap. I could go on, but if you've graduated from kindergarten, you know how the rest goes.

Then came journalist Rose George, author of The Big Necessity. "Let's talk poop," she said right off the bat. "We all do it. We all think about it. We just don't talk about it, and that's really dangerous."

Poop is a "very good weapon of mass destruction," she said. A mere gram can hold 10 million viruses. A higher consciousness would lead to more effort to improve sanitation around the world, she said. She credits toilets with adding 20 years to the average lifespan.

During the intermission, there was a line at the women's room. Overheard: the usual discussion of whether to storm the men's room. A strident young woman pointed out, with no trace of humor, that limited toilet access at this event was "inappropriate."

Even so, it's hard to complain after hearing Rose George describe a Mumbai slum where there is a grand total of 10 toilets for 40,000 people.

After George came Singapore businessman Jack Sim, founder and head of the World Toilet Organization and the king of potty talk. His group sponsors World Toilet Day.

Sim's big idea is to make the toilet a way to keep up with the Joneses, so that people in poor countries will want to build and use their own toilets. For some, it will be a whole new way of doing things.

Sim strode onto the stage looking like he was at a TedX conference — Space Age microphone snaked around his head, a big smile on his face and a giant video screen behind him.

Sim grew up poor in Singapore, made money in construction and took on public toilets "as a hobby," he says. He's got a three-part plan: use humor to break the taboo about toilet talk, make toilets sexy, and get massive media coverage.

One way to get people in poor villages to want toilets is to give one to the wife of the village chief, knowing she'll brag about it. "Jealousy is a very strong marketing tool," he said.

His parting plea: go out tonight and tell your friends about toilets.

After the two talks, a couple of folks from the Gates Foundation came on stage to talk about ways to reinvent the toilet, such as making solar powered toilets, toilets that create cooking fuel, etc., etc.

Chris Williams of Gates took the humor option. Earning hisses from the audience, he said, "We now have the makings of a movement."

Gotta love Bill Gates.  Hey, Zuckerberg what are you doing?

It's About Time

Questions for the Bangladeshi All-women Peacekeeping Force in Haiti
The International Day of United Nations Peacekeepers, commemorated each year on 29 of May, is an occasion to salute the 120,000 peacekeepers serving in 17 missions in some of the world’s most volatile and dangerous environments. In the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH), the Bangladeshi contingent is composed entirely of women. Leading by example, the 102 women contribute to restoring peace and security in the Caribbean island, with a specific focus on ending violence against women.

Sahely Ferdous

What kind of impact do women officers tend to have on communities in Haiti, and women in particular?

My troops attended trainings on the code of conduct, and trainings on sexual exploitation and abuse. We noticed that the impact of women as peacekeepers is that it strengthens psychological support for victims, so that they feel more comfortable reporting sexual or physical violence. They feel more secure with them than a male officer. We noticed that with women, female victims receive more patience; females can understand harassment better. They can also counsel on different issues such as health, education, finance and household affairs.  

What are the main challenges for women in Haiti today, and have you seen much progress?

The main challenges for women in Haiti are to be better protected against violence and gender discrimination, to be economically independent and to increase their participation and involvement in central and local government. There are changes, such as the infrastructural development in different areas in Port-au-Prince and the relocation of displaced people to better residential areas. More children go to school now than before. But there are still major challenges to reduce rape and sexual violence.

How have you been addressing sexual violence issues in Haiti?

Sexual violence is a major problem in Haitian society. Women and girls are vulnerable in camps of internally displaced people (IDPs) because of the poor accommodation system. Sexual violence has decreased with the implementation of security measures; MINUSTAH, with the local police, conduct regular patrols. The reporting of sexual violence is better now because of the presence of women officers.

To address sexual violence, providing security is important. If a victim of sexual violence reports the crime, the perpetrators may threaten her; if she doesn’t, then they may abuse her silence. So security and emotional support should be given simultaneously.

How does your unit deal with being away from their families, in a country where the language, food and culture are so different?

Yes, it is hard, but the women officers manage. They have access to the internet and mobile facilities, so they communicate daily with their family members. Also, they feel proud to work under the flag of an international organization; it proves their capabilities to work for peace.

As a woman and a leader within the UN Police, do you think women are becoming seen as agents of change?

Our women’s contingent will have a long term impact on the Haitian people, especially on women and girls. Most of the women welcome our presence and activities. They see us as a symbol of women’s empowerment and feel inspired to be established socially and economically.

Only Do As I Say

Elizabeth Warren, who has railed against predatory banks and heartless foreclosures, took part in about a dozen Oklahoma real estate deals that netted her and her family hefty profits through maneuvers such as “flipping” properties, records show.

RETURN ON HER INVESTMENT: Elizabeth Warren purchased this Oklahoma City home at 200 NW 16th Street for $30,000 in August 1993, then sold it for $145,000 five months later.

A Herald review has found that the Democratic U.S. Senate candidate rapidly bought and sold homes herself, loaned money at high interest rates to relatives and purchased foreclosed properties at bargain prices.

Land records from Warren’s native Oklahoma City show the Harvard professor was active in the often topsy-turvy real estate market in the 1990s, including:

• Purchasing a foreclosed home at 2725 West Wilshire Boulevard from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development for $61,000 in June 1993, then selling it in December 1994 for $95,000 — a 56 percent mark-up in just 18 months.
• Buying a house at 200 NW 16th St. for $30,000 in August 1993, then flipping it for $145,000 — a 383 percent gain after just five months.
• Lending one of her brothers money at 9.5 percent interest to buy a home at 1425 Classen Drive for $35,000 in August 2000. He sold the place three months later for $38,500 — a 10 percent gain in 75 days.
• Providing her brother with financing to buy a $25,000 house at 4301 NW 16th St. in 1994. He sold the property four years later for $42,000, a 68 percent increase.
• Giving her sister-in-law a mortgage in 1996 to buy a $31,000 home at 2621 NW 13th St. Three years later, the sister-in-law sold the place for $45,000 — a 45 percent boost in three years.
• Providing her brother with a loan in 1997 to buy 901 NW 22nd St. for $90,000. He sold it some two years later for $106,000 — an 18 percent increase.
• Giving her brother a mortgage to buy 3836 NW 12th St. in 1997 for $26,000. Nine years later, he unloaded the home for $45,000 — a 73 percent jump.
Herald columnist Howie Carr reported yesterday that Warren and her relatives also profited from two additional Oklahoma City foreclosures — in both cases showing triple-digit percentage gains.
Warren’s campaign issued a statement last night: “Elizabeth and (her husband) Bruce are fortunate to be in a position where they can help their family. They have been able to help relatives buy their homes and her nephew — a contractor — fix up houses.”
However, Warren and her family’s private investments don’t seem to square with her public statements about the latest real estate boom and bust.
“We are in the midst of one of the greatest economic crises in our country’s history — a crisis that began one lousy mortgage at a time,” the Democrat wrote on her campaign website, which also decries “a deregulated credit industry (that) squeezed families harder, hawking dangerous mortgages.”

Hundreds of pet owls abandoned...

...after Harry Potter craze fades.

And it’s feared many more have been illegally released into the wild and will have starved to death

Hundreds of owls are being abandoned across the country after being bought as pets by Harry Potter fans.

Sanctuaries are full of the birds now the craze has faded after the release of the final Harry Potter film last year.

And it’s feared many more have been illegally released into the wild and will have starved to death or taken over territory inhabited by smaller wild owls.

There was a surge in demand for pet owls from fans who fell in love with Harry’s cute companion ­Hedwig.

But the birds, which can live for 20 years, take a lot of looking after – and many owners have become fed-up of repeatedly having to clean up garages and sheds of their ­droppings and feathers.

One rescue worker says she is now having to care for 100 owls at her sanctuary.

Pam Toothill, of the Owlcentre in Corwen, North Wales, said: “Before the films were out I had six owls, now it’s 100. It’s all down to ­Harry Potter.

“People saw ­Harry’s owl in the movies and thought how cute and cuddly they looked. Now they are bored and fed-up with all the work involved looking after an owl.

“They are quite costly to look after. Ideally you need a 20ft aviary, and that costs about £900.

“I know it’s not JK Rowling’s fault, but people didn’t think enough about buying an owl before getting one.

“Owls need enough space to be able to flap their wings five times before landing back on a perch, or they get a chest ­infection.

“But we had one lady who was keeping two owls in her bedside cabinet in her ­bedroom.

“And there was a chap with a ­European Eagle Owl, which has a 5ft wingspan, in his one-­bedroom flat. It’s insane."

It is perfectly legal to keep an owl and no licence is needed. But anyone caught releasing a captive owl faces six months in jail or a £5,000 fine.

Thirty unwanted barn owls are among the 170 creatures being cared for at the Sanctuary Wildlife Care Centre at Ulgham, near Morpeth, Northumberland.

Owner Kim Olson said: “When people saw Harry Potter loads of them wanted an owl. They’ve kept them in their shed or garage for a bit and now they’ve got bored and they hand them in to us.

“It’s illegal to release an owl into the wild because they would take over from the native wild owls, but obviously a lot of people have ­ignored that law.”

Harry Potter author JK Rowling has pleaded with fans not to follow their hero and keep an owl as a pet.

“If anybody has been influenced by my books to think an owl would be happiest shut in a small cage and kept in a house, I would like to take this opportunity to say as forcefully as I can, ‘you are wrong’,” she has said.

“If your ­owl-mania seeks concrete ­expression, why not sponsor an owl at a bird ­sanctuary where you can visit and know that you have secured him or her a happy, healthy life.”

The Harry Potter owl craze echoes that of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle film in the early 1990s, when thousands of ­unwanted pet terrapins were dumped in Britain’s rivers, canals and lakes.

Why Women Will Rule the Economy of the Future

If you wanted to sum up today's labor market in a single equation, it might go something like this: education = earning power. It's not as ironclad as e=mc², but by and large, the higher your degree, the more income you can make, and the better your chance of staying employed. 

If the equation holds, women are poised to dominate our workforce in the coming years. With each passing decade, more Americans have gone to school and earned a higher degree. But as shown in this chart below, which I compiled from data in a pair of annual reports released by the National Center for Education Statistics, nearly all of that progress since 1975 has been among females (in GREEN).

Women passed men in bachelor's attainment in 1995 and haven't looked back since. By 2000, a higher share of females were earning Master's degrees, where they now out-compete males 8.8 percent to 5.1 percent. The pattern has been similar across every racial demographic. Among whites, blacks, Hispanics, and Asians, women have simply made more progress.  

As Hanna Rosin once pointed out in "The End of Men," women do have a somewhat greater economic incentive than men to go to school. A young male with only a high school diploma earns $32,000 a year on average, whereas a young woman only makes about $25,000. But that doesn't change the obvious gains both genders reap from growing to school. If there's any upside for men in this data, it's that their educational attainment numbers have begun inching up in the last few years after stagnating for decades. Once on campus, they also still dominate highly-paid fields such as engineering and the sciences. But the more women who flock to higher education, the more headway we can expect them to make in those areas as well. For more than 35 years, women have made almost all the progress on campus. And there's no sign that's going to change soon. 

Not Sure I Need To Know This

NASA Predicts Our Galaxy Will Merge With Another In 6 Billion  Years

A great galaxy mashup will occur in 6 billion years when our galaxy, the Milky Way, collides with the nearby Andromeda galaxy, according to the first reliable determination of Andromeda’s sideways motion, made using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. 

The galactic union isn’t expected to result in the destruction of Earth, the Sun, or any other planet in the solar system. In fact, no stars whatsoever are expected to collide becauase they are so far apart within each system. But Earth’s night sky is expected to undergo a “spectacular evolution,” according to NASA scientists, who gave a press conference on the new findings on Thursday.

Beating the old 'Feelings' record...

The word ‘never’ is said a total of 73 times in the Justin Bieber song “Never Say Never”.




This comes out to a ‘never’ uttered once every 3.15 seconds! And if you don’t count the 40-second rap interlude by Jaden Smith (in which no ‘nevers’ are spoken), ‘never’ is said every 2.6 seconds throughout the song! I’ll tell you one thing though - I NEVER want to have to listen to this song again...counting those was the worst.