Golden State Has Green Jobs Galore available

Northern California's Bay Area is turning green with envy, now that Los Angeles has surpassed it as the nation's leading eco-friendly employer. A recent report shows that there are more green jobs in the Los Angeles area than in any other region in the nation, and the number of green jobs is expected to double over the next several decades.
Most people think Hollywood entertainment is California's biggest industry, and while it's certainly the most well-known, green industry is burgeoning. The research, prepared by Philip Romero, the former dean of the California State University, Los Angeles, College of Business and Economics, shows that the green job sector has grown at triple the rate of the rest of the region's economy over the last 15 years. Green jobs now account for about 3.9 percent of total employment and 4.5 percent of private sector employment.
That's more than 10 times as many green workers in the L.A. region than in any other energy-oriented industry, including petroleum, which many people don't realize is also big in Southern California. Oil derricks are often discreetly hidden throughout Los Angeles, and you'll find them on movie lots, country clubs -- even on the Beverly Hills High School campus.
"The increase in total jobs stimulated by the growth of the clean-tech industry is far larger than California's entire mining industry, and roughly comparable to the utility or aerospace industries in their pre-recession peaks," says the report. "These projected gains will roughly equal the jobs lost statewide in the recession in the electronics manufacturing (high tech) and 'information' (software and publishing) industries."
The report shows that green industry jobs pay better than most. It makes the claim that since green occupations have such specific skill requirements, workers can make, "50 percent to 100 percent premiums over the average job." And that's not just in California -- that refers to green jobs anywhere.
"California's commitment to clean energy is starting to bear fruit -- in the form of high-wage, skilled jobs," said Tom Steyer, founder and co-managing partner of Farallon Capital Management, LLC and co-chair of the Californians for Clean Energy and Jobs Network. "Los Angeles is a great example of what is possible if we double-down on investments in clean energy, instead of continuing our reliance on fossil fuels." Which is saying a lot for an area that has more cars and busier freeways than just about anywhere in the U.S.
So which companies are making an effort to up the green job total in Los Angeles? Vaha Sustainable Energy, Bevilacqua-Knight, Inc. and Urban Land Institute are all hiring, and thousands of green jobs will be created if plans for NBC Universal's Universal City development go through.
The city of Los Angeles itself has created multiple green construction jobs by passing the Green Building Retrofit Ordinance in 2009, which requires all city-owned buildings larger than 7,500 square feet or built before 1978 to be retrofitted to meet certain ecological standards. The legislation also created a green jobs training program. All these efforts, little by little, are helping to turn the Golden State green.

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Oklahoma bomber Norway attacks draws comparison

WASHINGTON, July 23, 2011 (AFP) - The right-wing, anti-government mindset attributed to the Norwegian rampage suspect has observers recalling US extremist Timothy McVeigh, behind the devastating Oklahoma City bombing.
McVeigh, then just 26, blew up a van he had packed with explosives and parked outside a large federal building in the Oklahoman state capital, on April 19, 1995.
The blast killed 168 people, including 19 children and babies, injured more than 800, in the deadliest ever domestic attack in US history, and brought into sharp focus the threat of homegrown terrorism.
Arrested shortly afterwards, McVeigh, a Gulf War veteran, was found to have been a figure in neo-Nazi groups and even claimed to have acted for the "common good" of Americans, as he railed against what he thought was the dictatorship of the federal government.
After six years he was executed on June 11, 2001, but while on death row, McVeigh spoke openly of his part in the bombing and the anti-government hatred that motivated him.
In the case of the murderous rampage in Norway that has killed at least 91 people and shocked the normally peaceful northern European nation, a portrait of the lone attacker has emerged as a "Christian fundamentalist," and links have been made with right-groups.
Widely named by local media as Anders Behring Breivik, he identifies himself as "ethnically Norwegian," and has posted writings at length on his dismay with the Norwegian government and the ruling liberal political party.
On his Facebook page -- since deleted -- Breivik also said he was a director of an organic farming business, which gave him access to nitrate chemicals apparently used in the Oslo explosion that kicked off Norway's own worst ever homegrown attack on Friday.
An agricultural firm has indicated Breivik purchased some six tons of chemical fertilizer in early May.
The Oklahoma City bombing in the United States drew wide attention and even acclaim from some far-right militias.
"Timothy McVeigh is still seen by some groups in the US as a hero," said Matthew Goodwin, politics lecturer at the University of Nottingham in central England.
"Whether this attack (in Norway) will inspire copycat attacks itself remains to be seen. There is certainly the potential for it."
According to data compiled by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) in the United States, the number of dedicated militias with a racist, extremist agenda has increased 60 percent since 2000, from 602 then to over 1,000 recorded last year.
The SPLC estimated in 2009 that such movements were further emboldened with the election of the first black president, Barack Obama in 2008.

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Farewell A ‘Friday Night Lights’

There are few series I can think of whose conclusions occasion feelings of sorrow. “The Sopranos” ended amid confusion and awe. We may miss the narrative and the ingeniously black comedy of it, all if not the actual characters, none of whom you really want tucking you into bed at night. The same can be said of “Big Love,” another of the greatest family dramas ever on television. Though we may miss its intelligent social commentary, we do not necessarily pine for the people in it to re-enter our lives. HBO renders characters ambiguously; we are not supposed to fall in love with each and every one of them.

As a network series, “Friday Night Lights” operated under certain constraints and the result was not only an exquisite bit of anthropology — life in a small, working-class Texas town – but a show in which beloved characters became intimates in our own lives. The series is over now, and I can genuinely say, I’m sorry that I won’t be able to see how these lives further unfold — how Tami and Eric make out in the Northeast, how Tim and Tyra do as a married couple, how Becky and Luke manage his time in the military, how Billy and Mindy will manage with twins.

The world of “Friday Night Lights,” was, for the most part, a world of exceedingly good people. The closest our hero –Coach Eric Taylor — ever comes to being morally unpalatable is resisting marital compromise. The final episodes have Tami anguished over the prospect that Eric might want to stay in Texas forever, depriving her of the best career opportunity of her life. The scene in the final hour, when she and Eric take Matt and Julie out for dinner to explain the challenges of marriage, was heartbreaking for Eric’s blindness to his own hypocrisy. But, of course, he comes around, giving up the chance to coach the East Dillion-Panthers super team and hitching his wagon to Tami’s new academic career. One of the hallmarks of this series has been the extreme close-up, as faces forlorn or contemplative consumed the whole frame. I liked the way the camera was so often pulled back in the finale, putting some distance between us and our adored Dillon-ites, readying us for goodbyes. The device seemed especially noteworthy in the shot of Eric and Tami outside the restaurant. This is among the most intense and difficult moments we’ve ever witnessed between them — “It’s my turn, babe,” she tells him — and the direction, in a sense, gives the characters their privacy to experience this.

Eric and Tami do abandon the Lone Star life and move to Philadelphia. In that last montage, some months after East Dillon has done the inconceivable and won the State championship, they are shown as the East Coast peopl, Eric thought they could never be. Tami is the dean of admissions of a pseudo-Haverford and Eric is coaching football somewhere nearby. Julie and Matt are in Chicago; whether they have married I’m not sure, but we know that they are together and happy. I’d like to believe that they are not married, that they’re saving that for the time when they are at least both 25. And I’d like to know that Julie has transferred to Northwestern.

It’s clear that Tim and Tyra will be together. We know that Tim will be in the hands of a woman who really loves him and also one who will accept his deficiencies and challenge him where she knows he can grow. Tyra wants to do something useful in the world. Tyra tells him she has plans (to which he affectionately replies, “Don’t.”) I wish I could see the extended Riggins family Christmas, 10 years down the road, with Billy and Mindy’s brood and Tim and Tyra and their kids in Tim’s house with, by then, its newest addition.

Vince, we imagine doing fantastically on the super team, and heading to a top-notch SEC program. And Landry, of whom we saw not nearly enough, will surely do something wonky. Do we worry about Luke? Sending him to the military was realistic but I wish we’d be guaranteed a happy future for him. And I wish, in some small way, that “Friday Night Lights” were a cheesy enough enterprise to promise us a reunion show.

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Artscape to Naked Salute Photographer creates

It may not be part of Artscape, but it's still art, says Joe Giordano, who spent Friday morning hanging 12-foot-tall provocative photographs of nude and clothed models from buildings along North Avenue.

"I doubt that Baltimore has ever seen pictures displayed this big," said Giordano, who started his morning hanging two photographs from the roof of the Load of Fun studio at 120 W. North Ave.

Giordano said he wanted to get in the spirit of Artscape, which will be going on all weekend just south of where his photographs were being hung. The portraits, he explained, are done in the style of and as a tribute to German avant-garde fashion photographer Helmut Newton, who unveiled his own "Big Nudes" series of photographs in 1982, the same year as the first Artscape.

"I wanted to do something colossal to celebrate the anniversary," Giordano said as he prepared to hang a third photograph, from the clock tower on a building at the corner of North Avenue and Howard Street.

Artscape officials, he said, turned down his request to be part of the free arts festival. "They said it was a bit too controversial for a family-friendly art event." Undaunted, he got permission from several building owners along North Avenue to display the photographs there.

The photos were shot in his studio space at Load of Fun about two weeks ago, he said. Five local models — Miriam Ault, Emily Wyatt, Jen Tydings, Danielle Robinette and Erin Nelson — posed for him. The plan, Giordano said, is to keep the portraits hanging at least through Friday. He fears they could get damaged if they stay up longer and remain at the mercy of the elements, and he hopes to auction them off eventually.

While no one hassled him while the first couple of banners were going up, Giordano said he was unsure of what the reaction would be to his photographs. For one thing, he admitted, the visual impact was proving less than he had hoped. Twelve-foot-tall photographs that dominate an indoor studio don't look nearly as imposing when hung from a building, he admitted.

"They look huge in the studio," Giordano said, "but when they're out on the building, the building just devours them."

Still, Giordano said, he was proud of his work and remained confident that it would be noticed. And while he wasn't looking to get anyone, including himself, in trouble, he wouldn't mind if the photos ruffled a few feathers.

"If hanging nude photographs from buildings isn't guerrilla enough for a photographer," he said, "I don't know what is."

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sought community's help first Jewish boy's parents

When an 8-year-old boy from an insulated, ultra-Orthodox Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn failed to make it home from day camp, his parents' first call was not to police, but to the Shomrim patrol, a local volunteer group whose name means "guardians" in Hebrew.


Hasidic areas like Borough Park, where a Shomrim-organized search party looked for Leiby Kletzky, are worlds unto themselves. Members have a distinctive appearance — wigs and modest dresses for the women, beards and side curls for the men. They send their children to Jewish schools, speak Yiddish as a first language and shun modern distractions like television.

Yet another distinction is the patrols, which residents turn to first because "they know the community, they speak the language, they have the trust of the entire community," said Isaac Abraham, a leader of the ultra-Orthodox in Brooklyn'sWilliamsburg section.

The search party for Leiby grew to as many as 5,000 people and served as a window into the tradition in these ultra-Orthodox communities of relying on one another.

Neighbors looking for the boy stopped knocking on doors Wednesday when his remains were found and police arrestedLevi Aron, a hardware supply clerk who has pleaded not guilty to charges that he killed Leiby and dismembered him.

Despite the tragic end, the search was a powerful example of the value of Shomrim and similar patrols to their communities, said state Sen. Eric Adams, a retired New York Police Department captain who represents a neighboring Brooklyn district.

"The community patrols have the manpower that can immediately go into the crevices of a community that police may not even be aware of," he said.

Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly praised the group and said he understood that there was a tradition in the Hasidic community of notifying the citizen patrols first. But Kelly said he wished the Kletzky family had called 911 at the same time.

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The day Stephen King came to town

In the science-fiction series Haven, Emily Rose plays FBI special agent Audrey Parker, who arrives in a small town on the eastern seaboard and has to learn how to do her job while dealing with her uncomfortable presence as an outsider. This proves to be easier than the part of her job that requires her to deal with residents with supernatural powers, but still, the outsider thing is tricky.

In its way, though, the fact that the fictional town of Haven is set in the real-life small town of Chester, N.S., made the role-playing a bit simpler.

Rose, speaking over the phone from Nova Scotia during the filming of the show’s second season, recalls last year when the crew arranged her car: a bright orange rental.

“I was like, ‘Really, an orange rental car? Honestly?’ So I changed it, and sure enough next week some people came up to me and said, ‘We didn’t see your car anymore, we thought you had left.’ You draw so much attention that it helps make me feel the reality of what it’s like for an outsider to come in.”

The folks of Chester, and nearby places such as Lunenburg and Mahone Bay, know there’s a series being shot in town, she says, but the relationship between small town Nova Scotia and the cast and crew is a pleasant one. “If we are still on set after nine o’clock, we are not getting food in the town,” she says. “But, if we call ahead and ask them to hold a table or hang on for us, they’ll help out. It’s great.”

Haven, loosely based on a Stephen King story called The Colorado Kid, is the story of a small town, an unsolved mystery, and how the people there deal with its secrets. But the brief, simple story at its root, Rose explains, is a jumping-off point.

“The Colorado Kid is mainly just a forum for conversation about what happens to a town when something does not receive closure,” she says. In the story, reporters are seated at a table discussing an unsolved murder. Another character listens in. Haven takes that concept and goes from there. “We still pay homage to the book, but it’s more a forum for having an unsolved murder that’s eating at the town.”

And what’s eating at the town? Plenty. Agent Parker wants to know what is up with all the people with special powers. Her friend, local cop Nathan Wuornos (Lucas Bryant), happens to have his own powers. And in the Season 1 finale, an FBI agent arrived in town and identified herself to Audrey Parker as, yep, Audrey Parker. So frustrating when that happens!

“We’re going a bit darker this year, tonally,” Rose says. “I think if we had done that right out of the gate, I don’t know if the likability would have been there. But now, you’re already in the boat with Audrey and Nathan, and we’re taking you down those rivers, so to speak.”

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Outbreak reported at Las Vegas resort Legionnaires

Elevated levels of the bacteria that causes the disease were found at the Aria Resort and Casino, a 4,004-room hotel that advertises spectacular views of the Las Vegas skyline and surrounding mountains, they said.

"Health officials have recently notified us of a few reported instances of guests who visited Aria, were diagnosed with, treated for and recovered from Legionnaires' disease," the hotel said in a letter posted on its web site.

Legionnaires' disease is caused by Legionella bacteria, named for a 1976 outbreak at an American Legion convention in Philadelphia. It causes pneumonia and kills between five and 30 percent of patients, sending between 8,000 to 18,000 people to the hospital each year. It can be treated with antibiotics.

The Southern Nevada Health District said a small number of cases of Legionnaires' disease that may have been linked to the hotel were reported in 2009, but tests of the hotel's water system were normal at the time.

Health authorities again searched for the bacteria at the hotel last month after several more cases were reported, Health District spokeswoman Jennifer Sizemore said. She put the total number of cases since 2009 at six.

The hotel said water tests detected elevated levels of the Legionella bacteria in several guest rooms, but neither the hotel nor health authorities specified what water system the outbreak was associated with.

The hotel said it was contacting guests who stayed in its rooms between June 21 and July 4 to alert them of the possibility they had been exposed to the bacteria, which can spread the disease when it is inhaled.

Gordon Absher, spokesman for MGM Resorts International, which owns the Aria, said the Aria's water system had been superheated and chemically treated to remove the offending bacteria, which were no longer detectable.

But he said he did not expect the outbreak to have an impact on business, saying he was unaware of any cancellations as a result and that the hotel was having "a good summer".

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