Boston Globe had an article the other day that I thought was very interesting, and it's away from the politics that I seem to have been focused upon for the last week or so.  This article is about Amish peoples moving into the Unity, Maine area.  It's an agricultural area and many there wanted to keep it that way, and so they have.

Several Amish families have moved into the area, and this is the towns reactions and the reactions of the Amish who moved in.  I think many of you may enjoy reading it.  I know I did.

By Sarah Schweitzer, Globe Staff  |  November 29, 2009

UNITY, Maine - The land was gorgeous. Pastures bounded by forests and overlooked by the distant Dixmont hills. And that was the problem.

As dairy farms in Unity have struggled and died in recent years, town leaders worried the setting would draw developers more interested in erecting neo-Colonials and paving roads than preserving the town’s agricultural heritage. They recruited organic farmers who bought small plots. But vast swaths remained.

Then a little more than a year ago men in banded straw hats and denim suits arrived and started buying big parcels. They built sturdy houses on the hillsides above fields where they planted strawberries and butternut squash, and loosed goats and cows to graze. They started small businesses on their land, turning out metal siding, wind turbines, and furniture, and sold vegetables and baked goods.

“The Amish were the solution that we were looking for - that we could never have dreamed up,’’ said Doug Fox, a neighbor of the Hochstetlers, one of Unity’s eight Amish families.

In a rugged stretch of Maine, where self-reliance and iconoclasm have been long honored, Amish are settling and finding eager neighbors. Amish first made homes in Smyrna and Easton in Aroostook County and most recently in Unity and neighboring Thorndike, in the state’s center, transforming landscapes into scenes that could be postcards from Lancaster, Pa. - byways dotted with pickups giving wide berth to horse-drawn buggies carrying women in bonnets and men with beards. Today, about 200 Amish live in Maine, according to their leaders.

They have come from Michigan and Canada, Tennessee and Kentucky, and other offshoots of original Amish settlements in Pennsylvania. Some are fleeing encroaching suburbs and neck-craning tourists, and seeking open-minded communities that will allow them to practice their brand of ultra-simple living. Some are following a directive to spread the word of their lifestyle and Christian beliefs by starting communities in places far from other Amish settlements.

With their hand-stitched shirts and chaste frocks, the Amish still command double-takes in Maine as they bike to school and carpool to Wal-Mart. But they quickly have become integral parts of their communities even as they observe boundaries to avoid technologies that they shun, such as electricity from the grid. Among some Mainers, there is a small but not insignificant amount of Amish envy.

“I stand here all day and watch them,’’ said Josh Miville, manager of Chase Toys in Unity, a shop that sells all-terrain vehicles and sits across from an Amish farm and the community’s one-room schoolhouse. “And I’ll tell you, they’ve got something figured out that we don’t. It’s the simple life. No power bills, no cellphones, no worries.’’

In Unity, population 1,900, the Amish have found a particularly happy coincidence of interests. The town is home to Unity College, an environmental school that teaches sustainable living practices and lends an earthy quality to the culture. That a group of people with such small carbon footprints - erecting wind turbines to charge battery packs used for powering tools and lanterns, keeping food cold in summer in an insulated basement room lined with three wagonloads of ice chunks from a pond - would land here, strikes many as a perfect alignment.

“You should see how hard they work,’’ said Ron Rudolph, a town selectman and co-owner of an organic vineyard. “I couldn’t believe the houses they put up - in days. And the best part of it is, they don’t drive cars that smoke up the area.’’

Amish residents say the appreciation is mutual.

“I like the laid-back lifestyle,’’ said Andrew Stoll, a 35-year-old father of five who moved to Unity from Michigan and runs a metal roofing business out of his barn. His mother and three brothers also now make their homes here. “People are very neighborly.’’

To be sure, when the Amish first arrived in town last year, they were curiosities, their culture a whispered topic that sent some people scurrying to laptop computers to figure out just what their dress and German-accented English were all about. Residents weren’t sure whether to wave when they saw Amish bicycling along the road, which was now sometimes speckled with manure from horses pulling buggies. Some leery residents asked the town clerk whether they paid property taxes. She assured them they did.

But in short order, they became the cool kids that everyone wanted to know. Recently, neighbors flocked to a pig roast the Hochstetlers hosted. Meanwhile, the Unity Union Church men’s fellowship lobbied for weeks to have the leading Amish men attend their meeting and explain the Amish lifestyle. On any given day, the Amish have their pick of residents’ standing offers to drive them to stores in nearby Waterville. (The Amish in Unity do not own or drive cars but will accept rides.)

“There’s a friendly competition to see who knows the most about the Amish,’’ said Fox, a professor of landscape horticulture at Unity College.

The Amish maintain some divisions. They send their children to their own school and do not permit their children to visit the homes of non-Amish. They are not easily reached because they don’t have phones in their houses, though some have put phones in sheds. Amish discourage phones in homes to preserve family time. They do not read local newspapers or vote in elections. And they often defer to their first language, Pennsylvania Dutch, a German dialect.

But Amish have increasingly become a part of town life. Crosstrax, a funky deli that sells milk and cheeses from local farms, now also offers baskets of Amish-grown vegetables - last week, spaghetti squash from Amish in Thorndike. Amish businessmen regularly show up at Chase Toys, where Miville receives faxes on their behalf. And come Wednesdays, the store is flooded with calls from residents wanting to know whether Abner Stoll is selling his glazed doughnuts across the way that week.

“The Amish don’t so much influence the town as complement the town,’’ said Naomi Caywood, a clerk at Crosstrax.

The Amish residents say they had little idea of Unity’s makeup when they settled here. They were looking for land and heard that Unity had ample stock at reasonable prices. (One family bought a 200-acre parcel for $350,000 and another a 100-acre parcel for $235,000, with money principally earned from small businesses.) They say the land needs work to revive its haying potential, but they have been pleasantly surprised by the town’s embrace of their efforts.

“They want the land to be preserved,’’ said Ervin Hochstetler, 45. He moved his wife, Esther, also 45, and 11 children - now 12 children, ages 21 to 7 months - to Unity from Smyrna, and is planning to build wind turbines that produce compressed air for pneumatic tools.

The Hochstetler home is a study in efficiency, with solar panels on the roof and two small wind turbines in the field. As they tucked into a meal of deer meat and potatoes for lunch on a recent day, their eldest daughter retrieved yogurt from the porch, where food is stored in winter. On the wall, a sign read: “To be content with little is hard, to be content with much is impossible.’’

Still, the house is not without traces of contemporary culture. The baby, Seth, happily bounced in a multicolored plastic ExerSaucer, and when the Hochstetlers hosted the pig roast at their home and neighbors brought bottles of soda and Little Debbie cakes, the Hochstelters did not turn away the offerings.

Sarah Schweitzer can be reached at schweitzer@globe.com.

Hope you all found that story as interesting - and a refreshing break - as I did.  Personally, I wouldn't give up my tech/modern day life like the Amish, because I love the tech and modern day life, but I find it - pardon me for saying it again - refreshing to see folks live their lives as they choose, and yet not damn others for living/believing differently.  If we can anything away from the Amish, it is that we should live our lives, and believe as we wish, no matter what others think of it.

Until next time...

-Wil

By RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON – Senate Democrats face deep divisions within their ranks as they begin debate Monday on President Barack Obama's health care overhaul, with the recent all-hands-on-deck coalition frayed over abortion and the option of government-run insurance.

While majority Democrats will need 60 votes to finish, some in the party say they'll jump ship from the bill without tighter restrictions on abortion coverage. Others say they'll go unless a government plan to compete with private insurance companies gets tossed. Such concessions would enrage liberals, the party's heart and soul.

There's no clear course for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., to steer legislation through Congress to the president's desk. You can't make history unless you reach 60 votes, and don't count on Republicans helping him.

But Reid is determined to avoid being remembered as another Democrat who tried and failed to make health care access for the middle class a part of America's social safety net.

"Generation after generation has called on us to fix this broken system," he said at a recent Capitol Hill rally. "We're now closer than ever to getting it done."

His bill includes $848 billion over 10 years to gradually expand coverage to most of those now uninsured. It would ban onerous insurance industry practices such as denying coverage or charging higher premiums because of someone's poor health. Those who now have the hardest time getting coverage — the self-employed and small businesses — could buy a policy in a new insurance market, with government subsidies for many. Older people would get better prescription coverage.

Most people covered by big employers would gain more protections without major changes. One exception would be those with high-cost insurance plans, whose premiums could rise as a result of a tax on insurers issue the coverage.

The public is ambivalent about the Democrats' legislation. While 58 percent want elected officials to tackle health care now, about half of those supporters say they don't like what they're hearing about the plans, according to a new Kaiser Family Foundation poll.

The Senate debate risks alienating more people because much of the discussion probably will revolve around divisive issues that preoccupy lawmakers.

"A large portion of the debate will be spent on issues that aren't important to the workability of health reform," said Paul Ginsburg, president of the Center for Studying Health System Change.

The debate should start off modestly, with each side offering one amendment. No votes are scheduled Monday.

Reid wants to finish by Christmas; he may not get to.

Of the many issues senators have to weigh, abortion funding and the option of a government insurance plan promise to be the most difficult.

On abortion, no compromise seems possible. On the public plan, a deal may yet be had.

Compare the House and Senate bills: http://tinyurl.com/yeshhgv

Kaiser Family Foundation: http://healthreform.kff.org/

With the Senate so closely divided, this is sure to be an interesting debate.

Until next time...

-Wil

This explanation is pretty easy to follow, and it even addresses a phenomenon I mentioned in my time travel post.

Times Online had an article yesterday about the CRU.  Thought I would post it here for you all to read:

Jonathan Leake, Environment Editor

Answering the question from my previous post on the LHC, the highest energy collision in a particle accelerator to date is about 950 GeV per beam (compared to the 450 GeV per beam produced by the first LHC collisions), and CERN aims to produce 1.2 TeV per beam collisions by Christmas.  Collisions become particularly interesting at 3.5 TeV per beam, as this evidently is the energy level at which the Higgs Boson particle is expected to appear.  According to this source, the LHC is capable of producing 7 TeV per beam.

Fox News has been reporting this week that the Climate Research Unit(CRU) has been fudging reports and deleting e-mails to hide what they have been doing.

Wow...  What the hell?  You mean to tell me that, all the bullshit put forth by the CRU - and other environmentalist whackjobs - was just that?

Here is the article from Fox News(articles are italicized):

Hackers broke into the servers at a prominent British climate research center and leaked years worth of e-mail messages onto the Web, including one with a reference to a plan to "hide the decline" in temperatures.

The Internet is abuzz about the leaked data from the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit (commonly called Hadley CRU), which has acknowledged the theft of 61MB of confidential data.

Climate change skeptics describe the leaked data as a "smoking gun," evidence of collusion among climatologists and manipulation of data to support the widely held view that climate change is caused by the actions of mankind. The authors of some of the e-mails, however, accuse the skeptics of taking the messages out of context, adding that the evidence still clearly shows a warming trend.

The files were reportedly released on a Russian file-serve by an anonymous poster calling himself "FOIA."

In an exclusive interview in Investigate magazine's TGIF Edition, Phil Jones, the head of the Hadley CRU, confirmed that the leaked data is real.

"It was a hacker. We were aware of this about three or four days ago," he told the magazine, noting that the center has yet to contact the police about the data breach.

TGIF Edition asked Jones about the controversial "hide the decline" comment from an e-mail he wrote in 1999: "I've just completed Mike's Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd [sic] from 1961 for Keith's to hide the decline."

He told the magazine that there was no intention to mislead, but he had "no idea" what he meant by those words.

"That was an e-mail from ten years ago. Can you remember the exact context of what you wrote ten years ago?" he said.

"Mike" refers to Jones' colleague Michael Mann, who told the New York Times that the "trick" was simply a way of solving a data problem. In this case, the warming trend of the last century was detected in tree-ring samples only until 1960, but it continued in thermometer readings.

Jones' word choice was poor, Mann told the Times, but the calculations were "not something secret."

The Telegraph has posted some of the more scathing excerpts from these emails, which the newspaper suggests points to manipulation of evidence and private doubts about the reality of global warming, though the much of the scientific language in the e-mails is esoteric and hard to interpret.

Others suggest the comments are simply "scientists talking about science." In an interview with Wired, Kevin Trenberth, head of the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, points out that "if you read all of these e-mails, you will be surprised at the integrity of these scientists."

Still, one notable e-mail from the hacked files clearly describes how to squeeze dissenting scientists from the peer review process:

"I think we have to stop considering Climate Research as a legitimate peer-reviewed journal. Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal. We would also need to consider what we tell or request of our more reasonable colleagues who currently sit on the editorial board…What do others think?"

But then, I find this article by The Guardian in the United Kingdom, stating that the University of East Aglia would be conducting an investigation on the e-mails and the CRU.  Here is the article:

The University of East Anglia is to launch a review into the theft and online publication of hundreds of emails sent by scientists in its climate research unit.

Selected and unverified extracts from the emails have been used by climate change deniers to claim that the scientists colluded to manipulate climate data, causing a storm on deniers' blogs. The charge is rejected as "despicable" by those involved and as groundless by leading scientific bodies.

With less than two weeks before the crucial UN climate change summit in Copenhagen, climate scientists and campaigners are assessing the damage the incident has caused to the public understanding of global warming. Opinion was split last night over how to deal with the fallout.

Bob Ward, director of policy and communications at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change at the London School of Economics, called for an investigation.

"Once appropriate action has been taken over the hacking, there has to be some process to assess the substance of the email messages as well," he said.

"The selective disclosure and dissemination of the messages has created the impression of impropriety, and the only way of clearing the air now would be through a rigorous investigation. "

However, others said an investigation would be a mistake, particularly as some climate sceptics were also calling for one.

Andy Atkins, Friends of the Earth's executive director, said: "Calls for an inquiry look suspiciously like an attempt to cast doubt on the science of climate change ahead of crucial UN negotiations.

"The overwhelming majority of climate scientists believe that climate change is happening, that it is man-made, and that it poses a major threat to people across the planet. We can't afford to be distracted from the need for urgent action."

George Marshall, founder of the Climate Outreach and Information Network, said: "The UEA response has been frankly pathetic. One can only imagine that the UEA's communications team is totally out of its depth. A less charitable conclusion is that they are defending the interests of UEA and are not concerned about – or have not understood – the damage to climate science."

The Met Office, which jointly produces global temperature data with the climate research unit, said there was no need for an inquiry. "If you look at the emails, there isn't any evidence that the data was falsified and there's no evidence that climate change is a hoax," a spokesman said.

"It's a shame that some of the sceptics have had to take this rather shallow attempt to discredit robust science undertaken by some of the world's most respected scientists. It's no surprise, with the Copenhagen talks just days away, that this has happened now."

Michael Mann, director of the earth system science centre at the University of Pennsylvania, and a long-term target of sceptics, agreed the timing was suspicious.

"What appears to have happened is that going into this monumental climate summit in a couple of weeks the other side, which does not favour taking action to combat climate change, resorted to an illegal smear campaign," he said.

"They are going through them and cherry-picking them for any word they can find that is cited out of context and can appear incriminating. I think it's despicable."

He told the Guardian the emails – though embarrassing – did not undermine the body of science. "This doesn't make any difference at all in degree of consensus on climate change," Mann said. "I hope it boomerangs back on the criminals."

A joint statement from the Met Office, Royal Society and the Natural Environment Research Council said: "The scientific evidence which underpins calls for action at Copenhagen is very strong.

"Without co-ordinated international action on greenhouse gas emissions, the impacts on climate and civilisation could be severe."

So there it is.  Two different articles.  One, full out claiming(basically) that Climate Change is a hoax by CRU and their ilk.  The second, more cautious - and with a bit of disbelief - and willing to wait until a review is in before condemning it.  So far, Fox News is the only news organization that has reported about the e-mail leak.  Which is a bit worriesome for me.  They are news organizations, it's their job to report things like this, even if it goes against their political affiliations.

Anywho, I thought others would like to read this as well, so I posted it for you.  I want your take on this.  Is it a bunch of B.S.?  Or, is there some truth to either article?  Are you on the fence on this?  Have at it!

Until next time...

-Wil

A soldier by the name of J.R. Salzman - I am unsure of his rank - was wounded in Iraq a few years ago and has PTSD from the events that occured there.  This month he wrote a blog post about the attack at Fort Hood, and the MSM's reaction to it.  I am going to repost his words here in their entirety, as he has already said them far better than what I fould come up with.

Here are his words - if you wish to read peoples responses to his blog post, the link is provided above(his words are italicized):

I’m more than a little angry right now.  Yes, I’m irate that some sh-tbag Major (“sh-tbag” is often used as a technical term in the Army) opened fire on a group of his fellow Soldiers killing 12 and wounding 30. But that’s not even what is under my skin right now. What is bothering me is the general reaction of our media and those stupid enough to think this was not an act of terrorism, but was caused by supposed PTSD caused at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

You want to know what PTSD is like? I'll tell you.  You have nightmares that go on for weeks.  Mine would always be the same.  Wherever the window was in the room in which I was sleeping I would see a bright white flash. I would wake up screaming to my wife “Get up! Get the f-ck up! An IED just went off!”  Sometimes I would just wake up screaming in agony as I relived the moment where my right arm was ripped from my body by an Iranian shape charge.  (I may not know what childbirth feels like, but I know what it's like to go an hour with my arm ripped off without painkillers (I'm allergic to morphine).)  PTSD makes you paranoid as hell.  “Why is that person staring at me?  Are they a threat? Where is the nearest exit? Why are these people so close to me?  Why is no one pulling security? What was that noise? Where is the nearest cover?

I need to get out of here.”  You lie wide awake in bed at night wondering if it's safe to go to sleep or if you should get up and start pulling security. When I got home from Walter Reed and started college (a week later, stupid idea) I would often stay up for days at a time without sleeping. Eventually my body would completely shut down from exhaustion and I would sleep for 12 hours or more only to complete the cycle all over again. (I still cannot believe I got all As and Bs.)  Since I was injured in a humvee I am especially susceptible on the road to the effects of my PTSD.  I still get nervous and hold my breath every time I drive by a piece of trash or tire debris on the shoulder or median.  I avoid guardrails and broken down cars on the side of the road.  On a couple different occasions I yelled out “tire!” to warn my wife (who was driving) of a potential IED in the road. There was nothing there (no tire, no nothing).  One late night while driving home completely exhausted on our small two lane country roads at slow speed I locked up all four tires on my car to keep from hitting a cardboard box in the middle of the road.  At that moment I would have bet the contents of my bank account it was an IED.  That's what PTSD is like.  At no point in time have I ever felt the desire or need to grab a weapon and go shoot someone or something up.  At no point in time have I ever grabbed a weapon and broken a law because I felt the need to protect myself.  PTSD urges you mitigate the risk of events that happened in your life.  But if you've never had anything traumatic happen in your life, you can't have PTSD.

If you can get PTSD from treating soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center then why the hell haven't more people snapped?  Why haven't all the therapists in physical therapy and occupational therapy, and all the staff on Ward 57 ran around shooting up the place?  They have seen far more wounded Soldiers than this POS ever did. My occupational and physical therapists, like many of the civilian personnel at Walter Reed, have been there since the beginning of OEF.  They have taken care of countless (probably hundreds) Soldiers with a variety of different injuries.  Missing arms (like me). Missing legs. Missing both. Missing parts of the face.  Severe burns. Whole chunks of the skull missing. Missing jaws. Ears. Eyes. Severe PTSD.  Severe TBI (traumatic brain injury) to the point that Soldiers would forget where they were going while walking the 50 feet from physical therapy to occupational therapy (they would be found wandering the halls unsure where they were supposed to be going.  I had a buddy who used to do that walking the 20 feet to prosthetics. My TBI is bad, but not that bad).  

So why haven't they gone crazy?  Because you don't get PTSD from sitting on your ass around Walter Reed.  Not only is it not possible to “catch” secondhand PTSD, but it is not that kind of a place.  I would know, I was a patient there for nine months.  The place is simply not that stressful or chaotic.  When I was there my PTSD got better, not worse.  And I would be willing to bet my dog tags that I saw far more wounded Soldiers than sh-t bag Major did during our overlapping time there in 2007.  I regularly visited Ward 57 to give advice to the new wounded. Other Soldiers and amputees did it for me when I was there so I considered my visits “paying it forward”. I had daily physical and occupational therapy with other Soldiers.  I regularly partook in activities in and out of Walter Reed with present and past wounded Soldiers.  To say that this guy got PTSD from being stationed at Walter Reed is an absolute farce.  The people who are making this sh-t up have never set foot on Walter Reed, let alone met a soldier with PTSD.

If you can get PTSD from treating soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center then why the hell haven't more people snapped?  Why haven't all the therapists in physical therapy and occupational therapy, and all the staff on Ward 57 ran around shooting up the place?  They have seen far more wounded Soldiers than this POS ever did. My occupational and physical therapists, like many of the civilian personnel at Walter Reed, have been there since the beginning of OEF.  They have taken care of countless (probably hundreds) Soldiers with a variety of different injuries.  Missing arms (like me). Missing legs. Missing both. Missing parts of the face.  Severe burns. Whole chunks of the skull missing. Missing jaws. Ears. Eyes. Severe PTSD.  Severe TBI (traumatic brain injury) to the point that Soldiers would forget where they were going while walking the 50 feet from physical therapy to occupational therapy (they would be found wandering the halls unsure where they were supposed to be going.  I had a buddy who used to do that walking the 20 feet to prosthetics. My TBI is bad, but not that bad).  

So why haven't they gone crazy?  Because you don't get PTSD from sitting on your ass around Walter Reed.  Not only is it not possible to “catch” secondhand PTSD, but it is not that kind of a place.  I would know, I was a patient there for nine months.  The place is simply not that stressful or chaotic.  When I was there my PTSD got better, not worse.  And I would be willing to bet my dog tags that I saw far more wounded Soldiers than sh-t bag Major did during our overlapping time there in 2007.  I regularly visited Ward 57 to give advice to the new wounded. Other Soldiers and amputees did it for me when I was there so I considered my visits “paying it forward”. I had daily physical and occupational therapy with other Soldiers.  I regularly partook in activities in and out of Walter Reed with present and past wounded Soldiers.  To say that this guy got PTSD from being stationed at Walter Reed is an absolute farce.  The people who are making this sh-t up have never set foot on Walter Reed, let alone met a soldier with PTSD.

On the 9th of November, he added an update to the blog thanking people for spreading his words around the 'Net.  Here it is:

Update- Nov. 9

First, I would like to thank everyone who has been reading my thoughts and passing them around the web.  When I decided to write this it was not my intention to create something that would go viral.  I was simply blowing off steam and debunking yet another ridiculous claim by our fact-less media.  Second, I feel it is necessary to address my rather colorful language in this post.  A day or so after I wrote this, I went back and reread it and thought “wow… I sure did swear a lot!” As regular readers (all three of them) can attest, I almost never include such expletives in my writing.  So how did they come to be?  It has to do with the way I “type.”  The IED that almost killed me left me with four remaining fingers, only three of which somewhat work (my pinky is just “along for the ride”).  So when I type something long like this blog post, I use my voice recognition software. So I'm not actually “typing,” I'm talking.  When I'm very angry and I talk I tend to throw around an expletive here and there, like any good combat Soldier should to prove his worth with the English language.  Unfortunately, such language tends to turn off much of the general public, and tends to retract from the overall statement being made.  So I decided to clean up the language to a more PG-13 rating so that it will possibly get bit more exposure.  Please realize I am not doing this so that I can get more attention, but rather to protect the good name of my fellow Soldiers and all the hard-working folks at Walter Reed Army Medical Center by debunking some of the BS being perpetuated by our media.  (If you're the kind of guy (or gal) who likes a bit of vulgarity in what you read, you can still view the unedited version right here. Proceed at your own risk.)

I thought others would like to read this as well, however, I posted the "cleaned-up" version instead.  If you want to read it raw, the link has been provided.  As for the pics, they are - of course - of Mr. Salzman while he was at Walter Reed Medical Center.  They, too, were posted on his website.

Until next time...

-Wil