Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 182

Look up at the super blue blood full moon Jan. 31 ��� here���s what you���ll see and why

The "supermoon" rising over Dubai on January 1, 2018 (Credit: Getty/Giuseppe Cacace)

During the early hours of Jan. 31, there will be a full moon, a total lunar eclipse, a blue moon and a supermoon ��� all at the same time. None of these things is really all that unusual by itself. What is rare is that they���re happening all together on one day.

What makes the moon look full?

Like the Earth, half the moon is illuminated by the sun at any one time. The moon orbits around the Earth and as a result we see different amounts of the lit-up side.

The phases of the moon visible from Earth are related to its revolution around our planet.

Orion 8, CC BY-SA

A full moon is when we see its entire lit-up side. This occurs every 29.5 days, when the moon is directly opposite the sun relative to the Earth. Jan. 31 will be our next full moon in the lunar cycle.

What���s a lunar eclipse?

The moon���s orbit is tilted by about 5 degrees relative to the Earth���s orbit. So, most of the time the moon ends up a little above or below the path Earth follows as it revolves around the sun. But twice in each lunar cycle, the moon does cross into our planet���s orbital plane.

A lunar eclipse happens when the moon is completely in the Earth���s shadow.

Tomruen, CC BY-SA

If that crossing corresponds to a full moon, the moon will pass into the Earth���s shadow, resulting in a total lunar eclipse. Since the moon needs to be behind the Earth, relative to the sun, a lunar eclipse can only happen on a full moon.

To see the phenomenon, you need to be on the night side of the Earth; this eclipse will be visible mostly in Asia, Australia, the Pacific and North America. But don���t worry if you miss it, lunar eclipses happen on average a couple times a year. The next one visible in North America will be on Jan. 21, 2019.

A blue moon that looks red

When a lunar eclipse happens, the moon appears to darken as it moves into the Earth���s shadow called the umbra. When the moon is all the way in shadow it doesn���t go completely dark; instead, it looks red due to a process called Rayleigh scattering. The gas molecules of Earth���s atmosphere scatter bluer wavelengths of light from the sun, while redder wavelengths pass straight through.

This is why we have blue skies and red sunrises and sunsets. When the sun is high in the sky, red light passes straight through to the ground while blue light is scattered in every direction, making it more likely to hit your eye when you look around. During a sunset, the angle of the sun is lower in the sky and that red light instead passes directly into your eyes while the blue light is scattered away from your line of sight.

In the case of a lunar eclipse, the sunlight that makes it around Earth passes through our atmosphere and is refracted toward the moon. Blue light is filtered out, leaving the moon looking reddish during an eclipse.

On top of it all, the Jan. 31 full moon is also a considered a blue moon. There are two different definitions of blue moon. The first is any time a second full moon occurs in a single month. Since there are 29.5 days between two full moons, we usually only end up with one per month. With most months longer than 29.5 days, it occasionally works out that we have two full moons. We already had one on the first of this month and our second will be Jan. 31, making it a blue moon. With this definition our next blue moon is in March, leaving February with no full moon this year.

The second definition of a blue moon states it���s the third moon in a season in which there are four moons, which happens about every 2.7 years. We���ll only have three this winter, so the Jan. 31 full moon won���t be blue by this definition. Stargazers will need to wait until May 18, 2019, for a blue moon that fits this older, original definition.

A supersized supermoon

Finally, to add the cherry on top, this will also be a supermoon. The moon���s orbit is not perfectly circular, meaning its distance from Earth varies as it goes through one cycle. The closest point in its orbit is called the perigee. A full moon that happens near perigee is called a supermoon by some.

This happened with our full moon earlier this month on Jan. 1 and will again on Jan. 31.

Its proximity makes it seem a little bit bigger and brighter than usual, but that���s the extent of its effects on Earth. The distinction is usually hard to notice unless you���re looking at two pictures side by side.

There are long traditions of giving . This being a bigger, brighter, reddish-looking blue moon, perhaps we should call the next full moon the super purple moon. The moon will not actually appear purple, nor will have it a cape ��� but Jan. 31 is a great time to gaze up and enjoy the night sky.

Shannon Schmoll, Director, Abrams Planetarium, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Michigan State University

EPA to withdraw proposal to reverse Bristol Bay protection

(Credit: Gertjan Hooijer via Shutterstock)

The latest move made by the Environmental Protection Agency is surely a win for environmental activists.

CNN reports the EPA is withdrawing its proposal to “reverse clean water safeguards” for the Bristol Bay region,��which was intended to make room for a gold and copper mine to be built by Pebble Limited Partnership.

The Bristol Bay watershed, which has been protected by an Obama administration EPA protection since 2014, supplies “half of the world’s sockeye salmon” according to CNN.

The Obama administration issued the protection after a peer-reviewed study��found the region “would result in complete loss of fish habitat due to elimination, dewatering, and fragmentation of streams, wetlands, and other aquatic resources.”

The report also revealed that the ecological resources from the area supported 4,000-year-old indigenous cultures and provided 14,000 full-time and part-time jobs.

EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, according to CNN, ordered staff to reverse the protection after an October 2017 meeting with the CEO of Pebble Limited Partnership, Tom Collier.��Once CNN broke the news about the meeting, a letter surfaced���signed by 40 Democratic lawmakers���expressing the threat The Pebble Mine would have on the region.

���The EPA���s plan to reverse clean water safeguards is egregious and inconsistent with science, and frankly, inconsistent with basic logic,��� the��letter stated. ���The Pebble Mine directly threatens our maritime economy and thousands of American jobs that rely on this world-class fishery. We ask you to listen to America���s fishermen and businesses and reverse EPA���s decision to undo strong protections and clean water safeguards in Bristol Bay.���

Pruitt has reportedly had a change of heart though. According to CNN, he said in a statement on Friday:

“It is my judgment at this time that any mining projects in the region likely pose a risk to the abundant natural resources that exist there. Until we know the full extent of that risk, those natural resources and world-class fisheries deserve the utmost protection.”

How do I keep my kid safe on the internet?

Little girl with computer (Credit: Alexander Mak via Shutterstock)

Internet safety goes��way beyond protecting kids from strangers or blocking inappropriate content. It’s about helping your kids use the internet productively and practice��safe, responsible online behavior����� especially when you’re not there to answer their questions or check in on where they’ve ventured. Keep in mind that what may seem like basic knowledge to parents is new to kids just getting started in the digital world. Having a conversation��before your kid embarks online��helps set expectations and establish ground rules. Here are the basic guidelines to share with your kid:

Follow your family’s rules about when and where to use the internet.
Be polite, kind, and respectful.
Understand a website’s rules, and know how to flag other users for misbehavior.
Recognize “red flags,” including someone asking you personal questions such as your name and address.
Never share your name, your school’s name, your age, your phone number, or your email or home address with strangers.
Never send pictures to strangers.
Keep passwords private (except from parents).
Never open a message from a stranger; it may contain a virus that can harm a computer.
Immediately tell an adult if something mean or creepy happens.

Innocent on death row: The day I got the call that set me free

Anthony Graves (Credit: Gerald Seroy)

The cell was cold and familiar. I���d been back in Burleson County Jail for more than four years by then, waiting for the resolution of a nightmare I���d thought was over. Bisecting the cell was a long metal table that in another world might have been a picnic table covered with greasy goodies from some well-tended grill. It was hard to imagine this table filled with friends and family, though. I had none in Burleson. I was a ���danger��� to the hardened inmate population, or so the state said.

Solitary is where they put someone charged with a capital offense, and I was the only capital inmate Burleson had, so it was me alone in solitary, and the double isolation made it worse. The cell was big enough to house four inmates; it was like a big empty warehouse. I felt isolated not only because of my physical surroundings, but because I didn���t know anyone in Burleson, and it was obvious that everyone in the jail had been instructed not to talk to me. I was the death row inmate, the branding that had determined so much about the quality of my life for years. It was like being a celebrity of the wrong kind, for all the wrong reasons, and all eyes looking at me knew my infamous status. The feeling of being constantly judged was an extra layer of punishment in the midst of an already unthinkable situation: I was on track to be executed by the State of Texas for a crime I knew nothing about and did not commit.

My jail cell was secluded and also cold���so cold that I walked around wrapped in my blanket every day to keep my body temperature up. I talked my thoughts out loud just to hear my own voice. When an officer would come to my cell, I would try to engage him or her in conversation just to interact with another human being. Some would stay and talk for a while, but not often. People never understand how truly important human contact is until it is taken away. I had no human contact. The windows had blinds on them from the outside so that I couldn���t look out into the hallway, but someone in the hallway could open the blinds at any time and look in at me. A toilet and shower sat behind a spare metal partition, giving the illusion of privacy. But it was only an illusion. I felt like a creature on display. That is something that is taken for granted on the outside: the expectation of being treated decently.

Of the two sets of steel bunk beds up against the back wall, the bed at the bottom right was the only one covered with a thin plastic mattress. They didn���t issue pillows so I ended up balling my clothes and sleeping with them under my head instead. A pay phone hung along the side of the wall beside the seatless toilet bowl. I could use the phone to make collect calls to my family, but the calls were exorbitantly expensive. The color of the cell was light gray, with food stains and small graffiti covering the walls. The whole place smelled mildewy and just plain foul.

A television sat on top of a stand that was mounted on the wall. I could watch the local news and shows that came on the basic channels. Silence had become my worst enemy.

I was only existing in life, waiting for my fate to be determined by other people. There was nothing to do, no obvious way to become engaged in anything. The hours of nothing interrupted by monotonous routine can literally drive a man insane.

I was desperate for human contact. I needed help and to feel the power of being connected to something larger than myself. That was the danger I had sensed from the very beginning. Not the physical kind; this was mental. I was balanced on the razor���s edge, and it wouldn���t take much to push me into not caring about myself anymore. I knew that if that happened, I would simply be killed by the state, my life eliminated before I had the chance to grow into a person with something to contribute to the world. I hadn���t quite discovered that self yet. I didn���t want to die before I had the chance.

In order to survive, I distracted myself from my immediate surroundings by withdrawing inward, which is not my natural disposition���but then, these were unusual times. By going inside myself, I escaped the smell, the awful toneless grays encircling me, the chill of the steel, the lack of humanity. I learned to be a community of one. I could only control the tiniest elements of my existence. And so I���d turned to letter writing as a way to lift the suffocating walls of isolation, one bit of communication at a time.

The metal table was bolted to the concrete floor, with steel benches on either side, and seated on one of these benches is where I found myself most of the day. I wrote countless letters at this table. I wrote letters to family, friends, and my attorneys. I wrote to remind people that I needed their help in saving my life. I had developed relationships with people as far away as Paris, Switzerland, Germany, Sweden, Africa, and Norway. These people had written to me while I was on death row, and some had even come to visit me. They ended up becoming my extended family. They stood with me for years and fought the good fi ght. I don���t know what would have happened to my mental state if it hadn���t been for all the love and support that my European allies showed me. At the start, I didn���t realize how vital that support would be.

From the moment of my arrest on a charge of multiple homicide, I���d maintained my innocence, refusing to believe the justice system would fail me, that the state could actually kill me for a crime I did not commit. There were others who agreed, most recently Pamela Colloff of Texas Monthly magazine, who had written a moving expos�� on my case.

On this day, I sat at my metal writing table, responding to a letter Pamela had written me requesting information for a follow-up article she was preparing about my case. ���They���re either going to have to kill me or set me free,��� I wrote. ���But if they kill me, the whole world���s gonna know that Texas pumped poison in the veins of an innocent man.���

I was three-quarters of the way through this letter, scribbling desperate words, when a guard approached my cell.

���Graves, come on,��� the voice boomed, his words echoing off the cell walls. ���I���ve got orders to bring you out.���

I was immediately on alert. This was jail, of course, where inmates don���t exactly come and go for any old reason. I had learned by then that some officers weren���t to be trusted.

���Can you tell me where we���re going?��� I asked, but the officer gave no explanation. It didn���t feel right. He seemed to be withholding information, and I knew from all my time on death row that being brought to the front offices was a big deal: something either very good or very bad had happened. I hadn���t heard from my attorneys that day, but I knew there was ongoing activity concerning my case.

���I���m not going anywhere without my attorneys,��� I said, letting the guard know that after years of being jerked around in the system, I knew good and well that Gideon v. Wainwright entitled me to counsel. My nervousness grew as we turned the corner and came to a large steel door with the words interrogation room written across the top.

Sensing my discomfort, the officer dispensed with whatever game he���d been playing. I would later find out that he knew the news I was about to receive, and he was just as nervous as I was. He opened the door quickly, revealing two members of my legal team, Nicole C��sarez and Jimmy Phillips Jr., and another officer, Sergeant Kuhn.

Nicole had been a great champion of justice in my case. In a search for more meaningful work, she���d given up a corporate legal career to become a journalism teacher at the University of St. Thomas in Houston. In 2002, she and her students heard about my case during a visit from David Dow, a University of Houston Law Center professor and founder of the Texas Innocence Network, the state���s oldest innocence project. Nicole and her students had immediately volunteered to help with my case, and took on the role with gusto. In 2006, she became an official member of my legal team. Now, she looked as though she was holding back tears when she asked me how I was doing.

���I���m fine, Nicole. What���s going on?��� I knew that if I was going to get answers from anyone, it would be from her.

���Do you remember how you told me that God was good, when you were trying to lift my spirits about all of this?��� she asked.

Of course I remembered saying those words, I told her; after all, holding tight to that belief had gotten me through some dark times on death row when I thought that the State of Texas might just succeed in killing me. ���You���re going home, Anthony,��� Nicole said, her eyes growing wider as she spoke. ���Siegler just dropped all the charges, and not only that, but she���s willing to tell the world that you���re actually innocent of this crime.���

I didn���t know what to say or do. I had just gotten the news that I had fought for, without letup, for nearly two decades. I���d gone into that room with my sword and my shield, my defenses up and ready to fi ght, but it appeared that the battle was already won. I thought for a brief moment that my lawyers might have misunderstood the prosecutor, Kelly Siegler, or that I might have misheard Nicole when she relayed the news. I had seen plenty of men pulled out of prison and put right back in when one court or another decided to reinstate, or allow reprosecution of, their cases. I had seen the courts take them on an emotional roller-coaster ride, their freedom dangled precariously in front of them before the state ripped away their last remaining hope. My own hopes had been dashed time and again. I feared that if I let myself believe the news was real this time, I might not be able to recover if justice was once again snatched from my tired fingers.

But then Sergeant Kuhn confirmed what Nicole had been saying. ���Graves, do you want to go get your property?���

As the sergeant and I began to walk down the quiet hallway, it started to dawn on me: it���s over. Several minutes later, a forty-five-year-old man with only a small box of possessions to my name���a few books, the legal papers that had helped me win my freedom, the photographs that were all I���d had of home���walked out of the living nightmare that had consumed my entire being for so long and into a new life that I hadn���t prepared myself to start living. I had just made commissary, but getting my hands on that pittance of money would take time I wasn���t prepared to give. ���I want to get out of here before they change their damn minds,��� I said.

Once outside the jail, I embraced my lawyers and tasted the sweetness of freedom for the first time since a Brenham police officer had arrested me more than eighteen years before.

For all the years the wheels of justice had churned so slowly in my case, now there had hardly been time to make arrangements concerning my release. Even Nicole hadn���t let herself believe the state was serious about dropping the charges until she���d got to the jail. Like me, she���d wanted to get the release process over with as quickly as possible. There was no ceremonial proceeding with a judge admonishing the state or apologizing for the system���s treatment of me, nor were there any local news teams there to cover my release. It was only by pure coincidence that a crew from CBS���s “48 Hours” was visiting that day, filming a documentary on my innocence claim.

I had only one thing on my mind as I prepared to get in the car and leave behind 6,640 days of pure hell in those jail cells. Richard Schlesinger, the reporter from “48 Hours,” looked at me and knew just what that was.

���Anthony, does your mom know?��� he asked. It had all happened so fast that Momma had yet to hear the news.

���How about we call her?���

Nicole dialed the number and handed me a smartphone, an alien device developed and redeveloped many times over during the time I���d been locked up.

���Hello, Momma,��� I said as I prepared to ask her the question I had asked at the conclusion of every one of my conversations with her from jail. ���What you cooking��tonight?���

She wasn���t used to getting a call from Nicole and then having my voice come on the line. She started to answer, but I had to interrupt her, the gravity of my words hitting me: ���Well, that���s good. Because I���m coming home, Momma.���

* * *

The��ACLU and the Abolitionist Law Center recently filed a lawsuit against the state of Pennsylvania to end mandatory and permanent solitary confinement for prisoners sentenced to death. Because of his many years suffering the horrors of ��solitary confinement, Anthony Graves is serving as a spokesperson for the suit.��

Trump isn’t crazy, he’s just a terrible person

(Credit: Getty/Chip Somodevilla)

In an age when the current White House occupant has inspired unprecedented levels of armchair psychiatry, Allen Frances remains one of the foremost authorities in the field. As the chair of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) IV Task Force, he helped draft the criteria defining narcissistic personality disorder and other mental illnesses. He previously served as the chairman of the psychiatry department at Duke University School of Medicine and founded the��Journal of Personality Disorders��and the��Journal of Psychiatric Practice.��In other words, Frances knows his personality disorders.

This insight has come in handy as breathless speculation about Donald Trump���s mental state reaches fever pitch. The president���s belligerence, bellicosity and bad behavior have inspired mental health clinicians to break the Goldwater Rule ��� which deems diagnosis from afar unethical ��� and even to call for its elimination. Yale psychiatrist Bandy Lee has��briefed Congress on Trump���s “unraveling��� and��edited a book in which 27 other psychiatrists��offer similar psychiatric takes. Nearly 70,000 mental health professionals have signed a petition alleging ���Trump is mentally ill and must be removed.��� As far back as 2015, psychologist George Simon told Vanity Fair that he had ���archive[d] video clips of Trump��to use in workshops because there���s no better example��� of narcissistic personality disorder.

Dr. Frances, in a letter to the��New York Times that got a lot a lot of attention, fervently disagreed.

Frances���s description of Trump as a man who is mentally fit but morally bankrupt deserves some turning over, in part because it doesn���t let the president off the hook. If Trump is mentally competent, that means he is responsible for the havoc he wreaks, the pain he causes and the hatred he stokes. There has to be an ultimate political reckoning for those behaviors ��� hopefully, one that ends with Trump not just being removed from office, but held accountable for alleged crimes and betrayals.

But what deserves further scrutiny is the discrepancy between how Frances describes Trump���whom he rightly condemns as a ���bad person��� based on all available proof ��� and those who put him into office and overwhelmingly continue to support his presidency. Trump���s campaign platform,��while otherwise notoriously lacking in details, was comprised solely of policies that promised further disenfranchisement and harm to communities of color and other vulnerable populations. The 63 million people who voted for Trump sanctioned this as a means to Make America Great Again. This is not conjecture: most Trump voters were more economically secure than the country overall, and endless studies (like��this,��this,��this,��this��and��this) have shown the key factor driving Trump support was white racial resentment, an overused journalistic euphemism for straight-up racism. There are plenty of white racists who are neither members of the KKK nor the alt-right, who would deny their racism when confronted or questioned on it, but whose voting habits are unquestionably guided by their bigotry.

Frances calls out the ���societal disease��� that helped sweep Trump into office, but stops short of historicizing it as a foundational virtue of a country established in slavery and genocide instead of a recently emergent issue. If Trump is a ���bad person��� because of his unabashed racism, misogyny, homophobia and Islamophobia ��� the defining traits of his public persona and presidential candidacy ��� then a vote for Trump, and thus those positions, says something significant about the morality of Trump voters. How can anyone ask for empathy for those who cast ballots for vengeance and white power because they imagined their status slipping away, even while communities of color continue to struggle in far more life-threatening ways ��� a struggle exacerbated in the last year by the result of those votes? To leave this out of any analysis is as inherently a political decision as addressing it.

I spoke with Frances, whose most recent book is��Twilight of American Sanity: A Psychiatrist Analyzes the Age of Trump, about the problem that is Trump and how to end the distractions that keep us from solving it.

Kali Holloway: You famously wrote the��DSM��entry for narcissistic personality disorder, which has been consistently associated with Trump since he launched his presidential campaign. You’ve spoken about your disagreement with that assessment. Can you talk a little bit about why you think that description is off?

Allen Frances: Yes. First of all, Trump is, without a doubt, a world-class narcissist. Not just among the great narcissists of our day, but among the great narcissists of all time. You have to go back to Nero in Rome maybe to find someone as self-involved and destructive as he is.

The idea that narcissistic personality disorder could serve as a political weapon to remove him from office under the 25th Amendment is absurd on many grounds. First off, it’s a very tenuous psychiatric diagnosis. When we introduced it in 1980 for the first time in the DSM-III, we did it strictly for clinical purposes, never imagining that it would ever be used as a political weapon. It was almost removed by DSM-5 in 2013; it just barely made it into the final draft of the system. It won’t be included in the World Health Organization Classification of Psychiatric Disorders that will be published next year.

Secondly, some of our best and worst presidents have been narcissistic. It’s never been seen as a sign by itself of incompetence for the office. It’s the behaviors that may be associated with it that need to be addressed, not the diagnosis. The diagnosis doesn’t really add much to the discussion. In fact, instead of clarifying it muddies the waters.

Thirdly, the criteria of a narcissistic personality disorder require a whole series of narcissistic behaviors and attitudes. All of which Trump displays with magnificent extravagance, but it also requires that there be, as a result, clinically significant distress or impairment. Trump is a great causer of distress in others. He’s creating horrible impairment in our democracy, but there’s no evidence to indicate that he would meet the grounds of clinically significant distress or impairment to himself.

He’s been rewarded for being this narcissistic idiot his whole life, not punished for it. He has not hidden himself. He is the most transparent personality in the world. Every thought is out there in a tweet. He has been this person��throughout his whole life. He won the election ��� admittedly with the help of rigging and gerrymandering ��� but with this personality on full display.

We desperately have to contain this dangerous, impulsive, irritable, ignorant, despicable president. But we’re not going to contain him by idle, sideline, armchair, impotent psychiatric diagnosis. The only way to contain him is through political action. The ruminations about his psychology, his mental status, his psychiatric diagnosis are a terrible distraction from the political steps that need to be taken by Congress immediately and by the voters in the midterm election.

KH: Just continuing on this thread, you���ve previously said that Trump is ‘more bad than mad,’ which essentially means we’re dealing with someone who isn’t mentally ill; he just isn���t a good person. I wonder if, for a lot of people, seeing a president behave in ways that are so outlandish and nonsensical, we subconsciously feel like a personality disorder has to be at work because it���s so hard to make sense of it otherwise.

AF: Yeah. Confusing��mad��and��bad��is a very dangerous precedent. It’s not at all restricted just to Trump. The National Rifle Association happens to believe that whenever there’s a mass murder, the person must have been crazy. It’s not the guns that did it; it’s the crazy person. They actually work hard to get the mentally ill more armed. They are against laws that restrict arms for the mentally ill, but then the minute there’s a serial murder, any kind of homicide, it’s the crazy person who did it, not the gun. We are criminalizing mental illness. We have 350,000 people with mental illness in jail because they couldn’t get treatment. We’re medicalizing bad behavior.

When the Harvey Weinsteins and Tiger Woods and all the others get caught with their pants down, the first claim is sex addiction: ���I’ll go off for a rehab program and I’ll be cured in a month.��� We’re medicalizing immorality. We’re medicalizing people who rape and say they have mental disorders. Bad behavior is part of the variety of human nature. Only a small portion of bad behaviors are done by people who are mentally ill. Most bad people are not mentally ill; most mentally ill people aren’t bad. When we confuse the two, it’s a stigmatizing insult to the mentally ill. It’s terrible for them to be lumped with Trump because most of them are well-meaning and well-behaved, and Trump is neither.

I mean, the other problem with this is it treats Trump as if he’s a one-off and he’s crazy. It takes away from the fact that we’re crazy for having elected him.

KH: I actually wanted to go there because I know you started writing��Twilight of American Sanity��before Trump made his bid for the presidency. You���ve said you had already noticed signs of what you identify as the ‘societal disease’ that would lead to Trump’s rise.��

AF: Trump is not a one-off. We act as if we could just remove Trump from office, we would return to societal sanity. Trump is a symptom of our disease, not the disease itself. He’s a reflecting mirror on our soul and the image is not pretty. The racism, misogyny, LGBT prejudice [and] xenophobia that partly brought him to office ��� these issues need to be addressed. These things are not just an aspect of Trump.

KH: He’s a symptom of a serious disease.

AF: As Clinton says, there���s a deplorable element to Trump’s support. It’s fueled by an underlying racism, misogyny, LGBT prejudice, anti-Semitism, and so forth. We have to address that, not just make believe it’s Trump’s creation.

There’s another large part of Trump support that comes from economic inequality. Especially in rural America amongst impoverished whites, there’s been a tremendous reduction in life expectancy, a terrific opioid epidemic, an inability to find decent paying jobs, an increasing inequality, the absence of health care, and the people left behind in America are rightfully upset with the status quo. Their message is completely valid. They just picked the worst possible messenger. He’s done everything in his power in his first year of office to betray them with every one of his policies, especially the tax cut and the medical coverage deduction.

Then we have self-proclaimed evangelicals, who are led by hypocritical religious leaders who are anything but Christian. Christ preached love, Trump preaches hate. Christ rewarded morality, Trump is one of the most immoral people in the country today. Christ never preached against abortion or homosexuality, even though both were common in the Roman Empire he lived in. His biggest targets of disapproval were the rich and the religious hypocrites ��� the two groups Trump most represents. The leaders of the evangelical movement have sold their souls to the devil in leading their flock to support someone whose policies are the very opposite of Christian charity and love.

Then there’s a fourth group. The fourth group is the political and economic cynics who are using Trump as the vehicle for their policies. His distracting tweets and bizarre behavior have allowed a tax cut that represents a kind of reverse Robin Hood, a stealing from the needy to feed the greedy, and efforts to take away medical coverage from those people most in need.

So we have four groups supporting him. The deplorables, the disadvantaged, the deceived religious, and the cynicals. We have to look at the problems each presents to American democracy and the challenges each presents to American democracy, rather than focus attention just on Trump’s psychological quirks.

If he were gone and we had Pence and Ryan in office, that would probably be less short-term dangerous for America because they���re less likely to impulsively press the button. But in the long term, they’re more dangerous, because they’re more plausible representatives of the horrible Koch and Mercer policies that Trump is the face of.

KH: I want to go back to talking about the deplorables and the disadvantaged who are part of Trump’s base, because I have a really hard time distinguishing between Trump and his followers. If Trump isn���t mentally ill, but is just a bad person, I have to wonder what that says about his followers. There���s this idea that we all have to have empathy for Trump supporters who have been left behind. But it���s always been true that the people who by and large didn’t vote for Trump ��� people of color and other marginalized people ��� have suffered far more and far longer with far more extreme consequences than any of the groups that feel they are being put upon right now, and therefore voted for Trump.

The conversation that suggests Trump���s base voted for him because of the degradation of life quality they’ve experienced over the last 50 years seems like an obvious centering of their white pain over groups that have suffered much longer.

AF: The way I see it is, I think it’s important not to discount Trump followers because it’s easy to do that. I tend to do it. But we should try to understand the situation; otherwise, we’re not going to be able to reach them. I think some are irredeemably deplorable. The old right types are irredeemably deplorable, as are the cynics, the people who use him for economic and political gain. I can understand their behavior, but I detest it.

Take West Virginia, the pivotal state. It had the largest support for Trump. The biggest margin, 70 to 30. Most of the people who voted for Trump were simply deceived by the 40-year, well-funded campaign waged by exploitive, greedy billionaires that has brainwashed them into believing their anger should be directed toward immigrants or people of color or other sexual orientations, rather than toward the terrible maldistribution of wealth that’s occurred in this country over the last 50 years. I don’t feel angry at them; I feel angry at the alt-right. I don’t feel angry at many of the people in West Virginia who voted for Trump, because their lives are terrible and he made false promises that they believed.

I feel no anger toward the many religious people who continue to support Trump because I think they’re following their leaders. I think their leaders are despicable. I mean, you take someone to provide political support and do prayer breakfasts with someone as uncharitable, as immoral, as deceitful as Trump. To get him their “legitimization” based on a political, cynical, political capitalization. I think they’re detestable ��� the leaders are. I don’t think the people who follow them and follow the propaganda are detestable.

I don’t think the 35 to 40 percent of the people who support Trump are one homogenous mass. Trump said he could shoot someone in daylight on Fifth Avenue and probably 20 percent of the public and a lot of congressmen would find excuses for his doing it. I think that his 35 to 40 percent support now [won’t] necessarily persist into the future as his grotesque behavior alienates more sensible people who are brainwashed by the propaganda that helped get him elected.

KH: When we talk about Trump voters, we can���t leave out that Trump didn’t just win the economically disenfranchised or the economically vulnerable among his base; he won every socioeconomic class of whites. How do you account for the mentality of the voters who are not in any dire economic straits? What is there to justify their votes for Trump?

AF: Actually, I canvassed last weekend in Darrell Issa’s district in California. It was a striking experience how many people of middling means were saying, “Well, he’s been great for my 401k.” Yes, Trump’s average supporter is not the distressed person in West Virginia. Among people with considerable means, Trump is a bonanza in terms of the tax cuts that are fueling this crazy stock-market. People who own the corporate stock ��� the shareholders and the corporate executives ��� are crazy happy to have someone like Trump. His antics cover up, in a way, the rip-off of the tax cut. It’s a pure scam.

Everyone’s talking about Trump’s psychological motivations and not doing the kinds of things [we need]. Why wasn’t there a demonstration in Washington against the tax cuts or the threats to medical coverage? I mean, there’s going to be a Woman’s March this month, but who cares? There should be much more attention to fighting his policies and much less attention on the person and the priorities of Trump.

KH: Earlier, I think the phrase you used is that Trump is a ’causer of distress.’ From the moment he launched his campaign, I���ve been interested in the ways Trump causes trauma and what the long-term repercussions of that will be, especially for vulnerable populations. We have a president who tells children their parents are from sh*thole countries, who is consistently triggering women, who essentially has declared millions of people unwanted in this country. Do you have any thoughts on how we might see this imprint in the years to come?

AF: I think the way to deal with trauma is to turn passive into active. I’ve never been politically active in my whole life. I’ve been missing in action at just about every important political moment up until this one. I think people have to stop screaming at their TV sets, stop thinking about complaining about Trump, and get out to vote.

I think the vast majority of Americans are decent people. The trouble is that a vocal minority is better at propagandizing. Another thing about Trump’s support is it���s completely dependent on Rupert Murdoch. It���s amazing how much power Rupert Murdoch has now.

KH: It���s astounding and frightening.

AF: All [Murdoch] has to do is turn Fox News against Trump and Trump is toast.

Rupert Murdoch, in fact, controls the political fate of America. So we have one person of dubious good will who determines who’s going to be president of the United States. I think that it shouldn’t be like that. We the people have to take back our country. Democracy is a very fragile thing in the history of the world. Even the Athenian democracy lasted for just about 70 years. Democracy is not a given. Our democracy now is under threat.

We only have four defenses of democracy. Congress, which has been a disgusting failure. The courts, which have done their best, but god knows what will happen with Trump’s appointments to the Supreme Court and lower courts. The media, which have been good but have been largely discredited in the minds of many because of Trump’s propaganda campaign. Then we the people. We’ve been very inactive. I’m very disappointed that there wasn’t more obvious pushback in this last year against Trump.

No one ever considered a midterm election could be this important, because usually, things only tilt the balance back to the middle. But this midterm election is different. We may be entering two slippery slopes. One, for the protection of our democracy against Trump’s attacks against it. Two, for the defense of the world’s climate, and what could be a catastrophic and irreversible set of amplifying changes.

I think that it’s a matter now of duty to public citizenship and responsibility to our children and grandchildren. People have to stop whining about his diagnosis and get on the streets, canvas and find a political voice. Our Congress should be passing a bill that makes clear to Trump that only they can declare war. It’s an article in the Constitution. It’s been ignored by presidents since World War II. To our detriment, we’ve been in a lot of stupid wars because of that. It’s time that Congress make clear to this unstable president that it���not he ��� is responsible for declaring war. Trump makes clear the tremendous hole in our government procedures. We need to have a protocol for starting nuclear war that doesn’t leave the button near his irritable trigger finger. He could press that button instead of tweeting in the morning and no general would know.

We need to have a protocol that makes clear that this is a consensus decision and not made solely by what may be the most unstable person in the country. These are political steps that need to be taken, and people need to stop this unsure preoccupation with psychological motivations and diagnosis, and realize that we’re under political threat.

It’s our job as citizens to push back in any way we can.

More deaths reported from this year’s flu

(Credit: Getty/sturti)

The flu��is continuing to hospitalize people around the country and federal officials warn it could get worse.

“Hopefully we’re in the peak currently, since the data is a week behind, or that it peaks soon. Regardless, there is a lot of flu activity happening across the country and likely many more weeks to come,” CDC spokeswoman Kristen Nordlund told CNN.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC)��weekly flu report, seven more children reportedly died from the flu bringing a nationwide count to 37.

“A total of 37 influenza-associated pediatric deaths have been reported for the 2017-2018 season,” the CDC reports.

Since October, there have been 11,965 laboratory-confirmed flu-related hospitalizations, according to the CDC.

This year’s flu is also significant because it seems to be more widespread than previous years. The CDC tweeted that this is the first time in 15 years that “all states in the entire continental U.S. have reported widespread #flu activity during the same week.”

#FluFactFriday: Did you know? Over the past 15 flu seasons, this is the 1st time all states in the entire continental U.S. have reported widespread #flu activity during the same week. https://t.co/ycVdIWwWhU pic.twitter.com/6aGtv16C3S

— CDC Flu (@CDCFlu) January 19, 2018

Some lawmakers are taking action to combat the flu. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo signed an executive order allowing pharmacists to administer flu shots.

“With flu cases reaching epidemic proportions in New York, we must do everything in our power to fight this virus and keep New Yorkers safe,” Cuomo said in a statement. “Once again, I urge all New Yorkers to help us combat this quick-spreading strain of flu and make sure they and their loved ones are vaccinated.”

In early December, health officials anticipated this season would be particularly bad nationwide since it was picking up earlier than in previous years.

���Flu is picking up and picking up early,��� Daniel Jernigan, director of the influenza division at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told the Washington Post. ���A lot of people are getting together in the next few days and weeks. All of those folks who are traveling, some of them will be traveling with their influenza.���

The CDC continues to warn people that it’s not too late to get a flu vaccination.

#Flu activity continues to increase nationally in the United States. CDC recommends flu vaccination, even if you've already been sick, and early antiviral treatment for people who are very ill OR those who have flu and are at high risk of complications. https://t.co/KHXucF48vi pic.twitter.com/7oJK4qbUp8

— CDC (@CDCgov) January 26, 2018

What happens when a meme makes a corporation lose control of its brand?

(Credit: Shutterstock)

When you were��envisioning what the future might look like,��did you ever��think that 2018��would bring a��major detergent brand��being forced to warn consumers not to eat pre-packaged laundry pods? Indeed, of the hundreds of��images that��riff on the��so-called “Tide Pod challenge” ��� an internet inside joke that has led hundreds of fame-hungry online��citizens��to put the laundry pods in their mouth and (usually) pretend to consume them ��� there is one meme in particular that��does a good job summarizing the absurdity of this faux-trend.��It��reads:

1968: In 50 years time I bet we���ll have bases on the Moon and put a human on Mars.

2018: Doctors concerned that ���Tide Pod��� meme causing people to eat laundry detergent.

The ridiculousness of the Tide Pod challenge, surely, has contributed to its virality. Since December, the Procter & Gamble company, owners of the Tide brand, have faced an unprecedented swell of publicity surrounding Tide Pods, their packaged laundry pod brand, as a result of the meme.

It is, in part, understandable; after all, the packaged laundry pods definitely resemble candy���for this reason, young��children and adults with dementia��have accidentally consumed them. While there have been reports of people accidentally eating the pods surfacing since 2013, the eating-tide-pods meme became��increasingly popular after humor site CollegeHumor��posted a��sketch titled ���Don���t Eat the Laundry Pods��� in March 2017. This��might have been the��gateway��to the ���Tide Pod challenge,” a competition in which teens post videos of themselves chewing on packaged laundry pods.

Preventing children and adults from eating Tide Pods is a serious matter. Indeed, the American Association of Poison Control Centers (AAPCC) issued a statement on Jan. 22 stating that in one week in 2018, the AAPCC saw 47 cases of ���intentional exposures cases��� to laundry pods��among teens, bringing the 2018 total to 86 teens.

���We cannot stress enough how dangerous this is to the health of individuals ��� it can lead to seizure, pulmonary edema, respiratory arrest, coma, and even death,��� Stephen Kaminski, JD, AAPCC���s CEO and executive director,��said in a statement.

Despite warnings from the company and public health groups, the��dark joke about��eating laundry pods has become an internet phenomenon. The national press has reported on it. Countless memes have have been��shared about it. Celebrities have commented on it. A pizzeria in Brooklyn has created Tide Pod pizzas that they call ���Pied Pods.��� A North Carolina bakery��makes��Tide Pod doughnuts. And there’s an online��recipe for a “Tide Pod Challenge shot,” made from blue cura��ao, orange vodka and white chocolate liqueur.

Tide Pods are a household name, and now teens and��young adults��everywhere are��seeing the brand’s name in their social media feeds��many times a day. It���s��the kind of publicity that a brand would pay thousands, even millions of dollars to obtain. Except in this case, this publicity is linked to jokes about��death.

The Tide Pod challenge meme presents��a��public relations��crisis that is perpetuated by the speed and vastness of the internet, and it is now totally out of Tide���s control ��� which some experts say could��constitute a��modern public relations��nightmare.

���If the internet turns on you, you have to do a lot of work,��� says Victoria Vix Reitano, a digital marketing and social media expert and the CEO of CreatiVix Media. ���The internet has the most unlimited memory in the world. Tide would�� have to spend quite a bit of money and focus on original content to make these searches go away [in order to recover].���

The quick pace of the internet has changed the public relations landscape ��� putting��brands like Tide Pods under the microscope and subjecting them to��ceaseless public scrutiny as the meme spreads.

���You can���t delete it, but you can have a good response to it that becomes aligned with the story,��� Reitano said.

Erik Bernstein, vice president of Bernstein Crisis Management, said the response to a crisis like this is ���proportionate to the threat.���

���In this case Tide���s PR team has one primary mission — make certain nobody, and I mean nobody, could even possibly think the brand endorses eating their product,��� Bernstein said. ���As long as the brand continues to use every opportunity to say, ���Hey, don���t eat Tide pods��� then there shouldn���t be significant recovery needed.”

The PR team at Procter��& Gamble has worked with social media sites like YouTube to remove Tide Pod challenge videos, and even enlisted Robert Gronkowski, tight end for the New England Patriots, to make a PSA video��warning the public��not to eat Tide Pods.

In an email to Salon, Procter & Gamble spokeswoman Petra Renck said the Tide team��was very worried about the meme.

���Nothing is more important to us than the safety of people who use our products,��� Renck said. ���We are deeply concerned about the intentional and improper use of liquid laundry pacs by young people engaging in intentional self-harm challenges.”

Renck outlined the steps they���ve taken to avert the crisis, including working with social media networks to remove content that encourages the harmful behavior, and distributing a safety message on various social channels.

���We are engaging with people on social media to continue to communicate that laundry pacs are made to clean clothes,��� she said.

When asked if sales had been affected, Renck said: ���We���ve not seen a measurable impact on sales of Tide Pods since this social conversation began.”

Bernstein��said��that in this case, the old adage ���any press is good press��� likely doesn���t apply.

���I don���t know if I���d say it���s a dream come true,��� Bernstein said. ���I would imagine a few people at Tide lost sleep when the trend first began.���

Some men are mad about KFC’s new Colonel Sanders, Reba McEntire

(Credit: Chris Pizzello/invision/ap)

Women are breaking the glass ceiling in the fast food industry.

Kentucky Fried Chicken revealed a new marketing campaign featuring Reba McEntire as Colonel Sanders. She’s the first woman to ever take on the role of the company’s founder���joining the ranks of other celebrities like Rob Lowe, George Hamilton, and Darrell Hammond.

KFC tweeted the commercial, saying, “Nothing to see here, folks. Nope, nothin��� at all. Just the same old Colonel with a new flavor of fried chicken.”

Nothing to see here, folks. Nope, nothin��� at all. Just the same old Colonel with a new flavor of fried chicken. pic.twitter.com/ju2omd07OC

— KFC (@kfc) January 26, 2018

McEntire said in a statement this is her “most unique” role yet.

“I grew up with Kentucky Fried Chicken. It’s part of my story, and I’m so excited to now be part of theirs,” McEntire said in a statement. “I’ve held a lot of roles in my life — sort of like the Colonel himself — but this is certainly the most unique one yet.”

Ever since #MeToo went viral, female empowerment and equality have become a key��initiative in various industries. According to Newsweek, the KFC campaign wasn’t meant to be a “political move” though.

“We���ve always maintained that anyone, male or female, who embodies the spirit of the colonel is qualified to play the iconic role,” the spokesperson told Newsweek. “We were looking for a country music legend who shares the values of the Colonel, a showperson through and through, and a lover of fried chicken with plenty of Southern charm to boot. Reba was the perfect choice.”

Cross-gender acting, when actors play roles opposite of their gender, is not only something to be celebrated by women. It’s another reminder that all actors don’t have to be��tied to playing characters of their own genders. Indeed, actors have assumed roles opposite of their genders in the past. Cate Blanchett played a male character in “I’m not there.” Allison Williams played Peter Pan in “Peter Pan Live!”���the NBC��production, and John Travolta played Edna Turnblad in the 2007 remake of “Hairspray.”

Unfortunately, trolls took to Twitter to criticize the KFC move.

https://twitter.com/Wedonot_forgive/s...

Dear colonel sanders.. I am truly sorry for what we have become

— Ruben Cazessus (@BEBESQUARES) January 26, 2018

The REAL Colonel Sanders is turning over in his grave right now. What a ridiculous joke this is.

— GoPackGo (@NoahMOJ) January 26, 2018

Claims that suggest the late Colonel Sanders was sexist might��weigh some truth. According to a 1970 profile of Sanders��in the New Yorker, he allegedly made derogatory comments about some women. The writer wrote:

He knocks them dead with his flattery, but if you get close enough to him in a crowd you can hear him muttering a running commentary to himself: ���Umm, that gal���s let herself go. . . . Look at the size of that one. . . . I don���t know when I���ve seen so many fat ones. . . . Lord, look at ���em waddle.���

However, KFC’s marketing team says they chose McEntire because she embodies “qualities of the colonel.”

“We picked Reba McEntire because she is a perfect fit for KFC and Smoky Mountain BBQ. She embodies the qualities of the colonel with her showmanship and entrepreneurial spirit,” KFC Chief Marketing Officer Andrea Zahumensky told USA Today.

The day George Harrison walked out of the Beatles

(Credit: Getty/Bloomsbury Publishing/Salon)

The proposed live concert, a continual topic of discussion at the rehearsals, hung over proceedings as an unresolved issue and a source of disagreement among the four. “It was around the second week when the notion came up of what and where the public performance was going to be,” says Les Parrott, in regard to the ongoing discussion of the logistics of the live concert. He continues:

Slowly the notion���driven hard by Lindsay-Hogg, I think���of staging a concert in a ruined Roman amphitheater in North Africa, with a crowd of 1000 saffron-robed locals, grew. The means and cost of shipping the equipment were a major debating point. Huge mobile generators would be needed for the lighting and sound requirements. However, this was all solved by a suggestion from George. He said the production should ring up a U.S. Air Force general who ran a large part of the USAF in Britain, as they had once done a charity concert for him, and he had said anytime they needed help, he would help them. Well, the producer did call and an immediate offer was made to fly all and everything we would need in a massive Galaxy aircraft down to a another USAF base a few hours drive from the proposed location, from where USAF trucks would haul it to the Roman ruins. I think the answer ended with a salutation of, ���Hell, we’ll just turn this into one big exercise; we just love those guys.”

However, one lunch time this all ended. We had all moved into the dubbing suite at Twickenham. I think we were looking at some sound/film rushes and a somewhat ad hoc meeting developed to discuss the pros and cons of the North African location shoot. It was certainly at one point well over the proverbial fifty percent approval mark, with the visual notion of one or more thousand saffron-robed Arabs being a major selling point. Then Yoko spoke up, “After 100,000 people in Shea Stadium, everything else sucks.” That was it in that short sentence; the idea evaporated. “Yeah, right; good point, of course,��� chorused the other Beatles, and that was it.

While the January 30 Apple rooftop concert was probably the most famous date of the “Get Back”/”Let It Be��� project, January 10 was probably the most infamous. After running through “Two of Us” and “Get Back,��� the group performed “Hi-Heeled Sneakers” before lunch. It appears that by that morning, Paul was fairly happy with the progress he had made on the song “Let It Be��� and played it for the group’s music publisher, Dick James. It was during lunch, just after a heated exchange between Paul and George and following the intro of Chuck Berry’s 1961 song, “I’m Talking About You,” that George walked out of the session and quit, saying, “See you ’round the clubs.” Dave Harries, one of two technical advisors from Abbey Road present at Twickenham, recalled the haste with which Harrison left the film studio. George Martin had arrived just before Harrison left. Martin was driving his Triumph Herald and accidentally hit Harrison’s Mercedes. It must have happened just minutes before Harrison left, because when George Martin walked onto the soundstage, Harries said, “George didn’t have time to tell him “I dinged your car.���

In order to keep the filming moving along, Denis O’Dell instructed Michael Lindsay-Hogg to shoot close-ups of John, Paul, and Ringo. Parrott says, ���We were merely told George had gone home to visit his mother in Liverpool and we would resume filming after a short break.��� The rest of the group returned and ran through, oddly enough, covers of “Don’t Be Cruel” and “It’s Only Make Believe,” before concluding with “The Long and Winding Road,” “Adagio For Strings,” and, from The White Album, “Martha My Dear.��� ���At the end of the day I was told to wrap the gear and take it back to the rental company and await instructions,��� says Parrott.

Tensions had been evident in the studio, long before the “Get Back��� sessions. Richard Langham, an engineer who worked at Abbey Road over many years, remembered how the mood at Beatles sessions changed over the years. “You could feel tensions,” he stated. “[The Beatles] were all very nice to us. We never got the brunt of it all. A lot of people didn’t want to work on Beatles sessions. The in-joke sort of was, if you were naughty you were put on a Beatles session.”

Discussions ensued on how to proceed without Harrison. There was, oddly enough, almost a sense of complete denial of the fact that he was gone. Lindsay-Hogg even suggested that for the live concert they could simply say he was sick. As for John Lennon, his famous quote was, “If he doesn’t come back by Tuesday, we’ll just get Clapton.”

While Harrison’s departure in retrospect may seem cataclysmic, one doesn’t get that impression when listening to the bootlegs of that day. Some bootlegs reveal that the breaking point for Harrison may have come after a messy version of “Two of Us.��� After the opening guitar chords of “I Saw Her Standing There” break down, it appears that Harrison is indeed leaving the group. He rather casually says, “I’m leaving the band now. You can place an ad in the NME.” He also seems to be making a comment about how Apple’s publicity department could deal with the reasons for his leaving the group.

Without missing a beat, the other three launch into ragged, rushed, near hysterical versions of “I’ve Got a Feeling,” “Don’t Let Me Down,��� and “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer.” All the songs were done in an obvious jocular manner, and John and Paul’s vocals are sung in a feverish and comedic way. John’s near-primal scream comedy vocal approach shows either his complete lack of concern that George has left or a nervous disgust over how much these sessions have completely fallen to pieces.

The seven days of filming were unlike anything the group had ever done before. With their live performing days behind them, they had not rehearsed in years. Also, there was no clear plan on what the rehearsals would lead to. The fact that they were being filmed at the chilly, fishbowl-like Twickenham soundstage obviously must have added to the tension of the rehearsals.

What was going through the Beatles’ minds while they played at Twickenham? Whatever tension there was, there still must have been a bittersweet feeling as well. As they played some of their old songs and especially covers of songs that were part of their early stage show, memories of their hungry years must have crossed their minds. As they spontaneously ran through songs like “Hippy, Hippy Shake,” “Dizzy Miss Lizzy,” and ���Money,” did they recall those sweaty nights in the dank Cavern cellar in Liverpool? Did they remember how tired and wired they were as they blasted out set after set at the Kaiserkeller, the Star Club, and the Top Ten Club in Hamburg, Germany? The incessant touring in the U.K., in America, and in the East, and all the television shows they had done must have come to mind as they played certain songs. Did it add to their misery, recalling the exhausting schedules of the past, or did it inspire sadness, knowing they had now come full circle with the end clearly in sight? There had to be that sense of what happens when old friends, who have long drifted apart, get back together. As much as everyone wants things to be the way they once were, it simply can’t happen. By playing those old songs, the Beatles must have known they were tempting fate. Like characters in a Thomas Wolfe story, they were trying to get back homeward, but of course they couldn’t.

Cremation is not an eco-friendly way to go ��� consider dissolving yourself

(Credit: AP)

There are many ways to embark on the journey to the great beyond. One popular custom is the coffin burial. Or rather it was, until cemeteries began running out of ground space. And conventional burials that use toxic embalming fluids are simply terrible for the environment.

Cremation has become a common contender, but even this method comes with its practical problems. Enter a rather odd form of liquid cremation known as alkaline hydrolysis.

In October 2017, California became the 14th state to propose legalizing this measure through a bill set to take effect around 2020. According to a San Francisco Chronicle report, the rise in this trend has to do with a growing effort to ���green-ify��� burial. Before getting into how alkaline hydrolysis is better for the environment, let’s have a brief description of its more morbid details.

The process begins by placing bodies in a vat containing an alkaline solution. The solution ��� described as a ���brownish, syrupy residue��� ��� gets heated to 300 degrees, which helps speed up the body���s natural breakdown process. After four hours, all that is left of the body is a skeleton that is crushed into ash for families to scatter or keep in an urn. The toxic-free leftover liquid is also safe to dispose of in the sewers.

So why is dissolving bodies better than burning them?

���Granted, you���re using water. However, you���re not using fossil fuel and you���re not putting a carbon emission into the sky,��� Matt Baskerville, an Illinois funeral director who uses alkaline hydrolysis, told the New York Post. ���It���s definitely a cleaner and greener option than the traditional flame cremation.���

One company that specializes in liquid cremations claims it uses 90 percent lessenergy than the flame-based method. An Atlantic article adds to this point, noting how a ���single cremation requires about two SUV tanks worth of fuel.��� Then there���s the ���million pounds of metal, wood and concrete��� that is used to shield bodies buried in coffins.

While liquid cremation avoids this waste, is it really the reason people are favoring it over more traditional methods?

���Burning Grandma in fire seems to be violent,��� Phil Olson, a philosophy professor at Virginia Tech,��writes��in the Atlantic. ���In contrast, green cremation is ���putting Grandma in a warm bath.’��� In other words, rather than the eco-friendliness of this burial method, it���s the perception of being peacefully put to rest that appeals to people.

Even the Archdiocese of San Francisco, speaking to the San Francisco Chronicle, said that the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops was considering whether they would officially endorse liquid cremation.

It���s up to each person how they choose to physically part from this world. Liquid cremation claims to be one of the least damaging methods for the environment. Some might say simply being buried in a burlap sack in a forest is the way to go. Is one method greener than another? Maybe the question should be: does it really matter? In the end, the impact you leave on the environment after you die is far less important than the footprint you leave while you���re still alive.