Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 82

Telemedicine opening doors to specialty care for inmates

Reuters/Carlo Allegri

This article originally appeared on Kaiser Health News.

When an inmate needs to see a medical specialist, getting that care can be complicated.

Prisons are often located in rural areas far from medical centers that have experts in cancer, heart and other disease treatments. Even if the visit just involves a trip to a hospital across town, the inmate must be transported under guard, often in shackles.

The whole process is expensive for the correctional facility and time-consuming for the patient.

Given the challenges, it’s no wonder many correctional facilities have embraced telemedicine. They use video conferencing to allow inmates to see medical specialists and psychiatrists without ever leaving the facility.

A survey by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of prison health care in 2011 found that 30 states out of 45 that responded said they used telemedicine for at least one type of specialty or diagnostic service. The participating states reported that telemedicine was most commonly used for psychiatry (62.2 percent) and cardiology (26.6 percent), according to the research, which was published in 2016.

Among the corrections facilities offering these services is Rikers Island, which houses nine jails on an island near LaGuardia Airport in New York City. It recently began to provide telehealth services for female inmates who need oncology, rheumatology and hematology services. Other specialties are expected to be added in the future.

Male inmates on Rikers have been receiving telehealth services since 2016. Roughly 40 inmates have virtual visits each month with specialists in those same areas as well as infectious disease, urology, dermatology, pulmonology and gastroenterology.

“Initially we implemented [telehealth] for the efficiency part, to avoid hours of transport,” said Dr. Ross MacDonald, chief medical officer for NYC Health + Hospitals/Correctional Health Services, which runs the health care services at Rikers. “But what we’ve learned over time is that it really improves clinical care.” Telehealth allows the referring physician at the jail to consult with the specialist at the hospital as a team, and together clarify information for the patient, MacDonald said.

Clinicians provide regular primary care at the jail. When a medical concern is identified that requires a specialist’s attention, the patient visits the jail’s medical clinic with the provider who referred her, and the two of them go over the patient’s medical history and symptoms with a specialist at NYC Health + Hospitals/Elmhurst in Queens who is visible on the monitor. If vital signs need to be checked or other tests performed, the primary care provider can handle that and relay the information to the specialist.

If after that meeting, a face-to-face exam with the specialist is necessary, that would be scheduled, MacDonald said.

“This is not meant to replace in-person visits, it’s meant to complement them,” he said.

Still, some prisoner advocates worry about the increasing use of telemedicine. Khalil Cumberbatch said he’s concerned that the video visits may heighten inmates’ feelings of isolation. Cumberbatch spent nearly a year on Rikers Island, first as he awaited trial on first-degree robbery charges in the early 2000s and later when he appealed his conviction.

He now works as the associate vice president of policy at the Fortune Society, a nonprofit organization that supports efforts to help prisoners re-enter society after incarceration.

“You’re removing contact with the outside world,” he said. “There’s a level of engagement that can be lost when you’re doing it on the screen.”

But for sick prisoners, that may not be a priority, others say.

“Lots of them don’t want to go to the outside facility,” said Dr. Edward Levine, the medical director for prison care for Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, which has been doing telemedicine with the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction since 1995. “These people are sick. They have to get on a bus, it’s bumpy, and there are delays, and if [they’re] not feeling well, they don’t like it.”

Levine estimates he sees up to 150 gastroenterology patients a year at Ohio’s 29 prisons through telemedicine visits. “You develop a relationship with them the same as you would if you saw them in a clinic,” he said.

Although inmates may owe copayments if they see a provider for run-of-the-mill aches and pains, they won’t generally have to pay for specialty care, whether provided on-site or through telemedicine, said Dr. Anne Spaulding, an epidemiologist and associate professor at Emory University’s public health school in Atlanta who has worked as a medical director in corrections. That’s because a medical provider typically initiates specialty care. Inmates are more commonly charged for medical visits that they initiate, she said.

Telemedicine can improve continuity of care and help patients keep chronic conditions under control. In one study of HIV-infected adults incarcerated at Illinois Department of Corrections facilities, 91 percent of telemedicine patients achieved complete suppression of the virus during the first six visits, compared with 59 percent of patients who received standard care on-site at the facilities. The study credited the results to having specialists provide evidence-based, up-to-date care through telemedicine, rather than relying on primary care physicians at the correctional facilities.

“If we can see them in real time without having to leave the facility, we get better outcomes,” said Dr. Jeremy Young, an infectious-disease specialist and associate professor of medicine at the University of Illinois at Chicago, who was the lead author of the study.

N.Y. Attorney General Eric Schneiderman resigns, minutes after bombshell sexual abuse allegations

AP

New York’s chief law enforcement officer suddenly resigned on Monday night after multiple women accused him of verbally and physically abusing them. New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, a fast-rising Democrat with national ambitions who had positioned himself as a champion of women in the #MeToo era, initially attempted to dismiss the accusations against him as “role-playing and other consensual sexual activity.” But he swiftly announced his resignation after New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a fellow Democrat, called on him to step down.

“I do not believe it is possible for Eric Schneiderman to continue to serve as attorney general, and for the good of the office, he should resign,” Cuomo said in a statement. That came only minutes after the New Yorker published a bombshell report that detailed the direct accounts of four women who accused Schneiderman of abuse going back to 2013. Less than an hour later, the attorney general tendered his resignation.

Multiple women who were former romantic partners of Schneiderman accuse him of slapping and choking them in intimate situations without consent and then threatening them with death if they told anyone, according to a harrowing report by the New Yorker’s Jane Mayer and Ronan Farrow.

"No one is above the law, including New York's top legal officer," Cuomo continued in his statement. "I will be asking an appropriate New York District Attorney to commence an immediate investigation, and proceed as the facts merit."

The call was echoed by the president of the New York chapter of the National Organization for Women -- which had endorsed Schneiderman in both his 2010 and 2014 election campaigns -- along with Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., a political leader of the #MeToo movement and until this week a Schneiderman ally.

Moments later Schneiderman released a short statement, his second of the night, announcing that Tuesday would be his last day in office.“It’s been my great honor and privilege to serve as attorney general for the people of the State of New York,” this statement read in part. “In the last several hours, serious allegations, which I strongly contest, have been made against me."

While Schneiderman acknowledged that the allegations had rendered him ineffective as attorney general, he continued to deny their substance. In an earlier statement, he had described the incidents described in the New Yorker article as “role-playing” that had occurred “in the privacy of intimate relationships.”

“I have not assaulted anyone. I have never engaged in nonconsensual sex, which is a line I would not cross,” Schneiderman, who was up for re-election this year (and was widely expected to win), had said earlier on Monday.

Statement from Eric T. Schneiderman:

"In the privacy of intimate relationships, I have engaged in role-playing and other consensual sexual activity. I have not assaulted anyone. I have never engaged in non-consensual sex, which is a line I would not cross."

— Eric T. Schneiderman (@Schneiderman) May 7, 2018

To state what ought to be obvious, there is a world of difference between consensual kinky sex or BDSM role-playing, such as Schneiderman appears to describe, and nonconsensual violence or abuse, as alleged by all four women mentioned in the New Yorker article. 

As reporter Jane Mayer explained to MSNBC on Monday night, all four women “felt tremendously conflicted” after Schneiderman sued disgraced Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein for his apparent pattern of “unrelenting” sexual harassment, intimidation and discrimination. “The hypocrisy became kind of untenable and they began to reach out to each other and form an alliance,” Mayer explained.

While two of Schneiderman’s former partners are unnamed in the report, two women went on the record and provided medical evidence and contemporaneous corroborating accounts from high-profile friends, including novelist Salman Rushdie.

“Sometimes, he’d tell me to call him Master, and he’d slap me until I did,” said Tanya Selvaratnam, an immigrant from Sri Lanka who dated Schneiderman after meeting him at the Democratic National Convention in 2016. “[H]e started calling me his ‘brown slave’ and demanding that I repeat that I was ‘his property.’”

Selvaratnam also alleged that Schneiderman threatened to tap her phone, among other threats.

Michelle Manning Barish, another former partner of Schneiderman's, provided the most detailed account, describing how the high-profile Democrat hit and choked her repeatedly, often after excessive drinking.

“All of a sudden, he just slapped me, open-handed and with great force, across the face, landing the blow directly onto my ear,” she said. “It was horrendous. It just came out of nowhere. My ear was ringing. I lost my balance and fell backward onto the bed. I sprang up, but at this point there was very little room between the bed and him. I got up to try to shove him back, or take a swing, and he pushed me back down. He then used his body weight to hold me down, and he began to choke me. The choking was very hard. It was really bad.”

During his first year in office as attorney general, Schneiderman was instrumental in passing a law making strangulation, common in domestic abuse cases, a serious violent crime.

Schneiderman, who was among several Democratic state attorneys general leading a de facto movement of legal resistance against President Donald Trump, sued the administration over the Muslim ban and reproductive rights issues. He also successfully sued Trump University. The president will undoubtedly celebrate Schneiderman’s stunning and sudden demise. In a 2013 tweet, Trump predicted as much, comparing Schneiderman to former congressman Anthony Weiner and former state attorney general Eliot Spitzer, a pair of New York Democrats with national political ambitions who were brought down by sex scandals — respectively, sexting with a minor and solicitation of prostitutes.

Weiner is gone, Spitzer is gone - next will be lightweight A.G. Eric Schneiderman. Is he a crook? Wait and see, worse than Spitzer or Weiner

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 11, 2013

The New York state legislature will appoint Schneiderman's successor, and that could be exciting. Although the state has reliably voted Democratic in recent years, control of the legislature remains split, with Republicans holding a one-vote majority in the state Senate, thanks to a single renegade Democrat who caucuses with the GOP.

#TimesUp Hollywood

As more women get power in Hollywood, will the industry's gender politics finally change?

#MeToo in the art world: Genius should not excuse sexual harassment

Getty/Mark Ralston

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

This May, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., was to showcase the work of two famous artists: one of painter Chuck Close and another of photographer Thomas Roma. Both exhibitions, however were cancelled due to allegations of sexual harassment.

The public debate sparked by the cancellations has centered around the question, is it possible to separate the value of art from the personal conduct of the artist?

As a scholar of aesthetics and gender studies, I believe, in the wake of #MeToo this is a good time to revisit the argument of Russian poet Alexander Pushkin about the incompatibility of genius and evil.

Genius and evil

In his short play from 1830, “Mozart and Salieri,” Pushkin fictionalizes an encounter between the composer Antonio Salieri and his younger friend, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, in Vienna, Austria. Based on existing rumors at the time, Pushkin presents Salieri as envious of Mozart’s genius to the point of poisoning him at the meeting.

Pushkin’s claim in this play was that the human value of good defines genius, and hence committing a crime disqualifies one from being a genius. Based on this presentation of Salieri as evil, his reputation as a composer was tarnished.

After new research suggested that Mozart died from natural causes, most probably a strep infection, views on Salieri’s music also changed. With this new information, Pushkin’s argument was revisited, and Salieri’s reputation in the music community started to improve, demonstrated by recorded albums and staging of his operas.

This goes to show how art makers and their audiences become emotionally attached to artists and composers as individuals, and not just to their music or painting. Pushkin himself identified strongly with Mozart.

And the change in attitudes to Salieri also supports Pushkin’s original argument that how genius is understood is strongly correlated with human values, where good and genius reinforce each other.

The debate

In the current debate in the art world over this issue, several experts have said that the value of art should not be associated with the personal conduct of its maker. For example, Tom Eccles, executive director of the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College, suggested that “we can’t not show artists because we don’t agree with them morally; we’d have fairly bare walls.” An example would be be that of the famous painter Caravaggio, who was accused of murder and whose works continue to be on display.

However, James Rondeau, the president and director of the Art Institute of Chicago, disagreed that museums could present their decisions about the value of the artwork as totally separate from today’s ethics. Rondeau said:

“The typical ‘we don’t judge, we don’t endorse, we just put it up for people to experience and decide’ falls very flat in this political and cultural

moment.”

The #MeToo ethical challenge

This public debate has gained significant traction in the art world because the #MeToo movement has redefined sexual harassment as evil. Started by Tarana Burke, an African-American civil rights activist in 2006 and spread by Alyssa Milano, an American actress and activist, as a Twitter campaign in 2017, the #MeToo movement has become a social media-driven collective voice. It has presented sexual harassment and sexual violence as harm serious enough to warrant recognition and social change.

Consequently, a number of artists have come out with their experience of sexual harassment. Five women came forward accusing Thomas Roma, a photographer and professor, of sexual misconduct. In the case of Chuck Close, artists Langdon Graves, Delia Brown and Julia Fox described in interviews and on social media platforms the anguish and self-doubt his actions had caused them as individuals and also as artists.

Delia Brown, for example, described how Chuck Close told her at a dinner that he was a fan of her work and asked her to pose for a portrait at his studio. She said she was “over the moon” and excited “because having your portrait done as an artist by Chuck Close is tantamount to being canonized.”

However, she was shocked when he asked her to model topless, not a practice that he pursued with other famous artists. Brown refused. Explaining her anguish, she felt he saw her only as a body rather than an important artist and felt manipulated. She said “a sense of distrust and disgust” has stayed with her. Other artists made similar allegations of having been invited to Close’s studio to pose for him and being shocked by his behavior.

Chuck Close chose to downplay the harm done to them as persons and artists by dismissing their words. He said the “last time I looked, discomfort was not a major offense.”

Genius redefined

The point this reinforces is that if sexual harassment is wrong then the value of artwork being exhibited in a public museum is questionable.

Scholar Roxane Gay, the best-selling author of the essay collection “Bad Feminist,” sums up why it is so evil, when she explains the cost to women. She says:

“I remember how many women’s careers were ruined; I think of those who gave up their dreams because some ‘genius’ decided indulging his thirst for power and control mattered more than her ambition and dignity. I remember all the silence, decades and decades of enforced silence, intimidation, and manipulation, that enabled bad men to flourish. When I do that, it’s quite easy for me to think nothing of the supposedly great art of bad men.”

This debate has also shown how the definitions of evil in Pushkin’s “genius and evil” argument are also subjective and depend on human values at a particular time. #MeToo has changed the public view on sexual harassment. Indeed, the public debate surrounding the decision by the National Gallery of Art to cancel two exhibitions has been as much about the value of human beings as it has been about the value of art.

Irina Aristarkhova, Associate Professor, Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design, University of Michigan

There’s no good Mother’s Day card for a not-good mother

Shutterstock/Getty

It's my little annual Mother's Day tradition. I stand in the greeting card aisle, surrounded by paper images of flowers and butterflies. I pick up one card after another, shake my head, and put them back. They don't make great cards for not-great moms.

My mother and I haven't had a conversation in almost two years. She has seen me — and her two grandchildren — only once in the past dozen years, at a family funeral. She didn't stay long. In those twelve years, I've published two books, had serious cancer twice and watched my firstborn spend a week in the ICU. I've passed the milestones of holidays and birthdays and school plays. My mother lives an hour away. She doesn't answer her phone.

I typically send her three communications a year, unless there's an emergency — for Christmas, her birthday and Mother's Day. Mother's Day is the hardest. There are lots of safe cards for the other two celebrations — humorous ones, ones that don't assume intimacy. Mother's Day cards are different. Because they're for your mother, the person who ostensibly raised you and took care of you and loves you unconditionally. But those "You've taught me so much by your beautiful example" and "When a daughter grows up feeling as cherished as I did, she's bound to love her mom with all her heart" sentiments just feel a little . . . off for me, you know?

My mom's own track record with cards isn't the best. For my birthday last year, I got a nautical-themed card "Wishing you the very best" and a $20 bill. It was signed, "Mom. Hi." For my daughters' shared birthday in January, they got a Christmas card with "Merry Christmas" crossed out and "Happy Birthday" written underneath. I never get a card for Mother's Day, so at least it's not like I need concern myself with matching her tone this time of year. Yet here I am, scouring the Hallmark racks for something like a gesture anyway.

The practice of buying a thing made of paper, signing your name to it, sealing it in an envelope, putting a stamp on it and dropping it down an actual mailbox feels insanely old-fashioned — which is probably why people still value it. Plenty of us don't even make the effort to talk on the phone any more, or write out words in a text when a smiley face or a heart will do. Any communication that takes more than five seconds feels like a declaration of devotion. When, last week, a card with no other purpose except that it was funny arrived for me from a friend, I practically wept with gratitude.

Illustrator Emily McDowell calls cards "the most special way to communicate." She notes, "We have 57,000 ways to communicate with each other, but they're all electronic. They're ephemeral. You don't keep a text on your refrigerator. Greeting cards have stood the test of time because they're something people can hold on to and save. You have someone's handwriting in it. Nobody's typed anything."

"You used to get a lot of stuff in the mail," she adds. "People sent letters all the time, so your mail was something to look forward to. Letters have kind of gone away, so you only get bills and junk mail and stuff you don't want in your mailbox. Getting a card in the mail is like, 'Oh my God, a good thing!'"

Despite how cherished cards are, the supposed imminent death of their industry has become a perennial subject of retail speculation. In 2015, Hallmark ominously began shutting down its Connecticut distribution center and announced it was cutting 570 jobs. A former Hallmark designer and marketer told NPR at the time, "The personal expressions industry is facing something, kind of like climate change shift." Yet retailers like the Chicago-based Paper Source have managed to stay afloat — and expand — by offering cute, millennial-friendly merchandise and craft-making classes along with what it describes as "that quirky card, chic personalized stationery, elegant invitations, and the beautifully wrapped gift that you are looking for." People still want to get mail.

This holiday, as I was once again feeling stumped for the appropriately neutral message of "It's Mother's day and you are, technically, my mother" to send, I decided to consult Emily. As the creator of Emily McDowell Studio, she knows that often in life, there is no good card. That's why she co-wrote a book called "There Is No Good Card for This: What to Say and Do When Life Is Scary, Awful, and Unfair to People You Love."

Three years ago, McDowell earned international attention when she created a line of "empathy cards" to offer, with heart and humor, supportive messages for people going through grief, illness, infertility and more. Sample sentiment: "If this is God's plan, God is a terrible planner." On the Mother's Day section of her site, currently, one can purchase witty and sweet messages for moms and "honorary moms," as well as her all-purpose classic, "I know this day really sucks for you."

When I asked her recently what the hell kind of card to get my less-than-World's-Greatest-mother, McDowell said, "The is actually the perfect use for the blank card with the flower on it. If you have a relationship that is in name only, where you have a mom or a dad and you are sending the card out of familial holiday obligation, the basic 'Happy Mother's Day, Happy Father's Day' is a benign message that checks the box, I think rather than trying in a store to find a card that is appropriate to send that person."

McDowell's thriving business, meanwhile, is a resource for, as she puts it, "the casualties of shitty people: the shitty adjacent people." She says, "We make a lot of cards for non-traditional parent child relationships. But they are less for what to send your shitty mom and more about what to send your friend who has a shitty mom and hates Mother's Day because they feel left out."

She acknowledges that this holiday is so tough for so many. "It's not just people who had a shitty mom," she says, "but people who had miscarriages or people who want to get pregnant and can't and have any kind of bad association and get triggered by the mother-child celebration. We focus on supporting each other, and recognizing the reality of what we're going through that may not be reflected in greeting card land."

The distance between my own mother and me grows wider with every passing marker of the year. I no longer send her gifts or attempt to call her, and I recently told my teenage daughters they shouldn't feel obliged to send her cards if they don't want to. When Mom's birthday rolled around this winter, I toyed with the notion of ignoring it altogether. I was in throes of a deeply painful period in my life, and her conspicuous absence from it felt uniquely cruel.

It took a few days to make up my mind. I had to get to the place where I didn't want to do something purely out of guilt or tradition. But I didn't want to not do something, out of spite or hurt feelings, either. So I reached down deep for the love I still carry for her, the gratitude for the love she has given me and for the happy memories that nothing can ever erase. I sought to do something thoughtful, with no expectation of reciprocity. That's what a card is supposed to do. It was an exceptionally cold day. I had just come out of the hospital, where my daughter had been fitted with a heart monitor. I went to the drugstore and found a card that said, "Happy birthday, Mom" on the front. I wrote "I love you" inside.

And now, because they still don't make cards that say, "You probably did your best, given your limited emotional range" or "I turned out OK anyway," this weekend I got my mom a card that reads, "Wishing you every special thing Mother's Day can bring." I don't know what those special things would be, but I wish them for her anyway.

I won't include my older daughter's yearbook photo, or the image of her sister singing at Le Chat Noir in Paris. I feel like it would seem like I'm asking my mom for something, and I'm done asking. Instead I'll just sign my name. The name she gave me. The name that's half hers. In two days, it'll travel to her mailbox and into her house. She'll recognize the return address on the envelope. She'll open it and see the butterflies on the paper. She'll read a message from a daughter she no longer knows. And then maybe she'll put it on her refrigerator.

Amber Tamblyn on motherhood in Trump's America

Actress and Director Amber Tamblyn talks about motherhood in Trump's America and her film "Paint It Black."

Former “Transparent” star Jeffrey Tambor admits to being “mean,” but denies being a “predator”

Amazon Studios

Actor Jeffrey Tambor has spoken out for the first time since being fired three months ago from his Emmy Award-winning role on the groundbreaking Amazon series "Transparent" after two women accused him of sexual harassment. While Tambor has admitted to being "mean" and "difficult" to work with, he denied sexually harassing his accusers in a new profile in The Hollywood Reporter (THR).

"This is the first time I’ve talked about this – ever," Tambor told the magazine. "And possibly the last time. I used to teach acting, you know, and I’d always say, 'Announce where you are.' So this is me doing that."

The sexual harassment allegations against Tambor first surfaced in October 2017, and the actor was dismissed from his starring role in "Transparent" in February following an investigation. (Tambor said he was interviewed in two 10-hour sessions.) Show creator Jill Soloway has now confirmed that the upcoming fifth season would the series' last and would not include Tambor.

Even prior to the allegations, Tambor's casting in "Transparent" was controversial. The critically-acclaimed show has been lauded for elevating the transgender experience and for hiring LGBTQ staff both in front of and behind the camera. But Tambor, who starred in the show as trans woman Maura Pfefferman, is cisgender. People likened his casting to "blackface," and criticized Soloway for not casting a trans actor in the role. Also, both of Tambor's accusers are trans.

Van Barnes, Tambor's former assistant, and Trace Lysette, a cast member of "Transparent," went public with their accusations last fall. Barnes penned her #MeToo account on Facebook, alleging that "he's a f**king monster." While she did not name Tambor, the post describes an employer who allegedly subjected her to "butt pats," said she should sleep with him to get a "Hollywood-industry-appropriate-pay-grade" and pressured her to engage in a sexual relationship. In the post, Barnes said she thought about suicide when she left her job.

Barnes' story went viral, and a few weeks later, Amazon Studios confirmed an investigation into her allegations. Tambor wrote off Barnes in a statement as a "former disgruntled assistant," calling her claims "baseless."

Lysette accused Tambor of unwanted flirtation, kissing her on the lips and during the filming of one scene, she claimed he performed "thrusts" on her hips. "They were discreet, and insidious and creepy. I felt his genitals on me," she alleged to THR. "And I pushed him off." Lysette claimed she reported the incident, and no action was taken.

"Given the circumstances of my life," she wrote in a statement to THR in November, "I was used to being treated as a sexual object by men — this one just happened to be famous." Lysette worked in a strip club in New York City before she embarked on an acting career. There, she kept her transition hidden.

After Lysette's allegations went public, Tambor put out a new statement. "I find myself accused of behavior that any civilized person would condemn unreservedly," it said. "I know I haven’t always been the easiest person to work with. I can be volatile and ill-tempered, and too often I express my opinions harshly and without tact. But I have never been a predator — ever."

But, what Tambor is admitting to now could be interpreted as verbal abuse. "I drove myself and my castmates crazy," Tambor told THR. "Lines got blurred. I was difficult. I was mean. I yelled at Jill — she told me recently she was afraid of me. I yelled at the wonderful [Executive Producer] Bridget Bedard in front of everybody. I made her cry. And I apologized and everything, but still, I yelled at her. The assistant directors – I was rude to my assistant. I was moody. Sometimes, I didn’t talk at all."

Tambor's agent, Leslie Siebert, affirmed some of this behavior. "He’s guilty of being an asshole at times, and being, you know, temperamental and moody," she told THR. "And he feels awful about it and apologizes, and he’s working on himself. But in the 30 years I’ve worked with him, I’ve never been told about any behavior like what these women are accusing him of."

Tambor also said that, initially, he had the private support of Soloway, but he now feels abandoned by her. "I said to her, 'Since you know the truth, would you make a public statement on my behalf?' It’s my biggest disappointment that she hasn’t."

Soloway countered, "I never told him I was going to accuse Van or Trace of being liars. He knew that nobody could do that. And I was really working with him to help him understand that a simple apology would go a really long way. I was hoping to get him there."

Soloway added, "It’s not a simple case of did he do it, or didn’t he do it. Nobody said he was a predator — they said he sexually harassed people. He made enemies, and I don’t think he realized he was making enemies. You have to be very, very careful if you’re a person in power and treat people very appropriately."

Tambor has been able to retain his role on the Netflix comedy "Arrested Development." The series' fifth season premieres on May 29.

Oliver North is the perfectly toxic choice to head the NRA

AP/Sue Ogrocki

Oliver North, the man who nearly thirty years ago was convicted of several crimes related to the Iran-Contra scandal, is going to be the new leader of the right-wing pro-gun lobby, the National Rifle Association (NRA).

"Oliver North is, hands down, the absolute best choice to lead our NRA Board, to fully engage with our members, and to unflinchingly stand and fight for the great freedoms he has defended his entire life," NRA executive vice president and CEO Wayne LaPierre explained in a statement, according to CNN. LaPierre has emerged as one of the NRA's most prominent figures over the last few years, a role that he is likely to at least partially cede to North now that the former National Security aide has been tapped to head the organization.

North is likely to fit in well with the group, given that he has spent more than twenty years as a right-wing media figure. Most recently North has appeared regularly as a commentator on Fox News, where he has continued his reputation for offering consistently conservative interpretations of major news events.

Up until the 1970s, the NRA was viewed as more of a sportsmen's club than a political organization, at least according to its leaders. In 1977, however, an internal coup replaced the organization's traditional leadership with staunch right-wingers who were convinced that federal efforts at gun control were an attempt by the state to infringe upon their civil liberties. This was in staunch contrast to the right-wing position on gun control less than a decade earlier when an armed Black Panther Party march in California prompted Governor Ronald Reagan and other prominent conservatives to call for stricter gun control measures.

North himself became a right-wing hero in the 1980s when he admitted to partial responsibility for selling weapons to Iran through an intermediary in order to arm right-wing militants in Nicaragua called the Contras. The so-called Iran-Contra scandal would shake Reagan's presidency during its second term as well as that of his successor, George H. W. Bush. North was ultimately convicted of three crimes, according to The Guardian.

The former National Security aide, Oliver North, the man at the heart of the 1986 Iran-contra affair, was yesterday found guilty on three counts - including deceiving Congress and receiving an illegal gratuity - in a verdict which seems certain to rebound with a vengeance on President Bush and his predecessor, Mr Reagan.

The three counts were: shredding government documents; accepting a bribe in the shape of a security fence; and seeking to keep the truth from Congress.

North's convictions were later vacated and the charges against him dismissed due to the possibility that witnesses may have been influenced by his congressional testimony, for which he had been granted immunity. As a result, North's public image was sufficiently clean to enable him to run for the United States Senate in Virginia in 1994. Although the 1994 midterm elections were a sweeping triumph for Republican candidates throughout the country, North was one of the few GOPers to go down in defeat, losing to the Democratic incumbent Chuck Robb in a campaign later chronicled in the 1996 documentary "A Perfect Candidate."

This hilarious "American Dad!" clip offers a pithy summary of North's involvement in the Iran-Contra scandal.

Australian trees beat the heat by sweating to keep cool

Getty/Ida Jarosova

This article was originally published by Scientific American.

Recent summer temperatures in parts of Australia were high enough to melt asphalt. As global warming cranks up the heat and climatic events intensify, many plants may be unable to cope. But at least one species of eucalyptus tree can withstand extreme heat by continuing to “sweat” when other essential processes taper off, a new study finds.

As plants convert sunlight into food, or photosynthesize, they absorb carbon dioxide through pores on their leaves. These pores also release water via transpiration, which circulates nutrients through the plant and helps cool it by evaporation. But exceptionally high temperatures are known to greatly reduce photosynthesis — and most existing plant models suggest this should also decrease transpiration, leaving trees in danger of fatally overheating. Because it is difficult for scientists to control and vary trees' conditions in their natural environment, little is known about how individual species handle this situation.

Ecologist John Drake of the S.U.N.Y. College of Environmental Science and Forestry and his colleagues grew a dozen Parramatta red gum (Eucalyptus parramattensis) trees in large, climate-controlled plastic pods that isolated the trees from the surrounding forest for a year in Richmond, Australia. Six of the trees were grown at ambient air temperatures and six at temperatures three degrees Celsius higher. The researchers withheld water from the surface soil of all 12 trees for a month to simulate a mild dry spell, then induced a four-day “extreme” heat wave: They raised the maximum temperatures in half of the pods (three with ambient temperatures and three of the warmer ones) — to 44 degrees C.

Photosynthesis ground to a near halt in the trees facing the artificial heat wave. But to the researchers' surprise, these trees continued to transpire at close-to-normal levels, effectively cooling themselves and their surroundings. The trees grown in warmer conditions coped just as well as the others, and photosynthesis rates bounced back to normal after the heat wave passed, Drake and his colleagues reported online in February in Global Change Biology.

The researchers think the Parramatta red gums were able to effectively sweat — even without photosynthesis — because they are particularly good at tapping into water deep in the soil. But if a heat wave and a severe drought were to hit at the same time and the groundwater was depleted, the trees may not be so lucky, Drake says.

Other scientists call the finding encouraging. “It's definitely good news,” says Trevor Keenan, an ecologist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, who was not part of the study. “It would be very interesting to know how this translates to other species,” he adds. Drake hopes to conduct similar experiments with trees common in North America.

Yes, “This Is America”: Donald Glover makes us confront our country’s violent horrors

YouTube/Donald Glover

This weekend Donald Glover took a long shot at genius and scored­­ — nothing but net.

I’m not talking about his already-impressive career history: of being a 23-year-old writer on "30 Rock," the Emmys he won last year as an actor and director for the first season of his acclaimed FX show "Atlanta," or the 2016 Grammy he won for "Red Bone." These are all great accomplishments that have earned him constant praise and enough clout to be named one of Time’s 100 Most Influential People last year. But I'm not here to focus on that.

Yesterday, the 34-year-old renaissance millennial shattered the internet into a billion pieces with his new song and video, "This Is America."

Directed by "Atlanta" director Hiro Murai, the video opens inside a huge warehouse with an acoustic guitar perched in a chair, begging to be played. Once that wish is granted, we see Childish Gambino (Glover's stage name) standing alert and erect until the beat drops and he starts gyrating in playful winding motions­­­­. These are moves you don't expect. They catch you completely off guard, and just as you begin to accept them, he pulls a gun from the small of his back, fixes his body in a perfect Jim Crow pose, and blows a hooded and cuffed dude's head off.

https://twitter.com/xocourtsss/status...

I first thought of Oscar Grant, an unarmed African American man from Oakland who was murdered by police while wearing handcuffs. Then Walter Scott, another unarmed man shot in the back during a traffic stop.

With no pauses for reflection or mourning, Gambino keeps dancing while passing off the gun with the utmost care as the dead body is dragged away like a sack of trash.

“I love him, because he’s rejecting toxic masculinity with his sensual feminine dance moves!” my friend Ebony texted me. “Black boy joy! Y'all dudes need to pay attention!”

“How’s he not toxic?” I asked her. “He committed a murder!”

I watched the video again and heard what she was saying, but I didn’t feel it. The soft moves could definitely be that kind of layer; however, I don’t think that was the main point. That's why I recommend watching the video four or five times on a device larger than a cell phone before forming an opinion, because there is so much to see.

I think the dancing, along with Glover's almost manic smile and upbeat vibe, is offered up as a distraction, to direct the viewer's attention away from the chaos in the background. It’s as if Glover is playing with the audience­­, forcing us to look at him and celebrate him — like my friend Ebony did, like I did on the first viewing, and like most of us who willingly and totally ignored the world behind him crumbling and on fire, in the same way we turn a blind eye to so many horrible things that happen in the world every day.

The song employs repetition with a clear message — this is America — because what he is showing metaphorically is the condition of this country: A person can be shot in the head and our attention can be distracted almost immediately away from that by a hot movie, viral story, social media trend or an outburst from the president, and just like that, the murder, along with any empathy for the victim and family, is pushed magically out of the conversation­­. This is especially true if a police officer was the trigger man.

Gambino continues to dance. Encountering a church choir, singing with angelic voices, he spends time in fellowship with them — similar to the way Dylann Roof did in Charleston — and then he takes out a gun and murders them in cold blood, just like Dylann Roof did. The people are left to bleed. Just like earlier, the gun is passed off to another person and wiped down with care, seemingly valued more than the bloody choir members piled up, slumped over on the stage.

This video couldn’t be delivered at a more appropriate time­­, on the heels of the Las Vegas and Parkland massacres, as the killing of Stephon Clark, another unarmed African American man, is being investigated. Glover is holding a mirror up to the ugliest parts of this country, where these tragedies happen over and over again­­, proving that they aren’t freak accidents but a part of a disgusting tradition of violence we aren't willing to break.

This is a country of gun-praising murderers, where we freely and proudly kill people. This is a country that ignores the pain of broken families, only to buy more guns and break them again.

This is America.

U-God: Machine guns have no purpose
Wu-Tang Clan member U-God challenges the notion that gun control is a violation of the Second Amendment.

Meek Mill, ready to be a “voice for the voiceless,” calls for criminal justice reform

Getty/Drew Hallowell

Rapper Meek Mill appeared on "Dateline" with Lester Holt Sunday as the network aired an in-depth look into his more than 10-year involvement in the criminal justice system. "Dreams and Nightmares: The Meek Mill Story," went beyond retelling Meek's ongoing legal battles, but into parole and probation, a system which supervises more than 4.5 million people across the U.S.

Meek, born Robert Rihmeek Williams, was first convicted on guns and drugs charges when he was 19 years old, for which he spent less than six months in jail. But since then, he's been dinged over and over again for technical probation violations, ordered to serve another three- to six-month sentence in 2014, a 90-day house arrest in 2016 and most recently, a two- to four-year sentence from last November. He was released on bail two weeks ago.

During the five months Meek spent in state prison, a #FreeMeekMill movement ignited in the streets and on social media, garnering support from high-profile, wealthy celebrities like Jay-Z, Kevin Hart, Colin Kaepernick, Philadelphia 76ers co-owner Michael Rubin and New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft.

Throughout his prison time, Meek's lawyers also accused the judge, who has presided over his case since his original conviction, of bias and inappropriate behavior, and asked for her recusal. And when new evidence emerged that the arresting officer and sole witness in Meek's conviction was potentially corrupt, the judge refused to overturn his conviction or allow him to be released on bail. His lawyers appealed to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, which granted him bail in April.

Now conditionally free but not exonerated, Meek is determined to turn the attention and support he received into a criminal justice reform movement. "This is the same thing that thousands of other minorities are going through, they just don't have anybody to speak on their behalf," Meek told Holt, speaking of the seemingly endless nature of probation and myriad minor technical violations that can send someone back to prison. (For example, under Meek's terms of probation, he had to alert an official anytime he traveled out of state — which for him meant every single time he wanted to pick his son up from school in nearby New Jersey.) "Now they do," he said.

Focusing outward is crucial at this time — 61,000 people currently sit in prison because of technical violations. Meek described the entrapment of the criminal justice system as incredibly easy to get caught in and yet a "hundred times harder" to leave, whether one is innocent or not.

In the "Dateline" special, Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner said while the public has seen Meek's case as a symbol for the injustices in the criminal justice system, "the irony here is that no one lifted up a poor person, no one lifted up someone who's not famous," he said. "There are a lot of Meek Mills who are not privileged and do not have access to [his] resources."

But the power of fame — not to mention finances — is not is lost on Meek. "Let's retire the free Meek Mill hashtag and make it #JusticeReform," he proposed.

Philadelphia could be well-positioned to jumpstart such a criminal justice reform movement with Krasner in office. He campaigned as a reformer and has already started implementing reforms that could serve as models across the country. Adamant that the system must be changed, his office has laid out new guidelines for prosecutors meant to reduce prison populations and establish fairer sentencing. One such guideline suggests prosecutors not ask for more than six months in jail or prison for a technical violation on probation or parole, with an emphasis on avoiding the violation charge or identifying alternatives to incarceration.

Rubin says he imagines Meek Mill can be a catalyst for a broader movement, much like Harvey Weinstein's alleged victims were for the second wave of the #MeToo movement.

Meek certainly has the platform and popularity and feels charged to be a "voice for the voiceless," as he told Holt. At the same time, his case is still ongoing, and he indicates that sense of continued supervision and restriction can be overwhelming. "I don't feel free. I ain't feel free since I caught this case at the age of 19. I'm 30 now," he told Holt. "I don't feel free at all."

How a prison project changed him

David Arquette explains why he's producing the documentary “Survivors Guide to Prison,” which shines a light on the broken criminal justice system in the United States

Technology is better than ever — but thousands of Americans still die in car crashes every year

Getty/shaunl

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

Today, driving is arguably safer than ever been before.

Modern vehicles now boast a number of safety features, including blind spot monitoring, driver alertness detection systems and emergency braking. Additionally, highway engineering has improved over the last several decades. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention called motor vehicle safety one of the top 10 U.S. public health achievements of the 20th century.

Despite this, there were 32,166 crashes that led to at least one death in the U.S. in 2015.

Over the course of one year, crash injuries cost an estimated US$18 billion spent in lifetime medical expenses and $33 billion of lifetime work. That’s six times more in medical costs than the U.S. spends annually treating gunshot wounds.

These numbers are alarming. It’s not a stretch to say that motor vehicle crashes should be viewed as a public health crisis. I have been researching roadway safety for the last five years and have provided expert testimony to state legislative bodies on my findings. The data show that robust distracted driving policies can make a difference — if states pursue them.

Why people crash

Why are there so many crashes when cars and roadways are much improved? Part of the answer lies in a ballooning technological phenomenon: distracted driving.

According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, there are three primary types of driver distraction: taking one’s hands off the wheel, taking one’s eyes off the road and taking one’s mind off driving.

When a driver interacts with a cellphone — texting, video streaming, emailing — it takes his eyes off the road for several seconds at a time. Research shows that cellphone use while driving can result in longer reaction times, impaired following distance and crashes.

That can be injurious, if not deadly. Studies on distracted driving and cellphone use almost always find negative roadway outcomes, such as near-misses, crashes and delayed reaction times.

In 2015, 10 percent of all roadway fatalities occurring in the U.S. involved distraction, leading to close to 3,500 deaths and an estimated 391,000 people injured. While distracted driving is prevalent among all ages, drivers between the ages of 15 and 19 were involved in more fatal crashes than those in other age groups.

Other major causes for fatal crashes include unfavorable weather conditions, such as fog or snow; drivers’ physical impairments, such as drowsiness or heart attacks; aggressive driver behavior; or vehicle failures.

Paradoxically, some causes of crashes may seem positive. As the economy improves and gasoline prices drop, more people drive and crash risk increases. In recent years, the U.S. has climbed out of a recession, and the unemployment rate has been on the decline.

Distracted driving laws

To tackle the public health threat of coronary heart disease and stroke, states implemented tobacco control laws that prohibit smoking in public places; implemented excise taxes; and allowed Medicaid to cover treatment of tobacco addiction.

States have also used legislation to address motor vehicle safety. Common laws include blood alcohol concentration limits; graduated driver licensing programs; and laws mandating the use of seat belts, child safety seats and motorcycle helmets.

States have also zeroed in on texting. Today, all states but Montana have passed laws that specifically prohibit texting while driving. The laws generally define texting as the manual composition, reading or sending electronic communications via a portable electronic device.

However, all state laws prohibiting texting while driving are not created equal. For example, in some states, an officer cannot stop a driver just for texting — there must be another reason. Moreover, some states, like Indiana, ban texting while driving for young drivers only.

In states where officers can stop drivers just for texting, studies show that roadway deaths have gone down by about 3 percent, while hospitalizations decreased about 7 percent.

States where an officer must have another reason did not see significant reductions. In fact, among some age groups, these bans were linked to increases in crash-related fatalities and hospitalizations. This is perhaps because people in these states are holding their devices just a little lower than they otherwise would, so as not to be detected.

As lawmakers and other stakeholders consider what can be done to further address distracted driving as a public health crisis, enforcement of existing laws is an obvious first step. Given that texting bans are not aggressively enforced widely, it stands to reason that more serious attempts of enforcement may lead to safer roads.

Alva O. Ferdinand, Assistant Professor of Health Policy and Management, Texas A&M University