Census jobs abound. Read more here. And here. (Any old Projo article’s an excuse for Lardaro to throw a sucker punch.)

Leonardo Lardaro, distinguished professor of economics at the University of Rhode Island, said that one reason why the census bureau might be having trouble attracting applicants is because of unemployment benefits. He said that people on unemployment might feel a temporary census job is only going to be a few extra dollars more than an unemployment check, so it’s not worth jeopardizing the benefits.

Lardaro said even though the jobs are temporary, they will help Rhode Island’s ailing economy.

“We are one of the worst states in the country. Rhode Island needs all the help we can get,” Lardaro said. “It takes people off unemployment insurance and eases the pressure on our overburdened trust fund. It might help confidence. Even in the short term … I don’t see how that could possibly hurt.”

Anyone interested in applying for a U.S. Census Bureau job, should call 1-866-861-2010.

While you’re on hold, check out the only census-inspired song I’ve ever heard — Detroit Rebellion’s “Numbers,” at the bottom of the song listings on his MySpace page.  It’s based on Jeff’s thankless spring and summer of 2010. (And imagine what’s in store this year, per the signs like the one above.)

If you see me coming

I’m walking down the street

Will you let me in

Or call the police

I don’t know

If you said ‘absolutely nothing’ (or ‘fat children’) congratulations, you get it. If you said ‘adult supervision’ or ‘helmets’ then you are a tedious fool. I have not seen the movie Where Do the Children Play? but I’m pretty sure I’m on board with the central theme.

This thought-provoking documentary examines an issue of growing concern among pediatricians, mental health experts, educators and environmentalists: more and more children are growing up with few opportunities for unstructured play, especially outdoors.

You don’t even see kids playing outside in the snow any more. Children used to be kicked out of the house by their parents and told not to come back until dinner. They then roamed the neighborhood in noisy gangs — usually with a pack of dogs — got into trouble, made up contests and games, staged plays, devised money-making schemes, formed weirdass clubs, and learned how to navigate social situations and become autonomous and independent citizens of the world. (And that world is not a scarier place, parents just do not assess risk properly.) The movie will be shown at Temple Beth-El next Tuesday evening and will be followed by a panel discussion. It will screen again on March 30th down at the URI Kingston Campus.

[I originally had this incorrectly slated for tonight. The event takes place one week from tonight. My apologies to the commenter and anyone else who has been inconvenienced. I usually check and double check, but I was rushing. BC]

Tuesday, March 16, 7pm to 9pm, Temple Beth-El, 70 Orchard Avenue

Maggie Gallagher from yesterday’s NOM rally. (Polygamy gets a shout-out at the 3:00 mark.)

Pole-handling skills this poor are unlikely to result in much of a catch — or ever getting pregnant for that matter — so this gal will be fine. But the Rhode Island Department of Health issued an advisory Wednesday regarding consumption of stripers and blue fish.

The Rhode Island Department of Health (HEALTH), in coordination with six other east coast states, reminds consumers of advisories on striped bass and bluefish consumption. These fish can contain high levels of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs).

Maine, New Hampshire, Connecticut, New Jersey, Maryland and Delaware and HEALTH recommend that pregnant women, women considering pregnancy, nursing mothers and children younger than six years of age refrain from eating striped bass and bluefish.

The rest of us are instructed to limit consumption to one serving per month, although other states are advising only four servings a year.

But wait until midnight tonight.  A new law goes into effect on March 1st mandating that women be allowed to breastfeed any place open to the public (presumably this would include Club Balloons).  Oh to be a fly on the wall when this legislation was in committee.  “I say we carve out an exception to the one-tit-at-a-time rule in the case of twins or exceptional racks” (see picture). How nifty for the lawmakers that they could appear enlightened while talking up their favorite topic.  Here’s the Health Department info;

Rhode Island Public Breastfeeding Law
A new law (R.I. Gen. Laws § 23-13.5) supporting breastfeeding families takes effect on March 1, 2009. This law allows a woman to breastfeed or bottle-feed her child in any place open to the public. The Department of Health and the Rhode Island Breastfeeding Coalition have developed materials to help employers and organizations support breastfeeding in their businesses or meeting places.

As to Salma Hayek, I’m not gay but even I can’t stop staring at those things.

Providence is a haven for weirdness and weirdos.

This is what makes the town so great.

Where else can your day start with a phone call from a Cheyenne “hobo,” checked in to the RI Hospital for a suicide attempt, and end with synth rock played in a downtown “gay” bar full of rockers, trannies, bears, and at least one WASPY dude.

J.W. was beat to hell from a mugging — no joke, he has the scars to prove it — and called from the psych ward, which he said, under his breath, as he assessed the likelihood that I would actually follow through on my promise of sending him back to Billings, where his tribe could take care of him, was partly to get him out of the cold, apparently related to the failure of the sober house to keep him so.

J.W. is big.

And real.

He gave me a dream catcher when I loaded him with provisions, with a medicine stone, that he said he made for me, as soon as he got my email telling me I’d buy his ticket home.

Having grown up with a master prevaricator alcoholic brother, I have a strange yin/yang revulsion/predilection for the grand deception. I’m not sure what to do with the gift made by a man whose own medicine is made of stuff concocted by white men to keep us all under control in a world.

Not in control.

Did it work for him?

more »

In lieu of getting laid. This afternoon the Patriots (8-5) will be playing the Raiders (3-10).  So… this may not be the greatest game, but in Oakland there is always another show and if this turns into a blowout, the cameramen may turn their attention to the nutty fans.  The aesthetic in the Alameda County Coliseum seems to be rooted in motorcycle-pirates, but frequently veers off into a weird Darth Vader/Marilyn Manson/Transformers/Boy George sort of thing.  And the women wear tiaras.  Serious football fans of course heap scorn upon these displays (partly because the Raiders are always losing, so it does look a little pathetic) but I find it entertaining.

Patriots at Raiders, 4:15pm, Channel 12

more »

Lots of pretty lights have popped up around town for the holidays. Here’s another type:

The India Association of Rhode Island is hosting a candlelight vigil tonight to share its solidarity with caring and concerned people and to express its outrage and sorrow on behalf of the victims in last week’s terrorist attacks in Mumbai. Several Indian, Jewish and Catholic speakers are slated.

Tonight / 6-7 p.m. / State House south steps (facing the mall) / BYO flashlight or battery-operated candle

 Parts of the Aids Quilt, which memorializes more than 91,000 individuals lost to AIDS, will be on display at RISD this weekend.  This handmade quilt, which was started in 1987 and now weighs 54 tons, is the largest piece of ongoing community art in the world.  I last saw it in 1995, when I took this photo of just a tiny piece of it on display at my college.  It’s awe-inspiring.  Don’t miss it.

Former RISD | works storefront, 10 Westminster Street, Providence  / today and tomorrow, noon-4 p.m.; Saturday, 5-9 p.m. / free

As of this morning, same-sex marriage is legal in Connecticut.  Two down, 48 to go.

From the Wall Street Journal, a startling medical mystery:

“The patient, a 42-year-old American living in Berlin, is still recovering from his leukemia therapy, but he appears to have won his battle with AIDS. Doctors have not been able to detect the virus in his blood for more than 600 days, despite his having ceased all conventional AIDS medication. Normally when a patient stops taking AIDS drugs, the virus stampedes through the body within weeks, or days…The breakthrough appears to be that Dr. Hütter, a soft-spoken hematologist who isn’t an AIDS specialist, deliberately replaced the patient’s bone marrow cells with those from a donor who has a naturally occurring genetic mutation that renders his cells immune to almost all strains of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.”

Read the amazing story here.

Sustainability Print Show!
The opening is this SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 2nd 2008 from 4-7pm at The AS220 Main Gallery space, 115 Empire Street, Providence, RI 02903. It’s also FREE!
Print Show by Just Seeds Visual Arts Cooperative & Thirty+ RI Artists, including (but not limited to! and possibly inaccurate in some instances!):
Mary Tremonte, Josh MacPhee, Bec Young, Pete Yahnke, Meredith Stern, Dylan Miner, Colin Matthes, Erik Ruin, Beatrice McGeoch, Raphael Lyons, Cybele Collins, Michaela Colette Zacchilli, Mike Taylor, Monica Majewski, Scott Noise, Delia Kovac, Tim Patterson, Jenine Bressner, Jola Bielat, Meg Turner, Xander Marro, Caroline Paquita, Jen Daltry, Amber Schulz, Andrew Oesch, Sarah Ryan, Jean Cozzens, Will Schaff, Lu Heintz, Erin Rosenthal, Shawn Gilheeney, Ben Fino-Radin, Anna Shapiro, Jomas Daconceicao.
Come thru! Bring snacks or whatevs, I think its gonna be potluck styleeesssss!!!!!! Suckah!

The Downtown Neighborhood Charette (whose area of focus includes the Jewelry District too) kicks off today. Full schedule is posted here, and today’s workshops are as follows:

11 am-12:30 pm
Focus on Capital Center
What do we need to do to complete Capital Center? Are there any changes to the vision for this area?

1:30 pm-4:30 pm
New Parks/Pedestrian Bridge
Share your ideas on the design of Downtown’s two newest parks and the pedestrian bridge that will connect them after the relocation of Interstate 195 is completed

6 pm-9 pm
Visioning Session
Join your elected officials in a visioning exercise and share your ideas for the future of Downtown Providence

All workshops are at 222 Richmond St, Suite 200.

Photo somehow borrowed from FortWayne.com.  So hopeful they’ll either not care or not notice.

Nebraska law-makers scrambled to narrow the wording of their new “safe haven” law. Initially passed to provide an anonymous alternative to panicky teens for safely disposing of an inconvenient newborn, the law had unintended consequences to say the least.  There was no age limit in the legislation and emergency room personnel were stunned when people started dropping off their grown kids — like amnesty day at the public library — including one father of 10 who dropped off 9 of them (keeping the good one.)  Welcome to the heartland. The Nebraska state beverage is milk, the state dance is the square dance, and the population is 90% Christian.  You know… the real America.

Banjo player Eddie Adcock recently had brain surgery where surgeons installed deep brain stimulator electrodes to control a tremor in his right hand. Patients are sometimes kept awake during brain surgery to interact with the surgeon and help guide the procedure. In Adcock’s case, he played the banjo as the surgeon worked.

Zuh?

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mBi7d6e5KI]

So, when McCain refers to Americans as “my fellow prisoners,” is it:

a) a flashback, possibly drug or senility induced, to his actual days of being a prisoner, or
b) a reference, albeit an oblique one, to his outmoded economic views, inasmuch as he sees Americans and businesses as “prisoners” of taxation and regulation, or
c) a tacit philosophical comment on how we are all, metaphorically, “prisoners,” perhaps of a corrupt political system or of a stagnant culture or somesuch, or
d) the foreshadowing of a threat to actually imprison us once he’s elected.

You decide? more »