Results tagged “nationalcenter”

Yesterday, the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University released a study, Wasting the Best and the Brightest: Substance Abuse at America’s Colleges and Universities. Among the findings in the 244-page report (PDF here), painkiller abuse has increased 343% between 1993 and 2005, binge drinking has gone up 16% between 1993 and 2001, daily marijuana abuse doubled between 1993 and 2005, and 26% more students are getting drunk at least three times a month.

March 10: Cantina-Style: One Pot Meals Cooking Demonstration and Luncheon

What's a polar bear to do when it is 72 in January? Well, if you're a member of the Coney Island Polar Bear Club, you stage a silent protest. The Times reports eight members of the club cancelled their Saturday swim, because the water was too warm. Perhaps more interestingly, the News reports it was nine members of the club and the Post says ten! According to Polar Bear Club treasurer Tom McGann, yesterday was the first time in more than a century that the club has cancelled a swim. Meanwhile, the News also reports that the real polar bears in the Central Park Zoo were largely unaffected by the warm weather.

- Fifty-eight percent of New Yorkers polled say they are prepared for an emergency that would require them to evacuate their homes and leave the immediate area for up to three days, yet 32 percent indicated that they don’t have emergency go bags ready with the necessary supplies to take with them. On the upside, 17% of people feel that they are more prepared than last year, so at least they feel good, even if they're going to be struggling in a waterlogged taxi. NY Times talks to a number of disaster preparedness experts, like 's National Center for Disaster Preparedness director Dr. Irwin Redlener, who says recent disaster have "not wake-up calls, but more like snooze alarms, where we get aroused briefly and then drift back to sleep." Fine - you got us: Gothamist bought a handcrank radio at Radio Shack, but we still haven't Ziplocked any cash or credit cards...we have a "maybe we're going somewhere" bag.

So, what happened to our sunny, dry weather? The sun disappeared when the winds shifted around and started blowing from the east –right off the cold Atlantic. A giant ridge of high pressure has parked itself over the Canadian Maritimes and is blocking the atmosphere from moving eastward across the country. If a balloon were released in Seattle today it wouldn't follow I-90 across to Boston before flying out to sea. Instead it would take a hard right over the Dakotas, plunge as far south as the Gulf of Mexico, scoot over to the Carolinas, take a hard left up the eastern seaboard, continue north over Vermont, Quebec and Baffin Bay before taking another right over the top of Greenland, before finally plunging south into the Mid-Atlantic. A 4,000 mile trip in only 10,000 miles! Kind of like a large-scale version of trying to drive across Bergen County.

The Transit Transport Workers Union is telling its subway conductors and workers to "cut and run" in the event of a terrorist event (chemical, biological, etc.) according to the Daily News:

The disappearance of 27 year-old, pregnant Laci Peterson late last year may have taken a sad turn: the decomposed bodies of a woman and a baby were found in the San Francisco Bay area. Newsday's coverage includes this: