TUESDAY, MARCH 13, 2007
Tuesday Edition: Weak Kennel Inspections
The
(Allentown, Pa.) Morning Call
did a terrific job of using public records to show that dog kennel inspections in
the Keystone State fail to protect the pets that stay at these places.
The paper reviewed records from 20,000 kennel inspections to learn the following:
Puppy breeding and boarding kennels throughout Pennsylvania have been virtually assured of passing grades from state
regulators even with feces-filled living areas, cramped cages, dirty water bowls and diseased or dead dogs, according to an investigation by The Morning Call based on a first-ever analysis of 20,000 state inspection records.
Dog wardens are charged with protecting puppies. But the analysis of kennel inspection records from 2003-2006
shows the wardens have been the kennel owners' best friend.
The newspaper found that
nine out of 10 times, kennels received "perfect"
inspections, in addition to these statistics:
- 98.2 percent of inspections gave the kennel an
overall rating of satisfactory.
- 90.8 percent of inspections were perfect, meaning none of the 26 subcategories or the overall rating was unsatisfactory.
- 7.5 percent of inspections had one or more categories marked as unsatisfactory. In other words, for
every 13 inspections an inspector [did], only one [listed] anything at a kennel as unsatisfactory.
- 0.9 percent of inspections (one of every 114) gave
the kennel an overall rating of unsatisfactory.
Al's Morning MultimediaThe Morning Call did
a very interesting
thing with
the kennel project.
The paper encouraged "viral
marketing" by
making its inspection-database search tool available for posting on other Web sites.
Also, here is a cool and fairly
simple use of the Web.
The
Seattle Times used this interesting graphic (click on the PDF link to the right) to show how
much of a difference daylight-saving time makes. It's "an hour-by-hour look
as the sun rises and sets in Seattle."
And finally, I want to pass along this monster 5,800-word
St.
Petersburg (Fla.) Times story about the Largo, Fla., city manager who was fired when he announced he was about to undergo a sex change operation. I was
surprised that I read the entire story. I liked
the complexity of the piece. And the
Times
built a Web site that includes video, a collection of past stories and even
a poll about the issue.
Gas Prices Rising FastGasoline prices
have risen 20 cents a gallon
in just two weeks.
It is not unusual for prices
to rise as refiners
switch to summer fuel blends. Add in a refinery fire and a power
outage at a refinery, and you start to understand
what is behind this jump. But despite the uptick,
there
is reason to hope that prices will not be as high as they were last year.
Sleepless WomenThe
National Sleep Foundation reports:More than half of American women (60 percent) say they only get a good
night's sleep a few nights per week or less, and 67 percent say they frequently
experience a sleep problem. Additionally, 43 percent say that daytime
sleepiness interferes with their daily activities, according to a new
poll released today [...]. Women's
lack of sleep affects virtually every aspect of their time-pressed
lives, leaving them late for work, stressed out, too tired for sex and
[having] little time for their friends.
NSF's 2007 "Sleep in America" poll sought to look at the sleep patterns of adult women (ages 18-64), as the NSF's 2005 "Sleep in America" poll found that women are more likely to experience sleep problems than men.
Specifically, the new poll finds the following:
[...] that women of all ages are experiencing sleep problems, which change
and increase in severity as they move through the different biological
stages of their lives. Interestingly, lifestyle also plays a
significant, often negative, role in women's sleep and daytime
alertness. Working mothers (72 percent) and single working women (68 percent) are
more likely to experience symptoms of sleep problems like insomnia. But stay-at-home mothers report a high level of overall sleep
problems, with 74 percent saying they are experiencing symptoms of insomnia at
least a few nights each week, 59 percent saying they frequently wake up
feeling un-refreshed and 9 percent [reporting] co-sleeping with a child or infant,
which adds to the sleep disturbances they experience each night.
Married and Sleeping AloneIn a related story,
The
New York Times reports that,
increasingly, married couples are sleeping alone. It's not about sex, the story says. It's about finding comfort:
In a
survey in February by the National Association of Home Builders, builders and architects predicted that more than 60
percent of custom houses would have dual master bedrooms by 2015, according to Gopal Ahluwalia, staff vice president of research at the builders association. Some builders say more than a quarter
of their new projects already do.
What could be called the home-sleeping-alone syndrome is not limited to the wealthy. For middle-income homeowners, it may be a matter of moving into a spare bedroom, the
recreation room or the den. In St. Louis, Lana Pepper, a light sleeper who battled for
years with her husband's nocturnal restlessness, reconfigured the condominium they bought recently, adding walls to create separate
bedrooms. Mrs. Pepper said the advantage to separate rooms was obvious: "My husband is still alive. I would have killed him."
We are always looking for your great ideas. Send Al a few sentences and hot links.
Editor's
Note: Al's Morning Meeting is a compendium of ideas, edited story
excerpts and other materials from a variety of Web sites, as well as
original concepts and analysis. When the information comes directly
from another source, it will be attributed and a link will be provided
whenever possible. The column is fact-checked, but depends upon the
accuracy and integrity of the original sources cited. Errors and
inaccuracies found will be corrected.
Posted at 10:41:32 AM
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