Here
is a story you don't hear every day. The
Consumer Product Safety
Commission announced a voluntary recall of more than 640,000 rocking chairs
sold between May 2004 through March 2006 at Wal-Mart stores and online. The rocking chairs'
runners are too curvy, which causes the chairs to tip over. There have been several injuries.
The CPSC says:
Wal-Mart has received
55 incident reports including 45 injuries. Those injuries include a cut
in the leg requiring 16 stitches, a slight concussion, fractured ribs,
wrist and cervical/lumbar sprains, upper back injuries, a pinched
nerve, a shoulder joint tear and one incident in which a pregnant
woman began having contractions after the display chair in which she
was sitting flipped over backwards. Many of the injuries occurred on
display models in Wal-Mart stores.
Click here and scroll to the bottom of the page to see pictures of the chairs.
The CPSC recommends that people stop using the chairs and return them to Wal-Mart for a refund.
You can find this and other recalls at Recalls.gov.
And here is a link to the Wal-Mart recalls page.
Let Your Finger Do the Buying
Jewel and Jewel-Osco supermarkets
are the latest to adopt finger identification technology as a way customers can pay for their
purchases. It is not fingerprint recognition, the stores say, but it is the same general
idea -- sort of.
The Chicago Tribune reports:
Jewel supermarket officials call it an
authentication system using hundreds of characteristics in the grooves
at the end of the index finger -- like spacing, size and curvature -- to
recognize a customer in seconds at the checkout line.
Which sounds like a fingerprint.
It sounded enough like a fingerprint, anyway, that several
shoppers at a Jewel on Chicago's North Side raised their eyebrows in
skepticism Tuesday as the supermarket chain trumpeted its use of Pay By
Touch software, which is up and running in all 204 Jewel and Jewel-Osco
stores.
It is the largest deal yet for Pay By Touch, a privately held San
Francisco company that says it enables 100,000 people in 14 states to
buy items without cash, credit or even an ID for alcohol -- just a finger
pressed to a stamp-sized piece of glass and a phone number.
You just stick your finger into a reader and once you are
approved you are paid up -- no need for cash or a credit card.
To find stores that use the Pay By Touch technology, just enter your ZIP code into the company's store locator.
Supermarkets aren't the only places using this biometric scanning
technology. Last July, WKMG-TV in central Florida reported that Disney World had begun requiring finger scans of all patrons. The Department of Defense uses it, too. Here's a link to its Biometrics Management Office and Biometrics Fusion Center.
The Electronic Policy Information Center, a Washington, D.C.-based
public-interest research organization that says it was "established in
1994
to focus public attention on emerging civil liberties issues and to
protect privacy, the First Amendment and constitutional values," has a resource page on the phenomenon. So does the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which operates under the motto "defending freedom in the digital world," and outlines its concerns with the technology.
The International Biometric Society also has some information. So does Michigan State University's biometrics research page.
You can find even more information on the European Commission's European Biometrics Forum Web site and on the U.S.'s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) biometrics resource center site.
Nursing Schools Need Teachers
Nursing schools say
they could stop turning away so many qualified applicants and alleviate
the national nursing shortage, but they can't hire enough teachers.
The Press-Enterprise in Riverside, Calif. localized the story.
In 2003, the American Association of Colleges of Nursing commissioned a white paper to explore the problem. The organization also has a resource page for information on the general nursing shortage, and so does Sigma Theta Tau International, the nursing honor society.
In February of this year, the Houston Chronicle covered the issue, too.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Bureau of Health Professions has a county-by-county accounting of the shortage.
Here are some other resources related to the nursing faculty shortage:
- American Association of Colleges of Nursing faculty shortage fact sheet
- "UNF joins program to address nursing faculty shortage," Jacksonville (Fla.) Business Journal, Aug. 14, 2002
- "Colleges Find Ways to Graduate More Nurses," Community College Times, July 23, 2002
- "Facts about the nursing faculty shortage," Indiana University School of Nursing
- "UC receives grant to help address nursing faculty shortage," University of Cincinnati Medical Center, Sept. 9, 2005
One Student: A Dozen College Applications
The New York Times gives a glimpse into the nightmare that high school seniors go through to get accepted to a choice college. The paper says:
A
generation ago, high school seniors applied to three, four or five
colleges. But now students aiming for the most selective universities
frequently apply to as many as 10 or 12; a significant number of
students, especially in the last three years or so, apply to many, many
more, guidance counselors and college admissions officials said.
The
main reason for this, guidance counselors and admissions officials say,
is a growing anxiety about admissions, stoked by college ranking
guides, the news media and, often, parents. Some students are desperate
to do anything to get into a brand-name institution -- including
applying to many of them.
The
growth of the Common Application, which more than 270 colleges accept,
has contributed as well by making it easier to apply to a large number
of institutions; so has an increase in the number of colleges that
waive fees for online applications. Most colleges charge about $50 to
$75 per application. And some students cast a wide net to increase
their chances of snaring a substantial merit scholarship.
Bird Count Results
The Great Backyard Bird Count
this year drew an unprecedented number of participants, which could be
an indication of how many people love that sort of thing.
The count
this year showed a startling number of American robins flocking to the
northwest. The flocks are as loud as jet planes. At the same time,
robins were considerably more sparse in the south this winter. Nobody
seems to know why yet.
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.
