Broward Palm Beach News Blog

Dr. Rene Varela

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The local community of marine mammal experts is a relatively small one, so the Juice has been asking some high-level folks in the scientific community to weigh in on the recent controversy surrounding veterinarian Dr. Rene Varela, candidate for mayor of Lake Worth.

One expert, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that Varela was a "very good veterinarian and seemed like a good person, but I personally lost respect for him when he went to work for Ocean Embassy."

Speaking specifically of Ocean Embassy's capturing of 28 dolphins in the Solomon Islands and further plans to capture dolphins in Panama, the expert said, "They were capturing wild dolphins and selling them to marine parks -- and they were doing it irresponsibly. If you're going to capture wild dolphins, you should determine how many there are and make sure that population can sustain itself. This was drastic; they couldn't recover. I feel like that was irresponsible."

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Of course Houdini's ghost would carry chains.

​ If the most famous magician in history were to come back from the dead as a publicity-related favor for any group or organization, it would probably be the skeptics.

Harry Houdini spent most of his career debunking psychics and scamsters, convincing the world that these people are frauds -- not worth the price of admission. He was so dedicated to this end that, nearing his death, he told his wife a secret word and said that if returning from the great beyond were possible, he would come back to her with that word.

Since his death on Halloween in 1926, there have been a number of seances held in the Houdini museum and elsewhere, each aimed at summoning the magnificent mystifier. Most of these rituals are performed by kooks and hucksters (as James Randi says, "woo-woo"). But now a group of local skeptics -- with help from some big-name celebrities -- are gonna give it a try themselves.

Dr. Rene Varela

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Two days ago, we posted this story about how protesters in Lake Worth targeted mayoral candidate Rene Varela, shining light on his work with Ocean Embassy, an Orlando company (formed by ex-SeaWorld employees) that has plans to build a resort in Panama featuring marine animal attractions. The company has also been accused of involvement with capturing wild dolphins in the Solomon Islands and exporting them to Dubai for use in theme parks. Protesters called Varela a "dolphin trafficker," and the story set off a heated debate in the comments field.

I contacted both Varela's employer and campaign manager requesting a phone interview. Varela did not return my calls but instead sent this email, which I only just rescued from my spam filter. I've posted it after the jump.

Snyder's home flu repellent: Vitamin D

​Historians will look back some day on the autumn of 2009 as a period of mass hysteria over a relatively innocuous strain of flu called H1N1, which so far has killed 1,000 Americans (normal seasonal flu averages 36,000 U.S. deaths per year, according to the CDC -- see how they arrive at that count in this Slate article). President Obama has declared swine flu a "national emergency" that might kill 90,000

Protestors at last night's forum

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It's not unusual for politicians to want to hide controversial details of their lives: adulterous affairs, DUI arrests, bankruptcies. Leave to the reliably kooky city of Lake Worth to have this week's most interesting political scandal: rivals of mayoral candidate Rene Varela -- a marine mammal veterinarian -- say that he helps sell wild dolphins for profit.

On his campaign website, Varela claims that he has taught at such esteemed institutions as Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute and the University of Florida. His website says nothing of his involvement with Ocean Embassy, a company that is building a $500 million Sea World-style resort in Panama.  Ocean Embassy's website says Varela has been director of veterinary services since 2005. No one answered the phone at Ocean Embassy's offices today, and Varela has yet to respond to an email seeking comment.

Ocean Embassy has been no stranger to controversy. 

Don't want it. Don't need it.

​In what may come to be called the Great Swine Flu Fuck-Up, local health officials have vaccinated thousands of schoolkids this year with the regular seasonal flu nasal mist -- a vaccination which unfortunately promises to protect them not at all.

The seasonal flu vaccine purportedly protects against three viral strains that aren't very common this year -- those three strains together will probably account for as little as five percent of flu illnesses. But the kicker is, once kids get the seasonal vaccine, they have to wait an extra month to get the Swine Flu vaccine, which contains a live virus. The two vaccines given too close together can prevent an effective immune response.

According to this Palm Beach Post article, parents are livid that their kids can't get vaccinated for the Swine Flu strain, H1N1, that the Post says may have sickened as many as 300 Palm Beach County school kids already this year. But parents should relax. According to an excellent article in the new issue of The Atlantic Monthly, flu vaccines don't work worth a damn anyway.

flickr user: nukeit1

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Today, newswires were abuzz with the information that a Washington-based nonprofit group called the Cancer Project, on behalf of two plantiffs in Connecticut, filed a class-action lawsuit against Burger King, McDonald's, and Friendly's.  The lawsuit alleges that chicken sold by the three restaurant chains contains a chemical, PhIP, which causes cancer. PhIP can form during the grilling/barbecueing/flame-broiling process.

But what wasn't noted in wire stories (such as this one by Bloomberg News) is that The Cancer Project is affiliated with the nonprofit Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, which has a strong animal rights focus.

Mathews: Make em laugh

​"We'd love it if the world turned vegan tomorrow," Dan Mathews says breathlessly. Mathews is senior vice president of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), the controversial animal rights group founded by Ingrid Newkirk in 1980. When I spoke to Mathews by phone Friday, he had to raise his voice above the honking of New York cabs and the belch of passing trucks. But the background mayhem couldn't faze a guy who thinks nothing of dressing up as a priest to crash a fashion show in Milan. Or posing in a rabbit suit for the cover of his new book, Committed: A Rabble Rouser's Memoir.

It takes more than a little ambient noise to shush Mathews or divert this theatrical pontificator from a spiel he's taken a quarter-century to perfect.

 Mathews is in Fort Lauderdale today to give a talk and sign books at

Gallagher: A model of self-destruction.

​The New York Times is reporting that the human body's ability to cannibalize its own cells is a major factor in maintaining human health. In short:

Increasing our body's ability to self-destruct may, paradoxically, let us live longer.

And no local bodies self-destructed as spectacularly as Ken Jenne, Beverly Gallagher, Joe Eggelletion, Fitzroy Salesman... I could go on.

The article tells of "lysosomes" -- the enzymes that supply a body nutrients and maintain cell production in the absence of food.

This strategy for survival, known as autophagy ("eating oneself"), evolved in our ancestors over two billion years ago.

But our Broward County officials are more highly evolved, relying not on food but on bribes and kickbacks. And for those few instances in which they were caught in the act, scientists can safely assume that local officials have accumulated enough in food -- that is, bribes and kickbacks -- to maintain basic life functions. In this case, retaining attorney David Bogenschutz, or some similar legal luminary, for their defense.

Flickr: mcatd40

Hollywood Beach

​Ocean currents only seem to behave randomly; researchers have detected a method to their movements. They're coordinated in fashion similar to the way a muscle moves around a "skeleton." By recognizing that system, researchers may be able to predict it, in the same way as meteorologists predict the weather. And that could bode well for pollution in South Florida beaches:

The scientists proposed building a holding tank for the fertilizers and pesticides that wash from farmland into the neighboring watershed that could release pollutants only at times when they would quickly drift into the ocean, where they would be so diluted they would pose less harm to marine life. In a later experiment, scientists found that the path of buoys dispatched in the bay followed the path predicted by the computer simulations.

Researchers who studied the waters along the southeastern coast of Florida found a similar structure that they argued could be used to reduce the effects of pollution near Hollywood Beach, south of Fort Lauderdale.

Alan T. Brown of Hollywood is the subject of an article in the most recent issue of Newsweek. Paralyzed from the chest down since colliding with a rock at age 20, the now 42-year-old Brown has long hoped medical technology would discover a means for him to walk again -- in effect, a cure for paralysis. But in recent years, he's adjusted his expectations. From the magazine:

It's not that he's completely abandoned the hope of ever walking again; it's just that after two decades in a seated position, he's got other issues to reckon with. He has had six major surgeries since his injury. His hemoglobin dropped from 15 to seven, and he began passing out regularly. "I'm in pain 24/7 -- I feel like my body's on fire," says Brown, who suffered 17 urinary-tract infections last year and a bout with a drug-resistant staph infection. "I've had so many surgeries -- you have to pick your battles. How you live your life now, what you do to keep yourself going -- that counts more than walking."

JREF

​Tickets for self-proclaimed "spiritual teacher and psychic" Sylvia Browne's first two appearances at the Seminole Casino Coconut Creek later this month sold out so fast that the casino booked Browne for a third evening of...of...whatever it is Sylvia Browne does. She says it's reading people's minds and talking to the dead. Skeptics, like The Amazing Randi, call Browne's act "flim-flam."

Tickets for the final night, September 29, are on sale for $30, which is a deal considering a 30-minute phone sessions with Browne go for more than $700.

The trio of dates are part of what Browne calls her "farewell tour." Randi, who heads the Fort Lauderdale-based James Randi Educational Foundation, says Browne's act hasn't gotten any better since they appeared together on Bill Bixby's television special in 1989. "And this farewell tour has been going on since 2002," Randi says. "Apparently she likes to linger on the doorstep when she says goodbye."

He says he's not surprised that Browne would come to South Florida, where there are plenty of skeptics -- but also plenty of commercial, self-proclaimed psychics. "She's a real money maker," he says.

Randi has, on several occasions, offered Browne the chance to prove her paranormal powers and collect his million dollars. She accepted the challenge in 2001, on the Larry King show, but never followed through.

Other skeptics have followed Browne's antics for years, chronicling her at StopSylvia.com.

For the cover story I wrote about James Randi last month, I tried to contact Sylvia Browne via email (no reply), phone (a member of her staff said she would consider the interview, but said she normally gets a fee for such things, then never returned the call), and silent psychic signals sent from my brain (all day, every day, for weeks). She didn't respond.

After the jump, video of some of Sylvia Browne's most audacious psychic predictions (and the results).

Flickr: deerme_2006

Smoke up, Bett. Your kids will pay your medical bills.

​It's been one of the talking points in the battle for major health-care reform -- for all our medical technology, Americans have a lower life expectancy than that of other developed countries. Like Europe, where people smoke like chimneys. Far more than Americans do. So what gives?

Today's New York Times provides an answer to that riddle: The Americans who collectively are dragging down that life expectancy statistic belong to a generation that came of age in the 1950s and 60s, when Americans smoked at a rate that was actually higher than Europe. If it's hard to imagine, watch Mad Men.

A big winner in this weekend's Emmys, Mad Men's third season is set in 1963. In that huge cast, only a few characters don't smoke -- Pete, Peggy, and Bert, off the top of my head. Add the plates of bacon and sausage for breakfast, plus the fast-food joints that were springing up in rural parts of America, and it's no wonder that generation's making an early exit.

Younger generations who smoke less can make up that gap, says Dr. Samuel H. Preston, speaking in the Times article:

"The U.S. has had one spectacular achievement in preventive medicine," he says. "It has had the largest drop in cigarette consumption per adult of any developed country since 1985." If Americans keep shunning cigarettes, the longevity gap could shrink no matter what happens with the health care system.

Our friend, the Burmese python.

​Wild critters in Florida have many subtle ways of fighting the predations of man. And now that Florida has declared open season on invasive pythons, it's a good bet that the snakes are going to have the last word, even if it's spoken with forked tongue.

Python meat is a delicacy that can sell to connoisseurs for up to $50 a pound. And it turns out our homegrown snakes are anything but edible. The St. Pete Times reports today that tissue samples from two dozen Burmese pythons taken from the Everglades are showing "extraordinarily high levels of mercury,"  according to National Parks Service officials. The pythons have three times more mercury than native alligators. And unfortunately, the high mercury levels aren't putting a damper on their reproduction.

And in other news:

Not so cute when eating a $100 orchid.

​Juice staffers found a bright-green baby iguana, cute as a little long-tailed buttton, on one of our lemon trees this weekend, But the sight wasn't exactly cause for celebration. It meant that the adult iguana that appeared in our toilet bowl a couple of years ago and that we idiotically pulled out and set free in a nearby alley is not only living in our yard now but has found a mate. Knowing that a single iguana can lay waste to an entire garden before you can say, "but that was my favorite rare orchid!", the Juice spent several fruitless hours on the internets yesterday searching for advice about how to kill iguanas humanely, and this is what we learned:

Do not bludgeon them.
Do not freeze them.
Do not drown them.
Do not suffocate them.
Do not pour bleach upon them.
Do not decapitate them.
Do not call animal control -- they already have their hands full.
Do not catch them and keep them as pets.
Do not attempt to sell them.
Do not release them alive elsewhere.
Do not eat them; they have salmonella.

So our question to you, dear readers, is WTF do we do with these frigging iguanas? The only allowable form of murder appears to be via pellet or BB gun. But the Juice does not own a BB gun.

A baby iguana ended up in our freezer, wedged between the frozen blueberries and the Miller's gin bottle. If anybody sends us a better solution, we'll happily thaw her out and put her to death more humanely.   

 The day is upon us. Yes, every Simpsons fan knows Whacking Day started in 1924 as an excuse to beat up the Irish. And yes, technically Texas has had organized snake whacking for years. But now Florida's bravest most cunning snake-hatingest citizens will descend upon the swamps of this state in search of Burmese Pythons (and other "reptiles of concern"), in order to study learn from photograph kill them.

Last month the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission began issuing permits allowing individuals to search for and euthanize these snakes for the sake of scientific study. (Early studies indicate extremely high levels of mercury in the animals.) This weekend those permit holders (there are less than 20 in the state) will be joined by, well, just about anyone who wants to whack a snake. Technically, it's anyone with an alligator hunting license, though a statement released by the commission says those rules could open up even more soon.

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/broward/

A screen grab from the Broward edition of this morning's Miami Herald.

​A month after a national magazine named Resveratrol Ultra among the drug supplements that profit from what appear to be misleading advertisements and in the week following its being mentioned in a similar context in the New York Times and then sued by Oprah Winfrey, that same controversial product is appearing in a prominently featured ad in the Miami Herald, seen above.

Despite that infamy, the product made by FWM Laboratories in Hollywood has never appeared in an article in the three major local dailies -- just as an advertisement. Or at least, a search of local news archives didn't turn up anything in South Florida besides the three Juice posts linked above.

Flickr: fracasnoir

​The feature story I wrote this week about zoophiles has attracted some controversy, here and in our sister paper, the Miami New Times. That's not surprising -- it's a touchy subject. I didn't have time to respond to all the comments and emails, but I did want to share a correspondence I had with one reader, Natalie Altman, who gave me permission to post her emails. Here's a portion of her first note:

I recently watched the "Zoo" documentary about the Washington man/horse incident. In the film, men gathered together at a farm, feasted and drank and then made sojourns out to a barn to have sex with animals. If you haven't seen it, I suggest you do. You'll be proud that in a few short interviews you fleshed out people of this kind of persuasion more than a full-length documentary did.

The men in the documentary didn't say much about themselves or what they were after other than that they liked being with animals. Your interviewees, on the other hand, were completely forthcoming about how they view themselves and how they would like to be viewed by others. In a nutshell, they want their relationships with "adult" animals viewed the same as relationships between consenting adult humans. On their wave length (and I'm not demeaning them, they're absolutely sincere) the object of their affection has communicated love and desire to them the way a human does and they want to be able to freely respond in kind with no legal hassles or moralizing.

The rest of her letter, and my response, after the jump.

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Miracle Fruit

​The folks who bring you museums of the random, odd, eccentric, and generally unbelievable, also have a book. Ripley's Believe It or Not! Seeing Is Believing! (You know it's good if it has two exclamation points in the title.)

And the latest edition of that book, published earlier this month, honors the fruit (pun alert) of one local man's labor. Curtis Mozie, a 65-year-old Fort Lauderdale man, has spent more than a decade cultivating the West African berry known in the U.S. as "Miracle Fruit." And now Ripley's is writing about it.

An excerpt from the book:

"Known also as the miracle fruit, the berry of Snyespalum dulcificum creates a chemical reaction that raises your sense of sweetness, making lemons taste like candy, beer taste like chocolate and hot sauces taste like donut glaze. The effect lasts for about an hour. The berry is native to West Africa, but is now being harvested in South Florida, where a single berry sells for $3."

That's right, rub the fruit on your tongue and everything sour tastes sweet. When I visited Mozie's house, I tried it with a pickle and a lime. Both things tasted like pure sugar. Mozie says he's working with researchers at the University of Florida right now, and there are other studies being done to learn the effect of miracle fruit on chemotherapy patients.

Mozie says he is the only commercial grower of miracle fruit in the state and indeed the largest in the country. And though he's received his share of press through the years, "It's still not as much publicity as miracle fruit should be getting," he says. "If you ask 20 people, maybe one in 20 has heard of miracle fruit. The way the news media is today -- when Michael Jackson died, everyone heard about it immediately -- people should know about the miracle fruit."

He says among other benefits, miracle fruit aids in weight loss. Most important, though, Mozie says that the berries could help society consume less sugar, an important issue in the days of morbid obesity and less-than-stellar health care.

So if you didn't know about miracle fruit before, you do now. Believe it or not.

Experts use high tech gagetry to test drywall at Whitney

​Residents at the Whitney in downtown West Palm Beach aren't particularly happy to know that they're living in one of the only condo buildings in Florida to have a suspected problem with Chinese drywall, at least so far. Especially since that's about the sum total of what they've learned since one apartment owner found she had corroded pipes, a signature of the problem drywall, in her apartment.

A few residents have complained of headaches and allergy problems; others have demanded a full report from The Continental Group, which owns the building. But response from management has ranged from slow, to confused, to downright nonsensical.

One resident, who asked not to be named, said the company first tried a random sampling of apartments. "They went around to a couple of units on each floor with some machine that was supposed to be able to sense the presence of Chinese drywall," he told The Juice. When the results came back positive for 50 percent of the tested units, outraged residents demanded an explanation. "They told us that 'there might be people with more sensitive olfactory responses than the machine,'" the resident remembers.

Last month, Bovis Lend Lease, the Whitney's builder, hired Environ International to perform its own round of tests. This time they removed safety plates and outlet covers and took samples of drywall from every unit. On Wednesday of this week, residents received this email from property manager Paul Wilkis:

Flickr user: doncon402

You lookin' for me?

​Males. When they're young and brash, trying to mark their territory and impress girls, there's no telling what they'll do. Run off to Georgia, even, and get themselves killed.

That's apparently what happened to a Florida panther who was shot and killed by a hunter last year in the woods of Troup County, Georgia. The animal's death set off a flurry of speculation that some kind of panther or cougar had escaped from captivity, because Florida panthers, which are an endangered species, hadn't been seen in Georgia in years. There's only about 120 of them left in South Florida, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Being that endangered wins the animals protection under federal law. The Fish and Wildlife Service must investigate when one of them is killed.So DNA samples from the rogue cat were sent to the National Cancer Institute's Laboratory of Genomic Diversity in Maryland, which discovered that it was indeed a Florida panther-- albeit one who had wandered very far from home.

"Finding a Florida panther that far from southwest Florida is out of the ordinary, but male panthers, particularly younger ones, can travel great distances," Paul Souza, Field Supervisor of the South Florida Ecological Services Office, said in a press release.  "While it's unusual for panthers to be seen that far north, it is not impossible for a young male to travel so far."

The mystery of the cat's identity took about nine months to unravel, which means he got faster DNA-testing than some accused rapists. But hey, that's how the panthers roll.

Radio Green Earth: Making the world safer for tree frogs

​Bet you thought South Florida was a lot more likely to win accolades for "best strip malls" or "extra egregious decimation of natural wildlife" than for anything much greener than development dollars. But it turns out Florida is among the top states in the nation when it comes to a clean, green energy economy, according to a study released last month by the Pew Charitable Trust. And we're also among the top ten states for jobs in the green sector (we got beat by Texas and California). To recap our victory over the forces of evil, the Pew study found:
• 31,100 jobs in Florida's clean-energy economy and 3,831 clean businesses.
• that venture capital investment in clean technology throughout the state totaled almost $117 million over the past three years.
• Florida is the only state in the country with its own cap-and-trade policy.
• Florida's clean-energy economy increased by 7.9 percent throughout the country from 1998 to 2007 compared to 3.7 percent for total jobs.

So green are we, in fact, that somebody thought a talk-radio program devoted entirely to clean energy might have a shot at making a profit. Probably safe to say that "Radio Green Earth" isn't siphoning off listeners from Limbaugh or Joyce Kaufman. Eco Advisors of Palm Beach Gardens is broadcasting the show on Mondays from 10 to 11 a.m. on WWNN-AM (1470) out of Pompano Beach. Recent shows, hosted by Missy Tancredi and John Poggi, among others, have run the gamut from best hybrid and electric cars to how to make your home greener to "the business case for sustainability." The show we caught touched on unadulterated Florida honey and also disentangled the alternative biofuels controversy over sugar cane versus algae.

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A blood-chilling... boulder?

​Near the city of Fort Worth, Texas, there's a Lake Worth -- a city that's next to an actual lake, not a lagoon like Florida's Lake Worth. And according to the Star-Telegram, this summer marks an anniversary of a ghoulish sighting that has earned a place in local legend.

The Lake Worth Monster -- aka Goat-Man -- hasn't been seen regularly at the Fort Worth Nature Center since a very memorable summer 40 years ago when all of Texas seemed to buzz with the news that a hairy, scaly 7-foot man-goat-beast was terrorizing the good citizens of Tarrant County.

As you can see, that's the lamest photo of a monster in monster-sighting history. After the jump, let's round up a few suspects and see if anyone in Lake Worth, Florida, has Goat-Man potential.

Photo: ClydeElliott

FAU research aims to stave off dystopian future full of American amphibians

​Florida Atlantic researchers are racing against melting polar ice caps and dwindling natural resources in hope of developing energy technology that exploits the vast powers of the ocean tides.

Sue Skemp, executive director at Florida Atlantic University's Center for Ocean Energy Technology, tells CNN:

"If you can take an engine and put it on the back of a boat or propel a ship through water, why not take a look at the strength of the Gulf Stream and determine if that can actually turn a device and create energy?"

To at least one potential Republican presidential candidate, that seems like a good question for citizens in the next century. Newt Gingrich echoes a refrain by Florida Republicans, for whom the first priority is to suck every last energy-giving fossil fuel from the Earth, including those off Florida's coast.

By then, surely evolution God will have seen fit to bless us with webbed feet and gills, a la Kevin Costner in Waterworld.

Flickr User: ejames1964

Bob Martinez

With the news full of moon landings, former Florida Gov. Bob Martinez recalls a far-less-triumphant moment in the American space program. In this month's Florida Trend, Martinez describes how he was on the campaign trail, hustling for votes in South Florida on the day in 1986 when the Space Shuttle Challenger was to launch.

I happened to be coming out of Broward County, having been endorsed by a number of local office holders, and I was heading to Brevard County for a fundraiser. I was on Interstate 95 and my driver and I were listening to the radio when all of sudden the music is interrupted with this bulletin. We looked up and saw the plume. We saw that plume the entire drive to Brevard County.

Martinez, who was governor from 1987-91 and had a two-year stint as the U.S. drug czar, gave the interview in connection with his having earned Florida Trend "Icon" status. Not to be confused with the Las Olas Lifestyle magazine's "Icon" status, which is among the allegedly corrupt acts for which North Broward Hospital District Commissioner Joseph Cobo is currently under criminal investigation.

Flickr User: capturingJenna

The culprit

If this study is true in claiming that there really is a relationship between a nation's high temperatures and its lack of prosperity, then shouldn't that apply to American states? If so, that bodes badly for this here peninsula.

It's "a huge effect," Olken says. The difference between a country that's in recession and one that is buzzing along amounts to a 3 percent shift in GDP. "So, 1 degree explaining a 1.1 percent shift is a huge effect of temperature."

It's unclear exactly why temperature would have this effect. It might be that crop yields go down or that disease is more of a problem. Or it might just be what you could call the "sloth" theory -- it's hard to work when it's hot out. Who wants to mow the lawn in August?

Seriously. But as a South Florida resident who grew up in a portion of the Midwest dangerously close to the polar circle, it's also a mighty pain in the ass to get out of bed when it's 30-below zero.

Another point: The chilly states, Canada, and Europe all gang up to boost Florida tourism. An economic engine that helps us afford air conditioning. At least for the short term. But with global warming, maybe this state is destined to slip toward equatorial poverty.

Today's forecast: A high of 92 degrees.

Idyllic Florida landscape courtesy of FMPA

Residents of Lake Worth, many of whom have made small but successful careers specializing in complaining about their high utility bills, might not know that the city actually gets the power to turn their fans and nuke their frozen dinners not from the beleaguered Lake Worth Power Plant but from the Florida Municipal Power Agency. Lake Worth is one of 30 cities in Florida, including Key West, Vero Beach, and Homestead, that rely on FMPA for energy that comes from a conglomeration of distant coal and nuclear facilities -- and maybe just occasionally, their own hometown plant.

The FMPA's reach is wide, and so is its impact on the kinds of energy Florida invests in. The executive board rarely meets publicly in South Florida. It's a pretty sure bet they didn't expect the 15 or 20 protesters at PGA National who turned out on Tuesday, at least one of them wearing a Homer Simpson costume, to welcome arriving board members and to make it clear they don't think much of FMPA's idea to invest in a $17 billion nuclear power plant in Levy County, in northwest Florida.

"Some people want to say that nuclear energy is green energy because it's cleaner than other sources," activist Russell McSpadden, who lives in Lake Worth, told us. "But there is evidence of cancer clusters, like around the Port St. Lucie plant, where children are getting brain cancer at an early age -- at rates of 400 times the national average. And that's when the plants are running safely -- we're not even talking about a meltdown. The plants also use a huge amount of water; they're expensive, dangerous, and dirty. The FMPA is an elusive group, and this may be the closest we're going to get to them." McSpadden says the Florida Green Party and the Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS) have filed formal complaints against the permitting of the plant.

Jennings: Spreading good energy.

Lake Worth City Commissioner Cara Jennings, who has lately been building her own solar panels ("I bought one panel for $600 and built another one in two hours for $100 -- I'm not so good with technology, but this is really easy") is encouraging South Floridians to show up for tomorrow's board meeting at PGA National.

"The FMPA is mismanaged," Jennings says. "Our City Commission is supportive of renewable energy, but the FMPA isn't investing in renewable, and they're not interested in conservation. One of the reasons our rates are so high is that FMPA bought gas at too high a price, and now we're paying for it. Customers understand if their bills go up with high gas prices; the problem is, their bills don't go down when prices drop."

Jennings wants to talk to the board about "net metering." As of now, Lake Worth residents who install solar panels, as she's doing, can't sell their extra power back to the city or receive credits from Lake Worth Utilities. The Lake Worth City Commission recently voted to withdraw from FMPA, a process that takes five years. "So we have four and a half years to figure out what our alternatives are," Jennings says.

The FMPA executive board meets Friday, July 17, at 10:30 a.m., 400 Avenue of the Champions, PGA National Resort and Spa, in the British Ballroom. Public commentary is welcome.

Flickr User: kirinqueen

Wednesday: A bitch

Don't kill yourself on Wednesday. Among other things, it's a total cliche. A recent study finds that that day is the most popular one to kill yourself.

Of those who do the deed, 24.6 percent do it on Wednesday. Saturday is a distant second at 14.4 percent, with Monday at 14.3.

Why Wednesday? Well, researchers Augustine J. Kposowa and Stephanie D'Auria can only guess at that.

Conventional wisdom -- and a cat named Garfield -- suggests that Mondays would claim the most victims, as a person seeks escape from the dreadful prospect of another workweek.

Then again, as the week's midpoint, Wednesday is unique in allowing one to reflect both on how miserable the current week has been and how that misery is only half over.

But the researchers found that survivors of The Hump stand an excellent chance of lasting through the week -- Thursday was the least popular day for suicide.

I'm hoping to speak later with an official at Henderson Crisis Center to see whether the research is backed by local trends. An official at Broward 2-1-1, a crisis hotline, suggested I point readers to suicidology.org, a website that has compiled a ton of research on suicide.

Mayor Frankel tests the power of her new software

Ever since West Palm Beach was designated the second most "technologically advanced" city of its size in the U.S. by a Digital Communities survey last year, we've been waiting to see if Mayor Lois Frankel was going to start jetting around to commission meetings in a flying saucer. It didn't exactly make us proud to learn we'd tied with Independence Missouri and Richardson Texas, but still, we'd made the list. Maybe the new City Center was going to turn out to be a marvel to rival those cool futuristic displays at the Science Museum - you know, city employees appearing as holograms, letters whisked from office to office in pneumatic tubes, that kind of thing. That $154 million the city spent on the Center ought to buy a lot of gizmos, right?

So it was sort of disappointing to learn that all that high tech energy was going into "addressing cost inefficiencies specifically related to obtaining construction permits" according to a news release from Avolve Software. Avolve has evidently sold the city a program called ProjectDox, which "serves as a conduit that feeds a variety of programs in an effort to more efficiently manage complex internal processes and provide outward-facing tools to better serve respective constituents faced with the effects of continuing growth and budget restrictions," Avolve CEO Ron Loback told EarthTimes.com  

If you can decode that sentence without using special hi-tech doublespeak software you are a lot smarter than us. But we are in favor of anything that will speed up those needless construction delays in downtown West Palm, anything that would make it faster to waive building heights limitations. Maybe the new software will also work to muzzle the objections of property owners tired of seeing their tax dollars diverted to big-ego projects, to defang critics of "pay to play," in which developers pull out their checkbooks and make campaign donations to grease the wheels. Perhaps now secretaries will merely have to type in the word "Catalfulmo" to instantly generate reams of permits. Now that would be some cool software.

Gopher tortoise: now receiving speedy mortgages on new homes

The permitting system also got a little easier for Florida's gopher tortoises this week. Lauderdale-based AAJ Technologies has invented an on-line permit system for Florida Fish and Wildlife which allows developers to certify the site as either a short-term or long-term protected site and apply for faster approvals to move the reptiles, which are not known themselves for particularly speedy relocation. Because the system is "paperless," it is not only "green," the buzzword most often tripping from the tongues of Florida pols and flacks these days, but will hasten the pace and presumably decrease gopher tortoise homicides in the process.

But even while tortoises were scoring big, things are still looking dire for the Florida panther. In 2004, a biologist who worked for the Fish and Wildlife Services for 18 years, Andrew Eller, Jr. charged that the agency used flawed data when assessing the habitat of the panther, approving building permits for thousands of acres that ought to have been protected. They also knowingly disseminated inaccurate information, Eller testified. Eller was fired and later reinstated after an investigation, but critics these days are worried that Obama's nomination of Sam Hamilton last month to lead Fish and Wildlife is not bound to improve things for the panther. A 2005 PEER survey of 1400 Fish and Wildlife biologists found that half of scientists surveyed felt that under Hamilton "commercial interests have inappropriately induced the reversal or withdrawal of scientific conclusions or decisions through political intervention," a long way of saying that in Florida the race goes to the developers, and it's not exactly a photo finish. One supervisor at F&W called Hamilton's tenure "a dog and pony show." Another said: "Florida has become a horror show for wildlife biologists."

Looks like our cats will be jumping through the hoops.

Kitten terrorizes Wellington teens

The heat index climbed over 110 last month and we've had more rain than you could shake a wet cat at -- two factors likely to get everybody feeling ornery. Judging from the number of weird animal incidents this week, that includes our furry, feathered, and scaled friends around the state. This week we've seen a 8.5-foot Burmese python "pet" strangle a toddler in Oxford, a rabid kitten terrorizing teenagers in Wellington, a rash of rattlesnake bites in Pierson, and a pit bull in West Palm Beach going for police jugulars. Only the alligators and the sharks have been fairly quiet this summer [EDITED: Oops, spoke too soon; shark bite in Biscayne Nat'l Park July 5th]. Meanwhile, humans are shooting each other for a beer.

A nice cold brew is supposed to simmer everybody down, right? Not if you're 47-year-old Ricky Von Welch. The Broward Sheriff's Office reports that on Tuesday Welch got mad enough at his girlfriend's son, 22-year-old Lorenzo Jones, who was visiting his Mom at the couple's apartment on N.W. 31st Avenue, to knock a beer from the kid's hand. Knowing young men as we do, it's probably safe to surmise that Jones had filched the last brew in the fridge -- and before you know it they were both wielding switchblades.

Welch, madder than a rabid cat

Welch allegedly exchanged his blade for a gun and shot Jones in the abdomen -- an attempted murder which is the last of a long string of offenses that has seen Welch in and out of jail, from domestic battery to a 10-year sentence for kidnapping and murder. Welch is in police custody after a brief escape, and Jones is recovering from surgery at Broward General.

Now, tomorrow's a holiday and we've got a long (probably hot and rainy) weekend.  Go pop yourself a cold one and try to steer clear of armed kittens and kin.