What professions have the lowest and highest unemployment rates?

Occupations with the lowest unemployment rates:

• Appraisers and assessors of real estate: 0.4%
• Therapists, all other: 0.4%
• First-line managers of police and detectives: 0.4%
• Locomotive engineers and operators: 0.4%
• Directors, religious activities and education: 0.8%
• Dentists: 0.8%
• Speech-language pathologists: 0.8%
• Detectives and criminal investigators: 0.8%
• Physicians and surgeons: 0.9%
• Occupational therapists: 1.0%

Occupations with the highest unemployment rates:

Helpers, construction trades: 36.0%

Telemarketers: 34.8%

Structural iron and steel workers: 28.4%

Roofers: 27.1%

Millwrights: 25.5%

Cement masons, concrete finishers, and terrazzo workers: 25.3%

Brickmasons, blockmasons, and stonemasons: 25.1%

Construction laborers: 25.0%

Drywall installers, ceiling tile installers, and tapers: 23.9%

Interviewers, except eligibility and loan: 23.4%

via NPR

In 2010, the Labor Dept. tracked unemployment rates for more than 500 occupations–from travel agents (11% unemployed) to taxi drivers (10.7%). See how each occupation stacks up.

Unemployment Rates, a Detailed Look – Infographic – WSJ.com.

I have a friend in construction who has been out work for about a year. I’m going to convince him to go to dental school.

Learning to Sing – Testing Frank Sinatra’s Microphone

It is  strange to say that I’m just now learning to sing after singing so much for so many years, but I’ve never been satisfied with my voice and I’d like to make it better, so I’ve tried various lessons. Tonight I had a breakthrough with an instructional DVD I purchased. I finally found a simple breath control exercise that made a big difference:

Keep the sternum up the chest open and don’t let the ribs collapse at all as you sing.

That’s it! I could hit notes easier, my tone was better, I wasn’t running out of air, and there was more natural vibrato just  from doing that one simple thing.

I’ll be posting more music a bit less strange news on the blog this year as I work on my goal of getting every song I’ve ever written finalized and recorded.  I have 50 or so.

Here is another reason I want to do the best I can with my voice lessons:

In a few days I get to test a special microphone in my home studio, that  modified Neumann U87 mic once owned by Pat Benatar, which Frank Sinatra sang on.   Things I’m finding on line say Frank mostly used a U47, and The Beatles used a U48 –same as the U47 but with different pick up patterns.

The U47 came out in 1949, the U87 in 1967, and the U87 Ai in 1986.

Sinatra recorded from March 18, 1939 to 1993 when he was 78 years old, so it seems likely that he would have recorded on a few U87 mics before leaving the world in 1998.

Will I sound any better with this $9,000 mic (and a top quality pre-amp and A/D converter) compared to my el-cheapo trusty $200 AT-3035?

I can’t wait to find out. For other musicians and anyone curious, I plan to post sound samples from the microphone “shoot out” so you can be the judge. All of my songs in the box to your left were recorded using the AT-3035.

Worker accidentally bulldozed homes while tenants slept

A confused construction worker accidentally bulldozed a couple’s home while the owners were inside, asleep.

Bozena and Rudolf Hison were woken up on Saturday morning by the heavy noises of walls being demolished.

“At first we thought it was an earthquake. The worker who was manning the bulldozer almost killed us. I could not run outside through the door, so my neighbour had to pull me out,” said the 58-year-old Bozena who suffered injuries in the accident.

“It was an enormous shock.”

The worker – who arrived at the site at 5:30 in the morning – allegedly misunderstood exactly what he was supposed to demolish on that day, and destroyed four houses instead of the designated support wall.

“That man is insane! My husband was warning him. He was yelling at him to stop, that there are people in the house, but the man just shrugged his shoulders and continued to demolish. No one can tell us this was a mistake,” says Olga Zupan, another owner whose home was damaged.

Marko Banovic, the director of the company Boston Global Properties responsible for the accident apologized to the owners.

“This is a great shame. We are very sorry. But I intend to compensate the people for the damage,” he assured.

Some media claim that the destruction was not an accident as the supporting wall between the houses in question never existed. …

via Worker accidentally bulldozed homes while tenants slept – General News – Croatian Times Online News – English Newspaper.

See, this is why I never sleep with earplugs.

Chopin’s hallucinations caused by epilepsy: scientists

In the great Polish composer, Frederic Chopin, towering genius combined with a wasted frame and a pallid face behind which lurked melancholy, a brooding over death, a disconnection from ordinary life and sometimes horrifying hallucinations.

A force that created this image was the French novelist George Sand, who described lyrically how her lover, cursed by prodigy and doomed by frailty to an early grave, would be shaken by ghostly visions.

“The phantoms called him, clasped him, and instead of seeing his father and his friend smile at him in the ray of faith, he repelled their fleshless faces from his own and struggled under the grasp of their icy hands,” wrote Sand.

But a study by a pair of Spanish neurologists tarnishes this compelling gothic tableau.

Chopin’s alienation and hallucinations probably had more to do with a medical condition than the burden of the Romantic artist, it suggests.

… one big suspect: epilepsy of the temporal lobes, whose seizures can unleash brief, stereotyped visions of the kind experienced by Chopin and a condition called “jamais vu,” or a dream-like disconnection from one’s surroundings. …

via Chopin’s hallucinations caused by epilepsy: scientists – Yahoo! News.

Crop Circles Found in Indonesia Rice Field

Indonesian rice farmers in Slemen, Yogyakarta, got quite a surprise Sunday morning when they discovered that overnight a large crop circle had mysteriously formed in one of their fields.

The circle, which also includes internal geometric patterns of a triangle and smaller circles, has an overall diameter of nearly 90 feet, according to The Jakarta Post.

One resident, Cahyo Utomo, speculated that the odd piece of rice field artwork wasn’t man-made. “The circles were there since yesterday morning. I think they were left by an alien spaceship,” he said.”It is impossible that this was made by the wind or any animal,” he added.

Whether crafted by humans or aliens, thousands of crop circles have been reported all over the world for many decades, but with a higher number recorded in England. And they’re not always circular, with some of the more intricate and complex ones looking like strange animals or even scientific symbols or DNA sequences.

The patterns are generally created by something that flattens various crops, like rice, wheat and rye, and they’re usually discovered by farmers in the early morning where they didn’t exist the night before.

via Crop Circles Found in Indonesia Rice Field.

Laser pointings soar; O’Hare, LAX top list

More than 100 incidents occurred at Los Angeles International Airport last year in which the safety of planes was put at risk by people pointing at them with lasers, and nearly as many incidents at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport, federal officials said Wednesday.

Overall, the number of incidents nationally in which people pointed lasers at planes and helicopters nearly doubled last year, from 1,527 incidents in 2009 to 2,836 incidents in 2010, the Federal Aviation Administration said.

Many of the incidents involve airliners that were in the midst of takeoffs or landings, critical phases of flight when pilots need to be at their most alert. Pointing lasers at cockpits can temporarily blind pilots or even permanently damage their eyesight. In some instances, pilots have had to relinquish control of their aircraft to another pilot.

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood called the laser incidents “an unacceptable risk to passenger safety.”

FAA began keeping track of the incidents about five years ago, as Internet sales of new, more powerful handheld lasers began to increase. There were about 300 incidents reported in 2005.

The lasers are many times more powerful than the laser pointers typically used by lecturers. Stargazers use them at night to point to celestial objects. The introduction of green lasers, which are more powerful and more easily seen than red lasers, has also fueled sales.

FAA Administrator Randy Babbitt urged pilots to immediately report laser incidents to air traffic controllers, who can then report the incidents to police. It’s a violation of federal law to shine a laser at an aircraft. Some cities and states also have laws making it illegal to shine lasers at aircraft.

In 2009, an Orange, Calif., man was sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison for aiming a laser at two Boeing jets as the passenger planes were about to land at John Wayne Airport in Orange County, Calif. A Parsippany, N.J., man received two years’ probation in 2006 after admitting to shining a laser at a plane approaching Teterboro Airport that temporarily blinded the two pilots. …

via Laser pointings soar; O’Hare, LAX top list – Chicago Breaking News.

Couple defies huge odds after all their children born at 7:43

Gaby Leslie – A couple are celebrating after their third child was born at 7:43 – exactly the same time as their two older children were born, several years apart.

According to hospital records, all three siblings from Salford, Greater Manchester, were coincidentally born at 7:43 – beating odds of 300 million to one.

The rare occurrence comes after parents Matt Rigby and partner Lowry Dairsley celebrated the arrival of Harrison at 7:43am on 20 January.

Harrison’s older sisters Ella and Evie were born at 7:43am in October 2005 and 7:43pm on Boxing Day 2007.

Lowry, 26, told The Sun newspaper last night: “When we found I was pregnant with Harrison we joked that it would be incredible if the same happened. When I went into hospital at 5pm on Wednesday we forgot about it and concentrated on the labour.”

“At 6.30am I felt the urge to push and when we next looked at the clock it was 7.41am.I was asked to wait for the next contraction by the midwife before she delivered him two minutes later. The doctors and midwives were speechless.”

Stunned father, Matt, 31, has a tattoo with the numbers 7 4 3 on his arm and added: “I looked up at the clock and it was 7.43. We couldn’t believe the coincidence.”

via Couple defies huge odds after all their children born at 7.43 – Yahoo! News UK.

Iran’s endangered cheetahs are a unique subspecies

Iran’s critically endangered cheetahs are the last remaining survivors of a unique, ancient Asian subspecies, genetics experts reveal.New analysis confirms Iran’s cheetahs belong to the subspecies Acinonyx jubatus venaticus.DNA comparisons show that these Asiatic cheetahs split from other cheetahs, which live in Africa, 30,000 years ago.Researchers suggest that Iran’s cheetahs must be conserved to protect the future of all cheetahs.

Cheetahs formerly existed in 44 countries in Africa but are now only found in 29.

Historically, they were also recorded across southwest and central Asia but can now only be found in Iran.

Scientists have previously said that cheetahs have low genetic variability, theorising that a “population crash” approximately 10,000 years ago led to inbreeding in the species.

Despite this, five ‘different’ subspecies are currently described according to where they live. …

via BBC – Earth News – Iran’s endangered cheetahs are a unique subspecies.

A Private Space Shuttle Replacement

Once the space-shuttle program ends this year, the only way to get people into orbit and to the International Space Station will be to buy seats on Russia’s three-person Soyuz capsules. So NASA, through its Commercial Crew Development program, has given $50 million in grants to companies developing new spacecraft capable of carrying people and supplies into orbit and to the space station.

The recipient of the biggest chunk of this money was the Sierra Nevada Corporation, which received $20 million to develop the Dream Chaser. This spacecraft, the size of a business jet, will take cargo and up to eight people into low Earth orbit, where the space station is located, and then return and land on commercial airport runways.

The company reached all its development milestones for the Dream Chaser last year and is now finishing a battery of tests on the craft’s carbon-composite frame. The shell of the spacecraft must be able to endure heavy loads and intense vibrations. So the Dream Chaser frame has been mounted on an earthquake simulator in a lab at the University of Colorado in Boulder. So far, the design has performed as expected, says Mark Sirangelo, head of Sierra Nevada’s Space Systems division.

via A Private Space Shuttle Replacement – Technology Review.

Mars Crew on 500 day simulation trip

The Mars-500 crew and its make-believe spaceship — a set of three culvert-like steel cylinders housed in Russia’s Institute for Biomedical Problems (IBMP) – is due to enter orbit around the Red Planet on Feb. 1. After the crew carefully simulates the activation of their mock lander, two of the volunteers – Alexander Smoleevsky and Diego Urbina — will go inside and explore a simulated Martian surface that already has been used to test a small rover mockup.

The 500-day test is designed to gauge how a crew would handle the isolation and cramped quarters on a comparable mission to Mars. Researchers at IBMP have run other tests of this nature, going back to Soviet days, but Mars-500 is the most elaborate yet.

Unlike the Spartan early simulations, IBMP designers have taken pains to make the interior as comfortable as possible, starting with wood paneling in place of bare steel, and private rooms.

The IBMP/Mars-500 website includes a detailed virtual tour of the facility, which is accessible here.

If all goes as planned, and none of the volunteers exercises his right to leave whenever he likes, the six Mars-500 crewmen will “return to Earth” in November.

via Isolation Chamber.