Hawaii

DLNR Division of Boating and Ocean Recreation Lahaina harbor office is working to address removals of three vessels moored off the shore near Mala Wharf which went aground today due to high surf between six to ten feet. Witnesses said the vessels broke loose from their moorings during a large set of five waves. High […]

Shining a modern light on an ancient practice, noted Buddhist scholar, author and educator, Dr. Ugo Dessi will present a talk at the Honoka‘a Hongwanji Buddhist Temple on Monday, June 10, 2013 at 7 p.m. Asking the question, “Can the globalization of Buddhism help solve war and alienation?” Dessi brings international and inspiring insights to […]

I am always amazed at what other "tasks" people have to do at their jobs. Sometimes walking past car dealerships, I see the "female" workers out pulling weeds, or watering plants. The security guard at the banks help customers use the ATMs. And the other day I spotted this guy at the neighborhood suit store pulling weeds. I'm thankful my job never "made" me to do these things. p.s. I'm off

The National Weather Service in Honolulu has issued a flash flood warning for Hawaii County until 4:45 p.m. Saturday (May 18). At 2:36 p.m. weather radar showed heavy rain near Saddle Road Junction in West Hawaii. This area of heavy rain was nearly stationary. Other locations in the warning include the Leeward coast and the lower slopes from Upolu Point to Puuanahulu down to Kailua-Kona. The warning may be extended if rains continue. - visit Hawaii 24/7 to read the full story -

A powerful South sweep will continue to produce high surf along the South facings shores of all Hawaiian islands. The National Weather Service in Honolulu has issued ahigh surf advisory for the South facing shores of the Big Island until 6 p.m. Sunday (May 19). - visit Hawaii 24/7 to read the full story -

MEDIA RELEASE Historic Kailua Village welcomes the monthly Kokua Kailua event 1-6 p.m. Sunday, May 19. During Kokua Kailua the oceanfront Alii Drive becomes a pedestrian-only walkway. Dozens of island vendors line the road in addition to the many interesting shops that are open and waiting to be explore. All that strolling can cause an [...] - visit Hawaii 24/7 to read the full story -

The sun rises in an explosion of pink and gold and already bees are working the beach heliotrope blossoms. Turtle tracks on the wet sand speak to an overnight visitor, who rose even earlier than I. The sea invites me to swim in her salty shimmer and I accept, gratefully. It's the best time of year, when the days start early and everything is fresh and green and bursting with new life.In the midst of all this busting out all over, the EPA approved Dow's new systemic insecticide, sulfoxaflor, which it acknowledges is highly toxic to honey bees. Seems the feds aren't concerned because they don't anticipate any “catastrophic effects” on bees. Just the usual slow simmer in the increasingly toxic soup. Besides, “industry” is clamoring for a “new and improved” pesticide because – surprise! – the bugs are becoming increasingly resistant to the stuff already used to kill them, including the neonicotinoids linked to hive collapse. Oh, but no worries, this new chemical is “softer” than the ones it's replacing. It's “beneficial.” You know, better living through chemistry. So how long do you suppose we can keep upping the poison ante? I mean, before everything folds? It seems Europeans are far more worried about this than Americans, who are dulled and dazed by GMO high fructose corn syrup, bad TV and a quest for the almighty dollar. As The Washington Post reports, America's devotion to pesticides and GMO crops may jam up EU trade talks:U.S. crops inspire fear among everyone from French wine producers to German corn growers. Many European farmers say that plants that are carefully engineered to do everything from boosting production to repelling pests have uncertain environmental consequences and, once growing, spread uncontrollably via pollen that can float for miles on the wind.In the United States last year, genetically modified crops comprised 88 percent of all corn, 94 percent of cotton and 93 percent of soybeans, according to Agriculture Department figures. In the European Union, they covered less than 1 percent of farmland, mostly in Spain, according to the European Commission.Just two genetically modified crop types are approved for planting in the European Union, out of a far wider range of species used elsewhere. But one of the two, a BASF potato, is no longer marketed; the other, a Monsanto corn breed, is banned for growing in France, Germany and elsewhere, despite findings from both U.S. and E.U. food regulators that the produce is safe. [Many U.S.-grown products are banned from Europe.] One exception is the American-grown genetically modified soybean, which dominates the European animal feed market.The difference in approaches, analysts say, is that U.S. regulators tend to rely on short-term scientific studies about safety to give new technologies a green light. European regulators tend to be far more cautious, focusing more on what they might not know than on what they do know. But even the Europeans may not be spared the consequences of what Dr. Robert S. Lawrence, director of the Johns Hopkins' Center for a Livable Future, terms “a dramatic assault on the security of the food supply.” As NBC News reports:“We’re in a situation where the food supply is more vulnerable than it has ever been,” added Lee Hannah, senior fellow at Conservation International, a global nonprofit that advocates for sustainable policies. It seems that GMOs and pesticides are only part of the problem. There's also the growing impact from atmospheric carbon dioxide, which last week reached concentrations likely not experienced on Earth since the Pliocene era, some 4.5 million years ago. The warm, moist air is allowing pathogens to thrive at a time when global trade is expediting the movement of plant pests and diseases. Citrus, coffee, chocolate, wine, maple syrup and salmon are just some of the foods that are either likely to suffer, or already getting hit.America's reliance on mono-cropping poses another grave risk, according to Hannah:“For inst

In 1970, the year I started working in radio and the year I started my senior year in high school, George Harrison came out with his debut solo album "All Things Must Pass," a double album containing "My Sweet Lord" and "Isn't It a Pity?" and "What is Life?" Years later we learned that Harrison had so much great material because he had trouble getting Lennon and McCartney to record his songs as Beatles tracks, so for a few years he had been hoarding what he considered his best stuff. In 1978, I had a musical and social epiphany one night, reporting to work at the Mutual Broadcasting System for an overnight anchor shift. Much time had passed in my young life - I was married now with a stepson to raise and a daughter on the way, had worked for three radio stations and had "made it to the network," even if it was the smallest of the four legacy networks, and 1970 seemed a long time past. So it blew my mind to step into an elevator and hear an elevator music version of "Isn't It a Pity?"  If someone was recording tunes from "All Things Must Pass" to play as background music, clearly my youth had passed, because background music was, I had always thought, music for old people. An alarming thought for someone who was 25. It was about as strange as walking into a supermarket this week, at the age of 59, and hearing "Wake Up Sunshine," an obscure track from another 1970 album, "Chicago." The second album by the long-lived rock-with-horns band contains the hits "Make Me Smile," "Color My World," and "25 or 6 to 4," giving the band six hits in two years, its premiere album having included "Beginnings," "Questions 67 amd 68," and "Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?" Even people born decades later know some or all of these tunes. And Chicago itself is still recording with four of the original six members. But only someone who bought the album when it was new was likely to remember "Wake Up Sunshine," the first track on one of the four sides, a short and upbeat number with something like a news theme at the end. It was never released as a single, though it should have been. On reflection, two things make it possible for this to have happened, for an album cut from 1970 to be suitable as "background music" in a supermarket. The first is that we babyboomers redefined what background music was. The second is that generations coming after us have a different view of the music of different generations. Background music is an old concept. Much of the Baroque music we listen to closely, glaring at people who cough or open candy in noisy wrappers, was written as background music for royal parties where people talked and laughed and ignored what was being played. In the Roaring Twenties, Erik Satie wrote something he called "Furniture Music" to be played at the intermission of a concert as background while people talked, but, as he told the story later, it was a failure, because people stopped talking and listened to it. In 1934, George Owen Squier founded Muzak, whose name, he explained, came from the word "music" and the end of another made up corporate name, Kodak. He recorded background music to be played quietly from speakers in stores. In offices, to encourage productivity, he would program a succession of tunes with increasing tempos. In restaurants, to encourage turnover, he would program music with a tempo that suggested a slightly faster chewing rate. Muzak still exists, but in February the company announced it was retiring the word "Muzak." In the 1940s, a Dallas radio station programmed orchestral music to be heard in the background in stores and homes. Its call letters were KIXL and announcers called it "Kixel." The format was much copied, along with the idea of choosing call letters that suggested a nickname. As late as the 1970s background music stations included WAYV, "the never-ending wave of music," in Atlantic City, WPCH ("Peach") in Atlanta, WLIF ("Double-U-Life") in Baltimore, and so on. To e

For the last two weeks, Safeway had suddenly been getting things right. We probably shopped at the Kaneohe store at least five times over the past couple of weeks without encountering an error. This was a dramatic change from the previous several months when I could count on errors appearing every time we shopped there. I even designed shopping lists heavy with items with one or another of Safeway’s layers of special prices, club discounts, and digital coupons, sometimes with overlapping discounts. And for a couple of weeks Safeway got it all right. It felt as if the whole system had been quietly upgraded, or perhaps supervisors suddenly started paying attention to their jobs, or maybe they tinkered with the software to reduce the error rate. If I were really paranoid, I might think that they cleared my personal account to make sure it comes out right, but that’s pretty far fetched. More likely that the bad PR spurred some management-level changes. Whatever the cause, though, things appeared to have been improved. Then came our Safeway stop late Thursday afternoon. I bought a few oranges with a special “deal match” price of 67 cents a pound, but they rang up at the regular $2.99 per pound. This resulted in being charged $8.10 instead of just $1.82. As usual, though, Safeway’s peculiar point-of-sale computer system applies most of the discounts in a blur at the very end of the process, meaning that you usually don’t have an opportunity to catch errors until after you’ve been handed your receipt and are heading out the door. At just before 5 p.m., the customer service desk was not staffed, and it took several announcements by cashiers and several minutes for a manager to arrive on the scene. He was all business. In short order, I received a $6.58 refund of the overcharge ($6.28 plus the $.30 excise tax) plus with a $5 gift card. No fussing required, and no need for me to cite the store’s price guarantee. Of course, I’m now a known trouble maker, and I can’t say whether or not other shoppers are having the same experience when reporting pricing erros. Meanwhile, it’s been over a month since my Hawaii Monitor column at Civil Beat highlighted Safeway’s price guarantee policy, and the column is still among CB’s top ten most popular items. I would be interested in hearing from other Safeway shoppers. Have you noticed fewer price errors in the past several weeks? And if you’ve asked for a refund after being overcharged on something, did the store follow Safeway’s price policy? Note: the policy is that if you’re overcharged on something costing under $5, you should get it for free, and for an item costing over $5, you should pay the lowest price and get a $5 gift card. Share your recent experience, please.