Also on today’s menu:
Search Continues For Missing ‘Titanic’ Sub
A New Conservative Take On The Economy
Short Daytime Naps Could Boost Brain Health
There were no fatal motorcycle crashes during the 100th anniversary Laconia Motorcycle Week celebration, but a day later, there was a head-on collision between a motorcycle and an SUV that left the motorcyclist dead.
The North Main Street accident occurred around noon on June 19 when one of two southbound motorcycles crossed the center line in front of a Chevrolet Suburban belonging to Mr. C’s Taxi Service. The motorcycle operator died at the scene but the automobile driver and the other motorcyclist were uninjured, according to police. There were no passengers in the taxi at the time of the crash, which occurred near the Busiel Street intersection.
During Motorcycle Week, there had been two serious but non-fatal collisions, and two pedestrians were struck by a blue Harley-Davidson Sportster whose operator wore a bright yellow helmet and left the scene without stopping.
Search Continues For Missing ‘Titanic’ Sub
The firm OceanGate said it is “exploring all options” to get the crew of its Titan submersible craft back safely after the research vessel Polar Prince lost contact an hour and 45 minutes into its eight-hour dive on June 19. As of 5 p.m., the U.S. Coast Guard estimated the sub had between 70 and 96 hours of emergency oxygen left.
The sub had been on its way to the wreckage of the Titanic, about 370 miles off the coast of St. John’s, Newfoundland. The Polar Prince is an icebreaker hired by OceanGate to ferry people and the submersible craft to the North Atlantic wreckage site. The search area lies in a remote section of the Atlantic Ocean, 900 miles east of Cape Cod, where the waters are 13,000 feet deep, according to U.S. Coast Guard District 1 Rear Admiral John Mauger.
The vessel was carrying one pilot and four “mission specialists” who paid $250,000 each for the chance to study the wreckage lying 12,500 feet beneath the ocean’s surface. It was the third expedition since 2021, each one lasting eight days, according to OceanGate. Its website says 18 dives were planned. “Given the massive scale of the [Titanic] wreck and the debris field, multiple missions performed over several years will be required to fully document and model the wreck site. This longitudinal survey to collect images, videos, laser, and sonar data will allow objective assessment of the rate of decay and documentation of the process.”
The website goes on to say, “Titan is lighter in weight and more cost efficient to mobilize than any other deep diving submersible. A combination of ground-breaking engineering and off-the-shelf technology gives Titan a unique advantage over other deep diving subs; the proprietary Real Time Hull Health Monitoring (RTM) systems provides an unparalleled safety feature that assesses the integrity of the hull throughout every dive.” It uses Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite technology to communicate.
A New Conservative Take On The Economy
Oren Cass, a former aide to Mitt Romney and executive director of the think tank American Compass, is among a number of Republican politicians who are skeptical of the free market philosophy championed by Ronald Reagan. “We really like capitalism,” Cass said, “but we recognize it’s not working right now.”
That skepticism led to Republican Senator J.D. Vance joining Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren in crafting a bill to limit executive pay at failed banks. Florida Senator Marco Rubio signed a public letter calling for the reinvigoration of collective bargaining and having labor unions play a larger role in the economy. Senator Todd Young of Indiana helped to write a bipartisan bill to restrict noncompete agreements that prevent employees from accepting jobs from a competitor. Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas fought for federal subsidies to expand domestic semiconductor manufacturing similar to what President Joe Biden Jr. signed last year.
Cotton, Rubio, Vance, and Young will speak about the emergence of a populist conservative movement in economics at an event on Capitol Hill, organized around American Compass’ policy manifesto, “Rebuilding American Capitalism: A Handbook for Conservative Policymakers.”
David Leonhardt writes in the New York Times that the document calls for “a guaranteed right for workers to organize and industrywide bargaining, which could increase the number of union contracts — and raise wages; a financial transaction tax, meant to reduce Wall Street trading that makes people rich without making the economy more productive; a monthly child benefit of around $300, as well as changes to Medicare and Social Security to recognize the work done by stay-at-home parents; and an easing of government regulations to encourage new construction.
Short Daytime Naps Could Boost Brain Health
An article in Sleep Health reports on studies by University College London and the University of the Republic in Uruguay that have established “an association between habitual daytime napping and larger total brain volume, which could suggest that napping regularly provides some protection against neurodegeneration through compensating for poor sleep.”
Drawing on data from the UK Biobank study that collated genetic, lifestyle, and health information from 500,000 people between the ages of 40 and 69, the team focused on 35,080 Biobank participants, looking at whether genetic variants previously associated with daytime napping are also linked to brain volume, cognition, and other aspects of brain health.
“It could be having a short daytime nap … could help preserve brain volume and that’s a positive thing, potentially, [for] dementia prevention,” said Dr. Victoria Garfield, a co-author of the study. Previous research suggested that napping for up 30 minutes may be beneficial.
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