While You Were Sleeping: December 2011

by Brian K. Mahoney, November 30, 2011

According to Dr. Charles Gerba of the University of Arizona, a microbiologist known as “Dr. Germ,” the gas pump is the everyday object most likely to transmit germs. Gerba’s conclusion is drawn from a study done by Kimberly-Clark’s Healthy Work Place Project, a subsidiary of the manufacturer of tissues and hand sanitizer. The research results released in late October found that 71 percent of gas pump handles and 68 percent of corner mailbox handles are “highly contaminated” with the kinds of germs most associated with a high risk of illness. The study stated that 41 percent of ATM buttons and 43 percent of escalator rails are similarly teeming with germs.
Source: USA Today

Fewer Mexicans are immigrating illegally across the border into the United States as fewer jobs, harsher border control, and threats against leaving from violent Mexican gangs have made the trek to the US less and less appealing. At its peak in 2000, 1.6 million people were arrested attempting to cross the border illegally over an 11-month period. Over the 11-month period that ended in August 2011, that number dropped to 304,755. Mexico itself is feeling a change, as its interior secretary for migration matters, Rene Zenteno, noted that “our country is not experiencing the population loss due to migration that was seen nearly 50 years ago.”
Source: Los Angeles Times

Under federal law, people with felony convictions forfeit their right to bear arms. Yet every year, thousands of felons across the country have those rights reinstated, often with little or no review. While previously a small number of felons were able to reclaim their gun rights, the process became commonplace in many states in the late 1980s, after Congress started allowing state laws to dictate these reinstatements—part of an overhaul of federal gun laws orchestrated by the National Rifle Association. Margaret C. Love, a pardon lawyer based in Washington, DC, who has researched gun rights restoration laws, estimated that in more than half the states felons have a reasonable chance of getting back their gun rights.

In Washington State, where convicted felon Erik Zettergen shot and killed a man after having his gun rights restored in 2005, since 1995, more than 3,300 felons and people convicted of domestic violence misdemeanors have regained their gun rights in the state—430 in 2010 alone. One study, published in the American Journal of Public Health, found that denying handgun purchases to felons cut their risk of committing new gun or violent crimes by 20 to 30 percent. A study in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that handgun purchasers with at least one prior misdemeanor—not even a felony—were more than seven times as likely as those with no criminal history to be charged with new offenses over a 15-year period. Criminologists studying recidivism have found that felons usually have to stay out of trouble for about a decade before their risk of committing a crime equals that of people with no record.
Source: New York Times

In London on November 5, one of John Lennon’s molars sold for $31,000 at auction. A Canadian dentist, Michael Zuk, submitted the winning bid. The tooth had been in the possession of Lennon’s former housekeeper, Dorothy Jarlett, since the late `60s, when Lennon gave the tooth to Jarlett as a souvenir.
Source: Rolling Stone