BBC:
Taser parties a growing US trend. Hmmm. Twelve or so years ago, a rapist was using a taser to stun women joggers near here.
Scientific American:
Buried Prejudice: The Bigot in Your Brain. And yet, I have another story of Mr Jackson. Once again, from the ‘80’s. I was coming home late one night from Manhattan, walking through the Princeton University campus from the PJ&B ("Princeton Junction and Back”, the Dinky, the shortest train line in America). I heard a hubbub coming from Whig (or Clio, I never remember which building is which ... the one that was burned, and re-built), and paused under a streetlamp along the wide flagstone walkway. I knew Mr Jackson was going to be speaking there that night, so I wondered whether it might be worth walking to the front of the building. I looked up at the back windows. Mr Jackson walked by a window, and we happened to perceive each other. He saw me slightly backlit, and froze with a look of surprise (I thought fear at the time) on his face. I was dressed in black jeans, black leather jacket, carrying a black briefcase. I looked like a professional assassin out of some movie, in retrospect. His ‘handlers’ peeked out at me, and I thought it was time to beat a hasty retreat, taking a different pathway home.
Sometimes ‘bigotry’ may be plain self-preservation. We unconsciously judge by the predominant cultural archetypes.
Or, simply overactive imagination ... as my 20-something perceptions probably were.
NY Times:
Aid Supplies Arrive in Myanmar. Every time I run the tap for a glass of clean water, I think of Myanmar. Noone has clean water there right now. Cholera and other water-borne diseases will explode, if the government won’t permit more aid.
BBC:
Pollster John Zogby explains why it’s over for Hillary. One of the most important points is his last: “Not enough happened last night to give her any hope, so continuing would only give the appearance of wanting to damage Mr Obama.”
Reuters:
‘Mompreneurs’ fill market gaps in baby, mother products. “Now they’re looking for products they need as a mother and they don’t see them, so they go out and invent ... [snip] ... Many of them have the energy and ambition and the time to create products and services and make some money from them.”
Hispanic Business:
U.S. Hispanic Population 45.5 Million Strong, Fueled by Births.
Ghost in the Machine:
Looking back five years after our ’glorious victory.’
The Atlantic.com:
Where Mother Saw Best. “Alice Friedman’s Women and the Making of the Modern House and Colin Davies’s Key Houses of the Twentieth Century probe aspects of the complex relationship between modernism— the dominant architectural style of the 20th century—and domesticity.”
NY Times Opinion:
“The next president and Congress will have to work very hard to uncover all the ways Mr. Bush has twisted or evaded the law, and then set things right.”
NY Times Opinion:
Mr. Obama and Rev. Wright. George Bush must be happy as a clam to inherit such a reprieve from acerbic election-season critique of his policies. He’s gotten off easy, to this date.
The Economist:
Crooks & Liars:
Too good to pass up. Helen Thomas Confronts Perino On Torture; Perino Denies and Lies. An interview with Ms Thomas, that folks mind find interesting.
Telegraph.UK:
Career women work longer hours than men. Work longer as an aggregate; not necessarily at their career. We men need to step up to the [dirty dinner] plate more. I include myself in that condemnation.
Daily Kos:
John Ashcroft yelled at me tonight. When you split hairs over torture techniques, you’ve lost it. I predict in some podunk school system, a kid will drop an M-80 in a toilet (as kids have been doing for years), be arrested for ‘WMD’ and waterboarded to determine if he is planning future depredations.
Washington Post:
Most Troubled Mortgage Borrowers Without Plan, Report Finds. “… while lenders appear more motivated to help, they continue to work on a case-by-case basis instead of adopting a more systematic approach. As result, the process is time-consuming and often fails to help borrowers before they fall into foreclosure.”
Yahoo News/AP:
So, does this mean Al-Qaeda is going to start picking on Iran?
ReadWriteWeb:
Real people don’t have time for social media. This is a timely article. I’ve been asked by various outfits (especially nonprofits) about how many hours it takes to maintain a beneficial existence on social media services. Ones that generate more value in awareness and donations than the cost of social media upkeep. I remain skeptical, except for outfits who can afford to dedicate an employee to maintaining the accounts full time. Even then, value must be measurable, results quantified. For large nonprofits, this is likely not an issue. But for small ones, social media is becoming a black hole. The demographics don’t necessarily fit every business’ or nonprofit’s goals. Median age for charitable donors tends to be somewhere in the age group of 40-somethings. Via vowe.
Reuters:
“When a country employs more military musicians than professional diplomats, it’s time to review priorities ...”
CNN:
Study: Single parents cost taxpayers $112 billion. Oh, shock me with your objectivity: “The study was conducted by Georgia State University economist Ben Scafidi. His work was sponsored by four groups who consider themselves part of a nationwide ‘marriage movement’ ...” Decent affordable childcare, you nimwits. Colleges should have childcare as part of their work/study programs; use some of those huge endowments.
Washington Post:
White House Torture Advisers. “Discussions were so detailed, ABC’s sources said, that some interrogation sessions were virtually choreographed by a White House advisory group. In addition to Cheney, the group included then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, then-defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, then-secretary of state Colin Powell, then-CIA director George Tenet and then-attorney general John Ashcroft.” My italics, for emphasis. Torture by political bureaucracy. Should be a new level in Dante’s Inferno ...
Guardian.UK:
”Why are there no black ballerinas in the UK’s big companies?”
World Affairs:
Neocon Nation: Neoconservatism, c. 1776. Oh really? These same Founding Fathers condemned their fellow, repudiated Aaron Burr for allegedly plotting to free the Western US from the yoke of Spain. You interpret history through red lenses, I can do as well in blue. Washington also said, “The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is — in extending our commercial relations — to have with them as little political connection as possible.” John Quincy Adams said, “Wherever the standard of freedom and independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will be America’s heart, her benedictions, and her prayers. But she does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.”
So I take your neocon golden eagle, and raise you a good old isolationist Virginia halfpence.
NY Times Editorial:
Immigration, outsourced. I’ll make the observation that history lies close to the surface here in the West. Do a search on ‘border lynchings’ and you’ll see the Mexican has suffered as greatly as other races, less publicly. The sentiment’s been the same for 200 years and more, for anyone considered ‘other’: “They ain’t human.”
SF New Mexican:
Gap between [NM] state’s rich, poor among nation’s largest. So if the longstanding Republican theory of sharply stratified society fueled by acquisitive individualism works so well, why aren’t we being used as the poster-child for the ideology? Because noone wants to discuss the realities.
SF New Mexican:
Feds secretly exhume bodies after looting at Civil War-era fort. “Federal officials learned of the looting in November 2004, when Don Alberts, a retired historian for Kirtland Air Force Base, tipped them off about a macabre possession he’d seen at Brecheisen’s home about 30 years earlier. Alberts described seeing the mummified remains of a black soldier with patches of brown flesh clinging to facial bones and curly hair on top of its skull. Alberts said the body had come from Fort Craig.” I would have poured concrete over the area, memorialized it with plaques, and let them rest in place.
