8/26/11

Extended Irene Video Coverage

msnbc video: Hurricane Irene begins lashing Carolinas:

Hmmm. I have to go from NYC to the Berkshires in Massachusetts tomorrow. Getting there may be doable. Getting back is less certain. Meanwhile NYC faces unprecedented preparation for a lot of wind and a lot of water.


Global Online Privacy

We would not want to believe pot could lick the big C now, would we?

PBS documentary sheds light on marijuana’s cancer-killing properties | Raw Replay: "The cancer-killing properties of marijuana were the subject of discussion in a PBS documentary that aired this week to little media fanfare."

If this is true it reveals even more truth about our media.

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Blogs from the Bahamas paint a portrait of Irene

Bahamas: Riding Out Hurricane Irene · Global Voices:

That's what Global Voices does daily. Giving us a window on the world.
Global Online Privacy

Maybe this could be a contest after all

Tea Party Supporters Backing Perry for GOP Nomination:

The Gallup figures are iffy but we could argue that Tea Party types like Perry and people who do not like the Tea Party but remain Republican prefer Romney by a few points. I think this shapes up to be a Perry walk, but sometimes voters like the Barack-Hillary dynamic and help stretch these things out.

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You wouldn't expect anything less from BP

Dispersants Used in BP Gulf Oil Spill Linked to Cancer: "WASHINGTON, DC, August 26, 2011 (ENS) - Five of the 57 ingredients in dispersants approved by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for use on oil spills are linked to cancer, finds a new research report based on data obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request by environmental groups on the Gulf of Mexico."

And they covered it up too. That's our friendly oil business for you.

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Facebook teacher-student communication upheld in Missouri

Mo. judge blocks Facebook limits for teachers - Yahoo! News: "JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — A new Missouri law prohibiting teachers from having private online conversations with students suffered a double setback Friday. First, a judge blocked it from taking effect because of free speech concerns. Then the governor called for its repeal."

Post-mortem proselytization in the land of Bush 3

Daily Kos :: State of the Nation: "Texas lawmakers fighting to insert Christian language in funerals for non-Christian soldiers"

Post-mortem proselytization in the land of Bush 3.


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Academic Silos - Hardly an Environment for the Rebuilding of Societies

Susan & Jon Awbrey, "Organizations of Learning or Learning Organizations:<BR> The Challenge of Creating Integrative Universities for the Next Century" at ARISBE: THE PEIRCE GATEWAY: "The structures of today's universities remain locked in academic and administrative silos that have little genuine ability to communicate or to recognize the interdependence of knowledge. These structures inhibit not only integration within research but also integration of knowledge within the teaching/learning context as well as within the total community of learners — faculty, staff, and students — that comprise the institution."

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Annals of Disgust - US Islamophobia Funding

Report: $42 Million From Seven Foundations Helped Fuel The Rise Of Islamophobia In America | Common Dreams: "These five “scholars” are assisted in their outreach efforts by Brigitte Gabriel (founder, ACT! for America), Pamela Geller (co-founder, Stop Islamization of America), and David Horowitz (supporter of Robert Spencer’s Jihad Watch). As the report details, information is then disseminated through conservative organizations like the Eagle Forum, the religious right, Fox News, and politicians such as Allen West and Newt Gingrich."

If you think hate does not flourish as big business in the US, that it only exists in James Ellroy novels, think again. These are the disgusting human beings who serve the big money donors to poison our society with their bile. It is a criminal act against every fibre of Abba's being.

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Irene Video from Thursday Illustrates Her Strength

Hurricane Irene carries threat of inland floods, not just coastal surge (VIDEO) - CSMonitor.com:

This video and the narrative attest to the strength of Irene and the likely mayhem it will cause if its inexorable course proves as predicted.

The commercial at the beginning is a necessary evil.

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Civil Rights Movement and Urban Violence Today

Veterans of the Civil Rights Movement -- The Urban Uprisings and the Southern Freedom Movement: "On New Year's eve, 2009, Oscar Grant, a young Black man, was apprehended by transit police and then fatally shot in the back while he was laying face-down on a BART station platform. His family and community activists organized a number of protests against his murder and police abuse and brutality in general. Violence, including some arson and looting, broke out at some of those protests despite efforts by organizers and the Grant family and to prevent it."

'via Blog this'

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RMB China Currency Matters

Hong Kong's Role in Building the Offshore Renminbi Market | Chatham House: Independent thinking on international affairs: "China's expanding trade will spur the development of a wider RMB deposit base in Hong Kong, boosting its position in international banking markets. At the same time, this will promote the holding of RMB in foreign exchange reserves by central banks, particularly within Asia. This development alone could propel the RMB into a significant position among the top international currencies."

'via Blog this'

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C. S. Peirce on what makes logic true

Grounds of Validity of the Laws of Logic: "It will be said that my deduction of logical principles, being itself an argument, depends for its whole virtue upon the truth of the very principles in question; so that whatever my proof may be, it must take for granted the very things to be proved. But to this I reply, that I am neither addressing absolute sceptics, nor men in any state of fictitious doubt whatever. I require the reader to be candid; and if he becomes convinced of a conclusion, to admit it. There is nothing to prevent a man's perceiving the force of certain special arguments, although he does not yet know that a certain general law of arguments holds good; for the general rule may hold good in some cases and not in others. A man may reason well without understanding the principles of reasoning, just as he may play billiards well without understanding analytical mechanics. If you, the reader, actually find that my arguments have a convincing force with you, it is a mere pretence to call them illogical."

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Actually Rick Perry Bush 3 is a small problem

The words below were written last August (2011) and they indicate that Perry took little time to disqualify himself. I think it was he that set the stage for the surge meme. A rather ironical meme when you think about it. In any case the nomination has not yet been decided. I see it as an R and R affair. On one side is Romney trying to buffoon his way to becoming the savior of an unreceptive GOP, on the other Rush seeking to co-opt perfectly good American ideals for the conservatives. When Mitt tries to mouth these ideals they have a false and hollow ring. When Obama mouths them they have sincerity which is part of what drives his enemies batty. He can out-conservative a conservative any day. As for Rick, he can blame W for his sad demise. We were not ready for another Texas Governor with the same vocal timbre as the Ruiner of Our Country.

Rick Perry on Romney's health care law: It's a "huge problem" for him - Political Hotsheet - CBS News:

We can generally see that Perry's comments are basically hot air. What we need to see is that this man is at bottom Bush 3. If we want a mentality like that in the White House ushering in another worst decade of our life, hen Rick Bush 3 is our man. Otherwise it will be up to us, the voters, to demonstrate that he is indeed a small problem who will go away in time.



Messianism hobbles universalism

BEYOND CREED - Stephen Rose : IUniverse:

It is remarkable that messianism has escaped notice for thousands of years as a deleterious force in human affairs. Dylan's 'don't follow leaders' is an appropriate indication of a saving suspicion. But this is trumped by examples of crowd behavior and conformity that literally stagger anyone with a core of sensitivity - which should be everyone in their right mind. A few years back, I wrote a book that applies these thoughts to Jesus and concluded that he is much more the universalist than one who lays claim to worship or adulation or the one-sided following required by messianic figures.


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Hard time for universalists

We do not even have a word for us. We are nomads of the universe. We think universally but everything is divided into disciplines and sub-disciplines. Efforts to philosophize on everything end up in Ken Wilber color-coded invitations to yet another discipline. And marketed! Still we are the ones who can see. And we are the ones who can say. And we are the ones who deserve an ear even if the sound we get back is derision. We are also in the majority! For at bottom all people are universalists (or what Dostoevsky called philosophers) by virtue of minds that contain essentially the same things. And by things I mean values, ideas, habits waiting to be born wrapped in a penumbra of fallibility and supposition. Shakespeare reigns because he plumbed the universal. We suffer suffer atrophy because we don't.

Using the personal to deflate the political

Gaddafi’s Taste for Rice — BagNews: "In the last BagNews Salon, my take — looking at the military’s photos of Osama bin Ladin’s bed during the Abbottabad raid — was that part of the logic in circulating this intimate image was to “strip” OBL of his powerful, militant as well as ascetic identity."

I think the fellow makes a good point.



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How we place ourselves in the world is a daily choice

The New Atlantis » GPS and the End of the Road: "We seem likely only to continue to misunderstand the source of our disappointment — as some inherent shortcoming in the world, rather than a problem in how we place ourselves in it."

There are shortcomings in our world. And they do affect our placement in it. The answer is not how, because that implies that the earth is fixed and all we need to do is adapt. We are homo faber. We make the world. Our choices narrow as our experience reveals that what we have made has liabilities we did not anticipate. (As in sprawl, for example.) The solution lies in active engagement to change the environment we have made.



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Time to move nuke to the same bad side as oil and coal

Washington Earthquake Raises Red Flag About Safety of U.S. Nuclear Plants - The Daily Beast: "A small malfunction at a Virginia nuclear plant during Tuesday’s quake has raised new concerns about whether America’s nuclear facilities can withstand forceful ground shaking. By Daniel Stone."

One would think that we need no more warning than this. But we have typically exempted nukes from the bad rap we give to depleted and vanishing fossil fuels. That's a mistake. We warm the globe up to produce the extreme weather that shakes up the nuke plants that bothers us for a while and then we go back to building them and saying how safe they are.

Another anti-Obama absurdity

President Obama’s Political Team Is Blowing It - The Daily Beast: "But what needs to change is the way the White House approaches politics. To what? To a simple, blunt, and deeply real-world truth: He’s not nearly as bad as the other guys, who are crazy. That’s all he’s got."

Mr. Tomasky has a perception problem. I think he ran out of gas as well. What Obama has is much more than being better than say Rick Perry. Start with a firm grasp on political reality. To achieve what he plainly states at all opportunities, but which few even comprehend of listen to, we need a Congress that works. That can only happen at the polls. Thus the President is playing rope-a-dope in the face of all his many enemies and ignorant critics. And maybe some golf too. The choice has always been with the people.



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Bill McKibben is foolish to blame Obama

Hurricane Irene Can Be Tied to Global Warming, Says Bill McKibben - The Daily Beast: "They’re trying to get the president to see the danger of climate change. Irene will be a distraction in the short run from our efforts, but in the long run it underlines what the fight is all about. If the president goes for business as usual, we’re going to get planet weird."

These progressive screeds versus Obama all end the same way. If, then. Because they are not willing to say they actually believe the President will not act. If I had to say that racism is involved in Obama hatred, I would distribute it equally across the board. I believe Obama will smack down the pipe line if he can. He would do it with much more ease if people would support him. And listen to what he says. And credit what he does. That's too much to ask of course.




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I would say solutions trumps all the rest

3 Things That Must Happen for Us To Rise Up and Defeat the Corporatocracy | | AlterNet: "August 25, 2011 |

"Transforming the United States into something closer to a democracy requires: 1) knowledge of how we are getting screwed; 2) pragmatic tactics, strategies, and solutions; and 3) the 'energy to do battle.'

First, corporations will fall of their own inflated dead weight. We need not treat them as enemies. We can if we wish avoid them even if it requires some inconvenience. Second, pragmaticism (Peirce) might see things in the following way: 1 Excitement, 2 blunt truth and out of this binary bind 3 a resolution or habit that either works or does not. Excitation is almost entirely lacking today and thus we are stuck. The excitation for me is the notion of car free cyber-cities which cluster dispersed populations to the point that they can create viable societies and vibrant communities. My benchmark is about 10K folk per unit adapting from today's layout. Moving toward car-free sustainable communities that are walkable and ecologically stable. Until a vision beyond the mess of today emerges, we are in limbo. And the energy to achieve goals will languish. We must first "get the idea".

Ramen gets its due

Alone With Your Ramen - Amateur Gourmet:

This is for all the stiffs like me who thought ramen was simply a plastic wrapped rectangle that cost little and satisfied little.


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Looks like good bye to a nuke free Japan

Japan: Prime Minister Naoto Kan resigns – Boing Boing: "In his final months, Kan articulated a vision for a nuclear-free Japan that struck a popular chord with a nation reeling from the Fukushima nuclear disaster and its still-unfolding consequences. What becomes of that no-more-nukes vision depends in part on who succeeds him. That person will be Japan's sixth PM in five years."

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Why do I keep saying end the war on drugs?

53 dead in attack on casino in Mexico - World news - Americas - msnbc.com: "It is assumed the attack was carried out by the Zetas cartel, who set fire to the casino because the owners had not paid some $10,000 a week the organization had demanded, government officials told Excelsior."



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GOP tax cut hypocrisy - not if it helps the poor

For Some in G.O.P., a Tax Cut Not Worth Embracing - NYTimes.com: "That tax cut — which reduces workers’ contributions to Social Security this year to 4.2 percent of wages, from 6.2 percent — expires in December. The White House would like to extend it for another year. But Republicans in Congress are balking, arguing that such a cut adds needlessly to the nation’s budget deficit, and should be replaced with an overhaul of tax policy instead."

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MLK memorial postponement is a good decision

MLK memorial dedication postponed due to Hurricane Irene - Associated Press - POLITICO.com: "WASHINGTON — The dedication of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial on the National Mall in Washington, which President Barack Obama was scheduled to attend, has been postponed indefinitely as Hurricane Irene bears down on the East Coast."

Very good decision. Let's wait until this patch is behind us.

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Current take on Irene for NYC area folk

Hurricane Irene poised to slam New York City and beyond - latimes.com: "The storm could "pass within 30 miles of New York City" on Sunday evening as a Category 2 hurricane, meaning winds would be between 96 and 110 miles per hour. She warned that glass windows could shatter on New York City skyscrapers. Beyond New York City, she said, hurricane-force winds could plague the Delmarva coast, eastern New Jersey, Long Island and southwestern New England."

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Facebook privacy can be controlled - some ACLU guidelines

ACLU Guide to New Facebook Privacy Controls » Blog of Rights: Official Blog of the American Civil Liberties Union: "Today Facebook is rolling out a series of changes to its privacy controls. We reviewed the changes in detail on Tuesday; now here’s how you can take advantage of these changes."

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Reconciling Christian orthodoxy and Abba's Way is simple.

Abba's Way - Premises - Associated Content from Yahoo! - associatedcontent.com: "I regard Christian orthodox statements of "truth" as suppositions and I have no problem with the suppositions of anyone. Abba's Way can accept many statements, even creedal ones, in the same way one might accept. 'The Universe is expanding'. Things we cannot say from direct experience are suppositions."



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Jesus frees us from the binary and enables us to think beyond the box

Abba's Way - Stephen C. Rose : IUniverse:

Why did Jesus use Abba to signify G-d if not because he wished to upset at the very root the horrendous besmirching of the deoity that occurs whenever the deity is made party to a human conflict, particularly one that results in the worst evil of all which is the conscious taking of human life. Jesus, if you follow him, centers the very notion of Satan in the binary mentality which cannot see beyond a conflict. The uncompromising attitudes that hobble our current politics are part and parcel of what Jesus came to defeat. And he succeeded! By giving us the gift of mind that frees us from the binary and enables us to think beyond that box. This very renegade deity Abba is placed within us as a gift. Accessable with a simple inner turn.


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Most of what I read on education is teacher-centric

The Schools We Need | Erik Reece | Orion Magazine:

Most of what I read on education is teacher-centric. In my understanding, this is a major error. Education is driven most effectively by a single simple thing. The curiosity of the student. The desire to follow a certain line of interest. This is why I see the reforming of education in terms of freeing students to follow their own interests. The whole notion of school as a class which depends on a teacher to maintain some sort of order while somehow eliciting the interest of each student is absurd. The notion of attending a school which looks more like an office complex than a place to settle in and learn is inherently defeating. I would move in the direction of kiosks with large screen presentations of the very best of everything curated by people who know whatever the subject is and can answer the questions of interested students. I would measure progress by the quality of conversation between a student and a curator. I would close the cover of any book that suggests that the teacher is the main key to educational reform.

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