We Are Winning

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Martin Luther King, Jr. (January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was an American clergyman, activist, and prominent leader in the African American civil rights movement. He is best known for being an iconic figure in the advancement of civil rights in the United States and around the world, using nonviolent methods following the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi. King is often presented as a heroic leader in the history of modern American liberalism.

A Baptist minister, King became a civil rights activist early in his career. He led the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott and helped found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1957, serving as its first president. King's efforts led to the 1963 March on Washington, where King delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech. There, he expanded American values to include the vision of a color blind society, and established his reputation as one of the greatest orators in American history.

In 1964, King became the youngest person to receive the Nobel Peace Prize for his work to end racial segregation and racial discrimination through civil disobedience and other nonviolent means. By the time of his death in 1968, he had refocused his efforts on ending poverty and stopping the Vietnam War.

King was assassinated on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee. He was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1977 and Congressional Gold Medal in 2004; Martin Luther King, Jr. Day was established as a U.S. federal holiday in 1986. (read more)

alexander calder

"goldfishbowl"

alexander calder

Anti anxiety

Sian Beilock

Writing has been shown to replace ruminating. Ruminating is generally thought of as the mental activity devoted to replaying past traumatic experience. It is a well-known contributor to clinical depression. That’s why writing workshops are often included in the treatment of depression. However, ruminating over future events, such as taking a high-stakes exam or something, can be equally disruptive. In this case, ruminating often leads to “choking” where students perform more poorly than expected given their skill level, especially when there are large incentives for optimal performance and negative consequences for poor performance. University of Chicago Psychologist Sian Beilock has found that the simple act of writing about anxiety can significantly reduce students’ chances of choking, especially if it’s done just prior to test-taking [link]. She says that when students are able to express their fears in writing, they’re given the satisfaction that they’ve dealt with them enough to move on and stop ruminating over them. This, in turn, releases space in working memory ..making it available to work on the task at hand.

The Power of Nightmares: Politics of Fear

part 2

part 3

crazy

"You have to be crazy...

to live in an insane world.

impossible

Infinite time...

infinite space...

what is not possible ?

Nonviolent Civil Disobedience is our only Chance

http://www.eternalvigilanceradio.com/

Hell in Haiti: one year later

one year later: (Battle for Haiti)

conflict

remember...

you don't hate

people...

you hate what

they DO...

god didn't make

any bad people

"Et tu, Brute?"

monsanto is evil

The Monsanto Company is a U.S.-based multinational agricultural biotechnology corporation. It is the world's leading producer of the herbicide glyphosate, marketed as "Roundup". Monsanto is also the leading producer of genetically engineered (GE) seed; it provides the technology in 90% of the world's genetically engineered seeds. It is headquartered in Creve Coeur, Missouri.

Agracetus, owned by Monsanto, exclusively produces Roundup Ready soybean seed for the commercial market. In 2005, it finalized purchase of Seminis Inc, making it the world's largest conventional seed company.

Monsanto's development and marketing of genetically engineered seed and bovine growth hormone, as well as its aggressive litigation, political lobbying practices, seed commercialization practices and "strong-arming" of the seed industry have made the company controversial around the world and a primary target of the alter-globalization movement and environmental activists. As a result of its business strategies and licensing agreements, Monsanto came under investigation by the U.S. Justice Department in 2009.

In June 2007, Monsanto acquired Delta & Pine Land Company, a company that had patented a seed technology nicknamed Terminators. This technology, which was never known to have been used commercially, produces plants that have sterile seeds so they do not flower or grow fruit after the initial planting. This prevents the spread of those seeds into the wild, however it also requires customers to repurchase seed for every planting in which they use Terminator seed varieties. Farmers who do not use a terminator seed could also be affected by his neighboring farmer that does through natural pollination. In recent years, widespread opposition from environmental organizations and farmer associations has grown, mainly out of the concerns that hypothetical seeds using this technology could increase farmers' dependency on seed suppliers.

Despite the fact that in 1999, Monsanto pledged not to commercialize Terminator technology, Delta Vice President, Harry Collins, declared at the time in a press interview in the Agra/Industrial Biotechnology Legal Letter, "We’ve continued right on with work on the Technology Protection System (TPS or Terminator). We never really slowed down. We’re on target, moving ahead to commercialize it. We never really backed off."
(read more) (millions against monsanto) (food inc.)

secret astronauts

Reception

In 1998, psychologist Arthur Graesser examined the real-time components of speech and reading comprehension. See [Einstein’s Dreams]. Components of comprehension include things like ‘syntax parsing’, ‘semantic processing’, ‘unexpected event-handling’ and ‘resolution’. They can be measured in milliseconds. Using an interactive computer-presentation, he recorded the time students spent at each component-step. Sort of like a reaction-time study. What he found was counterintuitive. Comprehension scores were actually higher for students who took longer to process the semantic and unexpected components of a narrative. Students who spent less time performing these tasks scored lower. On closer examination, he found that they were interpreting events way too fast to derive the most likely meaning. Neglecting these early steps also put them at greater risk of misunderstanding whatever happened next. What this tells me is that receptivity and a sense of wonder are far more important than coming to the most expedient conclusion when following what another person is saying.

rub the lamp

coldfusionnow.org

Cecilia

"Lady with an Ermine"

Leonardo da Vinci 1489–1490

you really got me

So Once Again!

"Masters Of War"

Come you masters of war
You that build all the guns
You that build the death planes
You that build all the bombs
You that hide behind walls
You that hide behind desks
I just want you to know
I can see through your masks.

You that never done nothin'
But build to destroy
You play with my world
Like it's your little toy
You put a gun in my hand
And you hide from my eyes
And you turn and run farther
When the fast bullets fly.

Like Judas of old
You lie and deceive
A world war can be won
You want me to believe
But I see through your eyes
And I see through your brain
Like I see through the water
That runs down my drain.

You fasten all the triggers
For the others to fire
Then you set back and watch
When the death count gets higher
You hide in your mansion'
As young people's blood
Flows out of their bodies
And is buried in the mud.

You've thrown the worst fear
That can ever be hurled
Fear to bring children
Into the world
For threatening my baby
Unborn and unnamed
You ain't worth the blood
That runs in your veins.

How much do I know
To talk out of turn
You might say that I'm young
You might say I'm unlearned
But there's one thing I know
Though I'm younger than you
That even Jesus would never
Forgive what you do.

Let me ask you one question
Is your money that good
Will it buy you forgiveness
Do you think that it could
I think you will find
When your death takes its toll
All the money you made
Will never buy back your soul.

And I hope that you die
And your death'll come soon
I will follow your casket
In the pale afternoon
And I'll watch while you're lowered
Down to your deathbed
And I'll stand over your grave
'Til I'm sure that you're dead.







(Dylan)



This was written in early 60's -- I am amazed and disheartened as to how it is equally true today.
Will it never end?

Sanctuary

The ocean has always been my sanctuary,
..it fills my head with wonder.

perfect

Everything is...


as it should be...


everything is...


perfect*




(*falling is easy)

cannibal

atomic bomb

Academic freedom

The other day students asked me why we waste money on research that doesn’t have immediate medical or commercial value. It was a fair question. I told them I thought it was because progress often depends on research that was originally done for non-commercial purposes ..like scientific advancement. The Internet came to mind. The Internet and all the social networking and businesses it hosts ..did not start out as a texting or commercial enterprise. It was an experiment that relied on research coming out of fields such as cybernetics and neuropsychology. The head of the project was a psychologist from MIT named Joseph Licklider [link]. He was a leading expert on the nature of the auditory system. His research involved understanding the way signals travel across the nervous system and get converted to sound by the auditory centers in the brain. His findings became the basis for ‘packet switching’ in computer networks, without which the Internet would have never progressed much farther than the telephone [link]. These studies were not originally intended for use by the computer industry ..nor were they funded by drug companies. The Internet would have never come about through corporate sponsorship alone. That’s the reason why scientific inquiry needs to be conducted in a neutral setting.

deviant

Enigma - Principles of Lust/Love/Sadness

Conspiracy theory

It was the intention of the Bush administration to raise unemployment and drive more middle-class citizens to lower economic classes. They felt it was necessary to get middle-class Americans to accept lower wages. Lower wages mean lower prices and greater demand for American-made products, which helps balance the trade deficit. Reduced purchasing power also means less tolerance for high-priced foreign oil, which helps domestic oil companies expand their operations into coastal waters as well as wildlife sanctuaries. Furthermore, they figured it would discourage fanatics from developing renewable energy sources. A larger class of low paid workers creates greater competition for low-paying jobs. Greater competition for low-paying jobs is how you get the job market to deal with immigration. Fear of foreign workers helps Republicans enact tougher immigration laws ..like denying immigrants any chance of citizenship, which also goes for their American-born, college-educated children ..as well as those serving in the military. Another advantage of the politics of fear is that it helps Republicans win elections. That’s probably what helped Republicans gain control of Congress. Records show that the more support there is for republican issues in congress ..the more cutbacks you can expect to see in public education (especially in the form of federal grants and student aid). Cutbacks such as these deny middle-class access to higher education. What was their intention ..? To create a larger pool of low-cost labor. These advantages are short-term however, and the cycle will turn. When the disparity becomes so great that higher education becomes a luxury only the wealthy can afford, they might as well shut down the state universities ..there aren’t enough wealthy students to go around. When the GOP cuts all ties with the Latino community, and their efforts at stemming immigration fail (because it’s like trying to stop water) ..they’ll have succeeded in creating a larger population of democratic voters. And when support from the rural Midwest farmer collapses because they haven’t kept their promise to repeal the estate tax ..the cycle will come full circle.

The Conquest of Cold

Bose - Einstein condensate

A Bose–Einstein condensate (BEC) is a state of matter of a dilute gas of weakly interacting bosons confined in an external potential and cooled to temperatures very near absolute zero (0 K or −273.16 °C). Under such conditions, a large fraction of the bosons occupy the lowest quantum state of the external potential, at which point quantum effects become apparent on a macroscopic scale.

This state of matter was first predicted by Satyendra Nath Bose and Albert Einstein in 1924–25. Bose first sent a paper to Einstein on the quantum statistics of light quanta (now called photons). Einstein was impressed, translated the paper himself from English to German and submitted it for Bose to the Zeitschrift für Physik which published it. Einstein then extended Bose's ideas to material particles (or matter) in two other papers.

Seventy years later, the first gaseous condensate was produced by Eric Cornell and Carl Wieman in 1995 at the University of Colorado at Boulder NIST-JILA lab, using a gas of rubidium atoms cooled to 170 nanokelvin (nK) (1.7×10−7 K). For their achievements Cornell, Wieman, and Wolfgang Ketterle at MIT received the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physics. In November 2010 the first photon BEC was observed. (read more) (see more)

..................................

You think that light is fast? Well, think again. Sometimes it is slower than a crawl. All schoolchildren know that light is the fastest thing there is. It zips along through empty space at 297,000 km per second (186,000 miles a second).

But now a Danish physicist and her team of collaborators have found a way to slow light down to less than 1.6 km per hour (one mile an hour) - slower than a slow walk.

The way Dr Hau and her team have slowed down light by a factor of 600 million or so is to use a group of atoms called a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC). These atoms are cooled to a temperature of only a few billionths of a degree above absolute zero, the coldest possible temperature, at which all motion stops.

In a Bose-Einstein condensate, atoms are hardly moving at all. This means that according to the uncertainty principle that rules atoms, they are spread out and overlap. This results in a group identity for the collection of supercold atoms. And when light passes through such an environment, it will slow down.

By firing co-ordinated beams of laser light through the BEC, Hau and colleagues have slowed light down to a crawl. Inside the BEC, the so-called refractive index (which measures the slowing of light) becomes enormous: as high as 100 trillion times greater than that of glass. (news.bbc.co.uk)

Out Of Space

Lucifer, son of the mourning, I’m gonna chase you out of earth

I’m gonna put on a iron shirt and chase Satan out of earth

I’m gonna put on a iron shirt and chase the devil out of earth

I’m gonna send him to outta space to find another race

I’m gonna send him to outta space to find another race

Satan is an evilous man

But him can’t chocks it on I-man

So when I check him with my lassing hand

And if him slip, I gaan with him hand

I’m gonna put on a iron shirt and chase Satan out of earth

I’m gonna put on a iron shirt and chase the devil out of earth

I’m gonna send him to outta space to find another race

I’m gonna send him to outta space to find another race

Him haffi drop him fork and run

Him can’t stand up to Jah Jah son

Him haffi lef’ya with him gun

Dig off with him bomb

I’m gonna put on a iron shirt and chase Satan out of earth

I’m gonna put on a iron shirt and chase the devil out of earth

I’m gonna send him to outta space to find another race

I’m gonna send him to outta space to find another race

Satan is an evilous man

But him can’t chocks it on I-man

So when I check him with my lassing hand

And if him slip

a new year

it's a secret...

don't tell anyone...

might think you're crazy...

it's what they want you to think...

that you're crazy...

you're not

may good befall all

lapidation

Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani (Persian: سکینه محمدی آشتیانی, born ca. 1967) is an Iranian woman convicted of adultery and murder, and since 2006 has been under a sentence of death under in Iran. An international campaign to overturn her sentence was started by her daughter and son, Farideh and Sajjad Mohamamadi e Ashtiani, and it brought widespread attention to her case in 2010, when prominent media sources claimed that she was sentenced to be executed by stoning. Iranian authorities denied that this method of execution would be used, and gave her a stay of execution in September 2010.

Mrs. Ashtiani had allegedly committed adultery with the man who murdered her husband, Isa Taheri. Taheri was found guilty of murder and sentenced to death. Taheri was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment.

In 2006, Mrs. Ashtiani was brought on her first trial, charged with the murder of her husband. She was found guilty of murdering her husband, and sentenced to death by hanging. Her sentence was commuted to 10 years imprisonment, like Taheri's, in 2007.

In September 2006, her case was again brought up in a different court, this time tried for adultery. She pleaded guilty but later recanted her confession. She was convicted of adultery while still married, and sentenced to death by stoning, and an additional sentence of 99 lashes.

The international publicity generated by Mrs. Ashtiani's plight led to numerous diplomatic conflicts between Iran's government and the heads of certain western governments. Due to the reaction of the international community, the execution had been stayed indefinitely.
(read more) (freesakineh.org) (Du'a Khalil Aswad video)