Fiction

“Tepco Are Negligent Murderers - Salon”

2011-03-20T19:38:00.001-07:00

“Tepco Are Negligent Murderers - Salon”

Posted:

From the Wall Street Journal:

The plant's operator—Tokyo Electric Power Co., or Tepco—considered using seawater from the nearby coast to cool one of its six reactors at least as early as last Saturday morning, the day after the quake struck. But it didn't do so until that evening, after the prime minister ordered it following an explosion at the facility. Tepco didn't begin using seawater at other reactors until Sunday. Tepco was reluctant to use seawater because it worried about hurting its long-term investment in the complex, say people involved with the efforts. Seawater, which can render a nuclear reactor permanently inoperable, now is at the center of efforts to keep the plant under control. Tepco "hesitated because it tried to protect its assets," said Akira Omoto, a former Tepco executive and a member of the Japan Atomic Energy Commission.

Tepco prevented a measure which might have arrested this horrible situation earlier. We don't know if it would have stopped the current slow-motion disaster, but we'll never know if it wouldn't, either.

But because of a corporation's wish to protect its property, how many are dying now and will die in days, months, years to come? How much cumulative damage will be done to Japan, and eastern Russia, and Korea, and China alone, not to mention the effect of those rads being vomited in a steady stream into our atmosphere?

A little uranium twinkling in every lung.

All because of a company's negligence, even leaving aside how we don't learn the lesson of not doing things we don't know how to fix when they go wrong. Things that, when they go wrong, go wrong all the way. Because of money. Because of profit.

Not yours.

The profit of the corporations, the legal fictions we have given the powers of God and the legal standing of human beings. But none of the same liability.

Indeed, the whole purpose of corporations is evasion of individual liability. But it seems you cannot have your cake and eat it too.

That has started to break down of late, with the Supreme Court's surprisingly intelligent decision(dissented by Thomas and Scalia, of course) against AT & T, declaring that the corporation did not have the same right to privacy as an individual does. There's a next logical step, though.

Because corporations murder. They destroy lives, property, and resources. Before this, there was BP and the Gulf. Oil companies, for decades. Union Carbide in Bhopal. R.J. Reynolds and others. All engaged in irresponsible behavior that cost the lives of millions. That's not even including corporations such as ITT, DeBeers, or United Fruit that actively killed people and overthrew nations and governments.

Some have paid fines. Occasionally executives have gone to jail. But mostly, the corporations remain and find new ways to commit the same crimes. And they usually don't really have to fix what they destroyed, or pay for it.

The paying is usually left to the victims.

Why should they have all the advantages of an individual with none of the responsibilities to the human race?

Bad enough we can never hold God to account. But to actually create and tolerate such a malign force within our own world, created by our own laws, which protect it as it murders us?

It seems to me that in some way, should a corporation commit murder and mass destruction, it should be imprisoned, even executed, as any individual might, as well.

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Five Filters featured article: Comment Is Free But Freedom Is Slavery - An Exchange With The Guardian's Economics Editor.

“Can fantasy ever tell the truth? - The Guardian”

2011-03-17T19:30:00.001-07:00

“Can fantasy ever tell the truth? - The Guardian”

Can fantasy ever tell the truth? - The Guardian

Posted:

China Miéville's fictions 'riff on the nature of fantasy itself'. Photograph: Chris Close

There is nothing wrong with escaping reality now and again. Like a well brewed ale, or a good malt whisky, a finely crafted escapist fantasy can be a thing of joy and beauty. But while the occasional tipple can be a good thing, most of us recognise that a bottle of Jameson's a night is unhealthy for body, mind and soul.

An unfiltered diet of escapist fantasy blockbusters can be similarly unhealthy. As master anti-fantasist M John Harrison expresses it in his essay The Profession of Science Fiction while discussing the appeal of fantasy to young children terrified by adult life, "Many fantasy and SF readers are living out a prolonged childhood in which they retain that terror and erect – in collusion with professional writers who themselves often began as teenage daydreamers – powerful defences against it."

For many literary readers it is this suspicion of escapism that deters them from fantasy. Literary fiction is rooted in the idea of engaging with reality as it is, of facing all the pains and pleasures of life and examining them in detail. Iris Murdoch described great writing as having "a conception of truth, a lack of illusion, an ability to overcome selfish obsessions" and as being the work of a "free, unfettered, uncorrupted imagination." Bad writing for Murdoch, and for the generation of literary writers surrounding her, could be defined as "the soft, messy, self-indulgent work of an enslaved fantasy".

Kevin Brockmeier's The Illumination is not soft, messy or self-indulgent. But it is fantastic. The novel charts a jagged course through the lives of its six protagonists in a world transfigured in one fantastic way. Wounds of all kinds, from cuts and bruises to amputated limbs, have begun to emanate light. The narrative offers no explanation for the phenomenon of illumination, and its consequences are not explored in any depth beyond its profound impact on the characters of the story. It is a fantastical device which helps Brockmeier arrive at the kind of hard truths literary fiction so admires.

China Miéville's fiction is no less truthful, but far more extravagantly fantastic. Miéville's early Bas-Lag trilogy reworked the familiar trope of the fantasy city, but New Crobuzon owes more to Dickensian London and M John Harrison's Viriconium than it does to Tolkien's Gondor. Miéville's upcoming Embassytown is generating considerable excitement as his most sophisticated work to date. The Embassytown of the title is a human colony on an alien planet inhabited by the Hosts. The Host language is so alien that it can only be spoken by genetically engineered Ambassadors, and uses human colonists as living similes for complex ideas.

The game with Miéville's fiction is to unpick the complex, many layered metaphors he twists from the fantasy he is creating. In Embassytown Miéville continues to explore socialist ideology and the power of language to control and enslave. It is hard to escape, however, the sneaking suspicion that Miéville is riffing on the nature of fantasy itself and the complex relationship between the pusher of fantasy and their adoring, addicted audience.

Catherynne M Valente is the author of perhaps the most baroque and stylish fantasy being written today. Valente's novel Palimpsest also explores a fantasy city, an other-worldly, phantasmagorical metropolis that can only be reached by travellers from our reality through sleep. Visitors to Palimpsest are tattooed with unique maps of the city, and must then seek one another out to continue their explorations of that place.

Valente's latest novel Deathless reworks the Slavic fairytale of Koschei the Deathless, returning Valente to her ongoing fascination with folk and fairytales. Valente describes her own work, along with other writers including Ekaterina Sedia and Theodora Goss, as "mythpunk" fiction that combines fantasy, folktale and myth with postmodern techniques, non-linear storytelling and academic critique. The results are fantasy that begins to capture the highly subjective truths of contemporary reality.

As an escapist experience, fantasy has fallen in to disregard with writers and readers who seek to understand the often difficult and painful truths of real life. But writers such as Brockmeier, Miéville and Valente are returning to fantasy for the many ways it can unlock truth. Perhaps it is a consequence of living in an era of such radical change, but the fantastic seems once again to play a part in expressing the truth of our time.

“The Confederate flag and free speech: It's long past time to stop mythologizing our ancestry - Oregonian” plus 1 more

2011-03-16T19:44:00.001-07:00

“The Confederate flag and free speech: It's long past time to stop mythologizing our ancestry - Oregonian” plus 1 more

The Confederate flag and free speech: It's long past time to stop mythologizing our ancestry - Oregonian

Posted:

Published: Wednesday, March 16, 2011, 7:00 AM

By Jeffrey Fuller

After reading about Ken Webber, the Medford school bus driver who was fired for refusing to remove a Confederate battle flag, which he called an expression of his "redneck" identity, from the antenna of his truck while parked at a local school, I was reminded of my own upbringing in Missouri near the home of the notorious Confederate guerrilla and outlaw Jesse James.

Coming of age in an area where Southern sympathies still exist, where Jesse James is still celebrated (even I, a liberal historian, struggle not to brag about the nearness of my roots to this legendary and murderous man), and where the "Dukes of Hazard" just made sense, I've often found contradictions in the realities and fictions surrounding the South and an understanding of who we are as individuals. The brief background information about Webber in The Oregonian brought two specific issues to mind:

The first issue is the fact that there is no Confederate heritage without hate. The belief that the Confederate flag stands for "heritage not hate" is one steeped in mythology, in a dishonest reading of the South's stated intentions, and in the addition of ideas that simply did not exist until after the war was concluded and Reconstruction was in full swing. The state of South Carolina's declaration of secession spelled out the South's cause quite succinctly. The writers attest that states have the right to secede first and foremost, and in this the myth is born. The right to secede equaled a war for state's rights. The rest of the declaration goes on to assert that the United States' refusal to uphold the Fugitive Slave Act and the "election of a man ... whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery" made it impossible for South Carolina to continue as a member of "the Union heretofore existing between this State and the other States of North America." All of the rights they find abused fall under the guise of slavery. In fact, the right to secede and the rights supposedly abused by the federal government concerning slavery are the only rights mentioned in the cause of so-called heritage preservation.

The second issue is the overlaying of the term "redneck" onto a noted symbol of hate. The etymology of the word stems from the sunburned necks of America's farmers. Where I grew up, redneck was generally a term one earned through hard labor and long days in the field. It was a badge of honor one wore on his skin, not because he tattooed it on himself but because nature saw fit to brand him with its mark. It was a celebration for the group that represented the nation's heartland and life blood. It was not a term that anyone who adopted the style could claim. Driving a pickup, wearing a mesh-backed cap and listening to country music were not enough. There was pride in who they were, but to wave a flag would have been too ego-driven and grounds for ridicule.

Why is it that some Americans, especially in the case of the Confederate flag, must continue to ignore our past and mythologize it as something worthwhile and grand? Ken Webber, and many others around the nation, not only fly this statement of hatred ignorantly but take it a step further and fly it with bellicose defiance, unintentionally ridiculing a time-honored faction of American livelihood.

We should take a page from Germany's bravery in admitting our historical prejudice rather than pretending it was something else. The Germans labeled the swastika as a symbol of hatred and bigotry. The Nazis built the autobahn and pulled Germany out of its economic calamity, yet no one ignores the Holocaust because of these triumphs. So why cannot Americans acknowledge the Confederacy's intent to dominate in all aspects the lives of a people based on the color of their skin, to brutalize them, rape them, whip them, brand them, take their children and work them into their graves? That is the real history of slavery, the real history of Southern secession, and the real history of the Confederate flag. It is time we admit our past failures and bigotry, and stop mythologizing our ancestry as something grand when it was anything but.

Jeffrey Fuller lives in North Portland.

Comprehensive concert and comedy calendar for the week starting 3/4 - New Haven Register

Posted:

Billy Ray Cyrus, MGM Grand Premiere Ballroom, Foxwoods Resort Casino, Route 2, Mashantucket, 800-200-2882.

The Lee Boys, Fairfield Theatre Co.'s StageOne.

Tartan Terrors with Ask Your Father, The Ridgefield Playhouse.

Tera Melos with Marnie Stern, Fugue, Heirloom Arts Theatre .

The Original Saturday Night Dance Party, Toad's Place.

The Rock 106.9 WCCC Presents: Monster Energy Outbreak Tour featuring Rev Theory with Pop Evil, The Black Cloud Collective, Aranda, Crossing Rubicon, Abyss, Death On Arrival, The Awakening, Full On Wolf, Webster Theater.

Saturday Afternoon Jazz Jam with Dave Dana and Brian Buster (early), Cafe Nine.

The Manchurians with The Reducers (late), Cafe Nine.

Battle Of The Bands - Preliminary Round featuring Torndown with Forging Utopia, The Circuit, Fear the Masses, Casting Call, That's The Problem, The Space.

Lou Pella with Doc Baker's Traveling Musicological Extravaganza, The Outer Space.

David Cassidy, Wolf Den, Mohegan Sun.

Freeplay (cover band), Daniel Street.

MDIII, Georgetown Saloon.

Red Cadwallader, Sage American Grill & Oyster Bar.

Sharp Drezzed Man, C.J. Sparrow Pub & Eatery.

Black Rock Rocks Mardi Gras party, Acoustic Cafe.

The Jazz Guild (early), Two Boots.

Mike Freeman's ZonaVibe (late), Two Boots.

Groovetime, J. Roo's Restaurant.

Livingston Taylor, Infinity Hall.

The Jerrod Cattey Trio, Olde School Saloon.

Joe Fonda Jazz Trio, Buttonwood Tree Performing Arts & Cultural Center.

Airborne Jazz Band, Bin 100, 100 Lansdale Ave., Milford; 203-882-1400.

Out of Thin Air, New Deal Steakplace.

Heavy Breath with We Were Skeletons, Chauncey Gardiner, My Fictions, The Cookie Jar, New Haven, private house party; GO, http://thectsound.com/yabb/index.php?topic=1932.0.

Testing For Echo with Free Grizzly Bear Rides, Root In Stereo, Fools On Sunday, Chance, Dun Bin Had, Amity Teen Center, 10 Selden St., Woodbridge; 203-298-9735.

SUNDAY

Luther with Communipaw, Alive In Love, Heirloom Arts Theatre.

Open Blues Jam with Travis Moody Band, Cafe Nine.

High School Open Mic, The Space.

Valli Sings Valli, Wolf Den, Mohegan Sun.

Local band showcase featuring After Autumn with Ruthie Shultz, Steve Mallon, Sandoval Band, Daniel Street.

Kids karaoke, Georgetown Saloon.

Bill Fluker and Friends, SoCo's Bar & Restaurant, 50 Fitch St., New Haven, 203-764-2662.

MONDAY

Etana & Gyptian with Jungle Man, Toad's Place.

A Night of Smooth Jazz with Rohn Lawrence & Friends, In Lilly's Pad, Toad's Place.

Beatnik 2000 #561, Cafe Nine.

Eric Stepanian, Wolf Den, Mohegan Sun casino.

"Anything Goes" open mic with J Cherry, Buttonwood Tree Performing Arts & Cultural Center.

Jim Oblon, The Owl Shop, 268 College St., New Haven; 203-624-3250.

TUESDAY

Furthur, Toyota Presents the Oakdale Theatre, 95 S. Turnpike Road, Wallingford; 203-265-1501.

Tab Benoit with Otis and the Hurricanes, Fairfield Theatre Co.'s StageOne.

The Wolfe Tones, Toad's Place.

Pussy Magnet, Cafe Nine.

Young Dubliners, Wolf Den, Mohegan Sun.

Acoustic Open mic with Marc Huberman, Georgetown Saloon.

Open mic night, Acoustic Cafe.

Shaka and the Soulshakers, Two Boots.

Karaoke with Andy, Olde School Saloon.

Open Mic Night Hosted By Seth Adam Trio, Stella Blues, 204 Crown St., New Haven, 203-752-9764.

UltraRadio.com Open Mic @ Kelly's, Kelly's Restaurant & Bar, 196 Crown St., New Haven; 203-776-1111.

Greg Sherrod Band, The Owl Shop.

WEDNESDAY

The Protomen with Mile Marker Zero, Heirloom Arts Theatre.

Local hip-hop showcase featuring Booslick with Kode Red, Mayo Giovanni, Cash Time Industries, Killa Ben, Tallent, Dublin, The Ingredients, Toad's Place.

Ron Anthony, The Outer Space.

Dr. K's Motown Revue, Wolf Den, Mohegan Sun.

Local band showcase featuring Risk All In Life, Mouth On Tailpipe, Attack Memphis, Daniel Street.

Cajun Roadhouse Wednesdays live music with DJ E-Bomb, Two Boots.

Karaoke, J. Roo's Restaurant.

Tab Benoit, Infinity Hall.

All-request music party, Olde School Saloon.

Airborne Jazz Band, Cafe Goodfellas.

George Lesiw Trio, The Owl Shop.

Manic Productions Presents: Fang Island, BAR, 254 Crown Street, New Haven, 203-495-8924.

THURSDAY

Raul Malo Solo with Seth Walker, Fairfield Theatre Co.'s StageOne.

Evergreen Terrace with Lower Than Atlantis, Too Tall Grizzly, Like Beasts, Heirloom Arts Theatre.

The Blasters, Cafe Nine.

Burn Lexington with Loyalty Among Thieves, Hope to Live, Systems and Skylines, The Space.

Rehab, Wolf Den, Mohegan Sun.

Open mic jam with Artie Tobia, Georgetown Saloon.

Ken Safety's Open Mic, C.J. Sparrow Pub & Eatery.

Brian Dolzani and Melissa Mulligan, Acoustic Cafe.

Thirsty Thursdays + Karaoke, Two Boots.

Jace Everett, Infinity Hall.

Airborne Jazz Band, Angry Olive Italian Bistro & Restaurant, 1625 Silas Deane Highway, Rocky Hill; 860-257-8402.

Make Do And Mend, Balance And Composure, Baby Grand, University of New Haven German Club, UNH, 300 Boston Post Road, West Haven; no phone.

By Entertainment Staff / @nhregbuzz

FRIDAY

Bon Jovi, Mohegan Sun Arena, 1 Mohegan Sun Blvd., Uncasville; 800-745-3000.

Connected: Friday Night: Massive, Fairfield Theatre Co.'s StageOne, 70 Sanford St., Fairfield, 203-259-1036.

Jesse Cook with Marc Huberman, The Ridgefield Playhouse, 80 East Ridge, Ridgefield; 203-438-5795.

Ovlov with Yes Please, Big East, Heirloom Arts Theatre, 155 Main St., Danbury: 203-796-0000.

Johnny Winter with Remember September, Cobalt Rhythm Kings, Toad's Place, 300 York St., New Haven, 203-624-8623.

Manic Productions and The Arc Agency Present: My Heart To Joy with Transit, Pianos Become The Teeth, The World is a Beautiful Place & I am No Longer Afraid to Die, Fugue, In Lilly's Pad, Toad's Place, 300 York St., New Haven, 203-624-8623.

Stay with A Sunset Tragedy (CD Release), Stateside, Call Me Anything, Young Hollywood, The Sophmore Beat, Webster Theater Underground, 31 Webster St., Hartford; 860-246-8001.

Happy hour (early), Cafe Nine, 250 State St., New Haven; 203-789-8281.

Jesse Malin & the St. Marks Social with The Black Noise Scam, Christian Marrone (late), Cafe Nine.

Battle Of The Bands - Preliminary Round featuring Do Not Engage with Lakshmi, Speak In Verse, At Long Last, 3Under Par, The Space, 295 Treadwell St., Building H, Hamden, 203-288-6400.

Mon Monarch, The Outer Space, 295 Treadwell St., Building H, Hamden, 203-288-6400.

Robert Cray, Wolf Den, Mohegan Sun casino, 1 Mohegan Sun Blvd., Uncasville, 1-800-745-3000.

Unzipped (cover band), Daniel Street, 21 Daniel St., Milford; 203-877-4446.

Chewy & The Grateful Friends, Georgetown Saloon, 8 Main St., Georgetown, 203-544-8003.

Jeff Fuller & Friends, Sage American Grill & Oyster Bar, 100 S. Water St., New Haven; 203-787-3466.

Benjy Michaels, C.J. Sparrow Pub & Eatery, 908 S. Main St., (Route 10) Cheshire; 203-272-8204.

The Jam Stampede, Acoustic Cafe, 2926 Fairfield Ave. (Route 130), Bridgeport, 203-335-3655.

Solistic with String Theorie, Two Boots, 281 Fairfield Ave., Bridgeport; 203-331-1377.

Denovo, J. Roo's Restaurant, 249 State St., North Haven, 203-281-5411.

River City Slim & The Zydeco Hogs Mardi Gras Party, Infinity Hall, Route 44, 20 Greenwoods Road, Norfolk, 866-666-6306.

Chewy & The Grateful Friends, Olde School Saloon and Bistro, 418 State St., New Haven; 203-772-0544.

George Schuller Trio, Buttonwood Tree Performing Arts & Cultural Center, 605 Main St., Middletown; 860-347-4957.

Airborne Jazz Band, Cafe Goodfellas, 758 State St., New Haven; 203-785-8722.

Stand Up Comedy Night, The Funky Monkey Cafe & Gallery, 130 Elm St., Watch Factory Shoppes, Cheshire; 203-439-9161.

JJ Diamond, New Deal Steakplace, 704 Boston Post Road, Westbrook; 860-399-01015.

UltraRadio.com Happy Hour with Steve Gregory, Anna Liffey's, 17 Whitney Ave., New Haven; 203-773-1776.

CT Folk presents Tim Grimm with Michael Smith, First Presbyterian Church, 704 Whitney Ave., New Haven; 203-562-5664.

SATURDAY

Freestyle Extravaganza VI, Mohegan Sun Arena.

Billy Ray Cyrus, MGM Grand Premiere Ballroom, Foxwoods Resort Casino, Route 2, Mashantucket, 800-200-2882.

The Lee Boys, Fairfield Theatre Co.'s StageOne.

Tartan Terrors with Ask Your Father, The Ridgefield Playhouse.

Tera Melos with Marnie Stern, Fugue, Heirloom Arts Theatre .

The Original Saturday Night Dance Party, Toad's Place.

Saturday Afternoon Jazz Jam with Dave Dana and Brian Buster (early), Cafe Nine.

The Manchurians with The Reducers (late), Cafe Nine.

Battle Of The Bands - Preliminary Round featuring Torndown with Forging Utopia, The Circuit, Fear the Masses, Casting Call, That's The Problem, The Space.

Lou Pella with Doc Baker's Traveling Musicological Extravaganza, The Outer Space.

David Cassidy, Wolf Den, Mohegan Sun.

Freeplay (cover band), Daniel Street.

MDIII, Georgetown Saloon.

Red Cadwallader, Sage American Grill & Oyster Bar.

Sharp Drezzed Man, C.J. Sparrow Pub & Eatery.

Black Rock Rocks Mardi Gras party, Acoustic Cafe.

The Jazz Guild (early), Two Boots.

Mike Freeman's ZonaVibe (late), Two Boots.

Groovetime, J. Roo's Restaurant.

Livingston Taylor, Infinity Hall.

The Jerrod Cattey Trio, Olde School Saloon.

Joe Fonda Jazz Trio, Buttonwood Tree Performing Arts & Cultural Center.

Airborne Jazz Band, Bin 100, 100 Lansdale Ave., Milford; 203-882-1400.

Out of Thin Air, New Deal Steakplace.

Heavy Breath with We Were Skeletons, Chauncey Gardiner, My Fictions, The Cookie Jar, New Haven, private house party; GO, http://thectsound.com/yabb/index.php?topic=1932.0.

Testing For Echo with Free Grizzly Bear Rides, Root In Stereo, Fools On Sunday, Chance, Dun Bin Had, Amity Teen Center, 10 Selden St., Woodbridge; 203-298-9735.

SUNDAY

Luther with Communipaw, Alive In Love, Heirloom Arts Theatre.

Open Blues Jam with Travis Moody Band, Cafe Nine.

High School Open Mic, The Space.

Valli Sings Valli, Wolf Den, Mohegan Sun.

Local band showcase featuring After Autumn with Ruthie Shultz, Steve Mallon, Sandoval Band, Daniel Street.

Kids karaoke, Georgetown Saloon.

Bill Fluker and Friends, SoCo's Bar & Restaurant, 50 Fitch St., New Haven, 203-764-2662.

MONDAY

Etana & Gyptian with Jungle Man, Toad's Place.

A Night of Smooth Jazz with Rohn Lawrence & Friends, In Lilly's Pad, Toad's Place.

Beatnik 2000 #561, Cafe Nine.

Eric Stepanian, Wolf Den, Mohegan Sun casino.

"Anything Goes" open mic with J Cherry, Buttonwood Tree Performing Arts & Cultural Center.

Jim Oblon, The Owl Shop, 268 College St., New Haven; 203-624-3250.

TUESDAY

Furthur, Toyota Presents the Oakdale Theatre, 95 S. Turnpike Road, Wallingford; 203-265-1501.

Tab Benoit with Otis and the Hurricanes, Fairfield Theatre Co.'s StageOne.

The Wolfe Tones, Toad's Place.

Pussy Magnet, Cafe Nine.

Young Dubliners, Wolf Den, Mohegan Sun.

Acoustic Open mic with Marc Huberman, Georgetown Saloon.

Open mic night, Acoustic Cafe.

Shaka and the Soulshakers, Two Boots.

Karaoke with Andy, Olde School Saloon.

Open Mic Night Hosted By Seth Adam Trio, Stella Blues, 204 Crown St., New Haven, 203-752-9764.

UltraRadio.com Open Mic @ Kelly's, Kelly's Restaurant & Bar, 196 Crown St., New Haven; 203-776-1111.

Greg Sherrod Band, The Owl Shop.

WEDNESDAY

The Protomen with Mile Marker Zero, Heirloom Arts Theatre.

Local hip-hop showcase featuring Booslick with Kode Red, Mayo Giovanni, Cash Time Industries, Killa Ben, Tallent, Dublin, The Ingredients, Toad's Place.

Ron Anthony, The Outer Space.

Dr. K's Motown Revue, Wolf Den, Mohegan Sun.

Local band showcase featuring Risk All In Life, Mouth On Tailpipe, Attack Memphis, Daniel Street.

Cajun Roadhouse Wednesdays live music with DJ E-Bomb, Two Boots.

Karaoke, J. Roo's Restaurant.

Tab Benoit, Infinity Hall.

All-request music party, Olde School Saloon.

Airborne Jazz Band, Cafe Goodfellas.

George Lesiw Trio, The Owl Shop.

Manic Productions Presents: Fang Island, BAR, 254 Crown Street, New Haven, 203-495-8924.

THURSDAY

Raul Malo Solo with Seth Walker, Fairfield Theatre Co.'s StageOne.

Evergreen Terrace with Lower Than Atlantis, Too Tall Grizzly, Like Beasts, Heirloom Arts Theatre.

The Blasters, Cafe Nine.

Burn Lexington with Loyalty Among Thieves, Hope to Live, Systems and Skylines, The Space.

Rehab, Wolf Den, Mohegan Sun.

Open mic jam with Artie Tobia, Georgetown Saloon.

Ken Safety's Open Mic, C.J. Sparrow Pub & Eatery.

Brian Dolzani and Melissa Mulligan, Acoustic Cafe.

Thirsty Thursdays + Karaoke, Two Boots.

Jace Everett, Infinity Hall.

Airborne Jazz Band, Angry Olive Italian Bistro & Restaurant, 1625 Silas Deane Highway, Rocky Hill; 860-257-8402.

Make Do And Mend, Balance And Composure, Baby Grand, University of New Haven German Club, UNH, 300 Boston Post Road, West Haven; no phone.

“Muslim American groups, not Rep. Pete King, are the ones fomenting hysteria with hearings on tap - New York Daily News”

2011-03-13T19:29:00.001-07:00

“Muslim American groups, not Rep. Pete King, are the ones fomenting hysteria with hearings on tap - New York Daily News”

Muslim American groups, not Rep. Pete King, are the ones fomenting hysteria with hearings on tap - New York Daily News

Posted:

Opinions – Guest Contributor

Miller for News

Headlines about Rep. Peter King producing 'panic' in the rank-and-file Muslim community are nonsense, writes Steven Emerson.

Never in my entire career in Washington have I encountered the hype and scare tactics of those opposing the hearings into Islamic radicalization by Rep. Pete King. A classic example was a headline on MSNBC.com: "Inquiry by congressional committee looks like inquisition to many Muslims."

The line of attack is now familiar: If King (R-L.I.) were truly interested in violent extremism, his hearings would focus on a wide range of groups that wreak havoc on America, including neo-Nazis and others; by focusing solely on Muslim extremism, the argument goes, he is betraying his bias.

This is utterly ridiculous. Our organization, the Investigative Project on Terrorism, recently did an analysis of all terrorism convictions based on statistics released by the Justice Department. These stats show that more than 80% of all convictions tied to international terrorist groups and homegrown terrorism since 9/11 involve defendants driven by a radical Islamist agenda. Though Muslims represent less than 1% of the American population, they constitute defendants in 186 of the 228 cases the Justice Department lists.

The figures confirm that there is a disproportionate problem of Islamic militancy and terrorism among the American Muslim population.

This is not to say that, on a percentage basis, American Muslims tend to be violent or extremist. To the contrary. Those involved in terrorism are a tiny sliver of the overall Muslim American population.

But one ought to be able to focus on a very real problem - homegrown terrorism fueled by Muslim extremism - without being accused of painting the entire U.S. Muslim population with a broad brush.

Emotions run high at Times Square rally on Sunday. (Lono for News)

The real underlying story here is how the self-anointed leadership of the Muslim community - groups like the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the Islamic Society of North America and the Muslim American Society - are the ones responsible for instilling panic into the Muslim community by suggesting that these hearings will lead to "hate crimes" against Muslims.

That canard has been used by these groups for years in their attempts to intimidate the media, commentators and critics of radical Islam from truly analyzing the role of these groups and others in radicalizing their constituents in the American Muslim community. The documents showing the creation of these groups with the assistance of the Muslim Brotherhood were introduced into evidence in the trial of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development several years ago. At the trial, the Council on American-Islamic Relations was described by an FBI expert as a front for Hamas, and was also listed, together with the Islamic Society of North America, as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation indictments.

Groups such as these routinely play the "Islamophobia" card, and get attention for doing so in the mainstream media, in order to silence criticism of Islamic radicalism. In fact, these very same groups, just like the Obama administration, categorically refuse to even use the term "radical Islam" in order to excise the term from the American vernacular.

Critics have taken issue with King's focus on one religious minority. But, in fact, in previous years, Congress has held numerous hearings into various ethnic subcultures that have spawned illegalities - including the Italian mob, Hispanic drug cartels, black and white prison gangs, white racists and neo-Nazis.

Headlines about King producing "panic" in the rank-and-file Muslim community are nonsense. The only panic is that being strategically fomented by groups with an interest in spreading fear. They, together with their mainstream media friends, have falsely alleged that: one, there is a war against Islam by the United States, and two, the FBI is secretly instigating Islamic terrorism by use of informants.

These are dangerous fictions.

Steven Emerson is executive director of the Investigative Project on Terrorism.

“An Interview With Mark Alpert, Author of The Omega Theory - Seattle Post Intelligencer” plus 1 more

2011-03-12T19:14:00.001-08:00

“An Interview With Mark Alpert, Author of The Omega Theory - Seattle Post Intelligencer” plus 1 more

An Interview With Mark Alpert, Author of The Omega Theory - Seattle Post Intelligencer

Posted:

Saturday, March 12, 2011
Last updated 12:21 a.m. PT

The Omega Theory caught my attention for two reasons. First, its main plot revolves around a theory of Albert Einstein's, who I consider one of the most fascinating people in American history. Second, it has a character who is autistic and I've long been intrigued by -- and do professional work with -- people who are autistic. 'My only concern was that the book would be so plot-heavy as to have empty characters, one of my gripes I've made before about The DaVinci Code.

Fortunately, that's not the case - the characters are interesting, his portrayal of someone with autism matches that of "some" people with autism (as the saying goes "if you've met one person with autism then you've met one person with autism," meaning not all are alike) and the book is a good thriller.

Consider checking it out.

Thanks to Mary A Summers for suggesting some great questions for this interview. And now for the interview...

Should readers start with your first book, Final Theory, or is it OK for them - like me - to start with the second? Also, what is the status of the movie version of your first book?

A sequel needs to satisfy two audiences, the people who read the first book and the people who are coming to the story cold. When I wrote my first novel, Final Theory, I wasn't thinking of it as the beginning of a series. Before Final Theory, I wrote four novels that didn't get published, and I had no idea whether this one would sell either, much less become the first book in a series. But I liked the characters I created, so when I got the contract to write two more science thrillers I thought it would be an interesting challenge to continue the story in a second book. I knew I had to re-introduce the hero, David Swift, in the sequel, so at the start of The Omega Theory I show him giving a speech at the Physicists for Peace conference. He's become a peace activist because of the events of the first book, but it's not essential to know exactly what those events were. I figured that most readers would be inclined to sympathize with a peace activist. Everyone says they're for peace, but very few people actually do something about it.

My film agent sold the rights to Final Theory to a Los Angeles production company called Radar Pictures. Last year Nicolas Cage was attached to star in the film and the production company re-optioned the rights. But selling the rights to a book and getting a star attached doesn't always mean that the movie will actually get made. I'm not involved in the process and I know almost nothing about it. Still, it's nice to dream. Final Theory would make a great movie. And so would The Omega Theory.

How has your background as a journalist and editor helped you as a novelist? What have been the high and low points as a writer (both journalism and fiction)?

Working in journalism is great training for a budding novelist, because the basic mandate of a newspaper or magazine story is the same as that of a novel: The story has to be clear, and it has to be interesting. In both journalism and fiction, you learn how to convey a story through the judicious use of telling details. And the process of getting good quotes is similar to writing good dialogue. I couldn't have written Final Theory if I hadn't worked as an editor at Scientific American for ten years. And much of the cool technology in The Omega Theory is based on the stories I edited for the magazine.

The high points in journalism for me were the many interviews I did with famous and infamous people – Carl Sagan, Edward Teller (I interviewed him for a cover story in Popular Mechanics), George Wallace (I covered his last year as governor of Alabama when I was a reporter for the Montgomery Advertiser), George W. Bush (I interviewed him for Fortune in 1989, after he became a part-owner of the Texas Rangers thanks to his father's rich friends). The low points were the big stories I missed because I just wasn't observant or aggressive enough. In fiction, the low points were all the rejections I got for my first four novels. But ever since we sold Final Theory, the experience has been one long high point.

I work with autistic teens and adults so I was intrigued by the autistic character, Michael. Did you do much research on autism? Do you know people with it? Why did you decide to have the character be autistic? Incidentally the best book I've read about autism is The Horseboy. I interviewed the Horseboy's dad here, and I liked Temple Grandin's movie about autism, which I talked about here.

I became fascinated with autism after editing a story about it for Scientific American about ten years ago. It's a very mysterious disorder. It often runs in families, and scientists have identified certain genetic variations that make people more susceptible to it, but researchers believe there are also environmental triggers, although they haven't positively identified any yet. (They can rule out some things, though. Very convincing studies have shown that vaccines aren't the culprit. More likely, it's something that affects the fetus, because the earliest signs of autism appear just a few months after birth.)

The disorder has also shed light on the workings of the brain, showing how empathy and imitation are part of neural development. I don't know anyone with autism, but I'm a big fan of Temple Grandin's books. In The Omega Theory, I decided to narrate several of the chapters from the point of view of Michael, the autistic teenager who has phenomenal mathematical skills. Before I started writing those chapters I reread Temple Grandin's books thoroughly, trying to get her voice inside my head. I wanted Michael to speak in a similar voice, very precise and logical. I'm happy with the way those chapters turned out. I think they're the best part of the book.

The publicity material accompanying this book describes you as the literary heir to Michael Crichton. How do you feel about that label and comparison?

I loved Michael Crichton's The Andromeda Strain. I also loved The Terminal Man and Jurassic Park. (And of course the movie Westworld, which Crichton wrote and directed — brilliant!) I wasn't as fond of his later books and I heartily disagreed with Crichton's stance on global warming, but it's still a great thrill to be compared with him. He inspired so many people to become interested in science, and I hope I can do the same.

Can you talk about how you decided to include Einstein's theories -- not to mention an Einstein relative -- as plots in these books?

Several years ago I edited a story about Albert Einstein for a special issue of Scientific American. The issue commemorated the 100th anniversary of Einstein's miracle year — 1905 — when he published the papers that laid the foundations for the two main branches of 20th-century physics, relativity and quantum theory.

But I became more interested in the second half of Einstein's career, from the 1920s to the 1950s, when he struggled to develop a unified field theory that would incorporate both of these branches and explain all the forces of Nature, from gravity to electromagnetism to the nuclear forces.

Despite 30 years of effort, none of Einstein's attempts to devise a unified theory proved successful, and most of his contemporaries saw his quest as a tragic waste of time. It wasn't until the 1970s and 1980s that physicists revived the effort and formulated what is now known as a string theory, which is the leading contender for a unified theory, although it remains very much unproved (and the recent experiments at the Large Hadron Collider have so far yielded no evidence to support the hypothesis).

I've always loved to construct "What if?" scenarios, and one of them occurred to me while I was thinking about Einstein: What if he really did discover the unified field theory, but decided to keep it secret because he saw that it would enable the development of weapons even worse than the atom bomb? This became the premise of Final Theory, my first novel. In The Omega Theory, I take the premise a little further by considering why the universe follows mathematical laws in the first place.

Einstein often speculated on this question, and his writings on the subject have a somewhat mystical bent — he took it for granted that the universe has an underlying order, a plan perhaps conceived by some kind of divine intelligence (sometimes he called it "the Old One," sometimes simply "God" or "the Lord," although this may have been simply a turn of phrase rather than evidence that Einstein truly believed in a divine being).

In recent decades some theorists have proposed that the laws of physics function like a computer program. Quantum mechanics, for example, regulates the interactions between particles in much the same way that software guides the computation of batches of data. According to this view, the entire universe is a kind of natural computer that's been running ever since the Big Bang, following a program that could've emerged from chaos without divine intervention. A particular set of computational rules could've become the laws of our universe simply because they were more robust than any of the alternatives. This idea made me think of another "What if?" scenario: If the universe is really a computer, what could make it crash? This became the premise of The Omega Theory.

The more I read about Einstein, the more I marvel at what a complex character he was. Twenty-five years ago historians learned through a batch of newly discovered letters that Einstein and his first wife Mileva Maric had a daughter before they were married. Because of the scandal, Mileva went back to her native Serbia for the birth. The daughter, named Lieserl, is mentioned several times in the letters between Einstein and Mileva, but then she disappears from the correspondence. Historians don't know what happened to the baby. So this is another element I decided to incorporate into my thrillers, a previously unknown descendant of Einstein who has inherited the physicist's genius.

Do you think the knowledge and progression of science throughout the years is related to the ancient stories of the Sumerians, Egyptians, and Hebrews? If so, how?

The peoples of the ancient Middle East were wonderful observers of the sky, since the movements of the heavenly bodies were so important for their agriculture and religious ceremonies. But they didn't practice science as we know it today. They philosophized about things such as the states of matter, but it was more guesswork than scientific method, and their guesses were wrong just as often as they were right. It wasn't until the Renaissance that natural philosophers recognized the importance of using experiments to test their theories. That's when science was really born.

Regarding parallel universes: Do you think our brains act somewhat like a hologram, creating our own reality in which every person moves in, out, and intertwined? There is SO much of the brain we don't know about

There's a lot of debate among physicists about whether objective reality actually exists. The problem is that the laws of quantum mechanics assign a special role to the "observer" of a subatomic particle; before the particle is observed, it's spread across space in a wave-like probability cloud, but once it's observed it "collapses" to a specific location. That's one of the reasons why Einstein hated quantum mechanics; it made no sense to him that the mere act of observation could change the physical nature of the particle. And yet the laws of quantum mechanics have been verified again and again to incredible accuracy.

Some physicists have proposed alternative explanations, notably the many-worlds hypothesis of Hugh Everett, which postulates that at the moment of observation there is a bifurcation into many parallel universes, each with the particle in a different position. But the observer still plays a special role in this scenario. We may just have to accept the fact that the universe is odder than anyone can imagine.

What are your thoughts regarding the "Holy Land" area? Do you think in pre-ancient history, man had more knowledge of science than we do today? If so, how did they get such knowledge? The science fiction of alien visitation only in pre-ancient times?

As I mentioned, the ancients didn't really practice science. They made guesses about their world, and most of them turned out to be wrong. And there's no compelling evidence of alien visitation at any time in earth's history.

I visited Israel about 20 years ago and had a wonderful time there, especially in Jerusalem. Some of the scenes in The Omega Theory are set in Israel; in particular, there's a fun chase through the tunnels underneath Jerusalem's Old City. I don't feel comfortable writing about a place unless I've been there. I visited the Central Asian country of Turkmenistan in 2008 because I knew the plot of The Omega Theory would involve a secret military camp on the border between Turkmenistan and Iran. It was a little difficult getting a visa for Turkmenistan — the country's government is a nasty dictatorship that treats its people terribly. But I saw some amazing things there — the Burning Gas Crater of Darvaza, the cliffs of Yangykala, the geothermal lake inside the enormous cavern of Kow Ata — and I put them all into the novel.

Science fiction eventually crosses over to true science. In your opinion, what science-fictions should be heeded?

The old adage is true: We have to be careful about what we wish for, because we just might get it. Humanity wanted a limitless source of energy, and it got the atom bomb and nuclear waste. I'm not saying we should stop doing science; that would be insane. But as a species, we have to stop acting like brutal children. We've developed some very dangerous toys, so we need to learn the rules of civilized behavior. As Einstein recognized, what we really need is a world government, some kind of supranational organization that would restrain the worst of our nationalist and tribal impulses.

What's it like to get praised by such authors as Walter Isaacson, author of the great book about Einstein, (I interviewed him here) and James Rollins?

I love Walter Isaacson's biography of Einstein. It's a truly wonderful and entertaining book. And I also love Jim Rollins's Sigma Force series of science adventures. It's great to get blurbs from authors you admire!

What are you working on next?

I'm glad you asked! I just handed in the first draft of my third book. It's not another sequel; in the third book I created a whole new set of characters. And instead of focusing on physics, the new thriller is all about the brain-machine interface, the amazing new devices that are melding living things with microprocessors. The hero, for example, has an advanced prosthesis, a mechanical arm that's directly connected to his nervous system. (The Pentagon is funding the development of such devices, in part to help all the maimed soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.) The hero battles swarms of cyborg insects that have been implanted with tiny computer chips and antennas. (The Pentagon's working on this, too.) And other characters view the world with the help of retinal implants that feed video images to their optic nerves. (Again, this is a real technology.) I had a blast writing the book. There's no title yet, but it should be published sometime next year.

View the original article on blogcritics.org

Adventures in Filmmaking: A report from Fusion - AfterEllen.com

Posted:

I have a recurring dream. In this dream, I am a writer trying to write the perfect lesbian film. I type and type but nothing seems to make sense. Should I write about the past? My first love? My first cat? My first feminist book club? My first bar fight? It's been 20 years now and all I have are questions and more questions. What type of lesbian am I? Am I the right type of lesbian? Why did I get all those strange haircuts?

These are the first words of my feature documentary, Hooters!, a film about lesbian culture and cinema. (It's also a comedy.)

I know it sounds weird to have a dream sequence in a documentary but I not only put my point of view in my films, I literally put myself in them as well. And, despite sounding egotistical and narcissistic, it allows me to own my opinions and tell stories the way I want to. It's also cheap therapy.

Allow me to introduce myself: I'm Anna Margarita Albelo — also known as La Chocha — and I'm a filmmaker. I like to make documentaries, fictions, spoofs, art videos, news segments — pretty much everything except porno. I'll touch upon why at a later date.

For now, I've been asked to share with you my adventures in filmmaking, exploring the who, what, where, and whys of how myself and others make stuff. Every character needs a back story. At 40, I am what they call a "mid-career filmmaker." I graduated from Florida State University in 1993 from Media Production and Film. It was an exciting time because it was the beginnings of the "home video" making explosion that let us make whatever stupid or brilliant idea into a "movie." No pitching, no writing, no budgets: Just you and maybe some friends, getting together to make something. I became adept at what the Riot Girls had called the "do it yourself" movement and still create with that philosophy today.

I moved to France right out of college (my childhood wish) and managed to live and work there for 16 years as a freelance artist with no full-time job. Now, I'm back in Los Angeles and I'm here to make some movies. I am, as they say, living the dream!

As a Cuban-American filmmaker, I had the immense honor of participating in this year's Fusion Festival in Los Angeles with my feature documentary, Hooters! The Making of Older, Wiser, Lesbian Cinema.Though it was only my first Fusion Festival, it has definitely been one of the most exciting experiences of my filmmaking career.

What? You never heard of Fusion? Or you have heard of it but don't know what it really is? Let's correct that right now! If you live in Los Angeles (but really anywhere around the world) and are interested in issues concerning gay, lesbian, queer, trans, and everything in between, Outfest, the gay and lesbian film festival of Los Angeles is on top of your list. This huge, multi-faceted, non-profit organization is on its 29th year and has, over time, developed several programs to diversify its efforts in nurturing, showcasing and protecting LGBT voices. Along with the Outfest Film Festival in July — a huge 10 day program of films, videos, performances, panels, and all-types of special events, the non-profit has also created The Legacy Project for LGBT film preservation in association with UCLA, and Fusion: The Los Angeles LGBT People of Color Film Festival.

Now in its eighth year, Fusion is the only multicultural LGBT film festival of its kind and a true testament to Outfest's dedication to help under-represented voices get heard, seen, and talked about in our community. The festival includes short films, feature films, panels, workshops, and parties that highlight and celebrate the diversity of the LGBT community. This year's program featured a sing-a-long with The Wiz (starring Michael Jackson and Diana Ross), A Thousand Clouds of Peace (a legacy project gem from Mexico), a multi-ethnic shorts program, and a conversation with writer/director Dee Rees and producer Nekisa Cooper centered around their Sundance-opening film, Pariah (developed from their award-winning short of the same name).

Fusion also presents an Achievement Award acknowledging the career of an outstanding filmmaker of color. Last year's recipient was Wilson Cruz. This year it was British filmmaker Rikki Beadle-Blair. Fusion screened Rikki's recent feature film, FIT, a charming high school film that takes an exuberant and funny look at gay and straight love among the new millennials which is, by the way, distributed to every school in the UK. Now that's a real impact!

“Muslim American groups, not Rep. Pete King, are the ones fomenting hysteria with hearings on tap - New York Daily News” plus 1 more

2011-03-11T19:13:00.001-08:00

“Muslim American groups, not Rep. Pete King, are the ones fomenting hysteria with hearings on tap - New York Daily News” plus 1 more

Muslim American groups, not Rep. Pete King, are the ones fomenting hysteria with hearings on tap - New York Daily News

Posted:

Opinions – Guest Contributor

Miller for News

Headlines about Rep. Peter King producing 'panic' in the rank-and-file Muslim community are nonsense, writes Steven Emerson.

The figures confirm that there is a disproportionate problem of Islamic militancy and terrorism among the American Muslim population.

But one ought to be able to focus on a very real problem - homegrown terrorism fueled by Muslim extremism - without being accused of painting the entire U.S. Muslim population with a broad brush.

Emotions run high at Times Square rally on Sunday. (Lono for News)

These are dangerous fictions.

Steven Emerson is executive director of the Investigative Project on Terrorism.

Myth, Politics and the Erosion of The American Dream - Huffingtonpost.com

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There has been much myth making during the latest political cycle. Public figures like Sarah Palin, Mick Huckabee, Newt Gingrich, John Boehner and Michelle Bachman, among many others, have suggested both directly and indirectly that the United States is "broke," that global warming is a scientific fiction, that President Obama's health care reform legislation is an example of socialism, or that President Obama is a Muslim who was born outside the United States, which explains his "foreign" ideas.

Perhaps the most damaging political myth is one that was created during the Reagan Presidency: that big government is responsible for our domestic problems. The narrative of this political myth suggests strongly that all of our social and economic problems would "melt into the air" if we outsource public responsibilities to the private sector and return the republic to its long lost diet of low taxes and limited government.

None of these claims stand up to even minimal scrutiny. No reasonable person thinks that the United Stares is "broke." Climate scientists say that global warming is inconclusively fact -- not fiction. President Obama's complex health legislation bears no resemblance to more centralized medical systems that you find in European nations like France, Germany and Italy. President Obama is a Christian not a Muslim, who spent the great bulk of his formative years in Hawaii. Rather than bringing us unimaginable prosperity, a decade of lower taxes and more limited government regulation triggered the greatest economic downturn since The Great Depression. In practice, the mantra of limited government and lower taxes has provided political cover for an unprecedented redistribution of wealth from the middle class to the super-rich. According to a 2009 study in the International Journal of Development, J.B. Davies and his colleagues found that 1 percent of the US population controls 50 percent of the national wealth. If you look at the data in this and other studies of wealth distribution, it is clear that people in the bottom 60 percent bracket of income (the middle, lower-middle and working classes) control only a minimal amount of our wealth -- perhaps 5 percent. These disturbing statistics suggest a strong erosion of the middle class and an unchecked movement toward plutocracy.

Despite these scientifically validated facts, millions of Americans, who continue to believe in these mythical fictions, repeatedly vote against their interests. How can that be? I think some of the misplaced persistence can be traced to the power of myth. To paraphrase the words of the late Clifford Geertz, one of the great anthropologists of the 20th century, myths are stories we tell ourselves about ourselves. Powerful narratives based upon fiction -- not fact -- myths shape our perception of the world. They create frameworks for our behavior. They are impervious to logical or factual critique. As such, myths are powerful political tools that the powers-that-be have long used in their attempt to control social behavior.

Education is the mortal enemy of political myth-makers who want to shape your thoughts and chart your behavior -- all to meet the end of further income redistribution. Consider the latest budget proposals in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the state where I teach anthropology at a public university. Citing the mythic benefits of lower taxes and limited government, Governor Tom Corbett, a Republican, wants to slash the public higher education budget by 50 percent. Such a cut would simply decimate public higher education in Pennsylvania. What does that mean? In addition to staff layoffs, and program cuts, it means that our students, many of whom come from lower-middle class and working class families, would face an estimated 28 percent increase in tuition. Put another way, it means that if Governor Corbett has his way, scores of my students, no longer able to pay for their education, would have to drop out of school.

Let me make this scenario more personal. As I said in a previous post, many of my students are the first members of their families to attend college. Seekers of The American Dream, most of them have to work one of two jobs to pay for what has been a reasonable tuition at our state universities. To make ends meet, my best students often have work 20 to 30 hours a week at convenience stores or restaurants. Despite their time-consuming and energy-depleting economic routines, they come to class, read what I assign, turn in first-rate essays and score well on my exams. They never complain about their economic struggles. Their grit, which inspires me deeply, is a beacon of hope for the future.

The shortsighted draconian budget of Governor Tom Corbett, which is based upon faulty economic principles, will dash the future hopes of my hard working students most of whom come from families of working people, many of whom, believing in the mythic mantra of lower taxes and limited government, might have voted for Governor Corbett. The choice is a stark one. We can cave in to the likes Governor Corbett and become increasingly uninformed and pliant citizens who control less and less of the wealth in a nation of faded dreams, or we can speak truth to power, invest seriously in education and secure a more egalitarian and robust future. Which choice will you make?

Follow Paul Stoller on Twitter: www.twitter.com/stol1

“Muslim American groups, not Rep. Pete King, are the ones fomenting hysteria with hearings on tap - New York Daily News”

2011-03-10T19:38:00.001-08:00

“Muslim American groups, not Rep. Pete King, are the ones fomenting hysteria with hearings on tap - New York Daily News”

Muslim American groups, not Rep. Pete King, are the ones fomenting hysteria with hearings on tap - New York Daily News

Posted:

Opinions – Guest Contributor

Miller for News

Headlines about Rep. Peter King producing 'panic' in the rank-and-file Muslim community are nonsense, writes Steven Emerson.

The figures confirm that there is a disproportionate problem of Islamic militancy and terrorism among the American Muslim population.

But one ought to be able to focus on a very real problem - homegrown terrorism fueled by Muslim extremism - without being accused of painting the entire U.S. Muslim population with a broad brush.

Emotions run high at Times Square rally on Sunday. (Lono for News)

These are dangerous fictions.

Steven Emerson is executive director of the Investigative Project on Terrorism.

“Medicaid Is Worse Than No Coverage at All - Wall Street Journal” plus 1 more

2011-03-09T19:23:00.001-08:00

“Medicaid Is Worse Than No Coverage at All - Wall Street Journal” plus 1 more

Medicaid Is Worse Than No Coverage at All - Wall Street Journal

Posted:

By SCOTT GOTTLIEB

Across the country, cash-strapped states are leveling blanket cuts on Medicaid providers that are turning the health program into an increasingly hollow benefit. Governors that made politically expedient promises to expand coverage during flush times are being forced to renege given their imperiled budgets. In some states, they've cut the reimbursement to providers so low that beneficiaries can't find doctors willing to accept Medicaid.

Washington contributes to this mess by leaving states no option other than across-the-board cuts. Patients would be better off if states were able to tailor the benefits that Medicaid covers—targeting resources to sicker people and giving healthy adults cheaper, basic coverage. But federal rules say that everyone has to get the same package of benefits, regardless of health status, needs or personal desires.

These rules reflect the ambition of liberal lawmakers who cling to the dogma that Medicaid should be a "comprehensive" benefit. In their view, any tailoring is an affront to egalitarianism. Because states are forced to offer everyone everything, the actual payment rates are driven so low that beneficiaries often end up with nothing in practice.

Dozens of recent medical studies show that Medicaid patients suffer for it. In some cases, they'd do just as well without health insurance. Here's a sampling of that research:

Getty Images

TWISTED PATIENT

• Head and neck cancer: A 2010 study of 1,231 patients with cancer of the throat, published in the medical journal Cancer, found that Medicaid patients and people lacking any health insurance were both 50% more likely to die when compared with privately insured patients—even after adjusting for factors that influence cancer outcomes. Medicaid patients were 80% more likely than those with private insurance to have tumors that spread to at least one lymph node. Recent studies show similar outcomes for breast and colon cancer.

• Major surgical procedures: A 2010 study of 893,658 major surgical operations performed between 2003 to 2007, published in the Annals of Surgery, found that being on Medicaid was associated with the longest length of stay, the most total hospital costs, and the highest risk of death. Medicaid patients were almost twice as likely to die in the hospital than those with private insurance. By comparison, uninsured patients were about 25% less likely than those with Medicaid to have an "in-hospital death." Another recent study found similar outcomes for Medicaid patients undergoing trauma surgery.

• Poor outcomes after heart procedures: A 2011 study of 13,573 patients, published in the American Journal of Cardiology, found that people with Medicaid who underwent coronary angioplasty (a procedure to open clogged heart arteries) were 59% more likely to have "major adverse cardiac events," such as strokes and heart attacks, compared with privately insured patients. Medicaid patients were also more than twice as likely to have a major, subsequent heart attack after angioplasty as were patients who didn't have any health insurance at all.

• Lung transplants: A 2011 study of 11,385 patients undergoing lung transplants for pulmonary diseases, published in the Journal of Heart and Lung Transplantation, found that Medicaid patients were 8.1% less likely to survive 10 years after the surgery than their privately insured and uninsured counterparts. Medicaid insurance status was a significant, independent predictor of death after three years—even after controlling for other clinical factors that could increase someone's risk of poor outcomes.

In all of these studies, the researchers controlled for the socioeconomic and cultural factors that can negatively influence the health of poorer patients on Medicaid.

So why do Medicaid patients fare so badly? Payment to providers has been reduced to literally pennies on each dollar of customary charges because of sequential rounds of indiscriminate rate cuts, like those now being pursued in states like New York and Illinois. As a result, doctors often cap how many Medicaid patients they'll see in their practices. Meanwhile, patients can't get timely access to routine and specialized medical care.

The liberal solution to these woes has been to expand Medicaid. Advocacy groups like Families USA imagine that once Medicaid becomes a middle-class entitlement, political pressure from middle-class workers will force politicians to address these problems by funneling more taxpayer dollars into this flawed program.

President Barack Obama's health plan follows this logic. Half of those gaining health insurance under ObamaCare will get it through Medicaid; by 2006, one in four Americans will be covered by the program. A joint analysis from the Republican members of the Senate Finance and House Energy and Commerce Committees estimates that this will force an additional $118 billion in Medicaid costs onto the states.

We need an alternative model. One option is to run Medicaid like a health program—rather than an exercise in political morals—and let states tailor benefits to the individual needs of patients, even if that means abandoning the unworkable myth of "comprehensive" coverage.

Democratic and Republican governors are pleading with the president for flexibility to do just this. At least so far, this has been a nonstarter with an Obama health team so romanced by Medicaid's cozy fictions that it neglects the health coverage that Medicaid really offers, and the indecencies it visits on the poor.

Dr. Gottlieb is a clinical assistant professor at the New York University School of Medicine and a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

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Social Security Already Is Redistributionist - Spectator.org

Posted:

AmSpecBlog

By W. James Antle, III on 3.9.11 @ 12:18PM

Over on the main site, Ross Kaminsky makes the case against means-testing Social Security benefits. It seems to me, however, that one of his main concerns about the idea has already come to pass: Social Security is a welfare program masquerading as an insurance program. People may think of it as forced savings, but that isn't how the program really works.

The trust fund and individual account aspects of Social Security are accounting gimmicks. The payroll taxes we pay in are not really saved for our retirements. They are already paying for the benefits of the current retirees. When we retire, if we are very lucky, we will live off the payroll taxes of the poor working stiffs who remain. The trust fund is stuffed with IOUs; the government has already spent the surpluses. Al Gore's lock box has been picked. Millions continue to draw benefits after they've already gotten back everything they paid in plus interest.

A problem with means-testing is that it will actually compound this last problem. As the Congressional Budget Office has reported, the highest income earners already receive the worst return on their payroll taxes. But the fact is Donald Trump's payroll taxes are financing today's retirees anyway. His hypothetical benefits would be paid for by other workers, including people working at Burger King. Why should conservatives fight to maintain the fictions that make possible the liberals' Ponzi scheme?

“Robert J. Samuelson: Social Security is simply welfare ? - MySanAntonio”

2011-03-08T19:09:00.001-08:00

“Robert J. Samuelson: Social Security is simply welfare ? - MySanAntonio”

Robert J. Samuelson: Social Security is simply welfare ? - MySanAntonio

Posted:

I recently wrote that Social Security is often middle-class welfare that bleeds the country. This offended many.

In an e-mail, one reader snarled: "Social Security is not adding one penny to our national debt, you idiot." Others were more dignified: "Let's refrain from insulting individuals who have worked all their lives and contributed to the system for 50-plus years by insinuating that earned benefits are welfare." Some said Social Security, having $2.6 trillion in reserve, doesn't affect the budgetary predicament.

As a rule, I don't use one column to comment on another. But I'm making an exception, because the issue is so important.

Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, the main programs for the elderly, account for more than 40 percent of federal expenditures. Exempting them from government cutbacks, as polls indicate many Americans prefer, would ordain massive deficits, huge tax increases or draconian reductions in other programs. That's disastrous for the future.

I don't call Social Security "welfare" because it's a pejorative term, and politicians don't want to offend. So, their rhetoric classifies Social Security as something else, but it isn't. A welfare program, by my definition, taxes one group to support another group, not a scheme where people's own savings pay their later benefits. Also, Congress can constantly alter benefits, reflecting changing needs, economic conditions and politics. Social Security qualifies on both counts.

Let's start with its $2.6 trillion reserve. Does it prove that people's payroll taxes were saved to pay for future benefits? No.

Since the 1940s, Social Security has been a pay-as-you-go program. Most benefits are paid by payroll taxes on today's workers; in 2010, those taxes covered 91 percent of benefits. Without continued revenue from payroll taxes, the reserve's $2.6 trillion would provide 3.5 years of benefits, which in 2010 totaled about $700 billion.

The Social Security trust fund serves mainly to funnel taxes to recipients, and today's surplus is an accident, says Charles Blahous in his book "Social Security: The Unfinished Work." In 1983, when the trust fund was nearly exhausted, a presidential commission proposed fixes, but underestimated their effects. The large surplus "just developed. It wasn't planned," the commission's executive director said later. Even so, the surplus in time will disappear as the number of retirees rises.

And, Congress has repeatedly altered benefits. From 1950 to 1972, it increased them nine times, including a doubling in the early 1950s. In 1972, it indexed benefits to inflation. People didn't complain when benefits rose, but possible cuts trigger howls that a contract is being broken.

Not so. In a 1960 decision, Flemming v. Nestor, the Supreme Court rejected the argument that there is a contractual right to Social Security. It cited the 1935 Social Security Act: "The right to alter, amend, or repeal any provision" is reserved to Congress. Congress can change the program whenever it wants.

All this makes Social Security welfare. Benefits shift; they're not strictly proportionate to wages, but are skewed to favor low-wage earners — reflecting a judgment of who most deserves help; and they aren't paid from workers' own contributions.

But, we encouraged people to think they "earned" benefits and that Social Security is distinct from the larger budget. Politicians, pundits, think-tank experts and journalists engaged in this charade to spare Social Security's 54 million recipients the discomfort of understanding they're on welfare.

A relatively small elderly population sustained these fictions. This is no longer possible. Social Security affects the larger budget problem. Annual benefits are exceeding payroll taxes now. The gap will grow. The trust fund holds Treasury bonds; when these are redeemed, the cash must be raised by the government. The arcane accounting of the trust fund obscures what's happening.

As important, how we treat Social Security will affect how we treat Medicare and, to a lesser extent, Medicaid.

Because these programs involve middle-class welfare, cuts could occur without inflicting widespread hardship. All the elderly aren't poor. In 2008, a quarter of families headed by someone 65 or over had incomes exceeding $75,000.

No doubt, people would be outraged. Having been misled, they'd feel cheated. They paid their taxes, why can't they get all promised benefits?

But, the alternative is much worse: imposing all the burdens on current taxpayers and cuts in other government programs. Shared sacrifice is meaningless if it excludes older Americans.

Robert J. Samuelson is a syndicated columnist. Write to him at the Washington Post Writers Group, 1150 15th St. N.W., Washington, D.C. 20071.

“Robert Samuelson: Why Social Security is welfare - Orange County Register”

2011-03-07T19:18:00.001-08:00

“Robert Samuelson: Why Social Security is welfare - Orange County Register”

Robert Samuelson: Why Social Security is welfare - Orange County Register

Posted:

In a recent column, I noted that Social Security is often "middle-class welfare" that bleeds the country. This offended many readers. In an e-mail, one snarled: "Social Security is not adding one penny to our national debt, you idiot." Others were more dignified: "Let's refrain from insulting individuals who have worked all their lives and contributed to the system for 50-plus years by insinuating that (their) earned benefits are welfare." Some argued that Social Security, with a $2.6 trillion trust fund, doesn't affect our budgetary predicament.

Wrong. As a rule, I don't use one column to comment on another. But I'm making an exception here because the issue is so important. Recall that Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, the main programs for the elderly, exceed 40 percent of federal spending. Exempting them from cuts -- as polls indicate many Americans prefer -- would ordain massive deficits, huge tax increases or draconian reductions in other programs. That's a disastrous formula for the future.

Gail Sredanovic takes imaginary shovels from a bucket labeled BS while wearing a Simpson sign as labor and retirees groups protest against changes to Social Security outside the Monterey Conference Center in Monterey, Calif., on Monday, Feb. 21, 2011. The groups were rallying before former Senator Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles, former White House Chief of Staff spoke at the Panetta lecture series. (AP Photo/Monterey County Herald, David Royal)

We don't call Social Security "welfare" because it's a pejorative term, and politicians don't want to offend. So their rhetoric classifies Social Security as something else when it isn't. Here is how I define a welfare program. First, it taxes one group to support another group, meaning it's pay-as-you-go and not a contributory scheme where people's own savings pay their later benefits. And second, Congress can constantly alter benefits, reflecting changing needs, economic conditions and politics. Social Security qualifies on both counts.

Let's start with its $2.6 trillion trust fund. Doesn't this prove that people's payroll taxes were saved to pay for future benefits, disconnecting them from our larger budget problems? Well, no. Since the 1940s, Social Security has been a pay-as-you-go program. Most benefits are paid by payroll taxes on today's workers; in 2010, those taxes covered 91 percent of benefits. The trust fund's $2.6 trillion would provide only 3.5 years of benefits, which totaled about $700 billion in 2010.

The trust fund serves mainly to funnel taxes to recipients, and today's big surplus is an accident, as Charles Blahous shows in his book "Social Security: The Unfinished Work." In 1983, when the trust fund was nearly exhausted, a presidential commission proposed fixes but underestimated their effects. The large surplus "just developed. It wasn't planned," the commission's executive director said later. Even so, the surplus will disappear as the number of retirees rises.

Similarly, Congress has repeatedly altered benefits. From 1950 to 1972, it increased them nine times, including a doubling in the early 1950s. In 1972, it indexed benefits to inflation. People didn't complain when benefits rose, but possible cuts now trigger howls that a "contract" is being broken. Not so. In a 1960 decision (Flemming v. Nestor), the Supreme Court expressly rejected the argument that people have a contractual right to Social Security. It cited the 1935 Social Security Act: "The right to alter, amend, or repeal any provision of this Act is hereby reserved to Congress." Congress can change the program whenever it wants.

All this makes Social Security "welfare." Benefits shift; they're not strictly proportionate to wages but are skewed to favor low-wage earners -- a value judgment reflecting who most deserves help; and they aren't paid from workers' own "contributions." But we ignored these realities and encouraged people to think they "earned" benefits and that Social Security is distinct from the larger budget. Politicians, pundits, think-tank experts and journalists engaged in this charade to spare Social Security's 54 million recipients the discomfort of understanding they're on welfare.

A relatively small elderly population sustained these fictions. Now, this is no longer possible. Contrary to the Obama administration's posture, Social Security does affect our larger budget problem. Annual benefits already exceed payroll taxes. The gap will grow. The trust fund holds Treasury bonds; when these are redeemed, the needed cash can be raised only by borrowing, taxing or cutting other programs. The connection between Social Security and the rest of the budget is brutally direct. The arcane accounting of the trust fund obscures what's happening. As important, how we treat Social Security will affect how we treat Medicare and, to a lesser extent, Medicaid.

It is because these programs involve middle-class welfare that cuts could occur without inflicting widespread hardship. All the elderly aren't poor. In 2008, a quarter of families headed by someone 65 or over had incomes exceeding $75,000. No doubt people would be outraged. Having been misled, they'd feel cheated. They paid their taxes, why can't they get all their promised benefits? But the alternative is much worse: imposing all the burdens on younger taxpayers and cuts in other government programs. Shared sacrifice is meaningless if it excludes older Americans.

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“The advantage of being a 'person' - The Star-Ledger - NJ.com (blog)”

2011-03-06T19:07:00.001-08:00

“The advantage of being a 'person' - The Star-Ledger - NJ.com (blog)”

The advantage of being a 'person' - The Star-Ledger - NJ.com (blog)

Posted:

Published: Thursday, March 03, 2011, 5:43 AM

By John Farmer Jr.

The decision Tuesday of a unanimous Supreme Court that corporations do not enjoy an exemption for "personal privacy" under the Freedom of Information Act is a triumph of close reasoning and common sense.

Chief Justice John Roberts' rejection of the lower court's conclusion that corporations, like other persons, "are capable of being embarrassed, harassed, or stigmatized," could not have been more to the point: "Personal is often used to mean precisely the opposite of business-related."
In a broader sense, however, the court's disposition does little to change the misguided approach of deciding the legal status of corporations based on whether, in the judges' or lawmakers' views, they are more or less like natural "persons," or to reverse the trend elevating the status of corporations above that of regular folks.

The most prominent example, of course, is last term's decision of a sharply divided Supreme Court that corporations are indistinguishable from natural persons for purposes of the First Amendment's protection of political spending. But the Citizens United case is hardly the sole example; developments in its wake have continued the trend.

The Second Circuit Court of Appeals, for instance, held in Kiobel v. Royal Dutch Petroleum that corporations cannot be held liable under the Alien Tort Claims Act for supporting human rights abuses abroad. For purposes of that act, which relies on international law, the court reasoned, corporations are not considered "persons." The court concluded that because corporations such as I.G. Farben were not held liable as "persons," despite running the Auschwitz labor camp and supplying the poison gas used to asphyxiate millions, Royal Dutch Petroleum cannot be sued for its alleged role in abetting human rights violations in Nigeria.

Tuesday's decision in FCC v. ATT left undisturbed, moreover, the court's prior recognition of corporate privacy and personhood interests in the search and seizure, and double jeopardy contexts.

Nor is the elevation of corporate rights limited to the most recent judicial decisions. In investigations and prosecutions under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, the federal government has announced a shift in policy away from prosecuting corporate entities, choosing instead to focus on officers and employees, while in securities and other investigations corporations frequently act, in effect, as agents of the government.

Read together, these developments raise a potentially frightening prospect: an entity with enormous concentrated wealth that can spend with impunity on domestic political issues, act with limited liability abroad and readily avoid prosecution. This is an ironic culmination indeed of a decade marked by scandal and near collapse, from the dot-com bubble to Enron to mortgage bundling to Madoff.

Isn't it time to take a step back and look at the totality of this legal fiction? How useful or just is it, really, to base legal decisions defining corporate rights and liabilities on arguable propositions about how much they are, or are not, like "persons"?

Let's begin by acknowledging that there is a sound basis for limiting the exposure of corporations in many instances. The corporate form has been an invaluable engine of economic growth, and the corporate death penalty meted out to Arthur Andersen, for instance, seemed to penalize shareholders and innocent employees disproportionately.

But if corporations are not to be prosecuted like natural persons and if corporations are to be held immune, unlike natural persons, under statutes relying on international law, shouldn't those distinctions matter in other contexts?

If corporations are to enjoy a kind of legal insulation from prosecution and liability not available to other legal persons, doesn't it make sense that the price of such advantages should be some regulation of corporate political speech, if only to limit their ability to use the political process to expand their unique privileges?

Legal fictions are as old as the common law tradition itself. But the court's decision last year in Citizens United employed one legal fiction — that corporations are indistinguishable from other legal people — to expand vastly the scope of another legal fiction: that we speak when we spend.

If our courts continue to define corporate rights based on ultimately arbitrary judgments about whether they are, nor are not, like people, they will surely run afoul of Charles Dickens' Mr. Bumble, who was speaking about another legal fiction in "Oliver Twist," but had it right nonetheless: "If the law supposes that, then the law is a ass."

John Farmer Jr. is dean of Rutgers School of Law-Newark.

“Huckabee embracing Obama myths as he eyes Republican candidacy - Regina Leader-Post”

2011-03-05T19:32:00.001-08:00

“Huckabee embracing Obama myths as he eyes Republican candidacy - Regina Leader-Post”

Huckabee embracing Obama myths as he eyes Republican candidacy - Regina Leader-Post

Posted:

WASHINGTON — As he prepares to mount a possible 2012 White House campaign, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee has for a long while seemed intent on casting himself as the lovable lug of the Republican field.

Soft-spoken and good-humoured even in heated debate, Huckabee recently risked alienating the GOP base by defending first lady Michelle Obama's effort to promote good nutrition among America's children — even as Rush Limbaugh and others accused her of socially engineering the nation's diet.

He subsequently expressed a personal belief that Barack Obama was indeed born in the U.S.A.

Hardly an out-on-a-limb declaration, to be sure, but it was still risky given the baffling percentage of Republican voters who cling to conspiracy theories that claim the president is a radical Muslim revolutionary from Kenya.

Huckabee, however, has taken a hatchet to his image as a gregarious and reality-based contender in the past week.

In a series of interviews with right-wing radio, Huckabee resurrected fictions about Obama growing up in Africa and spending a childhood under the spell of Islamic madrassas.

The innuendoes stirred outrage among Democrats and were met with astonishment in mainstream news organizations familiar with the well-established details of Obama's childhood.

But no one in the Republican Party's leadership called Huckabee out. One potential reason? Trafficking in falsehoods about Obama's background, and questioning his American values, may be key to winning the Republican nomination.

"Sadly there are people who are immune to facts," says Mark Rozell, a political scientist at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va.

"The polling data shows that the Americans who are most inclined to believe that Obama is not a genuine Christian, that he is either a Muslim or something else, are very heavily the conservative evangelicals in the core of the Republican party."

Huckabee's characterizations of Obama as something other than a red-white-and-blue American began Monday in a radio spot with conservative host Steve Malzberg, who wondered why no one was asking the president for proof of his citizenship.

"I would love to know more," Huckabee responded. "What I know is troubling enough. And one thing that I do know is his having grown up in Kenya, his view of the Brits, for example — very different than the average American." Huckabee added that by having a "Kenyan father and Kenyan grandfather," Obama may have been influenced by the "Mau Mau revolution" and a belief that "the Brits were imperialist persecutors."

Obama was born in Honolulu on Aug. 4, 1961. He released a copy of his certification of live birth during the 2008 campaign, a document verified by state authorities. He grew up with his white mother and grandparents in Hawaii and Indonesia. He first visited Kenya in his 20s.

After getting called out for being flat-out wrong, Huckabee professed to having "simply misspoke when I alluded to President Obama growing up in Kenya and meant to say Indonesia." He criticized U.S. media for sensationalizing a "slip of the tongue."

Once might be a mistake, but twice smacks of strategy.

In a subsequent interview with the American Family Association's Bryan Fischer, Huckabee seized on the host's assertion that there is "some fundamental anti-Americanism in this president."

Huckabee said "that's exactly the point" he makes in a new book.

"I do think he has a different world view and I think it is, in part, moulded out of a very different experience. Most of us grew up going to Boy Scout meetings and, you know, our communities were filled with Rotary Clubs, not madrassas," Huckabee said.

During his boyhood years in Indonesia, Obama attended a secular public school and a Catholic school in Jakarta.

Another perceived Obama failing, according to Huckabee: the president did not grow up "playing Little League baseball in a small town." Obama did, however, did play basketball on a Hawaii state champion team in 1979. There was no word from Huckabee on the influence — negative or positive — that shooting hoops that might have had on Obama's world view.

Even though Obama's personal history received a thorough vetting in the 2008 election, myths about his birthplace, upbringing and faith have proven remarkably resistant to facts.

A Pew poll in August 2010 found that 18 per cent of Americans believe Obama is a Muslim. Among conservative Republicans, 34 per cent believe the president is Muslim.

"Huckabee is a smart guy. He is also very ambitious and, like many politicians, calculating about how he can maximize his base of support," Rozell says.

"The obvious question is why is he saying these things, and why now? It suggests he is putting serious consideration into a presidential run and is trying to activate his core constituency."

Huckabee won the 2008 Republican presidential caucuses in Iowa — where evangelicals hold significant sway — before losing the nomination race to Arizona Senator John McCain.

A Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll this week showed Huckabee leading the field of potential 2012 Republican candidates with 25 per cent support, with former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney in second at 21 per cent.

Huckabee polls even stronger in the U.S. South. A Winthrop University survey found he had 22 per cent support across the 11 southern states, well ahead of both Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin.

That Huckabee is courting social conservatives is beyond dispute. In addition to questioning Obama's American values, Huckabee generated headlines this week by criticizing the Oscar-winning actress Natalie Portman for celebrating her "out-of-wedlock" pregnancy at last week's Academy Awards.

"People see a Natalie Portman who boasts, 'We're not married but we're having these children and they're doing just fine,' " Huckabee said. "I think it gives a distorted image. It's unfortunate that we glorify and glamorize the idea of out-of-wedlock children."

Huckabee's ad hominem attack on Portman, at least, represents a long-standing view of family values promoted by social conservative voters.

But peddling myths about Obama's upbringing is a more dangerous proposition should Huckabee actually become the Republican candidate and face voters in a general election, Rozell says.

"The overwhelming majority of Americans don't believe these things (about Obama) and very many of them are turned off by these types of political appeals," he says. "There's the rub for Huckabee. What he is saying now might mobilize a constituency in a GOP primary campaign, but that strategy may backfire over the long run."

“The Fictions of Mike Huckabee - New York Times Blogs” plus 1 more

2011-03-04T19:26:00.000-08:00

“The Fictions of Mike Huckabee - New York Times Blogs” plus 1 more

The Fictions of Mike Huckabee - New York Times Blogs

Posted:

Timothy Egan on American politics and life, as seen from the West.

Mike Huckabee is supposed to be the Republican with a heart. He's the guy who said Mexicans are people too during the 2008 race for the White House. He's the weight-loss humanist who refused to join that anti-common-sense fringe of his party bashing Michelle Obama for suggesting that children eat more vegetables.

But beneath the veneer of Aw-Shucks-Huck is a public figure, and possible presidential candidate, who has shown a pattern of telling outright falsehoods about himself and the president.

This week, he backstepped from an extraordinary interview in which he had claimed, several times, that President Obama grew up in Kenya. But before that, Huckabee had created a shell of mistruths about a felon he helped to free early when he was governor of Arkansas. This man went on to murder four police officers in cold blood in my home state of Washington.

Here's what Huckabee said about Obama, from a conversation that is part of the innuendo-laden talk-radio gas that lies across the land like methane from a landfill:

And one thing that I do know is his having grown up in Kenya, his view of the Brits, for example, is very different than the average American.

Mike Huckabee has shown a pattern of telling outright falsehoods about himself and the president.

Of course, "what he does know" is completely wrong. Obama grew up in Hawaii, spent some years in Indonesia, and then went to college in California. He visited Kenya, the home of a father he never knew, in his 20s. Mostly, he was raised by his white grandparents in Hawaii.

Facing a storm of criticism, Huckabee turned churlish. He said he had simply "mispoken" while promoting his latest book of tired homilies. He meant to say Indonesia, not Kenya.

That doesn't wash, given that Huckabee in the same radio interview spun a similar and more elaborate fantasy of how Obama's world view was shaped by the "Mau-Mau" movement in Kenya. If Huckabee meant to say Indonesia, he would have made up something about Obama hating the colonial Dutch and having a thing against nutmeg.

This colonial construct sounds like something Huckabee picked up from one of the nutty books they promote on Fox.

This is troubling enough for a man who may one day be asked to make momentous decisions based on facts. It also shows that Huckabee will stir the same poison pot about Obama to please a Republican primary base in which half the voters think the president is not an American citizen.

But an even bigger fiction is the one Huckabee tells about the violent felon Maurice Clemmons. Here was Huckabee last month, at an informal gathering of reporters in Washington, after being asked about having granted Clemmons's plea for early release:

"There was a kid who was 16 years old, he committed a burglary, he was aggravated, but not armed. And for that he got 108 years," Huckabee said. "One-hundred-and-eight years."

Sounds awful. Only in Arkansas would they put a black teenager away for 108 years for a single burglary. Except it's not true, as a routine check of the record, or a look at the Pulitzer Prize-winning stories about Clemmons in The Seattle Times would show.

Clemmons was facing eight felony charges at the peak of a crime spree, not one. He was 17. During a reign of terror, he broke into the home of a cop, stole guns, assaulted and robbed a woman, and broke into the home of state trooper.

In prison, he committed a half-dozen assaults, harassed guards and had sex with inmates as part of a pattern of preying on fellow convicts.

Despite his bad behavior, he would have been eligible for parole after serving 18 years, not 108, The Seattle Times reported. But he got out early, serving 11 years, because Huckabee fell for the oldest con ruse in the book.

While saying he was under "the watchful eyes of the Lord," Clemmons assaulted two inmates. "God bless you," Clemmons wrote Huckabee, a Baptist minister, in his plea for mercy. "It is so prayed!"

In that same plea, he claimed to be a model prisoner. In fact, he'd been disciplined 29 times. Had Huckabee checked with prosecutors, prison guards or victims, he would have found grave concerns about letting Clemmons loose on the community. The prison system risk assessment categorized him as "most likely to return to violence."

And he did, sadly, in late 2009, murdering four officers who sat drinking their morning coffee. Clemmons was later killed during a massive manhunt.

During more than 10 years as governor, Huckabee granted twice as many requests for clemency as his predecessors had over 17 years. Some of the most hardened convicts played the religion card, and went on to further violence.

The pattern here raises two major concerns. He constructs alternative views: a convict is saved by Jesus, instead of using Jesus to get out of jail, or, Obama is a bad president because he's not really an American.

In one of his lame attempts to explain the Obama comments, Huckabee only added to the character assassination. He said, "Most of us grew up going to Boy Scout meetings, and you know, our communities were filled with Rotary Clubs, not madrassas." In other words, Obama may not be Kenyan, but he's probably Muslim! (Note to Huckabee: Hawaii has both Boy Scouts and Rotary Clubs.)

The second question is about judgment, always the most crucial thing to consider in a person who wants to be president. If Huckabee can't see past a crude convict ploy to his heart, how can he judge the North Koreans?

Huckabee makes a very good living from his employer at Fox News, and from more than a half-dozen books about values. One of the books is called "Character Makes a Difference," and another "Do the Right Thing."

Preacher: follow your own advice.

Bill Gates: States’ public employee pensions are completely unsustainable; action must be taken - Macdaily News

Posted:

Mar 04, 2011 - 05:30 PM EST — AAPL: 360.00 (+0.44, +0.12%) | NASDAQ: 2784.67 (-14.07, -0.5%)

Thursday, March 3, 2011 · 4:08 pm · 59 Comments

"I'm giving my third TED talk in three years," Bill Gates blogs for The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. "This time, I wanted to share some of what I've been learning about state budgets. I got interested in them because states supply most of the money for public education in the United States. What I've been learning, though, is that states are under increasingly intense budget pressure, and not just because of the aftereffects of the economic recession, although that has made things worse."

"There are long-term problems with state budgets that a return to economic growth won't solve," Gates writes. "Health-care costs and pension obligations are projected to grow at rates that look to be completely unsustainable, unless something is done. But so far, many states aren't doing much to deal with their fundamental problems. Instead they're building budgets on tricks – selling off assets, creative accounting – and fictions, like assuming that pension fund investments will produce much higher gains than anyone should reasonably expect."

Gates writes, "Eventually they'll have to make some hard decisions about priorities, and I'm worried that education will suffer, even more than it is suffering already because of budget cuts. The issues are complicated and obscured by the complexities of accounting, so most people don't fully understand what's going on. More people need to investigate their state's budget and get involved in helping to make the right choices. My TED talk is sort of a call to action for citizens, taxpayers, parents, everyone."

“Bill Gates: States’ public employee pensions are completely unsustainable; action must be taken - Macdaily News” plus 1 more

2011-03-03T19:24:00.001-08:00

“Bill Gates: States’ public employee pensions are completely unsustainable; action must be taken - Macdaily News” plus 1 more

Bill Gates: States’ public employee pensions are completely unsustainable; action must be taken - Macdaily News

Posted:

Mar 03, 2011 - 05:16 PM EST — AAPL: 359.56 (+7.44, +2.11%) | NASDAQ: 2798.74 (+50.67, +1.84%)

Thursday, March 3, 2011 · 4:08 pm · 48 Comments

Published: Thursday, March 03, 2011, 5:43 AM

By John Farmer Jr.

Tuesday's decision in FCC v. ATT left undisturbed, moreover, the court's prior recognition of corporate privacy and personhood interests in the search and seizure, and double jeopardy contexts.

John Farmer Jr. is dean of Rutgers School of Law-Newark.

“Special Exhibition on 20 Years of Science, Media and Mysteries Surrounding the Iceman in Bozen - Art Daily”

2011-03-01T20:01:00.001-08:00

“Special Exhibition on 20 Years of Science, Media and Mysteries Surrounding the Iceman in Bozen - Art Daily”

Special Exhibition on 20 Years of Science, Media and Mysteries Surrounding the Iceman in Bozen - Art Daily

Posted:

BOZEN.- On 19 September 2011 the Iceman celebrates 20 years of his second life. People all over the world watched on in amazement two decades ago as the intact body of a man from the Copper Age, along with his clothing and equipment, was recovered from a glacier in the Ötztal Alps where it had been preserved for 5,300 years. Long after his death, Ötzi, Iceman, now holds humans in his spell with ever more insights into his life and death. Over three million people have so far visited Ötzi in the museum, while numerous scientists have examined him. The South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology in Bozen is thus this year dedicating the special exhibition "Ötzi20 - Life. Science. Fiction. Reality" to Ötzi. The exhibition runs from 1 March 2011 until 15 January 2012.

The special exhibition occupies 1,200 m², the entire exhibition area of the museum building: four floors, each devoted to one of the topics life, science, fiction and reality, illuminates the full range of his discovery, the circumstances of his life, the results of the research and the media reality and fictions that have grown up around him. Interactive stations as well as films, interviews and hands-on displays guarantee an educational experience that is both exciting and entertaining.

The exhibition for the first time intends to analyse Ötzi above and beyond this scientific aspect. What image of him has developed? What role do the media play in this? What phenomena have arisen around Ötzi and what unusual results has all this produced? The answers to these questions allow visitors gradually to get closer to him.

New scientific discoveries and discussions also contribute to the Ötzi20 exhibition throughout the year. What secrets will the latest research methods reveal? Ötzi20 is not just a retrospective, it is also a snapshot that asks questions about the future. As a window into our archaeological past and as a social sensation, the Iceman provides us with food for thought for a long time to come.

One of the most frequently asked questions today remains: what did Ötzi look like? For the opening of the exhibition the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology is presenting to the public a new reconstruction of Ötzi, based on anatomical 3D images of his skull. The Museum commissioned the Dutch brothers Adrie and Alfons Kennis to create a new, naturalistic reconstruction based on scientific principles. His watchful gaze today meets visitors to the Museum, shaping our conceptions of the Stone Age inhabitants of the Alpine regions. Ötzi gives our history a "face" in the truest sense of the word, moving and fascinating people from all over the world.

The German photographer Heike Engel (21Lux) documented the work of the Kennis brothers over half a year and recorded the entire reconstruction process for the South Tyrolean Museum of Archaeology. Her close co-operation with the twins, revealed in a series of photos, makes their masterful handiwork seem almost close enough to touch. Her photos give viewers the feeling of actually being present in the artists' studio.

Since his discovery, numerous artists have addressed the subject of Ötzi in the most different disciplines and techniques. One representative is the British artist, Marilène Oliver, whose installation in the special exhibition plays with the multifaceted nature of the mummy. In her work "Iceman Frozen, Scanned and Plotted", Oliver translated a CT scan of the body into plot points, then drilled them layer for layer into acrylic sheets and fused them together into a block.

The South Tyrolean photographic artist Brigitte Niedermair has searched all over Europe for the "Image of Ötzi" that exhibitions have created of him. Her "Tableau Vivant" of large-scale photos records numerous reconstructions of Ötzi in very different contexts and interpretations.

The Museion, Bozen's museum for modern and contemporary art, is for the duration of the entire special exhibition showing the work by Hans Winkler entitled "Ötzis Flucht" (Ötzi's flight), an archaeological crime thriller featuring Ötzi's (fictitious) tracks.

“SEC Freezes Dallas Hedge Fund Manager’s Assets - Hedge Fund Net”

2011-02-26T19:37:00.001-08:00

“SEC Freezes Dallas Hedge Fund Manager’s Assets - Hedge Fund Net”

SEC Freezes Dallas Hedge Fund Manager’s Assets - Hedge Fund Net

Posted:

The Securities and Exchange Commission ran into court to freeze the assets of a Dallas hedge fund manager who allegedly raised more than $4 million from investors, including a former Dallas Cowboy.

The order freezing the assets of Christopher Blackwell, 32, was unsealed by the Texas federal court Thursday.

Blackwell raised money by telling investors various fictions, the SEC alleged, including that their money was safely in fixed-income trading programs, hedge funds and movie distribution investment contracts.

But $720,000 of investor money went, instead, to pay for Blackwell's personal expenses, including child support, entertainment that included what the SEC politely referred to as "gentlemen's clubs," and the purchase of an Audi and Hummer.

Additional money was parceled out in cash to Blackwell and his associates, while more than $500,000 was used for Ponzi payments; paying old investors with new investors' money.

The former Dallas Cowboy, who isn't identified in the court papers, was referred to Blackwell by one of his ex-teammates. Blackwell pitched him on a deal involving the purchase and sale of jet fuel, as well as a fixed-income trading investment.

The ex-footballer wired $250,000 to Blackwell, the SEC said.

The Department of Homeland Security got wind of Blackwell's operations because of the large wire transfers, and arranged for an undercover agent to meet Blackwell, masquerading as a potential investor.

At one of the meetings between Blackwell and the agent, which took place at a Hooters restaurant, the allegedly fake hedge fund manager claimed that he had advanced degrees from the University of Madrid and that he had worked for the Bank of Madrid and Goldman Sachs.

None of those assertions were true, the SEC claimed.

Attempts to reach Blackwell by phone in New Mexico, where the SEC says he now resides with his father, were unsuccessful.

“Security Alert: New Spyware on Android Devices Identified - TMCnet” plus 1 more

2011-02-25T19:04:00.001-08:00

“Security Alert: New Spyware on Android Devices Identified - TMCnet” plus 1 more

Security Alert: New Spyware on Android Devices Identified - TMCnet

Posted:

BEIJING, Feb 25, 2011 (PR Newswire Europe via COMTEX) -- On the heels of Hong Tou Tou, another two spyware programs on Android devices have been captured by NetQin Mobile Inc., a global leader in mobile security services. Named "SW.SecurePhone" and "SW.Qieting", the spyware may cause serious privacy leakage.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20100215/CNM002LOGO) Once installed, SW.SecurePhone will run in the background without any icon displayed. It will monitor the phone and collect data to save on the SD card. The data, including messages, call log, location of the phone, recorded sounds around the phone and pictures in the phone, will then be uploaded to a remote server every 20 minutes. This will compromise privacy as well as use internet traffic. This spyware is mainly distributed in the U.S through downloading from internet.

SW.Qieting automatically forwards messages received to a monitoring phone without the user's awareness. Meanwhile, there is no icon displayed after installation, hardly can the user be aware of the application being installed.

Security threats on Android devices are not fictions given the facts that more and more mobile threats are being captured. The typical ones include Geinimi identified by NetQin last November and Hong Tou Tou last week. Users should be more cautious than ever when enjoying the benefits of Android devices.

To stay safe, NetQin suggests users follow the tips below when using the phone: 1. Download applications from trusted sources and do check reviews, ratings and developer information before downloading.

2. Never blindly accept application requests. Closely monitor permissions requested by any application; an application should not request to do more than what it offers in its official list of features; 3. Be on alert for unusual fee deduction, as this may be a sign that your phone is infected.

4. Install a trusted security application to protect your phone from security threats. NetQin Mobile Anti-virus is protecting millions of users from mobile threats with its features of anti- virus, real-time protection, etc. NetQin Mobile Anti-virus 4.6 is available to download at http://www.netqin.com/products/antivirus/ and on Android Market.

About NetQin Founded in 2005, backed by Sequoia, Mayfield, Fidelity and Ceyuan VC, NetQin Mobile Inc. (referred to as "NetQin" hereafter) is a global leader in mobile security services, delivers proven mobile security solutions based on a cloud-computing model, including anti-virus, anti-malware, anti-spam, privacy protection, data backup and recovery, as well as data management - to more than 70 million users in more than 200 countries and regions worldwide - to protect them against mobile security threats. As the market leader in mobile security, NetQin holds 67.7% market share of China mobile security market (2010 Whitepaper on China Mobile Security Market by Frost & Sullivan, January 2011), and has received multiple industry awards and honors, including Technology Pioneer 2011 by the World Economic Forum, and the 2009 China Frost & Sullivan Award for Mobile Security Market Leadership.

For more information, please visit http://www.netqin.com.

CONTACT: Sophia Zhang of NetQin Mobile Inc., +8610-8565-5555,zhangxiuli@netqin.com

[ Back To 4g-wirelessevolution.tmcnet.com's Homepage ]

How Public Employees and Taxpayers Got Scammed - Reason.com

Posted:

Public employees have been cramming the Wisconsin state Capitol to protest the governor's plan to cut their take-home pay and gut their collective bargaining rights. You can't blame them for objecting when the state reneges on a deal. But they should have been protesting years ago, when politicians and union leaders struck a bargain that was too good to be true.

Government workers have long accepted a tradeoff. They get lower pay than they might get in the private sector, but better retirement benefits. They give up some current luxuries for more security later on. The great majority of them have pension plans with guaranteed payouts—an option that has largely disappeared from the private sector.

Most businesses long ago abandoned defined-benefit plans because they were unaffordable. The public sector has stayed with them, though—apparently to prove those private companies right. State and local governments, according to pension expert Joshua Rauh of Northwestern University, have promised $3 trillion more in benefits than they have set aside to pay for them.

Why? Because there are powerful incentives for both legislators and union leaders to do that. Politicians (particularly, though not exclusively, Democratic ones) want to ingratiate themselves with unions, whose members can be a huge help on Election Day. Union leaders want to keep their members happy and return their favored elected officials to office.

The problem, of course, is that such generosity costs a lot of money, which taxpayers may resist paying. That's where the back-loading of compensation comes in.

Promising government workers excellent retirement plans, off in the future, gratifies union members without outraging the taxpayers. The burden is postponed until some future date, which makes the process painless—until the future arrives.

Wisconsin is a typical state, with more than $45 billion in unfunded obligations by Rauh's calculation. Taken as a percentage of gross state product and state revenue, he informed me, that makes it about average or "maybe slightly worse."

But the phenomenon is a national one. Though Republican Gov. Scott Walker has targeted union negotiations, the same problem exists in states where public employees lack the collective bargaining rights at issue in Madison. South Carolina, Alabama, and Mississippi are among those, and their unfunded obligations loom even larger than Wisconsin's.

If collective bargaining gave too much power to public employee unions, you might expect states that mandate collective bargaining to have lower unfunded obligations—because the unions would be able to demand full funding. But that's not the case.

Union-friendly Illinois is one of the worst states in the country in shortchanging the public employee pension system. Over the years, elected officials have cut the state's contributions, diverted funds to pay other expenses, and borrowed money to cover current pension obligations. But no mobs of teachers and police officers descended on the state Capitol to protest, because they didn't grasp the implications.

Now we can all see the damage done. Though public employees have paid their share, the state has failed to keep up its end of the bargain. So in Illinois, as in Wisconsin and many other places, there is a conflict between what they were promised and what the citizenry is prepared to pay.

Government workers and taxpayers are both victims of this scam, which allowed extravagant pledges that don't have to be redeemed until later—by which time the governors and union officials who devised them are gone, leaving someone else to cash the check.

In the private sector, these shenanigans would never be tolerated. Public pension systems get to assume implausibly high returns on their investments, which gives the impression they can meet their future needs.

The looser rules "allow governments to base their budgets on economic fictions," writes Orin Kramer, who oversees investments for the New Jersey system, in The New York Times. You could even call it fraud.

Republicans in Congress are trying to prevent deception by requiring public pension systems to follow the same basic rules as corporations. Politicians hate the idea for the same reason the rest of us—government workers included—should welcome it. As Moody's Investors Service said in endorsing the plan, it would "provide new incentives to state and local governments to take action to ensure public-employee pension plans' long-term viability."

Creating incentives for governments to behave honestly and responsibly? It's a new concept, but it might be worth a try.

“A Playwright’s Fictions Stay Close to Real Life - New York Times” plus 1 more

2011-02-24T20:01:00.001-08:00

“A Playwright’s Fictions Stay Close to Real Life - New York Times” plus 1 more

A Playwright’s Fictions Stay Close to Real Life - New York Times

Posted:

[fivefilters.org: unable to retrieve full-text content]

CHICAGO — Midway through the second of the three "Trinity River Plays" at the Goodman Theater here, a small moment takes place that is hauntingly familiar to anyone with an elderly parent. Rose, played by Penny Johnson Jerald, who is weakened by ...

REVIEW. DESIGN FICTIONS All MADE UP and no where to go - Archinect

Posted:

REVIEW. MADE UP: DESIGN FICTIONS

eric chavkin

All MADE UP and no where to go

MADE UP: DESIGN FICTIONS is Art Center's new group exhibit surveying recent boundary bending design projects. The common link among the three dozen or so speculative works is an awareness of, and reaction to, 'the accelerating developments in technology'.

Before I arrived I was expecting some pretentious art scene mostly because the exhibit categories seemed half-organized in hyped hipster-speak: GET REAL, FAKING IT, AS IF: MADE BELIEF; IN YOUR DREAMS. LIES. Instead there was music to listen to and not talk.

Always the outsider I instinctively pulled back from jumping in and listened first to the ambient sounds , later to passerby talk. The space was brightly lit, and I got to watch the gallery goers.

Drone…. …Drrrrooooonnnne…. Drrrrronnnnnne….Dddddrroonnnnne…. waves of sound to be with yourself. The high brisk sky was pricked with stars.

Drrrrrrone…. drrrroooonnne ….. The colder court space was more what I was into at the moment. Drrrrroooonnnnn as in moan.

My spell was broken when curator Tim Durfee spotted my friend and enthusiastically described his installation. I backed off and listened. "This is a giant interactive scanner" I summarize: … embedded on the suspended frame are an array of 24 mini-cameras recording and transmitting multi-image projecting of the opening event in real time. There are outputs for printing, plotting and online. This I gathered is what it was all about.

Drone. From the distance I was at the installation looked good. The always positive Craig Hodgetts congratulated Durfee. I said from outside the work looked looked 'elegant'. Silence. Wrong comment. Duct tape is never elegant.

The large suspended installation by Durfee centers the exhibition space out-doing most all of the other art. At almost thirty-feet (unfolded) the folded vertical frame of woven tubing is a half-open (or half-closed) book. It successfully fills a very tall and awkward space. The rough and ready installation design is all off-the–shelf fasteners, tubing, and duct tape. As my friend says, tubing is the new 2x4. This was the most impressive part of the exhibit.

The new technologies that are not specifically mentioned are present as variations and permutations of software-based and miniaturized design. Some projects speculate on the possibilities and all are described as fictions. So every picture tells story as Rod Stewart sings so if you seen it before pass on to the next. There were a lot of 'I seen THAT before' comments.

I was hoping for some arty interactive video linked with the scan, something like face recognition linked to Facebook profiles or DMV records or something equally intrusive.. That would be something. But I was disappointed. It was like getting all dressed up and nowhere to go. I think the idea was better than the outcome and this is a work in progress.

This was more like a contemporary overview and for me there was not much in ground-breaking design or mind-bending concepts. Highlights for me were Perry Kulper's works and Benjamin Bratton's word vortex Plastic Futures Markets. It was good to see a few of Coy Howard's hand-to-mouse renderings exhibited again and kids liked playing with the Macs that were there for the software based projects. As I mentioned the suspended installation by Tim Durfee was the best piece. The exhibit is on until March 20.

Wind Tunnel Gallery
Art Center College of Design South Campus
950 South Raymond Avenue, Pasadena 91105

Janurary 29 – March 20, 2011

“Board votes 4-3 to restore traditional school calendar - Marietta Daily Journal” plus 1 more

2011-02-23T19:15:00.001-08:00

“Board votes 4-3 to restore traditional school calendar - Marietta Daily Journal” plus 1 more

Board votes 4-3 to restore traditional school calendar - Marietta Daily Journal

Posted:

MARIETTA — Despite a majority of attendees speaking passionately in favor of the current balanced calendar, the Cobb school board voted 4-3 Thursday night to revert to a more traditional school calendar, with an Aug. 15 start state.

Board members Lynnda Eagle, David Banks and David Morgan dissented. The calendar starts school Aug. 15, ends classes on May 25 and allows a week break at Thanksgiving, a two-week break at Christmastime and a week break in April. The other options the board considered had a start date of Aug. 1 or Aug. 17.

Twenty-four teachers, parents and residents spoke to the board during its public comment session in front of a packed boardroom of about 300 people with an overflow crowd in the lobby of the Glover Street central office. Most spoke ardently in favor of the balanced calendar, with a few becoming highly critical of the newly elected board members. Tim Stultz faced the most attacks from audience members, who held signs reading: "RECALL STULTZ!" and "Stultz is NOT a voice for our schools or our children." Others waved signs that said: "Keep the Balance" and "Teachers for balance."

Gina Ulicny reminded newly elected board members, speaking directly to Kathleen Angelucci, who ran on a platform in support of a more traditional calendar, that they were not elected solely on the calendar issue.

"You may have gone on one promise, but people don't vote for you just because of one issue. Sometimes people vote for you because you're the only one running," Ulicny said, as many people in the crowd laughed. "I'm sorry if that was tacky."

Former board member Holli Cash, who was narrowly defeated by Stultz in the November election, was openly critical of him, and questioned his appointees to the SPLOST oversight Facilities and Technology Committee during her impassioned speech to the board.

"I think you should all know when I voted for the balanced calendar last year, I personally, personally supported the calendar that we had already in place with adding the February break. But it wasn't about me. It was about the people in my community," Cash said. "…We need to look at the members you appoint to the F&T. They need to have the facts and fictions. You chose to take away Ann Kirk, who was there before I came on the board, and Susan Pearson, two very active members of the community, to put on a losing politician who does not know their facts, did not ask the facts before they came to speak against the Smyrna school, and a man in the community that knows many of the neighbors in the Nickajack and Griffin area, who gave you $500."

Others, like Beth Kriebel, simply asked the board to keep the current calendar because of the disruption another new calendar would have on their families.

"I think you're taking a huge risk in changing something that greatly impacts any family that has a student in the school district," Kriebel said. "While campaign promises were made last year by some of you, what about the majority of Cobb County parents who have adjusted to the balanced calendar on good faith that no changes would be made?"

One of the few audience members who spoke for the more traditional calendar was Vivian Jackson, the co-founder of "Georgians Need Summers" who was thrown out of a November 2009 meeting during public comment for her direct address to then-board Chairman Dr. John Abraham.

"The last time I stood in front of this podium was in November 2009, and here I stand again, in front of a newly elected school board, a majority of which campaigned publicly to return our district to a traditional school calendar and to do this as soon as they took office," Jackson said. "The voters went to the ballot box, not a bogus Monkey Survey. We do not want this experiment to continue another year."

Just hours before the meeting, the district posted the results of its online calendar survey, which showed that 72 percent of the 82,000 respondents were in favor of the balanced calendar, with 17.9 percent for the Aug. 15 start date and 10.1 percent for the Aug. 17 start date. The board released the survey Feb. 11 on its website through Survey Monkey and closed it Thursday at 1 p.m.

Even before the results of the survey were released, many community members were highly critical of it, arguing that anyone could vote whether even if they did not live in the district, and that it was possible to vote more than one time for the survey.

Prior to the vote for the traditional calendar, Eagle asked the board to vote to keep the balanced calendar for two more years and then revisit the issue. Her motion was turned down in a vote of 3-4, with all of the new members and Board Chair Alison Bartlett dissenting.

"I have no personal preference for a calendar," Eagle said. "But I feel that the issue was voted on. We made a commitment to our community, to our teachers. It sends a very bad message to our community. What's going to stop us from changing the calendar in four months? What's going to stop us from changing it next year?"

Banks asked his fellow board members to listen to the 72 percent majority who voted for the balanced calendar in the district's online survey.

"Madam Chair, I am very disappointed that you have allowed the calendar issue to once again come before this board," Banks said. "The most important experts I am listening to is the Cobb community. I have heard them loud and clear and apparently they affirm the decision made in 2009 in regards to the three-year calendar. All I can say to some of my colleagues is clean out the wax that is in your ears."

Stultz said, "I think throughout this entire process people were passionate on both sides of the issue. There's just a level of anxiety about the calendar and I think hopefully we can put that to rest this evening."

In other business:

 The board voted unanimously to purchase the 18 acres of land adjacent to the Belmont Hills shopping center in Smyrna for a new Smyrna area elementary school at a price of $7.8 million. The board also voted to hire the architectural firm of Cunningham, Forehand, Matthews and Moore for $598,000 to create plans for the $22 million school.

 The board voted 4-3, with Bartlett, Angelucci and Stultz dissenting to build a ninth-grade center at Harrison High School. While a ninth-grade center for west Cobb was included in SPLOST III, its location was not specified. SPLOST Chief Doug Shepard Harrison was chosen because of the four high schools in the west Cobb area - Harrison, Hillgrove, Allatoona and Kennesaw Mountain - Harrison has the least amount of space and the most portable classrooms. Bartlett opposed the building of the center because she said the district should consider putting the project off until later in SPLOST III, when the district will be able to better evaluate growth of the schools in the west Cobb area.

—-The board also approved renovations at 10 schools throughout the district which will be funded by SPLOST.

Fundraising Goal for Detroit RoboCop Statue Met - MyFox Detroit

Posted:

Updated: Wednesday, 16 Feb 2011, 6:20 PM EST
Published : Wednesday, 16 Feb 2011, 1:13 PM EST

SOUTHFIELD, Mich. (WJBK) - It was a 1987 cult classic. "RoboCop" is the story of a hero officer killed in a shootout, but brought back to life as a half man, half machine cyborg, who defended Detroit against crime.

Last week on Twitter, someone came up with the idea of putting up a RoboCop statue in Detroit.

Mayor Dave Bing tweeted back, "There are not any plans to erect a statue to RoboCop. Thank you for your message."

But that wasn't the end of the story.

The idea soon became a movement on Facebook and then other websites. Now, just six days later, organizers say they've exceeded their fundraising goal of $50,000 and a statue of RoboCop will soon become a reality.

John Leonard, an artist and one of the masterminds behind the online campaign, recently joined FOX 2's Huel Perkins for an in-studio interview.

HUEL: There are a lot of projects out there, a lot of symbols you could choose, why RoboCop and why do you think this caught on?

LEONARD: I think RoboCop for a long time has been a really popular character in a lot of circles, like science fictions fans, and he's really a popular international character … I think it has tremendously positive effect on people.

HUEL: Where you even born when this movie came out?

LEONARD: Yeah, I was pretty young, but I've been a fan for awhile.

HUEL: So, do you actually have the cash here or do you just have pledges for the money, and where is that money coming from?

LEONARD: The money's coming from a website called Kickstarter … It's a micro-funding website, which allows individuals to donate. It doesn't matter where they're from. It's just for people that want to support the project, and we're at $50,000 … What we're asking people to do on the Kickstarter website is that the more they donate, we're going to be able to use sort of the popularity of this project to fund some other initiatives or maybe bring attention to some other things that may be happening in the city … A lot of people have been matching their donations to the Detroit Public Schools … That's something I personally did, and there's been a lot of people that have been sort of seeing this as a way to bring a lot of positive support to the city.

HUEL: That's one of the complaints, too, because some people say in the city where the traffic signals don't work, the symphony orchestra is on strike, some people complain that this is a waste of time and money. How do you answer that?

LEONARD: I think that's up to the people that are supporting the project, and it's coming from private donations. We're not trying to take any money away from the city. We're not trying to take any money from people that don't want to give money to the project. At the same time, we're trying to use this to maybe get support for some other projects … I think there's been a lot of positive energy that's been flowing into the city because of this.

HUEL: Just to make it clear, this is private money and you plan to put up this statue on private land, right?

LEONARD: We're still talking to people about the best place to put it because I think the context and the location is really going to have an important effect on what this sends or what it says.

HUEL: That's also one of the complaints. Some people say that this statue of RoboCop only underscores the crime issue here and insults the city.

LEONARD: I think that it can be a symbol of rebirth. He's a superhero. I think if you look at the character … sort of the morals and the positive things that the character embodies are really the driving factor behind this.

We called the mayor's office, but they had no comment on this RoboCop statue issue.

“A Critic's Own Fictions: PW Talks with Louis Bayard - Publishers Weekly”

2011-02-22T19:37:00.001-08:00

“A Critic's Own Fictions: PW Talks with Louis Bayard - Publishers Weekly”

A Critic's Own Fictions: PW Talks with Louis Bayard - Publishers Weekly

Posted:

Photo by Augusten Burroughs

A Critic's Own Fictions: PW Talks with Louis Bayard
By Lenny Picker
Feb 21, 2011

In The School of Night, Bayard crafts a complex thriller centered on an obscure Elizabethan society of poets and scientists.

How did you learn about the School of Night?

Professor Google. Who, in addition to being a useful time-suck, is a very useful idea generator. Somehow or other, I landed on a page about the School of Night, and it was the name itself that captured my attention. And the more I learned, the more intrigued I was. Thomas Harriot, an author, astronomer, and mathematician, became my protagonist because, of all the school's purported members, he was the least likely to have his own book.

How has your work in politics and your current work as a critic affected your fiction writing?

I gave up working in politics a while back, and while I have strongly held beliefs, I try very hard not to let them seep into my work. By contrast, I think being a critic is pretty central to my fiction because my books tend to read other books. Mr. Timothy, to pick the most obvious example, is my alternative reading of A Christmas Carol. Even The Black Tower is a response to Vidocq's memoirs, which are really the first detective narrative in any language.

Why did you move from writing straight historicals to the bifurcated format of The School of Night?

It didn't seem like a jarring switch for me, because my first two books were very topical, urban, modern-day. I had expected the present-day strand to have the same amount of gravity as the historical strand, but for some reason, it kept insisting on being lighter and more larkish. One of the models I kept falling back on was The Maltese Falcon, which, to my mind, is a comedy: smart, literate, evil people sitting around and negotiating. I've always been intrigued by the way the barriers between past and present collapse. That's something I try to do in every book, I think. Poe, Vidocq, and Harriot—the leads of my last three books—were all outliers, and for a very good reason: they were all ahead of their time, which makes them a useful bridge between past and present.

What effect do you think Dan Brown has had on the writing of thrillers centering on long-lost secrets?

Dan Brown is definitely the elephant in the room, but that particular genre or subgenre has an older provenance. Go back to 1988 and Katherine Neville is writing The Eight. Go back a century earlier, you've got H. Rider Haggard and Robert Louis Stevenson and Conan Doyle. Half a century earlier, you've got Poe and "The Gold Bug." Nothing new under the sun.

“REVIEW. DESIGN FICTIONS All MADE UP and no where to go - Archinect”

2011-02-21T19:09:00.001-08:00

“REVIEW. DESIGN FICTIONS All MADE UP and no where to go - Archinect”

REVIEW. DESIGN FICTIONS All MADE UP and no where to go - Archinect

Posted:

REVIEW. MADE UP: DESIGN FICTIONS

eric chavkin

All MADE UP and no where to go

Always the outsider I instinctively pulled back from jumping in and listened first to the ambient sounds , later to passerby talk. The space was brightly lit, and I got to watch the gallery goers.

Drone…. …Drrrrooooonnnne…. Drrrrronnnnnne….Dddddrroonnnnne…. waves of sound to be with yourself. The high brisk sky was pricked with stars.

Drrrrrrone…. drrrroooonnne ….. The colder court space was more what I was into at the moment. Drrrrroooonnnnn as in moan.

Wind Tunnel Gallery
Art Center College of Design South Campus
950 South Raymond Avenue, Pasadena 91105

Janurary 29 – March 20, 2011

“REVIEW. DESIGN FICTIONS All MADE UP and no where to go - Archinect”

2011-02-20T19:06:00.001-08:00

“REVIEW. DESIGN FICTIONS All MADE UP and no where to go - Archinect”

REVIEW. DESIGN FICTIONS All MADE UP and no where to go - Archinect

Posted:

REVIEW. MADE UP: DESIGN FICTIONS

eric chavkin

All MADE UP and no where to go

Always the outsider I instinctively pulled back from jumping in and listened first to the ambient sounds , later to passerby talk. The space was brightly lit, and I got to watch the gallery goers.

Drone…. …Drrrrooooonnnne…. Drrrrronnnnnne….Dddddrroonnnnne…. waves of sound to be with yourself. The high brisk sky was pricked with stars.

Drrrrrrone…. drrrroooonnne ….. The colder court space was more what I was into at the moment. Drrrrroooonnnnn as in moan.

Wind Tunnel Gallery
Art Center College of Design South Campus
950 South Raymond Avenue, Pasadena 91105

Janurary 29 – March 20, 2011

“Who’s Your Mommy? The Secret Struggle Between Mothers And Nannies - Forbes (blog)”

2011-02-19T19:33:00.001-08:00

“Who’s Your Mommy? The Secret Struggle Between Mothers And Nannies - Forbes (blog)”

Who’s Your Mommy? The Secret Struggle Between Mothers And Nannies - Forbes (blog)

Posted:

The author and a young friend.

Cameron Macdonald spent five years interviewing 34 professional mothers and 50 caregivers of their young children to examine the intricacies of the relationships that take place between two women who share the responsibilities of raising a child.

She calls them—the nannies and au pairs—shadow mothers. The role that working mothers expect from the shadow mothers is paradoxical: form a strong emotional bond with the children while at the same time never, ever threatening the mother's place. "To be simultaneously present and absent in the children's lives."

I spoke with Macdonald this week about her new book, Shadow Mothers, and the women who trusted her with the complex emotional territory of mothering and care-giving. Her take on the plight of the working mother? It's not her problem alone, it's the nation's.

The overwhelming idea of the "perfect mom" and the fraught relationship between mothers and nannies seem a recent phenomenon. Did previous generations have such contentious relationships, or did everyone simply "know their place?"

There have rarely been times in history when middle-class and upper-class American families didn't have someone helping them with childcare. When we look back at earlier periods of domestic work, either immigrants or slaves in the south, there was very much a separation of roles.

For example, certain aspects of mothering were attached to certain tasks. Historically it was completely acceptable to have wet nurses because that was considered a 'menial' part of mothering. The 'moral' part of mothering—where the mother felt it was her place to step in–had to do with introducing kids to society and passing on culture and heritage.

One of the crises that we see today is that the day-to-day acts of breastfeeding, diapering and creating activities for toddlers—which used to be things a mother would delegate to someone else– psychologists and developmental experts now tell us are critical to the mother-child connection. If you're not home with your child doing these things, then you're depriving your child of something. Namely, you.

Today so much emphasis is placed on the mother-infant bond in forming secure attachments in later life and in later achievement. When you combine that with the fact that the majority of mothers of young children work outside the home– then you have a real tension. Ed note: (66% of mothers with young children work outside the home as of 2009).

A lot of the relationships between mothers and caregivers in the book focus on jealousy over-attachment between the caregiver and the child. When an upset child reaches for a shadow mother over her real mother, what is the mother going through?

The moms went through a range of emotions. There's a sense for most women that it hurts, that their first impulse was to always want to be the one their baby sought for comfort. That's understandable.

What they did with that feeling was where mothers differed. Maybe the feeling was 'I'm a bad mom.' Or maybe, 'this is natural for a child with multiple caregivers.' There was the it hurts but I'm glad that my child has a nanny that she loves response.

On the other hand there was the mom who strategically hired au pairs only on one year contracts which, by default, makes the mother the central attachment in the child's life. And there was also the one who fired the nanny when the child would reach for her first.

What is the caregiver thinking?

The nannies tended to think that the "who does the child reach for test" was a ridiculous measure of whether that child was attached to the parent. But they also felt that it was part of their job description to make sure that didn't happen.

And so both mother and caregiver create necessary fictions, both in the way that the job is managed and also managing the appearance of their relationship. They create boundaries around certain "mother-only tasks," symbolic things like who gives the bath or the use of the word mommy. These were ways of enhancing the image of the mother-child relationship while at the same time lowering the perceived intensity of the image of the nanny child relationships.

Why do some mothers desire a caregiver who has no emotion for their kids. And if they don't, why are they so upset when they see signs of it? Is it proof that working mothers are simply selfish?

On the one hand, you want a caregiver that is going to make your children happy, that they're going to love. Many mothers say "Yes, my kids love the nanny, they're so happy to see her when she comes," and in the same breath say, "but when she leaves it's no big deal" with no sense of the paradox there.

But I don't think it's selfish. Working moms are in a very untenable position. The women I interviewed were not Nanny Diaries mothers. They worked hard at work, they worked hard at parenting and they worked hard at being a good employer. They wanted their children to have a good relationship with their caregiver.

What's most poignant about the data that I found is that these are not the horror stories. These people have the best intentions, and so the problems stem from outside of their relationships: structural problems of unyielding workplaces, impossible mothering standards that are then expressed in these relationships between mother and caregiver.

Part of the perfect mother ideal of so many upper middle class women, working or not, includes the idea of preparing the perfect child—taking him to French, Tae Kwon Do and robotics classes from an extremely young age. Do you think it's mother's guilt that results in over-structuring and outlandishly high expectations of their child?

I do think that the moms, particularly the ones who worked long hours, had a fictionalized image of stay-at-home moms and also an image of what they would do "if they were home." This went along with class-based assessments of their nanny's strengths and shortcomings, and her ability to help raise a child who would grow up to be successful.

Part of the mother's job is the transmission of social class, and mothers often worried that a nanny from a different background couldn't give their children the strategic benefits that they might if they were home.

The structuring of activities also this idea of maximizing the child's potential in every way. If the nanny isn't as social as mom would like her to be, she's going to have them at art classes or dance classes. And if the nanny's not as educated, mom's going to send them to the library or the science museum.

Mothers who had more flexible work arrangements felt less of this need for control, and had more of an understanding and realistic of the expectations of their children. As their nannies said, "The kid's two. He wants to go to the same park, eat the same food, see the same kids because that's what toddlers do."

It seems that the only person in control of such a fraught relationship is the mother. So what is the solution? How can a mother change her behavior and her own sense of self-worth in order to have a healthier relationship with her children's caregiver?

I think that actually these are public problems and it would be unfair for us to argue for a private, self-help solution. I think that the structure of work needs to be more flexible to allow moms and dads to have the time they need to feel secure in their own parenting. Those parents who felt secure had a much easier time delegating to someone else.

I think we need to lighten up culturally about competitive mothering and the idea of a perfectible child. There's a lot of debate on how much our brain changes and grows throughout the life course, and how much we grow and change socially and emotionally throughout our lives. And we seem to be at a moment when we target early childhood and infancy. It's a little unreasonable and it's creating a tremendous amount of pressure.

With women now making up more than 50% of the workforce, you'd think that both men and women taking time and responsibility for their children would be equally accepted. Yet it seems the opposite is true: when a man takes time out from his workday for parenting, he's a "good dad" while a woman doing the same is considered a "bad worker." What do you make of this?

My research looked at college-educated, managerial and professional women. That's where the double standard is particularly acute. The message to women is that if you want to play with the big boys, you play by our rules.

At the same time feminism has achieved a certain victory in creating a sense that it's appropriate for men to take some role in their children's' lives. This is not to say that dads don't face a work-family strain. But research on working dads shows that the kinds of care that they do are very different from the kinds of things mom does. If someone has to stay home sick with a kid all day it's the mom. Sports events, it's dad.

Mother's tasks are often unexpected, more time intensive and more frequent—requiring more time away from the office.

There's so much attention paid to stay-at-home moms as we bolster the idea that mothering is a legitimate full time "job." But her self-empowerment seems to come at the expense of the working mother, making her feel that she will never be "as good" at home. Or, in many cases, "as good" at work. What psychological state does this leave the mother in?

I think it's important to emphasize that it's the idea of the at-home mom that's so detrimental. Not the at-home moms themselves. It's class specific too. If you're a single mom or your partner works in a blue collar job and you need to work, there's an understanding that it's tough but acceptable.

For professional women who have invested a lot in education, training and their careers, the comparison to the at-home mom is difficult. They don't want their child to be deprived because they work. Plus, there is a heightened tension because they're educated; there's a feeling that no one else can meet their children's needs the way they could, and so there's the desire to stay home.

But we also know from studies on the topic that you can't just take time off and from a demanding career expect to come back on the same rung of the ladder. It's unrealistic, and yet that's what [mothers] worry about all the time.

“Handing Out Knives to Madmen - Wall Street Journal”

2011-02-18T19:13:00.001-08:00

“Handing Out Knives to Madmen - Wall Street Journal”

Handing Out Knives to Madmen - Wall Street Journal

Posted:

By JOSIAH OBER

Corbis

The temple of Athena Nike (at right) on the Acropolis. The temple was completed in Socrates' lifetime.

Two and a half millennia after an Athenian philosopher drank a poisoned cup of hemlock as punishment for crimes against the state, the ancient Greek world continues to captivate us. And rightly so: New scholarship continues to reveal just how remarkable it was. Most premodern states, like too many countries today, were dominated by a small elite of ultra-privileged insiders who monopolized public goods, skimming off whatever surplus was produced by populations living near bare subsistence and thus seizing super size shares of stagnant economies. By contrast, the Greek world in the 500 years from Homer to Aristotle saw sustained economic growth and historically low level of economic inequality. Recent studies suggest that, from 800 B.C. to 300 B.C., the population of the Greek city-states increased by a factor of 10, while per capita incomes roughly doubled. That growth rate may be sluggish compared to leading 21st- century economies, but it is amazing by the standards of premodernity. What can explain such economic growth?

Free Greeks (we must never forget that this was a slave society) invested their efforts in industry, commerce and politics because they did not fear that the fruits of their effort would be expropriated by the powerful. Further, though the roughly 1,000 city-states of classical Greece competed fiercely in war, they actively exchanged goods and ideas. Among the productive innovations that spread rapidly across the Greek world were coinage, codes of law, and deliberative councils. There was no imperial center but instead a historically distinctive approach to politics.

The typical city-state was republican rather than autocratic, and a substantial part of the adult male population enjoyed participation rights. In Athens, the epoch-making "People's Revolution" in 508 B.C. resulted in democracy—the strongest form of republicanism the world had ever known—which meant universal native adult male franchise and a commitment to the principles of equal votes and freedom of speech and association. The Greek word demokratia asserted a fact and an aspiration: The people (demos) have the capacity (kratos) to make history.

Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) inhabited a world of dense, urban populations and vast trade in food and labor. By his time, perhaps half of all Greek city-states were democracies, and the philosopher opined that, "now that city-states are even larger, it is difficult for any non-democratic regime to arise." Wealth was not concentrated at the top: Laborers (citizens, foreigners and slaves alike) commanded wages far above subsistence. Archaeological excavations show that even the houses of those in the lowest quartile of income were spacious and well built. In Athens, citizens promoted ever more open access through new forms of constitutional and commercial law. They supported centers of higher education that laid the foundations of Western thought: first Plato's Academy and Isocrates' school of rhetoric; then Aristotle's Lyceum, Zeno's Stoa and Epicurus' Garden.

Socrates, the central figure of Bettany Hughes's delightful, if occasionally exasperating, book, was born in 469 B.C.—a long generation after Athens's democratic revolution—and died in 399 B.C., two generations before the Greek world reached its apex of population, economic success and democratization. Yet his Athens was already experiencing what can be considered a golden age of advancements in thought, art and politics. During Socrates' lifetime, the city also built and lost an Aegean empire that, at its height, encompassed more than 150 communities: a quarter-million Athenian residents and perhaps three times as many of their fellow Greeks.

Responsible Popularizers of the Ancient World

We have entered a Golden Age in which scholars of antiquity produce responsible popularizations aimed at readers who demand a sense of place and strong writing. Here are some models of the form.

Cleopatra by Stacy Schiff. Forget what you think you know about the seductress who employed exotic Egyptian charm to lure Julius Caesar and Marc Antony into her perfumed boudoir. Ms. Schiff shows Cleopatra as an astute ruler of a wealthy kingdom, who skillfully played a game of great-power diplomacy against the terrifying backdrop of Roman civil war. Though not a classicist herself, she has a trained historian's sensibility and has delved deeply into the ancient sources and modern scholarship.

The Spartacus War by Barry Strauss. An outstanding military historian revisits a famous slave rebellion and its gladiator leader. Spartacus time and again defeated the armies of the Roman Republic and threatened the Roman slave economy. With narrative skill and scrupulous scholarship, Mr. Strauss presents him as a charismatic leader and clever strategist who was ultimately unable to persuade his comrades to quit while they were ahead.

The Poison King by Adrienne Mayor. The story of Mithradates of Pontus, polygamist, mass-murderer, general and "Rome's deadliest enemy." Ms. Mayor illuminates antiquity's bloodiest one-day massacre of civilians in 88 B.C. and explains why it took Rome's best generals more than a quarter century to defeat him. Full disclosure: Ms. Mayor is my wife, but don't think I'm being partial—the judges who named her a finalist for last year's National Book Award shared my enthusiasm.

Parallel Lives by Plutarch. Perhaps the most successful of the ancient world's popularizers, Plutarch wrote short, engaging biographies carefully pairing examples of noble (and a few ignoble) Greeks and Romans, and remains an important source for modern biographers. The Penguin Classics series groups the Lives by topic and offers good translations.

Alexander the Great by W.W. Tarn.A grandmaster of responsible popularization from the mid-20th century, Tarn was a towering figure in classical scholarship. This hugely influential (and still very readable) biography portrayed Alexander as an idealistic warrior who sought to unite the known world in a brotherhood of mankind. Scholarship has moved on, but Tarn's passionate evocation of a "might have been" is still evocative.

Winter Quarters and Besieger of Cities by Alfred Duggan. A well- trained historian, Duggan wrote well- paced biographies and lively novels. My favorites are "Winter Quarters," a splendid evocation of Roman soldiers serving in Julius Caesar's Gaul, and "Besieger of Cities," on the exploits and failures of King Demetrius, son of Antigonus the One-Eyed, the most colorful of Alexander's successors. Be prepared to wince occasionally at attitudes toward ethnic groups.

Ms. Hughes presents a high-octane account of Socrates and his age, based on ancient literary sources, current archaeology and her own fertile imagination. She offers vivid slices of imagined Athenian life, taking us behind the public realm dominated by citizen men and exploring the lives of women, slaves and foreign residents in Socrates' city. Her biographical sketches of key figures— Pericles, the courtesan Aspasia, the military commander Alcibiades—are rich with lively detail. Here is Ms. Hughes on a religious sanctuary frequented by Athenian girls: "This sacred zone would have resembled an outpost of the rag-trade: when women died in childbirth their clothes were dedicated here; draped, hung and stored around the sanctuary; a limp gift to pitiless Artemis, to whom, probably just a few years from now, the girls would be calling out during the dreadful pangs of labor." Ms. Hughes weaves a morality tale about the danger of mixing politics with empire, wealth and religion, which ends with the trial of Socrates and the eclipse (she claims) of Athens' democratic golden age.

Though Ms. Hughes celebrates the Socratic ideal—the idea that a constantly examined life, devoted to seeking the good and true, is the only life worth living—she does not pretend to present new insights into Socratic thought. The payoff comes, instead, through re-situating the origins of moral philosophy in the context of a vibrant cultural and historical milieu. She invites the reader to travel as her companion beyond the familiar byways of Greek history, offering a full menu of "you were there" sounds, smells and textures: noisy Eleusinian cults, stinking excrement, "the dark, the whispers, the unseen skin pricks connecting flesh to flesh" at a symposium. All of this is great fun.

Yet readers must proceed with caution, for her conclusions are questionable. Athenian greatness, for Ms. Hughes, is coterminous with Socrates' life. "Socrates' lifespan marked the beginning and an end of an idea—the idealistic vision of an autonomous, tolerant, democratic Athenian city-state," she writes. Aristotle, who was born 15 years after Socrates' death and lived in a wealthy, densely populated Greek world in which democracy was increasingly prevalent, would be puzzled by Ms. Hughes's conclusions. But precipitous rises and tragic falls tend to be attractive to popular historians.

Even more problematic is that Ms. Hughes fails to provide a convincing answer to the central question of her tale: Why was Socrates tried and condemned? Socrates was a public philo sopher who could reliably be found conducting dialogues near the bankers' tables in the Agora. But he was also known to contemporaries as a teacher of aristocrats—including Alcibiades and Critias, who became enemies of the Athenian democracy, the latter in a blood-drenched postwar coup d'état in 404-03 B.C.

Protected by an amnesty, Socrates could not be prosecuted for having taught the tyrant Critias to despise democracy. But the philosopher's behavior following the democratic restoration was not similarly protected—and both before and after the coup his behavior included engaging others in public dialogues. Athenians had always held citizens legally responsible for the effects of their public speech. Socrates' dialogues were intended to make his listeners behave differently, and he denied that good ideas ever produced bad behavior. But the monstrous acts of Critias (among others) seemed evidence to the contrary.

And so Socrates' accusers were free to claim that, whether he realized it or not, he was a public danger, especially to impressionable youths. Since his public speech included sharp criticism of demo cracy, they could imply that Socrates, in effect, handed out knives to madmen, that when he denied dialogue could ever be dangerous Socrates was disingenuous or deluded, that his irresponsible speech was likely to have bad effects in the future—as it seemingly had in the past.

The charge brought against Socrates, by a team of voluntary prosecutors, was impiety—they accused him of impropriety in respect to the gods and corruption of the youth. I would suggest that Socrates was convicted not because the jurors were religious fanatics, not because they had lost their democratic tolerance, but because he seemed to them unreasonably unwilling to take responsibility for what he said in public. Today we allow pundits to say what they please, even if their speech has pernicious or even fatal effects. I think we are right to do so, and I think that 280 (out of 501) Athenian jurymen were wrong when they voted to condemn Socrates. But I think they were right to believe that when prominent public figures refuse to take personal responsibility for the consequences of their speech, democracy is in grave danger.

The Hemlock Cup: Socrates, Athens and the Search for the Good Life

By Bettany Hughes
Knopf, 484 pages, $35

Beyond her failure to convincingly interpret Socrates' trial, Ms. Hughes gets some facts wrong: The Athenian population did not increase five-fold during Socrates' life; nor did Athens lose four-fifths of its population during the Peloponnesian War. Papyrus does not rot within weeks in the Greek climate. Socrates' main weapon as a soldier in the Athenian army was not a broad-sword. Pericles was never elected "chief democrat." The walls of Athens did not separate citizen-haves from non-citizen have-nots. And far from despising the disabled, Athens paid handicapped citizens a daily wage.

Ms. Hughes is also too uncritical of her sources: She offers late Roman accounts of the Athenian persecution of intellectuals, long ago rejected as tendentious fictions by serious scholars, as fact and even inflates them into a systematic regime of censorship, book-burning and execution. She imagines that "scores— perhaps hundreds" of intellectuals shared Socrates' fate. If this were true, Socrates' trial would be unsurprising, but Ms. Hughes's claim is not supported by any credible evidence.

All the same, and despite these glitches, do read this book, both because of its marvelous storytelling and because it will stimulate a desire to learn more about the ancient world. Ms. Hughes's work joins a growing shelf of books about antiquity that exemplify the honorable goal of responsible popularization. Readers attracted to the splendid range of classical texts excerpted by Ms. Hughes will want to read the full versions; almost all are available in modern translations. (Start with Plato, in the complete edition from Hackett, edited by John Cooper—superb translations, with helpful introductions by one of the world's leading experts.) Socrates would be pleased if his story awakened a few modern Americans from moral slumber.

—Mr. Ober, chairman of political science and professor of classics at Stanford, is author of "Democracy and Knowledge: Innovation and Learning in Classical Athens."

“A Playwright’s Fictions Stay Close to Real Life - New York Times” plus 1 more

2011-02-17T19:07:00.001-08:00

“A Playwright’s Fictions Stay Close to Real Life - New York Times” plus 1 more

A Playwright’s Fictions Stay Close to Real Life - New York Times

Posted:

CHICAGO — Midway through the second of the three "Trinity River Plays" at the Goodman Theater here, a small moment takes place that is hauntingly familiar to anyone with an elderly parent.

Rose, played by Penny Johnson Jerald, who is weakened by ovarian cancer, has gone to the kitchen to boil water for oatmeal. But she is too frail to handle the kettle, which slips from her grasp.

Her 34-year-old daughter, Iris, played by Karen Aldridge, rushes in, telling her mother to sit down and let her make the cereal. "I'm the mama, I'm the mama," Rose insists, asserting her matriarchal status.

The words ring true for the playwright Regina Taylor, perhaps better known as the Emmy-nominated actress in the 1990s television series "I'll Fly Away," and, more recently, for her role in "The Unit."

Ms. Taylor wrote "The Trinity River Plays," named for the river that winds through her hometown, Dallas, after the death of her mother five years ago from the same disease. Though she calls it a work of fiction, "In my own journey, in becoming who I want to be, you do have to embrace the good and the bad," said Ms. Taylor, who turned 50 last year. "You have to go back and wrestle with the past, and embrace it."

A three-hour, three-act story, "The Trinity River Plays," directed by Ethan McSweeny, opened at the Goodman on Jan. 23 as a co-production with the Dallas Theater Center, which mounted it last fall. The play, which runs here until Sunday, is divided into "Jar Fly," which depicts Iris at 17; "Rain," the longest section, focusing largely on Rose and Iris; and "Ghoststory," in which Iris confronts her past and her relationship with her estranged husband.

Reviews have praised the work's intensity and richly drawn characters, while taking issue with its length. "In tone, dialogue, characterization and clarity, this trio of interlocking plays mark a real breakthrough" for Ms. Taylor as a playwright, the critic Hedy Weiss wrote in The Chicago Sun-Times. But Chris Jones, the chief theater critic for The Chicago Tribune, found the production "a long, meandering opus in desperate need of a vigorous, clear-eyed edit." Yet, Mr. Jones added, "it's the kind of emotional, revealing play many of us feel like writing after suffering through the life-upending death of a loved one."

The current version has evolved considerably from what Ms. Taylor showed Robert Falls, the artistic director of the Goodman, three years ago. "Rain," the first section she completed, was a "very spare, small play — four characters and sort of minimalism of language," said Mr. Falls, who has known Ms. Taylor for nearly two decades. "It was only the bones of the play, but the bones were so solid that you could add veins and blood and muscle and tissue, and it would ultimately become something full and whole."

A spokeswoman for the Goodman said that producers from other regional theaters had been coming to see the trilogy and that she expected that it would be performed elsewhere in future seasons. The piece marks Ms. Taylor's 11th production as an actress, director or playwright with the Goodman, where she has been an artistic associate for the last 17 seasons.

Until last summer, when she moved permanently to Chicago, she had divided her time throughout her career among Los Angeles for television roles, New York and Chicago for theater productions, and Dallas, where she cared for her mother before her death.

Ms. Taylor's acting, writing and directing lives have intertwined since the 1980s. In New York she was the first African-American to play Juliet on Broadway — in a 1986 "Romeo and Juliet" produced by Joseph Papp — and she has appeared in a variety of movies for the large and small screens, among them Spike Lee's 1995 "Clockers" and the 1999 Showtime television film "Strange Justice," in which she portrayed Anita Hill.

Her plays, an eclectic list, include the 2000 "Oo-Bla-Dee," about four black female musicians in 1946 who dream of becoming bebop stars; the musical "Crowns," which she adapted and directed, about the tradition and symbolism of elaborate Sunday church hats that some black women wear; and "Drowning Crow," her adaptation of Chekhov's "Seagull," set in 2004 in the Sea Islands of South Carolina and presented on Broadway in 2004 by the Manhattan Theater Club. Her most recent Goodman production, "Magnolia," an update of "The Cherry Orchard," set in 1960s Atlanta, had its premiere in 2009.

Ms. Weiss, like a number of critics, has had mixed reactions to Ms. Taylor's playwriting, as she stated in her review of "The Trinity River Plays": "Instead of the often opaque or chokingly politically correct work of seasons past (from 'Drowning Crow' to 'Magnolia'), this three-hour trilogy, which is clearly more than a little autobiographical, gives us a revealing, deeply intimate, 'hang out the dirty laundry' look at crucial aspects of Taylor's past. In the process, she seems to have liberated herself as a writer and discovered a far more direct, accessible, overtly emotional way into her audience's heart."

In an interview last month at the Goodman, Ms. Taylor explained why she preferred to work in more than one discipline.

"I like exploring different ways of expression," she said, "the acting, the writing, the directing, even cooking a meal." Food plays a role in "The Trinity River Plays," as do gardening and writing, which Ms. Taylor said she had done since she was 6. "Jar Fly," the trilogy's first section, explores the yearnings of a 17-year-old in the 1970s, when possibilities were opening up for young African-Americans that their parents might have found unimaginable. The title is a colloquial name for the cicada — some species of which take wing every 17 years, an interval that resonates in the trilogy — which Iris is writing about in her application to Southern Methodist University in Dallas, where Ms. Taylor also studied.

Iris's free-spirited cousin Jasmine, meanwhile, who has dropped out of high school, wants to become a "Soul Train" dancer on television. Jasmine, Iris's Aunt Daisy and Daisy's husband, Ray Earl, are living with Iris at her mother's home for the summer while Rose is away, training for a job.

The neat atomic ranch-style home, with its vivid garden, is where Iris reveals her crush on Jack, a classmate and athlete whom she has been tutoring. But her cousin dons a flaming-red outfit and patent-leather boots and steals Jack's attention.

Iris's innocence also is stolen, and the effects of that summer are still felt in the second play, "Rain," when Iris, who has become a successful New York writer, returns 17 years later to discover that her mother has fallen ill. In the final play, "Ghoststory," Iris confronts the effects of her mother's death and of Iris's 17th summer on her own life.

"Here is the first chance to see this writer, who is gifted, elusive and congenitally inclined to retreat into florid metaphor when things get too intense, begin to open up and confront her own demons," wrote Mr. Jones of The Tribune.

But Ms. Taylor, soft-spoken and exquisitely polite, would not declare the production a turning point. An admirer of the jazz great Miles Davis, she noted that for decades he kept progressing beyond his landmark albums, "Kind of Blue" and "Sketches of Spain."

"He did not stop at one sound," Ms. Taylor said. In the same way, she added, her plays are "markers along the way."

Two Myths About Résumés - Forbes (blog)

Posted:

Everyone wants to remove the uncertainty from the impossible mission of looking for a job.

Over eight years as a career coach in New York City, Win Sheffield has observed the myths his clients tell themselves about the challenge of finding a job.

In this piece, he lays out some facts and some fictions about résumés. (I've edited his words a bit.) He writes:

Résumé Myth #1: Putting together my résumé is the most important part of my job search.

The thinking behind this:

Every ad requires a résumé. Everyone who wants to assist me says that they can forward my résumé to HR. To get a job I need to interview and before an interview, interviewers ask me to send my résumé. The only way people will know who I am professionally is by my résumé. It is therefore the most important part of my search.

The appeal – why we want to believe it:

If the résumé is the key to job search, then once I have completed it (as hard as it is to do), I am done. A résumé is concrete and readily definable. It reflects facts. I love a clearly defined goal. It removes the uncertainty from the impossible business of job search.

The real deal:

A résumé is worth spending time on. Most employers require a résumé to get a job. I have clients who come to me after years of success getting jobs without one, but for the vast majority of people, a résumé is essential.

As important as it is, a résumé is just a piece of paper; as such, we cannot expect it to make the impression we do in person. Even with careful attention, as a rule, a résumé reflects where we have been, not where we are going; it is most helpful when we want to continue in the same field. But increasingly, we are changing fields.

To the extent that we change direction, we cannot rely as much on our résumé. Careful rewording of the résumé accompanied by a persuasive cover letter can help, but ultimately, the résumé is no substitute for meeting in person, so it pays to find ways to remove it from its role as our sole representative.

Unintended consequences:

Job seekers routinely spend lots of time on their résumés, get stuck there and don't move forward with their search. Others produce a résumé that does not effectively reflect their capabilities and therefore slows down their search.

What this means for you:

Spend time on your résumé. If you are changing fields, make sure it is comprehensible to your intended audience. Make it "good enough" and then get on with your search. Look into the variety of other ways at your disposal to connect with people through friends, colleagues, acquaintances, professional organizations, social and alumni groups, etc. Those people may ask for a résumé, but it will not be their only impression of you.

Résumé Myth #2: The best way to let people know you are in the market is to ask for a job and send out résumés

The thinking behind this:

If I don't know about where there are jobs, other people may, so why not ask them? My friends and business colleagues are often more than happy to send my résumé to someone they know if they don't have a job for me.

The appeal – Why we want to believe it:

It is tempting, especially when we are in our I-am-out-of-a-job-and-not-worth-your-time mode, to think that we are bothering our contacts. As a result, we decide to take as little of their time as possible. It's easy and just takes a minute to send out résumé, so we feel comfortable asking contacts to do that.

I also do not want to be manipulative or deceitful when I talk to my contacts. Everyone knows that networking is the way to get a job and when people say they are "networking," what they really mean is that they are looking for a job.

The real deal:

It is highly unlikely that anyone will know about the right job for us at the time we ask. It is also not likely that they will know someone who can offer us the ideal job. It could be that sometime in the future they may have a job, but the odds are still low. A dialog with a binary response (do you know of a job for me or don't you know of a job for me) is a limiting conversation.

Unintended consequences:

This leads us to ask everyone we know for jobs. If this goes on for awhile, our friends and contacts may well feel badly that they cannot give us what we want. They may also feel used, because we only come to them when we want something. In either case, they may start to avoid us, regard us as "damaged goods." or both.

What this means for you:.

The problem is not that you are approaching people, but why you are approaching them.

Those who like you want to be of assistance. They may think, like many people, that the best way to get a job is to get your résumé out there. They forward résumés to HR because they don't have a job for you and that is how they think they can best help you. Also, if they really don't want to help or don't know how to help, they can save face by sending your résumé to HR; then they don't have to think about it anymore.

They could help in other ways if you asked them. Would you be interested to know how things work inside their companies? Do you need to know something about how they do business? Who are their competitors? Is there a strategy you have used that you want to share with them or ask them about?

People like answering questions to which they know the answers. These questions also present an opportunity for them to interact with you, to learn in more detail about what interests you and to get to know you better. When it gets down to it, the better they know you, the more they will want to support you—and refer you to jobs they do know about.

“Fundraising Goal for Detroit RoboCop Statue Met - MyFox Detroit”

2011-02-16T19:48:00.001-08:00

“Fundraising Goal for Detroit RoboCop Statue Met - MyFox Detroit”

Fundraising Goal for Detroit RoboCop Statue Met - MyFox Detroit

Posted:

Updated: Wednesday, 16 Feb 2011, 6:20 PM EST
Published : Wednesday, 16 Feb 2011, 1:13 PM EST

Last week on Twitter, someone came up with the idea of putting up a RoboCop statue in Detroit.

Mayor Dave Bing tweeted back, "There are not any plans to erect a statue to RoboCop. Thank you for your message."

But that wasn't the end of the story.

John Leonard, an artist and one of the masterminds behind the online campaign, recently joined FOX 2's Huel Perkins for an in-studio interview.

HUEL: There are a lot of projects out there, a lot of symbols you could choose, why RoboCop and why do you think this caught on?

HUEL: Where you even born when this movie came out?

LEONARD: Yeah, I was pretty young, but I've been a fan for awhile.

HUEL: So, do you actually have the cash here or do you just have pledges for the money, and where is that money coming from?

HUEL: Just to make it clear, this is private money and you plan to put up this statue on private land, right?

LEONARD: We're still talking to people about the best place to put it because I think the context and the location is really going to have an important effect on what this sends or what it says.

HUEL: That's also one of the complaints. Some people say that this statue of RoboCop only underscores the crime issue here and insults the city.

We called the mayor's office, but they had no comment on this RoboCop statue issue.

“A Playwright’s Fictions Stay Close to Real Life - New York Times”

2011-02-15T19:32:00.001-08:00

“A Playwright’s Fictions Stay Close to Real Life - New York Times”

A Playwright’s Fictions Stay Close to Real Life - New York Times

Posted:

CHICAGO — Midway through the second of the three "Trinity River Plays" at the Goodman Theater here, a small moment takes place that is hauntingly familiar to anyone with an elderly parent.

Rose, played by Penny Johnson Jerald, who is weakened by ovarian cancer, has gone to the kitchen to boil water for oatmeal. But she is too frail to handle the kettle, which slips from her grasp.

In an interview last month at the Goodman, Ms. Taylor explained why she preferred to work in more than one discipline.

"He did not stop at one sound," Ms. Taylor said. In the same way, she added, her plays are "markers along the way."

“Why America Always Gets Revolutions Wrong - Post Chronicle”

2011-02-13T19:16:00.001-08:00

“Why America Always Gets Revolutions Wrong - Post Chronicle”

Why America Always Gets Revolutions Wrong - Post Chronicle

Posted:

Revolution is the word of the day in the Middle East. The reaction in the American media and government is pure puzzlement. Who is revolting? Why? Should we support them or oppose them?

The fact that nobody seems to know what in hell is going on in Egypt, Tunisia, Albania and Jordan is yet another black mark on the American intelligence establishment, which has spent far too long playing patty-cake with dictatorial governments while failing to infiltrate and research popular movements in the Middle East.

It is also yet another horrible manifestation of America's benighted foreign policy when it comes to revolutionary movements. Since the Woodrow Wilson administration, American presidents have consistently mishandled revolutions abroad: Russia, Italy, Germany, Korea, Cuba, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Vietnam, Iraq, Iran, Honduras, among others. Those failures stem from two conflicting notions embraced by liberal American presidents since Wilson. First, liberal presidents champion the ideas of "self-determination" - the idea that all populations have to decide their own future without extraneous help. Second, liberal presidents support the practical separation of civilian populations from the governments they elect.

Both of these principles are fictions. And working in tandem, they have crippled America's foreign policy, creating a catch-22: populations are supposed to pick their leaders without imperialist/colonialist interference, but those same populations cannot be held responsible for the leaders they pick. The result is American noninterference with burgeoning revolutions, then utter inability to cope with the results.

In practical terms, this means that the United States must uphold the dictators originally installed "by the people." We can't get rid of those dictators, since they were supposedly brought to power through popular means. We won't get rid of those dictators because if we did, we would have to deal with the reality that the people may in fact be just as problematic as the governments they select.

The first practical experiment in this catch-22 occurred in 1917 with the Russian Revolution. Wilson watched with approval as a hodgepodge of anti-tsarist popular movements ousted the unpopular dictators. Then Wilson watched in mild irritation as that movement, led by Alexander Kerensky, was ousted by the better organized and more militant Vladimir Lenin and his communists. While America interfered in a half-hearted way, by 1918, Wilson was preaching in his famous Fourteen Points speech that Russia would have to make "independent determination of her own political development."

When the communists took over, America quickly shifted into a defensive mode, opposing the Red regime while claiming that it was unrepresentative of the populace. The result: the most evil regime in human history reigning over half of Europe, sponsoring large swaths of like-minded evil regimes in Asia, Africa and Latin America - and an American policy that coddled that regime for decades until Reagan.

The pattern repeated itself in Korea, where the United States under Truman refused to go all the way in stopping the North Koreans. Instead, MacArthur was fired for suggesting that America target the root of the problem in China. In Vietnam, the left protested that the Vietnamese people wanted communism, that Ho Chi Minh was a man of the people, and that any significant incursion into Cambodia was unthinkable. It repeated itself in Iran, where the left insisted that we allow the shah to fall, but now watch from afar as the mullahs crush all dissent.

Most recently, the pattern has repeated itself in the Gaza Strip, where the United States pushed for the installation of democratic institutions and then had to face the unpleasant reality that the electoral majority of the Palestinian population is radically evil in its anti-Semitism and Islamism. Instead of facing that fact, the United States under President Obama has chosen to legitimize Hamas by ripping Israel as intransigent.

Now the pattern is repeating itself in Egypt. President Obama's administration has taken the conflicting position that Hosni Mubarak is not a dictator, but that he must make way for democratic reforms. Obama's minions have stated that the Egyptian people seek freedom, even as they parlay with the Muslim Brotherhood (Obama has kowtowed to the brotherhood himself, inviting them to his 2009 Cairo speech). Obama's messengers have labeled prospective Egyptian leader Mohammed ElBaradei a Nobel Prize winner as though it is a real qualification, even though he is also a soft agent of Iran.

Instead of seeking out and supporting the most pro-America strain within the Egyptian revolution, Obama has sat idly by, still following in the footsteps of Wilson. When an anti-democratic movement shoves its way forward and usurps power, Obama will sit idly by, abiding by those same Wilsonian dictates. And when America has no one to deal with in Egypt but the radicals the Egyptian people have selected, we will appease them, all the while sighing over what might have been.

Ben Shapiro is an independent columnist, and author of the new book Project President: Bad Hair and Botox on the Road to the White House and the bestseller Brainwashed: How Universities Indoctrinate America's Youth

“Dr. Ashraf Ezzat reporting from Egypt; One For All, And All For One - Salem-News.Com”

2011-02-12T19:04:00.001-08:00

“Dr. Ashraf Ezzat reporting from Egypt; One For All, And All For One - Salem-News.Com”

Dr. Ashraf Ezzat reporting from Egypt; One For All, And All For One - Salem-News.Com

Posted:

Feb-12-2011 18:24 Dr. Ashraf Ezzat Salem-News.com

The will of the people is bound to prevail.

Thousands of Egyptians demanding that Mubarak steps down.

(ALEXANDRIA, Egypt) - History has always shown us that people are seldom seen dreaming like one, thinking like one, aspiring to one goal and acting like one for all, and all for one.

We had many fictions and fairly tales that celebrated such oneness but we had very few realities on the ground.

Years and even centuries would pass by before any group of people could be united in heart and mind, before they could start realizing that they can and will make things change according to their true will... and before they believe that they can achieve magical moments with no need for crystal ball.

Millions of people can't be wrong.

Millions of people can't do wrong

Millions of people can't go wrong … when they are joined as one in front of forces of corruption and hypocrisy.

Free at last

Nothing and no one could stand in front of millions hungry for freedom and dignity.

No one has the power to hide the sun of truth and no one can abort the dawn of liberation and freedom.

The will of the people is bound to prevail.

A dictator is like a spider you have to destroy him to get rid of a web of corruption and deception.

The dictator is finally out of Egypt.

Egyptians have every right to celebrate this glorious and rare historical moment.

Let's hope this will bring a better tomorrow.

Let's hope the millions would not forget this moment when they were one for all, and all for one.

______________________________________________________

Dr. Ashraf Ezzat is an Egyptian medical doctor whose passion has always been writing. He says of all the human-related studies, he finds himself attracted to history. Ashraf stresses that history helps us understand change and how the society we live in came to be.

He says Egyptology holds a special place in his heart, for Egypt is where the human conscience sprouted. In ancient Egypt all things civilized began to evolve. "I write articles and share posts of interest to me and hopefully to a lot of people."

Dr. Ashraf Ezzat says you can drop him a line any time at: amenhotep.55@gmail.com

"I like to exchange knowledge and experience, I think that`s what Blogging is all about."

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