Grateful Dead: "Sugar Magnolia"

The Day My America Died: 8 January 2011

Having nephews and then nieces saved my life in many ways: wanting to do better than before, set a good example, keep a stiff upper lip in adversity.

Held all four as squirming infants on my knee, had the boys visit me in the to them big city of Orlando--Michael wore me out as had not had roommate for years nor job with much human interaction (graveyard shift) and he chattered non-stop, forcing me to listen and care and interact; while his brother David settled for riding around the Orena and babbling 'bout meeting Shaq, also challenging me to hear, listen, and care..

Now the boys can drink and teenage nieces tolerate their dinosaur uncle while he tries to keep up a brave front.

Nevertheless, some days my "gravity fails and negativity won't pull me through," leaving me no words for my nieces.  Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues

What if one were on a high school student council and inexplicably got shot, what would I tell her sister and mine?

Nothing.

An embarasing admission for 1 as glib as me but at rare times words fail even me.

So maybe would fall back on my last line of defense.

Lie.

Lie to them just like I lie to myself in the morning to get myself out of bed, affirming the life giving lie my acts can make my corner of the world the tiniest bit better.

Yes, live the lie of hope and spit in the face of my eventual demise and keep hope alive my nieces and nephews can build a world just a bit better than the 1 they  inherited.

Lie to myself and perform daily ablutions, dress, and seek 1 positive thing to do and learn on the day Life gave me.

[Christina-Taylor Green's short life was pinned between two national tragedies: She was born Sept. 11, 2001, and she died as a gunman apparently targeting Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) shot 20 people in Tucson.]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/09/AR2011010902186.html

US Representative John Dingell Reading Violent Rhetoric

Even as a staunch defender of First Amendment rights to Free Speech--1 who will defend the right of expression especially for those whos disagree with me, defend until at least mild discomfort for myself--perhaps we in the United States can agree as a polity can agree on metaphors to avoid.

To wit, a list compiled at Talking Points memo:
1. Refrain from telling supporters that winning the election may require active exercise of their "second amendment" rights.
2. Refrain from suggesting it's time for "armed revolution", even if Thomas Jefferson once kinda sorta suggested that.
3. Refrain from holding political fundraisers focused around use of automatic weapons, especially target practices with initials, name or images of your political opponent.
4. Refrain from telling supporters you want them to be "armed and dangerous."
5. Refrain from making campaign posters with opponent's head in gun sights.
6. Refrain from saying that bullets will work if ballots don't.
7. Suggest that supporters not bring weapons to opponents' political rallies.

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2011/01/tpm_guide_to_the_perplexed_1.php#more

Tim Tebow Walks on Water, Leads Homeless Man to ESPN Fantasy Football Win

[Tebow helps homeless man win big in fantasy football

by Jeff Barlis

Perhaps it was divine intervention.

How else could one explain a homeless man beating 3.1 million people to win ESPN’s prize-eligible Fantasy Football league and a $3,500 gift card?

Well, Florida Gators icon Tim Tebow did his part.

The man, 33-year-old Nathan Harrington of Salem, Mass., became homeless after a 2009 car accident left him with nerve damage and unable to work. He was eventually forced to move his fiancee, and their 3-year-old son into a motel.

To play fantasy football, Harrington said he knocked on strangers’ doors at the motel, asking to use their computers, used the computer at his father’s nursing home, called in roster moves to friends and swung by his mom’s house and the library when he could.

Going into the last week of the season and sitting in seventh place, Harrington says his decision to start Tebow in the final, fateful week is what put him on top.

“I was sitting at my mother’s computer going nuts,” Harrington told The Salem News,recalling the debate about whether to put Tebow in the lineup. “I thought ‘I’m going to live with this guy, or die with this guy.’ I put him in, then took him out. I was thinking ‘I can’t put everything on Tebow.’ ”

Then, Harrington’s 17-year-old son, Nathan Jr., chimed in.

“Just go with Tebow,” he told his dad.

“This is right before 1 p.m., right at crunch time, I had a matter of minutes to get him in,” Harrington said.

Tebow came through with two passing touchdowns and another on the ground in a 27-point fantasy performance. It put Harrington on top by 0.8 points, a final result so close that even a single yard difference might have cost him the top prize.

Harrington says he is selling the $3,500 Best Buy gift card to his mother for $2,500 and will use the money to help move his family into a new apartment.]  emphasis added

http://editorsdesk.blogs.gatorsports.com/10294/tebow-helps-homeless-man-win-big-in-fantasy-football/

Might as well call it divine intervention.  Now, Lord, about my Cubbies...

"Don't Feel Like [Blogging] but I am Today"

Ramones: "Gimme, Gimme, Shock Treatment" (4th 0f 4)

Hat tip Lawyers, Guns, and Money: http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2011/01/r-i-p-don-kirschner

Domestic US Terrorism Targets MLK Parade in Spokane

[An official familiar with the case has said the bomb left along a Martin Luther King Day parade route in Spokane, Washington had a devastating potential to inflict a number of casualties. In an Associated Press article, the official is quoted as saying "They haven't seen anything like this in this country," and "This was the worst device, and most intentional device, I've ever seen."

Thankfully, a city worker noticed the bomb before the parade marched past the device last Monday. When law enforcement officials saw a wire coming out of the package the bomb squad was called and the parade was re-routed. The bomb squad was able to defuse the bomb, and now officials are discovering the sophisticated nature of the device. The device was designed to be detonated remotely through something akin to a garage door opener. Shrapnel was also strategically placed in the package to cause more injuries after to anyone within the blast range.

The FBI has said the time and location of the device are inescapable, leading them to believe there was a social or political agenda behind the attempted attack. The FBI has called the attempt an act of "domestic terrorism."

Despite the gravity of the story, the mainstream has paid relatively little attention to the story...]
http://www.examiner.com/political-buzz-in-national/mlk-parade-bomb-spokane-called-worst-device-ever-seen-this-country

Nicotine Now Killing Bees: Maybe the Whole Human Race?

"A new generation of pesticides is making honeybees far more susceptible to disease, even at tiny doses, and may be a clue to the mysterious colony collapse disorder that has devastated bees across the world, the US government's leading bee researcher has found. Yet the discovery has remained unpublished for nearly two years since it was made by the US Department of Agriculture's Bee Research Laboratory.

The release of such a finding from the American government's own bee lab would put a major question mark over the use of neonicotinoid insecticides – relatively new compounds which mimic the insect-killing properties of nicotine, and which are increasingly used on crops in the US, Britain and around the world.

Bayer, the German chemicals giant which developed thei nsecticides and makes most of them, insists that they are safe for bees if used properly, but they have already been widely linked to bee mortality."
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/exclusive-bees-facing-a-poisoned-spring-2189267.html

Photo Essay: " Haiti, Hope and Heartbreak"

http://motherjones.com/photoessays/2011/01/haiti-mark-murrmann

"Compassion for the Other"

"Compassion for the other comes out of our ability to accept ourselves. Until we realize both our own weaknesses and our own privileges, we can never tolerate lack of status and depth of weakness in the other."

- Joan Chittister

From Sojourners

"Big Baby" Davis Bashes Dwight Howard

“Just make him a finesse player,’’ Davis said. “He’s a great player, you know, but he’s not the hardest to guard. I think it’s easy to guard him.’’
http://www.boston.com/sports/basketball/celtics/articles/2011/01/18/pierce_wasnt_late_to_help_out/


D. Howard C 43:08 10-19 13-18 0-0 -6 5 13 3 0 1 3 1 33

U2: "Bad"

U2: "Pride in the Name of Love"

Cage the Elephant: "Back Against the Wall"

"Guess I'm a coward scared to face the man I am."

Who Knew? Rules for Raising Daughters

[But, help may be at hand, thanks to a group of private girls' school headteachers who next month will publish a book offering tips on how to raise daughters. However, experts are questioning the value of advice from those working in the sheltered world of independent schools...

[But not everyone believes that people such as Dr Wright, who is head of £28,950-a-year St Mary's Calne boarding school in Wiltshire, are best qualified to comment on most parents' experience of bringing up girls in Britain...

Davina McCall, Broadcaster

"Girls are fabulous and complicated; I've had extraordinary luck with my mother. The trick is to make women feel confident and imbue them with respect for the world around them."

Martha Lane FoxOnline entrepreneur

"The worst thing you can do is give them a false self. I see it a lot in boarding schools where girls arrive independent and diverse and all end up the same: wearing the same clothes and having the same expressions. That's a catastrophe. What you want to do is encourage difference."]

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/here-come-the-girls-how-to-bring-up-daughters-2185727.html

Allah Akbar Algebra

Despite fevered fetishes of American exceptionalists, what exists now has a foundation on what came before, and much of what we consider "modern" came from Baghdad.  Ignorant savages indeed.

[The story begins in AD830. The place: The House of Wisdom, Baghdad, Persia in the Islamic Golden Age. Works from around the world were brought to Baghdad for translation. Scholars of Babylonian astronomy, Indian numbers and Greek mathematics all came to the richest city in the world to embrace its powerful intellectual culture. A paper mill had been built in the city, and due to this minor industrial revolution, there was a proliferation of books and libraries.

Mohammad Bin Musa Al-Khwarizmi was the father of algebra. He introduced the idea of the zero (brought from India) as a place-holder in arithmetic, which give our calculations their columns of hundreds, tens and units. He also wrote the book that probably changed our world as much as any other: Hisab al-jabr wa al-muqabala, which translates as "The Compendious Book on Calculation by Completion and Balancing". From al-jabr came the word "algebra".

The study of al-jabr progressed in the East, but it took hundreds of years for the scholars of western Europe to advance. Most notable of those who took the Lady Algebra to her next incarnation was Leonardo of Pisa, more commonly known as Fibonacci (c1170-1250).

Fibonacci, the most talented western mathematician of the Middle Ages, spread throughout Europe the use of the Hindu-Arabic numeral system, the system we use today. He also showed that new methods could be used to find solutions of some cubic equations, something that many students still learn, but which, at the time, was a stupendous advance.

The essence of algebra is solving or "reducing" equations to their simplest form. Taking away the confusion and the noise, and making sense of it all. To do that, we have to find specific methods. These methods are known as algorithms – the Latin and English corruption of al-Khwarizmi's name. You can try to solve algebraic equations in different ways. Guessing at solutions, for instance, is one way. It is possible, if you try for long enough, to guess the exact solution of a simple equation. Another way to find a solution is by means of geometric construction. The Greeks favoured this. But it is the invention of further algorithms that has driven, and will continue to drive forward, the language of algebra.]
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/carol-vorderman-when-x--y--z-the-goddess-algebra-smiles-and-i-worship-her-2185633.html

Haiti: Lack of Potable Water and World Cares Naught

[Port-au-Prince, Haiti -- On a Sunday afternoon in Camp Kasim, water is nowhere to be found. Once the Oxfam-supplied tanks run dry for the weekend, they will not be refilled until Monday. If cholera were to strike on a Sunday, life-saving rehydration may be but a theoretical possibility.


The cholera epidemic, which has now claimed the lives of over 3,000 people, is only the most recent and urgent symptom of a larger and ongoing violation of the right to water in Haiti. Cholera represents a special threat to the one million internally displaced people (IDPs) living in camps that often lack access to water and toilets.


For cholera, a disease that is waterborne and kills by dehydration, access to clean water is imperative to both prevention and treatment. Despite this, the cholera response has not led to significant improvements in access to clean water.]
http://www.alternet.org/story/149504/haiti_still_lacks_safe_drinking_water_and_the_international_community_is_partly_to_blame

"Chicken" McNuggets: Half Chicken, Half Stuff

[Do you put dimethylpolysiloxane, an anti-foaming agent made of silicone, in your chicken dishes? How about tertiary butylhydroquinone (TBHQ), a chemical preservative so deadly just five grams can kill you?

These are just two of the ingredients in a McDonald's Chicken McNugget. Only 50 percent of a McNugget is actually chicken. The other half includes corn derivatives, sugars, leavening agents and completely synthetic ingredients.

There's no doubt processed food like that from McDonald's is not part of a healthful diet, and I'm grateful I've never had a chicken McNugget. But man {most}y Americans cannot say the same.

This sentiment was echoed by Federal Judge Robert Sweet in a lawsuit against the restaurant chain in 2003: "Chicken McNuggets, rather than being merely chicken fried in a pan, are a McFrankenstein creation of various elements not utilized by the home cook."

Time Magazine reported that Judge Sweet "questioned whether customers understood the risks of eating McDonald's chicken over regular chicken."

Seven years later, I still wonder whether McDonald's customers truly understand the risks of consuming fast food on a regular basis.] emphasis added
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-mercola/whats-infast-food_b_805190.html?utm_source=DailyBrief&utm_campaign=011311&utm_medium=email&utm_content=BlogEntry&utm_term=Daily+Brief

"What can mere mortals do to me?"

[When hard pressed, I cried to the LORD;
  he brought me into a spacious place. 
The LORD is with me; I will not be afraid.
  What can mere mortals do to me?]

Psalm 118:5,6

Habitat for Humanity: Building Haiti

On January 12, 2010, an earthquake with a magnitude of 7.0 struck the Caribbean nation of Haiti just 10 miles west of the capital, Port-au-Prince. The earthquake damaged nearly 190,000 houses, of which 105,000 were completely destroyed. Of the more than two million affected survivors, 1.3 million are still displaced today."  (emphasis added)
http://www.habitat.org/disaster/active_programs/haiti_earthquake.aspx?tr=y&auid=7610872