AVATARS AND THE WALLS THEY BUILD

Digital Domain - A Strong Password Isn’t the Strongest Security - NYTimes.com:

"“These requirements keep out the good guys without deterring the bad guys,” he said."

Although about passwords for digital access, believe the same logic presented by this author also applies to the debate over immigrants entering our country illegally; the building of a wall as a structure physically difficult to scale, or using a  set of technological systems creating a virtual wall difficult to penetrate unnoticed, along the border seemingly the preferred choice with the majority of those outspoken.

The biggest mistake we make is forgetting, if not outright dismissing, the fact that United States of America is a nation carved from land and currently ruled by  the succeeding  generations of immigrants who were not the first inhabitants;  immigrants who appeared uninvited, fully armed with offerings of cheap beads as gifts,  prepared having no intention of leaving.

The second mistake is believing building a wall is a solution.  The best example of why a wall won't work is to ask another question:

What wall ever built during all of man's history endured the test of time..strong enough...having never failed?  

It has been my observation while reading books and documentaries about man's history, the higher the walls built , the more extreme the violence suffered by those so determined protecting only their own interest, more complete the finality,  more quickly evidences of existence erased, more quickly forgotten over time, once their defenses fail.

If our ancestors, Europeans mostly until calling America home, were willing to risk their lives crossing the great ocean divide for a chance at a better life; why would Latin Americans be any different?  Why would they wait to be welcomed into our country if there were no incentives to stay where they were?  With guns being so readily available from our side of the border, why would they not  bring violence back into our country using  same guns purchased here legally? 

W.A.S.P. well on their way to being the new minority; where's the incentive/precedence for our wishes to be respected;  to be treated any different than America's original inhabitants, before discovered and claimed for Kings and Queens financing the expeditions, by Europeans  chasing PROFITS believing themselves serving GOD's will? 

Literature flourishes bes, W.R. Inge | Dictionary.com

"Literature flourishes best when it is half a trade and half an art."

Inside the Minds of Animals / Baby and a Kitten

"There's a world of difference between a baby and a kitten!"
-Republican, Religious Right DVM-


"That's what we keep telling ourselves."
-Liberal, B. H. DVM-

Believe the mistake made is our focus on what makes us different from all other animal; stated more broadly, anything that's living.  We wrongly interpret these differences allowing some degree of control over our destination as superior;  believing ourselves an exception, excused, not part of the equation/balance that is THE LAW of NATURE.

Inside the Minds of Animals - TIME: "Humans have a fraught relationship with beasts. They are our companions and our chattel, our family members and our laborers, our household pets and our household pests. We love them and cage them, admire them and abuse them. And, of course, we cook and eat them.
Our dodge — a not unreasonable one — has always been that animals are ours to do with as we please simply because they don't suffer the way we do. They don't think, not in any meaningful way. They don't worry. They have no sense of the future or their own mortality. They may pair-bond, but they don't love. For all we know, they may not even be conscious. 'The reason animals do not speak as we do is not that they lack the organs,' René Descartes once said, 'but that they have no thoughts.' For many people, the Bible offers the most powerful argument of all. Human beings were granted 'dominion over the beasts of the field,' and there the discussion can more or less stop"

Inside the Minds of Animals / Charity

Inside the Minds of Animals - TIME: "A 2008 study by primatologist Frans de Waal and others at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center in Atlanta showed that when capuchin monkeys were offered a choice between two tokens — one that would buy two slices of apple and one that would buy one slice each for them and a partner monkey — they chose the generous option, provided the partner was a relative or at least familiar. The Yerkes team believes that part of the capuchins' behavior was due to a simple sense of pleasure they experience in giving, an idea consistent with studies of the human brain that reveal activity in the reward centers after subjects give to charity."

Inside the Minds of Animals - TIME

Inside the Minds of Animals - TIME: "a zoologist at the University of Cambridge — the aptly named Christopher Bird — found that the rook, a member of the crow family, could reason through how to drop stones into a pitcher partly filled with water in order to raise the level high enough to drink from it. What's more, the rooks selected the largest stones first, apparently realizing they would raise the level faster. Aesop wrote a tale about a bird that managed just such a task more than 2,500 years ago, but it took 21st century scientists to show that the feat is no fable."

How Pakistan's Floods Have Made Women Dangerously Visible - TIME

How Pakistan's Floods Have Made Women Dangerously Visible - TIME: "Parda, which is also spelled 'purdah' and means 'curtain' in Urdu, is the practice of shielding women from men they are not directly related to, both through physical segregation and through the custom of modesty, that is, with the women wearing clothing to conceal their shape. It is observed by many women in rural areas of Pakistan, including in the majority-Pathan northern belt bordering Afghanistan. In these parts, a family's honor is often tied to the chastity and obedience of its women — and protecting and defending the honor of women from verbal and physical harm is part of an ancient code of honor and revenge. But the code is all too often taken to extremes. Barely a week goes by without stories appearing in the Pakistani media about an enraged male — from across Pakistan's multiethnic spectrum — who has killed his female relative or relatives for some perceived infringement of 'honor.' For women adhering to Parda, it's usually easier and safer for them to simply remain secluded in their homes."

Racial violence changes student — and school - U.S. news - msnbc.com

Racial violence changes student — and school - U.S. news - msnbc.com: "Duong Ly speaks dispassionately, expressing no racial animosity, when asked to explain how fellow students could commit such vicious attacks.

'Because they live in a violent environment,' he suggests. 'Maybe their parents have problems and troubles, so they want to express their anger by violence.'

His father also declines to condemn the attackers. 'In Vietnam,' he says, 'the original Vietnamese people don't like us because we are a different ethnicity. People from the countryside who move to the city get discrimination from city people. It's the same here. They don't have an understanding about who we are. Discrimination happens in every society.'"

"If you're that angry and frustrated about something that your behavior manifests itself that way, what are we not addressing as a school, as a community?" asks Hackney. "As African-Americans, we can't forget our own struggle to the point that we become what we fought so hard against."

What would you do: teen golfer disqualifies self, gives up medal - Devil Ball Golf - Golf - Yahoo! Sports

What would you do: teen golfer disqualifies self, gives up medal - Devil Ball Golf - Golf  - Yahoo! Sports: "Now, it's easy to go and tee off -- pun very much intended -- on golf's drop-the-hammer rules, on Wood for bringing the extra club to Nash's attention, or to Nash himself for failing to count the club. But all that misses the point. This is a story about honesty and doing what's right, even when what's right makes zero logical sense. Sure, Nash could have rationalized away keeping an extra club, but where's the honor in that?
Congrats to Nash for standing up and doing the right thing, no matter what the cost. And hopefully there are much bigger medals waiting for him down the line."

MADRASAH: Word Origin & History

madrasah

Arabic

 lit. "a place of study,"

from loc. prefix ma- + stem of darasa "he read repeatedly, he studied."

Online Etymology Dictionary,

© 2010 Douglas Harper

***

Among Western countries post-9/11, the Madrasas are often perceived as a place of radical revivalism with a negative connotation of anti-Americanism and radical extremism, frequently associated in the Western press with Wahhabi attitudes toward non-Muslims.

The word madrasah literally means "school" and does not imply a political or religious affiliation, radical or otherwise. They have a varied curriculum, and are not all religious. Some madrasahs in India, for example, have a secularized identity.

Although early Madrasahs were founded primarily to gain "knowledge of God" they also taught other subjects including mathematics and poetry. For example, in the Ottoman Empire, "Madrasahs had seven categories of sciences that were taught, such as: styles of writing, oral sciences like the Arabic language, grammar, rhetoric, and history and intellectual sciences, such as logic."

This is similar to the Western world, in which universities began as institutions of the Catholic church.

The Yale Center for the Study of Globalization examined bias in United States newspaper coverage of Pakistan since the September 11, 2001 attacks, and found the term has come to contain a loaded political meaning: "When articles mentioned 'madrassas,' readers were led to infer that all schools so-named are anti-American, anti-Western, pro-terrorist centers having less to do with teaching basic literacy and more to do with political indoctrination."

Various American public figures have, in recent times, used the word in a negative context, including Newt Gingrich, Donald Rumsfeld, and Colin Powell. During Soviet occupation in Afghanistan many CIA official[who?] were found involved in breeding terrorist activities in some of the madrassa schools in northern Pakistan. Those who were involved were not yet handed over to the Pakistani government to present them to courts. It was several times accepted by USA government and admitted by several involved like Donald Rumsfeld, Colon Powell, Bush Sr. etc.[citation needed]

The New York Times published a correction for misusing the word "madrassa" in a way that assumed it meant a radical Islamic school. The correction stated, "An article... said Senator Barack Obama had attended an Islamic school or madrassa in Indonesia as a child referred imprecisely to madrassas. While some (madrassas) teach a radical version of Islam, most historically have not."

(lifted from Wikipedia's article for Madrasah)

Terms and talking points containing loaded political meaning:

He's    a(n)

Socialist!

Elitist!

Arab!


Communist!


Progressive!


Fascist!

Muslim!

Why Do Heavy Drinkers Outlive Nondrinkers?

Why Do Heavy Drinkers Outlive Nondrinkers?

These are remarkable statistics. Even though heavy drinking is associated with higher risk for cirrhosis and several types of cancer (particularly cancers in the mouth and esophagus), heavy drinkers are less likely to die than don't drink, even if they never had a problem with alcohol. One important reason is that alcohol lubricates so many social interactions, and social interactions are vital for maintaining mental and physical health. As I pointed out last year, nondrinkers show greater signs of depression than those who allow themselves to join the party.

The authors of the new paper are careful to note that even if drinking is associated with longer life, it can be dangerous: it can impair your memory severely and it can lead to nonlethal falls and other mishaps (like, say, cheating on your spouse in a drunken haze) that can screw up your life. There's also the dependency issue: if you become addicted to alcohol, you may spend a long time trying to get off the bottle.

Who has ever

taken their first drink alone?   

Could it be that drinking alone just isn't fun.

Like to see them repeat this study, but this time limit the study to

MADD mothers

 including

amount of time

spent

 driving

with

cellphone in hand.

Bet you those who frequently chat on cellphone while driving live longer also; whether a moderate drinker or not!

  

Roddick and Serena Williams Find Hole in Electronic Judging System - NYTimes.com

Roddick and Serena Williams Find Hole in Electronic Judging System - NYTimes.com: "Like smoke through the keyhole of a fortified door, human outrage, however misplaced, will apparently find an outlet, no matter how tiny."

Scientist at Work - Dr. Donald A. Redelmeier - Debunking Myths of the Medical World

In the Canadian Medical Association Journal in December, Dr. Redelmeier examined University of Toronto medical school admission interview reports from 2004 to 2009. After correlating the interview scores with weather archives, he determined that candidates who interviewed on foul-weather days received ratings lower than candidates who visited on sunny days. In many cases, the difference was significant enough to influence acceptance.

Scientist at Work - Dr. Donald A. Redelmeier - Debunking Myths of the Medical World - NYTimes.com: "Often he works from a hunch."

In 1990, he and Professor Tversky published a paper in The New England Journal of Medicine showing that when physicians make a medical decision for a single hypothetical patient, they favor more expensive treatments than when making a decision for a group of hypothetical patients with similar symptoms. And in 1996 the two scientists found that increased arthritis pain had nothing to do with the weather. They attributed the misperception to the human tendency to look for patterns even where none may exist.

****

“Part of the satisfaction for Don is knowing the results stand the test of time,” Dr. Singh said.

Dr. Redelmeier’s unusual approach goes hand in hand with some pronounced personality quirks. His e-mails, which are legendary among their recipients, are written as lists, with a number assigned to each thought. Dr. Redelmeier does this, he said, in order to focus on the content of a message rather than get distracted by grammar, punctuation and syntax.  

“I remember the first time I got one, I was a little offended,” Dr. Singh said. “I’d never gotten an e-mail not written in a paragraphed format. Yet he addressed everything I needed to know.”

  ****

Not everyone has unconditional admiration for Dr. Redelmeier’s work. Professor Tibshirani, for instance, has reservations about some of Dr. Redelmeier’s choices, and declined to collaborate on the Academy Awards study.

“I honestly thought it was frivolous, and we’ve argued about it,” Professor Tibshirani said. He also questioned the Election Day research. “Of course there’s more traffic, so it seemed self-evident,“ he said.

That perspective amuses rather than offends Dr. Redelmeier. When asked about it via e-mail, he responded within one of his numbered missives:

15) I sometimes tell a joke to tackle the issue

16) that is, about people’s ability to judge “frivolity”

17) namely, imagine Charles Darwin 150 years ago

18) at the time he disappointed his father by neglecting medical training

19) and asked, instead, to go on a two-year vacation in the tropics

20) with an emphasis on bird watching (finches)

21) the father was not impressed and thought the son was wasting his time

Another Redelmeier philosophical pearl is:

“Do not get trapped into prior thoughts.

It’s perfectly O.K. to change your mind

as you learn more.”

ONCE IN COLOR, YOU NEVER WANT TO GO BACK TO BLACK AND WHITE

Bleeding Heart of an Humanist: GERMANS IN THE WOODS

World English Dictionary


humanism (ˈhjuːməˌnɪzəm)

— n

1. the denial of any power or moral value superior to that of humanity; the rejection of religion in favour of a belief in the advancement of humanity by its own efforts

2. a philosophical position that stresses the autonomy of human reason in contradistinction to the authority of the Church

3. ( often capital ) a cultural movement of the Renaissance, based on classical studies

4. interest in the welfare of people

'humanist

— n

human'istic

— adj

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition

2009 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins

Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009

"Money" - Liza Minnelli, Joel Grey

Op-Ed Columnist - The Billionaires Bankrolling the Tea Party - NYTimes.com

Op-Ed Columnist - The Billionaires Bankrolling the Tea Party - NYTimes.com: "The New Yorker article stirred up the right, too. Some of Mayer’s blogging detractors unwittingly upheld the premise of her article (titled “Covert Operations”) by conceding that they have been Koch grantees. None of them found any factual errors in her 10,000 words. Many of them tried to change the subject to George Soros, the billionaire backer of liberal causes. But Soros is a publicity hound who is transparent about where he shovels his money. And like many liberals — selflessly or foolishly, depending on your point of view — he supports causes that are unrelated to his business interests and that, if anything, raise his taxes."

9/11 The Falling Man

Dyeing dogs in China takes off - CNN.com

Link to video on the growing popularity in China of dyeing dogs.

Dyeing dogs in China takes off - CNN.com:

"'I think he loves it,' says Li. 'Since he's been dyed, he gets lots of love and attention.'"

 

"Why didn't they just get a fucking panda!  Putting that poor dog through all that unnecessary stress just for the owners amusement!"  My first reaction on seeing this video.  "Such a friendly happy dog!  Who wouldn't give it lots of love and attention!"

But it was a happy friendly dog; one that seems to be enjoying the extra attention as if never enough.  So....for that dog...even if owner's motive did not have the dogs best interest in mind....I'm happy; the dye job having a net positive effect for the dog.

Like to believe would still have been a happy friendly dog receiving lots of love and attention, had the owners been embarassed with a bad dye job.

Blair: Bush world view had 'immense simplicity' - CNN.com

Blair: Bush world view had 'immense simplicity' - CNN.com: "Detailing the close professional and personal relationship which developed between the two leaders in the wake of the 2001 terror attacks in the U.S. and during the build-up to the Iraq war in 2003, Blair writes that Bush was 'very smart' while having 'immense simplicity in how he saw the world.'
'Right or wrong, it led to decisive leadership... he sincerely believed in spreading freedom and democracy,' he writes in 'A Journey;' which hit book stores in the UK on Wednesday.
But Blair, whose premiership overlapped the presidencies of Bush and Bill Clinton, reserves his warmest words for Bush's Democratic predecessor, describing him as a 'political soulmate' and 'the most formidable politician I had ever encountered.' He also defends Clinton over the Monica Lewinsky affair."

BILL AND MONICA AND PEPPERONI

Blair: Bush world view had 'immense simplicity' - CNN.com:

"But Clinton's greatest political strength was an 'endless ability for rapport with ordinary people... and to be fascinated even by the most unfascinating people because he was always willing to learn from them.'

Blair also suggests Clinton's affair with Lewinsky may have arisen in part from
his 'inordinate interest in and curiosity about people.'
'In respect of men, it was expressed in friendship;
 in respect of women, there was potentially a
sexual element. And in that, I doubt he is much different from most of the male population.'"