Prometheus 6

A Wall of Wisdom for my eldest daughter (help needed)
October 31, 2007 By: Lester Spence Category: black family, announcements

My daughter turns 13 next week. A teenager.

What my wife and I are interested in doing is building a “wall of wisdom”. A collection of ideas and sayings from people we’ve come across in our physical and virtual sojourn.

If you could tell a teenager one thing, what would it be? Because we’re actually building something we’d like whatever you write to be short enough to put on a note card of some sort.

Oh. Feel free to link to this…I’m interested in getting responses from as many people as I can.

As it turns out, the most important thing I had to get my daughter to understand, and the hardest, was "Your father loves you such that he won't kill you over a mistake, no matter how big you think it is." I don't know if that's the sort of thing he's looking for...

LETTER FROM CYBERSPACE
Tribune reporter Howard Witt hasn't seen a reaction to a story quite like the one he got after writing about a controversy in the small Texas town of Paris
Published March 26, 2007, 8:57 PM CDT

Mr. Witt earned a little celebrity. He found a true injustice and reported it well.

That has now happened with a story I wrote two weeks ago, about a 14-year-old black girl from the small Texas town of Paris, who was sent to a youth prison for up to 7 years for shoving a hall monitor at her high school. A 14-year-old white girl, convicted of arson for burning down her family's house, was sentenced by the same Paris judge to probation.

If you had Googled the black girl's name, Shaquanda Cotton, the day before the story was published on the front page of the March 12 edition of the Tribune, you would have gotten zero results. On Monday afternoon, there were more than 35,000 hits.

I'm seeing a lot of traffic from "Shaquanda Cotton" searches over the last few days. I followed some back to the search pages. An MSN search returns 955 hits.  Got folks from Univ. of Texas System Office of Telecom. Services. The Army Information Systems Command just searched for "judge chuck superville" via Yahoo.

I got one out of google.co.uk yeaterday. International searches for Shaquanda are good things. Might be bad for American propaganda...stories about how George Bush's home state imprisons children for years over trivialities, how is he going to treat your Middle Eastern children? Oh, Shock and Awe, that's right...

Visit and link Free Shaquanda Cotton. Find nice, long comment threads and link them too. Keep the discussion alive.

Professor Kim's niece is at home.

I just saw this at Professor Kim's News Notes. The young lady's picture is linked to the Flikr page so you don't have to host the picture if you want to spread the word.

Yes. That is a hint. 

My Niece is Missing: Please help us find her

Shanice Beckham-Day “Shay”
Missing Since October 31

Age Now: 16 DOB: November 25, 1989
Race: Black
Height: 5'6"
Weight: 160 lbs
Hair Color: Reddish Brown
Eye Color: Brown
Circumstances: Shanice was last seen on October 31, 2006 in the area of Germantown Avenue and Wyneva Street in Philadelphia around midnight; she may still be in the local area.

IF YOU HAVE ANY INFORMATION
PLEASE CALL 9-1-1 OR 215-686-3353

Professor Kim has an interview with Sonya Sanchez posted today.

On Dec. 1, 2006, Sanchez and other members of the group Grannies for Peace, will go on trial at the Philadelphia Community Court on charges of "defiant trespass." The women were arrested June 28 at a downtown Philadelphia Armed Forces Recruiting Center where they refused to leave after they tried to enlist, but were rejected because of their age. Sanchez says that the women are saying to the recruiters, "Hey, take us. Don't take our children and our grandchildren!"

In this podcast, she talks about the trial, and why the need to work for peace is more urgent than ever. She advocates an immediate pullout from Iraq, greater cooperation with the United Nations, and greater emphasis on problems that threaten to destroy the planet, such as global warming.

"We're asking people to come from all over the country -- young, old, middle-aged -- to come to the courtroom in support of what we are talking about here."

The trial will be held at Philadelphia Community Court, at 1401 Arch Street, on the second floor, at 8:30 am.

2006 Fort Greene Park Summer Literary Festival
Saturday, August 19th, 4:30 PM
Fort Greene Park, Brooklyn

Click here for directions!

Drawing upon the rich and diverse literary history of Fort Greene Park and its surrounding neighborhoods, The Fort Greene Park Summer Literary Festival provides a means for self-expression and creativity for area young people, and builds community through arts and literature. The Lit Fest consists of a six-week series of free Saturday creative writing workshops for young people and an end-of-summer reading featuring literary icons reading alongside our young writers. The Lit Fest honors the power of the written word to build inclusiveness and give voice to the thoughts and experiences of everyone, not just the privileged and powerful.

The Lit Fest is a project of NY Writers Coalition, the Fort Greene Park Conservancy, Akashic Books and Griot Reading Programs, with additional support from The Walt Whitman Project and BOMB Magazine.

Sponsors include NYC Council Member Letitia James, Con Edison, Time Warner, Emmanuel Baptist Church, Independence Community Foundation, the Brooklyn Arts Council through a grant received from the NY State Council For The Arts, Poets & Writers, Inc. through public funds from the NYC Dept. of Cultural Affairs, and the NYC Department of Parks & Recreation.

Quote of note:

"You have a lower half of the wage distribution in the United States that has not experienced any income gains for a long time now," said Barry P. Bosworth, an economist at the liberal-leaning Brookings Institution. "But from a macro perspective this doesn't have much impact."

Even as the average worker's wages are stuck in neutral, corporate profits, professionals' incomes, gains from investments and executive compensation - the kind that frequently comes in the form of stock options - are all surging, supporting healthy gains in the economy.

How Long Can Workers Tread Water?
By EDUARDO PORTER

Quote of note:

Yet, the looming question is what the 68-year-old Mr. Powell, who served in the military for 35 years and rose to the rank of four-star general, can offer a venture capital firm that specializes in the financing of biotechnology start-ups and technology companies like Google and Netscape Communications, to name two of its more successful investments.

Seriously...it's like an insurance company hiring a ex-football star.

Mr. Powell has successfully ascended to Brahmin class. I'm impressed.

Off the World Stage, Taking a Role in Venture Capitalism
By GARY RIVLIN

Going through the headlines in the dread RSS reader, I started to read this

What Happened in Ohio
I don't usually let other people do my thinking for me, but I confess I'd been waiting for Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) to tell me what to think about the voting irregularities that marred the November elections in Ohio.

when this

Accepting Politics In Science
The Bush administration has been hammered over the past few years by accusations that it is "politicizing science," especially through the practice of stacking advisory panels with political partisans. For instance, in 2002 a professor at the University of New Mexico claimed that an invitation to join the National Advisory Council on Drug Abuse was rescinded when he failed to express to an agency official his support for President Bush.

caught my eye. Given that I feel bad and incomplete data can screw the best of intentions, and given that I feel that is the Bushista plan all along I thought I'd give it a read.

As of this writing I haven't read either op-ed. I got...distracted

S. Africa as Seen in a Mirror
A reporter returns a decade after apartheid's fall to find blacks and whites taking different roles in a country with pride in its transition.
By Scott Kraft
Times Staff Writer

…As a correspondent in South Africa from 1988 to 1993, I watched the dying breaths of apartheid: The failed attempt to force blacks into autonomous "homelands." The dismantling of laws imposing racial separation. The week in 1990 that the African National Congress was unbanned and its leader, Nelson Mandela, freed. And I returned in 1994 when the black four-fifths of South Africa's 45 million people got their first chance to cast a free vote.

When I returned again recently, I found a country that, at first, felt and looked familiar. The haze of coal smoke and mining dust still carpeted the mile-high metropolis of Johannesburg. The combis, vans packed with black commuters, still speeded to and from the sprawling township of Soweto. Thickets of squatter shacks still pressed against the road from Cape Town's airport to Table Mountain. And the singular beauty of this land, from its shimmering veld to its pristine beaches, was undiminished.

But, on closer inspection, it was clear that 10 years of black majority rule had brought profound change. An aggressive affirmative action program had lifted blacks into private industry and swelled the black middle class. All-white schools had become predominantly black schools. All-white suburbs were deeply integrated.

What was equally remarkable, though, was what the black majority had not done. It had not used its new upper hand to crush the white minority. It had not taken property from whites or jailed leaders of the former regime. It had not erased the achievements of white rulers from its history books. In fact, the victors had displayed a confidence and magnanimity rarely seen in post-revolutionary societies.

Race once dominated conversations here. But no longer. Today, South Africans complain most frequently about crime, and they've built higher security walls and hired more private guards. They criticize the government's mishandling of the AIDS epidemic that now claims 600 lives a day. They lament the persistent poverty, fed by an unemployment rate of more than 20% — twice that, by some estimates.

And, when asked, they look back in surprise that their country has undergone a peaceful transition from black oppression to multiracial democracy.

I get the whole Stargate SG-1 series on DVD and what does the Sci Fi Channel do?

TO: Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff
Dr. Elizabeth Weir, Stargate Command
General George Hammond, USAF

On behalf of the people of the United States, I congratulate you and the Stargate SG-1 team for discovering the hidden Antarctic base of the Ancients, the creators of the Stargates. We now possess the knowledge to travel farther through the cosmos than ever before.

Dr. Weir is assembling an elite team to explore — for the first time — outside our own galaxy. The Stargate Command group currently in Antarctica is already discovering unique new technologies that will aid us as we strike out to the Pegasus Galaxy and beyond.

Yet we must remember this: With all these boundless possibilities will come new threats. Is the balance of risk worth it? I wholeheartedly say yes. And if I may add, I envy those about to embark on the adventure of a lifetime.

July 15th is the series premiere. Will I watch this? Is a bear Catholic? Does the Pope sh…wait, that's not right…

In 1920 The Nation published an article by James Weldon Johnson titled Self-Determining Haiti: The American Occupation . That article is up on Africana.com, with an introduction by Professor Kim Pearson.

N. Gregory Mankiw, President Bush's chief economist, who stirred controversy by suggesting that shipping service jobs overseas could be good for the economy, said his comments were "far from clear and were misinterpreted." Mr. Mankiw, speaking to the National Economists Club, said nothing he said should have been construed "as praising U.S. job losses." Any lost job "is an awful experience" for workers and their families, he said, adding that he had learned from his misstep that "economists and noneconomists speak very different languages."

If "National Black United Fund" is too general, you can

• Get with one of the local affiliates
• Pick a particular member of the collective that focuses on an issue you find critical.

I found this thoroughly misnamed but very interesting collection of factoids at the National Black United Fund web site.

The National Black United Fund moves into the Good Causes box for Black History Month.

Islamic Relief is taking donations to help deal with this disaster. See the column on the right.

Not to downplay the earthquake at all, but I noticed they have a fund to help out with famine in Africa, so I had to add a link to that as well. The African famine link may well become a permanent fixture.

Published: December 28, 2003

KERMAN, Iran, Dec. 27 — As rescue workers raced to the ancient city of Bam, officials there raised the death toll from its 12–second earthquake on Friday to 25,000, and worried that it could go much higher.

The interior minister, Abdolvahed Moussavi Lari, said on state television from Bam: "The city is ruined. More than 70 percent of it is destroyed."

Tens of thousands of the injured crowded field hospitals or lay helplessly in the streets. Survivors and rescuers dug frantically to uncover those still trapped.

In Bam, Reuters reported, one man, Taher, cried over the body of his teenage son, calling out, "Wake up, wake up!" Another parent, Fatemeh, 35, mourned her two children, saying, "I am burying myself in this grave."

Aftershocks jolted the area, shaking down the already crumbled low–rise dwellings of clay tile, brick and concrete block.

Dozens of international relief flights and supply shipments sped on their way, transporting everything from skilled rescue workers to water purification tablets. The United States said it was sending tons of medical supplies in a military airlift, as well as rescue squads and medical teams.

Most rescue workers were flying here to Kerman, to make their way by land to Bam, 120 miles to the southeast.

Iradj Sharifi, rector of the faculty of medicine in Kerman, said that in the pre–dawn earthquake, "Five thousand people were killed on the spot and there are 20,000 people under the rubble."

Brigadier Mohammadi, commander of the army in southeastern Iran, told state television, "We need help — otherwise we will be pulling corpses, not the injured, out of the rubble."

There were grim but uncertain predictions that the death toll — in a 2,000–year–old city of 80,000 people — might keep growing.

"As more bodies are pulled out, we fear that the death toll may reach as high as 40,000," said Akbar Alavi, the governor of Kerman, the provincial capital, according to The Associated Press. "An unbelievable human disaster has occurred."

I wasn't going to do this yet. But you start reading and listening and thinking…

My gay community ain't as big as it used to be. Not like it was ever that vast, and a significant chunk of it was lipstick lesbians anyway. It's more like I went this way and they went that way. So most of the people I've lost to AIDS weren't gay. The gay folks I knew established some discipline, fast.

And actually, if you don't care about gay folks getting AIDS, you wouldn't much care about the other folks I lost either. Hangout crew, street people, ex-junkies that cleaned up too late, but didn't find out for a couple of years.

I would say it doesn't matter WHAT you think. But it does. I know a guy who's HIV positive that didn't tell anyone for years. He didn't want to deal with the exile status. His girl found out later, and that sucks to the point I wanted to smack him.

He should have told her. But we all could have made it easier.

You don't have to be afraid of people who are HIV positive. You don't have to be afraid of people with AIDS. If you could catch it from just being around them, we'd all have it.

People with AIDS aren't evil. Some have been foolish, or unknowledgeable or just lied to. But they're not evil, and AIDS is no more a punishment than the flu…and a lot harder to catch than the flu.

I don't know if there's a lot of good biochemical news about AIDS. But I do know if we all weren't so stupid, frightened or closed-minded, there could be a lot less bad news on the personal tip.

W.H.O. Aims to Treat 3 Million for AIDS
By LAWRENCE K. ALTMAN

The World Health Organization called on developing countries yesterday to train and organize 100,000 health care and nonprofessional workers to carry out its plan to begin delivering antiretroviral drugs to three million AIDS patients by the end of 2005.

The organization, a United Nations agency, said 6 million of the 40 million people infected with the AIDS virus were in immediate need of antiretroviral treatment, but that only about 480,000 were receiving it.

The new program, which the organization said would cost at least $5.5 billion, is intended to reach half those in need by the end of 2005 ? two million more than would be reached by then without such a program.

In issuing a more detailed framework for its program, to coincide with World AIDS Day today, the organization also recommended four combinations of antiretroviral drugs that countries could use to start treatment. The list was vastly simplified from the 35 possible combinations the organization had recommended previously. All four combinations have been proved effective, though none include the powerful protease inhibitor drugs that are often prescribed in the United States and other wealthy countries.

Just so I don't forget, December 1, 2003 is World AIDS day.

The button in the Good Causes box on the right will take you to a British site where you can discover if you are HIV prejudiced. Of course, YOU'RE not prejudiced, right? You don't need to take the test or find out the facts about AIDS, right?

Right?

Source: American Diabetes Association
Publication date: 2003-11-20

Buckwheat 'controls diabetes'

BBC News

November 19, 2003

A type of herb called buckwheat may be beneficial in the management of diabetes, say researchers.

Extracts of the seed lowered blood glucose levels by up to 19% when it was fed to diabetic rats.

Scientists at the University of Manitoba in Canada say diabetics should consider including the grain in their diet, or taking dietary supplements.

The study, part funded by the food industry, is published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.

A food that could actively reduce blood glucose levels could be a real breakthrough.

You've seen the link to the American Diabetes Association on the right there. I'm not an official advocate or anything but Denis Bustin of the Massachusetts General Hospital Center for Diabetes Research left a comment two days ago that I thought I'd put on the front page:

I also noticed that right now, Equal® (the artificial sweetener guys) are matching donations made through 12/31/2004 up to a maximum of $50,000.


And since diabetes is as big a deal in Native American circles as Black circles, I thought I'd mention they have a Diabetes and Native Americans page.

Aaron at Uppity-Negro, attempts to shame the devil and instead invokes a reified Chaos Deity.

See the upper right and consider yourselves so urged.

Are you reading the RSS feed? then here:

October is
National Breast Cancer Awareness Month

I'm only being so obliging because I'm rather fond of breastesses. For technical reasons, I'll be clicking next month, but I'm sure they'll find that acceptable.

CORRECTION: Click now, cash donation next month.

Not only have I answered the call, fugging up my achromaticity in the process, I've shaved off the little white corners that annoy Aaron so much. Download it from my site yourself, tough guy.

Furthermore, equally good causes can get equally good placement. Being beyond time and all that, someone's gonna have to tell me about these things and if I see them and call them Good, I shall exalt them.