May 1, 2011 archive

Professor Fired for “Offending Baptist Beliefs”

Some stories are more painful than others.  Sometimes that’s because I can imagine the hurt if I were the person involved.  But the more painful ones are the ones that dredge up memories of past hurts.

A recap:  In 1992 I began my transition from male to female as a tenured college professor at a state university in Arkansas.  That did not go particularly well.  There was a lot of pain involved.  But by the end of 1994 my transition was over and, amazing thing, I still had my job.

Now to the story at hand.  Rachel Tudor was a college professor at Southeastern Oklahoma State University in Durant, Oklahoma.  “Was” is the operative word.  She has been denied tenure and will be terminated effective May 31, 2011.

Meet the right royal scroungers

http://socialistworker.org.uk/…

Now that The Wedding is over (I didn’t watch), it might be fun to take a look at what the Royals are raking in from the British public.

Although we’re told Kate made quite the fetching bride, her averice appears to be in keeping with the Royals standards.

Six In The Morning

Costly Afghanistan Road Project Is Marred by Unsavory Alliances



By ALISSA J. RUBIN and JAMES RISEN

Published: May 1, 2011


GARDEZ, Afghanistan – When construction crews faced attacks while working on a major American-financed highway here in southeastern Afghanistan, Western contractors turned to a powerful local figure named simply Arafat, who was suspected to have links to Afghanistan’s insurgents.

Subcontractors, flush with American money, paid Mr. Arafat at least $1 million a year to keep them safe, according to people involved in the project and Mr. Arafat himself.

Six In The Morning

Costly Afghanistan Road Project Is Marred by Unsavory Alliances



By ALISSA J. RUBIN and JAMES RISEN

Published: May 1, 2011


GARDEZ, Afghanistan – When construction crews faced attacks while working on a major American-financed highway here in southeastern Afghanistan, Western contractors turned to a powerful local figure named simply Arafat, who was suspected to have links to Afghanistan’s insurgents.

Subcontractors, flush with American money, paid Mr. Arafat at least $1 million a year to keep them safe, according to people involved in the project and Mr. Arafat himself.

On Universities And Such, Or, If Obama’s A Kettle, Is Donald Trump Black?

Just about 40 seconds after (Yes, He’s Actually The) President Barack Obama brought forth his Certificate of Live Birth unto the world Donald Trump was accusing Obama of somehow sneaking his way into some University or another.

If Trump’s to be believed, Obama was a terrible student at a College, and then he somehow snuck his way into a University; after that he basically grifted his way into becoming the President of the Harvard Law Review.

Trump would tell you that he’s a hustler, that Obama is, and we’ve got to do whatever it takes to figure out what kind of semi-illegal shenanigans Obama’s University experience was all about.

But here’s the thing: Donald Trump has his own history of semi-illegal University shenanigans-and it appears that some of his semi-illegal shenanigans continue to this very day.

Cartnoon

Sylvester and Tweety MysteriesPlatinum Wheel of Fortune, Episode 2, Part 2

The Internationale

Arise ye workers from your slumbers

Arise ye prisoners of want

For reason in revolt now thunders

And at last ends the age of cant.

Away with all your superstitions

Servile masses arise, arise

We’ll change henceforth the old tradition

And spurn the dust to win the prize.

So comrades, come rally

And the last fight let us face

The Internationale unites the human race.

No more deluded by reaction

On tyrants only we’ll make war

The soldiers too will take strike action

They’ll break ranks and fight no more

And if those cannibals keep trying

To sacrifice us to their pride

They soon shall hear the bullets flying

We’ll shoot the generals on our own side.

So comrades, come rally

And the last fight let us face

The Internationale unites the human race.

No saviour from on high delivers

No faith have we in prince or peer

Our own right hand the chains must shiver

Chains of hatred, greed and fear

E’er the thieves will out with their booty

And give to all a happier lot.

Each at the forge must do their duty

And we’ll strike while the iron is hot.

So comrades, come rally

And the last fight let us face

The Internationale unites the human race.

A DocuDharma tradition.

Tracking Elevator

It’s good for what ails you!

Late Night Karaoke

Bamyan Heart of All Hazaras

Bamyan Heart of All Hazaras

Asia heart of world,Afghanistan heart of Asia,Hazarajat heart of Afghanistan,Bamyan Heart of All Hazaras in world,these boys are belongs to Bamyan.look at there friendship they don’t think about bout there Poverty.they need your help.

Photo and caption by Jamail Haider.

92% of Americans prefer Swedish distribution of wealth.

The mal-distribution of wealth in the United States is at all time highs.  A 2005 study conducted before the largest financial theft in history showed that (1) Americans overwhelmingly prefer a fairer distribution of wealth, and (2) they don’t know how badly wealth is currently distributed.  Here’s the pdf.

The study’s 5,522 participants were randomly selected from a panel of one million people, and were representative of adult Americans in terms of sex ratio, incomes, political leanings (Bush vs. Kerry voters), and geography.  Each participant was given the same definition of wealth:

“Wealth, also known as net worth, is defined as the total value of everything someone owns minus any debt that he or she owes. A person’s net worth includes his or her bank account savings plus the value of other things such as property, stocks, bonds, art, collections, etc., minus the value of things like loans and mortgages.”

Participants were then given a preference test using unlabeled pie charts showing different distributions of wealth across five quintiles.

Americans Prefer Sweden

For the first task, we created three unlabeled pie charts of wealth distributions, one of which depicted a perfectly equal distribution of wealth. Unbeknownst to respondents, a second distribution reflected the wealth distribution in the United States; in order to create a distribution with a level of inequality that clearly fell in between these two charts, we constructed a third pie chart from the income distribution of Sweden (Figure 1).2 We presented respondents with the three pair-wise combinations of these pie charts (in random order) and asked them to choose which nation they would rather join given a “Rawls constraint” for determining a just society (Rawls, 1971):

“In considering this question, imagine that if you joined this nation, you would be randomly assigned to a place in the distribution, so you could end up anywhere in this distribution, from the very richest to the very poorest.”

Here are the results of the pair-wise preference tests (with labels now added to the graphs):

The Week in Editorial Cartoons – So, Who’s the Hair Apparent Now? (Special Appeal)

Crossposted at Daily Kos and The Stars Hollow Gazette



GOP Hair Apparent by Pat Bagley, Salt Lake Tribune, Buy this cartoon

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Note: Sections 1-4 contain dozens of additional editorial cartoons and commentary.  I’m not sure why but I was getting the below error when trying to post the complete diary.  Check out the remaining portions of the diary at Daily Kos.

java.sql.SQLException: Incorrect string value: ‘xC2x8CxC2xA9=1…’ for column ‘extendedText’ at row 1