August 2015 archive

The Breakfast Club (Traveling Music)

breakfast beers photo breakfastbeers.jpgOne of the things about traveling is that a lot of your time is taken up by- well, traveling.

If you have a job in a cubicle or on a line and your input is just another unit of labor this is not usually a hardship as your temporary replacement will generally handle the routine minutia and while you may find a big pile of “too difficult” waiting on your return at least it’s not a huge backlog of EVERYTHING!

As a photon artist, particularly one working in the ephemeral field of politics, policy, news, and cultural criticism that I do, for many years I rarely left my desk for more than 12 or 18 hours in a row and all my other ambitions had to be accomplished in that time frame.

The tyrany of deadlines.

Now, upon advice from my therapist and others, I have adopted a more relaxed attitude though each mark missed still evokes torrents of self recrimination.

Yesterday was such a day.  I was up at the crack of dawn (which is still cracking pretty early where I am), wrote 2 pieces, and set up the page.  I spent the rest of the day (all 16 hours or so) traveling and visiting.  Was it fun?  Sure, but last night while I was busy not sleeping all I could think about was the fact I’d forgotten to put up a Cartnoon.

I’ll bet you didn’t even notice.

But that’s my craziness.  It puts me in mind though, that in times not so long ago people would disappear for months (or 10 years in the case of Odysseus) and literally sail off the end of the Earth (did I mention I had no cell service?).

Today’s Art Music is mostly about such a person, Sinbad, who not only did that, but did it repeatedly.  The stories of his travels to distant and fantastic lands make up a large part of 1001 Nights, a collection of Arabian folk tales initially translated by Sir Richard Burton (the explorer, not the actor) who is also remembered as one of the group searching for the source of the Nile and as the first Westerner to visit Mecca.

The conceit of the Arabian Nights is that some Muckety-Muck has the habit of marrying women, spending the night with them, and then executing them in the morning.  Scheherazade is selected for this dubious distinction but rather than amorously seduce she tells stories whose cliff hanger dawn breaks led the Muckety-Muck to postpone her disposal for 1001 days at the end of which he pretty much gives up and decides to keep her around.

Needless to say this plot is a long time favorite of writers who can only aspire to be as enthralling as Scheherazade.

In 1888 Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, a member of ‘The Five’ (most influential mid-Romantic Russian composers) was at work finishing up Prince Igor, an opera by his good friend Alexander Borodin (also a member of ‘The Five’) who had just died.

Perhaps for relief from this grim task he composed Scheherazade as a symphonic poem.  No, I don’t really know the difference a symphonic poem and a symphony except these Romantics were constantly striving for pure emotional effects, structurally they’re virtually the same with 4 movements in different time signatures.

It’s a still a big hit with Figure Skaters and the Santa Clara Vanguard featured it in both their 2004 and 2014 shows.

What?  Not into DCI?  Oh well, here’s the orchestra version- Vienna Philharmonic at the Salzburg Festival 2005.

Obligatories, News and Blogs below.

On This Day In History August 29

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour a cup of your favorite morning beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

Find the past “On This Day in History” here.

August 29 is the 241st day of the year (242nd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 124 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1533, the 300 year old Inca civilization ended when Francisco Pizarro’s conquistadors strangled the last Inca Emperor, Atahuallpa.

High in the Andes Mountains of Peru, the Inca built a dazzling empire that governed a population of 12 million people. Although they had no writing system, they had an elaborate government, great public works, and a brilliant agricultural system. In the five years before the Spanish arrival, a devastating war of succession gripped the empire. In 1532, Atahuallpa’s army defeated the forces of his half-brother HuÁscar in a battle near Cuzco. Atahuallpa was consolidating his rule when Pizarro and his 180 soldiers appeared.

In 1531, Pizarro sailed down to Peru, landing at Tumbes. He led his army up the Andes Mountains and on November 15, 1532, reached the Inca town of Cajamarca, where Atahuallpa was enjoying the hot springs in preparation for his march on Cuzco, the capital of his brother’s kingdom. Pizarro invited Atahuallpa to attend a feast in his honor, and the emperor accepted. Having just won one of the largest battles in Inca history, and with an army of 30,000 men at his disposal, Atahuallpa thought he had nothing to fear from the bearded white stranger and his 180 men. Pizarro, however, planned an ambush, setting up his artillery at the square of Cajamarca.

On November 16, Atahuallpa arrived at the meeting place with an escort of several thousand men, all apparently unarmed. Pizarro sent out a priest to exhort the emperor to accept the sovereignty of Christianity and Emperor Charles V., and Atahuallpa refused, flinging a Bible handed to him to the ground in disgust. Pizarro immediately ordered an attack. Buckling under an assault by the terrifying Spanish artillery, guns, and cavalry (all of which were alien to the Incas), thousands of Incas were slaughtered, and the emperor was captured.

Atahuallpa offered to fill a room with treasure as ransom for his release, and Pizarro accepted. Eventually, some 24 tons of gold and silver were brought to the Spanish from throughout the Inca empire. Although Atahuallpa had provided the richest ransom in the history of the world, Pizarro treacherously put him on trial for plotting to overthrow the Spanish, for having his half-brother HuÁscar murdered, and for several other lesser charges. A Spanish tribunal convicted Atahuallpa and sentenced him to die. On August 29, 1533, the emperor was tied to a stake and offered the choice of being burned alive or strangled by garrote if he converted to Christianity. In the hope of preserving his body for mummification, Atahuallpa chose the latter, and an iron collar was tightened around his neck until he died.

Health and Fitness News

Welcome to the Health and Fitness News, a weekly diary which is cross-posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette. It is open for discussion about health related issues including diet, exercise, health and health care issues, as well as, tips on what you can do when there is a medical emergency. Also an opportunity to share and exchange your favorite healthy recipes.

Questions are encouraged and I will answer to the best of my ability. If I can’t, I will try to steer you in the right direction. Naturally, I cannot give individual medical advice for personal health issues. I can give you information about medical conditions and the current treatments available.

You can now find past Health and Fitness News diaries here and on the right hand side of the Front Page.

This week’s digest is abbreviated since I am, once again, traveling this week.

Tomatoes Pack a Nutritional Punch

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Tomatoes  receive a lot of attention from nutritionists largely because of a phytonutrient called lycopene. Studies have long suggested that lycopene, which is contained in the red pigment, has antioxidant properties. Now growers are raising and marketing “high-lycopene” tomatoes. Indeed, a company based in Israel has developed a dried cherry tomato, which it is calling a “raisin tomato,” that contains almost 100 times the amount of lycopene in a regular cherry tomato.

I love this suggestion on preparing tomatoes for cooking from the author, Martha Rose Shulman

In many of this week’s recipes I’m using a technique that may be new to some of you. Rather than peeling, seeding and dicing the tomatoes, I grate them on the large holes of a box grater. This is a technique I learned in Greece; it’s used throughout the Mediterranean. Cut the tomatoes in half, squeeze out the seeds if instructed to do so, and rub the cut side against the grater. Don’t worry: the skin is tough and you won’t scrape your hands. When you feel the holes of the grater against the inside of the tomato skin, you’re done. It goes quickly, and it’s a nifty time-saver.

Pasta With Salsa Crudo and Green Beans

Tomato Frittata With Fresh Marjoram or Thyme

Blender Tomato Soup

Bruschetta With Tomato Topping

Cooked Grains Salad With Tomato Vinaigrette

Trans woman raped by corrections officer at Rikers, files federal lawsuit

A transgender woman, identified only as M.T., who is a former inmate at Rikers Island has filed suit in Manhattan Federal Court claiming she was sexually assaulted repeatedly by a corrections officer at the Robert N. Davoren Complex after having been harassed for months by the officer.

M. T. claims she was raped by Officer L. Galan on Dec. 2, 2012.  

Galan stated that Plaintiff ‘could do this the easy way or the hard way,’ Plaintiff did not feel that (she) could walk away or call out for help.

–the lawsuit

The Breakfast Club (Questions Without Answers)

Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover  we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.

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This Day in History

Martin Luther King, Jr. gives ‘I Have a Dream’ speech; Clashes mar 1968 Democratic National Convention; Black teen Emmett Till abducted, killed in Mississippi; Britain’s Prince Charles, Princess Diana granted a divorce.

Breakfast Tunes

Something to Think about over Coffee Prozac

Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Seek what they sought.

Matsuo Basho

Banana Republics

In some places impeachment is not “off the Table.”

Guatemala President Faces Arrest as Business Interests and U.S. Scramble to Contain Uprising

Guatemalan Supreme Court Approves Motion to Impeach President

By Sofia Rada, Truthout

Thursday, 27 August 2015 00:00

Amid a growing political crisis in Guatemala, the country’s Supreme Court issued a unanimous decision on August 25 to approve a motion by the attorney general to impeach the president. The attorney general identified President Otto Pérez Molina as the head of a corruption scheme that led to the resignation of the country’s vice president and a number of other senior officials. The growing crisis has mired the president’s administration for much of this year, but until now the opposition has been unable to get enough votes in congress to lift the immunity granted to Pérez Molina by Guatemalan law.

As opposition to his continuance in office mounted, Guatemalan President Pérez Molina announced on August 23 through a televised address that he would not resign. He categorically denied all claims that he has ties to the corruption scandal, which led to the May resignation of the country’s former vice president, Roxana Baldetti, who was arrested on August 21 and taken to court. The scandal concerns the funneling of taxes into private accounts and offering discounted custom rates for under-the-table payments. Despite growing protests and increasing pressure from those who oppose his continued rule, however, the president continues to reject any responsibility and does not show signs of succumbing to demands for his resignation.

In a statement sent via email to COHA, a U.S. Department of State Spokesperson said the department was closely monitoring the situation in Guatemala. The spokesperson reaffirmed the department’s support in “transparent, independent and impartial legal processes” and noted that the CICIG “has been a proven partner of both the government and people of Guatemala in their efforts to promote the rule of law.” The spokesperson did acknowledge the recent request by Guatemalan prosecutors for the right to impeach the president, but also urged all parties to respect the schedule of national elections and the Guatemalan constitutional process. Earlier in May, the State Department had issued a press release expressing its support of President Pérez Molina and his administration in efforts to address the issue of corruption in Guatemala. The State Department had also urged Guatemalans to support government institutions in investigations and prosecution of corruption and encouraged the president to work closely with the CICIG. However, the CICG has now identified Pérez Molina as complicit in the corruption scandal.

I haven’t forgotten Nancy.

A Marxist Critique of Libralism- Vijay Prashad

A Four Part Interview on Reality Asserts Itself, The Real News Network.

Marx and Tolstoy Helped Me See the Limits of Liberalism

Questioning the Underlying Structures of Property and Power is “Off the Table”

Chelsea Manning, the Nuremberg Charter and Refusing to Collaborate with War Crimes

International Law and “The Responsibility to Protect”

On This Day In History August 28

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour a cup of your favorite morning beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

Find the past “On This Day in History” here.

August 28 is the 240th day of the year (241st in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 125 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1963, the Reverend Martin Luther King addressed the crowds assembled on the Washington Mall from the steps at the Lincoln Memorial. His speech, “I have a Dream”, is forever embedded in history and our memories as one of the great moments in the fight for civil rights. But there were many other speakers, and in particular one great performance by the “Queen of Gospel”, Mahalia Jackson. Right before Dr. King spoke, Ms. Jackson performed “How I Got Over”.

Indeed, if Martin Luther King, Jr., had a favorite opening act, it was Mahalia Jackson, who performed by his side many times. On August 28, 1963, as she took to the podium before an audience of 250,000 to give the last musical performance before Dr. King’s speech, Dr. King himself requested that she sing the gospel classic “I’ve Been ‘Buked, and I’ve Been Scorned.” Jackson was just as familiar with Dr. King’s repertoire as he was with hers, and just as King felt comfortable telling her what to sing as the lead-in to what would prove to be the most famous speech of his life, Jackson felt comfortable telling him in what direction to take that speech.

The story that has been told since that day has Mahalia Jackson intervening at a critical junction when she decided King’s speech needed a course-correction. Recalling a theme she had heard him use in earlier speeches, Jackson said out loud to Martin Luther King, Jr., from behind the podium on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, “Tell them about the dream, Martin.” And at that moment, as can be seen in films of the speech, Dr. King leaves his prepared notes behind to improvise the entire next section of his speech-the historic section that famously begins “And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream….”

There is no embeddable video of Ms Jackson from that day but here is the inspirational song she performed that day.

Cartnoon

The Breakfast Club (Poohstick)

breakfast beers photo breakfastbeers.jpgIt’s not what you think.  This is the game Christopher Robin played with Winnie the Pooh in many of their A.A. Milne adventures.

The basic concept is simple- find some sticks, drop them in a stream or river on one side of a bridge, see which one emerges on the other side first.

Since this a childlike and contemplative game it’s best not to choose a rushing torrent as your course and turbulence can make it difficult to determine stick identity when it emerges.  Your best bet is a slowly meandering waterway on a hot summer day with a broad bridge to enhance the suspense and encourage deep philosophical conversation while awaiting the outcome.  

If your nature is more, ahem, competitive there are some tricks (all very fair and within the rules and spirit of the game).  They involve, as you might expect, stick selection since it is the only variable under your control.

Revealed: how to pick the perfect Poohstick

Press Association

Wednesday 26 August 2015 03.52 EDT

Poohsticks, the timeless game made famous by Winnie the Pooh, Piglet and Christopher Robin, is not a game of chance, according to scientists – and there’s even a formula to win.



Egmont Publishing joined Dr Rhys Morgan, director of engineering and education at the Royal Academy of Engineering, to equip the 39% of people who already take time sourcing the perfect Poohstick with the formula to ensure they pick the speediest stick to sail to victory.

It comes after a survey of 2,000 British parents revealed that 41% of players take the time to personalise their sticks to ensure they take no chances in knowing exactly who wins.

It turns out that just 11% of Britons naturally pick the right sort of stick, with a third of people (30%) heading straight for a long and thin stick, which according to Dr Morgan is only half right.

The scientist, a father of two and avid Poohsticks player himself, said the main variables that need to be considered when designing the optimum Poohstick included cross-sectional area, density/buoyancy, and the drag coefficient.

The perfect Poohstick would be tubby and long, fairly heavy (but not so heavy it will sink to the bottom of the river), with quite a lot of bark to catch the flow of the river like paddle.

Science and Technology News and Blogs

Science Oriented Video

The law that entropy always increases holds, I think, the supreme position among the laws of Nature. If someone points out to you that your pet theory of the universe is in disagreement with Maxwell’s equations – then so much the worse for Maxwell’s equations. If it is found to be contradicted by observation – well, these experimentalists do bungle things sometimes. But if your theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation.

Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World (1927)

Obligatories, News and Blogs below.

New Orleans: A Tale of Two Cities

It is 10 years since Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast causing $108 billion in damages, killing over 1300 people and completely changing the city of New Orleans and the coastline.

Today New Orleans has changed in many ways, it is whiter, richer and the poor are poorer:

Ten years later, it is not exactly right to say that New Orleans is back. The city did not return, not as it was.

It is, first of all, without the more than 1,400 people who died here, and the thousands who are now making their lives someplace else. As of 2013, there were nearly 100,000 fewer black residents than in 2000, their absences falling equally across income levels. The white population decreased by about 11,000, but it is wealthier.

The city that exists in 2015 has been altered, by both a decade of institutional re-engineering and the artless rearrangement that occurs when people are left to fend for themselves.

Empowered by billions of federal dollars and the big ideas of eager policy planners, the school system underwent an extensive overhaul; the old Art Deco Charity Hospital was supplanted by a state-of-the-art medical complex; and big public housing projects, at once beloved and notorious, were razed and replaced by mixed-income communities with housing vouchers.

In a city long marinated in fatalism, optimists are now in ascendance. They promise that an influx of bright newcomers, a burst of entrepreneurial verve and a new spirit of civic engagement have primed the city for an era of greatness, or, at least, reversed a long-running civic-disaster narrative.

“Nobody can refute the fact that we have completely turned this story around,” said Mayor Mitch Landrieu, talking of streamlined government and year-over-year economic growth. “For the first time in 50 years, the city is on a trajectory that it has not been on, organizationally, functionally, economically, almost in every way.”

The word “trajectory” is no accident. It is the mayor’s case that the city is in a position to address the many problems that years of government failures had allowed to fester. He did not argue that those problems had been solved.

On This Day In History August 27

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

Find the past “On This Day in History” here.

August 27 is the 239th day of the year (240th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 126 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1883, The most powerful volcanic eruption in recorded history occurs on Krakatau (also called Krakatoa), a small, uninhabited volcanic island located west of Sumatra in Indonesia, on this day in 1883. Heard 3,000 miles away, the explosions threw five cubic miles of earth 50 miles into the air, created 120-foot tsunamis and killed 36,000 people.

Krakatau exhibited its first stirrings in more than 200 years on May 20, 1883. A German warship passing by reported a seven-mile high cloud of ash and dust over Krakatau. For the next two months, similar explosions would be witnessed by commercial liners and natives on nearby Java and Sumatra. With little to no idea of the impending catastrophe, the local inhabitants greeted the volcanic activity with festive excitement.

On 27 August four enormous explosions took place at 05:30, 06:44, 10:02, and 10:41 local time. The explosions were so violent that they were heard 3,500 km (2,200 mi) away in Perth, Western Australia and the Indian Ocean island of Rodrigues near Mauritius, 4,800 km (3,000 mi) away, where they were thought to be cannonfire from a nearby ship. Each was accompanied by very large tsunamis, which are believed to have been over 30 meters (100 ft) high in places. A large area of the Sunda Strait and a number of places on the Sumatran coast were affected by pyroclastic flows from the volcano.

The pressure wave generated by the colossal final explosion radiated from Krakatoa at 1,086 km/h (675 mph). It was so powerful that it shattered the eardrums of sailors on ships in the Sunda Strait and caused a spike of more than two and half inches of mercury in pressure gauges attached to gasometers in the Jakarta gasworks, sending them off the scale. The pressure wave radiated across the globe and was recorded on barographs all over the world, which continued to register it up to 5 days after the explosion. Barograph recordings show that the shockwave from the final explosion reverberated around the globe 7 times in total. Ash was propelled to a height of 80 km (50 mi).

The eruptions diminished rapidly after that point, and by the morning of August 28 Krakatoa was silent. Small eruptions, mostly of mud, continued through October, though further reports continued through February 1884. These reports were discounted by (Rogier) Verbeek.

The combined effects of pyroclastic flows, volcanic ashes and tsunamis had disastrous results in the region. There were no survivors from 3,000 people located at the island of Sebesi, about 13 km (8.1 mi) from Krakatoa. Pyroclastic flows killed around 1,000 people at Ketimbang on the coast of Sumatra some 40 km (25 mi) north from Krakatoa. The official death toll recorded by the Dutch authorities was 36,417, although some sources put the estimate at 120,000 or more.

Ships as far away as South Africa  rocked as tsunamis hit them, and the bodies of victims were found floating in the ocean for weeks after the event. The tsunamis which accompanied the eruption are believed to have been caused by gigantic pyroclastic flows  entering the sea; each of the four great explosions was accompanied by a massive pyroclastic flow resulting from the gravitational collapse of the eruption column.

In the aftermath of the eruption, it was found that the island of Krakatoa had almost entirely disappeared, except for the southern half of Rakata cone cut off along a vertical cliff, leaving behind a 250-metre (820 ft) deep caldera.

In the year following the eruption, average global temperatures fell by as much as 1.2 C (2.2 F). Weather patterns continued to be chaotic for years, and temperatures did not return to normal until 1888.

The eruption darkened the sky worldwide for years afterwards, and produced spectacular sunsets throughout the world for many months. British artist William Ashcroft made thousands of colour sketches of the red sunsets half-way around the world from Krakatoa in the years after the eruption.

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