READ HERE

According to Corinne Moss-Racusin, a doctoral candidate in psychology at Rutgers, applicants in staged interviews were judged equally competent, but the “modest” males were less liked—a sign of social backlash.

Modesty was viewed as a sign of weakness, a low-status character trait for males that could adversely affect their employability or earnings potential. Modesty in women, however, was not viewed negatively nor was it linked to status.

in full HERE

Since 2002, 46 Afghans have deserted their armed forces while in the U.S. for language and military training. Of those 46, roughly half–at least 22–have found their way north of the border.

They made the trip with the help of a network of people, including Afghans who left Lackland Air Force Base before them; a group of naturalized and undocumented Mexican women in Texas; relatives of current and former Afghan military students living in the West; and at least one Iranian taxi driver who runs a human smuggling business at the Canadian border.

The Afghans who have made it to Canada appear to be living comfortably there — and many have put themselves on Facebook, where they connect with other Afghan dissenters and active U.S. and Afghan military personnel, including members of the Afghan military currently attending the Defense Language Institute at Lackland or receiving training at other military bases in the U.S.

Dan Ariely: My name is Dan Ariely and I’m the James B. Duke Professor of Psychology and Behavioral Economics at Duke University.

Question: What did you find when you started looking into the world of online dating?

Dan Ariely: I became interested in online dating because one of the people who were sitting in an office next to me was incredibly miserable, and he was an assistant professor; he just moved to the university where I was at; he was spending long hours; he was not finding anybody to date; he was, couldn’t date students at the university, he was a professor; he didn’t have time to go outside. You know, we were not particularly a social bunch, you know, he was basically stuck. And online dating was a very promising way to think about this solution for a marketplace that wasn’t working very well, and he tried online dating and he was just failing miserably, continuously. So that kind of piqued my curiosity about it. And then I started looking at online dating.

So I start looking by registering myself and looking at other people and then I said, let me ask some of my friends to enroll. So I didn’t ask them to really enroll, I just took their profile sheets and asked people, “Could you fill those out but without your name?” And I took people that I liked more and I liked less, and I took their profile and I tried to figure out could I tell the difference? …
READ HERE

about time. Congress Rethinks Its Ban on Internet GamblingMarveling at Wonders Out of This World

everyone thinks the Washington Post study of national security a Pulitzer-worthy work: not this guy:

Ok. Wikileaks is all over the place. Now the Pentagon wonders if its release risks Afghan lives by giving names

No matter how one feels about illegals attempting entry at the borders, we have this taking place:

for which, see here

An Underground Duo Finds Unfamiliar Perch Atop the Charts and you can listen to them here

If you love history, then you want to read about the Roosevelt letters going to the National Archives.

By Conor O’Clery[1]- GlobalPost

Ash trays up for sale outside a bar on Parnell Street, Dublin. The Irish government is proposing desperate measures to meet Ireland’s crippling national debt of 84 billion euros ($108 billion). (Fran Veale/Getty Images)
Click to enlarge photo

DUBLIN, Ireland ─ Like to buy a nice new airport? No? How about a railway network or a power station? Well then, wouldn’t you like to have a bus company, or a harbor, or a television service or a chain of post offices?

Anyone of these properties could be yours; all reasonable offers considered. They are slated to come under the auctioneer’s hammer in a fire sale of national assets in Ireland.

Like a household up to its ears in debt, the Irish government is planning to sell off the family silver to make ends meet.

Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan appointed a commission on July 22 to look at the possibility of unloading these assets to help meet Ireland’s crippling national debt of 84 billion euros ($108 billion). The planned sale is an indication of how desperate the financial situation has become since the Irish property bubble burst three years ago.

A nation listed the as the sixth richest non-oil country in the world by Standard & Poor has seen a sharp decline in wealth and economic activity. Tax revenues have collapsed and the government is struggling to keep its controversial pledge of two years ago to bail out the country’s banks, which are floundering under the weight of reckless loans.

This has created a black hole into which tens of billions of euros are disappearing. The worst offender, Anglo Irish bank, is in the process of transferring loans with a nominal value of 35.6 billion euros ($45.5 billion) to Ireland’s “bad bank,” the National Asset Management Agency, known as “Nama.”

Irish Property developers — until recently members of the world’s rich set — are now saddled with immense debts, such as Dublin-based Paddy Kelly who was worth 350 million euros ($455 million) in 2007 and now owes 350 million euros.

Sean Fitzpatrick, the former chairman of Anglo Irish and a poster boy for the excess of the Celtic Tiger era, was declared bankrupt last month owing 150 million euros ($195 million), a rare event in Irish economic life.

Ireland emerged from recession in the first quarter of this year, helped by profitable multinationals, but it is a jobless recovery and little new wealth is being created.

Banks are tight-fisted, unemployment is rising and emigration is increasing. A ruthless government is slashing public spending and state salaries while raising taxes to prove its credit worthiness to the financial world.

There are even proposals before the government to impose tolls on country roads rather than just motorways, such is the desperation to squeeze more euros from dwindling personal incomes.

U.S. economist Paul Krugman, writing in his New York Times blog last week under the heading “Leprechauns and confidence fairies[2],” maintains that this is a mistake, and that the Irish government “should do all they can to avoid prolonging the slump even further, that austerity may be self-defeating.”

But Cliff Taylor, editor of the Irish financial newspaper The Sunday Business Post, responded: “If the government did pump money into the economy it would lift things a bit, no doubt, the more pressing problem is that we haven’t got any money to pump in.”

Which comes back to the plan to sell off state assets to raise cash. The full list of properties targeted by the new Review Group on National Assets, chaired by “slash and burn” economist Colm McCarthy, has been published on the finance department’s website[3].
References

1. ^ Conor O’Clery (www.globalpost.com)
2. ^ Leprechauns and confidence fairies (krugman.blogs.nytimes.com)
3. ^ website (www.finance.gov.ie)

Excerpted from Ireland History | Europe Economy | Public Sale

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/ireland/100726/ireland-economy-sale

Readability — An Arc90 Laboratory Experiment http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability
Follow us on Twitter »Readability version 1.6.2

18-year-old Peter McBride was murdered in Belfast on 4 September 1992 by Mark Wright and James Fisher, members of a Scots Guards battalion commanded by Tim Spicer. The unarmed father of two was shot dead minutes after being stopped and searched by a British Army patrol.[1]

Local police were not able to speak to the two soldiers until some hours after the shooting.[2] In the meantime, the men were interviewed by Spicer along with three other officers. Spicer later wrote “I thought between us we could reach a balanced judgement on what happened.”[3] The delay gave rise to allegations that the Army was helping the men to prepare a defence.[4]

Lt Col Spicer has since maintained the same version of events as Wright and Fisher, that the two soldiers believed McBride was about to throw a coffee jar bomb contained in a plastic bag he was carrying.[5] This in spite of the fact that McBride had been searched moments earlier by members of the same patrol. The bag was subsequently found to contain a t-shirt.[6]

read>>> HERE

The president and policymakers rely on insights from the Central Intelligence Agency to inform their foreign policy decisions. CIA officers use a variety of sources in formulating their assessments. The following article is the first in a series that will explore different sources and collection disciplines, which are the building blocks of what we call “finished intelligence.” This article will focus on open source intelligence.

READ HERE.

more Teagarden jazz videosack Teagarden Quintet 1952.

more videos of Teagarden here

Davies’s interest had been piqued in mid-June when Bradley Manning, a junior army intelligence analyst and the alleged source of several high-profile WikiLeaks disclosures, was quoted in chat transcripts claiming to have leaked a voluminous amount of yet-to-be disclosed diplomatic cables.

Whatever Assange had, and whomever its source, Davies knew that WikiLeaks would publish again—and hoped to convince him to let The Guardian look at any future release before WikiLeaks splashed it on its own site.

After e-mails to Assange’s listed accounts netted nothing, Davies contacted a half dozen people close to him, hoping to reach and woo Assange. One of them came back with a tip that a skittish Assange planned to honor a commitment to speak before the European parliament on Tuesday, June 21, despite the cries of “manhunt” surrounding him. Davies asked The Guardian’s Brussels reporter to corner Assange and tell him that he was on his way.

“While I was on the train going under the Channel, I had tried to work out what I would say to him,” remembers Davies. “It wasn’t going to work if I said ‘I’m a greedy reporter, I’d like to take all your information and put it in my newspaper.’”

readIN FULL

PHRASE FINDER

read here.

The term ‘flaneur’ is a lovely, decadent concept from the 1890s. It comes from a French verb which means "to stroll". So as a flaneur you walk around your city – but not on purpose, you simply STROLL – in order to experience it, and possibly change it.

The beauty of the idea is that anyone can be a flaneur. Oscar Wilde was a flaneur. Jack Kerouac definitely was. So was Hunter S. Thompson, in his own crazy ether-snorting way.

If you go for an aimless walk, watching people, maybe doing something to shake them up from their city daydream – or maybe capturing everyone else’s citd daydream in a poem, or in a photo – then you’re a flaneur, too.

READ HERE.

The discovery was described as a “significant step forward” in the battle against the degenerative disease that affects 120,000 people in the UK – or one in 500 of the population – with 10,000 new cases being diagnosed each year.

read here.

By DAVID LEONHARDT

How much do your kindergarten teacher and classmates affect the rest of your life?

Economists have generally thought that the answer was not much. Great teachers and early childhood programs can have a big short-term effect. But the impact tends to fade. By junior high and high school, children who had excellent early schooling do little better on tests than similar children who did not — which raises the demoralizing question of how much of a difference schools and teachers can make.

There has always been one major caveat, however, to the research on the fade-out effect. It was based mainly on test scores, not on a broader set of measures, like a child’s health or eventual earnings. As Raj Chetty, a Harvard economist, says: “We don’t really care about test scores. We care about adult outcomes.”

Early this year, Mr. Chetty and five other researchers set out to fill this void. They examined the life paths of almost 12,000 children who had been part of a well-known education experiment in Tennessee in the 1980s. The children are now about 30, well started on their adult lives.

On Tuesday, Mr. Chetty presented the findings — not yet peer-reviewed — at an academic conference in Cambridge, Mass. They’re fairly explosive.

Just as in other studies, the Tennessee experiment found that some teachers were able to help students learn vastly more than other teachers. And just as in other studies, the effect largely disappeared by junior high, based on test scores. Yet when Mr. Chetty and his colleagues took another look at the students in adulthood, they discovered that the legacy of kindergarten had re-emerged.

Students who had learned much more in kindergarten were more likely to go to college than students with otherwise similar backgrounds. Students who learned more were also less likely to become single parents. As adults, they were more likely to be saving for retirement. Perhaps most striking, they were earning more.

All else equal, they were making about an extra $100 a year at age 27 for every percentile they had moved up the test-score distribution over the course of kindergarten. A student who went from average to the 60th percentile — a typical jump for a 5-year-old with a good teacher — could expect to make about $1,000 more a year at age 27 than a student who remained at the average. Over time, the effect seems to grow, too.

The economists don’t pretend to know the exact causes. But it’s not hard to come up with plausible guesses. Good early education can impart skills that last a lifetime — patience, discipline, manners, perseverance. The tests that 5-year-olds take may pick up these skills, even if later multiple-choice tests do not.

Now happens to be a particularly good time for a study like this. With the economy still terribly weak, many people are understandably unsure about the value of education. They see that even college graduates have lost their jobs in the recession.

Barely a week seems to go by without a newspaper or television station running a report suggesting that education is overrated. These stories quote liberal groups, like the Economic Policy Institute, that argue that an education can’t protect workers in today’s global economy. Or they quote conservatives, like Charles Murray and Ramesh Ponnuru, who suggest that people who haven’t graduated from college aren’t smart enough to do so.

But the anti-education case usually relies on a combination of anecdotes and selective facts. In truth, the gap between the pay of college graduates and everyone else grew to a record last year, according to the Labor Department, and unemployment has risen far more for the less educated.

This is not simply because smart people — people who would do well no matter what — tend to graduate from college. Education itself can make a difference. A long line of economic research, by Julie Berry Cullen, James Heckman, Philip Oreopoulos and many others, has found as much. The study by Mr. Chetty and his colleagues is the latest piece of evidence.

•

The crucial problem the study had to solve was the old causation-correlation problem. Are children who do well on kindergarten tests destined to do better in life, based on who they are? Or are their teacher and classmates changing them?

The Tennessee experiment, known as Project Star, offered a chance to answer these questions because it randomly assigned students to a kindergarten class. As a result, the classes had fairly similar socioeconomic mixes of students and could be expected to perform similarly on the tests given at the end of kindergarten.

Yet they didn’t. Some classes did far better than others. The differences were too big to be explained by randomness. (Similarly, when the researchers looked at entering and exiting test scores in first, second and third grades, they found that some classes made much more progress than others.)

Class size — which was the impetus of Project Star — evidently played some role. Classes with 13 to 17 students did better than classes with 22 to 25. Peers also seem to matter. In classes with a somewhat higher average socioeconomic status, all the students tended to do a little better.

But neither of these factors came close to explaining the variation in class performance. So another cause seemed to be the explanation: teachers.

Some are highly effective. Some are not. And the differences can affect students for years to come.

When I asked Douglas Staiger, a Dartmouth economist who studies education, what he thought of the new paper, he called it fascinating and potentially important. “The worry has been that education didn’t translate into earnings,” Mr. Staiger said. “But this is telling us that it does and that the fade-out effect is misleading in some sense.”

Mr. Chetty and his colleagues — one of whom, Emmanuel Saez, recently won the prize for the top research economist under the age of 40 — estimate that a standout kindergarten teacher is worth about $320,000 a year. That’s the present value of the additional money that a full class of students can expect to earn over their careers. This estimate doesn’t take into account social gains, like better health and less crime.

Obviously, great kindergarten teachers are not going to start making $320,000 anytime soon. Still, school administrators can do more than they’re doing.

They can pay their best teachers more, as Pittsburgh soon will, and give them the support they deserve. Administrators can fire more of their worst teachers, as Michelle Rhee, the Washington schools chancellor, did last week. Schools can also make sure standardized tests are measuring real student skills and teacher quality, as teachers’ unions have urged.

Given today’s budget pressures, finding the money for any new programs will be difficult. But that’s all the more reason to focus our scarce resources on investments whose benefits won’t simply fade away.

E-mail: leonhardt@nytimes.com

For decades, scientists puzzled over these differences in the apes’ sexual anatomy. But the answers eluded them because there was so little information on the natural behavior of the animals.

By the 1970′s, however, field biologists observing wild primates were revealing the secrets of their subjects’ sexual lives. Professor Alexander Harcourt, now in the Dept. of Anthropology at UCDavis, was one of those biologists, studying wild gorillas with the late Dian Fossey. Since then, Harcourt has collaborated with other researchers to understand how an animal’s sexual anatomy relates to its sexual behavior and overall mating system – equivalent to humans’ marriage system. The result of these studies is now known as sperm competition theory.

In a nutshell, it goes like this: males of a species will have large testicles when they need to make lots of sperm in order to fertilize females. And they will need to make lots of sperm when other males are mating at the same time with the same females. Think of fertilization (and hence, siring offspring) as a lottery competition. Large testicles allow a male to enter more tickets (sperm cells) into the lottery and therefore give him a better crack at the prize. But not all mating systems are lottery competitions.

Take, for example, gorillas and chimpanzees. Gorillas live in cohesive groups usually consisting of one fully adult male, two to three adult females and their offspring. When a gorilla female is ready to mate, normally only one adult male is there as a partner. In groups with more than one, the alpha male can often monopolize females. The 400-pound male gorilla can therefore afford to have relatively tiny testes (relative to his body size) because the only sperm racing for the female’s ovum will be his own.

Compare this with the chimpanzee that lives in loosely structured multi-male, multi-female communities. When a female chimpanzee comes into estrus, she is often attended by a host of males, many or most of whom will mate with her on the same day. That means lots of sperm from different individuals all competing to be the first one to reach the egg. The male with the biggest testicles will produce the most sperm. He has ‘bought the most lottery tickets’. And so he is most likely to fertilize the female.

To expand the comparison beyond the apes, Harcourt and his colleagues examined the data on testicle size and mating system for a wide variety of primates, from lemurs to baboons to humans. The results are dramatic. In most species classified as multi-male, that is, where a female has more than one partner during any one given estrous period (equivalent to ovulation), males’ testicles are larger than you would predict from their body size. In contrast, single-male systems, that is, monogamous primates, or those where just one male defends a harem of females, such as the gorilla, have testicles that are either smaller than you would predict from body size, or right on the line. I know what you’re wondering, and the answer is: humans fall right on the line, suggesting that sperm competition has played a minor role in the evolution of our sexual anatomy and behavior.

The relation is so clear that if you knew the typical body size of a species, along with the size of its testicles, you could make a pretty good guess at its mating system, even if you had no data from the wild. Furthermore, researchers stimulated by the primate work have found the relation in other groups of animals including birds and butterflies.

But there are many questions about the evolution of sexual equipment and behavior that remain unanswered. We are a long way from understanding the penis, for example, and the ways in which its size and shape relate to mating systems. It is likely that females hold many of the answers, says Professor Harcourt. The influence of females’ behavior and sexual anatomy on those of males is a fertile field for study of sperm competition and its role in evolution.

© Kelly Stewart

Dept. of Anthropology, University of California, Davis, CA 95616.
e-mail: kjstewart@ucdavis.edu

What They Know.

The one of the curtain was shot in a small town a few hours by train from Tokyo. This image was meant to be deleted in order to save space on my memory-card. Unfortunately, I deleted the wrong picture just because I was in a hurry. I was pretty inexperienced with digital cameras back then and deleted images quite uncontrollably. For a long time I didn’t care about this picture at all. But after two years I went back and took a saw it again. I started to like it but in some way I didn’t really know how to explain. It just exists and feels disarming. Today it is absolutely one of my favorite pictures.” “The picture of the man with the tattoo is also about chance but another kind of randomness. One night I was out drinking in Shinjuku and came in contact with a man inside a bar, probably because he was carrying a camera. I could´t speak any Japanese at that time and he didn’t speak English but somehow we ended up in the Golden Gai district. I cannot remember more than that. Suddenly he pulled off his shirt. Out from his back welled one of the most brutal tattoos I’ve ever seen. As I recall, I instinctively took two shots of him from behind as he stood and stretched his muscles. We had absolutely no dialogue, everything just happened automatically. I don’t know how I came to the final image. Suddenly he just sat in the corner. I think the biggest gift for a photographer is how get to the image without the obvious need to look for it. I believe it is all about pure intuition. That you keep on going like a child. Being a good photographer is not about being rational.”
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includes video at link. read the interview and you will discover a lot about Pakistan and Afghanistan that we simply know nothing about]

Jere Van Dyk, who was imprisoned by the Taliban for 45 days, explains the historical and cultural facts that are crucial for understanding the war-torn country—and why our goals there are so difficult to achieve.

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This is a pretty impressive figure and is indicative of the meteoric increase in e-book sales. The Association of American Publishers has stated that e-book sales are up 400% through May over same period last year.

There appears to be a little spin going on.

more here.

DAILY ROTATION.

Narcissists are not necessarily more creative than their peers, but they think they are, and they are adept at convincing others to share their inflated view of themselves, says Jack Goncalo, assistant professor in the department of organizational behavior at Cornell University.

Three studies led by Goncalo in 2007 and 2008 showed that narcissistic individuals asked to pitch creative ideas to a target person were judged by the targets as being more creative than others.

more>> HERE

"This result surprised us," says the study’s senior author Shin-ichiro Imai, MD, PhD, an expert in aging research at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. “It demonstrates that SIRT1 in the brain is tied into a mechanism that allows animals to survive when food is scarce. And this might be involved with the lifespan-increasing effect of low-calorie diets.”

Imai explains that the mice with increased brain SIRT1 have internal mechanisms that make them use energy more efficiently, which helps them move around in search of food even after a long fast. This increased energy-efficiency could help delay aging and extend lifespan.

The research findings are published in the July 28 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience.

Imai’s past research demonstrated that SIRT1 is at the center of a network that connects metabolism and aging. A form of the gene is found in every organism on earth. The gene coordinates metabolic reactions throughout the body and manages the body’s response to nutrition. SIRT1 is activated under low-calorie conditions, which have been shown to extend the life spans of laboratory animals.

The researchers found that the key to the mice’s extra activity lies in a small region of the brain called the hypothalamus, which controls basic life functions such as hunger, body temperature, stress response and sleep-wake cycles.

At the start of the research project, the study’s lead author Akiko Satoh, PhD, a postdoctoral research associate in developmental biology, saw that mice on low-calorie diets had increased amounts of SIRT1 in specific regions of the hypothalamus and that neurons in the same regions were activated.

A green stain lights up a protein tied to aging, showing that it is abundant in the hypothalamus region of mice brains.

(Photo Credit: Shin-ichiro Imai, Washington University in St. Louis)

So the research team developed mice that continually produced higher amounts of SIRT1 in their brains to see what the effect would be. That’s when Satoh observed the mice’s unusual level of activity under fasting conditions.

"This is the first time that it has been demonstrated that SIRT1 is a central mediator for behavior adaptation to low-calorie conditions," Satoh says.

Interestingly, these mice, called BRASTO (brain-specific SIRT1-overexpressing) mice, also maintained higher body temperatures after a 48-hour fast than ordinary mice, which experience a drop in body temperature during fasting.

"The BRASTO mice have a better capability to come up with energy to achieve a higher body temperature and increased activity level when food is restricted," says Imai, associate professor of developmental biology and of medicine.

The team also examined mice that had no ability to produce SIRT1 in their brains. During diet-restricting conditions, these mice did not increase their activity, and their body temperature dropped more than normal, giving further evidence that SIRT1 was essential for high-activity, high-temperature responses.

As the researchers looked further into the role of SIRT1 in the hypothalamus, they found that during diet restriction, SIRT1 enhanced the production of a specific neural receptor in the hypothalamus involved in regulating metabolic rate, food intake and insulin sensitivity. Furthermore, mice with increased brain SIRT1 had a higher neural response to the gut hormone, ghrelin, which is known to stimulate the hypothalamus during low-calorie conditions. Both findings add weight to a significant role for SIRT1 in the hypothalamic response to a restricted diet.

The scientists are continuing to study the BRASTO mice to see if they live longer than ordinary mice.

Their work suggests that the brain, and particularly the hypothalamus, might play a dominant role in governing the pace of aging. They believe their studies could eventually provide clues for increasing productive aging in people.

"If we can enhance the function of the human hypothalamus by manipulating SIRT1, we could potentially overcome some health problems associated with aging," Imai says. "One example is anorexia of aging in which elderly people lose the drive to eat. It is possible that enhancing SIRT1 could alleviate behavioral problems like this."

Source: Washington University School of Medicine

via Aging and longevity tied to specific brain region in mice | Science Codex.

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You’ve heard of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. But the lure of list-making has inspired plenty of people in the modern day to compile their own lists of wonders. Here are seven of the

7 Different Seven Wonders of the World.

This article concerns the sinking of the South Korean Corvette ‘Cheonan’ on 26 March 2010 with the loss of 46 South Korean sailors. The event occurred about 1 nautical mile off the South West Coast of Baengnyeong Island in the Yellow Sea and close to the maritime border with North Korea Map. The island is dominated by a joint U.S.-Korean base for anti-submarine warfare (ASW) operations. The sea channel between Byeongnyeong and the North Korean coast is narrow enough for both sides to be in artillery range of each other.

Baengnyeong Island shown in red

The event took place in the aftermath of the 11-18 March 2010 ‘Foal Eagle’ Exercise, which included anti-submarine maneuvers by a joint U.S.-South Korean squadron of five missile ships. Mystery surrounds the continued presence of U.S. missile cruisers in the locality more than eight days after the ASW exercise ended.

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This picture is from 1944, and shows drilling rigs on California’s coastline. I am not sure what part of California, but maybe someone familiar with the state could speculate from the terrain. I would have to say things have changed a lot since 1944.

Old Picture of the Day.

LEARN GREEK AND HEBREW WHILE GETTING YOUR TEETH CLEANED.

On this day in 1909 Chester Himes, “the father of black American crime writing,” was born. Although Himes is mostly read for his “Harlem Domestic&” novels — Cotton Comes to Harlem, A Rage in Harlem and six others featuring the detectives “Coffin”; Ed Jones and “Gravedigger” Johnston — a recent flurry of attention may change that. The End of a Primitive and Yesterday Will Make You Cry, two novels deemed too sexual or violent when they first appeared, have been reissued in their original, uncut form as W. W. Norton "Old School Books. Add to this two recent full-length biographies, and Himes may be on the verge of rediscovery, twenty years after his death.

Judging by the last sentence in My Life of Absurdity (vol. II of Himes’s autobiography), such posthumous fame would seem to confirm his own view of his life:

For all its inconsistencies, its contradictions, its humiliations, its triumphs, its failures, its tragedies, its hurts, its ecstasies and its absurdities; that’s my life — the third generation out of slavery.

A similar emphasis on absurdity and racism characterizes many of Himes’s books. On the last page of Blind Man With a Pistol, the last book in the Harlem cycle, Grave Digger explains what little he can to head office as the streets erupt in racial violence:

An hour later Lieutenant Anderson had Grave Digger on the radio-phone. "Can’t you men stop that riot?" he demanded.

"It’s out of hand, boss," Grave Digger said.

"All right, I’ll call for reinforcements. What started it?"

"A blind man with a pistol."

"What’s that?"

"You heard me, boss."

"That don’t make any sense."

"Sure don’t."

Blindness and rage also entered Himes’s personal life early, along with absurd mischance and mistake. At the age of thirteen he played a role in the accidental blinding of his teenaged brother, an event which triggered lifelong guilt and anger:

We pulled into the emergency entrance of a white people’s hospital. White clad doctors and attendants appeared. I remember sitting in the back seat with Joe watching the pantomime being enacted in the car’s bright lights. A white man was refusing; my father was pleading. Dejectedly my father turned away; he was crying like a baby. My mother was fumbling in her handbag for a handkerchief; I hoped it was for a pistol.

As a seventeen-year-old busboy, Himes was seriously injured when he fell down an elevator shaft. As a freshman at Ohio State, he fell into a Roaring 20s lifestyle, and when he was expelled fell again into petty crime. Two suspended sentences only encouraged him to trade up his .32 handgun for a Colt .44 that "looked like a hand cannon and would shoot hard enough to kill a stone." His next job was armed robbery, an elderly Cleveland couple’s Cadillac and jewelry. The Caddie got stuck in the mud, and when the pawnshop owner went into the back room with the jewelry Himes just stood there: "I suspected he was calling the police…. But I couldn’t run; never could run." Handcuffed at the feet and hands, he was hung upside down from a door and pistol-whipped into a confession.

The anger and absurdity continued throughout his time at Ohio State Penitentiary — the one convict who was murdered for not passing the bread, the two who killed each other over whether Paris was in France or France in Paris, the 330 who died in a fire, most of them trapped in their overcrowded cells. But Himes learned to write in prison, and channel enough of his anger into plot and theme that he was paroled after serving seven-and-a-half years of his twenty-five year sentence. Few of his serious or social protest novels were widely-read, but when he found his crime-novel formula — he wrote the eight Harlem books in twelve years — he was a popular hit. This was especially true in Europe, where Himes had chosen to live for racial reasons. Here he felt he could walk down the street with his head up and, later in life, see bookstore placards describing him as "The Greatest Find in American Crime Fiction Since Raymond Chandler."

via Chester Himes – Chester Himes, Hard Times.

Gastonia, North Carolina (photo by Lewis Wickes Hine).

Spinners. Smallest girl – Pearlie Turner, 408 East Long Ave. Been at it 3 years and runs six and seven sides. Her Sister (largest girl) runs only four sides. I found other cases where youngest sister did much more work than oldest and family stimulated her by praising her speed and the other’s slowness. — Lewis Wickes Hine

via.

Black and WTF.

left: Sacha Guitry, The Story of a Cheat, 1936, black-and-white film in 35 mm, 81 minutes. Right: Sacha Guitry, Quadrille, 1938, black-and-white film in 35 mm, 95 minutes.

DUBBED A “MINIATURE MODERN MOLIÈRE” by contemporaries and later “Lubitsch’s French brother” by François Truffaut, the Saint Petersburg–born Sacha Guitry (1885–1957) was a popular, prolific playwright/writer/actor and admired wit even before churning out forty-plus films. Criterion’s archive-diving Eclipse imprint makes available a quartet of playful 1930s works that sample an oeuvre marked by his one-man-showmanship. Though Guitry’s reputation has traveled little outside of France (where he was tarred for entertaining during the Occupation), his genial cynicism, candid and unpretentious sophistication, and Meliesian joy in storytelling have found admirers in filmmakers ranging from Truffaut-Godard-Resnais to Arnaud Desplechin, Olivier Assayas, and Jean-Pierre Jeunet.

The Story of a Cheat (1936) features Guitry as a smooth player who owes his life to a petty theft in boyhood: Grounded, he misses a dinner of mushrooms that kills his family. What follows is the eminently Continental yarn of his continued survival by hook or by crook and of the lovers that give him a run for his money. Amazingly, the memories of servicing a guest as a hotel elevator boy and gambling in Monaco are told almost entirely through voiceover, a sustained feat buoyed by imaginative bridges and asides such as a magic trick demonstrated in a mirror. In a characteristic paradox, the cheat finds himself entrusting his fate to honesty. Representing another Guitry specialty, The Pearls of the Crown (1937) shares in this raconteur’s spirit with its costume-a-rama daisy-chaining mildly goofy histories of royals in France, England, and beyond.

The housebound intrigues of Désiré (1937) might have attracted accusations that Guitry’s work was “filmed theater,” but the filmmaker’s driven dialogue belies the imputation of stodgy-staginess. As a new valet with a checkered past, the husky Guitry elegantly serves his beguiling boss (Guitry’s frequent co-star and one-time wife Jacqueline Delubac, her fine beauty served well by Criterion’s high-quality image) and neurotically pours forth on-the-fly analyses of motivations and potential indiscretions. As with the love rectangle of Quadrille (1938)—a reporter, a movie star, an editor, and his actress wife—there’s a frankness about sexual desires, across any boundaries, and social fictions that surpasses mere glib urbanity. “Let’s make sure we have our stories straight,” the editor tells his wife. “It’s only polite.”

— Nicolas Rapold

Eclipse Series 22: Presenting Sacha Guitry is now available from Criterion. For more details, click here.

via trick shooting – artforum.com / film.

Captured: America in Color from 1939-1943

The photos belonged to William Herbert Sheldon, an American psychologist, and the practice didn’t stop at Yale. The practice was widespread among America’s most prestigious universities (including three Ivy League schools — Harvard, Yale and Princeton), and Who’s who of Americana, George Bush, Bob Woodward, Hilary Clinton, Diane Sawyer, Meryl Streep, etc., went through this ignominy.

Although later defended as a part of the studies on the rate and severity of rickets, scoliosis and lordosis, sharp metal pins were attached to each naked student’s spine in the photos suggest that it may have been conducted to support Sheldon’s Mengelian theory on the relation between body types and social hierarchy. While Yale burned and shredded most of the photographs when they discovered them, some of the pictures survived and were later transferred to the Smithsonian. Only in 2001, those final images were destroyed.

via Iconic Photos.

The Franklin expedition, in a painting by W Turner SmithSir John Franklin and his entire crew perished in the frozen Arctic, and the Investigator went to find them

Canadian archaeologists have located a British ship abandoned in the Arctic while on a 19th Century rescue mission.

Parks Canada researchers found HMS Investigator in Mercy Bay this week.

Canada’s government says the discovery bolsters its claim to sovereignty over the Northwest Passage, which is feared threatened by increased shipping.

The Investigator was abandoned while searching for the Franklin expedition, itself lost with all its crew during a mission to discover the passage.

“It’s an incredible site,” Canadian Minister of the Environment Jim Prentice told the BBC by telephone from Mercy Bay.
Northwest Passage map

“You’re looking at what people have not seen in 156 years, which is a remarkably intact British sailing vessel.”

The Investigator, captained by Robert McClure, left Britain in 1848, ultimately making two attempts to find the Franklin expedition.

Its crew abandoned the ship on the western side of the Canadian Arctic when it became trapped in pack ice.

Running low on supplies and food, Capt Robert McClure and his men were eventually rescued by another party from the Royal Navy.
‘Largely intact’

Archaeologists discovered the ship under about 25ft of pristine, icy arctic water this week using sonar and metal detectors.

“You could make out all the planking on the deck, the details on the hull, all of the detail of the timber,” Mr Prentice said. “It’s sitting perfectly upright on the floor of the ocean.”

The Canadian researchers also found three graves of British sailors who died of scurvy on the 1853 expedition.

Parks Canada, a government agency, will inventory and study the ship and other artefacts but will not remove them. It has been in touch with the British government regarding the sailors’ remains.

Capt McClure is credited as the first European to discover the western entrance to the Northwest Passage.

Mr Prentice said the discovery of the Investigator supported Canada’s historical claim to the region, which the country inherited when it gained independence from Britain.

The issue of sovereignty has become increasingly important to Canada as the melting of arctic ice has increased interest in marine shipping through the Northwest Passage.
Excerpted from BBC News – Canadian team finds 19th Century HMS Investigator wreck

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-10793639

Readability — An Arc90 Laboratory Experiment http://lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability
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The marketing divisions of these papers distribute anti-American DVDs, books, and CDs at no charge or at very low and clearly subsidized prices. [3] These dailies also glorify terrorism, and disseminate antisemitic messages, including praise of Hitler, Holocaust denial, and passages from The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

This report focuses on a two-part Vakit interview with a Turkish prisoner, claimed to have been recently extradited to Turkey from Guantanamo. Vakit has been banned in Germany because of its antisemitism, and Germany has demanded that the Turkish government either implement or pass the necessary laws to rein in the paper.

Meanwhile, in Turkey, Vakit journalists are invited to official events, granted interviews with government ministers, and frequently accompany PM Erdogan in his private plane on his official trips.

The following are excerpts from the Vakit interview: [4]
The Women Soldiers Tore My Clothes Off and Attacked Me Verbally and Physically

Vakit: “Ibrahim Sen, [aged] 25, is from Van. Because of his deep interest in Islamic studies he traveled to Afghanistan. When his madrassa was bombed [by the U.S.] he wanted to return to Turkey, unaware of the fact that this road would take him to Guantanamo. Sen, who was detained in the Guantanamo base for two years and three months, told Vakit [the story of] his time there, which will, in a most striking way, shed light on the mentality that the Islamic world […] is facing. Sen’s story terrifies us. [...]

“In the next two days, you will read the [story], made public for the first time, about the resistance and events at Guantanamo, as well as information that will take your breath away […]”

Sen: “[First] the Americans [...] took us to a U.S. base in Kandahar. [...] As soon as we entered the military base, the U.S. soldiers attacked us with iron [bars]. They divided us into groups of five, threw us on the cement floor, and beat each of us […] at least for half an hour. Then, 10 American women soldiers took me to an interrogation room; of course my hands and feet were chained. There I saw [pages from] the Koran scattered on the floor; they had written insults on the Koran pages. The women soldiers tore my clothes and attacked me verbally and physically. My head and face were bloody because they were beating me with iron [bars]. […] This was a true nightmare [...] The women soldiers gave me blue overalls and transferred me to the men soldiers. They cut my hair and beard. I was passing out because of their torture.

“During the next week, my friends and I were tortured without a break. […] They gave us numbers and threw us in cells. My number was 274. Cell tortures began. We stayed at the Kandahar U.S. base for 40 days, and during the entire time, we were not allowed to sleep for more than half an hour. If you fell asleep, they would come in with their dogs and attack you. If you were injured, say with a broken arm, they would cut it off. […]”
Guantanamo “Was Filled With Jews”; “A Rabbi was Present at Interrogations”
Ibrahim Sen: “Torture time began. The Jewish commander Yasef said, while electrocuting my body, ‘You Turkish terrorist, […] it will be soon. After Iraq, Iran and Syria, it will be Turkey’s turn. Your women will be our servants and your men our slaves. When we get to Istanbul first thing we will do is burn the tomb of your grandfather [Sultan] Abdulhamid’ [emphasis in original].’

“[In Guantanamo,] they leave you alone in the room of insanity. They sit you on a chair, connect various cables to different parts of your body. When they turn them on, you started hallucinating. You hear weird and frightening sounds in your ears and you want to die. At least 400 prisoners who entered this room attempted suicide, and 90 lost their sanity.”

Vakit: “How was the morale among the prisoners?”

Sen: “Despite all the tortures, morale is alive among the Guantanamo prisoners. Sacred dreams help with this. […] One day an Afghani brother called to a Kuwaiti sage and told him that he had dreamed that the Prophet [Muhammed] had spoken to him and said that Allah had not forgotten them and that the angels were watching them – and that a good surprise was awaiting them […]

Vakit: “How were you received at Guantanamo?”

Sen: “The same way as at the military base in Kandahar. We were received with attacks by U.S. soldiers. Even though we were chained and our heads were covered, they kept beating us. My entire body was bleeding. I passed out. When I woke, I was in an interrogation room. They had removed the sack from my head. Facing me were 10 soldiers with Jewish skullcaps on their heads, four women and six men, and a Turkish translator. […] One of the soldiers instructed the women soldiers to strip me. The women soldiers cut my clothes with scissors and left me […] naked. […]”

Vakit: “You mentioned soldiers with skullcaps. Were there many of these at Guantanamo?”

Sen: “I can tell you. Ninety percent of the soldiers at Guantanamo wore skullcaps. They all had Jewish names. There were also 15 rabbis in Guantanamo that we counted. At least one rabbi was present during interrogations […]”

Vakit: “For how long did you stay in the interrogation room?”

Sen: “I was subjected to continuous torture for 10 days straight. They kept asking me where Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar could be found. […] Then they took me to another room where there was a TV. They made me watch an immoral film. They beat me and gave me more electricity whenever I lowered my head. After that, two soldiers carried out [sexual] activity with one another in front of everyone. A woman soldier asked me to do the same. […] When I refused, they took me to the ‘insanity room.’ […]”

Vakit: “[…] What did you do in your cells every day?”

Sen: “We read the Koran all the time […] and organized some protests. […] We sang marches praising Osama bin Laden […] We called out slogans that the victory promised by Allah would soon be delivered, that the jihad fighters would win and that Islam would be victorious […]”

Secular Daily: “Vakit Respected by AKP Government”

In her April 13, 2006 column in the centrist, secular daily Sabah, Asli Aydintasbas reacted strongly to the Vakit interview, calling it “crude antisemitism for the ignorant, similar to [the movie] Valley of The Wolves – Iraq, in which a Jewish-American doctor cuts up Iraqis to send their organs for sale in Tel Aviv. […] A crude provocation that caused synagogues in this country to be bombed and people to be killed [emphasis in original].”

She continued: “Yet Vakit, which was shut down in Germany, is respected by the [AKP] government [...] [Its correspondents are] invited on the prime minister’s private plane during his official trips; it is accorded interviews by cabinet members; [and] a few days ago [its journalists] were at the Foreign Minister’s residence [emphasis in original].”

[1] For more Special Dispatches from MEMRI’s Turkish Media Project, please visit: http://www.memri.org/turkey.html.

[2] See MEMRI Special Dispatch No. 870, “Anti-Americanism in the Turkish Media,” February 25, 2005, http://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/1328.htm.

[3] For example, 500,000 copies of a book published jointly by 13 foundations and organizations commemorating the birthday of the Prophet Muhammad have been handed to passersby at distribution stands throughout Istanbul. The book cites hate propaganda in the form of many hadiths (traditions of the Prophet Muhammad) vilifying Jews, including the hadith of the gharqad tree, which prophesies that the Muslims will kill the Jews at the end of days. When the Jewish community of Istanbul learned of this campaign from an April 16, 2006 report in the Turkish daily Vatan, they filed a complaint against this kind of distribution with the Istanbul authorities. In response, the Istanbul mufti issued a statement saying, “It is saddening that this publication included anti-Jewish material, which stems from ignorance,” but no action was taken against the distributors of the book.

[4] Vakit, April 10, April 11, 2006.

Pakistan’s leading daily, The Dawn, very succinctly put the situation in the country as follows: This was now an open secret that the US-Pakistan strategic dialogue, for all purposes, was being run by the Pakistan army, and Islamabad had virtually surrendered national security and foreign policy domain to the generals. (The Dawn, July 21, 2010) The report suggested the government should “grab with both hands” any foreign aid for social, economic and developmental work.

There could not have been a more frank, but sad, reflection of Pakistan’s so-called democratic government led by President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani. For Pakistan watchers the world over this was no secret. The US officials visiting Pakistan in serial like the sight of air planes landing in London’s Heathrow airport, made it clear that the serious interactions were with the GHQ and talk with the President and Prime Minister were of form.

It was widely expected that army Chief Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, who was to retire on November 28, this year would get an extension. At this critical juncture on the war on terror and the Afghan situation, it would have been unwise to let the main man in Pakistan into pasture. The US and other NATO countries had established a relationship with him and would want him to continue for some time. Prime Minister Gilani and President Zardari had little choice. Had they decided otherwise, a coup would not be out of possibilities.

The Pakistan army is generally a solid bloc, and the top generals were unlikely to oppose Kayani’s extension. This has happened before. The army knows that their strength lies in sticking together. Others not making to the top position can sacrifice.

A second full term of three years for Kayani was not even expected among Pakistan’s well informed media. It appears to have been a GHQ decision accepted by the US-NATO coalition, though it is not clear if this particular length of service was discussed with them in advance. But the manner in which the US leadership has been supporting the Pak army suggests they would like Kayani at the helm till they withdraw from Afghanistan.

Kayani, though selected by Gen. Parvez Musharraf for the top army post, are contrasts in personalities. Musharraf was flamboyant and boisterous, and would speak anything he liked. Kayani, a former ISI Chief, is quiet, studious and does what he wants through the democratic leadership puppets.

Kayani has never allowed the civilian leadership to take a different line in foreign policy and security issues which contradicted the army’s views. He scuttled Zardari’s efforts to bring the ISI under the Interior Ministry. He prevented Zardari to send ISI Chief Lt. Gen. Suja Pasha to India for discussion after the “26/11” Mumbai terror attacks which we know today was sponsored by the ISI with Kayani’s blessings.

It would be important to recall that at a meeting at the NATO Hqrs. In Brussels in 2008, Kayani had said Pakistan had no commonality with India religiously, culturally and historically. This was not an off the cuff remark. It is his faith.

Kayani demonstrated his position against an India-Pakistan rapprochement when he scuttled the India-Pak Foreign Ministers’ meeting in Islamabad earlier this month.

The Pak army is now intent to establish a Taliban coalition government in Afghanistan. Afghan President Hamid Karzai, isolated and weakened by the West over the last one year, had little option but succumb to the Pak army pressure.

The recent “Wikileaks” publicization over 90 thousand US classified files on the Afghan war has raised a huge controversy. The US government has not denied the contents, but has condemned it as endangering the lives of US and its allies.

Although some of the files reveal information about the ISI and Pak army’s co-operation with the Taliban and the Haqqani network including directing and paying them to attack the Indian Embassy in Afghanistan, the files reveal a duplicitous relationship between the US and the Pak army.

True, top American leaders have repeatedly spoken about the ISI – Taliban nexus, safe haven for the Al Qaeda and the Taliban Shura in Pakistan, and attacks on Indian assets in Afghanistan, but the Pak army and the ISI have shown scant regard to these statements.

The Wikileaks revealed logs of US and NATO killing of civilians in Afghanistan, sometimes without any regard to lives. The Pak army knew about these incidents but kept quiet. There was a “you scratch my back and I scratch yours” agreement.

It now appears that the US wanted to just show genuine concern for India and Indian interest in Afghanistan. Why else the US was reluctant to give Indian investigators access to David Headly, who surveyed Mumbai and other places for the ISI? Why did they ask the Indian investigators not to publicly reveal Headly’s interrogation contents.

These revelations have opened up the proverbial Pandora’s box. Where, in fact, does India figure in America’s Afghanistan policy, and what does President Barack Obama’s ever shifting Af-Pak policy is headed.

On the first phase, India must proceed with the assumption that any improvement in India-Pak relations and India’s security from Pak sponsored terrorism depends on the Pak army, especially Gen. Kayani, and not on the civilian government.

Simultaneously, India has to prepare options for its Afghan policy now openly threatened by Pakistan and the US only mouthing platitudes. It is unlikely that Afghanistan will see a stable future. Almost half of Afghanistan is against the structure that Pakistan, the US and Karzai are working upon. For them, Taliban in the government is just not acceptable. Russia and Central Asia are also highly concerned. And the US may have to leave Afghanistan and Pakistan without Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda. Wind back to 2000.

About the Photograph:

“For me the art of photography begins with chance and not planning anything in advance. It’s certainly the case with these two photos.

The one of the curtain was shot in a small town a few hours by train from Tokyo. This image was meant to be deleted in order to save space on my memory-card. Unfortunately, I deleted the wrong picture just because I was in a hurry. I was pretty inexperienced with digital cameras back then and deleted images quite uncontrollably. For a long time I didn’t care about this picture at all. But after two years I went back and took a saw it again. I started to like it but in some way I didn’t really know how to explain. It just exists and feels disarming. Today it is absolutely one of my favorite pictures.”
“The picture of the man with the tattoo is also about chance but another kind of randomness. One night I was out drinking in Shinjuku and came in contact with a man inside a bar, probably because he was carrying a camera. I could´t speak any Japanese at that time and he didn’t speak English but somehow we ended up in the Golden Gai district. I cannot remember more than that. Suddenly he pulled off his shirt. Out from his back welled one of the most brutal tattoos I’ve ever seen. As I recall, I instinctively took two shots of him from behind as he stood and stretched his muscles. We had absolutely no dialogue, everything just happened automatically. I don’t know how I came to the final image. Suddenly he just sat in the corner. I think the biggest gift for a photographer is how get to the image without the obvious need to look for it. I believe it is all about pure intuition. That you keep on going like a child. Being a good photographer is not about being rational.”

GALLERY

University of Illinois psychologist, Chris Fraley, said there had been a century-long debate on whether incest taboos are psychological or cultural adaptations designed to suppress a biological urge. In the early 20th century Sigmund Freud, a psychoanalyst, proposed it was psychological, while Edward Westermarck, a sociologist, proposed it was cultural. Westermarck thought there was a critical time in childhood during which people would not find attractive people who were raising them or raised with them.

Most modern researchers think Westermarck was correct, but a new study led by Fraley suggests there may also be a psychological component in which we align ourselves with our kin, who are genetically close to us.

The research involved three experiments.

read HERE.

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IN FULL

EDDIE KIRLAND, NEARLY 87, PLAYS BLUES, DETROIT STYLE

EDDIE KIRLAND MUSIC VIDEOS

SAN CARLOS, Ariz. — He cuts a tiny figure in the vastness of the upland desert, the expanse of scrub and brush and saguaro cactuses and red ragged mountains. He is a red-headed boy with a sunburned nose and sunglasses, and he moves with a step not graceful, nor terribly fast, but steady and determined, his mouth set in a hard line.

The boy, Zachary L. Bonner, has walked nearly 1,950 miles from his home outside Tampa, Fla., to this spot in the desert, and he intends to walk another 500 miles or so to the Pacific Ocean, all to raise money for homeless children.

At 12 years old, he is something of a prodigy among do-gooders. This is the third and longest trek he has organized to raise money for the Little Red Wagon Foundation[1], the charity he started when he was 6 to help get water to people after Hurricane Charley hit Florida in 2004.

“He’s just like every other kid, except he likes to do community service work for some odd reason,” said his mother, Laurie Bonner, who walks with her son, taking turns with a family friend. “He likes doing it. It’s weird.”

Zachary acknowledges that his determination to walk 2,478 miles is a little out of the ordinary for a boy his age. Many of the children in his neighborhood back in Valrico, Fla., he says, do not understand it. His mother said that since he started his charity work, he had made few friends his own age; the people closest to him are college students and adults who admire his work.

“Some kids are really into baseball, and that is what they do seven days a week,” Zachary says as he takes a water break in the 100-degree heat. “This is what I enjoy doing.”

His efforts have not gone unnoticed. Some Hollywood producers have bought the rights to his life story so far and this summer started shooting a feature film, directed by David Anspaugh of “Hoosiers” fame and produced by the Philanthropy Project.[2] His mother declined to say how much Zachary was paid, but she did say that he gave it all to the Little Red Wagon Foundation.

He counts among his fans and supporters Elton John, who has pledged $50,000 if Zachary makes it to Los Angeles.

Zachary barely cracks a smile when he talks about being invited to Mr. John’s concert in Tucson this week. Asked about the future, Zachary says he would like to go to Harvard and become a prosecutor. “It seems like a career I would really enjoy,” he says.

The trek is a family affair. Zachary, his mother and a family friend, Matt Chesney, 20, sleep in a donated R.V., rising about 3:30 every morning. Zachary says he usually eats a bowl of cereal and tries to start walking by 5 a.m., before the heat becomes unbearable. His mother and friend take turns following him in a Volkswagen Beetle with his sponsors plastered on the side and a red wagon affixed to the top. One walks beside him while the other drives behind.

He tries to cover at least 20 miles a day, and has worn out five pairs of shoes since he started in late December. The main enemies, he says, are boredom and fatigue. “You get bored walking down the road for hours at a time,” he says as he trudges in the high desert dust here along Highway 70. “You can only listen to so much music.”

To pass the time, he listens endlessly to Elton John, Owl City, Lady Gaga and Mika on his iPhone. He also sends messages over Twitter to more than 1,600 followers. He snacks on apples and granola bars, but waits until the afternoon to eat a large meal, usually donated by restaurants like Chili’s.

Still, as he crosses the great deserts of West Texas, New Mexico and Arizona, his mother has grown concerned about his health. “He’s lost a lot of weight,” she said as she walked behind him. “He’ll take off his shirt and you can see his ribs.”

Ms. Bonner, 43, a real estate agent and investor, said she had been hoping for years that her son would grow out of this charitable phase. Every year, she asks if he would like to take a break from his mission and go to a local school with children his own age.

But he prefers to study online, through a company called K12[3], because he can finish his classes quickly and have more time for charity work.

“I have parents that ask me all the time: How do you get them involved?” she said. “I don’t think you can. Unless the kid loves that thing they are doing, there is no way. I used to think it would end, but now I think maybe this is what he’s supposed to do.”

The Little Red Wagon Foundation mostly provides school supplies, food, clothing and toys to homeless children. In 2008, tax records show, the organization raised about $53,000 and spent $5,600 to feed about 800 homeless families during the holidays and to provide the children with toys. It also spent $2,200 on teaching supplies in a poor district and backpacks for orphans. It ended the year with $50,000 in the bank.

This year, Ms. Bonner said, Zachary has received pledges of cash or in-kind donations of about $120,000 from various sponsors.

Along his trip, he has held special events for homeless children, including taking a group to an amusement park in Dallas.

“I feel we should meet their basic needs but take it a step further and meet their kid needs,” he said as he slogged across the desert. “I feel it’s important for everyone to have the opportunity to just be a kid.”
References

1. ^ Foundation Web site. (littleredwagonfoundation.com)
2. ^ Project’s Web site. (www.aolnews.com)
3. ^ Company’s Web site. (www.k12.com)

Excerpted from Boy’s Latest Charitable Act Is Long Walk With Mom – NYTimes.com

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/28/us/28walkingboy.html?ref=james_c_jr_mckinley

via MAGAZINE ARTICLES ARE HERE

55 tunes at margin…see link

It also belongs to collection: Music & Arts

Artist/Composer: John McCormack

go here for streaming music

The Aral Sea was once one of the four largest lakes in the world, situated between Kazakhstan in the north and Uzbekistan in the south. In the 1960′s the Soviet Union redirected its tributary rivers into irrigation projects, and as a result by 2007 it had shrunk to 10% of its original size. Once prosperous fishing towns like Muynak were left stranded miles from the retreating waters, their boats high and dry on the salt-encrusted desert sand.

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* Estimated costs range from $1.5-1.9 billion

* 1 million square foot, 65 Megawatt facility

The Utah Data Center (UDC) will be a highly secure 65 Mega Watt, Tier III National Security Agency datacenter facility to be located near Camp Williams, Utah. The fast-track program will consist of approximately 1 million square feet of new facilities, of which 100,000 ft2 will be mission-critical space with raised flooring, and the other 900,000 ft2 will be devoted to technical support and administrative space. Ancillary support facilities include water treatment facilities, electrical substations, a vehicle inspection facility and visitor control center, perimeter site security measures, fuel storage, chiller plants and fire suppression systems. The UDC will incorporate green building strategies and will be required to be a LEED certified facility, with the goal of obtaining a LEED Silver rating. 1

The construction of the facility has been broken into three phases.

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