May 16, 2015

Great information for those of us who wouldn't miss observing Pi Day:

Happy Pi Day 2015

3.14.15 9:26:53... - Today seems perfect for reporting research results related to pi. Yes, I've dug up some pi to report. Well, today is not your usual Pi Day holiday. Some are calling it Super Pi Day, others proclaim the Pi Day of the Century. So, no ordinary discovery of pi in prehistory will do today, great accuracy is a must, at least 3.14159. Of all the times I've uncovered pi as an archaeologist, this one certainly wins one pi contest, accuracy:

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Examine the result in Google Earth:
http://www.jqjacobs.net/kml/pi_pyramids.kml [/font][/center]
Coincidence, when random, can explain pi recurring in research results, in archaeology and elsewhere. Coincidence does not easily explain this finding, with too many coincidences in one relationship set. Three monuments, each a center of a civilization, each the largest center of civilization on a continent (albeit only two of the three at once), and each monument ranking in some largest category for its time and place. This is not a comparison of cities, rather the very centerpoints of their largest monuments present the precise ratio of pi.

Accuracy is one way to assess the probability of coincidence. On the global scale, accuracy is an applicable method. The monument center-on-center arcs precisely express the ratio one to pi. Precise, in this case, means as accurate as the method of determining the coordinates. Using my research application (spherical trigonometry), the shorter arc result is within 4m of precisely equaling the larger arc divided by pi. El Paraiso IV, the largest mound at El Paraiso, is over 400m long and the four meters of inaccuracy is in relation to one-third of earth's diameter, well over 4,000,000 meters. In other words, the prehistoric pi ratio is accurate to one part in one million. My math result using the coordinates listed below is 1.0 : 3.141590. Quite an accurate slice of pi, besting anything in history written with little letters during the same time.

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Piramide del Sol, view is the westward side facing the central avenue.
Teotihuacan, the Largest Prehistoric City in the Americas
http://www.jqjacobs.net/mesoamerica/teotihuacan.html[/font][/center]
Far more valuable information brought together at this link. It's one to keep:
http://www.jqjacobs.net/blog/

May 16, 2015

For first time in years, major US orchestra performs in Cuba

Source: Associated Press

For first time in years, major US orchestra performs in Cuba
By BETH J. HARPAZ, Associated Press | May 14, 2015 | Updated: May 16, 2015 12:49am

HAVANA (AP) — The Minnesota Orchestra played to a sold-out house Friday night in the first performance in Cuba by a full professional U.S. orchestra since 1999, coming just months after the two Cold War rivals announced a thaw in relations.

Few of the visiting Americans speak Spanish, but "the universal language of music" was all they needed, said Mele Willis, the orchestra's artistic operations manager.

The performance at the 2,000-seat National Theater, which was broadcast live in Cuba and on Minnesota Public Radio, included famed Cuban pianist Frank Fernandez and the Cuban National Choir. Fernandez was presented with a bouquet, then pulled some of the flowers loose and handed them to a few of the Americans in the orchestra.

A thrilled crowded gave the concert a standing ovation. Omar Fernandez, a Cuban who works for a Canadian travel agency in Havana, attended with his wife and young son. "We love music. And this is very important," he said when asked why he came.

Read more: http://www.chron.com/news/world/article/For-first-time-in-years-major-US-orchestra-6265065.php

May 16, 2015

Panama gripped by millionaire ex-president's graft scandal

Panama gripped by millionaire ex-president's graft scandal
By Juan José Rodríguez (AFP) 7 hours ago.

When he ran for office, Panama's former president Ricardo Martinelli promised graft-weary voters he would never steal a cent: Why would he need to, since he was already a millionaire?, he asked.

Six years later, he is at the eye of a swirling scandal that has taken down several close allies, including two former ministers jailed for stealing public money.

The mounting accusations of massive corruption during his presidency (2009-2014) are now closing in on Martinelli, a white-haired supermarket magnate who is already under investigation for skimming money off the top of a school lunch contract.

~ snip ~

Prosecution documents seen by AFP say that money was used to buy luxury cars, apartments and a yacht.

Read more: http://www.digitaljournal.com/news/world/panama-gripped-by-millionaire-ex-president-s-graft-scandal/article/433384#ixzz3aIK7O5so

May 14, 2015

The Ridiculous Cold War against Cuba

The Ridiculous Cold War against Cuba
by Jacob G. Hornberger
May 14, 2015

Yesterday, Cuban President Raul Castro announced that Cuba is ready to name an ambassador to the United States, signifying that the United States and Cuba continue on the road toward reestablishing formal diplomatic ties.

As the governments of the two nations move further toward renewing formal relations, it should become increasingly clear what a horrible fraud the U.S. national-security branch of the federal government perpetrated on the American people after Fidel Castro took power in 1959.

Soon after Castro took power after ousting the U.S.-supported Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista, it became clear that Castro was taking Cuba in a communist direction, especially with his nationalization of businesses and industries, including those belonging to influential U.S. corporations.

The CIA and the Pentagon told President Eisenhower, and later President Kennedy, that the “national security” of the United States “threatened” by a communist regime 90 miles away from American shores.

More:
http://fff.org/2015/05/14/ridiculous-cold-war-cuba/

May 14, 2015

Latin America’s Social Policies Have Given Women a Boost

Latin America’s Social Policies Have Given Women a Boost
By Fabiana Frayssinet

BUENOS AIRES, May 8 2015 (IPS) - Although they do not specifically target women, social policies like family allowances and pensions have improved the lives of women in Latin America, the region that has made the biggest strides so far this century in terms of gender equality, although there is still a long way to go.

Luiza Carvalho of Brazil, U.N. Women’s regional director for the Americas and the Caribbean, said that can be seen in each report by her agency. “It’s interesting to note that of all of the world’s regions, Latin America has in fact shown the greatest progress,” Carvalho said in an interview with IPS during the global conference “Women and Social Inclusion: From Beijing to Post-2015”, held in the Argentine capital from Wednesday May 6 to Friday May 8.

The advances made in Latin America, Carvalho said, “were not so much a result of economic policies; on the contrary, they were the result of social policies, which although not necessarily specifically aimed at women, ended up benefiting them a great deal, directly and indirectly.”

Latin America’s successful cash transfer programmes include Brazil’s Bolsa Familia, Argentina’s Universal Child Allowance, Ecuador’s Human Development Bonus and Mexico’s Prospera.

More:
http://www.ipsnews.net/2015/05/latin-americas-social-policies-have-given-women-a-boost/

(These programmes, we learn day by day, are the forward steps the fascists want to destroy the first opportunity they get.)

May 14, 2015

IACHR Tackles Violence Against Native Peoples in Costa Rica

IACHR Tackles Violence Against Native Peoples in Costa Rica
By Diego Arguedas Ortiz

SAN JOSE, May 11 2015 (IPS) - After years of violence against two indigenous groups in Costa Rica, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) demanded that the government adopt measures by May 15 to protect the life and physical integrity of the members of the two communities.

The IACHR granted precautionary measures in favour of the Bribri community living in the 11,700-hectare Salitre indigenous territory, who have been fighting for years to reclaim land that has been illegally occupied by landowners. “The law gives us the right to defend our claim to our territory, and one of the things it allows us to do is take back the land that is in the hands of non-indigenous people who are not living on it,” the leader of the community, Roxana Figueroa, told IPS.

Besides seeking to protect the community of Salitre, the resolution is aimed at safeguarding the Teribe or Bröran community in Térraba, also in the southeast. Around 85 percent of the Teribe community’s land is occupied by non-indigenous people, which violates their collective title to their ancestral territory.

Salitre, Térraba and the other 22 indigenous territories established in this Central American nation all share the same problem: the occupation of their land by non-indigenous landowners, in violation of international conventions and local legislation. Costa Rica’s indigenous law, in effect since 1977, declared native territories inalienable, indivisible, non-transferable and exclusive to the indigenous communities living there.

~ snip ~

There are very real reasons to be afraid. The violent incidents documented by the IACHR include a Jan. 5, 2013 machete attack on three unarmed indigenous men. One was also tortured with a hot iron rod; another was shot; and the third man nearly lost two fingers.


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A Costa Rican indigenous family runs to take shelter in the community of Cedror in the indigenous territory of Salitre on
Jul. 6, 2014, fearing an attack by landowners who occupied their land after setting fire to their homes and belongings the
day before. Credit: David Bolaños/IPS
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More:
http://www.ipsnews.net/2015/05/iachr-addresses-violence-against-native-peoples-in-costa-rica/

May 14, 2015

Peru reopens probe into mass sterilisations - rights groups

Peru reopens probe into mass sterilisations - rights groups
Source: Thomson Reuters Foundation - Thu, 14 May 2015 17:53 GMT

By Anastasia Moloney

BOGOTA, May 14 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - A top law enforcement official in Peru has ordered the reopening and expansion of a criminal investigation into the alleged forced sterilisation of thousands of indigenous people.

During the 1990s, nearly 350,000 women and 25,000 men were sterilised during a programme led by the government of former president Alberto Fujimori to reduce the birth rate. The programme focused on indigenous and poor people in rural areas of Peru.

Some 2,073 women have given statements to local and international rights groups saying that they had their tubes tied without their knowledge or consent, and at least 18 women died as a result of the surgery.

In January 2014, shortly after learning that Peru had closed an investigation into the sterilisation program and had cleared Fujimori and others in his government by saying no crimes against humanity had been committed, human rights groups filed a complaint.

More:
http://www.trust.org/item/20150514175414-7c2dr/

May 14, 2015

Canada has failed to protect indigenous women from violence, says UN official

Canada has failed to protect indigenous women from violence, says UN official

UN special rapporteur says Canadian government has repeatedly failed First Nations women and calls for national inquiry into decades-long epidemic

Tom McCarthy in New York
@TeeMcSee
Tuesday 12 May 2015 08.00 EDT

Canada has repeatedly failed to put an end to a decades-long epidemic of violence against First Nations women, according to the UN special rapporteur on the rights of indigenous people, who renewed a call for a national inquiry into the problem.

Speaking to the Guardian in New York, Victoria Tauli-Corpuz said the government had taken some steps to try to protect Aboriginal women, including direct funding for about 30 organizations to reduce violence against them.

But she added: “That’s not enough. That’s not an adequate response.”

Tauli-Corpuz pointed to the killing of First Nations woman Cindy Gladue, who bled to death in a hotel bathtub in Edmonton in 2011 after she was stabbed by a trucker who prosecutors say had hired her as a prostitute.

The man accused of her murder, Bradley Barton, was found not guilty in March, a verdict which prompted outrage among activists. Following a national letter-writing campaign, the government said it would appeal the verdict.

More:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/may/12/canada-violence-indigenous-first-nations-women

May 13, 2015

A Scientist Accidentally Developed Sunglasses That Could Correct Color Blindness

A Scientist Accidentally Developed Sunglasses That Could Correct Color Blindness

The California company EnChroma is creating lenses that allow some to see colors for the first time


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The impact of EnChroma sunglasses: the left shows what a wearer with red-green colorblindness would typically see. The right shows what they see while wearing the sunglasses. (EnChroma)
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By Li Zhou
smithsonian.com
March 3, 2015

One afternoon in 2005, Don McPherson was playing ultimate Frisbee in Santa Cruz. He was wearing a pair of sunglasses, when his friend, Michael Angell, admiring his eyewear, asked to borrow them. When he put the glasses on, he was stunned by what he saw.

McPherson recalls Angell saying, with surprise, “I can see the cones,” referring to a set of orange traffic cones nearby. What made this a startling observation was that Angell had been colorblind his whole life. The sunglasses, which McPherson, a materials scientist, had engineered, actually allowed him to see the orange hue for the first time, and distinguish that color from the surrounding grass and concrete.

Based in Berkeley, California, McPherson, who has a PhD in glass science from Alfred University, originally specialized in creating eyewear for doctors to use as protection during laser surgery. Rare earth iron embedded in the glasses absorbed a significant amount of light, enabling surgeons to not only stay safe, but also clearly differentiate between blood and tissue during procedures.

In fact, surgeons loved the glasses so much, they began disappearing from operating rooms. This was the first indication that they could be used outside the hospital. McPherson, too, began casually wearing them, as sunglasses. “Wearing them makes all colors look incredibly saturated,” he says. “It makes the world look really bright.”

More:
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/scientist-accidentally-developed-sunglasses-that-could-correct-color-blindness-180954456/#78Jb6BvOY0zQMLv8.99

May 13, 2015

Anglican bishop and priest arrested for laundering money for Colombia’s top drug gang

Source: Colombia Reports

May 13, 2015

Anglican bishop and priest arrested for laundering money for Colombia’s top drug gang
posted by Talor Gruenwald

Anglican bishop and priest arrested for laundering money for Colombia’s top drug gang
posted by Talor Gruenwald

Colombia’s national police has detained a bishop of the Anglican Church and a pastor suspected of laundering over $400,000 dollars for neo-paramilitary group Los Urabeños.

The two putative religious officials created an organization in which they supposedly raised money from parishioners for religious purposes, but instead used the organization to launder large sums of money.

The bishop, Orlando Arce Ortiz, was the main architect of this organization and was also responsible for advising Los Urabeños on how to make certain members pass as humanitarian aid workers. The pastor, Jorge Armando Mercedes, helped send drug money to his native Dominican Republic and pass it off as offerings from parishioners in Colombia.

. . .

The national director against organized crime for the Prosecutor General, Alvaro Sarmiento, also indicated that, aside from launder money, Otoniel used an NGO as well as Christian churches to transport weapons for the paramilitary group.

Read more: http://colombiareports.com/anglican-bishop-and-priest-arrested-for-laundering-money-for-colombias-top-drug-gang/