PufPuf23
PufPuf23's JournalThe unsanitized story of Jackie Robinson
I liked this article.
http://espn.go.com/mlb/story/_/id/15182338/how-story-real-jackie-robinson-shows-deeper-more-painful-side-civil-rights-legend
Although born from good intentions, the idea of Jackie Robinson the saint is a convenient, unfortunate concoction. It is true enough that Robinson changed America, and in turn, America changed with him. His image and name rests on awards and on stamps, on highways and schools, and in his sport, no player on any team will ever wear his number 42 again, except during the one game later this week, when every player, coach and umpire in the majors wears it.
The simple language at the root of his legend -- Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier -- sounds good and permanent and important, uncomplicated both for grade schoolers and adults alike, and the triumphant tone is consistent with America's enduring need for hope.
[The Undefeated: 'Jackie Robinson' doc kills myths of legend
Ken Burns' four-hour, two-part documentary on Jackie Robinson alters the memory and mythology of the first black man to integrate baseball.]
Yet even that is a concoction. At best, it is a fantasy discouraging the deeper, more painful excavation of the barriers he couldn't break and why, the ones society did not lower but strengthened because of the threat of his presence. At worst, it is a simplistic and corrosive lie designed to keep America from itself, to keep it from what it is, which is a nation far more comfortable with always being the good guy, always preferring the fairy tale to the truth.
The real Robinson, whole and unsanitized, was constantly human, competitive, flawed and pained, honorably naïve but always in determined opposition to the obstacles that prevented him from fulfilling a quest still unrealized some 44 years after his death: full partnership in the American dream for African-Americans. The real Robinson lives beautifully and heroically, inside a confectionary lie that his sainthood was something given by a redeemed America rather than taken from a resistant one.
The concoction undermines his true, enduring significance: the enormous cost of the legend, its actual price in isolation and hurt. Robinson paid for remaining in the fight, even when overmatched, and was betrayed, sometimes by his supporters. The better story for a nation so woefully divided is the real one of the person willing to pay the cost and suffer the cracks and fallibilities that came with it.
More:
Here are several attempts.
Eyes Wide Hut - Woman on vision quest rents hut in Iceland during the off-season that has poor illumination and is rife with vermin (cockroaches, spiders, mice, rats, Icelandic elves and other creepies). Decides her life wasn't so bad after all.
Trading Laces - Valley girl with OCD barricades herself in mall shoe store and won't come out until spirited away by delivery truck driver to distribution center.
Da Vinci Cod - Talented young artist gives up his art to marry a fisherman's daughter and become a fisherman. He invents an automated cod cleaning and fileting machine. In his spare time he paints fish murals all over the village. Today the fishing industry has died but there is a tourism industry based upon his murals, some are still being discovered. As a tie-in to the movie release, there is a coffee table book of his restored murals.
Men in Back - All the men in the world wake up to a medieval world where they have just been released from slavery to the women. The never-ending story of how they strive to become equal and free in an unjust world.
Fee Willy - An ex-POTUS with a weight problem wanders the world collecting stipends for The Fee Willy Foundation. He is uncertain as to whether he wants his wife to be POTUS.
The Plan to Send a Submarine to Titan, Saturn's Largest Moon
Planetary scientists intend to send a submersible vessel to cruise the liquid hydrocarbon seas of Titan, Saturn's largest moon. The mission study is in its infancy, but its ambition and audacity harkens to the best of science fiction and the heady heights of the Space Race. As Ralph Lorenz of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) explains, "The virtue of this study is that you just need to say those words—Titan submarine—and everyone kind of gets that it's out there, it's interesting, and there's a lot of exciting potential."
At the 47th annual Lunar and Planetary Science Conference held last month in The Woodlands, Texas, Lorenz—the Titan submarine's project scientist—led an open forum on the mission to solicit reactions from fellow space scientists to the mission's targets and objectives. The goal was to help the Titan sub researchers determine the best payload of scientific instruments for the craft.
Among the questions the scientists must eventually answer: How long should such a mission last? How far should the submarine go? How fast should it go? How much data might it try to return?
None of these questions are as simple as they might seem. Cruising speed and data transmission, for example, must be carefully balanced. Too much of one takes away from what little available power exists for the other. Shorter travel distances mean more data about fewer things; vice-versa for longer distances. If the vessel is going to be sticking around one area for a while, what instruments might be needed to really collect every scintilla of data possible? Then it's back to the drawing board with respect to balancing the use of available electricity. No problem in space exploration is trivial, and no decision can be made lightly. Add to all this the problems inherent to submersible vehicles—and that Titan's seas are cryogenic, or extremely cold—and you get some idea of how ambitious and exciting this mission really is.
http://mentalfloss.com/article/78049/plan-send-submarine-titan-saturns-largest-moon
More plus video and images at link.
Checked online about my CA registration status and because of a glitch said not registered.
I just got off the phone with County Voters Registration.
One need to put the "/" in MM/DD/YYYY.
Also one needs to enter either last four digits of SS# or DL#.
DL# worked but not SS# when I tried internet online while on the phone.
I have been a voter at same address since 2003 and only have vote by mail as live voting was stopped several years ago as very rural.
So I am still registered to vote and person told me getting many similar calls for same reason.
Here is where to check one's CA Voter Registration Status.
http://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/registration-status/
Found mass quantities of morel mushrooms yesterday.
What shall I do with them? New ideas welcome.
So far scheduled:
(1) Butter and garlic add eggs and scramble.
(2) Chicken and morel teriyaki stir fry with brown rice.
(3) Butter and garlic with sirloin steak.
(4) ???
I make great mushroom soup in the Fall with tanoak (matsutake) mushrooms and greatly prefer over made with morels so soup is out unless something truly different.
The Libya Gamble:Inside Hillary Clinton’s Push for War & the Making of a Failed State - Democray Now
Published on Mar 3, 2016
http://democracynow.org - The New York Times has published a major two-part exposé titled "The Libya Gamble" on how then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pushed President Obama to begin bombing Libya five years ago this month. Today, Libya is a failed state and a haven for terrorists. How much should Hillary Clinton be blamed for the crisis? We speak to journalist Scott Shane of The New York Times.
Democracy Now! is an independent global news hour that airs weekdays on nearly 1,400 TV and radio stations Monday through Friday. Watch our livestream 8-9AM ET: http://democracynow.org
C) has destroyed the Democratic Party
The current Democratic Party is the historic Democratic Party in name only.
A minority of Democrats in name only conspired to take over from within the Democratic Party of my youth.
In 1968 the Democratic Party splintered into four groups:
1. Hubert H. Humphrey, Johnson's Vice-President, gained the support of labor unions and big-city party bosses (such as Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley), who had been the Democratic Party's primary power base since the days of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. It was also believed that President Johnson himself was covertly supporting Humphrey, despite public claims of neutrality.
2. McCarthy rallied students and intellectuals who had been the early activists against the war in Vietnam;
3. Kennedy gained the support of Catholics, African-Americans, and other racial and ethnic minorities;
4. Conservative white Southern Democrats, or "Dixiecrats," their influence declining swiftly in the national party, tended to support either Vice-President Humphrey or George C. Wallace and the Alabama governor's third-party campaign in the general election.
The 1968 POTUS cycle included assassinations (RFK and MLK) and riots. The disgraced Nixon won the 1968 POTUS election and extended the Vietnam War. Racist, corrupt, and "owned" Nixon slowed Democratic progress in civil rights, peace, and economic justice until forced to resign in 1974.
The 1972 POTUS cycle included McGovern, Lindsay, George Wallace, Humphrey, and a range of other potential nominees. George Wallace started fast winning Florida and being generally competitive until a failed assassination attempt that gravely wounded Wallace.
McGovern, a Vietnam War peace candidate, lost in an extreme landslide.
Jimmy Carter replaced Ford as POTUS in the 1976 election. We forget and Carter has become a beloved Democratic figure but was considered a conservative Dixiecrat at the time of his election. He is considered a weak and ineffective POTUS. The GOP broke the Borland Amendment and provided arms to the Contras in Nicaragua financed by sale of arms to Iran during the Iran Hostage crisis and the hostages were released when Regan sworn in to office.
The next three POTUS election cycles were Reagan/Bush, Reagan Bush, and Reagan.
A new wind rose within the Democratic Party as traditional Democratic values continued to founder and neoliberalism became the guiding economic philosophy of both the Democrats and GOP.
Neo-liberals within the Democratic Party organized the DLC and championed Bill Clinton who won over the tired and corrupted GOP in the 1992 POTUS election. None of the four splinters of the 1968 Democratic Party brought the Democrats back into power. The New Democrats adopted many of the economic and empire stances of the GOP and married them to the social liberalism and diversity of the remaining FDR/JFK/LBJ Democrats. The New Democrats, Third Way is another label, are "C)" that willfully infected and have gained control at the upper levels and in public discourse of the Democratic Party. The New Democrats are kin to Rockefeller GOP, Reagan followers spread into what were traditionally under represented minority groups, former Dixiecrats, and higher income and professional class Democrats.
Now Liberals and FDR/JFK/LBJ Democrats are mocked and minimalized within what was "our" own Party which has become a Party of wealth and empire; and, thanks be to electronics, ready bread and circuses.
A documented miracles and clip of OMG Cat
The cat clip is after Salma Hayek talks about her breasts.
This clip is for the cat people. Promise.
What seems to be the trouble, love?
I happen to like Russell Brand and think he is a very smart person.
This clip and his interaction with Mika on Morning Joe (minus Joe that day) cracks me up.
I do not know why Joe Scarborough was not there that day but would not be surprised is that he was avoiding Brand.
There is a vast difference between plant breeding and gene splicing / genetic modification (GMOs).
Caveat: Gene splicing also know as genetic modification is a valid technology. However, the science is relatively new.
The technique has allowed a revolution in the medical, agriculture, research science, and other fields.
Corporate supporters understate the direct risks and overstate the benefits of genetic modification of food and material crops on a landscape scale. . The external risks to soil, genetic diversity, human society, etc. are understated or ignored. There are large short term financial rewards for manufacturers of gmo strains and corporate agriculture.
My perception is that there are shills at DU and elsewhere that seek to foster the idea that the questions attendant to corporate agriculture based upon gmos is a closed question when this is not in fact true.
Plant breeding
wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant_breeding
Plant breeding is the art and science of changing the traits of plants in order to produce desired characteristics.[1] Plant breeding can be accomplished through many different techniques ranging from simply selecting plants with desirable characteristics for propagation, to more complex molecular techniques (see cultigen and cultivar).
Plant breeding has been practiced for thousands of years, since near the beginning of human civilization. It is practiced worldwide by individuals such as gardeners and farmers, or by professional plant breeders employed by organizations such as government institutions, universities, crop-specific industry associations or research centers.
International development agencies believe that breeding new crops is important for ensuring food security by developing new varieties that are higher-yielding, resistant to pests and diseases, drought-resistant or regionally adapted to different environments and growing conditions.
Genetic engineering (gene modification)
wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_engineering
Genetic engineering, also called genetic modification, is the direct manipulation of an organism's genome using biotechnology. It is a set of technologies used to change the genetic makeup of cells, including the transfer of genes within and across species boundaries to produce improved or novel organisms. New DNA may be inserted in the host genome by first isolating and copying the genetic material of interest using molecular cloning methods to generate a DNA sequence, or by synthesizing the DNA, and then inserting this construct into the host organism. Genes may be removed, or "knocked out", using a nuclease. Gene targeting is a different technique that uses homologous recombination to change an endogenous gene, and can be used to delete a gene, remove exons, add a gene, or introduce point mutations.
An organism that is generated through genetic engineering is considered to be a genetically modified organism (GMO). The first GMOs were bacteria generated in 1973 and GM mice in 1974. Insulin-producing bacteria were commercialized in 1982 and genetically modified food has been sold since 1994. GloFish, the first GMO designed as a pet, was first sold in the United States in December 2003.[1]
Genetic engineering techniques have been applied in numerous fields including research, agriculture, industrial biotechnology, and medicine. Enzymes used in laundry detergent and medicines such as insulin and human growth hormone are now manufactured in GM cells, experimental GM cell lines and GM animals such as mice or zebrafish are being used for research purposes, and genetically modified crops have been commercialized.
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