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Wednesday Reads: The Mini-Series Begins

Posted: May 8, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: academia, Crime, Foreign Affairs, Great Britain, Israel, Italy, morning reads, Palestine, Real Life Horror | Tags: , , , , , , , |32 Comments

2b8e24848f17b8ec4a7397174aa12d0cGood Morning

Well, since Dak is off flying the friendly skies (lets hope her TSA agent buys her a drink first) and Boston Boomer is babysitting her nephews all day, you will be stuck with me for the duration.

😉

(Ah, should I say the next few posts at least…)

So……let the series of posts begin…

The little girl born in captivity to Amanda Berry is named Jocelyn, and according to ABC news, she seems to be doing okay. They have released a picture of her from the night of her escape that shows her face, and she is smiling.  Cleveland Girl Born in Captivity ‘Smiling,’ Eating Popsicles – ABC News

nc_amanda_berry_daughter_unblur_ll_130507_wg

The little girl, named Jocelyn, ate popsicles in the hospital room in which she and her mother were examined after all four females were takes to Metro Medical Center, said Cleveland Police Deputy Chief Ed Tomba.

“She looks great, happy, healthy and ate a popsicle last night,” Tomba said of the little girl, who may have been born and raised in the very house in which her mother was a captive.

“Seeing her mother smile made her smile,” Tomba said.

FBI Special Agent Vicki Anderson told ABC News that Jocelyn is missing a front tooth and that Berry had been schooling her daughter in the home.

Police said the women knew each other in the home, and while in the hospital asked to visit one another. It was DeJesus who proudly showed off to investigators a drawing the little girl had made.

CNN has full coverage here: Charges expected Wednesday in missing women case – CNN.com

But if you have 7 plus minutes to spare, please click here to see Anderson Cooper’s interview with the amazing Charles Ramsey…this man is a treasure.

Did you know that in the academic world there is a boycott of Israel? Yeah it is creating a stink over in Europe: Stephen Hawking joins academic boycott of Israel

Stephen Hawking

A statement published with Stephen Hawking’s approval said his withdrawal was based on advice from academic contacts in Palestine. Photograph: Facundo Arrizabalaga/EPA

Professor Stephen Hawking is backing the academic boycott of Israel by pulling out of a conference hosted by Israeli president Shimon Peres in Jerusalem as a protest at Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.

Hawking, 71, the world-renowned theoretical physicist and former Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge, had accepted an invitation to headline the fifth annual president’s conference, Facing Tomorrow, in June, which features major international personalities, attracts thousands of participants and this year will celebrate Peres’s 90th birthday.

Hawking is in very poor health, but last week he wrote a brief letter to the Israeli president to say he had changed his mind. He has not announced his decision publicly, but a statement published by the British Committee for the Universities of Palestine with Hawking’s approval described it as “his independent decision to respect the boycott, based upon his knowledge of Palestine, and on the unanimous advice of his own academic contacts there”.

Hawking’s decision marks another victory in the campaign for boycott, divestment and sanctions targeting Israeli academic institutions.

This started with The Teachers Union in Ireland, followed by the United States members of the Association for Asian American Studies. Take a look at that Guardian article to read more about it. If it was mention here on the blog earlier, I may have missed it…but perhaps it was lost in the shuffle of all the breaking news of late.

Meanwhile, in Italy: Deaths as Genoa ship hits control tower

At least six people have died and four are missing after a container ship crashed into a control tower in the Italian port of Genoa, officials say.

The Jolly Nero smashed into the 50m (164ft) concrete and glass tower late at night, reducing it to rubble.

Three of those who died are believed to have been trapped inside a lift as the tower collapsed.

Rescue workers have been searching in the rubble for survivors while divers scoured the water around the dock.

The accident occurred at about 23:00 on Tuesday night (21:00 GMT), when a shift change was taking place in the control tower and about 13 people were thought to be inside.

Rubble of the control tower in Genoa port, 8 May 2013All that remained of the tower on Wednesday was rubble.

One report I saw says they believe the total to be nine dead, but that is not confirmed.
Finally, this article about the origin of language should be very interesting to many of you: English May Have Retained Words From an Ice Age Language

Map showing approximate regions where languages from the seven Eurasiatic language families are now spoken. Image: Pagel et al./PNAS

If you’ve ever cringed when your parents said “groovy,” you’ll know that spoken language can have a brief shelf life. But frequently used words can persist for generations, even millennia, and similar sounds and meanings often turn up in very different languages. The existence of these shared words, or cognates, has led some linguists to suggest that seemingly unrelated language families can be traced back to a common ancestor. Now, a new statistical approach suggests that peoples from Alaska to Europe may share a linguistic forebear dating as far back as the end of the Ice Age, about 15,000 years ago.

I’ve just given you the first paragraph of that article, you need to go read the entire thing at the Wired link and see just how important and ancient the word Mother really is….

That should get things rolling today, see y’all later…comments down below.

32 Comments on “Wednesday Reads: The Mini-Series Begins”

  1. JJ Lopez Minkoff says:
    May 8, 2013 at 8:10 am

    Hope you all have a great morning, I won’t kid you, I am still very tired. I’m going back to bed. LOL

    • bostonboomer says:
      May 8, 2013 at 8:54 am

      Rest up, JJ. I’m not going to disappear completely.

      • JJ Lopez Minkoff says:
        May 8, 2013 at 9:01 am

        Oh hey, I thought you would be real busy, but not totally disappear…;)

        Dak should be happy about this: The Volokh Conspiracy » Louisiana Supreme Court Rules Voucher Plan Violates State Constitution

        And there is this news too:

        The Volokh Conspiracy » “Judge Rips Obama’s Right-Wing Plan B Stance”

        Salon has an interesting report on Tuesday’s court hearing before federal district judge Edward Korman in which the Administration sought to defend its newly announced policy of limiting the over-the-counter availability of Plan-B contraception to females 15 and older instead of removing all restrictions as Korman had previously ordered. A taste:

        This morning, Korman repeatedly slammed his hand down on the table for emphasis, interrupting the government counsel’s every other sentence with assertions like, “You’re just playing games here,” “You’re making an intellectually dishonest argument,” “You’re basically lying,” “This whole thing is a charade,” “I’m entitled to say this is a lot of nonsense, am I not?” and “Contrary to the baloney you were giving me …” He also accused the administration of hypocrisy for opposing voter ID laws but being engaged in the “suppression of the rights of women” with the ID requirement for the drug.

        The Administration is also appealing Korman’s order.

        Then I saw something on Cannonfire about Obama wanting to go ahead with wiretapping?

      • bostonboomer says:
        May 8, 2013 at 9:46 am

        I was just about to post the original wiretap article by Charlie Savage. Obama administration wants to let intelligence agencies monitor all internet communications.

        The F.B.I. director, Robert S. Mueller III, has argued that the bureau’s ability to carry out court-approved eavesdropping on suspects is “going dark” as communications technology evolves, and since 2010 has pushed for a legal mandate requiring companies like Facebook and Google to build into their instant-messaging and other such systems a capacity to comply with wiretap orders. That proposal, however, bogged down amid concerns by other agencies, like the Commerce Department, about quashing Silicon Valley innovation.

        While the F.B.I.’s original proposal would have required Internet communications services to each build in a wiretapping capacity, the revised one, which must now be reviewed by the White House, focuses on fining companies that do not comply with wiretap orders. The difference, officials say, means that start-ups with a small number of users would have fewer worries about wiretapping issues unless the companies became popular enough to come to the Justice Department’s attention.

        • JJ Lopez Minkoff says:
          May 8, 2013 at 10:00 am

          It is so obvious the only reason the GOP is so anti-Obama is because he is a Black Man…cause it definitely has NOTHING to do with his polices.

          Hey you want a laugh…check out the latest cover of the Enquirer:

      • bostonboomer says:
        May 8, 2013 at 10:08 am

        OMG! That’s hysterical!

  2. JJ Lopez Minkoff says:
    May 8, 2013 at 8:16 am

    Cleveland police search for more women after tip from kidnap victim, report says | Fox News

    Cleveland police are searching properties Wednesday morning near the home called a ‘house of horrors’ after they were reportedly alerted by one of the kidnap victims that there may be more women.

    Details of a possible fourth victim came to light during police interviews with the oldest victim, Michelle Knight, who reportedly said there was another girl at the home about 10 years ago, but disappeared.

    In 2007, Ashley Summers, a 14 year old, disappeared in the same neighborhood. Initially it was believed Summers was a runaway but a few years later, police saw a potential link with the other missing girls.

    Knight reportedly told police she was unsure of how many other women may have been in the house because they were all kept in separate locked rooms.

    Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/05/08/cleveland-police-hit-with-claims-missed-clues-after-3-women-freed/#ixzz2ShsVZQ3p

  3. JJ Lopez Minkoff says:
    May 8, 2013 at 9:08 am

    As BB posted last night: Charles Ramsey: ‘Take that reward and give it to’ the kidnap victims | The Raw Story

    The man who is being hailed as a hero for rescuing the lives of three women kidnapped for a decade says that he would like any reward money to be turned over to the victims.

    Charles Ramsey became an instant Internet sensation on Monday when he helped free Amanda Berry, Georgina DeJesus and Michele Knight from the house next to his where they had been trapped for around 10 years.

    “Bro, I knew something was wrong when a little, pretty white girl ran into a black man’s arms,” he told WEWS following the rescue. “Something is wrong here. Dead giveaway.”

    On Tuesday, CNN host Anderson Cooper asked Ramsey what it felt like to find out that he had been living next to kidnapping victims.

    “See, that’s why now I’m having trouble sleeping,” he explained. “See, up until yesterday, the only thing that kept me from losing sleep was the lack of money. See what I’m saying? So now that that’s going on, and I could have done this last year, not this hero stuff, just do the right thing.”

    “Because there’s a lot of people, they’re saying you’re a hero,” the CNN host noted.

    “No, no, no. Bro, I’m a Christian, an American, and just like you,” Ramsey insisted. “We bleed same blood, put our pants on the same way. It’s just that you got to put that – being a coward, and I don’t want to get in nobody’s business. You got to put that away for a minute. You have to have cajones, bro.”

    Cooper noted that the FBI had offered a reward for at least two of the victims.

    “I tell you what you do, give it to them,” Ramsey said. “Because if folks been following this case since last night, you been following me since last night, you know I got a job anyway.”

    “Just went picked it up, paycheck,” he added, producing an envelope from his pocket. “What that address say?”

    “Where are them girls living? Right next door to this paycheck. So yes, take that reward and give it to — that little girl came out the house and she was crying.”

  4. JJ Lopez Minkoff says:
    May 8, 2013 at 9:15 am

    Geez, Death toll of Bangladesh building collapse crosses 800 – Salon.com

  5. bostonboomer says:
    May 8, 2013 at 9:55 am

    Wow.

    Heritage study co-author opposed letting in immigrants with low IQs

    Richwine’s dissertation asserts that there are deep-set differentials in intelligence between races. While it’s clear he thinks it is partly due to genetics — “the totality of the evidence suggests a genetic component to group differences in IQ” — he argues the most important thing is that the differences in group IQs are persistent, for whatever reason. He writes, “No one knows whether Hispanics will ever reach IQ parity with whites, but the prediction that new Hispanic immigrants will have low-IQ children and grandchildren is difficult to argue against.”

    Toward the end of the thesis, Richwine writes that though he believes racial differences in IQ to be real and persistent, one need not agree with that to accept his case for basing immigration on IQ. Rather than excluding what he judges to be low-IQ races, we can just test each individual’s IQ and exclude those with low scores. “I believe there is a strong case for IQ selection,” he writes, “since it is theoretically a win-win for the U.S. and potential immigrants.” He does caution against referring to it as IQ-based selection, saying that using the term “skill-based” would “blunt the negative reaction.”

    Eeek! This needs to get out there.

    • JJ Lopez Minkoff says:
      May 8, 2013 at 10:03 am

      Skill based? Damn them. Assholes…they are all assholes.

    • bostonboomer says:
      May 8, 2013 at 10:07 am

      Quote from Richwine’s dissertaton:

      The statistical construct known as IQ can reliably estimate general mental ability, or intelligence. The average IQ of immigrants in the United States is substantially lower than that of the white native population, and the difference is likely to persist over several generations. The consequences are a lack of socioeconomic assimilation among low-IQ immigrant groups, more underclass behavior, less social trust, and an increase in the proportion of unskilled workers in the American labor market. Selecting high-IQ immigrants would ameliorate these problems in the U.S., while at the same time benefiting smart potential immigrants who lack educational access in their home countries.

    • RalphB says:
      May 8, 2013 at 10:32 am

      Wow, just openly racist now.

      • bostonboomer says:
        May 8, 2013 at 10:33 am

        I guess the Heritage Fdn isn’t going to help the Republican Party shake of its racist history.

    • NW Luna says:
      May 8, 2013 at 4:59 pm

      Idiot! IQ tests predominantly test your knowledge of the dominant or mainstream culture.

  6. bostonboomer says:
    May 8, 2013 at 10:34 am

    Charles Ramsey applauded by crowd at Cleveland airport

  7. RalphB says:
    May 8, 2013 at 10:54 am

    The interview with Ramsey was really good. The linguistics piece was interesting as well. I’ve been interested in the origins of languages for quite a while, particularly how they change over time.

  8. NW Luna says:
    May 8, 2013 at 5:02 pm

    JJ, you continue with such interesting posts! I love reading about language/word origins.

    “Tabby Cat Whisker Roast” — Wherever did you find it? How fun! I want a copy (yes, I have kittehs, or they have me.)

  9. RalphB says:
    May 8, 2013 at 5:10 pm

    When Benghazi is pushed, someone should bring up this list from the Bush years.

    September 17, 2008, terrorists attacked the U.S. embassy in Sana’a, Yemen – 7 killed.
    July 9, 2008, terrorists attacked the U.S. consulate in Istanbul, Turkey – 3 killed.
    September 12, 2006, terrorists attacked the U.S. embassy in Damascus, Syria – 1 killed.
    March 2, 2006, a suicide car bomber killed 4, at the U.S. consulate in Karachi, Pakistan.
    December 6, 2004, terrorists attacked the U.S. consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia – 5 killed.
    July 30, 2004, a suicide bomber killed 2 at the U.S. embassy in Taskkent, Uzbekistan.
    February 28, 2003, terrorists attacked the U.S. consulate in Karachi, Pakistan killing 2.
    February 20, 2003, a suicide truck bomber killed 17 at the International Diplomatic Compound in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

  10. Fannie says:
    May 8, 2013 at 10:03 pm

    If all they had was four people to send, it could have meant their lives too, and was a waste of time.

    They are more pissed off because of the Cleveland Kidnapping case, and the Jodi Arias case getting more air time, that they can’t shoot straight.

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