Friday Reads
Posted: December 20, 2013 Filed under: 2016 elections, Barack Obama, Mental Health, morning reads 46 CommentsGood Morning!
I have to admit I have no idea where this one is going to go today. I only know there are a lot of things I’m really tired of at the moment and
I’m going to avoid them. However, tomorrow is the Winter Solstice so the days are really short and so is the sunlight!
So, I’m going to start out with an archaeology thing and go from there. Archaeologists are trying to find libraries and scrolls buried beneath volcanic ash in Herculaneum. They hope to recover some of the ancient texts that existed in that time period.
In 2008, a further advance was made through multi-spectral imaging. Instead of taking a single (“monospectral”) image of a fragment of papyrus under infrared light (at typically 800 nanometres) the new technology takes 16 different images of each fragment at different light levels and then creates a composite image.
With this technique Obbink is seeking not only to clarify the older infrared images but also to look again fragments that previously defied all attempts to read them. The detail of the new images is so good that the handwriting on the different fragments can be easily compared, which should help reconstruct the lost texts out of the various orphan fragments. “The whole thing needs to be redone,” says Obbink.So what has been found? Lost poems by Sappho, the 100-plus lost plays of Sophocles, the lost dialogues of Aristotle? Not quite.
Despite being found in Italy, most of the recovered material is in Greek. Perhaps the major discovery is a third of On Nature, a previously lost work by the philosopher Epicurus.
But many of the texts that have emerged so far are written by a follower of Epicurus, the philosopher and poet Philodemus of Gadara (c.110-c.40/35BC). In fact, so many of his works are present, and in duplicate copies, that David Sider, a classics professor at New York University, believes that what has been found so far was in fact Philodemus’s own working library. Piso was Philodemus’s patron.
The Senate passed a huge appropriations bill last night for the military.
The legislation would:
—Authorize a 1 percent pay raise for military personnel and cover combat pay and other benefits.
—Strip military commanders of their ability to overturn jury convictions, require a civilian review if a commander declines to prosecute a case and require that any individual convicted of sexual assault face a dishonorable discharge or dismissal. The bill
also would provide victims with legal counsel, eliminate the statute of limitations for courts-martial in rape and sexual assault cases, and criminalize retaliation against victims who report a sexual assault.
The Pentagon has estimated that 26,000 members of the military may have been sexually assaulted last year, though thousands were afraid to come forward for fear of inaction or retribution. Several high-profile cases united Democrats and Republicans behind efforts to stop sexual assault in the ranks.
The compromise also would change the military’s Article 32 proceedings to limit intrusive questioning of victims, making it more similar to a grand jury
The legislation does not include a contentious proposal from Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., to give victims of rape and sexual assault in the military an independent route outside the chain of command for prosecuting attackers, taking the authority away from commanders.
That proposal drew strong opposition from the Pentagon and several lawmakers. Gillibrand’s plan is likely to get a separate vote, perhaps as early as next month.
Italian police on Thursday conducted a manhunt for a serial killer who was allowed to leave a Genoa prison on a two-day, good-behavior pass to see his elderly mother but failed to return.
Bartolomeo Gagliano is armed and “dangerous,” Genoa police official Fausto Lamparelli said. He urged people who think they might have spotted Gagliano to quickly call police.
There are fears that the fugitive might have driven across the nearby border into France.
Courts held Gagliano, now 55, responsible for the fatal stoning of one prostitute and the wounding of another in 1981, but ruled him mentally incapable of understanding the crime and ordered him to an asylum for the criminally insane, according to authorities. After escaping in 1989 from the asylum, he killed, along with another man, a female transsexual and a male transvestite, and was again sent to a criminal asylum for psychiatric treatment, authorities quoted in Italian news reports said.
I wonder who thought that was a good idea?
The tiny break away country of South Sudan looks to be on the edge of civil war. Things are really coming apart at the seams there and it is a dangerous situation for the country’s civilians. Americans are being evacuated.
US President Barack Obama has warned that South Sudan is on the “precipice” of a civil war, after clashes in the capital Juba spread around the country.
He said 45 military personnel had been deployed to South Sudan on Wednesday to protect American citizens and property.
On Thursday three Indian peacekeepers died in an attack on a UN compound.
At least 500 people are believed to have died since last weekend, when President Salva Kiir accused his ex-deputy Riek Machar of a failed coup.
“South Sudan stands at the precipice. Recent fighting threatens to plunge South Sudan back into the dark days of its past,” President Obama said in a letter to Congress.
“Inflammatory rhetoric and targeted violence must cease. All sides must listen to the wise counsel of their neighbours, commit to dialogue and take immediate steps to urge calm and support reconciliation.”
Sudan suffered a 22-year civil war that left more than a million people dead before the South became independent in 2011.
The recent unrest has pitted gangs from the Nuer ethnic group to which Mr Machar belongs against Dinkas, the majority group to which Mr Kiir belongs.
A report issued last week by the Department of Justice’s Inspector General found that the federal prison population has increased so rapidly over the past dozen years that the high costs of housing all of those convicts is draining the agency’s budgets for fighting crime, combatting terrorism and protecting Americans’ civil rights.
The US leads the world in imprisoning its citizens, and one of the reasons for that are our long mandatory minimum sentences for those caught up in the drug war. Awareness of the costs of these policies — in human as well as budgetary terms — has been increasing in recent years. In 2010, Congress passed the Fair Sentencing Act, which addressed a significant disparity in the punishments meted out for those possessing crack and powder cocaine. Earlier this year, Attorney General Eric Holder issued new prosecutorial guidelines in an effort to cut down on the number of nonviolent drug offenders facing long periods of incarceration.
Today, Charlie Savage reports for The New York Times that the Obama administration offered some immediate relief to some of those people serving sentences that are disproportionate to their crimes.
I really liked this question from Robert Reich: What Will It Take for Us to Get Back to Being a Decent Society? . . . Now that we’re second 
only to Romania for child poverty.
Congress has just passed a tiny bipartisan budget agreement, and the Federal Reserve has decided to wean the economy off artificially low interest rates. Both decisions reflect Washington’s (and Wall Street’s) assumption that the economy is almost back on track.
But it’s not at all back on the track it was on more than three decades ago.
It’s certainly not on track for the record 4 million Americans now unemployed for more than six months, or for the unprecedented 20 million American children in poverty (we now have the highest rate of child poverty of all developed nations other than Romania), or for the third of all working Americans whose jobs are now part-time or temporary, or for the majority of Americans whose real wages continue to drop.
How can the economy be back on track when 95 percent of the economic gains since the recovery began in 2009 have gone to the richest 1 percent?
The underlying issue is a moral one: What do we owe one another as members of the same society?
So, it’s coming towards the end of 2013. I cannot imagine 2014 is going to be much different, but I’d like to think it will be. There’s one thing that I’m looking forward to: Hillary Clinton: I’ll make a decision on 2016 next year.
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is still keeping mum on whether she’ll run for president in 2016, telling ABC News she hasn’t made up her mind yet.
“Obviously, I will look carefully at what I think I can do and make that decision sometime next year,” Clinton told Barbara Walters during an interview to mark her selection as Walters’ “Most Fascinating Person of 2013.” It’s the second time she’s received the distinction – the first being 1993, the year the list debuted, when she was first lady.
Clinton also said it’s too early to look at the next election.
“I think we should be looking at the work that we have today. Our unemployment rate is too high. We have people getting kicked off food stamps who are in terrible economic straits. Small business is not getting credit, I could go on and on, so I think we ought to pay attention to what’s happening right now,” she said.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
peej
Carissa
bostonboomer
ecocatwoman
mablue2
peggysue22
quixote
skydancingguestblogger
Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
Sky Dancing 
Good post BB
The story about the serial killer is incredible. What were they thinking?
And the story of Obama commuting the sentences of the 8 crack users will no doubt cause a kerfuffle on the right. They won’t take the time to read the stories of the injustice that was perpetrated on the 8 people, they’ll just rail and raise hell like the usually do. I’m sure the snow queen will be among the first to find fault with it since she was among the first to come to the defense of the Duck Dynasty bigot. Oh excuse me, I mean religious man! <>
And this story really sent me over the edge because the same people, many of them evangelical pastors and NOM members, who stoke the gay hate fires here are working in Uganda with Martin Ssempa:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/20/uganda-anti-homosexuality-law_n_4478602.html
The real Phil
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDHr8GR-e-4
They need to put him back on TV because he’s a spectacle/ Pat Robertson may have a slot for him
That’s hilarious!
ROTFLMFAO!!!!!! Thank you for that my friend. It is totally on the mark.
FUCK THE DUCK
That was just about perfect!
Maybe word will spread in a few decades?
Columbia Journalism Review: Political centrism is not objectivity
Thx for that link!
That is a very good article. Gives me some new ways to word my explanations whenever I hear someone yammering about the supposed alarming Federal debt.
Funny in an LA sort of way,,,
Lol
That’s so funny!!!
And ehhhh, our neighbors to the north are very progressive, aren’t they? To my way of thinking we all sell ourselves to make a living in one way or the other. No reason for ADULT prostitutes, female or male, to be imprisoned, punished, stigmatized and marginalized for doing what they want with their own bodies. . Not to mention the fringe of licensing and disease control that goes along with legalization. I wish we’d legalize prostitution and drugs, make laws to make those who partake as safe as possible and take it out of the hands of pimps, thugs and criminals. But that’s just my live and let live personal philosophy.
BYOD? (bring your own diapers)
I think he likes the genuine cloth kind with the teddy bear diaper pins. 🙂
Clearly true post.
Josh Barro: There Are Two Americas, And One Is Better Than The Other
http://variety.com/2013/tv/columns/dear-duck-dynasty-fans-you-do-know-its-all-fake-right-1200980709/
Sick of Speaker Boehner? OTOH, how nice to be able to be hospitalized for “feeling unwell.” Not just the coverage, but the covered sick leave.
Lots of interesting stuff here. The story about recovering the library is fascinating. I hope we’ll hear more about it.
On the presidential commutations, one of the people whose sentence was commuted was MA Gov. Deval Patrick’s cousin. The two have never met and Patrick says he didn’t have anything to do with the decision on his case.
On the serial killer, after Amanda Knox case, I get the feeling Italy’s justice system is deeply flawed.
Amazingly flawed. Probably as bad as our own.
I think it might be worse than ours. At least we don’t allow double jeopardy.
Well, there is that and it’s one of our better parts. Now if we could just get the full power of the Constitution, and Amendments, back I’d be quite happy with it.
Class warfare in Dixieland
Despite platitudes about opportunity, America’s southern states suffer the greatest income inequality
http://www.salon.com/2013/12/20/class_warfare_in_dixieland/
Dak, Only the willfully blind who live here are unaware of the lousy economic issues and lack of mobility in the South.
GOP Congressional Candidate: Duck Dynasty Star Is ‘Rosa Parks Of Our Generation’
Oh, yeah, hating on people is so damned courageous!!!
God…..Nothing is anymore despicable than co-opting a true civil rights Shero to prop up your redneck bigot. The people who are flocking to his defense are doing so because they find validation for their own phobias and bigotry in his hate rhetoric.
Seriously disturbing story: Exporting our religious wankers should be illegal.
NOLA.com @NOLAnews 2m
As @DuckDynastyAE star criticizes homosexuality, Uganda moves to punish it with life imprisonment: @JarvisDeBerry http://ow.ly/rY0G4
NOM and FRC, (who were created to deprive L/G’s equality in U.S. law) are working their asses off against L/G’s in 3rd world countries like Uganda, where Christianity is still a new religious belief. If they can market homophobia in 3rd world countries, they can keep their cash cow producing. They’ve used the epidemic of AIDS/HIV to demonize L/G’s to the uneducated. All the while the catholic church in the 3rd world is telling it’s adherents not to used condoms, even in the face of AIDS/HIV. I’m hoping Pope Frank changes the messaging in those countries concerning the use of condoms so that AIDS/HIV ceases to be an anti-gay propaganda tool for the Evangelical wingnuts, otherwise known as missionaries.
Not to mention that the obvious benefit of educating people on the use of condoms during an epidemic of sexually transmitted disease will save lives. Unfortunately too many of the Christian missionaries are more concerned with proselytizing than saving and protecting lives.
Obama: Sochi Olympics Delegation ‘Speaks For Itself’ http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/obama-sochi-olympics-delegation-speaks-for-itself …
Federal judge strikes down Utah’s anti-same-sex-marriage law.
http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/news/57291925-78/marriage-utah-judge-sex.html.csp
And that threatens people like PHIL because it erodes their reasons to marginalize.
Ezra Klein is thinking about leaving the WaPo to start his own independent media venture.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/20/ezra-klein-washington-post-new-venture_n_4481314.html?1387567156
His reporting about the ACA has been pretty hysterical. Wonder if it’s effected by future plans?
Do you think he has a corporate sugar daddy like Greenwald does?
I have no clue.
That’s great.
When I watched Phil in the Video of him preaching I couldn’t help but notice his hand gestures when he talked about gay and lesbian sex. He turned his palm up and moved his fingers in a tickling fashion when he talked about 2 women having sex and he made a pushing gesture with his hands palm up when he talked about 2 men having sex. I think PHIL has an unfulPHILed fantasy.
Well, did you notice he only condemned male prostitutes?
No!!! I wonder why? 🙂
Maybe because he thinks they weren’t in the bible?
He probably got shortchanged. 🙂
http://www.lonestarq.com/mayor-annise-parker-calls-phil-robertson-redneck-wingnut-whose-views-completely-irrelevant/
“I have never watched ‘Duck Dynasty,’ so I don’t think about it much at all,” Parker responded. “I’ve been a gay community activist since the mid-70s. It was a very different time. We were fighting to keep people out of jails and mental hospitals. What some redneck wingnut has to say about the GLBT community is completely irrelevant.”
That was sort of my attitude when I first read his comment. I found it noteworthy and newsworthy, but I thought, “who’s surprised by that?”. What I’ve found overbearing in this whole mess is the defense of his comment as a sincer expression of his “christian religious beliefs” and how the right wingnuts at FRC, NOM and FOX went off the tracks yesterday when A&E suspended him. Hell, the NAACP and the HRC only expressed their disappointment to A&E in an email and to my knowledge no gay organization and no civil rights group called for his suspension or his firing. Hell, there wasn’t even a petition lodged against him or his DUMBASS show.
Then my email inbox was blown up this morning by friends who were stunned over the outrage and the gay hate they were seeing on Facebook. I’m not on Facebook for that very reason. I can no longer tolerate the drama of the southern Christo’s over every little thing they consider “sinful”. One of my cousins spent the better part of this morning reading facebook comments to me from some of my family members defending Robertson and condemning L/G’s. Then my oldest daughter called because she entered the Facebook fray ( apparently she felt she was entering it in my defense because I’m the only “out of the closet” person in my family),to tell them they could “kiss her ass”. Considering this guy is in fact just a goofy-old-wasp-right-wing-nut-bigot, he’s made my day quite entertaining.
Bwahahahahaha! I was wondering the same thing after reading his original statement.