←
→

Monday Reads

Posted: September 8, 2014 | Author: | Filed under: morning reads | Tags: , |66 Comments

Good Morning!

So, I’m really tired of the political news right now.  The global news is depressing.  That goes without saying.  So, here’s a little distraction for your morning coffee.

AP1466-jack-the-ripper-elizabeth-stride-catharine-eddowsDNA tests appears may have identified Jack the Ripper.

It is the greatest murder mystery of all time, a puzzle that has perplexed criminologists for more than a century and spawned books, films and myriad theories ranging from the plausible to the utterly bizarre.

But now, thanks to modern forensic science, The Mail on Sunday can exclusively reveal the true identity of Jack the Ripper, the serial killer responsible for  at least five grisly murders in Whitechapel in East London during the autumn of 1888.

DNA evidence has now  shown beyond reasonable doubt which one of six key suspects commonly cited in connection with the Ripper’s reign of terror was the actual killer – and we reveal his identity.

A shawl found by the body of Catherine Eddowes, one of the Ripper’s victims, has been analysed and found to contain DNA from her blood as well as DNA from the killer.

The landmark discovery was made after businessman Russell Edwards, 48, bought the shawl at auction and enlisted the help of Dr Jari Louhelainen, a world-renowned expert in analysing genetic evidence from historical crime scenes.

Using cutting-edge techniques, Dr Louhelainen was able to extract 126-year-old DNA from the material and compare it to DNA from descendants of Eddowes and the suspect, with both proving a perfect match.

The revelation puts an end to the fevered speculation over the Ripper’s identity which has lasted since his murderous rampage in the most impoverished and dangerous streets of London.

A DNA sample has proven Polish immigrant Aaron Kosminski was Jack the Ripper.  The owner of the shawl shares his story and the forensic and criminal research from the Ripper scenes.fd91a6e72023d1a0e6b3b6a14690e61e

Before buying it, I spoke to Alan McCormack, the officer in charge of the Crime Museum, also known as the Black Museum. He told me the police had always believed they knew the identity of the Ripper. Chief Inspector Donald Swanson, the officer in charge of the investigation, had named him in his notes: Aaron Kosminski, a Polish Jew who had fled to London with his family, escaping the Russian pogroms, in the early 1880s.

Kosminski has always been one of the three most credible suspects. He is often described as having been a hairdresser in Whitechapel, the occupation written on his admission papers to the workhouse in 1890. What is certain is he was seriously mentally ill, probably a paranoid schizophrenic who suffered auditory hallucinations and described as a misogynist prone to ‘self-abuse’ – a euphemism for masturbation.

McCormack said police did not have enough evidence to convict Kosminski, despite identification by a witness, but kept him under 24-hour surveillance until he was committed to mental asylums for the rest of his life. I became convinced Kosminski was our man, and I was excited at the prospect of proving it. I felt sure that modern science would be able to produce real evidence from the stains on the shawl. After  a few false starts, I found a scientist I hoped could help.

So,  you’re well aware of my fascination with all things archaeological.  Here’s an interesting one from an excavation Mexico’s Temple of the Serpent.  The discovery is about a year old but style very mysterious.

Archaeologists excavating beneath Mexico’s Temple of the Feathered Serpent have discovered hundreds of mysterious yellow orbs.

Tunnels near the third largest pyramid in the pre-Hispanic city of Teotihuacan have been the focus of archaeological study ever since they were discovered in 2003.

The yellow spheres were uncovered when a remote-controlled robot carrying camera equipment was deployed to explore a series of winding and largely inaccessible chambers within the ancient pyramid ruins that are characterised by statues of strange serpent-like creatures.

“They look like yellow spheres, but we do not know their meaning,” Jorge Zavala, an archaeologist at Mexico’s National Anthropology and History Institute, told ABC news of the find. “It’s an unprecedented discovery.”

The orbs measure between 1.5 and 5 inches and are believed to be covered in a yellow material called jarosite and to contain a core of clay.

The World Heritage Site, a city of pyramids located just 30 miles from Mexico City, is thought to have been established around 100 B.C and was inhabited by around 100,000 people at its peak before being mysteriously abandoned around 700 A.D.

The remote-controlled robot Tlaloc II-TC sent to explore the tunnels carries an infrared camera and a laser scanner that generates 3-D visualisation of the spaces beneath the temple, allowing it to access parts of the ruin which have not yet been excavated.

“A few months ago we found two side chambers at 72 and 74 metres from the entrance. We called them North Chamber and South Chamber,” archaeologist Sergio Gómez Chávez, director of the Tlalocan Project, told Discovery News.

“The robot was able to enter in the part of the tunnel which has not yet been excavated yet and found three chambers… We believe that high-ranking people, priests or even rulers, went down to the tunnel to perform rituals.”

38fbe68ee4c952f652c1fc5535b7dec7A Pennsylvania mom is headed for prison for giving her daughter miscarriage-inducing pills.  This is pretty much what you get when you make abortion difficult and expensive.

A Pennsylvania woman has been sentenced to up to 18 months in prison for obtaining so-called abortion pills online and providing them to her teenage daughter to end her pregnancy.

Jennifer Ann Whalen, 39, of Washingtonville, a single mother who works as a nursing home aide, pleaded guilty in August to obtaining the miscarriage-inducing pills from an online site in Europe for her daughter, 16, who did not want to have the child.

Whalen was sentenced on Friday by Montour County Court of Common Pleas Judge Gary Norton to serve 12 months to 18 months in prison for violating a state law that requires abortions to be performed by physicians.

She was also fined $1,000 and ordered to perform 40 hours of community service after her release. The felony offense called for up to seven years in prison and a $15,000 fine.

Matthew Bingham Banks, Whalen’s lawyer, previously told Reuters criminal prosecutions of this kind were not common.

Whalen told authorities there was no local clinic available to perform an abortion and her daughter did not have health insurance to cover a hospital abortion, the Press Enterprise newspaper of Bloomsburg reported.

Her daughter experienced severe cramping and bleeding after taking the pills and Whalen took her to a hospital near her home for treatment, the newspaper said.

The closest abortion clinic to Whalen’s home is about 74 miles away in Harrisburg.

The Pennsylvania case follows the prosecution of a Florida man who pleaded guilty to tricking his girlfriend into taking an abortion pill. He was sentenced in January to 13 years in prison and $28,500 restitution. In June, Florida toughened state law to allow for prosecutions in the death of non-viable fetuses.

177be344f43cfe821e3566085a1a6503How can a chemically induced miscarriage be considered “performing” an abortion which sounds somewhat surgical to me?  Suppose I will have to ask Doctor Daughter this question next time I talk to her.

Here’s a very interesting article on the history of slavery in the US and why so many people still lie about this horrible institution.

Textbooks segregate twenty-five decades of enslavement into one chapter, painting a static picture. Millions of people each year visit plantation homes where guides blather on about furniture and silverware. As sites, such homes hide the real purpose of these places, which was to make African Americans toil under the hot sun for the profit of the rest of the world. All this is the “symbolic annihilation” of enslaved people, as two scholars of those weird places put it.2 Meanwhile, at other points we tell slavery’s story by heaping praise on those who escaped it through flight or death in rebellion, leaving the listener to wonder if those who didn’t flee or die somehow “accepted” slavery. And everyone who teaches about slavery knows a little dirty secret that reveals historians’ collective failure: many African-American students struggle with a sense of shame that most of their ancestors could not escape the suffering they experienced.

The truth can set us free, if we can find the right questions. But back in the little house in Danville, Anderson was reading from a list of leading ones, designed by white officials—some well- meaning, some not so well-meaning. He surely felt how the gravity of the questions pulled him toward the planet of plantation nostalgia. “Did slaves mind being called ‘nigger’?” “What did slaves call master or mistress?” “Have you been happier in slavery or free?” “Was the mansion house pretty?” Escaping from chains is very difficult, however, so Anderson dutifully asked the prescribed questions and poised his pencil to take notes.

Ivy listened politely. He sat still. Then he began to speak: “My mother’s master was named William Tunstall. He was a mean man. There was only one good thing he did, and I don’t reckon he intended to do that. He sold our family to my father’s master George H. Gilman.”

Perhaps the wind blowing through the window changed as a cloud moved across the spring sun: “Old Tunstall caught the ‘cotton fever.’ There was a fever going round, leastways it was like a fever. Everyone was dying to get down south and grow cotton to sell. So old Tunstall separated families right and left. He took two of my aunts and left their husbands up here, and he separated altogether seven husbands and wives. One woman had twelve children. Yessir. Took ‘em all down south with him to Georgia and Alabama.”

Pervasive separations. Tears carving lines on faces. Lorenzo remembered his relief at dodging the worst, but he also remembered knowing that it was just a lucky break. Next time it could’ve been his mother. No white person was reliable, because money drove their decisions. No, this wasn’t the story the books told.

So Anderson moved to the next question. Did Ivy know if any slaves had been sold here? Now, perhaps, the room grew darker.

For more than a century, white people in the United States had been singling out slave traders as an exception: unscrupulous lower-class outsiders who pried apart paternalist bonds. Scapegoaters had a noble precedent. In his first draft of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson tried to blame King George III for using the Atlantic slave trade to impose slavery on the colonies. In historians’ tellings, the 1808 abolition of the Atlantic trade brought stability to slavery, ringing in the “Old South,” as it has been called since before the Civil War. Of course, one might wonder how something that was brand new, created after a revolution, and growing more rapidly than any other commodity-producing economy in history before then could be considered “old.” But never mind. Historians depicted slave trading after 1808 as irrelevant to what slavery was in the “Old South,” and to how America as a whole was shaped. America’s modernization was about entrepreneurs, creativity, invention, markets, movement, and change. Slavery was not about any of these things—not about slave trading, or moving people away from everyone they knew in order to make them make cotton. Therefore, modern America and slavery had nothing to do with each

I’m not sure if you read about The Economist’s review of a book about slavery last week.  It’s pretty much upset every one–including the author of the book–and been withdrawn.

When Cornell University professor Ed Baptist read The Economist review of his book on slavery, he knew that it would be a big deal. The review dismissed his work as “advocacy” because “all the blacks in his book are victims, almost all the whites villains.”

That characterization of his work, which attracted the most backlash from journalists and academics, was not entirely a surprise to Baptist, he told TPM on Friday. It is something he has heard in history circles before the reaction to his new book, “The Half Has Never Been Told.”

“I thought that was silly,” he said. “But I’ve been talking about this kind of stuff for a while in academic circles and public history circles, and it’s not uncommon for people to protest that I’m not being sensitive enough to the inner lives of enslavers.”

“On one level, I want to respond, ‘No, actually, I think I’m being very sensitive to it and I’m just unfurling these other sides to the story that are often left under the sheets as it were,'” he continued. “The point that other people have made that I think is so effective is that for me to write a book about the exploitation of enslaved people, by definition, is going to show enslaved people as the objects of all kinds of victimizing processes and, on the other hand, enslavers as the agents of those processes.”

The Economist did apologize and withdraw the review, though Baptist said he believed the magazine had only apologized for the last line on “victims” and “villains.” Another bit of the review, which questioned the reliability of ex-slaves in relating experiences under slavery, struck him as “blatantly racist.”

“One thing that really did aggravate me about the review was this suggestion and this sort of implicit argument that ex-slaves had some sort of vested interest and are unreliable reporters on what actually happened,” he said. “That is such an old struggle when you’re talking about the history of slavery, the constant undermining of testimony from survivors.”

“That was not apologized for,” he said, “and that was I thought blatantly racist, blatantly something that you would have heard in the 1850s or something like that.”

It’s amazing to me that we still have such a profound level of racism in the world and in this country.  Of course, the sexism overwhelms me too.  I’m trying to be much more aware of the idea of swimming in privilege.

So, hopefully this little thread will get you to share what you’re reading and blogging today.

66 Comments on “Monday Reads”

  1. bostonboomer's avatar bostonboomer says:
    September 8, 2014 at 8:17 am

    Hi Dakinikat,

    I’m glad you brought up the Economist review of Baptist’s book on slavery as the foundation of American capitalism.

    I read the review after I saw Tommy Christopher’s post on it a couple of days ago. As I pointed out at The Daily Banter, the Economist review also failed to mention the routine rapes of slave women by slave holders. As usual, women’s experiences are ignored. I searched the book on amazon and the author did deal with the treatment of women under slavery a few times. I plan to check out the book in the future.

  2. bostonboomer's avatar bostonboomer says:
    September 8, 2014 at 8:45 am

    Thanks for a fascinating post. The Jack the Ripper story is amazing. I’ll be interested to see what other Ripperologists have to say about this. I know many consider Kosminski to be the most credible suspect. The murders were clearly done by a highly disorganized killer, most likely mentally ill.

    The PA story about the mother helping her daughter have a miscarriage and going to jail for it is heartbreaking. We have gone nearly full-circle, back to the way things were when I was young. It’s horrible.

    • dakinikat's avatar dakinikat says:
      September 8, 2014 at 8:57 am

      Just the story of a police officer bringing home a bloody shawl to his wife was wild to me. That she and others saved it and stashed it for many years is wild too. The science on the DNA extraction is wild too. I wonder how much might learn from other cases like the Lizzie Borden story if some evidence still exists?

  3. janicen's avatar janicen says:
    September 8, 2014 at 9:50 am

    There is so much to be fascinated with and yet so much to be outraged about in this post. Where to begin? The yellow orbs are fascinating. Maybe an early form of those bins of balls that kids can jump into?

    That Jennifer Whalen is actually going to jail for getting her daughter an abortion pill is absolutely shocking. I guess we all knew it could come to this but how could any judge sentence a poor woman to jail time, 18 months!!!!, and so much community service that certainly she has already lost her job and whatever reputation and status in her community she had. How is that not cruel and unusual punishment considering the “crime” she committed? How does that make any sense? And yet the feds were going to let the McDonnells off with no jail time for all of the theft they committed. I guess Ms. Whalen should consider herself lucky she wasn’t burned at the stake for being a witch.

    I read the Economist book review and the retraction. How disgusting is it that some insist that we paint enslavers in a more positive light?

    The right is bubbling over with racism and misogyny and contempt for the poor to such an extent that they just can’t contain it anymore.

    • dakinikat's avatar dakinikat says:
      September 8, 2014 at 12:00 pm

      I was wondering how much connection it had to our slavery experience. It seems some men still think they can own women and others. It’s just not slavery, more like indentured servitude to them.

      • NW Luna's avatar NW Luna says:
        September 8, 2014 at 4:45 pm

        That’s what I thought, too. The old attitude that women (and children) who’ve been raped or otherwise abused are exaggerating or making it up.

        to protest that I’m not being sensitive enough to the inner lives of enslavers.”

        ….sounds just like the complaints that prosecuting a HS football start for rape is going to ruin his life. Whereas it’s OK to not be concerned about the lives of the girls/women who’ve been raped.

    • gregoryp's avatar gregoryp says:
      September 8, 2014 at 8:00 pm

      I have to think that no matter how bad we think things were for the slaves, no matter how bad African Americans believed it was for the slaves it was much, much, much worse. No one should ever sugar coat what those unfortunate people went through or be ashamed of them for not being able to fight back. I just don’t think there is any possible way to overstate the horror and atrocities inflicted upon them and there should never, ever be any sympathy towards people who owned slaves no matter how benevolent they allegedly were.

      • janicen's avatar janicen says:
        September 8, 2014 at 8:35 pm

        Exactly. Just the daily horror of knowing that at any moment, for any reason, you could be beaten or killed and then add in the brutality of day to day living with no hope whatsoever of escape. That anyone could see anything positive about slavery is disgusting.

      • dakinikat's avatar dakinikat says:
        September 8, 2014 at 8:36 pm

        I still can’t fathom the horror of even surviving one of those ships and the markets let alone being separated from your family and doing miserable physical work in the southern heat.

  4. bostonboomer's avatar bostonboomer says:
    September 8, 2014 at 10:43 am

    Another article by Edward Baptist at Politico:

    What the Economist Doesn’t Get About Slavery–and My Book

    • bostonboomer's avatar bostonboomer says:
      September 8, 2014 at 10:48 am

      A piece by Blattman that discusses the efficiency for forced labor based on research:

      What The Economist should have read before suggesting that US slavery wasn’t always so bad

    • dakinikat's avatar dakinikat says:
      September 8, 2014 at 12:04 pm

      The review was essentially another example of “mansplaining”.

      To do this, let’s put aside the review-as-written’s worn-out paternalist baggage about slaves being “well-treated” because of their value. Let’s ignore the way it cavalierly dismisses more than 2,300 formerly enslaved people’s interviews and autobiographies, which I drew upon for accounts of their own daily lives, as the habit of suggesting African Americans’ historical voices somehow carry less weight than the accounts of those who exploited them is a long-standing pattern among those who minimize slavery’s brutality.

  5. bostonboomer's avatar bostonboomer says:
    September 8, 2014 at 12:29 pm
  6. bostonboomer's avatar bostonboomer says:
    September 8, 2014 at 12:35 pm

    Video of the knockout punch that Ray Rice only got a two-game suspension for at TMZ. Unbelievable. And she married him! As TMZ points out, Michael Vick got a prison sentence for abusing dogs. Rice deserves the same. I’d like to see him put in stocks in the public square.

    http://www.tmz.com/2014/09/08/ray-rice-elevator-knockout-fiancee-takes-crushing-punch-video/

    • bostonboomer's avatar bostonboomer says:
      September 8, 2014 at 12:36 pm

      An employee of the hotel — which just shut down for good — tells TMZ Sports he was working there at the time and says the NFL saw the elevator footage before imposing the 2-game suspension.

      • bostonboomer's avatar bostonboomer says:
        September 8, 2014 at 12:48 pm

        Fox hosts giggle that NFL player’s abused girlfriend should learn to ‘take the stairs’

        http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/09/08/fox-hosts-giggle-that-nfl-players-abused-girlfriend-should-learn-to-take-the-stairs/#.VA3m2J6NP0E.twitter

      • dakinikat's avatar dakinikat says:
        September 8, 2014 at 1:22 pm

        http://www.sbnation.com/lookit/2014/9/8/6121697/terrance-knighton-tweets-nfl-ray-rice-video

        Here’s Broncos player that says Rice should be thrown out of the NFL and jailed.

      • minkoffminx's avatar JJ Lopez Minkoff says:
        September 8, 2014 at 6:34 pm

        Yup, Has Peter King Read His Own Reporting On The Ray Rice Fiasco?

        On July 29, SI.com’s Peter King, who covers the league from the centermost pleat on Roger Goodell’s khakis, reported that “NFL and some Ravens officials” had seen unreleased security-cam footage of the Ray Rice altercation from within the elevator. At the time, it was important for the NFL to establish that it was taking great pains to investigate the incident. Here’s how King wrote it up:

        There is one other thing I did not write or refer to, and that is the other videotape the NFL and some Ravens officials have seen, from the security camera inside the elevator at the time of the physical altercation between Rice and his fiancée.

        Today, the videotape in question was leaked, and there was nothing exculpatory in it to be found. Peter King writes:

        If league officials saw this video before issuing the two-game ban for Rice, all the scorn that’s been heaped on Roger Goodell and his colleagues will be deserved.

        Doubt has crept in, just when doubt has become useful for the NFL. It’s a long way to travel to get from “have seen” to “if … saw,” but Peter King got there, somehow.

        Update: King has a remarkable statement in which he more or less lights his journalism career on fire:
        On Reporting Ray Rice | The MMQB with Peter King

        On Reporting Ray RiceRead on mmqb.​si.​com

        To: Our readers.

        From: Peter King, editor-in-chief, The MMQB

        An addendum to the Ray Rice coverage:

        Earlier this summer a source I trusted told me he assumed the NFL had seen the damaging video that was released by TMZ on Monday morning of Rice slugging his then-fiancée, Janay Palmer, in an Atlantic City elevator. The source said league officials had to have seen it. This source has been impeccable, and I believed the information. So I wrote that the league had seen the tape. I should have called the NFL for a comment, a lapse in reporting on my part. The league says it has not seen the tape, and I cannot refute that with certainty. No one from the league has ever knocked down my report to me, and so I was surprised to see the claim today that league officials have not seen the tape.

        I hope when this story is fully vetted, we all get the truth and nothing but the truth.

        My internet is out then on for a few minutes then out again.

        There is a guy who is running for Georgia superintendent of schools that is an oathkeeper and tea party nut…he calls for “Georgia-grown” education standards. GA candidate: Black female opponent can’t win by ‘dusting off copies of The Color Purple’

    • janicen's avatar janicen says:
      September 8, 2014 at 1:55 pm

      Top trend on Twitter. I saw the video, it’s shocking. But then I guess we all knew he didn’t knock her out cold by yelling at her. All of us except the NFL. I’m glad the Ravens cut him. A baby step in the right direction for domestic violence.

      • bostonboomer's avatar bostonboomer says:
        September 8, 2014 at 2:06 pm

        The NFL has now suspended him indefinitely! This is huge!

        http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nfl/ravens/2014/09/08/baltimore-ravens-cut-ray-rice/15291729/

        • janicen's avatar janicen says:
          September 8, 2014 at 4:36 pm

          It is huge. As soon as the Ravens cut him people were speculating as to which team would pick him up. Now none of them will. May this be to domestic violence in the world of professional sports as the Donald Sterling comments were to revealing the racist underside of professional team ownership. I wonder how many Donald Sterling apologists (and shockingly there are many) who insist that he is the victim since he had an expectation of privacy will also see Ray Rice as a victim since he was in a closed elevator. Clearly the chuckle heads on Fox News think so with their “… remember, there cameras in elevators…” remark.

      • bostonboomer's avatar bostonboomer says:
        September 8, 2014 at 2:13 pm
        • Fannie's avatar Fannie says:
          September 8, 2014 at 3:22 pm

          WTF?

        • RalphB's avatar RalphB says:
          September 8, 2014 at 7:39 pm

          Shaneen Allen is being completely screwed here and it started when the police arrested her for what should have been a warning offense to an out-of-state resident about local gun laws. Then the ludicrous misuse of prosecutorial discretion by a district attorney.

          Just a guess but Ms Allen is likely African-American while the cop and prosecutor are not.

    • Fannie's avatar Fannie says:
      September 8, 2014 at 3:47 pm

      He needs to go down like the Titantic did. He cold cocked her with a punch to the face. Then it looks like five men arrived to look at his handi work, and did nothing, turned their heads the other way. They are as much a savage as he, they were in a position to call police and have her medically checked out, and speak up. I guess they were afraid they’d be struck in their teeth, or they have seen it so many times, that they could care less because she was out of her head, not Ray Rice. She staggers to get up, and the NFL didn’t want to stop him either. Until this video. It’s horrible.

  7. bostonboomer's avatar bostonboomer says:
    September 8, 2014 at 1:05 pm

    ISIS’s Enemy List: 10 Reasons the Islamic State Is Doomed, by Kurt Eichenwald

    http://www.newsweek.com/isiss-enemy-list-10-reasons-islamic-state-doomed-268953

    • RalphB's avatar RalphB says:
      September 8, 2014 at 7:50 pm

      Provided we have the moral courage to only do what is absolutely necessary to prevent some kind of genocide, while letting nature run it’s course, I think Eichenwald is largely correct.

  8. bostonboomer's avatar bostonboomer says:
    September 8, 2014 at 1:12 pm

    An energy boom lifts the heartland (NYT).

  9. dakinikat's avatar dakinikat says:
    September 8, 2014 at 1:45 pm

    Wash. state megachurch closes branches after founder is caught calling women ‘penis homes’

    http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/09/08/wash-state-megachurch-closes-branches-after-founder-is-caught-calling-women-penis-homes/

    • Fannie's avatar Fannie says:
      September 8, 2014 at 3:27 pm

      I remember this church well, we discussed it some time ago. I’ll try to find more, because I remember several church members exposed the sexism, and they dishonored their membership in the church.

      • NW Luna's avatar NW Luna says:
        September 8, 2014 at 4:52 pm

        That church. I was happy to read this morning in our local paper that it is folding fast.

        After 18 years of explosive growth, officials at Seattle megachurch Mars Hill say financial pressures in the wake of recent negative media attention are forcing them to cut staff and eliminate some branches. …. The church, which had blossomed to15 branches in five states and had followers around the world, also plans to cut 30 to 40 percent of its paid staff of about 100. That staff already had seen layoffs last spring and a string of departures in recent weeks by pastors angry or uneasy about the church’s direction.

        The downtown and U District churches’ pastors told their attendees about the coming changes Sunday and said those three Seattle branches will all meet as one in Ballard on Oct. 12. ….

        Also closing or possibly reconstituting in some other form is a Mars Hill branch in Phoenix. A branch in Huntington Beach, Calif., is in jeopardy if its financial picture does not improve. …

        The preaching of the charismatic, jeans-clad Driscoll has been controversial for years, particularly his views about homosexuality and the roles of women. But the recent storm really started forming late last year, when an evangelical radio host accused Driscoll of plagiarizing some passages in one of his books. When Driscoll defended the pages, a handful of religion bloggers found other instances. Then critics revealed Mars Hill used church money to have a company buy up one of his books to boost sales.

        http://seattletimes.com/text/2024485113.html

  10. dakinikat's avatar dakinikat says:
    September 8, 2014 at 3:13 pm

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2746472/Inside-tiny-town-built-sex-offenders-Photographer-captures-spiritual-safe-haven-Florida-200-convicted-sex-criminals-relatives-live-side.html

    Inside the tiny town built for sex offenders: The spiritual ‘safe haven’ in Florida where 200 criminals and their relatives live side-by-side
    Miracle Village, just outside Everglades in south Florida, was established in 2009 by the late evangelical pastor Dick Witherow
    Borne out of religion, it is place where registered sex offenders can live without judgement and repent their sins
    Many offenders find it near impossible to find housing in Florida, where they are not permitted to come within 1,000 feet of children
    Brooklyn-based photographer Noah Rabinowitz spent three days in the village capturing the people who live there
    Rabinowitz says he was more interested in capturing a self-governed society, rather than what had brought them together

  11. dakinikat's avatar dakinikat says:
    September 8, 2014 at 4:12 pm

    Geologists say they’ve found evidence that oxygen-producing life existed on Earth some 3.02 billion years ago–60 million years earlier than previously thought.
    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/08/life-on-earth-existed-way-earlier_n_5781840.html?ir=Science

  12. bostonboomer's avatar bostonboomer says:
    September 8, 2014 at 5:11 pm

    I’ve been listening to the Boston sports talk station this afternoon. They’ve been playing the press conference Ray Rice held in May (courtesy of the Ravens) after he and his wife had “counseling.” Rice apologizes to everyone under the sun–except his wife who is sitting silently behind him. Rice acted like they were both equally at fault. Then at the end, his wife says she’s sorry for her part in the incident! After that, the Ravens tweeted that–that she felt bad for what she did to cause the assault.

    Today, the Ravens deleted that tweet, and removed the press conference video and any mentions or photos of Rice from their website. They just can’t wait for this to blow over. The NFL too, I’m sure. Unfortunately for them, the Ravens are playing on national TV on Thursday night. I wonder what the commentators will be talking about?

    Watch the press conference here (fixed):

    http://www.baltimoreravens.com/videos/videos/Ray-Rices-Full-Press-Conference/405fea46-d4d4-44c7-b381-33497bf6d12f

  13. NW Luna's avatar NW Luna says:
    September 8, 2014 at 5:12 pm

    Hey, American workers: Your bosses would rather outsource you.

    The corporate executives who decide whether U.S. workers get meaningful raises have looked at the broader economy and have a message: Don’t expect a pay increase anytime soon.

    And if you’re counting on a full-time job offer in the future, your prospects may be dimming. That’s the future that many U.S. executives envision.

    A survey of Harvard Business School alumni released Monday reveals a series of trends that are widening income disparities and may be weakening the ability of the U.S. economy to grow in the long term.

    More than 40 percent of the respondents foresee lower pay and benefits for workers. Roughly half favor outsourcing work over hiring staffers. A growing share prefer part-time employees. Nearly half would rather invest in new technology than hire or retain workers.

    At the same time, it’s becoming harder for the executives to find skilled workers, according to the survey results.

    http://seattletimes.com/text/2024488839.html

    • NW Luna's avatar NW Luna says:
      September 8, 2014 at 5:28 pm

      While another article a bit later has this:

      The U.S. job market has steadily improved by pretty much every gauge except the one Americans probably care about most: Pay.

      The unemployment rate has sunk to a nearly normal 6.1 percent. Employers have added a robust 2.5 million jobs the past 12 months. Layoffs have tumbled. Yet most people are still waiting for a decent raise. Friday’s August jobs report confirmed that average hourly pay has crept up only about 2 percent a year since the recession ended five years ago — barely above inflation and far below the gains in most recoveries.

      Just why pay has been so weak and when it might strengthen are key issues for the Federal Reserve in deciding when to raise interest rates. The trend has mystified analysts.

      Mysterious. Really? Dak could tell them a thing or two. And I suspect it’s more the media that’s mystified.

      • NW Luna's avatar NW Luna says:
        September 8, 2014 at 5:29 pm

        This sounds promising:

        The Obama administration will decide “in the very near future” what actions it can take to make it less profitable for U.S. companies to shift their legal addresses to other countries, Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew said Monday.

        A growing number of U.S. companies are shifting their addresses abroad in an effort to reduce their U.S. taxes. The maneuver is known as a corporate inversion.

        In a speech Monday, Lew said these companies are eroding the U.S. tax base and shifting the burden of funding the government to other taxpayers. He said the best way to address the issue is for Congress to overhaul the U.S. tax code making it more attractive for companies to stay in the U.S.

        http://seattletimes.com/text/2024489225.html

    • bostonboomer's avatar bostonboomer says:
      September 8, 2014 at 5:29 pm

      Great. These guys need a dose of bad karma.

    • janicen's avatar janicen says:
      September 8, 2014 at 8:39 pm

      I wish nothing but pain and suffering for those fat cats.

  14. bostonboomer's avatar bostonboomer says:
    September 8, 2014 at 8:26 pm

    Scott Brown Threatens Lawsuit Over Being Called a ‘Washington Lobbyist’

←
→