Wednesday Reads: The Mini-Series Begins

Good 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

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

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.

All 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.