August 2014 archive

John Oliver – Fireworks

Adapted from Rant of the Week at The Stars Hollow Gazette

As summer is coming to a close and we have come to the last holiday weekend of “official” summer, in a web exclusive from the 4th of July, here is John Oliver’s take on the American fixation with fireworks.

The Breakfast Club (Summer Days)

Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover  we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:30am (ET) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.

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This Day in History

Britain’s Princess Diana killed in a Paris car crash; Poland’s Solidarity labor movement born; Jack the Ripper’s first victim found dead in London; Violinist Itzhak Perlman and singer Van Morrison born.

Breakfast Tunes

On This Day In History August 31

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour a cup of your favorite morning beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

Find the past “On This Day in History” here.

August 31 is the 243rd day of the year (244th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 122 days remaining until the end of the year.

I am very hesitant to make the death of Princess Diana the prominent story of the day but her death was a tragedy on so many levels that it is not surprising that the world nearly stood still for 6 days until her funeral. There are many things that we remember exactly where we were and what we were doing when they happened, like 9/11 and, for those of us old enough, JFK’s assassination.

I was living in Paris then not far from the site of the accident. I had been out to dinner that evening with my then ex-husband, Dr. TMC, when we heard the crash, it was that loud, and shortly after the sirens of emergency vehicles. Not unusual in Paris, so, we continued on to our destinations. It wasn’t until very early that I heard that the Princess had died and where. Paris was stunned. The site became a instant memorial.

We all sat glued to the TV for days waiting for the Queen to say something. The Queen badly underestimated the admiration that was held her former daughter-in-law.  The day of her funeral Paris froze, the only time I have ever seen the city this quiet was on 9/11.

After being criticized for failing to satisfactorily match the grief of the British people, the royal family arranged for a state funeral to be held for Diana at Westminster Abbey on September 6. Diana’s coffin was taken from Kensington Palace to the Abbey on a horse-drawn gun carriage, and an estimated one million mourners lined the route. Diana’s sons, William, 15, and Harry, 12, joined their father, Prince Charles; grandfather Prince Philip; and uncle Charles, the Earl of Spencer, to walk the final stretch of the procession with the casket. The only sound was the clatter of the horses’ hooves and the peal of a church bell.

The service, watched by an estimated two billion people worldwide, sacrificed royal pomp for a more human touch. Workers associated with Diana’s various charities represented 500 of the 2,000 people invited to attend the funeral. Elton John, a friend of Diana, lent a popular touch to the ceremony when he sang “Candle in the Wind,” accompanying himself on piano. After the service, Diana’s body was taken by hearse to her family’s ancestral estate near Althorp, north of London. In a private ceremony, she was laid to rest on a tree-shaded island in a small lake, securely beyond the reach of the camera lens.

Since the death of Princess Diana, Althorp, which has been in the Spencer family for over 500 years, is now a popular tourist attraction that offers tours to the general public.

I still light a candle in her memory on this day.

Blessed Be.

Six In The Morning

On Sunday

US jets target IS positions in Iraq

 Warplanes attack fighters in besieged northern town of Amerli and airdrop humanitarian aid to civilians trapped there.

 Last updated: 31 Aug 2014 06:34

The US military has attacked Islamic State positions in the besieged northern Iraqi town of Amerli and airdropped humanitarian aid to civilians trapped there, the Pentagon has said.

US aircraft delivered over a hundred bundles of emergency supplies and more aid was dropped from British, French and Australian planes, officials said on Saturday.

Iraqi army and Kurdish forces closed in on Islamic State fighters on Saturday in a push to break the Sunni fighters’ siege of Amerli, which has been surrounded by the fighters for more than two months.

US jets and drones have also attacked the Islamic State group’s positions near Iraq’s Mosul Dam.




Sunday’s Headlines:

Weary? In need of some sun? Relax and unwind with a trip to… Iraqi Kurdistan

Doubts over India’€™s ability to handle nuclear power expansion

African, Somali troops recapture town from al Shabaab

Bahrain arrests top human rights activist

Fukushima fallout: Resentment grows in nearby Japanese city

Late Night Karaoke

The Breakfast Club (Socialist Realism)

breakfast beers photo breakfastbeers.jpgSocialist Realism is not as easily quantified in music as it is in literature and representational art due perhaps to the sonic nature of it’s expression.  Don’t get me wrong, the commissars knew what they liked and what they liked was therefore good for the people.  That was kind of a Neoclassicism with heroic and noble themes easily grasped by the masses for propoganda purposes, other more ‘challenging’ expressions deemed bourgeois, ‘decadent, degenerate and pessimistic’.

Socialist Realism must follow these rules laid down by the Congress of 1934

  1. Proletarian: art relevant to the workers and understandable to them.
  2. Typical: scenes of every day life of the people.
  3. Realistic: in the representational sense.
  4. Partisan: supportive of the aims of the State and the Party.

Despite that it also (depending on the patronage and power of its State sponsors as well as their personal tolerance for difference) it also included avant garde elements like Jazz and 12 Tone, Dodecaphony, and serial techniques.

Perhaps the most popular Soviet composer in the Socialist Realism style was Isaak Dunayevsky who achieved notable success in collaboration with director Grigori Aleksandrov in creating the scores for many comedic films.

Among his favorite works was Circus

I’ll be back with news and links later.  You know, visiting.

On This Day In History August 30

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour a cup of your favorite morning beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

Find the past “On This Day in History” here.

August 30 is the 242nd day of the year (243rd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 123 days remaining until the end of the year.

On this day in 1967, Thurgood Marshall becomes the first African American to be confirmed as a Supreme Court justice. He would remain on the Supreme Court for 24 years before retiring for health reasons, leaving a legacy of upholding the rights of the individual as guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.

Thurgood Marshall (July 2, 1908 – January 24, 1993) was an American jurist and the first African American to serve on the Supreme Court of the United States. Before becoming a judge, he was a lawyer who was best remembered for his high success rate in arguing before the Supreme Court and for the victory in Brown v. Board of Education. He was nominated to the court by President Lyndon Johnson in 1967.

Marshall was born in Baltimore, Maryland on July 2, 1908, the great-grandson of a slave who was born in modern-day Democratic Republic of the Congo.His original name was Thoroughgood, but he shortened it to Thurgood  in second grade because he disliked spelling it. His father, William Marshall, who was a railroad porter, instilled in him an appreciation for the Constitution of the United States and the rule of law.

Marshall graduated from Frederick Douglass High School in Baltimore in 1925 and from Lincoln University in Pennsylvania in 1930. Afterward, Marshall wanted to apply to his hometown law school, the University of Maryland School of Law, but the dean told him that he would not be accepted because of the school’s segregation policy. Later, as a civil rights litigator, he successfully sued the school for this policy in the case of Murray v. Pearson. As he could not attend the University of Maryland, Marshall sought admission and was accepted at Howard University School of Law.

Marshall received his law degree from the Howard University School of Law in 1933 where he graduated first in his class.

Marshall won his very first U.S. Supreme Court case, Chambers v. Florida, 309 U.S. 227 (1940), at the age of 32. That same year, he was appointed Chief Counsel for the NAACP. He argued many other cases before the Supreme Court, most of them successfully, including Smith v. Allwright, 321 U.S. 649 (1944); Shelley v. Kraemer, 334 U.S. 1 (1948); Sweatt v. Painter, 339 U.S. 629 (1950); and McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents, 339 U.S. 637 (1950). His most famous case as a lawyer was Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954), the case in which the Supreme Court ruled that “separate but equal” public education, as established by Plessy v. Ferguson, was not applicable to public education because it could never be truly equal. In total, Marshall won 29 out of the 32 cases he argued before the Supreme Court.

Marshall served on the Court for the next twenty-four years, compiling a liberal record that included strong support for Constitutional protection of individual rights, especially the rights of criminal suspects against the government. His most frequent ally on the Court (indeed, the pair rarely voted at odds) was Justice William Brennan, who consistently joined him in supporting abortion rights and opposing the death penalty. Brennan and Marshall concluded in Furman v. Georgia that the death penalty was, in all circumstances, unconstitutional, and never accepted the legitimacy of Gregg v. Georgia, which ruled four years later that the death penalty was constitutional in some circumstances. Thereafter, Brennan or Marshall dissented from every denial of certiorari in a capital case and from every decision upholding a sentence of death.[citation needed] In 1987, Marshall gave a controversial speech on the occasion of the bicentennial celebrations of the Constitution of the United States. Marshall stated,

   

“the government they devised was defective from the start, requiring several amendments, a civil war, and major social transformations to attain the system of constitutional government and its respect for the freedoms and individual rights, we hold as fundamental today.”

In conclusion Marshall stated

   

“Some may more quietly commemorate the suffering, struggle, and sacrifice that has triumphed over much of what was wrong with the original document, and observe the anniversary with hopes not realized and promises not fulfilled. I plan to celebrate the bicentennial of the Constitution as a living document, including the Bill of Rights and the other amendments protecting individual freedoms and human rights.”

He retired from the Supreme Court in 1991, and was reportedly unhappy that it would fall to President George H. W. Bush to name his replacement. Bush nominated Clarence Thomas to replace Marshall.

Marshall died of heart failure at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, at 2:58 p.m. on January 24, 1993 at the age of 84. He is buried in Arlington National Cemetery. His second wife and their two sons survived him

On November 30, 1993, Justice Marshall was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Bill Clinton.

Late Night Karaoke

Health & Fitness News

Welcome to the Health and Fitness News, a weekly diary which is cross-posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette. It is open for discussion about health related issues including diet, exercise, health and health care issues, as well as, tips on what you can do when there is a medical emergency. Also an opportunity to share and exchange your favorite healthy recipes.

Questions are encouraged and I will answer to the best of my ability. If I can’t, I will try to steer you in the right direction. Naturally, I cannot give individual medical advice for personal health issues. I can give you information about medical conditions and the current treatments available.

You can now find past Health and Fitness News diaries here and on the right hand side of the Front Page.

Vegetarian Taco Night

Vegetarian Taco Night photo 22recipehealth-articleLarge_zps75aee41b.jpg

Andrew Scrivani for The New York Times

Taco night is nothing new, but over the last five days, we’ve had taco week. The markets are piled high with irresistible produce – summer squash, tomatoes, green beans, corn, peppers and chiles, greens and herbs – and corn tortillas are a great vehicle for them.

~Martha Rose Shulman~

Chard and Sweet Corn Tacos

These sweet and spicy tacos can be filled with chard of any color, or other greens like beet greens or amaranth.

Summer Tacos with Corn, Green Beans and Tomatillo Salsa

Another way to use the versatile green bean in summer cooking. Cut into one-inch lengths and add to a mix of corn, chiles and green tomatillo salsa.

Tacos with Roasted Potatoes, Squash and Peppers (Rajas)

You can turn the heat up or down on this taco, depending on your taste for spiciness. Season the potatoes, onions and squash before roasting.

Tacos With Summer Squash, Tomatoes and Beans

Beans such as pintos, even out of a can, add substance to this summery taco filling. Goat cheese provides a creamy, rich finish.

Tacos with Spicy Tofu, Tomatoes and Chard

In these tacos, tofu stands in for meat in a vegan picadillo, cooked in a modified salsa ranchera.

Random Japan

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More than meets the eye, sushi in disguise! Check out these transforming sushi toys!

   KK Miller

Your mother probably scolded you for playing with your food at the dinner table, but here’s one of the few times you’ll be able to get away with it! Introducing transforming sushi toys from Takara Tomy. Now, instead of playing with a floppy piece of asparagus (how’s that supposed to stand up to the forces of evil anyway?), you can play with these pieces of super robot fighting sushi. Just don’t try to take a bite out of them!

Takara Tomy is well known for making the Transformer toys a reality. This time they are taking their transforming skills and applying them to everyone’s favorite Japanese food: sushi! There were images and first run prototypes of these bad boys (or good boys as it may be) back in June, but now we are getting a good look at the Schallyders and are pretty excited with the results!

Improving Transgender Health Care

There has been a slew of stories lately on the medical front concerning treatment of transgender people by medical professionals, emanating from Ohio, Washington, Oregon, California and Massachusetts.

To quote one of the authors of the pieces I shall link to:

There has been a long history of lack of access to basic healthcare and systematic discrimination for transgender people.

–Pat Magee, MSW, for Rage Monthly

Seven stories on the other side.

Torture: The Whole Truth and Nothng But the Truth

News that journalist James Foley was waterboarded before he was brutally beheaded by his ISIS captors should come as no surprise. It is past time that the United States come clean on its war crimes and release the entire 6300 page congressional report, unredacted and let the chips fall where they may.

What Charlie Pierce said:

Please, somebody, goddammit, just leak the damn report. All of it, CIA concerns be damned. Because now not only do we have a moral right and a moral duty to know everything that was done in our name, but we also have a national interest in determining to what extent the behavior of our government differed from the behavior of ISIS, besides the fact that (as far as we know) none of our captives were beheaded. That’s a pretty low bar for an evolved democracy, but there it is. I no longer care about phantom “national security” concerns. Fk the torturers and fk their enablers in Congress, and fk all redactors, and fk the pet lawyers and bureaucrats that made torture legal and acceptable. Let what’s going to happen to them happen. Let justice be done though the heavens fall and John Yoo loses his job. They opened the door to this, with their memos and their barely stifled giggles. They grafted sadism onto the Constitution. They taught ISIS its techniques. James Foley, a fellow Warrior, god rest his brave soul, was tortured before he was murdered using techniques that barbarians learned from the oh-so-civilized heroes of our National Security state. This is what we teach the world now. Are you guys proud? Does your heart swell in the faculty lounges and in the cozy think-tanks? Does it swell with pride at the impact you’ve had on the world?

How do you like your blue-eyed boy now, Mr. Death?

They had to be carefully taught.  

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