19-year old Kristina Costa won Best of Show in the Skidmore College Student Art Exhibit with her 6-foot high portrait of Dumbya. She updates it regularly, having to do it at the Gallery since the piece has become too heavy for her to carry. Why updates? Cuz it’s made entirely of small plastic toy soldiers, one for each sevice member fatality in Iraq.
Go here to see a photo of her work of conscience.
News you don’t get otherwise, excerpted from The Week:
Good Week For Outsourcing, after a Chinese man advertised for a woman to serve as a stand-in for his mistress, so his angry wife could beat her up. He offered 3,000 yuan ($400) for 10 minutes of being pummeled. Ten women have applied.
Bad Week For Rural humor, after a Maryland legislator proposed a ban on “bumper nuts,” outsize plastic testicles that wry pickup-truck owners have taken to affixing to their trailer hitches. “It’s a pretty serious problem,” said Delegate LeRoy Myers Jr. “You have body parts hanging from the hitches of cars. We’ve crossed a line.”
America isn’t the only place where science is under siege, said Nicolien den Boer in Amsterdam’s Radionetherlands.nl. Muslim creationists are waging a stealth campaign to try to make Europeans doubt the truth of evolution. They have blitzed European schools with copies of an 800-page Islamic textbook called The Atlas of Creation. The Turkish author, Harun Yahya, holds that Darwin’s theory “is responsible for all the evil in the world, including international terrorism.”
NATO member Latvia said this week it would pull most of its troops out of Iraq by the summer, to free up forces for the fight in Afghanistan. Baltic neighbor and fellow NATO member Lithuania quickly followed suit. Latvia currently has 125 soldiers in Iraq and 36 in Afghanistan; Lithuania has 53 in Iraq and 120 in Afghanistan. Three Latvian soldiers have died in Iraq since joining the coalition forces in May 2003.
Then, of course, there was the program I watched on the History Channel , which will be on again tonight, that sets a possible end time for news as we know it:
There are prophecies and oracles from around the world that all seem to point to December 21, 2012 as doomsday. The ancient Mayan Calendar, the medieval predictions of Merlin, the Book of Revelation and the Chinese oracle of the I Ching all point to this specific date as the end of civilization. A new technology called “The Web-Bot Project” makes massive scans of the internet as a means of forecasting the future… and has turned up the same dreaded date: 2012. Skeptics point to a long history of “Failed Doomsdays”, but many oracles of doom throughout history have a disturbingly accurate track record. As the year 2012 ticks ever closer we’ll speculate if there are any reasons to believe these doomsayers.
When my cousins visited for my mother’s birthday last month, some of my female cousins and I got into a conversation about our various remedies for arthritis. All of us females on my mother’s side of the family are afflicted with it.
Noni juice was the preferred tonic of one cousin, who has carpal tunnel as well as joints in her hands that tend to swell. White raisins soaked in gin was the preventive another cousin suggested. In my refrigerator is a jar filled with raisins soaking in gin. If the effective ingredient in that concoction has something to do with the sulfides/sulfites used to make the raisins golden, I’m out of luck because I use organic raisins (I have a sensitivity to sulfites). If it’s the juniper berries in the gin, along with the health benefits of raisins, it just might work.
Over the years, I have found sulfur-based compounds good for a variety of afflictions. The best salve for a pimple breakout was a prescription ointment I had years ago that had a sulfur base.
These days, my vitamin shake that I take every day includes my addition of a teaspoon of MSM powder. Go here for more information about Methylsulfonylmethane (MSM). My arthritis symptoms are minimal.
My grandmother, who grew all kinds of (what we thought were) weeds in her back yard that she soaked in 100 proof alcohol and used for various ailments, including arthritis, also was given injections of gold for her swollen joints.
I wish I had paid more attention to my grandmother’s “old wives” remedies when she was alive. But I was a teenager and had other priorities.
I wonder what she would have thought about gin-soaked raisins.
While she sleeps, I blog, wash dishes, water my plants, brush my cat, start going through my papers for tax time.
She takes several naps a day, now. Eats, goes to the bathroom, sleeps, eats……. “You’re my mother,” she says to me.
While I’m sorting through my mounds of unfiled statements, receipts, and slips of paper I can’t remember why I saved, I come upon my ID badge from high school. It’s my senior year photo. 1957. My thumbprint is on the back. It’s a Civil Defense ID. It might be the only record of my thumbprint in case something happens to me and the only thing left is my thumb.
I also find a rubber-banded collection of ID badges from my various jobs with the NY State Ed Department. I look at how I’ve changed over the years.
Below are some news tidbits you might have missed — or, if you didn’t — are worth repeating for various ironic and absurd reasons. You can find out more, including the sources for the items by going here.
For its temporary embassy in Washington, D.C., the Iraqi government purchased a $5.8-million Tudor-style mansion across the street from the home of Dick Cheney on Massachusetts Avenue. The mansion features a built-in espresso machine, heated floors, soft pistachio carpeting, and a Jacuzzi.
Ted Wells, Scooter Libby’s defense lawyer, gave his closing argument. “He’s been under my protection for the last month,” Wells told the jurors, “now I’m entrusting him to you.” Then, he sobbed, “Give him back! Give him back to me!” Wells then went back to his chair and sniffled.
Scientists said “quasicrystalline” designs in medieval Iranian architecture indicated that Islamic scholars had made a mathematical breakthrough that Western scholars achieved only decades ago and concluded that ancient Iranian culture was very, very smart.
Twelve senior citizens on a beach excursion in Costa Rica during their Carnival Cruise Line vacations drove off two muggers, while a 70-year-old American put a third in a headlock, broke his clavicle, and strangled him to death.
With its new slogan “The Light is On for You,” The Archdiocese of Washington launched a marketing blitz that included ads on buses and subway cars, 100,000 brochures, and a highway billboard in an effort to get Catholics to confess.
After widespread opposition from residents of Utah and Nevada, the Pentagon canceled its plan to test a large non-nuclear bomb as part of Operation Divine Strake.
Researchers at Johns Hopkins University confirmed that mothers suffering from heartburn are likely to give birth to hairy newborns.
Scientists in Senegal watched chimpanzees fashion spears from sticks and use their weapons to stab sleeping bush babies.
Thousands of spectators at the Rose Monday parade in Mainz, Germany, watched a float of President Bush being spanked by the Statue of Liberty.
Some very “interesting” news came out too late for this weeks Harper’s Weekly. I can’t wait to see how this whole thing plays out:
James Cameron’s “The Lost Tomb of Christ,” which the Discovery Channel will run on March 4, argues that 10 ancient ossuaries — small caskets used to store bones — discovered in a suburb of Jerusalem in 1980 may have contained the bones of Jesus, according to a press release issued by the Discovery Channel.
If only.
When you turn on the national and international news these days, no matter what channel/perspective you watch, you can’t help wondering exactly what the truth is.
Why don’t they just give a lie detector test to Bush and Cheney, and Tony Snow, and Libby and Howard K. Stern and whoever else might well be lying? And how about all of those supposed terrorists held at Gitmo? Couldn’t we have avoided all of that mess that we got ourselves into by, instead, hooking them all up (one at a time, of course) to a polygraph??
Well, I guess it’s not that simple, and a friend of mine from college, who was a polygraph operator for the CIA in Viet Nam, has a new book coming out next month that deals with that subject: Gatekeeper: Memoirs of a CIA Polygraph Examiner
Excerpted from the book description at Amazon:
John F. Sullivan was a polygraph examiner with the CIA for thirty-one years, during which time he conducted more tests than anyone in the history of the CIA’s program. The lie detectors act as the Agency’s gatekeepers, preventing foreign agents, unsuitable applicants, and employees guilty of misconduct from penetrating or harming the Agency. Here Sullivan describes his methods, emphasizing the importance of psychology and the examiners’ skills in a successful polygraph program. Sullivan acknowledges that using the polygraph effectively is an art as much as a science, yet he convincingly argues that it remains a highly reliable screening device, more successful and less costly than the other primary method, background investigation. In the thousands of tests that Sullivan conducted, he discovered double agents, applicants with criminal backgrounds, and employee misconduct, including compromising affairs and the mishandling of classified information.
John’s first book was Of Spies and Lies: A CIA Lie Detector Remembers Vietnam. According to one reviewer, who also says This book is so good I have added it to the select list of intelligence reform books recommended by the Council on Intelligence:
The entire book is a gem. While I do not relish factual and temperate evidence that our clandestine operations in Viet-Nam were largely a sham; that we were the useful idiots to local authorities using us as a cash cow and tool of vengeance on their personal enemies; that most of our officers were drunk or adulturous or incompetent or all three at once; that our top agent really did not have the access he claimed to have but was simply a high-quality channel for his uncle to sell information collected from various local and mostly open sources–all this is depressing. It is also instructive.
While John was discovering painful truths about Viet Nam, an eventually-to-be friend of mine was a student in college protesting that war. I met him years later when he became my therapist, my mentor, and a good friend.
Today, Ed Tick, through his Sanctuary: A Center for Mentoring the Soul, is doing groundbreaking work in helping individuals, particularly soldiers, to deal with PTSD. He currently is featured on the website of Voices in Wartime for his grassroots project Soldier’s Heart.
Ed’s books, War and the Soul and Sacred Mountain: Encounters With the Vietnam Beast force us to look deep into the dark destruction that war rages on the very center of our humanness and sanity.
Both John and Ed use their experiences and their narrative talents to expose truths about war and its trappings that most of us would not have a chance to learn about. They know what’s true. Believe me.
A blogger in Saudi Arabia tells of a scam that takes us back to the fantasies of men in the Middle Ages — and in their middle ages — when the virginity of their women was one of their prized possessions.
Read Lori’s post in her blog, Sand Gets in My Eyes, where she reports:
According to Peaceful Muslimah, the soaps are indicative of a larger problem in the Middle East (and likely other parts of the world), where a woman’s virginity is her most important asset.” Unfortunately in many Muslim societies, as well as non-Muslim underdeveloped nations, there is an extreme pressure brought to bear on women’s chastity. As I recently discussed here, lack of chastity or even the perception of it can lead to fatal consequences. So is it any wonder that Muslim women are willing to go to extraordinary measures to maintain the appearance of the virginal bride on their honeymoon.”
[snip]
I did some checking, and the soaps are readily available throughout the world, thanks in large part to the internet. The idea is that the soap’s astringents “constrict and tighten” , creating that coveted “look and feel” of virginity.
One manufacturer boasts their product is….”Used and enjoyed by hundreds of thousands of women in the Middle East and Asia, it has brought back youthful passions, rekindled sensual yearnings, and completely intensified sexual experience.”
Ha! What a lot of bunk!
Her entire post includes more links and info. It would be great if others would post about this issue as well.n I have cross-posted it at Blog Sisters.
At various times in my life I have made the statement that I’d like to be either famous or infamous. I didn’t care which. I’ve always known that my cavalier attitude was part of my rebellion against the constant maternal caution not to embarrass her, not to call attention to myself in any negative way.
Of course, there were also times in my life when I’ve stifled myself — you know, the expectations of family, employers. The need to keep being paid a salary is a great motivator to behave.
The great thing about combining retirement and blogging is that I no longer have to worry about keeping a job, and I have a forum wherein I can risk becoming either famous or infamous. (Not that I’m either, or expect to be either. But I’m free to not care — unless I choose to — if someone doesn’t find me acceptable.)
I no longer have to worry about my “permanent record,” unlike the two bloggers who resigned from John Edward’s presidential campaign because of something they posted on their blogs.
Reid Stott over at photodude.com has a realistic post about the situation in which those bloggers found themselves, explaining:
It’s like the phenomenon of someone who was “fired for their blog.” No, they were fired for saying or doing something they shouldn’t have. It just happened to be in their blog. But a blog is not a buffer from the real world. Your words there count just as if you’d said them to someone’s face, with the difference that they are archived for a very very long time
Rafe Colburn, in his post on “your permanent record,” adds another dimension to the issue:
This certainly comes into play when I’m involved with hiring people. I can find out more about anyone from their blog archives than I can by interviewing them. In interviews, people usually tell the interviewer what they think they want to hear. In other contexts, they are usually less circumspect. When I find I may work with someone, I look for blog posts, messages to mailing lists, comments on blogs, Usenet rants from a decade ago, and anything else I can find. There’s more to anyone than their persona on the Internet, but more information is almost always better than less.
All true. All true.
But not for me because I’m retired, and I’m wearing purple.
I like to play at taking pictures. This one I took on my walk yesterday. “Snow sculpture,” I thought.
No, I’m not talking about Dumbya this time.
I don’t know why I hadn’t heard about this before, but I just followed a link from Jeneane’s post dealing with education and found out about Julie Amero, the seventh grade substitute teacher in Connecticut who is facing 40 years in prison after pornographic popup ads came up on her computer screen during a class in 2004.
Karoli at Odd Time Signatures explains the case, including the following:
When I first read about this story, Amero was on trial. I assumed that the defense would show that the ads were clearly the result of a spyware/adware infection and she would be acquitted. My shock went deep (along with just about everyone with an ounce of understanding about how malware works) when she was convicted of multiple counts of exposing children to pornography. My outrage is just as keen, knowing that she was not permitted to introduce evidence of a malware attack because the defense failed to do so at the pretrial phase.
Amero and her husband are broke. A sad result of these specious accusations and mockery of a trial: Amero was 4 months pregnant when she was arrested, and lost her baby as a result of the stress. A miscarriage of justice, truly.
Karoli’s post links to a site that quotes the following from an article published in the New York Times:
Brian Livingston, editorial director of Windows Secrets, an electronic newsletter about the Microsoft program, said in an interview, “Prosecutors should be chasing the maker of these spyware programs, not hapless teachers who have nothing to do with the images.”
Ms. Amero’s husband, Wes Volle, was emphatic in saying she was clueless about computers and was in over her head once the pop-ups began. Mr. Volle, a graphics designer, accused the school system of sacrificing his wife to deflect attention from its own failure to install effective filters on its computers.
The ignorance that permeates this case is layers deep, and at the bottom is the defense lawyer who obviously didn’t understand the fundamental relevance of how internet technology works and apparently never brought it up at pre-trial. And, for a school administration to be that ignorant of howproblems with internet technology can run rampant is truly a dereliction of duty.
An artcle on alternet.net explains the problem clearly:
Adware, spyware and other infectious software are known hazards to security and privacy — and when lax cybersecurity meets anti-porn hysteria, a mailware infection can even land you in jail. Malicious coders are getting more sophisticated all the time, but law enforcement and the criminal justice system aren’t keeping up. A criminal conviction can hang on the difference between a deliberate mouse click and an involuntary redirect on an infested computer. Too often, even so-called experts can’t tell the difference.
There is a website to help Julie Amero and her husband raise the money that they need for their defense against the kinds of powerful people who are so ignorant about what is perhaps the most significant technological/educational/cultural phenonemon of this generation that their stupidity results in a tragic miscarriage of justice.
I have become used to people I know in real life not knowing much about the Internet and not knowing anything about blogging. But they aren’t lawyers or teachers or school administrators. They join AOL and learn what icons to click to use their email account occasionally. They are, as it’s said, out of the loop, and they don’t care. It’s all just too complicated for them to bother with.
But the people with power to destroy the lives of others because of their ignorance — well, it’s time they start caring and start learning.