It’s incredible how different we all are . . .

Here's how photographer Timothy Allen sums up his two year trip to the far corners of the world in order to capture images for the BBC series Human Planet:

It's incredible how different we all are, but yet we share roughly the same hopes and dreams for life. We're essentially looking for a roof over our head, looking to find a mate in life and feeding ourselves and looking after our offspring, and that's about it, really.

Allen's quote brings to mind Donald Brown's work on the incredible sameness of all human animals. But, as Allen points out, our cultures are also dramatically different from one another. Now please do yourself the supreme favor of clicking on this link to view a sampling of Allen's exquisite photography for Human Planet. His slide show includes some of the most memorable photos I've ever seen. You can read through the live chat that the show's team had earlier tonight, and please do consider a visit to Allen's own site. And here's a bit of video from the series, a segment dealing with the "last free people on the planet."

Continue ReadingIt’s incredible how different we all are . . .

They’re still testing the wrong people.

Dafna Linzer wrote a piece for ProPublica (I found it on Slate) on February 23rd, titled "The Problem With Question 36" with the subtitle "Why are so many of the answers on the U.S. citizenship test wrong?" (On ProPublica, she called it "How I Passed My U.S. Citizenship Test: By Keeping the Right Answers to Myself"). She was summarizing her experience becoming a naturalized American citizen in January of this year. As you may guess from both titles, she found a few problems with some of the questions on the test administered by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). She quotes Christopher Bentley, a spokesman for USCIS:

"The goal of the naturalization test is to ensure America's newest citizens have mastered a basic knowledge of U.S. history and have a solid foundation to continue to expand their understanding as they embark on life as U.S. citizens."
I thought of my own short rant I wrote a year ago on my personal blog that I called "They're testing the wrong people". I considered rewriting it for here, but I'll just highlight (and elaborate) a few points in relation to this and not quite in relation:
  1. We make people wanting to become citizens of the USA take a test that I doubt most natural born citizens could pass. I speculated that many of our elected legislators couldn't.
  2. Adoptive parents endure tremendous invasion of privacy, screening and considerable financial impact, yet "natural" parent require no such tests.
  3. The military requires a test, but Congress doesn't.
  4. Civil service may require a test, but Congress doesn't.
  5. Boards of Education decree testing standards, but undergo no such tests themselves.
Ms. Linzer's story might enlighten you, or not, but I now have to add the USCIS - or at least the scholars, educators, and historians they consulted to create the current test - to the list of people who need to be tested.

Continue ReadingThey’re still testing the wrong people.

Is This Part of the 2011 Republican Strategy?

I am not a political analyst. Nor am I a games theorist, although I come from a family full of them. But there seems to be a pattern in the odd funding battles currently being fought by Federal House Republicans. Defunding Planned Parenthood is a high profile battle that seems pretty silly. For 1/6 the price of a single stealth bomber, Planned Parenthood provides birth control, pap smears, breast exams, STD treatments and other health services to millions of the poor and unenfranchised for a year. No tax money has gone for abortions since the 1970's, so this service is not actually the issue. Well, unwanted children help keep prisons full. Or become likely infantry assets (cannon fodder). They also keep the crime rate up, allowing the Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt crowd a tighter control over individual rights. Also, knowledge is power. Planned Parenthood works hard to try to educate young people on how to get out of the young-breeder cycle and build more fulfilling lives. If conservatives could just get this unregulated source of pure information away from the young, then church indoctrination would provide the Quiverfull of Christian soldiers at the voting booths. Defunding Public Broadcasting is a less publicized issue. They argue that NPR and PBS may have been a necessary part of the dial back when there were three networks. But now there are hundreds! So who needs just one more paid for by taxes? Well, in the old days, there was one non-commercial educational network on the dial: PBS. Now, with hundreds of stations to choose from, there is one non-commercial educational network on the dial: PBS. Why is this a problem to conservatives? Well, the cities are a lost cause. With inescapable multiculturalism, a high rate of college education, and exposure to a wide variety of influences and media, cities tend toward a liberal bias. Knowledge does that. But out in the boondocks, the only fly in the otherwise completely conservative Christian ointment is the centrist ("bleeding heart liberal") influence of Public Broadcasting. If they could only get rid of that, they'd control all the channels. Conclusion: Republican Policy is Ignorance is Bliss: Cut programs accordingly.

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Matt Taibbi asks: “Why isn’t Wall Street in jail?”

At DemocracyNow, Matt Taibbi discusses why, on Wall Street, Nobody goes to jail."

Every single former investigator or current investigator that I talked to said the same thing: Madoff went to jail because the wrong people suffered. You know, it was famous actors. It was, you know, the glitterati in New York. If these were teachers and firemen and all the usual suspects—you know, look at the—we have a million people in foreclosure in this country right now, and a lot of them are there because of predatory lending and because of this fraud scheme, but there are no criminal prosecutions. I think that’s the reality now, is that we don’t see anybody being criminally targeted unless their victims were powerful people themselves. We have two-and-a-half million people in jail this country, you know, more than a million who are in jail for nonviolent crimes. And yet, we couldn’t find a single person on Wall Street to do even a day in jail for losing 40 percent of the world’s wealth in a criminal fraud scheme? And that tells you that we have—this goes beyond the cliché that rich people have better lawyers and they have an advantage. This is a step beyond that. This is a situation where the system is completely corrupted, and it’s true regulatory capture. The SEC and the Justice Department are essentially subsidiaries of Wall Street.

Continue ReadingMatt Taibbi asks: “Why isn’t Wall Street in jail?”

We Are Not Parts

I’ll admit up front that I’m shooting from the hip here. There are many aspects to what is happening in Wisconsin right now with parallels to several past instances in the country in the fight over workers’ rights, unions, and moneyed interests, but I frankly don’t have the time to research them all right now and get something up before it all comes to a head. Isn’t it interesting, though, that we are collectively cheering what is happening in the Middle East right now and something similar is happening right here and people don’t seem to be paying attention to what’s at stake? I grant you, it’s a stretch. But on principles, not so much. We’re talking about who has the right to speak to power and over what. The protesters in Madison aren’t having their internet access and phone service pulled and it’s doubtful the military will be called in, but on the other hand the Wisconsin state police are being asked to go get the now-labeled Wisconsin 14 and bring them back to the state capitol to vote on something that is clearly a stripping of the right of petition and assembly. So this can become very quickly a constitutional issue and that’s scary, because right now the Supreme Court has been decidedly against workers’ rights. Governor Scott is at least being clear. I’ll give him credit, he’s not ducking questions about what he’s trying to do. Wisconsin, like many states, has a budget crisis. He’s already gotten concessions from the unions, a lot of money. The unions have not balked at doing their civic duty in terms of agreeing to pay cuts, freezes on raises, and some concessions on benefits to help the state meet its budgetary responsibilities. But he’s going further and asking that all these unions be stripped of their collective bargaining abilities in order to make sure they never again demand something from the state that the legislature or the governor believes they don’t deserve. In other words, Governor Scott doesn’t ever want to have to sit down and ask them for concessions ever again—he wants to be able to just take what he wants. [More . . . ]

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