Niece in Africa

I have a charming niece named Katja Boye. She and her family are currently traveling, working and studying in various parts of West Africa. Katja recently sent my family some of her digital images; I really enjoyed the many scenes and textures and colors of Africa. I also enjoyed the contrast of seeing images of my very light-skinned relatives (they are Norwegian, with their permanent home in Norway) mingling with the many dark-skinned Africans. katja-in-class I asked Katja if she would grant me permission to share some of her photos on this website and she gave the go-ahead. I don't actually know these specific locations within West Africa yet - - perhaps Katja will write a comment and provide some further information. Katja (she stands out in the photo to the right) is the daughter of Alida Jay Boye (my wife's sister), who you can see at the left side of the sand dune photo below. Alida is the co-author of a beautifully written and photographed book describing the people and the ancient manuscripts of Timbuktu, located in the African country of Mali. Yes, Timbuktu is a real place, it is surrounded by sand dunes, and here is an aerial shot of of the city. The title Alida's book is The Hidden Treasures of Timbuktu: Rediscovering Africa's Literary Culture. For many years, Alida has been "commuting" from Norway to Mali work on these manuscripts under the auspices of the United Nations. Here's more information about Alida's work. alida-and-familyI don't claim to be able to read any of these manuscripts, but I do enjoy their physical beauty, which you can see here. Those who can read the manuscripts recognize them to be a vast literary treasure created by Africans and collected by various people and institutions in Timbuktu, which for centuries served as a commercial crossroads in Africa. For more on Timbuktu and its famous manuscripts, consider this informative video. Katja's father Thorvaldt (who works in a diplomatic capacity for the Norwegian government regarding several west African countries) and her sister Ebba (a student) have also spent considerable time working and studying in various parts of Africa. As you can see, the members of this family are quite comfortable traveling far from their cold homeland of Norway to warm Africa. Click on the title to this post for the permalink version, which will allow you to see all 18 images. Katja - thanks for letting me share these photos!

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The craving for beer as the cause of civilization

According to archaeologist Patrick McGovern, the craving for beer might have caused people to decide to start farming. Humans turned from hunting and gathering to agriculture because of "our ancestors’ simple urge for alcoholic beverages." He points to evidence that humans were making beer as far back as 9,000 years ago.

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Avatar

Okay, so I contributed to the James Cameron Self Love Fund and saw AVATAR. Yesterday we went to the 3-D showing (no way I would spend money on the normal view, I can wait for the DVD the way I do with 99% of the movies I see anymore). I’ve had a day to think about it now and I’ve come to some conclusions, which are hardly profound, but I think worth saying. Let me say up front that I wasn’t bored. Visually, this is a stunning achievement. But that’s what everyone is saying. It is, in fact, the best 3-D I’ve ever seen. Often in the past the effect is minimal and the cost in headache high. This was neither. And it fully supported the visuals rather than masking mundane or poor image elements. Pandora, the planet involved, is magnificently realized. Cool stuff. Real gosh wow. The biology is problematic. You have a wide mix of lifeforms analogous to Earth. Some big lumbering critters like hippos or rhinoceri that also have features of a dinosaur, and some small things that are clearly wolves, and one big nasty cat-like thing that’s like a sabertooth tiger. It’s unclear if any of these creatures are mammalian, but it doesn’t matter much. Dinosaur analogs. Most of them apparently four-legged. But the “horses” the natives ride are six-legged, reminiscent of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ thoats. How does that play out in evolutionary terms? Well, maybe that’s a quibble. How then do you evolve humanoids out of this? Well, maybe that’s a quibble, too. This film is not about science on any level, regardless of the few bits of dialogue suggesting there are, you know, scientists, and that there is a studyable cause to any of this. Because the story, basically, is hackneyed, cynical, and cliched. [more . . . ]

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FOX commentator struggles to not understand the First Amendment

In this February, 2009 video, FOX commentator Megyn Kelly worked hard to claim that she didn't understand the First Amendment. Michael Newdow, who filed a suit challenging a school that required his child to say the Pledge (including the phrase "one nation under God") showed considerable patience with Kelly, but the outcome was pre-ordained. Kelly showed the same closed tortucan mind as the U.S. Supreme Court which strained mightily to through out his suit on a technicality rather than face the music. Emotions generated by the compulsion to force students to say the pledge has often caused massive distortion to legal logic.

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Newly released AIG emails further impugn Tim Geithner

What would you think about the Federal Reserve Bank of New York telling AIG to intentionally withheld from public scrutiny that AIG was paying 100 cents on the dollar for credit default swaps at the same time that AIG was crying for a bailout from the public, thereby hiding from the public that the public was functionally bailing out Goldman Sachs and other large banks? What would you think about the fact that Tim Geithner headed the New York Federal Reserve when this was going on? Eliot Spitzer, William K. Black and Frank Partnoy sum up the issue:

Today, a Bloomberg story revealed that under Timothy Geithner's leadership, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York told AIG to withhold details from the public about its payments to banks during the crisis. This information was discovered when emails between the company and the Fed were requested by representative Darrell Issa, ranking member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
Who owns AIG? The taxpayers own 80% of it. Therefore, AIG should release the emails. Who can and should make this decision?
The taxpayer's stake in AIG is held by the A.I.G. Credit Facility Trust, whose three trustees are Jill M. Considine, a former chairman of the Depository Trust Company and a former director of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York; Chester B. Feldberg, a former New York Fed official who was chairman of Barclays Americas from 2000 to 2008; and Douglas L. Foshee, chief executive of the El Paso Corporation and chairman of the Houston branch of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. We call on these three officials (interestingly all former Fed officials) to immediately release the documents we request. The value of these documents, if it were ever in doubt, was certainly proved by today's revelations. Release the emails.
See also, this earlier post on a NYT op-ed by Spitzer, Black and Partnoy.

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