My Pal Foot Foot

Brené Brown: Expanding Your Perception

Alice Walker

I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field and don't notice it.

Emma Goldman

"If I can't dance, I don't want to be in your revolution."

Sesame Street:Song: I Love My Hair

Awesome.

Rye Rye - Sunshine ft. M.I.A.

Pure Imagination

One of my favorite scenes in one of my favorite movies of all-time..

Galaxy Song

Whenever life gets you down, Mrs. Brown..

Desert Island Top Five: Albums

In no particular order..

Paul Simon, Graceland

The Band, Jericho

Norah Jones, The Fall



Ry Cooder & Co., Buena Vista Social Club

Vince Guaraldi, A Charlie Brown Christmas

Hunter-Gatherer Peoples: Technology

In this section, you will be searching for answers to the question:
How did hunter-gatherer peoples develop and employ technology?

You will have 10 minutes to complete the online portion and corresponding questions of this section in your packet.

First, you will read this Discovery article exhibiting what an ancient toolkit looked like. As you are reading the article and examining the image, consider what necessities you might bring to survive in the wild.

Next, you will watch a traditional, persistent hunt by San tribesmen in the Kalahari Desert of Africa. As you watch, pay close attention to the methods of tracking and hunting that the tribesmen employ - it is the same as it was thousands of years ago - and think about what advantages we have as humans over other species.

Finally, consider the image below. This is one of the earliest projectile technologies, the Atlatl. It was developed as a much more effective and powerful weapon than its precursor, the spear. How might this development affect the ways in which hunter-gatherers tracked down their prey?


To see the Atlatl in action, watch this short clip.

Hunter-Gatherer Peoples: Language

In this section, you will be searching for answers to the question:
What did the advent and mastery of Language mean for the human species?

After a brief introduction by your teacher, you will have 10 minutes to complete the online portion and corresponding questions of this section in your packet.

You will first explore The Cave of Lascaux, located in modern-day France and often called the Sistine Chapel of cave paintings.

You will then watch this video on the San Bushmen, indigenous people of the Kalahari Desert in Africa, who are located in modern-day Botswana and Namibia. Their "click" language is Khoisan, what many believe is the root of all human language.

You will end this portion with another clip from a San Bushmen clan. It is an ancient song sung by a tribeswoman to teach children how to count to ten. Can you remember the songs of your childhood that helped you learn or recall?

Hunter-Gatherer Peoples: Culture

In this section, you will be searching for answers to the question:
How did the cultures of the hunter-gatherers evolve with the development of technologies and language?

Use the image below to participate in the class-wide Spiral Learning Activity. Sketch the image in your Virtual Field Trip packet and write down concepts as we move through the activity.


You have 10 minutes to complete the online portion and corresponding questions of this section in your packet.

Now, you will watch this video on the Babongo tribe of Gabon, Africa, believed by many to be the oldest people (homo homo sapiens) on earth. As you watch, think about the ways in which the daily schedule of the Babongo influences their culture (i.e. customs, interactions, spiritual rituals, etc.).

Finally, watch this clip from the film The Gods Must Be Crazy about the Sho tribe of the Kalahari Desert in Africa. Take special notice of tribal life before the introduction of this "new" technology, how it affected the balance of the tribe and how the tribe responded.

MI Proposal 10-2

A PROPOSAL TO AMEND THE STATE CONSTITUTION TO PROHIBIT CERTAIN FELONS FROM HOLDING ELECTIVE OFFICE AND SPECIFIED TYPES OF PUBLIC EMPLOYMENT POSITIONS

The proposed constitutional amendment would:
Make a person ineligible for election or appointment to any state or local elective office or to hold a position in public employment in this state that is policy-making or has discretionary authority over public assets, if:

1. Within the preceding 20 years, the person was convicted of a felony involving dishonesty, deceit, fraud, or a breach of the public trust; AND

2. The conviction was related to the person’s official capacity while holding any elective office or position of employment in local, state or federal government.

Require the State Legislature to enact laws to implement the prohibition.

-------------------------------------------------

After looking over the proposal, I am in favor of this amendment. I see it not as over-reaching, vague or excessive. The language is very specific as to what types of felonies would be exclusionary for candidates running for an elected position: "IF within the preceding 20 years, the person was convicted of a felony involving dishonesty, deceit, fraud, or a breach of the public trust; AND the conviction was related to the person’s official capacity while holding any elective office or position of employment in local, state or federal government." It has nothing to do with drugs or other types of felonies outside of breaking the ethical codes of holding a position of public office.

I would point to the current situation in Detroit Public Schools as an exemplary case of how this amendment could apply. Four employees of the state - a former principal, the accountant for her school, a police officer and the accountant's son - defrauded the school district out of nearly $150,000. They used their positions as public servants to commit a felony. The amendment, if enacted, would prevent these people from serving in a public position for the next 20 years. I think any judge who believes in the balance between protecting the rights of (former) criminals and upholding those in public office to high standards - or at least a standard higher than deceit, fraud, dishonesty or a breach of public trust - would find this amendment within Constitutional parameters and widely beneficial.

Proposal 10-1: Glove-State Constitutional Convention?

MI residents will vote in November on whether to have a constitutional convention in 2011. The cost of the convention will be approx $28 million. Citizens will run for delegate slots and if elected will have the right to amend or totally redo our state constitution. Last time we did this was 1962.

My thoughts:
I am willing to invest in our state to get us going in a positive, SUSTAINABLE direction.

An Analogy: My mom has had a lot of health problems. For years, she was going from specialist to specialist, trying to figure out why she was feeling awful all the time. She was doing this while continuing to go about her life in her normal trajectory. But she wasn't getting any lasting solutions: a medicine to help one symptom was making another worse, new symptoms would pop up as a result, etc. She needed a different approach to her health because these were only temporary solutions. Finally, she went to Mayo Clinic where all of her health problems were taken into consideration by a team of medical experts who looked at the bigger picture. They diagnosed her with chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia, diagnoses that would not have been possible if she wouldn't have gotten this holistic, systemic look at her health. From this she was able to reassess her life choices and come up with creative, sustainable solutions to her health problems.

Just as the health of my mother cannot be viewed in a symptom-by-symptom approach, the failing of Michigan's economy cannot be sustainably addressed through an agency-by-agency approach. Our world, our nation and our state have undergone EXTENSIVE changes since 1962. Our current problems are systemic. We chug ahead on an outdated and decidedly short-sighted economic model of governance. It is no longer a viable economic strategy to rely on the Big Three in Detroit to carry our state; to run our prisons as we do; to allow an outside company bring in outside jobs to exploit our state's resources in the short-term; and on and on.

We are situated in the future of resource protection and management: the fresh water of the Great Lakes. Either we can morn the death of a dinosaur industry reliant upon a resource that will invariable run out and try to resuscitate it for a few more decades, OR we can start looking at ways to tap into the incredible potential of our state's resources - human and natural.

To be damn sure, I am not advocating opening the floodgates to allow the rampant, unregulated exploitation of our resources by state and private business. On the contrary: we have to revamp, restructure and revitalize those agencies responsible for making smart, long-term and sustainable resource management decisions. Our DRNE/DEQ are incredibly underfunded, understaffed, overworked and essentially impotent. But these are without question the defining agencies of a future "green economy." We don't need jobs that will be gone in 15 years and leave us with the gutted skeleton of a resource that could've been preserved in a way to ensure (re)use.

As a future educator (hopefully in Michigan), I am very nervous about the current trends in public education. The problems are cancerous and rampantly spreading to more school districts with greater severity. A holistic, long-term look needs to happen in this sector and many others in order to get our state heading in a positive direction. This is an issue that MUST be addressed if a constitutional convention takes place - pas de question.

We can't let desperation cloud our judgment. We have seen time and again the inability of our governing bodies to get past entrenched partisan politics and special interest influences. We need a new mission statement - one that transcends these frivolous roadblocks that eat away at our confidence in the capacity of our government to function based upon what is best for our state.

I don't want to leave Michigan: I've grown up exploring our natural beauties, loving our unfailingly friendly Midwestern residents, investing in local materials, crafts and services and sustaining myself on the bounties of Michigan-made food. Because of this, I am willing without hesitation to support this opportunity to come together as a state to begin the process of cultivating a healthier future.

Banksy

Brilliant. I'm using this as part of my introductory Spiraling Curriculum piece tomorrow in HS350. AGRICULTURAL REVOLUTION. Did we make the right turn?

Great Lakes Lovin'

I want a Great Lakes kind of love

A love that’s wide and deep

A love where I can see the bottom

But the bottom is soft on my feet

I want a Great Lakes kind of love

Clean and refreshing

I jump in naked and shout

“WOO! That’s Love!”

I want a love that reflects the most beautiful moments of the day, that roars with injustice against the shores when the winds aren’t behaving

A Love that preserves secrets

And if I sink too deep

It will preserve me too

Keep me

Until I am ready to come to the surface

I want a Great Lakes kind of love

Where people sit on its edge and whisper

“Wow, that’s something”

I want a Great Lakes kind of love

Not a mountain to climb

But water to sit by on a quiet night

But water to slip into slowly

Mountains are a nice affair

But I want a Great Lakes kind of love

Finger-Pointing?

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

President, Waterkeeper Alliance; Professor, Pace University

A common spin in the right wing coverage of BP's oil spill is a
gleeful suggestion that the gulf blowout is Obama's Katrina.

In truth, culpability for the disaster can more accurately be laid at
the Bush Administration's doorstep. For eight years, George Bush's
presidency infected the oil industry's oversight agency, the Minerals
Management Service, with a septic culture of corruption from which it
has yet to recover. Oil patch alumnae in the White House encouraged
agency personnel to engineer weakened safeguards that directly
contributed to the gulf catastrophe.

The absence of an acoustical regulator -- a remotely triggered dead
man's switch that might have closed off BP's gushing pipe at its sea
floor wellhead when the manual switch failed (the fire and explosion
on the drilling platform may have prevented the dying workers from
pushing the button) -- was directly attributable to industry pandering
by the Bush team. Acoustic switches are required by law for all
offshore rigs off Brazil and in Norway's North Sea operations. BP uses
the device voluntarily in Britain's North Sea and elsewhere in the
world as do other big players like Holland's Shell and France's Total.
In 2000, the Minerals Management Service while weighing a
comprehensive rulemaking for drilling safety, deemed the acoustic
mechanism "essential" and proposed to mandate the mechanism on all
gulf rigs.

Then, between January and March of 2001, incoming Vice President Dick
Cheney conducted secret meetings with over 100 oil industry officials
allowing them to draft a wish list of industry demands to be
implemented by the oil friendly administration. Cheney also used that
time to re-staff the Minerals Management Service with oil industry
toadies including a cabal of his Wyoming carbon cronies. In 2003,
newly reconstituted Minerals Management Service genuflected to the oil
cartel by recommending the removal of the proposed requirement for
acoustic switches. The Minerals Management Service's 2003 study
concluded that "acoustic systems are not recommended because they tend
to be very costly."

The acoustic trigger costs about $500,000. Estimated costs of the oil
spill to Gulf Coast residents are now upward of $14 billion to gulf
state communities. Bush's 2005 energy bill officially dropped the
requirement for the acoustic switch off devices explaining that the
industry's existing practices are "failsafe."

Bending over for Big Oil became the ideological posture of the Bush
White House, and, under Cheney's cruel whip, the practice trickled
down through the regulatory bureaucracy. The Minerals Management
Service -- the poster child for "agency capture phenomena" -- hopped
into bed with the regulated industry -- literally. A 2009
investigation of the Minerals Management Service found that agency
officials "frequently consumed alcohol at industry functions, had used
cocaine and marijuana and had sexual relationships with oil and gas
company representatives." Three reports by the Inspector General
describe an open bazaar of payoffs, bribes and kickbacks spiced with
scenes of female employees providing sexual favors to industry big
wigs who in turn rewarded government workers with illegal contracts.
In one incident reported by the Inspector General, agency employees
got so drunk at a Shell sponsored golf event that they could not drive
home and had to sleep in hotel rooms paid for by Shell.

Pervasive intercourse also characterized their financial relations.
Industry lobbyists underwrote lavish parties and showered agency
employees with illegal gifts, and lucrative personal contracts and
treated them to regular golf, ski, and paintball outings, trips to
rock concerts and professional sports events. The Inspector General
characterized this orgy of wheeling and dealing as "a culture of
ethical failure" that cost taxpayers millions in royalty fees and
produced reams of bad science to justify unregulated deep water
drilling in the gulf.

It is charitable to characterize the ethics of these government
officials as "elastic." They seemed not to have existed at all. The
Inspector General reported with some astonishment that Bush's crew at
the MMS, when confronted with the laundry list of bribery, public
theft and sexual and financial favors to and from industry "showed no
remorse."

BP's confidence in lax government oversight by a badly compromised
agency still staffed with Bush era holdovers may have prompted the
company to take two other dangerous shortcuts. First, BP failed to
install a deep hole shut off valve -- another fail-safe that might
have averted the spill. And second, BP's reported willingness to
violate the law by drilling to depths of 22,000-25,000 feet instead of
the 18,000 feet maximum depth allowed by its permit may have
contributed to this catastrophe.

And wherever there's a national tragedy involving oil, Cheney's
offshore company Halliburton is never far afield. In fact, stay tuned;
Halliburton may emerge as the primary villain in this caper. The blow
out occurred shortly after Halliburton completed an operation to
reinforce drilling hole casing with concrete slurry. This is a
sensitive process that, according to government experts, can trigger
catastrophic blowouts if not performed attentively. According to the
Minerals Management Service, 18 of 39 blowouts in the Gulf of Mexico
since 1996 were attributed to poor workmanship injecting cement around
the metal pipe. Halliburton is currently under investigation by the
Australian government for a massive blowout in the Timor Sea in 2005
caused by its faulty application of concrete casing.

The Obama administration has assigned nearly 2,000 federal personnel
from the Coast Guard, the Corps of Engineers, the Department of
Defense, the Department of Commerce, EPA, NOAA and Department of
Interior to deal with the spill -- an impressive response. Still, the
current White House is not without fault -- the government should, for
example, be requiring a far greater deployment of absorbent booms. But
the real culprit in this villainy is a negligent industry, the
festering ethics of the Bush Administration and poor oversight by an
agency corrupted by eight years of grotesque subservience to Big Oil.

The Anti-Mosque Bandwagon: Crossing Constitutional Lines

The anti-Mosque bandwagon in NYC is crossing Constitutional lines.

The main defense for the activities of the anti-Mosque bandwagon is their First Amendment right to Freedom of Speech. I would agree that they have the right to speak out against the Mosque and attend city zoning meetings to voice their opinion to the officials who will be making the decision. But as this article illustrates, the actions of the teens has gone past Constitutional protection.

I see this case as needing the application of the penalties involved with prosecuting a hate crime, not simply "disrupting a religious ceremony." I would draw on the legalese and Constitutional interpretation laid out in Wisconsin v. Mitchell (1993), in which the Supreme Court upheld Wisconsin's penalty-enhancement law. A group of black men targeted a white boy to beat up specifically because of his race. Assault was beefed up under the law to aggravated battery. The Supreme Court upheld the WI law for three reasons, which I see applicable to this current incident:

1. Physical assault is not by any stretch of the imagination expressive conduct protected by the First Amendment (firing a shot gun and sideswiping a worshiper with a vehicle are NOT constitutionally protected forms of expression).

2. In previous cases, sentencing judges have been allowed to take into account the defendant's racial animus towards his victim (there is no doubt that the victims in this case were targeted as a direct result of their religious standing).

3. The law punishes only conduct, NOT speech (anti-Mosque demonstrators have been allowed to voice their dissatisfaction with the plan with Constitutional protections; those protections do not extend to battery and/or firing a shot gun in city limits).

State Supreme Courts and the U.S. Supreme Court have ruled over and again in similar cases. Throughout history, religion has been the impetus and the victim of targeted violence, enough so that the Supreme Court has made it a federally-protected class (just like race). It is unjust to apply those protections inconsistently. The charges of "disrupting a religious service" are a joke. It is up to the State, as per the 10th Amendment, to extend those protections to the members of the Mosque while properly punishing those whose conduct (not speech) is criminally punishable. If the NY Supreme Court is unwilling to step up in this case, then it is up to the U.S. Supreme Court to follow stare decisis (precedent).

zealot live fugees

Michael Franti: Hey World (Don't Give Up)

Maybe..

..I should be a lawyer. I'm really digging on Constitutional Law and the interplay between the Feds and the States. Hmmm nerrrrrrdy.

But it's not as wholesome. And, I'd be arguing all the time. I'd rather create and build with others. I like to share and play nicely. Is this possible in Law? Is this possible in anything any more?

Loving

"When It Don't Come Easy"
Patty Griffin

Red lights are flashing on the highway
I wonder if we're gonna ever get home
I wonder if we're gonna ever get home tonight
Everywhere the waters getting rough
Your best intentions may not be enough
I wonder if we're gonna ever get home tonight

But if you break down
I'll drive out and find you
If you forget my love
I'll try to remind you
And stay by you when it don't come easy

I don't know nothing except change will come
Year after year what we do is undone
Time keeps moving from a crawl to a run
I wonder if we're gonna ever get home

You're out there walking down a highway
And all of the signs got blown away
Sometimes you wonder if you're walking in the wrong direction

But if you break down
I'll drive out and find you
If you forget my love
I'll try to remind you
And stay by you when it don't come easy

So many things that I had before
That don't matter to me now
Tonight I cry for the love that I've lost
And the love I've never found
When the last bird falls
And the last siren sounds
Someone will say what's been said before
Some love we were looking for

But if you break down
I'll drive out and find you
If you forget my love
I'll try to remind you
And stay by you when it don't come easy

Living

My Symphony

by Rev. William Henry Channing (1810-1884)

To live content with small means.
To seek elegance rather than luxury,
and refinement rather than fashion.
To be worthy not respectable,
and wealthy not rich.
To study hard, think quietly, talk gently,
act frankly, to listen to stars, birds, babes,
and sages with open heart, to bear all cheerfully,
do all bravely, await occasions, hurry never.
In a word, to let the spiritual,
unbidden and unconscious,
grow up through the common.
This is to be my symphony.

Stand By Me

Playing For Change
http://www.playingforchange.com/

For Rainy Times

OK Go - This Too Shall Pass

Holiday Spirit 2008

Over Christmas break, I needed a prescription filled so I went with my mom to the pharmacy. While waiting (as one does in a pharmacy), an elderly couple came through to pick up their surplus of meds. One for his heart, one to help with the symptoms of that one, one for his blood pressure, one for her arthritis, one for.. Between them, I must have counted seven or eight little red-orange bottles. The pharmacist started ringing them up, and the old man noticed the price of one of the prescriptions had gone up. "Wasn't that only $65 last month?" he asked. It was now $78. The pharmacist assured him that it was the right price and promised to look for another generic brand that would be less expensive. Their total for one month of prescriptions: nearly $600.

Tis the season.

Elizabeth Gilbert: A new way to think about creativity

I look forward to sharing this with my students. She speaks to the human experience, at its core.

Anis Mojgani performs Shake the Dust at HEAVY AND LIGHT.

Afternoon

It's 3:30 p.m., August 26, 2010.
It's the first Thursday of my final year at Northern.
It's a way to journal.
It's a way to remember and recall and reminisce.
It's a way to collect all the cool stuff I find.
It's a way to prepare myself for my future.
It's a way to produce positive.
For me.

Ready-made posts

Originally posted April 27, 2010, during finals week.

Now I don't feign expertise or full understanding of what's going on with the housing crisis, subprime mortgages, credit defaults, foreclosures, recession v. depression debate, inside trading or other delineations in the current state of affairs of our economic system. And, frankly, I am militantly suspicious of anyone who lays claim to "know it all": it is in many ways simply too big, complex, dynamic, backwards and susceptible to real or imagined manipulation. But on the same hand, I haven't once bought this whole "No one saw it coming" argument coming from those same people who have made it their life's work. There is just more to the story.

And it pisses me off. All of it. Not just news of the corruption and deception within these institutions that hold the livelihoods of so many hard-working Americans, but (1) the maddening complexity of the whole damn thing and (2) the way it has been packaged and sold to us by inflammatory media sources.

This has been an ongoing frustration for me. But often when I have these sort of anxieties about feeling ignorant and taken advantage of as a citizen participant, life provides. I'm not going to get prophetic but rather just share some articles, clips and recordings that have contributed to my better understanding of what's happening, in layman's terms. Some are recent and some I've held onto for a few years.

Feedback and further sources are welcomed and requested.

IF NOTHING ELSE, CHECK OUT #1 and #2

-----------------------------------------------------------

1. "NPR: THIS AMERICAN LIFE"
Episode: "Inside Job," Act One: Eat My Shorts
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/405/inside-job

You can stream it online. Love me some Ira Glass. If you don't delve into anything else, take a half hour to listen to this - gives full explanation of most Wall Street jargon and puts it into a real-life context. NPR worked in conjunction with ProPublica to ask, "Really? Nobody saw this coming?" ProPublica's subsequent full article on the housing crisis: http://www.propublica.org/feature/the-magnetar-trade-how-one-hedge-fund-helped-keep-the-housing-bubble-going


2. "THE DAILY SHOW WITH JON STEWART"
Discussion with Jim Cramer, of CNBC's "Mad Money"
http://www.indecisionforever.com/2009/03/13/jon-stewart-and-jim-cramer-the-extended-daily-show-interview/

Jon Stewart (who does not stake claim in being anything other than a host of a comedy show) calls on Jim Cramer (who bills himself as a 'financial expert') to help be an illuminating force in reporting and commenting on our financial situation. Tag-line from Cramer's show: "Watch the "Mad Money" TV show on CNBC, Jim Cramer can help you make money! Watch as money manager Jim Cramer guides you through Wall Street investing." Unfortunately Cramer, like MANY others who are/were on the inside of all this, has bought into the theatrics of selling bullshit to the public. EXCELLENT.


3. "THE STOCK MARKET WHO CRIED WOLF"
A brief history of alarmist—and wrong—Wall Street predictions about the effect of new regulations.
http://www.slate.com/id/2252038/pagenum/all/#p2

So where do we go from here? Do we keep relying on those 'financial experts' who both perpetuated our current situation and now say "We had no idea this would happen?"


4. "EVERYTHING'S AMAZING AND NOBODY'S HAPPY"
C.K. Lewis on Conan O'Brien (pre-NBC/CBS drama)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8r1CZTLk-Gk

Funny commentary on the state of things and that it might be a good thing that the "foundations of capitalism" are crumbling.


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P.S. Zeitgeist "The Addendum" http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7065205277695921912# gives a good overview of the foundations of our free market economy and how we employ capitalism in our country.