The real-life family from "The Impossible"

It's their family's true story, that the movie "The Impossible" is based on:


All I could see was water and two of my boys clinging to the tops of trees

It seemed like the perfect Christmas break for the Spanish family of five.

But then the splashing and laughter were drowned out by a deafening roar and Maria watched in horror as a towering wave pushed in from the sea and ripped through the hotel.

The family’s Far Eastern holiday over Christmas 2004 had ended in disaster — caught up in the Boxing Day tsunami which killed around 240,000 people in 14 countries.

[...]

Recalling the moment the tsunami struck, Maria, a doctor, says: “The wave is big on the cinema screen but in real life it was so much more. It was everything.”

In an instant, she found herself separated from Lucas, husband Quique and younger sons Tomas, eight, and five-year-old Simon.

The wave smashed her against a plate glass window which exploded behind her and she was swept through the hotel.

She says: “I remember being pushed against walls. You could feel them trembling and breaking, feeling them as they gave way, one after another.

“Some of the walls did not collapse — that’s why people died. They were trapped.

“I was under the water for a long, long time. I was not in physical pain but the drowning sensation was like being in a spin-dryer.

“The doctors said I was underwater for more than three minutes because my lungs were absolutely full of water. I saw many lights under the water, tunnels with lights at the end, that people tell you they see when they are going to die.”

Like Lucas and Maria, Quique doesn’t know how long he was underwater.

He says: “I thought, ‘That’s it, I’m not going to make it.’ But I needed to try. I saw a light above me, so I tried to push myself up and get my head out of the water.”

He surfaced in the torrent, more than half a mile downstream from the hotel, and says: “The only thing I could see was water and the tops of the trees. I was alone.

“I thought there was no way my children had made it. I started to cry and then I thought, ‘Why are you crying when there is no one to comfort you?’”

Quique managed to grab hold of a tree and thinks he hung on for about half an hour as the raging waters roared past him.

He says: “Then I heard Tomas’s voice. He was shouting, ‘Papa! Mama! Lucas! Simon!’” [...]

Another good interview is here:


Seemingly impossible: Miracle survival of family who inspired new tsunami movie

[...] “We started to hear a very horrible sound. I was looking around thinking maybe this is just in my mind.

"No one recognised the sound. It felt like the Earth was coming apart but everything looked perfect.

“I was facing the sea and saw a huge black wall. I didn’t think it was the sea. I thought it was a black wall coming to get us.

“The two youngest boys were in the swimming pool with my husband.

"Lucas, the eldest, was just in front of me. He had just got out of the pool to fetch the ball we had bought them on Christmas Day.

"I screamed to my husband and to the kids. I thought it was the end for all of us. Lucas was crying out, ‘Mama, Mama’.

"Then they all disappeared under water. [...]

Based on the details in these interviews, it seems the movie re-enacted their experiences very closely. Follow the links for more details, and lots of photos.
   

Big Solar Flares this weekend?

Maybe:

Sunspot Blasting Out Major Solar Flares Will Face Earth Soon

The super-active sunspot responsible for unleashing the three most powerful solar flares of 2013 within a 24-hour stretch this week is slowly rotating toward Earth and will likely be facing our planet by the weekend, experts say.

Active Region 1748, as the sunspot is known, unleashed three monster solar flares between Sunday and Monday (May 12 to 13). Every one of the solar storms registered as an X-class flare — the most powerful type — with each successive event stronger than the last, culminating in an X3.2 megablast Monday night.

These solar explosions did not affect Earth, since AR1748 was not facing our planet at the time. But the sunspot is now circling into view, so future flares and any associated eruptions of super-hot solar plasma — called coronal mass ejections (CMEs) — could potentially target our planet, scientists say. [Sun Unleashes Biggest Flares of 2013 (Photos)]

"In a couple of days, it will be far enough onto the disk that any CMEs that we got would probably have some impact on Earth," solar astrophysicist C. Alex Young, of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., told SPACE.com.

AR1748 should be near the center of the solar disk by around Saturday, Young added.

"If it sends something off, then we can expect to get some CMEs sort of head-on" at that point, he said.

[...]

Scientists give AR1748 a 40 to 50 percent chance of firing off another X-class flare, he added, though this probability is a rough estimate that could change as further information becomes available.

X-class flares aimed at Earth can have consequences on a planet-wide scale, triggering widespread radio blackouts and long-lasting radiation storms.

Earth-directed CMEs have even more destructive potential. When a CME's charged particles interact with Earth's magnetic field, they can spawn geomagnetic storms powerful enough to disrupt GPS signals, radio communications and power grids.

Solar activity waxes and wanes over an 11-year cycle. The current cycle, called Solar Cycle 24, is ramping up toward an expected peak later this year. [...]

See the full article for embedded link, and video.
     

Panarama from Mars

Follow the link and click on the interactive panorama, in full screen mode. It's really cool:

Stand on Mars Next to the Curiosity Rover With This Incredible Panorama
     

Japanese Tsunami Debris on Oregon Coast

It's starting to arrive in greater quantities. A few Sunday's ago, I encountered my first piece. We were having a nice walk on a local beach:


It was another day in paradise. Just beautiful. Then I saw it:



A first I thought it was just an ordinary piece of rubbish. But then I saw the Japanese writing on it. It was a bottle of hairspray. It had floated in the ocean for a long time, so long that it had seaweed growing on it.

I could only wonder; had it been sitting on a shelf in a hair salon? Or on a ladies dressing table, or in someone's bathroom cabinet? Was it swept out to sea from someone's house - WITH the house? With people still in the house? All questions that can never be answered.



I left it there, bearing witness to a disaster far away, years ago. I continued my walk, and told myself I would pick it up on my way back down the beach. But on the way back, it was gone. Either someone else picked it up, or it went back to sea for a while, to remind someone else on another day.

Meanwhile, an article in the Vancouver Sun tells us that a Tsunami here would not be as bad as the earthquake that would cause it:

Monster earthquake would devastate Pacific Northwest, leaving thousands dead
But tsunami would be secondary issue for Lower Mainland, because Vancouver Island would take brunt of big wave: expert

A monster earthquake and tsunami would wreak havoc on B.C.’s west coast, but the effects would be far worse in Washington and Oregon states.

“I suspect there’d be a significant number of deaths in the Lower Mainland as a result of the shaking,” said Ronald Clowes, a crustal seismologist and professor emeritus at the University of B.C. “But the tsunami would be a secondary concern.”

Clowes spoke on Friday after researchers told Oregon legislators Thursday that more than 10,000 people could die when — not if — a monster earthquake and tsunami occur off the Pacific Northwest coast.

Coastal towns would be inundated; schools, buildings and bridges would collapse; and economic damage could hit $32 billion, the researchers said.

These findings were published in a chilling new report by the Oregon Seismic Safety Policy Advisory Commission, a group of more than 150 volunteer experts.

[...]

According to the Oregon report, the 2011 Japan quake and tsunami were a wake-up call for the Pacific Northwest. Governments have been taking a closer look at whether the region is prepared for something similar, and discovering it is not.

Oregon legislators requested the study so they could better inform themselves about what needs to be done to prepare and recover from such a giant natural disaster.

The report says that geologically, Oregon and Japan are mirror images. Despite the devastation in Japan, that country was more prepared than Oregon because it had spent billions on technology to reduce the damage, the report said.

Meanwhile, a third minor earthquake has struck off the north B.C. coast, the latest in a series that has rattled the area since last fall. [...]

I don't deny that there is a seismic hazard here. But I don't know how they can say "Oregon and Japan are mirror images". Japan has a long history of active earthquakes, which is why they are better prepared. Earthquakes in Oregon are few and far between, which is why we are not better prepared. I don't see how that makes us a "mirror image". Though I suppose if a large earthquake and resulting tsunami happen, it won't much matter what we call it.
   

GOP supporting Gay Marriage?

Many in the party are moving in that direction:

Conservative effort underway in push for gay marriage

There are some prominent names in there. I'm not surprised. In so many ways, the battle to stop it is a lost cause, for many good reasons:

The inevitability of Gay Marriage

Whatever you think of it, it's here, and it's not going away. Deal with it. The GOP has much more important battles to deal with, and should not waste any more time and resources on a battle they have already lost.
     

The changing face of healthcare

I recently came across this article, which is aimed at American physicians:

Getting ready for emerging care models

Like it or not change is coming to healthcare. The government, employer groups and other purchasers of healthcare are demanding higher quality and lower costs in the delivery of healthcare. The Affordable Care Act of 2010 started this evolution and whatever you call it -- value-based purchasing, accountable care, patient-centered healthcare, etc. -- it is taking root and starting to grow rapidly.

[...]

To get an idea of what you should be thinking about, let’s look to a healthcare market where these “new” healthcare delivery models are the norm and have been in place for years. One such market is in the Netherlands, where 90 percent of demand for care is generated in the primary care setting and providers (private) are paid a lump sum based on conditions and work in integrated care networks.

In the Netherlands today, 99 percent of physicians use a computer, 97 percent are Internet-enabled, 90 percent store all types of health records electronically, 84 percent receive lab results electronically, and 26 percent exchange data electronically with other providers – all benchmarks that the United States aims to achieve in the next 3-5 years. The international standards used in the Netherlands are consistent with U.S. conventions, as HL7 and ICD-9 are used in healthcare and ICD-10 is being adopted. Also, as in the United States, Holland does not have a dedicated health ID number or “smart card” for patients that some European countries have adopted but which are not relevant in this country. In these respects, the Dutch market is extremely similar to the U.S. market. This market is where our own company history started, and where our care collaboration and disease management solutions have matured.

Here is what you need and why
To participate in a value-based delivery model you must be willing and able to coordinate and collaborate on patient care with other ambulatory providers; the goal is to render the right amount of preventive care, avoiding health complications and resulting in better patient care with lower attendant costs. Once this mind shift has taken root -- a very different and, for some, a difficult way of thinking -- you need the basic tools and capabilities to engage in care coordination. These tools must:

Enable you to store patient information electronically. This does not have to be the typical full-blown EMR that legacy vendors have been marketing. These EMRs were developed in the fee-for-service model to optimize billing and reimbursement and resemble digital renditions of paper records. Not to mention they are expensive to acquire and maintain even when they may be subsidized by the ACO. Instead, you need a platform that is designed for the new delivery model focused on optimizing patient care, with a workflow that fits your practice pattern. For more on this see the 2010 PCAST Report titled "Realizing The Full Potential of Healthcare Information Technology to Improve Healthcare."

Enable patient-centric care, including making sure that patients receive reminders for preventive services through multiple channels based on their personal profile.

Support the care team network, allowing all providers, physicians, facilities, etc., involved in treating particular patients to share relevant information through collaborative and coordinated care.

Manage patients proactively.

Be able to generate electronic referrals.

Be a cloud-based solution. Cloud-based solutions require little or no local IT support and investment. This is really important for the average physician practice. Also the pricing level and payment structure with predictable cash flow more closely matches the size of the practice.

To distill down these capabilities into specific tool sets means you should expect to have the following: an EHR; a care collaboration/coordination solution; and the ability to exchange electronic referrals. The key in selecting the right solutions for your practice is to pick one with the right workflow for your practice. The solution(s) must be cloud-based so you can avoid the costly hassle of purchasing and supporting local software installations, which is expensive and not your core competency. If you do not have these capabilities you either might not be a candidate to participate in an ACO, clinically integrated care delivery network or PCMH, or the ACO will force you to use their solutions.

You should expect the ACO to provide other required solution capabilities such as clinical decision support (CDS), analytics, population health tools, health information exchange platform (HIE); reporting tools, etc. These are expensive solutions tailored for a large organization to manage and support. [...]

It goes on to describe the current inefficient, entrenched ways of doing things, and how they are going to be forced to rapidly change, as has happened in many other industries (It has an embedded link to an article in Forbes).


Also see:

Have Smart Phones to do Medical Work
     

SS United States, Part 2: The Blue Riband

The grand old ship that's fighting for it's life. I first posted about it here, with a link to a video about the ship. Below is the second of four parts.




SS United States: Made in America (Chapter 2: The Blue Riband)


   

Ubuntu tablet interface enjoys success

Ubuntu 13.04 Review: Linux for the average Joe or Jane

The new Ubuntu Linux distribution, 13.04, aka Raring Ringtail, is ready to go, and for most users, it may be all the desktop they need.

True, many hard-core Linux users have turned against Ubuntu in recent years. Or, to be more precise, they turned against it when Ubuntu's parent company, Canonical, switched from the GNOME 2.x desktop to its Unity desktop interface. They have a point. Unity doesn't give Linux experts the kind of control over the operating system that they get from desktops such as KDE, MATE, and, my own personal favorite, Cinnamon.

However, Unity is not a user-experience failure like Windows 8's Metro. Instead, it's very good at what it sets out to do: Provide a user-interface (UI) that's easy enough for an 80-year old to use and provide an interface that's designed to work equally well for desktops, tablets, and smartphones. In short, Ubuntu is not for Linux power users, it's for all users.

That's very clear in Ubuntu 13.04. While this new version doesn't offer a lot of new features, it has done a nice job of cleaning and speeding up the ones it had. In particular, I noticed how this works on a review system, a 2008-vintage Gateway DX4710. This PC is powered by a 2.5-GHz Intel Core 2 Quad processor, has 6GBs of RAM, and an Intel GMA (Graphics Media Accelerator) 3100 for graphics. Unity itself was much faster than before on the same box.

That's because Ubuntu spent a lot time making performance improvements to Unity. These include: "reduced memory consumption and a great number of small UI fixes to bring a better overall shell experience. Those are like being typo-tolerant in the dashboard when searching for an application, using the mouse scroll wheel on a launcher icon to switch between applications, or better available third-party device handling."

Of course, if you really want Ubuntu, and you really can't stand Unity, there are a wide variety of Ubuntu 13.04 variants with different desktops. These include: Kubuntu, with KDE; Xubuntu, with Xfce; and Lubuntu, with LXDE. [...]

I personally don't like Ubuntu's Unity Desktop. It's a tablet-like interface, similar to Windows 8. But Unity isn't as hated as Windows 8. Why? Because it wasn't automatically put on most new PCs and forced on people, like Windows 8 was.     

Windows 8 does more than flop

It slides:

Windows 8 blamed as PC sales slide

[...] When the company introduced Windows 8 in October, the operating system was supposed to help a flagging PC market gain — or at least lose less — ground against tablets, with a new touch-based interface. Instead, sales of PCs have dropped faster, and analysts are saying that sales aren’t coming back.

“At this point, unfortunately, it seems clear that the Windows 8 launch not only failed to provide a positive boost to the PC market, but appears to have slowed the market,” said Bob O’Donnell of IDC in a press release. “Microsoft will have to make some very tough decisions moving forward if it wants to help reinvigorate the PC market.” [...]

Some people aren't replacing their PC's but are moving to tablets and smart phones. And I suspect that the people who use PCs, don't want the interfaced dumbed down to work like a tablet. At least, that's true for me.
     

A new kind of sleeping pill: "Dora-22"

A Sleeping Pill Without The Sleepy Head?

[...] DORA-22 is part of a class of new drugs — one of which the Food and Drug Administration is already considering for approval — known as orexin antagonists.

“It’s high quality research,” says Jerome Siegel, professor of psychiatry at University of California Los Angeles, who was not associated with the study.

The authors compared the sleep-inducing effects of DORA-22 to those of three well-known sleeping pills: diazepam (Valium), zolpidem (Ambien) and eszopiclone (Lunesta), which work by slowing down brain activity. Immediately after giving the animals the drugs, the scientists tested the animals’ memory and reaction time. (While most people take sleeping pills before going to bed, such effects are important to document so researchers, and users, can fully understand how their brains and bodies are affected by the medications in case people don’t take the drugs as prescribed.)

“It’s very enticing because there are some clear results that show [that these drugs] differ from old hypnotic drugs in terms of affecting cognition and memory in two animal species,” says Dr. Emmanuel Mignot, director of the Stanford Center for Sleep Sciences, who wrote a commentary on the research, which was published in Science.

Rats given high enough doses to cause sleep of the three currently available drugs had difficulty recognizing whether they had seen an object previously presented to them, while those dosed with DORA-22 did not show such compromised recall. Similarly, all of the drugs except DORA-22 reduced rhesus monkeys’ ability to react to a touch screen and correctly choose a colored square associated with a reward. In fact, even at doses 30 times higher than the lowest amount needed to affect sleep, the drug did not impair performance on this task.

What makes this new class of drugs different? Orexins, which are also known as hypocretins, are brain chemicals that promote wakefulness. Of the brain’s billions of neurons, only tens of thousands produce orexins. People with narcolepsy who have difficulty staying awake and are prone to suddenly falling asleep without warning are missing almost all of the neurons that produce these chemicals. DORA-22 and similar drugs work by blocking orexins by essentially producing a brief and reversible bout of narcolepsy. [...]

It's an interesting concept. But how many years till we find out the long term side effects?
     

The crap that movies "teach" us

I often suspected this:

7 Bullshit Police Myths Everyone Believes (Thanks to Movies)

And if that's not enough, there's more:

6 Life Saving Techniques From the Movies (That Can Kill You)
     

Real Pharmaceutical Marijuana?

Is it comming? Maybe:

Pot in a pill: All the pain relief without the smoke

[...] Let me introduce you to dronabinol. It turns out that the miracle that is modern psychopharmacology has now shown it IS possible to render pot's analgesic effects into capsule form. And according to a new study, it works just as well as smoked marijuana at tamping down pain. But the capsule's effects last longer, and they come with fewer of the "abuse-related subjected effects" (i.e., feeling high) than does smoked marijuana.

Face it, potheads: You knew it was just a matter of time before "the man" got a hold of weed and snagged all the profits. But who knew he'd suck the fun out of it too?

For the record, dronabinol did induce some of smoked marijuana's other side effects, some of which have medicinal value to certain populations: It did increase appetite, decrease nausea and improve sleep.

The new research appeared Monday in the Nature journal Neuropsychopharmacology. It was authored by a group from Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons. [...]

The full article goes on with details about how it was tested, which I also found interesting.

     

Are conspiracy theories always inevitable?

For some people, yes:

What Is a 'False Flag' Attack, and What Does Boston Have to Do with This?


Also see:

Cannabis, Communism and Conspiracy Theory all go Together to make this San Franciso Treat
     

Save the S.S. United States from the scrap-heap

I was gonna do a post about this great old ship a few years back, when they were planning to refurbish and relaunch her. But it seems that bringing her up to modern code proved to be too cost prohibitive; those plans all fell through. Now she is in a fight for her life:



Historic Ship Short on Funds and Time

The SS United States is sending out what may be its final distress call.

The 990-foot-long ship could be sold for scrap within two months unless the grass-roots preservation group that's working to secure a home and purpose for it can raise $500,000 immediately, the group told The Associated Press. Talks are under way with developers and investors about the ship's long-term future, but without the emergency funding, its caretakers fear they will run out of money before a deal is inked.

The historic ocean liner carried princes and presidents across the Atlantic in the 1950s and 1960s but has spent decades awaiting a savior at its berth on the Philadelphia waterfront.

"We've made progress on the fundraising side and the redevelopment side," said Susan Gibbs, executive director of the SS United States Conservancy and granddaughter of the ship's Philadelphia-born designer, William Francis Gibbs. "Our immediate goal is to buy some time."

The group has raised $1 million through fundraisers and a website, where contributors can sponsor a piece of the ship for $1 per square foot, but has received no public funding. What is desperately and immediately needed, they said, are donors with deep pockets and high profiles.

"Are we giving up on successfully redeveloping the ship as a self-sustaining entity? Absolutely not," said Dan McSweeney, head of the redevelopment efforts. "We continue to have active discussions with potential partners, we have ideas of potential sites for the ship, but we need more time to get it off the ground ... and we're running out of runway."

It costs $80,000 a month just for mooring, basic maintenance, insurance and security, he said.

The conservancy is exploring potential partnerships with four entities in Philadelphia and New York City to refashion the vessel as a stationary entertainment complex with 500,000 square feet of space for a hotel, theater, restaurants and shopping. The sluggish economy and other factors have slowed negotiations, McSweeney said.

As talks continue, he said, the hope is to convince corporate sponsors, influential politicians and prominent business leaders — are you listening, Donald Trump and Michael Bloomberg? — to lend their political and financial capital to the effort.

"Any way you look at it, there is no downside to this project," McSweeney said. "It's an economic and community development project that's going to create jobs."

The SS United States carried more than 1 million passengers at record-breaking trans-Atlantic speeds over the course of 400 round trips from 1952 to 1969, among them President John F. Kennedy, Prince Rainier of Monaco, Salvador Dali and Elizabeth Taylor. A joint venture between the Navy and ship designer Gibbs & Cox, the luxury liner was made with hidden military might: It could have been converted in a single day to transport 14,000 troops for 10,000 miles before refueling.

After being decommissioned it changed hands multiple times, from the Navy and on through a series of restoration-minded investors.

It was towed from Virginia to Turkey to Ukraine, finally arriving in Philadelphia as a gutted hulk in 1996. Another succession of developers and a cruise lines failed to return the ship to service as retrofitting costs proved too great. [...]

I remember reading about this ship when I was a kid, I was a real fan. Our local library had and encyclopedia, that had a three panel color fold-out of a cutaway diagram showing all the inside parts and levels of the ship. I had a model kit of the ship that I built and painted. It was the greatest ocean liner ever.

How ironic that it can't be brought up to "modern" standards. It was not unsinkable, but it was hard to sink. It had five chambers. Even if all 5 chambers were to flood, up to the waterline, it would still not sink. Compare that to modern cruise ships, that have only two chambers. And their "modern" propensity to break down at sea and become floating toilets.

The hope now is to turn the ship into a permanently docked museum/hotel/office space/restaurant/conventions center complex. It seems like a worthy venture. We once visited the RMS Queen Mary in Long Beach, California. It had been converted thus, and it was a very enjoyable visit. I would love to see that happen for the S.S. United States, since it can't be allowed to compete with our modern floating toilet bowls.

Here is a video about the ship. It's part of a series, I think I shall try to post one a week, for the next several weeks.




SS United States: Made in America (Chapter 1)


Also see:

Granddaughter of SS United States' designer turns to documentary, social-media campaign to save ship

www.savetheunitedstates.org

   

My Brilliant Career, part II

Previously, I explored Tax Preparer as an additional source of income. This time, I'm going to look at Pharmacy Technician.

It's a better option than Chickenblogging, and it seems that for the foreseeable future, healthcare is where the most jobs are.

I've been taking some accounting courses from Ed2go.com, and I was perusing some of the other non-college credit courses, and this looked interesting:

Explore a Career as a Pharmacy Technician

Health care is a booming field these days, and pharmacy technicians are in high demand. In this course, you’ll take a look at the many job settings and career paths open to you if you become a pharmacy technician. In addition, you’ll master the skills you need to get an entry-level position as a pharmacy tech or clerk.

You’ll start by learning basic terms for medical conditions and anatomy, gaining the skills you’ll need to read prescriptions and patient records easily. In addition, you’ll find out how common classes of drugs are made and how they work.

Next, you’ll master the simple math that every pharmacy tech needs to know. You’ll learn how to calculate dosages accurately, practice using simple formulas and math tools, and find out how to translate metric measurements into familiar household measures like teaspoons and tablespoons. Turning to the business side, you’ll look at sales and find out how prescription pricing works.

In addition, you’ll learn about the important laws and regulations that govern pharmacies. You’ll also hone your communication skills, learning how to handle customers courteously and efficiently. And finally, you’ll explore the steps you can take to enhance your career prospects becoming a Certified Pharmacy Technician (CPhT). By the time you’re done, you’ll be prepared to start your career in this popular and rapidly-growing field.

Note: This course is designed to give you an introduction to the profession of pharmacy technician. It will not supply enough information to sit for the national exam. If your goal is to become a Certified Pharmacy Technician (CPhT), then upon completion of this introductory course, enrollment into the advanced course is recommended. The advanced course is located in the online Career Training section of the ed2go catalog: http://www.gatlineducation.com/pharmacytechnician.html.

The Advanced Course is 330 hours, and prepares you to take the State Exam. Both courses are on-line (which allows great flexibility), and offer demos so you can see how they work. The introductory course offer's an entire lesson and quiz free. I think I may take the introductory course, just to see if I have what it takes, and if I can see myself doing it. No point in taking an advanced course till I know that.
   

Don't want windows 8? Go with "refurbished"

If you aren't ready to deal with Windows 8, but you need a new Windows Machine, you can still get Windows 7 if you buy "refurbished". Here are a few of my favorite places to buy from:

http://www.staples.com/Refurbished-Laptops/cat_CL168249

http://3btech.net/laptops.html

I used laptops as an example in the links, but they both have very good deals on desktop models too.
     

Old Fashions with a New Twist

In Namibia:

The Show-Stopping Fashion of Namibia’s Herero Tribe

Even in a continent rich with fantastic traditional garments, the Herero tribe of Namibia stands out. Photographer Jim Naughten first came across and photographed members of the tribe while traveling across Southern Africa 15 years ago. Naughten returned in 2011 with better camera equipment and produced this eye-catching series. Merrell has just published a book of the work, and two shows open in March: at Klompching Gallery in Brooklyn, and Margaret Street Gallery in London.

The origin of the Herero dress is early-20th-century German colonization. The outfits, which at first were forced on the Herero, later became a tradition, a choice, and a source of pride and status as they made the fashion their own. Tribe members wear the German uniforms at various ceremonies, funerals, and festivals as a way of honoring their warrior ancestors. [...]

Follow the link and have a look at all the pictures. I enjoyed looking at the people's faces, as much as the clothes.


     

The inevitability of Gay Marriage

Here is the "why":

A gay marriage backlash? Not likely

[...] Four factors often predict whether judicial decisions will generate backlash: public opinion, relative intensity of preference, geographical segmentation of opinion, and ease of circumvention/defiance.

Unsurprisingly, only rulings that contravene public opinion tend to generate backlash. In 2003, Americans opposed gay marriage by roughly 2 to 1. Today, supporters outnumber opponents by 5 or 10 percentage points. A ruling in favor of marriage equality would generate far less backlash today than previously. Still, the nation was divided nearly down the middle when the Brown and Roe cases were decided, yet both rulings generated massive political resistance.

Backlash is more likely when opponents of a ruling care more than supporters do. In 1954, Southern whites overwhelmingly disagreed with Brown, and 40% of them regarded civil rights as the nation's most pressing issue. Most Northern whites agreed with Brown, but only 5% of them deemed civil rights equally important. Similarly, by 2004, among the one-third of Americans who supported gay marriage, only 6% said the issue would influence their choice of political candidates. Among the two-thirds who opposed gay marriage, 34% deemed it a voting issue.

That large disparity in intensity of preference between the two sides of the issue no longer exists. Perhaps more important, even strong opponents are unlikely to find that a marriage equality ruling will directly affect their lives in the way that Brown and Roe affected opponents. In the 1950s, white Southerners committed to white supremacy thought that sending their children to school with African Americans was the end of the world. Opponents of abortion regard the procedure as murder.

Constitutionalizing gay marriage would have no analogous impact on the lives of opponents. Expanding marriage to include same-sex couples may alter the institution's meaning for religious conservatives who believe that God created marriage to propagate the species. But that effect is abstract and long-term. The immediate effect of a marriage equality ruling would be that the gay couple already living down the street would become eligible for a marriage license — and nothing would change in the daily lives of gay-marriage opponents. That is why strong initial support for a state constitutional amendment to overturn the Massachusetts court ruling rapidly dissipated once same-sex couples began to marry. [...]

That explains a lot. Succinctly. And in IMO, makes it inevitable.
     

Rand Paul on Pot; a Democrat Opportunity?

Rand Paul: People Shouldn’t Smoke Pot, But They Shouldn’t Go To Jail for Non-Violent Drug Crimes

[...] While arguing against mandatory minimum sentences for smoking pot, Paul pointed out that both President Bush and President Obama could have seen their lives destroyed by marijuana-related arrests, reports the Hill. “Look, the last two presidents could conceivably have been put in jail for their drug use,” Paul said. “Look what would have happened. It would have ruined their lives. They got lucky. But a lot of poor kids, particularly in the inner city, don’t get lucky. They don’t have good attorneys. They go to jail for these things. And I think it’s a big mistake.” Host Chris Wallace replied with a laugh: "Actually, I think it would be the last three presidents, but who's counting?"

[...]

Ian Millhiser at ThinkProgress writes that Democrats need to take “very, very seriously” the fact that “one of America’s most radical ideologues” is moving ahead with an “effort to outflank them on drug policy.” Paul clearly believes that taking a more liberal stance on drug issues could help him appeal to young people, independents, and moderates. And he’s right. Polls have shown that two-thirds of Americans under 30 favor legalization of marijuana. Paul is right on policy too, adds Millhiser, but “if Democrats cannot be moved to think sensibly on drugs because it is the right thing to do, the least they could do is think sensibly on drugs because it is in their selfish political interests to do so.”

“one of America’s most radical ideologues”? You mean, actually following what the United States Constitution says is "radical"? Not in my world. I guess he must mean the Brave New World this one is turning into.
     

Death by Alzheimer's is increasing

U.S. deaths from Alzheimer's growing, data shows
(Reuters) - Deaths and the risk of dying from Alzheimer's disease have risen significantly in the United States during the last decade, according to two reports released on Tuesday.

[...] Data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed the risk of death from the degenerative brain disease rose 39 percent between 2000 and 2010 even as mortality rates for other conditions such as cancer, heart disease and stroke fell significantly.

Separate findings from the Alzheimer's Association based on CDC data, but looking at actual deaths, found mortality up 68 percent over the same decade.

While the risk of death depends on a patient's age, gender, race and even where they live, it is clear that it has been increasing steadily for a long period of time, the CDC said in its report.

Those 85 and older are far more at risk of dying from Alzheimer's than those age 65 to 84, CDC said. Whites and women are also at higher risk, it added. [...]