Sun

29

Jul

2012

25-year-old murder conviction of two Detroit brothers tossed out

Julianne Cuneo, owner of Sunshine Investigations, and daughter of Roger and Martha Cuneo was one of two female investigators working on this project.  She is not the one the prosecutor erroneously hinted at some "hanky-panky".  It appears to me that the prosecutor is acting out the fox and the grapes of Aesop fame.

Photo

Photo by AP

By Jim Schaefer / Detroit Free Press  |   Friday, July 27, 2012  |  http://www.bostonherald.com  |  Midwest

DETROIT -- Raymond Highers, wearing bright yellow Wayne County Jail scrubs, folded his hands Thursday and clamped his eyes shut when it became clear what the judge was about to do.

 

“We have new evidence .” Wayne County Circuit Judge Lawrence Talon began.

 

Then the sniffling started, from one or two supporters in the back row of the packed courtroom on the sixth floor of the Frank Murphy Hall of Justice in downtown Detroit.

 

“ The court finds the newly discovered evidence to be credible and reliable.”

The room erupted in screams and applause before Talon could finish.

Raymond Highers and his brother, Thomas Highers, both imprisoned for a quarter-century for a murder they long maintained they did not commit, had just had their convictions wiped out.

 

And then, for the first time in the extraordinary hearing held off and on since March, Raymond Highers reached forward, shook his brother’s hand, and embraced him.

 

In a ruling from the bench that lasted about an hour, Talon said that new witnesses who never went to police about the shotgun slaying of Robert Karey, 65, offered enough new evidence during the hearing to erase the 1988 decision by then-Judge Terrance Boyle to convict the brothers and sentence them to life in prison.

 

Older brother Thomas is now 46. Raymond just turned the same age.

 

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Sat

28

Jul

2012

Air Pano

I recommend this program by Air Pano - a Russian company which has done a magnificent job in using advanced technology to develop this geographical study: AirPano.com.  It allows one to feel that they are "there" when they observe countries and sites from diverse aircraft - a feeling of true connection.  It allows an appreciation of many cities and places in our world, and draws us all closer together.

1 Comments

Thu

26

Jul

2012

Capra: Bibliography

Original text

Dr. Capra's books have been published in numerous languages and editions. Click here for a complete list.


The Tao of Physics, Capra's first book, challenges much of conventional wisdom by demonstrating striking parallels between ancient mystical traditions and the discoveries of 20th century physics. Originally published by a small publisher with no budget for promotion, the book became an underground bestseller by word of mouth before it was picked up by a major American publishing house. Since then, The Tao of Physics has been published in 43 editions in 23 languages.


In The Turning Point, the author expands his focus to show how the revolution in modern physics foreshadows a similar revolution in many other sciences and a corresponding transformation of world views and values in society. In particular, he explores paradigm shifts in biology, medicine, psychology, and economics. The book has been published in 25 editions in 16 languages.

 

In Uncommon Wisdom, the author describes dialogues and personal encounters between himself and the thinkers who helped shape the theme of The Turning Point.The book has been published in 16 editions in 12 languages.

 

The Web of Life starts from the conceptual framework presented in The Turning Point, summarizes the mathematics of complexity, and offers a synthesis of recent nonlinear theories of living systems that have dramatically increased our understanding of the key characteristics of life. The book has been published in 14 editions in 10 languages.

 

In The Hidden Connections: A Science for Sustainable Living, the author extends the framework of systems and complexity theory to the social domain and uses the extended framework to discuss some of the critical issues of our time -- the management of human organizations, the challenges and dangers of economic globalization, the scientific and ethical problems of biotechnology, and the design of ecologically sustainable communities and technologies. The book has been published in 11 editions in 8 languages.

 

Die Capra Synthese (The Capra Synthesis) presents an annotated selection of the author's essential texts in two German editions.

 

Green Politics, co-authored with Charlene Spretnak, analyzes the rise of the Green Party in Germany and similar ecology-oriented political parties in other European countries. The book has been published in 7 editions in 4 languages.

 

Die Seele Indiens: Tamil Nadu (Tamil Nadu: The Soul of India), coauthored with Jacqueline Capra, is a photo essay on daily life in the villages and cities of Tamil Nadu in southern India.

 

Belonging to the Universe, co-authored with Brother David Steindl-Rast, explores parallels between new ways of thinking in science and Christian theology. The book has been published in 10 editions in 7 languages.

 

Mindwalk contains the complete screenplay of Bernt Capra's film, cowritten by Floyd Byars and Fritjof Capra, together with introductory comments by the film's director and a scientific commentary by Fritjof Capra.

 

EcoManagement, co-authored with Ernest Callenbach, Lenore Goldman, Ruediger Lutz, and Sandra Marburg, proposes a conceptual and practical framework for ecologically conscious management. The book has been published in 5 editions in 4 languages.

 

Steering Business Toward Sustainability, co-edited with Gunter Pauli, is a collection of essays by business executives, economists, ecologists, and others who outline practical approaches to meeting the challenge of ecological sustainability. The book has been published in two editions in two languages.

 

The Science of Leonardo is the first book to present a coherent account of the scientific achievements of Leonardo da Vinci, the great genius of the Renaissance, and to evaluate them from the perspective of 21st-century scientific and philosophical thought. Its central thesis is that Leonardo's science is a science of living forms, of quality, which can be seen as a distant forerunner of today's complexity and systems theories. It is a science that honors and respects the unity of life, recognizes the fundamental interdependence of all natural phenomena, and reconnects us with the living Earth. Leonardo's science is thus highly relevant to our time. The book has been published in 7 editions in 5 languages.

0 Comments

Thu

26

Jul

2012

Fritjof Capra

Source

Fritjof Capra, Ph.D., physicist and systems theorist, is a founding director of theCenter for Ecoliteracy in Berkeley, California. The Center advances schooling for sustainability; its most recent book on this growing movement in K-12 schools isSmart by Nature: Schooling for Sustainability (2009). Dr. Capra is on the faculty of the Beahrs Environmental Leadership Program of the University of California, Berkeley.

 

He also teaches at Schumacher College, an international center for ecological studies in England, and frequently gives management seminars for top executives.

 

Dr. Capra is the author of five international bestsellers, The Tao of Physics (1975),The Turning Point (1982), Uncommon Wisdom (1988), The Web of Life (1996), andThe Hidden Connections (2002). He coauthored Green Politics (1984), Belonging to the Universe (1991), and EcoManagement (1993), and coedited Steering Business Toward Sustainability (1995). His most recent book, The Science of Leonardo, was published in hardcover in 2007 and in paperback in 2008. Please see the bibliographyfor full details about publications.

 

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Wed

25

Jul

2012

Closely Watched Study Fails to Find Arsenic in Microbial DNA

From Science Insider

on 2 February 2012, 1:50 PM 

 

The debate over whether a bacterium can incorporate arsenic into its DNA just flared up again, with the posting yesterday of a paper refuting the idea on ArXiv, an electronic preprint archive primarily used by astronomers, mathematicians, and physicists. The controversy began in December 2010, when NASA astrobiology fellow Felisa Wolfe-Simon and colleagues described online in Science a microbe called GFAJ-1, which grew, albeit slowly, in the presence of arsenic, leading the authors to conclude the bacterium had taken up the toxic element and incorporated it into its cellular components. The report, amplified by a NASA press conference, quickly lit up the blogosphere and Twitter and led to the unprecedented publication of eight critical technical comments alongside the print version of the paper.

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Fri

20

Jul

2012

Dinosaur Eating Habits Revealed By Analysis Of Diplodocus Skull

From The Huffington Post

By  

Posted: 07/18/2012 12:52 pm Updated: 07/18/2012 1:15 pm


Call it a prehistoric paradox. Huge herbivorous dinosaurs like Diplodocus—at about 30 meters in length, one of the longest dinos ever discovered—needed to consume vast quantities of plants. And yet scientists have puzzled for years over the Diplodocus’ long snout and protruding, peglike teeth--which don't look like the right equipment for the job.

 

With the help of finite element analysis—an imaging technology commonly used in airplane design—a team of researchers created a 3D model of the Diplodocus skull and used it to figure out just how the dinosaur dined.

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Thu

19

Jul

2012

Greenland glacier loses large mass of ice

Large-mass-of-Glacier breaks off

 

From   Washington Post

    Heath and Science

      By  and Published: July 17

 

Professor Andreas Muenchow, University of Delaware - The vast, flat expanse stretching into the background is the Petermann Glacier, well over one-third of which has now broken off. It connects the Greenland ice sheet to the Arctic Ocean.

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Thu

19

Jul

2012

Paraprosdokians

Paraprosdokians:   Turn on your speakers and click here. This will pronounce the word for you!

(Winston Churchill loved them) are figures of speech in which the latter part of a sentence or phrase is surprising or unexpected; frequently humorous.


  
1. Where there's a will, I want to be in it.

2. The last thing I want to do is hurt you. But it's still on my list.

3. Since light travels faster than sound, some people appear bright until you hear them speak.

4. If I agreed with you, we'd both be wrong.

5. We never really grow up, we only learn how to act in public.

6. War does not determine who is right - only who is left.

7. Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.

8. To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism. To steal from many is research.

9. I didn't say it was your fault, I said I was blaming you.

10. In filling out an application, where it says, 'In case of emergency, Notify:' I put 'DOCTOR'.

11. Women will never be equal to men until they can walk down the street with a bald head and a beer gut, and still think they are sexy.

12. You do not need a parachute to skydive. You only need a parachute to skydive twice.

13. I used to be indecisive. Now I'm not so sure.

14. To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first and call whatever you hit the target.

15. Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.

16. You're never too old to learn something stupid.

 

17. I'm supposed to respect my elders, but it's getting harder and harder for me to find one now.

 

4 Comments

Tue

17

Jul

2012

HUNDREDS OF DEAD PENGUINS WASH UP ON BRAZILLIAN BEACHES


From NBC NEW:

 

In Sao Paulo, Brazil, authorities say that over the past week more than 500 dead penguins have washed up on the shore of beaches across southern Brazil.

 

The deaths have puzzled marine biologist, and as of now, they are unsure of the caused of the penguins deaths. Officials say the penguins appeared to be in good shape with no evidence of malnutrition or injury.

 

The penguins were Magellanic penguins that are named after the region where they mate in southern Argentina. The penguins were in the process of migrating towards warmer waters and more food.

 

Officials are still investigating the cause of the penguin's death but they should know the reason in less than a month.

0 Comments

Sun

15

Jul

2012

Words and their Stories

Recently, I had reason to look at VOA (Voice of America) where there are many articles of interest.  The group of articles that caught my attention is "Words and their Stories".  An example of this is:

 

Bob always played with cold, hard cash --only coins and dollar bills. Sometimes my friend would clean up. He would win a lot of money on one card game. He liked to tell me that one day he would break the bank. What a feeling it must be to win all of the money at a gambling table!

 

Beginning with May 7th, 2006 there are are various phrases as in the example above with an explaination of the phrase.  The "slang" word(s) are highlighted, and the meaning of that word or phrase is then explained.

0 Comments

Thu

12

Jul

2012

Rich countries pledge $2.6bn for family planning in global south

UN WIRE  July 12, 2012 


Funds pledged to aid contraception access for millions of women

Access to contraception would be extended to 120 million women and girls in the developing world over the next eight years through $2.6 billion in pledges made Wednesday at a family-planning summit in London. More than 20 poor countries contributed to the spending commitments, which are projected to reduce by tens of millions the numbers of unwanted pregnancies and abortions and improve survival rates for mothers and babies.

 

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Thu

12

Jul

2012

Alan Turing: Part II

Alan Turing: His Mind, His Life 

 

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Tue

10

Jul

2012

Alan Turing: Part I

In Part 1 of a two-part series, listen as Frances Allen, Charles Bachman, Vint Cerf, Dame Wendy Hall, William Newman, Christos Papadimitriou and Judea Pearl celebrate the mind of Alan Turing, the father of computer science. Click the link above to learn more.

 

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Tue

03

Jul

2012

Bill Moyers | Remember Thomas Jefferson's Betrayal

ere comes the Fourth of July, number 236 since the Continental Congress approved the Declaration of Independence and riders on horseback rushed it to the far corners of the thirteen new United States - where it was read aloud to cheering crowds. These days our celebration of the Fourth brings a welcome round of barbecue, camaraderie with friends and family, fireworks, flags, and unbeatable prices at the mall.

 

Read More 1 Comments

Tue

03

Jul

2012

American Opium

delanceyplace header

Copy of this  Article in Delancey Place 

From:  

Land of Promise: An Economic History of the United States

 by Michael Lind by Harper


In today's excerpt - in the 1700s, British merchants made fortunes smuggling opium into China over the objections of Chinese leaders the resulting opium addition epidemic devastated Chinese society. Profits proved too tempting and by the 1800s American merchants had joined in the trade, earning vast sums including the fortune inherited by Franklin Roosevelt:

 

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Mon

02

Jul

2012

Judge Orders Twitter to Release Protester’s Messages

E-Mail from John Royal of the National Lawyers Guild - Detroit Branch.

 

New York Criminal Judge who ruled that Twitter messages are public messages, and Twitter is required to turn them over to prosecutors upon request.   The case arises from a subpoena for an Occupy Wall Street activist who was arrested for Disorderly Conduct while crossing the Brooklyn Bridge during a protest last October.  See NYTimes article below.  John Royal

Read More 1 Comments

Sun

01

Jul

2012

14th Dalai Lama

On July 6, 1935, a child named Lhamo Thondup was born into a peasant
family in a small hamlet in the mountains of Tibet.  In 1933, after the
13th Dalai Lama died, a search party of Buddhist monks embarked on an
intensive search for his successor.  Four years later, in 1937, the monks
formally identified the two-year-old child as the 14th reincarnation of a
long line of Tibetan spiritual leaders who are believed to embody the
compassion and wisdom of Buddha.  His name was soon changed to Tenzin Gyatso and he began a lengthy and intensive process of being groomed to become the future spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhists.

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Fri

30

Jul

2010

Problem with listening to music on Jimdo

I can't get Music to work.  Any suggestions.  Ponyo 

14 Comments

Fri

23

Jul

2010

EVALUATE THE GROUP PLEASE

I want to raise two questions for consideration by the group.

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Tue

20

Jul

2010

WHAT was your country like 100 years ago?

 

1909 Ford Model R  

 

The year is 1909.

  
Just over one hundred years ago.  
What a difference a century makes.

Read More 4 Comments

Sat

17

Jul

2010

Dirt Money

      I have been thinking a lot on what topic should I post here, but due to some recent and very affective events I decided to post about money.

       Money is dirt. Yeah I could say it and be over but... my anger does not allow it. Money is dirt in every possible way. Some of you may already know this, but there are many people out there who get happy, smiling and greedy of course over this thing called money. It disgusts me how much it is necessary to SURVIVE in our planet. If you have no money you will eventually die. Don't get me wrong I know it is absolutely necessary to have money, I need it to eat, to go to my work, to call my friends, to talk to my boyfriend, but the point is, why did our ancestors had to make this form of exchanging goods to live? I wish we could all go back to when you could trade a bag of rice for a bag of apples or something.

    Back then no one was out to get money, no one was greedy to the point of killing and no one was judged by having expensive or cheap clothes. Everyone was the same humble kind of human. Money makes people sick, makes people pumpous, makes people cynical and ugly outside not matter what they do to their outsides.

    I am always shocked to see what kind of things require money, and big amounts too. Maybe I am particularly  annoyed to see how much of this disgusting money thing I am required to give to have the person I love, the person I am willing and wanting to spend the rest of my live with, here with me in my country. It is...disgusting.

Everything that falls apart anywhere in the world is due with money. Directly or not. And I may be talking on a heavy heart, hot mind and something else, but I would prefer any day to reverse this life and it's advances in order to have a peaceful life, mind and heart.

     I apologise if I made no sense at all.

Thanks for reading. Ana

 

7 Comments

Fri

16

Jul

2010

Animal Autopsies in Gulf Yield a Mystery

Something on the BP Oil Spill, if you are following it at all.

I found this news article interesting - but it is a little long.  Maybe you would just want to skim it and see what you think.

 

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — The Kemp’s ridley sea turtle lay belly-up on the metal autopsy table, as pallid as split-pea soup but for the bright orange X spray-painted on its shell, proof that it had been counted as part of the Gulf of Mexico’s continuing “unusual mortality event.”

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Tue

13

Jul

2010

The Unicorn in the Garden by James Thurber

Roger and I find this very funny, and we wondered whether people of another culture also would think so.  The piece itself is a classic of Twentieth Century American humor.  James Thurber wrote primarily for the magazine "The New Yorker," which is still published weekly.

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Sun

11

Jul

2010

China and Polution Control

July 4, 2010

China Fears Consumer Impact on Global Warming

 GUANGZHOU, China — Premier Wen Jiabao has promised to use an “iron hand” this summer to make his nation more energy efficient. The central government has ordered cities to close inefficient factories by September, like the vast Guangzhou Steel mill here, where most of the 6,000 workers will be laid off or pushed into early retirement.

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Sat

10

Jul

2010

How to re-edit your comment?

Who can help me to solve this problem?

When you completed your comments , then you want to change some words. It seems you can't re-edit it?

Thanks.

8 Comments

Thu

08

Jul

2010

Reviewing the goals of the Group

I sent this note to some of the members of the group, but not to all. So I thought perhaps I should post it.

Read More 1 Comments

Wed

07

Jul

2010

Introductions of Partners

So far I know all the partners who are in this group. Therefore I was surprised but glad that Mike (Everest on English Share) came up with an idea of our introducing ourselves to each other.

 

This blog is a good way to do that because the introductions will remain available for new members, and because we can gather them in one place.

 

I hope that everyone who is currently a member will add a comment which contains their introduction to the group.  And I hope everyone in the future will add a comment with their introduction.

11 Comments

Wed

07

Jul

2010

U.S. Unemployment Payments

The New York Times  

July 4, 2010

Punishing the Jobless

By PAUL KRUGMAN  

There was a time when everyone took it for granted that unemployment insurance, which normally terminates after 26 weeks, would be extended in times of persistent joblessness. It was, most people agreed, the decent thing to do.

Read More 15 Comments

Tue

06

Jul

2010

Introduction With Pictures 4

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Tue

06

Jul

2010

Introduction With Pictures 3

If you want to start a new subject, you will need to enter the edit mode of Jimdo.  To to this it is necessary to enter the same password again.  To do this you go to the bottom of the screen and on the right side you will see Login.  When you click on that, a screen appears on the left side which has a sign-in  area.  Use the same password that you used to enter.

1 Comments

Tue

06

Jul

2010

Introduction With Pictures 2

If you request the add comment choice then this screen appears.  Your Name goes on the name line, and your comment is on the Entry lines.

2 Comments

Tue

06

Jul

2010

Introduction With Pictures 1

Read More 1 Comments

Sun

04

Jul

2010

Introduction to Jimdo

This is an introduction to Jimdo and the use of the blog.  Some may already know how to use use this feature.  If so okay.  But if not, this is a good topic to discuss - or at least ask questions about.

 

Read More 4 Comments

Fri

13

Nov

2015

Are Languages Products of their Environment?


shutterstock_222422665_151112


DISCOVER MAGAZINE published this very interesting article: 


  Languages Are Products of Their Environments


The characteristics that make each language unique may actually be adaptations to the acoustics of different environments.

2 Comments

Tue

03

Jun

2014

The Case for Reparations

 

The Case for Reparations

 

Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal. Thirty-five years of racist housing policy. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole.

 

By Ta-Nehisi Coates

May 21, 2014

 


Chapters

  1. I. “So That’s Just One Of My Losses”
  2. II.  “A Difference of Kind, Not Degree”
  3. III. “We Inherit Our Ample Patrimony”
  4. IV. “The Ills That Slavery Frees Us From”
  5. V. The Quiet Plunder
  6. VI. Making The Second Ghetto
  7. VII. “A Lot Of People Fell By The Way”
  8. VIII. “Negro Poverty is not White Poverty”
  9. IX. Toward A New Country
  10. X. “There Will Be No ‘Reparations’ From Germany”
0 Comments

Mon

02

Jun

2014

A Look At 19th Century Children In The USA

PHILADELPHIA — DINNER with your children in 19th-century America often required some self-control. Berry stains in your daughter’s hair? Good for her. Raccoon bites running up your boy’s arms? Bet he had an interesting day.

 

As this year’s summer vacation begins, many parents contemplate how to rein in their kids. But there was a time when Americans pushed in the opposite direction, preserved in Mark Twain’s cat-swinging scamps. Parents back then encouraged kids to get some wildness out of their system, to express the republic’s revolutionary values.

The New York Times

Sunday Review

By JON GRINSPAN MAY 31, 2014

 

A late 19th century family taking a stroll down a set of railroad tracks
A late 19th century family taking a stroll down a set of railroad tracks

American children of the 19th century had a reputation. Returning British visitors reported on American kids who showed no respect, who swore and fought, who appeared — at age 10 — “calling for liquor at the bar, or puffing a cigar in the streets,” as one wrote. There were really no children in 19th-century America, travelers often claimed, only “small stuck-up caricatures of men and women.”

 

This was not a “carefree” nation, too rough-hewed to teach proper manners; adults deliberately chose to express new values by raising “go-ahead” boys and girls. The result mixed democracy and mob rule, assertiveness and cruelty, sudden freedom and strict boundaries. Visitors noted how American fathers would brag that their disobedient children were actually “young republicans,” liberated from old hierarchies. Children were still expected to be deferential to elders, but many were trained to embody their nation’s revolutionary virtues. “The theory of the equality” was present at the ballot box, according to one sympathetic Englishman, but “rampant in the nursery.”

 

Boys, in particular, spent their childhoods in a rowdy outdoor subculture. After age 5 or so they needed little attention from their mothers, but were not big enough to help their fathers work. So until age 10 or 12 they spent much of their time playing or fighting.

 

The writer William Dean Howells recalled his ordinary, violent Ohio childhood, immersed in his loose gang of pals, rarely catching a “glimpse of life much higher than the middle of a man.” Howells’s peers were “always stoning something,” whether friends, rivals or stray dogs. They left a trail of maimed animals behind them, often hurt in sloppy attempts to domesticate wild pets.

 

And though we envision innocents playing with a hoop and a stick, many preferred “mumbletypeg” — a game where two players competed to see who could throw a knife closer to his own foot. Stabbing yourself meant a win by default.

 

Left to their own devices, boys learned an assertive style that shaped their futures. The story of every 19th-century empire builder — Carnegie, Rockefeller, Vanderbilt — seems to begin with a striving 10-year-old. “Boy culture” offered training for the challenges of American manhood and a reprieve before a life of labor.

 

But these unsupervised boys also formed gangs that harassed the mentally ill, the handicapped and racial and ethnic minorities. Boys played an outsize role in the anti-Irish pogroms in 1840s Philadelphia, the brutal New York City draft riots targeting African-Americans during the Civil War and attacks on Chinese laborers in Gilded Age California. These children did not invent the bigotry rampant in white America, but their unrestrained upbringing let them enact what their parents mostly muttered.

 

Their sisters followed a different path. Girls were usually assigned more of their mothers’ tasks. An 8-year-old girl would be expected to help with the wash or other physically demanding tasks, while her brother might simply be too small, too slow or too annoying to drive the plow with his father. But despite their drudgery, 19th-century American girls still found time for tree climbing, bonfire building and waterfall-jumping antics. There were few pretty pink princesses in 19th-century America: Girls were too rowdy and too republican for that.

 

So how did we get from “democratic sucklings” to helicopter parents? Though many point to a rise of parental worrying after the 1970s, this was an incremental change in a movement that began a hundred years earlier.

 

In the last quarter of the 19th century, middle-class parents launched a self-conscious project to protect children. Urban professionals began to focus on children’s vulnerabilities. Well-to-do worriers no longer needed to raise tough dairymaids or cunning newsboys; the changing economy demanded careful managers of businesses or households, and restrained company men, capable of navigating big institutions.

 

Demographics played a role as well: By 1900 American women had half as many children as they did in 1800, and those children were twice as likely to live through infancy as they were in 1850. Ironically, as their children faced fewer dangers, parents worried more about their protection.

 

Instead of seeing boys and girls as capable, clever, knockabout scamps, many reconceived children as vulnerable, weak and naïve. Reformers introduced child labor laws, divided kids by age in school and monitored their play. Jane Addams particularly worked to fit children into the new industrial order, condemning “this stupid experiment of organizing work and failing to organize play.”

 

There was good reason to tame the boys and girls of the 19th century, if only for stray cats’ sake. But somewhere between Jane Addams and Nancy Grace, Americans lost track of their larger goal. Earlier parents raised their kids to express values their society trumpeted.

 

“Precocious” 19th-century troublemakers asserted their parents’ democratic beliefs and fit into an economy that had little use for 8-year-olds but idealized striving, self-made men. Reformers designed their Boy Scouts to meet the demands of the 20th century, teaching organization and rebalancing the relationship between play and work. Both movements agreed, in their didactic ways, that playtime shaped future citizens.

 

Does the overprotected child articulate values we are proud of in 2014? Nothing is easier than judging other peoples’ parenting, but there is a side of contemporary American culture — fearful, litigious, controlling — that we do not brag about but that we reveal in our child rearing, and that runs contrary to our self-image as an open, optimistic nation. Maybe this is why sheltering parents come in for so much easy criticism: A visit to the playground exposes traits we would rather not recognize.

 

There is, however, a saving grace that parents will notice this summer. Kids are harder to guide and shape, as William Dean Howells put it, “than grown people are apt to think.” It is as true today as it was two centuries ago: “Everywhere and always the world of boys is outside of the laws that govern grown-up communities.” Somehow, they’ll manage to go their own way.

 

________________________________

 

A National Endowment for the Humanities fellow at the Massachusetts Historical Society who is writing a book on the role of young people in 19th-century American democracy.

0 Comments

Mon

21

Apr

2014

Investigating Family's Wealth, China's Leader Signals a Change

From The New York Times 

By CHRISTOPHER DREW and JAD MOUAWAD

APRIL 19, 2014

 

HONG KONG — His son landed contracts to sell equipment to state oil fields and thousands of filling stations across China. His son’s mother-in-law held stakes in pipelines and natural gas pumps from Sichuan Province in the west to the southern isle of Hainan. And his sister-in-law, working from one of Beijing’s most prestigious office buildings, invested in mines, property and energy projects.

 

In thousands of pages of corporate documents describing these ventures, the name that never appears is his own: Zhou Yongkang, the formidable Chinese Communist Party leader who served as China’s top security official and the de facto boss of its oil industry.





A visitor at the Zhou family's ancestral graves in Xiqliantou, eastern China.  Intrigue surrounds the family after a spate of arrests.  Sim Chi Yim for the New York Times
A visitor at the Zhou family's ancestral graves in Xiqliantou, eastern China. Intrigue surrounds the family after a spate of arrests. Sim Chi Yim for the New York Times

But President Xi Jinping has targeted Mr. Zhou in an extraordinary corruption inquiry, a first for a Chinese party leader of Mr. Zhou’s rank, and put his family’s extensive business interests in the cross hairs.

 

Even by the cutthroat standards of Chinese politics, it is a bold maneuver. The finances of the families of senior leaders are among the deepest and most politically delicate secrets in China. The party has for years followed a tacit rule that relatives of the elite could prosper from the country’s economic opening, which rewarded loyalty and helped avert rifts in the leadership.

Zhou Family Ties

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Fri

13

Nov

2015

Are Languages Products of their Environment?


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DISCOVER MAGAZINE published this very interesting article: 


  Languages Are Products of Their Environments


The characteristics that make each language unique may actually be adaptations to the acoustics of different environments.

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Tue

03

Jun

2014

The Case for Reparations

 

The Case for Reparations

 

Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal. Thirty-five years of racist housing policy. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole.

 

By Ta-Nehisi Coates

May 21, 2014

 


Chapters

  1. I. “So That’s Just One Of My Losses”
  2. II.  “A Difference of Kind, Not Degree”
  3. III. “We Inherit Our Ample Patrimony”
  4. IV. “The Ills That Slavery Frees Us From”
  5. V. The Quiet Plunder
  6. VI. Making The Second Ghetto
  7. VII. “A Lot Of People Fell By The Way”
  8. VIII. “Negro Poverty is not White Poverty”
  9. IX. Toward A New Country
  10. X. “There Will Be No ‘Reparations’ From Germany”
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Mon

02

Jun

2014

A Look At 19th Century Children In The USA

PHILADELPHIA — DINNER with your children in 19th-century America often required some self-control. Berry stains in your daughter’s hair? Good for her. Raccoon bites running up your boy’s arms? Bet he had an interesting day.

 

As this year’s summer vacation begins, many parents contemplate how to rein in their kids. But there was a time when Americans pushed in the opposite direction, preserved in Mark Twain’s cat-swinging scamps. Parents back then encouraged kids to get some wildness out of their system, to express the republic’s revolutionary values.

The New York Times

Sunday Review

By JON GRINSPAN MAY 31, 2014

 

A late 19th century family taking a stroll down a set of railroad tracks
A late 19th century family taking a stroll down a set of railroad tracks

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Mon

21

Apr

2014

Investigating Family's Wealth, China's Leader Signals a Change

From The New York Times 

By CHRISTOPHER DREW and JAD MOUAWAD

APRIL 19, 2014

 

HONG KONG — His son landed contracts to sell equipment to state oil fields and thousands of filling stations across China. His son’s mother-in-law held stakes in pipelines and natural gas pumps from Sichuan Province in the west to the southern isle of Hainan. And his sister-in-law, working from one of Beijing’s most prestigious office buildings, invested in mines, property and energy projects.

 

In thousands of pages of corporate documents describing these ventures, the name that never appears is his own: Zhou Yongkang, the formidable Chinese Communist Party leader who served as China’s top security official and the de facto boss of its oil industry.





A visitor at the Zhou family's ancestral graves in Xiqliantou, eastern China.  Intrigue surrounds the family after a spate of arrests.  Sim Chi Yim for the New York Times
A visitor at the Zhou family's ancestral graves in Xiqliantou, eastern China. Intrigue surrounds the family after a spate of arrests. Sim Chi Yim for the New York Times

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