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

Read More 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

Read More 1 Comments

Fri

18

Apr

2014

Top Ten Songs of 2013

Top 10 Songs of 2013

Rank  Song                                                                  Artist

   1    Blurred Lines                                                       Robin Thicke

                                                                                  Featuring T.I. &

                                                                                  Pharrell

   2   Wake Me Up!                                                       Avicii

3 Roar Katy Perry

4 Radioactive Imagine Dragons

5 Thrift Shop Macklemore & Ryan Lewis Featuring Wanz

6 Royals Lorde 7 Just Give Me A Reason P!nk Featuring Nate Ruess 8 Get Lucky Daft Punk Featuring Pharrell Williams 9 Can't Hold Us Macklemore & Ryan Lewis Featuring Ray Dalton 10 When I Was Your Man Bruno Mars

Read More 0 Comments

Mon

14

Apr

2014

Top Ten Rivers

0 Comments

Mon

14

Apr

2014

Top Ten Most Popular Dream Cruises (by Westerners)

0 Comments

Mon

14

Apr

2014

Top Ten Lowest Average Birth Weights by Country

0 Comments

Mon

14

Apr

2014

Top Ten Deepest Oceans and Seas (in meters)

0 Comments

Mon

14

Apr

2014

Top Ten Most Intelligent Breeds of Dogs (western world)

0 Comments

Mon

14

Apr

2014

Top Ten Countries by Number of Cows

0 Comments

Mon

14

Apr

2014

Top Ten Yearly Number of Births by Country

0 Comments

Mon

14

Apr

2014

Top Ten Largest Work Forces by Country

0 Comments

Sun

13

Apr

2014

Top Ten Lakes in the World

5 Comments

Sun

13

Apr

2014

Top Ten Ice Cream Consumers (by Country)

0 Comments

Sun

13

Apr

2014

Top Ten Household Size (by Country)

0 Comments

Sun

13

Apr

2014

Top Ten Countries by Suicide Rates

0 Comments

Sun

13

Apr

2014

Top Ten Countries with Highest Life Expectancy

0 Comments

Sun

13

Apr

2014

Top Ten Divorce Rates (by Country)

0 Comments

Sun

13

Apr

2014

Top Ten Highest Death Rates in the World

0 Comments

Sun

13

Apr

2014

Top Ten Highest Alcohol Consumption by Country

0 Comments

Sun

13

Apr

2014

Top Ten Fastest Cars in the World

0 Comments

Sat

12

Apr

2014

Top Ten Countries With The Most Population

0 Comments

Sat

12

Apr

2014

Top Ten Countries With Most Billionaires

0 Comments

Sat

12

Apr

2014

Top Ten Countries With Most Airports

0 Comments

Sat

12

Apr

2014

Top Ten Common Causes of Accidental Death

0 Comments

Sat

12

Apr

2014

Top Ten Coffee Drinking Nations by Cups per Person

0 Comments

Sat

12

Apr

2014

Top Ten Most Polluted Cities in the World

Here are the top 10 cities for which data is available, according to a 2011 World Health Organisation (WHO) report.

The  is measured as the microgramme (mcg) concentration per cubic metre of air of particulate matter smaller than 10 micrometres (PM10)—about a seventh of the width of a .

The figures are the average for the year. Seasonal spikes can be many times higher.

The WHO's health guidelines are maximum exposure of 20 mcg/m3, measured as an annual average.

1) Ahvaz, Iran 372 mcg/m3 (2009 data)

2) Ulan Bator, Mongolia 279 mcg/m3 (2008 data) 

3) Sanandaj, Iran 254 mcg/m3 (2009 data)

4) Ludhiana, India (2008 data) and Quetta, Pakistan (2003/4 data)

tied at 251 mcg/m3

5) Kermanshah, Iran 229 mcg/m3 (2009 data)

6) Peshawar, Pakistan 219 mcg/m3 (2003/4 data)

7) Gaborone, Botswana 216 mcg/m3 (2005 data)

8) Yasuj, Iran 215 mcg/m3 (2009 data)

9) Kanpur, India 209 mcg/m3 (2008 data)

10) Lahore, Pakistan 200 mcg/m3 (2003/4 data)

Paris, whose levels hit a high of 180 mcg/m3 last week, has an annual mean level of 38 mcg/m3 according to 2008 data.

Beijing, which has also been in the news over smothering smog, is listed with an annual mean figure of 121 mcg/m3.

The Middle East and North Africa is the world's most polluted region with an annual mean level well over 130 mcg/m3, followed by Southeast Asia with a level near 100 mcg/m3.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2014-03-world-polluted-cities.html#jCp

0 Comments

Fri

11

Apr

2014

Top Ten Best European Cities to Visit

0 Comments

Fri

11

Apr

2014

Top Ten Ranking of Nations in Bread Consumption (kg per capita)

0 Comments

Fri

11

Apr

2014

Ranking of Countries by Cleanliness

0 Comments

Fri

11

Apr

2014

Chocolate Consumption by Nation (kg per capita)

0 Comments

Fri

11

Apr

2014

Ranking of Car Production by Nation

0 Comments

Fri

11

Apr

2014

Ranking of Nations Drinking Bottled Water

0 Comments

Fri

11

Apr

2014

Best Athletes of 20th Century

0 Comments

Fri

11

Apr

2014

Top Ten Best Selling Cars in First 6 months of 2005

0 Comments

Fri

11

Apr

2014

Top Ten Honeymoon Destinations

0 Comments

Wed

09

Apr

2014

Julianne on Dateline - the Story of the Higher Brothers

Julianne Cuneo, Private Investigator
Julianne Cuneo, Private Investigator

Detroit News: Higher Brothers"

March 31, 2014 at 10:45 pm 

'Dateline' to air story of brothers freed after 25 years spent in prison for Detroit murder

The story of two brothers who were set free after spending more than half their lives behind bars on a murder conviction will air Friday on “Dateline.”

Raymond and Thomas Highers spent 25 years in prison for felony murder before all criminal charges against them were dismissed in September. The two had been imprisoned in the June 26, 1987, slaying of 65-year-old Robert Karey inside an alleged Detroit drug house.

 

Julianne, daughter of Roger and Martha Cuneo, was the investigator in this case, and one who successfully brought forth many of the here-to-fore silent witnesses.  These witnesses were instrumental in establishing the clearly innocent verdict.

 

Presented here is the 6 part video (an hour show) presented on Dateline which presents this interesting case - a verdict reversed after 25 years.

 

To TV SHOW

3 Comments

Sat

29

Mar

2014

Herman Kiefer Complex (Hospital)

Image via Waymarking.
Image via Waymarking

 

Making the Case For The Herman Kiefer Complex

Read More 0 Comments

Thu

27

Mar

2014

Snowy Owls (Snowies) - So little is known about them

Read More 0 Comments

Tue

25

Mar

2014

The G.A.R. Building Detroit The Grand Army of the Republic

HEADS UP… With each passing week there are more and more signs of progress at Detroit’s Grand Army building. On any given day we’re seeing more and more teams of workers. The trades are having to work around each other at this point – and we think that is a pretty good problem to have.

 

The restoration can be followed from 2/28/12 to the current date (scroll from current to 2/28/12) by accessing:  G.A.R. Detoit

0 Comments

Tue

25

Mar

2014

Plurals

From St. John Karp Blog 

 

The Problem with Plurals

or: Quis Castigabit Ipsos Castigatores?

January 5, 2012 

 

If you’re like most of us, you’ve said something perfectly normal only to have some creep pounce on your grammar. “Actually, it’s ‘I can’t get any satisfaction.’ I think you’ll find it’s ‘The lovers, the dreamers and I.’”1 If you’re an incorrigible bastard like me, you’ve occasionally been that creep (although, I maintain, in the politest possible way). But what happens when even the pedants are wrong? Because even the snarkiest censors will occasionally be wrong themselves, especially when it comes to that glorious goldmine of the English language: plural nouns. Everyone — and I mean everyone — screws these up from time to time. But the problem isn’t with the English language itself. The problem lies squarely with foreign loan words and the people who insist on using them correctly. 

 

Press here to see the rest of the article

0 Comments

Mon

24

Mar

2014

Relocating Farmers to City

From New York Times

BEIJING — China has announced a sweeping plan to manage the flow of rural residents into cities, promising to promote urbanization but also to solve some of the drastic side effects of this great uprooting.

 

The plan — the country’s first attempt at broadly coordinating one of the greatest migrations in history — foresees 100 million more people moving to China’s cities by 2020, while providing better access to schools and hospitals for 100 million former farmers already living in cities but currently denied many basic services. Underpinning these projections would be government spending to build roads, railways, hospitals, schools and housing.

New apartment buildings for former miners and farmers in a suburb of Beijing. Credit Kim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters
New apartment buildings for former miners and farmers in a suburb of Beijing. Credit Kim Kyung-Hoon/Reuters

Read More 0 Comments

Sat

22

Mar

2014

For Linguists and Educators

Once again The Washington Post has published the winning submissions to its annual neologism contest, in which readers are asked to supply alternative meanings for common words. The winners are:

 
1. Oyster (n.), a person who sprinkles his conversation with Yiddishisms.

2. Negligent (adj.), describes a condition in which you absentmindedly answer the door in your nightgown.
 
3. Pokemon (n), a Rastafarian proctologist.
4. Flabbergasted (adj.), appalled over how much weight you have gained.
 
5. Abdicate (v.), to give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach.

6. Lymph (v.), to walk with a lisp.

7. Esplanade (v.), to attempt an explanation while drunk.

8. Willy-nilly (adj.), impotent.

9. Gargoyle (n), olive-flavoured mouthwash.
 
10. Coffee (n.), the person upon whom one coughs.
 
11. Flatulence (n.), emergency vehicle that picks you up after you are run over by a steamroller.

12. Balderdash (n.), a rapidly receding hairline.

13. Circumvent (n.), an opening in the front of boxer shorts worn by Jewish men
 
14. Rectitude (n.), the formal, dignified bearing adopted by proctologists.

The Washington Post's Style Invitational also asked readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter, and supply a new definition. The winners are:

1. Bozone (n.): The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows little sign of breaking down in the near future.

2. Foreploy (v): Any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose of getting laid.

3. Cashtration (n.): The act of buying a house, which renders the subject financially impotent for an indefinite period.

4. Giraffiti (n): Vandalism spray-painted very, very high.

5. Sarchasm (n): The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.

6. Inoculatte (v): To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.

7. Hipatitis (n): Terminal coolness.

8. Osteopornosis (n): A degenerate disease. (This one got extra credit.)

9. Karmageddon (n): It's like, when everybody is sending off all these really bad vibes, right? And then, like, the Earth explodes and it's like, a serious bummer.

10. Decafalon (n.): The grueling event of getting through the day consuming only things that are good for you.

11. Glibido (v): All talk and no action.

12. Dopeler effect (n): The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.

13. Arachnoleptic fit (n.): The frantic dance performed just after you've accidentally walked through a spider web.

14. Beelzebug (n.): Satan in the form of a mosquito that gets into your bedroom at three in the morning and cannot be cast out.

15. Caterpallor (n.): The colour you turn after finding half a grub in the fruit you're eating.

And the pick of the literature:

16. Ignoranus (n): A person who's both stupid and an asshole.
0 Comments

Sat

15

Mar

2014

Puns for Educated Minds

1. The fattest knight at King Arthur's round table was Sir Cumference. He acquired his size from too much pi.

 

2. I thought I saw an eye-doctor on an Alaskan island, but it turned out to be an optical Aleutian.

 

3. She was only a whisky-maker, but he loved her still.

 

4. A rubber-band pistol was confiscated from an algebra class, because it was a weapon of math disruption.

 

5. No matter how much you push the envelope, it'll still be stationery.

 

6. A dog gave birth to puppies near the road and was cited for littering.

 

7. A grenade thrown into a kitchen in France would result in Linoleum Blownapart.

 

8. Two silk worms had a race. They ended up in a tie.

 

9. A hole has been found in the nudist-camp wall.The police are looking into it.

 

10. Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.

 

11. Atheism is a non-prophet organization.

 

12. Two hats were hanging on a hat rack in the hall wall. One hat said to the other: 'You stay here; I'll go on a head.'

 

13. I wondered why the baseball kept getting bigger. Then it hit me.

 

14. A sign on the lawn at a drug rehab center said: ‘Keep off the Grass.'

 

15. The midget fortune-teller who escaped from prison was a small medium at large.

 

16. The soldier who survived mustard gas and pepper spray is now a seasoned veteran.

 

17. A backward poet writes inverse.

 

18. In a democracy it's your vote that counts. In feudalism it's your count that votes.

 

19 . When cannibals ate a missionary, they got a taste of religion.

 

20. If you jumped off the bridge in Paris, you'd be in Seine.

 

21. As a vulture carrying two dead raccoons boards an airplane. The stewardess looks at him and says, 'I'm sorry, sir, only one carrion allowed per passenger.'

 

22. Two fish swim into a concrete wall. One turns to the other and says,' Dam! '

 

23. Two Eskimos sitting in a kayak were chilly, so they lit a fire in the craft. Unsurprisingly it sank, proving once again that you can't have your kayak and heat it too.

 

24. Two hydrogen atoms meet. One says,' I've lost my electron.' The other says,' Are you sure?' The first replies' Yes, I'm positive.'

 

25. Did you hear about the Buddhist who refused Novocain during a root-canal? His goal: transcend dental medication.

 

26. There was the person who sent ten puns to friends with the hope that at least one of the puns would make them laugh. No pun in ten did.

0 Comments

Fri

14

Mar

2014

Wolves - How They Changed The Course of the River

SORRY. If you are in China

and are trying to see this video

(http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=91e_1392504581),

the Chinese government is blocking it.

Read More 0 Comments

Wed

12

Mar

2014

20 Logic Jokes

2 Comments

Fri

07

Mar

2014

Icebergs in Lake Michigan

ICEBERG PICTURES FROM LAKE MICHIGAN   Amazing striped icebergs

Icebergs in Lake Michigan sometimes have stripes, formed by layers of snow that react to different conditions.

 

Blue stripes are often created when a crevice in the ice sheet fills up with melt water and freezes so quickly that no bubbles form.

 

When an iceberg falls into the lake, a layer of water can freeze to the underside. If this is rich in algae, it can form a green stripe.

 

Brown, black and yellow lines are caused by sediment, picked up when the ice sheet grinds downhill towards the lake.

Read More 0 Comments

Sat

01

Mar

2014

Ethiopia Map 3

add

 

0 Comments

Sat

01

Mar

2014

Introduction to the Ethiopia section of this "blog"

Read More 0 Comments

Fri

28

Feb

2014

Virtual Tours through Museums

 

 

FOR VIRTUAL TOURS

 

Louvre

Visit the museum's exhibition rooms and galleries, contemplate the façades of the Louvre.  Come along on a virtual tour and enjoy the view, thanks to the sponsorship of Shiseido.

 

Virtual Tours

These Sites present over 300 Museums, exhibits, Points of Special Interest and Real-Time journeys which offer online multimedia guided tours on the Web.

British museums

Explore and on line tours

 

Dasmascus Room

 The Damascus Room is a highlight of the Islamic art collection assembled by Doris Duke (1912–93) and is one of two Syrian interiors preserved at Shangri La.

 

 

 

 

 

 

INTRODUCTION

 

Some countries are blocked from using some of the URLs in this section.

Web Freer  is a piece of software that is free and can be downloaded to "unblock" these and other blocked sites.

 

Or use a proxy server.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Welcome


Read More 0 Comments

Sat

08

Feb

2014

Learn Chinese

From Dome Weekly E-Bulletins

January  4, 2013

Tom Watkins    LEARN CHINESE!

 

Could Governor Snyder follow Brooks Patterson’s lead and call for the teaching of Chinese in all Michigan schools? Governor Snyder could catapult Michigan forward in his State of the State (SOS) address by calling for the teaching of Chinese history, culture and language in all of our schools. The reinvention of Michigan may well require that students learn Chinese and much more about China, the “Middle Kingdom.”

Read More 0 Comments

Sat

08

Feb

2014

Roots of the NSA


Published on 
Alternet (http://www.alternet.org)

Home > Roots of the NSA: How the White Panthers Saved the Movement and the FISA Court was Created


AlterNet [1] / By Hugh "Buck" Davis [2]

comments_image

Roots of the NSA: How the White Panthers Saved the Movement and the FISA Court was Created

 

 

January 29, 2014

 

On the Monday following the Watergate break-in, the Supreme Court decided U.S. vs. U.S. District Court (Keith) ex rel Sinclair, which struck down the Nixon/Mitchell program of warrantless domestic political wiretapping. The aftermath, leading to Nixon's resignation, revealed the ugliness of the FBI's COINTELPRO campaign to disrupt the civil rights, black liberation, anti-war, youth, women, environmental, LGBT and other social justice movements that exploded in the 1960s.

 

That led to the Church Commission, which recommended various checks on the FBI's power to disrupt political dissent and the creation of Foreign Intelligence Security (FISA) Court, which is today the subject of great controversy in the wake of Edward Snowden's revelations about the massive data mining and surveillance of U.S. citizens and their communications (not to mention that of the rest of the world). Particularly since 9/11 and the passage of the Patriot Act, progressives and civil libertarians have protested the quasi-police state expansion and militarization of U.S. law enforcement, including infiltration of legal groups and the open quashing of political speech (see Occupy Movement), accompanied by widespread electronic surveillance.

 

The FISA Court (one of whose first judges was the Honorable Ralph Guy, who was the U.S. Attorney when the Keith case started in Michigan in 1970) supposedly protects U.S. citizens from warrantless electronic surveillance. Progressives have complained that the Court (secretive, one-sided, loaded with compliant judges) is a joke. But it was still not responsive enough for Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Ashcroft and they simply ignored it on many occasions. After the Snowden releases, there have been congressional calls to strength FISA. But with the National Security Agency and the FISA Court judges admitting that even they do not understand how all of these electronic surveillance and data gathering programs work, it is nothing but a fig leaf, and a shriveled one at that. History has shown that we cannot legislate or litigate our way to liberation.

 

The Beginning: Bombings and Conspiracies

 

In early August 1970, two thin white guys with Afros and purple T-shirts that said “White Panther Party” (WPP) came into the National Lawyers Guild office in Detroit. A few weeks earlier, Lawrence (Pun) Plamondon, the first white revolutionary in modern times to make the FBI’s Top 10, had been arrested in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula for allegedly throwing a beer can out of a van. He was being driven to a hiding place by Jack Forrest and another member of the WPP. They pled guilty to harboring a fugitive.

 

Pun, Jack and John Sinclair (at that time doing nine and a half to 10 years in Michigan’s Jackson Penitentiary for two joints) had been charged earlier for the 1968 dynamite bombing of the CIA recruitment office in Ann Arbor. Pun, already facing numerous charges around the county, went underground at the news of the indictment and ultimately to Algeria, where Eldridge Cleaver of the Black Panthers (BPP) was also a fugitive. But there wasn’t any marijuana, alcohol or hippie girls in Algeria, so Pun did not last long. Because the FBI had infiltrated the WPP and their informant was sleeping with Pun’s wife, they were hot on his trail.

 

The guys who walked into the Guild office were John’s younger brother (Chief of Staff of the WPP) and the Minister of Propaganda. They announced they were going to New York to get Bill Kunstler and Len Weinglass to represent Sinclair and Plamondon. Would I be willing to represent Forrest and act as local counsel? Never having handled a felony or been in federal court (still technically being employed by Legal Services), I naturally said yes. It did not seem like a big risk. Kunstler and Weinglass were the two most prominent lawyers in the country after the Chicago 7 trial. I assumed they would not take the case. I was wrong.

Why me, when they already had Justin (Chuck) Ravitz, who had been representing Sinclair since the days of the Artists’ Co-op in Detroit, was still appealing his last marijuana conviction and attempting to get Sinclair out on bond? The backstory is that a couple of weeks before Pun and Jack were busted, Chuck and I were at a party hosted by a lefty law professor. I had volunteered to open the Guild office in January 1970, and had been doing political misdemeanors (primarily Black Panthers charged with impeding pedestrian traffic with aggressive sales of their newspapers). After a few beers and a few tokes, Chuck and I were bemoaning our clients. He said “I’m really tired of the White Panthers.” I felt the same way about the Black Panthers. We agreed to trade them for the next year. That is how I ended up at the first pre-trial conference with Kunstler, Weinglass, Damon, Keith and Guy.

 

Trial Court: The Decision

 

Keith gave us only a couple of months to file our pre-trial motions because all three of the defendants were incarcerated. All of the ordinary motions would be drafted in Detroit. But the electronic surveillance motion was prepared in New York by the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR). We filed 20 or 21 motions, including one to have the chief witness for the government, David Valler, compelled to submit to a psychiatric examination.

 

There had been eight bombings in southeast Michigan in the fall of 1968 and Valler, who lived in a combination commune and abandoned house near Wayne State University, was calling the editor of the Detroit News, implicitly confessing. They ran a front page story with Valler’s picture under the headline “Is this the bomber?” Ultimately, according to Forrest, Valler took 40 hits of acid and turned himself in. Valler not only confessed to all the bombings, but implicated John, Jack and Pun in the CIA blast. He got a sweetheart deal and a light sentence.

 

The News made him its “youth” columnist in the Sunday Magazine, where he dutifully condemned the counterculture and radical politics for the next few years until the case was over. Then he was irrelevant.

 

We had many people come forward who had known Valler and told us how crazy he was (including stories of how he painted pictures of Jesus with penises on his face, or that he had consumed an extraordinary amount of hallucinogenic and other drugs). That caused us to make the psychiatric motion.

 

Another Detroit attorney, Neal Bush, drafted a jury challenge in which we claimed that youth was a class and that the systematic exclusion of young people from federal juries constituted discrimination (no one under 21 was allowed to serve).

 

The government responded and, to our surprise, admitted that there were electronic intercepts of Plamondon. The hearing on the motions was scheduled for early December 1970. That morning, the weather was terrible and the airport was closed. Kuntsler and Weinglass were not going to make it. Bush and I were going to have to argue. Neal told me he had never argued a motion before. I responded that I had never had a federal case.

 

At the hearing, Judge Keith patiently and politely heard and denied all of our motions, except the one concerning the wiretaps. Since the government had admitted their existence, he ordered them produced. There was another round of briefing regarding the timing and circumstances of the disclosure of the surveillance.

 

At the next hearing in January 1971, Judge Keith ruled the intercepts illegal as warrantless political surveillance. Thus, the government had to turn over the tapes and we had to have a “taint” hearing to see whether they would affect the trial. Keith was considering having the trial first and then having a hearing to determine if it had been prejudiced by evidence derived from the intercepts. The government, objecting strongly to revealing their contents, assured Keith that Pun was not the target of the intercepts and that it would not affect the trial. Keith still insisted that the tapes would have to be disclosed.

 

At that point, Guy, apparently on orders from Washington, told Keith that the government did not intend to disclose the wiretaps before or after the trial. Keith looked at the defense and said “Mr. Kunstler, make your motion.” In the face of a dismissal, Guy asked for 48 hours to appeal to the Sixth Circuit for a stay by way of mandamus. They did and it was granted.

 

We never knew why the Nixon/Mitchell White House/DOJ decided to pick this case in which to take a stand. Similar motions had been filed in other political prosecutions and a courageous federal judge in Los Angeles had ruled against warrantless electronic surveillance of U.S. citizens in a Black Panther case. But that was post-trial and the regular process of appeal was not going to be fast. The government apparently wanted a rapid review and chose the case of this political band of counterculturalists in Michigan. Perhaps they thought that the defense would be weaker than in one of the other big anti-war/conspiracies. Plus, they knew that the tapes were irrelevant to the charges.

 

The Sixth Circuit

 

The mandamus was against Keith’s disclosure order. That is how the case came to be known as U.S. vs. U.S. District Court (Keith) ex rel Sinclair. The Sixth Circuit ordered a short briefing schedule and oral argument on the day of the filing of the briefs in February 1971. It was agreed that I would write the mandamus portion of the defendants’ brief and the electronic surveillance section would be written in New York. Kunstler would fly to Cincinnati. I would drive down. We would put the halves together in the morning and then argue that afternoon. Keith did not participate.

 

I had no clue about mandamus and was working very long hours on all of the other political cases that were being handled by the Guild office. I needed access to a federal law library at odd hours. A Guild member was working for a federal judge and gave me a key to the chambers. I could come and go as I wanted. Security at the courthouse was different in those days.

 

Technically, I had a good argument that this was not proper case for mandamus. If we could defeat it on technical grounds, the case against our clients would be dismissed. We had to try. But the impetus was with the government. Everyone knew they wanted this case as a ratification of their policies. Accepting the mandamus under a “special circumstances” rubric, the Sixth Circuit decided the case on the merits.

 

The day before the scheduled argument in Cincinnati, I drove to Columbus to see friends from my VISTA volunteer days. But going down the Interstate to Cincinnati, I hit a patch of black ice, went into the median and rolled four times. The Samsonite briefcase Mother gave me when I graduated from law school shattered and cut off the top half of my right ear. I was taken to the local hospital.

 

Kunstler, always magnificent in crisis, grabbed a car or a cab in Cincinnati and rushed to the scene of the accident. The originals of my half of the brief were spread along the median in the snow. Bill collected them and took them to a cleaners in Cincinnati, where he had them dried and pressed. He went to court, argued and we won 2-1, former Detroit Police Commissioner Edwards writing for the majority, U.S. vs. U.S. Dist. Ct. (Keith) ex rel Sinclair, 444 F2d651 (6th Cir. 1971).

 

Back at the Fayette County Memorial Hospital, the switchboard was lighting up as calls poured in from around the country. It did not take them long to figure that not only did I not look like any lawyer they had ever seen, but that I was connected with some radical political case. My doctor clearly did not want me there and kept suggesting that I be taken by ambulance to Columbus to have my ear reattached by a prominent plastic surgeon. I indicated that I understood that the sooner that something was sewed back, the more likely it was that it would be successful. He acknowledged that, but still urged me to go to Columbus.

 

I asked him about the relative difference in skill between him and the doctor in Columbus. With a supercilious look, he said, “Probably the difference between you and the best lawyer in the country.”

I said, “Well, sew my goddamn ear back on then. I’m one of the best.” He did. It took. Before I left the hospital, he visited and said, “I hope you lose.”

 

The divisiveness of the question and the degree to which the Nixon administration was prepared to go to defend it was presaged by the final words in his dissent in the Sixth Circuit:

 

It has been said that wiretapping is a dirty business. Professor Wigmore answered this argument: "But so is likely to be so all apprehension of malefactors. Kicking a man in the stomach is 'dirty business," normally viewed. But if a gunman assails you and you know enough of the French art of savatage to kick him in the stomach and thus save your life, is that dirty business for you?"
 

On To The Supreme Court

 

After the victory in the Sixth Circuit, that the government would seek and the Supreme Court would grant certiorari was a foregone conclusion. Once the Court took the case, the forces began gathering. The legendary Arthur Kinoy, one of the co-founders with Kunstler of the CCR and law professor at Rutgers, would argue for the individual Defendants. The brief would be written at CCR, primarily by Peter Bender.

 

Now Judge Keith decided to directly participate and went to Bill Gossett, one of the name partners at Dykema Gossett (the largest law firm in Michigan and former president of the ABA). Gossett took the case pro bono and engaged Prof. Abraham Sofaer of Columbia Law School to write the brief.

 

The amici lined up for Sinclair and Keith:

  1. The National ACLU and the ACLU of Michigan;

  2. The Guild and the National Conference of Black Lawyers;

  3. The BPP;

  4. The UAW; and

  5. The American Friends Service Committee.

For the government — none.

 

Everyone knew this would be a watershed case, particularly with the various streams of political dissent bursting forth with increasing vigor in 1971. The government, determined to maintain the COINTELPRO program against these movements, as its final submission likened the case to the occasions in U.S. history when federal troops had to be called out to quell domestic disturbances, producing a list. Predictably, they were all racial incidents or labor disputes.

 

Importantly for progressives, all of the big anti-war and Black Panther conspiracy trials around the country were put on hold because similar motions had been made in each of them, with the government uniformly admitting to warrantless wiretaps of the defendants and their organizations. It made no sense for them to move forward in the face of the impending decision in Keith.

 

The argument was held Feb. 24, 1972. Because I had an appearance in the trial court, I was allowed to sit inside the bar, although I was not admitted to practice in the Supreme Court. In the meantime, in December 1971, the WPP had pulled off the now legendary “Ten (Years) for Two (Joints)” concert in Ann Arbor featuring John Lennon, Yoko Ono, Bob Seger, 5 of the Chicago 8, et al. — a 10-hour extravaganza.

 

Three days later, the Michigan Supreme Court gave Sinclair bond on appeal as a precursor to declaring the Michigan marijuana law unconstitutional as cruel and unusual punishment, crowning an extraordinary and prolonged effort by Ravitz. As the only free defendant, Sinclair had to be allowed into the argument. He and Leni (Magdalene Sinclair, his wife) sat on two throne-like chairs at the back of the chamber in purple White Panthers shirts.

 

Erwin Griswold, my law school dean and Nixon’s Solicitor General, refused to argue the case for the Government, bringing in Robert Mardian, head of the Internal Security Division of the DOJ and the first guy gone in Watergate. I later tried to talk to Griswold about it, but he refused. Rehnquist had recused himself because he had helped formulate the policy at the Justice Department. The courtroom was packed and the stage was set.

 

Mardian was not an accomplished appellate advocate and the Justices pounced on him quickly. As a final ploy, Mardian produced a tape and begged the Justices to listen to it in chambers so they could hear exactly how dangerous these defendants were and why it was necessary for the government to use such means. One of the Justices asked if the government would agree to have the defendants’ lawyers listen with them. Mardian replied that he would agree for Gossett to hear the tapes, but not Kinoy. Thurgood Marshall, who had argued Brown vs. Board of Education with Kinoy in the Supreme Court, turned his chair around and never looked at the government again. Gossett acquitted himself well. But Kinoy was brilliant, going up and down the bench reminding one Justice after another of statements they had made in previous cases that compelled them to rule warrantless wiretapping illegal.

 

The Keith decision was released on June 19, 1972. The Watergate burglary occurred the night of June 16, 1972, the Friday before. Kinoy always theorized that Rehnquist had tipped someone that they were going to lose on Monday. Thus, the “plumbers” were not putting wiretaps into the Democratic National Committee office, they were taking them out. It is an interesting theory. Regardless, the combination of the decision and Watergate ultimately led to the end of the Nixon presidency and a comprehensive expansion of political rights.

 

Interestingly, the opinion was written by Lewis Powell, who had given speeches in favor of warrantless wiretapping while he had been president of the ABA. Gossett’s representation of Keith could not have hurt in that regard. It was a unanimous 8-0 decision. But that was not the end of the case.

 

Quietly, all of the big conspiracy cases, including the Weatherman indictments in Detroit and elsewhere, were dropped. The government could not prove a single case without its illegally obtained evidence or else did not want to suffer further embarrassment and exposure of COINTELPRO, so they abandoned them. That is how the White Panthers and Judge Keith saved the movement from more years of surveillance, COINTELPRO disruption and conspiracy charges.

 

During the pendency of the appeal, I had a conversation with Guy, still then-U.S. Attorney. He indicated that if we won, he was afraid that it would just drive the practice further underground and make it more clandestine. How prophetic that was! Guy went on to be appointed to the District Court and then to the Sixth Circuit. He has been one of the judges most frequently appointed to sit on the FISA court, which, after the reforms which came out of the exposure of the COINTELPRO program, was supposed to consider applications for intercepts and searches involving foreign threats to domestic security. We now know that under Bush II, even this extremely friendly bench was not considered to be sufficiently malleable for the Ashcroft, Cheney/Rumsfeld security initiatives.

 

Post-Keith: Sinclair vs. Nixon and the Second Wiretap

 

Separate litigation referred to as Sinclair vs. Nixon, was initiated by CCR in the D.C. District Court after the decision in the Keith case, claiming that the secret intercepts had violated Plamondon’s Fourth Amendment rights. Through a series of decisions, Nixon was granted presidential immunity and Mitchell qualified immunity. But after the discovery in 1977 through a FOIA of a second secret wiretap on the WPP headquarters from August 1970 through January 1971 through an FOIA request, the suit was amended to add that claim.

 

Remember that throughout the proceedings in the Keith case the government never disclosed the fact that it was at the very moment he was deciding the legality of warrantless domestic surveillance, the FBI was wiretapping in the very case which was pending before him. Whether Guy knew is a matter of conjecture. As far as I know, he has never said. But it was conducted by the FBI office in Detroit. They regularly reported to Hoover himself (with memos to 126 FBI offices around the country). The transcripts of those taps are still under seal.

 

That second tap, was never disclosed to the defense, Keith, the Sixth Circuit or the Supreme Court. Technically, the FBI could argue that since the defendants were in prison, they were not the ones who were being targeted. But they frequently called the WPP headquarters from jail. Thus, it was ultimately a deception, orchestrated at least by Mitchell and Hoover. The tap was lifted the day after Keith ruled such intercepts illegal.

 

The tapes revealed that at least I was overheard. That implicated the Sixth Amendment (confidential relationship between clients and attorneys). Although the communications were with the Defense Committee, rather than with the defendants themselves, they still revealed defense strategy.

 

Thus, the original case against Nixon in the D.C. was transferred to Michigan. I and one of the original WPP lawyers in Ann Arbor, Dennis Hayes, handled it thereafter. There was another appeal (the third) to the Sixth Circuit on the issue of immunity for the individual FBI agents who had monitored the attorney calls. It was unsuccessful and the case came back for discovery. We had few resources. The WPP itself had long since dissolved and the individual plaintiffs had little or no money. Revolution is not a lucrative vocation.

 

The FBI agents who were the individual defendants had either retired or spread all over the country. The question was whether the plaintiffs could show that they acted so egregiously that, despite the novelty of the situation, they were liable. Without the ability to pursue expensive discovery, there was no way to adduce such proof. The Court granted summary judgment. The case went back to the Sixth Circuit and was extinguished in 1989.

 

What Was On the Tapes?

 

There remains the issue of what was on the original intercepts of Plamondon and what effect it would have had on the trial. The government has never disclosed the contents. A popular theory is that, given the focus on the BPP, the intercepts were of Pun and Eldridge Cleaver calling BPP headquarters in Oakland from Algeria when they were both fugitives. At this time not even Congress knew about the existence of the National Security Agency, exposed in William Bamford’s book The Puzzle Palace. One can understand why the government would not reveal intercepts by a secret communications monitoring agency.

 

Would the information in the intercepts have tainted the trial itself? Almost certainly not. The Assistant U.S. Attorney assigned to the actual prosecution of the case, told me years later that they would not have tainted the trial. I believe it.

 

He also claimed he would certainly have obtained a conviction had we ever gone to trial. That is an uncertain proposition. I think Sinclair would have been acquitted and was only thrown into the indictment because he was a nationally notorious figure. Kunstler and Weinglass tried to subpoena John from prison to testify in the Chicago 7 trial on youth culture, but were rebuffed by the good Judge Julius Hoffman.

 

The only apparent evidence against Sinclair were two FBI memos of interviews with Valler (the snitch) in the Wayne County Jail. In them, Valler indicated that while John was in town for a concert with the MC5 (Kick out the jams, m***erf***ers!), he met Sinclair in an underground newspaper office.

 

There, Valler claimed that he told John that he had a lot of dynamite and asked if he was interested. Even the FBI reports only claim that Sinclair said he would be interested in some dynamite, but did not want to blow anything up himself. On one other occasion after the bombing itself, Valler claimed that he and Sinclair were in the same room somewhere and that John looked at him meaningfully and nodded yes. Without more, that is not the stuff of conspiracy convictions.

 

About Jack Forrest, nothing can be said. He has never publicly spoken. He was clearly an acquaintance of Valler’s during the time that the bombings took place in 1968. Plus, he was a member of the WPP. But at the time of the CIA explosion, he was still living in Detroit.

 

That leaves Pun Plamondon, the flamboyant Minister of Defense for the WPP. He was a wildman. By the time I finished with all of his cases in 1973, I believe we had faced 18 felonies. Emblematic of Pun’s style is his comment in his autobiography, Lost to the Ottawa(he found out that he had been taken away from his unmarried Native American parents and given to a white family), that he was framed for a crime he does not deny committing: “I’m not saying I didn’t bomb the CIA building in Ann Arbor. But I damn sure didn’t tell that government snitch I did."

 

 

 

 

See more stories tagged with:

Keith Case [3],

detroit [4],

Ann Arbor [5],

michigan [6],

Lawrence (Pun) Plamondon [7],

nsa [8],

fisa [9],

richard nixon [10],

u.s. supreme court [11],

U.S. vs. U.S. District Court (Keith) ex rel Sinclair [12],

social justice movement surveillance [13],

government repression [14],

government spying [15],

fbi [16],

cointelpro [17],

Foreign Intelligence Security Court [18],

Edward Snowden [19],

John Sinclair [20],

NSA electronic surveillance program [21],

Center for Constitutional Rights [22],

1970s [23],

1972 [24],

The Puzzle Palace [25],

Legal history [26],

Peoples History [27],

black panther party [28],

White Panther Party [29]


Source URL: http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/roots-nsa-how-white-panthers-saved-movement-and-fisa-court-was-created

Links:
[1] http://alternet.org
[2] http://www.alternet.org/authors/hugh-buck-davis
[3] http://www.alternet.org/tags/keith-case
[4] http://www.alternet.org/tags/detroit-0
[5] http://www.alternet.org/tags/ann-arbor
[6] http://www.alternet.org/tags/michigan
[7] http://www.alternet.org/tags/lawrence-pun-plamondon
[8] http://www.alternet.org/tags/nsa
[9] http://www.alternet.org/tags/fisa
[10] http://www.alternet.org/tags/richard-nixon
[11] http://www.alternet.org/tags/us-supreme-court-1
[12] http://www.alternet.org/tags/us-vs-us-district-court-keith-ex-rel-sinclair
[13] http://www.alternet.org/tags/social-justice-movement-surveillance
[14] http://www.alternet.org/tags/government-repression
[15] http://www.alternet.org/tags/government-spying
[16] http://www.alternet.org/tags/fbi-0
[17] http://www.alternet.org/tags/cointelpro
[18] http://www.alternet.org/tags/foreign-intelligence-security-court
[19] http://www.alternet.org/tags/edward-snowden
[20] http://www.alternet.org/tags/john-sinclair
[21] http://www.alternet.org/tags/nsa-electronic-surveillance-program
[22] http://www.alternet.org/tags/center-constitutional-rights
[23] http://www.alternet.org/tags/1970s
[24] http://www.alternet.org/tags/1972
[25] http://www.alternet.org/tags/puzzle-palace
[26] http://www.alternet.org/tags/legal-history
[27] http://www.alternet.org/tags/peoples-history-1
[28] http://www.alternet.org/tags/black-panther-party-0
[29] http://www.alternet.org/tags/white-panther-party
[30] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B

 

 

0 Comments

Sun

02

Feb

2014

Bees - Intimate Portraits of Bees

http://www.natonalgeographic.com/features/149114-bee-native-macro-photography-insects-science/

http://www.natonalgeographic.com/features/149114-bee-native-macro-photography-insects-science/

 

 

 

 

0 Comments

Sun

12

Jan

2014

A Brief History of Anarchism

Noam Chomsky has been awarded the Sydney Peace Prize. (photo: Ben Rusk/Flickr)

 

A Brief History of Anarchism

Article from In These Times.

The struggle for the common good has a long past.

BY NOAM CHOMSKY

An early 20th-century IWW poster depicts the plight of the working class.The industrial worker
toils to hold up the edifices of capitalism, government and religion, which do nothing but crush
her. (1911 IWW newspaper/WikiMedia Commons). 


PRESS HERE TO SEE WHOLE ARTICLE
Read More 0 Comments

Sun

29

Dec

2013

Health - Corruption - India

The Economic Times (India):  A collection of articles about Corruption

 

http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/keyword/corruption

 

 

Volume 29, Issue 1, March 2001, Pages 66–79

Abstract

This study introduces a new perspective on the role of corruption in economic growth and provides quantitative estimates of the impact of corruption on the growth and importance of the transmission channels. In our ordinary least squares estimations, we find that a 1% increase in the corruption level reduces the growth rate by about 0.72% or, expressed differently, a one-unit increase in the corruption index reduces the growth rate by 0.545 percentage points. The most important channel through which corruption affects economic growth is political instability, which accounts for about 53% of the total effect. We also find that corruption reduces the level of human capital and the share of private investment. J. Comp. Econ., March 2001 29(1), pp. 66–79. School of Business, Hong Kong Baptist University, Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong. Copyright 2001 Academic Press.

 

Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: O40, O50.

0 Comments

Thu

19

Dec

2013

LP: Underlying Principles

Learning Paradise is intended to be a place where people feel close to one another, feel safe, can chat about a veriety of subjects, and enjoy their time in the group,

 

It's purpose is to provide a place for people to practice thinking and chatting in English.  The learning of grammer and other elements of English is incidental to this, and should be part of information gathered in other places.

 

Admins should not do some things:

 

 

1. They should not use demeaning behaviors toward other people.  Each person in the group should be respected - and none should be treated as lessor than any other.  Women are as capable as men, and should be treated that way.  Young people can think and express just as can those who are older.  Old people such as me - deserve only the respect they earn - it does come along because they have breathed longer than other people.

 

2. Demeaning behaviors toward other people based on their religion, place of birth, or color of skin is unacceptable.

 

3. People mistreating each other - by calling each other stupid, by pictures showing a child being spanked as a cartoon, word games where people are hit or berated are inappropriate in this group, so the admins should not encourage this behavior in the group.

 

Since this is a group that is free to speak  (has freedom of speach), some members will be disrespectful, vulgar, or obnoxious in some fashion.

Admins should moniter these "situations" and see if they can intercede by changing the subject, making a difusing joke, with direct rebuttal, or by some other method which will halt the "abuse".  It is a matter of judgement - but if the member is "too" offensive, then warnings and/or booting out of the individual is the proper solution.

0 Comments

Wed

18

Dec

2013

LP - Philosophical Overview

My vision of Learning Paradise is that it is a place where people could feel close to one another, feel safe, could chat about a variety of subjects, and would enjoy their time in the group.

 

I also see it as a place for people to practice thinking and chatting in English.  The actual learning of grammar and other elements of English would be done in other places.

 

It is of course true that people should be able to say what they want in the gorup within certain broad parameters.

 

So I hope the administrators will try to influence conversations to not be concerned with ages as a bias toward good or bad concepts.  I hope they would strongly try to influence conversations away from demeaning remarks about women - to keep conversations from suggesting that women are less capable then men.  Games or cartoons or conversations where people try to hurt each other bye word or pictoral representation should be strongly discouraged.  All this requires some skill in guiding people away from offensive conversation, but is an art worth developing.   I hope that they would help the group see as unacceptable remarks that denegrate people of any color - white, black, brown - or what ever, and infact block such remarks from by removing the offender.  All of these "topics" can easily become offensive and lead to dismissal of the offender.

0 Comments

Wed

18

Dec

2013

LP Admin Jobs - Intro

The adminstrative jobs associated with Learning Paradise (chat group) are now (December 18, 2013) seen to fall into 4 parts:

 

1. Entrance and exit control.

a. This is the control of people joining - making sure they aren't on our "black" list, setting up names and making sure they chat.

b. And, to check to see that people "obey" the 1 month silence and be booted rule.

2. Keeping the chats "flowing".

Should be very active in the discussion time and try to keep the conversations flowing.

3. Head hunters.

Seek out and actively encourage people to join our group.

4. Police personel.

Make sure the rules are followed, and try to diffuse any potentially "explosive" situations.

 

There may be a couple of people assigned to each of these areas, because of the time zone problems.  And one person might work in more than one area.  

 

For example, while there certain people who are assigned the duty of policeman, they may not be around at the time of trouble.  So if other admins are around, they should step in and take on the role of policeman.

 

More detailed descriptions of each admin position will be given in descriptions to follow.  This is a preliminary statement.

0 Comments

Thu

05

Dec

2013

President Obama's Unequality Speach

 

 

 

 

Ours is an economy....

 

"that’s become profoundly unequal and families that are more insecure.

 

Since 1979, when I graduated from high school, our productivity is up by more than 90 percent, but the income of the typical family has increased by less than 8 percent

 

Since 1979 our economy has more than doubled in size,

but most of the growth has flowed to a fortunate few.

 

The top 10 percent no longer takes in one-third of our income; it now takes half.

 

Whereas in the past, the average CEO made about 20 to 30 times the income of the average worker, today’s CEO now makes 273 times more."

 

for more see

 

 

Full transcript: President Obama’s December 4 remarks on the economy

Updated: Wednesday, December 4, 12:33 PM

 

 the following pages

 

 

 

Read More 0 Comments

Mon

07

Oct

2013

powers for Rong 1

First, numbers are represented in different ways depending on the number base you are using.

 

We are used to number base 10.

 

The number base shows how many symbols you use.

 

For example, number base 10 has 10 symbols ( 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,0)

and number base 2 has 2 symbols (0,1)

 

Number bases all have a 0 which indicates the absence on any quantity.

 

...............................................................................................................................

 

Second, when I refer to columns I go from right to left:

 

column number: 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

 

and each column has a value:

 

for number base 10:

column value: 1000 100 10 1

column number: 4 3 2 1

..............................................................

NUMBER 2 4 3 6

Compute 2 (1000) + 4 (100) + 3 (10) + 1 (10)

Equals 2000 + 400 + 30 +1 = 2431

 

for number base 2:

column value: 8 4 2 1

column number: 4 3 2 1

..............................................................

NUMBER 1 1 0 1

Compute 1(8) + 1 (4 ) + 0 (2) + 1 (1 )

Equals 8 + 4 +0 +1 = 13

 

...............................................................................................................................

 

 

 

 

 

Third

The second column always has the value of the number base you are dealing with.

for number base 10:

column value: 1000 100 10 1

 

for number base 2:

column value: 8 4 2 1

 

for number base 8:

column value: 512 64 8 1

 

...............................................................................................................................

 

Fourth

The column values are computed in this fashion:

Column 1 = Number Base ^0 (this means it is always 1)

Column 2 = Number Base

Column 3 = Previous column times number base

and all other column follow the rule of column 3.

For number base 2 the column values are:

Column 1 = 1

Column 2 = 2

Column 3 = 2 * 2 = 4

Column 4 = 4 * 2 = 8

For number base 3 the column values are:

Column 1 = 1

Column 2 = 3

Column 3 = 3 * 3 = 9

Column 4 = 9 * 3 = 27

 

...............................................................................................................................

 

Fifth

Another way of phrasing the column values is:

Column 1 = Number base ^0 (or ^column number -1)

Column 2 = Number base ^1 (or ^column number -1)

Column 3 = Number base ^2 (or ^column number -1)

Column 4 = Number base ^3 (or ^column number -1)

Column 5 = Number base ^4 (or ^column number -1)

 

 

0 Comments

Mon

07

Oct

2013

Calculators

0 Comments

Mon

07

Oct

2013

Calculator

0 Comments

Thu

26

Sep

2013

Introduction to Fables

Selected Quoes from the Preface

                Selected Quotes from the "Preface"

        THE TALE, the Parable, and the Fable are all common and
popular modes of conveying instruction.  Each is distinguished
by its own special characteristics.  The Tale consists simply
in the narration of a story either founded on facts, or created
solely by the imagination, and not necessarily associated with
the teaching of any moral lesson.  The Parable is the designed
use of language purposely intended to convey a hidden and secret
meaning other than that contained in the words themselves; and
which may or may not bear a special reference to the hearer,
or reader.

        The Fable partly agrees with, and partly differs from 
both of these.  It will contain, like the Tale, a short but 
real narrative; it will seek, like the Parable, to convey a 
hidden meaning, and that not so much by the use of language, 
as by the skilful introduction of fictitious characters; and 
yet unlike to either Tale or Parable, it will ever keep in 
view, as its high prerogative, and inseparable attribute, 
the great purpose of instruction, and will necessarily seek 
to inculcate some moral maxim, social duty, or political truth.

        The true Fable, if it rise to its high requirements, ever
aims at one great end and purpose representation of human 
motive, and the improvement of human conduct, and yet it so 
conceals its design under the disguise of  fictitious 
characters, by clothing with speech the animals of the field,
the birds of the air, the trees of the wood, or the beasts 
of the forest, that the reader shall receive advice without
perceiving the presence of the adviser.

        Thus the superiority of the counsellor, which often renders 
counsel unpalatable, is kept out of view, and the lesson comes
with the greater acceptance when the reader is led, unconsciously
to himself, to have his sympathies enlisted in behalf of what 
is pure, honorable, and praiseworthy, and to have his indignation
excited against what is low, ignoble, and unworthy.  The true 
fabulist, therefore, discharges a most important function. 
He is neither a narrator, nor an allegorist.  He is a great
teacher, a corrector of morals, a censor of vice, and a 
commender of virtue.

        In this consists the superiority of the Fable over the Tale
or the Parable.  The fabulist is to create a laugh, but yet, 
under a merry guise, to convey instruction." "The continual 
observance of this twofold aim creates the charm, and accounts 
for the universal favor, of the fables of Aesop.

        The construction of a fable involves a minute attention 
to (1) the narration itself; (2) the deduction of the moral; 
and (3) a careful maintenance of the individual characteristics
of the fictitious personages introduced into it.  The narration
should relate to one simple action, consistent with itself, 
and neither be overladen with a multiplicity of details, nor
 distracted by a variety of circumstances. The moral or 
lesson should be so plain, and so intimately interwoven with,
and so necessarily dependent on, the narration, that every 
reader should be compelled to give to it the same undeniable
interpretation.

        The introduction of the animals or fictitious characters 
should be marked with an unexceptionable care and attention 
to their natural attributes, and to the qualities attributed 
to them by universal popular consent. The Fox should be 
always cunning, the Hare timid, the Lion bold, the Wolf 
cruel, the Bull strong, the Horse proud, and the Ass patient.
Many of these fables are characterized by the strictest 
observance of these rules.  They are occupied with one 
short narrative, from which the moral naturally flows, 
and with which it is intimately associated.
Read More 0 Comments

Wed

18

Sep

2013

The Boy Genius of Ulan Bator

Battushig Myanganbayar and his sister outside their home in Mongolia.

 

From the New York Times http://

www.nytimes.com/2013/09/15/magazine/the-boy-genius-of-ulan-bator.html?emc=eta1&_r=0

 

Read More 0 Comments

Thu

12

Sep

2013

How to Benchmark Your PC for Free

How to Benchmark Your PC for Free

By Marco Chiappetta, PCWorld  Jul 2, 2012 6:00 PM 

Press Here For the Original Article

 

Running benchmarks on a PC enables users to evaluate performance, to identify potential bottlenecks, and to choose effective system upgrades. Unfortunately, many users imagine that system performance is simply a matter of CPU frequency or memory capacity, which leads them to think that dropping in a faster CPU or more memory will automatically and immediately yield noticeable performance improvements. In reality, however, that is not always the case.

Read More 2 Comments

Wed

14

Aug

2013

Martha

Martha
Martha
0 Comments

Wed

14

Aug

2013

Irene in her younger days

Irene McNish (Martha's mother)
Irene McNish (Martha's mother)
0 Comments

Tue

13

Aug

2013

Irene McNish

0 Comments

Tue

13

Aug

2013

Julianne - Early Years

EARLY ADULTHOOD

0 Comments

Tue

13

Aug

2013

Gary - Introduction

Gary DeMorris - husband of my eldest daughter, Julianne.

0 Comments

Tue

13

Aug

2013

Tom and Julianne

Tom and Julianne
Tom and Julianne
0 Comments

Sun

11

Aug

2013

Steve - pencil drawing of siting in Oak Drive living room

1 Comments

Sun

11

Aug

2013

Steven at Oak Drive (front living room south side window)

Steven in our Oak Drive Detroit home
Steven in our Oak Drive Detroit home
0 Comments

Sun

11

Aug

2013

Steven, Martha, Roger

Martha, Roger, Steven:  10-9-1997
Martha, Roger, Steven: 10-9-1997
0 Comments

Sun

11

Aug

2013

Cuneo Family

Cuneo Family - front : Martha; Roger; Back left to right: Julianne, Steven, Pamela
Cuneo Family - front : Martha; Roger; Back left to right: Julianne, Steven, Pamela
0 Comments

Fri

09

Aug

2013

Steve & Kate

Steven and Kate - April 1999 - in Florida - Steve 44 years old
Steven and Kate - April 1999 - in Florida - Steve 44 years old
0 Comments

Tue

06

Aug

2013

Biography Pictures - Index

Martha's family 

 

 


Rogers's family 

 

 


   

Roger's and Martha's family

 

 

Martha

 

 

Roger 

 

   

 

The family branches out 

 

Steven

 

 

Julianne

 

 

Pamela

 


 

Grandchildren

 

Julia

 

Daniel

 

Jennifer

 


 

Relatives  

 

Lyn Hall Walker

 

 


Friends of the family


Some pictures of Irene and George McNish - Martha's parents. 

 


Some pictures of Gertrude and A. Henry Cuneo - Roger's parents and his sister Lorna.  


  

 

 

 

Some group pictures of Martha,

Roger, and their 3 children from

eldest to youngest:  Steven,

Julianne, Pamela, and George

(Martha's dad) in various scenes or

groups.  And some individual shots of family members.   

 

 

 

Our eldest child and only boy.

 

 

Our middle child and eldest daughter.

 

 Our youngest child    

   


 

 

 

Julianne's oldest child    

 

Julianne's youngest child 

 

Pamela's child   

 

 


 

  

Lyn (Mrs. Lyn Hall Walker) - Roger's mother's youngest sister's (Muriel Birmingham Hall) only child

 



0 Comments

Tue

06

Aug

2013

Park College: Re-visit our Wedding Chapel

Re-Visiting our Wedding Chapel at Park College
Re-Visiting our Wedding Chapel at Park College
Read More 0 Comments

Mon

05

Aug

2013

Irene and George McNish

Martha's Parents:  George and Irene McNish probably early 50s
Martha's Parents: George and Irene McNish probably early 50s
0 Comments

Sun

04

Aug

2013

George McNish (Martha's Father)

George McNish about 14 years old in traditional Scottish attire
George McNish about 14 years old in traditional Scottish attire
0 Comments

Sun

04

Aug

2013

Marilyn Hall Walker (Roger's Cousin)

Roger's Cousin LYN (his mother's youngest sister's daughter)
Roger's Cousin LYN (his mother's youngest sister's daughter)
0 Comments

Sun

04

Aug

2013

Gertrude Birmingham Cuneo

Gertrude Birmingham Cuneo (Roger's mother) before she was married - probably 30 or 31 years old
Gertrude Birmingham Cuneo (Roger's mother) before she was married - probably 30 or 31 years old
0 Comments

Fri

02

Aug

2013

A. Henry Cuneo

A. Henry Cuneo (Roger's Faher) about 1917 about 22 years old
A. Henry Cuneo (Roger's Faher) about 1917 about 22 years old
0 Comments

Fri

02

Aug

2013

A. Henry Cuneo

A Henry Cuneo (Roger's Father) at about 10 in about 1905
A Henry Cuneo (Roger's Father) at about 10 in about 1905
0 Comments

Fri

02

Aug

2013

Martha 1969

Martha, 1969, in Living Room on Oak Drive in Detroit
Martha, 1969, in Living Room on Oak Drive in Detroit
0 Comments

Fri

02

Aug

2013

Steven (aprox. 5) and Julianne (aprox. 3)

Steven (aprox. 5) and Julianne (aprox. 3)  1960
Steven (aprox. 5) and Julianne (aprox. 3) 1960
0 Comments

Thu

01

Aug

2013

K.C. Molly and Ginger

KC, Molly, and Ginger
KC, Molly, and Ginger
0 Comments

Thu

01

Aug

2013

Martha and Duchess (An Australian Cattle Dog)

Martha and Duchess the Australian Cattle Dog
Martha and Duchess the Australian Cattle Dog
0 Comments

Thu

01

Aug

2013

Sophie and Duchess - Australian Cattle Dogs

Two pet Australian Cattle Dogs - Sophie and Duchess
Two pet Australian Cattle Dogs - Sophie and Duchess
1 Comments

Thu

01

Aug

2013

Martha and Red - a Newfoundland

Martha and our pet Newfoundlander RED  1983
Martha and our pet Newfoundlander RED 1983
0 Comments

Tue

30

Jul

2013

K. C.

K.C.  Labrador Retriever
K.C. Labrador Retriever
0 Comments

Tue

30

Jul

2013

Sophie

Sophie an Australian Cattle Dog
Sophie an Australian Cattle Dog
0 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

1 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

Read More 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

Read More 1 Comments