The turkey was fed and sheltered for 1000 consecutive days, but this
did not mean that the butcher loved him. --anon
Nearly 85 percent of the population of Qatar is made up of foreigners.
A Kurdish
official said that Jordan Matson, an American citizen, had joined the
Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG), who are mainly battling
advances by Islamic State close to Syria's borders with Turkey and Iraq.
A friend of Matson's said he told online gaming friends about two
months ago that he was joining a "private army" to fight Islamic State.
Matson had said he was formerly in the military.
Who is.....Kim Philby?
Ignaz
Semmelweiss (1818-1865) was a Hungarian physician who used a rigorous
analytic approach to determine why women were dying from infection
following childbirth. He concluded that there was a connection between
the illness and hygiene--of the physician--and recommended vigorous
hand-washing between patient contacts. (This was not ever done at the
time.) He was committed to an insane asylum when he started to exhibit
what
was possibly the early onset of Alzheimer’s disease. While there he was
beaten
by the staff and died from his injuries. One of the most important men
of the 19th Century science world was beaten to death in a hospital by
its staff.
An article, "How Climate Change Helped ISIS," was published in September in the Huffington Post.
An
editorial writer for the Boston Globe with the wonderful name
of Hiawatha Bray has written an article on the importance of addresses
when evaluating epidemics. It is a clever idea being pursued by a number
of people and countries particularly India, Ireland and the West
African countries. Michael Olsen, a Utah land developer has a plan to
put millions of people on the map, in Liberia and around the world.
Olsen’s nonprofit organization, Addressing Homes LLC, has developed a
universal standard for generating addresses, based on a building’s
latitude and longitude. He uses Google. There is a funny moment where
Olson goes to the Postmaster of Liberia, Frederick Norkeh, and shows him
his plan and results. “I want to take it home and show my wife and
family we have an address,” Norkeh said.
Abigail
Adams was determined to save her children from the fate of her brother
and his family. (She had seen him succumb to alcohol and debauchery,
desert his family, and leave them penniless.) She was very strict with
her children. She actually took her seven year old son John Quincy to
Bunker Hill on June 17, 1775 to see the price paid for freedom. Amid the
carnage he saw the Adams' family friend, Dr. Joseph Warren, killed.
The vineyard canary: Vintners plant roses among their vines because they get sick before
anything else in the field. If there’s mildew in the air, it will infect
the roses first and give a winemaker a heads-up that it’s time to
spray.
Wainwright, a pitcher with consummate control, hit the
Dodgers Puig with a ninety-mile-an-hour fastball. The next man up,
Gonzalez, initiated an almost fight with this exchange with the Cardinal
catcher Molina:
"I was just basically saying, 'You guys keep doing this over and
over. We're not going to put up with that,'" Gonzalez said after the
game. "They're going to say it's not on purpose, but come on. It's
Wainwright. He knows where the ball is going."
Gonzalez said Molina's response was, "You've got to respect me."
"I thought that was out of context, but it's what he said," the Dodgers first baseman said.
On
Sept. 25, 2013, the Washington Post reported that Antarctic sea ice had
grown to a record extent for the second straight year — some 19.51
million square kilometers. In June of this year, the Post noted a
possible new record ice extent is "part of a puzzling 33-year trend in
increasing sea ice around Antarctica."
"But
even in the United States, human slavery now is greater than it ever
was during the 18th or 19th century. In Atlanta, Georgia, we have
between 200-300 girls sold into sexual slavery every month." So former
President Jimmy Carter said in an interview. The fantasy world of
politicians always substitutes hyperbole as fact. Like art, it becomes a
reflection of reality and of value itself.
The
National Book Foundation named the authors included on this year's "5
under 35" list. The young authors are occasional NPR contributor Alex
Gilvarry, Yelena Akhtiorskaya, Valeria Luiselli, Kirstin Valdez Quade
and Iraq War veteran Phil Klay, whose short story collection Redeployment also made it onto this year's longlist for the National Book Awards.
In
1940, the Japanese Army Air Force bombed Ningbo with ceramic bombs full
of fleas carrying the bubonic plague. Many of these operations were
ineffective due to inefficient delivery systems, although up to 400,000
people may have died. During the Zhejiang-Jiangxi Campaign in
1942, around 1,700 Japanese troops died out of a total 10,000 Japanese
soldiers who fell ill with disease when their own biological weapons
attack rebounded on their own forces.
In
the South China Sea there are four narrow "choke points," the Malacca,
Sunda, Lombok, and Makassar straits. More than half of the world's
annual merchant fleet tonnage passes through these choke points, and a
third of all maritime traffic worldwide. The oil transported through the
Malacca Strait from the Indian Ocean, en route to East Asia through the
South China Sea, is triple the amount that passes through the Suez
Canal and fifteen times the amount that transits the Panama Canal. 200
small islands and rock/reefs lie in this area and, although most are
rarely above water, these sites are lusted after by local
nations--including China--because of their geographical importance but
also for their possible oil reserves.
Factitious \fak-TISH-uhs\, adjective: 1. Produced artificially, in distinction from what is produced by nature. 2. Artificial; not authentic or genuine; sham. From Latin facticius, "made by art, artificial," from the past participle of facere, "to make."
The huge cyberattack
on JPMorgan Chase that touched more than 83 million households and
businesses was one of the most serious computer intrusions into an
American corporation. Also troubling is that about nine other financial
institutions — a number that has not been previously reported — were
also infiltrated by the same group of overseas hackers, according to
people briefed on the matter. The hackers are thought to be operating
from Russia and appear to have at least loose connections with officials
of the Russian government, the people briefed on the matter said. (NYT)
AAAAaaaannnnnnddddd......a poem that NPR called "devastating:"
Certain moments send adrenaline to the heart, dry out
the tongue, and clog the lungs. Like thunder they drown
you in sound, no, like lightning they strike you across the
larynx. Cough. After it happened I was at a loss for words.
Haven’t you said this yourself? Haven’t you said this to a
close friend who early in your friendship, when distracted,
would call you by the name of her black housekeeper?
You assumed you two were the only black people in her
life. Eventually she stopped doing this, though she never
acknowledged her slippage. And you never called her on
it (why not?) and yet, you don’t forget. If this were a
domestic tragedy, and it might well be, this would be your
fatal flaw - your memory, vessel of your feelings. Do you
feel hurt because it’s the ‘all black people look the same’
moment, or because you are being confused with another
after being so close to this other?
An unsettled feeling keeps the body front and center. The
wrong words enter your day like a bad egg in your mouth
and puke runs down your blouse, a dampness drawing
your stomach in toward your rib cage. When you look
around only you remain. Your own disgust at what you
smell, what you feel, doesn’t bring you to your feet, not
right away, because gathering energy has become its own
task, needing its own argument. You are reminded of a
conversation you had recently, comparing the merits of
sentences constructed implicitly with ‘yes, and’ rather
than ‘yes, but.’ You and your friend decided that ‘yes,
and’ attested to a life with no turn-off, no alternative
routes: you pull yourself to standing, soon enough the
blouse is rinsed, it’s another week, the blouse is beneath
your sweater, against your skin, and you smell good.
The rain this morning pours from the gutters and everywhere
else it is lost in the trees. You need your glasses
to single out what you know is there because doubt is
inexorable; you put on your glasses. The trees, their bark,
their leaves, even the dead ones, are more vibrant wet.
Yes, and it’s raining. Each moment is like this - before
it can be known, categorized as similar to another thing
and dismissed, it has to be experienced, it has to be seen.
What did he just say? Did she really just say that? Did I
hear what I think I heard? Did that just come out of my
mouth, his mouth, your mouth? The moment stinks. Still
you want to stop looking at the trees. You want to walk out
and stand among them. And as light as the rain seems, it
still rains down on you.
--Claudia
Rankine, a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and the 2014
winner of the Jackson Poetry Prize. She teaches at Pomona College.
