Notes to a friend on 'a rational, informed explanation that will make sense'

I do have a lot of reasons for supporting Obama. I wouldn't say a word if you didn't ask, but I know (hope) you're not going to give me a hard time. First, I will say that I would have preferred John McCain over George W, and I was very sad to see how much of himself he had to give up to run a national campaign. If it had to be a Republican eight years ago, McCain had a lot of good qualities, and it was tragic what Rove and Bush did to him during the 2000 campaign. Now, it occurs to me that if you are still a staunch Bush/Cheney supporter that you won't agree, but so be it.

Bush/Cheney have something to do with why I support Obama so very strongly. From my perspective, not meaning to be argumentative, they have gutted our country with their policies. They came into office with a neo-con plan, and used a national tragedy to manipulate the public into supporting their longstanding neo-con plan to remake the middle east by lying and manipulating the truth about weapons of mass destruction. It has been an eight year rape and pillage of the US by arms dealers such as Haliburton and dysfunctional corporations, ending in a massive 700 billion dollar hand out to their supporters. They have nationalized the banks and much of the free market. Talk about socialism, Bush/Cheney have moved our country closer to socialism than at any other time in history. Under Bush/Cheney we went from a 5 trillion dollar surplus to a multi-trillion dollar deficit. Tax cuts went to the wealthiest 2% of the population. My taxes have personally gone up. The Bill of Rights is shredded. Torture is our new national policy. The Geneva convention is for other people. All of the goodwill generated after 9/11 has been squandered. We are now the most hated country on earth. And we have brought down the financial markets of the entire world with our failed policies.

Ok, you're probably fuming by now, but that is the groundwork. There are a few things that I know personally about Obama. He is an intellectual. He is one of the brightest minds of our generation. He is honest and places high value on personal integrity. He has been preparing for this job for his entire life. He has a profound understanding of international politics. Whenever I would sit down and talk to Obama it would be about the intricacies of how governments around the world work, about the economy, about international relations. He knew more about the Soviet military missile plans and the US defense systems at 18 than I have ever learned. He could talk about how many of what kind of missiles and where they are. He knows history. He knew the details of every treaty and trade agreement the US made - as a kid. Seniors would stop us to discuss their dissertations on the Soviet military with him while I just waited slack jawed. And this was before he got one of the finest educations available. The depth and breadth of his understanding of political history and current events of the US and most of the countries in the world was astounding. I thought I loved obscure topics, but I never stumped him, came close of course. ;)

He is a nice person. He used to call his Grandma when he left the library at 2 am because it was still early in Hawaii, and she would worry about him. He is open and not judgmental. When I would say something rude to someone he would bring it up later in a quiet way and say something about how did it make that person feel, then drop it. Of course, that annoyed me at the time, but I can see that he was trying to do what seemed like the right thing, not trying to annoy me, just questioning unkindness. Because he was ultimately very kind and thoughtful. He never got mad or lost his temper even when he was very mad.

So, enough about my anecdotal perspective. I definitely had to put aside my personal knowledge of 'Barry' in order not to get freaked out about the surreal quality of seeing him on television so frequently.

As a candidate, I felt and still feel that we need a brilliant and inspiring leader in office now, an intellectual. We need someone who can understand the complexity of the problems facing our country. We need a very strong leader. And we need someone who can put together a team of the best and brightest.

When Obama first started campaigning, I was not convinced by him because I liked the idea of a tough broad like Hillary being the first woman president. But during the fierce primary process, I started watching them both speak. Barack had a message the likes of which I have never had the good fortune to hear in my lifetime. Hillary had the same old Clinton attack, take no prisoners, ruthless, us versus them attitude that had made the Clinton presidency controversial.

But Barack had this incredible speech about moving past the politics of divisiveness, about the country coming together and healing, and creating a new order in which Democrats and Republicans work together. And then he stuck to it. He never attacked Hillary Clinton with any of the mud that the Republicans would have used against her. He ran a tough primary, but without ever stooping to drubbing her reputation or impugning her past. Next, he never said one negative word about Sarah Palin. Unbelievable. If ever a red herring was dangled in front of a candidate, she was it. He refused to go negative when it would have been a popular thing to do in the sense that he could have run an angry campaign that would have fired up people - a campaign railing against the arms dealers and deregulators who have left our country a shambles - and think how those remarks aggravate you - because he did think about it - and he didn't do it. That is a conscious choice to try to bring harmony to a divided country.

Next we need a president who can put together a team of the best and the brightest in the country and inspire them to find solutions to the problems we face being in two wars and having brought the world markets to a near collapse. Look no further than his campaign. He picked people who put together a campaign the likes of which has never been seen before. He is the first democratic candidate ever to outspend the republican candidate. Ever. His team reached out across the internet and inspired 3 million people to donate 650 million dollars. 3 million people donated. All of those people felt empowered. But his campaign didn't stop there. They saw what happened when Rove put together a ground team of the religious right and Bush won in 2004. They learned. And Obama's campaign reached out to students and community organizers around the country. In states where the Republicans had 50 offices, Obama had 150. This is all part of a well thought out plan to succeed.

Which brings me to one point that is again personal. In my entire life, I have never seen someone achieve success with the steadiness and self-confidence of Barack. We both tried to transfer to Ivy League schools when we were sophomores. He got in. We both stayed up all night to write our Poli Sci papers. He got A+'s. When I stepped into an empty, sunny street in New York City after having been kicked rudely out of an interview for not being prepared, tears streaming down my face, who did I see walking towards me into the sunlight. Yes, on this completely deserted street, on a rare sunny day in winter, it was Barack Obama. I desperately looked for a place to hide, an alley, an unlocked door, jeez even a trash bin. But it was just me, concrete and steel buildings, the brilliant sun and Barry strolling along whistling. And as he approached me, and I froze in place, he got a huge, joyful smile and came up and gave me a hug and started talking about what a beautiful day it was. He looked a little quizzical when he saw the tears, but I just smiled and lied through my teeth about how great everything was and sent him on his merry way. He radiated even more than that brilliant sun.

He was on his way to work. To a job. A job he liked. A well paying job. At the time it made me miserable but now I get it.

The point of that story is that Obama has this inner light guiding him to success. He plans. He makes good plans, then works hard to stick to them, then eventually succeeds. And that is a hell of a quality. That is a quality that our country needs right now. At this moment in time, to have this person come out of the blue, out of nowhere, who is exactly what we need is extraordinary. We need the man who inspires millions. We need the man who can make good plans, and work hard enough to achieve success. We need the person who put together the team that ran the kind of campaign that will be studied for years to come.

When Beth was in law school and we were at Paul's house at the beach, she started quizzing Obama about when was he going to go to law school, the way she can really grill a person. He was unfazed and told her that everyone has to listen to their inner voice to find their own way. That shut her up of course, not having any idea what he was talking about. But he is guided from within in a very spiritual way. And I think he would be the first to acknowledge that it is important to work on your spiritual side and have a relationship with God.

Another point, that I have been hoping for the past couple years is that I hope he gets the presidency now because he owes no one anything. Everyone goes to Washington D.C. clean and idealistic, but the money and the power seep into every crevice. Hillary Clinton is now indebted to major special interest groups. John McCain faced public censure for his support of Keating. George W arrived owing huge favors to diverse groups including the Saudi royal family who made him rich by investing in his oil firm for the purpose of deducting the loss. Cheney owed the defense industry (aka arms dealers... ;) ) big time. No one can ever stay clean. But at this moment in time Obama is clean. He owes 3 million people, but he does not owe the defense contractors, the bankers, the Saudis, the thousands of rich and powerful special interests who do their best to control government policy. He is free to do what he does: think, plan, put together a team of the best and the brightest, and inspire people to do the hard work and make the sacrifices that will be needed to get to the success that is waiting.

This is a job he has been preparing for his entire life. Soviet aggression is not new to him. He understood the history and political processes of the former-USSR better as an 18 year old teenager than George W does now as sitting president. He is a constitutional law professor. He understands our United States Constitution and treasures it.

And one of the most amazing parts of all this is that Obama did this completely alone when compared to all others. The Bush family has a long legacy of wealth, power and holding public office. McCain comes from a family with a very strong father figure and a long line of successful military officers. Al Gore's father was a Senator. Mit Romney's father was a Senator. McCain's second wife is incredibly wealthy. John Kerry's wife is also unbelievably wealthy. But Obama had nothing. He knew little about his father. His mother was a single mother, often overseas working on her phd. He grew up with his grandparents in a tiny apartment and only got to go to a good school because his grandmother was able to get him a scholarship. He was no one. No connections. Almost no family. Not even a distant father checking on him. He got himself through school on scholarships and student loans. And when he graduated from Colombia and got a well paying job writing for a business journal, he quit it to make next to nothing in the slums of Chicago to try to help people organize themselves. And when he got out of law school, a hundred grand in debt, he didn't take the great jobs offered him, but moved back to the slums of Chicago and worked again for little money to help disadvantaged people.

That's not all he did, of course. He got some great jobs, well-paying jobs. But there were times when he chose to serve others. That's what his mother and grandparents taught him was an important value. It's very Midwestern. You help out your neighbors, and those less fortunate. It's one of the values of this country that I admire the most.

And he kept at this work while he lost all of his nuclear family. His father died a few months before he went to Kenya to meet him. His mother died very young of cancer which her HMO refused to treat with new drugs. His grandfather died. And the day before the election, on Monday of this week, his grandmother died. The one he used to call from the late night reading room because the time was earlier in Hawaii. He would call his grandmother so she wouldn't worry and make me wait because he didn't think I should walk alone across campus at two in the morning. I'll admit, it kind of annoyed me at the time, but in retrospect that is the kind of son I would want to raise.

So, it's a combination of the power of his personal story and inner strength, and a respect for his intellect and his ability to build a winning team of the best and the brightest, then inspire them to accomplish more than anyone has done before that gradually put me solidly behind Obama. It is his dignity and self-confidence that inspire people around the world to once again look to the US for leadership. His years of unrecognized preparation for this moment inspire me. His outsider status as a person who is free to make decisions because they are good for the country, not because he owes someone a favor. His powerful curiosity and desire to learn. His steadiness in the middle of a storm. When Wall St. first collapsed he talked to people who really understand the problems, put thought into his response. He didn't jump half cocked on the first plane to Washington.

He is unflappable. Indefatigable. Thoughtful. He actually thinks before he speaks. An extraordinary communicator. As much as I love knowing that "man and fish can live in harmony", eight years of unintelligible gibberish is enough.

He's a better person than I am. He would never write all those rude things about Bush/Cheney that I wrote to someone who might be offended. But I think I can tolerate being outclassed and out-successed and out-shined so long as he brings with him to office that light that shines through him, the way the sun did on a lonely street in New York.

Ok, don't yell at me for rambling on. Remember you did ask.

K, you seriously should watch Obama and McCain's speeches on YouTube. We are part of history. Millions of people who never voted before, voted because Barack made them feel like they weren't worthless, like they could be a part of this country also. And McCain gave a moving speech about the historical nature of this election. It is not just the first African American president, but really the first president who was elected by the little people who have no lobbyists and no wealth.

And you know this person. He has turned into a brilliant orator. Your grandchildren are going to want to hear about Barack. This is much bigger than politics.

Do you remember how so many people were against Kennedy because he was Catholic? It was a huge deal because he was the first Catholic to run for and become President. If your parents had gone to school with JFK, wouldn't you be a little interested? He broke the religious divide that treated Catholics as second class citizens.

In the same way, Barack will be the last first black President of the United States. Here is a rare chance to move forward, past race. All the things that you are afraid of for your boys, that affirmative action will hurt them, he is putting those things in the past.

I'm not trying to sway your politics, or annoy you. Just point out that you are part of some of the most remarkable history that will be made in our lifetime. Don't miss it. His rhetoric is beautiful. But that is not a bad thing. You don't have to vote for him, or change your views. But give him a listen. He is a sum of more than his parts. There is a real light shining through him. Yes, maybe it is calculated to achieve an end, perhaps written by someone else, all of that. But there are few chances to hear someone like this.

Yes, he could even fail. Quite possibly no one can get us out of the current situation with collapsing economies and multiple wars, hated around the world, jobless rate soaring. Perhaps no one. But it is going to be a hell of an effort. Don't miss it because of the old politics. I almost missed it by dismissing him as someone who was just another guy I went to school with. I'm so glad that I took a second look. I'm not suggesting you change your opinion of him, the way I did. Very few people live up to their potential in this world. Very few people have a vision of how to make the world a better place. Don't miss it like I almost did.

Their house survived Ike, but it's the only one left

(CNN) -- Warren and Pam Adams lost a house to Hurricane Rita in 2005, so it seems they'd be relieved to learn their new home withstood Hurricane Ike.

Helicopter pilot Ray Asgar submitted this aerial shot of the house on Wednesday.

1 of 3

But not when their house is the only one still standing in their section of Gilchrist, Texas.

Ike's storm surge last week devastated the Bolivar Peninsula town, flattening most of the roughly 200 homes there. The couple's yellow house at the beach -- supported 14 feet off the ground by wooden columns -- was the only house on Gilchrist's Gulf Coast side not to be flattened.

"As we got there, the tears started flowing," Warren Adams, 63, said Thursday after his first visit to the home since evacuating. "There's a yellow house sitting there, but that's all. It was devastating."

Although the house is there, it might not continue to stand. Huge storm surges walloped the interior, making it uninhabitable and destroying many belongings.

WSJ: McCain is "un-Presidential"

McCain's Scapegoat

Article
REVIEW & OUTLOOK
SEPTEMBER 19, 2008

John McCain has made it clear this week he doesn't understand what's happening on Wall Street any better than Barack Obama does. But on Thursday, he took his populist riffing up a notch and found his scapegoat for financial panic -- Christopher Cox, the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Christopher Cox.
To give readers a flavor of Mr. McCain untethered, we'll quote at length: "Mismanagement and greed became the operating standard while regulators were asleep at the switch. The primary regulator of Wall Street, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) kept in place trading rules that let speculators and hedge funds turn our markets into a casino. They allowed naked short selling -- which simply means that you can sell stock without ever owning it. They eliminated last year the uptick rule that has protected investors for 70 years. Speculators pounded the shares of even good companies into the ground.

"The chairman of the SEC serves at the appointment of the President and has betrayed the public's trust. If I were President today, I would fire him."

Wow. "Betrayed the public's trust." Was Mr. Cox dishonest? No. He merely changed some minor rules, and didn't change others, on short-selling. String him up! Mr. McCain clearly wants to distance himself from the Bush Administration. But this assault on Mr. Cox is both false and deeply unfair. It's also un-Presidential.

Take "naked" shorting, in which an investor sells a stock short -- betting that it will fall in price -- without first borrowing the shares he is selling from an investor who owns them. The SEC has never condoned the practice, and since 2005 it has clamped down on short selling in any stock that shows evidence of naked shorting. The SEC further tightened its rules against naked shorting just hours before Mr. McCain excoriated Mr. Cox for doing nothing.

The rules announced Wednesday will increase penalties and close loopholes that exempted broker-dealers from the rules against naked shorting. They also make it clear that deliberately selling short a stock whose shares cannot be borrowed is fraud under the Securities Exchange Act. That's all to the good, we suppose; fraud is fraud. But regular short selling is not fraud. It adds valuable information to the market about what investors believe to be the price direction of a stock. Demonizing short-sellers as a band of criminals, or barring short-selling outright in financial stocks, as regulators in the U.K. did Thursday, removes information from the market.

Then there's Mr. McCain's tirade against the "uptick rule," a Depression-era chestnut that investors could only short stock after a rise in that stock's price. The SEC staff studied the effect of the uptick rule on prices for years, in a controlled experiment involving thousands of stocks. It found the rule had no effect. Other studies, including those that examined the uptick rule's effect on stocks disclosing bad news, also found that it "protected" no one. The SEC's permanent staff has long supported repeal and the SEC's commissioners voted to do so unanimously in June 2007.

While he was at it, Mr. McCain added the wholly unsupported assertion that "speculators pounded the shares of even good companies into the ground." It wasn't very long ago that he blamed speculators on the long side for sky-high oil prices. Then oil prices fell. Now Mr. McCain wants voters to believe speculators are responsible for driving mismanaged financial companies to ruin. The irony is that this critique puts Mr. McCain in the same camp as some of the Wall Street CEOs who have led their firms so poorly. They also want someone (else) to blame.
In case Mr. McCain is interested, overall short interest in financial companies actually declined by 20% between July and the end of August. That's right: Far from driving this crisis, shorts were net buyers of financial stocks this summer, as they must buy stocks back to close their positions and realize their gains (or losses).

In a crisis, voters want steady, calm leadership, not easy, misleading answers that will do nothing to help. Mr. McCain is sounding like a candidate searching for a political foil rather than a genuine solution. He'll never beat Mr. Obama by running as an angry populist like Al Gore, circa 2000.



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Bush on the run

Is President Bush AWOL?

This is the perfect ending to the most disastrous eight years of any President of any time.

If people vote for Grampy and Vampy, then they deserve the 100 years war, oops 100 years peaceful occupation with uncounted deaths and dismemberments, the tax cuts to the extreme end of the wealth spectrum, the insurmountable debt to China that they will get. Better yet maybe Grampy and Vampy will privatize social security which they supported once. Then the system can go completely broke and be gotten rid of. This will allow the divide between the poor and wealthy to blossom and eradicate the middle class. The masses getting what they deserve. Too stupid to understand what failure means.

Saturday Night Live - Sarah Palin & Hillary Clinton

SNL sketch of Sarah Palin & Hillary Clinton

Duh: Playground time proves helpful for students with ADD

I suspect that children are getting doped up on Ritalin and other drugs too often because it's a quick fix for the schools and teachers.

When reading articles about Playground time proves helpful for students with ADD, it is hard to believe that any school would reduce the amount of time for recess. It is a no-brainer that kids need recess. And physical-ed class. What the hell is the matter with people to make them lose their common sense? Kids need to run around, yell, play and kick loose. Everyday.

I am not the anti-Obama

Just for the record.

Those Mayo Clinic folks are so smart

Autonomic neuropathy

ARTICLE SECTIONS

* Definition
* Symptoms
* Causes
* Risk factors
* When to seek medical advice
* Tests and diagnosis
* Treatments and drugs
* Prevention
* Lifestyle and home remedies
* Coping and support

Coping and support

Living with a chronic illness or disability presents daily challenges. Some of these suggestions may make it easier for you to cope:

* Set priorities. Decide which tasks you need to do on a given day, such as paying bills or shopping for groceries, and which can wait until another time. Stay active, but don't overdo.

* Seek and accept support. Having a support system and a positive attitude can help you cope with the challenges you face. Ask for or accept help when you need it. Don't shut yourself off from family and friends.

* Prepare for challenging situations. If something especially stressful is coming up in your life, such as a move or a new job, knowing what you have to do ahead of time can help you cope.

* Talk to a counselor or therapist. Depression and impotence are possible complications of autonomic neuropathy. If you experience either, you may find it helpful to talk to a counselor or therapist in addition to your primary care doctor. There are treatments that can help.


Reprints and permissions icon Reprints and permissions
April 15, 2008
By Mayo Clinic Staff © 1998-2008 Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research (MFMER). All rights reserved.

I am the anti-Obama

I don't think it was really meant as a compliment when I was referred to as the anti-Obama.

But it does have a sound like 'anti-Christ' and that leads to a strange topic that has floated on my periphery of my thoughts.

Why Obama? Usually, ones asks of fate or god or whatever, why? when something terrible is happening. But this time it is something good. In fact, this is one of the few times I have found something good happening in the world, at least something good and newsworthy also.

Obama has this magnificent oratory gift. He has optimism and hope. He comes across as young and vital and at the beginning of his gifts. It is stirring. And moving. And unsettling.

He had nothing. Absent father. Absent mother. Far off siblings. No family connections. No money.

And he cruised through the experiences that beat the crap out of me. College he made grades and friends easily. After college he slid smoothly into a decent job. Along the way he figured out what he wanted to do with his life. Then he did it. He married the right person. She never left him. He had beautiful children. He got into every school he applied to. He has not been fired or laid off from work. He did not have his energy sapped by an endless series of meaningless low paying jobs. He is healthy physically, mentally and emotionally. He is self-confident. He does not need anyone. He moves forward.

And I struggle to get out of bed everyday. I struggle to take a breath. I fail and fail and fail again. And start all over, only to fail. Then I wallow in negativity and hopelessness. And it seems that I am fairly normal. In fact, I am rather successful and positive depending on who you compare me to, in all my wallowing glory.

So, the weird part is this feeling of inevitability about Obama. He always seemed to walk on water. Whatever he tried he succeeded at. And wondering does the US deserve him?

I mean he is the real deal. He does care about people. Maybe not persons but definitely about people. He has held onto his ideals. He did set a path for himself and follow it. He does seem to answer to a higher calling. His drummer does seem to have an inside track to elevate the human spirit. Do you see where I am going with this? I can't put into words this feeling because I just hate the crackpot idea it seems to be. But I can't help wondering, who is calling him? and why?

Things That Suck

Unemployment and underemployment. Not keeping limits on the H1-B Visa program. Companies, including a certain unnamed multi-national, are hiring and training college graduates from India instead of from the U.S. Industry needs to work more closely with schools to build a workforce for the future and be incentivized to focus on more than short term profits that boost stock prices and executive bonuses.

The mortgage crisis. The push for short term profits drove the mortgage crisis we are currently experiencing. Lenders dropped their standards for making loans during a clearly speculative market period in order to cash in on the short term profits. The industry could easily have averted this crisis by taking responsibility.

But that's the trouble with working for a corporation. Individual responsibility is strongly discouraged. If you try to take an ethical stand for even the smallest principle, you will be pulverized. Literally pulverized.

The corporate world controls by fear of layoffs. And crushes anyone who takes an ethical stance. The Corporation is a soul-crushing, spirit sucking, vat of congealed evil dressed up in a suit and worshiping at the alter of the devil named quarterly earnings.

The work maze

Sometimes you need to evaluate your work life. I am reading "The Four Hour Work Week" and the author posits that the opposite of happiness is not sadness, it is boredom. Brilliant. Because boredom is the one most unbearable condition in the world. Fear of Boredom is why I take five books and ten magazines on an airplane with me. I've never read five books and ten magazines, but I feel safer from the brutal possibility of boredom.

I worry about work when it becomes boring. When it is diminishing instead of growing. When my accomplishments are ignored or credited to others. And based on several of the articles I have been reading on the internet, I am correct to worry.

The title of this article is not accurate, but some of the information in it affirms what I already know and believe:


Employee Beware: Five Signs of a Lousy Job

Ever known someone who worked at the same job for years, but complained about it daily? Have you accepted an unfulfilling job because you think work is work and it doesn't need to be enjoyable? The fact is many people are stuck in lousy jobs and have either grown complacent, don't know that there are better options out there, or just aren't sure what the warning signs are.
Here are some signs it's time to look for greener pastures:

1. You dread going to work.
How you feel about going in to your job each day can tell you a lot about whether it is the job for you, says Andrea Kay, career consultant and author of "Life's a B*tch and Then You Change Careers." Do you wake up in the morning and dread leaving your house for the office? While you are not expected to jump up and down with excitement every Monday morning, feeling constant job-related anxiety is a significant sign that you are in the wrong place.

2. You get no enjoyment from your day-to-day responsibilities.
No job is fun and games every day, but you should find some enjoyment in your daily responsibilities. Kay says that examining your job's typical duties is important to gauging whether or not it is a good fit.

The things you do daily should fit with your strengths, which are the things you like to do and do well, Kay says. For example, if you are happiest when you are out communicating with people, you probably will not be happy working with numbers and spreadsheets all day.

3. You are uncomfortable with the company culture and environment.
Some people write off the importance of culture in the workplace, but it can have a dramatic effect on your overall happiness and success. Kay says you need to ask yourself if you feel comfortable with the values of the organization. Are they in alignment with your own?

Additionally, the work environment can be another big factor in determining if a job is one that meets your needs. For example, if you love to spend all your time outdoors, you might not be happy sitting behind a desk day in and day out.

4. Your relationship with your boss is turbulent.
Problems with the boss are the most common reason that professionals give for leaving jobs, and the employee/employer relationship is critical to overall job satisfaction. "Define what would be an ideal relationship with your boss so you can take the initiative to help create it or know what to look for," Kay says. For example, do you like someone who works closely with you or would you rather work for someone who is hands-off? Only after you determine what your ideal is can you assess whether or not your relationship is living up to it.

5. You see no opportunities for career advancement or enhancement.
If your company does not place an importance on job training and professional development, this should raise some concerns. Similarly, if you have been stuck in the same position for years, have the desire to move up, but are not given the opportunity to do so, you might want to re-evaluate your situation.

While Kay says these five factors can be indicators of a lousy job, she also strongly cautions against using them as an excuse to leave without first taking some initiative to change your current situation. For example, if you feel like you have not been provided with opportunities to advance, proactively seek out these opportunities by talking with your boss or consulting human resources. If you feel like you do not fit in with the culture, assess whether or not you have made an effort.

"You need to ask yourself 'have I done everything that I can to explore advancing or enhancing my career here?'" Kay says. "Do what's in your power to make a difference."

If you are still feeling unsatisfied, the job is probably just not for you. And while it might be time to look for something new, your lousy job is not a total loss -- use what you've learned to help you find the right fit next time.

Copyright 2007 CareerBuilder.com. All rights reserved. The information contained in this article may not be published, broadcast or otherwise distributed without prior written authority.

Story Filed Monday, September 24, 2007 - 3:50 PM

Chinese leaders say the country faces a critical water shortage

Water. Water is the resource we cannot do without.

It's a lot of information to put together from all over the world. Pollution. Salinity of irrigated farmlands. Urban/suburban sprawl.



ABC News

Pollution Turns Chinese River System Red

Pollution Turns Central China River System Red and Foamy, As Many As 200,000 Without Water

By ANITA CHANG

The Associated Press

BEIJING

Pollution turned part of a major river system in central China red and foamy, forcing authorities to cut water supplies to as many as 200,000 people, the provincial government and a state news agency said Wednesday.

Some communities along tributaries of the Han River a branch of the Yangtze in Hubei province were using emergency water supplies, while at least 60,000 people were relying on bottled water and limited underground sources, Xinhua News Agency reported.

Residents in some towns were getting water from fire trucks, the Hubei provincial government said on its Web site.

Five schools were closed in Xingou township, while others could not provide food to students, the Xinhua report said without elaborating.

The pollution was discovered Sunday when water plant workers from Jianli County found that the Dongjing River, a tributary of the Han, had turned red and foamy, the Hubei Web site said.

Water plants along the river suspended intake and cut tap water to as many as 120,000 people, according to reports on the site. Xinhua said 200,000 people were without water.

Tests showed the polluted waters contained elevated levels of ammonia, nitrogen, and permanganate, a chemical used in metal cleaning, tanning and bleaching, Xinhua said. The pollution apparently flowed down from the Han River, the Hubei government said without elaborating on its source.

Water from nearby Lake Chang was being diverted to dilute the pollution.

Most of China's canals, rivers and lakes are severely tainted by industrial, agricultural and household pollution. Chinese leaders say the country faces a critical water shortage, partly due to chronic pollution and chemical accidents.

In one of China's worst cases of river pollution, potentially cancer-causing chemicals, including benzene, spilled into the Songhua River in November 2005. The northeastern city of Harbin was forced to sever water supplies to 3.8 million people for five days. The accident also strained relations with Russia, into which the poisoned waters flowed.

A paper mill dumped waste water directly into the Han in September 2006, forcing authorities to cut water supplies for a week in some areas, the Xinhua and government reports said. They did not say how many people were affected.

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Copyright © 2008 ABC News Internet Ventures

The Itch

New York Times article about itching will make you itch, very good article but it really does make you start itching.

More about mosquito repellants

Another informative site about mosquito repellants:

Integrated Mosquito Management

The Centers for Disease Control has a useful discussion of repellents http://wwwn.cdc.gov/travel/yellowBookCh2-InsectsArthropods.aspx

Colorado State University has a good summary of repellents
http://www.ext.colostate.edu/westnile/mosquito_mgt.html


Integrated Mosquito Management
University of Wisconsin - Madison

Eucalyptus, Soybean Oil, or Citronella

Repellents based on plant chemicals can provide good protection.

As long as it is understood that frequent reapplication may be necessary, plant-derived repellents should provide the same protection against mosquito bites as deet.

Oil of eucalyptus-based repellents include Repel Lemon Eucalyptus Insect Repellent, SC Johnson Off Botanicals, and Fite Bite Plant-Based Insect Repellent. The active ingredient in these repellents is para-menthane 3,8-diol (PMD). Field studies have shown that PMD provided protection that was equal to lower concentrations of DEET (<20%)>

Eucalyptus oil protects from mosquitoes

Have you ever been concerned by all the warnings on a bottle of mosquito repellant made with deet? Put on clothes, not skin. Avoid over exposure. Keep out of reach of children.

Eucalyptus oil may actually work better than deet, and is not a caustic chemical.

This blog has a good summary of the studies done: Insect repellents: Do natural alternatives to Deet (such as eucalyptus) offer reliable protection?

Wednesday, February 21, 2007
Insect repellents: Do natural alternatives to Deet (such as eucalyptus) offer reliable protection?

Many travelers, especially those with chemical sensitivities, are reluctant to apply Deet, a potent and somewhat toxic chemical, to bare skin. Some turn to natural alternatives. But are any of these natural substances anywhere near as effective as Deet at preventing mosquito bites? When I asked an Australian doctor in Laos this question, he quipped: “I certainly would not put trust in a herbal insect repellent.” Nevertheless, I was curious to explore this question further.

Jotman investigates.

The chemical industry, much like the drug industry, has little incentive to popularize non-chemical-based preventive measures. In other words, supposing there were a natural alternative to Deet that had been scientifically proven just as effective, it probably would not be very well publicized. The fact is that the chemical-pharmaceutical complex dominates the media-marketing-information channels in our society. Nevertheless, as malaria and dengue are potentially deadly diseases, I thought the doctor might have a point. Better safe than sorry. Where there any studies exploring the effectiveness of natural Deet alternatives?

Conducting some online research, here's what I learned:

* According to a UK study conducted in Bolivia that compared three mosquito repellents -- one eucalyptus based, one neem based, and one mixed essential oils based -- to a repellent containing 15% Deet, the eucalyptus-based repellent gave 97% protection for four hours, whereas Deet only gave 85% protection. The study reported that the other 2 products did not provide significant protection from mosquito bites.
* A UC Chapel Hill study compared Deet to several natural repellents -- and found Deet superior to the botanicals (providing protection for 300 minutes), though one botanical gave protection for 94 minutes, the others repellents were almost useless.
* A US Department of Agriculture study compared Quwenling, lemon eucalyptus plant to Deet concluded that "as a topically applied mosquito repellent, Quwenling has a shorter duration of effectiveness than Deet."
* Another UK study compared a eucalyptus repellent to Deet and found "no significant difference between PMD (the eucalyptus-based insect repellent) and Deet in terms of efficacy and duration of protection."

On the basis of these studies, in sufficient concentration, eucalyptus insect repellents would appear to offer an effective, safe, and natural alternative to Deet.

Update:
It's worth considering that many of the natural substances are produced in countries where there is no government oversight over the processing and labeling of the natural agents. As trusted brand-names seldom offer natural product alternatives to Deet, one may have to go on faith that the bottle of “natural repellent” contains the indicated substance in the strength claimed. Sadly, when purchasing locally-produced natural products in a corruption-prone region, you can’t be so sure what you are buying.

Yes, I am chopped liver

People suck. They really suck. It's a never ending series of betrayals. And I am chopped liver. But enough already.

More interesting and less heated, is the story of how those fabulously descriptive phrases came into our national language.

And the NY Times, naturally has the story, in a column written some time ago by William safire, entitled, "On Language; Enough Already! What Am I, Chopped Liver?"

October 25, 1998
On Language; Enough Already! What Am I, Chopped Liver?
By WILLIAM SAFIRE

'What red-blooded American hasn't surveyed the muck and mire of our national politics,'' writes Mark Jurkowitz of The Boston Globe, ''and said, 'Enough, already'?''

''Time magazine reports that Clinton's woes have left U.S. foreign policy adrift,'' writes The Guardian of London, ''though Garrison Keillor says, 'Enough already!' ''

Howard Fineman of Newsweek asks, ''Is there any way out of this mess?'' leading to an inch-high, 102-point, block-letter headline: ''enough already.''

The stylistic issue raised is: Should there be a comma between the first and second words of this increasingly important phrase? The publication that pioneered in its popularization is The Toronto Globe and Mail; of the 19,000 entries in the Dow Jones database, the first 22 uses (from 1977 to 1983) were in that newspaper. According to Warren Clements, style editor, ''We abandoned the comma in 1979 because enough already was considered one of those expressions that is almost one word. It rips rollingly off the tongue; the comma would slow it down.'' Adds Michael Kesterton of that newspaper, ''I know it's a Yiddishism, but it just fits the Canadian soul -- you know, 'I've had it and I'm not gonna take it anymore.' ''

The origin is the Yiddish genug shoyn, literally ''enough already.'' It is part of an array of phrases using shoyn for emphasis, from the similar gut shoyn, ''All right already!'' in the sense of ''Stop bugging me,'' to shvayg shtil shoyn, ''Shut up already!'' one calibration more irritated than genug shoyn.

''This use of already began to appear early in the century,'' says Sol Steinmetz, the lexicographer who has taken the place of the late Leo Rosten as my primary Yiddish adviser, ''among immigrant Yiddish speakers living in New York who were just starting to talk English. By the 1930's it had become common usage among their children who no longer spoke Yiddish -- a development that enabled it to entrench itself in the American language.''

Another scholar, Lillian Feinsilver, in her ''Taste of Yiddish'' (1970), notes that ''English would normally use the mild now, as in 'Come, now,' or the stronger 'Come on, now.' ''

Now is an adverb of time that can be used as an admonition before a statement (''Now, I want you to listen to this. . . ''). Similarly, already and yet are adverbs of time that can be used to intensify a statement when used at the end. (''Were you bitten by a mad dog?'' ''And the dog is mad, yet.'') Thus, already -- in Standard English, ''beforehand; by this time'' -- can be used in this idiomatic sense to mean ''without further ado'' or ''and you'd better believe it.''

We have seen how this Yiddishism has been thoroughly assimilated and is now an Americanism. Because other American English expressions have been adopted in many other languages -- O.K. and no problem are examples -- does this mean that this particular emphasis of exasperation is taking root elsewhere?

Some evidence exists that it does. Here is a letter to The Washington Post from Robert Hill, an American working in a large Saudi hospital in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia: ''The overwhelming -- by 9 to 1 -- response to the Clinton affair varies among 'What is the very big deal?' to 'What about the problems in the rest of the world?' to 'Enough already!' ''

When a Yiddishism takes root in Riyadh, that's saying something. Have we exhausted this subject? The reader may now vent exasperation at a surfeit of data by expostulating the very phrase being so minutely examined.

WHAT AM I?

At a chic Washington cocktail party, Elizabeth Drew, author of ''Whatever It Takes: The Real Struggle for Political Power in America,'' accepted an hors d'oeuvre of chopped liver smeared on a cracker and asked: ''Chopped liver is delicious. Why do people derogate it so? As in the expression, 'What am I, chopped liver?' ''

The earliest use of this phrase in its derogatory sense -- that is, ''something trivial; something to be scoffed at'' -- in the Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang is by Jimmy Durante on his 1954 CBS-TV show: ''Now that ain't chopped liver.''

In a 1980 monologue about the Reagan-Carter Presidential debate, Johnny Carson noted Ronald Reagan's statement that if all the unemployed were lined up, they would stretch from New York to Los Angeles. ''He came up with another one today,'' said Carson. ''If everyone on welfare were chopped liver, you could spread them on a line of Ritz crackers from here to Bulgaria.'' A decade later, the actor-producer Michael Douglas applied the phrase to himself, complaining about his secondary role in a movie: ''That hurt me in the industry as an actor, and it ticked me off. I thought, What was I -- chopped liver or something?''

This show-biz usage contributed to the treatment of the ethnic culinary delicacy (in Yiddish, gehakte leber) as an object of disdain. It may have also been influenced by its sense in underworld lingo as ''a beaten and scarred person,'' or by the urbanization of the once-rural expression ''That ain't hay.'' Steinmetz speculates: ''Chopped liver is merely an appetizer or side dish, not as important as chicken soup or gefilte fish. Hence it was often used among Jewish comedians in the Borscht Belt as a humorous metaphor for something or someone insignificant.''

Nobody who tastes properly made chopped liver can use it as a derogation. I turned to my Times colleague Marian Burros, author of ''The New Elegant But Easy Cookbook,'' for the recipe: ''Saute one finely chopped medium onion in two tablespoons hot chicken fat until lightly golden and very soft. Add 1 pound chicken liver and saute until cooked through; process in food processor with one small raw onion and one hard-cooked egg. Season with salt and pepper and mix with enough chicken fat to make it moist and spreadable.''

Then you can say, ''I feel just as terrific as chopped liver!''

* Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

Women of the world: Female leaders can change the course of our political and economic future--for the benefit of everyone.

Another fine article from Ode magazine:

Women of the world: Female leaders can change the course of our political and economic future--for the benefit of everyone.

Marie C. Wilson | October 2005 issue

I often hear people say that the lack of women in positions of political leadership is an issue that pales next to world crises—global terrorism, fragile economies, inadequate health care, troubled schools, corporate greed. They see no connection between the frightening situations we’re in and the fact that few women sit at the table to determine the solutions.

No wonder we’re where we are today.

This fundamental imbalance, with men running the world and women mostly spectators (or victims), is not a trivial detail. It is the problem. It is also the one solution we have not tried, and the one most likely to work.

It’s not that putting women in power is simply the right thing to do—it’s the only thing to do. The values that women uniquely bring to the table—empathy, relational skills, community focus, inclusion across lines of authority—are vital if we are to solve any of the monumental issues facing our world today.

This is not just me talking. Three decades of research in state legislatures, universities, and international public policy centers have proven beyond doubt that women, children, and men all benefit when women are in leadership. Broader social legislation, benefiting everyone, is more likely to pass if women are in office. We know the power of women as peacemakers in the world from scores of stories about their effectiveness at negotiation, from Ireland to Pakistan to Norway to South Africa to India and beyond.

We can ill afford to use only half our talent, when we know for a fact that today’s complicated challenges demand more than one vision. It’s time for real and permanent power sharing, for real and permanent change—women ruling side by side with men, allowing their voices to rise with different solutions and allowing men to think outside of the masculine box. In this way, we get fresh eyes and fresh solutions from both genders,

applied to both old, abiding problems and to new, frightening ones.

This is not a call to pry power from the fingers of men and turn it all over to women. Together we can create a different world, shifting the burden from male shoulders and allowing the diversity of thought and life experience to transform our actions—perhaps bringing a greater peace, perhaps allowing men to be better fathers, perhaps providing a new paradigm for our security.

It’s not easy to get there. Those in power rarely let go without a fight, even if they would benefit by doing so. For women to truly gain the leadership roles, we must be insistent and persistent. We must enlist our many male allies. We must step up to the plate, letting it be known that we are ready to lead, that in fact we demand it as a birthright. If we think creatively, if we use our community resources (a particular strength of women), if we support women who say they want to lead, if we use our voices and our votes to get there, we will achieve the transformation of power. And everyone will be better for it. Our daughters and sons and grandchildren will thank us, because their world will offer more options. We owe it to them. And to ourselves.

Marie C. Wilson is founder and president of The White House Project (www.thewhitehouseproject.org), a U.S. nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing women’s leadership across sectors and fostering the entry of women into all positions of leadership, including the presidency. She is also the author of the new book Closing the Leadership Gap: Why Women Can and Must Help Run the World (Viking). This text was adapted from the book If Women Ruled the World, edited by Sheila Ellison (Inner Ocean Publishing).

How Women Will Change The World: The not-so-secret secret to changing the world

There is a timely article about how women in Rwanda are changing that country and turning it around from the horrible genocide that left the country devastated to today's economic revival. The country was left with a population 70% women after the genocide. Today " the women of Rwanda are behind one of the most inspiring comeback stories of national transformation in recent history."

I have been researching giving to charity and how to make your giving have the most positive impact. Micro-lending to women has proven to have the most significant positive impact to a community. When you help a woman, she helps the whole family. Teach a woman and she teaches the family.

An unfortunate inverse applies. When a society becomes majority male population, women's rights suffer, and the society as a whole suffers. This is happening in China and India today with the years of using new technology and old traditions to increase the male population at the expense of baby girls. In both China and India there are social issues including an increase in sexual crimes that will resonate for many years to come. China has reacted by sharply decreasing the wholesale adoption of girl babies to foreign countries. India has not acknowledged the issue, a typical response for a country that is still in denial about its growing AIDS epidemic.

The article first appeared in Ode, and was latter referenced in the Huffington Post. And here:

The 1994 genocide in Rwanda left the country in tatters, its future fraught with uncertainty. Of the more than 800,000 people killed, most were men and boys. Rwanda’s remaining population was 70 percent female. Fast-forward to the present day: The economy has revived and is holding steady. Major road arteries between cities and outlying villages, which were destroyed, have been rebuilt. Today, the Rwandan lower house of Parliament is nearly half female, the highest percentage of women in any parliament worldwide. Girls are attending school in record numbers.

The women of Rwanda are behind one of the most inspiring comeback stories of national transformation in recent history. And while their story is dramatic, it’s not unique. Indeed, in the field of international development, women have emerged as the not-so-secret secret to changing the world.

As former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan has said, “If there is one lesson we in the United Nations have learned over the years, it is that investing in women is the most productive strategy a country can pursue”—to raise economic productivity, improve nutrition and health, and educate the next generation.

When economist Muhammad Yunus won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for his innovative work in microcredit lending, he made it clear that it was women who make up the bulk of the poor but ambitious small business owners lifting their communities out of poverty with their entrepreneurialism. What many people don’t realize is women are behind many of the primary drivers of social change.

In the U.S., for example, women earn 78 cents to a man’s dollar, which may lead you to think they give less to charity. Think again. In fact, women control over half the total wealth in America, and give just as much as men to charity. Unlike men, however, they’re more willing to take risks on smaller or new organizations they believe have a strong vision for change. Studies show women volunteer more than men, and since the 1960s have turned out in greater numbers at the voting booth. In other words, women are the single most important market opportunity for changing the world.

Unfortunately, their potential has yet to be fully tapped. Professionals in the social-change sector, including advocacy groups, humanitarian organizations and philanthropists, haven’t always been thoughtful about targeting women as partners. But if more of them did appeal to women, what would it look like? For starters, it would involve invoking the values that matter most to them. Research from sociological studies to the latest in brain science show that above all, women value connection and community. For women, it’s not about “me,” it’s about “we.” That means women are less concerned about the pecking order and more committed to keeping harmony in the coop.

At the dawn of the 21st century, the greatest social and environmental challenges that confront us make these values a winning blueprint for transformation. Both globalization and climate change have already made national borders more tenuous. If the reigning ethos of our history as a species has been “survival of the fittest,” the temperature of today’s planet requires a paradigm shift to “survival of the connected.” Women can lead the way.

You don’t have to be an international diplomat to take this new ethos to heart. An important first step is to ditch the niche. That is, banish the notion that women are a peripheral audience and place them squarely in the centre, where they belong. Next, engage women by speaking directly to their values and encouraging their active participation. With women on your side, you’ll both build a community and catalyze the change you want to see in the world.

Lisa Witter is the chief operating officer and Lisa Chen a senior vice president at Fenton Communications, a U.S. public interest media relations firm. They are the co-authors of The She Spot: Why Women Are the Market for Changing the World—and How to Reach Them, which will be published by Berrett-Koehler in June.

"Lust Telepathy"

Huffington Post blogger Dr. Belisa Vranich writes in Lust Telepathy: An Unexplored Psychological Phenomenon, writes about the connection between couples that allows them to feel 'almost telepathically connected'. She describes it as a brain activity similar to the high a drug addict feels.

It is a strange thing that happens between a couple. You can feel it when it happens to you. And sometimes you can see it when it happens to others. And when it happens to one person but not the other it is the stuff of tragic unrequited love. And all of these are being mapped to parts of the brain.

So, if these experiences have to do with neurons and neurotransmitters and the electrical circuitry of our brains, is there a non-verbal communication taking place? And I don't mean batting eyelashes. Is there a level of transmittal between electrons that takes place without the complex processing of bringing an emotion to consciousness and assigning verbal signifiers?

And for people who do not easily bring emotions to consciousness and who do not easily translate neuron sensations into the abstraction of language with its assignment of signifiers to signifieds, is there some way for them to communicate?

And why are some people more able to comprehend their feelings than others? Or more able to make that intense connection?

Vranich writes "Classic psychology explains that the "merging" feeling--the well-sung "losing yourself in another" moment--is something that resembles the feeling infants have of being connected to their mothers, their gaze ("mirroring") being an intrinsic part of the development of the self."

Is their something in the maternal bonding process that needs to take place in order for the adult mind to have the capacity to bond with another?

Pandas!

See cute panda video posted by NPR. These pandas are located at the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding in China.

New Development Languages

Two new programming languages that I have learned about in less than a week:

Flex
Ruby on Rails

Very exciting!!!

More to explore.

Where Hillary Failed ... Wright succeeds ... Bringing Down Obama

Read more about "Wright to Obama: 'Coming after you' " on politico.com

The Pastor Disaster ... Just when it seemed about to blow over ...

Reverend Jeremiah Wright, former pastor to Barack Obama, has had quite a week. He taped an interview with Bill Moyers last Wednesday which aired on Friday, April 28, on PBS. Spoke at an NAACP dinner Sunday night, and today gave a talk to the National Press Club in Washington. And he sure raised some hell. And put Obama in a tight spot.

Just when it seemed about to blow over ... Wright comes out of his weeks of silence, swinging. He denies that Obama denounced him. And he has a lot to say that is going to alienate voters for his friend and former Congregation member.

Geez, I remember thinking that Obama was getting a free ride with the Press, no one digging into his real past, no one dragging him through the mud.

Nope, it took a man of God, a pastor, a preacher, to bring down Obama. And Wright may have finished off Obama for good.

Why did he keep silent for so long? And why speak now? He looks like he is grabbing his fifteen minutes of fame. He may destroy Obama's political ambitions, but he has thrust himself onto the national stage as one of the "voices" of black America. Now he will be up there in the spotlight with Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson. He can show up anywhere and get press coverage. He can write a book and get rich. He can grow his power and influence in the black community infinitely.

But he cannot help Obama. And he cannot allow Obama to succeed as an individual. He has to bring him down. It's like the Irish. Whenever an Irish person gets too successful, then the others around him have to pull him back down to their level. The Irish are great at not letting their own succeed. And apparently black pastors have a bit o' the Irish to them.

Wright would rather push his paranoid black liberation theology agenda than see real progress for African Americans. He would rather make a name for himself than help the entire country benefit from the type of leadership that Obama could bring to the Presidency.

Pathetic, sad man, Jeremiah Wright, trapped in a view of the world that is inflexible, no longer valid, and holding back progress more than anyone or anything outside of himself.

Obama needed a family. But what a price to pay for it.

Michelle Obama & Race

After reading Michelle Obama's senior thesis "Princeton-Educated Blacks and the Black Community", I didn't find it racist at all. She was trying to draw a correlation between how much time Blacks spend with what she calls "the Black community" and "Black culture" and how much those same people are interested in helping economically disadvantaged Blacks.

The paper is somewhat pedantic, well-written and rather boring. Which is interesting since Barack's autobiography was also well-written and a little to wordy and pedantic, and dare I say it? ... a little boring.

Most people that I know look back upon their senior thesis with some sort of nostalgia for their naïveté and innocence, or irony for their unsophisticated ideas. Of course, I have no idea how Ms. Obama would feel if she reread her thesis at this point in time. I would hope that she would be able to see the flaws and naïveté implicit in it's simplistic take on race in America. But who knows if some bitterness may have hardened her ideas.

Some of the assumptions Ms. Obama makes in her thesis are moral stances on what people ought to do. She does not present an argument for why skin color should determine who you do or don't help. She starts with the assumption that skin color defines culture, and that people ought to help economically disadvantaged people who have the same skin color as them.

In this picture, there are "Black" people and "White" people and no one in between. And the "White" people are somewhat stereotyped as having "the luxuries typical of the White middle class." As a person of northern European descent, I certainly don't think of myself in the terms, generalizations or stereotypes which Ms. Obama uses in this paper.

But it's not a paper about what happens when you stereotype and generalize people based on race. She was trying to prove her thesis that when "Blacks" went to Princeton, they become inculcated with the desire to have lucrative, successful careers, and they do not have an interest in helping people of the same skin color who are economically disadvantaged. And there is a definite judgment that it is bad not to help disadvantaged people who have the same skin color as you do.

There are some assumptions made that I would say don't hold up to examination. But Ms. Obama is viewing the world through a very distinct prism in this paper.

One would hope and expect that her world view has expanded somewhat over the years. I would have said that as a Christian woman one would expect her to be more tolerant and racially inclusive. But then again, her Church is not a particularly tolerant of racially inclusive Church.

Ms. Obama is an unknown entity. But there is no doubt that someone as intelligent and articulate as she was 23 years ago has grown over time, and has grown able to relate comfortably to people of all races and socio-economic backgrounds.

Perhaps she left south Chicago as a teenager from an environment that was entirely "Black", and arrived at Princeton, and experienced being the minority group for the first time at a time when the university was predominantly "White". Possibly she even went from being on of the most popular and successful people in her community to being an unknown amongst all the other most popular and successful people from their communities.

It can be a shock to get to college and find that is where all the other smart kids went. No one is as special as they think they were when they get to a good school because that's where all the other talented kids have gravitated to. And there is nothing easier than deciding that there is some generic reason why people treat you the way they do. Many a time I have thought that someone got a promotion because he was a guy. Maybe it was true, and maybe it wasn't. But it sure was easy to find the major difference and define the situation with that difference.

And to be honest, from what I have learned from my close friend who graduated from Princeton two years before Ms. Obama, there was plenty of institutionalized racism on that campus. Princeton in the 1980s was turning out the future corporate attorneys, stockbrokers and Wall St titans, not the future labor organizers and criminal defense attorneys that Oxy was incubating.

Read the thesis for yourself, and make up your own mind.

Politico.com article regarding Michelle Obama's college thesis on race

Michelle Obama thesis was on racial divide

By JEFFREY RESSNER | 2/22/08 4:20 PM EST Updated: 2/23/08 9:51 AM EST

Michelle Obama's senior year thesis at Princeton University, obtained from the campaign by Politico, shows a document written by a young woman grappling with a society in which a black Princeton alumnus might only be allowed to remain "on the periphery." Read the full thesis here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4.

"My experiences at Princeton have made me far more aware of my 'blackness' than ever before," the future Mrs. Obama wrote in her thesis introduction. "I have found that at Princeton, no matter how liberal and open-minded some of my white professors and classmates try to be toward me, I sometimes feel like a visitor on campus; as if I really don't belong. Regardless of the circumstances underwhich I interact with whites at Princeton, it often seems as if, to them, I will always be black first and a student second."

The thesis, titled "Princeton-Educated Blacks and the Black Community" and written under her maiden name, Michelle LaVaughn Robinson, in 1985, has been the subject of much conjecture on the blogosphere and elsewhere in recent weeks, as it has been "temporarily withdrawn" from Princeton's library until after this year's presidential election in November. Some of the material has been written about previously, however, including a story last year in the Newark Star Ledger.

Obama writes that the path she chose by attending Princeton would likely lead to her "further integration and/or assimilation into a white cultural and social structure that will only allow me to remain on the periphery of society; never becoming a full participant."

During a presidential contest in which the term "transparency" has been frequently bandied about, candidates have buried a number of potentially revealing documents and papers. In Hillary Rodham Clinton's case, there's been a clamoring for tax records, White House memos and other material the candidate's team has chosen to keep from release. The 96-page Princeton thesis, restricted from release by the school's Mudd Library, has also been the subject of recent scrutiny.

Earlier this week, commentator Jonah Goldberg remarked on National Review Online, "A reader in the know informs me that Michelle Obama's thesis ... is unavailable until Nov. 5, 2008, at the Princeton library. I wonder why."

"Why a restricted thesis?" asked blogger-pastor Louis Lapides on his site Thinking Outside the Blog. "Is the concern based on what's in the thesis? Will Michelle Obama appear to be too black for white America or not black enough for black America?"

Attempts to retrieve the document through Princeton proved unsuccessful, with school librarians having been pestered so much for access to the thesis that they have resorted to reading from a script when callers inquire about it. Media officers at the prestigious university were similarly unhelpful, claiming it is "not unusual" for a thesis to be restricted and refusing to discuss "the academic work of alumni."

The Obama campaign, however, quickly responded to a request for the thesis by Politico. The thesis offers several fascinating insights into the mind of Michelle Obama, who has been a passionate advocate of her husband's presidential aspirations and who has made several controvesial statements, including this week's remark, "For the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country." That comment has fueled debate on countless blogs, radio talk shows and cable news for days on end, causing her to explain the statement in greater detail.

The 1985 thesis provides a trove of Michelle Obama's thoughts as a young woman, with many of the paper's statements describing the student's world as seen through a race-based prism.

"In defining the concept of identification or the ability to identify with the black community," the Princeton student wrote, "I based my definition on the premise that there is a distinctive black culture very different from white culture." Other thesis statements specifically pointed to what was seen by the future Mrs. Obama as racially insensitive practices in a university system populated with mostly Caucasian educators and students: "Predominately white universities like Princeton are socially and academically designed to cater to the needs of the white students comprising the bulk of their enrollments."

To illustrate the latter statement, she pointed out that Princeton (at the time) had only five black tenured professors on its faculty, and its "Afro-American studies" program "is one of the smallest and most understaffed departments in the university." In addition, she said only one major university-recognized group on campus was "designed specifically for the intellectual and social interests of blacks and other third world students." (Her findings also stressed that Princeton was "infamous for being racially the most conservative of the Ivy League universities.")

Perhaps one of the most germane subjects approached in the thesis is a section in which she conveyed views about political relations between black and white communities. She quotes the work of sociologists James Conyers and Walter Wallace, who discussed "integration of black official(s) into various aspects of politics" and notes "problems which face these black officials who must persuade the white community that they are above issues of race and that they are representing all people and not just black people," as opposed to creating "two separate social structures."

To research her thesis, the future Mrs. Obama sent an 18-question survey to a sampling of 400 black Princeton graduates, requesting the respondents define the amount of time and "comfort" level spent interacting with blacks and whites before they attended the school, as well as during and after their University years. Other questions dealt with their individual religious beliefs, living arrangements, careers, role models, economic status, and thoughts about lower class blacks. In addition, those surveyed were asked to choose whether they were more in line with a "separationist and/or pluralist" viewpoint or an "integrationist and/or assimilationist" ideology.

Just under 90 alums responded to the questionnaires (for a response rate of approximately 22 percent) and the conclusions were not what she expected. "I hoped that these findings would help me conclude that despite the high degree of identification with whites as a result of the educational and occupational path that black Princeton alumni follow, the alumni would still maintain a certain level of identification with the black community. However, these findings do not support this possibility."

W E I R E D N E W S: Karate students take out robber

Karate students take out robber. Metro.co.uk reports:

It's been a bad few days for criminals. Not only did a mugger in Germany get taken down by a blind judo champion, but an armed robber in Colombia found out the hard way that a karate academy is a lousy place to try and rob.

The thief discovered the flaw in his plans when the students at the academy didn't take kindly to being robbed, police said on Friday.

The robber is now recovering in a hospital, in Santander province north of Bogota, after the martial artists used their combat skills on him and took away his gun.

'An individual entered a martial arts school with a firearm but they managed to react, put their knowledge to use and disarmed him,' Santander police commander Col. Julio Cesar Santoyo told local Caracol radio.

Not to be missed are the comments:

Texas Rocks! With the modifications to our "Texas Castle Law" last year it would be legal to kill the robber. AND if he had any money in his pockets you could reflect that the robber paid you to terminate him! Now how cool is that?
AUSTIN – Gov. Rick Perry today signed into law Senate Bill 378, extending Texans’ rights to use deadly force for means of self-defense, without retreat, in their home, vehicle or workplace. The law takes effect Sept. 1, 2007.

- Dave, Dallas Texas

Troy -The UK is one step ahead of you guys on this. In the UK not only would the victims have been arrested, jailed and sued but the robber would have been able under EU 'yumin rights' legislation, to have demanded and received 'compensation' for his hurt 'feeling's, his hurt ribs, his hurt head, his hurt 'dignity' and all the 101 other little 'urts he suffered - poor thing. We don't play around in the UK - we give it to the victims of crime in spades. How dare they stand up for themselves?!

- John Jones, London

No kidding, how dare those kids try to defend themselves.

- Sam, Virginia, USA

Brilliant!

- Steven Klassen, United States

Columbian justice seems to have taken a turn for the better. In the US the victims would have been arrested and sued.

- Troy Lee, Sanibel Florida USA

Obama diverted by pastor detour

Now, the media has finally found some substance to dig into rather than quibble over substances with "the pastor disaster."

Seriously, how long has Obama been a declared candidate running for the Democratic nomination? A couple weeks? Wasn't there some sort of Senate race a few years back also? But now the media has discovered Reverend Wright and his extremist sermons, not to mention the Trinity United Church of Christ's website with it's Afro-centric, blacks only message.

When I first read the website of the Trinity Church, and the message it put forward, I was definitely put off. I would definitely feel unwelcome at that Church based on the tone and message conveyed. I would be intimidated to participate in a community so candid about it's bias. Perhaps there are Churches with a bias toward white people that would also put me off and offend me.

But B. was never that kind of person. He was a skeptic like many of us at Oxy. Wary of organized religion and it's history of oppression and violence. When he found Trinity Church, and he found a minister who accepted him, and a group of people who accepted him, then met at his first legal internship a woman who was most likely very much a part of the Church and the community, well it must have all made sense to him. Spiritual growth, belonging to a community, being accepted, finding love, all of those things happened to him with Trinity Church playing an integral role.

So, I don't think B. became some kind of radical bigot all of a sudden. He found a balance between the gifts and the flaws of his new life as a Christian and a member of Trinity Church.

Part of growing up is the process of finding yourself and your identity. In retrospect, I understand that B. had a greater challenge than many of us who were of the same age and social group, but he also had the greater success. That is one of the great wonders of B., that he did so much on his own. Who knew. He always made everything he did look so easy and graceful and effortless. And sometimes it did seem like the world was colluding with him, even making the sun shine and the birds sing for his benefit. And I have felt the urge to hide when I saw him coming, in order to avoid experiencing the juxtaposition of his calm, self-confidence and seeming enjoyment of life with my nearly infinite series of failings, fears and frettings.

If ever there was a living, breathing, walking, talking example of a person bringing good things into their life by having confidence, faith and hope, B. is that person. He breathes the rarefied air of the few natural born leaders.

Not that I noticed that at the time. We were teenagers. He just seemed kind of arrogant and bossy to me.

Perhaps he was simply a misunderstood Mr. Darcy of his time. Seemingly arrogant and indifferent, but actually a highly ethical and compassionate human being. Or maybe not.

There may be stories to find but no one has found them

Ridiculous. The NY Times ran an article about Obama, Friends Say Drugs Played Only Bit Part for Obama, questioning whether he really used drugs as much as his memoir portrays. It seems like quite a stretch to try to discredit Obama's drug use. People don't overstate their drug usage; they downplay it. One might even consider that Mr. Obama admitted to drug usage to take the wind out of any later revelations that might have come out. Mr. Obama's friends aren't talking. If you've heard him or met him, you understand he can be compelling.

Is this what all the books about George W. Bush are like? Do they also get everything wrong, talk to people who know nothing, and come up with ridiculous claims out of the writer's own imagination? In a way it is disillusioning. I mean it wouldn't be that hard to come up with some genuine journalism if one did the research. There is enough public information to make for some interesting writing. Are journalists lazy or just trying to make tight deadlines?

Free Press: Tom Cruise and Scientology

Finally, the press is getting some backbone and covering Tom Cruise and the Scientology stories.

About the Creepy Cruise video.

Creepy Cruise video.

O and Oh

Dinner at Picasso was out of this world. The Cirque du soleil show 'O' was fantabulous.

Oh, I walked around the entire hotel and never once saw Hillary Clinton or the Democratic Caucus, although she was rumored to be staying at the Bellagio. Apparently, not on my floor.

Great Lectures for Free - elite world of humanities goes open source

On ABC7 local news I heard a news story about a fabulous free opportunity. You can download lectures from some of the best professors at the best universities in the US. Go to school web sites, like openculture and a special section of iTunes known as iTunes U. I have seen lectures like these for sale on tape for hundreds of dollars, but had no idea they are available for free online. Woo-hoo!!